Every Day With You

"Hermione, I brought—"

Draco ducked as a jet of purple flames whizzed just over his head. Thankful for his well-honed seeker instincts, he straightened up. He thought he could smell burning hair but one look at Hermione and he realized now was not the moment to bring it up.

Whenever Hermione was stuck on a fiendishly difficult problem at work, Draco was forcibly reminded of his dear deceased aunt Bellatrix. Hermione's hair was all over the place, her sleeves rolled up, and she was holding her wand in front of her like a jousting lance. Leave it to Draco to have fallen in love with the most terrifying witch of their generation...

He steeled himself and bravely decided to try again.

"Hermione, I just wanted to—"

"Not now Draco," came the terse reply.

He paused in the doorway. Hermione hadn't even turned to look at it. Her focus was entirely on a little compact-sized mirror on the wall in front of her.

He waited patiently a little bit longer, knowing after all this time that the dismissal was nothing personal. He watched as her shoulders relaxed and she lowered her wand. He let her exit whatever intellectual maze she was enveloped in before he entered the spacious office.

"What have they got you working on this week," he asked conversationally, as he placed his bag on Hermione's impeccably neat desk.

"Some wizard in Burnaby seems to have burned down a muggle shopping center," Hermione said.

Draco paused. No regular wizarding fire would have caused the auror department to call in his girlfriend's consulting expertise, and it certainly wouldn't have her worked up like this. He weighed the merits of asking Hermione more about the project versus distracting her from whatever was stressing her out.

He was saved from making a decision as Hermione sighed and crossed the room to embrace him.

"Honestly, it's just the strangest spellwork. We have security footage from the muggle authorities showing a blast of flames coming from the wizard just after he exits the video frame."

"Sounds like an open and shut case then," Draco said, knowing full well it wouldn't be.

Hermione sat down heavily at the chair behind her desk, while Draco made himself comfortable at the couch by the window.

"You'd think so, right? But apparently some tinkering with the footage by the muggle authorities revealed the suspect's reflection in a mirror. He did raise his wand, which is enough for us to have him in custody under the statute of secrecy, but he was pointing it the other way when the blast apparently happened. The footage angle cuts off at just where he is so we can't physically prove that some other wizard didn't cast a spell from the other direction."

"Let me guess, he says he raised his wand to protect himself."

Hermione nodded.

"Surely the aurors can handle checking the last spell on the wand or procure some veritaserum," Draco said, not bothering to hide his disdain for the wizarding world's law enforcers.

"The last spell on his wand was a shield spell, but that tells us almost nothing. And Draco, you know that we don't use veritaserum in criminal cases anymore. It's about as reliable as a muggle polygraph these days."

"So what do they think you can do?"

"They want me to reverse manufacture the spell that was cast to prove that the wizard fired his wand… backwards."

Draco blinked.

"Merlin, Hermione, I swear each request from the aurors is more ludicrous than the last."

Hermione smiled wryly. "Yes, it certainly feels like they want me to pull convenient answers out of thin air for them. I only agreed to take this case on because I think that the implications of non-linear trajectory spells could be huge."

Draco thought about this. Hermione could be changing the face of wizarding medicine, dueling, and so much more. He shook his head incredulously.

"Just another day at the office eh, Hermione?"

Hermione laughed easily and Draco knew he'd made the right decision to come by today.

"So what did you want to see me for?"

Draco reached into the bag he'd left on the desk and brought out the cake box from Hermione's favorite bakery.

"Can't a man just cut out on practice a little early to see what his girlfriend is up to without an occasion?" he asked innocently.

"I'm sure he can," Hermione replied with a wide smile.

Draco brought out two forks and opened the small cake box. He handed one to Hermione and the two of them shared the slice of American cheesecake (Hermione's favorite) from the box.

These were the moments Draco loved most. Since they had grown up, Hermione's fondness for solving the world's puzzles and improving lives had taken a more independent path than any single-stream profession could have afforded her. And Draco found that he wanted nothing more complicated in life than playing quidditch and staying close to those he loved. Their relationship might have surprised a few at first, but truthfully nothing had made ever more sense to Draco and Hermione.

They chatted about this, that, and everything, as they were always able to. Had Draco heard about the latest muggle inventions? Did Hermione know that Pansy was planning to name her firstborn Wilhemina? Wilhemina? Why yes, Draco, I did, since Ginny and I were the ones who helped Pansy scan the family tree for that. Harry was in Tibet… or Taiwan? They'd respectively received a postcard from each but who knows which was sent first. And Ron and Luna were apparently splitting the Weasley and Lovegood hair genetics exactly halfway, which, Draco pointed out, was simply playing the odds when you had "that many" (four) kids.

When they finished their sweet respite, and Hermione had finished licking the remnants from her fingertips, Draco tidied up. He leaned over the desk for a kiss. Hermione smiled against his lips and he tasted the strawberry he'd let her have from the top of the cake (true love indeed, he thought to himself).

He made his way to the door. Before he left he turned around and reminded Hermione, as he did every day…

"I love you, Hermione Granger, and I love every day with you."