A SMALL CORNER OF THE WORLD
…
Hermione Jean Granger exhales in relief as she steps out of the summer heat and into the cool interior of Flourish and Blotts.
She will admit it is in part because she's in one of her favourite places again. Her hectic job writing for the Daily Prophet doesn't leave her much time to read for pleasure, and the feeling of stepping over the threshold of the shop in search of new books for herself, and not in preparation for some article or some interview, is akin to one of coming home. The smell of leather and parchment. The chime of the till. Shelves full of worlds just dying to be explored.
And nobody to share it with.
It is very rare that she feels melancholic over the fact – growing up in the way that she has, a solitary childhood followed by boarding school in a strange world where she always felt somewhat out of place has meant she's learnt to be self-sustainable. Pragmatic to a tee. But that doesn't mean she doesn't often wish for someone else to share her love of written words – of literature and poetry, prose and language – harbouring a burning excitement of what one will find, how the next book you pick up will change your perspective on the world. Harry often enjoyed reading a little, but never to the extent that Hermione did, and Ginny has grown to like it occasionally in the handful of years since they've all left Hogwarts. Ron, however, seems to have an adverse reaction to the pastime, and Hermione often used to see him as a lost cause.
Which is perhaps the reason they broke up.
It's not that he wasn't nice to her when they were together, because he most certainly was. But Hermione is… well, Hermione. Intellectually speaking, he never stimulated her, which Hermione learnt over the short year they tried to 'be together' is a dealbreaker to her in a relationship. When she tried to debate with him on the odd occasion – you know, ask him about politics or humanity or even bloody quidditch – she reminded herself of a steamroller, or a hurricane, destroying everything in her path without opposition.
No, it wasn't a very enjoyable time in her life, but she's glad that they still remain friends to this day.
An elderly couple enter through the door behind her, bell tinkling atop the frame, and she moves out of the way and further into the shop. It's currently June, and as such the weather is hot outside but nobody has started any back-to-school shopping yet, meaning the place is rather quiet despite the fact that it's a Saturday and normally the busiest day of the week.
Hermione doesn't mind, though. She turns and heads up the stairs to the second floor, knowing exactly where she wants to head to first: the fiction section.
The way people read works much differently in the wizarding world, something that has always mildly baffled Hermione. In the muggle world, fiction has a huge market - so big that it's split up into several genres – but here it isn't so. Frowned upon by purebloods and the like, not much of it is written in the first place, and so it is reduced to having a singular section upstairs and out of sight while non-fiction takes up most of the shelf space. And while Hermione does love sinking her teeth into an informative read, educating herself on something she might not otherwise come into contact with, it lacks the escapism she so desperately seeks in a good novel.
And so that's the direction in which she wanders, pausing occasionally when a book catches her eye to read the blurb, but nothing overly piques her interest. She rounds the corner of the aisle to the section she's after, gaze raking over the tomes around her inquisitively, before they land on a figure stood a bit further down, book tucked under his arm while he runs a slender finger across the spines on the shelf as he reads the titles.
Hermione's steps falter.
Probably due to the fact she's never seen anyone in this section, she reasons. Not really. As she alluded to, it isn't very popular amongst witches and wizards, so she seldom sees anyone here.
It's definitely not because it's Draco Malfoy stood there.
Draco effing Malfoy, stood right there in the fiction section of Flourish and Blotts, looking as though he's actually enjoying himself.
It must be his doppelganger, she thinks. Or poor lighting. Or maybe it's for some sort of joke he's concocting for his gang of pureblood friends – she can all too easily imagine it. Look what I found in the mudblood section, she hears him taunt in her head, isn't it complete and utter rubbish? My bloody house elf could have written better than this filth-
Malfoy turns and looks at her, breaking off her internal monologue. Slate grey eyes pinning her as if they can read her thoughts as easily as one of the books surrounding them. She's still walking, she realises, and will undoubtedly pass him in a few short strides. Would it be weird to stop now? To spin on her heel and flee into the adjacent section, hide behind one of the shelves and wait him out?
Yes, Hermione, she thinks. Yes, that would be very weird.
She nods once at him in acknowledgement. It's all she can bring herself to do. He mirrors the gesture, mumbling, "Alright, Granger?" as she passes, and despite the fact that she's hated him and everything he stands for for years, that he was her teenage bully and treated her abysmally, her politeness just won't seem to allow her to ignore his words and move down the aisle in silence like she'd originally planned to do.
So, she says; "Yes, thank you. You?"
She's on the other side of him now and comes to a stop by a side table containing piles of tomes. He turns his head sharply to look at her, and she immediately regrets ever opening her mouth to reply.
"I'm well, thank you," he says warily.
"Good."
Silence hangs between them. Hermione turns to the stack of hardbacks she's stood next to, lifting the front cover of the one on top to peer just inside. She should leave. She should go while they're still being civil to each other.
But she's always been Gryffindor through and through, too bold for her own good.
"Can't say I ever expected to see you here, Malfoy," she comments casually.
Her words break right through the awkward atmosphere that had settled, dissipating it immediately and sending them straight back to their bickering Hogwarts days.
"What's that supposed to mean?" he fires back hotly.
"Well, isn't fiction synonymous with muggle?" She looks up at him. "Wouldn't have thought you'd want to be caught dead in this section."
He tilts his head to the side, eyes narrowing. "I think that's a little unfair, Granger, since you hardly know me."
She scoffs. "I know enough."
"Do you?"
"Don't I?"
"I'm allowed to enjoy fiction too, you know. It's a free world, I can read whatever I want."
"Sure, you can," she says. "Apart from fiction, most of which is written by mudbloods, and therefore you don't deserve to read it based off your poor treatment of them in the past."
He visibly flinches at her words, the only inclination that they've landed at all since his expression otherwise remains stoic, and guilt worms it's way through her. Is she being unfair? I mean, he was undoubtedly unfair to her for all of those years at school, and she thinks it's only right that she stand up for herself now while she still has the opportunity. She might never even see him again after this chance encounter, and if this is some sort of joke by being here then she needs to let him know that it's definitely not okay.
Before she can add anything else, however, he says, "You know, I always thought you were an advocate for equal rights. I would have never admitted it, but I did admire that about you. But it seems to me that it was all a façade."
Hermione opens her mouth to respond, but nothing comes out. A façade? Is he kidding? At a loss for words, she takes him in, the book pressed against his side and the downturned corners of his mouth, light wash muggle jeans and platinum hair, and realises that he's being serious.
He's being bloody serious.
She then proceeds to wish the ground will simply crack open so she can throw herself into the abyss.
She was unfair to him, wasn't she? She was unfair and scathingly biased – every quality she previously abhorred within him manifesting in her – and the niggling guilt increases tenfold. She doesn't even know him anymore, not that she particularly knew him all that well in the first place. She drops her shoulders, which she didn't even realise were raised like some sort of cornered animal, and shuts her eyes for a second before looking at him once more and saying, "I'm sorry. Truly."
His expression softens, though there's still a wary glint in his eye. "So am I. For the years of utter hell I gave you."
"I…" She frowns, surprised at his blunt admission, and a smile threatens to rise to her lips. "Very forward of you, Malfoy."
"Well, it's not often one bumps into a pretty woman with good taste." He looks around at the shelves pointedly and shoots her a small, hesitant smile.
If his previous words didn't utterly shock her, these ones certainly do.
"Are- are you hitting on me?" she asks.
Malfoy laughs – actually laughs – at her response, the sound a far cry from the nasty jeer she remembers him sporting. "Still very much a Gryffindor I see, Granger. Tell me, is the notion of subtlety anathema to you?"
"Hermione," she corrects dumbly, marvelling that he understands the meaning of the word 'anathema'. "It's Hermione."
"In that case, it's Draco."
"Cool."
"Cool."
There's silence for a couple of minutes, though while the silence before was awkward, this one is tentative. Hopeful and full of some unnamed promise.
"What is that you've got?" she asks, pointing to the book under his arm.
"Oh, this?" He pulls it out, and she steps closer to read the title.
"Ah, I've read that one," she says. "Not as good as The Bleeding Cauldron but still a great read, I found."
"Yes, I've read that one too. Fascinating allegory on nihilism."
She looks up at him in excitement. "Wasn't it? Especially the part when…"
And so they stand there and talk about books for the better part of the next hour, time seemingly abandoning them in their small corner of the world along with the sense that they were ever adversaries, and once their voices are hoarse and their expressions unguarded, they make to leave the shop, checking out their purchases at the till and stepping onto the cobbles of the street beyond.
"Hey," Draco says, holding his Flourish and Blotts bag in one hand while tucking the other into the front pocket of his jeans, a picture of casual. "I... I don't quite know how to say this, but I really enjoyed your company today and rather think I'd like to enjoy it even more over a bottle of wine and a good meal."
Hermione raises a brow and asks, "Is that so?"
She swears a slight blush rises to his pale cheeks. "Yes."
"Where would you take me?"
His turn to raise an eyebrow at her, dryly commenting, "It's the twenty-first century, Granger, where would you take me?"
She grins at him. "It's Hermione, remember?" She starts to walk off. "Meet me here at seven on Monday."
"Seven on Monday?"
"I'm not in the habit of repeating myself, Draco."
He smiles and starts to walk backwards in the opposite direction, his expression causing Hermione's stomach to flip. "I'll see you on Monday, then."
…
A/N: This was written for the QLFC, team Tutshill Tornados.
Prompts used:
(Beater 2) Unfairness
1. (word) Casual
11. (setting) Flourish and Blotts
Word Count: 2011
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