Chapter One

"Come on, Hermione. What can go wrong?"

Hermione looked up from her large cup of coffee and at one of her best friends. "I don't know, Mandie. I just don't think it's a good idea."

"Sorry I'm late," Ginny Potter said, sounding out breath. "What have I missed?" She put her bag beside her chair and looked at the other two girls at the table.

"Where are Ron and Harry?" Hermione asked.

"Ignore her. I'm trying to convince her to come on this double date with Aiden and his friend," Mandie told Ginny.

"Do it," Ginny exclaimed, wide-eyed.

"Guys, you know that I'm not giving up, and that I know that five years is long enough to dwell, but I'm still not ready to date."

"Why not? You've done it several times, and sometimes it's even turned into a short relationship."

"And a lot of sex."

Ginny glared at Mandie and put her hand on Hermione's back, "I love you, and only want you to be happy, but it's been five years."

"What I mean is…I spent a year and a half bitter and refusing to open my heart again. For two years after that all I looked for was love. I've spent the past two years since then just having fun." Hermione sighed. "I just don't know where I am anymore."

"Well maybe tonight will help you then," Mandie suggested.

"I know," Hermione mumbled. She would never forget that bitter divorce and how it tore her up. The only good that came of it was the many men she dated and bedded after. On the outside, she was completely over the whole thing, but on the inside she was hurt and refused to let her shield down to anyone for too long.

"I still don't get why you two split up," Mandie said. While Hermione and Ginny had been friends during Hogwarts and had been together through the dating, marriage and divorce, they didn't work with or meet Mandie until the beginning of the divorce.

"Well, some pre-war memories and situations came up, we faught about everything, and it was like the old Malfoy was back and worse than ever," Hermione remembered angrily. Truth be told, that wasn't the whole story, but that was what she told her friends and herself every time it came up.

"So then try a new guy on. One that you have no history with whatsoever."

"Well what do I have to lose?"

"Hopefully not your knickers again," Ginny said, erupting in laughter from the time Hermione came home from a date she had with a guy who ended up hiding her knickers from her.

Hermione rolled her eyes and took a sip of her coffee.

"So are we in for tonight Draco?" Aiden asked his friend in their favorite bar.

"I don't know. You know I'm not a dater anymore," Draco replied, taking a sip of his beer and checking out the waitress as she walked to the table in the back of the bar.

"She has a boyfriend and he's a professional dueler," Aiden casually told Draco, bringing his own drink to his lips.

Draco looked away from the girl and back at his friend. He was a twenty-eight-year-old divorced bachelor. He was having fun with his life without dating. For some reason he always found the concept to be so trivial. "I don't know…"

"Well what do you have to lose?" Aiden put his drink down and looked across the table. "Look, it's taken me three months to get this girl to go out with me and this is the only good day for either of us for the next two weeks-"

"Then wait another week."

"I'm going to be in another country next week doing nothing but math. Come on, it's just one date."

Draco rolled his eyes and sighed, "fine. What time?"

Truth be told, though he was well over his divorce as well as his ex-wife, he wasn't sure if he was ready to let his guard down again or if he was willing to open up like he had with…her.