A/N: Hey, y'all! Just getting my quarantine on this weekend! How are you guys holding up out there in this crazy world?

Anyhoo, apologies for taking so freakin' long in posting this chapter. I've been tinkering with it since Christmas, and I don't think it's going to get any better.

Please enjoy! R&R! And stay safe out there! Do a home-project. Write something fabulous. Binge Call the Midwife or Good Girls on Netflix. Watch Frozen 2 for the sixth time this week on Disney+. If you got too much toilet paper at home, ding-dong ditch rolls at the front doors of neighbors. Best of love to all you from my new home (I recently moved, thus, another reason why this chapter is so late).

Chapter 36: The Maze

December 2010

Surrey, England

"This is it, Nat," says Clint, resting a hand on a gravestone.

Natasha Romanoff, having already read every stone, double checks the few surrounding ones for good measure. The burner phone had been found here, but there's no reason in the world for Milas to have come here..

She nods, lips pressed together, brows furrowed. "Do you think she's still here in England?"

The man stares off into the far distance of the cemetery, his expression somber. "I think she's dead."

Her chest constricts. The breath is knocked out of her. "Your arrow didn't kill her. You said so."

"There's nowhere for her to run. No one has any idea where she is. Not a single person. S.H.I.E.L.D. isn't known for losing people. Not for this long. I think she killed herself." He shakes his head, sniffing. "Probably knew the Russians weren't going to do anything for her, and western intelligence wants her dead. Every corrupt government in the Middle East wants her head on a plate."

"The world is a lot bigger than those places," remarks Nat, toeing a patch if wet snow beneath her boot. Closing her eyes, she folds her arms, sighing. "She'd go to Africa."

"We checked Africa."

"Not all of it."

"Everywhere they'd let us set foot in, we have."

Her head shakes. "She's not dead. I know it."

"We can't look forever. Your LOA is about done."

A car pulls up beside the cemetery, and Rogers steps out of the car. Nat tries to remember a time where just seeing him made her smile. How her stomach would tighten a little, and her heart would quicken. Not a lot. She's was never a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl housing a crush.

Seeing him now. Every time and all the time, she only thinks of work. She thinks of their time together these last several months. The more time she spent with him, the more she began to feel ambivalent towards him. His broad shoulders and puppy-dog grin and his inherent stubbornness to do the right thing does nothing for her now. He's an Avenger. A team player. S.H.I.E.L.D. needs him. The world needs him. Nat doesn't.

It doesn't help that she's felt his shift towards her after Milas' betrayal. He doesn't trust her anymore, if he even did to begin with. His warmth towards her has lessened to a tepid awareness of her presence as an Avenger and S.H.I.E.L.D. agent. He doesn't want to get too close, and why would he? He's smart. He knows she and Milas sprouted from the harsh, Communistic depths of the Soviet Union. Born with hammers and scythes in tiny hands. Any day, Nat could turn, too.

"Nothing," says Rogers, walking up the stone pathway towards them. He pulls out his phone. "Got a call from Fury. It's done. S.H.I.E.L.D's called off the search and closed the case."

"No use chasing a ghost." Nat smiles bitterly and doesn't move.

"It's time to go," offers Clint.

The three of them get into the car. Nat keeps her eyes forward, not sparing the cemetery another look. She refrains from clenching her fists and forces herself to let go. It's done. She pockets her rage and stores it for another day because she knows Milas is alive. Sooner or later she'll emerge, and Nat will be ready.

In a few years to come, Nat will be facing Milas, gun pointed at her chest and finger on the trigger.

Washington D.C.

Baron Von Strucker and Alexander Pierce sit in silence, the latter resting his chin on clasped hands while the former drinks. And drinks. And drinks just a little more.

Pierce finally speaks. "What now?"

Struker bitterly laughs. "Agent Abbelgen is most assuredly alive, and Prisoner 73180 is most assuredly not. The only thing I have going for me is those fucking twins."

"Tell me something." Pierce leans forward. "Do you really think she's alive?"

"I do."

"Why?"

"Her kind. Treacherous, traitorous bitches. They don't go down easy. Look at your Romanoff. How long have you been waiting for her to die?"

The other man shrugs, unbothered. "She has her uses." He strokes his chin. "If she's alive, why hasn't she tried again to expose us? We were lucky with Agent Brown."

Now it's Strucker's turn to clasp his hands. He tucks his head close to his chest, thinking. "That is the questions, isn't it?"

"I don't like it, Baron, but we can't postpone the work on the helicarriers any longer. We either stop the whole thing right now, or we go forward. Are you a gambling man?"

Strucker's mouth twists into drippy smirk. "You already know the answer to that question, Alex."

"Do you always win?"

"And you know the answer to that one, as well."

"You win some, you lose some." Pierce stands and looks upon the Potomac, his thoughts below water. "I'm giving the green light. We'll start work again on the second of next month. Project Insight is back on."

Wiltshire, England

Boots crunching in the snow, Hermione walks a safe, observing distance behind Teddy Tonks. The man shivers in his thin, threadbare garb he came to England in back in July. He thinks he doesn't deserve a coat or the new trousers and sweaters the elves leave for him by request of Harry. He thinks he deserves to be cold. Chunks of fresh, wet snow clump patchily on his slippers and socks.

Tonks stops and so does Hermione. She watches him stick out his arm, palm open towards the sky. Large, thick flakes of snow hitting his palm and dissolving.

"It's really coming down, isn't it?" he says.

"Do you want the pill?"

She asks. For how long she's had it, she thinks there should be a hole burnt in her pocket

He worries his bottom lip, not looking at her. Nor at the sky anymore. He looks back at the garden where Lilo is buried. "Maybe. Keep ahold of it."

He tells her that every time she asks when they walk the grounds, so he can get his hour of fresh air every day. According to Harry, he's earned it. Hermione hadn't been so sure when he made the decision back in October, but so far Tonks hasn't misbehaved.

"My little Dora loves Christmas," says Tonks. He stoops down, picking up two handfuls of snow and shaping it into a ball. "When we get a white haul like this one, we build a snowman together. Just me and her. Andy has the hot chocolate ready for us when we're ready to come in."

His gaze moves to the estate, his brow furrowing.

Hermione sighs, folding her arms.

"That's not my house." He blinks and looks around, finding her. She grimaces. "Who are you?"

So it's going to be a bad day today.

"Prisoner 73180, I demand your compliance."

He cowers in on himself, hunching with his hands tucked to his chest. He stares at her, frightened.

He jerks his head around, like he's trying to find an escape and then stumbles at realizing the open space around him. So many directions he could run towards, but then he glances back to her.

"Please don't use the shocks. I'll comply."

The last several months, she's been able to find triggers, although it's been a frustrating journey. Tonks' memory is fading. The damage in The Fridge is catching up to him. Also, Hermione suspects he's subconsciously doing it to himself. Starving himself didn't work. If he could hollow himself another way, then maybe he wouldn't have to suffer his own existence anymore. Hermione told this to Harry which made him hate her for a week or so before resigning in the fact that she's probably right.

"Back inside," she orders.

After Dipper returns Tonks to his cell, Hermione goes to her room just in time to see Draco's demonic black owl peck at her window. She opens it and grabs the parcel from the beak, breaking off a piece of her chicken from her lunch tray to feed Leviathan. It will peck at her and fly around, knocking over everything in the room, including landing sizeable droppings on her bed if she doesn't feed him.

Unrolling the small scroll, Hermione skims the note. Draco's letting her know he has an inhouse appointment in two hours, but he'd like her to arrive by Floo at his house in one.

He always wants her an hour early.

Like it will change things between them if she's alone with him.

As if their relationship hasn't changed enough already in several short months. It wasn't long ago she'd ran away from him, straight into the cold, merciless presence of Severus Snape.

Hermione replies to Draco's note and then plonks down at her desk, setting up her stationary. Scribbling down a note, it simply says,

Appointment with Malfoy at 1300.

Her words sink into the page.

Not waiting for a response, Hermione finishes her lunch and goes for a quick swim in the pool before showering. Grabbing her relatively new mokeskin satchel from her armoire, she digs her arm, elbow deep into it. One by one, she removes the contents from it, laying them out on her bed to ensure she's got everything. A few months ago, she learned that Nott was instructing his elves to rifle through her things, ensuring she wasn't hoarding makeshift weapons or dark spell books of any kind. He doesn't trust her, and tensions were high enough when Blaise and Ginevera Zabini were murdered. It just got worse when a man named Marcus Flint joined them.

That was the emergency Nott and Potter had been called to as she lay fairly dead at the feet of Snape. Marcus Flint, a Pureblood and former Slytherin from Hogwarts, died from a set of cursed cutleries made of the purest, Goblin-made silver. A set his father apparently inherited from his father. And the father before him. And the father before him. And so on.

The deadly utensils had been in the family for ages, stored away somewhere on the property until that fateful day was the first guess many had. No one knew much more than that until Flint's father who is in prison. In that Azkaban place. Hermione had read his account from The Daily Prophet, and he said that the cutlery set had been buried with his Blood-Traitor cousin during the first part of the War, back in 1979.

Flint's father had candidly described how loathsome both his cousin and the cutlery set were, and how tickled he'd been when his immediate family no longer had to bother with either of them anymore.

The man, however, was not tickled to learn about the death of his only son. Now he fears his illegitimate daughter will get the load, damn it to hell, and fund her dance school with it or 'some common rot'.

The case is still open, and Nott and Potter know at least one person who's involved but have no proof given Soo-jin is never in England when these tragedies take place. She's always accounted for at work in Norway.

One person who isn't accounted for.

Pansy Parkinson-Flint.

She's missing.

And has been since the day of her husband's passing.

According to Harry, she alerted the DMLE by Floo about her dead husband and a dead house-elf at the table. When the Aurors bounded through the hearth, she was nowhere to be found. Not a trace of her. No evidence of a struggle. No evidence that she packed up and left. The DMLE wanted to conclude that she killed her husband and elf before jumping ship, but there wasn't enough evidence for that. And if she did kill him, it wasn't to make her rich self any richer because she disappeared and never reappeared to pay Grimgotts a visit to claim the Flint vault as her own. Her own vault is being monitored and so far, not a single coin has left it.

And like that, Hermione places a large pot of blue, yellow pansies at the front of her mind. It's the only pansy she can think of. Her mum used to grow them. On her knees, she'd yank the weeds out from around them as well as the orange ones because she thought they were hideous.

Behind that memory, she thinks of the term pansy and its development of becoming a derogatory blow, typically dealt out by the heterosexual male to a seemingly androgynous male.

Hermione doesn't know Pansy Parkinson Flint.

She's never seen her in person. Only the picture that's occasionally in the Daily Prophet, reminding everyone she's still missing and wanted for questioning in regard to her late husband's death.

If Hermione did see or even get word of the woman's whereabouts, she'll take to her desk and write it down in her enchanted stationary. She has instructions. Orders. What's left of her brand still encourages compliance to her master.

Not that Hermione needs much encouragement these days.

Hers satchel's contents are spread on the comforter of her bed: training robes, mask, cap, midwifery books, gloves, cauldron, ladle, mask, thermometer, her cloth caboodle of scissors, various clamps, and vials of various roots, weeds, and plants. She's only in training and doesn't need much more than what she has right now.

Lastly, the wand case. Flipping the latch, Hermione lifts the wooden lid and with her thumb and pointer finger, picks it up by the shaft. Her magic vibrates painfully through her hand, and the wand shakes. She can almost sense it wants to splinter, so she grasps the cool, enamel hilt with its iron core.

Putting away all her equipment back in the satchel, including the wand, she slings it over her shoulder and heads out. She checks with Nott in his office, who's on-call today.

"I'm leaving," she tells him.

"If you come across some Pepper-up..." he tells her from behind the Daily Prophet.

Stepping out of the hearth, Hermione ignores the woman flush against the closed drapes of the sitting room. In one of the woman's hands is a cup of tea. Her other hand has pull away the dark gray velvet of drapes just enough to get a glimpse outside. Her black hair is down today. Hermione hasn't seen it down for months, and sees the ends brushing her shoulder blades. It has grown.

"Nott would like Pepper-Up if you'd like to send the message," says Hermione.

The woman doesn't respond, and Hermione finds the bathroom, changing into her training robes and knotting her hair to fit most of it into the cap. When she comes back out, Pansy Parkinson-Flint is nowhere to be seen. Even the tea set and book are gone. Only a single strand of hair, long and black, rests on the coffee table. Hermione grabs it and tucks into her satchel before stepping into the fireplace.

Draco takes a freshly brewed potion out of his office cabinet. She hasn't seen this one here before. He presents the substance to her, the dark, murky green hue of it unable to catch the light from the lamps. Hermione takes advantage of the fact that he's behind his desk and walks closer to him, side-glancing the contents on his desk.

"Ageing potion," she says. Her eyes zero in on the black specks. "Concentrated."

"What would you use it for?"

"Risky or no?"

"No."

"Premature deliveries, then."

"Elaborate."

"Half a drop spread on the lips every ten minutes until baby's heartrate and breathing regulate or until the healer arrives to assess."

Draco puts away the vial and shows her another one.

Sighing, she shakes her head. "It's Winifred that should be quizzing me, Draco."

"Well, you already had lunch—"

"You always ask me to come an hour early before your appointments knowing that I'm not going to take a meal with you."

"Because I keep hoping you'll change your mind. One day, you will. I'm sure of it."

"What do you think would happen if I did decide to take you up on a cheese sandwich and a bowl of soup? That I'd forgive you?"

He paints a tiny smile on his face, removing another vial and showing it to her. This one is thick as cough syrup and purple as the finest and fattest wine grapes.

"That and you'd let me ravish your cunt."

Hermione keeps her gaze steady on his face. "Not your common aphrodisiac. This one imitates love, but it's not as potent nor long-lasting like Amorentia. I can't for the life of me wonder why I'd ever need this at a delivery. Draco, I don't think I'll ever eat or drink anything from you ever again."

"Wrong. A drop of this in your morning tea will make your breasts express milk like the High Force Waterfall."

Hermione takes the vial from him and puts it back in the cupboard. "Not my cup of tea." With her hand still in the goldmine, she pilfers a couple of baggies of dried knotgrass. "I'm taking these. Try and stop me."

"Careful. I just might." He watches her movements as she stows away her loot. "Are you telling me it's time to start brewing the post-partum potions? And here I thought that we weren't due for that for another month."

Hermione smirks. "Hopefully, you fuck differently than you teach. If I ever do take you up on that cheese sandwich and soup, you won't ravish me like you're trying to teach me. Slow, boring, and indirect. My pace is fast and to the point."

"You go too fast, the ride ends quick."

"That sounds like a personal problem. If you can't keep up and can't hold on, I'm sure there's a potion—"

"You, girl. Take my bag." Winifred enters the room. She's literally 105 years old, blind in one eye, and dressed like an early twentieth century Russian villager, shuffles closer to them. She doesn't have to wear the midwife uniform if she doesn't want to.

With a wave of the ancient woman's wand, the bag goes flying towards a bust of Abraxes Malfoy that's a good fifteen feet from Hermione.

"Hermione is her name," reminds Draco.

Yeah.

She got to the point she had to be called by something other than 17. The shift was...rather anticlimactic, honestly. She thought she'd have a more difficult time burying Milas, only to unearth Hermione again.

"Your mother must've been touched, I'm telling you. Setting you up for a lifetime of trouble with a name like that. I would know. Why my mother couldn't name me Karen instead of giving it to my sister, I don't know why. I would've been a great Karen."

Gripping the silver owl at the top of her cane, Winifred continues, "Now, young man, I trust that you will be on your best behavior at the Weasleys."

"Padma's delivery should go smoothly. Baby is not breech I do have a scheduled cesarean at St. Mungo's at four, but you can deliver with your eyes closed, Winifred. And you've got Hermione here who's great at losing her cool after the wave has terror has passed. Her timing at keeping cool head is brilliant, I tell you. It's why I referred her—"

"Nothing's set in stone, yet, boy. She's marginally better than that last brainless tart you tried to throw at me."

Hermione, rifling through Winifred's notes from her discarded satchel, says, "She's two weeks overdue."

"It's those skinny hips of hers," tuts Winifred. "We'll be sure to give Mrs. Weasley tea with a bit of concentrated Caxambu Style Borborygmus. It'll keep her contractions coming." She points her cane at Hermione. "Now remember, girl. When the father-to-be offers tea…"

"No thanks."

"If the mother-to-be offers tea…"

"No thanks."

"If the grandmothers-to-be offer tea…"

"Accept whatever they offer, no questions."

"Stop that. You can go over the notes when we get there. The baby's not going to wait."

"It's waited this long," mutters Hermione.

"What was that?"

Tossing the slings of both satchels over each shoulder, she forces a smile on her face. God, she hates this.

Like, a lot.

How the fuck did her life become this? If Madam B could see her now, the shame. Hermione would willingly kneel before the woman and accept her whipping.

Ronald Weasley, eager, quickly offers Hermione and Winifred a spot of tea before they get started. Padma is in the bedroom. Hermione can hear her pained moans throughout their home.

"No, but that's very kind of you, young man," says Winifred.

"No, but thank you," says Hermione.

Molly Weasley appears, tray of scones, clotted cream, and tea at the ready. Hermione hasn't even cleaned all the soot from her training robes yet. "Oh, but you must, Winnie. And you, Hermione. You're getting thinner every time I see you. Padma isn't even dilated to a two yet, so you've time to fuel up."

"You convinced me," says Winnie, making herself comfortable on one of the sofas. Hermione stiffly joins her, and Molly promptly gives her a cup of tea.

"Drink up, dear," she tells her pointedly.

Hermione's eyes drift down to the warm, light brown liquid. "Okay," she murmurs.

Sip after sip, soon enough, Hermione sees the tiniest glass vial resting at the bottom of her teacup. Swiftly, she swallows the vial, pulls out a handkerchief from her satchel, coughs into, and apologizes about the tickle in her throat.

"Another cup then," advices Molly.

Ronald eyes her nervously. He's such an anxious-ridden man. Taking pity on him, she winks over the rim of her second helping of tea and watches him visibly relax. Now, he can converse safe territory like weather and the stupidity of the Harlem Shuffle with Draco because surely, they can both agree that, yes, it's snowing outside. And, yes, Americans are thick.

"Well, almost all of them, anyway." Draco shoots Hermione an obvious smirk that doesn't go above Ron's head. Now, he's back to making nervous glances at her. Someone is going to have to work with him. Snape would eat him alive, so maybe Nott if he's ever cleared to join an Order meeting.

There's potential inside that skittish ball of nerves. Ron is a fair strategist. His ideas work. But he wears his emotions on his face and has difficulty keeping secrets from those he cares about, such as Harry and probably his wife. Hermione wasn't there at the pivotal moment when the Order of the Phoenix looked to him for hope of assembling a battalion of revenge-stricken people. She imagines he shook his head, sheepish and red-faced, and sat down while throwing an exhausted arm up, saying, 'Someone needs to do it.'

In Hermione's mind, the crew looked to each other before enough eyes landed on Ronald Bilius Weasley—who fought alongside Harry throughout their school years and during the war. And because the man cautiously rose to the opportunity, not everyone in the Order knows all the ins and outs of every plan.

While sipping at her second cup of tea, Hermione focuses on certain memories since leaving Nott Manor, ranging from modification to completely fabricated. She immediately arrived at Draco's via Floo and changed into her robes there. Draco harmlessly flirted and wasn't inappropriate in anyway. He's harmless, respectful, and houses useful information about other Purebloods who are not easily accessible. She arrived at Ron Weasley's house, declined tea and then accepted it. It gave her a tickle in the throat, and she needed to cough into a cloth. There's nothing out of the ordinary. Draco Malfoy and Ron Weasley struggle to make nice, somehow accomplishing maturity regardless of their history.

In the corner, standing stiff and mildly bored, Hermione watches Padma push out a healthy son. Both she and Ron weep with joy. They've been trying for a baby going on a decade, and they've finally got their wish after a series of miscarriages. Panju has fat, round cheeks, curly black hair, and set of lively lungs. He falls on his mother's breast, latching like a famished calf. The mood is so bright, uplifting even, Draco and Ron shake hands. The former even gives the latter a pat on the shoulder, congratulating him.

Hermione soaks in the image. She wants Soo-jin to see the goodness in Draco. He's not perfect. His flaws are numerous, and he's worth more alive right now than dead. He keeps in touch with people who are about the old ways. Like his father and mother, not that either of them is particularly threatening currently. Word has it that Lucius Malfoy is living the rest of his days in exile at an estate in France. Narcissa Malfoy is with him, weak and often fighting bouts of illnesses. Others on Draco's list of contacts include the Lestranges, Karkaroffs, Parkinsons, and those are just the locals. Soo-jin believes he knows where there are others who have gone into hiding once their family members started dying off.

Because Molly doesn't offer the firewhiskey, Hermione and Winifred must decline a shot when Arthur Weasley is passing around glasses and a bottle. Ron wets the baby's head, Padma gets another well done from everybody, and it's time to leave. By this point, dinner will be ready when she gets back to Nott's.

It began at Snape's back in July, this role she's playing. This front as a mediwitch student. Hermione vowed she wouldn't leave his house until she could throw up a wall and protect her memories. Fingers digging into the upholstery of his stuffed armchair, her heart hammered and dewy nodules of sweat glistened across her forehead. Her skull pounded from the blunt, useless effort in attempting to shield herself from Snape's first round of lessons.

She's disoriented and drinks from her glass of cold water before gathering bracing herself.

"I'm ready to try again," she says.

Snape's black eyes glittered. He cocked his head slightly. He sat down, pressing his fingertip together, his expression becoming concerningly pensive.

"We may be…" he pauses, "going about this the wrong way." He abruptly stands to his feet, closing in on her. "You said you want me to educate you on how I fooled the Dark Lord. It was not because I threw up walls."

Flourishing his wand, he fashions a model of a maze on his coffee table. In the middle of a maze, he conjures a ball of yellow light. "If Soo-jin is clever like the Dark Lord had been, which I imagine she has the potential, she'll will force information out of you in other ways given your capability in blocking her advances up on your mind. She has already by using the brand, but it won't be enough, and it would be a waste of an opportunity."

Snape returned to the sofa, and he rested his gaze on her. "Consider the maze. Consider the walls of the maze. The direction towards the center. I led the Dark Lord to the memories I guided him to see while barricading the necessities."

Hermione's slumped in the chair, eyes closing. She rubs her forehead and can see where this is going. "If I'm guiding Soo-jin to certain memories, it means I'm letting her in. It means I'm helping her."

"Be slow in your approach warming up to her ideals and even slower warming up to her. Read the books she's given you." He turned his attention back to the maze. "From now on, be secretive. Not too obvious. She'll catch on quick that you're hiding something. When she uses the brand against you, confess you've been meeting with Draco Malfoy. At this point or quickly following, we must count that she'll perform her through your carefully constructed maze. Show her how his books burn you at the touch. Show her how he treats his house-elves." He leaned forward. "Show her you've seen Lucius Malfoy in the house."

"That was a Boggart—"

"I'll teach you how to manipulate the memory as to appear real. Draco's father would be a prize to eliminate. And Hermione." His tone dripped with severity. "In time, we will divulge this to Theodore and Potter but for now, this is between you and I. We'll continue your afternoon lessons. I'll arrange with Theodore having your potion lessons in his lab, away from prying eyes. It will not be potions you'll be learning with me. You're smart enough to teach yourself on your own time. Find a place to do so. There may come a time I'll have you over here, but it won't be Occlumency nor potions."

"What will it be then?"

"We must stress Draco's worth to Soo-jin in keeping him alive. The Malfoys have Pureblood connections all over the world—"

A banging on the door interrupted his flow. Both he and Hermione jumped to their feet, Snape's wand raised. He put a finger to his mouth before creeping towards the door. Putting the tip of his wand on the wood, he peeked into the spyhole, frowned at his feet, before looking again. He opened the door, and a person barged through it.

"Hide me. Hide me, please," said the person. A woman.

Snape cautiously closes the door, lowering his wand. "Were you followed?"

"I-I don't think so." She removed the hood of her raincoat revealing slightly tangled black hair, blood-shot sapphire blue eyes, pouty pink lips with blood crusted at the corners, a peaches and cream complexion marred by tear-tracks, and an upturned nose, much like a pug's almost. Pretty thing but not perfect.

"I'm sorry to come at you like this," she wept, shaking her head. A wet cough escaped her lips. Her voice already raspy, becomes gravely and thick. "But I didn't know where else to go that was safe and with someone who could help me—"

Snape gripped his wand. "I only told you that my home could be a safe haven for you on the one condition."

"Marcus is dead," she choked out. She yanked up the sleeve of her raincoat, displaying her limb, revealing blackened fingertips and open, oozing pustules. "And I will be, too, I reckon."

Yes, this is where it started.

For whatever reason, Isabella likes Hermione, although she suspects it could have to do with the spectacular show she put on at the Weasleys several months ago, or maybe because Draco told the little girl that she used to be a ballerina. Apparently, Isabella's main priority right now is to grow up and be beautiful enough to play Odette in Swan Lake.

Ballet would be a good profession for her. Since her parents' death, she's become clinically mute. The last word she said was at her mother's wake at The Burrow. Theo worries this will impact her magic in some way, especially when she goes to Hogwarts. According to Your Developing and Growing Magical Child, very few children can accomplish wordless spells before fifteen.

The moment the woman steps through the fireplace, the little girl who'd been trying and failing to mount her unruly toy broom, discards it and goes dashing towards her, skipping every so often and attempting to do a grand jete, as well.

Hermione's face slides into a half-smirk. She crouches to Isabella's level and says, "Show me again that leap. I think you can do better."

Isabella does it again, only worse.

"All right, you. Let's go over here." They shuffle over to the far corner of the office.

"Late night at Snape's again," acknowledges Nott. He puts the Evening Prophet down. "I'm going to have enforce curfew. Make you write lines if I catch you out after certain hours."

"Melted a cauldron, and he made me remove venom from baby acromantulas."

"How do you do it, Granger?"

This Granger title he's gifted her has become a thing, and she hates it. For the longest time, her dad's face would pop into her mind when he began calling her that.

"Do what?"

"Lie so magnificently."

"Acromantulas too much?"

"Melted cauldron. You only mess up," he shakes the paper, beginning to read from it again, "when you want to."

"I wanted to. I'm in love with Severus. I want to spend as much time with him as I can."

"Good, good. Another troublesome Muggle-Born, who's overly friendly with a Potter, mucking up Snape's life is exactly what that codger needs." He peels back a corner of the paper and smirks at Isabella. "Am I right, sweetheart?"

She bobs her head up and down, clueless to what the grownups are talking about, but they're both kind of grinning at each other. She wants to be included on the fun.

"Enough of that," says Hermione, catching Isabella's attention. "How should your arms look when you leap?"

Isabella shows her…an incorrect form.

After thirty minutes of form-corrections with Isabella, Hermione trudges up to her room and sits down at her desk. In her stationary, she writes:

Parkinson in Tyrol.

The words sink into the parchment, disappearing from sight. Hermione goes into the bathroom and crouches at the cupboard door beneath the sink. Licking the tip of her pointer finger, she draws a pattern on the wood, whispering an incantation, and watches that pattern glow. She opens the cupboard and crawls inside before standing to her full height.

Magic.

Really incredible.

A simmering cauldron awaits her. Taking the knotgrass, she adds it to the foul-smelling liquid. Another week, and it should be ready. Hermione checks her pocket, insuring she still has the single long black hair from earlier.

Parkinson only gave one hair. They've got one shot to make it right. Ron better be sure his plan will work.

To be Continued...