Author note: This was always meant to be just a one-shot drabble? However i didn't quite like how i ended it. No Beta, please review.
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Chapter Two.
Hermione.
It had all been too much, the healers, the magical specialists who focused on Muggle medicine, and now the team from the Department of Mysteries, all telling her it was hopeless, that there was no chance of recovery, and that restoring the former memories of her parents was no longer possible.
Too long, they had indicated, any more time than a mere couple of months and the mental fugues become too strong to break through without causing significant mental damage.
It was too much to hear, especially after the latest fight with Ron. He wanted her to come out more often after work, socialising with his new crowd of colleagues, be on his arm and make him look like the hero. All she wanted to do was curl up in front of the fire at home, a warm mug of tea and perhaps a biscuit or two to nibble on as she perused a few interesting books. Post-work hours should be enjoyable, but the two of them had vastly different ideas of what enjoyable looked like.
She imagined Ron would wither if he was cooped up at home, unable to go out and meet new crowds, being free to travel with his post-war accolades and Auror internship. Hermione felt like she would wither away if she was forced to join him. After a year on the run, living in a grimy tent, squatting in any damp and dingy unseen corner they could find, she wanted a chance to be comfortable coming home to a bed with a soft pillow and the homely smell of a pot of coffee in the mornings.
Eventually Ron had seen the cracks in their relationship, which would have been perfectly fine, if it had not been two hours prior to the anniversary of the Battle which saw the end of the Second War. She had been dressing in her grey gown, appropriately solemn for the occasion, and trying to work on her hair, when he had strolled into the bathroom behind her and bluntly announcing he didn't think they should be together romantically anymore.
The hairbrush lay forgotten once it clattered to the floor, hitting the sink on its way down.
"Now, you're doing this now?" She had replied, not shocked, but certainly aware that Ron's emotionally empathetic range had decreased from teaspoon to microscopic.
"Well, yeah, surely after all we've faced now is better than never. Right?" Was the self-righteous reply.
A deep inhale was followed by a slow exhale. The hairbrush stayed forgotten as one extra thing was added to her list.
"We're not announcing this tonight though, tonight is about acknowledging last year and all the people we lost. Harry's bringing Andromeda and Teddy and your mum is going to need us to help her when they get to the memorials. We can deal with us tomorrow."
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Two months is all it had taken her to get herself organised to exit the wizarding world. Post gala, she had moved out of her and Ron's small flat and into Grimmauld place with Harry, taking up the same bedroom she and Ginny used to share.
After paying the Mind Healers one last visit, partially to make one last heartfelt plea, but also to thank them for their services over the past eight months, Hermione packed up her belongings into her purple extended purse and hailed a cab to her new flat in Oxford.
Her childhood home had been sold on prior to her parents moving to Australia. Her spell work had been efficient in that area, the Grangers had retired from their dental practice and had instead taken up a life of leisure on the eastern side of Australia, following the comfortable sunny temperatures year round like birds flying away for the winter.
Her small one-bedroom flat was perfectly situated in Muggle Oxford. Her biggest concern once moving in was making sure she had a roadworthy bike to travel to and from the classes she had enrolled in. The money she had stashed away in a childhood bank account had grown a little over her year on the run, but it would not be enough to pay off her home loan, or even get her through the year or repayments unless she worked as she studied.
A quick confounding charm to the registrar and course directors smoothed over supposedly lost paperwork, and a place magically opened up for her in the wildly popular Historical Studies, of which she was the eleventh student in a ten-student capped class. Hermione supposed she could have done the right thing and allowed herself to go on a wait list, but surviving a war, and essentially losing her parents had made her a little selfish in chasing a goal.
The professor had been impressed at her application in class, ensuring that she had the "with honours" tacked onto her degree at the earliest opportunity. She was even given a chance to take on a masters dissertation support for a senior researcher a few years into his degree on classical alchemical literature, which meant she got to spend extra hours in the Bodleian library, calling up ancient muggle texts on the early attempts of muggle potioneers, trying to replicate the many remedies and potions that they used to have access to prior to the statute of secrecy. Many ingredients were substituted, but she recognised a few potioneering methods, although the muggles would have had no way to temper the flames, or access to the right cauldron needed for some of the more caustic potions.
She had quickly grown a fascination in exploring these old muggle texts, finding a vast number of social links between the muggle world in the time of the fathers of muggle science, and the increase in secrecy from the magical world, reacting to a growing level of disharmony from the more conservative religious elders of the time. Hermione began to find herself wanting a conversational partner who could share in her enthusiasm with these previously unresearched links, but the only thing greeting her in the evenings was her ageing cat who loved nothing better than to remain fast asleep in his bed next to the heater.
Harry was the one link to the Wizarding world she kept. She tried keeping in touch with Ron, but their friendship fell apart as easily as their relationship had, and they parted ways without issue when he had started a relationship with Parvati when they reconnected at some function. Hermione didn't feel his loss too keenly, but she missed his easily going nature and his witty remarks to nonsensical things.
After realising her funds were getting dangerously low, and without the freedom to magically create more (as against the Wrack's law of magical ethics dictated to the wizarding society who involved themselves in the Modern Muggle World), Hermione found herself having to write herself a heavily doctored resume in order to get a job to pay her way through.
As perfect as a library assistant would have been, the hours clashed with her courses lectures, the auxiliary staff position demanded previous experience in a similar role (and cleaning cauldrons after a practical class session didn't count), the administration roles all required experience in something called the Office Suite, which Hermione had a vague understanding that it was a series of computer programs, all of which she could certainly learn had she the time but the closing dates for those positions passed before she could learn why PowerPoint kept making her written text take up the whole screen.
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One evening barista course later (as recommended by Blake Hughes, the senior student whose dissertation she was a junior research assistant for), and she had a genuine certification that would see her score an informal interview, then a trial and a job offer in the space of one afternoon at a cafe, located neatly in a comfortable distance from bother her flat and the lecture halls in the Eastern Campus.
Being the woman behind the coffee machine at the ungodly hours of each morning gave Hermione a renewed sense of purpose, and invigorated her mornings. The deeply earthy smell of the freshly roasted beans, the whirring of the grinder and the puffing hiss of the froth nozzle all filled her senses for the four hour morning shifts. She got to know the usuals and their morning orders, which of the bespeckled professors were burning the midnight oil, and bizarrely, which of the locals were popping in for a morning hot drink after spending the evening at home with someone who they were not in a committed relationship with.
It was the shifty, guilty faces that gave them away, she had decided. The first time she had noticed, a woman wearing the previous day's work outfit, ordering her usual tall double shot had been nervously looking around the cafe, as if waiting for someone or something to jump out at her. The woman had put Hermione on high alert, highly in tune with the flavour of a room, especially after being on the run for so long, and being considered society's undesirable Number Two.
After realising the woman was merely trying to avoid being caught engaging in an extra-marital tryst, Hermione had calmed, realising that the muggles around her were oblivious to the trauma of war.
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Harry eventually became a regular customer, after realising that the coffee she made in the muggle machine was vastly superior to the instant magical powder that he had learnt to conjure. She learnt his order too, but never started making it until he arrived, wanting to spend a few extra moments with her oldest friend. Their mornings usually consisted of her asking him what the plan for the day looked like, and Harry either happily replying that it was a field test a day, or morose in his reply that it was another day of facing an ever-growing pile of paperwork and theory for his Auror Training.
When Harry first mention his office mate, Hermione was surprised, Draco Malfoy had slunk away with his parents after the war, only dutifully coming out of the woodwork to face the Wizengamot (in which she, Ron and Harry had all spoken in his defence), and appearing beside his parents as they made social appearances. She never imagined the man would have wanted to work in law enforcement, she had imagined he would be happy living a life of leisure, swanning about using his name as a passport to the high life. Hermione had pulled herself up on that thought, reflecting on the thought that she was no longer the invasive know-it-all of her teenage years, so perhaps the blond man was no longer the pointy git who made fun of her oversized front teeth or made petty remarks on the quidditch skills of others.
Hermione grew surprised when Harry's coffee order became two take-aways, the large cappuccino for himself, and a long black with one sugar for none other than his probation office mate. She decidedly did not comment on the new friendship between the two men, having decided that if Harry was going to make the decision to trust Draco Malfoy, and work peaceably alongside him, then he couldn't be as bad as he was when he was a teen.
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More than a year after Harry had added Draco's coffee to the morning routine, Hermione had wondered why Draco didn't just get his own coffee, after all, a public Ministry floo connection was available a mere half block away, and Harry made use of it five days of the week.
Her query was answered the very next morning, when Draco Malfoy himself walked through the cafe door, tagging behind Harry very much like the colleague introducing a mate to his favourite watering hole like they were. She hadn't even noticed at first, too busy making a series of orders for a van full of American tourists who had decided that the seven-thirty morning rush was the perfect time to order a half dozen unnecessarily complicated hot drinks with extra syrups and liquids added to them, like there wasn't a dozen professionals, paralegals and suited up business owners desperate for their morning cuppa to wake up their soul for whatever lie ahead for the day.
Harry and Draco were relegated to the back of the queue as the teenager taking orders made apologies to the rest of the line as they stepped forward to order, citing a short wait due to the backed up orders. Being British, the rest of the customers merely nodded and waiting patiently, though more than one eye cast an unsavoury look at the loud tourists exclaiming how "vinty" the wall paper was.
When the queue lessened and the rush of people began to wane, Hermione looked up at the remaining morning crowd, finally noticing Harry She grinned at him, barely taking note of the familiar face beside him before ducking her head down to fill the next order slip for Mr Norman - a rather particular man who's reputation preceded him, being that he was the founding partner of Norman and Jates, the most prestigious law firm in the Oxford region.
The steam from the froth nozzle had caused her already curly hair to escape its braids, framing her face and thankfully hiding the beads of sweat that were forming as she was blasted with waves of steam escaping over the cups and jugs.
Finally the last of the muggles ahead of them picked up their order, receiving a quick smile in farewell from Hermione. Layla, the teenage girl who had been on the payment counter nodded to Hermione, knowing she was more than happy to do Harry's order - gladly took the free moments to tuck back in the staff corner to pull out her phone and take a quick breather before the next wave of morning workers rushed in.
Harry motioned for Hermione to acknowledge Draco, but she wasn't sure what to offer aside from and awkward: 'Hello Malfoy, good to see you're looking well, how's work?"
She opted out of saying that, instead deciding that a pointed finger at Malfoy, followed by the sternly delivered,
"I'd like to thank you Malfoy for having the least complicated coffee order of my entire day." Before cracking a grin at the two of them.
Having broken away from the potentially awkward reintroduction, the three of them split into smiles and a quick laugh as she held out her hand for Harry's muggle bank card, swiping it through to pay for their drinks.
She hadn't been lying either, Harry's cappuccino was one of the less complicated usual orders, but nothing quite beat the simplicity of a long black with one sugar.
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Bizarrely, Draco Malfoy himself quickly became a regular customer, though usually arriving in the afternoons when she had her afternoon shift post-classes and research allocation times. At that stage, the cafe had passed the lunch rush, and was usually a favoured hang out for the older crowd, the cake and coffee specials drew people in from the area, especially when the cake when the owner's locally renowned lemon and poppyseed.
Draco, as he had asked her to call him the first time he came by himself, had decided to take on the role of friend, neatly slotting into her life in a way that was purely professional, but definitely friendly. He shared with her that he had been surprised of her retirement from magical life, having always assumed she would be interested in paving the way for social reform in a post-war society being the leader and spokesperson for the repressed and underrepresented peoples. She was surprised at his assessment of her, clearly thinking that she had far greater ambition and desire for public life than she had in reality.
He eventually became a fixture of sorts in the cafe in the later hours of the day, propping himself up on stool closest to the service bar, reading case notes and files concealed in charms to make them look like muggle research papers. His semi-brooding, but definitely intimidating presence ended up being a boon for Hermione , and sometimes the young teenagers working the till alongside her, especially when an irate customer decided that the coffee order wasn't right (it was, she had started drinking her husband's drink), the lid wasn't secured properly (it was), and even a time when the customer wasn't happy with the semi-crumpled condition of their change.
If he was there when a customer began making wholly unreasonable complaints, he merely had to look up from his work and make a soft, amused exhale, or clear his throat gently and the customer would find themselves locked in a staring competition with a disconcertingly handsome yet highly intimidating man holding a folder and sitting with a half-finished coffee and muffin.
The angry customer would always blink first.
Sometimes harry would join Draco in the afternoons, and the two of them would grab a table, working through concealed case files for hours until Hermione had to kick them out for closing, citing that she wanted to go home and feed her cat and herself.
One afternoon neither of them showed up, and Hermione felt their new absence keenly having gotten very used to seeing the two of them regularly, their occasional laughter as they came across particularly amusing details from old case files.
Shrugging to herself, she guessed they might have a meeting that ran late, or there had been an issue with an old file that needed more confidentiality than being in public in a purely muggle closing time arrived, she was mopping the seating area when Draco finally sauntered into view from the direction of the Floo connection, clearly trying to hide a smile. flicking back the lock on the entry, she let him in, and was about to berate him for his supreme tardiness when he spoke first,
"Harry waned to tell you himself, but he's been held up with Ginny and the rest of the Weasleys, but, we've both passed the last of our probation assessments - we're now fully qualified Aurors."
A noise of surprise escaped her, milliseconds before she launched at him and lulled him into a tight hug. His face was probably suffocated by her hair, but she imagined he could still hear her loud congratulations as he returned the hug.
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19th August, Reclusive Exclusive
Dear readers, for months now we have been at a loss as to why Draco Malfoy, a recently qualified Auror with the ministry, opted to step away from the historical residences of Malfoy Manor, instead looking to reside in Muggle England for the foreseeable future. It was a shock to many, but the aftershocks were clear when Mr and Mrs Malfoy senior heading to Southern France, leaving the historical manor to skilled magi-tradesmen to ensure the property is modernised, and the recent history erased from the site.
We at the Prophet may have recently discovered the charming reason that might have been the driving factor in Mr Malfoy's decision to seek pastures outside the expected magical realm. It seems that Draco Malfoy has sparked an interest in none other than Miss Hermione Granger, the muggle-born friend of Harry Potter, and a recipient of the Order of Merlin, First Class, for her unstoppable moral ethic and good work during the Second War. After the fall of the Dark Lord many assumed the outspoken young woman would have entered the realm of politics, having been known to champion House Elf rights when at school (see our article on Social Reforms on page 37, Ms Granger was the founding member of the grassroots movement entitled S.P.E.W., which was later championed by former Bulgarian quidditch player, Victor Krum).
However post-war Ms Granger quickly faded from view, seemingly adopting herself into the Muggle World to escape what has proven to be intense scrutiny by the Old Guard who face significant social reforms after a lifetime of comfort. Hermione Granger was recently spotted working and studying in the muggle village of Oxford (south of the village of Wetterleft Upon Avon), where she seems to ave retired indefinitely from the Magical World However she is not alone in this endeavour, having been spotted with Draco Malfoy as a companion on multiple occasions. Speculation has begun to build, with close friends of the two declining to comment on the matter. Have your say by emailing back in tonight's Evening Prophet. - Moira Hestington, The Daily Prophet.