Happenstance

The Greengrass ancestral abode near Wotton-under-Edge was a nice Georgian manor house someone with no taste had tried to tart up as Tudor. Hermione rolled her eyes at the timber beams and whitewash. She guessed an ambitious ancestor had revised the family’s occupation of the house to an earlier date to make them seem more pureblood than they were. The status games of the ‘old families’ drove people to extraordinary lengths of daftness.

“The elder Madam Greengrass will not be in attendance.” Narcissa remarked as they made their entrance up the gravel drive, having as was common Apparated just in front of the gates. The walk to the house allowed them to marvel at the architectural eccentricities and make a good procession. “She disapproves of her daughter-in-law’s attempts to moderate the family politics.”

“Lovely.” Hermione recalled Daphne Greengrass, presumably the granddaughter of the conservative elder Greengrass, as one of Pansy’s cronies and anticipated the tea party to be dire. Mrs Malfoy gave her a cool look, which she met without blinking. She was going to smile and be seen to be affable, and do it with good grace, but liking the pandering was beyond her.

“Quite.” Narcissa conceded and took them to the front door without further comment. They were greeted by a scion of the family rather than a house elf, a concession to modernity that did not please Madam Malfoy. Proper witches did not wait upon people.

They surrendered their coats and made small talk with Astoria as she showed them into a drawing room crowded with matrons. There was a pause. Hermione rankled. The witches’ resumed their scattered conversations, collectively opting to pretend nothing was wrong. But the supercilious raised eyebrows stung. The fact the derision was directed at Narcissa did not make it any easier to take. Hypocritical bitches, the lot of them, Ms Granger thought. Madam Malfoy frostily weathered the looks, taking a seat with the hauteur of a Grand Duchess.

Hermione joined her on the settee. Socialising happened. It was a slow, polite game of musical chairs as people circulated to chat and eavesdrop on other conversations. She was soon listening to a Fenland witch talking ostentatiously about Laura Ashley and getting it slightly wrong despite her spirited attempt to sound like a Muggleborn. Perhaps she was going for Half-blood and worldly.

Whatever the impression the gentlewoman was trying to make she was not succeeding. Hermione looked around wondering if there was a seat vacant behind a potted palm where she could hide when a lissom blonde replaced the close friend of Mrs Ashley.

“So funny she says Laura Ashley served her personally in her shop.” Kasimira laughed like the bluebird embroidered on her robes. Hermione did not join in. She had been laughed at too often to casually mock someone else.

“I didn’t realise you were a Gentlewoman.” She ventured, noticing the very chunky engagement ring on her Grace’s hand. Ron had not given her his grandmother’s ring, as was traditional amongst the Weasleys. It was fortunate none of the boys had been engaged at the same time as the family didn’t have other jewellery so fine. Granddame Cedrella’s ring had done the rounds replaced by the hand-fasting ring at marriage. Only Muggles wore two rings together.

When Ron had given it to her, Hermione had been proud to be included in the tradition. She did not know whether to be surprised or dismayed about the ring. It was none of her business if Ron wanted to throw his money around. For a moment she sympathised with her successor before the thought occurred possibly Kasimira had picked the new ring herself. She had coaxed Ron into spending on other fripperies.

“Oh, I am not. How droll you are.” The titled witch smiled as though she had uttered a bon mot. “But I expect your patroness will soon have you on the rolls.” Her smile foiled her Botticelli angel face. She was clever. Hermione realised. With the expensive tastes and kept manners it was tempting to write her off as a dumb blonde but that would be an error.

“Narcissa and I have different ideas on how to spend our time.” Hermione temporised then added. “We’re going to the Louvre later then to the Uffizi. It’ll be a nice break from the English weather.” Non-magical cultural pursuits would hopefully be a good show of Narcissa’s Muggle cred.

“And your fiancée, he is not going with you?” Kasimira asked, voice idle, wits not.

“He’s minding the babies.” Hermione could not shake the feeling she was fishing for something. Narcissa returned, and standing beside the younger blonde witch, they could have been mother and daughter.

“My son is modern. He wants to change nappies as some sort of badge of courage.” Madam Malfoy spoke dismissively, seemingly uninterested in an acquaintance’s curiosity. She took Hermione’s empty cup, swirled it once widdershins and looked at the dregs before setting it down. “Come along, my dear. The pastries are better at the cafe Richelieu.”

Madam Malfoy swanned out with Hermione, smirking at the implication of being the ugly duckling, following in her wake. She noted out of the corner of her eye Kasimira pick up her teacup to study the leaves as Narcissa had. Oracular nonsense but interesting. Hermione wondered how closely the two women were related. In pure blood circles it was a given there was some familiar link but how close was difficult to say.

It was Hermione’s turn to Apparate and she thought that a good thing when she saw the slight tremor in Narcissa’s hands as she fastened her cloak. She took them to Paris, where the air was pink with the setting sun. Always reinforce your lies, Hermione had learned in the war. Cover your ass to put it less elegantly. She ordered coffee as she was awash with tea, and pain au chocolat because she wanted something sweet to rid herself of the sour spite.

“You need some nicer friends.” Hermione observed, shrugging out of her coat. Parisienne fashion consciousness being what it was no one batted an eye at Narcissa’s attire. Her coiffure was enough to convince them of her elan.

“They are not my friends.” Madam Malfoy corrected, weariness pulling down her mouth into the frown familiar to Hermione from the first time they had met at the Quidditch Cup. “They are my peers. Whether I like them or not is immaterial.” She brushed a floss-fine strange of hair off her face with an avian gesture. “The milieu is not to be denied.”

“Foutez-tous.” Hermione said with studied nonchalance. Narcissa’s pale eyes registered surprise before her poise reasserted itself.

“A novel attitude.” She was bland. Hermione smiled.

“Not so modern as all that. What were you doing in the Sixties? I don’t suppose Free Love was must advocated in wizarding circles.”

“You suppose correctly.” Irritation gave the elder witch a spark of vivacity as Hermione had hoped to do. ‘We are not so anachronistic as you might think. I prefer a settled life but Lucius in his youth was quite the London man. He did well for us in the Muggle world.” She reflected on happier times only briefly. “It was always there, I suppose, the hate. It is easy to see your kind as rats, a plague scrabbling in filth.”

“Prejudice is magnetic.” Hermione was ready to explain magnetism when Narcissa nodded. She understood about lodestones and it was a good analogy. “We’ll find him.”

“There is very little of him left.” Narcissa stopped to smile automatically at the waiter when he brought the coffee. “I lost him finally when he gave the Dark Lord our son. All the justifications, all the sacrifices were supposed to make the world fit for our child. To make everything right once and for all. Nothing mattered if Draco was taken as atonement. All for a bastard’s pique.”

“It was never about making the world a better place. It was all a slave for an angry man who wanted revenge.” Hermione tore her pastry into pieces with her fingers over her discomfort at rubbing salt into Narcissa’s wounds. She was accustomed to not showing her pain, merely sipping her coffee. Not a cheering conversation. She changed topics. “Have you seen the Mona Lisa?”