A/N: Okay, so, short chapter! Yay!

If you're wondering why I'm updating so quickly, its because all of this is already pre-written. I was planning for it to be a one-shot, but it got too long, so...

Just wait a few more chapters where I actually have to write again, and my updates will become A LOT SLOWER HAHA. Trust me.

He rummages wildly through his bag, which has fallen to the floor at his feet. He finally pulls out a delicate, glass bottle, filled to the brim with some kind of liquor, and, after uncapping it, smashes it clumsily to his lips.

For a moment or two, his desperate gulps are the only sound in the room.

He gasps for air and throws the empty bottle across the room. It shatters loudly, mocking him, sharply reminding him that he is losing control again.

Her suspicion still burns in his chest like undoused acid.

He does not know, does not care, what she thinks of his parents. Because his parents were the one who tried to stand tall in front of Draco, for his sake, when turbulent times drove them apart and tumbled them inside out. It was a façade, and he always knew it, but it pained Draco unbearably to think about it.

But the day came when they toppled and teetered and fell, loudly and painfully. Delicate china chess pieces, toyed around and played with, until they lost all balance and cracked, shattered, broken.

He never thought much of Hermione, back in Hogwarts. He was logical and methodical when it came to her, figuring out and pinpointing her weaknesses and strengths, strategically almost, calculating what would hurt her most. Her blood status bothered him slightly, and compelled him to wield even more of his tortuous virulence, but at the end of it all she was merely a character from a storybook to him, plain and flat and ordinary.

He always thought he was superior to her, more capable of inflicting brutality and pain and anguish, which was always what seemed to matter anyway.
It seems, today, she has proved him wrong.

She does not want to come back the next week. She is resolute, convincing herself while indulgently serving morsels of hatred to her mind. It is easy to hate him, easy for the feeling to blow through her with red hot ferocity.

It almost works, until the old Muggle cellphone her mother gave her years ago rings insistently in her ear. She frowns, because she knows who it is.
Loudly snapping the faded pink flip phone open, she hesitates before accepting the call.

"Harry," she grumbles, by way of greeting, not waiting for him to speak first. "I'm not really in the mood."

Harry's sigh crackles through the phone speakers like muffled fireworks, exasperation tinged with edgy irritation. "Hermione, look. You're being so ridiculously predictable; I knew you would go and botch this up somehow, and I knew you would make up your mind to skip this week, and I know you'd say exactly that when I'd call you."

Hermione scowls, readily angried, and is about to end the call until she thinks about what he has said again, and her clever mind comes to attention.

"What? So you knew?"

Harry's silence seems to huddle uncertainly in the air, as if intimated by the intense and accusing scrutiny in Hermione's voice.

"You bastard!" she shrieks. "You knew that you were sending me to that son of a bitch, that absolutely filthy, no-good pureblood! You knew Dr. Seamus Baulstrade or Bullshit or whatever the hell it is, was bloody fucking Draco Malfoy!"

"Hermione," Harry interrupts smoothly, "I thought he changed. It was an opportunity, I saw, for the both of you, but if you're reacting this way I'm assuming he upset you." He sounds genuinely concerned. "What happened?"

Hermione's mouth opens immediately, and she eagerly prepares to pour out her anguished laments, her vicious complaints of his utmost impudence.
Only she finds there is nothing to say.

"He...er..." She curses herself for stumbling and hesitating, but it is too late.

"Nothing, eh?" Harry says, and Hermione can feel that unmistakable quirk of the eyebrow that seems to dance through the call. "I thought so. You could have tried, 'Mione."

Hermione drags her hand wearily down her face. "You thought so? You have this much trust in him? And not in me? How do you know, h-he wasn't t-there, when -"

Harry exhales sharply. "He wasn't there. I know it, and the Ministry has records. Hermione, relax, please, and understand. He's not a bad psychiatri -

"Yes, about that," she bounces back vehemently, and Harry knows she is wielding her furiously jagged sword of intellect, aiming to hit him squarely in the face. "Is it really suggested by experts to be in the best interests of the patient to have their mind repaired by a man whom they have had past interactions with, none of which have been remotely pleasant?"

"For most patients, no, maybe," Harry sighs, struggling to find a point. "But I feel it would be good for you. And him.

"Yes?" Hermione spits angrily. "And what is so special about us?"

"I...don't know. But I met him, once, briefly, after the war and everything, and he reminded me of you. He was civil, you know? Polite, a little bit, snarky and arrogant, but not even half-bad. It seemed like you two could have a decent conversantion."

"Never," Hermione snorts, quite convincingly, but inside her heart is pounding against her chest. They did have a decent conversantion, an enjoyable one, in fact, until the tables suddenly turned. She didn't realize it, but it happened, this tentative amiability, and looking back at it, Hermione realizes with heavy and poisonous horror, they almost seemed like good friends reacquainting after a long separation.

Eager to depart from the subject, Hermione tightens her grasp on the phone. "So, how's Ginny? And the kids?"

"Hermione," Harry says sternly, realizing what she is doing, but answers her anyway. "Ginny's fine, still recovering from the pregnancy. The baby - well, Ginny's always going on about how adorable it is -"

"I'm sure," Hermione interjects, managing a smile. "Could you send me a picture?"

"Yeah, later," Harry answers, through the midst of some horrible static; it sounds as though he is shaking the phone. "Oh gods, Hermione, I'm sorry, I have to go. Call you back later?"

"Yeah, of course," she readily agrees, but by then the phone is cut.

Sighing, Hermione sets the phone down, and stares up at her bedroom clock, ticking monotonously. She crosses her legs, pinches her thumbs, shakes her arms. The seconds fail to go by any faster.

Yeah, maybe I was pissed when I wrote it? Sorry for the abundant swearing lmao.

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