Chapter Four: Don't Answer His Floo calls

At the Department meeting the following Monday, Hermione was, per usual, the first to arrive. She spread out her work and began reading through her office heads reports. She hadn't finished the first one before the door to the conference room opened. She looked up to see who was coming in. Draco stood there, kicking the door closed with his shoe and carrying a mug of tea in each hand.

"What are you doing?" she asked him.

"Bringing you tea," he told her as he made his way around the large table. She watched him silently, waiting for him to make his way to her. He set one of the mugs in front of her and sat down in his seat with the other, leaving Harry's chair open between them. As she continued to stare, not knowing what he was up to, he pulled a folder out from under his arm, tossed it on the table, and flipped it open. He grabbed a pen from a pocket and looked at her. "How is the Jones case going?"

She frowned. Apparently this was his way of getting around submitting a request. "Good," she told him. "I just got notice his trial date is set. You and Harry should be getting notification today or tomorrow."

"Thank you. I'll make sure I'm free to attend." He jotted down a note on the parchment inside of the folder.

Hermione waited for him to speak again, but he just grabbed his tea and sipped at it. She looked back at her own work, trying to return to making notes in the margins of the report. He was incredibly distracting as he watched her work. He ran his hand down his thigh to rub at his knee. He flipped the page of the report. He lifted his cup and drank his tea.

Hermione read the same sentence of the report multiple times. None of the words seemed to mean anything, but she didn't want to give in to whatever it was that he was trying to do. He was messing with her mind, and she didn't like it. She reached for the tea before her and took a drink of it, letting her brain try to refocus on her work instead of the man two seats down from her.

Draco shifted in his chair as she put the mug back down on the table, and she looked over at him. "What?" she asked.

"Nothing," he said, shrugging.

"Don't you have work to do or something?"

"Not really." He closed the folder in front of him. "I just thought you might want some tea."

"Well, thank you." It was only polite really. He was trying to be nice.

"You're welcome. How was your weekend?" he asked.

"Fine." She was very aware that his sneaky arrival early to the meeting was leading her to breaking her rule to never talk to him alone, but hopefully someone would arrive soon. Also, it wasn't like either of them was really going to try anything inappropriate in the conference room of all places.

"Did you visit your parents?" He knew that she tried to get to her parents house once a week if possible.

"Yes." There had been several mornings with him in her bed that she had tried to work up the nerve to ask him to stay and go with her, but she never had.

"How are they doing?" he asked.

"They are fine."

"Good."

The door opened again, and Hermione looked back to her work, relieved at the interruption.

XXX

Hermione was working late again Thursday evening. She was fairly sure the entire department had gone, but she had set aside this time to work on the World Cup preparations. She grabbed dinner, brought it back to her desk, and worked as she ate. At the particular moment when Draco barged into her office, she was trying to figure out how to kindly respond to the latest letter from the IWC insisting that it was not worth reevaluating the amount of memory charms allowed to be performed on the Muggles around the event.

She looked up from the letter, and Draco fell into the chair across from her desk. She glanced over at the closed door and back to him. "What are you doing?"

"Let me take you to dinner," he said.

"I ate." She pointed at the cold food sitting at the corner of her desk.

Draco frowned at the container. "Let me take you out for real food that you don't eat at your desk so slowly that it gets cold and you barely eat any of it."

"I'm working," she told him.

"It will still be there tomorrow." There was a hint of irritation to his voice, and she wasn't sure what to make of this, or his insistence that she eat with him.

"After you spend the night at my flat," she told him, knowing that it would end there.

"I didn't -"

"Draco -"

"I just want to take you to dinner," he snapped, his tone growing closer and closer to an anger she didn't understand.

"I don't want to go." That wasn't entirely true. She felt bad for making him upset. She was sure that she would enjoy dinner with him, wherever in the Muggle world they ended up, and then she would bring him home because they would stand at the door of her flat in silence for a long time, the tension between them growing unbearable until she invited him in.

"Okay." He was visibly trying not to be upset, but it was impossible not to see it now, not to know that he was annoyed with her. "Do you want to go to dinner this weekend?"

He looked so hopeful that she almost said yes, but she really, really needed to get her life together, and that did not include dinner with someone that wouldn't admit to taking her to dinner. "No," she said softly, hoping that she could at least let him down easy. She couldn't help but wonder what in the world had gotten into him. He had been acting odd, and sure, she had been turning him down and blatantly trying to avoid him honestly, but this seemed like more than that.

Draco was quiet for a long time. She waited as it was clear that he was trying to say something, that the words were on the tip of his tongue. Finally, after several long minutes, he leaned forward, running his hands down his thighs nervously as he met her eyes. "Why did you bring him?"

"What?" She didn't need him to repeat himself. She heard what he said, but the question was so unexpected that she didn't know what else to say in response.

"Trevor." He spat out the name, and Hermione's mouth gaped, her mind trying to determine what in the world was going on.

"Trevor," she repeated. Was he jealous of the man she had sent home alone?

"Yes, Hermione. Trevor. For two years, things are one way, and then you just show up with a fucking date. It was in the damn Prophet next day." She hadn't seen that. She hadn't looked though to be honest. She was too busy being mad at herself to care or think about it. To be fair though, she had only seen Trevor once since that night. They ran into each other in the lift. He had asked her out again, but she'd turned him down and not thought about it again.

Hermione set her quill down on her desk, using the few moments to try to formulate a response to him. "I'm allowed to date, Draco."

"Have you been on a single other date in the past two years?" he asked, his skin growing a bit pink.

"I don't see what that -" She hadn't of course, at least not before Trevor. He had been the exception, one she had only made in the hopes that she would possibly find something interesting enough about him to distract her from being an idiot with Draco, which clearly had not worked. It wasn't her best moment.

"Neither have I." He pushed out of his chair. "Not since that first time, or frankly, quite a while before it."

"Well, I didn't know that."

"What do you think? I've been off shagging other women and just not telling you?"

"You never said," she told him stubbornly. They had never spoken about it, not once, so how was she supposed to know what he was or wasn't doing? If he felt so strongly about her dating, he probably should have mentioned it at some point.

"I didn't realize I had to. I knew you would eventually need more than this, but I didn't think you would just spring it on me like that."

"You don't have any right to tell me when or how I can date anyone. And, it's not like you've been exactly open to talking about us ever," Hermione snapped back. They weren't together. He wasn't her boyfriend. He had never once mentioned anything close to a commitment or insinuation that he thought of her in anyway when they weren't having sex. How in the world could he expect that she owed him anything?

"I think I've earned a heads up, at least."

"I told you I was done."

"Are you fucking kidding me?" He was shouting now, and she could feel her tolerance slipping away quickly. How dare he come into her office while she was working and start shouting at her about going to a stupid Ministry dinner with someone else? "You told me you were done every time, but then kept on with me."

"So, I couldn't have just actually been done because I was terrible at keeping to it in the past?" she asked. "I guess I should have talked it over with you in all the spare time we have in the morning before you slip out.

"Don't you even try to blame me. You brought him to that damn dinner, and then you kissed me. I didn't ask you to. I didn't force myself on you, Hermione. I never have, and I'm tired of you insinuating that I'm pursuing you without reason."

"Well, you can be damn sure that whatever it was that we were doing, I'm not doing it anymore. I'm tired of it. You would think that you would have figured that out when I showed up with Trevor, but apparently not."

"It's kind of hard to figure out what in the hell you're doing when you took me home and not him!"

"You shouldn't have even asked if I wanted to!"

"You shouldn't have looked at me like you were waiting for me to!"

"I'm not perfect. Of course I want you to, but I'm trying out being with someone that will actually be seen in public with me, so maybe you can just sod off and let me."

"Fine. We both know we can never be that anyway so we might as well just get it over with."

"What the hell does that mean?"

"Merlin, You're so blind to what the world is really like."

"I am not! What are you talking about?"

"Fine, you're not. You have it all figured out. I'm an asshole. It's always my damn fault, anyway. I'm always the one that asks, the one that leaves, the one that everyone disapproves of. So, fuck it. If you want it to be done, Let's be fucking done. I won't bother you again." Draco wrenched open the door to her office. Before she could say a word, he was gone, the door shaking as it recovered from him slamming it behind him.

XXX

The next day, Hermione took off work. She could have gone. She was fine. She wouldn't have even seen him. There was no reason to, but she had the time off, and it was easier to just stay in her room, wrapped up in her bed with a book she had been neglecting for too long.

It was nearly lunchtime when Ginny came in, knocking on the open door as she stood in the entry. "Hermione."

"Yeah." She didn't look up from her book, she just stared down, not wanting to show Ginny her tear streaked face again.

GInny sighed softly and shut the door behind her. "Draco is at the Floo," she said quietly.

Hermione looked up, surprised. "I can't talk to him." Even if she wanted to, there was no way she was going to let him see how much he had affected her. And she did not want to. He had been an ass, well they both had, but they needed to just actually stick to their word for once and let this die.

"He seems really upset. I think he just wants to apologize," Ginny explained.

"Just - tell him I can't talk," Hermione repeated.

"Okay." Ginny nodded. " I'll tell him."

Hermione listened as Ginny walked back to the sitting room. She had left the door open, and Hermione could just hear the two voices.

"She isn't coming," Draco said. At his voice, fresh tears started to fall unbidden. She was about done with her emotions making her feel crazy today. They hadn't even been together. Well, she hadn't thought they were, but after their fight yesterday, whatever they had been was sounding more and more like a relationship that just hadn't gone into the real world. Why couldn't he have just said any of that before they reached this point? Why was he so insistent that they couldn't be together? It didn't really matter.

"She said she can't talk right now," Ginny told him.

"Yeah. I figured. Just tell her I'm sorry. I shouldn't have yelled at her, especially not at work."

"No, you really shouldn't have," Ginny said, but her voice was gentle, the same voice she had been using with Hermione.

"I just want her to know that I'm sorry." Hermione laid down, moved under the covers, and pulled them over her head, blocking out the faint words.

A few minutes later, she heard the sound of Ginny's feet moving across the floor and then felt the bed depress as she sat down. Ginny tugged the blankets down to crawl in next to her friend.

"Why does it feel like we broke up Gin?" she asked, tears rolling down her face to the pillow.

"Because you're in love with him." Ginny rubbed at her back gently.

"He's an idiot," Hermione told her.

"So is Harry, but I still love him."

"You're the one who told me to find a way to get over him." Hermione wasn't upset with Ginny. It wasn't her fault. None of this was. She'd just been trying to help.

"I know. I know I did." Ginny sighed. "I didn't … I think he might honestly care about you, and I didn't realize that before."

"He has a funny way of showing it then."

"I don't think he really knows how to do all this."

"That's not an excuse," Hermione told her. She didn't really want to feel bad for Draco right now, or see his side of things. She just wanted to mourn whatever had just died between them and move on. "Ron figured it out. If Ron can figure out how to be in a relationship with another human being, I'm pretty sure Draco could if he really cared to."

Ginny was silent for a few minutes, but then she spoke again in that same quiet voice."I just hate seeing you like this."

"I'll be fine. I just need to be miserable for a few days first," Hermione assured her.

"Can I bring you anything?"

"No. I'm fine."

"Can I stay here for a bit?"

"Yeah."

XOXO

Meg