Chapter 3: The Leaky Cauldron Confession
The Leaky Cauldron was a relief. It was dim, it was loud, and most importantly, it had no direct line of sight to a certain blond wizard’s windows. Hermione pushed through the heavy door, the chatter and clatter washing over her like a warm, grimy bath. She’d spent the last seventy-two hours in a state of low-grade, manic vigilance.
Her flat no longer felt like a sanctuary. It felt like a tactical arena. The self-inking eagle feather quill he’d somehow smuggled into her Ministry bag had been the first escalation. It had waited until she was in the middle of drafting a memo to Cornelius Greengrass before bursting forth with florid, rhyming couplets about her eyes being like “twin pools of fire whiskey” and her hair a “cascade of autumn’s most rebellious leaf.” She’d had to vanish the entire parchment.
Then came the paper birds. Dozens of them, charmed to look like tiny, shimmering hawks, had followed her from her doorstep all the way to the Ministry atrium, darting and weaving around her head in a silent, graceful ballet until a stern-faced Auror had stunned them all into a confetti heap. She’d recognized the precise, aristocratic folds immediately.
The warming charm on her armchair was the final straw. It was subtle. Diabolical. The chair would be perfectly normal until she settled in with a book, and then a slow, pervasive heat would build from the cushions, not enough to burn, but enough to make sitting still an exercise in sweaty, agitated futility. It reset every time she left the room. She’d taken to reading while standing up.
She needed a neutral zone. A place without windows that faced his building.
Tom the bartender nodded at her from behind the bar. She scanned the room and saw a familiar flash of blonde hair and a set of broad shoulders in a booth near the back. Neville Longbottom was waving, and next to him, Luna Lovegood was peering into her butterbeer as if it contained a miniature galaxy.
Hermione made her way over, sliding into the booth across from them with a sigh that came from her bones. The velvet seat was cool and solid, the curtain beside her slightly charred at the hem, smelling of old smoke and secrets.
“You look,” Neville said kindly, pushing a full tankard of butterbeer towards her, “like you’ve been dueling a particularly clever Devil’s Snare.”
“It’s worse than Devil’s Snare,” Hermione muttered, wrapping her hands around the cool glass. “Devil’s Snare has predictable rules.”
Luna looked up, her large, silvery eyes blinking slowly. “Hello, Hermione. Your aura is very spirally today. All tight and cross-hatched. Is it the Nargles? They’ve been particularly attracted to repressed magical energy lately.”
“It’s not Nargles,” Hermione said, then took a long drink. The sweet, fizzy liquid soothed her throat. “It’s Malfoy.”
Neville’s eyebrows shot up. “Draco Malfoy? What’s he done now? I heard he’s gone legit. Potions, investments.”
“Oh, he’s legitimate,” Hermione said, the words tumbling out in a frustrated rush. “He’s also a perpetual, infuriating… presence. He lives across the alley from me. He has these huge windows. And he just… watches. And then he does things.”
She launched into the saga. The shirtless morning coffee ritual. The Permanent Sticking Charm retaliation. His magically amplified note. Pansy Parkinson’s commentary from the street. Theo Nott’s exhausted sighs. Then, the recent campaign: the lovesick quill, the aerial paper escort, the chair that seemed to have a personal vendetta against her relaxation.
Neville listened, his expression shifting from concern to bewilderment to a suppressed smile. Luna simply listened, her head tilted, a faint smile playing on her lips.
“He’s like a child pulling pigtails,” Hermione finished, slumping back against the booth. “A very rich, very fit, and magically proficient child with too much time on his hands. I’m drafting a formal complaint to the Department of Magical Nuisances. There’s a form. I found it.”
“A formal complaint,” Neville repeated slowly. “Against Draco Malfoy. For sending you paper birds and warming your chair.”
“It’s harassment! It’s disruptive! My productivity is down twelve percent!”
“It sounds,” Luna said, her voice dreamy yet clear, “like a crup trying to show affection.”
Hermione stared at her. “What?”
“You know,” Luna continued, tracing a pattern in the condensation on her glass. “When a crup brings its owner a dead garden gnome. It’s messy. It’s unpleasant. The owner is usually rather cross. But the crup doesn’t understand that. It just knows it found something interesting and wants to share it. It’s a clumsy offering. All those pranks… they’re his dead gnomes.”
The silence that followed was punctuated by a raucous laugh from a group of witches at the bar. Hermione felt her argument deflate, not from agreement, but from the sheer, baffling logic of Luna’s analogy.
“He’s not a crup, Luna. He’s Draco Malfoy. He doesn’t do affection. He does mockery. He does arrogance. This is about winning some idiotic game he’s invented.”
“Is it?” Neville asked, uncharacteristically direct. He’d grown into a quiet confidence that sometimes caught her off guard. “Remember sixth year? The way he’d always be wherever you were in the library? The constant comments? It was all rubbish, of course, but it was also… a lot of effort for just mockery.”
Hermione frowned. She did remember. A different kind of tension, laced with fear and hatred, but the constant attention had been there. “That was about blood purity and his father’s agenda. This is… post-war boredom.”
“People change,” Neville shrugged. “I mean, he testified for the prosecution at the last Death Eater appeal, didn’t he? Theo Nott’s. Helped get him clemency. That doesn’t sound bored.”
“It sounds like he’s paying a debt,” Hermione countered, but her conviction wavered.
Luna took a sip of butterbeer. “The paper birds were hawks, you said? Not eagles? Hawks are watchful. They’re persistent. They’re also traditionally associated with messengers. Perhaps he was just trying to say hello in a way he thought you’d appreciate. You’ve always liked clever magic.”
Hermione opened her mouth to protest, then closed it. The birds had been beautifully charmed. Annoying, but technically exquisite. The warming charm was flawlessly cast, undetectable until it was activated. Even the love sonnets from the quill had scanned perfectly. It was all high-level, meticulous magic. The kind she respected.
“I just want it to stop,” she said, but the heat had gone out of her voice.
“Maybe you don’t,” Neville said gently. “Maybe you’d miss it. Sounds like it’s the most interesting thing that’s happened to you since you moved in.”
She glared at him, but it was half-hearted. He was right. The pranks were infuriating, but they were also a spark. A puzzle. A break from the solemn weight of her new job, the careful curation of her post-war life. Draco Malfoy was a grenade tossed into her perfectly organized flat, and part of her was fascinated by the pin rolling across the floor.
“So what do I do? According to your canine psychology, Luna? Do I pat him on the head and throw the gnome away?”
Luna’s smile widened. “You could throw it back. A crup loves fetch.”
Hermione considered this. Throwing it back. Not with a Ministry form, but with magic of her own. Something equal parts clever and cutting. Something that would force a real reaction, not just another smirk from a windowsill.
A determined calm settled over her. The spirals in her aura, if they existed, seemed to loosen. She finished her butterbeer.
“Thanks for the therapy session,” she said, standing up. “I think I know what I need to do.”
Neville smiled. “Just don’t set his building on fire. I’m fond of that part of Diagon Alley.”
“No promises,” Hermione said, but she was already planning. The walk back to her flat felt different. The evening air was cool, the market square quieting down. She looked up at his windows. The lights were on, casting a soft glow into the deepening blue.
She couldn’t see him. But she felt the game shift. It wasn’t about defense anymore. It was about a new, more interesting offensive.
A dead gnome for a dead gnome.
She let herself into her flat, the door clicking shut behind her with a sound of finality. Her eyes went to the warm armchair. Instead of annoyance, a slow smile spread across her face. She had research to do. Not on wizarding law this time.
On reversible, non-lethal, but deeply inconvenient household hexes. And perhaps the charming properties of conjured garden gnomes.