Four Years Later…

Hermione squinted at the ray of sunlight falling upon her face in the early morning. She'd come to hate the sunrise wondering how on earth she'd ever once had the energy to get up and study before the crack of dawn. Slowly but surely she was becoming a night owl preferring the shade of the dark to the clarity of the day's brightness. Grumbling she realized she had no choice but to get up if she wanted to cook breakfast and make it for her shift on time. Muggle transport wasn't as nearly as reliable as using the floo or a portkey but a muggle job meant she was a muggle again in many ways. It was all for her parents, all for them, she recited to herself during these particularly confronting sunrises. She wrapped a robe hanging on her doorknob around her to keep the chill away. Perhaps she'd make pancakes and begin today on a fresh note. The weather was pleasant and her work was rewarding. While Hermione took out the ingredients to make the batter she began to list the several things she was grateful for in her life. Rainbows, chocolate frogs, Ginny, Luna, her friends, Theo— Her mind paused as she reached for the flour. Theodore…

A loud pop gave Hermione a sudden frightful start. "Ron—Harry!" she exclaimed her hand to her throat. "What have I told you about using the doorbell?"

The two boys looked rather rattled, neither greeting her in the usual manner. Ron was surveilling her living room furniture as though it'd spring to life at any moment. "Well we just thought we'd drop by," he murmured distracted by the lamp on the desk.

"Hermione," said Harry softly. "Can we sit down for a minute?"

She frowned at their bizarre behavior. Removing her apron and putting it back, she pulled out a chair and took a seat at the small kitchen table. Harry sat next to her but her ginger friend continued circling her living room furniture casting a suspicious eye toward everything.

"What the devil are you doing?" she asked over her shoulder.

"Nothing, nothing," he mumbled, glancing up at her. "Just… checking."

"Hermione," said Harry stirring her attention away from Ron. "We have something to tell you."

"Oh God, it's not about Mundungus Fletcher, is it? Because Ron's already given me a long—"

"No, no," interrupted Harry. "That's… well it's not fine, you should've really reported him but—" Ron cleared his throat and Harry's green eyes darted between them. "—that's not important, forget that." He paused again taking her hands in his. "Something's happened... Corban Yaxley was found dead in New York."

She wrenched her hands from Harry's, her lips parted in what he thought was genuine surprise. "Oh," she said clutching tightly to her bathrobe. "How?"

"Murdered," added Ron, watching her carefully. "You haven't read about it in the papers this morning?"

His hand was gripping the chair so hard his knuckles were turning white. "No," she said clearing her throat. "Late start this morning."

"Show her," he said to Harry, with a jerk of his head.

Harry took the folded newspaper out from his robes, looking sickly as he unrolled it. Hermione's gaze fell to the newspaper as she ran her palm over the front page, over an old photo of Draco. She stared at it for a long time but her eyes couldn't read past the byline—Draco Malfoy at Large & Alive. Seconds passed, maybe minutes, perhaps hours and her eyes didn't move...

"Hermione, are you—"

"It's not him," she said looking up at them. Harry was about to speak but Ron beat him to it.

"How can you be sure?" he asked in a diplomatic manner.

Hermione's gaze went back to the newspaper. Slowly, she stood, pacing the small space of the apartment while reading the article quietly. This time forcing her eyes to go past the byline. After a few minutes, she tossed the newspaper onto the kitchen table and said bluntly, "I'm sure because Draco is dead." Then she turned away from them both and began to occupy herself with putting the ingredients away. There would be no pancakes today.

"You don't have to do that by hand you know," said Ron gently.

She threw him a soft smile. "I prefer it."

Harry was the one to break the silence first. "Hermione, the MO is the same."

"Probably a copycat," she replied hearing the clinical tone of her voice. "I imagine there are many who would want Corban Yaxley dead—"

"But—"

"Makes sense really," she went on coolly. "Everyone knows what Draco did… the murders before… funny how murder makes you famous—well I suppose not funny ha-ha but… have you heard of the copycat effect? Some sick wizard probably thinks he'll get his picture plastered all over Wizarding Britain—and a book deal. Rita Skeeter will probably give him one too—"

"But Hermione," pressed Harry. "What about his signature—?"

"That's probably where he got the details from in the first place" she continued. "From that awful book Skeeter wrote—I say he, although it might be a witch—statistically female serial killers tend to use more—oh well actually, there was this one case—"

"Hermione, STOP!" yelled Harry so abruptly that even Ron himself had flinched.

"Harry," he warned.

"I'm sorry," he sighed, collapsing down onto the couch, rubbing the scar on his forehead. Hermione wasn't certain who he was apologizing to. "I just… we need you to understand that there is a strong possibility that Malfoy is alive."

Her jaw clenched but she said nothing and then Harry's eyes went to the sleeve of her left forearm where the fuzzy material of the bathrobe hid her mutilated skin and she tucked her hands into her chest feeling exposed.

Ron looked to her apologetically. "We have orders to bring him in, Hermione."

She simply stared out of her kitchen window. "It's not him," she murmured. "It's not."

"Kingsley's given us orders to handle the situation," he added softly. "We have Aurors watching over you."

"Who?" she demanded angrily, her eyes darting between the two of them.

"Matthews & Leto," supplied Harry. "We won't be far away either."

She folded her arms in a defensive stance. "I don't need protection."

Ron's gaze was unwavering. "You're the first person he'd want to see," he explained. "It's not protection."

She pursed her lips, a hint of a smile. "Right," she laughed, a strange hysterical tinkling. "Well, I'm going to get ready and go do my job. I suggest you boys do yours instead of chasing ghosts."

Harry opened his mouth to speak but before he could so much as breathe a word, Hermione had rounded on him, screaming. "Draco is dead Harry! Greyback admitted to having killed him and to having thrown his body into the ocean—under Veritaserum—and how dare you let Kingsley print this-this... slander!" She picked up the newspaper once more crushing it into her hands and pushed it into Harry's chest. "The Mudblood Lover Returns."

He cringed. "Hermione, he's the Minister, I couldn't—"

"Fuck you, Harry. Fuck you and Kingsley and the bloody Ministry!"

They both flinched from her as if she were unhinged but it was Harry who was looking at her as if he'd stepped into a devil's snare.

"Do you think this is the way I want people to remember him!" she hissed. "Do y—?"

And then suddenly Harry was screaming back and Hermione could hear the heavy pounding pulse of her heart as he spoke. "People call him the Mudblood Lover because that's what he carved onto his victim's arms—!"

"WELL, MAYBE THEY DESERVED IT!"

Her chest was heaving and she thought she'd throw up bile from the way her body was shuddering. Swallowing it down she chanced a look at Ron whose face had gone deadly white. "You don't mean that," whispered Harry, shaking his head slowly. She looked back to Ron whose body had gone rigid, his eyes to the floor avoiding her gaze as if he couldn't stand to be involved in this, not again.

Hermione marched up to her bedroom, slamming the door hard behind her because she didn't know what she meant anymore except that she needed to get ready for her shift. Draco was dead but her parents weren't and only she could get them to remember. With a numb kind of facility, Hermione brushed her teeth, showered and changed. Her shift wasn't for another half hour but she couldn't stomach the idea of eating anything. Opening her bedroom door to leave the apartment she came to a halt to see Ron was still there, seated at the kitchen table two cups of cold tea in front of him.

"Hey," he said with a sheepish half-smile. "I was hoping we could talk."

"I already told you," she said in a cold voice. "It's not him."

"That's not," he faltered taking a deep breath. "It's about me."

That gave her pause and she studied his earnest countenance realizing something was wrong, other than everything else in her life that was wrong. Wrong, wrong, screaming and howling wrong.

"What is it?" she asked taking a seat next to him. "Is it Gin, or—?"

"Everyone is fine," he reassured her quickly knowing the trauma, the natural paranoia that settled, leaving them all wondering what awful thing might befall them next if they let their guard down.

Ron looked into his cup of tea. "It's about Pansy Pa—Zabini," he corrected. "It's about her."

Hermione's eyebrows furrowed trying to think of the last time she'd seen Pansy. They were somewhat, she would've liked to say friends, but she wasn't entirely sure what to call their amiability. Before she could press what it was, Ron said, "I did something stupid Hermione, you know how sometimes I do stupid things without thinking, you know I, I don't mean to, I don't think, I just do."

She tried to piece together what this was all about but he wasn't making sense. "You can tell me," she said softly. After everything they'd been through together Ron was… she loved him entirely and wanted him to be happy and felt that lately, he had been. He was always in such a good mood, always smiling, almost at peace… "What's wrong Ron?"

The redhead lifted his gaze from his empty teacup. "No one knows," he said. "Not even Harry. But… but you'd understand, you'd understand how sometimes things are just a certain way."

"Understand what?" she asked a little more impatiently. "What's going on that—"

And then it hit her like a ton of bricks. "Ron, are you…" Hermione could not finish the question, too afraid of the answer.

He was holding his head in his hands, his elbows on the table utterly defeated. "It was just once and then… I love her, Hermione. I love her so much it's… it's bursting out of me."

She stood, the chair scraping against the ground. Taking their cups to the kitchen sink she poured her untouched tea down the drain and rinsed them with washing liquid.

"Say something," he whispered after a minute. "Tell me what to do. Every time she goes back to him…"

She turned around her bare hands still covered in suds. "You mean every time she goes back to her husband," she corrected scathingly.

Ron's expression hardened, a disappointed frown marring his face. "I thought you of all people would understand."

"Understand infidelity?" she huffed picking up the washcloth to dry the cups. "No, I'm sorry Ron, I don't."

"No," he clipped. "Not that—that you'd understand that some things are out of your control. Feelings are out of your control."

She whirled on him clutching the washcloth in her hand. "Really?" she challenged. "Are you really still using Draco against—"

"I'm not talking about him," he said evenly, without a trace of anger in his voice. "I'm talking about Nott."

Hermione thought she felt her heart fall to her gut. Ron merely watched her with a steady gaze.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said rolling her eyes, trying to feign ignorance and began folding the washcloth into a small square.

"I overheard you two speaking at the Memorial Ball."

Hermione's face suddenly twisted into an ugly sneer losing the neat fold of the material. "You were spying on me?" she hissed.

"No," he said softly. "It was by chance…"

Her expression fell. "It wasn't… he was very drunk and I was worried so I…" she wavered feeling weary. "He didn't know what he was saying, he was drunk—confused."

"What was he confused about?"

"I barely see the man!" she barked tossing the washcloth onto the table angrily. "Let it go, Ronald!"

But he wouldn't. He just wouldn't leave well enough alone.

"Is there something going on between you and Nott?"

"No," she replied heatedly, her hands beginning to wash the cups once again in her agitation. "There isn't."

"Hermione, there is an official murder investigation—"

"And what the hell does any investigation have to do with my personal life?" she snapped, flinging her hands from the sink, water dripping onto the clean floor.

"Everything," he deadpanned. "If Malfoy is alive—and I believe he is—it's not safe for Nott."

"I told you," she whimpered; desperation so thick in her voice, it broke. "Draco is not alive, please stop saying he is because he's not—he's dead and Nott—!"

"Then what did it mean?" pressed Ron, raising his voice.

"What did what mean?" she yelled back in exasperation.

He folded his arms across his chest unyielding. "What did Nott mean when he said he doesn't know if it's better or worse when you stay away?"

Hermione pursed her lips staring unflinchingly. Ron had heard everything and she was at a loss for what to say. He stood slowly and placed his hands on her shoulders looking her square in the eyes. "No one would blame you…not after everything you've—"

"I would," she confessed softly. "I'd blame me."

He shook his head looking at her with such pity it burned her. "You aren't responsible for what happened."

"But aren't I?" she asked in a childlike voice.

"Voldemort," he hissed with a sudden ferocity, "is responsible... none of it was your fault."

Then he wrapped his big arms around her small frame holding her tightly till her body stopped trembling. Hermione was grateful that after releasing her, Ron didn't comment again on the conversation he'd overheard between her and Theo, opting instead to explain how the affair between Mrs. Zabini and he had started. But then Ron told her how he'd proposed to the married woman last night and Hermione surrendered to the fact that today was a doomed day and pancakes, no matter how delicious, would never make it better.