Chapter 32: The Burrow
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Draco stood alone at the gate to Malfoy Manor. He held his trunk. He knew he would regret this.
He checked his wristwatch, sighed, rubbed his eyes, and checked it again. It was dawn. He really should have just thrown etiquette to the wind and Flooed.
Moments later, a house-elf popped into existence beside him. A floral bucket hat balanced on his wide ears.
“Mister Draco! Dobby is so glad to be seeing you! Dobby has been to such places!”
For Dobby, such places could mean the Hogwarts wine cellars, or the moon.
“He has been to wizard cities! Poorto! And Barceloona! His friends are going on without him today to Majorca. He will join them tonight! But Dobby is sorry for rambling and for being late also. If Mister Draco is not needing anything else, is he ready?”
“I’m not sure Mister Draco gets a say in the matter.”
“Sir?”
“Never mind,” he said. “Geronimo, or what-have-you.”
He permitted Dobby to take his hand. With a crack, the house-elf Apparated, and they appeared in a broad field of golden grass, tinged pink by the growing light of dawn.
A forested valley opened up on either side of them like a rose of crumpled green velvet. Full-bodied trees, pussywillows and elm and birch, feathered the horizon, while a yellow ribbon of country rode ribboned back and forth through the verdant hills and embroidered the hem of a gleaming white river. On a bit of wood hammered up clumsily to a post, there was a sign that read: THE BURROW.
“This is most charming!” said Dobby, who would have said as much of a tar pit.
It was not an utter circle of hell, but he reserved judgment until he saw the house. He hefted his wand to cast a Levitating Charm on his trunk — stopped himself — and sighed. Rolling out an ache in his shoulder, he hauled it up the uneven dirt path. He thought longingly of the porters at the Ritz-Carlton.
A quarter-mile down the drive, they came upon a house. He had never seen a house sustaining so much weight on so little structural integrity. It looked like someone had taken a perfectly good Tudor cottage and squashed it under a stack of several other, smaller Tudor cottages, smelted them together with some stilts and bulging brickwork, and peppered some chimneys on top as a garnish. It lay in the nestled arm of the riverbank, a towering patch job of timber and whitewash, whistling smoke from one of its flotilla of chimneys.
It was actually not an unpleasant place, until you remembered that nine people lived in it, and then it became downright terrifying.
One of the upper-level windows swung open, and a crop of bright red hair sprouted from it like a fast-blooming carnation. “Oi! It’s Malfoy! Least, I think it is,” he added. “The last weaselly blond git who came around wanted to sell insurance.”
“That you, Weasley?”
“You’re gonna have to be more specific! There’s more than one of us!”
“Lord help me. It’s like I’m back in Gryffindor.”
“Worse!” said another voice brightly. A second window on the floor above Ron’s popped open, and out came another redheaded young man with long thick ringlets bound up in a ponytail, wearing a leather duster. “We’ve got a full house! Hello, there. Ignore my brother’s manners.”
“Two Wheezys!” said Dobby, greatly pleased.
“If only,” muttered Draco. He raised his voice. “Easily done, I’ve had years of practice. Introduce yourself, ginger ruffian.”
“Ha! I’m Bill! Hang for just a second, there, we’ll nip down and help.”
“Wot?” said Ron indignantly, but then something yanked him back from the window, and the shutters snapped closed. There was a small commotion inside the house, and then the front door burst open, and the pair of Weasley boys raced each other up the footpath. They were neck and neck until a Jelly-Legs Jinx snared Ron’s ankles, and he went pirouetting into a hedge.
“Bill! No fair! I can’t do magic!”
“Tough beat. Should’ve been born sooner.” Bill flicked his long hair out of his eyes and grinned at Draco. Upon closer inspection, the boy was built like his brothers — a frame like a stringbean with biceps — but he carried himself with all the confidence of his height and struck an impressive silhouette, besides. He wore an earring with a fang pendant and faded, washed-out denim pants in the muggle style, with rips slitting through the legs (were his parents in such dire straits they couldn’t afford thread?) and a pair of dragon-hide boots that lifted him another three inches off the ground. He looked like a fashion spread Katie Bell would hide in her nightstand.
“You’re the Malfoy kid,” he said.
“Was it the hair?”
“And the sneer,” he said, still grinning. “Ron says nice things about you, sometimes. Not often, but sometimes. Ow, kid.”
“He’s lying,” Ron said to Draco. “I’d never.”
He reached out as if to give him a hug, and then, perhaps seeing the hesitation on Draco’s face, lowered his arm for a handshake instead. They shook hands, and Ron slapped him on the back.
“Thank Merlin,” said Draco. “I should have gone straight home. Now, Weasley Senior, could I trouble you for a Levitation Charm? Any longer with this trunk, and I’m likely to lose an arm.”
“Anything for a guest. Also, hello,” he said to Dobby. “You’re not his, are you?”
“No, sir! Dobby is a free elf! Dobby is only here as a favor to Mister Draco! Hello, Wheezy!”
“Hullo, Dobby,” said Ron. “Nice hat.”
“Good,” said Bill. He jerked his thumb at the Burrow. “Either of you want some coffee or sausages? Mum’s cooking fit to feed the RAF.”
“Dobby must be going,” said Dobby reluctantly, as though the loss of sausages would cause him anguish in the nights to come. “Dobby has promised his friends he is to join them again, and Dobby is only seeing Draco as far as the Wheezy’s house. But he is ever so happy to see Mister Draco’s friends, and to make your acquaintance, Mister Wizard!”
Bill bit his lip, his eyes twinkling. “Yeah, for sure,” he said. “Nice meeting you, little man. Safe travels.”
“Thank you, Dobby,” said Draco.
It wasn’t quite a dismissal, but it wasn’t not, either. Some habits died slow.
Dobby seemed not to notice. He cradled Draco’s shinbone in a loving embrace, and then performed the same on Ron’s kneecaps, and Bill’s. Then he snapped his fingers, and disappeared.
“Alright, Mister Wizard,” said Ron. He pointed at Draco’s trunk. “Chop chop.”
The entrance to the Burrow did not inspire confidence. Above the doorframe the wall had sagged under the weight of the brick atop it, and been reinforced with a hastily applied listing pillar. A pigpen was tucked under one gabled window, and a herd of swine grunted contentedly in the sun-baked mud. A clamor of voices cut through the clear August morning.
“Mum’s in good form today,” yawned Bill. “Fair warning, if she yells, it means she likes you. Could mean she doesn’t like you, of course, but that’s not as common. She likes most people, does Mum.”
“Grand,” said Draco tightly. He wondered, not for the first time, why the hell his mother couldn’t have delayed her trip until he was at school. “Just how I’d like to start my vacation. Are those your animals?”
“Nah, they’re our neighbors,” said Ron carelessly. He slung open the door. “Came around at the wrong time, caught Mum in a bad mood, you know how it is. But I think we’ve got enough for Christmas hams, so I wouldn’t worry about it, if I was you.”
“Though she was complaining about not having enough chickens,” said Bill thoughtfully.
Then the two bastions of mirth, pleased with their own hilarity, laughed their way into the house.
The inside of the Burrow was bigger than the outside. This shouldn’t have surprised him, but it did, perhaps because it still wasn’t all that large anyway, considering the number of people trying to fit inside it. The first floor was composed of a tiny wood kitchen, most surfaces of which were covered in bubbling cast-iron pots and pans, emitting the wonderful smell of fresh bread and bacon grease. There was a scrubbed-wood dining table, a small cast-iron stove in lieu of a fireplace, and enough clutter to fill several collectors’ homes: secondhand books, old magazines, frayed ragdolls and chipped wooden toys, houseplants, photographs, and post that spilled over the side table and into the nearby wastebasket, which overflowed. An owl roosted on one of the upper shelves, above an old grandfather clock that had not two but seven hands, each crowned with a freckled face. Draco did not get to inspect it any further, however, because he was accosted by a howl that made him reach for his wand.
“GEORGE AND FREDERICK WEASLEY! ”
One of the twins — moving too quickly to say which — skidded around the corner and vaulted the table in a practiced leap. “Sorry, Mum!”
His counterpart was right behind him, clearing the table with an identical jump. He grasped a fistful of white papers. “Yeah, sorry, Mum! Gonna just go take care of these—”
“YOU COME BACK THERE THIS INSTANT—”
A spell came arcing out of the kitchen; the twins seized each other and dropped behind the chairs, where it sailed over their heads. It was here that they caught sight of Draco.
“Well, if it isn’t Blondie!”
“A houseguest! What timing! What serendipity!”
“What a perfect occasion to welcome this upstanding young man into our house!”
“Now don’t be disturbed by the ruckus, Malfoy—”
“—it’s about to die down rather quickly, if I’m not mistaken—”
“Bit of a domestic, you know how it is—”
“—suppose he doesn’t, though, Freddie, you think his mum ever yells at him?”
“Why, no, Georgie, I don’t,” said Fred, ecstatically. “I think his mum never gets mad at all.”
“Quite right, quite right. Together, then?”
“There’s no other way.”
They shouted together: “Hey, Mum!”
“WHAT!”
Molly Weasley swung around the corner, her face red and shiny from the understandable exertion of breaking the sound barrier, clenching a wooden spoon in one hand and her wand in the other.
There was a long, meaningful beat.
“Good morning, Mrs. Weasley,” said Draco politely. George kissed his fingertips. Fred was miming a round of opera applause.
“Hello, Draco, dear,” she said, breaking into a beatific smile. “Welcome to the Burrow. Would you like some coffee?”
“Who is that? Molly?” Arthur Weasley poked his head around the corner, spotted Draco, and gave a cheerful wave. “Oh, hello, there! Glad you got in alright! No trouble?”
“None at all.”
“That’s splendid. Ron, why don’t you show Draco where he’s sleeping?”
“Great,” said Ron. “Sure. Where is he sleeping?”
Molly huffed. “For the hundredth time, we’re putting the younger boys in Ron’s room, with Fred and George, and the older boys are in the twins’ room, and Hermione is with Ginny. It’s perfectly simple.”
“Except for the part where we don’t keep our room,” piped up Fred.
“Never was too clear on that part,” added George.
Molly turned her head slowly to look at them. They fell silent.
“Right, up we go, then,” said Ron quickly. “You can manage your bags, can’t you, Ma—”
The spoon swung around to accuse him. “Ronald! He is a guest!”
“George and I can carry it,” Fred piped up. “We’re bigger than Ron is—”
“You stay where you are.”
The twins slumped, rooted to the spot. Bill gave a soft laugh and slipped past his mother, dropping a kiss on her temple as he sidled into the kitchen. On the way, he traded places with Ginny, who was wearing an oversized Chudley cannons t-shirt and the whitewashed muggle denim pants that the whole clan of them seemed to favor.
“Let me at it, why don’tcha,” she said cheerfully to Draco. “Today’s bicep day.” Her t-shirt laid bare the best muscles a thirteen-year-old could ask for, i.e., none, albeit with the promise of impending volume once she could tip a scale at five stone.
Together with Draco and Ron, she edged out of the kitchen and climbed a rickety staircase that zigzagged through the house to the upper stories. Ladders lanced together platforms that didn’t gel right onto the stairs, and narrow passageways cut off to thin doors. The Weasleys scampered up and down these many ladders and staircases like lemurs, which helped to abate the fear that one wrong step would send him plummeting through the plywood floor.
“Their O.W.L.s came in today,” confided Ron. He rounded the banister and hopped over a jagged hole in the stairs. Draco warily circumnavigated it. “Bad news.”
“They’ve been having this one out for an hour already,” said Ginny. “Mum wants them to go into the Ministry of Magic like Dad, and all they want to do is open a joke shop. Which, with their grades, might be about the best they can ask for.”
“She was expecting more?” For the mother of Fred and George Weasley to have any ambitions beyond their immediate short-term survival struck Draco as rank delusion. He was personally impressed that they had given thought to anything past graduation.
“Nah, not really,” said Ron, “but it stings a bit, since Percy went and got seven. Lucky me, though, they’ve set the bar nice and low. Oh, speak of the boggart.”
They rounded the second landing, and at the top of the staircase above them stood two people locked in a passionate conversation about cauldron thickness. One of them was a stocky redhead with horn-rimmed glasses and the fuzzy threatenings of a deeply ill-advised mustache. The other was a girl with voluminous brown hair in natty curls and a heart-shaped face that was just starting to lose its babyish shape: the cheeks thinning out, the chin forming a delicate sharp point atop a thin neck. She was wearing a pair of muggle jeans, these ones much tighter than their school trousers, and the thin fabric of her white tee shirt stretched taut across her shoulders. The neat triangles of her shoulder blades pressed shadows into the cotton. It looked very soft.
“Draco! We didn’t hear you come in!”
Summer always turned Hermione’s hair lighter, and this was no exception. A number of sandy gold strands laced her normal curtain of fringe, though she’d grown it out. When she smiled, her teeth were white and clear of metal.
He opened his mouth to say something snide about Molly Weasley’s crusade, but what came out was: “You got your bracers off.”
Her smile grew wider. “Braces, and yes, I did! Isn’t it so much better?”
“I’m not falling for this again.”
She laughed, tripped down the stairs, and hugged him. He rocked back precariously from the sudden weight.
Her shirt smelled of fresh sterile detergent. Underneath that was sweat and salt from her skin, and her shampoo. It reminded him of Hogwarts, in the odd way that certain smells always could. Her hair buried his face in soft warm curls, and she was hot — physically, filmed with sweat, like she’d been working outside, searing in all the places she touched him — but soft, too, softer than she’d been the last time he’d hugged her. Two months was a long time.
He had thought about doing this.
When she drew back his hand lingered on her waist, for balance. Under the thin shirt he could feel the V-shaped place where her ribcage met her hip. The fabric was as soft as it looked.
He removed his hands and buried them in his pockets.
“Oh, Draco,” said Percy. “This might interest you. Hermione and I were just discussing a report I’ve got to finish for the office — we’re trying to standardize cauldron thickness. Some of these foreign imports are just a shade too thin — leakages have been increasing at a rate of almost three percent a year.”
“Three percent!” gasped Ron. “Does the Minister know about this?”
“I was telling him that we should be brewing with silver, instead,” said Hermione seriously. “But pewter is much more common, and it encourages people to cut all sorts of corners.”
He frowned. “The issue with silver isn’t that it’s not preferred, it’s too expensive. The market favors pewter, except in cases with exacting purity requirements, but then you’re dealing with niche sales for specialists.”
Percy was nodding with his whole body. “Which is just what I was saying to Mr. Crouch,” he insisted. “Exactly. Which is why people like us have to intervene and create quality regulations in order to prevent shoddy products from endangering witches and wizards everywhere. Really, when you think about it, we’re saving lives—”
“None of you deserve a summer vacation,” said Ron doggedly, and with Ginny nodding in agreement, they peeled off upstairs. Draco touched Hermione’s arm, and she followed them, after promising Percy that they would circle back to the question of tariff regulations later.
The room at the top of the house obviously belonged to a teenage boy. Under a miasmic carpet of dirty laundry, a twin bed lay, sloppily made, the bed sheets patterned with Cleansweeps. The room itself was a gabled wood attic, its slanted roof plastered with ruddy orange Chudley Cannons posters that moved and whirled across the walls, the players weaving in between canvases. A fish tank on the windowsill held an extremely robust frog, which ribbited with dignity as they entered, and its fellow pet, a small gray owl with yellow eyes, fluttered around a small steel cage beside it, bleating loudly.
The whole place smelled of Ronald, which was not a compliment.
Two sets of bunk beds had been wedged into the corners. When Ginny dumped his trunk on one of them, Draco realized with grave foreboding that it was his.
Ron hopped onto his bed, dislodging a flurry of pillows. “That bed’s Harry’s,” he said. “He’s coming later this week.”
“Wasn’t he staying with you for the summer?”
“Oh, he is. But he and Charlie went to watch the quidditch semifinal. Ireland versus Peru. Peru got demolished.”
“Of course they did, have you seen Ireland’s chasers?” said Ginny eagerly. “Moran’s got biceps the size of quaffles. She’s hardcore.”
She said it as if it were the finest compliment it lay in her power to bestow.
“No, but I wish I had. Charlie said they pure savaged them.”
“Unsurprising, for Peru,” sighed Draco, “but the Irish seeker is still mediocre at best. If they can’t get a hundred and fifty up before Krum—”
Ron shook his head. “See, there you go again, mate, overvaluing the seeker—”
Hermione cleared her throat. “About Harry,” she said pointedly. Her fatal flaw was, of course, a total disinterest in quidditch. “Has he heard from Padfoot?”
“Who’s Padfoot?” said Ginny.
“This weird bloke at school,” said Ron, waving his hand. “Bit of a recluse, you wouldn’t know him. I think he wrote once or twice, but he’s gone quiet since Harry’s birthday. Same for Moony.”
Draco, who was habitually suspicious of overfamiliar vagrants and Sirius Black in particular, put a mental flag on the subject.
Harry Potter was a case study in what would happen if you took just about the quietest, politest, most innocent child you could possibly imagine and dropped him to simmer with three or four of the least qualified parental figures you could find on short notice, let steep for fourteen years, and give him a quidditch habit. He treated Remus Lupin and Sirius Black like demigods because they honored him with even a scrap of paternal affection. Being abandoned or forgotten by them probably wouldn’t surprise Harry, but it would probably kill something inside him stone dead, and for that crime Draco would have very little mercy or forgiveness, if the time came.
“They’re busy, I expect,” said Hermione carefully. “It’s possible they haven’t had a moment to sit down and write. Unless—”
Draco cleared his throat subtly. What she meant was obvious — unless they’ve been caught — but Ginny was still in the room, and increasingly indignant at being cut out of the conversation. Besides, they’d have heard something if the two were arrested. The Ministry would plaster it on every flat surface in Britain.
Speaking of which. “Weasley, what the devil is your brother doing working for the Ministry?”
Ron groaned. “Oh, Percy? Don’t get me started. I don’t reckon he’d come home if Dad didn’t make him. He got a job with Crouch in the DIMC, and he’s not shut up about it since.”
“According to Mr. Crouch, Ginevra,” singsonged Ginny. “As I was saying to Mr. Crouch, Ginevra… Mr. Crouch is of the opinion, Ginevra, that I should lodge a meter of birchwood directly up my saggy white arse. And he’s quite right, too…”
“Obviously I know that,” said Draco shortly. “What’s he doing working for Crouch?”
“What do you mean?” Ron rolled himself upright. “He’s in the Pops party, like Dad. Dad says they might even run him for Minister in ’97, if they can get the votes.”
“First of all, if your party’s best candidate is the disgraced Bartemius Crouch, you might as well just hand Runcorn the pulpit with a red bow on top. Second of all, International Magical Cooperation was overhauled after the last election, it’s teeming with Cavs. You can’t spit in that department without hitting a conservative. Crouch only kept his position by the skin of his teeth.”
Ginny gave a pointed yawn. “If I have to hear any more about Fart-y Crouch, I’ll puke,” she said. “Anyone feeling brave enough to check on breakfast? Hope she hasn’t burnt anything, the last time she cooked angry I had to get out a chisel for the pancakes.”
“Oh, we should help,” said Hemione, and sprang up. “Cooking for eleven must be terrible.”
Draco raised his eyebrows. His idea of ‘helping’ in the kitchen consisted of drinking a freshly squeezed glass of grapefruit juice and describing what consistency he’d like his eggs.
Hermione gave an entreating pout — which failed to compel him at all, but to avoid embarrassing both of them, he jerked his head in assent. They clambered down the stairs, causing a small thunder on the creaky floorboards.
Mrs. Weasley was alone in the kitchen, muttering to herself.
“…though they haven’t got brains… be in real trouble. I’ve had more owls… carry on… Improper Use of Magic Office…”
A vigorous jab of her wand sent a pile of potatoes whirling out of their skins. She flicked it again at the fire under a saucepan, lit it, and gave the vegetables inside a judicious shake, billowing flame.
“Hey, Mum,” said Ginny cheerfully, reaching past her to snag a piece of bacon. “We’re here to help, or whatever — whoa!”
Molly had flicked her wand at the cutlery drawer, and knives and forks exploded from it like a swarm of silver insects. Ron hauled Draco down in time to spare him an impromptu haircut by way of an expeditious airborne steak knife. Instead, it buried itself safely in the pile of potatoes by the sink, and began chopping.
“…know where we went wrong… same for years, one thing after… listen to — FRED!”
She had picked up a fake wand, and it had turned into a rubber mouse, which squeaked and scampered into a hole beneath the cupboards.
“Think that one’s George’s, actually,” Ron mumbled. “Fred’s are smaller.” He started unstacking plates along the table, while Hermione followed him, distributing forks. Ginny ferried heaping platters of pancakes and roast potatoes out of the kitchen, assisted by her mother’s floating saucepans.
Draco lingered in the stairwell with his hands in his pockets, stalled not so much by the feeling that such work was beneath him — which it was, though he considered it also beneath anyone with, well, wizards in the house — but because he lacked an understanding of how it worked. He had never been in a household without help before, and was unsettled by the way everyone else seemed to understand what to do.
Fred and George came thumping down the stairs and snagged plates from a floating stack over the stove. “Oh, yum, pancakes,” said George loudly. “I love pancakes. My favorite.”
“I’m ever so grateful to mum for making them,” said Fred, even more loudly.
If they had hoped their mother would be softened with praise, they were mistaken. Mrs. Weasley came veering out of the kitchen like a vengeful hawk, orbited by a small solar system of saucepans. “Why don’t you make yourselves useful, for once, and go find your father?” she snapped. “And your brothers, too. I don’t know where everyone in this house gets off to the minute there’s work to be done.”
On cue, Bill and his father bustled in from the garden. “Sorry we’re late, Mum,” said Bill breathlessly. “Just fixing some stuff in the shed.”
“Arthur Weasley, I swear, if it’s that car—”
“What car?” said Arthur, with deeply unconvincing innocence. “Bill and I were getting some patches for the roof.”
Molly made a sound of supreme un-convincement, and pointed to the table. They sat.
Draco discreetly deposited himself in a seat between Hermione and Bill, where he seemed safely buttressed from Mrs. Weasley’s line of fire.
Breakfast was served melee style, a violent clash of venturing spoons for the high-ticket items on the table. Bowls of crisp roast potatoes and fragrant sauteéd mushrooms made quick rounds, often snatched or Summoned out of slow hands, while a mountain of glistening beef sausages vanished under rapid-fire erosion. George and Ginny formed a quick allegiance and raided the platter of ham steaks, piling up fat ziggurats of glazed pork under a burnished crust of brown sugar, while Bill and Fred had a spirited bout of fork-fencing when both grasped the ladle to the baked beans. Ron stuffed two wedges of white toast in his mouth and piled four more onto his plate before Mrs. Weasley noticed, and shrilled at him to save some for Hermione, who had nearly lost a hand when reaching for the pumpkin juice; Percy wandered in late, made himself a cup of coffee, and went back upstairs after complaining about the noise.
But after five minutes of pure combat, the table settled, and the clamor settled into a cheerful burble of conversation, undercut by the sound of vigorous eating. Draco tentatively speared a pancake and, when no retribution was forthcoming, snatched it onto his plate. He sectioned off a triangle, swiped it in whipped cream, and lowered it timidly into his mouth.
It was heartbreakingly good: fluffy and chewy and sweet with a salty finish, like eating a pan-fried cloud. He had assumed, based on Ron’s eating habits, that the food in his house would be so scant or so inedible as to render him desperate for nourishment by the time he got to Hogwarts. But Mrs. Weasley’s talent was undeniable. He cut off a larger piece and felt much less miserable about his living prospects for the next two weeks.
“Coffee, Draco?” said Mr. Weasley jovially, hefting a tall silver pot. “There’s plenty.”
“Arthur! He’s fourteen!”
“Oh! Er, never mind, my boy! Tea?”
“Please, and thank you,” said Draco stiffly, and a chipped brown mug levitated down the table at him. He sniffed it surreptitiously before drinking it. It was dense, black, and so over-brewed it made his eyes water. He schooled his expression into perfect neutrality before setting it down.
“Now, Hermione,” said Mr. Weasley, sawing into his black pudding with vigor. “You promised to tell me how your father’s fruit canal went.”
“…Root canal?”
“Yes! That’s the one!”
“He’ll be pleased you remembered,” said Hermione, a bit surprised. “It went well, I suppose, though he hasn’t written to me yet. I’m not sure they feel altogether comfortable with owl post.”
Draco snorted.
“Oh! Draco, you mightn’t know — Hermione’s parents do the most marvelously complex Healer work imaginable,” said Mr. Weasley earnestly, gesturing at Hermione with his knife. “I had the privilege to speak to Dr. Granger about it briefly, and my goodness! The education of a lifetime. Do you know that muggle Healers have to go to school for eight years just to get a license for teeth?”
He didn’t, nor, for that matter, that muggles had special schools for any kind of work at all. He simply hadn’t given muggle professions altogether that much thought. In his mind Hermione’s parents were blurry, bumbling, kindly figures in the background of their daughter’s life, benignly ignorant, guilty of nothing better or worse than holding her back from the world to which she belonged.
He had not, admittedly, considered the possibility that they were as smart as she was, which in hindsight might have been an error.
“My dad really liked talking to you,” said Hermione. “If you can get that telephone working, I can give you his number.”
Mr. Weasley was ecstatic. “Really! Hermione, would you?”
“Don’t threaten him with a good time,” warned Ron, who was engineering an intricate forkful of sausage and beans on a plinth of pancake. “Keep talking that way, and your folks will wind up at the family reunion. That’s what happened to the Jordans.”
“I think they would like that very much,” said Hermione shyly. Draco glanced sideways at her, and she was beaming. “Thank you, Mr. Weasley. They’d love to feel — included.”
“Well, they’re welcome at the Burrow just any old time, dear,” said Mrs. Weasley briskly, liberating the fried tomatoes from Fred’s grasp. “Just like their daughter. Aren’t they, Ron?”
“Yersh,” warbled Ron. He swallowed hard and grinned at Hermione. “Practically family, they are, anyway.”
Hermione smiled back, radiant. Draco narrowed his eyes. Nothing was more embarrassing than undisguised pandering, and it wasn’t as though any of the Weasleys would know subtlety if it performed a highly ironic burlesque on the breakfast table.
He avoided the sickening, moon-eyed ogling taking place between Hermione and Ron’s parents by reaching for the coffee pot, which bequeathed a stream of jet-black liquid, bitter as coal, but more tolerable than bad tea. His cup frothed beige when he doused it in cream, and he drank half of it at once.
The earthy smell of coffee rolled up from the mug in his hands, and sent him sliding back into memory: a year ago now, he had been at the summer house in France, with Theo and Pansy. Theo had boasted that he drank black coffee every morning when he was at home, and Pansy had called him a ridiculous liar, so he’d dug an old coffee press out of the pantry and proceeded to ravage the crimeless kitchen in his quest for validation. Somehow he had spilled the bag of grounds, discharging a waterfall of black grains on the white marble, and Draco and Pansy, after laughing themselves just about hoarse, had played Tag the Erkling to see who had to get the mop. Narcissa found them huddled over the sink, attempting in vain to extricate a gelatinous tar-like substance from the press. The kitchen had smelled like dark roast for weeks.
But that was a year distant, and leagues away. This place was too loud and far too crowded for him to mistake it for that quiet, airy house on the beach. He hadn’t seen Theo or Pansy since June. They had traded letters — short, polite little things that never seemed to say all they could — but neither had come to visit, and in July, Theo had stopped answering. Pansy said he had gone on a business trip with his father. Draco wasn’t sure if he would feel better if she was lying.
“Draco?”
He looked up, and found Hermione staring at him.
“What”
“I asked after your mother.”
“Oh. She’s quite well, thank you. Vacationing in Romania.”
“…with a horrible great fang on it,” Mrs. Weasley was insisting. “Really, Bill, what do they say at the bank?”
“…would be Ludo Bagman,” Mr. Weasley was saying to Fred, in crosstalk. “The official gambling ring always runs out of Magical Games and Sports. He was the one who got us such good tickets for the Cup, in fact. I did him a bit of a favor: His brother, Otto, got into a spot of trouble with a lawnmower with unnatural powers, and I smoothed the whole thing over. That family…”
“Charlie works in Romania,” said Ron brightly, to Draco. “There’s a dragon sanctuary there. He loves it. Says it’s the most powerfully magical place in Europe.”
“Charming, but I doubt she’ll have the chance to visit,” Draco said thinly. He dropped his silverware and pushed back his chair. “Excuse me.”
It was simply too much. Too many people doing too much at once, and all of it irritating. Why on earth hadn’t they eaten outside? At least there would be some fresh air.
He ferried his plate into the kitchen and dumped it in the sink. It didn’t take long for footsteps to follow him.
“That tea was inedible,” he said, by way of explanation. She ignored him. She was a wise girl.
Hermione dipped her plate in the sink beside his and ran the water. The babble of the faucet almost drowned out her murmur. “You left in a hurry.”
“I needed some air.”
She nodded. “It takes some getting used to,” she admitted. “When Harry and Charlie come back, it’s even worse. But you get used to it quickly, and then there’s something downright lovely about it. Having so many people in the house.”
“It explains a good deal about Ronald,” he said. Anyone who grew up knee-deep in people bigger and louder and stronger than oneself had to develop certain ways of coping. Perhaps for that reason, he found Ron was by far the most likable of the pack; he possessed a certain quiet and dignified sensitivity to other people’s feelings which even his nicer family members seemed to forget.
Hermione paused, revolving the dish this way and that, as if contemplating which way to attack it. “Ron is a good sport,” she said, barely moving her lips. “He puts up with a lot. I don’t think I gave him much credit for having such a good temper, until now.”
“Certainly he tolerates more than I would.”
Abruptly, he remembered something, a soggy vignette of memory, blurred by the years:
Bet you wish you had her brains. Then maybe your mummy would pay attention to you.
He closed his eyes.
When he opened them, the memory was gone, and he was back in the kitchen. There it was easier to breathe, and it smelled of dish soap instead of woodsmoke, with a verdant tendril of fresh air wafting in from the open window. Hermione’s arm brushed against his as she rinsed her dish and hung it up to drip-dry on some sort of metal rack.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you call him Ronald, before,” she said, half-teasing.
“And for preference, I should never do so again. But if I shout Weasley in here, I’ll bring down half the house on top of me.” He leaned his hip against the sink while she scrubbed out the inside of her glass with a dishcloth. “So. How was your summer?”
“Terribly unproductive, actually! I didn’t finish half the things I wanted to do. My mum and my uncle dragged the family on a big vacation to Lisbon, and I can’t read on planes or cars without getting sick. Then we toured these old monasteries and I kept wanting to ask the guide about the runic inscriptions, but my cousins were there, so I couldn’t mention it without sounding barmy.”
“I knew you had cousins,” he said, pleased. “One of them fancied a muggle rockstar.”
“Who? Oh, yes, that was ages ago, though. She’s got a boyfriend now, and she’s very mature.” Hermione rolled her eyes. “I think she writes to him daily.”
“You didn’t write to me daily, that’s for certain. The owls can find you in Portugal, you know.”
“Yes, but I can’t very well explain to my aunt and uncle why I’m mailing a letter by owl, can I? It was hard enough explaining why my parents let me keep one for a pet. They already think I’m some sort of nutter.”
He did not miss the way she tossed her hair back, shoulders steel-stiff, full of a defiant indifference. That was a fresh bruise, then.
He clucked his tongue and nudged her foot with his. Hermione always came back from her summers a little bit brittle, a little bit antsy, a little bit hungrier to prove herself. It wasn’t fair, and he could think of better ways for her to spend her summer than being dragged around and treated like the family loon — but it would probably offend her if he suggested them. He was careful with what he said about her muggles. He was never sure where the lines were. Hermione herself didn’t always seem to know.
“Pity them, that don’t know the half of it,” he said.
She gave a sideways smile. “I left some of my Astronomy homework out,” she whispered, conspiratorial. “I pretended I’d forgotten it. Nicole thought it was calculus, and she told her mum I was in advanced maths.”
“You madwoman. The Ministry will be at the door any minute. Also, what Astronomy homework, Sinestra doesn’t assign summer reading.”
“The back of the book has practice tests! You did finish the book, didn’t you?”
“Of course I finished the book,” he said, lying, “but—”
Ron poked his head in the kitchen door and rapped his knuckles on the doorframe. “What are you two whispering about?”
“Nothing,” said Draco.
“Homework,” said Hermione, promptly. “Speaking of which, Ron, have you done your essay for History of Magic? I thought the prompt this year was rather vague, so I’d like the three of us to compare our work, to see that we’ve all understood it correctly—”
“Blimey, never mind,” Ron said mildly, sauntering between them to drop his plates in the sink. “Teach me to interrupt a bloody meeting of the minds. Both of you should follow up with Percy, if you can stomach it, by the way; no one’s wanted to talk to him about cauldron bottoms all summer, and I think he’s depressed.”
“He’s not wrong, you know,” said Draco, who was more dismayed than anyone to find himself coming to Percy’s defense. “Cauldron thickness is highly relevant in advanced potion-making. If you read Alchemy magazine—”
“Oh, that’s bedtime reading, innit, keep a stack of them on my nightstand,” said Ron. “Really takes the edge off a long day, a copy of Alchemy magazine.”
“You’ve made your point.”
Ron clattered his dish into the rack and wiped his hands on a yellowing, highly-questionable towel. “House is a bit unbearable, when it’s this full,” he said frankly, surprising Draco. He had assumed the natives were immune to the Burrow’s tribulations. “Most of the time it’s roomier. Bill floats around, and Percy’s due to move out at the end of the summer, once he finds a flat. And Mum always gets stressed when there’s company over. She’ll calm down once she gets used to you. Best thing to do in the meantime is get out of the house.” He jerked his head at the door. “Fancy seeing the shed? Dad’s working on a car.”
“Does it drive?” said Hermione curiously.
Ron grinned. “No,” he said.
Admittedly, when his mother had told him to take a vacation, he had not given much thought as to what a week at the Burrow would exactly entail. Vaguely, he envisioned Ron’s routine at home to be the same as Draco’s, only in shabbier rooms: breakfast in bed, four hours of quidditch practice at the top of the morning, followed by several more hours of reading in the library, or perhaps brewing practice in the alchemy room, preferably scored by Hermione’s cassettes; then a three-course tea setting, served by Briselda; an afternoon constitutional around the lake; a game of tennis or chess with his mother; and dinner on the veranda, with a nightcap waiting in the drawing room. Finish with nine hours of blissful sleep in a king-sized bed, wake, and repeat, for results exceptional in health and mental fitness.
The delusion that this would continue at the Burrow was dragged out behind the shed and butchered within mere hours.
For one, summers at the Burrow appeared to involve a diabolical amount of work. The consequence of having no hired help, Draco realized in horror, was that one’s children became the only local source of free labor; and Mrs. Weasley showed no compunction about treating them as such. Moreover, he began to understand why she had so many, for there was a seemingly inexhaustible amount of work to be done: the massif of soiled dishware erected by each meal had to be scrubbed, dried, and put away, thrice daily, or else the kitchen would disappear into filth; no sooner had the last of these been dealt with than Mrs. Weasley would start cooking again, hauling out the same pots and pans and cutting-boards they had just painstakingly wiped clean, and someone was required to chop vegetables or peel potatoes or monitor simmering saucepans; meanwhile, the meal scraps would be carted out to feed the livestock, leaden bagfuls of fruit rinds and potato skins to be hauled into the pigs’ trough, or handfuls of corn and wheat scattered around the chicken coop, while jogging at a steady clip, lest the battle-hardened hens identify one’s fingers as a more promising source of nutrients (a fact that one’s hosts were happy to let one discover, quite meanly, without any prior warning); and, at the very moment the sun reached its blistering zenith, one could be dispatched to climb up on a molten-hot tin roof and fix a drainpipe: an exercise in endurance that meant hauling around an toolbox of ungodly size while clinging to the sun-baked wall and sweating out half his body weight in fluids, while Ron stripped off his shirt and scampered up and down the roof, hammering things, his back brilliantly white with sweat, like an albino primate.
“At the risk of rudeness,” said Draco through gritted teeth, “your parents are wizards, aren’t they, Ronald?”
Ron caught a splinter in his finger, swore, and popped it in his mouth. “Course they are,” he agreed, too distracted by his injury to take offense. “What’s your point?”
“That I have been made to execute at least six tasks today, not including this one, which would have been faster and better-suited to magical means.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Ron easily. “I’m sure they could do most of this stuff, if they had the time. But Dad’s got to work, and Mum’s only one woman.” He swung the hammer down hard on the nail, missed it, and Draco’s reflexes alone prevented him from rendering Draco’s thumb two-dimensional.
“Watch it. What about ancestral magic?”
“Sorry, sorry. What d’you mean?” Ron lined up another strike of the hammer.
“The Laws of Blood. Your parents are both of-age, and this is your family seat. Don’t they have any sort of sway over the house?”
“Eh, maybe a little. We haven’t lived here that long,” he said. “The Burrow’s not some old Wiltshire castle with generations of magic buildup. The best Dad can do is nudge the foundations around a little, prop up some walls, keep it from toppling over.”
“It’s a manor, not a castle.”
“Mate, you can’t just say stuff like that when I’m holding a hammer. It’s too much temptation.”
Against the odds, Ron seemed at peace in a way he never was at school. He was competent, cool-headed, and he knew things like which cupboard the teacups went in and how to replace a mortar joint, when it was safe to ask Mrs. Weasley for something, and when it was best to clean out for a while. Sometimes he would stop in the middle of whatever they were doing, cock one ear to the wind, and then say, “Come on,” and lead Draco and Hermione down to the living room, where they would discover a burgeoning game of Exploding Snap, or a fresh batch of doughnuts, or a group about to depart for the local village of Ottery St. Catchpole; and though he couldn’t explain how he knew these things were happening, he was so rarely wrong about them it soon became clear he had a sixth sense for it — as if there was an invisible cord running all throughout the Burrow and its residents, vibrating at an inaudible frequency to which Ron had a special and private attunement. He was adept in the ways of this hardscrabble life, and whether it was practice or instinct or something magical, the effect was the same: for once in his life, Ron emerged as the captain of their little group, and Draco and Hermione found themselves following his instructions, not the other way around.
“I’m not used to it, either,” she confided to Draco quietly, when they were pinning up laundry on clotheslines in the garden. (Draco had conscripted her, out of a point-blank refusal to place his digits anywhere near Ginevra Weasley’s bloomers, and she had gladly taken refuge from a third hour of chopping carrots.) “At home, we use technology to do most of this — we have a washer and dryer for laundry, and a dishwasher, a lawnmower, et cetera.”
He gingerly lifted a sodden blue dress shirt between two fingers. “They live even rougher than muggles do, is that what you’re saying?”
“Not all muggles. There’s a variety.”
“If that’s supposed to make me feel better, it doesn’t.”
She pursed her lips. “I thought for wizards, having money wouldn’t make so much of a difference,” she said. “There’s so much you can do for free with magic—”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“I just assumed — when he said his family was poor, I thought he meant compared to you. But earlier I walked in on Arthur and Molly talking about where they’ll get the money for textbooks this year— I don’t know how they manage.”
This made him vaguely uncomfortable. “Why the devil does Arthur stay at the Ministry, then? Clearly it doesn’t pay enough.”
“I don’t know. He seems to love the work.”
He snorted. “In Muggle Artifacts?”
“He does,” she said, warningly, and he rolled his eyes but dropped the point. Virtually nothing was said about muggles in the Burrow unless it was adulation. It was a bizarre inversion on the rest of the world, where even in the depths of an ill mood, Draco could take comfort in the fact that he had magic, while some people did not. Here, it was hard to feel like a wizard at all.
In the evening, they played a quidditch skirmish in the makeshift pitch behind the shed, with the sun low and orange in the sky. With six players they broke into teams of three — Draco, Ginny, and George against Ron, Fred, and Bill — and rotated players every point, a fast and surprisingly brutal workout that wore him out far more quickly than flying drills at home. Draco had the best broom-handling of anyone, and a better touch on the quaffle, all hairpin turns and elegant underhand passes; but the Weasleys played hard and reckless, and he lost the ball more than once to a dive-bomb from someone who didn’t appear to care whether or not either of them stayed on their broomstick. Ginny in particular played with naked aggression, elbows and headers and last-minute swerves, and she laughed when he knocked her off her broom. She flew like she’d never played with a ref before, which he supposed she hadn’t.
Bill hadn’t played quidditch in school, and he flew like it: slow underhand passes that were intercepted more often than not, and shots on goal that bounced off the wicker goalposts as often as not. He was bad, but good-natured about it, and was the first to laugh when he scored accidentally on his own hoop.
Ron flew keeper, and was strikingly good at it, for someone Draco had never seen on a broom. He kept his eye on the quaffle and both hands loose for a catch, steering with his knees. Years of being forced to play keeper for his brothers’ games had built up his skills, and in another world, Draco would have liked to see Ron try for the team.
After the game they lay in the shade of the elm trees, sweaty and winded and trading trash talk lazily in the warm evening light, until Hermione came out to gather them for dinner.
When they had cleared the table of fried fish and fresh lemonade, they hiked down to the river. Draco at first feared this meant more work, but he was relieved to discover it did not.
At the foot of the garden the river bent into a small bowl in the earth became a shallow, domesticated thing, lapping over a bed of muddy pebbles, trussed with cattails and feathery branches of weeping willows. A small wooden dock listed into the water like a ramp, and when the sun went down a caravan of fireflies moved over the water like a river of airborne stars, their reflection doubled in the water. Said water was cold as hag’s blood, not to mention, which didn’t stop any of the boys from whipping off their shirts and stampeding in. Ginny, only a heartbeat behind them, wriggled out of her shirt and trousers in an instant — ignoring Mrs. Weasley’s screech of dismay — and streaked after her brothers, a slip of pale skin cutting through the froth like a white eel. Hermione rolled up her pants to her knees and sat on the end of the dock, her legs trailing in the water. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley shucked their socks and shoes and waded up to their ankles, holding hands. Every so often Mrs. Weasley tugged on her husband’s arm, and he bent down to give her a kiss. It could give a man a toothache, it really could.
Draco leaned against the willow trunk, watching from a safe and waterproof distance. Ginny and Bill got into a chicken fight between Fred and George, slapping at each other until they toppled into the water with great rowdy splashes and squawking. Ron, after lapping a neat circuit around the swimming hole, swam up to the dock and rested his folded arms on the wood, chatting to Hermione. They were both smiling, cast in ethereal light from the moon and the fireflies; something he said made Hermione throw back her head and laugh with her whole chest. Ron beamed like she’d given him a new house or something.
There was something cozy and balanced about the picture: everyone paired up, two by two. He scowled.
His footsteps creaked on the dock, and Hermione and Ron both looked up.
“About time, mate,” said Ron genially. If being interrupted bothered him, he didn’t show it. “Wondered when you’d get tired of creeping around back there.”
Draco slipped off his shoes and socks and arranged them neatly beside Hermione’s. Gingerly, he lowered himself onto the dock beside her, dipping his feet into the frigid waters.
“You’re not coming in?”
“No, thank you.”
“That’s alright, I’m no good at it, either,” Hermione reassured him.
He sniffed. “I’ll have you know I’m a champion swimmer, Granger. But I only indulge in water that’s been cleaned.”
“It’s moving freshwater,” said Ron reasonably. “We’ve been swimming here for ages, and nothing’s happened.”
“I rest my case.”
Ignoring this, Ron flopped belly-up and drifted into a starfish float. “I wish Harry were here,” he said. “Then everything would be perfect.”
Draco blinked. He had not remotely conflated any of the day’s activities with perfection. A glance at Hermione was expected to reveal similar confusion, but her expression was soft with affection for Ron, which was no less disconcerting.
“You’ve got a really beautiful home, Ron,” she said — which rankled Draco even more. Hadn’t she been saying to him just earlier that her own home was much nicer? Was she lying to make Ron feel better? That wasn’t at all like Hermione.
Ron flushed and rolled onto his front, hiding a blush that crept all the way down his chest. “S’ not bad, I guess,” he said, with obvious pleasure. “I know it’s not, you know, as fancy as you two probably like.”
“No, it’s really lovely,” said Hermione earnestly, while Draco ogled her in disgruntlement. “It is. It feels so homey, and welcoming, and your whole family works together. I always — I always wished I had a bigger family.”
“You did?” said Draco, blindsided. He couldn’t imagine having to share the Manor with someone else.
Ron nodded, like he understood. “They’re annoying buggers, each to each,” he said, “but if I had to take all or none, I guess I’d take them.”
One of his brothers hollered his name.
“Ah, gotta go. We’re gonna play sharks and grindylows. Mione, you can always join, if you want to swim in your clothes. Ginny’s got spares up at the house. You, too, Malfoy.”
Hermione demurred.
“Just jump, if you change your mind,” said Ron, and then struck out to join his brothers.
A trifecta of tiny red fish swarmed Draco’s foot. He flinched and kicked at them.
“Mione is an insipid name,” he said, apropos of nothing.
“I don’t think nicknames are meant to be serious,” she said. “And you still call me ‘Granger.’”
“Yes, because it’s your name.”
“It’s my last name,” she amended, not without amusement. “You have to admit it’s a little odd, isn’t it? We’ve known each other for years.”
That, he felt, was altogether beside the point. He didn’t remember choosing consciously to call her one thing or another; he’d just started off that way, stuck to it, and after a while it was awkward to stop. Anyway, it was useful: if he needed to get her attention, especially across a crowded Gryffindor common room, a full-throated Granger would make it immediately clear who was calling, i.e., why she should drop what she was doing and attend.
He doubted she would find this compelling, however.
“Would you prefer Mione?”
“Oh, don’t do that, you sound affected.”
A doe and her fawn tiptoed out of the shaded underbrush on the other side of the river, dipping their long necks low to drink from the freshwater. In the crepuscular light, they were almost invisible, and when they finished, they slipped silently back into the woods.
“Do you want me to call you Hermione?” he said suddenly.
She gave a little twitch, as if she’d brushed a hot pan. “No,” she said. “I don’t know. You can. But I feel as if you’re about to give me terrible news. You really can use Granger if you want, I didn’t mean to complain.”
“You never said it bothered you.”
“It doesn’t. You still call Harry ‘Potter,’ even though you’ve nearly died for him at least twice. I know it doesn’t mean anything.”
“That’s different,” he said. “It’s Potter. I’m not going to call him ‘Harry,’ that would be outrageous.”
“It would probably level a city,” she agreed.
“You’re joking, I’m not. But you could have said something earlier, if you minded. I don’t have to call you Granger, it’s not a compunction. I’m perfectly capable of pronouncing ‘Hermione.’”
“Evidently so,” she said, wryly. She kicked some water at him, and he skittered out of the way, giving an involuntary yelp. “I told you, I don’t care. Ron calls me one thing, and you call me another. They’re just nicknames.”
“It’s not the same,” he insisted, though he could not articulate what the difference was, when pressed; and then Mrs. Weasley made a loud health proclamation about the sleep needs of growing boys, and the whole troupe lumbered dripping back up the hill. The Burrow filled with the thunder of footsteps on the staircase; doors slammed, goodnights were shouted, and spare pillows were distributed among the guests; and at last, Draco folded himself warily into his tiny barrack in Ron’s bedroom, while Fred and George whispered to each other in the double-bunk, and Ron issued peal after peal of glass-shattering snores.
In any other place, after any other kind of day, such a cacophony would have kept him awake for hours, and left him murderously bad-tempered in the morning. But the vigorous routine of work and sport had left his whole body achy and limp and unfathomably exhausted, and before his head touched the pillow he had plummeted into a deep, perfect sleep.
Thank you for hanging with me through the hiatus! I appreciate your enthusiasm for this next volume! Here’s a double-chapter post to celebrate the beginning of Year 4 and Volume 2. As always, let me know what you think, and with my absolute love to everyone who’s commented so far.
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