Disclaimer- I do not own Harry Potter© or any of the concepts derived from the book series. The book series is the soul property of J.K. Rowling.
Mercy, Mercy
Part One
(embracing the first shard of irony)
At Harry's wedding, when Harry practically serenaded Ron—you've always been there man, I wouldn't know what I would've done without you—then turned to Hermione with that familiar worn-out smile and said simply—you've been a great pal—she very coolly smiled back and said nothing, succumbing to the weight of that misleadingly soothing nothing that everything happens for a reason.
providence
The conference room was deceptively smaller from the inside.
Had Hermione not been embarrassingly tucked away in the back corner, the place most frequented by those with aversions to things like punctuality, she might not have noticed this.
She also might not have noticed, in all her struggles to distract herself from staring at the clammy backside wobbling in front of her, the peculiarly troubling seating arrangement in the second row.
Unfortunately, these things happen for a reason.
These tiresomely punctual, seat-mucking-up things just happen for a reason.
And because it appeared that these things were out of her control, Hermione accepted with some mild discomfort the fact that Draco Malfoy was sitting beside Ron and Harry in a chair that had once been exclusively reserved for her. Hermione Granger. The girl one. The clever one.
It was not without an extremely legitimate albeit maddening reason that she had stumbled into Shacklebolt's meeting a catastrophic five minutes late. It was all Morgan Lowe's fault, the brown wild-haired Morgan with the black-rimmed glasses and perfect teeth, the Morgan who was otherwise known as the Head of the International Magical Council of Law (if you were actually interested in that kind of thing)—the Morgan who had come under the impression that he had misplaced Puerto Rico's proposal to ban tourists from apparating onto San Juan's beaches seconds prior to Percy's meeting with the Puerto Rican representatives.
In actuality, Morgan had never misplaced them at all. But if Morgan and Hermione had known that, they wouldn't have shredded Morgan's Priscilla curtains into fabric confetti in their desperation to find it. One can only scream accio Puerto Rican apparation proposal so many times before going insane. If Percy hadn't traipsed through to thank Morgan for dropping off the proposal on his desk the night before, Morgan's roll-y leather chair would have been torn apart.
Thus Morgan, who should have entered the conference room huffing and puffing alongside Hermione, was instead cleaning up the vestiges of his office while Hermione listened to Shacklebolt babble about the Annual Ministry Solidity Retreat.
The Annual Ministry Solidity Retreat was a fairly new occurrence in the Ministry. It brought together a select few employees from each department to discuss institutional stability in light of the Ministry's reformation. It was, if anything, intended to be a panacea for Magical London's fears and woes about a Ministry of Magic that had proven itself vulnerable to corruption in the past.
Harry and Shacklebolt had collaborated on developing the retreat with the Ministry for years following the Ministry's tumultuous demise under Thicknesse, and for the past three years since its inception, the retreats had proved extremely beneficial to the bolstering of public sentiments towards the Ministry.
The Ministry considered the retreats an entirely necessary addition to their agenda.
Hermione considered the retreats a joke. Throwbacks to the team-building camps of Muggle convention. Not that she'd ever been to either a retreat or a Muggle camp. She didn't really know anything about how the retreat functioned. This would be her first year going.
Regardless of how stupid she thought they seemed, the retreats had been Harry's idea, and Harry's ideas always tended to garner a certain amount of attention and success because nearly ten years after the war, people still felt obligated to support the Boy-Who-Lived-Twice. It was people like Harry, or so people like Hermione assumed, that had thrown down their robes over the muck for people to walk across. For all types of people to walk across.
She was speaking in particular about Draco, of course.
As Head of the Auror Office, Harry had practically handed Draco the promotion to Head of the Improper Use of Magic Office. No one aspired to be the hand or foot of the organization that prevented the conjuring of the nonexistent (food into pantries, money into bank accounts, inches onto the body, so on and so forth), but the promotion was certainly a monumental accomplishment for a man who had taken part in the plot to raze the Ministry, Hogwarts and any fledgling piece of evidence that Voldemort had been anything but the greatest wizard of all time. Ever.
She didn't care that Narcissa had saved Harry's life during the War. Draco would always be a narcissistic, misogynistic assface to her. When she'd received that little lavender airplane addressed from Harry and Ron, declaring that Draco had received the promotion, Hermione had nearly torn up the new broom handle regulations from the Trading Standards Body that she'd been working on for days. The boys even had the gall to ask her out for drinks to celebrate. Since she'd canceled on them for the last four drinks, it didn't matter to them whether or not she had to uncomfortably sit at a bar with Draco and discuss politics between shots—so long as they got to see her.
She dismissed the invitation without sending back a response, so when Harry and Ron showed up at her office door not knowing any better, she turned them away with a shake of her head.
Perhaps she should have taken those lightly disguised warnings a little more seriously because despite all her musings on the fortitude of Harry's optimism, she was fairly certain she was becoming his only exception.
Since that night, she'd picked up the rather problematic habit of marking over measuring, so much so that she remembered events solely by their relativity to one another rather than by their proximity to these grand concepts like, oh, time.
At some point in between Draco's promotion and well, now, Harry had gotten married, Hermione had been promoted (though it was nothing too thrilling to boast about because although she was now working directly under the Head of her department, the Head was Percy Weasley of all antagonistic cynical wizards) and in the most tragically preventable of events, her relationships with Hogwarts friends had become saturated in gray.
That last event was not so much an event as it was a realization that she had made seconds ago after walking into the room and seeing Draco in her seat.
Looking at the three of them in a row made her recoil. Surely, Harry must have yielded to his sympathies and given the seat to Draco out of charity, for if Harry and Ron had willingly and unthinkingly just let Draco sit there without feeling any inkling of guilt, Hermione would be bothered to say the least. Yet, hiding somewhere in the clusters of neurons was her acknowledgement of this fact. Too much time had passed. Her boys had left her behind.
There were times when she theologically permitted the stirring of the spectrum of good and evil, particularly when working in the Department of International Magical Cooperation as it was in politics' nature to compromise some good in lieu of some bad, but having to witness Harry and Ron treating Draco like some sort of… human being was visually repulsive.
But what could she do but stand in her corner and watch them with her brow knit in anger and her fingers crinkling her papers? She had let Fate handle these relationships, as she assumed Fate had been doing all these years, and if Fate had determined it was time for a change, then so be it. Hermione was not one to give up so easily, but put up against things like providence, she felt helpless. Perhaps she could have tried harder to meet them halfway and perhaps she could have let go of her inhibitions and celebrated Draco's promotion with them—but she had already made her choice. She repeated to herself—everything happens for a reason.
The conference was suddenly over.
Shacklebolt was talking to Harry and Ron at the front of the room, while Draco dawdled about in his seat. Her seat.
Impatiently, she squeezed her way past the sweaty fat man in front of her and quickly made her way down the aisle towards Draco, her arms bumping over chairs in her haste to stake claim on her property. It was just a fucking chair, but she didn't want his hands all over it. She didn't want his jacket draped over it. She didn't want to see him or his shit anywhere near it.
But by the time she finally managed to navigate her way over to Draco, Ron and Harry had returned from their conversation with Shacklebolt. Draco was unashamedly staring at her, while Ron and Harry's mouths hung slightly agape.
She wished that now, more than ever, she'd done a better job of keeping track of time. In all her mishandling of the space-time continuum, she had failed to recognize that several months, not weeks, had passed since she'd last spoken to them. This realization destroyed her confidence.
Draco was the first to acknowledge her presence.
"Granger," he curtly nodded, gray eyes shifting immediately towards the ground. He appeared humbled by her arrival, that curiously angular face of his turning away from her in what she would normally had deemed timidity—but this was Draco Malfoy, and the near-convincing display of apprehension was undoubtedly another part of his bogus plan to look normal. Hermione brushed off the greeting. She wasn't stupid enough to fall for that shit.
"Hermione," Harry finally managed. Hermione sounded far less convincing than 'Mione, but she continued to smile that sickeningly sweet smile.
"Harry, Ron," she returned. Ron, in the most jarring of gestures, simply waved at her with a flicker of his fingers. Had their relationship really fallen this far?
Draco cleared his throat.
"Ah—I'll be outside," he directed at Harry and Ron. With a final drifting glance in Hermione's direction, he turned around and ambled out of the room with the other few straggling Ministry employees.
When the room finally emptied, save for the three of them, Hermione turned towards Harry.
"Malfoy. Really?" she asked, brow knit in skepticism.
"He's alright, Hermione," Ron said with a shrug.
She scoffed. Malfoy—alright? Men like Draco took entire lifetimes to correct themselves. "Alright" was unnecessarily considerate of Ron.
"Since when have we been on such good terms with Malfoy?" she muttered. After it spilled from her mouth, she regretted it. There was no such thing as her we anymore, judging from Ron's look of disbelief.
"I don't know if you remember Hermione, but we—" Ron nodded his head only in Harry's direction,"—have been working with Malfoy for about five months now."
Hermione shook her head, half in embarrassment, half in apology.
"Right—right… sorry, I just can't seem to keep track of time anymore."
Now it was Ron's turn to scoff.
"What have you boys been up to?" Hermione nervously tried to change the subject.
"A lot," Ron bluntly replied before Harry could get in a word.
Harry shook his head in disapproval of Ron's candidness as he looked down at his feet, which seemed to provoke Ron even further.
"What?" he barked, "So we're just going to pretend that this isn't uncomfortable for all of us?"
Though Hermione had determined, days ago, that this encounter would be problematic, she had pushed the realization to the back of her head and feigned ignorance. Now the truth in its startling brilliance had been thrown at her with devastating accuracy.
Still she pretended not to know what Ron was talking about because acknowledging that it was fact would mean that she'd known it was happening all along but had done nothing to stop it. Which was exactly what she had done. But she didn't want to appear that fickle.
"What are you talking about, Ron?" she bit back. Then turned to look at Harry for some final indication, some final fragment of hope.
"Oh come on Hermione! The last time we talked in person was months ago—don't tell me you didn't realize that?" Ron continued to berate.
"I've been busy!" was the only response she could muster. Then hoping to ease the tension, she added, "But we'll be able to talk loads at the retreat, right?"
Harry's face scrunched up.
"The retreat—that's what we came to talk to Shacklebolt about," he said.
Her breath caught in her throat.
"We've been begging you to come see us for months, Hermione…" Harry began, trying to spin some ornate explanation for whatever painful blow he was about to deliver. Ron, quick-tempered and impatient Ron, cut Harry off, stepping in front of Harry and closer to Hermione.
"You missed my birthday… you missed Harry's birthday…" he began, counting off on his fingers as he flailed them wildly in her face, "… And you nearly missed Harry and Ginny's wedding. You've missed everything, Hermione."
She had to bite down on her tongue to keep from lashing out at Ron. When he put it that way, of course it sounded awful. But she couldn't have just up and left from her office with proposals and treaties to pass just to knock back a firewhiskey and gorge herself on cake. She had worked damn hard to carve out a career for herself. By herself. She wasn't Draco Malfoy. She couldn't ring up Harry to pull her out of a rut if she'd gone out and gotten sloshed the night before. She had too much self-respect to do that.
There were so many bitter things on the tip of her tongue, so many acid-laced insults she wanted to spit in Ron's face. Still, some part of her clung to the remains of their friendship, hoping it would buoy itself up.
Before she could compose a decent response, Harry let out a heavy sigh and with his head turned down said, "We're not going."
Hermione would have been lying if she'd said she hadn't expected this. If anything, she was surprised they hadn't waited longer to tell her. Regardless—it still hurt to hear Harry, of all people, tell her that they had stranded her even though she'd already known she'd been alone for quite some time now. Her jaw dropped.
"I thought we agreed we'd do this together," she pressed, "The only reason I agreed to go on this ridiculous retreat was because I thought we were doing this together."
Harry shook his head.
"We thought we were doing this together too, Hermione, but you haven't even tried to make time for us these past few months. You're going because Percy asked you to, not because we did."
And without missing a beat, Ron shook his head in disappointment, "God forbid you disappoint someone other than you best friends."
Hermione could feel her eyes glazing over. This was simply unfair. She hated feeling outnumbered, especially feeling outnumbered by two people that she'd thought of as family. Had she been too presumptuous to think that they could simply slip back into the roles they'd been playing for the past twenty-some years after a five-month lull?
"That's completely unnecessary, Ron!" she found the nerve to shout, "You know I didn't do any of this on purpose!"
"What? We're supposed to feel better that you forgot about us on accident?" he hissed.
Hermione nursed her forehead in her hand. "Of course not! I would never forget about you!"
At that moment, Harry pushed Ron out of the way and interjected, "But you did, Hermione, you did!"
Hermione never took Ron's words seriously, but Harry's—she could always depend on Harry for a dose of honesty. And if what he'd said in that heartbreakingly pitchy tone was any indication of the truth, she had nothing to defend herself with anymore. They had seen her cry plenty of times, but that had been back when she could depend on them to comfort her. Her greatest fear now was that they wouldn't even bother.
"So that's the way this is going to be," she struggled to say, "You two are just going to ignore me for the rest of your lives?"
"Oh—so now you're upset about us ignoring you, but should you ignore us…" Ron rolled his eyes.
"I wasn't ignoring you! I told you—I've been busy…"
"Hermione, we've been working too, making sure your department doesn't get blown up at every International Magical Conference you have so you can do your fucking job—you're welcome, by the way—"
"Sod off, Ron! You'd be riding around on a mop carrying your passport with you to go to the fucking grocer's if it weren't for the shit I have to negotiate—"
And perhaps because he had come to the disturbing realization that this actually could be the end, that he didn't want to completely lose Hermione despite what Ron was nonsensically shouting, Harry waved at Ron to stop talking and turned to look at Hermione.
"We weren't ignoring you, Hermione," he explained, "we're not planning on ignoring you either."
He paused for a moment to gauge Hermione's reaction—she had only stopped talking because Ron had finally shut up.
"We can't make your decisions for you," he continued, "So if your career is more important, then fine, we can't stop you from working, but we're not going to go on this retreat with you just so you can feel better about not having spent time with us these past months. When you come back, either owl us, or don't."
Hermione had calmed down drastically. Arguing with Ron always set her off, but Harry could always bring her back down. He had certainly been blunt, but Hermione needed some brutal honesty every now and then.
"You're really not going to the retreat then?" she asked.
Harry shook his head, always the tastefully cool one, "We're not, but try to have fun, Hermione."
Ron however, annoyed that he'd had to keep his mouth closed for so long with so much hot air building up in his head, leapt forward with one final jibe.
"And it's not like you'll miss us any ways."
Harry squeezed his eyes shut in what could only have been frustration as Ron folded his arms across his chest with that ridiculously arrogant smile. She wanted to smack Ron across the face. She wanted to hurt him enough that he would never be able to talk again. But instead, she swallowed her anger and turned around without so much as a good-bye, for if she'd opened her mouth, something heinous would have spilled out.
She was also afraid that she would start crying. This was not at all what she had expected when she had walked into the conference room an hour ago.
She quickly walked out of the room, clumsily knocking over chairs in her haste to leave before that overwhelming sense of loneliness swept over her. She could feel it start to roll down her cheeks in little wet hot beads.
She shouldn't have been as upset as she was because she'd seen this coming, but she couldn't avoid feeling helpless. A part of her had always been so tangled up in Ron and Harry that when they'd pulled away, it'd left with them, leaving a gaping wound for all sorts of miserable sentiments to fester in. Somewhere behind her, she heard Ron or Harry call her name, but she burst out of the conference room door and slammed it shut behind her.
They were supposed to be the Golden Trio. What were they now?
Complete shambles.
"Tissue?"
She jerked her head to the side, her heart nearly bursting out of her chest in shock.
"Tissue?" Draco asked again, taking a step away from the wall he had apparently been leaning against this entire time.
Of all pieces of shit to have to deal with right now… She didn't have time for this. She would never have time for this. She sneered and shook her head in disgust. Too many emotions were running through her head right now.
Why was he looking at her? She would have slapped him were she any less professional. Her expression must have conveyed her revulsion because he balled the tissue up in his hand and threw it in a nearby wastebasket.
"A simple no would have sufficed, Granger," he said coolly.
She scoffed. He was actually talking to her. Like they did that sort of thing.
"Get away from me," she warned with her eyes narrowed.
"Merlin, I was just offering you a tissue," he replied, "I take it things with Potter and Weasley didn't go so well?"
If Harry and Ron hadn't walked out of the door at that very moment, Hermione would have thrown herself at Malfoy and ripped the weirdly blonde hair from his head. The gall of Draco, to think that he had any sort of precedence in her life, to think that she would ever degrade herself by talking to him. God—even for him to think that he had any precedence in Harry or Ron's life infuriated her.
She icily stared him down. She could hear Harry calling her name again, but her body was bursting with so many different emotions that she didn't want to speak. A string of profanities would just come flooding out.
Instead, she turned and walked down the hall to the elevator, her body shaking with anger as the boys called for her to come back.
xXx
This was not what Hermione had expected. This was far from what she had expected.
Where were the log cabins? The bonfires? The wildlife? The overwhelming scent of nature that flooded the nostrils and practically hummed with vivacity?
She could feel her stomach churning.
Why the fuck was she standing in front of Malfoy Manor?
She had seen it before in photographs, but this was one of those instances where it was far larger than it appeared in pictures. This thing was a granite Italian-villa-inspired monstrosity. She had never before been more humbled by a piece of architecture.
Morgan, clearly sensing her discomfort, nudged her in the side.
"Should you or should I?" he said, gesturing towards the large glass and wood front doors.
Hermione croaked in response. She should have paid more attention to Shacklebolt's briefing—particularly to the part where he had expressed that the retreat would be held at Malfoy Manor this year. Had she known this, she most likely would not have come, regardless of the fact that Percy had hand-picked and assigned her and Morgan to prepare the presentation for their department.
This was just asking too much of her.
It had been a week since she had seen Harry, Ron or Draco, a week since she had nearly pummeled Draco for being so brash as to think she would ever talk to him. Now, she would have no choice but to talk to him for the next six days. To eat with him. To discuss politics with him. Six entire fucking days. She was going to go mental.
As Morgan took the front steps two at a time, Hermione idled on the drive, hoping to spare herself the moment of having to look Draco in the eyes and thank him for his hospitality.
She hadn't spoken to Ron or Harry since the falling out. Instead, she had drowned herself in work, had stayed up for nights preparing the presentation with Morgan and had essentially left the Ministry as little as possible. The less leisure time she had, the less time she had to think about her deteriorating friendships. It was in her nature to hand the very few issues she could not deal with or control to Fate.
"Hermione!" she heard Morgan shout from the front doors.
He was waving her to come in. Apparently, Draco wasn't personally greeting his guests. The manor's doors had opened of their own resolve and were slowly closing in some pathetic attempt at appearing foreboding because God forbid someone try to use the handles to yank them open.
She quickly climbed up the steps, then took Morgan's hand and was pulled into the greeting hall before the doors slammed shut behind them with a resounding thud.
"Interesting welcome," she sarcastically drawled, setting her bags down on the floor.
The inside of the manor was surprisingly bright. Two grand staircases ran up along either side of the room. Large open rooms extended off of the hall, and directly across from the front doors, they could see into the candlelit courtyard. She could hear music wafting in through the open windows and hear the voices of other Ministry officials that had already arrived.
"Granger, Lowe."
Hermione turned in time to see Draco walking in from one of the side rooms. His hands were tucked into the pockets of his khaki pants and the sleeves of his white linen shirt were rolled up to his elbows. His expression was characteristically nonchalant. Her brow knit in scrutiny, but she still managed a fairly courteous, "Malfoy."
Morgan smiled and immediately grabbed Draco's hand with both of his own and shook, "How are you doing, Draco?"
"Good," he said with a nod. His gaze was awkwardly concentrated on Hermione. "I'm glad to see you two have made it here safely."
She was able to stop herself from scoffing by biting her tongue. Of course they'd made it here safely, the idiot. It wasn't as though they'd needed to take an excruciatingly difficult mountain biking expedition to get here. They'd apparated straight from the Ministry.
"Let me show you to your rooms so you can get settled in and join us in the courtyard," Draco continued. He reached for Hermione's suitcase, but she quickly pulled it away from him.
"I'm fine," she said, rather, warned. He smirked, shook his head, then turned towards Morgan, giving him a hefty pat on the back.
"How's Peru's case against the Vipertooth smuggling coming along?" he asked.
Clearly pleased that anybody was paying attention to the workings of the International Magical Council of Law, Morgan animatedly began to describe his work, ignoring the looks of disdain Hermione threw at him.
Watching Draco's reactions to Morgan's discussion of his work, Hermione was almost convinced that Draco was legitimately concerned about the Peruvian Vipertooths. She tried to distract herself from their conversation by looking at the pictures hung up on the walls. She had expected to see the faces of pureblood wizards and witches leering out at her, but all she had seen so far were landscapes, abstract works and the occasional geometric shape masquerading as modern art. It was all so eerily unlike the Draco she remembered from Hogwarts. This was not Draco at all.
"Here you are," Draco cleared his throat.
Apparently she had been so immersed in her observations that she hadn't realized that Draco had already dropped Morgan off at his room. The two of them were standing alone in the hallway. He pulled a key ring from his pocket and unlocked the door, pushing it open for her.
From the doorway, she could see a beautiful canopy bed with light blue silk sheets and translucent blue curtains. Beside the bed was a nightstand with a lamp and a complementary bottle of wine. She apprehensively took a step inside and was amazed to find that the further she went in, the larger the room appeared. There was space for a vanity, a wardrobe and an armchair, all consistent with the light blue theme and as ornately decorated as the wooden bed frame. Against the back wall, there were two French doors leading out to a balcony that overlooked the courtyard. The doors had been left slightly ajar and sounds of laughter and conversation floated in.
She contained her gasp of surprise, realizing that Draco was still standing beside her, staring.
"I hope it's to your liking," he said quietly, dropping her suitcase down. She hadn't even realized she'd left it outside, and it annoyed her that he'd picked it up.
"You know, you could have just left it, I would have gotten it," she said, not even bothering to tell him that yes, the room was to her liking. She didn't care that the room was beyond anything she could have imagined. She didn't want to give him the satisfaction of thinking that he had earned her approval.
"No really, I insist," he smirked.
She let her purse slide down her arm and onto the floor so that she could prop her arms on her waist.
"What do you keep finding so amusing?" she asked.
He didn't respond at first. He sort of half-narrowed his eyes in scrutiny, all the while smirking that ridiculous smirk.
"You're very self-righteous," he finally replied.
Her immediate reaction was to scoff. Her? Self-righteous? Of all people to make an accusation like that…
"Isn't that a little hypocritical of you?" she fired back.
He shrugged, then tossed her the key ring which she lithely caught.
"Then I suppose we have something in common," he said with a smile before turning around and closing the door behind him.
Hermione threw the keys onto the bed in anger, wishing she had the courage to set the room on fire just so Draco wouldn't have the satisfaction of knowing she would be getting any pleasure out of her stay here. She hated the way he thought he was so clever and charming. Oh, like self-righteousness was something that people pined for. He'd completely evaded her question.
She just needed to get through the next six days and then she would be able to return to the Ministry, owl Harry and Ron for a drink and return to her regular daily routine. Merlin, she could even leave earlier than that if she needed to. Their presentation was on the fourth day, Draco's presentation was on the fifth, and the celebratory gala for all Ministry officials was on the sixth. She could leave within the next four days if she wanted to. The weight on her chest lifted.
On the bright side, she had access to running water and air conditioning—these had been two of her largest concerns back when she'd thought the retreat was being held in log cabins in the woods. No matter how much disgust she expressed for Malfoy Manor, it was several hundred tiers above any inn, motel or bed and breakfast that the Ministry could have afforded for this many officials.
It was undeniably beautiful.
xXx
Despite Morgan's heckling, Hermione declined the invitation to go to the courtyard. According to the itinerary, Draco would be regularly hosting dinner in the courtyard, so tonight was no particular exception and if she wanted to take her time unpacking in her room and thereby cleanly avoid Draco for one more night, she could. Albeit she was still slightly disappointed because the courtyard, from her balcony above, appeared to be the centerpiece of the Manor which was saying quite a lot considering the walls of this place absolutely leaked with money.
The courtyard stretched down the center of the home in a cross shape. The four-man orchestra played in one of the juts and across the way, a bartender mixed drinks in the other. At the end of the courtyard, there was sundial hemmed in by square hedges and beyond it, there was an archway through the manor to what looked to be the opulent gardens Narcissa had won fame for before her death. The courtyard was lit with a mixture of floating candles and strings of light. In the direct center, there was a small rectangular pool lit up by glowing lotus flowers that floated along the surface like little tugboats.
She would have gone down—she was dying to go down—but seeing Draco walking about the courtyard made the bile churn in her stomach. So instead, she flitted about her room, investigating the nooks and crannies, interrogating the subjects in portraits to determine their bloodlines and political affinities.
It was a tragically lame evening for Hermione.
To pass the time, she took a quick shower. At least, she had been determined to take a quick shower, but upon stepping into the bathroom she shared with Morgan and seeing the white antique bathtub with the brass handles… she couldn't keep herself from slipping in.
So Morgan found her this way, with her eyes closed and her body submerged in fragrant bubbles, softly snoring.
She woke up to the sound of his laughter.
"Is this where you've been hiding out this entire time, Hermione?" he asked, propping himself up against the sink.
Hermione wiped her face off with a nearby towel, then stretched her soapy arms up above her head and yawned. She hadn't really thought about it before, but aside from Harry and Ron, Morgan was one of her closest friends. Perhaps even closer than Ron and Harry because all the time she hadn't spent with her boys, she'd spent with Morgan instead. In a strictly professional setting, of course.
She had never really asked Morgan questions about his personal life, but he had never mentioned a significant other, never worn a wedding band on his finger in all the years she'd known him, and every once in a blue moon, would bring up knee-slapping stories of awful dates his mother had set him up on. She took all of this to mean that he was a bachelor. At thirty years old though, with his straight teeth, unkempt brown hair and boyish charm, she wondered why.
Morgan took off his glasses and proceeded to wipe them clean on his shirt.
"You know, people were asking about you downstairs," he said, raising his brow.
"Really? Who?" she asked.
"Just some chums from Magical Transportation," he replied as he held his glasses up to the light for inspection.
Hermione nodded into the bubbly froth around her.
"Oh, and that bloke, Draco," he said very casually as he put his glasses back on. Hermione sat up straight in the bathtub, the water swaying around her.
"What?"
Morgan pushed himself off of the sink and came to sit down on the rim of the bathtub.
"I lied about Draco—but you're not doing a particularly good job of hiding your loathing of him. What exactly do you have against him?"
She flicked some soapy water at Morgan in objection, then settled back into the tub and looked up at the ceiling. Had it really been that obvious that she didn't like the man?
"What gave me away?"
He laughed and dipped his hand into the water, splashing her back.
"Don't think I didn't see you gagging behind us when we were walking to our rooms," he said.
She sighed, then picked up her wand from the floor and waved a towel over so that it hung like a curtain between her and Morgan. He turned his head away as she stood up out of the water and wrapped herself up.
"I just don't get it," she said as she climbed out of the tub, "Does nobody remember the kind of person he was? Does nobody remember what his family did? What he did?"
"It's been years since the war, Hermione. A lot can change in a decade," Morgan shrugged.
"Not Draco—I don't trust a freakishly blonde hair on that malformed head of is."
In truth, it wasn't malformed at all, and his hair wasn't very freakishly blonde either now, but Hermione was apt to ignore these facts when angry.
"You'd be surprised. He's worked hard. Really hard," Morgan stood up, resting his hands in the pockets of his field shorts.
Hermione rolled her eyes. Like she hadn't heard that before.
"I'll see you in the morning for breakfast," he said, putting one hand on her shoulder, "Stop thinking and try to have fun Hermione. He's not a bad guy. I swear."
Then he turned around and walked out the door back into his room, shutting it gently behind him. She sighed and slipped into the blue cotton bathrobe she'd brought from home. Sickeningly enough, it matched the room décor. She wondered if this had been intentional on Draco's part—but it was too farfetched a notion because Ministry files didn't exactly carry information on things like favorite colors and foods.
She padded back into her room and was slightly disappointed that she could no longer hear the orchestra music wafting in through the French doors. It was late though, past midnight, and they all had to be at breakfast at eight the next morning.
The bottle of wine was still sitting on her nightstand, untouched. Taking Morgan's advice, she finally relented and uncorked the bottle, pouring herself a glass. She set the bottle back down, then took the glass outside onto the balcony.
The courtyard was still lit up, but everyone had left, including the musicians and the bartender. The lotus flowers were the most hypnotic of all the sights in the courtyard at this hour, still glowing and lazily floating across the water with no particular direction. She leaned over the railing and stared down at them.
This was disturbing. The Ministry was eating his food, the Ministry was living in his house. Since she had handed her life to this organization, did that put her under the obligation of enjoying his company? She swirled the wine in her glass, then took a long drink.
Morgan was an excellent judge of character. Yet, he had never met Draco at Hogwarts. He had never been on the other end of an insult or an attack. He had never experienced the boiling hatred Hermione had for Draco. She simply could not believe that he had changed, regardless of what Morgan had insisted.
She stood up to stretch her arms across her head, quickly glancing at the balcony across the courtyard. She immediately regretted it.
Draco was languidly leaning against the railing, nursing a glass in his hand and staring at her. Had he been there the whole time, just watching her? She waited for the profanities to come bubbling out of her mouth, but instead of feeling revulsion or violation, she felt strangely impatient. She couldn't quite explain it.
He was still wearing the white shirt and khaki pants that he'd greeted her in and was still looking fascinatingly normal. Though the balconies were dimly lit, she could make out the features of his face, the structure of his body. She'd never allowed herself to look at him before, to really look at him. And now that she was, she realized that he had grown up into an attractive... she jerked her head away, staring down into her wine.
She wanted to throw her glass at him for not having announced his presence earlier, but knowing her lack of accuracy, she would undoubtedly have launched the wineglass at an entirely different balcony altogether.
She waited for him to say something. To break this awkward tension that she couldn't describe. Rather, she refused to describe it, concerned it was shaping into something else.
He suddenly pushed away from the railing and very casually and very coolly, lifted his wine glass to her.
"To self-righteousness," he toasted from his side of the courtyard, smirking.
He then turned and walked back into his room, leaving Hermione speechless and alone on the balcony.
Author's Note:
I've returned with another D/Hr piece, and geez, this took an effing long time to write. I've taken this story down a few comedy notches from This and Here, but hopefully it still sparks a laugh every now and then. It will probably be at the least, three parts, at the most, five. There are a lot of unanswered questions floating around, but hopefully they'll all get answered by the end of the fic. Read and review, let me know what you think, and enjoy!