Theo headed off the witch's plan to go out to dinner. The thought of her yelling at some maître d', while tempting, also led inexorably to the vision of the encounter being written up in the Prophet. Everyone liked a bit of gossip, after all, and there's nothing quite so grand as reveling in the woes of the fallen. The children of Death Eaters definitely counted as fallen, as disgraced, as delicious to whisper about in hushed, faux-shocked tones. 'Thought they'd get served,' he could hear people say to one another. 'Can you imagine? And that Granger girl, in bad company.'
He wasn't sure he could bear to have her tarred and feathered with their brush, so he made noises about how he'd planned to make something he'd just read about and implied going out would be an imposition. She backed down almost immediately and asked instead if there were anything she could do to help. He gave her a hunk of cheese to grate, opened another bottle of wine and poured her a glass, and asked her whether she'd read the most recent book that had come out by a politician. He listened with relief as she dropped all comments about dining out to instead excoriate the book as narcissistic pablum.
He agreed. It was a dreadful book written by a dreadful man who'd managed to play both sides against the middle during the war and who now spun his cowardice into a tale that might have met the truth once at a party. They hadn't chatted.
"Find any flats to go check out?" Draco asked when she began to run down. She'd spent much of the afternoon with the paper spread out before her, circling listings and then making calls. She accioed the marked up section and handed it over to him and he skimmed through the listings before crossing one of them out.
"I beg your pardon?" Hermione Granger said in a somewhat predictable huff. "I was going to go to that one first thing in the morning. I've already floo-called to set up a time and - "
"I wouldn't let a woman I hated live in that neighborhood," Draco said flatly.
"I can handle myself," she said. She set the wine down with a thunk and Theo watched the liquid slide up the inside of the glass and almost escape. She was a lightweight, that was undeniable. Half a glass and she was already losing the edges of her control.
The lightweight in question crossed her arms as she sat on the stool at their counter and glared at Draco. "I survived a war," she said. "I think I can handle a dodgy neighborhood."
"I'm sure you can," Draco said, "but there has to be a flat available somewhere that doesn't have aurors visiting the block every other day to look for Snatchers still harbouring delusions their pathetic hatreds make them Dark wizards worth fearing."
Theo leaned over and looked at the address Draco had crossed out and blanched. "You are joking about that one, right?" he asked her.
"The price is right," she said. "I'm not exactly high up the food chain at work. It's a nearly entry-level government job with the pay-cheque to match. I can't have… this." She waved her hand around to indicate the loft.
Draco and Theo exchanged glances.
"Well," Draco said, "you can't have that either, not unless you plan on having one of us there all hours of the day and night, and that would be a pain in the arse, so no."
"I'm sure it's fine," Hermione said. "And since when - "
"It's not fine." Theo knew he sounded exasperated and he tried to moderate his tone but based on the way she transferred her glare from Draco to him, he didn't succeed. "It's dangerous in that part of town. The idea of you even going there in the daylight sends chills down my spine. Living there? As a Muggle-born? You'd be in St. Mungo's within a week."
Hermione glowered but the stubborn looks on both their faces seemed to quell her, at least slightly. "Don't see why you care," she finally said as she unbent enough to take a sip of the wine. "I'm hardly your problem."
"That neighborhood is everyone's problem," Draco said. "Or should be."
"How can you not know which are the… one of us will have to go with you," Theo said as he turned back to the stove to give more of his attention to the risotto. "Left to your own devices you'd end up next door to a felix dealer."
"Or living with Death Eaters," she said.
Theo didn't even have to turn around. He could feel Draco's flinch, though the man covered it with a quick quip. "Or worse," he said. "Weasleys."
She sighed and looked half-miserable and Draco, who'd always had a feel for people's weak points if no real sense on when to let them lie, began to needle her. "Tell me, did he leave his laundry lying around? Half-empty cups of take-away coffee on the table? Dog eared books on the floor? I want to know everything."
Theo listened as she picked up her glass, set it down, and then seemed to fuss with the grater she had spelled to take care of the cheese he'd handed her. "He did," she said at last. The words seemed to be pulled reluctantly from her as if she balanced between wanting to not criticize the man to people who'd never been sympathetic to them and needing to release at least some of the inevitable post breakup anger. "Not books - Ron was never one for reading, but the laundry was a… I read once that when women leave their husbands, it's never because they caught them cheating or anything. It's because they just got to the point they couldn't stand the idea of picking dirty pants up off the floor one more time."
"You weren't married were you," Theo asked in sudden horror. Not that he supposed it mattered, not really, but it certainly complicated things. He'd turned around by the time she'd stammered out a series of 'nos', looking just as horrified as he felt. Her eyes traced over his arms with a look he'd seen on Draco's face and he wondered for a brief moment if he was misreading the frank appreciation in them before she wiped her face clear.
"No," she said. "Not married."
"Glad to know your judgement is only mostly bad," Draco said.
She began to look outraged again and he smirked at her. "I've seen the address of where you think you could live. You're an idiot."
"I'd be fine," she said again. She reached for the paper but he pulled it away from her and held it up, enough out of her reach she'd have had to stretch and fight him for it. She settled for scowling and having more wine instead. "Do you plan to be this bossy the whole time I'm staying here?" she asked.
"We're just looking out for you," Theo said. He began to spoon the rice onto plates, followed by the poached fish he'd been experimenting with. He sprinked on the cheese and sighed. This seemed like a bad idea but it was better than facing down a restaurant. "You have a history of odd choices. Just the merest passing acquaintance with you lets me know that." He handed her a plate. "Tell me if that's any good."
She dug a fork into the meal, tasted it, and her eyes widened. "This is amazing," she said around a mouthful of fish. "You're amazing."
"He is," Draco agreed.
"It's better than what you've been eating, I'm sure," Theo said. The sentence had been meant to be a bit of a goad but came out as a rather pathetic request for reassurance. She heard it and set her fork down and looked at him seriously.
"There's no comparison," she said.
When the food had been eaten and the dishes cleared, Draco excused himself to take a shower and Theo found himself alone with the witch for the first time. Draco had had a moment that morning when he'd invited her to stay, but it was the first time since they'd had her back for dinner the night before that Theo hadn't had Draco there as a crutch. Being with her suddenly felt unbearably awkward. He swallowed several times and tried not to stare. He'd spent so much of their sixth year in school watching her he probably still had every curl of her hair memorized. Even years later, scarred by war, he thought he'd have been able to pick her out of a crowd by the way she set her shoulders alone.
It seemed, as he sat there without speaking, embarrassingly stalker-like to know so much about how a woman sat and moved when you'd hardly spoken to her. No one wants to fess up his adolescent obsession to its object, even years later.
"He had nightmares," he said abruptly.
"Draco?" she asked.
Theo nodded.
"I know," she said. "I've… you mentioned it, and this morning I…." She turned her head away and looked out at the city that sparkled though their windows. "When I walked in to your room I was going to… well, it doesn't matter and it's a bit… it doesn't matter. He saw me and thought I was a dream."
"Flattering," Theo said carefully.
"Not when he expected me to be drenched in blood," Hermione said.
Theo nodded, though she wasn't looking at him and didn't see the gesture. He knew the content of Draco's dreams. Horrors, all of them. Hogwarts had been a nightmare that final year, and Malfoy Manor had been more of one. Draco had escaped the war alive and unimprisoned, but hardly unscathed. "Do you want me to muffle the room?" Theo asked. "The whole flat has a muffliato on it so the screams don't bother the neighbors, but… he doesn't have them every night, of course, but I could - "
"Please don't put yourself out," Hermione said. "It's already incredibly kind of you to let me stay while I'm looking for a flat. I don't want to impose, or ask you to do anything out of the ordinary on my account."
He watched her mouth move. It mesmerized him enough it took him just a beat too long to reassure her it was no trouble at all to cast a trivial charm to silence their room, and so she assumed it was indeed a problem and said again that she'd be fine, and to please not go to any trouble.
"Don't worry if you hear him, then," Theo said. "It's… you can just ignore it."
She didn't, of course, and she did. Theo supposed it was probably too much to ask that someone not react to the sound of their own name screamed in terror and pleading and wished he'd cast the muffliato charm anyway, or that Draco had not had a bad night, or that the man had at least just screamed incoherently. That she might have let go. Not her name.
She was in their room before Theo could have counted to five, not that he'd even been thinking of her. Or he'd been thinking of her the way Draco saw her, cowering under the edge of a knife. Theo wasn't even sure Draco was awake when he turned to see the real woman standing in his doorway, wearing pajamas that made it clear she hadn't dressed to entice at night in some time. Draco began to babble out the same apologies he usually made to the dream woman. He'd not meant it. He hadn't understood. He wished he'd been able to stop it, wished it so much. I'm sorry, he said over and over again. Granger, I'm so very sorry.
She sat down on the edge of their mattress and placed a hand over Draco's mouth. Theo waited for him to recoil or shudder but he just fell silent and stared at her in the dim room. "Hermione," she said.
There was a pause while both men sat in the darkness and listened to her speak. "You told me we should use first names," she said and Draco began to shudder. "It's Hermione."
"I'm so sorry," Draco said again, the words blurred and broken by the hand over his mouth. "Hermione, I'm so sorry."
"I know," she said. She ran a hand over the rough stubble on his face. "It was a terrible time. It's passed. It's the past. I'm here now."
"You are," he said. Theo knew Draco was awake by that point when he repeated the words, wonder filling his voice. "You are."
