Dedicated to Sam, for Hogwarts's Teacher Appreciation Event. I hope you enjoy it since I've never written for this pairing before.
It happens after the war before wounds have been healed and the words have been said.
It is a blur- no more magical contracts, or trolls, or friendship sealed in adrenaline and boldfaced lies. There is only the dust settling and the tears stopping and a world rebuilding itself in the rumble.
Hermione Jean Granger was born in a hurricane.
...
Sometimes, she thinks she is the only person who remembers the war. Everywhere she turns it's a new marriage or a baby or smiles that reach people's eyes.
Harry doesn't want to remember and she cannot blame him for not wanting to go back to a childhood of fear, of the empty silence of cupboards.
(Harry can never forget but he's getting better at lying to himself)
Ginny moves on. She's spiteful in her confronting her inner demons and she does it without a shard of hesitance, tossing her hair back over her shoulder with a careless ease. Ginny joins a Quidditch team. She's already won her war.
(Ginny's fought in a lot of wars and most of them have been against herself)
Ron does it unconsciously. It tears Hermione apart, the way he wakes up in the mornings after nights of screaming nightmares and goes on with his day. She breaks herself apart. He pours himself a cup of coffee.
(They break up a year later and their both secretly relieved)
...
She gets a job with the Department of Magical Law Enforcement because she wants to make a difference. Or, that's what she says in her interview. The woman looks over her records with a careless eye. Hermione Granger is a war hero. There's not a single establishment in the world that wouldn't hire her.
Hermione's badge is shiny and it feels stolen.
(After the war, she's quite good at stealing things from the ministry)
...
"The war trials are going on, did you know?" Hermione's work colleague whispered loudly, hiding her mouth behind her hand. Hermione resisted the urge to roll her eyes. She knew. She had taken notes on the interviewer's technique.
"Fascinating," Hermione said instead and turned away.
...
"Lucius Malfoy not committed to Azkaban following trial' the newspaper screamed.
Hermione dropped her quill. One interview. She had missed one interview while in a case involving a muggle girl kidnapped during war time. She had been gone for less than a week.
On the cover, Lucius smirked, venom masked in the curve of his smirk.
His face sent her back to the war.
...
He's everywhere.
She walks into the room and there he is, chatting up her secretary. He's at every gala, on every cover donating money to war orphans. He's society newest darling, the reformed Lucius Malfoy dedicated to making the world a better place.
He's the chip on her shoulder, the laugh behind her back.
She thinks she might hate him.
...
"Granger, I was waiting for you. I have some suggestions for your Werewolf petition, clearly, you didn't think it through very well."
Hermione stopped in her tracks, staring at him. He was here, in her office on the couch that she had bought with Ginny on a shopping trip.
Hermione turned on her heel and fled the room.
...
He likes bothering her.
Lucius Malfoy is always in her office with a suggestion or an idea or an insult. The sad part is that it's becoming a part of her routine to sit with a monster and discuss the future. She can't avoid him any longer.
(The saddest part is this: she misses the war and there he is)
...
In the end, she's not surprised by his proposition.
"Marry me, Granger." He said silkily. "Between my money, your status and our mutual influence, we would be a force to be reckoned with."
She knows she's lost when she can't think of anything to say. She hates him but he is there and she cannot pretend that there isn't something between them.
It's not love but it is passion in their arguments and hexes and hatred that is so blazing it scorches them until one of them is to overcome in desire to argue. Its teeth clashing and a battle for dominance.
She likes their power games.
...
"Make it worth my while."
It's a clash of wills, in the end, between a woman who set the world on fire and a man who learned how to manipulated it.
It's insanity dripping with every honeyed word and victory and power.
Together, they rule.