Six
Day: 869; Hour: 2
Nearly all the dishes in the house are littered in shards and ruins across the cheap linoleum floor. It's a pass-through house, which means it was heated and lit for any members of the Order or Ministry who needed a place to stay, but no one spent longer than a week, and no space was claimed for any one individual.
It's the first time she has seen Malfoy in over a month. His presence, sleepy-eyed and bed-headed, has completely taken her off guard when she spots him in the doorway. Breakfast that consists mostly of stale muffins from the back of the pantry and the last of the tea and coffee is a quiet event, until a faceless Auror storms in. The dishes that had been piled on top of the counter in rows are all thrown to the floor in an outcome of rage that doesn't seem gratifying in the least. Malfoy, Fred, and she can only stare in a sort of dazed wonder as he screams nonsensically and smashes the glass to ruins.
It took three of his friends to restrain him and bring him out of the room, and from what Hermione could gather of a few yells and grunts, it seems as if the Auror had lost someone close to him earlier that morning.
It was upsetting to think she had grown almost numb to it. Not to loss, but to the idea of it. While she felt pity for the man, her sadness and grief for him was not acute, but dull and shallow. It was as if everyone had to lose someone during the war. She had mourned with enough grief for them all, each time she was forced into the same sorrow.
The man's outburst still left a bad taste in her mouth though, and an uncomfortable awkwardness in the air, but the three at the table continued on, drinking their morning caffeine in silence, sitting amongst the chaos now on the floor. It felt strange. A little like she might have been dreaming.
"War is such a downer." Fred shakes his head and stirred more sugar into his coffee.
Hermione blinks at him. If there had ever been a more simple, almost flippant way in which she heard all of this hell described, she could not recall it. She was surprised. So surprised by his tone, and his choice of wording, that she laughs. Fred looks up in his own surprise at the sound, and when she is busy waiting for him to say something about it, she hears more amusement to her right.
He is grinning. Malfoy is turning his face into the hand that had previously been pushed against his cheek, doing his best to hide the grin, but she can still see it through the cracks in his fingers, and the slight crinkle of his nose and the corner of his eyes, and the lines around his mouth. She could tell without actually seeing it, that he is grinning like a fool. His shoulder shakes with the breath of a laugh, and then another. He turns his eyes from the redhead and onto hers, and it is a moment shared. They both laugh outright, and fifty years could pass, and she will still be able to recall exactly how he looked at that moment.
Day: 870; Hour: 7
Strange music beats with the jangled noises of Alicia's bracelets behind the door. Dean and Seamus play a game of chess, as Lavender recounts her horrifying experience swimming in the lake to Colin. There is an undercooked half-eaten birthday cake in the kitchen with only the first two letters of her name on it, and Seamus has a piece in the scruff on his chin, though no one tells him. As her toes curl in the warmth of the blazing fire, for just a single span of her heartbeat, Hermione swears she is back in Gryffindor tower.
Day: 888; Hour: 3
She huffs, and he grins when he finds her at a loss for a comeback. Hermione gives a scornful look to the way it transforms his face, and the cockiness now set in his demeanor.
He had a way of making you feel special when he smiled, Pansy had said once. She had been horribly drunk at the time, and bits of her lunch had caked the top of Hermione's trainers, and there had been spit hanging from her fingers. She had been a talker when she was drunk, which explained why every time Malfoy was around for it, he put her to bed or was always beside her to change the subject whenever he needed to.
She said he made you feel like he was smiling over an inside joke, and even if the entire room was in hysterics, when his eyes caught yours, it felt like you were the only two who actually got it and he wanted to share that second with you because of it. The real smiles though, not his fake ones, or the ones of malice. But the ones that made his whole posture easy, and he slumped a little, and one side of his mouth rose higher than the other. When he smiles like that.
Hermione likes to think she knows exactly what Pansy had been on about, though at the time she had been busy calling her a list of unpleasant names inside her head.
Draco Malfoy has a wicked smile. Everything about him is wicked, actually. As if all the parts of him had been thought over and created to form a different way in which to entice people to his way of thinking. Everything about him - his smile, his wit, his intellect, his face, his body - could be used as a weapon. It all just depended on who the opponent was and what he wanted out of them.
Not that she likes to think of Malfoy in this way, but she has forgotten to ignore how attractive he could be, despite the ugliness he shows sometimes.
Day: 913; Hour: 18
Hermione is not sure at all how she seems to have reached a place where she is comfortable sitting next to Malfoy at a table. She knows him in the distant sort of way that comes with a lot of time and gradual talking, but not about anything too personal. Moody seems to notice the change in their bodies, because he looks at both of them strangely before returning to his meal.
Hermione is curious about Malfoy in several different ways, but mostly now in the way the sun lights his hair and the way his fingers handle a fork, though she doesn't know why she is. It is slightly disturbing for her to feel so drawn to him, because she can't describe it, nor explain it, and it is him.
She liked to think she still hated him, but when she was alone, she wondered if maybe she didn't know quite how she felt anymore.
Day: 931; Hour: 20
He was beautiful in the faded blue-grey of early morning, though she suspected he would hate to hear it. Despite how vain she had always thought him to be, he actually despises hearing about himself now. Growing up is painful, and one of the hardest things of all is when you can start realizing the truth about yourself as well. Draco Malfoy can be a really ugly person. It is usual, and most the time, but she likes to think there are moments that make up for it.
There probably shouldn't be, but she is the sort of person that looks at absolutely anything and sees something decent about it. It is why he hates her and stays with her both. There is no one else in the world that can hate who he was enough to push for something better out of it. Without her, he would be alone. He likes to argue that he still is.
He is nearly naked. Stretched, defined and pale, and looking more like a man than any other man she has spied lying in her bed before. Granted, she had been just seventeen then, and now she is twenty. Twenty to his twenty-one, and his body is harder from Quidditch, and war, and from being too proud to not be comfortable with his body naked.
She traces his lines with her eyes, creating a visual memory in her retinas to burn into her brain. All the dips and curves and hollows of his upper body. She wants to reach out and run her fingers and hands over that expanse of lit-blue skin, just so she can feel what compact muscle under skin was like. Just so she can know what it was really like to touch a man, and could drag the memory up every time the girls talked, or she read, and she would no longer have to feel like the prude or the shy one ducking from conversation.
Or just so she can know what it was like to touch him. Her stomach was alive, and her heart was this beating mess building in tempo against her ribcage every time she entertained the idea of touching him. She hasn't known enough romance in her life yet to know if this is just from the idea of touching a man at all, or if it's because it was him. She preferred to think the former, if only for sanity's sake.
A lot of people lose their minds during war. She wanted to believe she can't be one of those people, because she had too much of it to misplace.
He had arrived at Grimmauld several hours ago, and with the few beds in their infirmary taken, she had felt bad about forcing him to sleep on the couch. Ron and Harry's bedrooms had been an option, but not one she was willing to take, and so she had led Malfoy into her own room. Not that he knew it was hers, or he would have had a problem with it, she was sure.
He breathed in shallow little breaths, but exhaled quickly each time, rustling the silver fringe falling across his forehead and eyes. His lids moved in circles and quick scans as he dreamt, and the muscles in his arms and shoulders bunch periodically bracing himself against things unknown. There were bandages taped crooked to his skin, and in the dim light they are maroon, but the sun would prove them bright, bright red she knew. His nails were uneven, dirt lining under and around, and in all the tiny lines of his knuckles and fingers. The row of knuckles on his right hand are black in the dark, swollen and hard to look at. They had gotten most the blood and dirt off him, but there was still a patch of dried blood streaked on his foot, and she always caught herself staring at it. Staring, and staring, and staring.
Day: 937; Hour: 14
Malfoy shifts, the couch dipping further down under his weight, and she has to tug herself back over to the arm so as not fall into him. He flips the channels casually; though he knows it annoys her, and rolls his neck, like watching television is the stressful part of his day.
"Do you know that every year, the sun gets further and further away?"
He looked completely uninterested, landing momentarily on a documentary about mice before moving on again. "Thanks for the useless information, Granger."
"Don't you care?"
"Why should I?"
"Because one day it will end up just being too far. Our days will be perpetually dim, and summer will end up like winter. We'll all freeze to death by the time winter comes. Our vegetation will be in ruins. Water will-"
"Why do you keep saying 'our' and 'we'? By the time it happens, it'll be a billion years. By then, the sun will have exploded anyway. To top matters, and the real point, Granger...is that we won't even be here. So, again, why should I care?"
"Well, what about future generations? My children's children and so on down my family line, and yours as well."
"They'll deal." He shrugs, tilting his head to follow the curving path of a car on some commercial.
"But-" She stops herself when he turns to look at her.
"Why do you care so much when there's nothing you can do about it? You're always going on about shit you can't ever change, when you should be concentrating on your own bloody life, or problems you can handle. Let it go."
Hermione stares back at him until he turns away, and then watches the side of his face. "I've been trying."
"Oh, yes. Quite obvious, that."
Day: 948; Hour: 1
There are two bright lights, red and purple, jetting toward a man with orange around his sleeve. His hair is orange too, orange in the sun, and Hermione, for a blinding second, knows that this is Ron and he is dying in front of her. Her feet have already kicked into motion by the time she makes it out as Seamus instead, but she was still running, because he might have had a chance to be saved.
Her arm is torn then, burning and ripping, and she cries out at the pain that flares. She sails into air, pulled back by that weight on her arm, and almost falls to her knees. Instead, she is pulled into warmth and cloth, and something hard and obscuring. She sees black, and then a mask of bone, and she screams against the hand covering her mouth.
She recognizes those eyes because she has seen then a million times, but she does not recognize them here, inside that mask, so she begins to struggle.
"Sh! Sh, Granger! It's me! It's only me. Stop." He shakes her, and it hurts her arm worse, and he knows because she whimpers on accident.
"Malfoy?"
"Yes," he bites, and she is so busy staring at him that she doesn't even notice he is dragging her behind a fence.
Everything seems to rock and sway, and she was not sure at all when this is supposed to stop being a dream she was having in a random bed, and when it started being real. Her heart pounds in a cacophony of awkward beats, and she cannot breathe at all now.
"You're a Death Eater." She is panting now, and pushes a hand into that heavy cloak and against his chest to push him back, feeling his stomach cave in beneath her touch.
"What? You're...are you blacking out on me? Snap out of it!" He shakes her, bringing the world back in focus a little more.
"No, I'm not blacking..." She shoves him harder. "What...I... When did... How!"
She is panicking now, and everything from her throat to the bottom of her stomach is seizing up in shock. Her eyes are burning and her head is swimming, and she just does not understand.
"You're a...a spy? A..."
"Wha-" He cuts himself off and shoves her back, and she gets a good enough glance at his face before he bends to know that he is angry and offended (and perhaps hurt, though she has not placed that look on him yet).
He enlarges a hooded robe, and a mask, and pushes them at her. They fall through her hands as easy as sand, and her palms feel burnt in the wake of them.
"What is going on?"
"Take off your Phoenix band and your robe, Granger, and get dressed in your Death Eater garb. You're joining the Dark Lord's inner circle this evening."
"What?"
He tossed neon yellow shoelaces at her. "Lace your boots."
"Malfoy-"
"Is it not obvious by now? Lupin sent for backup, and Moody came upon this idea before we left-"
"You did," she whispers, looking up from the shoelaces, and he looks at her before dropping his gaze back down to the hands smoothing out his robe.
"We're all as Death Eaters from this moment on. Phoenix - Granger, pay attention, because I know you're shit at identifying - Phoenix are all yellow shoelaces. Alright? No yellow shoelaces, then that's a Death Eater. Understood?"
"I can't..." She shook her head. "I can't wear this, Malfoy."
"You don't think you can do a lot of hard things, Granger," he mutters, though it's only partly true, and he puts the cold bone of the mask to her face.
She feels his magic like something raw and heated, and there is a static of such power that it sends goosebumps from her neck to her ankles. Her nipples pebble, her womb tightens, and she gasps out in surprise at the feel of it. It scares her as well, because she has never reacted in such a way to someone so quickly. It is the magic, she tells herself, again and again.
He is looking at her quite differently when he pulls his hand back, and she has to drop her eyes to regain her senses. He takes a moment to speak, and when he does, his voice is hushed.
"Simple as that. Now, hurry it up. We don't have all the time in the world."
It takes her awhile to get her head together. "Seamus-"
"Is fine. Hit with a Calming and Stunning spell so he didn't keep trying to send death curses at Longbottom and Thomas."
"And how am I supposed to know who to go after when I have only shoelaces to guide me?"
"They will think the Order left, and take us as their own. When they assemble, we strike."
She pauses, squatting down and ripping the black laces from her boots. "I'm sorry."
"For what?"
"I...I just...I mean, you're wearing..."
His feet shift. "Whatever, Granger. Just hurry it up."
"I am, though." She looks up at him now, and he stares back down at her longer than he should for a man in such a rush.
"Alright."
Day: 949; Hour: 10
Hermione can feel the weight of Tonk's eyes when Malfoy willingly takes the only seat left in the living room and sits beside her. It makes her shift around in her position, and for a second there is guilt, strange and bubbling at the base of her throat. Tonks, however, carries on with the normalcy of it; as if it weren't the strangest thing she had probably seen all day.
"Draco, please make it two against one and tell her to turn off the brain-numbing stupidity of this program."
He doesn't answer for several seconds, and Hermione isn't sure if he was even planning on it before she cuts in. "He's actually the one who refused to change it when I wanted him to weeks ago, so consider the odds still in my favor."
Tonks sighs and mutters something, but Hermione is too busy concentrating on the heat at her side to acknowledge what the other woman is saying. More so, she is too busy concentrating on the way Malfoy smells, and after a few sniffs, blushes as she places it. Malfoy gives her an odd look, likely from her obvious smelling of his person, and then smirks at the look on her face.
"You stink," she whispers, as if it will draw the attention away from her embarrassment.
"You over-exaggerate."
"You should shower after...something like that."
"I wasn't up for showering."
"But you were up for that?" He laughs lowly, and she takes a moment to find the double meaning before blushing all over again. "You know what I meant!"
"She wanted me to do it, so I did it."
Hermione snorts. "Like the only reason you did that was because she wanted you to."
"Well I certainly wouldn't have sought her out myself."
"Then why did you do it at all? If..." She trails off at the look he gives her, like she is naive, and suddenly she feels very much like she is. It's not like she doesn't know the answer to the question, but the idea of people sleeping together all over the place - no matter how much they might not like one another - is something she has been curious about for a long time now.
"What are you two whispering about over there?" Tonks is leaning toward them, obviously frustrated with her lack of eavesdropping skills.
"Nothing." Hermione answers quickly, and Tonks only grows more suspicious. Hermione sinks into the couch, as far from Malfoy as she can. The smell of him is making her think of things she does not wish to think about at all.
Day: 951; Hour: 22
"Hermione!" It is hissed and low, and she can see the shock red of Seamus' hair despite the cover of night.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Malfoy's voice is equally low, but tremendously more pissed off.
"My Phoenix band flew off, and I had to-"
"I don't give a shit. I told you stay on the fucking path, so stay on the fucking path!" he snarls, and it is very different from the moody but detached man she has gotten used to. Instead, it is very much like the one she used to know, and it makes her stand there like a gaping moron for far longer than his patience allows.
His fingers are tight, clamping around her arm as he yanks and shoves her forward, sending her stumbling over her own feet to gain balance.
"Hey!" Seamus steps forward, but Hermione is stepping forward with him.
"Don't touch me, Malfoy."
"Then move. We don't have time for you to mosey about after shit."
"No. No, don't touch me. I'll move when I damn well please, and you have no right to make that decision for me!"
"Alright. Alright, I'm sorry, Granger. You wanted to go find your band right?" He grabs her arm again, swinging her back the way she had been going. "By all means. Find us when you're done, or perhaps we'll just find you to Portkey back to the morgue. Sounds like a fantastic plan."
He shoves her back again, gesturing for her to go before she can even speak. Seamus rushes at him, and he is quick to draw his wand, the point pushing into the beard stubble of Seamus' neck. Hermione draws hers as well, and Malfoy finds it aimed at his face when he swings his eyes back to her.
He passes her off. He passes her off, looking back at Seamus as if she poses no threat at all. And damn it because he's right! Damn it, because she wouldn't do anything in a situation like this, unless she thought he would try to hurt her. She lowers her wand and shoves him instead, and finds his attention back on her once again. She shoves him harder, forcing him a step back, and darts her hands away when he makes a grab for them with his free one.
"What, Malfoy? Don't like people trying to shove you around? Is-"
He manages to grab her wrist this time, yanking her forward until she crashes into him. Seamus takes the opportunity to draw his own wand, while Malfoy lowers his head until his forehead touches her. His eyes are hot and angry, but she doesn't waver for a moment.
"Don't fuck with me, Granger."
"Don't fuck with me."
As Seamus' wand tip hits Malfoy's temple, the blond snarls and smirks, letting go of her wrist to grab her shoulder and yank her behind him. He returns his eyes to Seamus' furious ones, and Hermione thinks that if it is not for the sudden appearance of the rest of the team, something would have begun that she would not have been able to stop.
"We'll finish this later then, Finnigan."
"You fucking bet."
Day: 952; Hour: 8
"It was extremely childish. On both parts." She glares at Malfoy's swollen eye before looking back to the frazzled and still angry redhead, currently sporting a broken nose.
"I was defending you." Seamus' voice is thick and nasally, and Hermione shakes her head.
"You were angry, and have been. Don't use me as an excuse."
"It's what pushed me over the edge."
She shakes her head again, pushing his hair out of his face to inspect his injury more. "And right in Moody's office, of all places! It was a good thing he made sure to de-wand you both before it ended up even more barbaric."
He huffs a breath, hitting her in the face with hot air and the smell of chocolate. Once convinced he would be fine, she looks up to see Malfoy still sitting at the side of the bed, glaring at her as best he could. She feels like saying something childish, along the lines of 'you started it', but bites her tongue. Literally.
Day: 952; Hour: 21
"I would like to see the sun rise over the bay." She doesn't know why she bothered to look for the current high-on-pain reliever blond, but found herself lying beside him when she saw him in the snow at the back of the house. Silence had somehow turned into a very long conversation on many things, and now she finds herself discussing what they would like to do if they end up staying awake all night.
"What bay?"
"I don't know. Just a bay."
He pauses, giving her time to wait and stare at the white puffs of air vapor from both their mouths. "You are weirder than I first thought you were."
It is her turn for silence now. "Is that a bad thing?"
He shrugs - she can hear the sound of his clothes rubbing against his skin as he does. "It should be."
"But is it?"
His fingers flick across the mound of sparkling snow between them, and for a wild second, she thought he might take her hand, but he does not. "No."
Day: 960; Hour: 5
Hermione's fingers skim over the lines of potion ingredients, her list for the Grimmauld infirmary stock growing quickly on the parchment beside the book. When she glances up, Lupin is looking curiously at her, and seems to have been for some time now.
"What is it?" She ignores the impulse of wiping off her face.
"I've heard some interesting news."
Her head snaps up, because this could be about absolutely everything that rushes past the walls of her head. "About who?"
"You." Not so interesting then.
"What about then?"
"I heard you and Malfoy seem to be getting on fairly well."
She blushes, and it makes it look far worse than it is, but she can't control her reaction. "Tonks has been talking, has she?"
"Just that you both seem better acquainted with one another."
"I see him around a lot, and he's usually the only person I know to some degree. No one else is very talkative."
"He is?"
When I get him angry. "At times."
"I can't say I saw it coming."
"There's not really an 'it'."
"Even a semblance of normalcy between the two of you, I meant. Conversation and standing one another's presence goes a long way from where you both began."
"Yes, well... I can't say I saw it coming either." He is still looking at her curiously. "It's not like we're friends, Lupin."
"And what would be wrong with that if you were?"
"Everything."
"Like?"
"The fact that all my friends hate him, the fact that he's still arrogant, opinionated, and mean. Who he is and where he came from, and the things that he has done. I was sick of not talking. Sometimes he talks back."
"He's done a lot of good things the past year or so."
"But it doesn't erase all the bad things from the past ten years or so."
"No? Grudges make you old, Hermione."
"He was a nasty, racist boy-"
"Was, did you say?" He looks up from his own book then, smiling slightly at her. "Malfoy has made bad decisions in his life, and has been involved in a lot of bad situations. The man at the bottom of the hill, Hermione. And he kept pushing, and the boulder kept rolling back. Do you remember the story?"
"Yes."
"Young Malfoy has spent most of his life building that boulder, and the past year pushing it up the hill. Every mission gone right, every achievement he has reached with the Order, sends him forward a step. And every hated word, argument, prejudice, and look on the faces of his friends, when he faces them from the other side, has him faltering back one or two more. I don't know when he'll finally push it over and rid himself of his own failures, and of the hardship he created for himself. But he still keeps trying, doesn't he?"
Day: 964; Hour: 19
Hermione looks at Malfoy with Lupin's words repeating in her head, and he sends her glares to let her know that he knows she is staring and finds it bothersome.
Perhaps she has been looking at this wrong. Maybe you can't separate a person into two. One had to accept the past and the present as one constant flow in order to move on into the future, or that person would be hopelessly unmoving.
Malfoy had been several things, and he still is many different things, and those aspects make up who he was as a single human being. He is an enemy and an ally, someone to ignore and a person to talk to. He is contradictory, but that is part of what makes him a person. Not everything has to have changed in order for someone to be different. Malfoy will never be made of perfection, but he will no longer be made out of hate and racism.
This is a starting point, and an ending. It is a chance she had been reluctantly giving halves of for months now. Let him have it, she thinks. Let him push the boulder over. And they would all be better people for it.
Day: 969; Hour: 3
Christmas is dull, and not much like Christmas at all. The house is bare of decorations, an Auror stares glumly at the snowfall, and Malfoy keeps his nose buried in his notebook most the day. Besides a muttered 'Merry Christmas' in reply to her, he doesn't speak to her until the day is almost officially over.
She watches old Christmas movies, and Malfoy joins her for hot chocolate; when she tells him she will not talk about their mission tomorrow until Christmas is over, he makes fun of the movie every three minutes and then starts going over the plan exactly one minute after midnight.
Day: 975; Hour: 12
She does not receive her Christmas gifts until New Year's Eve, in a delivery from Fred and Ginny, though she likes to think their comforting presence is a gift in itself. There is no television in the house she is in now, so Fred and Dean rig a light bulb to a string for the thirty second countdown. It hits the ground unbroken before they even reach the last ten digits thanks to Justin's impatient hand, but Fred still stomps on it merrily at the end, and spills his wine over everyone in the room.
It almost makes up for Christmas.
Day: 981; Hour: 4
"I think just about everything in life seems like a great thing in the beginning. Like kids leaving in a car for a fun night out, but who never think of the car crash that ends up happening. Like every beginning of war, because people think there's freedom and power waiting for them at the end, instead of thinking about the middle. Or even Midas. Midas with his golden touch, and who must have thought the world was in his hands before he completely ruined his life."
"There are things that begin bad but end up finishing much differently as well."
"But why was it bad? It must have been something good in the beginning, or a person wouldn't find themselves in that situation at all."
"Well maybe they just thought it would be good, even if it wasn't." Hermione wonders if this is a piece of his boulder, because at times he thinks he's covering the parallel, but Hermione finds a lot of references to his life no matter what he says.
"But it's the same thing. It starts great - because it is, or you thought it would be, or because someone told you it is. But then...then bam. People walk around every day of their lives, and never expect the car crash."
"Maybe there isn't one."
"Maybe there is."
He turns from the stove, cocking his head at her. "And you're going to spend every day of your life thinking about it?"
"I think anyway." She shrugs. "I like to be prepared."
"I don't think that's a life at all."
"What about you then? You don't wait for the fallout?"
He snorts, collecting the sugar bowl from the top of the fridge where he likes to hide it. "We're in the bloody fallout, Granger."
"So you're waiting for the buildup?"
"I'm waiting to wake up after the crash. I don't want to inflate my head too much with things that don't matter yet. I've heard it causes brain damage." He looks at her meaningfully, and she scowls at him in turn.
"No. It's just that you're head is too large already to fit anything else inside."
"Don't try to knock up my head size to compare it to yours, just so you feel better about yourself."
"Malfoy, I knock you down when I want to feel better about myself."
He releases a quick breath, which can be a laugh or a sigh. "Slytherin."
"Hufflepuff." He points his spoon like a weapon and glares.
Day: 989; Hour: 17
Hermione threw the newspaper down, the four-month-old headline smacking against the table. "Muggles are not behind in the evolution process!"
"Of course they are. Survival of the fittest-"
"No! It's like a gene, all right? It's a gene, like the color of your eyes. And if two parents have blue eyes, it's nearly impossible that the child will have brown eyes. But sometimes that slips through the cracks, and a child will be born with brown eyes. Which is why there are Squibs, and why there are people like me! Most often, if there are two Muggle parents, the child is a Muggle. Two wizarding, a wizarding child."
"This doesn't disprove my point that Muggles are behind. They have no magic! They lack the capability that we have. They are like a whole word of Squibs, Granger. An entire Squib filled population, and if one was found, every researcher in the Ministry would be trying to figure out what went wrong."
"That's different! A whole community of Squibs could be a problem because they all must have come from wizarding parents in order to be a Squib. So the gene is getting lost somewhere. Muggles and wizards hardly integrate, and when they do, they stay in the wizarding world where they are allowed to do magic. That is why it doesn't spread throughout the Muggles. Because they never had it."
"Exactly! They never had it! We're hundreds of generations in on our magical capabilities, and it has never shown in the Muggle world except for odd cases. Why is it that we hold magic, but they don't? Why is it that they haven't formed it over thousands of years? Because they are behind in evolving-"
"Or maybe they are just that way! Maybe you're behind in evolving-"
"I'm the one with the capability! How am I the one behind?"
"Maybe it's just a weird mutation that started, and has never evened out-"
"Mutation... A fucking mutation?"
"And you know, for someone trying to redeem themselves, you're still racist!"
"I'm racist?"
"Yes, you're racist!" Hermione nods, as if he should have gotten this a long time ago.
He hits the table, slamming it up against the wall, the leg smacking off her kneecap. "I'm the fucking racist? You just compared magic to a fucking mutation, but I'm the racist? You're a fucking hypocrite!"
"You have an anger problem!"
"All you do is judge people! You're waiting for the next incriminating word or action as much as you're waiting for your fucking fallout! You put people in lines, and all you do is judge everything and twist it into how you think it should be, instead of finding out what it is! If they don't act like you, talk like you, think like you, and breathe like you, then they must be something beneath you, right? Shoved under your sensible fucking Mary-Janes."
"I judge people because I know-"
"You think you know. You think you're so clever, and have got everything figured out. You walk around like most the world owes you something, but here's a life lesson, Granger." He leans in, face red and eyes hard. "The world owes everyone something. You are not the only one who feels screwed over by other people, because everyone feels they have been. From you, to me, to Harry-Fucking-Potter, to Voldemort. You don't have the right to judge them, and still go on about-"
"You don't know anything about me! You're prattling on about me judging people, at the same time that you're judging me! You're-"
"How does it feel when the tables turn?" he growls, furious.
She stands then, too angry for stillness. "How does it feel to be judged? I'm the Mudblood, Malfoy, don't you remember? You're the fucking pureblood who thought himself so much better, and I'm the Mudblood who didn't belong. Remember? Do you fucking remember?" She screams, and hiccups, and thinks she might start bawling her eyes out from frustration and so many other things.
He straightens up, leaning back, as if she has slapped him. Yes, Malfoy. Yes, remember that, Mr. Redeemed. Mr. I'm-Forgetting-About-My-Fucking-Boulder!
"Maybe the reason I judge people is because I know they're judging me. I learned that the day I met you, didn't I? It's self-defense. It's how I protect myself, because I pay attention, and find out whose opinion is not worth worrying myself over. And you can't take that from me, Malfoy. You can't take it, when you're the one who gave it to me in the first place!"
"Poor, poor, Hermione," he whispers. "Poor Hermione Granger, with her bad childhood and mean schoolboys."
"Don't you dare belittle what I-"
"Alright, you want to get the shit out in the air then? Is that what you want?" He slams his palm down on the table, hard enough to make her jump. "All I knew was how to hate you, because that was how I was raised. There was no other way of looking at it, because that was the only way I thought it could be. Just as how you grew to hate me. I acted out in that hate, just as you did as well."
"I made no personal offense against you until you insulted me and attempted backward plans to hurt me and my friends!" she yelled. "I did nothing to make you that way."
"You didn't have to! I had knowledge, all stored up between my temples. I had facts, and lessons. Your kind was taking over, and they were bringing disease and dishonor, and they didn't belong there, taking things from us. Their world was on the other side of ours. They were stupider, uglier, dirtier, and something had to be done to bring peace back to our lives. I believe I heard something along the same lines from Moody just last month."
"But I still didn't do-"
"Your offense, at my mind set then, was just being there. For doing what I learned to hate you for, because you weren't supposed to be here. Even when I was younger, I had no reason to think about Muggle genocide. It was the ones here, taking what was ours that I wanted to get rid of. So I hated you. I fucking hated you so much."
"And-"
"But as much scorn as I subjected you to, you gave me the same. You may not have been racist, but you still hated me just as much."
"For the person that you were, rather than what you were! You hated me for something I couldn't change!"
"And you hated me for the same! So what the fuck is the difference?"
"There's a huge difference!"
"Like what?"
"If you hadn't hated me Malfoy, I would not have hated you. I was obligated, even just to defend myself!"
"And so was I!"
"No, you weren't!"
"Don't fucking tell me! You didn't live my life, Granger! And there's your problem, again. Judging, and never looking at the other side of things."
"I look from another person's view when they deserve for me to."
"When you deem them worthy of it, you mean?"
"Yes, wh-"
"There you go then. There. You. Go. Except I didn't start looking from your view until most the damage had been done, and you have. Never. Started."
"Because Death Eaters have proved themselves worthy? Ha! They-"
"Because I have!" he yells.
Silence. Hermione finds them both breathing hard, not a foot apart, and red in the face. She stares up at him, forgetting her anger for surprise, but he is still holding tight to his rage. The chords in his neck are tight, his eyes flashing, and his fists are balling and releasing at his sides.
"I'm not a racist," he whispers fiercely. "I am not him anymore. I didn't say Muggles aren't intelligent, or creative, or absolutely everything else that we are as well. All I said, is that they are behind in gaining magical ability. That was it. It was you who decided that must have meant they were a lesser people - not me."
He stares a moment longer before stalking away, his bones jilted on tight muscles.
Day: 991; Hour: 12
Neville laughs, stirring his coffee so that the spoon clinks off the side as many times as he moves it. "Was it bad?"
"I don't know. I just... It's like he keeps trying to pry my eyes open when I'm already looking."
"He had a point though. A little."
"I know. That's what bothered me the most. Because I don't feel he has a right for me to have enough pity or feeling to look at it all from his point of view and understand why he did the things he did. Yet, if I want to understand him, then maybe I have to. I'm the one who he tried to alienate, but he just turns it around."
"That's because it was the other way for him. And, Hermione, not for nothing, but the fact that he's even trying to explain it to you so you do understand, has got to mean something."
"He's trying to feel less guilty over the things he has done. Or just wants to live easier now by not having me jumping on the things he says."
"The fact that he would feel guilty means something too, though. As well as-"
"I know, Neville. I know. And that's why I decided to give him a shot, you know? I give him a chance, and then I go back to thinking he's not worth it. Then another chance, then I take it back. I'm seesawing back and forth, and it's ridiculous."
She feels awkward opening herself up to Neville, when it is something she doesn't do much with anyone. However, her conflict with Malfoy has been agitating at best and infuriating usually, and she needs someone to speak to who doesn't hate him.
Or maybe just someone to talk to about anything at all. She found herself having the most brain dead conversations with people just for the sake of speaking.
"You're letting yourself be vulnerable, and so you're keeping up defenses because you know you are vulnerable. And you're not going to go very far like that."
She sighs. "So I should just drop my defenses? It's Draco Malfoy."
"No, no. I mean you should stop looking at him like he's going to become his former self at any moment. Too much has happened for it to be that way. I'm saying that you shouldn't go in expecting everything to be different, but you shouldn't jump to conclusions about what he says, until you're sure you know what he means by it. Or else it's useless, because you're too used to looking for the insults that you're not paying attention to much of anything else. You're finding the hidden plastic Easter eggs that have nothing inside of them."
"Nice metaphor."
"I've been thinking of it since you started talking, so I had to add it in there." He blushes, and she laughs.
Day: 994; Hour: 2
Hermione writes and writes, far past the time her hand has cramped, and continues up until she signs her name. By the time she drops it off at Arthur Weasley's desk, she is close to positive her hand will dry up and fall off by morning.
She does not care that a letter will likely not reach them for months, because at least she knows she did her part in trying.
Day: 996; Hour: 10
A man with a long black beard sits beside her when Malfoy enters the kitchen. She is nervous to see him, but slightly relieved in a strange way - the man at the table has been looking at her oddly for twenty minutes now.
You're Hermione Granger, he had stated. Yes, she had replied. And then he had stared.
She glances up from Malfoy's hand, frozen around the sugar bowl. A perplexed expression rearranges his facial features, and the blank look on the Auror has changed to a stunned one.
"What?" she asks, alarmed.
"Your ass."
"What?" She looks back to Malfoy, and his eyes track down her body as he juts his chin toward her.
"I believe your ass is on fire, Granger."
She blushes, sure this is meant to be a joke of some sort, until the heat in her back pocket reaches a level where she is sure she is not imagining it. She stands quickly, bumping the table and sending cold tea sloshing over the side of her mug. The coin in her pocket is so scalding hot that it burns her fingertips, the letters from Harry and Ron floating to the ground behind the coin still spinning to a stop on the floor.
She waves her hand for the cool air against her injured tips, bending down quickly with her other hand to scoop up the smoking piece of parchment. It is yellow compared to the color of the others, and she knows it is the first letter Harry sent her since his departure.
"Shit!" she breathes, waving the paper and stopping the gradual descent of the red and orange line from turning the rest of it to ash. Her heart lurches painfully, because it is something treasured that is half ash and half burnt parchment in her hand. A ball wells and grows inside her throat, and she must blink several times as she unfolds the parchment to find most of the letter gone.
She is uncaring to how she must look to the two men, standing there and almost crying over a burnt piece of paper, but she feels negligent and horrible. She could probably quote the thing line for line. But that didn't change the fact that it was gone. Just as gone as Harry was to her now too.
"How did it start?" the Auror asks her, and she ignores him at first, breathing heavy as she refolds the paper.
"Granger." Malfoy is more insistent and far less patient, and she looks up at him and swallows hard.
"It...uh... What?"
"Is the coin activated? Is that what started the paper on fire?" the Auror speaks up again.
"It shouldn't have gotten that hot." Malfoy stares disdainfully down at the gold coin, a scorch mark now circular in the floor.
"The...the coin. Oh! Oh, the coin! Someone...trouble...I..." Hermione shakes her head, growing frantic, and darts barefooted from the house before she can form a coherent sentence.