Chapter 3: Welcome
REPORT TO THE RESTRICTED COLLECTIONS PANEL, MINISTRY OF MAGIC. SUBJECT: The Library at Malfoy Manor, Wiltshire. PREPARED BY: H. J. Granger. RECOMMENDATION: That the library and east wing be exempted from demolition and established as a public research archive under Ministry charter, and that the present owner be retained as its keeper, on the grounds that he is the only living person who knows how it is shelved.
She wrote it at the Fox and Feathers, by candlelight, after midnight, over four nights. The landlady brought cocoa and looked over her shoulder once and said, "Hm," and went away again. Hermione wrote forty pages. She cited the condition of the collection, the irreplaceable nature of the restricted texts, the danger of moving temperament-shelved books into Ministry storage, the precedent of the Hogsmeade Charter of 1872, and three separate clauses of the Reparations Act. She did not cite the white roses, or the green jumper, or the way he put his palm on a bookcase as if it were alive. She thought about them a great deal.
In the daytime, she said nothing. She went to the library at nine. She inventoried in the morning and worked on the ward in the afternoon, and he sat in his armchair and corrected her shelving and brought her Assam at eleven and four and did not mention France, and neither did she.
They were close now, on the ward. Down to the last knot.
"It's not a rune," she said, on the afternoon of the second-to-last day. They were both kneeling on the library floor in front of the great fireplace, where they'd finally traced the last binding: a single carved stone set into the hearth, black and smooth, no bigger than her palm. "It's a threshold. Look at the structure. It isn't keeping things out, it's deciding what's let in. Septimus didn't build a wall. He built a door and locked it."
"Then we unlock it."
"It's not that simple. A threshold needs both sides. Someone who belongs has to open it, and someone who doesn't has to," she frowned at the notes, "step through, I think. It's an invitation. The head of the family has to invite a guest the ward was built to keep out, and mean it."
He was quiet for a long time.
"And you'd be the guest," he said.
"I'm the only Muggle-born in the building. Unless Tippy has a secret."
He didn't laugh. He was looking at her across the hearth with an expression she didn't understand, and then he looked down at the table behind her, where her case stood open, and she remembered, too late, what was lying on top of her ledgers.
He reached past her and picked it up.
He read the first page standing. He read the second sitting down on the edge of the table. She knelt on the hearth with her hands in her lap and watched him turn the pages, one after another, with his face growing paler and stiller, until he reached the end, and closed it, and set it down very precisely on the table beside him.
"No," he said.
"You haven't heard..."
"I've read forty pages, Granger. I've heard." He stood. "No. You're not doing this."
"It's already done. I'm submitting it on Friday."
"Then don't." He walked away from her, down the long room, toward the windows. "I don't want to be rescued. I've had nine years of people deciding what to do about me. The Wizengamot. The Prophet. Potter, standing up at my trial like some sort of character witness. Do you know what that's like? Being somebody's good deed?"
"This isn't about you."
"It's entirely about me. It's got my name on it."
"It's about the books!" She was on her feet now. "Do you know what happens to temperament-shelved books in Ministry storage? I do. I looked it up. They put them in alphabetical order, in a basement in Whitehall, and in six months half of them are pulp and the other half have eaten the archivists. This library is the finest collection of restricted magic in Britain and you're the only person on earth who knows how to keep it alive. That's not charity, Malfoy. That's a job description."
He'd stopped by the windows. He had his back to her.
"And the rest of it?" he said quietly. "The roses. The tea. Am I supposed to believe that's all in the Reparations Act?"
She opened her mouth and nothing came out.
He laughed, very short, and walked out of the library.
The door clicked shut behind him.
The cold came at once, as she'd known it would.
It rose from the floorboards and up the walls and across the painted ceiling, frost blooming over the gold stars one after another until the vault was white. The candles leaned toward her and went out. The books began to move, all of them, all at once, the whole room rustling and turning on its shelves to look at her, and in the hearth at her feet the black stone set in the floor began, very faintly, to hum.
Hermione stood in the middle of it, alone, and found that she was not afraid.
She'd been afraid in this house before. She'd been afraid on the floor of a room that wasn't here any more. She thought of the walled garden with the rain falling on it. She thought of a man taking down a room stone by stone, a man spending nine years unpicking a ward with his own hands, a man sitting in an armchair for nine days pretending to read so that a house wouldn't hurt her. She thought: this is not your house any more, Septimus. He's already decided.
"I'm not leaving," she said aloud, to the shelves. "You'll have to get used to me."
A book flew off the gallery and hit the floor at her feet. She stepped over it.
She knelt on the hearth and put her hand flat on the black stone, the way he'd put his hand on the bookcase, and the cold went up her arm like a knife. She held on. She began, through gritted teeth, to say the counter-sequence they'd worked out, rune by rune, and the stone hummed louder and the frost crawled across the floor toward her knees and the room roared like a sea, and she held on, and held on, and knew in some calm, clear part of her mind that it wasn't enough. She could unpick it. She couldn't open it. It needed both sides.
The door crashed open.
He didn't run this time. He walked straight through the storm of books to the hearth and knelt down opposite her and put his hand on the stone beside hers, and she felt the ward flinch from him the way it had always flinched.
"You complete idiot," he said, breathing hard. "You stubborn, impossible, brilliant..."
"Say it," she said. "The invitation. Before my hand freezes off."
He looked at her. The room howled around them. He turned his hand over on the stone and took hers.
"Hermione Granger," he said, clear and steady, the way you'd say a vow. "You are welcome in this house. You are welcome in every room of it. You are welcome here for as long as you want to be, and longer, and you're welcome to my library and my tea and my roses and my terrible jumper and whatever else of mine you want." His grip tightened. "I mean it. I've meant it since you stood at my gate and told me you'd volunteered. Come in."
The stone cracked.
It split down the middle with a sound like a bell, and the cold went out of the room in one long breath, and every candle in the library relit at once, and the frost slid off the painted vault like snow off a roof and vanished, leaving the gold stars shining. The books stopped rustling. And then, slowly, softly, all down the long room, they turned on their shelves again, every spine, toward her, and she felt something she had never once felt in that house before.
Warmth. Plain, ordinary warmth, like a kitchen in winter.
"Oh," she said, and her voice broke.
He was still holding her hand. He was looking at her across the cracked stone as if she'd just walked out of the sea.
"It wasn't in the Reparations Act," she said. "The roses. The tea. You. None of it was. I just thought it would be harder to argue with if I left you out."
"Granger."
"I didn't want you to go to France."
"Hermione," he said, and leaned across the hearth, and kissed her.
It was careful, at first, as if he were still not sure he was allowed. Then she put her free hand on the back of his neck and kissed him back, and he made a low sound and pulled her up off the hearth and into his arms, there in the middle of his library, under his gold stars, with the books leaning out to watch. He kissed her like he'd been waiting nine years and nine days to do it. She thought he probably had.
When they broke apart, he rested his forehead against hers.
"I'm still angry about the report," he said.
"I know."
"I'm going to read it again tonight and find all your mistakes."
"There aren't any."
"There's one." He drew back just far enough to look at her, and he was smiling, not dry or thin, but properly, all the way to his eyes. "You've got the shelving wrong on page nineteen."
On the first of September the gates opened before she touched them.
She walked up the long drive in the early autumn sun with a Ministry charter in her bag, signed and sealed by the Minister himself. The Malfoy Library, a public research archive. Keeper: D. Malfoy. Restricted Collections Liaison: H. J. Granger, two days a week, on secondment from London, at her own request. Demolition of the west wing to proceed in October. East wing and walled garden exempted in perpetuity.
The white peacocks were on the lawn. One of them turned its head and watched her pass with what she chose to interpret as grudging acceptance.
He was in the library, in his armchair, with a book. He looked up when she came in, and his face did the thing it had started doing, the unguarded thing, before he remembered to arrange it.
"You're late, Granger."
"It's five past nine."
"Exactly." He stood and came down the long room toward her, and on the table by the window, she saw, there were two thin china cups with small blue birds on them, already steaming. "Assam," he said. "Dash of milk. No sugar. I've had a fortnight's practice."
"You'll need more than that," said Hermione, and stepped into the warm, welcoming room, and kissed him good morning.