Movie

3rd of December. Somewhere in the Dolomites.

Hermione uncorked her second bottle of wine of the day and paused a second too long before pouring the liquid in her stem glass. After a moment of consideration, she decided she wasn't an alcoholic (yet) and could still use a glass for good manners, so she tipped the bottle to serve herself a generous amount of Chardonnay.

The thing was that over the past two days she'd found the only way she could deal with Draco Malfoy staying in the same house as her was by being slightly tipsy all the time: if she'd sobered up completely, she would have probably gone absolutely bonkers.

She'd gone over the circumstances of their meeting at least a thousand times on the first night alone. She had laid helplessly in bed, warm pyjamas on and wrapped up in blankets, the noises of the raging storm outside the window as she stared at the ceiling while trying to cancel out the other noises coming from behind the closed door. Malfoy had fumbled in the kitchen for some time, then he'd gone to the bathroom, made his bed in the living room, and finally turned the TV on. The irony was that Hermione had wanted to scream so desperately that she'd just felt paralysed on the mattress: she couldn't even move to grab her wand and cast a silencing spell because she'd feared that she wouldn't have been able to dose the right intensity of magic and ended up, who knows, unhinging the door or something equally excessive instead.

Draco Malfoy was right. beyond. her wall.

It was insane.

It wasn't just about the fact that she had to share a small space with another person—she was pretty used to that. After all, Hogwarts dorms weren't exactly big, and she'd already gone through the living-with-a-man shock with Harry and Ron during their year on the run. It was more that, out of all the people on God's gracious Earth, it had to be him. Draco Malfoy. Draco my-father-will-hear-about-this Malfoy.

The last time she'd seen him was… she wasn't really sure when. At least five years before. Seven, probably. There had been the trials, which lasted for longer than she would have liked, and then there had been the official Hogwarts re-opening, when the castle was finally completely renovated. Hermione had gotten a plaque, even. Malfoy wasn't there… or was he? She would remember, right? Not that she would remember him, specifically, but someone would have probably said something about him being there and she would remember telling them off—which she didn't, so he probably wasn't there.

The trials, though, had been gruelling. She remembered those. She'd been called to testify on more occasions than she'd expected to, but the burnout had come all of a sudden the morning of Malfoy's final hearing. Hermione was sitting in the Ministry halls, waiting for her turn to go in, half listening to whatever Harry and Ron were discussing; it was at the umpteenth dig at the main character of the day that she'd told them—for the very first time and almost surprising herself, too—to just shut up about Malfoy.

"Look, it's not like I'm brimming with happiness at the idea of being one of the defence witnesses, but you're taking it too far," she'd added after a moment of complete silence in which the pair of wizards had looked at her as though she's developed horns out of the blue.

"Well, apologies if my mood isn't exactly serene at the thought that I'm helping in keeping that bloody brat out of Azkaban," Ron had grumbled back.

"Oh, come on, now! He wouldn't have ended up in Azkaban anyway," Hermione had retorted tiredly, already exhausted by the mere thought of how she was going to feel after the trial. "He didn't kill anybody, did he?"

A beat, after which Ron had forced out the words, "Not that we know of."

"Merlin, Ronald," she'd sighed, closing her eyes. "Harry used the Imperius once, you want to give him a one-way ticket for Azkaban, too?"

"Can you not say that out loud, maybe?" Harry had interjected then, bristling at the mention of his name.

"Oh, so it's all fine if it's for the 'greater good', hm?" Her no-nonsense tone and the implications she was hinting at had made Harry's green eyes flash behind the round lenses. "How very Machiavellian of you."

"Why do we even have to testify?" Ron had asked before Harry could reply. "What do they want to know? Are they going to ask about his character? Do they want us to tell them about that time he made your teeth grow longer?" He'd exasperatedly opened his arms and looked pointedly at Hermione who, on the other hand, ignored him and tilted her head back against the wall, eyelids closed once again. "Or about when he almost got Hagrid fired because he couldn't help but act like a twat every minute of his pathetic life?" he insisted. "Or when he joined Umbridge in practically creating a totalitarian state at school? Or maybe when he charmed all those pins during the Tournament?"

"You were a solid prick yourself during the Tournament, Ronald," she'd mumbled.

"Oh, shut up, Mione, that's completely different—how about when he smuggled Death Eaters inside the castle to fucking murder Dumbledore?"

"Okay, here's the thing," Hermione had snapped then, turning to hold Ron by his shoulders, eyes wide open in determination. "I know you don't like him. I don't like him. Harry doesn't like him." Harry had mumbled something incomprehensible, grimacing. "But this isn't about liking him. Malfoy is a spoiled, bigoted arsehole who did terrible things to all of us, but can you really, in all honesty, compare him to… I don't know, his father, for one?" Ron had tried to avert his eyes but Hermione had grabbed his chin to keep him looking at her. "Because I can't. So, we're going to let the Wizengamot take care of his sentence and we'll just answer the questions as straightforwardly as possible, with no additional comments. They can do whatever they want with our answers, that's not for us to worry about."

The redhead had stayed silent at that. The first noise came from Harry, who had taken off his glasses to viciously rub his face and groan into his own hands. "Well, not that this comes as a surprise," he'd said, "but Hermione is right," and fell on the seat next to her.

Hermione had taken a deep breath and smiled almost sadly, taking Harry's hand in hers and resting her head on Ron's shoulder. "I know."

She'd seen him only once they'd entered the room.

Despite the modernisation of the justice system in the Wizarding world being one of the first reforms passed as soon as a new government was sworn in, the courtrooms still instigated deep fear and tremor in anyone who entered them. The light bounced against the stone walls in cold colours, and the murmuring of wizards and witches sitting on the benches, along with their side-eyed and austere looks, made it so that everyone was as tense as though Dementors were present.

Malfoy was sitting in the middle of the room, on his own stoned throne, magical shackles binding his hands to the armrests. As soon as Hermione, Harry and Ron had crossed the threshold, all eyes in the room had turned to look at them—except for his. He kept looking at the inscription on the wall in front of him, over the many heads that were about to decide what the rest of his life would look like. It read, "Ignorantia juris neminem excusat".

Suddenly, it'd hit her irrevocably. The man sitting there, dressed in black, legs crossed, expression stern, hair combed neatly, jaw clenched and nails scraping maddeningly at his own fingers—that man had been her classmate. He wasn't just someone who'd decided to devote his life to Voldemort; he was Draco Malfoy and he'd once made her trip in the corridors at Hogwarts just to share a mean laugh with his friends. Hermione could still see that kid in his features, if she focused enough. Just like she could see her own self as a child in the mirror, the few times she paused to search for it. But those past selves were buried deep under sharp lines, dark circles and faint wrinkles, along with all the other indelible marks the war had left on them—body and soul.

Harry had said once, not that long before, that the war happened to them. Hermione hadn't really agreed—it hadn't just happened; she had fought it and she had made the choice to fight it every single day. But that day was the anniversary of Sirius' death, and there were all the countless other lives piling up on his conscience, too, and Harry was too tired, too beat, too worn out to sustain any type of conversation, so Hermione had just stroked his shoulder and hugged him tightly, letting the matter go. But that day in the courtroom, when the absurdity of it all had harshly crashed onto her, she'd thought that maybe Harry was right. The war had happened to them. They had been thrown in the middle of it, young and inexperienced as they were, and there had been no escape; one hour they were happily cheering their Quidditch team on the pitch of the World Cup, and the next they were desperately running away from a Dark Mark looming in the sky. One day Draco Malfoy was the irritating boy who had been transfigured into a ferret in the courtyard, and the next he was a Death Eater.

He was a Death Eater.

He had been her classmate, and he was a Death Eater.

Hermione hadn't been able to look at him for the rest of the hearing. She'd stubbornly kept her eyes on Harry and then on Ron as they followed each other on the stool, and then she did her best to look at everything but him when it was her turn to be questioned. She'd answered mechanically but dutifully, not even fully listening to the questions: yes, it was true that she and Mr Malfoy had shared several classes at Hogwarts; no, she wouldn't say that made them friends; no, she wouldn't describe herself as someone who could paint a precise picture of Mr Malfoy's character; yes, she had been reluctant to accept the idea that Mr Malfoy had become a Death Eater at sixteen; yes, it was true that Mr Potter had told her he'd seen Mr Malfoy lower his wand in the Astronomy tower after he'd told Professor Dumbledore he had to kill him; yes, it was true that Mr Malfoy had not identified her, nor Mr Potter or Mr Weasley, when they were caught in the woods and brought to his house; no, she could not guess what was the reason behind his mumbled "I'm not sure".

Then, her conscience had snapped back to the present when the prosecution asked, "Is it true that the defendant publicly addressed you as 'Mudblood' as early as in second year?"

Hermione had felt her insides twist together and she caught Harry hastily putting a hand across Ron's chest with the corner of her eye. She'd blinked at the witch in a plum robe standing in front of her, and then, for the shortest of seconds, her focus had shifted to the centre of the room and she'd locked eyes with Malfoy.

His eyes were intently on her, but his expression was blank.

"Miss Granger?"

She'd swallowed and tore her gaze away quickly. "Sorry," she'd apologised, clearing her throat. "Yes. It's true."

"And how many more times did that happen?"

Some whispers had risen around the room, but no one objected to the question. After all, hate crimes were one of the main reasons why Malfoy was sitting in the defendant's spot in the first place.

"I, uh…" Hermione had begun while tormenting her hands in her lap. The scar on her forearm burned. She had willed herself not to touch it. "I don't know."

"An approximate number will suffice," the witch had pushed. "None, another one, five..."

"You'll forgive me if I don't keep an exact count of how many times people have called me hideous names over the years," she'd snapped then. At the woman's raised eyebrows, she'd added a belated, "Ma'am."

Hermione would have never been able to say it with complete certainty, but she was pretty positive that, in that moment, Malfoy had smirked.

After that day, she wasn't sure she'd ever seen him again.

That is—until he'd randomly knocked on her door two days ago. And to add to the ridiculousness of it all, she wasn't sure when he was going to leave anymore, because nothing in the stormy weather outside indicated that the red alert was going to be withdrawn anytime soon.

Hermione jumped on her chair when a loud noise came from the other side of the wall, and that was when she realised she had already finished her first glass of wine, even though the cursor was still obtusely blinking at her from the white page on her laptop.

That was it. She had to find a way to kick Malfoy out.

"Will you turn the volume down, for Merlin's sake?!" she shouted, before marching into the living room, furious at everything and nothing at all at the same time.

Malfoy was sprawled on the sofa, the sheets still on it and completely unmade, a pillow behind his head and one leg perched over the backrest, arms crossed and eyes focused on the TV screen. He ignored her when she walked in, and instead knitted his eyebrows, making a great display of showing he was busy watching what was probably a stupid film.

"Are you getting deaf with age? Is that why you need the volume to be so loud?" Hermione insisted, waving a hand towards the television. Godric, she felt such a fool. Planted in the middle of the room, head fuzzy, unable to do the one single thing she was supposed to be doing, and not even capable of catching Malfoy's attention because even talking to him made her feel incredibly uncomfortable.

Hermione had never been a particularly physically open person. Despite that, since she'd known her closest friends for longer than she hadn't, she'd developed a spontaneous intimacy with them that was impossible to replicate with other casual acquaintances. But Malfoy wasn't Harry and he certainly wasn't Ron; he was none of the Weasleys and he was not like any other person she could easily call a friend—or an acquaintance for that matter.

Quite frankly, Hermione didn't even want to have an easier relationship with him: the less he entered her physical and emotional space, the better. For the past two days, she'd casted a spell every morning to find out whether he was still sleeping or already in the bathroom because she dreaded the prospect of knocking on the door and hearing his voice coming from inside. When she'd gone to the supermarket to shop for food, she didn't even ask him if there was anything he needed. Not that she didn't buy essential food for two anyway—she wasn't a total bitch.

(She did choose the wine specifically for herself, though.)

Had he wanted something, Malfoy could have walked there himself, in the middle of the storm, just like she had. Not to mention, he could have summoned food with his own wand, like the grown-up wizard he was; he certainly didn't need a mother, now, did he?

Mostly, Hermione tried to ignore him as best as she could. She didn't even tell Ginny about him when they'd finally managed to talk again. Why would she? The less he distracted her, the better. And since talking to Ginny mostly meant discussing work-related things, keeping Malfoy out of the conversation was only ideal.

Besides, it wasn't like he was making any efforts to be a nice flatmate. He would barely mumble a 'good morning' when he finally rose from his bed no earlier than 10AM; he would play music while showering without asking if it bothered her; he got dinner ready for himself—not that he cooked: he summoned it from Godric-knew-where—and never once asked her to join him; and there were the never. ending. films. He'd probably already gone through the whole collection of DVDs, and seemed now intent on watching every possible movie available on every single streaming platform ever. Right now, he was caught into something that looked an awful lot like How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days.

"Malfoy? Are you listening to me?"

"Shut up, Granger, I'm trying to watch a movie," he grumbled, shifting on the sofa and grabbing the covers to pull them up past his chin. "These idiots are about to fall in love or something, leave me alone."

Hermione took the deepest breath of her life. "They can fall in love even if the volume isn't set to break my hearing system," she hissed, curling her fists to keep herself from just snatching the remote from him and turning everything off.

Malfoy had the nerve to roll his eyes. "I'm trying to recreate the theatre experience, how about that? Use a spell, I bet you know a lot of those."

She felt her self-control slip away from her fingers with every passing second. "I'd expect you to be enough of an adult to be able to respect other people around you without them having to use magic to silence you out." Her voice sounded dangerously quiet, but Malfoy was apparently too focused on some subpar plot to notice.

"Well, then I must still be a teenager who never grew up, what can I say." He adjusted the pillow behind him. "Can you turn the lights off when you go back to your room?"

Inhaling shakily, Hermione flexed her fingers. "Godric give me strength," she whispered trembling as she stomped off to the bedroom, leaving the lights on and slamming the door shut behind her. She fell on the bed and pressed her hands to her face, feeling the blood pump in her temples. Her head started spinning, and every new breath she took trying to calm herself down only helped in making her more angry, more mad, more cross, more pissed, until she eventually felt the bubble in her lungs burst and had to quickly cast a Muffliato because she absolutely did not want Malfoy to hear her cry.

Which was stupid. It was just so stupid. Why was she even crying in the first place? No, sobbing. She was ugly sobbing because Malfoy wouldn't turn the volume of the TV down. How was that a real thing that was actually happening to her? She just wanted to have her own space to write her story, and now it seemed like he was doing everything in his power to take that away from her.

The most rational part of her brain tried to take the situation in her hands, reminding her that, well, that was not entirely true either; it's not like Hermione had told Malfoy what she was doing. And after all, he, too, had come here with the expectation of having some time by himself, right? Too bad he was acting like he was alone in the house, completely relaxed and at ease, while Hermione felt at her breaking point.

Maybe it was a sign.

Maybe she just wasn't meant to be a writer, and she should drop every dream of writing a novel. And maybe—well, most certainly, actually—that was the real reason why she felt so utterly helpless: how was she supposed to write a whole damn book if she couldn't even get past a bloody film being too loud?

Lifting herself off the bed, Hermione bitterly wiped the tears from her cheeks and went back to the desk, where she poured another glass of wine and downed it in a shorter time than it would have been appropriate. Cracking her fingers, she brushed her fingertips on the keyboard, willing her mind to empty from anything that wasn't the story she felt right at the ends of her fingers. The film dialogue on the other side of the wall was still pretty loud, but Hermione looked at her screen, tuned out the rest of the world and then focused steadily on the blinking cursor.

Tentatively, she began to type.

Dead. Monica Temple was dead and the last memory Richard had with her was of a fight.

A ringtone resounded in the living room, startling her.

"Godric's sake," she muttered, deleting everything at once and pursing her lips together to force back another gush of unpleasant and useless tears. She stood in a rush, looking for her wand. If he wanted to be treated like a child, then so be it: Hermione was going to have it his way.

Before she could cast the silencing spell, though, Malfoy's voice rang crystal clear from the other side of the wall, catching her attention. "What the fuck do you want now, you prat?"

"Hello to you, too, my charming, beautiful Snow Queen!" The voice from the phone came distorted and muffled, but it was recognisable to Hermione all the same. After all, she had been an active member of the Slug Club. "How's the weather? We heard there's a blizzard alert or something and dear Pansy here was wondering if you were still alive or gone to a better life."

"There's been an alert for three days straight, Zabini," Malfoy replied, pausing the movie. "I could very well be already dead, for all you know."

Hermione's hand was frozen, mere inches away from her wand. If Malfoy was going to tell his friends he was stuck there with her, then they would tell other people, and then her friends would know and, bottom line, she would have to move to Japan, change her name, and start a new life in incognito.

Maybe she could write about her real life, then, and pass it off for a fantasy book. Actually, it wasn't that bad of a plan—

"Which is why we're very happy that you picked up," the shrill voice of Pansy Parkinson resonated in the other room. It literally couldn't get worse than this. "And also, I've been talking to your mum—ghastly experience, let me tell you—so I already knew you were still with us. How's the place? Is everything all right?"

Showtime.

"Yeah, it's quite nice," Malfoy answered without missing a beat. "And I know the restaurants around here, so, you know. The kitchens are open."

"Ah, Salazar forbid the great Draco Malfoy actually cooked his own food instead of stealing it from Michelin-star chefs."

"Sod off, Zabini, will you? And I pay them, so it's not stealing."

"Right, we don't want to add any more crimes to the list, do we?"

"Don't you have something else to do, the both of you? I am trying to finish a movie."

"When is Theo supposed to meet you?"

Oh, wasn't that just great. Theodore Nott was supposed to get there, too. It could get worse, after all.

"Uh, dunno. But I don't think that's happening now, given the weather conditions. Now leave me alone, I have a film to watch. Bye."

Hermione fell on her bed again, elbows on her thighs, hands brought together to rest against the tip of her nose. The facts were these. One: Malfoy hadn't said anything about her. Two: his friends knew where he was and one of them was supposed to arrive there in the next few days. Three: Malfoy hadn't said anything about her. And, oh, four: he bought his meals from nearby restaurants.

Shooting back to her feet, Hermione marched into the living room.

"Oh, for fuck's sake, it's almost over, can you people just leave me alone?" Malfoy groaned as soon as she stopped in front of the television, hands on her hips.

She ignored the way he craned his neck to look at the screen. "Why didn't you say I was here?"

He raised his eyebrows. "I didn't realise you were eavesdropping on my private conversations."

"Maybe, if you'd lowered the tone of both your voice and your electrical devices, I wouldn't have the displeasure of knowing what you're doing with your life." He brought his hands to his temple, massaging his head. Right, because he was the frustrated one. "Answer me. Why didn't you say I was here?"

"Merlin's beard, Granger," he sighed, pausing the film again. "Did you want me to?"

"What?" she exclaimed, her voice pitching high. "Of course not!"

"Then why are you even asking? I'm leaving soon anyway, am I not? We can just pretend this," he gestured vaguely between the two of them, "never even happened. Telling them is pointless."

Well, that had been precisely her thinking, hadn't it? There was no logical reason why he should tell his friends about Hermione being there with him, just like there was no logical reason for her to tell Ginny—or anyone else—that Malfoy was her flatmate for the time being.

She crossed her arms then, clearing her throat. "Glad we're on the same page then."

Malfoy lowered his head, in a bow-like manner. "Could you please move, now?" he said after a moment, indicating the television. "I'm really invested in that."

"Right, yes," Hermione stuttered, stepping aside and back towards her room. As she put her hand on the door handle, though, something new struck her.

"Hold on," she said, frowning, before he could press play again. "You booked this place thinking it was for the first of December, right?"

"Yes, Granger, we've already gone over this," he drawled out.

"Shut up. You got your Apparition permission, and the car, and even scheduled that date with your friend. All in December." Her frown deepened.

Malfoy hummed noncommittally.

"And, um… when were you expecting to leave?"

He paused for a second, turning to face her. "How do you mean?"

"I mean that when I booked this place I had to enter the dates—from the first to the twenty-fourth of December. Which means, 1/12 to 24/12." She was speaking slowly, as though trying to keep record of the progression of her thoughts. "Whereas you booked it from the twelfth of January—12/1—to the… what? To the what?"

"I don't know, I—"

"No, because, you see," Hermione started, feeling something in between irritation, exhilaration and plain mockery taking place in her mind, "whatever that number was, it was something-slash-one, which had to mean n-th of January, am I right? I'm right. Because the date format was day-month."

Malfoy narrowed his eyes. "What are you getting at?"

"Didn't you, I don't know, double check the dates before sending the papers to the Ministry?" That funny feeling in her mind began spreading to her chest. "Didn't they need some kind of proof of travel to grant the permission? How did this slip past you?!"

Malfoy opened his arms in surrender. "I don't know, Granger. I don't know what to tell you, it just happened. Trust me, it's not some kind of ploy to trap you here with me, if that's what your swotty little mind is thinking," he sneered, before turning his attention back to the screen. But Hermione had had quite enough.

"Oh, piss right off, Malfoy!" she shouted suddenly, praying to both Hell and Heaven she wasn't going to burst into angry tears. "I actually have serious work to do, and all you do every single day is lie on that sofa, watching films as though you were the only person in here! I've asked you one thing, to turn the bloody volume down, and you couldn't even do that one thing for me! How am I supposed to get anything done like this?! And I don't even know when you're going to leave, because—just look outside! It's a mess out there, and we could be stuck in here for Godric knows how long!"

Malfoy jumped on the sofa at the first words of her outburst, turning to look at her and slowly propping himself up on his knees, a confused and alarmed expression on his features. "Alright, Granger, calm down—"

"Don't you fucking tell me to calm down, okay?!" she screamed back, and decided she'd embarrassed herself enough when she felt the corner of her eyes sting. "Just turn the bloody volume down, for Merlin's sake!" With that, the door slammed shut behind her, and Hermione fell hopelessly to the hardwood floor.

This was a mess. The messiest mess she'd ever found herself in. And Hermione had been in quite a few messes in her life. If asked, she'd positively describe herself as an expert on messes. And yet, she found herself crying again—which was just ideal—in addition to creating an even tenser mood in the house, with no possibility of escaping.

The truth was, there was so much shared history between her and Malfoy that Hermione should have known from the start that she was bound to snap over the most frivolous things. It was like hoping she could survive a weekend alone with Ron without feeling the urge to yell at him every other minute. Well, maybe not exactly like that—but close.

She knew from experience that the best thing to do would be to simply unpack all of that: it was useless and unhealthy—and felt like a ticking time bomb—to bottle up and carry on as though what was happening wasn't a big deal while, in fact, her being stuck in a cabin with Malfoy was probably the worst trigger ever and every therapist's hair would have gone white hearing about this. But in all honesty, the last thing she wanted to do was to sit down with him and talk about their past. It was Malfoy, for Godric's sake. There was nothing she wanted to talk about with Malfoy.

Besides, after all these years, Hermione was tired. She could have had her resemblance of closure with him during his trial, but she'd been tired then, too. And truth be told, she didn't care at the time. It was better to just move on as soon as possible, and if that meant a part of her remained volatile when it came to Malfoy and all he—he, specifically—stood for, well, why should she worry about that? It's not like he was part of her life anyway.

Why it was all cruelly catching up with her right now was beyond her.

Wiping at her damp cheeks, Hermione stood from the floor, grabbed her laptop and threw it on the bed, then filled the glass again and started searching for a film herself. If her mind wouldn't let her write not even half a page, she would look for inspiration somewhere else.

It was only when she finally landed on a random title and was about to cast a silencing spell that Hermione noticed she could barely hear the TV in the living room.

Malfoy had turned the volume down.