So wow this chapter is actually out pretty fast!
Anyway, I got a bit of writer's block, and ended up switching to a new POV for the second half of the chapter, so yay, exploration in new perspectives!
"Hey, Hermione. You busy?"
She whipped around in shock, chair clattering behind her, wand tight in her hand and a curse halfway past her throat.
It was Ron.
"Y-You startled me," she said, setting her chair up again.
He shrugged, taking another seat for himself without asking, clattering limply into it like he was part ragdoll.
This was one of those times when she was surprised how much energy had left him. Ron was a person who crackled with energy, life, strong emotions. Now, he was listless, eyes always heavy with sorrow and a bit distant, like they were seeing somewhere near the horizon.
She had tried to love him, told herself that Ron and her were meant to be, even while she grew so paranoid she'd wake up from her nightmares he couldn't fix and think he was a stranger, while he dug his grip into the past that had held so much more than the present-his brother, Hogwarts, times when being the Best Friend of Harry Potter was a distinction and not a forgotten sidekick position.
She had broken it off six months ago. She forgot when she did so that while she was struggling to love him, Ron had deeply loved her.
Her throat felt thick for a moment as she looked at another clipping and pushed another pin into the place on the map marking Wicked. While waiting the time until the meeting with Zabini, she was currently trying to find out the locations Draco was most likely to be on a given night.
"I was wondering-"
"I'm busy, Ron, sorry," she said, as his voice dwindled.
"...lunch..." he sighed. "'Mione..."
"I am busy! I've got to find a missing Malfoy so the Ministry can afford to rebuild Hogwarts and pay us at the same time! I don't have time to eat, or-or date, or-and I've said before, we're just not compatible!" She fiercely shoved another pin in the board, listening to Ron hesitantly walk off, then shook slightly, trying to shove away her frustration and hurt and self-directed anger.
She needed to work, after all.
She scrounged through the articles, pins in place, searching for any more clubs she could have missed, then quickly shoved it all aside, looking at the results of the root-cause test.
The sores, the manes, the disintegrating hooves all had one source, with a scattering of other illnesses, a strange bacteria, mutated or made by magic. Hermione groaned.
She hated those. New diseases were a pain to create vaccines for, and needed a name and to be studied in labs and mutated ones had to be renamed and catalogued and evidence on why it was not just some fluke and was actually a new disease and either way it was too much paperwork to just cure one damn illness.
Looking around the lab, she spotted no one else, no people standing in corners or working, but quickly cast out a charm to check. No one. The lab was as empty as it sounded. She began to write notes. Her handwriting was messy today, halfway unreadable, loops and dents only she knew made the letters they only barely represented. She needed more sleep, or more caffeine, and she knew which one she wasn't getting, but unfortunately as a sterile environment, it lacked a coffee-maker.
Hermione decided to complete her work in a coffee shop. Muggles made good coffee, and she didn't trust the coffeepot in the break room. In that respect, Hermione was not alone. According to Kingsley, the machine hadn't really been more than lightly rinsed in eight years.
Some days, she swore there was something swimming in it.
. . . .
Blaise believed in impressions. A good first impression meant a second impression with more room to breathe, and a good second impression was being well on its way to being invited to dinners and earning favors.
So Blaise, before his meeting with Auror Granger, decided to get a cup of muggle coffee. He doubted he would drink any of it, he wasn't so desperate as to actually want anything so cheap as to be sold to a coffee shop, but perhaps the logo would convince her that he doing well with muggle relations, and that whatever this meeting was about was not his fault.
He dearly wished his young secretary had remembered to ask. He'd only had her for a few weeks, and she was a hard worker and good with people, but often forgot these little important details.
Blaise only barely had the presence of mind to keep moving when he entered the shop. Apparently, Granger had felt the need to come all the way out to Plymouth, to get coffee, here.
Fuck.
Now he'd actually have to drink it.
Blaise hated coffee. He didn't like the taste, the smell, the texture, the nothing, but it was expected of someone running a company to drink it, so Blaise did so on occasion at key times.
Of course, it was also expected that he be having affairs with his secretary behind his girlfriend's back, but Blaise wasn't going to delve that far into clichés. His old secretary had been thirty years his senior and in fact his childhood nanny, and dear little Emily was just that-dear. She was more a pet than affair material. Besides, there was no way Blaise would ever hurt Gabrielle that way, Azkaban had-Blaise shook his head heavily before he thought of that looming prison, and stepped up to the register to break cliché. Fuck it, he was getting tea. The paranoid bint could take his first impression as it was. An overworked man holding a company up by a rusty chain and drinking tea with absolutely nothing added, not thrilled to have this conversation.
He sat in the booth, watching her work for a moment. He looked at her notes upside-down, deciphering the messy script.
"So Hogwarts is only half-standing and we're wasting money on a few ill centaurs. I'm pleased to know the Ministry thinks so highly of the oldest magical school in western Europe."
Her head snapped up, breathing fluttering and her eyes wide, hand on her wand. In front of all these muggles. She was paranoid.
"If we might start the meeting early and get it over with, Granger, I think we will all be much happier for the day."
"Not here," she said, voice tainted by fear. "Too many muggles." She quickly threw all her work into a cloth bag, standing up. She was frazzled. When her back was turned, Blaise allowed himself one quick smirk.
She led out to a park near one of the universities, settling down on a picnic bench before laying out a variety of recording tools, all disguised as small objects as she did so. That was fast and fancy work, illusion spells took lots of concentration and finesse.
Blaise snorted and looked unimpressed. Sitting down gracefully, he sipped at his tea and waited. He would not be the one to ask her to get around to it.
"Eleven and a half months ago, Draco Malfoy went missing from his home." She spoke calm, in clipped tones and short words, professional. "Despite appearing in a weekly column denoting the varying humorous effects of a stalker-reporter watching a man drink himself to death, his mother has been unable to contact him, his residence is unknown to all, and she wishes to bring him home before he dies of alcohol poisoning. I got the short straw and have to be the one to find him. To do so, I am seeking information from his peers to hopefully understand a bit of how his mind works. So. Just tell me about Draco."
Draco- constellation, dragon, Latin. Tall blond grey eyes idiot friend, brave fool. Broken glass.
Blaise's thoughts became briefly jumbled, short descriptive words attaching themselves to the name like a poetic definition. A memory of Azkaban danced in. He saw them leading out Draco, they were in the same cellblock, he remembered the lifting of the Dementors' energy and cold as Draco passed, stumbling, arm bleeding, red on his neck, laughing. He clutched a long shard of something in hand and the guards were treating him like he might explode any second and take down the building with him.
The other time, sickness swept through, Blaise remembered being taken out himself, coughing up so much blood it dribbled over his chin and onto a uniform he'd suddenly realized was so stained and ripped, and even now Blaise couldn't remember where he'd gotten those scars and tattoos on his chest.
He'd been chained to Theodore, and chained to Rodolphus, and Draco had been so ill, one of the first victims he couldn't even walk-the guards dragged him.
When he came out of quarantine, Draco hadn't come with them and his last thoughts before the Dementors stripped them away again was cursing Draco, jealous that Death would take that blond prick and not him.
Blaise suddenly realized that he'd been staring at Granger with a catatonic expression for a few seconds, and said the first thing that came to mind.
"I grew up with him, my mother often married men who were invitees of Malfoy events. So was Theodore, but I doubt he'd tell you that, he doesn't like remembering his childhood. Draco was spoiled, for being a Malfoy, being a pureblood, for being a wizard and for being a future soldier of the Dark Lord, his father was quite sure of the last one."
She obviously wanted him to just get on with it, so Blaise dragged the story out in other directions.
"He trained him. All our fathers trained us-at least till mine died in an unfortunate and coincidental series of events, then my mother married another Death Eater and it was right back to it. Between us, we have enough mental scars to keep a mental healer in business for fifty years. I'm sure you'd love to see that, Granger, another person more messed up than you so you can claim you're normal."
"I need Draco's life-story, not yours," she said, shaking her styrofoam coffee cup. There was a light sloshing sound.
"So Draco's messed up, thanks to his dear father, but spoiled, so he's always been a bit confused, messed up in the head. He thinks weird, but he remembers a lot, and he's always been a bit of a girl magnet, hard as it may be for you believe, your celibateness. We all know you didn't date Weasel for the good sex-lif-" he leaned back as she threw herself forward, growling out curses. He put up a light shield, invisible, and watched them dissipate. "Now, Granger, you're breaking the Statute. Do you want to Obliviate all these children?"
She put her wand away.
"Draco was friends with Fleur Delacour, did you know? He made all the boys in Slytherin jealous that year. Sounds like something he'd brag about, right? Well, he did at first, but it stopped soon enough." He frowned, and found himself saying, "Slytherins hold masks and fronts all their lives. I've been friends with Draco since we were in diapers and yet I know more about his opinion on you than I do about him himself. There's only a few select people we'll ever open up to. If you want to know about Draco, go talk to the part-beast."
"Veelas are humans with inborn magical animal-like abilities, not beasts, Mr. Zabini." Granger gathered up her things quickly. "Not that I could expect you to understand. How many Slytherins can see past their own noses with all the masks they put on?"
She walked away quickly, eyes constantly shifting around, before she pulled out her wand and apparated.
"Farther than you'd think, Granger. I want to know what you're really up to." He turned on his heel, apparating into a grand room with the magical windows displaying what it would look like if he were currently thirty stories up instead of three-most of the company building was underground, like most wizard buildings.
Gabrielle, a bit tiredly, looked up from reading a newly delivered contract. "How went the meeting? Should I hire a lawyer?"
"Let's go somewhere tonight, Gab. How does Wicked sound?"
Narcissa could find anyone when she applied herself. There was no way she couldn't find her son. He had to warn Draco that the aurors were planning something.
And besides, he hadn't taken Gab anywhere in months.
For anyone who's wondering, Gabrielle is not Fleur's sister Gab, she's an OC. Rest assured that Blaise is not dating someone half his age.