Inescapable
When Draco Malfoy stumbled across the old scroll he really hadn't paid it much mind. After all his family's library was stocked with unknown treasures. He couldn't understand why that particular scroll had caught his eye; by all standards it was plain. Just some thick vellum tied with a fading blue ribbon; no embellishments, nothing. But he picked it up nonetheless; the darkened corner of the vast Malfoy library was dedicated mostly to moldy old books on arithmetic, muggle arithmetic as ironic as it seemed now. The scroll had just been shoved to the back, half hidden and mostly forgotten. He shrugged before slipping the piece of paper into his pocket and then forgetting about it.
Sometimes we forget the most innocent of things can change our lives and what Draco Malfoy didn't know was that, that day his life would be irrevocably changed.
….
Hermione Granger had been gifted with a singularly strong sixth sense, nothing quite as dramatic as the power of the third eye and the ability to 'part the mists of time to peek into the veiled mysteries of the future' as Professor Trelawney claimed to have but strong nonetheless and for the first time a slow shudder made its way down her back, pricking the fine, baby hairs of her arms and the back of her neck. And as is the case with most human instinct the first thought that came to her mind was both right and ridiculous. The words 'sifting axis' drifted through her mind and faded away like an afterthought. In a mind as busy as Hermione's many thought went amiss, unanalyzed and forgotten.
"What an odd chill." She murmured to herself as she straightened her bedcovers and waited to hear the quite yet resolute footsteps of her reluctant roommate to fade out through the portrait hole so that she could proceed to her classes.
But before she could delve any deeper into the startlingly vulnerable feeling of moments ago, her thoughts were plagued with the daily mundane lists of duties and responsibilities she had to carry out as the Head Girl.
After the war, just a year ago Hermione and a handful of other students had decided to return to Hogwarts to continue their education where they had left off. The devastation of the war had left them all damaged and reveled some secrets that had shifted their perspectives. None of them had come out unscathed.
Hermione shrugged and picked up her book bag from her bed and made her way downstairs to the common room she shared with the Head Boy.
Draco's special scent still lingered in the air, as it always did when he left the rooms. He had such an overpowering presence thought Hermione, a tad bitter. Six feet four inches of stoic Slytherin was not good for her mental health. Especially now.
When the war had ended, everyone wondered why Draco Malfoy didn't end up in Azkaban with the rest of his family until one day two months later a large article proclaiming the Slytherin's involvement with the Order of the Phoenix as a spy working within Voldemort's ranks came out on the Daily Prophet. Everyone knew about it, expect her. Harry's justification had been that she was the one who would most violently oppose his induction into their resistance due to her rocky history with the blond.
Nonsense she had scoffed then, Hermione wasn't ruled by emotions like anger and revenge but both Harry and she had known in all matter concerning Draco Malfoy, Hermione was less than logical.
Oh she hated him. That hadn't changed and he hated her, it wasn't to do with their blood status, they just couldn't stand each other. Hermione like to rationalize it by saying they were both too similar and too different to get along. But they worked remarkably well together as long as the work was divided and they didn't have to spend too much time in each other's company.
Physically, much had changed about him. The pinched, unhappy look was gone from his face and his limp lackluster hair had grown back into its shiny blond, the color deepening from a platinum color to a darker shade of blond. Living freely suited him.
What she didn't know was that the Fates had a very different plan for the two. One that didn't involve their own decision of remaining casually indifferent to one another.