Hermione did not read tabloid newspapers. Her parents had always been at pains to impart to her a distaste for what they considered to be, at best, a lower form of culture and, at worst, one of the visible signs of the inexorable decay of western civilisation. Charlie did not share their prejudices. In his book, no one's brain had ever rotted from reading the news, even heavily-biased, barely-factual news. Also, he liked gossip. That's why he was the first one to spot her picture on the Daily Mail, under the headline, "HAS LOVE MADE DRACO MALFOY SETTLE DOWN"?

Hermione turned ten different shades of red on seeing the column. Things were weird enough with Malfoy without the Daily-freaking-Mail being something she needed to worry about. Also, her picture was in a national newspaper. Her picture was in a national newspaper next to a story on how Britney Spears was having some sort of nervous meltdown, and she could sympathise, she really could, because the world was a terrifying, complicated, messed up place, and nervous meltdowns were a perfectly reasonable response to it.

She stared at the picture in horror, trying to remember the occasion. It was just outside Nan's — Draco was looking at her and smiling at something she said — and it could have been on any number of occasions. They often went there after class, or met there for lunch, or went there for dinner. They went there a lot and she couldn't pinpoint the exact occasion, and maybe it didn't matter, because there was a picture of her in the Daily Mail, and she wanted the ground to open up and swallow her whole. She started reading the article and had to stop, because she was cringing hard enough that she might just hurt herself.

"Burn it," she said, closing it and pushing it away from her. "Shred it, burn it, get rid of it. And not a word of this to Malfoy."

Her Aunt Phyllis always made a big thing of how she read nothing but the classics, and had been known to go on for hours about how humanity had produced nothing worthwhile since the Greeks, but Hermione had once seen a copy of The Sun hidden under a special edition of The Odyssey, and she just knew that if anyone in the family was going to see this disaster it was her, the hateful, gossipy old biddy.

And the idea that Malfoy might see it just made her want to set herself on fire just to avoid the embarrassment. Of all the hare-brained, idiotic ideas she had ever had — and she had done many a stupid thing in her life — sleeping with him might just top the list. And things had been going so well before. They got along, and had fun together, and did a good job taking care of Scorpius. Things had been going great, so of course she had to mess it up somehow, because she was smart like that. And if sleeping together that one time hadn't been bad enough, that was nothing to the fact that they had kept on sleeping together, because they both were people who made really bad life choices.

And they didn't even talk about it, not really. The rest of the time they just carried on as if nothing had happened, because while to the casual observer they might both look like mature, well-adjusted individuals, they clearly weren't, and so they were sleeping together and not talking about it, which was fine. It was perfectly fine. It was perfectly normal, healthy behaviour that she was in no way keeping from her therapist, whose favourite question to anything she disclosed was always, "And how does that make you feel?", and that was not a question she wanted asked, because she didn't know how it made her feel, and what was more, she did not care to enquire too closely.

Her life was an unmitigated disaster and the last thing she needed was the tabloid press and her therapist piling on. Of all the ridiculous, nonsensical things to happen.

Lying in bed at night, her brain kept going at five hundred miles an hour and she was finding it impossible to relax or fall asleep or do anything but just lie there, silently freaking out. She made to get up, but Draco tightened the arm around her waist, brushing his lips against her temple.

"Stay," he said, his words heavy with sleep. "Stay a little while longer."

But she couldn't sleep and she couldn't stay and she was finding it really hard to breathe.

"I need to— I just—" She pushed his arm away and sat up, trying and failing to steady her breathing, which was coming too fast and too hard, and yet she couldn't catch her breath, she couldn't get her lungs to fill, and her heart was beating too fast, and she couldn't control any of it. She couldn't do anything but just sit there, making a spectacle of herself, and why hadn't she just left an hour ago, as she should have, why couldn't she just stop making everything worse all the time?

It was a while before she could feel the warm, steady hand rubbing circles on her back, a while before she could hear Draco's voice close to her ear, telling her everything was fine, everything was okay.

"I'm sorry," she said, wiping her eyes. "I—"

"Get dressed."

She nodded, pushing back the bed covers and trying very hard to ignore the overwhelming feeling of humiliation coiling in the pit of her stomach. She focused on the simple act of putting on clothes instead, on the mechanical movements that didn't require much thought or much effort. Draco caught up with her by the door, grabbing her hand and turning on the doorknob.

"Come on," he said, pulling her after him. He led her to his study and she followed, glad of the contact, glad of the company, relieved that he was still there, though she didn't understand why he was. "Sit," he said, letting go of her hand, and she resisted the urge to cling to him. He paused by one of the shelves and picked up a movie, before popping it into the DVD player. "You can watch subpar comedies on your own time. If I'm picking, I'm going for quality here." It was The Lion King. "I'll be right back."

He came back after a few minutes with a tub of cookie dough Ben&Jerry's and two spoons, and sat down on the sofa next to her. "Come here."

"You don't have to stay." It was fine, she was fine, and she had made enough of a fool of herself for one day.

"Yeah, you're not eating all the ice cream by yourself. Get over here already, Granger."

Giving in to the impulse to do just that, Hermione swung her legs up on the sofa and settled against him, her back against his chest. Draco wrapped an arm around her and offered her the ice cream.

"You're holding that," he said. "It's cold and I have sensitive hands."

She turned her face just enough to kiss the side of his jaw. "Thank you."

He turned and kissed her, a soft peck on the lips. "Do you want to talk about it?" he asked, his breath soft against her skin. She shook her head and he kissed her temple. "Okay."

He was warm and solid against her, and Hermione had never been more grateful for anything in her life. Everything was still a mess, of course, but it was easier to believe, as she watched The Lion King nestled against Draco, that things might just turn out all right. It had been one article. One flimsy article in the middle of a newspaper that wasn't worth the paper it was printed on. Nothing would come of it.

"Oh my god, will you guys just let it go?" Hermione dropped her coat on the rack by the entrance before heading for the living room, where Scorpius was playing with building blocks. The few blocks floating around him dropped to the floor when she walked in and the baby laughed and held out his hands to her. "Hello, sweetheart." She picked him up, glad of his solid weight on her arms, real and grounding. "Hi, Fred."

"Hermione, you have to go to the police." Ginny walked in, followed by Ron and Harry.

"I really don't."

"It's harassment," Harry said.

"It's bloody stalking, that's what it is," Ron added.

Fred got up, dropping the book he had been reading. "What happened?"

"Some creepy photographer was taking pictures of Hermione outside the pub. Charlie broke his camera with a cricket bat. Our brother has a cricket bat behind the bar. Make of that what you will."

"Hermione—"

"For the last time, I'm not going to the police. He wasn't breaking any laws. It's a public street. Now can we please drop the subject?"

"Let's not drop it just yet." Hermione bit back a curse, turning towards Draco who was standing by the door. "What exactly happened?"

She shot her friends a warning glance, but Ginny did not take any hints she did not choose to.

"A few days ago there was an article about you two in the Daily Mail."

"Thanks, Ginny," Hermione said, but the other woman ignored her, carrying on.

"And today there was some asshole taking pictures of Hermione across the street from the pub. These people are a bloody menace."

Malfoy stalked towards her, anger rolling off him, but when he spoke his voice was steady and even. "Did it even occur to you to tell me?"

Hermione resisted the urge to look away and held his gaze, saying with a calm she did not feel, "It occurred to me."

He glowered for a moment and she thought he meant to say something else, but at the last moment he just sighed and shook his head. "I'll take care of it," he said, strolling towards the door, his hands in his pockets.

"Well, what were you expecting?" Blaise swung his chair towards Draco, resigning himself to the fact that no work would get done until he had dealt with this. "You were providing a pretty steady income to a great many deal of people, and as far as they're concerned you just suddenly dropped off the face of the earth. Can you really blame them for trying to work with what you're giving them these days?"

"Yes, I bloody well can, and I can't believe you're siding with the freaking tabloids on this, Zabini."

Blaise sighed, feeling a headache coming on. "I'm not siding with the tabloids. I'm saying that you've been stringing them along for years, and if you thought you could put that particular genie back in the bottle whenever it's convenient, then you're a bigger fool than I thought."

"Spare me the fucking lecture." Draco fell on the sofa, throwing a cushion against the opposing wall. "How do I get them to back off of her? Who do I have to pay off?"

"You overestimate my network of contacts." And his ability to work a miracle. "If the tabloid press could be bought off, there would be no one left for gossip columnists to write about."

Draco groaned, leaning his head back against the sofa. "Just tell me how to fix this."

Blaise swung his chair towards the desk and picked up his pen. "Give them something else to write about."

Hermione had always known that Draco Malfoy did not do relationships. She had known him long enough and been a witness to his many flings for long enough that she knew what the score was. That thing between them, it wasn't a relationship, it was just two people stuck in the same ridiculous situation. Nothing bound them but Scorpius and the fact that somewhere, somehow, some version of them had seen something in each other worth holding on to, despite a war, despite their differences, despite the world going up in flames around them.

It was a beautiful story, but it wasn't theirs, and she had always known that sooner or later Draco would get bored of playing house, get bored of dealing with her problems, and go back to the life he had put on hold.

She had known all along that it would happen, but it still managed to take her by surprise when it did.

There were no more stories in the newspaper, no more photographers following her around. They were all suddenly too busy chronicling Draco's exciting life of debauchery to remember her. She was old news.

They wrote exciting tales of excess and dissoluteness, scandalous stories involving alcohol and drugs and women, and Hermione — who had known better all along, who despite recent evidence to the contrary absolutely had better preservation instincts than that — could not even take comfort from the fact that she had seen it coming. It made her feel like an idiot; it made her feel like a prize fool.

And perhaps it was fitting. Perhaps that's what she had coming to her for being careless enough to fall for a guy like him.

She didn't see him much anymore, except on the pages of newspapers she should have known better than to look at, let alone buy. He was out most of the time, and she tended to avoid him when he was in the house.

She had briefly considered moving back to the dorms, but she wouldn't leave without Scorpius and she couldn't take him, and not just because she couldn't have a baby in her dorm room. She wouldn't do that to Scorpius. She wouldn't do that to Draco, either.

And so she stayed, stuck and miserable and unable to do anything about it.

One morning she went down to the kitchen to find a woman leaning against the counter, drinking coffee and reading a magazine. Hermione did her best to ignore the sudden surge of jealousy and anger burning in her chest, and reminded herself that it was his damn house and he was free to bring to it anyone he saw fit, even if there were those who might consider bringing one of his nightly conquests to the house he shared with his son and the woman he had been sleeping with until just recently to be in poor taste.

Whatever. He could do whatever the bloody hell he wanted. It was no business of hers.

"Good morning," she said, because it was the civil thing to do, and she'd be civil if it killed her.

The woman looked over her magazine with big, green eyes that looked remarkably familiar. "You must be Granger," she said with a smile that some might have described as stunning, but that Hermione was more than happy to think of as no more than adequate. "And this must be my godson."

And just like that, all her jealousy and anger vanished. "You're Pansy Parkinson." It was not a question. She remembered now where she knew the woman from. There was a picture of her, Harry and Scorpius in the baby album.

"In the flesh." The woman smiled at the baby before turning her gaze back up at Hermione. "I've heard a lot about you."

"You shouldn't believe everything Draco says."

"Oh, not from him." She pulled a chair and sat down, crossing her legs. "That one doesn't tell me a thing. Seems to believe I'd just use the information against him. Though where he gets that notion from, I'm sure I don't know. Blaise, on the other hand, has the good sense to call when he's in over his head. Have a sit."

Hermione quirked an eyebrow at the order — for it was that, however light the tone and charming the smile — but sat down across from her anyway, with Scorpius on her lap.

"I've known those two a very long time," Pansy said, conversationally. "Theodore as well. You wouldn't know it by looking at him today, but Theo was a shy little thing when he was a kid, scrawny and timid and eager to please. One time at school, some older boys convinced him that if he wanted to hang out with them, he had to prove himself to them." Scorpius held out a hand in the direction of her magazine and it started moving across the table towards him. "So they had him sneak into Mr Davidson's room — he was the maths teacher — and steal a stuffed monstrosity named Errol. Mr Davidson adored that owl. I understand it was a family heirloom, though what sort of family passes down stuffed owls, I couldn't tell you." Scorpius grabbed the magazine and started chewing on a corner of it. "Someone told, and Theo was taken before the headmaster. Theft is something they take pretty seriously at Harrow, and they would've expelled him, except that somebody else took the fall for it." Her smile widened. "Draco knew where the owl was hidden, got hold of it, made a pile of maths books in the main courtyard, put the owl on top of it, and set the whole thing on fire. I'm told they still tell stories of it today. He was expelled, of course, but I don't think he was terribly concerned about that. Theo adores him to this day."

Hermione stared at her for a moment, this poised woman with a posh accent, who some version of herself had trusted enough to make her son's godmother. "What's your point, Pansy?"

Pansy chuckled, getting up. "No point at all. Except to say that even if he has no shame and less sense, his heart is usually in the right place. I'll see you around."

And with that she left, leaving Hermione even more tied into knots than she had been before.

It was almost midnight and Hermione was sitting on the staircase, looking at the front door and cursing her own stupidity. Because there was a chance that Draco wasn't coming home tonight, or that he wasn't coming home alone, or that Pansy hadn't been telling her what she thought she had been telling her. There was also the chance that Pansy had been telling her exactly what Hermione thought she had been telling her, but that she had been mistaken.

She didn't know and she couldn't think about it, because the more she thought about it, the more she wanted to chicken out, and she couldn't chicken out because she had decided that if she couldn't be smart about this, then she would be brave and see where that took her.

So she was sitting there. Waiting. Like an idiot.

She sighed, glancing at the grandfather clock in corner. Five more minutes. Five more minutes and she would get up.

Just then a key turned in the lock and Blaise walked in, followed by Draco.

"It's your neck," Blaise was saying. "I'm just asking you to leave me out of it."

"You, sir, lack courage."

"And you, sir, lack common sense."

Malfoy made to say something else, but just then they saw her on stairs. Blaise, knowing when to make himself scarce, gave Draco a look and headed up.

"Goodnight, Granger," he said, walking past her.

"Goodnight, Zabini," she said.

Draco walked up to where she was, and Hermione got up.

"Is everything all right?" he asked, frowning. "Is Scorpius—"

Without giving herself time to think better of it, she leaned forward and kissed him, daring and bold and reckless. He didn't move for one terrifying moment, and then his lips opened under hers, and his hands moved up her arms and around her back.

"I'm not made of glass," she said, her hands buried in his jacket. "And I don't need you to protect me from assholes with cameras."

He looked at her with serious grey eyes before leaning his forehead against hers, his arms tightening around her.

"It was my fault," he said, his voice low and pained. "If I wasn't—"

Hermione tilted her face up, silencing him in the one way sure to work. Draco sighed, leaning into the kiss, and Hermione wasn't scared anymore. Maybe everything was a mess, the both of them along with the rest of it, but just then she wasn't worried. Just then she could have taken on the world.