Don't hate me. I love you. Blame this slow publish on the writer's block, yeah? This is the big ol' chapter where shit really goes sideways, so I wanted to do it right.

Thank you for all the support and interest! I love hearing from you all, so keep it coming!

Love,

Cherry


It was Sunday, and while Sundays were usually Hermione's favorite day, she spent the entire morning chewing on her lip, staring at the letter that sat on her kitchen table.

Granger,

Tonight won't work for me. I'll be in touch.

~Draco Malfoy~

The note had clearly been written in a rush, Draco's normally perfect calligraphic writing was sloppier than usual (albeit it was still neater than most would produce), and the owl delivering the letter had disappeared the moment Hermione had accepted the envelope, not even waiting for a response or even a bit of food. It had come in the morning before she'd left for work on Thursday, which meant it had been three days now that Herimone had been waiting for Draco's follow up note indicating that he was ready to move onto the next round of treatment. So - like she had always excelled at - Hermione sat in her flat and read journal after journal, book after book, whatever kind of text she could find about what could happen to a patient if they didn't complete the mortuus textus hex potions in a timely manner. By noon, all she had learned was that the potion did indeed spoil if not used within four days, and required low temperatures to slow the process, so Hermione supposed the foul weather was indeed a bit of a blessing, though since she'd brought the potion home for the weekend in case Draco reached out to her, it meant that she couldn't light the fireplace to warm up her home.

Damn Malfoy, thinking I'm on his schedule, some of us do have lives, Hermione thought angrily as she stared at the jar of potion for what felt like the millionth time, looking for signs of dark purple wisps, a sign the mixture was turning bad. She sighed when she noted that there seemed to be one or two, but she couldn't tell if it was a trick of the light so she refused to let the bottle out of her sight for more than a minute lest it all turn purple when she wasn't looking.

At nearly one, the same eagle owl from three days prior flew up to the perch outside the window and tapped at the glass impatiently. Hermione stood and approached, unlocking the window and allowing the bird to fly in, though it seemed to send her a glare when she tried to feed it a treat, turning its face away and lifting its leg as if to say "as if I would bother myself with such an unpleasant show of affection, just let me do my job." Hermione dutifully unwrapped the parchment and sat at the table, reading through the note while the bird settled himself onto the back of one of the wooden chairs.

Granger,

I hope this letter finds you well, but knowing you, you're likely sick with worry, and I expect you've been sitting around awaiting my response following my previous message, so I'll get to the point. Are you free tomorrow afternoon? I have cleared my schedule already so I do expect you'll say yes.

~Draco Malfoy~

Hermione glared at his perfect signature and perfect, long letters. The nerve of him to be so very unbothered by the whole process! Who was he to place expectations on Hermione after he'd been the one to postpone!

Hermione snatched a bit of paper and a quill from her coffee table, writing her response angrily.

Malfoy,

Not only am I not free tomorrow afternoon, but after completing research related to the shelf life of the potion, I do expect it will be thoroughly spoiled by such a time. I am unaware of whatever side effects there will be from delaying treatment, but I expect there will be some in the time it takes me to brew a new batch.

I'll reach out to you when it's finished.

Hermione Granger

Hermione tried to sign her name as intricately as Draco had done with his signature, but much to her annoyance, it wasn't nearly as well executed. She considered rewriting the message, but the bird squawked at her like it knew what she was thinking and it refused to wait for her to rewrite something when it was already written down.

"Oh all right." Hermione muttered, tying the parchment to the owl's leg and shooing it out of the open window. It left haughtily - if that was even possible for a bird - and Hermione trudged into her bedroom, abandoning the souring potion in the kitchen. She changed from her flannel pyjamas she was still wearing despite the late hour into a pair of jeans and a long sleeved shirt, checking herself in the mirror. While it was still hours away, she had agreed to meet Ron at a restaurant in Muggle London, their first meeting since they'd made up two weeks ago. She was nervous, very much so, and now that her mind was off Draco, she let her anxious behavior shift over from illness to relationship worries, which began with how she planned to do her hair. Ron had always commented that he liked her with her hair back, and as a result, she'd learned how to put it up and out of her face, which was how she wore it more days than not. Maybe she should leave it down just to be petty.

No, that's not what this dinner was about. This dinner was about reconnecting with the man she loved, not acting out of resistance to a relationship she had gladly entered years ago. If it made Ron happy, wasn't that enough? Still angry from Draco's letter, Hermione took the clip out her hair with a huff, letting the poufy curls settle around her shoulders defiantly. She supposed one night of leaving her hair down wouldn't kill Ronald, and if it did, well then he wasn't worthy of her presence anyway.

Hermione heard a gush of air from her living room and knit her brow, wondering if Ron had invited himself over before their dinner at six. She stepped out of her bedroom and nearly jumped when she saw a certain blond examining her bookshelves, his back to the room.

"What are you doing here, Malfoy?" Hermione asked tiredly, leaning against the door frame to her room. He turned, clearly taking in her small flat as he looked over the seating area centered around the fireplace, the kitchen space situated under the windows opposite the mantle, and the absolute clutter that covered any flat surface.

"I take it you don't get guests too often." He drawled, raising an eyebrow as Hermione snatched a pair of pumps and stockings off the kitchen table, tossing them into her bedroom blindly before shutting the door behind her.

"Is that what you are?" She laughed humourlessly. "Could've sworn you were an intruder. I don't remember inviting you here."

Draco shrugged like his unexpected appearance was nothing important. "You said the potion would go bad by tomorrow, which implies it hasn't yet, so I'm here for treatment."

"And just how did you get in?" Hermione asked, raising a hand when Draco went to point to the fireplace. "No, no, how did you know where to go to get here?"

"You're a very easy woman to locate." Draco said like it was an acceptable answer. When Hermione waited for him to continue, he rolled his eyes. "I have good connections, and you're famous. It would've been more surprising if I hadn't been able to find out where you live."

"It's quite rude to Floo into a stranger's home." Hermione argued, folding her arms across her chest.

"Come now, Granger." Draco smirked, opening his arms in a welcoming gesture. "We're hardly strangers, are we? Why, you've seen me in less clothing than Thrump has, let alone someone who doesn't work for me."

"If that's a gesture of not being a stranger, then I must be quite good friends with a number of my patients." When Draco only stared at Hermione like she knew exactly where her afternoon was headed, Hermione grunted in annoyance and began clearing off her sofa. It didn't take very long, and for that she was grateful, knowing every moment she worked was a moment for Draco to judge her living environment.

"You know you could use magic for that." Draco noted as Hermione hung her trench coat up on the coat rack by the door.

"And you know it's quite disrespectful to Floo into someone's home without their permission, yet here we are." She quipped, walking over to the kitchen sink to wash her hands. "Make yourself comfortable, I suppose." She spoke over her shoulder as she dried her hands, taking the jar over to where Draco was now laying on her couch, his robes draped across the sofa to put a barrier between his body and the aging leather. Hermione sat on the coffee table and unscrewed the lid of the jar, dipping her hand into its contents.

"You know, Thrump might have a field day if he saw the conditions I was getting treated in. Would you like to borrow him some afternoon? He's brilliant with a good mess." Draco spoke as he stared up at the ceiling, his right arm propped behind his head to make room for Hermione to work.

"Oh shut it." She mumbled, still miffed about his stalling of the treatment and sudden appearance in her flat.

Draco listened to Hermione's request and did indeed "shut it," willing to let her work in peace if it meant avoiding the wrath that was Hermione when she got cheeky and defiant. When Draco's leg began to bounce from boredom after only twenty minutes, Hermione sighed and lifted her hand like she'd done during the first treatment, a book unwedging itself from its snug home in one of her overfilled bookcases. She handed it to Draco without looking up from her work and he happily accepted, though he was beginning to think her choice of reading material was intentional, as this time he had been given an autobiography titled My Life as a Muggle.

It was nearing seven o'clock when Hermione's fireplace flooded alight with green flames for the second time that day, and it was in the moment that she turned away from Draco to see who it was that Hermione remembered her dinner plans. Ron. The lanky redhead ducked out from the hearth, shaking his hair clean of soot.

"Ron." Hermione greeted her fiancé, standing up quickly as though she had been caught doing something improper. Perhaps she had been caught, given the date she'd missed, the undressed man on her sofa, and the guilt that rooted itself in her belly.

"You remembered our plans tonight, didn't you?" Ron asked casually, a smile tugging at his lips as he looked up to meet Hermione's eyes, though the expression soured quickly as his eyes slid to that which was behind Hermione.

"Weasley." Draco greeted as he stood, carefully buttoning his shirt over the sticky concoction spread across his ribcage. Ron looked between the two, their faces painting what looked to be a very clear picture; Hermione refusing to look Ron in the eye while Draco looked as cold and as arrogant as ever.

"No." Ron's voice was disbelieving and Hermione immediately recognised the tone he took. She'd heard it all too frequently growing up with the man in front of her. He had a terrible habit of making incorrect assumptions and running with whatever fantasy he'd created in his head, and Hermione knew exactly how this fight was about to play out.

"Ron, you're overthinking this." Hermione began, rounding her coffee table with her hands extended in front of her in an act of reassurance. "He's here for treatment."

"You do that during the week." Ron countered, running a hand through his hair angrily.

"He put me off." Hermione continued, her voice even. She refused to let this situation escalate any further. Not here, in her own home, and not now, in front of Draco Malfoy, of all people. "The potion was about to expire, and he showed up today so I wouldn't have to rebrew it."

"It's true, Weasley." Draco spoke, aware of where this was all heading. "Sent Granger a letter this morning, it's probably still sitting around this mess somewhere."

"Don't you talk about Hermione that way." Ron threatened, pointing fiercely at Draco. Hermione grabbed his extended wrist and pulled him into her bedroom, shutting the door behind them. In her haste, she forgot to cast a Silencing Charm.

"Ron, please -" Hermione began but Ron was beyond reasoning.

"Please, what, Mione?" He bickered. "Even if he is just a patient, we had plans! And instead, you're here with him and you didn't even bother to tell me what was happening!" Ron paced about the small space, clearly trying to hold in whatever rage was about to expel from all his limbs.

"For not reaching out, I'm sorry, but it was unexpected!" Hermione hollered back. "I didn't know he would just show up at my flat expecting care, but what am I to do when I spend a week brewing his treatment and learn that if I delay its use too long, it'll spoil? You can't possibly understand the amount of effort it took to find this cure, and how taxing it's been trying to determine if stalling treatment to rebrew the potion will affect the success of it all!"

"But it's bloody Malfoy!" Ron shouted as though Hermione's missing of the dinner was directly correlated to which patient she was working with.

"And this hex will kill him if I can't administer the treatment!" She dug her hands into her hair frustratedly. "I'm not doing this again! We've already had this discussion, Ronald, and nothing has changed. Do you really think so little of me? That my favor has shifted from you to him just because I missed dinner? Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?"

"I don't care if it sounds ridiculous to you, Hermione." Ron blustered. "You've been obsessing over Malfoy from the moment I dragged you into the case, and since then, I've gotten none of your attention or care, and I'm supposed to be the one you love, but instead of spending your time with me, you're choosing to spend it with Malfoy. I get it. You choose him."

An unpleasant moment of deja vu washed over Hermione. She refused to speak at first, processing all that he had said and evaluating what she needed to say. Maybe Ron was right on some level. Maybe he was supposed to be the one she loved, but in that moment, realising she was having the same conversation she'd had when he'd left her and Harry that night in the forest, what she felt wasn't love, but a deep, hollow emptiness, and where she should've felt the need to reassure Ron that he was important to her, she felt only disappointment and loneliness.

"You know you've said that before." Hermione finally spoke, and she tried desperately to keep the tears in her eyes from falling as his expression shifted from anger to confusion. "But what will be your excuse this time? You're not wearing a Horcrux."

She watched bitterly as Ron processed what she said, and grew to remember that night, knowing she was correct. He'd been the one to assume the worst then, and he was doing it this time too. At least then he'd had a powerful, dark magical artefact clouding his emotions.

"Hermione -" Ron quietly began but Hermione stopped him as she put her hand up.

"You know, you left then. Decided that must've been the best for all of us, without a care as to how anyone else felt, and it was only when I told you that I'd chased after you that you felt any remorse for what you had put us through. I don't want that again. I don't want to have to keep having these disagreements only for us to have to find a way to put the pieces back together after the fact. We're adults, Ronald, and we're acting like we did when we were children."

"What are you trying to say?" Ron asked, though he knew exactly what she was trying to say, he only didn't want to hear it. Hell, Hermione didn't want to say it. She'd never imagined herself having to express such a sentiment; she just assumed that at some point she'd marry Ron, no fuss about it. She'd be content enough to pop out a few of his children and return to working when they began their education at Hogwarts just like she had. That was the quaint image she'd had when she was seventeen, but like everything around her, nothing quite matched up like it was supposed to.

"Maybe we need to take a break." Hermione forced out, bringing her lower lip into her mouth the moment the final word left her lips. For as much as she felt; the frustration, the resentment, the anguish, the love, whatever kind of love it may have been...it had been easy to say. That feeling of ease disappeared the moment she looked into his eyes. They were filled with hurt and bewilderment, and Hermione knew if she didn't stand her ground, she was likely to fall back into that pattern of forgiveness, and that's not what she wanted for herself anymore. She wanted to feel like she wasn't wasting the life she had by holding herself back with the same routine she'd allowed herself to play into for eight years.

She could sense Ron trying to put together a response; she knew him nearly as well as he knew himself and it was clear he desperately wanted nothing more than to make this right, but he knew Hermione quite well too, and sensed that this wasn't some trivial matter he could apologise for and all would return to normal. This was deeper than that and if he wished to fix this, it would take far more than an apology, if anything would fix it at all. The notion that there might be no fixing it scared Ron immensely and rather than say something to possibly further disrupt the situation, he nodded wordlessly before stepping past Hermione and out of the bedroom, the Floo roaring to life as Ron left. Finally alone, Hermione allowed herself a moment to close her eyes, the tears she'd been holding back pressing between her lashes and down her cheeks. But they weren't tears of loss, but tears of realisation. She'd done it. She'd broken Ron's heart, and there was no guarantee things were going to be all right again. She choked out a sob and felt herself slide to the ground, pulling her knees to her chest as she leaned back against her bed.

It terrified her that she'd hurt someone she cared so much about, that she had no way of knowing if she'd ever be able to fix it, and that in the possible final moments of their relationship, she'd chosen to throw in Ron's face that he was no better of a man than he had been at seventeen. It had been cruel of her, to torment him like that.

There was the quiet clicking of footsteps coming into the room for a brief moment before Draco appeared in front of Hermione, blurry from her tears but clearly trying to gauge her current actions.

"Granger," he murmured quietly, knowing that now wasn't the time to be inciting conversation, but what the hell was he supposed to do? He'd heard the fight; he'd understood most of what had transpired between the two of them, and it was clear from the way Hermione had broken down that she needed some form of reassurance, but Draco didn't know how to give her what she needed or if it was even his place to give her any support. He'd nearly left after he'd silently watched Ron Floo out of her home, but something wouldn't let him go when he heard that first whimper coming from the bedroom. He wouldn't admit it to himself, but he recognised the sound from his own past, from the evenings he spent crying to that ghost in the girls lavatory about Voldemort, from the nights he woke from dreams of Nagini devouring people in his home, from the first moment he'd spent alone after finding out both of his parents were dead. He knew what that sound meant and he couldn't abandon someone going through such torment.

Either Hermione understood that Draco didn't know how to comfort her, or she didn't even pause to think about what she was doing, but in just a moment's time, Hermione lunged herself forward and into Draco's personal space, burying her face into his shirt as she cried. Stunned, Draco fell back onto his bum from his crouched position and extended his hands out, waiting for Hermione to let go, but when she only twisted her little fingers into his shirt and pressed her face further into his chest, Draco let out the breath he was holding and hesitantly placed a hand on her back, pressing the other onto the floor behind him to keep them propped up. Despite the fact that it was likely to ruin his poplin shirt, he let her cry, figuring that the only way for her to get over whatever pain she was dealing with was for her to work it out on her own while he provided whatever support he could, even though it felt drastically minimal. It was an unfamiliar method, Draco conceded - one he would never fully understand - but if it worked to calm down the witch currently wound up in his grip, then he was willing to be the one to take on her suffering, even if it was only a temporary fix.


"You're better off without him." Draco noted firmly, hoping the sentiment would matter enough for Hermione to understand that she really was overreacting to the situation. "Nobody's better off with the Weasel, even the Weasel himself."