Disclaimer: Harry Potter is the property of JK Rowling. I am a poor college student.
Dedication: To Rhea, for being all flaily over this with me; to les, for saying, "THEY SHOULD JUST FUCK ON TOP OF THE TABLE. JUST SAYIN'," even though I'm still not sure whether she was talking about Draco and Hermione or Sakura and Sasuke as her words are equally applicable.
Notes: I'm bad at following through, but this story shouldn't be terribly long (so approximately 10, 15 chapters). I will do my best to finish this if nothing else writing-wise this year.
Years later, they will say it began because of a small coffee shop on the corner of Knockturn and Diagon Alley that they both frequented. They'll say it was… serendipitous – almost like Madam Puddifoot's in Hogsmeade minus all of the frou frou year-long Valentine-esque décor and mystique.
They will say that, and they will be wrong.
It wasn't quite fate and while it lingered close to coincidence, everything that happened during the six months Ron and Hermione took a break was circumstantial by the only account that matters: the truth.
In all honesty, there was no real reason that it happened where it did anymore than any other place in central London. It could've come about in the hallways of the Ministry or the coffee shop Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy would later attribute with the alteration in their estranged acquaintance.
Really, it all began because Draco's mother wanted a sphinx.
Hermione hadn't had to confront a basilisk or acromantulas with Harry or Ron, but she'd seen her fair share of battles. She'd dueled both by their side and on her own in the final battle of Hogwarts against legions of Death Eaters – by Merlin's left knee sock, she'd figured out that there was a basilisk in the Chamber in the first place! She had spent months living in a tent on a hunt for fragments of a dark wizard's soul and had been attacked by the Snatchers.
Bellatrix Lestrange had even made her arm her personal scratching post, and she'd survived that.
So what did she have to be scared of?
Taking a shuddering sip of peppermint tea, she reminded herself: Draco Malfoy wasn't a basilisk.
At least, he hadn't been one when they'd been in school; else he'd have stared in her eyes every opportunity he got, she figured.
It's been years, anyway, since they last seen each other, let alone talked – four, to be exact. Her old wounds had healed, her teeth were now standard sized (Thank you, Madam Pomfrey!), and she had either forgiven or forgotten just about everything he'd ever done.
Chewing the inside of her cheek, Hermione wondered if he had outgrown "Mudblood" and if there had been enough time for his magically-stoked ego to shrink down to size.
There did seem to be enough space for oxygen in the room.
Hermione skimmed the list of appointments for the day, line by line getting crossed off as someone else in the department finished with another client. She didn't have to look far; he had made an appointment with the front desk and his name was at the top of the list.
She stood up at her desk, peeking over the top of her cubicle. Out of the cubicles around her, three of them were empty and the last five were closed. She didn't see any way out of it.
Man up, Hermione, she told herself firmly, self-consciously flattening the front of her black skirt and fixing the collar of her deep red blouse. You are just like anyone else working at this office. It'll be quick business and then – what are you worrying about?
She didn't have an answer for that – anyway, an answer that satisfied her and didn't make her sound like she didn't deserve to be called a Gryffindor.
It wasn't Arithmancy, Granger – engage attention, don't invade people's privacy, be personal but professional, listen, and don't wrinkle the paperwork.
Easy enough, theoretically.
Unfortunately, from prior experience, Draco Malfoy had a penchant for moving beyond anything theory would suggest against application.
With a practiced smile on her lips and shoulders squared, Hermione walked around her cubicle to the small waiting area and stood in front of the only person there with a hand held out, ready to be shaken. "Mr. Malfoy, what a… pleasant surprise. What can we do for you today?"
Malfoy blinked at her for a few seconds, eyes narrowed. He wasn't frowning, though. In fact, he looked mildly confused at it, like a vampire in front of a mirror.
"You shake it, Malfoy," she said as professionally as she could. She tried to keep her smile on, but it felt twisted at one corner and tight in the other. It probably came out a grimace.
Charming.
One eyebrow twitched, but he shook her hand, before following her into her small office space.
His presence casually filled the cubicle. It wasn't the pretentious way it had been back in school, with the confidence from old society that came with a sense of grandiose hubris and value of blood purity.
It was still self-assurance, to be sure, but it was… mellower. There was more poise to it than the simple ego of a seventeen-year-old boy who had been raised, supported, and comforted on his natural superiority.
More mature.
She wondered if all of that was there or whether she was just trying to convince herself that everyone could change. Harry believed it, but she didn't know if he still did.
"I didn't know you worked here," was all Malfoy said shortly, settling into the chair by her desk.
"At the Ministry or the, ah, Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures?" she said. Peering at the sheet, Hermione read, 'High-Level Adoption.' She nodded to herself as she pulled out her third drawer and tapped its side with her wand.
"This particular… department. I thought you would be over with Magical Enforcement, considering your… We'll call them life experiences. With Scarhead and Weasley."
Irritated, she sat up straight and looked at him.
He blinked. "Too soon?"
"Do you ever grow up? What is -?"
He just smirked. "Relax, Granger, I'm only joking, alright? Potter doesn't care what I call him anymore. Anyway," he said, leaning back and placing his feet on the edge of her desk, "he still calls me Ferret on occasion, so I believe I have earned the right to call him whatever I want."
She gave him her best no-nonsense Professor McGonagall look, complete with a withered thin mouth and low almost furrowed eyebrows, and nudged his leather shoes a finger until his feet drooped to the floor. "Within reason."
"Within reason," he agreed, replacing his feet. When she narrowed her eyes further, he tilted his head.
She sighed.
Malfoy took one foot off.
Shaking her head, Hermione licked her fingertips and neatly pulled out a stack of papers. Handing them to him, she said, "Read these and follow the instructions, Mr. Malfoy. I'm sure you know what to do. If you have any questions… feel free to ask."
As he started flipping through the paperwork, she sat back in her chair, elbow resting squarely on a stack of post-it notes, and stared at him with his head bent over the paperwork.
She'd been so nervous and unbelievably tense about how the meeting would go she hadn't really paid attention to him, to how four years had changed the demon of her teenage years. Perhaps calling him that was going a bit far, but "bully" wouldn't have been apt.
Not strong enough.
Years later, Hermione still remembered dreading Potions with his stage whispers in Snape's production of a dungeon, full of the pre-requisite teasing of the brainiac child who hadn't learned that Snape rewarded Gryffindors the way he did flies – by squashing them as painfully slow as possible. He'd been a sad man, Snape.
Draco Malfoy had just been unbearable, because unlike Snape, he did not stop at the dungeon door. Instead, he was her bright shadow in Defense Against the Dark Arts, and later, in their third year, he followed her to Care of Magical Creatures. He was there for her triumphs and her failures, poisoning them regardless until nothing she did felt like it was worth anything.
"Demon" might not have been far off.
Almost as strongly as those memories, she saw his face sixth year, growing wearier and wearier. His eyes grew baggy, his hair lanky and greasy like Snape's, and that boy, arrogant about his beauty and charm, began to disappear little by little. Like Sisyphus, each day was testament to some burden rolled up a hill only to return to its bottom again, aging him till Hermione could barely recognize him. Harry had suspected him of terrible things, things that weren't as bad as what he ended up doing.
Now, years later, they were here, sitting at her desk so he could adopt some magical creature for his personal use.
Sometimes, she thought about how had she changed since they'd graduated from Hogwarts?
Well…
The best thing she could say about herself was that she'd discovered de-frizzing spells.
Malfoy's hair was still as close to white as hair can get without deviating entirely from blond and lacked the lanky mess of sixth year. It - he looked cleaner than he had when she'd last seen him in the war, back to those days when he was the Slytherin house's glory boy: Snape's pet, pure-blooded, and Pansy Parkinson's favorite.
She couldn't help snorting at the thought of the pug-faced girl.
Malfoy looked up and she tried to look busy at her desk. "What?"
Hermione blinked at him. "What do you mean?"
He eased back into the chair and looked at her. "I mean, what was that sound for? And the face?"
Instinctively touching her face for a second, she asked, "What face?"
He cocked an eyebrow at her. "You looked entirely too amused at something – while you were looking at me. What was it?"
"Oh. I was just thinking."
"Really."
She glared at him. "If you must know, I was thinking about Pansy Parkinson."
"While looking at me?"
"If it bothers you so much, I'll look at the wall."
"Thank you," he said sarcastically before going back to filling out the papers and reading them.
His face was as pointy at the chin as ever and his eyes were snappy still, a fierce winter wind contained within a gaze that stood out against his pale skin, but it had… toned down since, well, back then.
He had toned down, and damn her if she didn't understand him. It was such a change from the Draco Malfoy she'd grown up with.
…
Well, there had been a war, and everyone had changed with it. She still had nightmares of it in flashes of green light and red slashes through the air, part of a rainbow barrage of spells. There were screams and shouts, bodies torn asunder by spells no one should know.
Even now, the sound of gunfire didn't scare her as much as the crack of avada kedavra, stilling her heart for a moment and chilling her bones.
It didn't surprise Hermione, really, that Harry was talking to Malfoy. Harry's face after going to Dumbledore's office in the middle of the Battle of Hogwarts had been ashen, shaken – transformed as if the floor under his feet had been taken away from him, as if meaning of life had presented itself, a lie in the face of everything he had believed in.
After Snape.
The Boy Who Lived became a man that night.
When everyone in their year who had decided to come back for the last month of school, Harry had been the one to try to cross the fundamental divide between himself and the Slytherins. Because of the state of the castle and the limited room in the houses, the seventh years had all been assigned to the Room of Requirements.
When the physical dividers had disappeared, Hermione had done what she'd always done best: gone to the library to think.
Perhaps labels weren't helpful – maybe they created the future out of expectations and stereotypes; they made villains out of ambitious Slytherin children, stuck-up teacher's pets out of bookworm Ravenclaws, friends out of loyal Hufflepuffs, and warriors out of brave Gryffindors. Not all of them were bad…
But they made the lines too simple, too organized.
Anyway, after Hogwarts, she expected some of the labels and House allegiances to fall apart. There would no longer be a Sorting Hat to tell her how to categorize the people she met. She'd have to become her own better judge.
Looking back, she noted the discrepancies in the people she'd met. Snape had followed loyalty and bravery over ambition; Dumbledore had had his weak moments; and Peter Pettigrew…
Needless to say, the Hat wasn't perfect.
Some Slytherins were easier to know than others. Not all of them had been friendly, but a month of living together had led to an uneasy peace, at the very least. There had been a few surprise friends, Blaise Zabini, to name one. He lived in the library just as much as she did and they were in many of the same classes.
It was… convenient.
They still met up every once in a while over coffee at Cream and Sugar when her work wasn't too busy. It wasn't as often as either of them would like, but Hermione loved her work.
Malfoy, though, had always been a different story. After all that had happened, she could forgive a few things, like not giving Harry away at first at Malfoy Manor, but there were years of damage and slowly healing scars that light hearted banter took thinking of how she would be with Harry or Ron.
"All done."
His voice startled out her of her thoughts.
"Read everything?"
He shook his head, hair falling in front of his eyes. "Unbelievably, yes."
"Signed your name twenty-six times?"
"I… wasn't counting, but I signed my name a lot. I'm not going to forget it anytime soon," he said with a small twist of his lips. It looked something like a smile, so Hermione grinned in turn.
It came a little easier this time.
"Okay, do you have any questions before you go?" she asked, hands clasped together.
"Was it necessary to sign all of those papers?"
"What were you planning on adopting?"
"A sphinx."
Hermione raised an eyebrow. "Really, Malfoy. I suppose your family does have a lot of valuable treasure. Family heirlooms and such…"
He shrugged nonchalantly. "Gringotts has a 'Supply your own sphinx' line in its safety deposit box contract. Mother wanted one."
"Well," she drawled, keeping a straight face, "considering all of the dangers that come with keeping a pet sphinx, we have you waive a lot of rights. For instance, as you may have noted in the really thick packet on item 5c, it's not our responsibility if you forget the answer to the riddle you set to it and the sphinx decapitates you. Nor is it our responsibility if you take too long answering the riddles and the aforementioned decapitation occurs anyway. The magical creature only becomes our responsibility when it rampages through downtown London and requires many Memory Charms."
In response to his look of incredulity, Hermione told him, "It happens. I know, I know, you won't forget..."
Muttering to himself, he stuck his hands in the pockets of his suit pants. "Well, none of them were me."
"I'm sure they said that, too, sir."
For the nth time in the past hour, he smirked at her.
They shook hands.
Pursing his lips, Malfoy said, "It was… good to see you, Miss Granger."
She inclined her head. "A pleasure, Mr. Malfoy."
As he walked out the door and his heels tapped against the tile of the hallway, Hermione almost couldn't believe that she actually meant what she'd said.
"A pleasure, Mr. Malfoy."
She needed a drink.