September 1, 2002
Draco Malfoy was standing behind his desk, buttoning his robe as Hermione moved around the secretary and through the door. She crossed the office with a purposeful stride, hearing the door shut behind her, and took Malfoy's hand when he reached out. His hand was just as smooth and large as she remembered it to be, including the slight roughness between his thumb and index where she figured Quidditch had toughened the skin.
"Miss Granger. I wasn't expecting you."
The tips of her ears went hot. He could have been referring to the fact that she had barged in without an appointment, or maybe to when she had abruptly left two weeks ago without a word. Both were unprofessional and a bit embarrassing, but she had good reasons for them. Even if he couldn't know what they were.
She had never been as angry as she should have been with him, but when he contacted her a few months ago after she hadn't heard from him in three years, she hadn't wanted anything to do with him. Then some distant suspicion came clawing back through the years, and she had felt like everything she ever wondered late at night would be answered with a single look at him. And it had been, in a way.
"I decided to accept your offer."
January 13, 2003
Hermione's eyes widened and her eyebrows drew together as she cocked her head. She studied it, and then tilted her head the other way, inspecting it again. She took three steps back, then another four, and crossed her arms.
"It's an abstract, Granger. It doesn't hold the secrets of the world."
"This is not an abstract."
"Does it look like a fruit basket? It's an abstract painting, meant to deliver a calming feeling."
"Did you buy it for yourself or the people who visit your office? Because it makes sense why people hate coming here, and why you're dangerous under a calm exterior."
"People do not hate coming to my office, and those who do are just afraid I've found out what they've done. The painting is blue tones and-"
She pointed at it, and turned her head to look at Malfoy. "This is a tsunami about to hit a village."
He leaned back against his desk, giving her a look above the folder he was sifting through. "We interpret things in accordance with our personality, emotions, and experiences. This must be your hero complex bursting to the forefront."
"And if you really didn't notice this before you bought it, you probably realized it subconsciously, which is why you enjoyed it. I suppose that would be your sinister self bursting to the forefront. With billowing robes, and a smirk, and pasty skin."
"My skin is pale, not pasty." He tossed the folder back onto his desk and stalked over to her. His arm rested against hers as he surveyed the painting, and she watched the smallest twitches and changes in his expression.
"Do you see the giant, rolling wave? And then the people screaming for help right there."
"There are no people screaming for help."
"Then what are those?" she asked, and he paused, his voice crackling in his throat. "Ha!"
"There's no ha. Those are obviously fish."
"What? They're faces screaming in terror."
"They're fish and seashells. If you interpret the blue to be a wave. It could be a sky. In which case it's clouds."
"Do not try to cover up the fact that you have a painting of dying people in your office. Look at that. Come on, Malfoy, terror."
"I admit that it slightly resembles how I feel each time you step into my office-"
"It looks exactly how I feel each time I see you, or-"
"But it more closely resembles how you look each time my intelligence trumps yours, and so, as you said, each time you see me."
"No, see, that's the terror of me realizing that I work for an idiot, who-"
"Well, we've already clarified that your powers of interpretation leave a lot to be desired. Like everything."
March 20, 2003
The potion turned from dull pink to a vibrant blue as Hermione stepped back. There was supposed to be a golden hue to it, but she didn't see it yet. She'd have to wait until it boiled up bubbles for her to check, and she'd have to start all over again if it wasn't there.
"Findels?"
"Four eyes, three tongues, and...let's go with five hearts."
"You're ordering a lot of these lately." Malfoy circled something on the parchment in his lap. "Keep botching the potion? I was wondering why you have yet to take a single day off - now I know it's because you keep trying to cover your-"
"I'm not botching it. It's just...not exactly right, and I can't decide what's wrong about it." She watched him for several seconds, her mind turning over something that had nothing to do with the potion. "There's just something that's not right, even though it all looks right."
"You're going off a feeling?" he drawled.
"Yes, a gut instinct. Which has never led me wrong." She set the ladle on the table, and muttered, "Even if it seems wrong at the time."
Malfoy scratched beneath his bottom lip, his eyebrows flashing up before slowly lowering. "I'd imagine the battles between your heart and mind as being more difficult than a meeting with an Unspeakable. You feel more and think more logically than a normal person would find healthy. You must counter yourself more than you do me."
"I don't know if I counter anyone more than I do you, since you're usually so wrong." She bit back the smile at his glare. "But I wouldn't sacrifice anything about myself. It's just a matter of knowing what to use in which decision. Which isn't always easy to decide on."
"Well, logically, feelings are unreliable, and create riskier decisions than knowledge does. Emotions are more likely to corrupt a good decision than form one."
"But not everything in the world is logical. You can't tackle an illogical problem with logic, because nothing will be logical. You can't tell me you've never made a choice based on emotion."
"I could tell you that-"
"And be honest?"
He frowned at the folder he was closing, tossing it onto the table before opening another. "Rarely has any major decision I've made based on emotion ever turned out well."
"What's the last major decision you made based off emotion?" He didn't even look up. "The last minor one?" Then he did, but he still didn't answer. "The last minor logical one?"
"To work late tonight in order to wrap up things that should have been done yesterday."
"So your decision to come down to the laboratories and sit with me was a minor emotional decision?" She said it as a joke, but he didn't appear amused. The silence lasted until she was shifting in discomfort.
"I consider that part of the decision to work late."
"Oh." She couldn't read him, and when she noticed she was taking too long in silence to attempt it, she shook her head. "Of course." Would he stop coming down here now if he thought she was assuming it was to spend time with her? Was it to spend time with her? "I was only joking, Malfoy."
"If I made emotional decisions in regards to you, I wouldn't have even hired you."
Prat. "Yes, well, I hate you, too."
"I don't hate you." He dipped his quill in the inkwell. "I haven't hated you for a long time, Granger. But I know you're an impossibly stubborn woman, would likely irritate the hell out of me, and would often forget you weren't the boss of the company-"
"I do-"
"I don't enjoy being aggravated. However, logically, it was a wise decision." "...I can't decide if that was a compliment, or a verbal slap in the face."
He smirked. "Logically?"
"Both."
"There's no emotion in logic, and so no offense."
"Then a lie, followed by a compliment."
"A lie? What are you brewing, exactly? I think the fumes have tampered with your perception of the truth." He clicked his tongue. "Then again, you did tell me last week that my nose made me look bird-like."
"That was last month, and you're still not over it? My God, you hold grudges. I'd almost think you were insecure if you weren't so cocky."
"I'm not cocky, Granger - I'm honest."
May 4, 2003
Malfoy looked down at her as he drew her back to him, gold lights dancing across his face before they turned. For a second, she saw red and green with snowflakes dusting down the slopes of their cheeks, but then it was gone.
She glanced down as the bottom of her shoe squelched across the top of his, but he didn't seem very bothered. "Sorry."
His gaze lifted above her head, and whatever he found there made him lead them back a few steps, until they disappeared more thoroughly into the crowd of dancing people. "Sometimes you look at me like I'm a potion, and you're trying to determine the ingredients by sight alone." His eyes dropped back to hers. "Why is that, Granger?"
She licked her lips, and he might have glanced at the motion, or it might have been all in her head. Sometimes she thought a lot of things had only happened in her head. That's the way it went when things happened so quickly or so long before a billion other full moments. It all started to feel like a dream.
"Maybe I'm trying to figure out your motives."
"In asking you to dance? Our table was infiltrated by werewolves - why do you think I asked?"
Hermione rolled her eyes. "Just because they are...a bit hairy-"
"A bit?" He looked up towards their table, and ducked his head to whisper in her ear as he turned them again. "You could braid the bloody hair on their palms alone, Granger. Shaking their hands felt like I was cupping the bun at the back of your head."
She hoped he didn't notice the goosebumps his whispering had left along her neck and shoulder. "At least they didn't insist on kissing your hand. I felt like my hand had disappeared into a tiny forest, and some little creature was going to bite my fingertips off."
Malfoy breathed a laugh, and she lowered her head to hide her grin, her forehead brushing his chest.
June 9, 2003
"I've realized that maybe you can't have it all. That sometimes there's two different things in opposite directions, or two different ends you want. But you can't split yourself into two and be at both places - you have to choose."
"Not always."
"But enough. And no matter where you end up, you're still going to think about the other one, and you're sometimes going to wonder if you made the right choice."
"The answer is simple, Granger, even if the execution is not - you don't settle. You make one something you obtain in the journey, and you bring it with you to the other end."
"But it's already gone. The choice left before you realized it was one." "Then you go back to get it."
"We don't all walk like elephants. We don't remember or know the way back again. We don't know how to stop and turn around, get the thing we left behind, and take a different path. We're just rolling down hills - and there's no getting back up them again."
"Rolling down hills?" Malfoy stirred his coffee. "I thought we were talking about elephants?"
Hermione waved her hand, taking a sip of her drink.
"If you want to walk like an elephant, Granger, you walk like a bloody elephant. There's nothing in our lives that stops us beyond ourselves. If you passed the path you wanted to take, then you turn around. People continuously get lost in their lives, but even if you have to journey the long way around, and through a dozen paths you wouldn't have taken before, you're still going to find the way back eventually."
"But paths close, and-"
"Do you think forests don't grow, or valleys don't turn to lakes, or the world doesn't change? Elephants don't walk back and see the same things they saw the first time through it, but they still find a way. You can sit there and blame the world and time, but it's yourself who didn't try hard enough. There's always a way."
"You think we control our destinies?"
He shrugged a shoulder. "A lot of things do. People, choices we hadn't known were significant, who we become. I think there are things that are meant for us, and I don't think we always know what they are, and we don't always find all of them. But every person has the power to change their destiny, and because of that, we control them."
"To an extent, I guess, yes. I- Why do you keep looking at the side of my face?" Hermione rubbed her cheek for the fifth time in two minutes.
Malfoy smirked. "I'm not. I'm looking behind you." Like he couldn't have told her that the first time she was obviously rubbing her face in response to his staring.
She twisted enough to look over her shoulder, and turned back around to glare at him. "She's rubbing her leg."
"Really? I had thought it was part of my destiny to witness an old woman-"
"Malfoy."
"I think it's the way the sausage and eggs are positioned on her plate-"
"If that were the case, she would be rubbing...herself all the time. Have you seen all the phallic symbols that surround us on a constant basis? Even sinks, baths, showers have the two knobs and then the tap. Penises are everywhere, so-"
Hermione leaned back as he nearly laughed coffee all over her, pushing a fist against his mouth. His face turned red as he started coughing in that squeaky way that meant he'd swallowed wrong, and she leaned across the table to smack him on the back of the shoulder.
"We're not counting this on your ridiculous list of ways in which I've tried to kill you."
July 4, 2003
Hermione looked up at the crunching sound, and saw Malfoy emerge into the cobblestone path from the shadows. His hands were in his pockets, his hair windswept, and he was looking at her oddly. It wasn't the anger she was expecting.
"What?"
"You're sitting in a dress, in the middle of a garden, under moonlight with flowers hanging all about you. If you were any other woman, I'd think you did it on purpose."
Her forehead wrinkled as she watched him trace a fingertip around the edge of a petal. "Why?"
His lips parted, but then he shut them again, exhaling through his nose as he closed the distance between them. "Pluckrow has left."
"Good. I won't apologize. If you'd like to terminate my contract-"
"Did he come on to you?"
"What? No. No, he was pulling the wings off a faery. Like a child serial-killer-in-training. Apparently, he wanted to show me some sort of trick, and he'd done it at least a few times before I arrived at his table." Hermione shook her head, and turned it away from him as she blinked back the prickling of tears. "You can't put their wings back on, you know."
"There are centers that rehabilitate wounded magical creatures, and provide a home to those that can't be released back into the wild."
"I know, I already brought her to one," she said. Malfoy looked like he was going to speak, but decided against it as he sat down next to her; she probably wouldn't have wanted to hear whatever he was thinking. "You know, people, they just...make these decisions. For good reason, and usually for no reason, or just because it benefits them in some way. Some tiny, stupid way. And they never care that it hurts other people or things. The entire world is just stomping all over one another."
"Not everyone thinks the way you do, Granger. Most people view faeries as little more than big flies, and I've personally seen what you can do to those with a bit of rolled up newspaper, things to climb on, and some hopping."
"Because they're always trying to fly into my potions, or else I'd leave them be. They only live for three days. Why would I end that any sooner without a reason?" She shoved her finger into his side, and he jerked away from it. "And flies have no intelligence - they're just insects. So while my reasoning would be in-"
"I'm not accusing you, Granger. Just to clarify before you try hexing giant wings onto my back."
She sniffed. "He deserved it." She watched her finger trace a pattern on the small space of bench between them, and then looked up to find him watching her. "Do you know how much better the world would be if we all had a little more compassion and understanding for one another? No matter how different we are?"
"Yes. Handshakes would be tossed aside in favor of hugs, and queues would last forever - you go, no, you go, you first-" He winced as if she had even done it that hard, and he grabbed her elbow. "I'm not feeling the compassion."
"Oh. My apologies... Did you feel it that time? Maybe-"
She jerked her hand back as he went to grab it, and jumped up from the bench when he tried again. She took a step back when he stood, and then two for each step he took forward. She was expecting jabs or those pinches on her side that he had discovered would send her into a fit of obnoxious laughter. He usually used those against her at the worst times, like in the middle of public or while she was berating him, and she hated when her anger broke with it. Even more, she hated the smirk he wore every time after.
"Compassion!"
"You attempted to break my ribs-"
"Psh, you're so over-dram- No! One more step, and I'll fling this branch at you."
He raised an eyebrow, and she mirrored it. "You wouldn't dare."
"Oh?" She released it from the pull of her hand, and it went swinging towards him.
He ducked, though there was no way the branch would have reached him, and he shot right back up again. There was a bit of wild determination in the way he looked at her, and her eyes widened. She started stepping back as he ducked under the branch, waving her finger at him.
"No, no! I knew it wouldn't- No!"
His hands grabbed her sides before she was fully turned away from him, and he pulled her forward. She pushed her hands out against his chest, leaning back, but there was no stabbing or pinching fingers. He just looked down at her as she narrowed her eyes at him.
"Didn't plan this far ahead, huh?"
He shook his head once. "I didn't plan this at all," he said, and then he kissed her.
Hermione's eyes remained open, staring blindly at his eyelids as his hands clenched on her waist. Her heart jolted, a dozen wings flickering in her stomach, and he pulled back when she gasped belatedly. He looked at their feet, pulling his lips into his mouth, and they shined when he released them. He blinked his eyes to hers, and she didn't know if either of them were breathing.
She pressed up until her mouth was hovering in front of his, and his gaze flicked down, up, down, up. She kissed him softly before pulling back a small space, and then his fingertips touched down at the start of her bare shoulders. He skimmed his fingers along them, and her hands tightened to fists in his shirt as the shiver rolled down her spine. She pushed forward, kissing him fully, and his hands wrapped around the top of her arms to pull her against him as he kissed her back.
September 1, 2003
"What do you want? Name it."
"I don't want anything!"
"There must be something, or you wouldn't be refusing to sign the contract!"
"I don't- I can't work with you anymore!" Hermione threw up her hands, and Malfoy slapped the contract down onto his desk. Because sometimes you didn't get both. Sometimes you didn't get anything at all.
His jaw was tightening, releasing, tightening, and the line of his stiffened shoulders looked like he was about to tackle something. "Is this about the kiss in the garden?" His voice came out a lot softer than his previous sentence had.
The kiss in the garden. The thing they had ignored talking about for a month. The thing that still sent her into a frenzied state of quickening heartbeats and flushed skin.
"It is, isn't it? What do you want me to do? Stay away from you? Do-"
"It's about a lot of things! It's about..." she paused, taking a deep breath as she shook her head at the ceiling, "things you can't even begin to understand, or know, or-"
"Then tell me!"
"I can't!"
He straightened up, then looked at the wall as if he was contemplating how quickly he could set it on fire, and how much he would enjoy the panic it could create. "There's nothing I can do to get you to stay?"
"I can't work with you. I'm sor-"
"You can't work with me, or you don't want to be around me at all?" He was studying her expression, and must have found some sort of answer there that she didn't even know, because he looked away from her like she'd spoken it. Like she had said both. "You're leaving then."
She swallowed, again, again, again. "Yes."
November 8, 2004
Hermione stared. She stared until her eyes were burning and she realized she hadn't been blinking, and so she blinked, and then she stared some more.
"We aren't together."
She should have found it strange that he would ask that. She should have found the question absolutely ridiculous. But she knew. Just like she had before.
"No," she whispered. "You left."
"I've been here."
She stared at him a long moment, and then shook her head again. "No."
"Yes. You worked for me for a year, kissed me, and then you left. You don't remember?"
She tilted her head, and a wave of liquid made him blurry as she looked down at his chest. "That wasn't you."
"It was. It's always been me."
"It's not the same." She looked down at his hand, at the amber gem in his ring. "It wasn't the same."
"It might have looked different, but the path has been the same. I...didn't think you would come work for me after I left."
"You were willing to sacrifice the journey for the end? If I hadn't known? If I hadn't somehow remembered the path, or knew the end I wanted?"
"I sacrificed nothing."
"This is the end you wanted?"
"It's not an end." His eyebrows furrowed as his eyes flicked between hers, and his hand slipped from the doorway. "Is it?"
She bit the inside of her cheek, but she thought he might have caught the slight curve to the corners of her mouth. "Does this mean I have your destiny in my hands? It's a rather nice change." He swayed back, and her hand darted forward, grabbing his arm. "No."
She reached up, her fingers catching the chain around his neck, and she pulled it down sharply. It clicked as it broke, and Draco shut his eyes at the sound. She wondered how long he'd been wearing it. How long he'd been trying to find all the ways back. But he'd taken his elephant walk, and he was finally home again.
The necklace dropped to the floor as she pushed up on her toes, kissing him. Her heart thundered as he breathed out harshly, kissing her back with a hard press of his mouth. She backed up a step, her hand smoothing down his arm until she found his fingers, and they curled back around her own as his eyes opened.
"Stay."
fin.