Author note: Hey everyone! Thanks for staying along for the ride :) I appreciate any reviews or suggestions. Keep in mind that this is going to be a bit of a slow burn, but I'm planning on picking up the pace soon enough.
Thursday
Miss Granger,
I'm surprised you included The Tales of Beedle the Bard on your list of recommended reading. If you can believe it, it's a book I enjoyed immensely as a child. Until Lucius caught me reading it and decided that I was too old for that foolishness.
But I found it a refreshing addition to your other, heavier, suggestions. Thank you again.
D. Malfoy
...
Draco,
I'm happy you discovered it once again, then. I have a sentimental attachment to the book; Dumbledore gave me the copy that I own. Or rather, he left it to me. It played a key role in defeating the Dark Lord actually - maybe if Lucius had let you read it, you'd have been able to point us in the right direction all those years ago.
I'd be happy to provide another list of reading if you're already so far through the books you bought at the shop.
-Hermione Granger
...
Miss Granger,
That would be greatly appreciated. I'd be happy to stop by later in the week, if you're free. Term begins Monday and I'd like to have a few options in my office to keep me occupied during free periods.
I would also be interested in hearing more about the role that The Beedle played in the war if you ever want to spin your own tale. But don't feel obligated. It's a nice thought, that I was a bit closer to the light without realizing it.
D. Malfoy
...
Draco,
If you really want to re-live the war, I can tell you about the days we spent on the run. Although if you remember correctly, you interrupted us at the time. But it's good to know you weren't as far gone as we all feared you were.
Come by the shop whenever you're free. I'd like to hear about your first few days at Hogwarts. Once, a long time ago, I thought I'd find a place there myself.
PS - please call me Hermione.
Tuesday
Hermione wasn't sure why, but it irked her that Draco referred to her as Miss Granger. It was much too formal, and although she'd interacted with purebloods often in the wizarding world, she'd never get used to their heavy formalities.
Not that she wanted Malfoy to go back to calling her the "m" word, but she didn't like him like this either. At least back in Hogwarts there had been some life in that smirk of his. Now, when she thought back to the brief moments she'd seen him in the shop, the memory of his slouched shoulders made her frown.
She was tidying up a shipment at the shop when the owl that she'd come to associate with Draco swooped through the door and landed gracefully on the counter. It was a modest bird, well-mannered (not surprising, considering its owner) and dark in color, with startlingly gold eyes.
"Hello," she murmured to him, moving gently so as not to spook him. He blinked lazily up at her before offering a leg, where the note was tied securely.
After she removed it the owl hooted, took two hops, and soared back through the open door. Hermione stared after him.
"Well, I guess Mafloy isn't expecting a reply."
The note was short and to the point:
Hermione,
I didn't want to surprise you too much, so I thought I'd give you a heads up. I'll be arriving shortly straight from Hogwarts.
I wouldn't mind a cup of tea, if you happen to have the kettle on.
D.M.
Hermione glanced at the counter where she did, in fact, have the kettle on. She hurried back and dug out the box of assorted tea she kept there for just such occasions, sweeping up the order she'd been tidying and stacking it all carefully to the side. She'd just finished fluffing up the receipts and invoices when she heard the crack of apparition out in the street, and a few moments later Draco Malfoy stepped through the door.
"Hello," he said, glancing around as he moved carefully into the entranceway.
Hermione assumed he was looking to make sure that no one was around, and that, with the strange slump to his shoulders, made her mind for her.
"Hullo. I thought we might have tea out front, if you don't mind. I've been inside all day and could use the fresh air."
Draco seemed taken aback by her abrupt greeting and bustling. She levitated the tea kettle and two cups before her, carrying the box, and tilted her head at her guest as she passed to indicate that he should follow. He did.
Outside he was even more clearly ill-at-ease, and it was obvious that it must be the public he was avoiding. Two women walked by and stared a bit two long at the pair as Hermione settled into one of the chairs at the small set of patio furniture she kept out on the alley.
"Draco?" she asked, and her use of his first name seemed to startle him back to the moment.
He sat quickly and glanced around once more before taking the cup of tea that she offered, thanking her.
"So, how was the first day of term yesterday?" she asked conversationally, though the two of them were still easing into this strange acquaintance.
"It was...enlightening," he confessed, seeming to relax a bit. "Actually I never realized just how nervous the professors must be. Possibly even more nervous than the students."
"It went well, though?" Hermione asked, and she knew that he knew what exactly she was asking; had the students taken well to the fact that a Malfoy was teaching them?
"Well I'm not exactly inconspicuous," he muttered, dipping his head down and proving his point simultaneously. The low afternoon sunlight glinted off his blonde head, drawing her eyes. "Minerva made sure to stop in a few times during the day. She has been very welcoming."
Hermione tried to meet his eyes just as he was avoiding her gaze. When it was finally too awkward and possibly rude for him to continue, his glance held a guilt she hadn't expected to see. Where was the arrogance of the Malfoy family?
"You've paid more than enough," she said quietly, reaching a hand out toward his own but not touching his.
She meant literally, but figuratively as well. The Mafloy estate had been heavily fined to help pay for reparations. And during the trials, Draco had been forced to take veritaserum. She'd known it was necessary, but none of them had realized how weighted their classmates' memories would be. Crabbe had actually, to everyone's horror, begun crying as he talked about his father torturing him.
And although Mafloy's answers had hinted more toward Lucius preferring verbal and mental abuse, it was clear that his childhood hadn't been a happy one. Even with Narcissa shielding him, as she had so clearly tried to do at the family's trial.
Now the person sitting before her was no longer a child, but neither was he a complete man; he seemed not to have healed at all. It was like looking at a tree that had tried to grow up around some imposing object, and had ended up deformed.
"Where did you go, after?" she asked quietly.
Malfoy put his cup of tea down on the table and couldn't look away from her eyes.
"I was sent to France, with a probation officer. For my first two years there I worked for a medical company preparing potions. When my time was up, I stayed, and they let me tweak recipes for mass production. But mostly I worked on the harder, more rare potions."
Hermione watched his throat bob as he swallowed and waited to hear more. He seemed compelled to continue talking, as if they were in front of the Wizengamot again and he had been dosed with the truth serum.
"I just didn't want to sleep, then, I needed to stay occupied, and so I took on any potions that involved moonlight or special conditions. They let me travel a bit near the end. To collect rare ingredients mostly. And I would have continued to do so, except that then Professor - Minerva's letter arrived, and I felt like I needed to...to.."
"Tie up loose ends?" Hermione asked quietly.
She'd seen it before. Theodore Nott, although he'd been completely acquitted of any involvement in the war or with the dark wizards, had made the rounds shortly after and apologized to each and every person he could find. Crabbe as well, after a few years of therapy, had written letters; Harry, Ron, and Hermione had gotten one from him, though none had replied, preferring to keep silent. Even Pansy Parkinson publically apologized to Harry for wanting to turn him over at the end. She allowed quite a few papers to release a four-page long statement in which she repented for her actions and promised to move forward in a positive light, which she seemed to be doing via charities.
But Draco had disappeared so quickly that he'd missed any possible opportunity to make amends. And now he was back. And in front of her, at a bookshop that she owned.
All of it seemed so absurd.
"Do you find it ironic that you've succeeded where I've failed?" Hermione asked him bluntly, and Draco actually leaned back at her words.
"What -" he asked, and she cut him off, leaning in.
"Listen, Malfoy. I've had everyone tiptoeing around me since the day we won the war. Since the day they told me my parents wouldn't be back. You, of all people, I would expect to be honest with me. You owe me that."
They were both surprised by the bite in her words, but Hermione was determined. She stared into his startled eyes - grey, a very light grey, which she recalled noticing the day she'd punched him in the nose - and silently urged him on.
He swallowed quite visibly.
"You're right, Granger."
The world suddenly righted itself as he used her surname, a soft growl back in his voice. This was the beginning of the Malfoy she remembered.
"I owe you that, and much more. An apology, for starters. I know I didn't do that," he glanced at the white scar on her arm spelling out the slur, which she no longer tried to cover up with glamors or muggle make up, "but I could have said something that day, and I didn't. I could have been the one to let Potter out instead of the house elf. I could have tried to leave with you. But I stayed."
He leaned toward her, their faces only inches apart, the pair of them unaware that customers out for their evening shopping were slowing and staring.
"I stayed and I watched people we knew die on the floor of the Manor. Right where she carved into you. I may not be guilty, but I'm not innocent, either. And no," he continued, sitting back once more, "I don't find it ironic that I'm where I am and you're where you are. I find myself lucky. And you, perhaps luckier."
Hermione frowned, confused by his words.
How could she be lucky? Once, she had dreamt of running for Minister; of marrying Ron, of becoming Headmistress herself perhaps, of running charities and making speeches. But instead she hid out in a small, dim shop each day, surrounded by books, speaking to almost no one at all.
Draco rolled his sleeves up and she stared at his pale forearms, crisscrossed by thin scars not unlike her own.
"The students are scared of me," he said in a dead voice, "but I'm more scared of them."
"So use your name against them," Hermione replied.
Draco was shaking his head. "I don't ever want to intimidate anyone-"
"Stop being such a wanker," she interrupted. "You're stuck with the name, Malfoy. You can be intimidating without being cruel. You can be strong without being harmful. Stop letting everyone else tell you who you are. Your mother would be ashamed."
Draco sat across from Hermione Granger, staring at his former classmate, whose face was hard. He hadn't expected her to be so blunt. Actually, he'd rather thought she would gracefully accept his apology, and then they'd talk about books, and maybe she'd mention forgiveness and not living in the past and all of that hogwash that he'd heard a thousand times.
Instead she'd called him a wanker and practically challenged him to go back to being his old self.
He'd spent years fighting that back; ducking his head and keeping his mouth shut until the only thing still Malfoy-ish about him was his hair and the name on his vaults.
But looking at Granger, her own hair and eyes wild with a kind of crazed determination, was causing something buried deep inside of him to rise. She looked like she wanted to hit him just then.
And he found himself wanting to fight back; not against her, but against the world, and all of the people who were still telling him who to be.
