Disclaimer: Harry Potter, SPEW, Hermione and Draco all belong to JKR. Of course.

Hermione had no trouble bowing to those in authority, at least if she thought they were worthy of their positions. She liked impressing the "higher ups" and displaying her vast knowledge, but at the same time, she was naturally bossy: she loved giving orders and she loved being in charge. What could she do? Her basic nature would not be denied. Still, during her years at Hogwarts she'd never really thought she'd be the absolute head of anything. S.P.E.W. was hers, and she guarded it fiercely. She didn't like letting anyone "unworthy" into the fold, and she couldn't help thinking that accepting the money, and letting Malfoy work for her was bowing to those who were not worthy of authority.

Hermione had reformed S.P.E.W. after working at the Ministry for two years. At first it was just her and Robin making a tiny office in Hermione's flat, but over the past four years they had built up their reputation, acquired their excellent staff and moved to their current location. Although many in the wizarding world still looked at them with condescension, Hermione knew in her heart that she was doing good work. Of course, being Hermione Granger: War Hero, lent quite a bit of credibility to her cause, too.

Hermione had changed her views somewhat since she started S.P.E.W. at Hogwarts; she now took into account elves' feelings about their wizarding families and how much they liked to work, but she was just as keen on proper treatment and equal rights as she had ever been. After Hogwarts, she had been excited about working for the Ministry, but despite how much it had improved under Kingsley's leadership, she felt that she was not reaching her full potential. S.P.E.W. really made her feel like she was making a difference in the magical community. House elves, of course, were not the only magical creature that needed her help, and Hermione hoped very much that Lucius's money would allow her to advocate for mermaids, goblins, fairies, and veela as well. Not trolls, though. Bugger them. She wished that Lupin could have survived the war and worked with her; he would have been a perfect mentor and would have been able to keep her "Hermione-knows-best" tendencies in check. She rather thought he would be proud of her and she dragged Teddy to "Take Your Child to Work Day" whenever she could.

Hermione thought it best to introduce Malfoy to the office at large; besides Robin, she had warned none of her employees about him. She had a good group of people working for her, so she knew they would be professional and that their excitement about the money would outweigh their trepidations. In truth, she knew that they would be far more diplomatic about Malfoy than she could ever hope to be. She would have to follow their lead in that respect.

It was a young office, and although Hermione sometimes thought they would benefit from an older wizard's experience and knowledge, her young co-workers energized her and kept her up to speed on the latest trends and fads. Hermione felt old most of the time; except for her weekly dinners with Harry, Ron and Ginny, she had almost no social life and she could barely tell the Weird Sisters from the Banshees. Still, despite the fact that wizards and witches her own age made her feel one hundred, she wouldn't trade her employees for the world. Their devotion to her and S.P.E.W. let her know she had made the right decision in her career.

At a quarter past nine, Hermione called everyone into the meeting room. Robin had already set out more tea and fresh scones; the girl was nothing less than a saint, pure and simple. Hermione grabbed a blueberry scone, realized she had absolutely no appetite, and put it down again. If she'd been feeling even remotely normal she would have been amused to see Rupert grab five scones before anyone else had managed one. It was scary how much he reminded her of Ron sometimes. She had asked Malfoy to wait outside; he had muttered darkly about being her 'dirty little secret' but complied.

"Good morning, Hermione," twins Elliot and Jasmine Blackwell singsonged, grinning cheekily. Although they had none of Fred and George Weasley's talent for mayhem, personality-wise they were a lot like them, and Jasmine and Elliot had a similar twin-link that could sometimes be scary. More than once Hermione had stood and watched while they appeared to carry on complete conversations without speaking. The two of them handled most of the home inspections for S.P.E.W., and managed to always come across as charming and posh, even while they cited families and rescued mistreated elves. They were young, attractive and well-liked purebloods and had been working for S.P.E.W. for two years. They came to Hermione straight out of Hogwarts and had done much to ingratiate the society to other members of the wizarding elite. At twenty, they were the youngest in the office and Hermione was shocked to find herself feeling rather motherly towards them at times.

"Late night, Hermione?" Veronica Hastings asked, looking sympathetically at Hermione's hair. Everyone knew that Hermione's hair got wilder the more stressed she was. It looked scarier than they had seen it in awhile, which did not bode well for the day. Veronica handled a lot of the day to day office work, such as mailings, paychecks and scheduling; Robin was Hermione's human daybook, of course, but the rest of the office went though Veronica. Rupert Markly, Ginger Toppington and Ariadne Lebell rounded out the office staff. They were all well used to Hermione's personality quirks, but thought themselves lucky to work for and with such a celebrated witch. S.P.E.W. seemed a worthy cause to them, and if other people looked down their noses at their work, what did they care? They knew they had the right idea. All magical creatures deserved respect and equal rights.

"Sort of," Hermione answered. She saw the furtive glances towards her head. "Yes, I know my hair is on full alert, but don't get yourselves panicking quite yet."

"I'm sorry, Hermione, but the last time it looked like that we had missed an important deadline," remembered Ariadne. "It took two weeks to sort that mess out. Please tell me we didn't lose our Iggy and Aggy appeal."

"No, nothing like that," Hermione assured her, annoyed that once again her hair spelled disaster for everyone. She was sure that Malfoy was on the other side of the door in hysterics about it. Stupid Malfoy. "I've actually got quite good news."

Rupert and Veronica exchanged dubious glances. It was quite likely that the Lost City of Atlantis could be found in their boss's hair that morning. How could that possibly foretell good news?

Robin spoke up beside Hermione. "Relax, everyone. It really is great; just ignore the hair for once."

Hermione smiled at her gratefully and waved her wand; in an instant her hair was pulled back in a serviceable, if still larger than usual, ponytail. "There, is that better?" Why she hadn't simply done that in the first place was beyond her; it certainly would have gotten them off on a better foot.

"Much," Elliot said, winking at her.

"Good, now perhaps you could all put your attention elsewhere," she grumbled. "I have three important announcements this morning. First of all, I'd like you all to give Robin a round of applause. She's been promoted to Head of Public Relations and Fund Raising. As you can imagine, this is a step towards Robin officially becoming my partner and I know you'll all agree that it's a long time coming." She waited while everyone clapped and hooted for Robin, who blushed but looked pleased. "Ginger, Ariadne, you'll both be reporting directly to Robin now. Your work will remain much the same, but the three of you will branch out even more than we already have. I expect this will do great things for S.P.E.W."

"Sounds great," Ginger said sincerely. The tall, pretty witch was twenty-six, which made her the oldest person in the office. She and Robin had been in the same year at school, and although Ginger had been in Gryffindor, they had been good friends. When Robin went to work for Hermione, Ginger had thought she was crazy - why sacrifice her career for Hermione Granger's pet project? Despite being in the same House as Hermione at Hogwarts, Ginger had not known the girl very well and had very clear memories of her previous S.P.E.W. campaign; Ginger had bought a button merely to shut the overzealous witch up. However, she soon realized that the work S.P.E.W. was doing was exactly the sort of thing she wanted to be associated with. She loved her job and thought they probably had a lot more fun than she would at the Ministry. It didn't hurt that Robin's elf friend, Violet, spent a lot of time with them all. Putting a specific face to the work certainly inspired them all.

"What's number two?" Rupert asked.

"We've received a rather generous endowment," Hermione spoke carefully. She knew the amount of money they were receiving would send everyone into apoplectic fits of glee, and she didn't really think they would care where it came from. To them, Lucius Malfoy was an idea, not a real person. None of them had any dealings with the man. Now that she really thought about it, it seemed quite possible they wouldn't care about Draco, either. They would see it as fitting that their benefactor's son would work with them. She would probably be the only grump in the bunch, which made her feel guilty about her conflicted feelings.

"How generous?" Jasmine asked. Despite her words, Hermione was still acting like this was the worst day of her life. What on earth was wrong with her?

"Extremely," Hermione answered. "We were left the sum of thirty-two million galleons."

Stunned silence greeted her words. Finally Veronica found her voice.

"You're kidding. You have to be."

"Ron put you up to it," Rupert said. "Where on earth would you get that much money?"

"It's not a joke," Robin assured him. "She's telling the absolute truth."

"Whooo!" Elliot screamed, grabbing his sister and twirling her around. "This is crazy - it's fantastic! Hermione, do you know what we can do with this? They'll be no stopping us!" He danced around the room, grabbing each of his co-workers - even Rupert - in fierce hugs. His exuberance was infectious; within minutes they were all whooping and dancing madly. Except Hermione, of course.

"Hermione, what's the matter with you?" Ariadne demanded. "This is outstanding news. I'm in shock. This is unbelievable, this is incredible, this is-"

"There's still one more thing, isn't there?" Rupert said, suddenly sobering. "Otherwise you wouldn't have come in with scary hair. What's your third bit of news, Hermione?"

"The money came from Lucius Malfoy. His son, Draco, will be my new assistant. I thought it only fitting considering how generous his father has been."

Hermione had decided not to tell everyone that Malfoy was only working with them because he had to. It might automatically sour them towards him and if word got out, it could put an unnecessary stain on S.P.E.W. Hermione had discussed this detail with Malfoy and Robin, and although Malfoy was not too happy with the idea, Robin thought it perfect. After all, how would it improve Malfoy's reputation if the wizarding world thought his "good deeds" were forced upon him? Malfoy thought it made him look desperate and in need of charity, but he had reluctantly agreed.

"Lucius Malfoy the Death Eater?" Ginger asked. "I read that he died. Why did he leave money for house elves?"

"I don't really know," Hermione admitted. "But he was cleared of war crimes and aided in Harry's triumph over Voldemort, so we can only assume he turned over a new leaf."

Outside the door, Draco bristled at Hermione's words. He knew she didn't believe a single word she spoke and it angered him to listen to her condescending bullshit. She knew nothing about his father, and even less about him. From what he had been hearing, the people that worked for her (and choosing to work for Know-It-All Granger in the first place made them all idiots in his book) sounded like sycophantic little creeps. Sure it was funny that they made fun of her stupid hair, but that just meant they had eyes. As far as he was concerned, Granger shouldn't let her underlings talk to her like that, anyway. If he ran the business, there sure wouldn't be any comments on his hair. Not that they could say anything, of course. Perfection in hair form was hard to come by, but he had been blessed. He leaned closer to the door to hear their reactions to his "hiring."

"I thought you didn't like Draco Malfoy," Jasmine remembered. "I heard you cussing about him to Ron Weasley one afternoon. Didn't you have that dartboard with his picture on it when we first moved here?"

Hermione blushed and prayed again that Malfoy wasn't listening at the door, though she knew how unlikely that was. "That was a long time ago. It's true that Malfoy and I weren't the best of friends at Hogwarts, but that's all behind us now."

"Yeah, but you called him a 'freakishly pale inbred snake-boy'," Jasmine persisted. "You wouldn't even let Elliot and me inspect Malfoy Manor. You said we might get some sort of 'blond wasting disease brought on by close proximity to evil.' Remember?"

Robin cut in, "The history of Hermione and Draco is rather complicated, but Hermione thought it important to honor Mr. Malfoy's contribution, so she asked Draco to work with us. He's eager to see first-hand the good his father's money does."

God, she loved Robin. "That's exactly right." And eager to make my life a living hell.

Jasmine didn't look convinced, and neither did anyone else, but they decided to play along for now. There had to be more going on, of course. The rivalry between the Malfoys and Hermione, Harry Potter and Ron Weasley was well-known. They knew it would take more than thirty-two million galleons (and damn, but that was a lot of money) to change Hermione's views on the infamous pureblood. Things were about to get very interesting.