A/N: My laptop threw a month-long bitchfit, I HAVE NOT GONE ANYWHERE.
A little warning about this chapter: It has Hermione dealing with a case of sexual misconduct. There is absolutely nothing overt, no details, no descriptions - just suggestions while Hermione meets the victims. In case that is something you wish to avoid, I would recommend skipping the second segment, the third segment before the XXX, and the bit before the first XXX of the eighth segment.
I OWN NOTHING BUT THIS SO CALLED PLOT
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Monday morning erupted like a fireworks display. Madam Barros' thunderous rage made itself evident through the thin walls of the office, and all three of its occupants scarpered out to the foyer to enjoy the show.
The research team's Gandhian act of non-cooperation had led to Stamp bungling yet another hearing. It was quite evident from Barros' manner, that her fury was compounded by the knowledge that she had been had. The more Stamp's pretence of competence fell apart, the more it made a mockery of Barros' supposedly unerring judgement.
The funny part was that, had Stamp been working under anyone else, his ability to rise while doing the bare minimum might just have won him some grudging respect. It was after all a conventional aspect of political acuity: The best of the best snatched up power by doing fuck all.
However, Elena Barros possessed the maximum amount of integrity permissible in a generally corrupt and dysfunctional Ministry. Stamp got a twenty-minute dressing down that ended with him slinking into his office with his tail between his legs.
Soon after, it was time to collect an official statement from Twila Elliot. Barros made a surprising display of sensitivity, when she asked Hermione to attend instead of Takumi. They convened in Barros' office, the curtains pulled back to let crisp summery sunlight in, while out in the real world, rain and wind held sway.
Twila was less than a year older than Hermione, and looked remarkably composed in formal robes. She was a squib – a fact that came as a surprise to Hermione and Kathy, but not Barros – and had the sort of face that naturally adapted a serious bearing, regardless of the situation, (it was just how her features were arranged,) but given the fact that the situation was actually very grim, her expression was that of redoubled seriousness.
Or so it was, until she saw Hermione. Then, her expression jumped up with an unexpected spark, and introductions and polite handshakes were forsaken in favour of the usual phrases of honour and delight. While the young woman was thus occupied, Barros thrust a heavy binder into Hermione's back, in a way that was somehow both subtle and harsh. One look conveyed her message – Hermione would be conducting the affair.
Haunted by the memory of the last meeting she had spoken at, and with the scowling spectre of her unforgiving boss watching, Hermione began the questioning. It was more uncomfortable than the time she had been forced to address the first ever gathering of Dumbledore's Army. Even Twila's agreeable nature and strong candour couldn't put her at ease, and once she began relaying the details of the main incident in question... well, ease was completely out of the question. Hermione's skin crawled.
The story was wretchedly predictable. Twila's mother had fallen ill, so she'd requested a few days leave from the shop to care for her. The proprietor threatened monetary consequences, unless...
The might of the woman in front of her was miraculous. How on earth had she been able to physically incapacitate a full-grown, wand-wielding wizard?
Hermione didn't have much of an appetite when they broke for lunch. Barros was impassive and it was impossible to tell if she was pleased or annoyed by Hermione's conduct.
Which worked out well in one way – she could skip going to the canteen without having to battle any vital urges.
She had drawn up plans, you see. Two of them, to be precise, and they complemented and upheld each other. The first was Project Focus Only On Law (FOOL,) and the second was Project Draco Avoidance, Full Time (DAFT). The whole idea was to get her head in place and her priorities in order. She had not awoken in an enchanted forest after a midsummer's night dream. She was not Lorna Doone, primed for a dramatic romance in the moors. She had real, serious work to do.
She fished out an ancient granola bar from her bag and ate it while she made note of the most pivotal bits from Twila's statement.
After lunch, they pushed all three of their desks together and spread their work across them.
The Wizengamot had, in close to a century, ruled on no more than twenty-six cases of unwanted conduct specifically of a sexual nature , exclusively filed by purebloods against muggleborns or squibs, and on some occasions, half-bloods. The list of complaints filed was exponentially lengthier, but those were closed long before they could be tried, as only copious amounts of galleons could ensure. The names of the accused and accuser were expunged; magically scorched off all documents.
Hermione trembled with rage as the day wore on.
Completely drained when she got home, she definitely should have had a full dinner, but she didn't. She was constantly thinking about Arabella Figg's treatment at Harry's trial. She just prepared for the next day and slept.
This was where Dankworth would've brought her, had she not immediately vetoed the idea of living in Knockturn Alley.
Kathy and Hermione scaled up a narrow staircase between a coffin shop and Tallow and Hemp Toxic Tapers, to a hallway full of doors and mould. They knocked on the door marked with a rusty, upside-down number five, which was subsequently opened by a young, tousle-haired boy of seven or eight.
They entered an extremely cramped quarters that, though highly cluttered, wasn't squalid like the rest of the building. There were three other small children in the room, two playing on the floor, and one asleep on the sofa that took up a quarter of the space. An ancient woman with sinister eyes sat in one corner, occupied in knitting like Madame Defarge gone past her prime.
The woman they had come to see, Lindy Dallton, looked a decade older than she ought to. She clutched a bawling infant to her breast while she did her level best to not answer a single one of their questions. Everything she said rounded back to, "That lying squib's going to shut down the shop, cost me my job, how shall I feed these runts then?"
Finally, after deflecting Hermione's persistence for thirty long minutes, she all but yelled, "Well, he never looked at me funny!"
And with that, she threw them out of her home.
Sometime later, Hermione and Kathy were standing outside a cottage in Hull. Their reception there was completely different. They were ushered inside by a lot of very eager and welcoming hands, pushed into comfortable chairs and plied with tea and cake before they got their interview with Hattie Norwood.
She was also a squib.
"Being a woman and a squib is a requirement, if you want to work for Millward," she reported bitterly, "Not hard to guess why."
"How long have you been working for him?" Hermione asked.
"Two years."
"And who was there before you?"
"Petronella, or summat. And before Twila, there was Jade," Hattie replied with a sad shake of her head, "She left in a... state. I think she was given a bloody decent amount as severance pay to keep shut about what happened."
"And what had happened?"
"Dunno."
"Do you know where she is now?"
"Sells linen at Cavern Lane."
Maybe Hermione had bought bedsheets from her.
"What about Lindy Dalton? Is she–"
"A cow? Yeah." Hattie spat, "She sees what goes on and doesn't turn a hair. You know..." she leaned forward meaningfully, "They say at least one of her kids is Millward's."
"How has your experience been, working for him?"
"Horrid," she mumbled, and a shadow fell over her face, "I want to leave. Every time he puts his ruddy filthy hands on me, I..."
She broke off with a groan and Hermione put her quill down.
"It's alright," she said, "You don't have to–"
"You saw my dad," Hattie carried on, "Dragon Pox messed him up so much, he can't work. Mum spends most of her time taking care of him. My younger sister's up the duff, my brother was killed in the war. I have no choice... there aren't many jobs around here for Squibs. I don't know anything about Muggles so I can't look for work there. I'm stuck. I don't know–"
She broke off again, and this time Hermione waited.
She muttered, "I wish I was as brave as Twila."
"Hattie," Hermione said softly, "If we asked you to bear witness–"
"I'll do it."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"You did well," Kathy remarked once they had apparated back to Diagon.
"I don't think I did anything," Hermione replied, feeling much too angry and discomposed by the whole situation.
"You were detached but sympathetic, and you kept her talking," Kathy said, giving her a reassuring smile, "Madam Barros would approve."
They met Takumi at the guarded fireplace behind The Leaky Cauldron. He shook his head with disappointment and they flashed their Ministry badges.
He elaborated as they marched down the Atrium – "The shop is locked and Millward's lawyers didn't allow me to see any records or papers. We need an order straight from the Wizengamot to gain access. As for a record of past employees... there isn't one."
"He only employed Squibs," Hermione said furiously, "No registration required. Personae non gratae, as far as the Ministry is concerned."
The next day, Hermione and Kathy stepped into Cavern Lane. It was a Wednesday afternoon, just like it had been when she had first gone there with Mrs. Weasley. But the current moment was stripped of all awe; that was just how the sodding universe worked and Hermione would never get used to it.
There were multiple stalls that sold linen, and they stopped at every one of them, muttering a tentative " Erm... Jade?" at any woman who looked the appropriate age.
When they found the one they were seeking, they were greeted with narrowed eyes and a distrustfully twisted mouth.
"Who's asking?"
"I'm Kathleen Edwards, and this is Hermione–"
"Granger. Yeah."
"We've come from the office of Madam Elena Barros, Barrister and Member of the Wizengamot, on behalf of our client Twila Elliot."
"I don't know any Twila Elliot."
"She was your replacement at Millward's Second Hand Robes and Garmen–"
"I don't give a shit about that."
Kathy surreptitiously nudged Hermione with her elbow, impelling her to take over. Hermione had no idea how to tackle such a situation.
"Look, Jade," she broached, dragging out the short syllables to buy time, "Twila has filed a very serious complaint against your previous employer, and we need to put together a case so strong that the Wizengamot cannot ignore it. We want to ensure that Millward gets his comeuppance, and we need your help."
"Can't do it."
She turned away and begun folding pillowcases.
"We spoke to Hattie Norwood," Hermione tried again, "And she said–"
Jade spun around with fury. "WHAT DID SHE TELL YOU?"
"Nothing!" Hermione pressed at once, as people around them turned to stare, "She just... suggested... that you left under some unfortunate circumstances–"
Jade scoffed angrily.
Such a futile push and pull carried on for much too long, and Hermione felt herself wilt. Jade's temper only got worse and she ended up knocking over a tall pile of cloth.
"I'm a squib!" she warbled, "We're all squibs! And he's a pureblood. I know how this will end. Everyone knows how this will end! What the hell do you think you lot can do?"
"Well," Kathy forced a smile and gestured towards Hermione with her thumb, "This one helped bring down You-Know-Who. She can do a whole lot."
Jade's eyes narrowed again as she peered at Hermione. The push and pull continued.
Ultimately, shoppers began edging too close, and the exchange came to a bitter end.
The moment they emerged from the tunnel, Hermione rounded on Kathy.
"How could you say that?" she barked.
"Erm?"
"This one helped bring down You-Know-Who?!?" She wasn't even able to verbalise her ire. "How dare you use that... use me... like bait? Use me as some sort of outlandish... promise... I know the only reason I'm coming along with you is... well... but to say it like that–"
Kathy looked believably shamefaced. "Madam Barros said I should use that as a clincher, if necessary."
"She fed you that line," Hermione spat, "Oh, I'm not at all surprised."
"I'm sorry," Kathy muttered.
They were silent the rest of the journey back to the Ministry. Kathy then headed to wherever she went to smoke, and Hermione stomped all the way to the canteen to grab some food. She kept her eyes fixed on her shoes, blindly snagged a sandwich, and left.
Waves of rage kept passing over her as she stood on the lift, like a physical force that wanted to send her crashing into people. Thankfully, Takumi wasn't around when she got to the office. Not thankfully, the sandwich ended up being full of that horrid potted meat that Ron had warned her against. She binned half of it.
She sat in her chair and simmered, and bit by bit she moved from being indignant for herself to being so on behalf of Jade. They had just swept into her place of work, brought up a deeply traumatic episode, and expected her to simply acquiesce? How had they thought that was right? How could they believe they were doing something good if that is how they approached a victim of assault?
Utterly sickened by herself, she wanted to apparate back to Cavern Lane and say sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.
The half-covered window in the office showed an artificial sky full of ribbon-like clouds.
XXX
She was completely drained that evening as well. Guilt continued its ravagement, and her optimism was at an all-time low.
The first thing she observed when she stepped into her flat was light streaming out of the kitchen.
Odd.
Then she noticed a funny burnt smell in the air. CLANG – was the sound of something metallic falling to the ground.
At once, Hermione whipped out her wand and began creeping across the room. Her body moved into a state of profound stress, so much so that she was nearly vibrating.
"Bugger!" rang out Theo's voice.
She ran.
He was standing in the middle of her very tiny kitchen, surrounded by pots, spoons, knives, half-peeled vegetables, and gaping at a pan on the hob that was engulfed in flames. With a yelp, Hermione doused it and grabbed his arm.
"Are you alright?"
"I'm fine."
They both took a step forward and peered into the pan. Four blackened, undecipherable lumps sat within, lightly smoking.
"Well, they're supposed to be a bit charred," Theo declared.
"What are they?" Hermione cried in horror.
"Lamb chops."
She moved away then, and properly took in the scene. The kitchenware scattered around was definitely not stuff that she had bought. There were peels all over the floor, dishes piled in the sink, a mysterious spill on the counter.
"I'll clean up," Theo offered weakly.
A sheet of paper floated above it all: A recipe in dad's handwriting.
"What the hell," she ground out, "Are you doing?"
"Um, I'm trying something new?"
He smiled down at her apologetically.
"Whaaaaat?" she breathed, barely aloud.
"Robert said that he finds cooking soothing."
"Are you feeling bloody soothed right now?"
"Ah, buddy, don't be angry."
"Why can't you try new things in your own kitchen?"
He shrugged limply. Something awful like sadness glimmered in his expression. She sighed.
"Lamb chops are not very beginner friendly," she muttered, "I don't know what dad was thinking."
"I asked for your favourites."
Well of course her irritation fled. She looked at him knowing that all her exhaustion was evident, and he looked back, reflecting something similar.
"Why don't you go relax... have a drink. Dinner will be... er... a little while longer."
She didn't relax, she didn't have a drink. She just toed off her shoes and settled on the sofa, diving right back into work and ignoring the noises and smells coming out of the kitchen.
Throughout the latter part of the day, she had obsessively studied the phraseology employed during the twenty-six trials that the Wizengamot had deigned to ratify. She wondered what would happen if they were to refer to those cases, use the same language, and dare the Wizengamot to rule differently and show their prejudice? Presumably, the Wizengamot would rise to the challenge.
Not much later, the floo went off and broke her concentration.
Draco stood in her living room in a dark brown polo neck jumper and joggers. He looked mildly perplexed, and like the perfect cherry on her shitstorm of a day.
"Have you seen–"
"In the kitchen."
He frowned and she turned back to the parchment on her lap, determined to not watch him stride across the room. She heard them speaking to each other, heard another CLANG that was a lid being violently dropped over a pot, heard Draco's footsteps as he returned to the room.
She simply had to see his reaction.
His mouth was slightly open, his brow was furrowed in a way that seemed to be ordering her to make sense of that right now . She shrugged, exactly like Theo had, earlier. Limply.
Then she looked back down at her work.
He moved and she stilled, waiting to hear the sound of the floo igniting once again.
But it never came.
She glanced up in time to observe him wander into the hall.
Minutes passed, and just as she was about to leap up and demand to know why he was pottering about her flat, he returned with Asterix the Gaul tucked under his arm. He settled on the armchair that he'd favoured since the very first night. Legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, he flicked open the comic and his eyes skated up and down the map on the very first page.
Hermione wanted to forgo her work in favour of cataloguing all the ways in which his expression would subtly shift as he went from page to page–
FOOL. DAFT.
An hour went by before Theo emerged from the kitchen with three plates. His shirt was spotted and darkened with spills and there was something in his hair, (besides copious amounts of sweat.)
"Dig in," he grumbled once everyone had settled at the table.
She regarded the food with a carefully blank face. It was a meal that she had sampled weekly for years, prepared perfectly by dad's seasoned hands, which was why she could spot all the millions of ways that Theo's preparation was so very wrong. Dad would have fainted.
The lamb chops were only marginally less charred than the ones that had caught fire. The roasted carrots looked mushy. The mushy peas looked roasted.
Theo, in turn, was regarding her with a carefully blank face, but no attempt at stoicism could mask his underlying anticipation. She cut into the chop with a great deal of force – it was dull grey on the inside – and sensed Draco doing the same.
She popped the morsel into her mouth and chewed.
And chewed. And chewed. And chewed.
It had taken on the characteristics of chewing gum, while tasting of nothing. There was nought for her to do besides a bit of wandless, non- verbal magic to banish the stuff from her mouth.
She smiled. "Not bad at all! Really... the... um... flavour is... really..."
Draco put his cutlery down and declared, "This is the worst thing I've ever eaten in my entire life."
He countered Theo's snarl and her glare with indifference and deftly pushed his chair back and stood.
"Are you leaving?!" Theo sputtered.
"Definitely."
"You had one bite!"
"I'm going to Beijing tomorrow morning," Draco drawled, "Can't be down with food poisoning. In fact, I'd venture to say that two bites might be fatal. Should have had you over to cook for the Death Eaters."
"Don't listen to him, Theo," Hermione huffed, "It's a remarkable meal, especially since it's the first time you've–"
"Have a second bite then," Draco interrupted, smirking wickedly.
"I shall!" she snapped.
She tried to spear a carrot, but it sort of just... melted off her fork. So, she went for the peas – a whole mouthful – and they were simultaneously hard and slimy. She chewed mutinously while maintaining a fixed glare on Draco.
"Not what I meant," he sniggered.
God, why wouldn't the day end?
He didn't budge; stood with his arms crossed on the back of his chair till both Hermione and Theo had taken a bite of meat and were sat there like cows chewing on cud. Then he gave a cheery wave and left.
"ACK!" Theo choked and spat into his napkin, "Hermione, you're a gem, but please, for the love of Merlin, stop eating."
"Mmm?" she asked, still chewing.
"This is ghastly. It's inedible." He gathered all three plates and jumped up, "Order some takeaway, will you? I'll clean up in there."
Later, after they'd eaten and Theo had gone back home, Hermione wandered into the kitchen for a cup of chamomile tea. There were still some peels on the floor, a spatter on the splashback, and all the kitchenware that she hadn't bought was wet and piled on the small counter.
Too much was going on. Between the stream of discouraging findings at work and frequent expeditions around the country, attempting (and failing) to track down all the squibs that had ever worked for Millward, Hermione felt thwarted every evening when she got home.
And when she got home, Theo would be in her kitchen making an unholy mess and inevitably having nothing to show for it.
On Thursday, he served up steamed fish fillets that had turned into rubber. Hermione ordered takeaway.
On Friday he stood, frozen, as her oven emitted clouds of black smoke. She didn't even know she had an oven.
"What did you think it was?" Theo grumbled, "A little home for a family of doxies?"
She glowered and dragged him, kicking and screaming, to a pub on Royal Mint Street, and quite happily let him pay for their dinner.
The streets were crowded that evening, for it was Bonfire Night, and they walked around amid the throng, until they were one with it – just two faces among many faces, with no woes or burdens of their own.
Theo stopped at a kiosk surrounded by eager tourists and bought himself a Guy Fawkes mask, claiming that he had always felt sad about forgoing the chance to wear a Death Eater mask. Hermione rolled her eyes and took him to stand by the riverside.
In the distance, lights and colours exploded in the sky. Friday night ended with a fireworks display.
She won a small reprieve on Saturday, spending it at the Burrow since Ginny was returning to Wales the next day. There was an endless quidditch match going on in the back garden, but Ginny begged off, and took a walk in the orchard with Hermione instead.
The last time they had wondered through those trees, it had been the peak of fruit-laden, bee-buzzy summer. Now, at the cusp of autumn and winter, leaves crunched beneath their boots, and the air was cold and damp.
Hermione told her all about the Millward case, finally admitting out loud: "I'm completely terrified that all this work, all our effort won't mean a thing. Those poor women will still be turned out of the courtroom with nothing. If they even get that far."
Ginny hummed sadly, and made an admission of her own. "Us Weasleys are so proud to be blood-traitors, but we've still got some very shitty views about squibs. Even mum, sometimes. George and – and F–Fred were the worst. I completely understand why Filch is so bitter."
"Yeah," Hermione sighed.
The gooseberry trees at the edge of the orchard were ripe and full of crows. Ginny picked up a pebble and hurled it, causing them to scatter with indignant caws.
"If we can't track down any of the previous employees... I mean, Jade's already refused to testify... I don't know what we'll do."
"I've never delt with prejudice like that, and I've never been attacked in that manner, but I do know what it feels like to be violated... to have all your control taken away. I was really angry too, for a very long time. It's understandable that she wants nothing to do with any of this."
"Yeah," Hermione sighed, again. "Ginny, are you still angry sometimes?"
"Of course. But it helps that Riddle is dead, and that I watched him die. Mostly, I'm angry at myself for being stupid, shy, and lonely enough to–"
"It wasn't your fault!"
"I know." She smiled. "But being angry with myself helped me get past it, you know? Helped me realise exactly what I don't want to be."
XXX
Sunday.
Hermione sat in her study with her head in her hands, surrounded by files and parchment, staring blankly at her pot of ink. One drop had spilled over the edge and formed a ring around the base, staining her desk. Stella had made herself a nest out of a frayed quill, and was fast asleep in one corner.
About fifteen minutes back, Theo had come into the room and asked, "Look, I know what it means, of course, but... what exactly does 'al dente' mean?"
"God's" in her kitchen –
Nothing's right with the world!
"Are you crying?"
She hauled her head up and found Draco leaning against the doorframe, looking much too amused and unconcerned for someone asking such a question. He was in a long, dark coat and his hair was pushed back. Her heart raced around her chest.
"Bawling," she rasped.
He semi-grinned and said nothing.
"So... You're back from China."
"No."
He sauntered towards the table, taking things out of his pocket that expanded in his grasp. After depositing a shiny red paper bag right in front of her, he moved towards the bookshelves .
Hermione stared at it... at his back... at the bag, once more.
"What's this?" she broached.
"See for yourself," he responded without turning.
By the time she had tentatively dipped one hand into the bag, he was in front of her again, arms crossed and holding Asterix and the Golden Sickle against his chest.
She pulled out a tin of green tea, covered in painted white and pink chrysanthemums and Chinese characters embossed in gold. Wide eyes flicked up at him, and he, placidly, lifted his chin, encouraging her to keep going. The second thing she pulled out was a small painting in a wooden frame.
It depicted a calico cat, almost round with the way it was bristling. Its tail was brown and bushy, its nose was pink and its eyes wide and amber; mouth open as though hissing. It stood on some sort of rocky slope, surrounded by vegetation typically seen in Chinese ink paintings. The source of its fury was a mystery.
"A copy of a twelfth century Sung dynasty painting, I believe," he said.
Her pulse had gone berserk – it had to be a medical emergency.
"Is this supposed to enrage me?" she asked.
His mouth twitched. "Everything enrages you."
It wasn't rage that she was desperately trying to clamp down on. She felt a broad, full grin pull across her face with no permission whatsoever, and she said with an embarrassing lilt: "It's absolutely darling. "
Draco snorted and turned to leave – she called out to him before he could exit.
Just a few steps short of the door, he looked back and raised a questioning brow.
She dithered, her heart pounding, caught between why are you doing this and how am I supposed to exist around you.
"Well?"
"I just – erm – thank you."
He took his time examining her, with a sedulous but cryptic eye. She couldn't say if he was gauging the sincerity of her gratitude, or basking in the fact that he had ultimately got her to thank him over and over again. And yet, even if the entire gifting exercise was disingenuous, she could not summon any outrage. Not when he smiled as he nodded and stepped out of the study.
She had to wait till her cardiovascular system resumed proper functioning, but eventually she went on to tidy her desk and follow after him. Going straight to the salon wall, she stood for a few minutes, considering, before hanging the cat next to Dean's painting. She took a step back to admire it, then turned to catch Draco watching from his armchair.
Theo served spaghetti aglio e olio, that was surprisingly edible. Just a little beyond al dente, light on salt, heavy on parsley, but on the whole not terrible; especially when paired with elderflower wine. Even Draco managed to stay put and finish a plate.
He told them about his final afternoon in Beijing, where the Chinese Ministry had charmed a special passage all along the Great Wall, for them to try out the newest super-speed brooms in the market.
"We get there, kitted out and everything... Kenny takes one look at the twenty-one thousand kilometre wall and says what's so Great about it then? It should be called the Humdrum Wall of China. For once, the translators where on point. The Chinese delegates got terribly rankled. We did not get to fly."
Theo laughed, barking words of phoney sympathy. Hermione took a gentle sip of wine and smiled.
Twila and Hattie turned out to be a powerful investigative team. They went digging around Knockturn, chatting up the residents and charming out information in a way Hermione would never have been able to. They even got Lindy's grandmother drunk enough to bleat out a name.
Additionally, they had reached out to Jade themselves. They said nothing about how they were received nor what words were exchanged; they just said that she had asked for some time.
Consequently, Hermione and Kathy spent two more days hopping around the country collecting statements and witnesses. Of the five women they met, three were on board at once, one asked for time, and one refused to let them past her door.
Exactly a week after their first encounter, Hermione received an owl from Jade early in the morning, while she was munching on toast, in which she said she would be willing to testify anonymously.
Hermione ditched her breakfast and raced to the Ministry, hoping to get to the admin office before the queues got too long.
Alas, queues and government offices are a match made in hell, ( which circle would you say, Draco? ) and she ended up standing in one, bouncing on the balls of her feet, for ages. Then the usual rigmarole happened, where she was sent from one desk to the other, chasing after some elusive wanker for his lousy, scribbly signature.
By the time she had put in the application for a Witness Anonymity Order, lunch was just an hour away. The entire first half of her day had gone.
She slouched into her office and filled her colleagues in while dropping the hundred or so scrolls crammed into her satchel, onto her desk. They had updates (of a kind) for her as well – Takumi had gathered nothing but accounts of Millward being a good, solid chap who loved his mother dearly. The more Hermione heard, the more she reckoned that he was cut from the same cloth as Borkin, Burke, and Mundungus Fletcher. Kathy merely muttered some stuff about Barros wanting them to reword the petition to the Wizengamot.
A minute before lunch, Hermione had thrown down her quill and was flexing her fingers, while watching her colleagues leave with careworn expressions. Her stomach rumbled, chastising her for abandoning breakfast. At least she could be sure that there was no chance of seeing Draco and Fiona together in the canteen that afternoon; he was attending a conference in Kabul.
She stood up and a little lilac paper-plane landed in front of her. Never before had she received a memo; not a personal one, with her name written on the wings. Nonplussed, she gently unfolded and smoothened it out.
Come to level six immediately.
If she hadn't known his handwriting so well, the curt tone and the lack of a please would have told her who'd written the note. And of course, there was no explanation.
Why was Draco summoning her? Level six was the Department of Magical Transportation. In her haywire mind's eye, she saw him taking her hand and begging her to run away with him to Afghanistan. Admittedly, not the most ideal location for an escape, but she was fairly sure that she was far gone enough to accept. Even as she raced to the lifts, she tried to come up with less outlandish theories, but somehow kept ending up with visions of him whisking her away somewhere.
Squashed amid a hungry crowd, Hermione was the only one who had to struggle through it to disembark on level six, crashing twice against people who were trying to squeeze their way in. She found herself in a short, deserted corridor, halfway down which was Draco, standing with his arms behind his back.
The walk towards him seemed endless, so she looked around at the bare, dull, standard corridor with great interest. He obviously did not make things any easier by looking straight at her throughout, with an air of barely suppressed impatience.
Finally, she stopped before him, tongue swollen and pulse pounding in her ears.
"Hermione," he pronounced, buttery smooth and tartly ironic.
She blinked. "You aren't in Kabul."
"Aren't I?" he raised his brows.
He spun around, marching down the corridor, a follow me implicit in the way his robes fluttered around his ankles.
"What's going on?" she demanded once she'd caught up with his strides.
"You'll see shortly."
At the end of the corridor, they turned left, into an ill-lit passageway that appeared to be dedicated to the maintenance staff.
"Draco," she huffed, her head wildly darting between his face and the path ahead, "You can't just send me cryptic memos and expect me to show up–"
"You did show up."
"And then offer no explanation–"
"You shall have your explanation soon."
"Why ca–"
"This way."
"But–"
"Stop yapping, please."
He pushed open a door revealing a stairwell, disappearing into shadows both above and below, and possessing a bit more than the usual, Ministry-approved shabbiness. Moving aside, he after you'd her in that commanding manner of his, and she took the step, too affronted to yap. She stood stupidly on the landing, waiting for him to direct her.
They climbed up one level, going through a door into another dingy passageway. As unkempt as the stairwell had been, it had not prepared her for the utter disrepair that lay ahead.
"What is this place?" she breathed, staring around at the bare floor, unfinished walls, unpolished doors, and missing fixtures.
"It was meant to be a plush new wing; rooms for visiting ICW delegates to put their feet up in between sessions. But the war obviously fucked with the budget, so the project's been put on hold."
A clattering noise coincided with the end of his sentence as a sconce fell off the wall.
Hermione said, "Theo will never forgive you if you murder me," just because she needed to say something . Draco did not consider her something worthy of a response.
Finally, he led her through another door. Into a bloody bedroom.
She could've sworn she heard the loud bzzzzt of her brain short-circuiting.
He came around and stood in front of her wearing a wide and devilish grin.
"Welcome to Kenny's secret siesta room," he muttered, sotto voce.
"Um," she said, "Uh?"
His grin turned into something flat out dazzling. For a moment, everything in the periphery blurred and her vision tunnelled. A luminous, saturated, crystal-clear line of sight started from the depths of her macula, swept over his straight, tall figure, and ended on the bed at the end of the room. She was nothing but a cluster of loose particles, vibrating with each reverberating thud of her heart.
Without disturbing their eye-contact, he gestured to the side with a tilt of his head. Moving forcefully, she looked that way.
There were two other men in the room. The shock of that reality jolted her, and as she distractedly pulled herself together, Draco walked by. The coolness of his shadow passing over her like a not-so-distant memory was what finally solidified her back into a whole.
She followed him with a plummeting gut and blazing hotspots on her cheeks.
"Hermione Granger," Draco announced, "Meet Kenneth Pendleton."
He spoke with that put-on ingratiating politeness that she'd heard him use around Slughorn and Umbridge. She had completely forgotten to expect that from him.
But at least Kenny looked and sounded exactly like the ought to have. He wasn't a tall man, but fairly stocky. His hair was unnaturally black, flattened and parted down the middle, with the ends curling outwards around his ears. His trousers were green, held up by thin black braces that criss-crossed over a beige shirt. Brown robes lay folded over his arm. He eyed Hermione's proffered hand with disdain and his short, upturned nose wrinkled.
"Well, alright," he snarked in an adenoidal tenor, quite plainly disinclined to participate in a handshake.
Hermione's arm fell back to her side, and she awkwardly opened and closed her mouth. Not a second later, Kenny was marching away, (she thought he might have muttered " bah, dappy lass! ") He threw himself on the bed, stretching out with his back to them, bringing an end to the first of the introductions.
The second man was tall. Taller than Draco, and perhaps even taller than Ron; the white turban on his head added to his towering height. He was thin as a rail and rather handsome, with a dark beard, and very strong, sharp features. His eyes were deep-set and piercing.
His name was Hafizullah Safi, and he was an ICW delegate from Afghanistan. He shook Hermione's hand warmly.
"Lovely to meet you," Hermione said, now completely at sea, and she knew that she had an idiotic, vacant smile on her face that made that fact very clear. However, she had given up on getting any sort of explanation. She would just go along with whatever was happening.
She took in the rest of the room: Besides the bed, there were two armchairs covered with dusty white cloth, and a decent sized table with four chairs. One wall was papered, the others were rough and bare. The windows were uncharmed – nothing but frames on a blank wall. Stubby, conjured candles floated around the room, providing less than adequate light.
"The conference at Kabul was cancelled because a bomb went off near the venue late last night," said Draco.
Kenny let out a loud snore.
"A bomb ?" she repeated thickly.
As the snores found a canorous rhythm, the other three settled around the table. Draco raised his wand and coaxed a few of the candles to sink a bit lower. Safi clasped his hands and, looking down at his knuckles, began speaking.
"Your name has come up during ICW meetings a few times, Ms. Granger, especially during the aftermath of the recent war. It really is a wonderful honour to meet you."
She could live to be a hundred and seventy and she wouldn't know how to react to that assertion. Luckily, Safi was not expecting a response. He carried on –
"You are muggleborn and remarkably well informed, are you not? I assume that you are aware of the current situation in Afghanistan?"
Hermione's vacant smile dropped as she nodded. "Civil war."
"Indeed," he concurred gravely, "We haven't known peace in decades, and I cannot see any way for it to end pleasantly. You can say it's a war for and between muggles, but... well, you see Ms. Granger, dangerous ideologies spread like poison. Though our magical community is relatively small, there are multiple factions taking advantage of the situation and trying to displace our Ministry, using dark magic. One group got hold of a load of muggle weapons coming in from Pakistan..." He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. "In the middle of it all, innocent people are dying. Muggle and magical. The Ministry has weakened, we don't have sufficient charm experts to put up protective shields, potions supplies are depleting... we... we are in desperate need for help."
For some time, there was only silence... and snores. The shadows around Safi's eyes were deep .
"I don't need to explain to you – either of you," he added, looking between Hermione and Draco, "How it feels to be facing death and evil all on your own... while the world looks the other away. I am truly sorry you had to endure that, at such a young age. I am here because I wish to do something about it."
He took out a fat scroll from inside his robes and laid it on the table. From looking at the sides, Hermione could tell that there was over three feet of parchment in there.
"I have been working on this emergency legislation for a long time," he said, placing a palm on the scroll, "It is a bill proposing the implementation of a relief package for communities in crisis. Money, Potions, a team of expert spell castors, and such things. I had the support of friends from other countries who are also in a bad situation, but I had little hope. It's rare that delegates from poorer countries get a say in anything. Then I met Mr. Malfoy and he offered me a perfect solution. Britain can present the bill as its own. Mr. Pendleton has graciously agreed to the scheme."
The low snores sounded even more ridiculous after that. Hermione's mind was whirring.
"Is that... wise?" she asked slowly, glancing at Draco.
"He won't have to do – and more importantly say – anything," Draco replied, "He'll just send the bill to the International Magical Office of Law, and once appraised, it will be read at the next ICW session. I would have thought you'd know how emergency legislation is passed."
"I do," she scowled.
"His gracious agreement, by the way, went like this – Let me sleep in peace and I'll sign my blasted name on anything."
Draco and Safi exchanged a short look of good humour, while Hermione simply stared. Grateful as she was for context, she still had no idea why she was being made privy to the scheme. But she held her tongue and waited, lest she be accused of yapping .
Safi smiled. "This is where you come in, Ms. Granger."
Oh. At last. She leaned forward with eager anticipation.
"I am not an expert in the field of law, merely studied it to the best of my ability and put this together. It requires polishing and editing to make it sound more... legal and... British."
He stopped speaking and looked at her expectantly. She frowned.
"I... see?"
"You will do it?"
"Me?!"
Silence. Snores. A silly little scoffing noise from Draco.
"But that's insane!" Hermione erupted.
Then they all turned to see if she had awoken Kenny.
The snores persisted. Their conversation resumed.
"I've only been working in the Department of Domestic – Domestic – Law for two months. I'm in no position to be reviewing... editing... a potentially pivotal bit of International Law!"
"Mr. Malfoy has assured me that you are capable and trustworthy–"
(For one golden moment she was rattled and lost track of what was being said.)
"–understand why complete secrecy is a must. If there is even a rumour that this bill is coming from an Afghan, they will do everything to sabotage it."
"But with Ke–" Hermione lowered her voice, "Mr. Pendleton's reputation amongst his colleagues, surely many will be questioning the origin of the bill!"
"Once it's been read, it doesn't matter," Safi shrugged, "We need it to reach the ICW. I am confident that the majority will support it, despite how much some countries love to use non-intervention policies as an excuse to not care."
"Mr. Safi–"
"All I ask is that you help me make sure the Office of Law will pass this. And as a muggleborn, I'm sure you have so much insight... the muggles at least make some attempt at providing humanitarian aid. I do not have the ability or resources to educate myself about such things."
"Mr. Safi," Hermione tried again, "I work for one of the most brilliant legal minds in the country. She's also an advisor to the International Office. You couldn't ask for a better person to help you with this."
"But can she be trusted?"
She didn't have an answer to that. Beyond feelings of indignant rage and grudging professional awe, she as yet didn't know what to make of the woman.
"I am desperate. I am so tired. I am ready to beg for just a little money... some equipment to counter dark curses... a stock of potions. I cannot take any chances; this plan is the only plan I have. It must work."
"Madam Barros will understand the gravity–"
"Will she? Ms. Granger... would you, personally, trust her? Would you put the fate of your life, your family, your country in her hands? Tell me something... where was she during your war? What was she doing?"
"...I... have no idea."
"And what were you doing?"
Hermione's mouth closed with a click. Safi's expression of raw despair melted into a small smile.
"You understand, do you not?" he murmured, "You know the pain of war. You know what it means to fight even when hope is lost."
Madam Barros would've called him an idealist, unkindly. He couldn't even blame it on youth, or the self-possession that comes from winning a war. He was stuck in the thick of one, drained and fraught, putting his last hope in her hands.
There were further arguments to be made – Kathy was more experienced, and muggleborn as well. Takumi was even more experienced, vastly and internationally so, and most definitely replete with compassion. But Hermione had decided. In all honesty, she had decided the moment he'd asked you will do it? She put away all her pragmatism and practicality. She pushed aside the absurdity of being barely twenty and having a say in something being presented to the bloody ICW. She plugged into the reservoir that told her that little girls can do magic, fourteen-year-olds can mess with time, sixteen-year-olds can fight battles, seventeen-year-olds can oppose Dark Lords, and eighteen-year-olds can kill.
"I will help you," she looked him in the eye and said, "I will do my best. It will be an honour."
He shook her hand once more and beamed, his gratitude silent and strong. They all stood up and the scroll was handed over to Draco's.
"I hope for it to be submitted to the International Office of Magical Law in a week, so that, inshallah, it may be presented at the ICW session on the twenty-second. And I have put a binding charm on the scroll. Only Mr. Malfoy can open it, and it must always be in the same room as him."
Hafizullah Safi left with a light-footed gait, and he left the door open behind him. The dark, decrepit corridor outside swallowed him whole. In his absence Kenny's snores seemed louder.
"Better get used to that," Draco smirked, "It's going to be your lunchtime medley for a few days."
He stood straight and sure in an aureole of candlelight, and she shook her head at him, while her own legs felt like rubber. Capable and trustworthy, or just the only person in the Department of Law that he knew?
"What a strange day," she breathed.
She lifted her arm towards the scroll, catching sight of her watch in the process.
"Fuck!" she gasped, "Is that the time? Argh!" She began walking backwards. "Must run. Same time, same place tomorrow? Er... yes. Bye!"
Right before the door, her heel caught on a dent on the floor and she stumbled backwards, arms wheeling till she managed to grab onto the doorjamb. Her knees folded and she only just saved herself from falling; her arse hovered a few inches above the ground. She squeaked as she straightened and looked up to find a wildly entertained Draco.
She turned around and sprinted down the corridor, up the stairs, across level six... all the way to her office.
"Where have you been?" Kathy demanded, "You're damn lucky Madam Barros didn't pop in."
"Sorry," Hermione mumbled, "I was eating. Hungry."
She was fucking starving and now she couldn't even help herself to a biscuit or a granola bar. Fox's Glacier Mints would have to sustain her till she could get a plate of whatever rubbish Theo would serve her in the evening.
XXX
Theo was giving fish another go. She'd walked into a kitchen once again filled with smoke, somehow generated in the process of salmon being poached. She'd walked out gnashing her teeth and counting her footsteps till she could close the study door behind her.
Thirty-four counts in her head, (after the twenty-one it took to bring her to the position of standing with her forehead pressed against the door,) was what it took to regain some composure. A pulsating pain squeezed across her skull. Tired and inexplicably morose, she couldn't believe the day she'd had.
People caught in the crossfires of a ruthless, brutal power struggle. Young women, squibs, suffering the entitlement of a wizard who held power over them. A girl with a headache, who felt utterly powerless.
Three points to make the world's grimmest triangle.
With a deep breath, she moved to the bureau and helped herself to a vial of headache potion. The pain cleared like fog dissolving in the wind, and she got to work.
Besides one slim volume on the DPO and United Nations peacekeeping, her civics books were dated and unfortunately unhelpful. She had treaties on all that was unjust in the world, biographies and autobiographies of reformers, reems and reems of information about existing British laws – magical and muggle – but very little that could bolster Safi's bill. There was one newspaper clipping pressed between the pages of a book about the formation of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which sparked something in her memory, leading her to dive into a pile of old newspapers till she found an article from early September, about the UN's peacekeeping mission in East Timor.
But that involved setting up a multinational unit, and invoked provisions that authorised the use of force. No chance of ICW risking the statute of secrecy with something like that.
A knock on the door jarred her out of her thoughts. If Theo had come to ask her some asinine culinary-related question, she would scream .
But it was Draco who wafted into the room. The ends of his hair were damp and he smelled absolutely divine, making Hermione want to scream anyway. He had the scroll with him, and he placed it carefully on the only free spot on her desk.
"How long do you think this will go on?" he asked irascibly.
She stared at the scroll, waiting for him to unroll it. He didn't.
"What will?"
"Theo's attempt at slowly poisoning us."
She breathed out a humourless laugh. He still didn't unfurl the scroll, too busy taking in the books and papers strewn around.
"You should ask him to move this project into your kitchen," she quipped.
"Why the fuck would I do that?"
"Because it's also his kitchen. And there's more room."
"To make a mess."
Stella appeared from under a folded newspaper and climbed atop The Civic Culture . He watched her and the scroll remained untouched.
"I'm surprised you keep showing up to be poisoned."
Draco scowled. "He made the face."
"The face?"
"Yeah. The I'm so gutted, woe is me, my mum is dead, and my girlfriend left me face."
"That worked on you?"
His scowl deepened as he grumbled and placed two long fingers on the scroll.
"Have you made any headway?"
He looked up from the clutter, finally meeting her eyes and his presence closed in all around her.
"No. I will have to make a trip to a library, look through some more recent publications, newspaper archives, get Jeeves to help out–"
"Jeeves?"
"Reginald Jeeves."
After a long pause, he said I'm sorry what , while looking most perplexed and seriously... fucking finally. She exhaled. It was good to see him out of the loop.
She stuck her nose in the air and proclaimed, "I don't have time to explain the internet to you right now, Draco."
They stood at an impasse till he wordlessly pulled at the ribbon holding the scroll together. Then he gave it a push and it gushed like a broken dam, rippling over the desk, down to the floor, and coming to a stop when it hit the wall behind her.
"Oh my," Hermione croaked.
She fell into her chair, weak with intimidation, as Draco moved towards the bookshelves.
"You can't leave the room, you know," she reminded him.
"I am aware," he snapped.
No words were exchanged after that. He stretched across the armchair and footstool with Asterix and Goths, and she bent over the enormous scroll with a pen and notebook at hand. They worked in silence and the evening pressed on; silence that was ever-so-often interrupted by the scratch of her pen or him turning a page or Stella shuffling in her sleep.
It ended when the door opened and Theo, grinning widely, invited them to dine. The fish was not awful, despite Theo's general aversion to salt. The accompanying sauce and asparagus were altogether ghastly.
On the whole, Project FOOL was going along swimmingly, which was a funny word to use while she was barely keeping her head above water.
The majority of her time was spent in putting together the Millward case, (i.e., listing evidence, witness statements, filling in the ridiculous number of forms the admin had thrust upon them,) hoping to be able to file a request for a court date by the end of the week.
Bang in the middle of such hectic days, Hermione had a bizarre interlude in a derelict bedroom.
Suffice to say, Project DAFT had gone to hell. It was obviously hard to avoid Draco when his presence was mandatory.
Hermione was sure that he had spent years teaching himself to be entirely conspicuous, no matter what. He could not simply, unobtrusively exist in a room. It was his fault she was so obsessively aware of him.
It wasn't just quiet distractions that he was inflicting on her either. On the first afternoon he brought sandwiches: caprese for her and prosciutto and spinach for himself. She blushed while unwrapping it, so it took a while to register the lack of snores. When the sandwich was halfway up to her mouth, she realised that Kenny was awake, sitting up in bed, and watching her.
"Draco," Hermione hissed through closed lips, "Did you bring him one as well?"
"Nope," Draco replied at a perfectly audible volume and took a big bite.
She sat frozen, unable to partake, for Kenny wouldn't even blink.
"Why the hell not?" she demanded in an angry whisper.
"Didn't want to."
"I can't eat while he's staring at me!"
"Then don't eat."
She set her sandwich down and growled lowly, then looked up at Kenny with a forced smile.
"Would you like some of my sandwich Mr. Pendleton?" she called out.
"What's in it?" he barked.
"Um, mozzarella, tomatoes, and ba–"
"I DESPISE tomatoes."
"Oh. Well."
He still kept gawking. Hermione re-wrapped her food and dived back into the scroll.
Later, she stood in the stairwell and crammed the sandwich into her mouth. She chewed while the lift carried her up to her floor.
The next afternoon, there was an additional tomato-less sandwich for Kenny. Hermione had to continuously fight a smile as she ate, stealing glances at Draco who was most determinedly fixated on Asterix the Gladiator. Kenny, after eating no more than two bites, turned over and went back to sleep.
The snoring resumed, persistent but erratic, much like Chinese water torture.
XXX
Distractions notwithstanding, Hermione put everything into tidying up and anglicising Safi's bill. He suffered from the same affliction as her: The compulsive need to elaborate where no elaboration was needed. She quickly realised that it was much easier to spot in other people's writing. He'd written paragraph after paragraph of solid prose that needed to be broken down into legalese.
She looked into multiple libraries across London on Saturday, including the British Library, which she hadn't visited in years. A scrupulous confundus charm got her through using an expired membership card, and she came away with plenty of magically doubled books and documents, and a thick stack of print-outs.
By the early evening, when Theo bustled into her kitchen with terrifyingly full bags, Hermione had compiled a list of ideas and points that she thought would enrich the proposal, at times directly lifting lines from Boutros Boutros-Ghali's An Agenda for Peace that she knew nobody in the ICW would recognise.
She was sat on her study chair with her knees pulled up, drinking a cup of excellent green tea, when the bequeather of said tea showed up, baring the scroll. He contemplated the cup she had waiting for him, nicely steaming under a warming charm, but he didn't thank her for it.
With the scroll open before her, she was ready to ascertain where she could inject her additions, but instead she made a passing comment about the 1980 UNGA emergency special session over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. She had just meant to give him a bit of context, in passing, but in no time at all it spiralled into an hour-long discussion.
They talked about the messy state of modern politics, about muggle and magical parallels. About battles that intersected, and common wars that were given two separate causes. About how blended ancient civilisations, over centuries, had turned into two distinct and separate worlds.
When a lull hit, Draco broke it by asking if he could borrow J.M. Robert's History of the World. Looking stiff and pinched, he couldn't quite meet her eye, while she remained startled and mute.
A lifetime ago that book had landed into his hands through shady means and, between then and now (as she let out an ardent of course ,) lay the history of them. The history of a tottery (don't call it a) friendship. The history of their dynamic and interplay; an inconceivable saga that led to them sitting together in her study while she felt so... so...
Good heavens, she felt alive.
XXX
Draco spent nearly all of Sunday in her flat. He sauntered into the study around ten in the morning, once again freshly showered, in a Wedgewood blue jumper that she stupidly complimented before she could think twice.
"Thanks," he said tonelessly, one brow arched.
"Let's sit in the living room," she mumbled quickly, gathering and levitating her things, "More light."
More space , she thought. Her study seemed to get smaller every time he entered it.
The following hours were productive. Hermione spread out on the dining table, he sat on his armchair, systematically making his way through Asterix comics. Lunch was eaten while work carried on. She made tea once, and he twice. Time and time again, she thought she felt his eyes on her, but they never actually were.
The day dimmed and Theo arrived with an excited whisper of Stroganoff.
"Got it!" Kathy announced as she walked into the office, too bright and chirpy for the hour, flapping an accepted Witness Anonymity order.
A confidential owl was despatched to Jade's, which returned promptly with a simple note that read: Come whenever.
They went at once.
Jade lived quite close to Cavern Lane, in a narrow, three-story house that she shared with eight other people. Hermione and Kathy were ushered into her very functional bedroom as soon as they arrived.
"Could you please silence the room," Jade requested stiffly.
Hermione complied.
There was a window, a standing cage with a small, sleeping white and grey owl, and a simple desk. Kathy perched on the edge of the latter, while Hermione sat on an armchair with a broken spring. Jade sat at the foot of the bed, eyes fierce and downcast.
"We owe you an apology," Hermione began, hoping it didn't sound perfunctory. She ignored the way Kathy's head snapped in her direction, and waited till Jade had looked up and pressed on – "Accosting you the way we did, while you were at work... was unbelievably insensitive and graceless. I am so terribly sorry."
Jade only shrugged and said, "Right then."
The subsequent transaction of information was crisp and clinical. Jade rattled out her statement like she had practiced it a hundred times. Her account of a late evening locking up the shop, when Millward had tied her up with an incarcerous charm and dragged her into a storage room, made Hermione ill; but Jade herself was cold and robotic. She would not pander to any show of empathy, any meaningless words of assurance that Kathy and Hermione tried to offer.
"You've got what you need. Please leave."
They went, heads hung low. Hermione stomach was full of horrible slimy, wriggling tendrils of guilt, horror, and pity.
"We have to take this man down," Kathy fumed.
XXX
There was still some time before lunch, but instead of going back to the office, Hermione made a loo-excuse and stood alone in the dark, musty stairwell, trying to reign in her emotions. She recited runic alphabets, took heaving breaths, and mentally moved from one point of her unhappy triangle to the other.
Safi was sitting at the table with Draco that day, the scroll and a bag from Neil's Noshery between them. He shot Hermione the most hopeful smile, that she did her best to reciprocate. (Kenny lay snoring in bed, with a half-eaten sandwich by his side.)
However, his open admiration of her work ended up lifting her spirits, and they even shared a laugh over her hard-fought bid to obtain brevity.
Zipping through her pointers, Hermione brought him up to speed in record time, and they spent the rest of the hour plotting the final draft. She even suggested employing a tactic she'd learned from the goblin episode –
"I say we double the money, and ask for a stock of spare wands..."
"Ms. Granger, that will drive countries that are on the fence to vote against us!"
"We're setting up a negotiation for the committee stage. Let the opposers have some sense of victory."
He was amused as he murmured an agreement, and went on – "What about rations? There should be an entire segment for that. I cannot even begin to tell you about the situation in Herat and Mazar-e Sharif..."
It was sort of twisted that they dug into their lunch while discussing the details of supplying food to the magical settlements in dire need. They discussed special provisions for children, and ensuring safe passages to schools and hospitals.
As always, Hermione noticed the time a little too late and she jumped to her feet while gathering parchments with one hand and stuffing the last of her sandwich into her mouth with the other.
"Are you sure it's ready?" she asked Safi, after suddenly finding herself unable to leave the room.
The wriggling things were back in her stomach, this time they were stirrings of doubt, stone-cold fear, and inadequacy.
"It is," he nodded, "It must be."
Hermione's eyes darted towards Draco; arms crossed and head lowered, he was watching her carefully.
"If we could just spend a little more time–"
"I don't have any more time to give, Ms. Granger. Please."
He stood up and towered over her, smiling in a warm, comforting way that felt almost paternal, and she was suddenly, strangely reminded of Lupin.
"You have done a wonderful job. I feel even more confident than before. Maybe the next time we eat together it will be a happier occasion. I would love to invite you to my home; my wife makes the most delectable mastawa."
He meant well and seemed utterly sincere, but Hermione was still all squirmy as she returned to the DDL.
She ran into Stamp at the foyer and he carelessly poured files into her arms and said, "The Kemball v Numisma hearing's tomorrow. Get the notes ready."
Steam poured out of her ears as he marched on – she had no fucking clue what that case was about. How was he still stupid enough to offload his work onto her?
XXX
Due to the additional work and an impromptu jaunt to the archival chambers, Hermione got home much later than usual. Not feeling brave enough to peep into the kitchen, she went straight to the study where the scroll lay open on her desk, and Draco was comfortably engrossed in Asterix and Cleopatra, with a cup of tea by his side. She let her satchel slide off her shoulder and fall to the floor, loud enough to get his attention without asking for it.
He looked down at the satchel, then up at her, a bit annoyed, but said nothing.
"I don't suppose you bothered to fix a cuppa for me," she accused, tiredly and lacking all bite.
"I bring you your bloody lunch, Granger," he groused, "Don't push it."
She pulled a face and turned away, settling at her desk with a subdued groan.
She picked up her quill... then she put it down. Her nose wrinkled.
"Dear lord, what is that smell?!"
"Theo is attempting a steak and kidney pie."
Hermione yawned for the sixtieth time that morning, and she could tell it was getting on Takumi's nerves. Not that he'd say anything, but he visibly twitched at every instance. It was rather hilarious, and she was tempted to fake a couple of yawns to see if she could make him dance.
It was just one of those days. She was beyond exhausted.
On her request, (much to her surprise,) Draco and Theo had agreed to stick around till two AM the night before. While she'd desperately worked on the bill, they drank firewhiskey and invented some very complicated new game involving gobstones, Stella, and an empty glass.
She was feeling every minute of that late night. There was a permanent ache at the base of her head and down her neck, her hand kept cramping, her eyes were pink-rimmed, and her hair was a puffy, enormous ball on the top of her head.
But she – and her two colleagues – soldiered on, till they finally crossed the last 't', and Kathy swept towards the admin office with her arms full of parchment. She returned sometime later, arms empty, and she raised them in a gesture of exaltation.
So, it was done. The future of the case rested on the Wizengamot's partisan disposition.
On that heartening note, Hermione set off for her final afternoon in the bizarre bedroom. She stopped by the loo to splash some cold water on her eyes and swipe some pink gloss onto her lips because that was just how things were now, and there was
Nothing.
She. Could. Do. About. It.
"Hi," she smiled once she had arrived and was pulling a chair back.
"Gran –Hermione," he muttered nonchalantly, sitting back and low on his seat, tie loosened and clearly exhausted, too.
Kenny snored, asleep on his back, with an unwrapped sandwich sitting on his gently ballooning stomach.
Knowing that she had less than twelve hours to finalise the bill, Hermione put her head down and got busy, but not before telling Draco to please let her know when lunch break was over.
And let her know he did, a mere two minutes before. She glared and he just matched it with meticulous conceit, (that very exchange of expressions must've repeated itself a thousand times in the history of them .)
"Try not to tumble on your way out," he said.
Still glaring, she held out her open hand, at the centre of which sat a glacier mint. His expression faltered, transformed into a look of curiosity, and he whisked the mint off her palm. The brief press of his blunt nails deposited electricity under her skin.
It galled her to put a pause on a very important pursuit, to waste her time on Stamps's idiotic patent infringement dispute that she could've easily made a case for even before she'd joined Barros' team; it was that sodding straightforward.
One standard, Ministry-issued parchment – forty centimetres – was all she would give him. He could go boil his head.
It so happened that Madam Barros intruded into the office at the same moment that Hermione was reaching the end of the parchment, (and her patience.)
Barros always dressed to the nines, but that afternoon she had gone beyond. A gorgeous, chunky emerald necklace adorned her neck, over white and yellow robes.
"Have you finally sent the application to the admin?" she asked the room at large.
"We have," Kathy replied.
"Very well. I will be leaving now, to take tea with Tiberius, Zoya, and Gavin. I feel they need to be personally apprised of the seriousness of the case."
And once she was gone, and the parchment was filled, Hermione stepped out into the foyer and dispatched her very first inter-departmental memo. She then knocked on Stamps door, waltzed in when given the word, and passed him the parchment with the sort of ceremony reserved for the Olympic torch.
"Is that all?" he balked, "The only way you could have done less is if you did nothing at all!"
"If you object to my work, perhaps you ought to take it up with Madam Barros."
"Oh, you think I won't?" he spat. There was murder in his eyes.
Hermione smiled, catty and smug, and she left him to fume, closing the door firmly behind her.
A memo landed in her bun, bearing a single word.
Fine.
When the cat's away, the mice will draft humanitarian bills.
XXX
She had been working at a pace that was furious, but also careful enough to not make any silly errors. Wand in one hand, making modifications; quill in the other, writing judiciously. Papers, parchment, and print-outs lay fanned around her, and her eyes darted between them, but her head barely moved.
She had barely moved in ages.
Had it been ages? It felt like ages. She was suddenly aware of the stiffness in her legs, and a sharp, throbbing pain at the base of her skull.
She put her wand and quill down and closed her tired, burning eyes. Reaching up, she undid her bun and her hair came sliding down. She breathed in the comforting smell of her shampoo. Her fingers carded through her achy scalp till she found the most painful point and lightly pressed on it. Oh, how she wanted to shower and sleep! She trailed her fingers down the sides of her neck, tilting her head and sighing at the soreness she found.
She slowly opened her eyes only to be confronted by Draco pinning her down with a hard and unforgiving stare. It knocked the wind out of her.
"What?" she whispered breathlessly.
A few seconds went by before he spoke. Stony gaze unwavering, his throat undulated as he swallowed.
"It's half six." His voice was rough and heavy with underuse.
"Oh!" she gasped, "Why didn't you say something sooner?!"
She was up in a flurry, gathering her stuff. She rolled up the scroll and pushed it towards Draco. Her blasted hair kept fluttering into her face, hindering the operation.
Her mind was buzzing even as they walked through corridors and down stairs, unwilling to lose the threads of her thoughts. She kept a metaphorical finger at the place where she'd left off, mentally cataloguing the points that were to follow. There was a pause when, just as they entered the lift, she had stumbled over absolutely nothing. She waited for some choice witticism from Draco – but none came. She glanced at him, and he was blandly watching the grille close. Her thoughts shot right back to where they had been.
He stood behind her at the floo. The same fate lay ahead of them both: Questionable supper and a long, long night of work. She stepped into the fire for a momentary reprieve from his scalding presence.