.
It starts on the Hogwarts Express. He's sitting alone in a compartment, doing his best attempt at not existing when she walks in.
"Oh good," she says. "Mind if I join you for a moment?"
He gapes at her. He hasn't seen her since his trial. They'd got him out of the way early, hardly charged him with anything in the end. Fines, probation, and the eternal mistrust of decent society.
He cannot imagine what she's doing here. Here on the train at all, here with him specifically. He asks her, with a sneer, if she's come to gloat. It's not what he wants to say. He doesn't have the words for all of that. Doesn't even, really, know what it is.
"I'm escaping," Hermione Granger explains, peering out into the passageway. "Merlin I hope they run out of questions soon otherwise this year is going to be a total fucking nightmare."
Draco is immediately forced to reassess several things about the Golden Girl. The first is that she's clearly not interested in bragging about the war, which - well he supposes he can understand that. He'd assumed, from the amount of newspaper coverage his eyes have flickered over and not absorbed, quite a different attitude. The second is that she hasn't taken whatever job the Ministry has thrown at her like Potter and Weasley have. That had been a headline, even he'd taken that one in. The third is that she seems completely unbothered by him. That leads him to a fourth: that she's as self-possessed as anyone he's ever seen.
There's no trace of embarrassment as she watches whoever she's hiding from through the compartment window. She's still in Muggle clothes: flared blue denim and a short, tight t-shirt. He can see a little bit of her abdomen between the two items of clothing. It's tense and tanned. She's holding a funny little beaded handbag. She's thinner, he notices, than she'd been before the war. Otherwise she seems unmarked by it all. He envies her that, envies her her bare arms.
He wonders if he should acknowledge, even apologise, for what happened at the Manor. He can't think what he could possibly say.
"Oh thank god," she says. "I think they've gone. See you around Malfoy. Oh and get some sleep - you look like shit."
He doesn't have time to be offended before she's gone, and when she has he still can't quite find the energy.
But just for a moment, and for the first time in weeks, he feels like he's in his own body.
.
.
The sorting is brutal.
Draco sits apart from the few others returning from his year, and they make no move to include him. He can see people staring and whispering. But he's been through enough dinners with the Dark Lord to at least relish the peace of this one. He can ignore the whispers. He could never ignore being singled out night after night for a taunt, a trap, a curse.
He watches impassively as a few small children are unlucky enough to be sorted into his once-illustrious house. He wishes he could be shocked at the boos and hisses, but there's a vicious anger in the room that three months of rebuilding has done little to alleviate. He can't really blame the other houses. People are grieving and this place saw some of the worst of it. He's not sure he'd be here if he had a choice. Maybe he should have gone to Ilvermorny like Pansy.
Then, Hermione Granger stands up and the hall is plunged into silence.
"Headmistress," she says in a calm, carrying voice, "I would like your permission to be resorted."
Whispers break out all around the room.
Ginny Weasley stands up next to her, scowling furiously. She mutters something to Granger.
"Me too," she calls out, less enthusiastically.
What are they doing?
Draco has no idea. Nor, it seems, does Professor McGonagall, but she nods and gestures for them to come up.
He can't hear what she says to them, but eventually she nods and they walk over to where Professor Sinistra is still standing by the hat.
"If any older students would like to be resorted," McGonall announces, "please come forward and form an orderly line."
One or two students get up immediately, then more. All in all about twenty stand at the front. He recognises some.
"Granger, Hermione," the Deputy Head announces once it's clear no one else is going to take the plunge and Draco watches her step forward to put the Sorting Hat on her thick hair. It's not as bushy as it once was. It's there for only a few moments before it screams SLYTHERIN and the hall erupts. Granger smiles, places the hat back on the stool, and waves to her old house as she heads over -
and plonks herself down opposite him. She's one seat to the diagonal but he suspects it was a careful choice. He's just not sure why . She nods at him. Her back is to the hall. Her spine is straight and her shoulders are tense. Weasley follows her over a few moments later. She's been sorted straight back into Gryffindor, red Captain badge glinting on her chest. She ignores him completely.
"Harry would be proud of your stupid saviour complex right now," she snaps at Granger. "For fuck's sake Hermione was this really necessary? You're going to be alone. I tried, but it wouldn't budge."
"I didn't fight a war so I could sit and watch eleven year olds get booed, Gin."
Weasley nods resignedly.
"Alright. I'll see you later, I guess. Be careful down there."
Granger nods.
"Pass the potatoes please, Malfoy," Granger says. He wonders if she's gone absolutely mental. He wonders if she's in danger. He passes her the potatoes. They sit in silence.
.
.
After the feast and an atypically optimistic speech from the Headmistress about unity and healing, Granger follows him to the Slytherin Common room. He steps aside to let her go through first. She doesn't say thank you.
She walks in like she's been there a million times, like she belongs, and joins the group of first years sitting by the fire with the Prefects. It's the first and last time that year they'll get to sit in the prime spot. Draco slides into a dim corner to watch, curious despite himself.
"Hello, I'm Hermione Granger. I'm new to Slytherin too. What's your name?" Her tone is far kinder than he's ever heard it, all the condescending snottiness drained out.
She introduces herself to all the new first years, shaking the hands of three children of imprisoned Death Eaters without batting an eyelid. She smiles warmly at them. Draco still doesn't really understand what she thinks she's doing. He scans the room: everyone is watching though some are better at pretending not to than others.
Professor Slughorn bustles in.
"It's an honour to have you in my house, Miss Granger," the elderly Professor says, looking rather misty eyed. Granger, to her credit, seems rather uncomfortable with this. She fades back behind the first years, listening to the Professor welcome them. Then they head off to bed as directed and she sits down, pulling a book out of that weird little bag she had on the train. She's spelled it black and tied it to her robes but Draco thinks it's the same one. He's almost curious. He doesn't really take in the other new transfers.
Aware that he's spying, he's surprised into a flush of embarrassment when Theo Nott slides into the seat next to him. He doesn't ask Theo why he missed the feast or where he was on the train. At least there is one person who won't dodge him.
"What," Theo says in an undertone, staring at Hermione Granger reading by the Slytherin Common Room fire, "the fuck?"
Draco doesn't reply, because there's nothing to say. But as they watch her, he feels something that isn't whatever particular combination of fear, humiliation, sorrow, resignation, guilt, emptiness and resentment that he's been drowning in at any one moment for what feels like a lifetime.
He's annoyed.
.
.
.
Put me in Slytherin, she thinks as she pulls the hat on, if you want the unity you're always singing about.
Resourceful, intelligent, brave, loyal. Oh, you could go in any of the houses, really, the hat whispers back, its words scratching across the back of her brain. But with your ambition and cunning I think... yes it had better be SLYTHERIN.
Hermione does know why she does it, she does , but she's still kicking herself when she looks over at the table on the far left of the hall. Enemy territory, she thinks, but the whole point is that it doesn't have to be.
She just hadn't expected it, hadn't expected to come back to a room so tangibly full of rage. She's always thought the Hogwarts Houses fostered more dangerous division than they encouraged healthy competition. But still, she'd sworn to herself that she'd have a quiet year. That she'd relax, enjoy the food, enjoy the peace, try not to put too much pressure on herself to study. Just one nice, normal year of us being students, she'd pleaded with Harry and Ron but they'd both refused, too keen to move on and up into adulthood.
Hermione wasn't ready for that. She wanted to be a girl again, instead of a weapon. A last line of defence to keep Harry Potter safe until he was ready to find out that he was going to have to die.
But if she hadn't expected the animosity, she really hadn't expected to be irritated beyond belief before she'd been on the train five minutes. She'd been gawped at all down the platform, even by people she'd known for years.
That's Hermione Granger, mum, look she was with him, you know, the whole time . With Harry Potter!
No one knew the whole truth, of course, but the papers had put together a surprising amount from the testimony of the early trials and Harry hadn't helped, snapping, "I don't know ask Hermione, she's the one who kept me alive," at a reporter a few weeks after the battle.
She doesn't blame him, he's just being modest. But he wouldn't just take credit for it and now she's in the spotlight and she hasn't quite worked out what to do with that. Except she supposes she has.
The cachet won't last. The Golden Girl label. She hates it, hates that a little bit of her loved it the first time she saw it in the Prophet. At least at school she'll fade into normality again after a few weeks of school. She knows that. Familiarity breeds contempt. But while all eyes are on her she might as well do one last thing to help save the world.
She's still not a girl. Now she's a symbol.
So she sits herself down near Draco Malfoy and smiles down the table at the terrified Slytherin first years and she hopes it's worth it.
She scans the other transfers. Parvati has been resorted into the dungeons too, along with two seventh years from Ravenclaw. Hermione can't remember their names. They sit together, further down the table. Parvati meets her eyes and nods and turns away and Hermione thinks about Lavender Brown and how she'd been a little bit too late.
Malfoy, Hermione thinks, really is a great deterrent to other people. It's his only good quality.
"You'll have to show me the way to the dungeons," she tells him as she loads her plate up.
"Quite a stunt," he comments in return. He's frowning, but he seems otherwise harmless. Hermione can't imagine being scared of him now, anyway. She's not sure she ever has been. His bullying was always more directed at Harry than her and - well.
He's nothing, really, now. Just a boy who made all the wrong choices and avoided prison because he'd been underage, under duress, under performing in the role of Death Eater.
Except he's not nothing, she thinks later, as she sits by the fire in the Slytherin Common Room. She looks around more carefully. If she's going to be a snake, she needs to know exactly what is going on all the time. She notices how people's gaze come back to him and back. It's not just morbid curiosity. They're waiting for something.
I should not be writing this, but I had to. Happy Virgo season to the elite of the Zodiac.
