The Long Black Coat

I am not JKR and when she gets Snape back he\'s going to be very crumpled

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I must be honest with myself, even if none of us ever speak the words aloud.

I miss the way the world was before.

I miss the days before I knew I was a Muggle. I miss the days before I had ever heard that word. I miss having a dental practice with my husband. I miss vacations. God help me, I miss the telly. I wouldn\'t have the slightest qualm about trading what little self-respect I have left in order to sit and watch Alexie Sayle call Thatcher the Anti-Christ for a half-hour, but I could settle quite happily for reruns of Waiting For God. Who am I kidding? I would be overjoyed with the news in Welsh.

It goes without saying I can\'t remember my car without being moved to tears.

It\'s gone now, of course. Our masters have destroyed all Muggle technology, and allow us little more advanced than the harnessing of fire. It sounds like hyperbole. It isn\'t. We Muggles are not allowed to forge metals of any sort. We till and sow and harvest with tools of wood and sharpened stone. We are not encouraged to follow the presumptuous, for Muggles, habit of reading and writing. The good old days are here again and they are rotten.

I cannot bring myself to miss my husband because if I did I might never stop.

We may not leave the confines of our village without the permission of the sadistic Muggle-born wizard whose word is law here. He, in turn, bows and scrapes in the presence of mixed-blood wizards.

There is no longer Jew or Christian or Muslim or Buddhist. We all worship the pureblood wizards, and they are jealous gods. They kill Muggles as though we were ants invading their beautiful summer picnic. From time to time they delight in tormenting us with the detached curiousity of a small boy with a magnifying glass.

Our lords require us to throw any child displaying magical abilities into the fire. It burns green and never leaves the mother with so much as ash or bone.

Hermione assures me, like the village wizard assures the weeping mothers, that the child is not dead, only gone, but I can\'t bring myself to completely trust her. I can never forget she\'s one of them. I wish she had never been born.

She is twenty-four, too old to go into the fire. She pretends at Mugglehood. All her friends were killed in the war. They fought against the coming of the Great Lord. She believes she would be executed were she found out. I find it hard to believe a schoolgirl even came to the attention of the Great Lord. Harry Potter was little more than a speed bump, after all. She\'s always thought she mattered more than she did. It\'s probably the result of being an only child.

She and I are all either has left. If I loved her less, I might not mind the life of mindless serfdom she suffers now. If I loved her more, I might not fear her. We never talk about our lives before. We never talk about her school days. We never talk about the future, for that matter. It is a life best lived not fully awake.

It is a life lived in terror. Other people appear to be happy. I sometimes wonder if we seem happy to them. Perhaps Hermione and I simply weren\'t cut out for life as peasants. I used to be proud that she inherited my stroppiness. I used to be proud of her intellect. We both would have been better served by docile tempers and strong backs.

We were with the other women of the village doing our washing when it happened. Believe me, it sounds more idyllic than it was. Laundry is a dirty, sweaty, backache-inducing business. Some of my most blissful memories include dropping clothes at the dry cleaner.

We saw him there as we beat the clothes on the smooth stones. We didn\'t have to ask. We knew what he was. Even from across the stream, that thin silver chain on his left wrist that is the outward symbol of the Great Lord\'s favored ones shone like a benediction. He could have raped her then and there if he wanted. Not one of us would have lifted a finger to stop him. Not that we could have stopped him if we tried. We\'re only Muggles, after all. The years since the war have taught us trying is useless.

If he had raped her, we would have told her what we always tell them — \"You\'ll live,\" with the unspoken truth that if there was a baby it would go straight into the fire. I\'m not sure if that\'s a blessing or a curse.

He didn\'t take her, though. What he wanted from her turned out to be more awful than that.

He was tall and ugly. His nose was too big, and his face was too long. His hair could have used a good scrub. All the other purebloods I had ever seen were immaculate. Of course, those were things I saw later. All I noticed at the time was that he was tall and dark-haired. He wore a long black coat. I kept my head down just like the others. It\'s not strictly forbidden to look a wizard in the eye. That doesn\'t make it a good idea.

He watched her, but he didn\'t move. At the time I cursed Hermione for raising her head to look at him. In retrospect, I doubt it would have made a difference. Neither of them said a word.

He was waiting in our hovel when we returned. Hermione tried to ignore him, walking past without a moment\'s pause. He spun her toward him, taking her chin between his thumb and forefinger.

\"I was under the impression you were dead,\" he hissed. I have never heard a voice as silky or as terrifying.

She answered him as though he were just anyone. \"I am dead.\"

I have no idea why, but I have always wanted to live; so I bowed low, pressing my face into the dirt floor.

\"Does this Muggle know ...\" he asked, but my maniac of a daughter interrupted him.

\"That she\'s harboring a fugitive witch?\" she said.

\"You are not wanted. For the record, you were never brought to the attention of Our Lord, and no one is left who could identify you,\" he said, his entire body tense.

\"Malfoy?\" Hermione asked.

\"Lucius was executed almost immediately after our triumph. It seems he was a traitor passing information to Our Lord\'s enemies for years and intended to immobilize The Dark Lord in order to give Potter a slight advantage,\" he said, his voice laden with meaning; but I had no idea what the significance was. \"A most fortunate discovery on my part.\"

Hermione snorted.

\"Why are you here, Miss Granger?\" he asked.

\"Where else would I be?\" she answered.

\"There is ...there is a vacant place at my side,\" he said softly.

\"What are you ...?\" her words trailed off into nothing. \"Why?\"

\"Don\'t be thick, Granger,\" he said bitterly.

I looked up, startled by the sound of my daughter\'s hysterical laughter, to see her shaking her head. He left without another word.

That night there was a storm. When I went to close the shutters, I saw him watching from the middle of the empty street, untouched by rain, his shape surrounded by a silvery glow.

In the morning, half the trees in the village were uprooted.

He never left her alone after that. He watched each day as she worked the fields. He remained distant. He remained silent, but he remained.

I became used to the lean figure in black scrutinizing Hermione\'s every move. One day, as he followed at his usual distance, my daughter turned to stare back at him, and he did a peculiar thing. The wizard knelt down and took a handful of dirt from her footprint.

Hermione\'s breath caught in her throat. The wizard in black opened his fist and blew Hermione a kiss, sending dust flying everywhere. He smirked.

\"What was that?\" I whispered in her ear.

\"Dirt from the intended\'s footprint can be used in...in a very effective love potion,\" she said anxiously. \"It\'s his way of saying he wants me of my own free will.\"

\"Who is he, Hermione?\" I asked. I couldn\'t restrain myself any longer. \"How do you know him?\"

\"He was my professor,\" she said, turning back towards the green\" he taught me potions.\"

She refused to answer any more questions about him, but he didn\'t go away.

One midsummer morning, we were sitting with some other women, gathering and weaving rushes, when he came closer than usual.

Hermione stood, perhaps to confront him, perhaps to run; it doesn\'t matter, as he didn\'t give her the chance. In what seemed like a single stride, he pinned her against a tree. The other women and I did our best not to watch. We were all of a meter away from them.

Meanwhile, my daughter was snarling at a man with the power of life or death over us all.

\"Get on with it,\" she all but screamed.

\"I quite intend to,\" he chuckled.

In a moment it became clear he was doing something to her, but rape wasn\'t it.

\"Owww!\" she squealed.

\"Hold your head still, Granger, I need to do the other side,\" he chided.

\"What was that for?\" she asked irritably.

\"To prevent this obscene little charade of yours from continuing any longer.\"

Delicate gold hoops now hung from Hermione\'s ears. She moved to slap his face but he caught her wrist easily. The wizard dropped her hand and walked away laughing to himself. No Muggle was permitted iron, let alone gold. He had done it. He had marked Hermione as a witch before the entire village. No, he had marked her as his witch.

She and I were alone more than ever after that. No Muggle with any sense of self-preservation addresses a witch in familiar terms. As Hermione\'s mother, I was automatically shunned as well. I don\'t blame them; if I were any one of them I would have done the same.

For fourteen long days, Hermione continued to rise and work alongside the rest of us. Still he was everywhere, watching.

Humans are, essentially, what we are. Though the world was destroyed and remade in the pureblood\'s image, the pub was fairly unchanged. At first it went silent at the sight of my child and I, but bit by bit we were forgotten, leaving Hermione and I to lose ourselves in the laughter and clamor around us. We enjoyed it until he appeared, leaning jauntily in the doorway, arms folded across his chest. Once again, every eye turned to Hermione.

\"What do you want?\" she snapped in his direction.

He said nothing, simply smiled a wolfish smile full of vicious crooked teeth. If I still had my practice, I could have done him a world of good.

Hermione sat bolt upright in her chair and spoke, \"We need to have a talk, Professor.\"

He ushered her through the door, almost smiling.

They stood in the middle of the road for half the night, keeping the villagers stranded in the pub, afraid to pass the witch and wizard.

The pureblood, what else could he be, seemed in turns predatory, solicitous, and condescending. Hermione\'s stance conveyed nothing but rage. Of course, that was all guesswork on my part; I heard nothing they said.

When I asked, she didn\'t answer.

The next day, he politely asked her to accompany him on a walk. When she returned, there were love bites on her neck. I should have asked her what happened. She was my daughter, but I had no idea how to speak to her. I don\'t think I ever did.

These days, he simply holds out his hand and she takes it. Although Muggle-borns aren\'t allowed wands, he brought her one.

\"Highly polished, cedar, 10-inch dragon heartstring,\" he said brusquely, as Hermione wept with joy. It was identical to the one her father and I bought for her when she was a child.

Now that I have seen him up close, he is as ugly as sin. He has that puffiness about the face usually associated with alcoholics. Heavy creases frame his mouth and slash his forehead. His eyes are small and black and look straight through Muggles as if we aren\'t there at all. Those same eyes caress my last link to the world like a pair of hands. I hate his filthy eyes. His hair is awful, and he has nose enough for three. When Hermione makes him angry, he can\'t talk without spitting.

I hate him. I hate him, and my daughter has given him her heart.

The Muggle-born village wizard nearly soils himself at the mere sight of him, but Hermione\'s face lights up the second he appears. Not that he gets the chance to appear much lately, since he seldom leaves her side. She no longer works the fields. She reeks of him. I think I know something of him now. He is a monster among monsters and rumored to be part of the Great Lord\'s inner circle; a pureblooded aristocrat in service to the Lord since he was barely more than a boy. None are more loyal, they say. Anything he wants is his. How can she love him?

Rules mean nothing to a wizard who answers only to Voldemort. I have the power to say the name in my own mind, yet it terrifies me. If the wizard in the long black coat\'s mistress wants a wand, then a wand she shall have, even if she\'s a mudblood.

I didn\'t raise my daughter to be a kept woman, but then I didn\'t spend twenty years in school to spend my days pounding clothes on a rock, either.

My Hermione has become a whore. It is surprisingly easy to admit. I find it more difficult to swallow when I consider what she is prostituting herself to. I despise her when I think of her in the arms of that dirty bastard. I wish she had died in the war with her friends. I wish she had never been born.

Three days ago, I woke up and she was gone. She left no word of goodbye, not even a note. Does she remember that I can read, even though they have taken away the books? I don\'t know where she is, but I know who she is with. I know that she is happy, but I wish that she was dead.

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fin