A/N: A huge thank you to my amazing alpha/beta team (aka my new besties): LeilahMoon, who is a genius editor... why didn't I find her sooner? And Lilithmorningstar69, who is wonderful at all things plot! I am beyond lucky to have found them!

Chapter 2

Hermione Granger and the Great Interruption

He walked in with his hands hanging before him, held together with a glowing wire that was leaving burn marks on his wrists. His shoulders were back, though, posture straight, chin higher than any other person's in the room. He glanced around at the faces surrounding the table, a slight smirk pulling at the right corner of his mouth. He knew he had the upper hand here, regardless of whose hands were bound.

It wasn't that Draco Malfoy's presence unnerved her. She would not be hoodwinked a second time. But the others – she was concerned for those who hadn't been acclimatized to Malfoy's artificial charm. Furthermore, his bloody smile irked her terribly. No, Draco Malfoy was not threatening. But he was a threat.

Hermione rolled her eyes and sat back down. She'd given them her ominous warning and now she couldn't wait to tell them all she'd told them so. She wouldn't participate in this charade. They couldn't make her. With a haughty air, she began to collect her things. For reasons she could not explain, she needed to make a scene. She wanted to make Malfoy amply aware that, while he may have fooled her colleagues, she would not be so easily swayed.

"Hermione," she heard from the front of the room. Harry was quite accultured to her antics and his voice was tired. He had on the jaded expression of an overworked and underpaid government employee. Which, she supposed, he was. He didn't even sound as though he were trying very hard to stop her. "Will you give it a rest, Hermione?"

"I will not have any part of this." She was shaking her head already; before he'd even finished speaking.

"Hermione, this is your job," Harry said. "You can't just walk away from it."

Hermione stopped rustling her things. Of course, she had no intention of actually walking out, but she wished Harry would fight a little harder. Otherwise, the scene would certainly fall flat. And Malfoy needed to know where she stood. "I can and I will," she said, deliberately avoiding looking directly at Malfoy.

"Hermione, we need you," Neville chimed in, although he was simultaneously sliding over those of Hermione's belongings which were just out of her reach.

She exhaled in frustration and looked to Harry, willing him to make at least one more moderately believable interjection. Harry just blinked at her; his obstinacy nearly rivalling hers. It was why he drove her absolutely bonkers. She pressed her lips together and stuffed yet another thick case file into her briefcase, feeling its contents shift with her fingers as the file folder shrunk in her grasp before she let go of it.

"Stay, Granger."

To Hermione's astonishment, it had been Malfoy who had spoken. She looked at him finally, at his face. His grey eyes looked almost luminous under the bright, overhead lights of the conference room. He had a mischievous grin on his face that told her he had no intention of staying out of trouble while on loan to the Ministry. But it was inviting – this grin. It was the promise of, if not honesty, at least a wildly good time. Oh, how she despised him.

He continued watching her as she studied his expression. "Stay," he repeated. "It'll be fun. Promise."

She scoffed. "As if your word means absolutely anything."

Malfoy placed a hand on his chest in mock surprise. "I'm hurt at your low opinion of me, Ms. Granger."

Hermione began to say something but then stopped. She stared at him for another moment before her eyes trailed down to the hand he'd placed on his chest. "Who uncuffed you?"

The two guards on either side of Malfoy looked at him in alarm. One of them grabbed Malfoy's wrists to examine them. Malfoy unfurled one of his hands and, in his palm, lay a coiled-up wire, no longer glowing, no longer enchanted. "Looking for this?" he said in an innocent voice to the guard still holding his wrist. Malfoy looked up at Hermione and gave her a wink, a salute which nearly made Hermione sick with aggravation.

Hermione directed a scornful glance at Harry, who seemed to be in the midst of stifling a chuckle. "Keep it off," Harry said, as the guard tried to wrestle the wire from Malfoy's hand. "I've got something better."

…

Hermione was examining documents, looking for something she may have missed, when there was a knock on the already open door of the conference room. She preferred working on large cases in the conference room because it allowed her to spread papers out across the entire table, rather than having to sift through them all at her considerably smaller desk. She looked up unhurriedly, after finishing examining the forgery in her hand. It was a Ministry pass, complete with a three-dimensional code, a rotating photograph, and a voice activated self-destruction mechanism, and it was fake.

"Working late?" Malfoy said in a casual tone, as if it were the fourth time this week he'd discovered her like this. He stepped inside the conference room with his hands tucked into the pockets of his trousers and looked down at the table, barely visible underneath all the papers.

Hermione did not have time for casual conversation. She despised meaningless chit-chat almost as much as she despised Draco Malfoy. She puffed at the loose curl that had fallen into her eyes and returned her glance back to the pass in her hand. "Do you need something, Malfoy?"

"It's been a minute," he said, shrugging. She could see him turning to face her through a thicket of her own hair. "Thought we might catch up."

She looked up and fixed him with a particularly frustrated expression. "Do I look like I have time to catch up?"

Malfoy smirked. "You look like you could use a break."

"What I could use," she said, "is a goddamn Firewhiskey. But," she added, "I've got a stakeout later tonight, and it's typically frowned upon to drink and drive."

"Drive?"

"I'm doing surveillance on a Muggle location so, yes, I shall be driving. Will that be all?"

Malfoy grasped the back of a chair – the one farthest from Hermione – and pulled it out from the table. "May I?" he said, gesturing at the papers strewn about its surface.

"This isn't your case, Malfoy," Hermione said coldly. "Go home, will you?"

Malfoy spun the chair around and lowered himself into it, sitting backwards like some sort of rebel. Miscreant, Hermione could feel the word forming on the tip of her tongue and she tried to chew it back. Who even sat like that? A jailbird, that's who. Did he think he looked cool? Hermione gave him a withering glare that he was very much meant to discern. "I don't particularly like my home," he said, evidently ignoring her animosity. "So, if you don't mind –"

"I do," Hermione interrupted, "mind."

Malfoy jerked his hand to straighten out a piece of paper he had picked up. "Well," he said, "I suppose you'll just have to deal, Ms. Granger. You're not exactly my first choice for an evening companion either."

Hermione stared at him lividly. "How dare you?" she said, her voice rising. "How dare you encroach on my case? Invade my personal space?"

"The conference room is a shared space, actually," he responded without looking up.

Hermione slammed the pass she was holding onto the table – together with a particularly loaded case file – to ensure a proper bang. "Get out," she said quietly. Threateningly. "Get out or I will hex you."

"Hermione!" Harry poked his head into the conference room. "Oh, perfect. Malfoy's already here. Yes," Harry continued, trying not to look Hermione directly in the eye as she stared him down. "I asked Malfoy to help you with this one, since it's been giving you a bit of a hard time. Have a good night, now!"

"Harry!" Hermione bellowed, rushing toward the open door as Harry descended the stairs toward the corridor.

"You seem a tad prickly," Malfoy observed. "Perhaps we should pour you that Firewhiskey after all. I could drive."

After Harry's departure, Hermione returned to her side of the table in silence. She slumped into a chair and began riffling through the papers on the desk. A few minutes later, she said, "Do you even drive?"

When she looked up, she saw that his mouth was curved slightly into a sideways grin, even as he continued to read the paper in his hand. She wished very much to slap it off his face but, alas, the distance between them would not allow for such indulgent behaviour. "I do," he said. "Quite well, I might add. It's one Muggle sport I'm quite fond of."

Hermione seethed. "It's not a sport."

Malfoy glanced up at her briefly. "It can be."

Hermione restored her attention back to the document before her. "If you're referring to racing, then I don't want you driving me."

Malfoy chuckled. "Relax, Granger." Then, after a short pause, he added, "I said I could drive, and I can. I wouldn't put you in harm's way."

Hermione lowered the paper in her hand slightly and raised her gaze. Finally, she said, "Well, then, what are you waiting for? Go on and fetch me a glass."

…

"Turn left at the light," Hermione said. "Park down the street."

"At the docks?" He looked over at her with raised eyebrows.

"For goodness' sake, keep your eyes on the road, Malfoy!"

Malfoy smirked. "What, this bothers you?" He turned to face the red light just as his foot pressed down on the brake pedal.

"You bother me," Hermione let out a sigh to indicate her state of acute exasperation. As Malfoy brought the car around the curb, Hermione's face followed the warehouse to their right.

"I take it that that is our mark?" Malfoy lowered his face to see out of Hermione's tinted window.

"Yes, but don't park in front of it," Hermione hissed.

Malfoy shook his head, putting one hand over the other as he steered the car away from the building. "Surely you don't think me that obtuse."

"Honestly, I don't think anything of you."

Malfoy looked at her as he put the car in park at the dock. He was still smiling. "I don't believe that for a second. You've got an opinion on everything."

Hermione relaxed into her seat and directed a stern gaze at the side mirror of the car. "This will be a long night, Malfoy. Perhaps you might consider shutting up."

Malfoy leaned into his own seat and said, looking up at the rear-view mirror above, "Consider it done."

…

After several hours of uneventful silence, Hermione turned to Malfoy. "I'm hungry. Are you hungry?"

Malfoy shrugged. "I could eat."

Hermione rotated in her seat and reached for a small bag in the back. "I brought dinner," she said, leaning back into her chair. "I could share."

Malfoy stared at her. "That's mighty generous of you," he said. "You're not out to poison me, are you?"

Hermione gave him a glare, but her mouth began to twitch from grimacing for too long. She pulled a hefty sandwich out of her tiny bag and split it in two. She held out one of the halves to Malfoy.

"What kind is it?" he said.

Hermione made a face. "Does it matter?"

"I'm quite picky."

Hermione narrowed her eyes. "Fine," she said. "Starve, then." She took a large bite of her sandwich.

Malfoy rolled his eyes dramatically and held out his hand. Hermione dropped the other half of the sandwich into his palm and turned away from him to look out the window. "You sort of hate me, don't you?"

Hermione stopped chewing and turned back to look at him. After a few moments of fixing him with an immensely disapproving expression, she swallowed and said, "Whatever makes you say that?" she smiled insincerely. Just with her mouth.

Malfoy nodded and bit into the sandwich in his hand. "Hmm," he said, pleasantly surprised, "ham and cheese. My favourite."

Hermione scoffed, turning away. "No, it isn't."

He looked over at her and smirked. "I mean, it's no BLT."

Hermione didn't say anything. She just continued to watch the street behind them through the sideview mirror. She would not engage any further. She had no interest in dredging up the past.

It seemed, though, that Malfoy had other plans. "You know," he said, "I'd never have you pegged for a Red."

Hermione's posture stiffened. "Well," she replied. "As you said," she turned to glance at him, "it's been a minute."