Draco Malfoy wanted to throw up. His gut roiled and he could feel himself shaking and Theo seemed determined to ignore all of that. He'd actually invited the witch over for dinner. Dinner! How was he supposed to sit across the table and have a civilized meal with a woman he'd seen screaming in agony on his floor and who he still saw tortured in his dreams? What was he supposed to talk about? He kept trying to catch Theo's eye as if he could somehow scuttle this entire plan but the man refused to look directly at him and instead offered Hermione Granger his arm and led her off to their flat.
Draco had never been ashamed of his flat before. It was filled with light and had huge windows that had once illuminated factory work and now just kept the shadows away. There was an open kitchen, and room for Theo's books and his wine, and a guest bedroom in case anyone ever wanted to admit they knew a Death Eater, and the shower never ran out of hot water, and it was a great flat. It was also small. There were no rolling parks, no gates, no peacocks. It wasn't a manor.
After they'd climbed the stairs to the fifth floor and Theo had opened the door and ushered the witch in, Draco waited for her to make a comment about how he'd come down in the world since she'd last seen him but all Hermione did was toss a truly ugly bag down onto a table and say, "You mentioned wine?"
"Yeah," he said, and pulled out a bottle of something Muggle, which she didn't comment on, and three glasses, and poured.
She took a sip and her eyes widened. "This is good," she said.
"Better than you're used to, I'm sure," he said.
"Draco!" Theo nearly hissed his name and Draco faced Hermione with a smirk firmly in place and waited for her to be offended and leave.
Instead she just took another sip from her wine and said, "I have to admit it's true. Neither Ron nor Harry really cared about wine. Ginny either. Cheap ale was their drink of choice." She took another drink and Draco felt gratified at the way she was savoring what he'd selected. "I could never get a taste for it," she added.
Theo began sorting through ingredients he had on hand and Hermione settled on a stool at the counter. She asked polite questions about when he'd taken up cooking and her shoulders became markedly tense at his offhand remark that unless they wanted to eat out in Muggle London every night learning to put a meal together had been a bit mandatory. Draco sat next to her and pushed his sleeves up to make sure his Mark was out and in her face and her eyes rested on it. "That had to be terrible," she said. She reached a finger out and touched it and he controlled his flinch.
"Bona fide bad guy," he said.
She drained her glass and held it out for more. "I understand some women like those," she said. She glanced over at Theo who was using his wand to dice herbs into smaller and smaller bits. "Or men. You should have plenty of fans."
Draco filled her glass. "I prefer to stay away from thrill seekers who want to brag they dared to talk to the big, bad wolf," he said.
"So," Theo said. "You and Weasley broke up?"
Subtle, Draco thought as he took a large swallow of his own wine. Still, in classic Theo fashion, the man had managed to combine two goals and had diverted attention from Draco's own issues while simultaneously fishing for information about how available she was. Years had gone by since school and the war and Theo's torch for the witch had never quite extinguished.
"Oh, yes," she said. "I'm boring and mental and, oh, all sorts of things." She took another large swallow of her wine. "People say dreadful things when they're ending it, you know."
"I suppose," Theo said. "Boring seems a bit unlikely."
Hermione took another drink and Draco found himself wondering what, exactly, her tolerance was. "I'm not the girl you take to the pub," she said. "I dress badly - "
"He's got a point there," Draco muttered to another hiss of disapproval from Theo.
" - and I spend all my time with my nose in a book." Hermione looked over at Theo's bookshelves and let out a sigh that might have been raw lust before she returned her attention to the man at her side. "We just weren't well suited is all. We let the passions of war hide that it was really a school girl crush on my part and, well, I don't know what on his." By the time Theo had finished preparing the chicken and cream and had set it into the over, Draco had lost what little sympathy he might have once had for Ron Weasley. He could intellectually acknowledge the man had been a hero but he'd also taken a witch Draco had admired, though never in a way anyone could see, and left her crying at the river and thinking maybe she really was dull because she didn't want to go to a grotty pub and drink cheap ale with a bunch of wankers.
Not well suited, indeed.
By the time she was dipping bread into the sauce and on her fourth glass of wine, she was revealing things Draco had never wanted to know. "I never even liked his body," she said. "He was bulky and hairy and his - "
"You can stop," Draco said, afraid she'd go even further. There were things he absolutely did not need to know about Ron Weasley. "He's not my type either."
That made her laugh.
"You," she said, leaning back so she almost fell off the stool, "You're much more the thing. All slender and wiry." She looked at Theo. "You too." She set her glass down and sighed. "How did I end up getting pissed with two boys from school, not my friends, both gay?"
"We picked you up," Theo said.
"Bi," said Draco. When she blinked at him a few times in confusion he said, more slowly, "Bisexual, not gay."
"At least in theory," Theo muttered.
"You've never?" Hermione looked from one of them to the other.
"We've lived together since the war," Draco said. "I assure you, we have."
"I meant with a girl."
Draco looked over at Theo who became very busy with clearing the plates. They'd certainly talked about it more than once, but since the only woman either of them had ever felt any kind of consistent attraction to was currently sitting on a stool in their flat, drunk as hell, it hadn't been something worth pursuing. The few women who might have been interested in a Death Eater and his partner were not the sort Draco would have wanted to even experiment with.
As Hermione had pointed out, some women did love a bad boy. He didn't feel like letting any of them into a life that involved nightmares and fear of the dark and a lot of rage.
"I," Hermione said, "have a great idea."
When she told them what it was Theo looked as if Christmas might have come early but Draco could feel a chasm open up underneath him. He'd fall, oh how he'd fall, and she'd walk off after a fun, drunken night with two old schoolmates, not even friends, and he'd be left in pieces. He settled on the easy excuse. "You're too pissed to make decisions like that." He tipped his head toward her glass. "I bet you can't even stand, much less consent to… no."
She tried to prove she could stand, an exercise that went badly, and Theo sighed. He might want to, but he wasn't going to take advantage of her in this state. "You can't even apparate home," he said. "You'd splinch yourself into a dozen parts." He coerced and bullied and insisted and at last the witch agreed to spend the night in their guest room. Theo handed her one of Draco's shirts and a hangover potion and said, "I'll make you eggs in the morning."
"I'm fine," she said and shut the door behind her.
Draco looked at Theo. "You had to invite her to dinner, didn't you?" he asked.
"I'll be wanking off to the sound of her propositioning us for months," Theo agreed rather glumly. "Let's go to bed. We can do the dishes tomorrow."
. . . . . . . . . .
When Draco Malfoy opened his eyes, Hermione Granger was seated at the foot of his bed. She looked healthy and well and even a tad mischievous and he braced himself for what would come next. He shut his eyes, hoping to somehow fast forward to the end, but when he opened them again she was still there, still whole, inexplicable wearing one of his shirts.
"You aren't covered in blood," he said, hoping if he talked to her this would be one of the less horrible visions. Sometimes she forgave him in these dreams. More often she just begged him to make it stop.
The look of playful devilry faded and she asked, "Why would I be?" He could see the moment she realized what was happening, and that shift in her eyes brought him all the way to lucidity. "I'm really here," she said, her tone unbearably gentle. "We had dinner last night and I overindulged in a rather glorious bottle of wine, or two, you opened, and you let me stay in your guest room. This isn't a... you're awake."
"Three," he said, willing himself to not shake. Even the memory of dreams past was enough to start the day badly. "We opened a third bottle."
She saw too much. She asked why he'd thought she'd be bloody and without meaning to, he told her. Theo lay next him, sprawled out and graceless and unconscious, and Draco said, "You usually are, is all." Theo looked as gorgeous as he usually did asleep, his hair rumpled in a way that seemed deliberate and his carelessly thrown arm embodying all the ease and privilege Draco had grown up with. He tried to summon some of that nonchalance and propped himself up on his arms and asked the witch why she'd let herself into his room.
"Well," she said, "I was going to point out I'm not drunk now, but..." She stopped and Draco forced a cocky smile to his face.
"Yes, I suppose the knowledge I dream of you covered in blood has quite spoilt the mood." He dreamt of her tortured. He dreamt of her screaming. He dreamt his aunt stood behind her, knife in hand, telling him not to fret because she'd kill anyone who wasn't worthy of him.
"Theo said you were haunted... I guess I should have listened."
She turned to go and he said, hoping to salvage something from this uncomfortable moment, "We could have tea before you leave?"
She nodded and he suspected she was just pitying him, the sad Death Eater with the nightmares, but she waited for him out in the kitchen as he shrugged into trousers and an old shirt. He caught a glimpse of himself in his mirror and grimaced. Scrawny and scarred and pale, with his fine hair sticking up in every direction, he was no Adonis. A few quick charms tamed his hair but nothing could help the scars.
"Where's your flat?" he asked her after he joined her. He set the kettle on to heat and began spooning tea into a pot.
She looked uncomfortable. "I guess I'll go find one today," she said. "I've been living with Ron, but that's out now, obviously."
"Can't you crash with a friend for a bit?" he asked her. "Bit much to have to find a flat in one day."
"Harry?" she asked. "You mean my exes best friend? I think he took Ron out last night for the customary 'more fish in the sea' pub crawl so that might be uncomfortable." She made a derisive snort before adding, "I'd not put him in the middle like that, at any rate."
Draco couldn't help but think that Weasley seemed to have had no compunction about making Potter choose sides. He cast his mind back. He'd watched her at Hogwarts but it was true Hermione had never been the girl surrounded by a bevy of giggling girlfriends. It has been her and Potter and Weasley from the beginning. Without them she was alone.
He poured water into the teapot and set the lid over it. "You could stay here," he offered with what he hoped sounded like indifference. "No one's ever used the guest room. I know the place is a bit small but -"
"All I've really got is clothing," she said. "And books. Ron and I rented a furnished place and his mum gave us her old cast offs for kitchen stuff so...but I don't want to impose."
"You wouldn't be," he told her. She looked unsure until he added, "Unless you'd rather not stay with Death Eaters. We're not a popular crowd; you'll be branding yourself as undesirable too if you move in"
It was, he learned as years passed, the easiest way to manipulate her. All he had to do was appeal to her sense of herself as brave and a champion of the oppressed and she was putty in his hands. Sometimes she'd smile at him as she jumped the way he wanted her to and he'd know she saw through him and did what he wanted but quailed at asking for directly out of love. That first morning, though, she was just offended.
"I don't care about that," she said, bristling. "I'll get my stuff as soon as I finish this tea."