Turn 30 of 36

The inspector arrives at nine minutes past nine. Hermione knows this because she is standing in the kitchen with her hand on the counter and her eyes on the clock and the binding magic pulled tight as a wire, and when the knock comes — three sharp raps — the magic flares and settles and she thinks: this is it, this is the moment where they find out whether the stage set holds.

Penelope Clearwater stands in the doorway with a clipboard and a Ministry badge and an expression that is professionally neutral and personally uncomfortable. She steps inside. Her eyes move — the hallway, the coat hooks where two coats hang, the shoes paired neatly beneath, the living room where the grey sofa sits against the wall with a throw cushion Hermione placed at three a.m. because the documentation mentioned soft furnishings. Penelope writes something. The scratch of her quill is very loud in the quiet flat.

"The kitchen," Penelope says. Not a question. She walks in and Hermione sees her cataloguing — the two plates on the drying rack, the two glasses, the table with its faint rings, the icebox which Hermione filled this morning with enough food for two. Penelope opens the icebox. She opens the cupboard. She counts the plates. She writes.

"The bedroom," Penelope says.

Hermione leads her down the hall. Draco is standing in the living room doorway with his arms folded and his face arranged into the mask of aristocratic indifference that Hermione has come to understand is not arrogance but architecture — something built to hold a structure together. He does not follow them to the bedroom. He stays where he is. Hermione is grateful for this. She does not think she could bear to watch him watch Penelope open the drawer where her jumper sits folded among his shirts.

Penelope opens the wardrobe. She sees his suits on the left, her blouse on the right, the gap between them that looks like space and is actually a border. She opens the dresser drawer. She sees the jumper. She sees the photographs — Hermione's parents on holiday, Ron and Harry at Grimmauld Place, the Hogwarts library. She runs her finger along the frame of the library photograph and Hermione's chest tightens because that finger is cataloguing her life, turning her memories into evidence of cohabitation.

"The bathroom," Penelope says.

Two toothbrushes in a glass. Two towels on the rack. Hermione's shampoo beside his on the shelf. Penelope writes. The quill scratches. The flat is quiet and the binding magic is pulled tight and Hermione stands in the hallway and watches Penelope's quill move and thinks about Draco's hand turning palm-up on the kitchen table at three a.m. and the way his fingers curled around hers and the word *together* spoken so quietly she almost missed it, and she thinks: none of this is on the clipboard. None of what matters is on the clipboard.

Penelope finishes in the bathroom. She clicks her quill into the clip on her board and looks at Hermione with an expression that is trying very hard to be professional and is not quite managing it.

"The residence presents consistent with cohabitation standards," she says. "I will note a recommendation for additional personal effects in shared spaces. Photographs in the living room. Evidence of shared leisure activity." She pauses.

"The bedroom reads as staged. The wardrobe division is too neat. A genuine shared wardrobe is not symmetrical."

Hermione's face does not change. She has been trained by war to keep her face when it matters.

"I will also note," Penelope says, and her voice drops half a register, "that I observed genuine physical comfort during my previous logging at the café. That has been entered in the file as a positive indicator. Today's assessment is — adequate. The next inspection will require more."

She leaves. The door closes. The flat is quiet.

Draco appears in the hallway. He has heard everything — she knows this because the binding magic tells her, because it pulls toward him now with a warmth that is no longer subtle, because the wall between them is thin and made of paper and they have both been pressing against it for days.

"Staged," he says. "The wardrobe is too neat."

"We made it too perfect," Hermione says. "Real marriages are messy."

"Real marriages," Draco says, and the word sits between them like a stone dropped in still water, and the ripples move outward and touch nothing and everything.