Roman Holiday

Chapter Sixty-Eight

“Lucius Malfoy,” said the aged wizard next to Cornelius Fudge, his palsied hands trembling against the parchment he was holding, “this judiciary panel finds you to be guilty of the following crimes.” His gnarled old finger moved as unsteadily as his wheezing, crackly voice; his lined face, however, was set with determination as he cleared his throat.

“Ahem. Illegal use of Polyjuice: impersonating with intent to harm. Kidnapping by Apparition. Attempted sexual assault.” He paused, faltering for a moment at the vicious trapped-animal look on Malfoy’s face, at Fudge’s cold sneer. “Collusion with Dark forces. Aiding and abetting a known enemy of the Ministry. Accessory to attempted murder.”

He studied Malfoy over his reading spectacles. “Have you anything to add to your defense, before this tribunal passes sentence on your crimes?”

Malfoy opened his mouth, then abruptly winced and shut it again. Hermione noticed that his knuckles had gone suddenly white against the edge of the table; his normally pale face was flushed an unbecoming shade of brick red.

Thanks, Sal, she thought fervently, shooting a covert look of gratitude at the empty space between Malfoy’s black-robed knees. Fudge’s sneer faded to a scowl.

“Get on with it, Hubbard,” he growled, and the old wizard sent him a look over the top of the parchment that was at once apprehensive and scathing.

“The panel, Mr. Malfoy, has recommended that you serve, for your crimes, a sentence of twenty years in Azkaban,” he said, and Hermione saw Malfoy’s shoulders jerk under the words - clearly, the severity of the sentence was a surprise to him.

Serves you right, she thought, then felt her own relief fizzle and evaporate as the Ministry official cleared his throat loudly.

“The Minister, however,” said Hubbard - and here, the Aurors present in the room stirred and muttered threateningly among themselves - “has seen fit to reduce your sentence, taking into account your position in the magical community and your long-time support of the Ministry itself.” He and Albus Dumbledore, Hermione noticed, wore identical expressions of resigned irritation. “The committee, therefore, has arrived at the following … compromise.”

Hermione stiffened in her chair and felt Madam Pomfrey, who was standing behind her, place a comforting hand on her shoulder. Below the table, her sweaty hands were locked in slippery combat with one another.

I don’t like that word, ‘compromise’, she thought, and braced herself for the worst.

“Lucius Malfoy, your sentence is hereby reduced to eight years,” said Hubbard heavily, “with the possibility of parole set after the first four.” More angry buzzing from the Aurors; Fudge’s face was set like stone, but Hubbard’s papery old cheeks were burning with bright spots of what might have been shame, or perhaps suppressed anger. Doggedly, he bent his head to the parchment in front of him.

“Your Apparation license is revoked for life. Your rights to vote, sit on Ministry committees, and hold office are permanently withdrawn, with no hope of appeal.”

He took a deep breath and soldiered on in his reedy, old-man’s tenor. “During your term in Azkaban, control of your financial estate is jointly awarded to Narcissa Malfoy and Albus Dumbledore. Out of that estate, we award to Miss Hermione Granger one thousand, five hundred Galleons, as a form of monetary apology. An additional fine in the same amount is payable to the Ministry, for illegal use of your Apparation privileges, and to cover the costs of this inquest.”

At that, Malfoy looked murderous. Hermione, on the other hand, dried her hands on her knees, feeling slightly cheered.

So. Only four years, out of the twenty he richly deserved - but to be fair, she supposed the same allowances would probably be made for a wealthy pillar-of-the-community at a Muggle trial. And he still wasn’t getting off lightly; in exchange for the reduced sentence, Fudge had really taken a beating in committee.

Hermione studied the Ministry panel with new appreciation. When you can’t beat ‘em, she thought, nickel-and-dime ‘em to death. From what she’d read about Cairo in the guidebook her puzzled father had owled to her, living there was dirt-cheap; fifteen hundred Galleons would set her up quite nicely indeed, should she decide to go that route.

And it wasn’t as if he couldn’t spare it.

On a more serious note, Malfoy was going to be seriously brassed-off after four years spent taking tea with the dementors.

Don’t think about that right now, she counselled herself, and looked up, gripped by a fresh wave of tension, as she realised Hubbard was speaking to her.

“ … Miss Granger?”

She swallowed hard. “Yes, sir?”

“The Ministry wishes to apologise for this regrettable incident,” the old wizard said formally, “and also to congratulate you on your extraordinary composure in the face of danger.” He didn’t appear to be reading from the parchment now; he shot a wary sideways glance in Fudge’s direction, then turned his attention back to Hermione. “This panel has recommended,” he continued, “that your name be submitted for consideration to the awards committee responsible for choosing the annual recipient of the British Medal of Magical Valour. The committee will review your case and owl you shortly.”

His faded, rheumy eyes were kind as they rested on Hermione’s. “And I, for one,” he said, his voice more vigorous now, “as a veteran of the war against Grindewald, and the father of two who died as Aurors battling Voldemort -“ he said the name almost defiantly, a gleam of fire passing over his old face - “would be honoured to shake the hand of the young lady who jailed that bastard in a trap of his own devising.” He extended his arm over the top of the desk, the last vestiges of his formality banished by a wide, surprisingly white smile. “Well done, Miss Granger.”

“Well done,” the rest of the panel echoed, and as Hermione rose shakily from her chair to shake Hubbard’s hand, she felt the prick of grateful tears behind her eyes.

Apparently, the whole Ministry wasn’t to be tarred with Fudge’s brush.

Fudge himself, however, looked colder and more forbidding than she’d ever seen him; Hermione took his reluctantly proffered hand with a sense of real foreboding, and quickly cut her eyes away from his frigid gaze. Funny how such a chubby, round little man could seem so frightening - it was rather as if her teddy bear had suddenly sprouted fangs and leaped for her throat.

It had to be her imagination - at least in part. But through the high tide of well-wishers, through the handshakes and back pats and floods of congratulations that rained down upon her from all sides, she felt those squinting, steely eyes upon her, and shivered.

It made no sense. But she couldn’t help but feel that this small victory had just made her a very powerful enemy.

**

Hermione didn’t sleep too well the night before her interview with Areli, but it was a happy, exhilarated insomnia this time, and not the cold leaden anxiety that had plagued her before the inquest. Predictably, Dumbledore had been right about the trial’s aftermath; the Daily Prophet had come to call, the afternoon after the verdict was announced, and fast on the heels of the ensuing article - definitely what Gram would have called a ‘puff piece’ - had come the counter-offers to the CCPMS scholarship.

Just two days ago, she, Harry and Ginny had spread out all the letters on a table in the Gryffindor common room (Ron was nowhere to be found; Hermione suspected he and Draco had slipped out to the Quidditch pitch to hit Bludgers at each other), and had divided the piles into two smaller stacks - labelled by Harry as ‘possible’ and ‘not bloody likely’.

Among the latter were an invitation to transfer to the Salem Academy of Massachusetts; a very shady-looking piece of correspondence from a dubious Uzbekistan-based company that wanted to incorporate the Illuminata into their brand of oven cleaner; and, perhaps most improbably of all, the offer of employment as a private Potions tutor to a six-year-old wizard from Reykjavik (who, as his mother assured Hermione in her letter, showed “unusual promise in Hexing”.)

Those, and the others like them, got polite notes of Replicated regret and were deep-sixed immediately thereafter. The stack of ‘possibles’ - much smaller, most of them similar to the CCPMS offer - Hermione had tipped carefully into a manila envelope and handed off to Dumbledore for comment. She hadn’t gotten them back yet, but she personally thought that Areli’s offer was a hard one to beat.

Harry seemed to think so, too.

“Hermione,” he’d said after he finished reading it, “you’d be crazy not to take this. Really.”

“You think so?” She scanned his face, ever-watchful for signs of dissembling. “But it’s our last year. I’d feel so … disloyal, leaving now.”

Harry looked disbelieving. “You’re kidding, right?” He made a scornful noise in his throat, accompanying it with a hand gesture that was so blatantly rude that Hermione snickered in spite of herself. “Come on, ‘Mione - you know us better than that. We’ve been back in time together, you and me. How’s another year of long-distance owls going to change that?”

At his casual tone, his obvious sincerity, Hermione felt her eyes fill.

The boys had laughed at her sentimentality for so many years now, that to hear a straightforward avowal from either of them always hit her blindside. And though she’d never have admitted it, their reactions were a definite litmus test for her decision. It was one thing to sacrifice romance for scholarship - but friendship was something else entirely; she hadn’t forgotten those first few lonely weeks at Hogwarts, as a brainy, friendless first-year.

Friends are like money, the old saying went. Hard to get, easy to throw away.

But he was sparing her that awful decision, and for that she was grateful. “Thanks, Harry,” she said. “I appreciate that.”

They grinned at each other, then turned abruptly toward Ginny, who’d just let out a loud harrumph, and who looked as if she’d just pieced together a mental puzzle that had long eluded her.

“Back in time?” she asked, and Harry’s forehead creased guiltily.

“It’s a long story,” he said. “I’ll explain …. later.”

From the look on Ginny’s face, a more timely exegesis was about to be required. Hermione, biting her cheek to suppress a smile, gathered up her papers and prepared to leave them to it.

Part of friendship, she supposed, was being where you were needed - and, perhaps more importantly, knowing when you were utterly superfluous.

And she had an overnight bag to pack.

**

The American University in Cairo was, according to Hermione’s guidebook, one of the most well-respected institutions of higher learning in the Middle East. It was also a rich-kid magnet which attracted trust-fund babies and well-heeled Expatriate Party Animals from around the globe. No keggers here, if the hype could be believed; rather, Turkish cigarettes, Cosmopolitan martinis, and Colombian cocaine from silver straws.

Pity, Hermione thought, that the book wasn’t nearly so eloquent when it came to discussing the less-notorious Cairo University, the Consortium’s parent institution. By studying the dinky map in the back of the index, she did manage to ferret out its location - in the Cairo suburb of Giza, near the Shooting Club and the Pyramids and just across the Nile River from Garden City and the Opera House. It was surrounded by relatively new West Bank residential communities dating from the rise of Anwar Sadat - professional, white-collar neighborhoods with exotic names that Hermione could almost taste on her tongue: Mohandiseen, Agouza, Doqqi.

Presumably, Bill’s aforementioned apartment building, the one with the unit coming empty next month, was in one of these.

Apart from that, she didn’t have much to go on. She’d been wondering for weeks about things the tourist-happy guidebook couldn’t tell her, and of course about Areli herself, whose picture she’d found in a 1964 Hogwarts yearbook - Areli, a willowy dark-eyed seventh-year gazelle of a girl, slim as a dancer under her student’s robes and regarding the camera with the cool regal stare of a puma.

She’d be - how old, now? Hermione did the mental math: somewhere in her mid-fifties. Younger than McGonagall, older than Snape.

Hm.

Further inquiries among the library’s archives of professional journals and trade magazines had uncovered a number of Areli’s articles - and even one moth-eaten, dust-caked copy of her dissertation, an undeniably interesting argument for the use of magical medical techniques in certain Muggle surgical procedures, as filtered through the Hippocratic Oath. Apparently Hippocrates had been a wizard, too - something Hermione hadn’t known, but wasn’t surprised to learn.

Top on her list of Intriguing Facts About Areli Ben-Nadir was currently this: that her densely written, formula-packed dissertation carried the most-poetic title of First Do No Harm.

That, in and of itself, sent Hermione’s Soulmate Antennae rocketing off the charts.

But further personal information about her prospective employer seemed virtually nonexistent. Hermione, studying that thumbnail-sized box of a photo in the yearbook, wondered how an additional thirty-six years would sit on those graceful shoulders - McGonagall seemed born in black wizarding robes, but that was acadème; what did one wear as a professional witch, as a scientist? Especially in the middle of the desert? Was that beautiful black hair drawn up in a bun, like Madame Maxime’s? Or had she cropped it off short?

Hermione rather imagined the Consortium as a white-tile lab, and Areli as one of those fast-walking, loud-talking medical researchers one saw on certain American-made hospital television dramas - immaculate white lab-coat, stylish seal’s-cap of hair, short-trimmed fingernails. But the truth was that she didn’t know what to expect - Hogwarts, after all, was a bit of an anachronism, and not the barometer by which one judged the real world.

Now was the time to wonder: what was Muggle, and what was Magical? And to what extent could they feasibly combine? It wasn’t a question one could easily ask, or expect to have answered, in a thousand-year-old Scottish castle haunted by pureblood ghosts and taught by pureblood professors; nevertheless, as the minute hand of her wristwatch swept inexorably toward the hour of her interview, Hermione felt it pressing down on her, the first chilly spectre of Life After School.

Who am I, and where do I belong? Hermione rolled her eyes at the impossibility of those questions, flipped her pillow over to find the cool side, and snuggled down determinedly for a few hours of sleep.

When the student is ready, the teacher appears. Pretty pop-psych, as Zen went.

But maybe, just maybe, it was true.

**