AN: This five-shot is completed and will be uploaded in the upcoming days.
It had been twenty years since it ended, but Hermione wasn't good at forgetting, or forgiving. Usually, she put it completely out of her mind, because to give it any more thought meant imbuing it with more significance than it had. But one thing that she regretted a lot was the fact she hadn't gotten revenge on one Draco Malfoy before she left England.
Of course, so many things had happened since that time. She had a completely different career, a completely different life—she was, in fact, living in a completely different part of the world now.
But when his name cropped up in the middle of drinks, it brought all her old resentments tumbling right back to smack her right in the face.
The three of them were coworkers in this lonely and high part of the world. Padma Patil had been in the Himalayas the longest, their regional expert on dye-based glamours. Theo Nott was the Unspeakable responsible for the mysteries of the mountains. And Hermione Granger was the most recent Hogwarts alumnus to be transplanted here and she was responsible for restoration and legal rights.
Officially she was the liaison on an international task force and no longer worked for the British Ministry, but she still unofficially reported back to them. It had been quite a step down from her old job within the Minister's advisory board where she had been slated for the Minister's position until her health took precedence in her life. It turned out that the mind could be willing, but the body was just plain getting older.
Days and nights tended to be both cold and dry, but not in the alcoholic sense, and the three were definitely not always sober after hours, especially once they had worked together for a few months and Hermione's defenses had started to crack in the isolation.
On this particular night, Hermione had brought Theo a very coveted invitation to the Mediterranean Magical Coalition Festival to the pub with her. He looked gleeful enough to begin dancing atop the tables as she handed him the glossy gold invitation.
"Patrice Lowensberg, here I come," Theo said. "No innuendo intended as of yet. You can be my plus one." This was to Padma.
Padma acknowledged the comment with a nod before gesturing over the waitress for another round of the local alcohol, a heady beverage called pahabier brewed from a wheat-like plant that grew high in the mountains. At this rate, they'd be sloshed before ten. "Might as well try my luck there," Padma said with a prosaic shrug.
Padma complained regularly about the lack of available wizards in the Himalayan region who didn't resemble a hairy goat. Hermione nodded encouragingly at her. "Have fun. I'm sure at least Theo will."
That was when Theo had piped up and said, "You know who else will be there? Draco Malfoy."
Hermione almost spit out the contents of her mouth. As it was, she began coughing like mad and both Padma and Theo had to pat her on the back at least ten times for her to get her breathing under control.
"At the Mediterranean Magical Coalition Annual Festival?" Padma asked, and Hermione was glad Padma asked so that she didn't have to.
Theo flashed the invitation at them. "His family always went to all the Mediterranean shindigs."
"Pretentious arse." The words jumped out of Hermione's lips before she could think twice. "If I ever see him again, I would give him a good slap to the face."
Padma looked puzzled. "How come? I mean, obviously he was horrible to you when we were at school, but I thought you two had become friends. You seemed very chummy when you were Chair of Foreign Affairs and he was the main consultant for the European organisations."
Hermione wished she hadn't said anything. "No reason."
"And aren't your children best friends or something?" Padma had a thoughtful frown on her face, the herald for questions that would lead her straight to the truth. Usually, she was much too polite to probe, but with a few drinks under her belt, all her latent lawyering skills came up to the forefront.
A slow smile made its way across Theo's face. "Oh, no, I get it now. You two had a thing."
Hermione sputtered and would have started coughing again, except Padma spoke up for her. "Stop teasing her, Theo. Of course she didn't. Did you, Hermione?"
Hermione busied herself with finishing the contents of her glass. Perhaps a little too busy, since it wasn't that imperative a task. When she looked up after swiping the back of her hand across her mouth, it was to find the both of them staring at her with wide-eyed expressions.
"You didn't," exclaimed Padma, looking slack-jawed.
"You did!" exclaimed Theo, looking far too delighted.
"I am really, really glad you're interested in Patrice Lowensberg, Theo." Hermione avoided both of their avid eyes. They were simultaneously trying to drill holes in her skull from the force of their gaze. "I totally support you going for an older woman. This is all incredibly empowering, that a woman of seventy could—"
"Shut up," Theo said, cutting her off with a slash of a hand. He was sitting up at attention, having sensed a juicy story.
Padma was not far behind, diplomacy only going so far before curiosity took over. "Yeah, spill."
Hermione sighed. She eyed the bartender wistfully and wished she were sitting on one of those lone barstools by herself. The bar was never full, not even on a Friday night, which accounted for them feeling right at home there after hours.
Or better yet, she could return back to base. Except there would be no privacy there either, and it was cold there, magic only going so far against the mighty forces of unending wind chill. She looked back at the two unblinking faces before her and sighed again.
That was when the whole story came tumbling out.
Twenty years ago
They met up again as a result of their children. Hermione would blame this all on Rose if she could, except Rose had no idea that any of this had happened, and some things your kids just didn't need to know.
Hermione had gotten an urgent owl in the middle of the night informing her that although this was not an emergency, as per current Hogwarts policy, she was being notified that her daughter and Scorpius Malfoy had decided to run off together in the middle of the night during term.
Of course, she had immediately gone off to the school alone. There was no reason to tell Ron if things weren't serious, and her ex-husband was busy sitting with his wife just gone into labor earlier that morning.
So, there she and Malfoy sat in the Headmistress' office in chairs that seemed just a tad too small and short, so that she felt like a schoolgirl again looking up at the headmistress' desk set upon a podium. There she had rolled her eyes when she heard of Rose and Scorpius' destination to the Ice Cave in Hallstatt. The supposed origin of Celtic magic.
Hermione remembered very clearly rolling her eyes at that.
Rose was still carrying one large grudge against Ron for getting remarried. Her daughter despised and was jealous of Celine in equal parts and had completely stopped talking to her father now that he was to be a new dad. Recently, her speech was littered with how Scorpius' father was such a faithful and honourable husband, the kind who stayed true to his wife even after she had passed away, unlike some people. They had gotten their vows done right, in a magical circle guaranteed for eternal bonding. Maybe if Hermione and Ron had done that instead of some Muggle ceremony for the Grangers, they would still be together.
As for Hermione, she had discovered that eye-rolling wasn't the sole domain of teenagers. She didn't want to speak ill of anyone, but at times she wanted to interject with, "Yeah, he's alright now, but did you know what a little git Draco Malfoy used to be?"
After being informed by the Headmistress that their presence was not necessary and that they would be allowed half an hour with their respective children the next day, Hermione had traipsed off in search of a pint at the Leaky Cauldron. Uninvited, Malfoy had tagged along.
Conversation had been civil at first. Those stupid kids, yadda yadda, things like that. What were those pubescent kids thinking? Then, it got serious.
"I'm sorry about your wife," Hermione had said. Humbly. Earnestly. All the speeches her daughter had given her about Malfoy's fidelity had evidently sunk in. She had been reluctantly impressed perhaps, by his devotion to his wife long after her passing.
"I'm sorry about your husband too," he replied, just as sincerely. Or so she thought.
"I'm not." She was surprised at his sympathy over her divorce. Rose and her annoying theories aside, she and Ron had had some good times, but she wasn't pining for him or anything. They were better as they were now and probably should always have just remained friends. Also, it might have been that the sentiment was foreign to her idea of him.
Malfoy smirked, eradicating what was clearly a front of sympathy. "You should be. You married him in the first place."
His implication suddenly hit her. "You—oh, shut up, Malfoy!"
He laughed. "That's very good. Did it take long to come up with that?"
"Hey, you know what?" She was so focused on insulting him that she was barely aware her words were starting to slur. "I'm sorry my kid had to drag your kid into this. I'm pretty sure your kid didn't have the brains to come up with something like this."
"You're right, he didn't. This didn't take brains at all. This took a distinct lack of brains."
For the first time since she saw him this evening, the lines of strain around his mouth had disappeared and he looked entirely too happy at her expense. Hermione's eyes narrowed and she threw the rest of her drink in his face. There wasn't a lot left, and he commented on it.
"Buy me another drink then, and I'll throw that one," she said, and damned if he didn't do just that.
She didn't throw it though. She gazed at him curiously. They were in their thirties now, and he looked surprisingly good. Hermione wondered how much of that was attributable to the beer and how much to her daughter's brainwashing. He stared straight back at her, as though aware of her inspection. Then he slowly rubbed two fingers over the side of his cheeks where the beer had sloshed him and, bringing them to his lips, he licked his fingers dry. Watching him and his no longer ferret-like face, she licked her lips as well.
His eyes had dropped to her mouth and he said the one thing that she never thought he say. It was something she had never expected they'd ever mention again. "I've thought about you, you know."
"Shut up," she said, looking away, intent only on tossing back the rest of the drink he bought her.
Except his hand stopped her from picking up her drink. "Didn't you ever think about me?"
There was something of a smirk on his face, but behind that, there was a bit of earnestness, too.
And in considering his question, Hermione realised that she had thought about him.
She had, in fact, given thought to that one time in eighth year, when a drunken Draco Malfoy had sobbed an apology to her after a Yule Ball that fell sadly flat with so many of their classmates absent. She had patted him awkwardly on his arm, which was the closest appendage to her. It was clear just what kind of state he was in, what with the stress of their NEWTs year combined with the war last year, topped off with alcohol he probably snuck into the dorms. Most of them had sobbed on one another by then, but Draco probably had nobody to sob on, given the stick up his arse for most of his life. Also, there was the fact that his paid companions had taken a leave of permanent absence from his side that year.
They had been on separate staircases when they first saw each other, but the stairs moved, secluding them in one of the archways for a good hour or so. After his astounding apology (that she chalked up to his inebriated state), they stayed in place to wait out the infrastructure, listening to the music interspersed with echoes of laughter from the Great Hall, watching the spill of light flicker with the movement of people. The darkness of the night settled in around them, making it easier to make believe that she wasn't sitting here alone with him, but rather with someone else.
She wondered if he would regret his words the next day, when he woke with a blinding hangover.
In the midst of these thoughts, he suddenly turned intense red-rimmed eyes on her and breathed alcoholic fumes in her face as he said, "Hit me, Granger."
He was completely crowding her space and forcing her to lean backwards over the stone stairs to maintain some semblance of distance. She almost fell over, but he caught her on her elbow and hauled her upright.
"What?" She tried to struggle free, but the scrawny thing was stronger than he looked. He smelled like he had been dunked into a vat of alcohol.
"Hit me in the face, Granger. You know you want to and it'll make me feel better. I wasn't sorry for third year, but I'm sorry now, for not doing a damn thing while you got tortured—"
"Oh, shut up, Malfoy." She tried to shove him away. Almost everyone she had come across had apologised to her for that. It was strange that he was too, except he had always wanted to be on whatever bandwagon others were on. Also, someone definitely spiked the punch, because she felt decidedly strange being so close to him that their bodies were being pressed up against each other. She had never found his annoying little face attractive, preferring character over supposed looks, but he had swagger alright, and apparently her hormones were not immune to swagger, no matter what her brains wanted to believe.
"Hit me. Hit me. C'mon, I deserve it and you want to. You know you want to—hit me!"
She hit him then, because if she hadn't wanted to before now, she definitely did now, because he was irritating her so damned much.
He reared off her, holding one hand to his cheek like he had third year, his mouth open.
Then she was the one smirking at him. She shrugged as he stalked back to grab her by the upper arms. "Hey, you told me to," she protested.
He didn't seem drunk in the least as he stared down at her with those red-rimmed silver eyes. "I didn't think you were going to!"
She shrugged again. "Well, I can't help it if you're so slappable."
He scowled down at her and shook her. Just for that, she slapped him again, and then he kissed her.
That shocked the hell out of her, but not as much as his next words, which were, "Merlin, I've been wanting to do that for ages."
That was when she kissed him back.
Present Day
"What a story," Padma said, although Hermione had left most of it out. Such as the fact Hermione could remember just how long Malfoy could look at you without blinking. About how he had told her how beautiful she was, even though she had never believed him, because Astoria Greengrass, now there was a real beauty and he had married her, hadn't he?
She didn't talk about a lot of things. There was no point in talking about how persistent he was, in the same way he had been in school and yet different, in a good way this time. He had shown up in Sark when she had been sent there for a three-day assignment. Then he had turned up again in Bear Island. Out of the blue, my arse.
It had all been incredibly flattering. The man had a certain amount of style and spared no expense on her account. He was alternately carefree and intense about things in a way that was foreign to her in contrast to the other men in her life, and it was addictive, the amount of attention he paid to her.
On the other side of the equation, he was incredibly selfish and seemed to not comprehend that she had a job. A damn good job that she was very proud of, and being marked for Minister meant a lot of sacrifices on her end and it was inevitable that whoever she was seeing romantically (and secretly) would bear the brunt of that.
At the end of their closet affair, it had been mostly hard words exchanged. He was angry and sulky that she didn't appreciate being whisked off on a South American trip for two weeks when she was fully booked with council meetings for the next month. Yes, of course she had promised they could make time, but she couldn't right now, couldn't he understand that?
Apparently he couldn't. "I'm leaving. You and your job can fuck off," he had all but snarled. "Why don't you owl me when you make Minister? Think you'd have time for a pity fuck then?"
And then after that snide rhetoric which underlined just how superficial their relationship had been, he had slammed out of the high-priced bungalow, leaving her just as ticked off as he was. What next left her more than ticked off—it made her shake with disbelief. He had left South America and left her stranded on the little vacation island with a Portkey that wasn't due to activate for the next two weeks.
Hermione had flown around the place in a state of rage for the next few hours, only just preventing herself from wrecking everything in the room. Then she realised that such action was silly when she had worked with the Unspeakable department in the past and learned a thing or two. For example, she knew that long-distance Portus spells could be accomplished if one wielded a Pegasus or phoenix feather core wand, but not, for example, a unicorn or dragon heartstring.
And so, using her superior brain, she got out of there and when she got home, she shrank down everything that Malfoy had at her place, which by then had accrued to a disturbing volume, and owled it to him. Her faithful owl also went back for her things, but she never got them, and what was more, she never even got an explanation or an apology. But that was the sort of pettiness Hermione guessed he always was capable of and she had just forgotten it.
That was fine too.
Hermione was quite good at compartmentalising. She threw herself all the harder into her work. She didn't think about him, not even when she started to work on her campaign. Nope, the fact that she would win and become Minister would be the icing on the cake, and no, she most definitely would not be contacting him then. Her two-fingered rejoinder would be her smiling face on the front of the Prophet when she was elected.
Only, it never got that far.
She never even made it on the roster.
After another year of trying and developing ulcers from the stress, Hermione took herself off to recover. And then she realised there was more to life than politics; there was a whole world out there.
"Closure," Theo said. "That's what you need."
Hermione looked down at her glass, which was empty. She drank from it again, just to be sure before looking up at the two of them with marginally improved equilibrium. "I don't need closure. I'm fine!" She waved her hand for emphasis. A big wave to show just how fine she was.
"You need to slap him in the face," Padma said. "And I need to be there to see it this time. Ron told everyone who would listen about that time third year, but nobody really believed him. Did it really happen?"
"It did." Theo confirmed with a nod. "I heard about it from Goyle."
"And you did it again in your eighth year?" Padma looked incredulous. "That was what started all this? Is he a masochist or something?"
"Nothing happened." Hermione wanted that to be clear. "It was a drunken snog. It didn't go anywhere." Not then, anyway.
"Still." Padma's face was screwed up in an expression of disbelief, as though she were trying to process how it could have even happened in the first place. She took a sip of her drink, but her face still bore the same confused look.
"You'll burn a hole in your brain, Padma darling," Theo said, grinning. Now that the secret was out and his curiosity shared, he sat back in his chair, one ankle over the other knee, his dashing robes parted and falling to either side of his chair. "What you don't know is that this was always their kinky form of foreplay. Draco's always had a thing for Hermione here. You should have seen the caricatures he drew of her in his spare time."
"He did not." Hermione's denial was automatic, although something fluttered inside her stomach and her face felt hot. She tamped it down. Theo had no idea what he was on about; Unspeakables were notoriously unstable creatures.
"Deny it if you must." Theo continued to grin in his knowing way. He latched his fingers behind his head. "Giant jubblies you had in them, too, if you were interested. I'm still rooting for you to lay on one him though. Couldn't happen to a nicer man."
Padma seemed to be on the same boat, if for different reasons. "You should do it. I've never hit a man in my life. I'd love to live vicariously through you."
"He really was such an incredible bastard." Hermione looked down at the table and saw that her hand was clenched into a fist. A fist that planned to plow right through the air to land in the middle of Malfoy's stupid smirky face.
Alright, she could admit it now. It hurt, alright? It really, really hurt. It hurt that he had pursued her for sex and had taken off the moment it got inconvenient for him. The utter bastard. Ron never did anything like that, and she had set birds on him, and wewe, other stuff too, over the course of their short marriage.
What was more, it rankled that it had been him, Draco Malfoy, bigot extraordinaire, that had gotten through her defenses. There were other men since that time who had seemed interested, but nothing that had panned out. She had been too bitter for any more relationships, and that was kind of on him too.
Of course, she wasn't going to take herself out of the equation. She took responsibility for the rest of it. For being so foolish that she let herself be swept up into a sexual relationship with him, when Terry Boot had been widowed and interested. Ooh, and Roger Davies. That had been kind of a shocker, but rather flattering for all that. But they all ended in nothing.
Because Malfoy was always there. There with the coffee and the takeout when she had been too tired to go out to eat. There to discuss possible legislative reforms. There when she had been stymied at charity balls, and there at all her outreach programs.
And she had lied to herself too, and told herself that it didn't matter when he was photographed with other women, although she noticed he never even bothered denying it. God, what an absolute fool she was. Yes, a good punch to the face was what would really make her weekend. She might even top that off with something else too, like a Portkey somewhere cold, to freeze off his bits?
Revenge was sounding better and better.