A/N: Not as long as the previous chapter, but trust me, the next chapter will make up for everything. Things are going to start happening pretty quickly so BUCKLE UP! HUUUUGEEEE huge thanks to all my reviewers as always, I LOVE YOU! You were all my motivation to get this chappie up. As always, let me know if there are grammatical errors (which horrify me) and I will fix 'er up. Also, I changed the summary. Whaddya think?

The Travesty of Human Fallibility

A few weeks had passed since the quarterly review, and Hermione still hadn't spoken to Harry. She'd had tea with Ginny several times, and even admitted some of her 'Malfoy troubles' to the younger witch. However, she was doubtful that any news of their interaction—and the fact that, technically, Hermione had taken Harry's advice—had managed to reach him at all. In fact, she wasn't sure that Ginny had spoken to Harry since the night he'd come over to her house.

That Wednesday, during her lunch break, she and Ginny had planned to grab a coffee together. Hermione decided to broach the subject then.

After they had settled at a comfortable table in an out of the way coffee shop in Diagon Alley, Hermione put down her drink. "So… I figure I should probably tell Harry that I'm sorry for blowing up at him…" She began, watching the other witch carefully.

Ginny frowned, stirring her cappuccino with her pinky. "Do what you like. I'm not sorry."

"Do you two…have a fight?" Hermione asked hesitantly.

"Well, I told you I hadn't been speaking to much since he initially told me about his crackpot plan… And after you came over, he came and tried to smooth things over, but—see, that's just the thing. It's so Harry. He just wants to smooth everything over, so that everybody's fine. Well, everybody's not fine!" Ginny cried, and then abruptly, a big fat tear rolled down the end of her nose. "Everything's not fine…not at all…" She said brokenly, and then began to sob into her hands.

Hermione rushed over to the other side of the table, embracing Ginny. "Oh, shh, don't cry," she hummed, as if it were Ophelia she were comforting, rather than a woman her own age.

"I can't help it," Ginny sobbed. "I always thought I wanted to get married, but it all happened so quickly. And, Hermione, no one ever tells you that being married isn't fun at all! I never get to see my friends, and Harry's not around that much… Oh, Hermione, and then he does all this ridiculously stupid and frustrating, idiotic stuff and I can't help but get angry at him."

"Shhh, shhh," Hermione whispered, stroking her hair.

"And the worst part is, I honestly don't know if it's going to work out. I really don't know!"

"Don't be silly. You've only had one fight! Nothing is irreparable."

Ginny pulled back, sniffling, and wiped her nose on the back of her hand. "Sometimes I just don't know. We're not as close as we used to be."

"Ginny, really, don't be ridiculous. One fight does not a marriage break."

"Maybe I don't want to be married anymore!"

There was silence, as Ginny clapped a hand over her mouth, looking shocked, and Hermione sat back in her chair, quietly digesting the information.

Finally, Ginny continued. "I know that this seems sudden, because it is our first fight, per se, but, Hermione, I've just been so unhappy this past year…" She trailed off. "I want my old life back."

"Well, Ginny, have you thought about...other options?" Hermione asked delicately.

"Other options?"

"Like, I don't know, counseling? From what I've been able to discern, marital problems are quite common, and a lot of people swear by couples counseling."

Ginny sniffled. "Sometimes I'm not sure I really want to make it work."

"Alright, that's quite enough of all this self-pity!" Hermione snapped. "You made a commitment to Harry, and you have two children. If you're unhappy, try to change the situation before leaping to all these drastic measures." She paused, and a frightening thought suddenly accosted her. "There's not…this isn't about someone else, is it Ginny?"

"Well, no-o, not really…"

"Ginny, if you're seeing someone else than this is much more serious than I thought it was."

"No!" Ginny cried. "No, not like that! I would never cheat on Harry. It's just…sometimes I wish there was, or could be? You know? In Hogwarts I had so many friends, and boys were always so interested in me, but there was only ever Harry… and there only has ever been Harry. We never even had a fight when we were dating, and then everyone started getting married, so, I mean, I guess we just thought that's what we were supposed to do."

Hermione shook her head, running the back of her hand across her forehead. "Gods, Ginny," she said. "I don't know what to tell you. My life's a mess. Ophelia's unhappy at school, there's been disaster after disaster at work, Malfoy's stalking me like his next meal, I haven't spoken to Harry in three weeks, Ron's in rehab, you're having marital problems—look at us all. What's become of us?"

"I don't think it's meant to be this way. It's supposed to be exciting and fun to be grown up and living on your own. You're supposed to have loads of beaus and go to parties and drink too much all the time."

Hermione smiled a bit at that. "Well, I always knew it was going to be hard work," she said. "I suppose I just didn't expect so many personal problems."

"Do you feel like Malfoy ruined your life?" Ginny asked curiously.

"I used to think that," Hermione confessed. "I used to hate him with every fiber of my being, and curse the day he was born. But it's strange, you know? I saw him one day, just in Diagon Alley, nowhere special, and it was like this huge revelation. I almost…looked forward to seeing him again." She took a breath, playing with her long-abandoned coffee mug, searching for the right words. "It's like…he's the spice."

"The spice?"

"He's the spice to my everyday life," Hermione clarified. "Everything is sort of bland, and normal, and then Malfoy is added and suddenly I'm sweating like crazy and need to wash out my mouth so that things can go back to normal. I mean, that's an extended metaphor, but every time Malfoy enters the equation things blow up—people go crazy. I go crazy."

"If that's the case, then I envy you."

"You, in your stable, comfortable life, envy me?"

"What you have, Hermione, what you have is what people crave! It's the tempestuous romance people spend their whole lives looking for, the by-the-novel sort of passion."

Hermione shook her head emphatically. "First of all, I have no romance. There is nothing about my hectic, stressful life that I would wish upon anyone else."

"Except a certain incredibly attractive Draco Malfoy," Ginny said slyly. Hermione colored.

"There's nothing between us. It's awkward and stilted, he's a total asshole and for some reason is just sort of…"

"Seductive." Ginny finished for her. "Just sort of inherently…seductive."

"I think it's a Slytherin trait," Hermione laughed. "You should have seen how Blaise Zabini tried to chat up the Healer internees. One of the sickest people I've ever seen in my life and he's cracking lewd jokes with them about storage closets."

"Did he try to chat you up?"

"Merlin, no! Malfoy is my only harasser at the moment, thank you very much."

"Is he really harassing you that much anymore?"

Hermione ran a hand through her hair. "Oh, it's all just so very stressful where he's concerned. The other day—Merlin, Ginny, I told you about—well, nevermind."

"No! You can't just do that—tell me!"

"Ugh, okay, the other day I had to meet Malfoy for the quarterly review, right? So I showed him to the empty conference room and we were about ten minutes early."

Ginny shook her head, murmuring "classic" under her breath.

"And there was this big empty table in the middle of the room, and I kept looking between it and him—and all I could think about was—" By this point Hermione approximately resembled a radish. Ginny broke out in to hysterical shrieks of laughter, causing other patrons of the small shop to look over at their table strangely.

"Oh—my—god," she gasped. "You—wanted—Malfoy—on the conference room table!" She yelped delightedly.

"Ginny, shhh!" Hermione hissed, turning, if possible, even redder. Ginny merely laughed harder, wiping tears from her eyes.

"Hahaha, oh, oh dear, oh Hermione, this is too much." When she finally calmed down, she looked at Hermione seriously. "Girl, you've got it bad."

"I don't 'have' anything," Hermione said tartly. "I simply, uh, am mildly attracted to Malfoy. That's all."

"Whatever you say."

"Don't say it in that tone!"

"What tone?" Ginny asked innocently.

"That tone! The one that implies you don't believe a word I'm saying!"

"Did I do that?"

"Stop it!" Hermine said helplessly. "I don't like Malfoy! I just want to sleep with him!"

An elderly man sitting at the table next to theirs gave Hermione a scandalized look. She buried her face in her hands.

"Anyways," she said finally. "This wasn't even supposed to be about me. It was supposed to be about you."

"What about me? My life's boring, I prefer to hear about yours," Ginny said, with an airy affect that fooled neither of them.

"I just want you to know," Hermione took one of Ginny's hands and squeezed it, "that if you ever need anything—my couch is yours, and I'm always here to lend an ear."

Ginny smiled weakly. "Thanks. For now I think I'm just going to see where things take me…" She was silent for a moment, and then looked at Hermione. "But I'm not going to go with the flow forever. That's what got me here in the first place."

"I'm not encouraging passivity," Hermione said. "Just remember—it's never easy."

"Life," was all Ginny said in response, shrugging. "It sucks."

888888888888888

Harry walked, or rather dragged, himself from his small office in to the corridor.

"More…coffee…" He groaned to himself, internally excusing the furthering of an already large addiction due to the monumentally awful few weeks he'd been having. Ginny hadn't spoken to him since "The Fight," as he had begun to refer to it, and he hadn't even seen Hermione since he'd attempted to talk her in to Malfoy. Add to it all that he was supposed to visit Ron, with Hermione, in a few days, and he was in a right royal mess. "Ron'd just laugh and call them prats," he thought miserably, missing his friend desperately.

"Potter!" Someone called, and Harry squashed another groan and attempted to arrange his face in to a semblance of professionality. He turned around.

"Yes?"

Draco Malfoy recoiled as if he'd been burned. "What in Merlin's name happened to you?" He exclaimed.

"Nothing," Harry groused. "What do you want?"

Malfoy fiddled with the brim of the grey fedora he never seemed to be without. Irrationality surged through Harry like a tide, and he itched to knock the damn thing off his smug head. That is, until he spoke. "I just wanted to thank you, actually," Malfoy said, but it seemed oddly genuine.

"Um, oh. May I ask why?" Harry was slightly stumped. He was even more stumped when Malfoy broke out in a peal of deep, rich laughter, flashing Harry a decidedly carnivorous set of pearly teeth.

"You're a good bloke, Potter, you know that?"

Harry scratched the back of his neck. Malfoy stood in front of him, his face practically glowing like a schoolboy's. (Well, okay, not quite, but for Malfoy—it was close enough.)

"You want to grab a butterbeer sometime?" He asked.

Malfoy gave him an odd look. It seemed to flicker between disdain, shock, and something else, settling on a pleasantly surprised sort of neutral. "You look like you could use something harder."

"C'mon, it's on me," was Harry's response, jerking his head toward the door.

And such it was that Harry found himself, a few hours later, hopelessly drunk and pouring out all his woes to one, Draco Malfoy, ex-arch-nemesis and foe.

"There's something about you and liquor, isn't there?" He asked the other man, after pouring out a particularly heart wrenching revision of his fight with Ginny. "You seem to have a knack for getting people to open up to you by getting them pissed."

For the second time that evening, Malfoy laughed. "No, Potter, I'm pretty sure you people are just pissed ninety percent of the time."

"Of course. We're British." Harry snorted at his own joke, inhaling firewhisky. "But seriously. If you want Hermione so much, just get her drunk again."

"The same trick won't work twice."

Harry knocked back another shot. "Yeah…Maybe I should try that. Get her drunk and she'll forgive me."

Malfoy perked up at the mention of Hermione, although Harry, in his state of utter inebriation, didn't notice. "Granger? She's mad at you?"

"Oh, yeah, didn't I tell you? I spoke to her about you—like you asked… Why did you ask that by the way? That was so weird, you know, I think you lo—"

"So she's mad at you because you tried to talk to her about me?" Draco interrupted.

"What? Oh, yeah, yeah, because of that. Apparently I like, betrayed her, or something. Women. And yeah, that's—you know, that's why Ginny—uh…" Harry abruptly lost his train of thought.

Malfoy snapped his fingers in front of Harry's face. "Potter! You there?" Harry nodded and mumbled. "So, Granger was mad because she still hates me?"

"Nah, nah, man," Harry slurred, "I think she fancies the pants off you."

Harry face-planted in to the bar. Malfoy shook him frantically, but to no avail. He was well and truly unconscious.

The bartender eyed Malfoy suspiciously. "He's your friend?"

Malfoy sighed. "Yes, I'll see him home," he said resignedly. The man nodded, satisfied, and left them alone. Malfoy eyed Harry dubiously. "You better thank me for this later." Awkwardly, he grabbed Harry's arm and shrugged it around his own shoulders. Maneuvering carefully, he managed to get it so they were standing side by side.

"Good thing I know where you live," he told the still unconscious Harry, and disapparated.

They reappeared on Harry's doorstep, Malfoy stumbling slightly under the unexpected weight. "You fatty!" He cried, turning on Harry. "Geez, Potter, cut out the carbs," he grumbled under his breath, essentially dragging the other man to the door.

He rang the bell, readjusted Harry, and settled his fedora in the afterthought of being presentable. The door was abruptly flung open by a furious looking Ginny. Her bright hair was sticking out every-which-way, giving her the appearance of an angry lion.

Malfoy attempted to take a step back, dropped Harry, caught him under the armpits and dragged him up, while Harry's head lolled and his legs refused to support him. Ginny watched the spectacle with a look of incredulity, before finally pulling out her wand and snapping "Wingardium leviosa!" At Harry, and sending him inside with a flick of her wrist.

"What is the meaning of this!" She shrieked at Malfoy, and he wondered briefly if she had put the sonorous charm on herself. He reflected that during the middle of a large fight with his wife was probably not the best time to drag Harry home, hammered out of his mind.

"It's lovely to see you, Mrs. Potter," he said smoothly, attempting to kiss her hand. She shook him off, planting a finger firmly in his chest.

"Malfoy. I want answers and I want them now."

"It's quite simple, really. Potter here merely, ah, overindulged. Don't assume the worst, my dear."

Ginny raised an eyebrow. "Harry's schoolboy enemy shows up on my doorstep with my completely inert husband in tow—for all I know he could be dead—and I demand answers. How is this, in any way at all, supposed to prevent me from, as you put it, 'assuming the worst?" How could there possibly be a worse situation!"

Draco coughed delicately. "My apologies. But, with the delivery of your husband, I'll be lea—"

"Not so fast," Ginny said. "What did he tell you?"

"What makes you think he told me anything?"

"Don't try that with me, Malfoy," Ginny snapped. "I'm not Hermione, I'm not easily distracted from the topic at hand."

"Hermione is easily distrac—"

"What did he tell you?" Ginny demanded.

"Oh, just some…things…" Malfoy said airily. "About…stuff… Mostly pertaining to himself…"

Ginny pinched her nose, shaking her head. "Merlin, Harry never could keep his mouth shut—especially when he's drunk. He told you everything, didn't he."

"Yup, pretty much." Malfoy affirmed, smiling rather smugly. "We're pals now, Potter and I."

Ginny rolled her eyes. "Spare me."

"I have a feeling I'll be seeing you soon, Mrs. Potter." Malfoy swept off his fedora, bowing elaborately to her. "Until then."

"I'm holding you partially responsible for this!" Ginny called to his retreating back, gesturing to the still-unconscious Harry.

In response, Malfoy merely smiled.

8888888888888888

It was a bad idea. In fact, it was a terrible idea. She had no idea why she had said yes, why he had initially suggested it, why all of this was happening.

She had been traversing the halls of St. Mungos, checking on various wings of the departments she oversaw and conversing and consulting some of her colleagues on her tough cases—namely, a certain Blaise Zabini—when she had felt someone touch her elbow.

"Granger," Malfoy's voice said in her ear, and she stopped dead, whirling to face him.

He took a step back at her suddenness, then smiled. "May I speak with you for a minute? In private?" He asked, putting an almost unnoticeable extra emphasis on the word 'private.'

"What are you doing here?" Hermione asked thickly, uncomprehending.

Draco's eyes darted from side to side, and he shoved his hands in his pockets. "I came to see you," he muttered.

"What?" Hermione asked playfully, unable to resist.

He eyed her. "I came to see you."

"What, sorry, I didn't hear you?"

"I came to see you, okay?" Draco practically bellowed.

Hermione took a breath. This is what you get for flirting! Her brain cried. She didn't listen. "Oh really?"

"Yes, Granger," Malfoy replied, but he was smiling now, too. "As I said, I need to ask you something."

"What's in it for me?"

Malfoy made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a snort. "Listen, is there someplace private we can talk?"

Hermione looked around, gathering her bearings. They were fairly close to the large conference room that had held the quarterly review a few weeks prior. "There's an empty room close by," she said, "if it's…urgent."

"After you." He tipped his fedora, smirking, and Hermione felt the blood rush to her face.

She in turn opened the door to the conference room for him, slipping in herself only after a quick perusal of the hall for potential busybodies. Luckily, there were none, and she shut it behind her with a sharp snap.

"So," she asked, leaning against the door, looking up through her eyelashes at Malfoy, "what was this urgent business you were so desperate to speak to me about?"

He was standing a little bit in front of her, head bowed and hands thrust into his pockets, knees hyper extended as he leaned on his toes and slouched his shoulders. In essence, he was the epitome of masculine beauty.

"I wanted to talk about our daughter," he began, and Hermione froze. The easy atmosphere vanished as her shoulders tightened. "No, no, don't do that," Malfoy cried, waving his hands. "No, I just wanted to ask about her, to—you know, know things! I don't—what I said before was in anger. I'm not going to try and take her away. I'm sure you're doing a fine job. I just had a sort of proposal for you."

"First off," Hermione said, not in the least relaxed by his spiel, "she's not our daughter. She's my daughter. What makes you think you have any right to her at all?"

Malfoy sighed. "Look, I had hoped this wasn't going to happen."

"You had hoped what, exactly, wasn't going to happen?" Hermione snapped.

"I hoped you would simply take pity on me, and tell me a little bit about her—let me meet her or something."

"I will do nothing of the sort!"

"Then I guess I'm wasting my time," he said, and moved toward the door. Maybe it was because he looked so dejected, or because he didn't fight her verdict, or maybe it was the memory of his smile when he told her that he was here to see her.

Hermione caught his sleeve. "Her birthday is the twenty-eighth of August, and her middle name is Cassiopeia."

Draco's eyes glowed. "Cassiopeia, the constellation? Granger, you didn't!" She nodded meekly. Suddenly, Draco let out a bellow of laughter, and grabbed her by the waist. Lifting her bodily, he spun her around. "You wonderful, crazy, wonderful woman!" He cried, laughing and turning, with Hermione laughing too and holding on to him for dear life.

He finally released her, still looking at her intently, and Hermione laughed self-consciously. "Really, I had no idea it meant this much…" She started, but Draco cut her off.

His hands were still around her waist, and he pulled her closer, lifting one to caress her face from jaw to cheekbone, ultimately tangling it in her hair. His lighthearted expression of before had deepened, and his eyes drew her in.

She was flush against him now, and he softly placed the other hand on the side of her chin, effectively cradling her face. Hermione looked up at him, blinking with her large, liquid eyes, and knew that he was about to kiss her.

And then—"Draco, no," she whispered, placing both her hands on his chest and shoving him away. He stumbled, the spell broken with the contact, and she flung herself out the door, rushing down the hallway, ignoring his calls of "Granger!"

Later that night, she would relive the moment several times, each one more agonizing than the last.