Ginny was right, of course. Divination or not, there he was. Sitting at the lab bench across from her. Hermione noticed him immediately as she stepped into the lab, and quickly pivoted back out of the room. Back against the wall, hiding out of sight, she tried to soften the hitch in her breath and clamoring of her heart.
Peeking over her shoulder, she could just make out the tuft of his white-blonde hair in the other room. It really was Draco Malfoy.
Dr. Taylor left his office and noticed her standing against the wall. "Hermione?"
She whipped her head around to look at him, and tried to relax her stance. "Professor. Good to see you."
"Yes, good morning. Is everything alright?"
"Oh yes," she brushed herself off and tried to remain as normal as possible. "Just preparing. For my experiment, of course."
He nodded. "Good, good. Let me know when you begin, and if you need any help setting up." Moving past her, he entered the lab and made a beeline for Malfoy.
"Hello Draco. Getting all settled in?" She heard Dr. Taylor say.
Trying to remain discreet and out of sight, she casually walked into the lab and put her stuff down. Put some gloves on her hands, and tied back her bushy hair. She could vaguely hear them talking, but perhaps she could get through this by never addressing Malfoy. The less interaction they had, the better.
She started collecting materials for her experiment, when she heard Dr. Taylor address her. "Hermione?"
She turned around, and avoided eye contact with Malfoy. "Yes?"
"You know Draco," Dr. Taylor gestured to Malfoy, who also wasn't meeting her eye. "You two will be working on a few projects together in the next coming months."
She smiled as pleasantly as she could muster, and ignored the rest of their conversation. The day passed quickly, and she kept herself busy enough that she never had to look Malfoy's way. And that seemed to be fine with him, until the very end of the day, when she began gathering her belongings.
"So, Granger, you've an interest in genetics?"
She couldn't stop the tiny, nervous laugh from bubbling out of her. After five years of silence, that was it? That was what he said to her?
"Obviously," she reigned herself back in with a cough to cover it up. He frowned.
"Since we'll be working together a lot for these next few years," he narrowed his eyes at her, and she finally looked at him, "I suppose we should be on speaking terms, don't you think?"
She rolled her eyes. "We don't need to speak, Malfoy. We can just work together."
"How do you propose we communicate on said work?"
"Um," she blinked, and then smirked. "If you want something, email me."
"Email?" He curled his lip. "Seriously?"
"Seriously."
"I remember a lot from Hogwarts," he stood brusquely, and grabbed his things, "but I don't remember you being such an immature prat."
"Oh?" She snarled, and she followed closely behind him as he left the lab, "I do remember you being such an absolute git, though. Guess your memory is going in your old age."
"Old age? I seem to recall you being older than me."
She pursed her lips together, and shifted her bag on her shoulder. They were both walking to the Floo fireplace, so she couldn't get rid of him. But damn it all, she couldn't believe he still remembered her birthday.
"Don't talk about that."
"Talk about what?" He flashed a wicked smile. "It's just harmless information. What are you referring to?"
"Shut up." She frowned, and thrust her jaw out. "And you know what."
"Do I? Perhaps you'll have to refresh my memory."
Temper flaring, she used one hand to push him against the wall. She let the tip of her wand, which was concealed in her sleeve, touch his chest so he knew she meant business.
"If you have any sense you'll drop it and never refer to that again."
Grabbing the Floo powder in her hand, she looked back at him and gave him a seething glare.
"I assure you; I've already forgotten all about it. It was entirely unmemorable."
Hermione didn't want to think about Draco Malfoy. No she definitely did not. But there were old memories, embarrassing memories, that were clamoring to the forefront of her mind. Things that should have been long forgotten—especially because of what came after.
But the pain, shame, and sin of it all was what landed her in front of Ginny, glass of wine in hand, sitting on their couch.
"Hermione? Just tell me what's wrong." Her friend's concerned voice did nothing to ease her spirits.
"What I'm about to tell you," she shook her head and took a breath, "you can never tell anyone. I know you tell Harry everything. I tell Harry everything. But I've never told anyone this. And I need you to keep it between us for now."
"You're scaring me," Ginny touched her shoulder. "Is everything alright?"
"No," she answered honestly. "It hasn't been alright since our fifth year at Hogwarts. I've been carrying this secret for so long…"
Hermione let out a sigh, and closed her eyes so she wouldn't have to meet her friend's gaze.
"I slept with Draco Malfoy."
Ginny burst out laughing. When she saw Hermione's serious face, she wiped a tear of mirth that had escaped.
"Oh Merlin. You can't expect me to take this seriously when you hit me with a joke. Are you practicing for a new comedy routine?"
"Ginny. I'm serious."
She shook her head. "Oh come on, I'm not falling for that."
Hermione's face burned, and she tried not to let her friend's reaction pour salt into old wounds. "Ginny, please."
At her insistence the red head blanched. "No."
"Yes."
"You couldn't have."
"I did."
"You're Hermione Granger! The bloody book queen!" Ginny was beginning to look delirious. "There's no way!"
Hermione put her head in her hands. "Somehow, there was a way."
"Okay last chance. Please, please tell me you're joking."
Hermione closed her eyes and shook her head.
Ginny erupted into a thousand emotions all at once. "How could you? How many times? He was our enemy! He was a bully! To you! Where did you even do it? Was he good? Were you guys in a relationship? Why? How big—"
"Okay, that's enough," Hermione cut her off, not wanting to go down the rabbit hole Ginny had apparently jumped right into.
"I just… Can't believe it."
"I know. But I'm telling you because. God. Working with him is going to be so hard."
"I bet," Ginny narrowed her eyes at Hermione, "You don't still have feelings for him, do you?"
"No, Merlin, no. That ship sailed long ago."
"Does that mean you did before?!" Ginny pounced on the admission.
Hermione waved a hand, trying to brush it off. "No. Not really. You couldn't even call what we did dating. We just snogged a lot in the back of classrooms and the library for a few months."
"How many?" Ginny asked point blank, giving Hermione no room to avoid the question.
"Five," she admitted, cheeks red.
"Five?! And you kept it from us! So well, I might add."
"It was hard. And uncomfortable. But," she shrugged, "we just… fell into it. And suddenly it was happening, and I didn't know how to explain it."
Ginny sat quietly and considered it for a moment. "Did it make the war even harder for you? I can't even imagine."
Hermione bit her lip and tried not to remember. "It was so incredibly difficult. And worse because no one knew. When we found out he was a death eater my heart broke in half. When he failed at killing Dumbledore—I rejoiced. During the battle, I was so scared."
She shook her head and put down her glass. "I'm sorry, Gin, I think that's enough for me tonight. I need the weekend to recover."
She smiled weakly at her friend as she stood to leave the room. It was relieving to have finally lifted the weight from her chest, but deep inside she was so sad for the girl who cried, five years ago, at the end of the battle. Thankful that some of her friends were still alive—and some of her enemies, too.
It was hard working with Malfoy, but luckily not as hard as she'd feared. It was easy enough to focus on her projects in the lab and ignore him, and after the first day he didn't mention their past again. His project was in a related field, trying to understand if there were novel proteins associated with magical people and all magic creatures. If they were correct about their hypotheses, the gene she was looking for would code the protein he was interested in. Occasionally they'd have to communicate, but suddenly a month had already passed, and she was beginning to feel a semblance of normal.
Walking in on a Wednesday morning, Dr. Taylor leaned out of his office and called out to her. "Hermione! Around lunch today let's schedule a meeting—we need to discuss the pattern of inheritance of the magical disorder."
"Sure," she brushed a curl behind her ear and went over to her chair. Hearing Malfoy snicker quietly, she flashed a glance in his direction.
Sitting with his arms crossed, he smirked. "It's obvious, isn't it?"
"What do you mean?"
"The pattern of inheritance. It's a recessive disorder."
She shook her head, and put a hand on her hip.
"Meaning you need two copies to have it. One copy from mom, one from dad—people with only one copy wouldn't have the disorder, so your parents wouldn't need to be magical." He waved a hand towards her, "thus explaining muggleborns."
"Thank you, I knew what you meant." She snapped.
"Doesn't that make you happy, Granger? Make you feel special or something?" He goaded.
"No—because you're only partially right. What about squibs? What about half-bloods?"
He rolled his eyes. "Can't you just be pleased I thought about the muggleborns?"
"No," she sneered, "because you didn't consider everyone. And you're only saying that for brownie points—you don't get a gold star because you're being a sane person."
"Only you could find fault in everything I do."
"Only you could have so many faults," she shot back, and felt rather childish immediately after. He grumbled for a moment and sat at his desk.
After working a few minutes in silence, she began to feel tense. It wasn't like she was wrong, but it had been unproductive for her to snarl at him. Even if he had provoked her—she was a purely rational scientist and should be above immaturity. And he'd proven to be a fairly competent scientist, so she wondered what he would think of her theory.
"I wonder if it's recessive—but with other factors involved, which makes it a different sort of disorder."
He raised an eyebrow and didn't look up from the paper he was reading.
She continued anyways, "I suspect it's an accidental duplication of a regular gene—so one gene turns into two, essentially, making it into a new magic gene. And that duplication can happen in nature sometimes—which accounts for some muggleborns. But it doesn't make sense why there's such a high rate of half bloods having magic, if it is a recessive disorder. There's too much chance in the model."
Malfoy considered it, touching his hand to his chin. "What if one magical copy of the gene could make the other copy mutate?"
"That's an interesting hypothesis," grabbing a pen and paper, she drew it out. "That could explain some of it, but it doesn't fall within the spectrum of normal genetics. It's hard to decipher where normal human genetics impacts this or magical genetics."
He took the drawing from her and studied it. "This actually could make sense. But I see what you mean, there's too much speculation."
"To really understand this, we'd need family trees from many people to confirm it isn't any other pattern of inheritance."
"Naturally. I can get you at least twenty for next week, and twenty more the week after."
"What?" She stuttered, not quite believing her ears.
"This is good work," he didn't look up from her drawing, and instead circled an area. "We wouldn't want it hindered by how slow the ministry is with these matters."
"How could you get so many? And why?" Almost whispering, she asked, "Why would you help me?"
He glanced at her over the top of the paper. "Really, now, Granger. The Malfoys have connections, and why wouldn't I help you? We're collaborating on our projects together. Don't be silly."
Stunned into utter silence, she could only sit in her chair and watch him walk to his desk.
And now-the fun begins! Thanks so much for all the support! Please let me know if anything doesn't make sense-I know it can get a little weighed down with the scientific concepts and I'm more than happy to revise/provide a better explanation. Also, they will refer to being magical as a 'disorder' just because they're looking at this as a condition-not all disorders are bad. It's just a way to describe the presence/absence of something that the general population doesn't have. I hope that makes sense, and please drop a review if you liked it!