A/N: Hope you are all are staying safe out there!
"I'm sorry, can you repeat that? You want to have dinner with Draco?"
Hermione rolled her eyes. She was having coffee with Ginny at their usual spot for the first time in ages, and Ginny was far too amused at her double date request.
"I've eaten with Draco plenty of times," Hermione responded in a petulant voice before taking a bite out of her scone. It was dry and oddly spongy; she knew it would taste like this, but every few months she would forget just enough to order one again.
"Sure, and I've had to twist your arm every single time. You must really like this one," Ginny said as she took a sip of her coffee, clearly trying to keep the glee off her face.
Hermione shook her head, knowing that disputing her happiness with Ginny would be a fruitless exercise. And would it even be true?
"I know this means you'll have to tell Draco about us— you know, Demetri and me— do you think he can keep a secret?"
Ginny cocked an eyebrow as she settled back into her armchair. "Hermione, that ship sailed a long time ago."
Hermione lowered her voice as she half-whispered, half-hissed, "I am fairly certain I asked you to keep it a secret, or at the very least it was implied in context."
"You never said to keep it a secret from my husband," Ginny replied in an exasperated tone. "Not that it would have helped; I tell Draco everything."
Hermione felt her face growing hot as she mentally went through the various things she had shared with Ginny since the redhead has been with Draco. "Everything?"
Ginny nodded.
"Okay, let's change the subject," Hermione suggested, not wanting to dwell on that topic of conversation any longer. Besides, she couldn't be too upset, as she had just told Demetri all about Harry's relationship the day before.
"Alright, then," Ginny agreed, still looking much too pleased with herself. "Things are going well with Demetri, then?"
Hermione pondered for a moment; on the one hand, things were great with Demetri. She had certainly never felt as connected to someone as she felt with him. On the other, he was an enigma that a significant part of her was terrified to solve, worried about what she might find.
Knowing that Ginny would convey her thoughts back to Draco, who probably handed them straight over to the man himself, she smiled slightly and said, "Things are going really well," omitting the rest of her thoughts.
Back at the office, Hermione was reading over a letter for what felt like the millionth time before sending it out. When she had first met Demetri and hoped to catch him in a life about Durmstrang, she had seriously underestimated her knowledge of the ins and outs of the school. While she thought that visiting would bring clarity, it only brought more questions, largely because of their hyper-strict policies with international visitors.
Why had Demetri only spent a year at Durmstrang? She felt fairly certain he had been there, as it was too strange of a story to concoct, unless he was trying to distract her. Still, even though she embarrassingly didn't even know what year her sort-of-boyfriend graduated, it seemed likely that the year he was there had overlapped with Krum's time at Durmstrang.
However, although she was entirely ready to use any knowledge she had gained from Krum several years ago, she was not prepared to write to him. Things hadn't exactly ended well. Hermione thought back to the last letter she had received from Viktor, a response to her vague skirting around the issues right before she had gone into hiding during the war. My only crime has been caring about you too much, Hermione. I promise I won't bother you anymore.
With those words running on repeat in her mind, she tried to quiet them just enough to re-read her letter:
Viktor,
I know it is presumptuous to write to you after all these years. During the war, I didn't trust you enough to confide in you, partly because I was worried about putting you in danger. Now, when I am afraid that danger may be upon me again, you are the only person I am trusting. I am just as afraid of endangering you now as I was then, but I'm hoping that our distance will protect you. Mostly, you are the only one that can help.
I've gathered from the papers that you'll be in England this weekend; can we meet in secret, please? I would give you more details, but I don't want to put them in writing for reasons that are likely obvious from the small amount of context I have given you.
-Hermione
Cringing, but unable to think of any way to improve upon it, she sent it before she could think of another excuse not to do so.
That evening, Hermione walked the two miles home instead of apparating. She needed to clear her head before seeing Harry, and sometimes the best way to do that was to be on her feet and force herself to be alone with her thoughts. At home, she could distract herself with tidying or working, but here, feeling anonymous in the city, she had nowhere to turn but inward.
It was becoming increasingly difficult to investigate Demetri. It wasn't that she no longer thought he was up to something; she knew that there was a near-certain chance that Demetri had murdered Cormac. And she had realized the more she thought on the topic that he must have been lying as early as he arrived at Durmstrang since his name was a sort of rearranging of Voldemort's and he had already been going by it in school.
Despite the mounting evidence, her affection had grown in tandem with her increasing conviction that Demetri was a killer, and that he wasn't done. She had started to fall for the small ways he gave away his mood, his haunting gray eyes, and she was even starting to find it charming when he acted like an absolute child. Hermione could step back and analyze the situation and tell herself that he was attractive, intelligent, and fixated on her, so of course she wanted him. But even when she would try to be objective, she couldn't help but feel it was more than the sum of his qualities or simple chemistry.
Still, she would have to acknowledge her feelings and press on. And that's why she was going to find out everything she could about his time at Durmstrang and subtly pry into what exactly he was asking about in his "interviews" about the War. And she would start tonight with Harry. She would tell him about Demetri, how happy she was, and try to extract as much information from Harry as possible without arousing suspicion. And both, somehow, would be entirely sincere pursuits.
