Author's Note: I am so, so sorry for not updating in, what, two months? I know this is a really pathetic excuse, but I was caught up in my schoolwork. Sorry. I'm pretty sure nobody reads my stuff anyway. Also, there's a lot of strong language/some explicit content, so be warned.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Harry Potter series.

Chapter 5

Draco wandered the streets until the sun fell from the sky. To a passerby, he might have seemed like a man traveling somewhere—a man with places to go.

"Oomph!"

He looked up.

Draco had just crashed into a girl with wild brown hair. He couldn't see her face, as she was currently trying to pick up a huge stack of books that she had dropped during their head-on collision.

"Watch where you're going," snapped Draco irritably.

"Excuse me?" the girl said indignantly, and then she stilled. Her arm froze in the action of returning a book to her arm. History of Wizarding Space Exploration, Draco read.

She took a deep breath and looked up.

Hermione Granger, that fucking mudblood. Why was she following him? Was she spying on him? What in the fuck did she want to do with him? Draco's own befuddled train of cursing made him even more confused and angry.

Sensing the silent fury raging in Draco's cold eyes, Granger involuntarily took a step back.

Good. Mudblood should know her place on the spectrum, Draco thought. A smirk crossed his face.

Granger's eyes locked onto his. They stood like that for a while, Draco angrily attempting to stare her down and Granger unrelenting.

Finally, she hissed, "If that's what you're thinking, I am most definitely not following you." Brat, she added under her breath.

"Oh, really?" Draco arched an eyebrow. "Because why does it seem that everywhere I go, you show up and manage to bother me some fucking more. I've got a feeling that this is about the job offer. No. I'm not taking it, and you can't make me."

If Granger noticed his usage of the swear word, she didn't show it. Instead, she eyed his suitcase and the large bag he was holding. "Stop acting like an immature child," she chided him.

Draco followed her gaze.

"I don't need your fucking help, mudblood!" he hissed vehemently. Oh, if she knew. If she knew.

"Oh, really?"

Now it was her turn with the eyebrow.

"Bitch."

A look of hurt shadowed her face, and she looked down at her shoes for a moment. Something twinged in Draco's gut. What was he turning into?

As quickly as it came, Granger's expression disappeared.

She rifled inside her coat and came up with a thick letter. "This is for you – a little something from the Headmistress of Hogwarts."

"What, do you worship her or something?" Draco sneered. "Old woman should have died years ago, and you're no better than her slave."

Granger opened her mouth to say something in response, and then closed it. Draco could see her eyes turning a little glassy, before she wheeled around and briskly walked away, still clutching the stupid books to her chest.

Draco stared at the note. Why was McGonagall so damn intent on sending it to him? Surely this "job offer" wouldn't make a single dent on the lives of anyone who worked in Hogwarts.

He sighed to himself, and suddenly, he was so tired. Would he go home, or would he sleep on a bench in the park? Right now, that was the biggest decision he had to face.

As Hermione walked back home, she wiped the angry, unshed tears that threatened to spill on her old Gryffindor scarf. What did Malfoy think he was? The king of the universe? He didn't deserve anything that he was given. He certainly didn't deserve the job. Many other people just wanted to make a difference in the wizarding world and actually help students, and there Malfoy was, wanting to be rich and famous and powerful.

She took out her keys and unlocked the front door of the Potter home.

Hermione took off her overcoat and unwrapped her scarf after setting her shoes near the entrance. Ginny walked in, talking to someone on phone. Hermione, in her current dreary state, still managed to marvel at Ginny's quick adaptation to Muggle technology.

"It's Ginny Potter, yes, who's calling?" Her voice gradually became muffled as Hermione walked up to her room.

"Hermione! Wait!"

"It was a wrong-number call," the redhead said apologetically, before taking one look at her best friend's face. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing. Everything's fine, except the fact that Draco Malfoy called me a bitch and decided that he was too good for me," Hermione shook her head. "It's fine, Ginny. It doesn't really affect me that much."

Ginny's face turned hard. "Oh, that Malfoy is going to get it."

"Wait-wait- what do you mean? Are you seriously going to-"

"How do you feel about revenge, Hermione?" Ginny said slyly.

It was the single worst place Draco had ever stayed in. The tiny bed inside the cramped room barely had enough space for him to stretch one leg. One leg! And he thought he would be better off without his lying, cheating, sorry excuses for parents. As much as he didn't want to admit it, Draco regretted leaving home. However, in a couple more years he would be thirty years old, and he didn't want to be caught dead still living with his parents.

He had grown so accustomed to the fine green-and-gold drapery that covered the expensive furniture in the Malfoy Manor that he could still feel the fabric beneath his fingertips once he touched the crumbling wood dresser in the hotel.

Draco brought his attention to the dingy fireplace that sat at the front of the windowless room. The small iron gates had been rusted over for years. Not even the cockroaches that infested the bathroom dared go near it, and that was saying something.

Draco hadn't thought about how much money he had to take from his family's savings account, and he soon realized that he didn't have enough. At first, he thought about taking Galleons, which his parents had more of than pounds, but what use would magical money have now that Draco had nowhere to go? he was, decidedly, not going back to the Manor. His pride had suffered enough already.

Fuming, Draco let out a loud roar and threw the mug he was drinking into across the room. Shit-quality coffee and glass shards slid down the walls, making him even angrier for some unknown reason.

Granger's brat face, the annoying lady who kept pestering him to accept some disgusting teaching profession in the school he hated, his own whoring, lying mother, his criminal father…. Draco could actually think of many reasons. He savagely kicked the armchair.

A knock on the door startled him. Draco held his breath for several seconds before he could restrain himself from ripping the door off its hinges.

He opened the door.

A young woman in a maid's uniform with dark hair and startling green eyes appeared in his vision. Astoria Greengrass, it read on her nametag.

Draco started laughing sarcastically and uncontrollably.

"Oh—so—they decide to send me a maid up here once they hear me throwing shit around?"

Unable to stop himself, he continued. "Look at this room! Look at me. For lack of a better metaphor, I'm the fucking room. Granger's bitchiness," he spat violently, "combined with that fucking piece of trash who did nothing to save Hogwarts from Voldemort, and my parents—my parents, who might sooner or later get arrested by the ministry—all make me want to fucking kill myself!"

Draco grabbed the girl's shoulders and shook them as hard as he could, blind with anger, and suddenly, her mouth was on his.

He let the girl do what she liked with him for a few seconds, before he flipped them over onto the bed, which sagged under both their weight. He let his shoulders relax, for the first time in days.

None of them noticed the small paper that floated out of the fireplace.

"I'm afraid, Miss Granger, that you've really got to track Mr. Malfoy down now," Headmistress McGonagall gravely told Hermione. "He hasn't responded in four days. I'm afraid something has gone wrong—"

"Excuse me, for interrupting, Professor," Hermione cut in. "But—are you really sure that you want to pick me to go find Malfoy? I mean, we aren't on very good terms, and the last time we saw each other, he called me a bitch."

She decided to let the part about being a slave for McGonagall slip.

"Hermione, I didn't expect you to be this immature," McGonagall told her. "Would you please just deliver the letter?"

Hermione was so tired of doing this. She'd been sent to find Malfoy more times than necessary now, and it was probably stressing her out more than her studies did. Speaking of which, she had to finish the textbook and return it to the library by eight o'clock. Holding her breath and closing her eyes until she counted to ten usually did the trick, so she did exactly that and took the parchment.

"Headmistress, I'm not even sure what Malfoy's whereabouts are exactly—"

The Headmistress then leaned into the young professor and whispered something into her ear.

Hermione nodded slowly.