Hermione read over her parchment, blowing on the ink to help it dry. Scattered about the coffee table around her, piles of forms waited for her attention. She reached for another, setting this one into the completed pile. Her other quill scribbled away vigorously as a dark figure moved through the mist of her tracker. The deer, now a bit more cautious about its surroundings, bent down to get a drink from the pond. Hermione turned back to her work.

If she buried herself deep enough, she could ignore the rest of her life. Or, at least, that was the theory. She briefly closed her eyes against the soft tapping of a black shoe across the table.

Draco sipped calmly on his tea, the only indication of his stress was the ever constant tapping. Tapping that was really beginning to put a strain on her nerves. She took a quiet breath and went back to her form.

The tapping stopped.

"How long are we going to do this?"

She tried not to take the bait. Draco sat up, folding his hands together and leaning his forearms on his knees.

"Hermione. We need to talk."

She did not look up. "There's nothing to talk about." Her quill kept moving.

He dropped his head and took an audible breath.

"We can't keep doing this."

"Doing what? Work?"

"No!" He sneered.

She closed her eyes, willing patience to flood within her. Draco ran a hand through his hair, tussling the usually kept locks.

"No," he repeated, a bit more calmly. "I'm just tired of us walking on eggshells around each other."

"We aren't. We are working." She glanced up from her parchment. "You know, the thing we originally came out here for?"

She noticed a slight pull at his lips, almost a frown.

"Yes," he drawled. "I know what we came here for."

He sat back. "I just thought..." His voice trailed off.

But Hermione knew where he was going with it. A jumble of emotions surged through her, anger being the first and foremost. She put her quill down, rather roughly.

"You thought what, Draco?" She stared hard across the table. Her breathing grew with her temper. Her voice rose with each sentence. Her eyes burned into his.

"You fancied that one night in one another's arms and I would forget all of it? Forget the insults? The years of hatred? The torture?"

Her throat caught at the last word. She closed her eyes at the slight sting of tears. She locked her jaw as raw emotions rolled over her. She took a small ragged breath.

His eyes fell from her face. He paused to take in her words, as well as a steadying breath.

"Are you the same person you were at fourteen?" He asked, his voice coming out like gravel. "How about at seventeen?"

She glanced up, narrowing her eyes, but did not say anything. He did not need her to.

"No...I didn't think so."

He stood and walked to the kitchen, spanning his hands across the counter. His fingers flexed, balling up and straightening out.

He was right, she knew. She had changed since their school years; everyone had. The war had made sure of that. At fourteen, she hadn't known what the outcome was going to be, let alone how it would affect her. At seventeen, she was just hoping to stay alive, to keep Harry and Ron safe, to see her parents one last time. Life had changed her.

And it had changed him too. She knew that now, after spending so many weeks here, in the shadows of Malfoy Manor. Draco was not the same little prick she had grown up despising.

She looked up at the man before her. His eyes were squeezed shut. His mouth pulled tight. There was pain there. She could see that as clear as day. It made a part of her wanted to reach out to him. Maybe...

She closed her eyes against such thoughts. No. Things are the way they are.

She took a slow, calming breath.

"Maybe it would be best - for the both of us - if I continued the paperwork from my office."

He opened his eyes to stare at the counter top. When he looked up, his face was composed and blank. But something had deepened in his eyes. They were steel, no longer the soft smoke she had come to know. He nodded curtly.

"Yes. Maybe that would be best."

Without another word, Hermione summoned her things and walked out of the tent. She had to get a better start on all her paperwork if she wanted the creature on file properly. At least, that was why she told herself she was leaving so quickly.

Draco wandered about the gardens, bored out of his mind. The past month had given him something to do, something to focus on. Now that it was over, he wasn't sure what to do with himself. He did not have a job to go rushing back to nor did he have any particularly invigorating hobbies (unless you counted flying, which he didn't. His mind tended to drift when he was in the air).

So here he was, shuffling his feet and thinking about searching the forest for the deer. Because, yes it was still here. And yes, the Ministry (aka Hermione) was doing all they could to remove it (or so she had stated in her very brief, very professional letter).

Draco sat down in a patio chair. He looked about the flowers and vines, drumming his fingers on the table. This was what his mother called "idle time". Wasting time was more like it. He hated it.

He was about to get back up, the thought of rereading potions books from the Malfoy library flitting through his head (anything to keep his mind from running off with him), when a big dark owl landed on the seat beside him.

It dropped the Daily Prophet on the table and held out a small pouch attached to its leg. Draco paid the bird and reached for the paper as it flew away. He would welcome a distraction at this point.

He opened it up, already thumbing to the obituaries when an article caught the corner of his eye. A picture of him and Hermione plastered over the front page.

Love Affair between
Golden Girl & Death Eater?

"What?" He almost dropped the paper.

His eyes took in the first bit of the article, written in a circle around the pair of them dancing.

"Everyone was a buzz when the romantic side of the Golden Trio ended a few years back, but it came to no surprise to this reporter. Not with Death Eater, Draco Malfoy, lurking around in the shadows. Who knows how long this love affair has been going on? It may be what turned things harsh between Ronald B. Weasley and Hermione J. Granger in the first place...Cont. Page 4)

Draco stared, dumbfounded at the two of them. How had someone taken this photo? They were the only ones in the tent that night...or any other night, for that matter. His mother hadn't even known their location. The only being who had was-

"Dotty!"

The house-elf came to the double glass doors immediately, quickly wiping flour on her apron.

"Yes, Master Draco?"

He shoved the paper in her face.

"What do you know about this?!"

Her eyes grew wide and her ears drooped. "Oh no, Master Draco," she whispered slowly. "Dotty has not seen this..."

She lowered her head and looked up from under her lashes with big sad eyes. "Does this mean everything is not alright between Master Draco and Miss Granger?"

Draco jerked the paper back. "There is nothing between Ms. Granger and I," he snarled.

Dotty did not take offense to his tone. Instead, she lowered her eyes. "That is a shame," she whispered, so low that Draco almost missed it. He cut his eyes at her then sighed, the breath coming deep from within.
"Yes, Dotty. Yes, it is."

Draco paced in the foyer of the manor. Hermione and two field techs from the Department of Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures were due at any moment. He was sure by now she had seen the article. Hell, everyone in Wizarding Britain had seen (and apparently discussed) the article.

Narcissa had casually commented on it after Colette Greengrass had brought it up during Wednesday tea. She asked what was between him and the muggleborn witch. Draco had been forced to tell her the same thing he had told Dotty: that there really wasn't anything between them.

He was pulled from his thoughts by a slight ding! that alerted the family to intruders at their gate.

He opened the doors to find Hermione, Creevey, and a little mousy woman coming up the drive. They stopped at the bottom of the stairs. Hermione's eyes flicked past him and he watched her jaw tighten before she fixed her gaze on him.

"Mr. Malfoy." She gave a stiff nod.

Draco's eyebrows came together but he returned her nod. "Granger. Good of you to come back."

Her eyes widened as if he had made a rude jab at her. He could actually see her bristle. He closed his eyes. This was going to be a long visit.

Hermione straightened her shoulders and gestured towards the garden gates.

"Shall we?"

Draco nodded.

He lead the way through the kept gardens and into the wilderness like before.

A few miles in, he couldn't stand it any longer. He glanced back at Hermione, who walked behind him.

"We need to talk."

She sighed. "As I said before, there is nothing to talk about." Her voice was hard and her words clipped.

"This article-"

"This article is nothing more than a thought up story that witches are narrow enough to believe."

"Yes, but those narrow witches hang on this Skeeter woman's every word. She has the whole of Britain eating out of the palms of her hands."

Hermione's eyes blazed.

"Rita Skeeter is nothing more than a two bit-" She cut herself off with a slight growl. She closed her eyes, took a breath, and tried again. "Skeeter is a woman who will go to many heights and push many boundaries to catch the eyes of her readers. Why she choose to target the two of us is beyond me."

"But how did she get that picture?" Draco asked, not really aiming the question at her but venting his frustrations in general.

Hermione paused, allowing the two techs to get ahead of them by a few feet. She turned to face him, looking him in the eyes for the first time since she arrived.

"Look, I don't know how she got it. Honestly, at this point, I don't particularly care. What I do care about is keeping my job. I came here to work, not fuss about some tidbit written by a washed up old woman."

Misery crept into her eyes as she spoke. Despite her saying otherwise, Draco saw how this endeavor was affecting her. It made him hate the reporter even more.

"Alright," he allowed. "So what are we doing?"

Hermione raised her eyebrows at him.

"I had thought that part was pretty obvious."

She continued after the two techs, who had paused and looked back at her.

"We are going to capture the deer," she called back over her shoulder.

Author's Note:

Disclaimer: I do not own anything from the Harry Potter series. Those rights belong to JK Rowling. I am only borrowing her beautiful creations.

I have noticed quite a few spelling mistakes as I am editing so yikes. I think I fixed them.