Disclaimer: Everything and anything is the sole property of J.K. Rowling!
Chapter One
The man paused and looked up at the moon, the only light visible in the sky due to all the muggle's pollution. A chill breeze passed by, kicking up the bottom of the man's long, dark cloak; he pulled the collar up closer around his face in an attempt to block the cold. Even as the wind began to pick up the lone figure continued to stare at the full moon; however, his eyes seem to be focused on something even more distant than the night sky. Something felt different about the night, the icy air out of place and foreboding on a previously pleasant September evening.
The moments stretched by on the lonely street corner until finally the vision ended and the tall figure looked down. His steely grey eyes were clouded with confusion, he did not fully understand what he had just seen, but Draco Malfoy knew one thing; he had to go see Harry Potter.
Hermione leaned back and stretched her arms as far as they would go. She smiled proudly at the almost completed stack of outgoing paperwork on her desk. Cataloging and updating the current activities of all known Death Eaters and Associates of Voldemort was the most dreaded annual job in the Auror department but Hermione was glad to stay late and take it on, even on a Friday evening such as this one. She truly enjoyed the almost zen-like mode achieved when filing through stacks of repetitive forms and reports; it reminded her of long nights spent studying in the library or Common Room at Hogwarts. Ron and Harry always knew where to find her and what they would find her doing, and would tease her about her studying habits for hours afterwards. Hermione smiled at the memories then reached forward and grabbed the last dossier: "Draco Malfoy, Location: UNKNOWN, age: …"
After briefly scanning the rest of the file and deciding everything was up to date Hermione placed it carefully on top of the stack of completed documents. She had always wondered what had happened to her old classmate and schoolyard enemy. At first it was assumed he had fled the clutches of the ministry, but that didn't make any sense. The entire Malfoy family had been acquitted during the War Crimes Trials; Hermione and Harry's (and a rather forced one by Ron) testimonies about the actions of Narcissa during the final battle had made sure of it. Not too long after that he vanished, never to be seen again. For nearly two years afterwards the rumors flew; he was raising a new dark army; he had been brutally murdered for betraying Voldemort; even some as ridiculous as that he had moved to Paris to open a brothel. But now, nearly seven years later, most people had forgotten the entire affair.
Stretching one more time Hermione stood up and headed out of her office, muttering a quick spell to make the massive stack of papers follow her out.
Draco strode into the Ministry moving as fast as he could without appearing too suspicious. He waved at the security guard, sending an untraceable Confundus charm along with the gesture. The guard waved back absentmindedly, his eyes slightly crossed. Draco hurried through the abandoned ministry up to the Auror Department in his haste bowling over a young witch carrying a large stack of papers.
"Sorry…" Draco breathed out after picking himself up off the floor. He reached out a hand to help the witch up but she had already picked herself up and was gathering up the papers.
"Bloody hell! And those were in order too!" She turned on the dark figure that had run into her, "Why didn't you watch where you were going!"
Draco immediately recognized the witch, everything from her bossy tone to her bushy hair and felt the old urge to retort building up inside him. He held back, instead waving his wand at the assorted papers and whispering "Priori Ordem." The papers sprang to life and began to sort themselves into the correct sequence.
"I apologize, I should have been more careful," he said in a low voice; however, as he said them he made the mistake of looking Hermione in the eyes. Despite his disguise there was a spark of recognition.
"Do I know you?" Hermione inquired, but before she could quite finish the sentence Draco turned and took off down the hallway. He found the door labeled "Harry J. Potter: Head Auror" and slipped inside.
"What the hell… Malfoy?" Harry turned around, incredulous at the sight of his visitor.
"No, it's the Grim Reaper. Of course it's me, Potter!" Between the earlier vision and his brief encounter with Hermione Granger, Draco was on edge and not in a good enough mood to deal with stupid questions, even Harry Potter's, the man to whom Draco owed his life and whom he'd even come to respect, although the words would never pass his lips.
"What the hell are you doing here Malfoy?" Harry asked, irritated.
"I had another vision, a bad one," Malfoy nearly whispered and Harry continued admonishing Malfoy over the explanation.
"I told you expressly to never come here! It's probably the most dangerous place you could be, if the ministry knew…" Harry ran his fingers through his messy hair and looked back at Draco.
"I didn't have a choice! I went to your flat, but you weren't there so I figured you were probably still working. I'm not a complete idiot, I knew the risks, I did disguise myself."
"Changing your hair color is hardly a disguise," Harry scoffed.
"Its all I had time to do!" Draco retorted with a glance at his chestnut brown locks.
"You're still recognizable, did anyone see you?"
"Granger, but I'm sure she didn't recognize me," A lie, but Harry didn't need to know that.
"Fine, whatever. So what are you here for?" Harry collapsed back into his desk chair and gestured for Draco to follow suit.
"I had another vision, a bad one, one you'll surely want to see. Do you still have the pensieve?"
Harry nodded and went over to a cabinet in the corner of the room. He opened it up and removed the stone bath, placing it on the desk between the two men.
Draco placed his wand to his temple and drew out the memory, dropping it into the pensieve and the vision began to play out on the surface. Draco had no desire to watch it again, so instead he focused on Potter. Harry's face seemed to drain of color as the memory progressed. When it ended he was clutching the desk so hard his knuckles had turned snow white. Slowly he released the death grip and looked up at Malfoy.
"Thank you for bringing this straight to me. I have to… I have to think about this. You can go, I'll be in touch." Harry said in a strained voice. His eyes were not on Draco but looking off into the distance, lost in thought. Draco left the office, leaving Harry to his musings.
Harry slowly turned to the portrait on the wall behind him. Dumbledore's face was equally distressed and pale. He spoke in a slow, weary voice.
"This does note bode well, Harry, this does not bode well at all. I fear the worst."
Hermione stared after the man for almost a minute before coming to her senses. Something about him had seemed so familiar, but she just couldn't grasp who he was or where she might have seen him before. She wanted to sit and puzzle it out, but it is a very un-Hermione Granger like thing to dwell, and she had work to finish up. Waving her wand at the now reorganized stack of papers she set off down the hall with them trailing behind her.
When she was done sorting all the dossiers into respective filing cabinets she decided to see if Harry was still hanging around the office. Most nights they were the last two out, Harry because his interminable amount of work, and Hermione because, well because it was better to be sitting busy at work than alone at her flat.
Harry's door was closed, which was unusual; Harry rarely closed his door whether he was in or not, he claimed he didn't like being shut-off from everyone else. She ventured a light rap and was answered by what sounded like someone falling over some furniture and a gratuitous stream of curse words.
"You okay?" Hermione inquired worriedly as Harry opened the door.
"Uh… yeah," Harry ran a hand through his eternally messy hair and leaned against the doorframe; he looked exhausted. "Long day, what's up?"
"I just finished with the cataloguing and was wondering if you wanted to go get a drink before heading home, isn't Ginny still at training camp? Are you sure you're fine, you look awful."
"A drink is exactly what I need, let's go," Harry grabbed his coat and pushed Hermione out the door in front of him.
Draco apparated from the front stoop of the Ministry to Knockturn Alley. He ducked briefly into an alley to strengthen his disguise and then headed into the seedy bar in front of him. Knockturn Alley was known for attracting the dark and the strange of the wizarding world and when the sun went down they all congregated at The Shrunken Head; it was the watering hole of the dregs of society.
Despite the transfiguration he had used on his features, Draco made sure to keep his hood up around his face, any other action would have made him stand out among this crowd. He made his way carefully to a booth in the back corner of the bar and slid in next to a man nursing a mug of something thick and bubbling. The man looked up slowly from his drink; one eye was milky blue and stared off blindly into the distance but the other was black and shone with unusual observance.
"I don't do business w' no one I can't see," the man grumbled, showing black gums and rotting teeth. If the smell of the rest of the bar hadn't already been so foul, the stench of rotten flesh rolling out the man's mouth would have been enough to turn Draco's stomach.
"I think you'll do business with me," Draco said coolly, briefly lifting his hood and releasing the transfiguration on his face, the flash of pale blonde enough to bring a spark of recognition, and fear, to the man's one good eye.
"O' course, master Malfoy, what is it you'll be a needin' ?" The man's slimy pink tongue was darting in and out of his vile mouth, vaguely reptilian and unsettling.
"Quiet, you fool!" Malfoy sneered under his hood. After six years of very carefully disappearing the last thing he needed was for some idiot to reveal his existence to a room full of witches and wizards who probably thought he was a traitor of the worst kind. "I need to locate someone, an old acquaintance of mine."
"I can locate anytin' w' the proper incentive," The man's eye greedily peered at Draco, who pulled a golden galleon out.
"You find him, you get your 'incentive,' you don't find him, you forget this meeting ever happened." Draco threatened. He put the galleon away and continued, "I'll be here, same booth, two nights from now. You will come, tell me what you have found and I will pay you whatever you have found is worth. And you will never breath a word of this meeting," Draco sent a small bit of magic with his last words and nearly smiled at the brief look of confusion on the man's face as his throat contracted and released.
Draco got up and made his way out of the bar, careful to avoid the other patrons, keeping his eyes down. A small dark figure got up from the bar and followed him out, standing outside the bar and watching him until he apparated at the end of the street. The woman gave a small smile as she pulled back her hood, dark curls tumbling out; an intricate tattoo took up a large part of her face, but it only added to her exotic beauty. She took off down the street with quick light footsteps, the little smirk still on her face.
Harry slammed down the first shot and signaled to the bartender for another. He and Hermione were perched at the bar of one of their regular establishments, Harry shooting back vodka and Hermione sipping on a glass of white wine. The barkeeper set down the second shot and Harry took a small sip before putting it down and rubbing his temples.
"Harry, really, you're not okay. Who was that man? What did he tell you?" Hermione put a hand on Harry's shoulder and he looked up and put his chin in his hands.
"He's an… informant of mine. Let's just say it's extremely unusual for him to visit me at the office." Harry took another sip of the shot and winced, he had never been much of a drinker.
"But, it must've been really bad news to have you this messed up, Harry, you know you can tell me,"
"I know, 'Mione, I know, just not now. Trust me, if I could without… I can't yet. Right now I just want to get a little bit tipsy, forget about it, maybe reminisce about old times,"
Hermione sighed, but smiled and raised her wine glass to Harry who smiled back, raised his shot and then tilted it back.
A few shots later Harry was a lot more than tipsy and he and Hermione were making their way down the dark London streets roaring with laughter about something even they weren't sure about.
"C'Mon Harry, you have to at least try to walk straight!" Hermione stumbled back on to the sidewalk that Harry had pushed her off of. He just laughed and threw his arm around her shoulders. She put hers around his waist and they continued their way to her flat in comfortable silence. It wasn't a romantic gesture in the least, just the sign of friends who had been to hell and back again together.
The silence was interrupted as Harry's cell phone rang out. The sudden noise caused them both to jump and Hermione was still recovering as Harry picked it up to answer. Hermione had been at the head of an incentive to get the wizarding world to accept more muggle technology, particularly things like cell phones that allowed instant communication. Some wizards, like Harry, really took to the phones, while others were still mistrusting of anything that worked without magic.
"Hey baby," Harry slurred into the phone, "I'm good, just me and 'Mione…" Hermione snatched the phone away from him.
"Ginny? Hi, yes, sorry about him, he had a few to many, yeah, haha! Well, we're on our way back to my flat, you should join us, maybe you could actually do something about your husband in his drunken state," Hermione snapped the phone closed and went to pick Harry up from where he had sat down against the wall of a nearby building.
They met Ginny at the entrance to Hermione's building and between the two of them they were able to get Harry up and into the spare bedroom. Hermione put on a pot of tea and sat down with Ginny at the small kitchen table. Even though it was a modestly sized flat the two girls could still hear Harry snoring down the hall and the first rumble sent them both into fits of giggles.
"Oh, that boy cannot hold his liquor," Ginny said when the two had finally recovered. She wiped tears of laughter from her eyes and went to get a cup of tea. "What prompted the binge anyway? Normally he doesn't ever drink more than a cup of beer, has to maintain 'constant vigilance'" Hermione snorted into her tea, but sobered quickly as she remembered the distress Harry had been in earlier.
"I'm not quite sure, he received some sort of report before we left for the bar. It must have been really bad, but he couldn't tell me what." She furrowed her brow; in the years since Harry had defeated Voldemort the wizarding world had been fairly peaceful, but it was still recovering from those dark times. "What about you, I thought you were supposed to be at training for another week?"
"Ha, well I made a bet with our trainer, Kelly the ex-Harpie who thinks she's the best thing quidditch has ever seen, that I could pull off a perfect Wronski Feint playing seeker against her. The deal was that if I could, I didn't have to stay for the rest of training, and well here I am. Showed her," Ginny laughed gaily.
"That's great, Harry will be happy once he's sober enough to realize you're home," Both women laughed again and the man's inebriated state as another snore rocked the flat.
"Are you good, 'Mione?" Ginny asked.
"Huh?" Hermione raised an eyebrow, "Of course I'm fine,"
"I dunno, you seem, not unhappy, but not totally happy either."
As usual Ginny was right on the mark, "For the most part I'm wonderful, I love my job, my friends, but I guess, I guess it feels like something's missing, one more ingredient and things would be perfect. I'm not really sure what it is though…"
"How long has it been?"
"I don't know what you're talking about." Hermione countered, a warm flush on her cheeks.
"Well I know there was my brother, and then a couple years ago there was that Swiss guy, then the yummy Italian guy, but neither of them lasted very long. Have you really seen anyone since then?"
Hermione's cheeks reddened further.
"Hermione! I can't believe you've gone that long, the Italian guy was what, a year and a half ago?" Ginny stared at her incredulously. Hermione snapped.
"Just because you and Harry are shagging like rabbits does not mean it's that unusual for the rest of us to go awhile without sex. And his name was Andre" Hermione crossed her arms and sat back in her chair. Ginny just started laughing until eventually Hermione cracked a smile.
"Fine, it has been awhile." Hermione surrendered taking a long sip of tea. The two girls kept chatting and catching up late into the night as the snores of their drunken companion rumbled in the background.
A/N: Found the beginning of this fic buried away in my computer and decided that, given the positive response to my first attempt at publishing some fan fiction, I'd go ahead and publish this too! Let me know what you think and whether I should keep it going!
To anyone who has read my other fic An Unexpected Change this is going to be very different - darker and more plot focused, but romance will play a key role!