WOOHOO! I hit 100 reviews! I've never done that on any story before (and I have stories published under 3 FF accounts and an AO3 account). Thank you soooooo much to everyone who has reviewed or added this story to your alerts and/or favorites! You motivate me to finish this story.
Hermione didn't see Harry again until Wednesday when he arrived in her office promptly at 11:30 a.m., carrying a takeout bag from their favorite sandwich shop. These weekly lunches in her office were something they'd done every Wednesday for as long as they'd both worked at the Ministry.
"Sorry I vanished like that Saturday night," Hermione apologized as she cleared a space off on her desk to set their lunch while Harry conjured a chair for himself on the opposite side of her desk. "Is Ginny terribly upset with me?"
"No, she understands why you left. We both do." Harry gave her a sympathetic look as he started to unpack their lunch onto the desk.
Hermione knew what they thought had happened, but it was far easier to let them believe that she had left because she was upset about Ron and Lavender than to admit the truth. Her eyes shifted to the office door Harry had left open and settled on Draco where she could see him sitting at his desk in conversation with another wizard who worked on their floor.
He must have felt her eyes on him because he glanced her way and smirked when their eyes met before returning his attention to whatever the other man was saying.
Her cheeks flushed slightly. It was positively sinful, the way he could make her feel with just a look.
Fortunately, Harry hadn't noticed the exchange as he'd been digging everything out of the takeout bag, but he did notice the peculiar expression on her face when he looked back at her. "You alright, 'Mione?"
"Yes. Fine." She unwrapped her sandwich and took a bite. "Thanks for grabbing lunch today. Next week is on me."
It wasn't lost on Harry that she was clearly trying to change the subject. "Are you sure you're alright? You know that Ginny and I are always here if you want to talk."
"Really, Harry, I'm great." Hermione insisted. "Ron and I were over before we were ever actually...over. If that makes any sense. Maybe we were good together in the beginning, but we wanted different things in life and neither one of us was ready to admit the spark just wasn't there anymore. It was partially my fault as well for staying when I knew it wasn't working, but I thought maybe we were just at a low point...I just didn't want to feel like I'd wasted six years of my life. Yes, it was a bit of an adjustment at first to suddenly go from getting ready to check "marriage" off the five-year plan to single...and to have it happen in such an awful public way, but maybe it really was for the best."
Harry nodded. He'd gotten the sense that things weren't going as well at the end as they had in the beginning, but he'd been so happy to have his best friends marrying each other that he'd looked past it. "And what about your living arrangements? Ginny told me you'd gone to look at apartments last weekend."
That gave Hermione pause. She'd nearly forgotten about the flat she'd gone to look at Saturday afternoon after everything that had happened afterward. "Someone else got it first," she lied. "But that's alright. There will be other places in the future. I'm fine where I'm at right now."
"Which is staying at Malfoy's house still?"
"Don't you dare start with that, too, Harry."
"No, I don't mean anything by it...It's just not where I would have expected you to go."
"Well, it's not like I had many other options at the time. And he'd a lot different now than he was in school."
"I believe you, but you know Ginny and I would have been happy to have you stay with us until you could get back on your feet."
"I know, but I couldn't possible intrude on you two, especially with the baby coming so soon."
"There's still a month and a half until James makes his appearance. Isn't Malfoy getting married around the same time?"
Hermione paused with her sandwich halfway to her mouth. "That's not for three months. Plenty of time to find a place for myself."
"Hm." Harry adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose. "You do seem a lot happier..."
"I am. Being single...not having a plan for once in my life...Maybe it's good for me."
Draco woke early Sunday morning and quickly realized he wasn't in his own bed. He blinked a few times and the tousled chocolate curls spread across the pillow beside him slowly came into focus. That's right. He'd fallen asleep in Hermione's room the night before…
Hermione's room.
The thought gave him pause. When had he stopped calling it the guest room?
He supposed it was as much her room as it was anyone's. Apart from Blaise who had crashed there once when he was too drunk to go home one night, no one else had ever stayed in it and with her stuff all spread around the room, it seemed like she belonged there.
It would be strange to have the room empty again soon, he thought as he propped himself up on one elbow and looked down at her. Her eyelashes were fluttering gently and there was a small crease between her brows as she dreamed.
His eyes wandered over her face, the freckles sprinkled over her cheeks and nose, then her rosy lips, parted slightly while she slept. She was beautiful. He wasn't sure why it had taken him as long as it had to notice.
Draco pressed his lips to her forehead and the crease between her brows vanished as she rolled toward him, still sound asleep. He smiled slightly and eased himself out of the bed, careful not to wake her.
He was in an excellent mood as he headed downstairs to start breakfast. Even though it had scarcely been more than a week, he noticed that he always woke feeling refreshed whenever he slept in the same bed with her. Something about her kept the usual nightmares and insomnia at bay.
When breakfast was ready, he set both plates at the table alongside two mugs of coffee before returning upstairs to wake her. He found the bed empty, however, and followed the sounds of movement to the open door of her bathroom.
She'd clearly just emerged from the shower. The steam still lingered in the air and she was standing in front of the mirror wrapped only in a towel while she applied a light layer of mascara to her lashes.
Draco smirked and crept up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist from behind and pulling her body back against his. He pressed his lips to her exposed shoulder and then to the side of her neck. "There's breakfast downstairs, but I think it's going to have to wait…" he murmured between kisses.
She chuckled and leaned into him before turning in his arms to face him, her hands coming up to brace against his chest... "As tempting as that sounds, I've got brunch plans with Ginny and Luna today...And you're going to make me late."
His fingers were already trailing over the bare skin of her thighs, moving higher toward the hem of her towel. "I'll be quick, then."
Hermione lost whatever will she had to protest as his mouth claimed hers and he walked her backwards until she was pressed between his body and the wall behind her. She shivered as the towel was whisked away, though it was more from anticipation than the chill.
It wasn't long before his clothes had joined her towel in a crumpled heap on the floor and her legs were wrapped around his waist while he thrust into her.
Her hands clutched at his shoulders while she kissed him hard on the mouth before her head tipped back against the wall and the sounds she had been holding back echoed off the walls of the room. His lips dropped down to the side of her neck, sucking and gently biting while his hands changed position on her thighs, getting better leverage until they were both falling over that edge together.
Draco and Hermione were still breathing heavily as she unwound her legs from his waist and he gently lowered her back to the ground, hands brushing over her hips and then waist before he took a step back and smirked.
She was about to ask what was so amusing before she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror and the mark he'd left on the side of her neck. Her hand flew up, fingertips gently touching the spot, and he chuckled.
"Now I'm really going to be late." She sighed and picked up her wand, casting a concealment charm to cover the mark while he pulled his clothes back on.
"Don't act like you didn't enjoy it."
Her eyes met his in the mirror as she repeated the charm until it was strong enough to cover the mark entirely. "I'm not going to dignify that with a response," she said, but the corners of her mouth twitched upward, giving her away.
"I'll put your coffee in a to go cup for you," he said as he pulled his last article of clothing back on and left the room.
Hermione fixed the damage done to her hair by their escapades and grabbed the outfit she'd laid out before her shower. Her eyes widened when she caught sight of the time. Hermione Granger was never late, but it seemed there was a first time for everything.
She was dressed and downstairs in under five minutes and Draco held her coffee out to her and she said a quick "thank you" as she rushed past him to the fireplace to floo to Diagon Alley and walk over to where she was meeting her friends.
She took a sip of the coffee as she stepped out into Diagon Alley. It was bloody perfect, and she was left to wonder how he knew just how she liked her coffee when she was always the one who made their coffees before work.
Ginny and Luna were already seated at a table with a plate of fruit and cheese in front of them. They gave her a strange look as she dropped into the remaining seat.
"We were starting to worry about you," Ginny said. "You're never late."
"Sorry, I just lost track of time this morning."
"Are you feeling alright?" Luna asked, genuine concern in her expression. "Your lips are swollen like you've had an allergic reaction."
Hermione's eyes widened, and her hand shot up to feel her lips, mentally cursing Luna's observational skills. She caught Ginny giving her 'the look' across the table and averted her eyes.
"I'm fine, Luna. What did I miss?"
Luna just looked back at her with a serene smile and Hermione got the feeling she knew more than she was letting on. She looked back at Ginny for an explanation.
"Luna here is seeing someone, but she won't say who." Ginny said.
"It's bad luck to talk about a new relationship in the first month." Luna said simply as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
Ginny shook her head slightly, clearly exasperated with all the secrecy from her two friends. She supposed she should consider herself lucky that she and Harry had fallen in love and married so young.
Two weeks had passed since they'd reached their new agreement and Hermione felt more confident and desirable in those two weeks than she had during the entire six years she had dated Ron. The feeling was addictive.
In those two weeks, she was certain they'd had sex in every room of the house at least once...some more than once, of course.
More than anything, though, she couldn't believe how fast time had suddenly seemed to move. There had been six months until Draco's arranged marriage to Astoria was scheduled to take place on the day of her own failed wedding. Now, there were only three months remaining which meant two months until the deadline she had set for their current...arrangement. There was really no better way to explain it than that.
They didn't talk about his impending nuptials, but they talked about everything else freely and Hermione had come to genuinely enjoy his company.
On this particular evening, they'd lit a fire in the living room fireplace to ward off the chill in the autumn air. They were reclining on the couch, a tangle of limbs after their recent lovemaking. Hermione was resting with her back against his chest and blanket pulled up over the them fighting to keep her eyes open due to a combination of the warmth from the fireplace and exhaustion. The fingers he was running gently through her hair weren't helping either.
She let her own fingers wander in an attempt to keep from drifting off to sleep just yet, allowing them to absentmindedly stroke the smooth and unblemished skin of his forearm...his left forearm.
Her fingers went still when she realized. How had she not noticed before now?
"It took a few years, but eventually it faded away on its own," he said, as if reading her thoughts.
"That's incredible," she said, marveling at the magic behind it. She wondered what it was about the spell that cast the mark that allowed it to fade away like that. "Mine didn't," she commented, flipping her own left arm over to show the word Mudblood, white and pale against her pink skin, but still visible nonetheless.
His fingers grazed over her scar, bitterly recalling where she'd gotten it. "I'm sorry... I should have done something to stop her... I should have— "
"It's ok. I never expected you to help me and I never blamed you for not doing anything. We weren't even friends then and even if you had tried to stop her, it wouldn't have worked. You'd have just been putting yourself at risk."
"Still, I should have…."
She cut him off again before he could continue blaming himself for something that was so far in the past. "We were just kids, then, you know. It didn't seem like it when we had so much weight on our shoulders, but we were and we both did the best we could in our situations."
"I could have done better," he said. She couldn't see his face, but his voice sounded strained.
"You did what you could do. You saved us from being killed that day. I never understood, though...You knew it was us. Even if you couldn't recognize Harry through the stinging hex's effects, you knew it was Ron and I, but you didn't tell them...You could have. Your family would have been rewarded for it, but you didn't...why?" It was a question that had plagued her quite a bit in the aftermath of the war, particularly when she'd seen him at Hogwarts again after she'd returned for her seventh year. She never had the nerve to walk up and ask him, then, though.
Something about her question must have struck a nerve because he was suddenly getting off the couch and walking away from her.
She didn't follow.
If he didn't want to talk about it, she wouldn't force him to. She pulled the blanket tighter around herself to make up for the lost warmth from his body heat and gazed into the flames, intending to head upstairs to her own room after enough time had passed that he wouldn't think she was following him to continue the conversation.
A/N So I had most of chapter 11 written the same day I published chapter 10. It was going great and even had an appearance from *gasp* Astoria. Then I realized that I couldn't just skip that much time, so I went back and wrote this new chapter 11 (which does include one scene from the old) and what I had originally written will appear in a later chapter.
