Chapter 4: Ginny's Turn

"Are you quite finished ?" Draco hissed through his teeth, looking utterly uncomfortable as Blaise grinned proudly. Ginny rolled her eyes, but had to admit an antsy Draco was an unfamiliar and amusing sight.

"I am! You should read to her, mate. Slowly. All night. In bed. And with a real sexy voice. But minus all the actual book shite-"

"We get it." Pansy intoned, drumming her fingers on the table in what felt like a dark warning as Harry nervously coughed into his hand again.

"What's with all the crying, too?" Ginny asked, hand unconsciously resting on her hip despite being seated, "Not all girls cry at a proposal."

"You cried at our proposal." Harry grinned, holding up their entwined hands to show off her ring as if it were proof.

"Not all girls cry at a proposal. " Ginny reiterated, flushing in embarrassment and quickly tugging her and Harry's hands back down.

"Look Zabini, you might know Malfoy, but I know Hermione." Ginny stated, all business as she leaned forward to address the other Slytherins, "And I have a better proposal suggestion."

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Hermione pushed open the door of her temporary lodgings in Bucharest, Romania, tired and ready to crash. She had spent a whirlwind week at a European wizarding summit at the Romanian Ministry, speaking with dignitaries and government officials from across the continent about standardizing laws and practices when it came to the treatment of magical creatures.

It helped to have attended the summit with Charlie Weasley—world-redound dragon expert and old friend—his first hand accounts about caring for dragons had been her secret weapon during her lengthy presentations, keeping the audience in rapt attention. Hermione had survived the week purely on nervous energy and by leeching off of Charlie's infectious enthusiasm for oversized, fire-breathing lizards, but now that the last hands had been shook and final business cards exchanged, she felt the exhaustion begin to seep into her bones.

The first thing she did was kick off her shoes. The damn heels had left her with blisters after hour 2, but had also made her look like a name-taking badass, so she had worn them the rest of the day, regardless of the pain. Now, though, she was happy to discard them and flop unceremoniously across the couch in her little hotel suite. Finally off her feet, she began pulling the bobby pins from her hair, unwinding the tight bun she had kept her mane in and relishing in the feeling of letting her hair down after a long day.

Tomorrow she would be heading back to London to take a day or two off, then begin compiling her report for the Minister, following up on the leads and business relationships she had established, debriefing her coworkers in the RCMC department, sending a thank you basket to Charlie—maybe a second basket to Molly as an apology for missing Ron's birthday dinner the other week. Hermione had already mailed Ron his gift and a card, to which there had of course been no reply. She hadn't been expected to attend but still felt bad about missing it and should drop Molly a line anyway-

The fireplace across the room roared to life with green flames, pulling her from her thoughts. She sat up quickly, recognizing the face that peered out at her through the Floo-green fire.

"Katie?" Katie Bell's head floated in the middle of the hearth.

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"Katie Bell . . . why does that name sound familiar?" Pansy asked, tilting her head as she tapped a nail against her lip.

"Yea high, Gryffindor, Chaser on the Quidditch team?" Ginny supplied, holding up her hand to about Katie's height.

"Oi, Marcus Flint had quite a crush on 'er. Switches sides for Bell during the war, I think." Blake chuckled, shaking his head.

"He did?!" Ginny's eyes went wide at the gossip.

"Oh! was she always running around with two other blonde Gryffindor girls?" Pansy held up two fingers as she spoke.

"Yes! Angelina and Alicia!" Ginny caught herself smiling, remembering how inseparable the three upperclassmen girls were, "They were always-"

Harry cut her off before she launched into a tangent, giving his wife's hand a squeeze, "Your suggestion, dear."

"Oh, right."

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"Oh, right." Katie said as harmless green flames licked at her cheeks. Her hair was pulled back out of her face, and she peered across the room at Hermione through large, wire-frame glasses, "Hermione, are you there? Message from the Ministry!"

"Over here!" She said, quickly crossing the room to the fireplace and crouching in front of it as Katie blinked up at her. Despite Katie's overall green-tinted pallor and the wispiness of her Floo-form, Hermione could tell the woman was nervous. She was chewing on her lip and several locks of hair were escaping her bun as her eyes darted around Hermione's face.

"Message from the Ministry. There's-" Katie repeated, cutting herself off as she looked down, presumably at the desk in front of her.

A slick, sick sensation ran down the back of Hermione's spine like a cold trickle of water, raising the hairs on the back of her neck and she knew something was wrong in a sudden sixth-sense awareness. The cold feeling of dread wasn't unfamiliar to her, but she hadn't felt it since the Battle for Hogwarts, moments before she had yanked Ginny Weasley out of the way of aSectumsempra meant for her throat. Not since she had turned, shielding the younger Gryffindor behind her and found herself on the smoking end of Lucius Malfoy's wand, another cutting curse readying on his smirking lips.

That's when Draco Malfoy had struck down his own father with an Avada , grave-pale and shaking, still holding his wand aloft as he emerged from the shadows to their left. He stared at the broken body of the Death Eater who had raised him, half-embedded in a cracked stone wall due to the vitriolic force behind the killing spell. Hermione held his gaze as her hand closed around his wrist, lowering his wand which was still sputtering sparks of green in rioting emotion.

"My . . . fuck- he-he was . . ." Draco's eyes darted across her face as if searching for the next word, the sentence dead on his lips.

"Shhh." Hermione murmured, immediately wanting to help him or hold him, the dual urges rising quickly in her chest before sense took a hold of her. The brunette shook her head sharply—it wasn't the time for that, it was never the time for that—and she tugged both Draco and Ginny back into the dark recesses of the school, dodging a renewed volley of spells from the approaching Death Eaters. They walked in hurried silence through empty corridors unwitting of the violence about to befall their grounds and had almost arrived back at the Order's rendezvous point when Draco spoke again near Hermione's ear, his voice rasping and lined with a manic edge,

"He raised his wand against you ."

"Katie ." Hermione urged, wide awake and on-edge, all thoughts of earlier exhaustion squashed. The Gryffindor looked back up at her with wide eyes, readjusting her glasses,

"Yes! Sorry. Yes, this is a very unusual request, but there's an emergency and Harry—er-Auror Potter is calling for all hands on deck." Katie still wasn't meeting her eyes. Hermione suppressed the urge to reach through the Floo and yank the papers from the other woman's hands.

"Two Aurors were sent on a very sensitive assignment near Bucharest, and they didn't check in with Harr—Auror Potter this evening during their scheduled coin press. Due to the nature of the assignment contact with the Ministry has been kept to a minimum, but the Aurors were supposed to let Potter know everything was going as planned by pressing their thumbprints to a charmed knut each evening at 5pm. They missed tonight's check in, which means they've been compromised." Katie began to shift nervously again, her head bobbing under the mantle.

"More Aurors are being reassigned to provide backup, but you're currently the closest Ministry official who has dueling training—maybe more than most Aurors—and Auror Potter can't wait for paperwork to clear and needs someone to check on them ASAP." Katie still wouldn't meet Hermione's eyes. Another shiver trickled down her arms,

"Who are the Aurors in trouble, Katie." She demanded.

"They—the Aurors were assigned to check on a nest of V-symps." Katie stumbled on, her glasses sliding down her nose as she shuffled the papers in front of her, "It was—they were supposed to monitor them and collect intel to relay to us when their assignment finished, nothing more. We don't have any information other than its a group of 3 to 5 V-symps who—who fled after the war."

"Katie ." Hermione practically growled.

"It was—Aurors Nott and Malfoy." Cool ice gripped the back of Hermione's neck.

"And you—you have the training." Katie repeated, finishing weakly.

Of course she had more dueling training than most Aurors, all of Hermione's training had been hands-on, during the war, countering actual spells intended to kill her. You can't simulate that in a class. And she had tried to. She used to teach dueling classes at the Ministry to incoming Aurors, as a part of a training regiment that Harry set up when he became Head Auror and overhauled the program.

Hermione had been in the middle of a class, instructing new Aurors how to wandlessly cast a Protego , when Malfoy had walked back into her life. She saw his tall form standing at the doorway through the blue haze that the protective charm cast on the outside world, and for a moment thought his appearance was just a trick of the light filtering in through her spell. When she dropped it a moment later and the blonde heir was still standing in the classroom doorway, she knew it was actually him. Draco had returned from his self-imposed year of exile.

Her hands began to tremble.

"Got one last student for you, 'Mione. Our newest Auror recruit." Harry had said briskly, walking into the classroom and beckoning over his shoulder for Draco to follow. Hermione had been so fixated on the fact that Draco refused to meet her eyes she hadn't even noticed her best friend standing behind him.

Draco silently took his place in the line of Auror trainees before her, the students regarding their new peer with various levels of curiosity and distaste. Harry readjusted his glasses in that boyish way he had yet to grow out of, and turned back to Hermione, a self-satisfied smile tugging at his lips, "Well, don't let me interrupt! Carry on."

"R-right. Right. Malfoy-" Hermione's voice sounded far away from herself, and she watched as Draco flinched when she said his name. She could feel the trembling move from her hands up her arms and fisted her hands tightly, holding it together. The last time she had spoken to Draco he had been in shackles and promising to leave Wizarding Britain behind him forever. Had Harry had a hand in his return?

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At the table, Harry and Draco shared a silent look of communication.

"I'll never tell." Harry grinned, raising a teasing finger to his lips as Draco rolled his eyes.

Ginny grinned, remembering that year after the war trials when Harry and Draco had become rather dodgy penpals, owling each other every few weeks. No doubt it was Harry who had started the correspondence, and Ginny only knew of it because they had moved in together shortly after the war and her then-fiance had to explain who was sending letters and howlers at odd hours of the night.

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Hermione could yell at Harry later about this little surprise. Or hug him. Or hex him. Or cry-

"Wandless Protego , was it?" Harry prompted helpfully from off to the side, silencing several students who had begun whispering amongst themselves. "Impressive technique. Your signature spell, if I remember correctly."

"It is." Hermione shook her head to clear her thoughts. She would definitely Tarantallegra Harry later for this. She held her bare hand upwards in a defensive position as she faced her students,

"Malfoy." She tried again, addressing her newest charge as she grew increasingly agitated with how he still wouldn't look at her, "Try throwing a jinx at me—and everyone watch the hand motion I make for the Protego."

There was a pause before Draco hissed through gritted teeth, "I—I can't ."

"What do you mean, you can't?" Hermione spat, her own anger boiling over. A year. A year of silence from the man she had fought back-to-back with on the battlefield, had pulled out of wrongful Ministry imprisonment, had spent nights lying awake wondering if he was even alive—

Draco looked away sharply, teeth working the inside of his cheek as his brows furrowed, "I bloody can't point my wand at you, Granger."

"What-" Hermione's question died in her throat as she looked down at the wand in his hand, even Harry moving close for a better view. The enchanted hawthorn wood was vibrating wildly as Draco clutched at it, the tip of the wooden rod swerving to avoid being directed at Hermione as if she and the wand were made of opposing magnetic forces.

Draco muttered a curse under his breath, grabbing at his wrist with his free hand and yanking his shaking limb away from Hermione, immediately stopping the tremors. Perspiration beaded at his temples from the effort of holding the wand towards her and he panted slightly, finally meeting her eyes, "I haven't been able to for a long time."

Hermione's recollection of their reunion lasted only for a second before she spun away from the fireplace, her back an icy sheet. Draco and Nott were staking out a V-symp nest somewhere in the city she had spent the past week giving talks about Harpies and Hippogriffs in. Draco and Nott hadn't checked in with the Ministry today. Draco and Nott were outnumbered.

She found herself moving across the apartment, automatically pulling on the worn combat boots she could never bring herself to leave at home and coiling her hair back onto her head in a tight bun. Katie's pained face still floated in the fireplace, biting her lip as Hermione robotically tugged on a heavy canvas jacket.

"Where are they." She asked, her voice flat, the chill creeping into her throat.

"It's—It's a Ministry flat Aurors use when they're on assignment. It's charmed so no one can tell it's there." Katie shuffled a few papers before relaying to Hermione the directions and counter-wards so that she could get into it.

Not five minutes later Hermione was out the door, leaving Katie's head sighing in the fireplace before pulling backwards and letting the green flames die.

Hermione hurried through the streets, her wand slipped up her sleeve, taking as many shortcuts as she could to get across town. She easily hefted herself over fences, stealthily cut through restaurant kitchens, and charmed a few muggles to forget they even noticed her, her Gryffindor sensibilities about such actions taking a back seat to the urgency of the task at hand. Surviving a war had tilted several of her morals.

And now she stood next to some dumpsters in the damp back alley of a mid-tier muggle hotel, looking up at the mostly-blank brick and concrete wall. It was dotted with a few windows and cable lines leading up to a flat gravel roof with a water tower on top. Hermione squinted, noticing the pigeons that dotted the surrounding rooftops and yet were mysteriously absent from the hotel in front of her. And there, at the top of the building's side, right below the lip of the roof was an ornately carved "M". Ministry building.

Hermione raised her wand, muttering the counter-wards Katie had relayed to her, and throwing a few custom charms into the mix that she had developed during the war. Specifically, a rather complicated one she had needed Bill Weasley's help with that kept the creator of the wards from realizing that they'd been broken.

Sure enough the air above the hotel's roof shimmered and revealed a penthouse suite with a balcony and peaked roof. With a flick of her wand she lowered the ladder of a nearby fire escape and climbed up to the penthouse hideout, slipping in through the ajar sliding door.

The suite that she carefully canvassed, wand held aloft and ready to stun, looked lived-in but not trashed. A pair of men's slacks and The Daily Prophet sat in the living room, a few empty takeaway containers on the kitchen's counter, and the two bedrooms and bathrooms were equally as devoid as life as the rest of the penthouse. A door at the opposite end of the suite lead out into a little landing and elevator, no doubt charmed to hide the top floor from muggles and non-Ministry wizards.

She could immediately tell which of the two was Draco's room; his suitcase sat in one corner, a vial of Drought for Dreamless Sleep on the bedside table, and . . . she paused, sliding her hand along the top of the chest of drawers to the right of the door. Odd. Empty.

Usually, in a defensive habit borne of combat and restless nights, Draco opted to keep a custom potion brew near the doorway of wherever he slept. It was the Malfoy Special "Skele-GrOhNo", a twist on the medicinal Skele-Gro that caused the afflicted's bones to grow at an alarming rate through their own muscle, freezing them in place. It was horrific, but had saved Order member's hides several times when their safe houses were raided in the middle of the night during the war.

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"Aye, that was a powerful potion. Got any more of it?" Blaise asked cheekily, elbowing Draco lightly in the side.

"Draco's Skele-GrOhNo is now considered a controlled substance by the Ministry." Harry automatically answered, as if his Head Auror status compelled him to.

"Yes," Draco drawled, gesturing carelessly towards Harry, "Like the Boy Who Brown-nosed said, the Ministry has got my stirring spoon on a tight leash these days."

"I don't believe that for a second." Pansy mused, swiping a cookie off the plate in front of them.

"Yeah Hermione gave me one of those droughts you brewed her for menstrual cramps. Good Godric, Malfoy, it really works." Ginny added.

"She gave you one, did she?" Draco's features were controlled but his usually porcelain face flushed with pink. Blaise tilted his head back to laugh loudly, causing some of the cafe's other patrons to look over in alarm.

"Oi, y-you're-" Blaise managed between laughs, "You went from brewing bombs for the war front to concocting pretty potions for chicks on the rag—OW!"

Pansy had apparently slammed her heel down hard on Blaise's toes under the table, " Enough , Blaise. Menstrual pain is no laughing matter. A drought like that would do a lot of women a lot of good."

Ginny nodded in solidarity across the table.

"Are you sure that's all you're brewing?" Harry leaned over suspiciously, causing Draco to push him back into Ginny's side by his forehead.

"Yes, mother ." He waved at the redhead, "Continue. Please. And remind me to have a word with Granger later about peddling my potions. Apparently I'm dating a dealer."

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And Draco's vial was gone.

Hermione had kept an iron grip on her emotions until now, standing in the middle of Draco's room in the abandoned Ministry hideout, as she dragged a hand over her face. Holding her palm over her eyes, she felt her fingers tremble at her temples.

Where are you, Malfoy?

Years ago, before her job with the RCMC Department, when she was still helping Harry overhaul the Ministry's Auror program, she had wound up with the opposite problem. After a year of no contact, Draco had been thrust back into her life and suddenly would not leave her alone.

It was as if a year abroad had turned Draco's smarm and mockery up to 11.

Whereas during the war Draco had been brooding and distant, now he was insufferable, unshakable. He would frequently appear out of nowhere to fall in step with her down the length of some obscure Ministry hallway while he complained about the Auror physical training regiment, folding himself into a chair across from her at lunch in the cafeteria and plucking her current book from her hands to flip through the pages and insult the muggle author, "accidentally" jinxing the wrong dueling partner in Hermione's class when they were supposed to be practicing counter-curses—although never turning his wand against her, she had carefully avoided using Draco as a demonstration since that first day.

Hermione would frequently find him sitting in her office in the mornings, having somehow gotten past her door's lock, feet propped up on her desk, coffee in hand, ready to complain about Harry's latest raid on his potion storage.

"Honestly, it's like the Ministry is trying to hoard every milliliter of Lobalug venom in the Isles. By the by, you're out of coffee." He said, wiggling her own mug at her while she stood slack-jawed in the doorway.

At the time Hermione had been furious but now, standing in the middle of his empty hotel room, she smiled. Opening her eyes as she massaged her temples, she looked down the length of her palm to the floor and frowned. There was a crumpled slip of paper sticking out from under the chest of drawers. Quickly bending down to scoop up the paper, she unfolded it against the wood of the drawers, running a hand across it to smooth it out.

It was blank, save for a series of dots.

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"Aaand I have to go to the bathroom." Ginny said sheepishly standing up from the table.

"Wait, what were the dots about?!" Pansy asked as Ginny carefully squeezed herself behind her husband's chair and aimed herself towards the bathrooms.

"A mystery . . . for now ." She said smiling as she flapped a noncommittal hand over her shoulder.

"How 'bout another round of snacks, eh?" Blaise said, also standing from the table as Draco groaned, slumping in his chair and tilting his head back up at the ceiling,

"How about we just order dinner if this intervention is going to continue?"

"There, there, Malfoy," Harry said emphatically, patting his once-rival on the shoulder, "It shouldn't take longer than a week."

"Well in that case Potter," Draco said with forced gaiety, "I await with bated breath."

A/N: Half done, folks!

Thank you to everyone who's left a fav, follow, or review! Special shoutouts to Shibalyfe, Jenny, and mysterious Guest-your comments really make my day :) Thank you for 'getting' my kinda wacky story!

Onwards!