One-Way Ticket

Chapter 1: An Accident

End of the school year. The Hogwarts Express takes everyone to the train station, where they then go home by side-along apparation, portkey, or car right? Well what if Draco and Hermione, enemies, bade goodbye with fued in their veins and hatred in their eyes...only to be haphazardly reacquainted sometime later outside Hermione's neighbourhood. "I think..." said Draco softly, "They screwed up my portkey. And you know...Hogwarts Express portkeys only run once a year. I think I'm here to stay..." he finished to Hermione's rapidly paling face.

"You have to be joking," the brunette, brown-eyed girl of fifteen said, surveying the tall, blonde boy with the pointed features who had been through the last five years of Hogwarts with her, and would be currently on holiday before joining her for the sixth. They were standing in the intersection near the entrance of her neighbourhood. Her parents had dropped her of for they had to do some last minute grocery shopping, and Hermione, having made the journey to and from Hogwarts twice each year for the last five years, had decided that she didn't need their babying, and was fine to be dropped of at the entrance of her neighbourhood, to walk through it alone before she reached her quaint little house that she was always happy to return to after a long school year, before they returned home.

Imagine her shock when she stepped out, only to be greeted with Draco apparating out of nowhere next to her, and her startled yelp as she clutched his arm and pulled him behind a pole, exclaiming on instinct what would the muggles think, before Draco angrily rubbed his arm, said as much impressed as he was by her quick reflexes, did she really think a pole was an appropriate hiding spot to hide him, and stepping out angrily.

Hermione only bristled further, anger turned to skyrocket when Draco bought out a grey gift box with a golden-brown ribbon knotted around it - a relic of a portkey, and briskly proclaimed the news it was likely his portkey that was screwed up, to which Hermione gave the less than satisfactory response of 'you have to be joking'.

"I'm not. Everything was fine until I touched the portkey to apparate to Malfoy Manor. And then I appeared here," for the first time, Draco was also looking rather alarmed and even paler than before, if possible, at the turn of events. "It has to be the portkey. It was wired wrong. What else could it be?"

"Well turn it back," said Hermione, fidgeting her hands before reaching out to touch the disguised present box that she thought was ridiculous the Malfoys considered an 'ordinary object a witch or wizard could be carrying at any time' design to request from the ministry.

The present box disintegrated into glitter as she touched it. They fell through her fingers and ended up on a grey pile on the ground before being blown away by the meandering wind. Talk about a weak portkey.

"I can't. It was wired once. Configured once when I touched it. I'm here now."

"What about your parents? Can't you write to them to take you back home?" said Hermione.

Some kids had come out of the neighbourhood now, and were glaring at Hermione and Draco suspiciously. There weren't many almost albino-like blondes in her neighbourhood, even though Draco's was a touch blonde more than an albino's, much less a male with such hair, much less there being common knowledge of Hermione's acquaintance with such a person, and she could practically feel the little kids staring. Especially as they were standing at one of the more prominent intersections, in broad daylight, on a public space.

It didn't help that Draco was in full Hogwarts wear, and Hermione was wearing possibly the ugliest and most scruffiest muggle clothes she owned - she never bought much muggle clothes to Hogwarts, so what came tended to be pretty generic, and ones she grabbed at random from her wardrobe. Plus a year of wear and tear, and they pretty much looked scruffly with a capital S.

"Oh. Come now, people are staring," she said, taking his arm and leading him away from the intersection, subconsciously, towards her house. Her parents had taken her luggage at the train station, secured it in their trunk and told her not to worry about it until they returned home so she didn't have to worry about that thank god, and she supposed Draco's luggage was probably sent back or something, as he had not appeared with his. Which made it easier to walk through the neighbourhood.

"I don't think so. Portkeys only open and close once in a year. It's hard to get them from the ministry. Even higher up people need special permits and a protocol to get them. Also, it's hard to wire it from a secluded muggle neighbourhood such as this. They work better at the entrance points to and from muggle words. I think...I'm here to stay until next year," he said softly, staring at Hermione. She was almost unnerved by how calm he seemed. She was going to ask him about it later, when another thought popped to mind.

"Your parents...how would they-" she was going to say 'deal with you staying in what they deem a inferior society due to their views' but thought that was awfully rude, even then, and settled on saying, "Are they okay with you living so far for quite an extended period of time?"

"I'll write. They'll understand. A portkey is permanent though. Almost like a one-way ticket. I guess I'm here to stay."

"I guess..."

She missed the slight sad flicker in his gaze when she failed to show anything more positive.

"How will your parents take a guest?" he asked.

Hermione swallowed the urge to say quite well, and that her parents were always asking about her Hogwarts friends, and inquiring for one of them to stay for a while in the summer from her letters of them. Also the fact that her parents had been remarking it was poor behaviour for a teenage girl to stay at home so much, and that short of arranging 'playdates' with Hermione's old classmates, they were almost looking at having a foreign exchange student over for just this purpose, perhaps Hermione could take them around the city or something as something that would help them learn and her talk to some more people.

Instead she settled for saying, "I'm sure they have adequate preparations to prepare for an unexpected visitor for a while or so. If you seriously must go back. Meanwhile, let's go to my house. It's not that far from here," she said.

They were walking uphill.

"And you'll have to change out of your clothes. And how will you write to your parents? You didn't bring an owl did you?"

"You forgot that owls always find their receipients," drawled Draco, "I'll just wait for an owl from my parents to come to me and hitch a letter back. I suspect my clothes will be with my trunk, which will be with my parents, which are quite far from here."

"We'll have to go department store shopping to buy you a new wardrobe then. This won't do," said Hermione, eyeing the stray pair of Hogwarts robes Draco was currently wearing. She tried to imagine Draco in something casual like jeans and a t-shirt, and she almost gave herself an aneurysm. Some things were impossible.

"I'll be worried. What items does your petty little stores carry?" asked Draco, staring blankly at Hermione. He really didn't know muggle fashion, and hoped the men weren't still in pantaloons, what his father told him was standard wear for muggle men in the 16th century at the time the wizarding population segregated from them.

You needn't be, Hermione fought the urge to say, viewing how Draco, with his tall height, slim frame, pointed elbows and chin, and crop of blonde hair, was practically every Abercrombie and Filch's dream model for teenage boy fashion. Even the mannequins were fitted with blonde wigs for a fashion statement, she almost noticed. It really was uncanny how even here, Draco was still the muggle definition of attractive. She wasn't sure where he was by wizarding standards but considering she had always seen him with a gaggle of girls at Hogwarts, she supposed it wouldn't be fair to say he was too low down. A part of her glowered at that, even though she couldn't pinpoint why.

"Cloaks with fur. Tights. Pantaloons," she said savagely.

Draco turned almost dead white. Hermione was startled. He couldn't seriously have thought?

"They have clothes for weird people who don't fit in," she said by way of letting him know there were other options he may have preferred, though an idea was twinkling in her head.

"Good. I wouldn't mind dressing like a pauper in your kingdom if it meant I could dress like a king in mine," he said, swinging his arms and sticking his head up as he walked.

Really, almost model material, Hermione thought with a huff, she could have to keep him unacquainted from the muggle mannequins lest he get ideas. What a long summer indeed.

"We're here," she said, and they stepped out from around a corner and viewed the quiet modest house of Hermione in their suburban neighbourhood. Suddenly everything seemed all the more real. The accident that was here to stay. It seemed to weigh and press on them, more than ever, more than the weight of the leaves and the trunks of the ancient oaks towering in Hermione's neighbourhood. A breeze fluttered, branches shifted and the oak creaked, Draco glanced back at Hermione, a poignant look in his eyes that may have hid the slightest amount of fear.

Hermione gave a small smile back.

Draco went back to staring at her house. Two storey, cream vanilla walls, a modest amount of windows with quaintly decorated lace curtains, a neatly kept garden, windows showing the slightest hint of an interior which suddenly seemed filled with too many unexpected things and personal relics of the Hermione Granger he had hated all these years. No-way zone. An accident. One-way ticket.

This was really it.

Author's Note: Thanks for reading, I'd appreciate a review and in case you're wondering, yes I know portkeys are highly unlikely to fail, and his situation is highly unlikely to be unable to be rectified for long in canon, but I needed a reason for them to get together and I reckon this could get interesting. Thanks for reading this far, and I hope you enjoyed and wouldn't mind leaving a review ;), happy reading!

EDIT(15-1-19): This story doesn't really kick of until chapter 6 (cause the previous chapters are sort of setting for it, and have a more simple writing style I guess) so please give this story a chance until chapter 6 cause the first few chapters aren't representative of what the rest of the story's going to be like. Chapter 6 and onwards is more representative of what the story's actually going to be like.

EDIT(15-3-19): I mentioned I would take this story down to work on it a bit. And the beginning few chapters are the same, but I think I'll make more changes towards the later ones.

-WhymsicalBell