Domestic Wizardry (Dramione)

Chapter 2: Will you come?

Hermione Granger-Weasley sat down at the table in the kitchen as her daughter dug into the apple crisp she'd made that afternoon.

"Rose. You know that what your father did yesterday was wrong, right?" She had glamoured the bruise on her face as well as she could to try and temper the fear she knew her daughter must feel.

Rose didn't look up from her plate, but her fork stilled.

"yeah. He scared me." She said softly. Hermione reached out and covered Rose's hand with her own, squeezing her fingers gently.

"I'm sorry that you saw that."

"I'm not." Rose looked up at her mother, a righteous anger burning in her eyes. "I don't want him to hurt you mum!"

Hermione smiled at her fierce little daughter. "Thank you, darling. I don't want him to hurt either of us." She took a deep breath before continuing. "Because he chose to do that this weekend, and because he's been doing other things that aren't right for a rather long time, I've decided that you and I are going to be finding a new place to live." She was careful to be firm and matter of fact- gently occluding and blocking the worst of the fear that simmered in the depths of her heart. There was no reason for that to spill over into her daughter's young heart any more than it already had.

Rose's eyes went wide

"Without dad?"

"Yes. Without your father. He's shown that he doesn't care if we're here or not, so we're not going to stay and let him hurt us any more." Hermione laced her fingers together on the table top.

"Where are we going to go?" Rose asked, ever the problem solver like her mother "Aunt Ginny and Uncle Harry's? Uncle Bill's?"

"I don't know yet. I've just decided today and I wanted you to know just in case we have to leave quickly. But we can't tell your father that we're leaving."

Rose nodded. "Of course mum." She knew that there were things she couldn't tell dad or he'd get very very angry. Things like how Scorpius Malfoy was her best friend in the whole world.

Hermione's cell phone began to ring. She picked it up and looked at the number. Wiltshire. Luna Zabini had probably lost her phone again. She muted it and laid it down. If it was Luna on a borrowed line she could call Ginny. "I've collected a few of our more important things so if we have to leave quickly at any point we can. I need you to go through your things tonight and bring me anything you definitely don't want to leave behind alright? We won't be able to take everything with us." Hermione's heart ached at the thought of all the books she didn't have to worry about packing up any more, but she slammed the door on those thoughts. She would have to deal with that pain at a later date.

"Alright mum."

The phone began ringing again. Hermione flipped it over. Same number as before. She let it go to voicemail again.

"Mum, I showed Scorpius what happened this weekend over lunch."

Hermione looked at her daughter, who put her fork down. Metal clinking against ceramic. "We were talking about our weekends in class and I lied when the teacher asked what our families had done. I didn't want to have to explain to everyone. So I said we'd gone to the library. And Scorp wanted to know what books we'd got and all I could think about was how dad burned them all." The phone began ringing a third time, the tones almost seeming to become more insistent.

Wiltshire.

Scorpius Malfoy and his father lived in Wiltshire.

Hermione felt a tiny spike of panic worm out of the occlusion that held her almost numb to the fear that by rights ought to be making her hands shake and her heart pound. "Hold on Rose- I think I need to take this." She picked it up with falsely steady hands and answered it this time.