Exams loomed on the horizon, inching ever closer. Hermione always had to begrudgingly admit year after year that she had enjoyed exams seasons much more as a student than she ever did as a teacher.

Everyone was just so whiny all the time!

She had to refuse at least three students already – it was all too familiar to her now, the scramble for a last-minute, last-ditch effort for a somewhat decent mark. Hermione prided herself in her teaching and in her fairness – she strived to give her students ample opportunity to show their talents, wherever they may lie – but the one thing she could not and would not ever tolerate was laziness.

Some students could be a tad too dramatic. One Slytherin girl had just left her office in tears, but what could Hermione do? Skiving lessons was never a good idea, and some students had to learn it the hard way at the end of term.

Presently, she was done dealing with morose students for the day – her office was now closed and she was looking forward to spending an evening talking about wards with Narcissa – Hermione could sense they were nearing a breakthrough, though she chose to remain cautiously optimistic. One never knew what those pesky wards could throw their way next.

She detoured to the castle kitchens out of nostalgia and in a playful mood, deciding to grab some scones just because. A couple of wandering Hufflepuffs were startled to see their stern Transfiguration Professor sneaking into the kitchens the same way they had done only moments before. They looked petrified at the prospect of getting a detention so close to exam time, but Hermione was feeling whimsical tonight.

"I won't tell if you don't." She warned them with a glare, before disappearing through the wall with a basket of scones.

Hermione had almost made it to Narcissa's office in the Dungeons when she heard raised voices coming from the Potions classroom – their angry tones made her instinctively reach for her wand. The basket of scones was immediately reduced to matchbox size and relegated to her robes; she tip-toed tentatively toward the door

"Lady Malfoy, I assure you, you are making a grave mistake! This is not the last you'll see of me!"

"Mr. Cambria, I have nothing left to say to you" Hermione heard Narcissa seething from within. She was startled by the sharpness in the other woman's voice—she had never heard her be so cutting, so vicious. "This matter is settled."

"This is a great injustice, Lady Malfoy! Samuel is a talented wizard—think of the opportunities you'd be denying him!" The man inside roared, his anger clear. Hermione flinched as she approached the door ever so cautiously.

"Your son has failed to produce a single satisfactory result all year—he will not be accepted into NEWT-level Potions" Narcissa retorted, her voice like a sharp shard of broken glass. "My decision is final."

"That is disgraceful, Lady Malfoy! You're a disgrace to this school, a disgrace to the House of Slytherin, a disgrace to our society! This is not the end of this, Lady Malfoy, mark my words!"

"Her name" Hermione warned in a low voice as she rounded the corner into the classroom, "is Black, not Malfoy. And she is a Professor of this school—a Professor whom you seem to be threatening."

Hermione could now recognize the wizard who had been yelling—Edward Cambria, father of Samuel Cambria, a Slytherin pureblood and member of the late Slug Club. No wonder Edward was unhappy – this was probably the first time he realized his son was not as smart as he thought.

Narcissa stood stoically by her teacher's desk, her eyes furious in a tempestuous grey. Her lips were pressed into a thin line of displeasure, and her hands were planted onto her desk in the defensive.

"Nothing of the sort," Mr. Cambria retorted hotly. He was a tall, intimidating wizard, with very neat black hair and a trimmed beard. His eyes were hard-set and of a deep, angry blue that matched his tailored robes.

"Good," Hermione commented, making it a point to keep her wand visible. "We would not want to escalate this to the Headmistress, would we?"

Cambria looked ready to explode into another diatribe, but seemed to contain himself. He turned a hateful look toward Narcissa.

"This isn't over, Lady M—" Hermione cleared her throat loudly. "Lady Black. The School Board of Governors will hear about this!"

"Don't worry, I will see to it that they do. I did keep all of your charming letters." Narcissa threatened bitingly.

Cambria huffed and stormed out of the classroom, nearly colliding with Hermione on his way out. The brunette saw him off with an angry glare before turning back to Narcissa suddenly worried that her intervention had been unwelcome.

The Potions professor, however, shot her a grateful glance, and Hermione was immediately put at ease. She approached, finally sheathing her wand.

"Are you alright?" she asked, mindful of the remaining tension she could still read in Narcissa's body language; it rolled from her shoulders in waves. "What in Godric's name was that all about?"

Narcissa sunk into her chair with a sigh. "Apparently Lord Cambria's son has not been performing as well as he ought to be in Potions for a future ministerial position. Somehow, that became my problem."

Hermione scrunched up her nose in displeasure. "And he thought he could threaten you into giving Samuel a higher grade?" she seethed.

"Not at first. He initially thought I could be persuaded financially."

There was something funny about someone thinking they could sway one of the richest women in Wizarding Britain financially, but Hermione overlooked it. She was getting angrier by the second. "That is completely unacceptable! The School Board of Governors should hear of this!"

To Hermione's surprise, Narcissa laughed sarcastically. "Yes, the Board. Half of them have also written me hoping to address unexpected drops in performance."

Hermione's eyes widened in both shock and frustration. "But that's illegal! A lot of these kids just got away without working because... Slughorn, y'know?"

Narcissa smiled gratefully. "Thank you. It's no coincidence that the only students whose grades have dropped come from influential families." She sighed. "I expect this to blow over eventually. These students will most likely use their family connections for work anyway."

That thought didn't sit well with Hermione. It made her feel like the past decade of reform and development didn't matter as much; not if Pure-Bloods could still rely so heavily on their connections to get ahead.

"Still," she continued her earlier train of thought, thoroughly displeased. "These parents need to learn their place. Cambria should talk to his son about his performance, not come here and threaten a member of staff."

Narcissa merely shrugged. "I have ample experience dealing with men such as Lord Cambria." she said, sounding resigned. "They are among some of the..."

"Rudest, most entitled and disrespectful arseholes on the planet" Hermione interrupted angrily. "He kept calling you Lady Malfoy!" She pointed out hotly, unsure why that particular fault made her so irrationally angry—hearing anyone refer to Narcissa by her old married name made her jaw clench in anger. "Mr. Davies at Diagon Alley kept doing the same thing!" she added, somewhat aware that her temper had begun to get the better of her, but unable to do anything to stop it. "What's up with that? You aren't married anymore!"

Narcissa stiffened and her eyes widened in surprise at Hermione's sudden tirade, but her gaze quickly softened into uncertainty and caution.

"So you noticed," she said simply, as if gauging Hermione's reaction.

Hermione was still bewildered, still heavily affected by that sudden anger that she couldn't quite comprehend.

"How could I not notice?" she cried. "They kept calling you Lady Malfoy! You've been divorced for nearly a decade!"

Narcissa's blue eyes looked pained and resigned – that resignation only served to incense Hermione further, and the sheer force of her present wrath confused her a great deal.

"I suppose you wouldn't understand, seeing that your understanding of Pure-Blood customs is extremely limited." Narcissa said matter-of-factly. She heaved a deep, drawn-out sigh. The resignation in her eyes seemed to shift into defeat, and Hermione did not like that transition.

"You never wonder, Hermione, why I am so far removed from my old circles?" Narcissa asked.

Hermione was stumped by the question—she began to realize she had never truly given the matter much thought. She had assumed that, perhaps, Narcissa's isolation from her previous acquaintances had been at least in part self-imposed.

"You changed your views... and they didn't?"

Narcissa smiled, but it was the kind of smile adults gave to a naïve child who said something unwittingly stupid about a matter they couldn't possibly understand. Hermione hated the feeling.

"Your... unbridled optimism in me is refreshing." Narcissa mused, looking saddened. "Yes, that had a little to do with it. But you must understand that most Slytherins would not be too... unforgiving about my changing allegiances. Many may see my defection as a good strategic decision." She sighed deeply, her gaze looking somewhere beyond Hermione, beyond even the walls of her classroom. "No, to many of my former acquaintances, it was the divorce that came to be the last straw."

Hermione felt like the wind had been taken out of her sails.

"What?" she croaked, because that didn't make any sort of sense. Divorce wasn't uncommon in the Wizarding World. How couple take Narcissa's changing allegiance in stride, but not something as simple as a divorce?

Narcissa motioned for Hermione to take a seat, and the brunette begrudgingly did so, still feeling strangely amped up.

"This may come as a surprise to you, since you are unfamiliar with some of our more stringent Pure-Blood customs" she began to explain, her gaze unfocused, removed to some place miles and miles away. "But in Pure-Blood high society, divorce simply isn't something that happens."

Hermione sagged into her seat. "What?" she repeated, and the question came out with more bite than she had intended. Narcissa began to look rather uncomfortable.

"It... doesn't happen. There's a reason why Paola Zabini allegedly killed four husbands" she tried to joke, but it was quite obvious to Hermione that her heart wasn't in it.

"When the divorce hit the papers... Merlin, it was a nightmare. Very few people judged me harshly after my acquittal, but after I divorced Lucius..."

Narcissa fiddled with a quill on her desk. Hermione longed to reach over the desktop and quieten her fidgeting hands with a comforting touch, but her own hands gripped the arms of her chair with unusual force. She did not like what she was hearing—it made her dislike Pure-Bloods and their backwards ideals far more than before.

"In a way," Narcissa finally continued with a vacant look in her eyes, "some of those people will always see me as Lucius' wife. Someone—something" she corrected with a grimace "that belongs to him, and always will."

"That's bullshit!" Hermione seethed. "How can they think that? You divorced ages ago!" she stood, the urge to pace some of her anger away too overwhelming to ignore. "He's in bloody Azkaban, for Merlin's sakes!"

Something in her tone made Narcissa stiffen, and Hermione felt ridiculous for how strongly she felt about the matter. "Sorry," she was quick to add. "I just... I don't understand the situation and I find it so unfair..." she sighed. "And I am a self-righteous Gryffindor. I can't just let injustice pass by," she tried to joke.

To Hermione's relief, her attempt at humour coaxed a genuine smile from Narcissa.

"I've made my peace with it" Narcissa said. "I haven't been entirely cut-off from my old circles. But whenever I do find the occasion to frequent them—or when the occasion finds me—it will always be as Narcissa Malfoy. They cannot see me as anything else."

Hermione's anger flared up again, but she did her best to control it. She had no reason to feel this invested. What did it matter to her anyway? Malfoy, Black... Narcissa was just Narcissa to her. Just Narcissa.

Although, a little voice made itself known, deep in the recesses of her mind, it could very well matter to you if people saw her as married to someone else.

Hermione summarily made the voice shut up.

"Why frequent them, then?" she asked instead. Narcissa made it seemed like she still chose to maintain some contact. "If they can't accept you as you are—without the Malfoy name attached—then why keep in touch at all?"

Narcissa's gaze turned severe; she looked pensively at the elegant feather of the quill she twirled in her fingers. She took a very long time to answer; for the longest time all Hermione could hear was the steady ticking of Narcissa's grandfather clock echoing in the room.

"I can't afford not to" she finally whispered, so softly Hermione wasn't entirely convinced she had been meant to hear it. But then Narcissa looked at her, and those blue eyes shone with something akin to fear.

"You're too young to understand" she breathed, "to really know how the Dark Lord first came to power. For years, there was no violence. No, for years he garnered the silent financial and political support of families like mine. There are still families like that out there now and I... I need to be aware of what goes on in those circles."

Hermione was at a loss. "And that's why Kingsley kept up his surveillance on you," she found herself saying, like pieces of a puzzle were coming together in her head with deafening clicks.

Narcissa looked surprised for a moment, then her expression became guarded.

"Who told you?" she asked, her voice abnormally cold. "Potter?"

"No," Hermione answered honestly—suddenly it was like she could not recognize the Narcissa sitting before her. "Kingsley himself told me. Harry had no idea."

"I find that hard to believe, considering Mr. Potter's position in the Ministry."

Hermione bristled. "Harry wouldn't lie to me" she said resolutely, with all of her conviction. "He thinks Kingsley may have Unspeakables watching you."

To the Gryffindor's surprise, Narcissa laughed—it was cold and heartless, and only made her more confused.

"Unspeakables" Narcissa whispered, shaking her head in equal parts disbelief and wonder. "I suppose our Minister of Magic does have a good head on his shoulders, after all." Narcissa said coolly, standing slowly.

Hermione was stumped.

"How can you say something like that?" she hissed, feeling her emotions get the better of her once more and hating every second of it. How could Narcissa be so nonchalant about surveillance that had taken place for over a decade when she had done nothing wrong since the end of the war?

"It's been ten years! You helped us win the War! You've helped so many people, for Merlin's sakes, you're making a Wizarding hospital with your own bloody money! You, you..." Hermione spluttered, stumbling over her words as they spilled out of her without control. "You helped save my parents!"

Somehow, Hermione had not seen Narcissa approach; she only felt the blonde's presence once a cold hand gingerly lifted her chin, connecting their gazes.

"Would you not? Have me under surveillance?" Narcissa inquired, her expression unreadable.

"What?" Hermione gasped, taking a step backward; Narcissa responded by taking a step forward. "Of course not!"

"No?" Narcissa pressed; Hermione continued going backwards and Narcissa followed her movement until the brunette had backed straight into Narcissa's closed office door.

"No," Hermione repeated, resolute.

"No," Narcissa echoed. Her hand lingered on Hermione's chin for long moments before moving onto her cheek. "Then you are far too trusting," she accused.

Hermione took hold of Narcissa's wrist. "You've given me no reason not to be." She insisted.

Narcissa's hand froze upon her cheek, her thumb gently grazed Hermione's bottom lip. "Have I not?" she murmured. Those blue eyes darkened nearly to grey—she looked at once lost and determined. "I can think of several"

Hermione maintained her defiant gaze on Narcissa's; the blonde's lips tugged into a slight smile, as if she were enjoying a challenge given.

"A Dark witch" she began solemnly, her blue eyes never straying from Hermione's hazel gaze, "married to a known Death Eater, with a Death Eater sister and a Death Eater son... Who had the Dark Lord himself as her guest. A witch who until now maintains contact with a circle of Pure-Bloods with questionable morals?" she stepped impossible closer to Hermione; their faces mere inches apart. "A witch well-versed in the Dark Arts... who has everything to gain in biding her time and playing nice for as long as it suits her needs?"

Hermione felt flustered with Narcissa's increased proximity, but she was a Gryffindor and thus refused to back down from a challenge. She straightened, coming even closer to Narcissa; they shared the same air, the same breaths as the connection of their gaze became electric.

"You forgot: a witch who still receives letters from said Death Eater husband. Ex-husband."

Narcissa's blue eyes widened in shock; her surprise was enough to make her take one step back. Hermione seized the opportunity to press forward, much like Narcissa had done earlier, and suddenly their balance had been reversed.

"How..." Narcissa began.

"Kingsley told me," Hermione interrupted. Narcissa's hand fell from her cheek, but the brunette held on to her wrist as Narcissa continued to step backward and she forward.

"You also forgot you're a witch who chose her family above all" the Gryffindor pressed on, confident. "A witch who loves her family—old and new" she said pointedly. "A witch who has absolutely everything to lose should some other Pure-Blood supremacist maniac came to power."

Hermione's eyes narrowed. Narcissa had been backed into her own desk, and the young professor was very much in the other witch's space, scant inches away.

"And everyone knows" she continued, "that any good Slytherin will always hedge their bets in their favour." She finished more softly, raising her other hand to Narcissa's pale cheek and letting her knuckles brush gently over the soft skin she found there. "Draco, Astoria, Scorpius. Andromeda and Teddy. You wouldn't risk losing them, even if you did still believe all of that supremacist crock of shit." Hermione smiled. "Which you don't."

Hermione felt Narcissa's gasp of surprise more than she heard it. She felt triumphant, even more so when the corners of Narcissa's lips tugged into a grin under her touch.

"Touché, Ms. Granger." She conceded, looking thoroughly impressed.

She couldn't help it—Hermione preened under the praise.

"Your reasoning is sound" Narcissa continued, raising an eyebrow "but remember this" she said, grasping Hermione's chin once more and tilting it up. "There is always more you don't know."

Hermione ignored the warning. She was right about Narcissa—she knew it in her heart, and she could think of very, very few things the blonde could say or do to convince her otherwise.

"The letters?" she asked instead. Narcissa huffed.

"Lucius' correspondence has decreased in frequency over the year. I receive a letter every other month now." She said, and Hermione could sense, no, could feel her honesty.

"What do they say?"

Narcissa shrugged. "At first they were complaints about the divorce. Some choice words about my choices and my character. Now? He mostly asks about Draco. I don't often reply." She let go of Hermione and walked back behind her desk, pulling out a drawer and taking out a stack of letters. "The Ministry goes through all of my correspondence" her tone turned half-playful, half-exasperated. "The poor idiots think I don't know."

Hermione eyed the stack Narcissa had placed on the desk. All of them were the of the standard-issue stationery given to prisoners in Azkaban. The Wizarding prison had undergone great changes over the year; Dementors still secured the perimeter, but were not used within its walls any longer. Prisoners had some small comforts such as letter writing and the Wizarding Wireless, plus some restricted visitations.

"Does he not write to Draco?"

Narcissa shook her head. "Draco made it very clear early on he did not wish to hear from his father ever again." The Potions professor looked pained. Hermione couldn't say she understood—Narcissa had at one point loved Lucius.

"It must be hard" she found herself thinking aloud. "After all you've lived through together."

To Hermione's surprise, Narcissa laughed. "It is not as hard as you think" she confessed. Her eyes hardened. "My devotion to Lucius waned shortly after the first war."

Hermione wanted desperately to ask more, but also didn't know if it was her place. This was just one more of the many secrets to Narcissa Black—Black, not Malfoy—that she would have to unveil little by little.

"Is... is this it?" Hermione asked instead. "The 'truth', or so you said?"

Narcissa looked intently at Hermione. Her expression was once again unreadable. Hermione gathered enough strength to continue. "You said there was still much I didn't know about you; that if I knew the whole truth, I wouldn't be so kind or compassionate. Is this it?" She motioned to vaguely to the stack of letters from Lucius.

The blonde's eyes became guarded once more; her responding smile held a heavy tinge of sadness.

"No," she confessed. "Not even close."