Chapter 1
Hermione Granger forced herself to open her eyes. It was dawn. The early morning light shone gently through a small crack in the curtains, and landed in a strip across the carpet. With a small groan, Hermione pushed herself up into a sitting position and climbed slowly out of the warm confines of her duvet, tiptoeing across the cream carpet of her and Ron's bedroom to the door. Once she reached the kitchen, she used magic to make some tea – it was much quieter than muggle methods, since their kettle had been known to wake even Ron up at seven in the morning before – and sat drinking it at the kitchen table, yawning and rubbing her bleary eyes to try and wake herself up. She looked at the kitchen clock and groaned again, knowing she had to leave in under half an hour, and was still struggling to keep her eyes properly open. Although most of the time Hermione enjoyed her job, she couldn't say the same for having to leave at 7:30 every morning and often not getting back until gone 6.
Hermione got changed quietly in her bedroom, having to dig deep in her drawers to find a pair of tights with no hole in. Mentally reminding herself to buy more the next time she went shopping, she tucked her blouse into her skirt and applied a small amount makeup in the en-suite bathroom.
"For Merlin's sake" She muttered under her breathe, inadvertently drawing eyeliner across her eyelid – as she did almost every morning.
She ran back into the bedroom and glanced at the clock. 7:24. Perfect, she'd still have time to stop and get her morning coffee. Ron rolled over stretching and gurgling.
"Errgoyl"
"Ron" Hermione whispered "Wake up"
"Shmmfl"
"Ron I'm leaving now, you need to get up" She sat down on the bed next to him and gently rolled him back over. He opened his eyes and sighed.
"Is it the morning already?" He asked, yawning.
"It's just gone half seven, I'm off now" she pressed her lips quickly to his forward, and left the bed.
"Don't go back to sleep!" She reminded him as she reached the door.
Ron groaned loudly in response. He never had been a morning person. Hermione rolled her eyes at him and shut the door behind her.
"Draco, you need to get up" Astoria whispered loudly, shaking the blonde increasingly violently.
"Noooo" Draco moaned "stop shaking me"
"Draco it's quarter to eight, you've got to leave" Astoria pointed out, letting go of him.
Draco sighed loudly, forced himself out of his bed. His wife stood watching him from the doorway, smiling and shaking her head.
"What?" he asked, already digging through his wardrobe for some clothes.
"I would have thought you'd be better at getting up after almost 2 years at this job" she told him "there's some coffee in the kitchen, although I doubt you'll have time to drink it"
Draco dragged on his trousers and shirt, flicking his wand at them to smooth out the crinkles. He ran into the bathroom and slicked his hair back with the help of some gel.
"I'm leaving" Draco called, sprinting out of the bedroom and towards the fireplace in the living room.
"Bye love" Astoria said from the sofa.
Draco spun around and made his way over to her.
"Draco! You're already late!"
"I just want to say goodbye to my beautiful wife first" he said, grinning.
He leant down and pressed his lips firmly against hers, to which she quickly responded to by kissing him back eagerly, sliding her hand round the back of his neck.
"Ok, you're right; I need to go" Draco dragged himself away from her and chucked a large handful of floo powder into the fire.
"See you later!" Astoria called, as he jumped into the fireplace and disappeared.
"Morning Jeanette" Hermione said cheerfully to the receptionist as she walked past, a Costa Coffee cup in one hand.
"Hi Hermione" the young girl smiled widely at her, still amazed to be working in such close proximity to her biggest role model.
Hermione walked into her shared office and settled down at her desk. She flicked through the latest pile of papers and then stowed them in the lower drawer of the small filing cabinet. She spent a few minutes returning her desk to its normal tidiness, sighing in exasperation at the mess and disorder which covered her colleague's. She was sure he never used to be that messy, and didn't understand why he found it fine to have last weeks papers stacked on top of yesterdays. The digital clock on the wall now read 8:12. Hermione rolled her eyes. As well as not being the most organised, her colleague was also late to work every single morning, and spent the first half hour drinking coffee and yawning.
Draco flew out of the fireplace, landing precariously balanced on one toe. Stumbling to regain his stability, he began walking as quickly as his legs would allow him down the endless labyrinth of corridors. He rushed straight past Jeanette, who rolled her eyes at him, before opening the office door and walking calmly in as if nothing was wrong.
"Overslept again?" Hermione asked, not even looking up from the paper she was reading over.
"Oh no, I aim to get here at this time every morning" he told her smugly, sitting down at his desk and sighing at the sight of it.
"You really should get an alarm clock you know" she suggested.
"A what?"
"It's a muggle invention, you set it to go off at the time you need to wake up and then you could be on time"
"I'm only, what, 13 minutes late" he pointed out "I'm not admitting defeat to your muggle inventions quite yet"
"Whatever you say" she said, smiling knowingly "have you replied to McKinney's memo yet? He was bugging me about it in the lift this morning"
"I'm home" Hermione called as she walked through the door to their flat.
"Oh hi, I've just started making dinner" Ron answered, sticking his head out of the kitchen.
"Ooh what are we having?" she asked, making her way into the kitchen.
"It's some Italian thing called gnocchi? Ginny gave me a recipe; apparently Harry managed to make it so I reckon I can"
"I'll just get changed then I'll come and help" Hermione told him, pecking him quickly on the lips.
Hermione disappeared off to get changed, whilst Ron continued with his cooking.
"Mash the potatoes…ok, that's not too hard" he told himself, pleased with his success so far.
A few minutes later Hermione returned, dressed in tracksuit bottoms and a baggy t-shirt. She wrapped her arms around him from behind and kissed the crook of his neck.
"Hello there" Ron said, turning round to return her embrace.
"Hello you" Hermione replied, snuggling into his neck "I've missed you"
"I missed you too"
"Now come on; how's this cooking going?" she let go of him and turned to the saucepan of slightly lumpy mashed potatoes.
"Apparently I just need to add some flour to this" Ron told her, digging around in the cupboard, whilst Hermione took advantage of his distracted attention to point her wand at the saucepan and mutter a spell to de-lump it.
"These look pretty good" Ron admitted fifteen minutes later, looking proudly at his neat line of gnocchi pieces waiting to be cooked.
"I think you've done a brilliant job" Hermione grinned at him "come on let's cook these – I'm starving"
"Malfoy was later again this morning" Hermione said, shaking her head in exasperation as they flopped onto the sofa after their dinner "I finally told him to buy an alarm clock"
"Hmmm" Ron murmured – unlike the others, he'd never quite given Draco for the way he'd acted when they were younger.
"And his desk is always such a mess! It makes me uncomfortable just to look at it!"
"Well that's Malfoy" Ron muttered.
"I'll stop talking about work now" Hermione said apologetically "How was your day?"
"Ah you know, pretty empty"
"Everyone in the Wizarding world is being very well behaved at the moment" Hermione joked.
"They're all petrified of Harry I think" Ron suggested "I mean having the man who killed Voldemort chasing you can be a little intimidating to to-be criminals"
"At least it's working" she shrugged "I feel like I haven't seen Harry for ages, I know they were off on Holiday recently"
"They got back last Thursday didn't they?" Ron pointed out "I'm sure we'll see them at some point soon. I forgot to tell you, I saw Neville today – he said he's started dating Cho Chang!"
"Cho and Neville?! How did that happen?" Hermione looked astounded.
"I have no idea! I mean I know Neville is a great guy, and he's been going to the gym non stop recently…but he's really not a Cedric sort of person"
"Maybe him and Cho have something random in common, a like love of country music"
"Maybe not country music, plants or something like that"
"I'll have to hunt him down at some point and question him" Hermione decided "isn't that crime programme on tonight?"
Draco Malfoy was feeling very uncomfortable. There were muggles everywhere – talking about 'Google' or something along those lines, crowding excitedly around a display (he had no idea what was in the glass cabinet), and generally being very muggle. He wasn't sure where he was going in this shop, or indeed what exactly he was looking for. Eventually a shop assistant took pity on him.
"Do you need any help there?" a short, plump man wandered over and asked him.
"Um yes, I'm looking for an alarm clock" Draco told him, hoping desperately that Hermione hadn't tricked him into shopping for some embarrassing sex toy.
"Ah yes, well we have a wide collection here" the man told him, leading him through rows of shelves until they stopped in front of a collection of clocks of all shapes and sizes. Draco felt a wave of relief that Hermione had genuinely been trying to help, and not just humiliate him.
"For what purpose are you looking for one?"
"To…um…wake up on time I guess"
"So you'd like a louder clock?"
"Yeah…I think"
"All of these here" he indicated the ones on the left "would be fine for that"
"Right, could you maybe pick one for me? I'm not great with decisions"
"If you wish" the man smiled widely "I've always rather liked this one here" he picked up a medium sized clock, with a Union jack background "show a bit of pride for the country"
"Ok, I'll take that then, do you use cards here?"
"Which cards?" the man looked confused.
"You know, for paying with, the little colourful ones?"
"Oh credit cards! We do"
"Um great, thanks" Draco smiled gratefully and walked off.
"Um sir, the checkout is over there" The man called after him, pointing to the left.
"Ah yes, thank you" Draco nodded, feeling his face turning pink. The shop assistant stared after him in bemusement.
He managed to pay without any major issues, and left muggle London as quickly as he could.
"Draco! I've been waiting for half an hour!" Astoria moaned as he walked through the door.
"Sorry Stori, I got caught up"
"Dinner's waiting on the table" she huffed, disappearing back into the kitchen.
Draco threw the shopping bag into the sitting room and made his way quickly through to the kitchen. Astoria had laid out a romantic meal for them, even going as far to light several tea-lights in glasses, and put out wine glasses and a bottle of red wine.
"Oh…you've gone to such an effort" Draco felt immediately guilty for his lateness.
"I just thought we hadn't had a nice evening for a while, and you've been busy at work recently" she shrugged, still looking annoyed.
"I'm sorry darling, it all looks delicious"
"Yeah well it's probably cold now" she said.
"I'll do the washing up for the next few days, I promise" he told her, resorting to a level of begging.
"Oh fine, it's not really cold because I put a charm on it" she said, giving in.
"Did you have a good day?" he asked as they sat down.
"Yeah, I got out of work early so I met Daphne and Pansy for coffee"
"How are they both?"
"Oh you know, Pansy is…well, Pansy" she said, rolling her eyes.
Draco chuckled, he knew all about how Pansy could be from their times at school together.
"Daphne said she's got this new boyfriend – wouldn't tell us who though"
"I'm sure every time you see her she has a new boyfriend" Draco pointed out.
"The curse of being overly beautiful" Astoria sighed.
"Didn't turn out too badly for you, did it?" he winked at her.
"I've let you off, you don't need to keep being overly charming" she winked back at him "the three of us were thinking of going away for a few days at some point"
"Oh that sounds nice, to a hotel or something?"
"More of a spa" she told him "where we can spend all day wearing fluffy white dressing gowns and being pampered"
"You actually make that sound quite tempting, maybe I'll join you" he joked.
"If you really want to spend more time with Pansy" she replied.
"Touché"
Thanks for reading! I'd greatly appreciate any reviews!