Chapter 11: No

It was a long and boring shift, and nothing had come along to make Draco feel better. It was finally time to close, and he'd just finished washing the dishes when someone started banging on the window.

"Oi, Drake!" He turned around to see Will waving from outside, pointing at the door. He crossed the shop and unlocked it, and the man stepped inside and looked around. "Hey, this place is a bit creepy at night."

"It's not that bad," Draco said. "What are you doing here?"

"Bee said you'd been acting funny lately." He lifted a hand and intentionally mussed his hair, like he was worried it had gotten too neat. "I thought you might benefit from a night out on the town."

Draco pretended he needed to think about it. "That sounds all right," he said, acting casual.

"That's the spirit." Will threw an arm across Draco's shoulders and made to lead him outside.

"I still have to close the shop," he said, trying to break free of the hold.

"Did you wash the dishes?" He nodded. "Then everything else will be fine. I'll tell Bee it was my fault if you like – she knows I can be a bad influence from time to time."

He surveyed the shop, and it was mostly clean. There was nothing that would upset Bianca in the morning. "Fine," he said. "Where are we going?"

"We're going to get drunk," Will said. His enthusiasm would usually be contagious, but Draco was gloomy enough to deflect it. "And if that doesn't help, we'll think of something else."

"Good idea." It wasn't going to fix anything, but it would solve the problem of tonight.

"And, as a happily married bloke, I'm the perfect wingman. Would you like me to get you laid?" he offered conversationally. It was tempting, although he knew from experience that meaningless sex was only a temporary distraction. Will was so theatrical that he could probably attract women in droves; it might even work better than Blaise's patented aloof-with-perfect-bone-structure strategy.

"I'll think about it," he said.

"You're not seeing anybody right now, are you?" He shook his head. "Just checking." Will kept up a consistent stream of one-way conversation as he led Draco down the street to the Leaky Cauldron, speaking at length about how excited he was about his baby.

Once at the pub, he seemed to decide that he was more interested in furthering Draco's genetic material. They claimed a table and ordered their first round, and he began to ask Draco's opinion of various women. He told Draco the plan: they'd scope out the room first and then go talk to his favourites. The drinks kept coming, and by the time Will had pointed out every petite brunette in the room, Draco was beginning to get suspicious. And drunk.

"Do you think I have a type or something?" He swirled the Firewhiskey in his glass, trying to remember how many he'd had.

"What do you mean?" Will asked, playing innocent.

"All the women you've asked me about so far have looked very similar." Three? Four? No, it was more than that. It kept spinning on its own after he stopped swirling it around. Will acted like he was offended.

"Now, that's not fair," he said. "Each of those lovely women is her own individual, with her own personal sense of –"

"Knock that off. What are you playing at?"

Will held up his hands like surrender, but Draco didn't buy it. "I was just trying to see what you like, mate. You've liked them all so far, so I think I'm moving in the right direction, but we can branch out a bit if you want. What about her?" he asked, indicating a curvaceous redhead.

"Pretty fit, but she looks like a Weasley."

"All right. Her?" Will tilted his jaw to point out a tall, willowy blonde in a black velvet dress.

"She looks too much like my mum," he said.

"See, we're back where we started." Will was fairly drunk by now, too, and his tongue was even looser than usual. "I'm just going to go back to my original plan of pointing out every woman who reminds me of Jane until you admit it."

"Oh, come on," he pleaded.

"No, you come on! Do you know what Meg and Bee talk about when you aren't around? I'll give you a hint: the answer is you. And do you want to know what they say about you?" He shook his head. "I'm going to tell you anyway. Now, don't be offended, but they say that you're all grey and stormy, and the only time you look happier is when you see Jane. When I was coming in to spy on you – sorry about that, by the way – I noticed it, too: most of the time, you look really tense and serious. Then, at the Phoenix Day dinner, it was this whole different Drake, glancing up every point-four seconds to search for the back of Jane's head in the crowd." As he spoke, Will performed an unflattering impression of Draco looking for Hermione, and he had to look away. "Tom asked me later if you two were dating. He thought the surname thing was an inside joke or something, but I got all the social skills in our family, so who knows what's going on in that brain of his."

Draco opened his mouth to reply, thought better of it, and instead lifted his glass to take a long drink.

"Here's what we're going to do," Will continued. "We'll forget about meeting new women and work on hooking the one we already know."

Draco still didn't feel like responding verbally.

"My wife thinks she'll say 'yes' if you ask her out."

"That's very unlikely," he said at last. He wasn't going to do it, but if he did, it wouldn't work.

"Why not? Bee knows her pretty well – they're practically best friends these days."

"They are? What happened to Harry Potter?" the alcohol asked, on Draco's behalf.

"I guess they're still close, but Jane doesn't see him as much as she used to. From what I've heard, he says he's busy with his new baby, but that didn't happen with his first kid, and I don't intend to avoid my best mates for a full six months after my son or daughter enters the world. The ladies think he's avoiding her because he still hangs out with that Weasley bloke all the time, and because Jane was none too happy when he left her alone at the Ministry. But take this with a grain of salt, seeing as I've never personally met him. These are just things I hear, and I do hear a lot of things."

"Well, Bianca's a whole hell of a lot better than those two, so good for Granger," he said. Maybe Hermione was trying to reinvent her image, too. "Either way, I still don't think she'd go out with me."

"You think she just sees you as a friend?"

"What? No, she sees me as an enemy."

Will sighed dramatically and placed a hand over his heart. "That's a relief. You had me worried for a second there. It would be an issue if she thought you two were best mates, and I might have to set you up with one of those lookalikes in here. No, enemy is fine. We can get past that." Draco started to interrupt him, since he clearly didn't understand the gravity of the situation, but he ignored Draco's attempts and continued his monologue. "Let me tell you about the first conversation I ever had with my wife. I'd seen her around in our Hogwarts days, and I thought she was just about the most interesting girl in school. I knew some things about her because she was Head Girl – she was in Ravenclaw, and those Ravenclaw ladies tend to be a bit exclusive about who they'll see. I was in Gryffindor, but I was still afraid to talk to her. I was pretty sure she'd think I was completely an idiot, which she probably does, but you'd never get her to admit it. I can just tell.

"Anyway, short story longer and longer, I never thought I'd see her again until I got my internship at the Prophet. She was a staff writer at the time – now she writes books, which is how she first met Jane, by the way. They collaborated on a book about Transfiguration. I was a bit nervous the first time I talked to her at work, and I made this awful joke about Hufflepuffs. She said, 'my mum was a Hufflepuff!' and I just kept talking and talking, and by the time I finally shut up, she pretty much hated my guts. I asked her out anyway, and she asked for my full name, and I told her. Then, she said: 'William Gregory Ward, I will never go out with you,' and that time she meant it."

Draco was still trying to interrupt, but it wasn't working. He was too drunk, for one, and it was like trying to stop a speeding train before it burst through the wall into his living room.

"I didn't give up, though. I kept trying to talk to her, and she said that a few more times, but then I hatched a plan. You might think this feeling you've got about Jane is just a little crush, but I doubt it – nobody just has a crush on a woman like that. It'd be a waste of your time. You've got to get your mind set on it and really do your best. Anyway, my dad was Muggle-born, so he showed us movies when we were growing up, and something that Muggles almost always do when they love someone is show up at their house and play music. I thought that was a pretty sweet little trick, but I didn't want to stalk a lady to her personal residence.

"So, I got my guitar, and I showed up at her office one day when she was just about to leave for lunch, and I played "You Really Got Me" by a Muggle band called The Kinks. The whole office crowded around to watch, mostly because I told them to, and she was so embarrassed, but she was smiling. She said it one more time – 'William Gregory Ward, I will never go out with you' – but that time she didn't mean it. I think enemies can be a better starting point than friends."

Draco tried to process all that information in his inebriated brain, and one thing stood out above the rest. "Maggie was a Hufflepuff?"

"That's what you got out of that?" Will asked incredulously.

"Most of it doesn't really apply to me – Granger and I are serious enemies. I've made tonnes of offensive jokes to her and about her, on purpose, but that's not the main reason. My family members have used Unforgivable Curses on her."

"Have you?"

"No, but –"

"There you go. She can't hold you accountable for what your crazy relatives did, and that was a long time ago – from seeing you two together, it looks like you're about where I was with Bee the second or third time she said she'd never go out with me. That means you've only got a couple more rejections to go before she decides you're determined enough to be worth some of her time."

The waitress returned just then to tell them the place was closing, so Draco didn't have to respond. They paid their tabs and headed for the Floo room, where Will grabbed his hand and initiated some kind of modified handshake that was exceptionally confusing in his current mental state.

"This was fun," Will said. "Do you want to go out with Tom and me and a few of our mates this weekend?"

"All right," he said. "Send me an owl about it."

"Good. And think about what I said."

Draco nodded and stepped into the Floo. He decided that if Will wanted to talk about Hermione again on the weekend, he'd probably just leave, because his whole goal was to stop thinking about her. Maybe he'd have to start over from scratch and make new friends who didn't know her; maybe in another country where they'd never even heard of her, or perhaps aliens from another planet who didn't know any humans at all.

There was an owl on the windowsill at his house, and he wondered how long the bird had been waiting. He disentangled the parchment from its leg and shooed it away as he read the short note:

Come to the place when it opens. Bring J.D., but keep a copy.

It was unsigned, but he knew it was from Hermione, and she must have been referring to the Dawlish photos. He stared at the note and considered his options. If he didn't do it, she'd never trust him and probably never like him. She would think he was a coward forever, but she wouldn't give up on her mission, so she'd still be in danger. His father wouldn't be in trouble, though.

If he did it, he was at the risk of becoming even more involved, both with this and with her, and he'd better hope his father was in prison if he ended up going out with Hermione Granger. His mother probably loved him too much to disown him, but she wouldn't like it, either. He would lose his original two friends, and he and Hermione might not work anyway. He would end up with two friends all over again – Will and Maggie, assuming Bianca sided with Hermione after their break-up – and the whole cycle would begin anew.

Both options were terrible, and so he tried to strike a compromise that was only "bad." Eventually, he made a decision: he'd give Hermione this one file, and then he'd hide the rest of them and tell her she was on her own.

He prepared the duplicate file and collapsed onto his bed.

He made himself a hangover potion the next morning, and it took the edge off. He arrived at the Raven a few minutes after it opened, and Hermione was already waiting.

She was holding a cup of coffee and fidgeting with her hair, poking at the back of it with her wand. She wasn't casting a spell to make it less frizzy (did one exist? Draco wasn't sure); she was just tapping it, over and over. He was impressed by her wand control: most people with a habit like that would have blown off their own heads by now. He pictured Hermione running in circles with her hair on fire, which was quite funny, and he had to turn his face down so she wouldn't see his smile. He wondered if he could still be a good person someday without losing his sick sense of humour. Hermione would know, but it wasn't like he could ask her.

"Granger," he said, once he'd collected himself.

"Good morning, Malfoy." Her hand stopped its tapping, and she gave him a polite smile and dropped her wand into her pocket. "Did you bring me anything?"

He held up the folder. She was crackling with excitement, so intense that he had to look away.

"Good," she said. "I'm going to visit an old associate, and it would be impolite to show up empty-handed."

That didn't sound good. "You're going to visit him by yourself?"

"Actually, I was hoping you'd go with me."

He didn't want to do that, but he wanted even less for her to go alone. Even worse, he could practically feel himself getting sucked in again: what if he left right now, and something terrible happened, and it was all his fault? Enough terrible things were his fault already, and he didn't want to start adding to the list again.

"Won't it look strange if we just walk in there together?" he asked, trying to stall. It didn't sound too hard, though. They would go in, meet with Dawlish, and get out. Draco would just stand behind her and look intimidating. He didn't have anything better to do today, anyway, and at least it would be mildly entertaining.

"Nobody's going to see us come in," she said. He guessed she must have known some kind of secret way to Dawlish's office because he couldn't think of a way to sneak into the Ministry.

"If I don't go, you're going by yourself?" he confirmed.

"Correct," she said, and he winced. She smiled at him, and he reckoned she knew what he was going to say. He reckoned she'd convinced him, but then he remembered that she hadn't said much of anything. In fact, he had more or less convinced himself.

"Fine, I'll go," he muttered. No use overanalyzing.

"Let's leave from the back room," she said. She didn't seem surprised at all that he was going with her.

As they approached the door, Bianca stepped in front of it and folded her arms. "You are not using this coffee shop for any more secret meetings until you tell me what's going on," she declared.

Hermione moved forward and touched Bianca's arm. "It's not that we want to keep you in the dark –"

"He does," she snapped, indicating Draco with a jerk of her head. She was absolutely correct, so he didn't try to argue or anything. Hermione gave him an admonishing look, and he shrugged.

"It's just that we've got to make sure we have all the information before we tell anybody about it. Please, Bianca, just trust me on this. When the time is right, you'll be the first to know." Draco was thinking it was an exemplary piece of manipulation, but then he realised she was maybe just being honest.

Bianca didn't agree right away, and Draco hoped that her trust for Hermione would outweigh her suspicions about his involvement. "If it's that important, you can use this room today," she said, relenting. "But my dad comes in at ten, and mum's here in the mornings on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. If you need to do this again, you have to make sure that neither of them finds out. Mum would worry herself sick about you two."

"Thanks, Bianca. You won't regret this," Hermione said, and the other woman moved aside to let them pass.

Once they'd locked the door and silenced it, Hermione pulled an ancient-looking folded garment out of her bag, and Draco did a double take. It looked like an Invisibility Cloak, but those were so rare that he'd only ever seen drawings in books.

"Is that what I think it is?" he asked, and she nodded. "Where did you get one of those?"

"I borrowed it from a friend," she said, and Draco thought he could guess which one she meant, that lucky bastard. He wondered how she'd gotten hold of it, though, considering she and Potter weren't as close as they used to be. Maybe he was wrong, and it was Longbottom's cloak or something – ha, good one.

"All right, so here's the plan. We enter the Ministry under the cloak and sneak into Dawlish's office. I'll come out and ask him a few questions, but you stay hidden just in case he tries anything. Can I have the photos?"

He handed her the file, and she glanced at the first shot and pulled a face. "Ew," she remarked insightfully. That about summed it up. She deactivated the spells on the door and showed him her determination. "Are you ready?"

He didn't respond, but she didn't wait for an answer. She unfolded the cloak and wrapped it around herself, beckoning for him to join her. He stepped under it cautiously, and then they were very close together. He had to hunch down a little bit to keep his feet hidden, and his head was almost resting on her shoulder with her back nearly flush against his chest. He took a deep breath, and her back straightened when he let it out against her ear. He didn't think she had breathed yet at all, and he reckoned this arrangement was probably making her pretty uncomfortable. He was getting a little bit uncomfortable, too, if you catch the drift. "All right," she whispered, turning her head so that her lips came close to brushing his cheek. "I'll have to Apparate both of us together. They haven't deactivated my pass yet."

The Ministry had finally gotten rid of the strange toilet system of entry, and now any individual with an authorized token could Apparate directly into the Atrium during business hours. She reached a hand out to her side. He took it, and he was pretty sure he felt her squeeze his hand right before his world flipped, stretched, contracted, and spun.

They landed hard on slippery tile in the lobby, and he had to grab her around the waist to stay upright under the cloak. She stumbled a half step forward, and he held his breath for a second as they stood perfectly still to make sure no one heard the scuffle. It didn't seem like anyone took a second glance at the spot they were standing, and he felt her relax against him.

"You can let go of me now," she whispered. He jerked his hands away like she was on fire, creeping backwards to place a few centimetres between them. Who knew invisibility cloaks were so warm? he wondered, tugging at his collar.

She walked slowly and quietly, and they fell into step as she led him to Dawlish's office. It was a stressful trip with a few near-miss incidents, but he was pretty sure the sleepwalking early risers at the Ministry would have barely noticed if he reached out and punched them with an invisible fist, unless he managed to spill their precious coffee in the process. A few were so hopped up on Pepper-Up that their wide eyes twitched erratically in the direction of the muffled footsteps, but most of them were stumbling forward with their eyes nearly closed.

Hermione was able to open the locked door of the office, and they stepped into the dark room and closed the door behind them. "Dawlish is always late," she whispered, "but he should be here soon. He always closes the door, too, so nobody will see that he isn't working."

They huddled into a corner to wait. Draco used the time to reinvestigate that smell in her hair, but he still couldn't figure out what it was.

After a few minutes, the man of the hour ambled in and closed the door, just as Hermione had predicted. He hummed under his breath as he used his wand to turn on the lights, with a pep in his step. Well, at least he got to be in a good mood for a few minutes this morning, Draco thought deviously. When he turned to hang up his hat, Hermione stepped forward and disarmed him from behind. Dawlish froze in place as his wand flew out of his hand.

"Turn around," she instructed. She kept her own wand trained on her former boss and pocketed the extra one, and Draco had to admit he was impressed with her neat little display.

"Oh, not you – anyone but you," he whined when he saw her, with his hands on either side of his head. "I thought I was done dealing with you."

In Draco's opinion, Dawlish was an idiot if he'd really believed that for a minute. If he had killed Hermione, she probably would have haunted him for all eternity – she never gave up on anything, even when quitting was a good idea.

"I've come across some interesting pictures of you, Mr. Dawlish. I'm certain you know which ones I mean," she said. He looked like he was about to deny it for a second, but then he caught sight of the file in her hands and panicked.

"Where did you get those?" he demanded. "Merlin, the two things I thought were never going to bother me again. What a day!"

"It doesn't matter where I got these, but I do know who else has them," she said. "How about you tell me your side of the story?"

She was mocking him, and Dawlish could barely hide his anger. Her back was to Draco, but he could picture the smug smile on her face. Dawlish broke eye contact to seek an escape, but he seemed to surmise correctly that he wouldn't have time to reach the door before a spell hit him. Instead, he attempted an ingratiating look and began to grovel.

"I've made some mistakes in my life. So, I love women – big deal." He shrugged and spread his fingers, showing his open palms. "That doesn't make me a monster. I didn't want to work with the Death Eaters, but they came to me during the Second War, and they had these photos that would have put me in prison. I didn't know those girls were underage," he said, and Hermione made a disgusted noise.

"Anyway, I had no choice but to cooperate," he continued. "I thought it would end after You-Know-Who was defeated, but it didn't. They said the photos would be released if they went to Azkaban, so I pardoned them, and then I was paying them off and passing legislation on their behalf. We got rid of all the Order members and complied with all their demands, but they still weren't satisfied." He rolled his eyes dramatically, to emphasise what a headache this had been for him. "Finally, a few of us got together and realised that nobody had seen a photo for years, so we told them we weren't going to work for them anymore unless they showed us the pictures again. They still haven't. Believe me, if I had known they didn't have access to what they said they did, I never would have pardoned them."

That explained why his father suddenly wanted that box: the blackmail targets had finally called his bluff. To keep himself out of prison, he would need to prove he had evidence against them, which would be tricky because he didn't. Draco also noted that Dawlish was lucky Hermione wasn't holding an empty folder, seeing as he'd just given her everything she would have needed against him. It was too bad she hadn't known he was so malleable, or she could have faked him out years ago.

"Has the Ministry been paying money to these individuals?" she asked.

"The Ministry hasn't, but we have out of our own pockets."

"Then technically the Ministry has, if you count the pay raises you've given yourselves over the years. Give me names." He waffled briefly, but eventually he caved under what Draco assumed was a pretty intense glare.

"Lucius Malfoy, Jarvis Nott, Hector Crabbe, and Oliver Goyle."

Draco could have told her that: those were the only four known Death Eaters to escape prison after the Second War, and it was obvious they had some tricks up their sleeves.

"Thank you," she said, again in that mocking tone. "I'm glad we had this talk. Oh, and I'll do you one better than the Death Eaters, just so you know I'm serious." She took out the first photo and held it up for his viewing pleasure, and he cringed. "Now, turn around, get on your knees, and place your hands behind your head," she ordered. He complied without another word.

Hermione motioned for Draco to follow her as she headed toward the door, placing Dawlish's wand behind his feet on the way out. She hurried back under the cloak as soon as they left the office, but Dawlish didn't follow them, and neither of them spoke until Hermione took his hand in the Atrium and Apparated them to the Shrieking Shack.

She did a little victory dance once they'd taken off the cloak, and he almost laughed at her, but it was over before he could blink. As though she'd never danced a second in her life, she returned to the business at hand.

"Why do you think only those four were in on the plan?" she asked. "Wouldn't they want as many people out of Azkaban as possible?"

"I thought about that, and I think it's because they're not well-known, with the exception of my father." He began to tick names off on his fingers as he spoke: "There were crowds of parents calling for the imprisonment of the Carrows after their stint at Hogwarts, and you can thank my aunt for making Lestrange a household name – all the blackmail in the world couldn't have kept Uncle Rodolphus on the streets. I think my father probably organised the scheme and only invited the safer options, which also happened to be his closest friends." He'd heard that those lucky four 'defected,' but he was never sure why it counted as defecting, since it happened in the last ten minutes of the War. He'd always thought that was just called 'knowing you're about to lose.'

"I guess I should have been thinking about this years ago," she said, shaking her head.

"At least you didn't lock yourself in a mansion for almost a decade," he pointed out dryly, and she smiled.

"That's true. Anyway, we're both doing something now, and I think it's going quite well." She looked at him strangely for a second, tilted her head, and nodded once. "High five," she said, holding up her right hand as though she were being sworn in for office.

"What?"

"Give me a high five – it's when you slap my hand," she explained. "Sometimes you miss, so it helps to line your elbow up with mine."

"Why would we want to do that? It sounds ridiculous."

"You only think so because you haven't tried it," she said. "Muggles do it when they're excited, or they've accomplished something through teamwork." She moved her hand closer and wiggled her fingers.

Well, fine. If she wasn't going to give up, he would get it over with. He carefully lined up his elbow across from hers and concentrated on her hand, and then he slapped it as she'd instructed. It felt funny, and he turned his hand around and looked at it like he'd never seen one before. She giggled at his reaction, and he shook his wrist to try and get the tingles off.

"Thank you for your help. I have to get this cloak back to my friend before he, er, notices it's gone," she said sheepishly. "I'll contact you soon."

Draco realised he'd either inadvertently signed up for her mailing list or added himself to the resistance movement, and no matter which one it was, his life was about to get full of extra junk. He kept thinking about what Will had said to him the previous night, though, and he figured he might as well get it over with now. Once she said 'no,' he could put it out of his mind.

"Wait," he said. It was surprisingly easy to do this, because he fully expected to be rejected. There wasn't that horrible "what if" factor, and the adrenaline was still coursing through his veins after their successful mission. "Would you like to go out with me?"

She looked at him like he had six heads, one of them was a turkey, and all of them were on fire.

"What?" she asked, frozen to the spot.

"I asked if you'd like to go out with me," he repeated. He kept his voice cool, like it didn't matter it at all.

"No!" she said. "Are you serious?"

"I'm serious."

"Well… no," she said again. The only part of her body that she seemed capable of moving was her eyeballs, as her gaze flitted randomly around the room.

"Any chance you'll change your mind?" he asked mildly.

"I don't think so," she said, and he nodded. Good, he thought. Now, the whole thing was finished. The next time she came round asking for his help, he'd tell her he was busy and send her on her way.

She gave him one last bewildered look and Disapparated.