The hospital halls are silent and empty. Standard visiting hours ended hours ago, but as a high-ranking member of the ministry, Hermione is allowed to come and go as she pleases. A healer looks up from her desk as Hermione walks by, and she smiles softly. "Here to visit old Crowell again?" she asks.

Hermione nods in response. "I've got to see when he'll be back on his feet...well, back on two feet." She corrects herself, thinking of the many legs sprouting out of Cromwell's stomach.

"It's nice of you to keep coming. He doesn't get many visitors."

"He would do the same for me," Hermione says before turning around and continuing down the hallway. Crowell is old, even by wizarding standards. He used to run the International department, but on his one hundred and fiftieth birthday, he handed the reigns over to Hermione, claiming the older a man gets, the less responsibility he wants. Most of his friends and relatives passed away decades ago, and in the back of her mind, Hermione wonders what type of magic Crowell uses to maintain the body of a man half his age. And a deeper part of her wonders what the point of living so long is if the people you care about have long since passed.

Crowell sits up with a grunt, smiling, as she enters the room. "Hermione!" he says cheerfully, though his face looks pale and gaunt. A sheet covers his many twitching legs. "How are you dear?"

"Fine. Thank you." She pulls up a chair to the side of his bed and looks down on his weathered, wrinkled face. "How are you?"

"Oh, same old, same old. They're going to try and remove Barnabus and Shamus tomorrow."

"Excuse me?"

Crowell lifts up the edge of the sheet and points to two particularly grotesque legs. "These two, right here."

"You've named your extra legs?"

Crowell's eyes twinkle. "I've had a lot of time on my hands." He sets back down the sheet. "So dear, to what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Nothing, really. I just felt like saying hello. Everyone at the office sends their best wishes."

"I wish they'd sod off and forget about me. I'm going to get fat if I keep lying around, stuffing down chocolate frogs and pumpkin pasties." He smiles, but then his face grows serious. He leans closer to Hermione, looking at her with questioning eyes. "Something's wrong. What happened?"

Crowell always had a particularly knack for seeing right through Hermione's cool exterior. He said he once had a younger sister exactly like her. Sighing, Hermione runs her fingers through her full, dark hair. "It's just these interviews. They aren't going very well."

"That's because you'll never find anyone as good as me."

"That's very true."

"But there must be a distant second out there somewhere. Who did you interview today?"

Hermione lets a moment pass before meeting Crowell's gaze. "Draco Malfoy."

Crowell and Hermione have worked with each other for almost a decade- and after long nights and tiresome trips, he knows most of the details of her past. The name Draco makes him cringe with sympathy. "Really? Didn't he know you were conducting the interviews?"

"Yes. That didn't seem to deter him."

"Little bugger. What happened? Did you throw him out?"

"Not exactly. Not at first." Hermione quickly relates the story to Crowell, and by the time she's finished, there's a curious expression on his face.

"Hmph," he says.

"What?"

"Perhaps," Crowell raises a hand to stoke the fine, silver hairs of his beard. "Perhaps he has changed. And you said he is overly qualified. Maybe you should-"

"You're not suggesting that I actually hire Draco Malfoy? I thought you were on my side."

"Darling, but of course I'm on your side. The thing is you need someone with experience for the department, and I think - now don't give me that look - I think in the end, you'll be glad you've given him a chance. Be the better witch. Stand on the high ground, give him the job, and see what happens. Worse comes to worse, he disappoints you, and you fire the bugger."

Hermione shakes her head. She came to Crowell thinking that he would pat her on the shoulder and tell her she made the right decision. She didn't imagine this would be the outcome. "I don't know. Maybe I should go through the applicants one more time..." she trails off. Crowell is right in at least one way. Draco is qualified for the position, and if for nothing else, she should hire him for that one simple reason. It's the logical decision, and Hermione has always put her trust in logic.

Crowell's eyes shine as he sees Hermione slowly relent. "That's a good girl. I knew I did that right thing when I handed the keys over to you. Come here." Hermione leans forward so that Crowell can brush his lips against the top of her head. "You're a good witch, Hermione. Don't let this Draco get under your skin. And remember, if you ever need anything, I'll be right here, bedsores and all."


Hermione gets to work early the next day. Last night, after hours of deliberation, she sent Draco an owl informing him he'd been accepted for the position on a temporary basis and that he was due for work the next morning. A large part of Hermione hopes the owl gets lost and drops the letter in a giant puddle of mud. An even larger part of Hermione hopes Draco gets lost on the way to work and falls in a giant puddle of mud.

She gnaws on the edge of her quill as the minutes slowly pass by. Draco should be arriving at any moment. She'll have to debrief him on the Taipei dragon fiasco (how a family of dragons got loose in a major Chinese city- don't ask her), and of course inform him about the Irish weather incident (just because they had one potato famine decades ago- it doesn't mean they have to magic forty days and nights of rain during crop season). But she doesn't know how she'll be able to do any of this when every time she thinks of Draco's face, her stomach curls with anger and distaste.

There's a knock on the door. Hermione takes a deep, solid breath before calling out, "Come in!"

Draco tentatively enters the room, lingering in the doorway. Hermione narrows her eyes. Yesterday he was screaming at her, and today he looks like a child asking for a toy. She narrows her eyes and says, "I'm not going to bite."

And then he smiles. Slowly. The ends of his lips barely curling up in distant amusement. "Funny," he says. "I was surprised to get your owl."

"You should have been surprised. After what you said to me - you left me with no reason to hire you."

"After what I said to you? What about -"

"And yet, I had a talk with Cromwell, our regular vice president, and he insisted that I give you a shot at the job."

"Well, look at that. The man doesn't even know me, and he likes me more than you do."

"He likes you because he doesn't know you." Again, Draco smirks. "Come. Sit down. You'll need to sign some contracts." Hermione spreads a few sheets of parchment across the desk, filled with scrawled rules and regulations. "You're signing on as solely an interim employee. As soon as Cromwell is healthy, you're out of here. Understand?"

Draco's cool grey eyes rise to meet Hermione's gaze. "Perfectly." He takes out a silver-tipped quill from the pockets of his robes and quickly signs the documents with tight, neat handwriting.

Hermione appraises the expensive looking quill. "I see you didn't lose all your family fortune."

"Pretty things and money in the bank aren't one in the same. I've kept a few things, but I had to sell almost everything to keep afloat until I started working. When my parents went to trial - well, let's just say the ministry charged a hefty fine for their crimes." That explains why the Malfoys never went to jail. They must have paid off the courts with every last sickle and knut. It's strange to think of Draco as just another wizard, thrown into the world without a galleon in his pocket.

Hermione scans over the parchments before stacking them together and sliding them into a drawer. When she looks up, Draco is staring at her. Always staring at her. She hopes that will stop, wondering if she can fire him on the grounds that he's simply off-putting. She self-consciously raises a hand, tucking her hair behind her ears. Years ago, she learned a simple spell to keep it smooth and untangled, but sometimes she thinks her hair is too persistent, even for magic. Clearing her throat, she says, "I guess we should get you settled. The in-house department is pretty small. About eighty percent of our employees spend most of their time travelling, so it's usually just me and a few assistants around the office."

"Do you travel?"

"Yes. Just not as often anymore." When Hermione first applied for the job, she was fresh out of Hogwarts and excited to explore the entire wizarding world. The ministry sent her everywhere- from the States to Chile to Kenya. It was exhilarating to meet witches and wizards from some many different places. But ever since Cromwell promoted her to head of the department, she's spent more time organizing other people's travels than travelling herself. "I send myself on the important cases, ones that take a practiced hand."

Draco smirks, and the smile reaches his eyes. "Hermione Granger. Forever at the top of the class. You're pretty young to be running an entire department."

Despite herself, Hermione blushes. She's proud of her accomplishments, knowing they stem from hard work. "I don't run the entire department. I may have the title, but usually Cromwell is just as busy as I am."

"When do you think he'll be back to work?"

Hermione bites her lip, and she's flustered when Draco's eyes graze over the sensitive skin. She tries to maintain her composure, wondering why Draco always seems to have this disquieting effect on her. "I'm not sure. A couple of months, I think."

"Hmm," Draco says, and nothing more.

They sit in silence for a moment before Hermione finally stands up. "Come on then. I'll show you around."

Instinctively, Hermione waits for Draco to reject her, insult her, but then she remembers that she's in charge, and that brings a whisper of a smile to her face. And when Draco says, "Okay, boss," and follows her out of the office, the smile grows wider.

A/N – Here's the next chapter. Please review if you like it so far!