Summary: Hermione has fallen apart, and Draco has the glue. ONE-SHOT.
After
By: melanie chester
Chapter One
Outside, the clouds hovered above and spewed heavy rain drops, splattering the ground, and Hermione thought of the inevitable witches and wizards hurrying about, casting almost continuous drying spells. Hermione Granger watched them all curiously, wondering if it might not be easier to just use an umbrella. Hermione always used an umbrella, the rare times she ventured outside.
"Would you like anything else, ma'am?" The waitress was short, round, fresh-faced and almost bubbling with youthful happiness.
In wonder, envy and slight anger, Hermione regarded the blonde Muggle, trying to remember the last time she had smiled so wide, the last time her face had been so bright, her hair so full of life. Glancing at herself in the window opposite, the witch regarded her lanky brown hair, rather haunted eyes, and spotted face, and sighed.
"A coffee, please," she eventually said.
"Two secs," the girl replied brightly, bouncing away.
So happy, Hermione mused, she'd probably be a Hufflepuff, like Hannah, maybe . . . During recent years, Hermione had taken to this habit—observing people and Sorting them, then assigning them to her various schoolmates. It was a painful, tedious game, but addictive nonetheless, something to occupy her empty days. The redhead with a million freckles to her left, she was Ginny, Hermione envisioned the woman holding a wand, a Bat-Bogey hex on the edge of her lips. The tanned brunette across the room, Lavender Brown, clutching at her compact mirror with the protectiveness of a lioness and her cub. The dark-skinned boy reading a newspaper, Blaise Zabini, reclusive and silent, an uninterested and dismissive expression flittering across his face, and then the faces began blurring and Hermione had to speed up in order to catch them all: the golden haired boy, with innocence and eagerness etched in every inch of him, Colin Creevey, the young Chinese lady, Cho Chang, her ebony locks falling down her back, the curly haired awkward looking boy, Harry, and suddenly—Draco. Draco Malfoy, smiling with the cashier, flirting with the waitress, running skinny fingers through his platinum hair, faltering slightly when the fresh-faced girl asks him his name, shuffling anxiously to a deserted booth, glancing at the War Heroine, glancing once more, just to be sure, and then distracting himself by reading some abandoned magazine upside down.
Three hours passed before Draco worked up the courage to take a furtive look at the Brightest Witch of Both His and Her Age, and wasn't so much shocked to see she was already staring. Draco Malfoy had been shunned and all but exiled from the world he'd been born and raised in, and had half his fortune taken away for war reparations. Not only this, but he'd been forced to watch his father take The Kiss, and his mother be sentenced to five years house arrest in the same Manor He'd lived in, with nobody but Winky for company. Most felt the punishment was just and right, just what scum like The Malfoys deserved, Harry, Ron, Ginny, they all felt he'd gotten of lightly, a pardon, a few thousand galleons gone, still enough to live the lap of luxury for the rest of his life, Malfoy was fine. Perfectly fine. Hermione Granger had disagreed. Hermione Granger thought that his pardon was a cruel, ironic sort of punishment, that banning him from most resectable jobs, then taking away the money that was rightfully his, was unnecessary. Hermione Granger voiced her opinion, and in turn, Ron had left her, Harry had given her the cold shoulder, and Ginny had lifted her nose and the air and stated Hermione was sick to sympathise with Draco Malfoy. This is why Hermione Granger had buried her wand, returned to her childhood home, obliviated the owners wandlessly, and why she motioned for Draco Malfoy to sit by her, with a short crook of her index finger.
When he sat, Hermione Sorted him, clearly still a Slytherin she thought, but not Draco Malfoy, Draco maybe, no last name she mused. She noticed the War had taken its toll on him as well, his smirk hidden beneath a thin line of suffering, his hair rather limp and less silvery. Finally, thought Hermione, someone as beaten up as me.
"How's Weasley?" The tumultuous words tumbled out of Draco's mouth.
"How's your mother?" Hermione retorted sharply, clenching her fists.
"Fine," he said.
"Two more years of the house arrest left, yes?" She twisted the knife.
"Eighteen months."
"How fortunate for her."
"I see you're every bit as unpleasant as you were at school," he commented, his old fire returning.
"I apologise for my behaviour, but you may not have noticed I was fighting a war," she countered.
"Not when you were eleven," he said. "You weren't fighting a war then, and that's when you were most unpleasant."
Grinding her teeth, she fought back the rage boiling inside her, fought it against it with self-control she thought had died a long time ago.
"You look tired, Draco," it was meant to be a snub, but all anger fled Hermione when Draco made a very obvious flinch at the sound of his own name.
"I am," he murmured, lowering his head.
Mechanically, because she wasn't sure how to comfort anyone anymore, Hermione stretched her arm out on the table, and gently touched his, internally gaping at his chilled fingers. "So am I."
"You should sleep then."
"So should you."
For another half an hour, silence occupied the both of them, as they thought of what so say next. It was a horrible reminder seeing you? I gave up my friends for you? Eventually, Hermione settled on a safe: what are you doing here?
"Getting breakfast."
"At four in the afternoon?"
"The days . . . It all seems the same. I would've sworn it was half nine."
"They go slow for me," Hermione told him. "Every minute feels like a day. The time is the one thing I always know."
"Because there's order to it," Draco replied earnestly. "You love order."
"I do," she admitted softly. "And you don't." It wasn't a question.
"I hate it," and his mind fluttered to Him, and his terrible, disgusting, horrific orders. "Hate it," he scratched at his left forearm absentmindedly.
"You hate Muggles, though."
Draco scoffed, and pulled his hand out of hers. "There is only one person I hate, and he's locked up, forever soulless."
"You love him too, though," again, it wasn't a question.
Draco shrugged. "Why are you here?"
"I live two streets away."
"I know."
Hermione raised a quizzical eyebrow.
"Everyone knows. Yet they all leave you alone."
"Yes," she sounded calm, but inside, her stomach churned at the thought that everyone knew where she lived.
"Why?"
"The same reason they leave you alone."
"Because you're an ex-Death Eater with disgraced parents?"
"Because I don't fit into the New Order," she clarified.
"What have they even done to you? To make you hate them so much?"
She wanted to reveal all . . . Reveal that it wasn't her they'd done one thing to, that it was indirectly they hurt her, offended her, tarnished her honesty and integrity.
Hermione shrugged.
"They took everything from me," he suddenly snarled. "My money, my home, my pride, my fucking happiness, my parents—"
"They took mine too," she interjected. "My happiness. My parents."
"Harry Potter took your parents away?"
"No, no, Harry Potter didn't," she muttered confused. "I did. I sent them away, but it was for him. Because of him. And my happiness, they took that away too."
"Right."
"So you're into self-pity these days, huh?" She asked curtly.
And Draco Malfoy did something he hadn't done in years. He laughed. It was raspy, dry, but it was his laugh. "Yes. What do you do to pass the days?"
And in response to his newfound jubilation, Hermione smirked, her eyes momentarily lighting up again. "I Sort people. Do you want to play?"
"Why yes, Granger, I think I do."