A/N: Enjoy!
Sweat clinging to her face and body as she spared a moment to catch her breath, Hermione stared up at the dark, empty ceiling. "Did we really just do that?"
A mere two or three inches to the left, Malfoy propped himself upright, holding the silence a few seconds as he processed the answer. "Have sex in your ex's broom shed where any number of his and Daphne's wedding guests could have walked in on us?"
She crinkled her eyes shut at the reminder. "You really know how to spell it out."
"Now this is going in my monogrammed diary …"
"You're insufferable," she chided, hurriedly gathering her dress and heels from the floor.
He offered no more than a laugh. "Surely you can see the humour in what's just happened."
"No, actually. Only a series of moronic, alcohol-fuelled decisions."
"Granger, it was just sex. Relax a little."
"Relax?" she repeated, slipping her dress back on before uttering the rest. "I've just had sex with the very wizard who had bullied me for six years of my life and tried to murder my best friend!"
His eyebrows bounced up a little. "Is that what you think of me?"
"It's the truth, isn't it?"
"Right." Without another word, he got up and redressed in a few quick swipes and tugs. "You go first. I'll hang back a few minutes in case anyone's out there."
She glanced back at him, a hesitant twitch between her lips. "You're sure?"
"Have we an alternative?"
"No, I-I suppose not." Ignoring the feeling in her gut, she ran her hands through her hair a couple of times and righted her dress before proceeding to the door against which their lips had met not a moment ago.
For split second she had stopped, her fingertips hovering over the door handle as she fixed a look at him from over her shoulder. She wasn't sure what she had wanted to say, only that the longer she stood there in silence, the more apparent it was that it was too late.
He shrugged his coat on, not a hair out of place.
One Week Later
"Sorry, I'm late!" Ginny blurted, the soles of her rain boots squeaking loudly against the floors of the quaint Muggle café as she made her way to one of the tables by the window.
Blowing on her morning coffee, Hermione had a quick sip. "S'okay. I've only been here a few."
"I'd have left home sooner but Harry needed help finding his favourite pair of socks and then I'd forgot my wand in the house after I'd already walked three blocks to the train station and it was just …" She gave herself a moment to gather her breath, fixing her lips into a smile as she looked to her friend after. "Anyway, how are you?"
"Good, good. I've got this week off, which is … erm …"
"Immensely boring?"
She exhaled deeply, as though she had hoped to hear that. "How do people do this? It's been two days and I've already run out of things to do."
"Well, you could always stop by St. Mungo's for a quick chat with —"
"Do you know how many art museums there are in London?"
"Er …"
"Over two hundred and fifty," she uttered, allowing that to sink in a moment. "I've been to half."
Ginny hesitated. "I'd no idea that was possible."
"Oh, it is. And if I see one more socio-political, urban installation, I'm going to lose my mind."
"As I was saying, you've always got the option to visit —"
"I've reorganized my flat twice in under an hour. Without magic."
"Sure, but —"
"And to be honest, I hate baths. You just fill it up and get in and then what?"
"Hermione, if you could just —"
"At this point, I'd prefer the stress and looming sense of danger at my job than whatever it is I'm meant to do with an entire week alone in my flat counting the seconds until I'm back at my —"
"Merlin's sake, just talk to the man!"
Falling silent, Hermione looked to her friend from across the table. "Kingsley is in Edinburgh."
"Not Kingsley, you ninny. Malfoy."
"Malfoy?"
Ginny gave her an obvious look. "I saw you."
"S-sorry?"
"The night of the wedding," she went on, as though it didn't need saying. "I followed you both to the back garden and saw you sneak off into the broom shed together."
Cheeks prickling with heat, Hermione had no words apart from, "Oh."
"I've not told anyone if that's what you're worried about."
"Well, good. There's nothing to tell. We just … erm …"
"Played a round of Exploding Snap after he'd fucked you against the door?"
"Ginny!"
Bursting with laughter, Ginny motioned to the barista for a coffee. "It's a miracle the thing didn't fall off the hinges with all that shaking. Harry saw it, too."
Hermione covered her face with her hands. "Merlin's sake. Harry knows. Of all people …"
"To be fair, you did a shit job of sneaking away. Half the wedding congregation saw you walk off together."
"We could have just been leaving at the same time."
"Right. Two adults who were all over each other the whole wedding had just happened to call it a night the same second."
Pounding her coffee as though it were a pint, Hermione leaned back in her chair. "This is bad. On a scale of accidentally dropping a cat hair in my Polyjuice Potion and Confounding McLaggen in front of the entire Gryffindor Quidditch Team, this is easily worse than the time I'd attacked your brother with a flock of magical birds after he had kissed another girl."
"Hard agree," Ginny stated, nodding in thanks as the barista brought over her coffee. "Solely due to the fact that you've avoided him since."
"You don't know that for a fact."
"Sure but I do know you."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
She smirked. "I love you to bits but we both know you self-sabotage when it comes to men."
"Th-that's not true! I was in a relationship for years."
"A relationship which had ended in you pushing him into being with another woman."
Parting her lips in protest, Hermione didn't know what to say. "He's adorable with Daphne …"
"Not the point," Ginny countered. "Talk to him. You owe it to yourself."
"I owe it to myself to explore a connection with a former Death Eater?"
"Depends. How was the sex?"
Hermione cringed at the reminder, forcing her eyes shut as the words came spilling out. "There is a solid chance I've thought about it every night since."
"Well, go on, then."
"It's not that simple …"
"Isn't it?"
"This is Malfoy we're talking about."
"So?" Ginny shrugged. "You didn't seem to care at the wedding."
"Drinks do that to a person."
"Just … set all that aside a moment. All the details that are in the way."
Hermione lifted an eyebrow. "Why?"
"Because you need to give yourself the space to assess how you really feel."
"What if the details are important?"
"They're not."
"He was a Death Eater, Ginny. An actual Death Eater."
"We both know he was forced into that," Ginny argued. "Now truly set all of that aside and give it a moment of thought. If he were just a regular bloke who had asked you to dance and filled your night with laughter and good memories, how would you feel about him?"
Hermione hesitated. "I … I can't just pretend that he wasn't a … a …"
"Try."
Gulping the rest of her sentence, she did exactly as her friend had asked. "I don't know how I'd feel but I do know that I wouldn't have said those awful things to him after."
"What did you say?"
"I called him insufferable and just … brought up the past."
"Right. Well, I suggest you pay him a visit and apologize."
"To what end?"
Ginny sighed. "He literally didn't take his eyes off of you once on that dance floor."
"Really?"
"Really," she nodded. "Now go."
One Hour Later
"A few more days and you'll be out of here in no time," Draco assessed, giving fourteen-year-old Teddy Lupin a pat on the shoulder. "Say hello to Longbottom for me when you're back at school. He sent over some of his personal Dittany the other month when we were running short here."
Teddy nodded along, his head tilted down.
"Something wrong?"
"Apart from the Scrofungulus?"
"Well, yes. Despite the state of your neck right now, I assume you'd be happy to have a few days away due to the Hospital Wing being overrun with cases," the Healer offered. "Unless it's not the missing school bit that's got you in a mood."
Swallowing at that, Teddy fidgeted with the buttons on the sleeves of his pyjama shirt. "Promise you won't tell anyone?"
"You have my word. Man to man."
He gave himself a moment to find the words. "Before the Scrofungulus outbreak at school, I … I may have asked out this girl in my Transfiguration class and she may have said she'd think about it."
"That doesn't sound too bad. Sometimes people need time to figure out how they feel."
"I know and that's what all of my friends had told me … before I had caught one of them kissing her in the dungeons the next day."
Draco stopped at that, his stomach lurching at the thought. "That's awful."
"S'okay. I suppose I know her answer now."
"Still wasn't nice of them to do that without speaking to you first."
"Yeah …" Teddy sighed. "Do you think it's because I'm not on the Quidditch team?"
"Whatever the reason, I'd move on and find people who respect me for me."
"Easier said than done."
Giving it some thought, Draco decided to just say it. "Do you want to know the truth?" he asked, earning a nod. "These years are going to be a struggle. You're going to make friends and enemies and have the best and the worst times of your life in those corridors. I'd know."
"Er …" Teddy looked to him, taken aback. "Is that supposed to make me feel better?"
"Yes," the Healer went on to say. "Because the best part of it all is it gets better. Regardless of all the friends you lose and gain along the way, all the mistakes you make and all the girls you wish you'd just had the courage to speak to … it gets better. I promise it will."
"Which girl do you wish you'd just had the courage to speak to?"
"Erm … well, that's not the point."
"There is someone," Teddy deduced, smirking. "It's not my Aunt Ginny, is it?"
"What? No, of course not. She's married."
"Oh, so it's a single person. Not hard to narrow it down now that most people your age are paired off."
Draco cleared his throat, immediately rising to his feet. "Right. I'll be checking in again tonight. Get some rest until then."
"Come on, Healer Malfoy. This is the most entertainment I've had since I've been here."
"I'll have one of the nurses bring you a copy of Quidditch Through the Ages," he decided, out of the door before Teddy could say another word. "That was close."
Only as he proceeded to his next patient's room, just barely having a look through the file on the door, did one of the nurses come rushing over to him. The loud smack of her shoes alerted him to the fact that it could only have been Nurse Bulstrode.
From experience, he knew she only ever approached him in the middle of the workday to suggest they go out for dinner or to tell him that he looked good in his robes.
"Millicent," he smiled, struggling to hold it. "What can I do for you?"
She returned his smile, forgetting for a moment that she had rushed to him at full speed for some sort of reason. "You've got a visitor in your office."
"I'm afraid they'll have to wait. I've got a full schedule this morning due to the outbreak."
"It's not a patient."
"Then they can certainly wait."
Just as he'd opened the door to the next room, she said it. "Auror Granger is here to see you."
His heart jumped into his throat. "As in Hermione Granger?"
"The very one."
"Did she, er … mention why?"
"She said it was important, so I can only assume it's on direct orders."
Allowing the door handle to slip through his grasp and close, the resounding click bounced along the walls of his subconscious before he took a deep breath and nodded to the nurse in thanks. "I-I'll take it from here."
"If you need anything, let me know," she offered, giving him a wink before walking away.
He spared a few seconds to cringe before proceeding directly to his office. Sorting out the mix of thoughts in his head the whole way, it all vanished the moment he opened his door to find a pair of warm brown eyes blinking up at him from across the room.
Unlike the other night, she was dressed in jeans and a white button top with a trench coat folded over her arm.
Not a word escaped her lips apart from, "Hey …"
Tensing a little, he left the door open an inch as he came in.
A/N: Thoughts?
