By the time Draco reached the front hall, no one was there. He turned 360 degrees in place, his heels sliding across the waxed marble floors, but all the animation in the immediate area were two portraits discussing his hair.

"Look at that ghastly hairstyle. Like he just woke up from a nap in the fields."

"It hardly looks as though he even bothered to comb it, does it? His barber must be blind, deaf, and dumb!"

Draco scowled at both of them; one a bewigged general who should have been the last person to talk about hairdos, and the other a spear-holding Greek warrior with his long hair tied in a knot at the top of his head. "It's the latest look, alright?" He had no idea why he was even bothering to argue with portraits.

"To scare people off? Is it called the Medusa?" That was the Greek warrior, but the general cackled as well.

Draco decided to ignore them. "Where's my father?"

"Leaving a comb for you in his will," the general said.

No wonder he'd been so quick to make fun of others in his adolescence. These two were the friendliest paintings of the bunch. Draco rolled his eyes and strode off in the direction of his father's study.

Just outside the panelled double doors, Draco's steps slowed. Had Hermione Granger actually been here? Or perhaps he'd been imagining things.

As to that, it was a sad state of affairs that he'd find himself hallucinating a girl's presence when he'd never paid any of them that much attention. And why was it so bloody difficult to approach her, for the love of Morgana's left tit? Obviously it had to do with the fact that he'd been rescued by her multiple times. He'd been practically laid bare for her. How could any woman respect a man after that?

Still the idea that she could have been here wouldn't leave him. He rapped twice on the door of the study, and when his father bade him enter, Draco turned the handle and pushed open the door.

As soon as Draco opened the door, he regretted it. For some reason, his father had mostly left him alone since they'd returned from Egypt with their tails between their legs.

Since neither father nor son had a wand, both had to wait on Narcissa to accompany them to a wand maker, and she took her time doing so. For some reason, Lucius had subsided to this unspoken punishment, and Draco remained an innocent bystander caught in their marital crossfire.

Whatever the reason, both Lucius and Narcissa had failed to pick up the marital prospects topic he'd left when he sprinted off for the Mediterranean, and he was puzzled but also cautiously optimistic. Maybe the discussion he'd had with his father in Egypt had finally sunk in, though Draco recalled that in the past, his father could only be counted on to be temporarily subdued.

His father was sitting behind his desk with a parchment in front of him, a frown on his face as he scribbled away. Without looking up, he said, "What is it, Draco?"

"Did I…" Draco didn't want to bring up Hermione Granger by name. "Did I hear voices just now in the front hall?"

"There are always voices everywhere in the manor, Draco," his father said, his voice very dry and sardonic. Draco saw that he'd broken out his reading glasses and was peering through them at his scribbling, though his spine was ramrod straight as ever. "In case you hadn't noticed, we own talking paintings, a resident ghost, a handful of House-elves, and a plethora of unwanted relatives who fortunately make themselves scarce."

"Very funny," Draco said. "I meant I thought I saw someone. A visitor."

Draco was starting to fidget in place. This was just like his childhood. His father believed very much in a Socratic form of child-rearing. Meaning if Draco didn't know what he did wrong, Lucius liked to make him guess what it was. There were a lot of rhetorical questions from his father all the time. He'd never realised before how irritating that habit was in a conversationalist.

"I thought I saw Hermione Granger. Is she around?"

"And you came in here expecting to see her?" Lucius looked up, staring at him with narrowed eyes, and Draco was once again reminded of exactly why he had stopped wanting to confide in his father.

Once upon a time Draco had told his parents everything, and they in turn had given him advice galore. After a few monumentally disastrous decisions though, he'd considered that he wasn't the worst at choosing for himself. It was just that his parents had so many opinions. About everything. He wagered that his father would have an opinion on the weather and could debate someone on just how cloudy the sky was.

"Look, was she here or not?" Draco asked impatiently.

"As a matter of fact, yes she was, and a money-grubbing, exacting chit she is at that." Lucius settled himself back behind his desk, attention back down at his papers as though he'd delivered his final judgement on the subject.

It was too curious of an opening. "What does that mean?"

"She tendered a bill for services rendered, just as though she were a merchant."

"No, she didn't." Draco's denial was quick and off the cuff, then he uncertainly gazed at the top of his father's bent head. "Did she?"

"Oh yes." Lucius tsked mildly, as though to say what can you expect of someone with such an unfortunate background? "She wanted to be paid for the items she apparently misplaced while carrying out her Ministerial duties." Lucius shook his head and scribbled something in a ledger. "Really, the Ministry has gone to pot."

Draco didn't believe it for one second, and yet…

Why would his father lie to him about this?

"It was appallingly clear that she came around dangling after you like a fishwife, but not to worry, Draco, you won't be beholden to that woman just because she happened to save your life."

"Saved yours too," Draco retorted.

Lucius sniffed and flipped a page. "It's so unbecoming of a woman to chase after a man. Her motives are clear as day. She has an eye on your vault."

Dangling after him. Chasing after a man. Him. Granger came to see him.

His heart gave one exuberant thump, so loud that he thought his father must've heard it. As casually as he could, Draco listed his shoulders in a nonchalant shrug. "Why would you think that?" he said as though he didn't care about the answer. "What would have given you that impression?" He ran a hand through his hair and tossed back his head to further emphasise how little affected he would be by the response. "Not that I care."

The way his father gazed unblinkingly at him in a shrewd and unimpressed manner sadly underlined how unconvincing Draco was. "It's obvious, isn't it? Couldn't she have returned the surplus amount by owl, or dropped it off in the Floo-post?"

"Surplus amount?" Draco's air of studied nonchalance turned into blank confusion. "What are you talking about?"

"It's clear that your little Muggleborn ex-classmate deemed our reward too miserly, so she returned the entire sum barring her expenses." Lucius gave a hard poke to a velvet pouch on his desk, and Draco heard the metallic clink of gold.

"Wait," Draco said. He frowned at the bag on his father's desk. "That's the money Granger brought back?"

Lucius snorted. "Obviously."

"It looks like it's hardly been touched!" Draco almost growled in exasperation. Trust his father to misstate the case—again. If that bag was the one his mother had foisted on Granger while on Zabini's boat, then Draco was a hundred percent certain she wasn't any kind of money-grubbing fortune-hunter. Case in point, she'd dated a few fairly impoverished individuals. His father was off his rocker if he thought Granger was a gold-digger.

"Well, we have bigger things to worry about, Draco." Lucius crossed his arms, his expression very stern and perturbed. "Money-grubber or not, if she returned the reward your mother gave her, that means she knows."

Draco had never felt more as though he and his father were stuck in two separate vacuums on two different planets shouting nonsense at one another across the vast distance. He waited for his father to keep going, and when he didn't, Draco made a gesture of impatient confusion. "Knows...what?" he prompted.

The expression on his father's face grew even more irritatingly condescending, as though Draco was expected to know all of this. "She knows the way to repudiate a Life Debt, and wants to keep us indebted to her forever. I shouldn't have to tell you that this bodes poorly for us. To be indebted to that horrifying and rude woman! How did she know that a rejection of a reward would further seal the debt?"

Not much bothered by this news, Draco rolled his eyes. "She reads a lot, I imagine. But I'm almost certain she didn't do it to seal your debt to her." She'd gone above and beyond on the trip, even when Draco had started off being a complete pill to her.

"Nevertheless, I'd expect you to manufacture some method to break this debt, or else the fate of our name lies in the hands of that woman."

Lucius was glowering, but Draco had stopped paying attention. Outside the study's ground floor window, Draco could see across the south side of the estate, where currently someone was waving a wand at a curious peacock. Someone who was the size of a speck from this distance.

Yet some things he'd gotten to know very well. He knew the exact shape of her head and how it looked in the sunlight. He knew the exact tilt of her chin and the set of her shoulders. Interestingly enough, he even knew exactly how she held her wand when she was thinking out loud, by the very end of it with only her forefinger and thumb as though she was trying to trace a drawing in midair.

Someone whose every gesture Draco had very recently gotten to know very well indeed.

"I suppose it's a moot point, since she mentioned something about leaving the country. I do think it's good riddance to bad rubbish—Draco, where are you going? We're in the middle of a conversation."

"Hold that thought, father," Draco said, rapping twice on his father's desk with his knuckles. His attention was completely focused on what was outside of his windows, or else he'd have seen his father's nostrils flare in distress at this distinct breach of father-son protocol.

With a wave of his wand, Draco vanished one of the panes of glass and climbed out.

"What are you doing—"

In the process of ducking his head under the mullioned beams, Draco knew the moment his father saw Granger. "Oh, no. Oh no, Draco. You haven't been moping around these past few weeks because of her, have you? This is quite beneath you. Oh, sod it. Draco, think of your future. Think of your children's hair!" As his son began to sprint across the grass, Lucius's volume steadily rose until he was shouting, his sleek head poking out through the hole of the missing pane of glass. "We don't own Sleekeazy's, you know!"

But Draco was already out of earshot.

Even though he had his eyes on his quarry, Draco was filled with apprehension that Granger would suddenly pull one of her signature moves and disappear from sight at any moment. What was that woman not capable of, anyway? After all, she might just have another one of her homemade Portkeys.

But Granger was still there gazing after the tail end of a disappearing peacock with a great deal of surprise as he came loping up across the grass.

"Hey," he said.

After that brilliant greeting, he panted for a good fifteen seconds. Thankfully, she seemed in no hurry to leave. She was still eyeing his mother's birds with speculation.

She then did a double-take at his appearance. "Oh. Draco. I mean, Malfoy."

"Draco's fine," he huffed out, trying to stand upright, though he was still breathing hard. He waved his free hand. His other hand was supporting his waist. "Whatever."

"Are you alright?" The expression on her face was not indicative of any friendly feelings. In fact, she looked rather as though she wasn't sure if she should call for a Healer instead.

"It's a lot...further than I thought," he managed. She was going to think he was a bloody weakling. He tried to explain. "I've been out walking and riding all morning. So maybe I overdid it a bit." Perfect. That was even worse.

Her eyes flicked to somewhere over his left shoulder. "I...wasn't sure where the front gate was. Your House-elf brought me up to the house. I tried walking down that path, but it led me back around here. Like it's a—"

"Infinitus balteum," they finished together, and they chuckled in tandem. At least he felt as though they were in tandem again, just as they'd been back in Egypt. How had talking to a girl ever been so difficult before? He wished with all his might that they could go back to that time, when they'd been easy and friendly with one another, and not this horrid awkward tension.

"Ha, yes." Her laugh seemed tight; she was only revealing one side of her teeth. "So if you'll direct me there, I'll just be going."

"Oh, you should stay," were the inspired and creative words that came out of his mouth. "For lunch," he tacked on hastily. "I owe you one, don't I? I distinctly remembered this being part of our deal."

Again that twitch of her eyelid. "Do you?" She was avoiding looking at him directly, or else she found the grass by his feet more fascinating, which was a sad blow to his self-esteem. "I don't—I don't remember that."

Yet another blow to his dwindling self-esteem. Fortunately Malfoys always had more to spare.

He glanced down at her hand which held a long feather. "I see you intended to make off with a souvenir."

It was the wrong thing to say. "No!" she said, and then almost shoved the feather at him. "No, it was lying on the ground, and it looked—interesting, so I picked it up. I wasn't going to take it or anything."

"Relax." He gently pushed her hand, along with the feather, back. "It was a joke."

"I'm not taking anything that doesn't belong to me!"

Her voice was rising in defensiveness and hysteria, and although Draco wasn't known for being the most perceptive person in the world, he could make two guesses as to who had made her feel like this. His father. "Nobody said you were. Calm down. It's just a peacock feather."

"Well, actually it's not," she said, still holding it out to him at arm's length as though she were handing him an explosive device. "Can't you see how the rachis is slightly...rusty?"

Purposefully he held onto her wrist and pulled the feather up higher, squinting at it. A sneaking suspicion was creeping in on him. No wonder his father didn't want someone like Granger snooping around the estate. He tried to play it off. "Copperish, rather, I'd say."

He could feel her eyes on him. "You know exactly what this is, don't you?"

"No." His denial was swift and knee-jerk.

"Someone in your family has been crossbreeding peacocks with phoenixes. Don't you know how dangerous that is? Does your family have a license for this?"

Great. His conversation with Granger was off to a roaring start. "I honestly couldn't tell you, Granger." When she narrowed her eyes at him, he persisted. "I'm telling the truth! Do you think I'm going around breeding birds?"

He could tell that she was turning over the possibility in her mind. "It's how Hagrid got those blast-ended skrewts," she said absently, rotating the feather between her fingers. "Remember how dangerous they were."

He had no idea what she was even talking about. "Right. Ha." He cleared his throat when she got that gleam in her eyes that he knew from experience was a precursor to even more questions. "So is that why you're here? One last Ministry inspection on behalf of the Creatures and Beings?"

His levity was the wrong tack. He knew it as soon as she stiffened and her head snapped up. "No, actually. I'm leaving the Ministry."

"I'd heard." How did one express sympathy for unemployment? Draco wasn't certain he'd ever had to think about this issue before. Certainly his parents wouldn't know the correct expression either. Perhaps a mixture of polite sadness for someone's private grief?

Draco knew when he saw Granger's face that he'd missed the mark completely.

"I wasn't sacked," she said, incredibly testy now that he'd accused her of spying on his family and being incompetent at her job on top of that. "I quit."

Now that was a bit easier to respond to. "Of course you did." He nodded once, in solidarity for her show of pride. "Good for you."

Clearly that reeked of condescension and faked belief, or that was what her narrow-eyed look was telling him. "I did. I...thought about what you said, and well, the things I did every day seemed a bit silly after I came back from Egypt, especially when compared to what they were going through there. And then I thought about how I'd always planned on taking a gap year to travel, and my parents were both in support of this, of course, and so when I had to write another report that nobody bothered to read before the meeting—or even refer to during the meeting—I'd just had it." Granger punctuated her rambling monologue with a decisive nod. She inhaled sharply. "So I left."

Of course she did. That was a much more likely scenario than her department getting rid of her when she was always so gung-ho about work. Probably even did overtime—though Draco had no idea what that meant. It sounded like it did in Quidditch, though, and he knew his father used to rant about workers' overtime in Brazil.

He couldn't believe he'd been about to believe Pansy, who'd made him think Granger had been fired, of all things. He should have known he couldn't trust her gossip, since it'd always been seventy percent inaccurate. "Well, sad mistake on their part, Granger," he said with another nod.

"And I'm not here to suction more money out of your vaults, by the way." She wasn't finished. "I came here to return your mother's 'reward' money, because saving someone's life doesn't warrant a reward. It's its own reward."

There. That was the Granger he knew so well.

"To be fair," Draco said mildly. "I honestly don't think my mother meant it as a reward. It's more as a reimbursement for expenses incurred in the line of duty."

"That's not what your father implied."

"My father," Draco said with a roll of his eyes, in the same tone someone else would say, oh, that again. "Well. You've spent time with him, Granger. Are you really going by what he's saying? That seems oddly naive for you."

She looked somewhat mollified. "Alright then." She turned away to dig in her bag, which he saw with a pang was different from the monstrosity she carried when he first saw her in Egypt. He thought the subject was closed, but she pulled a sheaf of parchment from within, and it magically unrolled to hang in the air before his eyes so that she was blocked from view. "This is my itemised list of expenses in case you don't believe me. That's your copy."

He batted the paper away and tried to sidestep to face Granger again, but the paper was irritatingly persistent and followed him around like an ever-present self-illuminating mirror, so he finally pulled it from the air and stuffed it in his pocket. "You've got to be kidding me, Granger. Of course I believe you. We both know my father's a dodgy old codger."

Part of him felt distinctly disloyal, but he'd have said a lot worse in order to get Granger to stop looking at him like he was an insect she needed to squash yesterday.

When she started to—not exactly smile, but at least she wasn't staring at him like he was Bubotuber pus under her shoe—he felt himself relaxing. "So, about this lunch I owe you—did you want to eat Egyptian food? Just to recreate the experience. I could arrange for a few homicidal witches to lunge at us during the meal for reminiscence sake."

Right, he was calling that reaction a smile, even though she wasn't looking directly at him.

"Well, actually, I'll have to take a raincheck on that," she said, and her eyes dropped from his again to that fascinating spot next to his shoes. Her hand began to fiddle with the strap of her purse. "I'm going to be gone for a while."

"Oh," he said. He'd never been rejected by a girl before. What a horrible feeling. Maybe he should Apparate back to his rooms and sulk for a solid month. Yet she was still here, so his feet remained frozen in place. "Oh," he said again.

"No, I mean—I'm really going to be gone. I'm traveling, you see. I've left my job so I can travel for a year. I have a Portkey that activates in a few hours, and I'll be all the way on the other side of the world, so back and forth isn't really possible…" she trailed off.

"Where are you going?" he asked as though it didn't matter very much to him. He didn't think he succeeded.

"China, actually. Thought it'd be interesting to see the Forbidden Palace." She lifted a shoulder and this time she was really smiling. Sadly it seemed to be at the thought of leaving England permanently. Draco really did have the worst timing in the world.

She was still talking. Draco postponed his sulking to listen. "Remember how we were saying there weren't enough wizarding guidebooks in the world—well, I just thought—Professor Snape always claimed I wrote like an instruction manual—what if I actually put my research and writing into actually writing books that could help people?" She looked excited but a bit abashed. He wondered if she'd mentioned her plans to anyone else. Probably the entire world, since lunch with him was the last resort for her.

"It sounds great, actually," he said politely, moving his mouth automatically when instead he really wanted to howl in irritation. He attempted a smile, but he could feel the edges of his lips turn downwards in its natural scowl.

She tilted her head to the side and evaluated him; the first time she really looked at him since he'd sprinted across the estate to catch up with her.

"You didn't—owl me or anything," she said suddenly. Then her mouth clamped shut as if she regretted saying what she did. "I mean, not that I was expecting you to or anything."

Draco was completely caught off guard. "It's…" Blinking was all he could do for the moment. In his acquaintance, no girl was ever this forward. Sly hints and coy side glances were what he'd had to work with in the majority of his contact with them. The direct approach was making his mind blank. He had no idea how to phrase his thoughts to present himself in the best possible way, when it was the most imperative time of his life to do so.

He took a deep breath. She was still waiting, and soon she'd get impatient and leave, and he wouldn't see her until she came back from this trip, and who knew how long that would be?

The truth it was, then.

He dashed a hand through his hair. "It's complicated, okay, Granger? You saved me so many times in Egypt and I just—look, it probably hasn't escaped you that I don't exactly have my life together. I don't know what I want to do for the rest of my life. My parents obviously want me to be—them, but I'm just realising that that's not who I want to be. And it's difficult coming up with an alternative when this is all you've ever known."

How horrifying that instead of saving her from deadly peril—as he'd daydreamed about multiple times since returning from Egypt—he was confessing what a complete shithead loser he actually was. Lovely. Honesty was the worst.

Somehow, though, her eyes had gone soft, in that way she used to get when talking about her friends, and instead of making him feel annoyed, it made him feel quite giddy instead. The thought rising inside him was shouting, yes, she likes me! She thinks of me as a friend! Who cares if you come off like an idiot when she apparently goes for idiots?!

Then the moment passed and she was looking back down at her feet. "Well, I'm certain your girlfriend will help you out with that."

What?

Oh shit on a stick, he'd completely forgotten about what's-her-face. Granger was going to kill him, but—in for a Knut, in for a Galleon.

"There wasn't a girlfriend," he mumbled as quickly as he could. "I made her up because I needed your help."

There it was. Now she was never going to want to have that lunch with him.

Draco waited out the horribly long pause. In the distance, he could hear the resonant squawk of a peafowl, followed by a flapping of wings. The astronomical clock on the side of the house chimed out the hour. The heat of the sun beat down on his head.

It was a lovely day, and Draco was going to die ignominiously on his grounds.

"Well," she said after that horribly long moment of silence, her clipped tone making him flinch. "That makes sense. I mean, your father's not exactly the soul of honesty himself, is he?"

He couldn't exactly argue that. There was a bald patch of grass next to his feet where the gardener had not filled in, and he focused on that instead.

"But Malfoy, you should have known I would've helped you if you had just asked me."

Draco glanced up. Instead of looking as though she wanted to hex him, she had a pitying look on her face, as though she wasn't in the least bit surprised. Then, as he gaped at her, she shook her head as though he were a lost cause and turned to leave.

When she would have turned to flounce off, he grabbed her arm by the elbow and held her in place even when she tried to pull away. "I do know, Granger. I know that now. I wanted to tell you multiple times but—I was just afraid to."

"Because you thought I'd abandon you?" She made a pfft sound that wasn't encouraging at all. "Nice, Malfoy."

He was starting to be a little desperate, because she looked as though she were inches from punching him in the face—or Apparating off so that he'd never get this chance again. "No! Because I didn't want our friendship to be built on a lie! And then it got harder and harder to say anything because—"

"Because?"

"Because I didn't want to lose what we had!"

His words seemed to hang in the air long after he spoke. He wondered if now he was coming off like a lovesick krup. This just wasn't his year, was it?

He scratched an itch on his eyelid and sighed. "It was nice, alright? I had fun with you. And you're basically the best female friend I've ever had. I found myself jealous of Potter, that idiot-for-brains."

"Really?"

He must've been doing something right, because her voice was squeaky and she hadn't automatically yelled at him for his name-calling.

A laugh gurgled out, surely sounding more urbane than it felt. "Yes, really. I'm not just saying that because I'm stuck here eternally with my parents, apprehensive of any new plans that they have for me." He ended on a much softer volume than how he'd started out. "I'm sorry. There. I said it. Now you can tell me to go to hell."

Of course she was going to tell him to go to hell. He was the most useless person in the world, and sulking as a full time job couldn't come soon enough.

"So what are you doing now?" she asked suddenly.

"Now?" He shrugged and rubbed a hand over his jaw. "Going to lie down after this, probably. Dodge my father and his infernal plans."

"Do you want to come with me? On my trip? Since you're—well, at loose ends."

His attention snapped back to her face. "Are you serious?" he asked even though she was looking straight at him now, her eyes dark and luminous.

She nodded, then shrugged diffidently. "Everyone works and… Well, never mind. It was just a thought. I mean—Egypt wasn't bad. Parts of it were really fun."

"The part where the witches were trying to sacrifice me?"

She laughed, rolling her eyes a little. "Well, some parts."

"So—you really forgive me then?"

Somehow he wasn't just asking about his lie—but about all the things that had gone before them—all the unspoken things that shouldn't just be relegated to this one offhand question that seemed to minimise their past. And yet when he looked at her, straight into her brown eyes, he knew that she knew exactly what he was thinking.

"I'll let you make it up to me," she said finally.

"Then I should probably come along to better my chances," he said recklessly.

Her eyebrows jumped up. "But what would your father say?"

"Sod my father." Draco couldn't help smirking when he said that. "He'll have to say it to himself. When do we leave?" he asked.

The light in her eyes emboldened him—something was telling him there was so much more to this, her, them, the world, that he had left to explore. His heart was thumping with exhilaration, and adrenaline pumped through his veins. He didn't feel like dragging his feet and going wearily through the minutiae of his everyday routine anymore. He felt reckless and free, like he could jump off a cliff and bloody fly.

With her there, a whole new life had opened up for him.

She was smiling a bit quizzically at him, like she'd never seen him before, but that maybe she liked what she was seeing. Then with a small shake of her head, as though she couldn't be bothered to puzzle it out now, she held out her hand. Draco didn't even hesitate. He reached out and gripped it so tightly he could feel the imprint of her smaller fingers in his palm.

Then he let the pull of Apparition pull him away with her.