Author's Note: Je n'ai rien à dire.

Sauf que j'aime beaucoup les blagues qui s'agissent de "Yer Mom."

And sorry about the delay; I got very lost trying to take a bus, wandered around awhile until I got desperate enough to call Eltea and have her Google Map me back to safety, and then had to start reading King Lear. In the midst of all this insanity, I forgot it was HaM Day. Blasphemy, I know.

And excessive apologies to bluenavydragon, whose name I managed to screw up recently by some feat of pure idiocy.

Chapter Seventeen

Fearless

When the alarm clock howled the next morning, Hermione cracked an eye open. She looked at the dark red letters for a moment, and then she opened the other eye. She blinked them both. There was something very strange going on. She felt… awake. Rested. Almost pleasant.

This wasn't a normal feeling for 6:45 in the morning. This wasn't a normal feeling for any time of the day. This wasn't a normal feeling for this planet.

Then she reached out to turn off her alarm and discovered why she felt this way. It was because Draco Malfoy's arms were around her, and she'd been nestled comfortably into the curve of his body. As she moved, he mumbled something, and Sparky, who was curled up next to her, opened his eyes and looked at her.

"Mrow," he announced.

"You, too," she told him. Then she slammed her hand down on the alarm, maneuvered around her favorite feline and her favorite human, and climbed out of bed to go take a shower.

She paused to look in the mirror in the bathroom. She still looked twelve, but she certainly didn't look dead. She looked… happy. "Happy" was a marked improvement over "dead." That much, at least, was unequivocal.

When she reemerged from the shower and peeked into the bedroom, Draco was still lying there, now clutching Sparky to his chest like a teddy bear. The cat didn't seem to have any objections.

That was when she should have known Draco was the right one—when she had seen that the cat liked him. Weren't there books full of magical tripe about how cats understood things that people didn't?

Well, she supposed she shouldn't give Sparky too much credit until he started writing out calculus formulas, but it was looking like he'd been right on the money this time. Though you had to view any consultant who licked himself with a degree of doubt.

Her hair dripping down the back of her neck, Hermione went into her kitchen and opened the refrigerator. Every time she saw that it full of food, it surprised her—but it was a pleasant surprise. Having food was not a bad thing. In fact, it was rather nice.

Everything was nice with Draco around. Hermione was beginning to worry that she would overdose on nice. Could you overdose on nice? Was there such a thing as being too happy? Would you lose sight of what happiness actually was if you were faced with too much of it?

Oh, who cared? She had slept through the night without waking up once, without lying in bed for hours with her mind racing from one red flag to another, without a moment of worry or panic, and she had done it in the arms of a very courageous, very kind, very hot man by the name of Draco Malfoy. That was plenty.

The elation made her feel brave. She plucked the mango-banana-papaya juice right out of the fridge, poured herself a tall glass, and drank it fearlessly.

Well, mostly fearlessly.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

"How's Ardoc?" the brunette asked smugly as she and her cronies arrived. It was ten o'clock sharp. These girls didn't waste time.

"He's doing vigorously," Hermione answered brightly.

"'Vigorously'?" the trio repeated together. They exchanged looks.

"What do you mean, 'vigorously'?" the brunette inquired cautiously.

"You mean, like, healthy," the blonde put forth tentatively and hopefully, "but not in a wanting-to-sleep-with-you kind of way—right?"

The brunette whacked her on the arm. "You're not supposed to out and say it!"

"Ow!" the blonde cried, rubbing at the afflicted area. "You hit me!"

"Well, duh," the redhead muttered, rolling her eyes. She tossed her head, likely hoping to look proud and aloof, and succeeded only in resembling a shampoo commercial. "Otherwise it wouldn't hurt."

"You deserved it," the brunette snapped, "asking a question like that. Really. You're like a rock, but dumber, and with hair."

"I am not!" the blonde protested. "Does a rock have skin like this? Does it? Feel this skin and tell me it feels like a rock." She grabbed the nearest available fingers—which happened to belong to the redhead—and pressed them to her cheek.

"Leggo!" her victim interjected, trying to pull away.

"Feel that?" the blonde prompted. "That's what it feels like when you moisturize twice a day and revitalize twice a week. Rocks don't moisturize at all."

Clearly, this girl was quite the geologist.

"Well, maybe you should revitalize your brain," the brunette sniffed. "I think it's dead."

"You're dead!"

"Your mother is dead!"

"She is not; she lives down the street!"

Hermione got up, took the latest letter summaries from her desk, and went to deliver them to the appropriate departments, smiling to herself.

Dynesy Cranot was slim and just a bit too tall, to the point that he seemed a little awkward. He had short, graying brown hair and pale brown eyes that clung respectfully to you while you were speaking and wandered wildly as he responded. He was like the uncle that you only saw once a year but really liked anyway, or the guy who sat at an outside table at the coffee shop on the corner of your street and always said hello to you when you walked by. He was also the head of the Department of Magical Catastrophes.

He accepted the slip of paper from her and smiled that light, distracted smile that he had. Nobody was really sure whether Dynesy Cranot was all there, eighty percent there, or not really there at all, and as long as he got his work done on time, nobody seemed inclined to press the issue.

"The last one was very humorous," he remarked, his gaze meandering over the wall behind her. "We enjoyed it."

Hermione blushed. She'd been ready to strangle the author of the most recent letter directed at this department, and the summary of that letter had, consequently, come in somewhere between absurdly sardonic and outright scathing. "I was getting a little impatient," she mumbled.

Dynesy glanced at her, and his bemused smile flickered wider. "Your impatience is endearing," he remarked. "Feel free to let it into the things that come here. We won't tell."

Slowly, Hermione grinned back. Then she returned to her desk, sat down contentedly, and went to work on another extremely impatient summary.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

When she went to collect Draco at five, he wasn't as his desk, but there was a lot of laughter emanating from Helicane's office.

"You're making that up," she heard Draco say. He laughed again, a sound like balm on a wound, like aloe vera on a sunburn, like—

Hermione needed to stop doing that in her head. It was weird. And kind of creepy.

"Don't look at me like that!" Draco was continuing. "You've got to be making that up. Skydiving, sir?"

Hesitantly, Hermione knocked.

"Come in," Helicane called offhandedly. "And what, Ardoc, did I tell you about that 'sir' business?"

When she opened the door, Hermione found Helicane seated behind his desk with Draco opposite him. They were drinking champagne out of beautiful crystal wineglasses, and Draco's beautiful crystal wineglass was half empty.

"Is it so terrible to venerate one's superiors, sir?" Draco replied, grinning.

"I'll drink to that," Helicane declared cheerfully. He and Draco knocked their glasses together and drank deeply. Only then did Helicane look up at his visitor. The mirth fell from his face like a loosely-secured mask. "Granger," he greeted her frostily.

As always, she did her best to be polite, even when she wanted nothing more than to slap the thinly-veiled distaste right off his fat face.

"I was looking for Draco," she explained.

Helicane raised an eyebrow. "Oh? What's the rush?"

"We have reservations at Tarsus," Hermione invented. Tarsus was some swanky restaurant that had just opened on the boulevard. The truth was, she really just wanted Draco away from Helicane and his bloody champagne. There was something not-quite-right about the whole thing, but she just couldn't put her finger on it.

"What's the occasion?" Helicane wanted to know.

"Well, new job," she improvised, motioning to Draco.

"New life," Draco added.

"New outlook," Hermione added nervously, watching Helicane's stony face.

"New cat," Draco concluded.

The stone melted into an indulgent smile as Helicane looked at Draco. "Reason enough, I suppose," he noted. "Go on, then, m'boy. Go have your nice dinner."

Draco set his wineglass down and stood, smiling blithely. "All right," he conceded. "I will. Thank you very much, sir. This was most lovely. Most lovely."

More like "Most deeply and entirely disturbing," Hermione thought.

As they left, she did her very best not to run out of the Ministry screaming and waving both arms in the air. She would very much have liked to. Giles Helicane had that effect on her.

"Do you ever actually do any work?" she asked Draco wryly.

"All the time," he replied pleasantly. "I'm either working like a dog setting up appointments and so forth, or I'm working like a dog trying to make it look like I'm working like a dog."

"I see," Hermione remarked.

"Do you see?" Draco inquired. "Or do you perceive?"

She turned to raise an eyebrow at him and discovered that he looked a little pale. "Are you all right?" she asked slowly.

Thinly Draco smiled. "Yeah, fine," he assured her airily. "Just a little piqued. Probably the wine. We're not actually going to Tarsus, are we?"

They were in the lobby of the apartment building, and Hermione guided Draco straight to the rickety elevator. She didn't even want to try the stairs. Then she had a better idea, looked both ways, took Draco's arm, and Apparated up to the hallway right in front of Number 78.

"Oh, my Heavens!" Lychorida Bolton shrieked. "You—you appeared from nowhere! You and your fiancé!"

Gulp, Hermione thought.

"No, no!" she insisted. "We… were just… being very quiet, because he has a headache." She patted Draco's arm and wished he didn't look like he was in a lot of pain. "Trick of the light, I'm sure."

Lychorida Bolton did not look convinced. Hermione jammed her keys in the door, opened it, pushed Draco inside gently, and ducked in after him. "Have a nice evening!" she called, after which she slammed the door shut and leaned on it, ready to wipe her brow melodramatically.

Only Draco wasn't there to see it. She paused, and in the lull, she heard some very forlorn vomiting noises coming from the bathroom.

"Oh, Christ," she said.

"His would be holy," Draco panted.

"Oh, Christ," she repeated.