July 30, 2002

Hermione froze, staring at the back of a bright blond head, and felt her heart slam against her chest.

"What are you doing here?"

The back of the navy blue coat stiffened, and then he stood, turning to face her. She looked at the confused faces behind him, and then widened her eyes so he received the full force of anger in her gaze.

"I was considering a donation."

She pointed her finger, stepping closer to him. "Why are you talking to them? You're-"

"Because I investigate the work of a place before I donate any of my money for them to continue that work," Malfoy said, a wrinkle appearing on his forehead. "Not that it's any of your business or concern."

"None of my business? Do not act ignorant, Malfoy-"

"I assure you that they aren't being harmed by my presence-"

"Your toxic presence!" She stepped closer to him, lowering her voice. "How dare you investigate-"

"I'll investigate anything I want. I have approval from the board of this institution to interview-"

"As a manipulative tactic to gain access to..." Her words and breath paused in her chest as his eyes flicked between hers, a strange expression on his face.

"What are you doing here, Granger?"

She dropped her finger from his chest, her exhale shaky as her cheeks colored. Maybe she really had just publicly attacked him for a reason he couldn't understand. Though she doubted he wasn't catching on to it now.

"Young lady-"

"I'll leave," Malfoy said.

Hermione stepped back and nodded, unable to meet his eyes. He hovered for a moment before stepping around her, and her eyelids fell shut as she listened to his retreating footsteps. She took a deep breath, another, another, and then opened her eyes again. If he hadn't known, then maybe he really was here to make a donation. Knowing Malfoy, a very sizable donation. And she had just sent him out the door.

"I'll be right back," she whispered, turning to walk quickly down the hall.

She wrung her hands in front of her, smiling distractedly at the people she passed, before turning for the reception desk. Malfoy was facing her, but he didn't notice as he told his assistant something. The people passing him were giving him curious looks that he didn't pay attention to, but Hermione figured it was due to the black traveling cloak he was wearing. He was lucky a child didn't see him and think it was a cape. Or the child was lucky.

"Malfoy."

He looked over at her, and his eyebrows darted up in surprise, before a careful blankness took his expression a second later. Something about him looked odd, but she couldn't decide what it was. The hair, maybe.

"You can stay. You should stay." She breathed out hard. "Stay."

August 19, 2002

She twisted her hands together on her lap, her body rigid with the long wait within his silence. "All right, Malfoy, I know that I haven't technically fulfilled the duties I was supposed to within the first month-"

"No, you haven't."

"But that it is the fault of another department not securing an allowance for the import of Ocklebarm Feathers, and the Ministry for not completing the review of the request. If I had the Ocklebarm Feathers, the potion would be ready for testing."

"Be that as it may, you have a contractual obligation to remain working. The ingredient may arrive tomorrow, and even if it does not, there's other work that needs to be done."

"That I will get done when I return. This is a personal matter that is very urgent, and it requires my immediate leave."

He took a breath, opening his mouth, and then shut it again. "One week."

"One week." She nodded, and then her eyes widened when he tilted his head forward. "Oh! One week, right. Yes. Good. Thank- Uh. Very good."

November 3, 2002

"I am not playing that game with you."

Malfoy raised an eyebrow, and the corner of his mouth lifted with it. "I can be very fun to play games with."

"Yes, I'm sure. Like Choke-The-Boss, or Trip-The-Git, or-"

"Strangle-The-Swot, or Shut-Up-The-Twit, or-"

"It's a very rude game, you know." She was about to steal his glass of champagne until a tray floated by, and she swiped two of them. "Completely unprofessional."

"No one is caring about professionalism at this point in the evening. This is when they have fun and get properly sauced, and then I make deals I have to remind them about in the morning."

She rolled her eyes. "Everything comes with a price with you."

"Everything comes with a price in general, Granger. It's only my intention to be a person who collects." He took a sip of his drink, and narrowed his eyes at one of the guests. "Is that man fondling my plant?"

She nearly spit out her champagne when she caught sight of the man stroking plant leaves, and slapped a hand over her mouth. Malfoy grinned at her, and she had the ridiculous urge to reach out and trace the lines around his mouth.

She fought back the laughter until she could swallow, and then it huffed out of her. "You almost made me embarrass the both of us if that went flying out of my mouth."

"It wouldn't have embarrassed me. I would have simply laughed at you."

She snorted. "Until I spit it all over you."

"I probably would have had to fire you."

He glared at her when she turned wide, hopeful eyes to him, and she laughed, sitting back in her chair. "All right. The man stroking the plant leaves is doing so because they remind him of a beautiful plant he fell in love with when he was a child-"

Malfoy shook his head and set his glass down. "No. He plans on murdering the plant. When he was a young lad, he always saw his mother fiddling with plants in the garden after his father had died. He grew a hatred for all things green and leafy, and is always filled with the intense urge to rip them apart."

"He's clearly insane, then."

"Ah, but it's in the blood. See, a few years after his father died, he was murdering plants in the garden. Only to discover-"

"Dun, dun, dun."

"-the body of his father. Ever since then, he's always justified his murder of those poor, innocent plants as an unstoppable, hereditary madness."

"Poor bloke," Hermione whispered. "Poor plants, really. Okay, that woman over there."

He clicked his tongue off the roof of his mouth. "That only leaves me thirty-five different choices."

"The one in purple."

"Eight. At least."

"Right-"

Malfoy grabbed her hand, his own warm, dry, and smooth against her skin. "Don't point," he whispered. "It's one of the biggest rules of the game."

"Oh, my apologies for breaking such a serious rule in our very serious game."

She raised herself up in her seat, her shoulder pressing against his. She felt his head turn slightly towards her as it moved her hair, but he didn't pull away. "Do you see the lady with the, uh...backside-the ruffles in the back of-" "Whose arse looks like it exploded ruffles, yes."

"Okay, and then over to the left, the lady with the feather hat?"

"What are those?"

"I've no idea, we'll do her next. But just two, three, four people-" He growled lowly, and she grinned, sitting back into her chair. "Well, that woman used to be madly in love with a pasty, scrawny-"

"Scrawny?"

"-pointy boy, who was very arrogant, rude-"

"Right, moving on."

"She used to try to smother this boy with love, but the boy had love for no one but-"

"This is breaking several rules of the game, including the very first rule - don't annoy me."

"-was so busy looking at himself in the mirror all the time, and refused to give her any room to look at her own self-"

"You do know that she's still one of my best mates, don't you?"

"-sweets, and all he did was brag about his not-so-considerable looks, talents, skills, and other assets-"

"What other assets, exactly? Because I'm very considerable in several departments."

"-and so Pans-uh, the woman, left poor Dr-the boy, and swore to never speak to him again. But, wait! The boy turned into a man who was still very rich! And so P-the woman..."

December 23, 2002

Hermione slid the gift across his desk, and immediately retreated towards the door. "I'll see you after-"

"You got me a gift?"

"Uh. Yes." She stilled, brushing her hands down her work robe. "I was going to get you Gitbegone Solution, but then I found this, and I thought of you...just that I thought you might like it. So. There's that. I'll-"

"Wait." He opened a drawer in his desk, pulling a box from it, wrapped in bright green paper. "Here."

She narrowed her left eye as she approached his desk again, and took the box, feeling the slickness of the wrapping paper. "Do you just stash gifts in case you get an unexpected one, and don't want to appear rude had you not bought something for them in return?"

He slid her gift towards him, running his fingers down an edge. "Have you been speaking to my secretary again?" He seemed to spot her hesitancy the moment she felt it. "Open it, Granger."

She had really been hoping to escape before any opening occurred, because Draco Malfoy turned her into a coward sometimes. She wasn't sure how he was going to take her gift, and she wanted to see it for herself just a little less than she wanted to avoid it and guess for weeks on end.

She flicked her finger over a fold of wrapping paper, and then grabbed it, peeling it back. Another strip, another, until she was cradling a white box between her arm and chest, and a wad of wrapping paper under the other arm. She looked up at him, and blushed when she saw he had only unfolded an end on his gift, while she had torn her paper to shreds. She was usually very neat and methodical in other areas of her life, but there was something about a wrapped present that had her five years old again.

Malfoy looked amused as he lifted a hand and rolled his finger in a circle. She looked back down, flipping the box over, and was unable to do much else beyond stare for a very long minute. Did he buy things like this for all his just-in-case gifts? Or was it not really a just-in-case gift, and he had assumed she'd love it? Or, perhaps, he had remembered a conversation they had last month that she barely recalled.

"I didn't think these came out until next month." They probably didn't. "Thank you." She grinned as she looked up at him. "Merry Christmas, Draco. Malfoy."

He tried to smother a smile as he pulled a line of tape from the wrapping paper. "Merry Christmas, Hermione. Granger."

February 4, 2003

"I'm trying to grab it!"

"You're not-"

Hermione lunged at the ball as it slammed through four jars, Lionfish eyes and bat wings flying across the floor. The ball bounced off the edge of a shelf and sailed to the other side of the room, and Hermione darted to the side to follow it. Her shoes slipped in mushrooms and plant roots, and small bones cracked beneath her heels.

She gasped when a burst of blue jetted past her arm, stumbling back against the shelves. She turned wide eyes to Draco as he cast another spell at the ball, his gaze darting around the room as he tried to follow its progress.

"What are you doing?" she yelled. "You're just break-"

"If you hadn't unleashed it-"

"It fell out of the box! It was your own fault for pushing against me!"

"I bumped into you! And what" -she yanked his arm to pull him out of the way of the ball flying at his face-"are you doing with weapons-"

"It's not a weapon! One of the researchers tested a failed potion to see if it would have the same effect on metal sphere- You just blew out the entire Asphodel stock!"

"As opposed to the ball you released blowing out everything else in-" Malfoy grabbed her wrist, pulling her back towards the door.

"I almost had it!"

"It's a metal ball traveling faster than a Bludger - it would break your-"

They both lunged away from the path of the ball, and it crashed into the door before flying at the ceiling. Draco grabbed her wrist again, his other hand twisting the doorknob behind him, and he rushed them both out of the room.

She took an extra step back at the force of the door slamming behind the kick of his foot, but his hand remained on her wrist. He rested his back against the wood for a second, both of them staring at one another as she caught her breath. His gaze dropped to the box she was holding to her chest, and her eyes widened as his narrowed, right before he tugged her forward.

Hermione pushed back, but he followed her, his hands shooting towards the box. She spun away from him, but it was too late, his grip tight around the edges.

"I have to test these! Da-"

"They've been tested and dismissed, and I...refuse-"

"No, it wasn't...ugh, controlled, or- Stop try-"

He yanked, and she fell against his chest as she wrapped her arm tighter around the box, and pushed against him with her other hand.

"I'm not leaving them in your incapable hands-"

"I am very capable! I am beyond capa- I will- Let go! Let go this second!"

"-entire stock room, and you can't be trusted with-"

"-tested, and don't think you can not approve them as a final product just because-"

"-let you loose in the building with-"

Draco pulled hard enough to twist her back towards him, and she flung herself back just as he jerked the box from her. Her breath caught as she fell back, but before she could meet the success of gravity, an arm snagged her around the waist. Her fingers had clutched into the fabric of Draco's shirt without her realizing, and her grip still didn't loosen when her feet were properly settled on the ground.

"You're a danger to my company." His hand tightened into a fist at the side of her back as he looked down at her.

She may or may not have tugged his shirt a little, but if she had, it might have been like one of those weird moments right before sleep where the arm suddenly shoots up into the air with no permission.

"You're a danger to society," she told him. And then he kissed her.

June 16, 2003

Draco was standing in the middle of the hall, his hands shoved into the pockets of his navy blue coat as he looked at her. The bright lights were harsh on the dark smudges beneath his eyes, and he looked paler than normal. He seemed a lot more tired than he had been that morning, and she guessed whatever meeting had him crawling out of the covers at four had gone badly. He was almost hard to look at it, despite being the very thing she wanted to look at in that moment.

"Hey," she said softly, coming to a stop in front of him. "I hadn't expected to see you until tonight."

He shrugged a shoulder. "I decided to see how you were doing."

Hermione swallowed hard, and caught sight of a mark on his jaw when she lowered her eyes from his. She frowned, reaching up to run a fingertip across it. It looked like a scar, but she would have seen it before.

"What's this?" she asked, looking up at him.

His eyes were hooded, and she pressed her fingers to his cheek, sliding her palm across his skin. Maybe he would call off for the day, and they could lie in bed and sleep the rest of it away. Or other things.

"I cut myself shaving. It's just healing up."

She hummed, but was distracted from inspecting the mark again when he bent forward to kiss her forehead. He'd only done it once before, on the verge of sleep, and it was startling despite the gentleness.

"How are they?"

She rested her forehead against his chin for a moment, dropping her hand to his shoulder before squeezing it. "As always."

"No improvement?"

She glanced over his shoulder as a woman rounded into the hall, and she dropped her hand away from him. "No," she said, pausing once in her step before he turned to walk with her.

Draco looked at her carefully for a few seconds before turning his face forward. He watched the end of the hall near until the stranger was far behind them, and then concentrated on her again. "I can't believe they haven't managed to find a single thing that improved it at any point in time."

He was staring at her intensely, and she was caught between looking away, or letting him see everything written on her face so she didn't have to fail at finding the words to say it. She didn't want to keep it all trapped inside of her anymore. She was becoming so tired of being so strong.

She shook her head. "Not once. It's always just..."

Her breath shuddered in, and his hand ghosted hers before wrapping around it.