Chapter 31: The Bechdel Test

"Mr Malfoy," the endlessly anxious pre-menopausal secretary, whose name Draco couldn't bloody remember for his life, stuck her head around his office door. "Mr Zabini is here to see you." She gasped and dabbed her sweaty upper lip. Blaise had that effect on hormonal women.

"Send him in." Draco nodded as he signed his name on the final contract of the day. "Hello, Bean." The blonde greeted with a smile that almost cracked his cheeks.

"What the hell is wrong with your face?" Blaise scoffed as he scooted into the office, shooting a wink at the flushed woman holding the door open for him.

"I'm happy," Draco responded tartly.

"You look like Willem Dafoe happy, which reads as scary, mate." Blaise, the muggle aficionado, slid into the free chair and crossed his legs. "Just discovered another secret family castle?"

"Much better than that, Hermione Granger loves me." Draco clapped his hands giddily.

"wait?" Blaise leaned forward in his seat. "She actually said that?"

"Not only did she say it, my learned friend, but she also said it first." The richest man in wizarding Britain did a little excited dance in his chair.

"NO, SHE DID NOT?" Blaise, who was already a little drunk at 3 pm, roared excitably.

"She did." Draco Malfoy smirked, his smirkiest smirk.

"fucking hell." The wizard slumped back into his chair and stared at his blonde comrade "so when's the wedding?" he cocked his eyebrow and watched Draco's glee turn to discomfort.

"Slow down there, Champ." Malfoy flapped his hands.

"You think Narcissa Malfoy, Queen bee of the wizarding ton, will let the Prince saunter about spouting love at some woman without… a ring on her finger?" Blaise could barely speak for laughing

"Hermione's a muggle-born Bean. They do things differently. They're a much more cautious breed. They cohabit and go on city breaks, take dance classes and go mini-golfing…." Draco was interrupted in his musings by Blaise's raised hand.

"What part of the mini-golf is mini? Is it the sticks or the balls?" He asked with genuine curiosity etched on his brow.

"I think it's the holes, anyway, as I was saying… there's a way they go about things. I'm trying not to scare her off." Draco reasoned as he caged his fingers on his desk. "That said, my mother is frantic." he gave a slight cough.

"Is it all getting too real for Cissy?" Blaise looked at his friend with sympathy, wondering if the matriarch had retracted her approval. "Who cares what she thinks, brother? You're in love."

"I think you misunderstand, though the sentiment is appreciated. Narcissa is frantically pestering me to 'lock it down' that's a quote." He rubbed the bridge of his nose. "She's had some epiphany and believes that Hermione is my, and I quote again 'destiny' . I explained the whole mini-golf and city break thing to her, and she told me about a potion that nullifies all contraception."

"SHE WANTS YOU TO BABY TRAP, GRANGER?" Blaise returned to his feet, his face askance.

"in her defence, she had accidentally ingested a massive amount of cannabis butter that morning." Draco shrugged as he fiddled with his cuff button, an image of Hermione popped into his head. He smiled.

"What?" Blaise leaned over the desk, peeved by his friend's nonchalance when delivering such a strange half anecdote. "Why was your mum eating Cannabis butter?"

Draco rolled his eyes. "Remember old professor Sprout?"

"She retired after the war?" Blaise resumed his seat, ready for another hilarious glimpse into the dysfunctional Malfoy clan.

"Mother invested in her small business. She grows mind-altering plants and sells them to rich old witches." Draco shrugged. "All above board, of course, nothing on the Ministry's banned list. Anyway, mum and some of the other Azkaban widows bake cakes filled with the stuff and then have little parties where they get shit faced. Anyway, that morning, she had a hankering for eggs Benedict, she likes to make it herself, and she got the jars of butter mixed up…."

"The sauce is all butter." Blaise gasped.

"The Sauce is all fucking butter, I popped over three hours later to find her laughing hysterically in her study with David Jones blaring. It was not a fun afternoon." he squinted at his hands as he remembered his mother's long-winded and confusing explanation of why he had to marry Hermione. He wasn't in disagreement. He had to marry Hermione, that was a given, but their timelines were starkly conflicting. And then there was the painting. He wasn't sure how he was going to tell Hermione about it.

"She's had a piece of art commissioned," Draco managed to choke out, "And it's possibly the worst thing I've ever seen."

"NO!" Blaise clapped his hands excitedly. "What is it?"

"When Ginny Potter caught the snitch at the big game, Potter and Granger embraced me." he shrugged.

"Yes, I saw the photo all over the press. It was hilarious." Blaise urged Malfoy to continue.

"Well, there's one the press didn't get where I kiss Granger on the head," he sighed. "Mother has it, and she's had an oil on canvas reproduction whipped up. It's the size of her fucking dining room wall, and if you look at it for longer than a minute, you feel seasick."

"fucking hell."

"She wants to host an unveiling once we make our relationship official." Draco swallowed.

"And when will that be?" Blaise asked the question everyone involved had been secretly thinking.

Draco didn't respond. He didn't have an answer.

"Thank you for agreeing to meet with me." Pansy tried to steady her breath. She was incredibly nervous, not a feeling she was accustomed to.

"I love this place." Hermione grinned as she glanced around the very muggle coffee shop and took a seat. It was a block from her flat and a favourite of hers during the winter months when they started serving their limited pumpkin spice latte with a homemade syrup. She ordered one hurriedly when the smiling waitress approached.

"I should've known you'd be here for your fix." The old waitress grinned at the curly-haired woman, who returned her attention to Pansy.

"I probably love it too much. It's my one sweet indulgence" Hermione tapped her teeth as if to explain, realising too late that her level of excitement over a hot beverage might come off as weird.

"I come here, for one thing", Pansy pointed at the sizeable half-eaten pastry. "Their cinnamon rolls are obscenely good, I don't know what the hell they lace them with, but they're addictive."

"It's crack." The waitress joked as she placed Hermione's drink down on the table. "Stan saw you come in and got it started. After two, I'm cutting you off." The woman turned to Pansy, "Last year, she drank three then walked straight into the glass door."

"Made a huge clang!" Stan, who'd been lingering by the espresso machine and eavesdropping, added.

"you know what's funny?" The waitress tucked her hands into the pockets of her apron and cocked her hip. "I said to Stan, didn't I say, Stan?"

"What?" Stan called.

"Didn't I say that the Curly one and the Posh one would be good friends?" The woman called over her shoulder.

"You did say that, my love!" Stan responded, turning to serve a customer who was patiently waiting. People came for the charm as well as the fat buns and hot coffee.

"And here you are, having girl chat!" The waitress laughed and clapped her hands, turning away from them and heading back behind the counter.

"My wife, she's got a sixth sense. She's a witch!" Stan laughed hysterically.

Hermione turned to pansy with a raised eyebrow and a smirk. "I never imagined you in a muggle establishment."

"The exchange rate is very favourable." Pansy tore a piece of bun and shoved it in her mouth, her nerves subsiding thanks to Hermione's easy demeanour.

"So I've been told," Hermione smiled.

"I've found that living in a muggle flat and buying from muggle shops means I can actually live a half-decent life on the pittance the Prophet pays me" Pansy very much wanted Hermione Granger to know she wasn't the spoiled child of her memories, not any more.

"Can I just check? Is this an off the record chat?" Hermione scrunched her nose, it was uncomfortable to ask, but she had to be careful.

"one hundred per cent confidential and off the record." Pansy nodded, she had meant to say when they met. "We can take a vow or…." She offered her pinky, and Hermione hooked it quickly.

"That'll do." Hermione smiled again, with nothing but warmth for the woman she knew Draco cared for. He'd made an effort with her friends, so she would do the same. "Thanks for what you said in the meeting to Yaxley. I think it really helped illustrate the point." Hermione took a long swig of the sweet and hot beverage and sighed.

"She's an empty-headed mouthpiece who diligently visits her imprisoned father every week." Pansy shook her head and rolled her eyes. "I don't even know why she was at that meeting. She still owns Hob Elves." Pansy had been practising saying the new title just in case.

Hermione tutted and took another sip, her disappointment in slavery momentarily outshone by sugar and spice.

"So, what are you doing with the elves right now?" Pansy asked, trying to emote interest. It was tough for her to emote anything after years of ice.

"Well," Hermione sighed, "I'm trying to teach a core group of them to read and write. I'm attempting a peer to peer learning structure. So that the ten I teach will teach two more elves and so on." Hermione smiled into her drink. "They're capable. It's just a lot of time."

"I could help." Pansy had been trying to find something about the elves she could relate to. The elves she'd grown up with were viciously loyal to her mother and terrorised her. Despite knowing slavery was wrong, she struggled to find sympathy when she had memories of Dandy, her mother's favourite, beating her with a hairbrush. A desire to be literate was something she could connect to.

"Seriously?" Hermione hadn't expected any sort of help. She'd assumed Pansy knew about her and Malfoy and had asked her here to make nice.

"I taught myself to read… the basics, I mean" Pansy Parkinson dipped her head and shrugged. "I was so behind I almost wasn't allowed to come to Hogwarts, my father bribed the board. It literally would've been easier to teach me to read." she scoffed into her drink. She'd read that vulnerability was crucial for making friends in one of the many self-help books she owned. "Draco would have me practice by reading Witch Weekly out to him in the first year." Pansy finally raised her head and was met by a look she could only describe as good-hearted. It wasn't judging nor disinterested. Hermione's face radiated empathy. It encouraged Pansy to continue. "My mother has an old fashioned view on womanhood. Much to her chagrin, I was a bit of a bluestocking." Pansy smiled.

"I haven't heard that phrase in so long!" Hermione chuckled. "My Nana used to call me a bluestocking!"

"Interestingly, it is one of those words which originated in the wizarding world." Pansy explained, "It was what Gryffindor called Ravenclaw, then it just became synonymous with a clever woman. Witches who liked to read were called Bluestockings in her honour, and at some point, in the Victorian era, it leaked into the muggle high society" Pansy grinned. It was one of the odd facts she'd turned up while snooping through old reporters' notes, after hours, at work.

"I did not know that," Hermione said happily, ever the keen learner. "But I assume you didn't ask me here to wow me with facts." Hermione looked thoughtfully at the woman she'd barely considered since school.

"I'm glad we didn't get a chance to talk about Draco at Narcissa's luncheon," Pansy glanced out of the window, and her heart thumped. "It means our first conversation passed the Bechdel test." the Slytherin bit her lip and turned her eyes back to Hermione.

The Gryffindor let out a little laugh as she observed the woman with a furrowed brow. "That's a phrase I would have bet money on not hearing today." She leaned forward, curiosity etched on her face.

"I found, on my first jaunt into a muggle bookshop, that I had an interest in feminist literature." Pansy tugged at her lip. Hermione recognised herself in the action, "Ron Weasley came to my flat, he bribed someone at the ministry for my address…." Pansy finally got to the heart of her summons, the words spilt from her. Telling another woman that her ex had popped by was never easy, regardless of context.

"I'm sorry, that must've been unpleasant." Hermione smiled guardedly.

"He sold me a story. About you and Malfoy sleeping together. He seems to be under the impression that you're doing it to access the elves." Pansy had struggled not to laugh when the redhead had announced this in her tiny flat.

"You bought it?" Hermione felt a swell of hurt.

"To suppress it," Pansy said quickly, realising she'd missed a pivotal point in her retelling. "I had him sign an exclusivity form. It means he can't be directly quoted on the subject by any other publications."

"Oh…" Hermione wasn't sure what to say.

"It doesn't mean the story is squashed," Pansy explained. "You two are hardly discreet." She smirked as she handed Hermione the photograph Narcissa had sent to Lucius. Hermione realised she'd taken yet another unusable photo thanks to her eye fucking the man she loved.

"Can I keep this?" Hermione asked, a blush spreading over her cheeks.

"Of course." Pansy smiled, watching as Granger subconscious stroked the image of Draco. "Once Weasley realises I'm not publishing his side, he'll go to others, and they'll print it. Without the named source."

"What should I do?" Hermione wasn't going to bother denying it. She loved him and pretending otherwise felt dirty. Pansy understood the press better than she and also had some understanding of purebloods and their strange ways.

"You need to come out in a controlled environment." Pansy handed Hermione her pre-prepared proposal. She knew the woman before her would appreciate the bullet points and mind map.

"did you do this to impress me?" Hermione laughed as she skimmed the document.

"yes." Pansy nodded, opting for truth over her more manipulative Slytherin instincts "but, also, the longer you don't announce your relationship, the more it looks like you're hiding him."

"I'm not." Hermione's voice came much louder than she'd expected.

"I know you and Malfoy have this concept of keeping it all to yourselves, but no man is an island." Pansy tilted her head sympathetically. "The first Elf fundraiser is in two weeks. Narcissa's winter ball is the ideal place for a public display of affection which says, 'yes, world, we're doing this'" Pansy beamed. "If we had a nice spread ready to go the next morning in one of the big publications, an exclusive interview with your story and some lovely pictures, it would halt any speculation." Pansy straightened her shoulders "obviously, I want to do the interview, but I accept you may have journalists you prefer to work with."

"You think all this is necessary?" Hermione looked dubiously at the woman and wondered if this whole interaction had just been a build-up to a scoop.

"I think whether you want to admit it or not, the story is important." Pansy scraped her fingers through her hair "the head of one of the old families falling for a muggle-born is news on its own. Draco Malfoy, Voldemort's favoured son, falling in love with Hermione Granger, defender of the meek is monumental." Pansy leaned forward and hesitated, then grabbed Hermione's hand "the war, it never fully felt like it ended, you know?" Tears, unbidden, filled Pansy's eyes. "Fuck." She swiped at them with her free hand. "Something about you and him, It puts a lid on it all. It's not your responsibility, and you've not asked for it but you and him falling in love gives the world closure." she released the hand she'd grabbed and pushed back.

"And you want to write it?" Hermione watched her closely, and she nodded

"I do,"

"Why?" Hermione asked. Pansy thought for a moment.

"I watched him pine for you, from weird angry obsession in the second year, to whatever the third year was" She laughed. "He was bewildered" Hermione joined her in the chuckle. She, too, had been confused in third year. She'd been terribly worried when Draco had been mauled, almost obsessively so. She'd feigned illness just to spy a look at him in the sick ward. Hermione had put it down to stress over Hagrid's job. "Then in the fourth year came the lust, he'd play it off as some sort of rebellion against Lucky, but I saw through it," Pansy said wisely. "The point I'm trying to make here is... I'm invested in this, I care about him, and I care about what you think." she tapped her fingers nervously. "I want to be part of whatever change you're bringing about, Hermione."

"I'll speak to Draco tonight and owl you." Hermione bobbed. "I'd like final approval before it goes to print."

"Agreed." Pansy nodded fervently.

"You're really different from how I remember," Hermione noted.

"I've been pretending to be what other people want for a long time. This version is as close to who I actually am as I can get right now." Pansy cricked her neck.

"I like her," Hermione grinned.

"Okay," Pansy took a breath. "Though it should be noted, the authentic me is still a bit of a bitch sometimes."

"Oh, I know that Parkinson, I read your column" Hermione chuckled.