Status quo

Notes: English is not my primary language. I'm self-taught (by reading fanfics). So please have that in mind! If you spot any errors that I couldn't identify during the proofreading, please let me know.

This will be a four chapter story, most of which I had already written. I will take the time to proofread it several times, however, to avoid as many mistakes I can and to try to learn better how to write in good English.

Thank you for reading!

Chapter 1: The irritating fingers of jealousy

"Again? That girl has no principles."

The knife on Draco Malfoy's fingers continued putting jam on the toast, the scraping sound filling the blanks between the newspaper's noise on his mother's hands. The singing of the little birds outside the open window were interrupted by the crunching bites, the toast disappearing little by little into inexistence.

He knew his mother was waiting for his question, the hoped curiosity at her cryptic words. He started preparing another one of the toasts that the Houses elves had made. The routine Saturday and Sunday breakfast were always like this: he would greet her with a short 'mother' and she would smile at him, calling the elves to bring the food. Narcissa would wear an elegant gown, as if this was some kind of social gathering and not just the visit from her only son. As her bracelets jingled together, she would make light conversation, which would go from questions about his job to the latest and juiciest social rumors. He would try to answer each question patiently, in a effort to integrate her in to his new life -not as traditional as his parents had envisioned. Against the stern opinion of Lucius (who was the only changing variable in the reunions, choosing to appear or hide away with "work" in the office), Draco had purchased a flat and he was working for the Ministry. Not that his opinion really mattered by now: he had been able to rejoin society as his father inhabited the Manor as a haunting ghost, after on behalf of Narcissa's help in the Final Battle, house arrest had been the decision for the verdict.

"Don't you work with her, dear?"

Draco took the cup in front of him and only once the liquid was pouring down his throat and the dancing steam was moistening his nose, he looked at his mother.

Narcissa sighed in exasperation at his slowness and indifference at the social happenings. The boy had never been interested by them and it was time he started paying attention. A Malfoy had to know his enemies; what better way than to be in the loop of the rumors and news?

"Who, mother?" He spoke after depositing the cup back on its plate with a loud clink.

She smiled and replied, "the muggleborn, Granger, I believe."

His fingers twitched at that name and ceased from any action. Draco despised every conversation in which any of the Golden Trio's names were mentioned; even more when it was hers. It had been three weeks since the last time his father, sitting straight as a rule at the head of the table chair, had paused between bites to ask about his "mud-muggleborn" co-worker. He had clenched his jaw, drank the remaining wine in his glass and tried to abort the conversation. He neither wanted to praise Granger, nor reassure his father's prejudiced and fascist beliefs.

"What about her?"

The page of the article in question was now open before his face. "It´s the fourth man she has dated in the last month." Draco saw the title, the words along the same line as what his mother had just said.

His eyes moved to the moving pictures of Granger in different surroundings and with different men. In one she was hugging Potter and his mind moved rapidly to Potter's wife: she would not be happy with the writer's insinuation. He quickly examined the other four photos. His fingers twitched, wanting to touch the paper and bring the images closer to his inspection, but his face would betrayed him. It couldn´t even be insinuated that he gave a damn about the muggleborn girl. Woman, he corrected himself.

Moving his stare away from the offending but hungry paper, he prepared another toast, looking at his mother. "I wouldn't know," but he did want to know. "I only work with her. We don't talk about personal issues."

"Oh, Draco!" Narcissa sighed disappointed. "You know the importance of knowing this type of things." More like: I like knowing this type of things, he thought, scoffing internally. "Gather the information and owl me."

"Mother, I will not do that."

She reduced the paper into a rectangle, sighing again and pursing her lips in a pouting gesture. After taking a sip of her tea, she straightened herself as an idea hit her. "I will owl Skeeter. She will tell me everything."

The wizard knew better than to try to dissuade her. And anyway, he would make her share the details. Not the dirty ones, no. Not only because he didn't want to hear that kind of words on his mother's mouth, but because he didn't want to know that kind of thing of Granger. He wasn't that much of a masochist.

Later, after they had finished breakfast and waited for his father to appear -who had not-, he went to his flat. After a shower and lunch with Blaise, he saw the Prophet being sold in a corner at Diagon Alley. He hesitated for a moment, but a little and annoying part of him wanted to satiate the curiosity, like a hand inching to put pressure over the injured toe.

He managed to not open it until night, when lying on the bed he didn´t have anything else to entertain him away from the topic. Draco tried to distract himself by looking first at the other columns and sections, as if someone, God maybe, was watching over him, judging his actions. He bit the inside of his mouth once he reached the page, well, the three pages article with the new cleaning spells book's advertisement on the fourth. This was clearly intended for women.

He felt almost like a spy looking at the pictures, an uncomfortable voyeur who at the same time wants and doesn´t want to look. Draco read the words first, as if reading words about her was more acceptable than looking at pictures that she clearly didn´t know that were taken. Soon enough, because of the hungriness of the devil inside him and the empty, stupid words that Skeeter had written, his eyes went again to her face.

Beside the title, she and Potter were still hugging from beginning to end. The insinuation was clear: there were not four men, but five. The article also named Krum and Weasley, taking up the number to seven and proclaiming her as the promiscuity impersonated.

In two of the next pictures she was wearing that enormous grey coat that she loved (not that they had talked about it, but she would use it at least three times a week), walking with one bearded man that he didn´t know in the first and with Jerry, Jeffrey or John (something with J) from the Department of Magical Games and Sports in the second. 'What was she even doing with him?' he wondered. That man was a moron. She really had something for sportsmen, or so the article proclaimed.

Rita must be mistaken, Draco thought. Who would go to not even one date, but two with that awful dead sheep on her shoulders? Granger. And she would tell them that it wasn't a sheep, thank you very much, but recycled yarn from the bloody end of the world. And even if in two of the photos they were only walking down the street, they were standing too close to each other. Fuck. At least she was looking at the ground as her hands moved in the traditional Granger-explication-mood, oblivious to the stares and attentions -or lack of attention- of others.

There was the rustle of paper as his hands gripped harder the pages. In the others two she was in a restaurant. Again her hands were moving, clearly dominating the conversation like she always did. Draco imagined that her mouth was moving around the words "elves", "freedom", "injustice" and so on. Or maybe making a discourse about why she chose to eat salad over the corpse of an sentient animal. He felt a bit of relief at that. Who would bother with someone so opinionated?

However, in the two dinner dates, judging by the bit of naked leg under the table, she was wearing a dress and even jewelry. Granger never wore that, not even for Ministry Galas, preferring to shock purebloods with muggle suits and jumpsuits. He felt something drop at his stomach by the image of her putting on a feminine look for other men.

At least she was not a lesbian, right?

Draco threw the paper beside the bed, wanting to demolish the little nagging sensation of anxiety and almost sadness inside. Why did he even care? He had made his peace with the fact that he had had a thing for her, that he still had one, and that he would never act on it. The scales of the con side were tremendously heavier than the pro one. Besides, why would she give him the time of the day?, he thought. It was already weird that they had come to have a peaceful work relationship. And really, he had a line of more beautiful and sane women available.

He closed his eyes, the images of her still printed into his eyelids. He opened them when another question came. How had the dates ended? Had she kissed them? Had she let them do something else? Maybe let them touch her, opened her legs or put her mouth around them? She was as much as a prude nun as a weird woman, with her muggle and leftist notions.

Her atopy had always been the source of his interest; now it only tortured him with the endless possibilities.

He took the pillow and pushed it against his head in an effort to suffocate the troubling thoughts that haunted his mind.

Granger appeared on his visual plane in the middle of the morning. The witch was wearing again that enormous coat that seemed to try to swallow her, as she sat down in front of him at the big table where the weekly meeting was about to start. A nod was what she gave him as a greeting, taking a little notebook and a pen out of her bag.

"Busy weekend?" He asked with what he hoped was an indifferent tone, the long quill rolling on his fingers in longing for the muggle tool. He had taken a like to it, thanks to her, but refused to use it in public.

She looked briefly at him, narrowing her eyes in confusion. He never asked about her life outside work context. The woman clearly didn't know if to took it as an improvement or as a veiled insult. "As a matter of fact, yes," she said and he bit the flesh inside his mouth, "I added some notes to the project draft." Her eyes moved to the person taking the seat on her side before settling on him again. "I can pass by your office after lunch and we can discuss it tomorrow."

"Why? Do you have plans?"

His tone came hard and sharp. Hermione narrowed even more her vision, trying to decipher if he was trying to tell her something or if it was really honest interest in her life. "Today it's Albus's birthday, so yes." She put her elbows on the table, moving her body forward, as if the proximity would give her the key to read between the lines. "Are you-"

At the entry of their boss and Draco's face moving away from her, she interrupted herself, sending the blond a suspicious look before starting to take notes. The heavy presence of eyes over her came and went, and so she was aware that the Slytherin was in fact not ok.

He evaded her for the rest of the day. Once the meeting had ended, he engaged Lisa into conversation, or more like flirtation judging by their body's language. In an obscure way Hermione could feel that this show before her, even if it wasn't an unusual action, it was a premeditated one. There was something in the erect spine of the blond directed at her that could only be psychoanalyzed as evasion and negation. The witch ceased from any type of action for a full minute, searching inside her brain what had happened last week to merit this change of attitude. Nothing came to mind, except that she hadn't returned the last book he had lent her. Although he had said to take her time. Could it really be that?

Well, he was a moody, bipolar serpent.

And so after lunch -or better say shopping for a gift and purchasing a banana on the way back- she passed by his office. The witch didn't knock just because the door was already open, but because she knew he hated when someone came in without announcing themselves. The wizard gave her his best arrogant posture, head tilted back in a way that even sitting down he seemed to loom over her. In other times it would have been menacing, this days it had become mundane thanks to its daily dose. Somehow it seemed colder now.

Normally she would have already sat down, knowing it irked him. Sensing the change of air around him, Hermione hesitated, caressing the book and documents in her hands in a nervous act. When his eyes landed on the movement, she stopped, suddenly aware of it. He didn't make any mocking comment as would have been normal, only directed his eyes at hers, arching a eyebrow when a minute passed by in silence.

Hermione cleared her throat in an effort to hide the embarrassment she felt at her immobilized pause. "Here it's the draft," she declared, putting the papers in the desk in front of him, "and the book."

He still didn't say anything nor move his eyes away, even with the knowledge that she hadn't finished reading it. Hermione had a sudden violent desire to gouge his orbs out. The witch held herself back. If he wanted to behave like a bloody idiot, so be it.

She left without any other word, tasting the taste of regression in her mouth.

"Have you read it?"

Those were the second words she said to him on Wednesday. Earlier Hermione had passed him by and greeted him with a little "hi". Just like the day before he hadn't answered, not even looked at her, so it was obvious that whatever had happened still remained effective. And it still was, even if now he did rise his eyes to her figure on his office's doorway.

"No."

"Wha- Why?" The muggleborn took some steps into the room, confusion written on her face. He was as workaholic as her. "I understand you were busy yester-"

Malfoy reclined back into the chair and moved a hand on top of his desk as if showing a magic trick, cutting her off. "Do you suffer visual impairment?"

"You couldn't muster just one hour?"

"I'm busy, Granger," he said, returning to his work, showing her just how busy he was that he couldn't even waste three minutes to talk to her. "I'll see tomorrow if I can." He didn't tell her that for the next day he had several meetings and so would be unable to do it.

On his peripheral vision he could see her mouth almost closing around words, probably insults and invitations to go to hell. No sound came; she only closed her fits, imagining them closed around his neck, and left, not before slamming his door.

As soon as the invader was out, the pen on his hand stopped. Not that he didn't have work, in fact he was pretty busy preparing for... next month report. Draco was completely aware of how childish he was behaving, but the need to punish her in some way was heavier than his moral conscience.

The next day he arrived extremely early with the intention of avoiding encountering her before the meetings of the day. Taking the pertinent documents, he left his coat on the chair imagining her seeing it and thinking that he would come back in a few minutes. Hermione would have to go back to his office several times before searching for an agenda or finding someone who knew where he was. On that note, he arranged the desk as if being in the middle of something: documents, papers half written, a quill and a opened bottle of ink. Malfoy made sure to not remind anyone where he was going and left, letting the lights spelled on and the door closed. In other context he would had been smirking by now, laughing at the image of a very pissed off Granger. And that case would had been ten million times more mature than this. It didn't matter. It felt right in some sense and it gave him back some tiny piece of control.

Despite feeling the deep coldness on his bones as the last meeting was decided to be held in a little coffee shop across the street, he didn't cast a warming charm. His companion had asked where his coat was, at what he had responded that he liked the cold and not that his coat was on a very important mission of driving Granger mad. Had she already noticed that he was not coming back? Had she turned upside down his little office with hopes of finding clues? Maybe she had taken residence in there, fed up with coming and going from hers office to his.

On that note he didn´t go back, even when he remembered that the wedding magazines his mother had given him for Pansy were in the top drawer of his desk. The wizard was meeting his friend that very night, precisely to gave them to her. Well, he would owl them tomorrow.

Even before the appetizers touched the table, Pansy had already cursed him to hell for his incompetence and lack of empathy for a woman who was planning the biggest event of a respectful wizardry society.

The handle rattled and the door opened, letting him find Granger sitting on his chair with her head resting on the desk. She did take residence on his office after all.

"Did you sleep here?" The question was impregnated with incredulity.

Her head went up in alarm. The witch tamps her hair down with her fingers, as if the beast could be tamed with that simple movement. "No, I was just thinking."

Malfoy approached the desk, taking the lands to their rightful king by putting his things on it. He noticed that the bottle of ink was now closed and the papers neat in a pile. "Of what?" He asked, taking off his other coat, which would soon join the other one on the back of the chair. "Of elves ruling the world?"

Hermione fulminated him with her stare. "I came early so you couldn't escape like the sneaky serpent that you are."

He smirked mockingly at her, showing his palms up in an innocent gesture. "You caught me."

"Don't be daft," she said, adjusting the papers and not moving away from his throne. She looked at him in the eyes and declared in an almost insecure tone, "You are avoiding me."

Malfoy didn't take his eyes away from hers, trying to invoke the ancient sophists' powers of persuasion. On his peripheral vision he paid attention to her fidgeting fingers dancing around the dead trees in evident nervousness. "I had been busy."

"If you don't want to tell me, it's ok. But we have to summit the project on Monday," her hands left the papers and moved to the quill, putting it parallel to its companions, "and even if they extend the deadline you know they always do it on the final day. We can't take chances with this!"

"Calm down, Granger." He took the quill back, "and stop moving everything." Hermione sats back with her hands on her sides, waiting. "We will finish it today. But I can't now-"

"You arrog-"

"I have another mee-"

"... aggravating-"

As Hermione stood up to better direct her angry words, he took advantage to take yesterday's coat and hanged it on the rack with today's one. "How violent you wake up. Do you bite off your companions' heads every morning?" Although the bitterness was pretty clear, she was occupied cursing him to notice it.

"... pig. I wasn't sleeping!"

"Behave yourself, I'm not a pig," like the ones you seem to date. Well, maybe she liked farm animals. It might be part of her plan of animal's liberation from all sort of chains and prisons. Was she then into bestiality? "Come back after lunch and we will do it."

"We need more time than that!"

With an invisible smirk he said, "then we will work late." He sat down on the now free chair, after she had chased him around the room with her fervent words, and raised an eyebrow at her. "Or do you have plans?"

Hermione didn't respond, only stopped yelling at him; although the little calculating frown on her face insinuated the answer. Fuck whoever it was, he hoped with all his heart that the man would encounter a violent bludger into the stomach, or bump into a hag that eats him, or maybe just cook a juicy piece of meat and face her righteous ire.

Draco decided right there that this project was going to be the most difficult and longest document they had ever wrote. He would occupy all her Friday night. "Do you promise you won't disappear?"

"Let me work." Her mouth opened, but he interrupted her again. "Granger, come back later."

The door closed after her. Recalling on his mind the slowest restaurants available around the Ministry, he decided to combine it with Pansy so he could give her the magazines. Two birds with one stone. Well, three, if one counted impeding Granger from having time to date.

Needless was to said that Malfoy returned with a full stomach around three on the afternoon and encountered the same image of the morning. Only this time the witch was not sleeping (or "thinking"), but working on his desk. She welcomed him with a furious stare that summarized everything that had been going on her mind the last few hours.

No word was exchanged until he put his coat on the rack and conjured a chair to sit down. Hermione quickly put the documents in front of him and asked if he was ready to start or if he had another plan prepared. A sneer was the answer, as the wizard reclined against the back's chair and rolled up his sleeves in preparation for a long afternoon and night of work. Draco would never do that with other people. It had been maybe two months into working together in the hot temperatures of summer when she had noticed that, even if he was red in the face from the heat, he would never show that part of skin. Then, in a nonchalant voice -that he had always suspect premeditated-, she had said to him that she wasn't bothered by the fading, grey mark and so didn't have to hide it for her. The Slytherin had blinked, frozen on the spot. The next time they were working together he had rolled up his sleeves and she had tried to hide a little smile.

She didn't smile now. "Can we start?" There was an edge on her tone, the seconds wasted on settling himself an affront to work ethics.

With the slowness of a snail, he took an imaginary lint and smoothed down the fabric of his trousers. "Whenever you want."

Inhaling air from her nose in an attempt to calm the increasing waters inside of her, she spoke. "I modified the order of the information and rephrased some of the paragraphs. If you already read the first draft we can decide-"

"I didn´t read it."

"Malfoy!" The quill he had left on the desk snapped under her grip. "I don't know what your problem has been this week, but you can't let it affect our work."

"I had been busy, Granger."

"You didn't have time in your three hours lunch?" The man shook his head in response, knowing that it would infuriate her more. "You are worse than Ron." She put a palm up as to stop the necessary effect of her words and sighed, taking her head into her hands and making the beast three times worse. "Ok, it's three and half. With good luck we can finish by seven."

Oh, no, we won't, he thought staring at her with his jaw clenched shut. Draco wanted to tell her that she won't slut herself out on his watch. But better keep violence away.

Her wish didn't become true. For the last hour her eyes had gone to the antique wooden clock's little hands, making him damn the day he had decided to put it up his wall. Each time her stare went up there, he bit the inside of his mouth, wanting to curse her for her lack of lady's education.

By ten to seven, resignation had taken hold of her. A loud sigh left her mouth as she reclined back into the chair. And so, fearing that maybe this new serial-dating Granger would throw the work by the window in pursuit of a certain part of the masculine anatomy he said: "The office is going to close. Where do you want to go?"

Hermione narrowed her eyes at him, making him almost fear that she knew exactly what he was doing. "I need to feed Crookshanks so, if you don't mind, my place," she said, standing up and piling up the documents. "Or you can wait for me-"

"Ok. Your place," he interrupted her, not wanting to leave her alone to change her mind. He took the papers from her hands and set everything in order before taking the two coats, one on his hands and the other on his body. She left to recollect her things in her own office, as he waited at the end of the corridor. After five minutes of her not emerging from the room, he approached and caught her writing a little note, which disappeared into her pocket as soon as the witch saw him. He only raised his eyebrows at her and she promptly hurried up.

When they entered the elevator, she pressed the button of another one of the levels. He didn´t ask anything: he knew that was where the Ministry's owls were. Draco could only wait for her, cursing the man she was owling, her for giving a damn about whoever it was and himself for feeling anger so deep at the knowledge that she clearly had been thinking about whatever date she had planned for that night. Minutes later, as the elevator returned to its way down, he stared at her, imagining the ways he could make her unable to date anyone else. Maybe he could terrify her stupid pretenders. Maybe he could explain to her the good customs and the way real ladies should behave. Or maybe he could treat her as she seems to like, pushing her against the wall, taking her and marking her like an animal would to its mate.

As she gave him a confused look, he could feel his fingers itching to grip her by the hair and tug her head back. He would like to loom over her, darken her face with his shadow, invade her, and make her say that she was sorry, that it was all on purpose or a big misunderstanding.

Fuck her, she turned him into a brute. Civilization out the window.

Malfoy felt almost ashamed of the kind of thoughts that her nearness always inspired. He was sure that if she ever found out, she would cut his balls off and make him eat them.

After the meows died down in consequence of the food's apparition, an owl taped the window. Opening the window, she didn't take the note off until she had found some treats, which the little animal happily accepted. The cat watched it from the floor, as if trying to decide whether the canned food was more delicious than a living, big owl.

Situated on the couch, he observed her read the note then store it into the grey coat's pocket. Nothing on her faces told him anything, no reaction, no smile nor scowl full of hate or love. Hermione turned her attention to him, taking the muggle artifact called phone, and asked. "Do you want Chinese again or something else?"

"Chinese," he replied with a hard tone. She raised her eyebrows at him, but didn't say anything, only put her coat on the garment beside the door. As she spoke on the phone to order the same food they always ate when they had to work on her flat, Draco wanted to go to the offending cloth and take the little paper into his hands, read it and then make it disappear into flames.

And he did just that, once the doorbell rang and she disappeared behind the door.

Don't worry, dove. We can change the plan. I will owl you in some hours to see if you are free.

Lawrence

It was true, then.

Dove? What the fuck? He scoffed in incredulity. Granger didn't resemble a dove in anything, unless it was a possessed and violent dove who have an opinion about everything in life. A dove with a rifle and a little band with different tones of green, as muggle movies showed. And who the fuck was Lawrence? Was he the Auror who had passed by their office the other day? Didn't she fucking hate Aurors, except from Potter, because of their duty to maintain the status quo? What a hypocrite.

The paper danced up as the flames devoured it. The wizard sat down quickly when the sound of her nearing steps was heard, but not before casting an owl repelling spell outside the window. Thank Merlin for the afterwards of the war which had forced him to learn that spell and for Hermione not owning an owl. Only a ugly, overfeed cat, who was now looking at him with accusatory eyes. When she appeared behind the opening and closing door he contemplated cursing her. With words or actual curses, he didn't know. But he remained seated, clenching his fits. He would curse fucking Lawrence.

"Is something burning?" Hermione asked, sniffing at the air trying to find the source of the smell.

"I don't smell anything, Granger." She sent him again that look, half question half dog wanting to flee from the leash and bite his face off. With the intention of divert he moved the things from the coffee table so she could put the dishes, trying to invoke Buda and his imperturbability. It wouldn't do to fight with her and let her free to invite fucking Lawrence to her house, her couch where he was sitting or her bed.

Once they were eating, she her noodles with vegetable and him with cows and chicken corpses' fragments, she cleared her throat. Malfoy took his eyes away from the documents to pose them over her, taking note that she was not reading.

"Malfoy..." she began and paused momentarily, whether to search the words or to brave herself to take the jump. "Has something happened?"

He clenched his jaw in an automatic response, gesture that she caught. "I don't know what you mean."

"I think you do." Hermione cleaned her mouth with one of that paper napkins that had little drawings on it, carrots, apples, tomatoes, potatoes. A weird mixture of fruits and vegetables; irrational as everything muggle was. He didn´t comment, but looked at her as expecting an explication. "Since Monday you have been rude. Well, rude," she said, moving her hands, as if the gesture was supposed to clarify what she meant. It didn't.

"Rude?"

"Ruder, you can say." Hermione took the little carton box in her hands, moving the fork within it. She had told Draco the first time they had taken Chinese that she became terribly irritated when people failed to use the little oriental utensils and tried anyway. The food would scatter all around, and 'do you know how difficult it is to take soy sauce out of a beige rug?' She had fought with the Weasel two times before deciding to never eat Chinese with him and to use a fork for her mental sanity.

"Ruder?"

Hermione scoffed in response, putting the box back on the table in a irritated gesture. "More rude, impolite, dry, insulting, violent, crude, bitter, harsh, barbarous-"

"Barbarous?" He asked, frowning at her for the most insulting word.

"I was running out of words," she said. "But you get the idea. So, did something happened?"

He didn't reply instantly. Not because he had to think on what to answer; no, he wouldn't tell her. What for? What could she possible say? Blush like the virgin she clearly wasn't and change to another Department to avoid him? Insult him and hit him because of the unrequited state of his opinion and attraction? And so he finished his glass of water and then spoke, "for the twentieth time, I have been busy all week."

The witch sighed, clearly not believing any of his words but deciding to let the issue sleep. "Ok, if you say so." The little box was again on her hands. "But if you want to talk, you know..."

Draco didn't respond, he only continued eating. She was not waiting for an answer anyway.

For the rest of the night they worked on the project. It could had been ready almost three hours before, but he insisted and insisted on making it larger, better, with more quotes and lengthier consultant bibliography. Hermione didn't protest, au contraire, she was happy that finally he was taking her advice.

On the little breaks they took, they talked about new books, research, little Potters and politics. She didn't seem to remember the existence of the Auror. Only one time she looked at the window, but he quickly engaged her again, saying that he couldn't fathom how Potter could produce the most beautiful babies she had ever seen.