I never meant to end up this way. I was "destined for greatness"; well, according to everyone else I was. I was just a homely bookworm that ate, slept, and breathed order. I rarely ever broke the rules and if I did it was with my two best friends and for a good reason. I studied more than I slept and I cared nothing for my appearance. I was just trying to live up to everyone's expectations of me. Trying to be perfect is hard and can get to you, which is why I think I am what I am today. After leaving school I applied for all the top jobs in the ministry thinking that I would easily get a job. I couldn't have been more wrong. I went to all the interviews and the second the supervisor would see me I would be shooed out the door. Even if I was Hermoine Granger they didn't care. Eventually I started wearing shorter skirts and put on a bit of make-up, anything to make them look twice at me, it didn't work.
My last interview, I wore a suit that consisted of a mini-skirt and a halter blouse with a black lacy push-up bra under the white blouse and stiletto heels, a tight fitting blazer covered the blouse but accentuated my breasts. My hair was curled and twisted up into a clip that, conveniently, I pulled out the minute the interviewer walked out of his office and saw me sitting in the lobby chairs getting up to go to his office. Immediate boner for him I noticed and smirked a little as I walked past him and into his office, sashaying slightly when he turned to follow.
"Miss Hermoine Granger?" he asked while looking me up and down. He was trying to do it coyly from behind the folder that he was "reading" from.
"Yes, you can just call me Hermoine. You must be Patrick Bracknel." I knew his type from spending so much time with Lavender and Parvati, the look and try to get into her pants type without taking no for an answer. I decided I'd play along until I knew if I got the job or not, which by the look in his eye he wanted a piece of me so I would get it.
"Correct, Miss—Hermoine. I see here from your profile that you graduated top of your class at Hogwarts. How impressive. However, you focused your studies on healing. How is it that you decided to apply for a secretarial position?" The way he said Hermoine made me shiver from disgust, "Oh are you cold? I'll just turn up the heat a bit to make you more comfortable."
The interview lasted about five minutes longer before I got so hot from the heat that I had to take the blazer off. Which I assumed was his purpose in turning it up so high. I really didn't want to since it seemed like the interview was going so well on its own I didn't need anymore-"physical" help. I barely had the blazer off before he said:
"Well Hermoine, I don't see why we need to continue this wonderful conversation any longer. You are obviously qualified for the job and I look forward to working with you. Just come in on Monday morning and I'll have someone show you around and in the afternoon I'll acquaint you with how things are run around here."
"Why thank you Mr. Bracknel. I will come in Monday. Have a great rest of your day!" I got up and walked out with the feeling of eyes on my back, well, on something much lower.
As I was walking out I didn't notice the other eyes on me, Draco Malfoy. He had just come out of his own office down the hall, heading out to lunch when I walked past him.
When Harry defeated Voldemort he lost something in him. He lost all that was Voldemort and what was left was just Harry. He was more like his father now that he could let the James Potter out in him. But he had Lily in him too. His mother was forgiving and because of that forgiveness Harry became friends with Draco Malfoy. It seems odd saying that they are friends when in reality they only go out drinking together but I say they are friends, because it takes a friend to put up with Harry when he's been drinking. No one really knows how they became friends, only they do, and they conveniently become temporarily deaf whenever the topic is mentioned.
I try not to spend too much time with Harry or even Ron anymore, because they know me too well and they will see how much I hate my life. I'm in a dead end job with a boss that sexually harasses me everyday. Even now that I dress the homely way that I used to, at work anyway, he keeps making advances because, unfortunately, he knows what is under the long skirts and sweaters that I wear.
"Moine! You won't believe what I just saw!" The shouts coming from Ginny reaching me on the second floor where I was reluctantly getting ready for a blind date.
"What is it Ginny?" I snapped, "I'm trying to get ready for the imbecile that you are setting me up with." I walked down the stairs as I said that, heading towards Ginny.
"He's not an imbecile, he's a guy from work, which means you would like him since he's a professor and you seemed to love professors 5 years ago." She pouted a bit and stared right at me, daring me to deny her last statement.
"What did you see Ginny? It's not Percy practicing his acceptance speech for the Wizards Who Have Changed The Wizarding World Award again?"
"No, but that was bloody hilarious when he was! I saw Harry buying a ring with Malfoy! Do you think Harry is finally going to ask me to marry him?"
"More likely that than Malfoy getting a ring for someone."
"Oh don't be too doubtful. I've seen the looks Malfoy gives you. He loves you he just won't tell you."
"He won't talk to me, be in the same room with me, look at me, work in the same office as me, and the list goes on Ginny. He doesn't like me just like I don't like Draco."
"You just called him Draco."
"I did not I called him Malfoy."
"No you didn't you said Draco---- HERMOINE LOVES MALFOY, HERMOINE LOVES MALFOY, HERMOINE WANTS TO MARRY MALF—" Ginny stopped short from her prancing around shouting to walk right into none other than Malfoy.
"Well, well, well, Granger. It seems we have a predicament to deal with. You seem to, as the young Weaslette says, want to marry me, I have no choice but to accept." Malfoy said with a smirk. Holding out a box to me I took it and warily looked inside to find the most gorgeous diamond bracelet. The diamonds were princess cut all around the white gold bracelet with a larger diamond where the bracelet would lay on the top of your wrist.
"Wow, it's beautiful…Malfoy why would you give this to me?" I breathed, "I mean, who is this for? You aren't resorting to bribery to get girls to fall for you now are you?" I could have kicked myself. It was obvious that it wasn't for me; I shouldn't have jumped to conclusions and it made me look like an idiot. Shoving the box back into his hands I turned to leave.
"Unlike you Granger, I don't have to stoop so low to get people to notice me."
I paused mid-turn and slowly turned back to look at Malfoy with a great desire to repeat the past, like a punch from 3rd year perhaps.
"'Moine, what is he talking about?" Ginny could tell by the look on my face that it was like I just got slapped. How could he know? I knew that he worked at my office occasionally but that he was the potions professor at Hogwarts ever since Snape died. I just gaped at him and left the room running up to my bedroom to hide from shame.
"Malfoy?" Ginny was confused and her confusion grew as Malfoy ran after me.
I could hear a knock at my door but I didn't want to see anyone so of course I did what I could.
"Go away. Leave me be. Fuck off. Take your pick." I yelled at the door, tears streaming down my face.
Malfoy burst into my room making me feel even worse because I should have said something meaner if I knew that it was him.
"Hermoine, I don't usually do this so I'm going to do this fast ok? I'm…I'm…s-sorry…I saw you when you came in for your interview. You should have never had to do something like that to get a job."
"Thanks…I guess…I didn't know that you saw me."
"So why did you do it?"
"Why did you buy the bracelet?"
"We weren't talking about that…we were talking about why "the Hermoine Granger" had to, for lack of better adjectives, slut herself up to get a job that is so obviously below her?"
All Hermoine could do was stare at Malfoy. As he was speaking he sat opposite me on my bed, the sudden change of weight distribution made me slide a little closer to him and the closeness was oddly intoxicating. I noticed a scar above his right eyebrow, it was small but something about it triggered a memory from when I was a different, happier person.
FLASHBACK
At graduation from Hogwarts I was given a charm bracelet from my parents as a gift and I wore it the entire day vowing to wear it at every special occasion. After the graduation ceremony there was a ball planned to let the seventh year students enjoy one last night of carefree adolescence before we were forced to enter the career fields that we had worked so hard toward.
The ball was planned to be a masked black and white and silver ball where we would reveal ourselves at midnight. I wore a stunning floor length black dress that had spaghetti straps that started in the front then went through loops criss-crossing the back ending at my lower back. The front went just straight across my chest with a very thin silver ribbon bordering the top of the dress but that was all the color on the dress. I chose to curl my hair into ringlets and pile it into a bun with some strands out with slight glitter on the tips.
My mask was silver with black diamonds scattered on either side going from larger sized to just flecks near my eyes. Ginny did my make-up very simple with black eyeliner and smoky-silver shadow to make my mascara-ed lashes seem thicker and my honey eyes to seem mysterious. I felt beautiful. I wanted to be beautiful. It was my last night at the place I called home for the past seven years, I needed to remember it right, I needed to remember it as it should be…happy…. before the war would destroy the people and their families in it.
I walked out from my dorm heading to the great hall but I cast a disillusionment charm on myself. I wanted a grand entrance. I slipped past dozens of masked students waiting for the great hall to open. I went to wait in an alcove near the hall. As I went to sit down I found that there was already someone sitting and in shock my arms went out and my charm bracelet hit the side of their head. I ran out screaming sorry and went to hide in a broom cupboard out of sheer embarrassment.
END FLASHBACK
"Hermoine? Hermoine?" Malfoy was waving his hand in front of my semi-entranced face.
"I-I did that? You?" I was rambling on incoherently and Malfoy just stared.
" Yes…you sleazed yourself up for a job…I was there…remember?"
"No. I wasn't talking about that Malfoy…. your scar…. it was made by my charm bracelet wasn't it. Back at the graduation ball…?"
"That was you? I searched the entire ball trying to look for a bracelet that could do that…. you were invisible so I couldn't just look for a dress…. why did you run? Why didn't you keep the bracelet on?"
"I lost it when I was in the broom cupboard…hiding" I hung my head down and started crying again, "I'm always trying to hide…"
Malfoy lifted my chin up gently and said quietly as he looked into my eyes, "never hide yourself away from the people that love you, they are the ones that keep us strong, that give us reason to carry on." He then got up and left my room shutting the door behind him. The shock that I was in from that statement was nothing compared to what I saw next to me. The box with the diamond bracelet in it was on my bed with a note attached. I gasped and opened the envelope wax seal with the Malfoy crest on it and pulled out a sheet of parchment. As I unfolded the note I couldn't help but hold my breath. I read out loud to maybe help it all seem truer than it already was.
Hermoine,
There is little that I can say that will explain why I give this to you. I know we have not known each other on friendly terms long enough for gifts like this to seem appropriate; but I am and I will always be a Malfoy, and in tradition with the ways of the Malfoys, I spend an extravagant amount of money on something unnecessary. However, I find this bracelet completely necessary. I need to apologize for all that I have done to you in the past and what I may do in the future. Please accept me as a real human being and not just a ferret as I have been known to be.
Draco Malfoy
P.S. I know the beauty of the diamonds cannot compare to the awing beauty that you posses, but by wearing them you may give them a second chance to come even a miniscule closer to how radiant you are.
The parchment dropped from my hands and slowly landed on the cold hardwood floor. I never thought Malfoy could be so—real, so human.