A/N: Happy New Year! This one is a wee bit short, but it's good to be back.
Hermione heard the commotion before she was greeted with the source of it. A confused call from her secretary, which quickly morphed into a shout of mingled surprise and annoyance before the door to her office was slamming open and Draco Malfoy was marching up to her desk. Fighting the way her hand twitched to go to her wand, Hermione shot to her feet and glared at him.
"What on earth are you doing-"
"What did you do?" He snarled, raising his voice so that it drowned hers out even as Serana raced in after him.
The secretary hovered in the doorway, eyeing the Malfoy heir with undisguised trepidation, as if she was afraid of getting closer lest he lash out at her. Hermione could see why, too, given the unbridled fury on his face. This wasn't the condescending disgust or trademark aloofness that she'd so often been on the receiving end of in their school days, this was sheer and genuine rage.
"What are you talking about?" she waved for her secretary to leave, and the woman did so without a moment of hesitation.
"Who have you told? About Marilyn? Who has Potter told, or that pitiful prat you call a husba-"
"Hey," she snapped, her own ire quickly rising.
"Who?"
"No one!"
"Who?"
"Are you deaf or just doing a very persistent owl impression?"
Draco did not see the funny side of her question, sneering at her, his lip curled.
"I'm glad you find this all so amusing, because somebody put this in her bag," he all but slammed a scrap of parchment down onto her desk.
Riled as she was from the greeting Draco had doled out, it took a moment for Hermione to register what she was seeing, and when she did her fury turned to dread. Well, shit. There was a symbol she'd dearly hoped to never see again, save perhaps in the history books.
"I'll have to call Harry," she sighed "He and Ron are the Aurors, this isn't my department, there's nothing I can officially do."
"No, you've done quite enough it seems."
"How exactly is this my fault?"
"This didn't start until you and your friends poked your noses in. Weeks, I've known her - months, in fact! And nothing. No trouble, no danger. Then you lot show up and trouble follows. Why am I not surprised?"
"If you've known her for months as you say, that's plenty of opportunity for one of your lot to catch wind of what's going on. Nobody I associate with wishes harm upon Muggles, can you really say the same?" Hermione retorted.
Draco glared.
"And I suppose you took proper precautions any and every time that you saw her?" She continued angrily "Apparated to a few different places before actually heading to York? Went through all the proper protective and concealment charms? Yes?"
His glare lost just a little of its bite, doubt visibly creeping across his face. Hermione took a deep breath in and forced her own anger out of her posture. It was, however much she hated to admit it, a little more difficult to absolutely despise him nowadays. Not because of Draco himself - no, he was almost as fundamentally dislikeable now as he'd been back in their Hogwarts days - but because of the root of his anger. He wasn't being a shit for the sake of being a shit now. He was scared. That much was written across his face as plainly as the Dark Mark had once been branded on his arm. Try as he might to disguise it with anger, Draco Malfoy was frightened.
"Did you do all of that? Before going to the little coffee meeting you had scheduled?" He asked.
The question was laced with accusation, but she could sense the real curiosity there.
"I did, but it didn't matter - she didn't turn up," Hermione crossed her arms "And it wouldn't matter even if she had. Or are you really suggesting the people I keep company with are more likely to do this than the ones you're surrounded by? Merlin, Malfoy, your own father could've been responsible."
Whether he was frightened for his own sake, or for that of Marilyn Baxter, Hermione couldn't be sure. If it was the former, then that was understandable. Logical, even. But if it was the latter? Well, that was both strangely adorable and entirely problematic.
Ten years ago she may have taken great pleasure in turning him away. In fact, having him coming to her in great need of her assistance (and, by extension, that of Ron and Harry's) was like some sort of revenge fantasy come to life in the mind of her teenage self. But turning her back on him would also be turning her back on Miss Baxter - the woman who had done nothing wrong, and would be far worse off for Hermione's refusal.
He hovered there in the middle of her office, too chagrined to continue his tirade, too desperate to leave without some promise of help, and most of all too damn proud to ask for that help. It was almost funny, how he'd changed so much but not at all.
"It wouldn't have been my father," he said eventually, brow furrowed before he repeated it again - for whose benefit she didn't know "It wouldn't have been. If he knew, there wouldn't be a howler in the world quite explosive enough for his fury. He wouldn't waste it on something like this. If he knew, I'd know damn well that he did."
It seemed he'd skipped past asking for her help, and moved straight onto assuming he had it, already crossing suspects off of the lift. Hermione groaned with no small amount of exasperation…and then she dropped her arms to her side.
"It may not be the same people responsible for these attacks, you know. Whoever was responsible for those, they gave no warning. That's what this is," she gestured to the Dark Mark emblazoned on the parchment "- a warning. Not an attack. Okay, it's not necessarily a bluff, but it may not be as dire as it seems. Somebody is intent on driving you away from her, but that doesn't have to mean that they're capable of following through on the threat."
"But it doesn't mean they aren't."
It wasn't a question, and the statement wasn't incorrect either. They both knew that.
"Lyn?"
"Mmmf."
She mustered the groan without opening her eyes, nor surfacing from beneath her covers.
"Are you decent?"
Taylor's voice was muffled by the door.
"Never," she called back.
The door creaked open.
"Feeling rough?"
"Not horribly. I didn't drink that much."
"Sarah probably wishes she could say the same. She's got her head in a bucket upstairs as we speak. Are you up to helping me pick up the pieces of what's left of our kitchen?"
Rolling onto her back, Marilyn sighed. It was better than lying here, doing her best to will herself out of existence entirely.
"Get the kettle on."
Not ten minutes later she found herself in her fluffiest dressing gown and woolly socks, scrubbing nacho crumbs out of the dining room rug. True to their usual form, mostly everybody had left much earlier than their night of drinking might have suggested they would - mostly because they would have been worried that staying for long would end with them roped into cleaning. The few who remained were either good Samaritans (they'd have to be, to have no qualms about being elbow deep in vomit in the bathroom - but then she supposed that sort of thing hardly fazed Sarah's med student friends), or trying to win the favour of one of her very pretty housemates through their good deed. One guy had already brought Sarah two glasses of water in the time that Marilyn had been awake alone. She wondered what it meant, then, that Draco was not to be found among the little group of potential suitors? Not that she was surprised by it, after the way they'd left things.
"When did Draco leave?" Taylor gave voice to the topic of her thoughts.
"A little before sunrise."
"Ah."
It was said knowingly, like Marilyn's answer had been ended with 'right after he put his clothes back on'.
"He slept above the covers - only after I adamantly insisted that he couldn't sleep on the floor."
"Oh."
This time it was said with disappointment. A level of disappointment that Marilyn had to begrudgingly admit that she also felt - even if she only actually admitted it to herself. Of course, she hadn't been hoping that after one kiss (no matter how intense that kiss wound up being) he would drag her to her bedroom and ravish her. She might have even dismissed his offer to sleep on the floor as gentlemanly...were it not for the awkwardness that the whole night had been bathed in after the kiss. Insecure and easily shaken were not words that Marilyn would've often used to describe herself, but that stifling awkwardness had almost been enough to ruin her entire night. It had certainly been enough to make her wish she hadn't kissed him. Or had he kissed her? Her memory of it changed every time she recalled it, morphing to fit her worries and fears, or even her suspicions of what might have happened.
One moment her recollections were filled with her launching herself at a horrified Draco, and then the next time she conjured up the memory he was just as enthusiastic as she had been. Perhaps even more-so. But maybe that was fanciful. Maybe that was just her believing what she wanted to believe, for the sake of her own ego and...feelings. What other explanation could there be? What could have changed during the walk from the garden to her bedroom? What could have possibly been the root of that awful silence that suffocated them for the rest of the evening, until she pretended to be utterly exhausted by the time one a.m. rolled around just so that she might stop trying to force conversation with him when he seemed determined to thwart any attempts the moment they started.
God, she'd curled up there on her bed for two hours afterwards, pretending to be asleep all while actually being painstakingly aware of his presence just behind her. It was that desire to work through her confusion that had her speaking again.
"...We might have kissed."
Taylor almost dropped the broom she'd been cleaning the kitchen floor with.
"What?"
"We kissed a little bit," Marilyn shrugged before sighing "...Okay, a lot. Well, not exactly a lot - one kiss. But it was a proper kiss, not just a 'New Years' midnight peck' sort of thing."
"Well, it was bound to happen sooner or later...if it was going to happen at all, I suppose. We were starting to wonder - Sarah and me, I mean."
"It's complicated. Messy. Maybe it shouldn't have happened at all," Marilyn sighed, leaning back from where she knelt on the floor.
She lifted a hand to smooth it over her hair in a soothing gesture, then remembered that she'd just been scrubbing at the floor at the last second and flailed the hand in frustration instead - probably looking like an absolute tit for her efforts. It was a wonder Draco hadn't proposed marriage already.
"That bad, then?"
Taylor was teasing, but the way she stopped what she was doing and moved to sit on the floor opposite her made it clear that she'd picked up on her distress.
"The kiss, no. Everything after it…" Marilyn trailed off and then groaned "I think it ruined everything."
"What even happened?" Taylor frowned.
Crossing her legs, she leaned forward with her elbows on her knees, waiting intently for some kind of explanation.
"I don't know," Marilyn insisted "We kissed and everything was fine, and then we went inside and nothing was fine. If we lived in some sort of palace where we needed a map to get from the garden to my bedroom I'd understand, but it was what? Ten seconds? I don't get it."
"Did you argue or something?"
"Arguing would've been preferable. Things were just so awkward. The silence was so bad. At first I thought it was just me being paranoid,
"Maybe it was the fact that you went to your bedroom? Did he think you expected more to happen and didn't know how to politely say he wasn't ready for that?"
"Maybe," she sighed "But I doubt it. I know him, if that was the issue he'd have said so."
"And there was nothing that happened in between? Nothing at all?" Taylor frowned.
"Nothing," Marilyn replied "Well, I showed him something - I found a scrap of paper in my bag that had an identical picture of this tattoo he has. Or had, I suppose, it looks kind of weird now. I thought it was funny, some sort of strange coincidence, but he barely even reacted. Just stared at it for a bit and shrugged it off."
"Maybe he thought you were making fun of him. Maybe it's a sore spot."
"Maybe, maybe, maybe," Marilyn sighed "It's enough to drive me mad. It's too much."
"Nobody ever found anything worth having without a little uncertainty," Taylor said, but her brows were knitted together in commiseration all the same.
Marilyn huffed a sigh. The real response to that was too long and complicated and tediously exhausting for her to even contemplate getting into. It was the sort of conversation that was better suited to a couple of bottles of wine, pizza, ice cream, a marathon of the cheesiest movies the eighties had to offer. Preferably with Sarah's presence, because she could make her laugh about anything. It was not a conversation for the dining room-slash-kitchen floor, before noon, whilst nursing a mild hangover and a wounded ego. Especially not with vague acquaintances darting in and out of the room at the drop of a hat. She didn't need them knowing quite how pathetically she'd started off the year - it would do little to help the aforementioned wounded ego.
No, this was a time strictly for funny anecdotes from the previous night, along with arguments over who would be walking to the chippy later on. Instead, she settled for the cliff-notes version of the matter at hand.
"He's not for me to have anyway, Tee. In any sense of the word."
At that, Taylor's sympathy went from commiserating to all-out sadness. Before she could formulate any kind of argument, though, Marilyn rose and went into the kitchen to make a start on the dishes. She didn't want to talk about it. Jesus, she barely wanted to think about it. The hangover, mild or no, was filling her with the sort of doom and gloom that she'd once have been able to drive away by moving until she physically could not move any longer. Now all she had was cleaning - a poor substitute, indeed. The hangover would wear off, and time would act as a balm to the ego and she'd be able to laugh about the whole fiasco. Until then she just had to see it through and lick her wounds.
It came as a great relief when she heard Taylor sigh and grab a bin bag somewhere behind her, going back to the task at hand. After a brief moment, she turned on the radio too for good measure. It was a slight distraction, at least, from the heaviness and confusion building deep within her. The only thing that eased the heaviness had the unfortunate effect of boosting the confusion in equal measures, and that was the memory of his exit - so hazy and sleep-fogged that she was almost convinced she'd dreamt it.
"Baxter?" she'd woken to him speaking quietly, but didn't react nor show any sign of consciousness "...Marilyn?"
The murmur of her first name had been even quieter. Dare she say affectionate? Or the closest she'd heard him get to it, anyway. Still, she hadn't moved - embarrassment and worry fuelling her Oscar-worthy performance. When she felt him ease off of the bed behind her, she expected nothing to follow but the creak of her bedroom door, and then the dull thud and rattle of the front door. Instead, though, she had to fight not to tense as she felt his fingertips skim across her jawline, even as goosebumps erupted all over her arms in response. Then he sighed, pulled her covers up over her from where his shifting had pulled them down a little, and then there was nothing but his soft padding footsteps as he left the room.
Marilyn waited before she allowed herself to react, wanting to be thoroughly certain that he was gone before she reacted. In the end, she spent so long waiting and listening for signs of movement around the house - anything to suggest he might've just gone to the bathroom or to the kitchen for a glass of water - that she fell asleep before she coherently registered his exit.