The day began like any other for Lucius Malfoy.
Woken up abruptly by the harsh lighting that was turned on every morning at 6 AM, followed by the ringing of the bell that signaled the start of yet another day in Azkaban Prison.
"No. Not prison… it's called a 'Correctional Facility' now." He thought.
Either way, the food was still shit and although he did prefer human guards to Dementors, their presence did little to brighten his mood.
After roll call, he was led down the hall to the showers with all the other male inmates on his cell block where they disrobed, washed up, and then were given their clean clothes for the day.
That was a marked improvement, being able to have a warm shower and a clean change of clothes every day. He was even allowed to shave under supervision.
Then it was time for breakfast; nearly the same selection every day, but at least they were fed three square meals a day, and were even allowed to have tea in the afternoons if they wished.
When the changes had been implemented, many people had thought that treating them as humans instead of garbage was unthinkable, mainly because the old ways had promised better treatment for those prisoners who had information and were willing to snitch in exchange for that treatment.
Nobody bothered to sit with Lucius, and he didn't blame them, most of them were half bloods whom had been recruited simply as Snatchers and they knew how deep-seeded his hatred was for them, especially as he had killed a few of them early on in his stay.
It didn't bother him.
Nothing fazed him anymore.
And then the post was delivered.
He never got mail from Narcissa and certainly not from Draco, so when the post came around, he was shocked when a guard called his name.
"Malfoy. You have post today." Came the gruff bark of the guard on breakfast duty.
A copy of The Daily Prophet was flung down in front of him with a string securing a note to the rolled-up newspaper.
Three words in acid green ink adorned the slip of parchment just below his name and cell block address.
"Enjoy the news"
He untied the string and removed the note before unfurling the paper.
He felt his blood pressure rise as he took in the headline.
Back from Exile and Out of Private Practice: Two Healers Aim to Break Hearts
Below it was a moving photograph of none other than that filthy mudblood Hermione Granger with a man with long blonde hair outside of a nondescript building in the city. They were talking in the photograph and he coughed on his tea when the man with the long hair moved into focus.
It was his son, Draco Malfoy, speaking cordially to the bushy haired freak that he had loathed in school, even smiling at her, looking at her in what could only be perceived as a loving gaze.
Lucius saw red as his eyes followed the story down the page; detailing how his son had been exiled to the US and how he had become a muggle healer, or Doctor, as they were called, only to excel in the field of trauma surgery and critical care and then be called back to England to become a magical healer at St. Mungo's.
A still photograph of his son adorned the page, taken from a directory of doctors and surgeons from an American hospital he had never heard of. Draco's unmoving image was smiling up at him, his wavy blonde hair loose around his shoulders, and he looked so much like his mother that it hurt, all whilst wearing a rather odd necklace around the collar of his robes.
Then he saw another still photograph of Hermione Granger, dressed in a similar manner with the same necklace adorning her collar as well.
"Rather ugly necklace, if you ask me." He scoffed internally, "Two blunted hooks on one end of a rubber tube and a strangely shaped silver disc on the other end? Who would want to be seen wearing such rubbish?"
He read on as it detailed that the mudblood had learned how to heal bones and sport injuries and then on to detail her personal life, as the long-standing girlfriend of that blood-traitor Weasley. Apparently, they had never married nor had children, but the Weasley boy had been grievously wronged nonetheless by the girl when she and Draco were spotted kissing in the window of her flat.
"… no word yet on how Ron Weasley will respond to this new, heartbreaking, development. Continued on page three."
Lucius didn't read further and bit his cheek to keep himself from yelling out in anger and disgust.
He had seen enough.
It was time to write his son a letter.
Across the country, Draco stirred awake on an unfamiliar sofa, sighing as he remembered the evening before, feeling the gentle weight of Hermione's head on his shoulder, very warm beneath a heavy woolen afghan blanket.
They had sat up all night, talking about their lives since Hogwarts and the war, eventually drifting off in the wee hours of the morning.
They were both off of work today unless Hermione was seconded to the hospital for an orthopedic emergency with one of her clients.
Hermione exhaled softly in her sleep and nuzzled against him.
His breath caught in his chest as he realized how much trust she was placing in him. Trust that he would not do anything untoward, trust that she would be safe with him, trust that he would be there when she woke up.
It was more than he deserved.
He had been so utterly cruel to her in the past.
He swallowed heavily and the prejudices of his upbringing creeped in around the edges of his thoughts.
He pushed them back with disdain, beating back those dark things.
Try as he might, his father's voice broke through in his head and he screwed his eyes shut tight.
He was thrown back to the Christmas holiday during his first year at Hogwarts when his father had gotten to see his academic reports and see his class ranking, which was not supposed to be shared with the students, but his father didn't care.
He had been called into his father's study and harshly berated for being second best in his year.
"Severus has informed me that there is only one student ahead of you in your class; a filthy mudblood Gryffindor girl named Hermione Granger. This is unacceptable. You are the most recent in a line of pureblood witches and wizards spanning more than a thousand years! You ought to be better than this! I demand you be better than this!" His father had yelled at him.
He had been struck after that for crying at his father's words.
He stiffened as he heard the belt whistle through the air and felt the phantom sting of it on the back of his legs.
It's not real.
It's not real.
You're not there.
Draco inhaled deeply and exhaled again, quickly using the grounding technique that he had learned in his most recent trauma-informed care seminar.
"Five things I can see…"
A rune copy of The Tales of Beetle the Bard on a bookshelf, Crookshanks sleeping in his chair, Hermione's sound system, their empty mugs from the night before on her coffee table, and the vibrant colors of the afghan that covered the both of them.
"Four things I can touch…"
His hand brushed the afghan, the upholstery of her sofa, his foot felt the soft rug beneath the sitting area, and his other hand moved and touched the end of Hermione's messy braid.
"Three things I can hear…"
The slight hum of traffic in the street outside, the ticking of Hermione's wristwatch, and the faint whistling of a kettle from a neighbor's flat.
"Two things I can smell…"
Hermione's flat had the smell of books about it, but she herself smelt faintly of roses and citrus, probably from her shampoo.
He found it very comforting.
"One thing I can taste…"
He looked around and spotted his coat. In his coat pocket, there was a tube of plain cherry Chapstick.
He supposed that counted.
Hermione moved again and his eyes fell to her face.
"I guess I could count the taste of her kiss… that was nice…" He thought to himself as he gazed at the sleeping witch beside him.
A couple strands of hair had separated from her braid and laid on her face.
Draco leaned over and brushed her hair out of her face, admiring her as she slept, blissfully unaware of the horrible memories he had driven off moments prior.
She was so peaceful, unbothered by the recent stressors of her life.
He wondered vaguely if he looked that relaxed when he slept.
He gently brushed away the second strand of hair from her face and Hermione felt his fingertips brush her skin and scrunched her nose before slowly blinking awake, her eyes focusing on his face and a small smile gracing her lips.
"Hello…" he whispered, smiling at her, his grey eyes bearing a striking resemblance to the way the sky would look during the springtime cloudbursts of her childhood.
Her breath caught with the way he gazed at her, butterflies springing awake in her belly and a chill rolling down her spine.
He looked at her like he was admiring some beautiful, priceless piece of art; much in the way a person admired that which they could never have nor deserve.
It was a bittersweet look.
"Good morning…" she murmured.
"Morning."
"Were you watching me sleep?" she asked groggily, lifting an eyebrow.
Draco felt the heat rise in his cheeks.
"No… well, maybe just for a moment. I didn't mean to wake you." He replied, his voice rough from sleeping.
The timbre of his voice made Hermione shiver slightly.
Gods, that was a nice sound.
She frowned slightly at the way his cheek was still bruised and swollen.
He saw the look on her face.
"It still looks bad, doesn't it?"
"It does. After breakfast, I want to take you to my practice and get an x-ray of it. I just want to make sure there aren't any hairline fractures, and if there are, I'd want to treat them." She replied with a nod.
"Are you always in doctor mode?" He asked jokingly.
"Only when I have to be." She said with a shrug, "Besides, I'm curious to see if you're an exception to the rule that all doctors make shitty patients."
Draco laughed at that.
"Speaking for myself, I think I do fairly well, but you've never seen me at the dentist. I'm strange about people messing around in my mouth."
"You know my parents were dentists, right?" Hermione stated with a laugh of her own.
"Are you shitting me?" Draco replied, covering his face in his hands.
"I shit you not!" She replied.
"Bet you're a model patient, right?" Draco asked.
"Actually, I am fairly good. I usually lead with the fact that I'm a doctor and then that usually allows my doctor and I to speak more plainly between each other. Still, I'm not the best when it comes to my yearly well woman exam, but that's neither here nor there as I still go every year." She replied with a shrug.
Draco raised his eyebrows and Hermione rolled her eyes at him.
"Oh, don't give me that look like you have something on me now; getting a pap test isn't exactly one of the joys of living with a Müllerian system."
"And what are those joys, if you don't mind my asking?" He asked as they stood up and folded the afghan blanket.
Hermione shrugged.
"I s'pose being able to have children is somewhere on the list, after that, not too much, to be honest. Curves and having breasts are nice sometimes, helps to fill out a dress, that's for sure." Came her quiet response after a few beats of silence, "But what about the other side of anatomy and physiology? What are the joys of having a Wolffian system?"
"Taking a piss while standing for sure… after that, nothing much comes to mind…"
"Oh, I just thought of one for Müllerian: hiding physical signs of sexual arousal. We don't have to worry about an awkward erection." Hermione said as she went into the kitchen and started the water for tea, "Don't worry, I went shopping yesterday in between procedures."
Draco laughed.
"Honestly, those school robes were real life savers during puberty. Saved me and a bunch of other lads from some real embarrassment."
"I know they had my back when I bled through my skirt once. Gods what an awful time."
"Oh no, was it your first time?"
"Yeah. I went to Pomfrey and told her I had started my period and she proceeded to give me a lecture on how it all works. I had to cut her off and told her that I already knew all of that, that I just needed pads and a paracetamol for the cramping. To this day, I still marvel at the fact that she didn't take points away for my backtalk."
"Simple, she didn't want everyone asking where the points deduction came from only to have someone say you had your period." He replied.
"Who would have known?"
"Didn't you share a dorm with Lavender Brown? That girl was a mad gossip."
"Yeah, I guess she was…" Hermione replied quietly, remembering the image of her lying dead on the floor in one of the corridors with her throat and most of her chest torn open, her eyes wide and unseeing, her lower jaw hanging open before the flesh below her chin gave way to destroyed viscera and dried arterial spray from her violent exsanguination.
"I'm sorry. She was a friend of yours that died in the battle…"
Hermione shook her head.
"She wasn't a friend. I hated her for a long time. Back when I was still in love with Ron. Before we were together, they were together. It used to disgust me with how obsessed they were with each other, but now I wish she were alive. Maybe then Ron would have found someone to be happy with and left me the hell alone."
"Pansy was similar to that. Always hanging all over me, driving me insane. We had a love/hate relationship…"
Hermione paused.
"I didn't even know you two were together. When was that?"
"Fifth Year we dated and then we had a lot of sex in Sixth. All consensual, of course, but never anything more than a physical release, and it was all mutual…" Draco paused for a moment, "That sounds bad… I mean, the sex was bad, but that's about it."
Hermione shook her head.
"Not at all. If I had been in your position, I probably would have done the same thing."
"Had bad sex with someone you didn't even like for a physical release?" He asked incredulously.
Hermione turned to face him with her elbows on the edge of the countertop behind her.
"Congratulations, you just summed up my entire sexual relationship with Ronald Weasley in one sentence. You only made one mistake, and that was assuming I ever had any sort of satisfactory physical release…but then again, how could you have known about any of that?"
Draco's face fell.
"And you were with him for all that time?"
"Yes, and only him…" She replied, her lower lip beginning to tremble with a realization, "I spent all that time on him and for what? I know that sex isn't everything, I know that intimacy takes many forms, as do love languages, but the fact that I allowed myself to stay with him time and again while he ignored my needs, both physical and emotional… Gods… I'm an idiot…"
The realization of the state of her former relationship and the time she had wasted on Ron hit her like a punch to the gut.
She started to cry hard, her sobs coming out as gasps, wracking her body. Her hands flew up to cover her mouth, muffling her cries.
Draco was across the room in an instant, taking her into his arms.
Hermione sobbed and allowed herself to be held by him.
"Shh, shh, no, you are not an idiot…"
"He never cared. H-He was only in it to use me… And-and I-I fucking let him do it!" She wailed into his chest.
It broke his heart to hear those words coming from her.
His own mother had been a victim of such a relationship. His father had used her for the status she held as a member of the Black bloodline, then used her like a pawn. Before he had been conceived, his mother had had several miscarriages, and then several after he was born as well.
However, his parent's relationship was far darker than just the fact that his father originally accused his mother of being less than pure blood and therefore unable to bear children.
There was always an accusation that flew from his father's mouth whenever they had argued, and that was that Draco was possibly illegitimate; that the miscarriages had been abortions and his mother was a whore.
Narcissa grew the herbs in her gardens and greenhouses for the potions needed to do that, and she was a highly skilled potions master and knew the recipes for abortive potions, but the accusation that she had aborted all but the one fetus that was never Lucius's to begin with was one that they had hotly contested, so much so that his father had forced Narcissa into making an Unbreakable Vow when he was six that she would never use her herbs to mix an abortive potion.
And she never did after that, but she did have a house elf perform a very powerful spell on her that rendered her permanently infertile.
Draco had only learned about any of that during his father's first trial because his mother had attempted to divorce him at the same time.
It wasn't until after the War that his mother finally got her freedom.
"You got out though. You got out and you're free." Draco said, pulling back and tipping her chin up to look at him, "Hermione, you don't ever have to go back to him. You didn't make any vows, and you didn't promise anyone anything. You owe him nothing. You're free."
She nodded tearfully.
"I am, aren't I?"
"Yeah, yeah you are."
"Promise?"
"I promise."
Hermione nodded and sighed, wiping away her tears.
"Thank you."
"Anytime… now you sit and I'll get some breakfast thrown together, okay?" Draco said, pulling out a chair for her and guiding her into it before chastely kissing her forehead.
Hermione smiled and wiped her eyes.
"But you don't know where anything is in here, you'll need my help." She said as she began to stand up.
Draco shook his head and got his wand out. He waved it and a teacup, spoon, and saucer flew onto the table in front of her with the sugar and milk landing behind them.
"Just sit, I can do a pointing spell and find what I need that way."
"But I-"
Draco sighed and sat down beside her.
"Please, let me take care of you. If I have any questions, I'll ask, okay?" He said, placing his hands over hers.
Hermione nodded.
"Ask me anything." He said, "It'll help pass the time."
"Okay, uh, I know how to play the guitar and the piano, but do you know how to play an instrument?"
"Actually, I can play the piano and the harp. My mother taught me to play both when I was younger. I just never kept up with it and my father didn't want me having, quote 'feminine interests'. So, I got out of practice and I haven't played since."
He poured the hot water over the basket of tea leaves in her teapot and let it steep.
"Oh, well I'm sure it won't take much to get back into the habit. It's like riding a bike. You learn but you never forget."
Draco smiled and waved his wand, instructing peppers, spinach, and an onion to wash and chop themselves as he put oil in a pan on the stove to begin heating up.
"And I never learned how to ride a bike as a child."
"I think that was more of a muggle specific thing…"
"Like riding a broom then, right?"
Hermione laughed nervously.
"I don't like brooms."
Draco turned to her.
"Really? But you do know how to fly, right?"
"Of course, I do… Remember it was me who saved the lot of you in the Room of Requirement? I was the one leading the pack on those brooms, casting spells to keep piles of flaming debris from blocking our way out." She replied, glancing at him with an incredulous look on her face.
Draco's stomach clenched uncomfortably.
"Oh, right. Now I remember. I think I had blocked that memory, or at least parts of it, from my mind. I remember us escaping on brooms, I remember Potter saving me and Ron rescuing Blaise. I remember Crabbe being burned alive."
"But not me leading you all out."
"No. And I believe that you did, but there was so much other shit that was happening that I can't remember it."
"It's okay. I'm surprised that I didn't repress the memory myself. My first time flying solo and it was escaping from Fiendfyre. Christ, I never want to fly again."
"That's understandable."
Draco was sautéing the peppers, spinach, and onion in the pan and he flicked his wand at the refrigerator, three eggs flying out and cracking themselves into a bowl with some salt and pepper, a fork flying up to beat them together, bacon bits joining the mixture with a bit of milk.
"You know how to cook…"
"Had to do it for myself when I was in the U.S. Starvation is motivation like no other when it comes to learning how to cook."
"Your mum never taught you?"
Draco shook his head as he poured the blended egg mixture over the veggies.
"My mum wasn't like that. Cooking was something that was below us. That was something that the house elves did. That and the cleaning, laundry, landscaping, tidying up, and so on. I had to learn to be self-sufficient. It was a lot of trial and error."
"What was the easiest thing to learn how to do?" Hermione asked as she began preparing toast for their eggs.
Draco laughed.
"Laundry, hands down. I learned very quickly about sorting loads by color and water temperature when all my white drawers and socks came out pink."
"Drawers?" Hermione asked with an eyebrow raised.
"Uh, underpants… or just pants here… they call them drawers in Baltimore, well, more like 'draws', but that's just the accent." He corrected with a shrug.
He plated their eggs and put cheese on top of them before finding the forks and sitting down at the table across from her.
She put the plate of toast and a container of butter on the table with butter knives.
"I thought I asked you to let me do it all?"
"Well, I still helped." She replied with a 'and-what-are-you-going-to-do-about-it?' look.
Draco smiled at her defiance.
"Okay then, what about you, what sort of music do you listen to while you're operating?"
Hermione smiled and a blush creeped into her cheeks as she ate.
"I have a dedicated playlist on my iPod… there's a mixed variety… some popular club music, some throwbacks, a little bit of the new stuff. I have an iTunes account and I'm constantly buying songs as I remember them… my iPod Touch is great for that… I can also read books on it."
"I have one, too." Draco said as he pulled his out of his back pocket.
"Ooh, we can plug them into my sound system and see who has the better music." She said with a competitive grin.
"You're on, mind you, I don't generally get to listen to music as I operate due to the nature of the surgeries I perform." Draco said.
"It's okay, I think that even if you're the head of trauma, you'll still be able to scrub in on other procedures. Maybe one of mine, if you'd like?"
"Doctor Granger, are you propositioning me?" he replied in a mock-scandalized voice.
"Certainly not!" she replied, "But it might be a good time."
The pair of them laughed and continued with breakfast and then they both began to do the dishes.
All was well until a great grey owl flew up and tapped her beak on the window to be let in.
"Eleanor?" Draco said as he opened the window and let the owl inside.
"I thought your owl's name was Elise?"
"It is… Eleanor is my mum's owl…"
Eleanor held up her leg with a rolled-up copy of the Daily Prophet tied to it and a letter in her beak.
She dropped the letter first and tried to take a nip at Draco when he reached for the newspaper.
"I think she wants you to read the letter first."
"Heh, you think?"
Hermione rolled her eyes and offered Eleanor a bit of egg, which she gobbled down happily.
Draco opened the letter and his eyes grew wide as he read.
Hermione saw the color drain from his face.
"What? What is it, what's happened?"
"My mother got the paper this morning and we've made the front page…"
Eleanor lifted her leg and Hermione untied the newspaper and unfurled it in horror.
"Oh no…"
Hermione threw the paper down and backed away from it as if it were a venomous creature.
"This is not good… not good for either of our reputations, careers, not to mention the fact that it could be misconstrued…"
"Misconstrued is the understatement of the century. Mum writes that the article continues on page 3 with a quote that suggests I'm controlling you via Imperius curse to get back into good graces with the movers and shakers of the wizarding community." Draco felt like he was going to be sick even as the words left his mouth.
"Who wrote this?"
"Take a guess."
"Rita Skeeter…" Hermione said, fuming.
Just then, another owl arrived, carrying a bright red envelope, hopped into the window, threw the letter on the floor and flew off.
"Oh no." Hermione sighed.
"Is that a Howler?"
"Yes. From Molly Weasley no doubt…"
"Shall I incinerate it?" Draco offered as the red envelope floated off the floor and hovered near Hermione on its own.
The sender's name was on the front of it in black ink.
To Hermione Granger
From M. Weasley
"She puts wards on them… trust me." Hermione said with a groan, "Might as well just get it over with."
Hermione leaned forward to undo the wax and let the berating commence.
She didn't even get to touch it before it morphed into an angry origami style face with sharp teeth and dark eyes.
"HERMIONE GRANGER! HOW DARE YOU SLEEP WITH THAT SNAKE OVER MY SON! AS IF REJECTING HIS MARRIAGE PROPOSAL WASN'T PAINFUL ENOUGH, YOU PUT HIM OUT ON THE STREET AND TOLD HIM THAT YOU WERE OVER! WHILE THAT VILE MAGGOT HID IN YOUR CLOSET, NO LESS! YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF! ASHAMED, I SAY! IF YOU HAD ANY GOOD SENSE, YOU WOULD APOLOGIZE FOR THIS BEHAVIOR IMMEDIATELY! YOU FILTHY SLUT! I HOPE HE GIVES YOU EXACTLY WHAT YOU DESERVE, YOU UNGRATEFUL BITCH!"
The Howler turned to Draco now and spoke in a low voice.
"You deserve nothing less than the Dementor's Kiss, you evil, murderous, lying snake. You're better off dead."
With that, the Howler tore itself apart.
"Well, that could have been way worse…" Draco said, "I was expecting a curse."
Hermione just stared blankly at the torn-up Howler.
"I didn't even do anything that her son hasn't done to me on multiple occasions; rejected advances, broken up with me on a dime, put me out, slept around with other people immediately after dumping me, cheated on me, and so on…" she said hollowly.
"According to what you've told me, you haven't even done a fraction of those things."
Hermione laughed then.
"Did I tell you that one time I caught him pouring my birth control potion down the sink?" Hermione said breathlessly, "His-his fucking excuse was that it was expired and I had just brewed it, thank you very much!"
Draco just stood there in abject horror.
"I thought he hadn't abused you…" he whispered, shocked and sickened at this revelation of hers.
"I had to get an IUD in secret… He never found out about it… I didn't even have to clip the strings short… it isn't like he knew how to use his hands on a woman anyway… But I was so scared of getting pregnant… I had taken Plan B before and he was mad then, accused me of not wanting his child… I was in the middle of my internship, who has a child in their internship?! Not me, that's who!"
Draco just let her get it all out of her system.
"I am so glad he's gone and I am so happy to be free from all that bullshit! No more passive aggressive suggestions from Molly Weasley for me!"
Hermione stopped laughing then, wiping tears from her eyes.
"Are you going to be okay?" Draco asked as she calmed down.
"I'll be fine.
He paused.
"Well, it's still your day off. Any plans?" he asked casually, "Given the circumstances, if you want me to leave, that's fine. You can relax, take a bath, unpack all that has gone on…"
"No. Stay with me… please…" she replied quietly, "That didn't faze you at all? Her telling you that she wishes you were dead?"
Draco shrugged.
"I've dealt with worse than that when I was branded, tasked with murdering Dumbledore and fixing an unfixable Vanishing Cabinet, two tasks that I would succeed and be killed for or fail at and still be killed for. I was kept by Voldemort as a prisoner in my own home for a year and a half, watched my crazy aunt kill people for fun. All of that, just to come out on the losing side of a battle that I wanted nothing to do with in the first place and then get arrested and nearly sentenced to death by the Kiss or life in Azkaban for things I didn't do and should have done or for things I did out of sheer terror and self-preservation."
Draco paused then and ran a hand through his hair.
"So, to answer your question, no, Molly Weasley wishing I was dead doesn't bother me. Hearing those words from someone who I already know didn't like me isn't news. I won't lose sleep over it and neither should you, okay?"
"Okay."
"But," he continued, "what I am concerned about is the fact that Ron was abusive in your relationships… You can report him if you choose to do so."
Hermione rubbed her hands against each other and shrugged.
"Even if I did, it wouldn't solve anything. I would still get blamed for turning all of this into a big ugly court case that would be rife with media attention. It would do more harm than good to the work we're trying to do at St. Mungo's. I think it would be best to just ignore it."
Draco nodded.
"It's your decision and I'll stand by it and you… we may be partners in rebellion, but I would like us to be friends who can support each other as well."
Hermione gestured towards the newspaper and sighed.
"I'm afraid this makes us more than just partners in rebellion and friends… It paints us as lovers as well…"
"Ah, forbidden romance, there's nothing like it." he replied sarcastically.
"I suppose it means we have a choice to make." She began, pacing the floor as she thought, "We could either ignore it as I suggested, deny the claims, or tell the truth about us and prove that there is something between us. Only problem is that no matter what we do, there will still be those that hate us for it. Guess the only thing to do now is make a choice…"
Hermione glanced at Draco, waiting on his input.
"I have nothing to gain by ignoring it except perhaps backlash if we do continue this relationship in secret and it does come to light later. Denial will only breed further speculation and cause more wild accusations to be thrown around." He took a deep breath and placed his hands on the back of one of her dining room chairs before continuing.
"I think that the most logical choice is to confirm the parts of the story which are correct and refute the ones which are lies. Will us being together harm our progress at work? It might, though not nearly as much as lying about it or ignoring it altogether would… At least, that's my take on the subject."
Hermione thought for a moment and then nodded.
"Your solution makes the most sense. People in the wizarding community already don't trust doctors as it is… they'd trust us even less if we lied about our personal lives."
Draco smiled widely, ignoring the pain in his jaw as he did.
"You agreed with me."
Hermione rolled her eyes.
"Yes, I agreed with you, do you want it in writing and notarized so you can put it on the wall with your degrees?" she replied, raising one of her eyebrows at him.
"No, but now that you mention it…" he began, only to be nudged by Hermione's shoulder as she walked by and took his hand, guiding him to her bathroom.
"Shut it. Let me check your face again, I'm worried about a hairline fracture."
"Oh, come on now, it isn't broken."
"And you would know how exactly?"
"It doesn't hurt a lot."
Hermione sat him down on the toilet seat and waved her wand over his face, murmuring an incantation that would allow her to see if there was a broken bone.
As his facial bones came into view, she noticed something shocking and gasped.
"What? Is it broken?" he asked worriedly.
"No… it's not broken, but your bones have markings on them… they almost look like patterns…"
Hermione trailed off, not finishing her sentence because she knew what they were.
Draco felt like he was going to be sick as he looked into the mirror behind her and saw the reflection of the marks on his bones.
The swirls and whorls, lines and patterns that crossed his bones were the same as the ones that had been on his Death Eater mask which had been given to him in a gilded box after his branding ceremony.
Hermione stopped the spell with a wave of her wand and she felt her heart drop at the look of horror and disgust on his face.
"Draco, I—"
She wasn't able to finish her sentence because Draco rose abruptly from the toilet, threw the seat up, fell to his knees, and heaved his stomach contents into the toilet bowl.