The table at 12, Grimmauld Place had a perfectly circular stain on it; Hermione Granger put her glass of whiskey in the exact same spot every night. Three cubes of ice in one dram. At only eighteen, she had to admit that she was a bit of a connoisseur. She was toying with a glass of Teeling's Single Grain, twisting the glass around in place.

She didn't hear his footsteps, but she knew he was there.

"Mudblood." He whispered. There had never been such relief in those two syllables, as there was then.

"Broken jaw, two fingers and a long scar down my side. I'm alive, though." She said.

"Concussion, three ribs, and I just had my nose fixed." He replied. "I win."

"Yes, it was a particularly difficult mission for you, wasn't it?" She snapped. "You almost killed Percy, did you know?" She asked, looking up at him.

"The world wouldn't miss another Weasley." He muttered darkly. Hermione knew they took shots at him whenever they could.

"What right do you have to criticize human beings, Malfoy?" She smiled cruelly. "You stopped being one long ago, if I remember right."

He glared darkly. That was a secret he'd told her one night when they'd just been talking. He told her about how Voldemort had forced him to murder his own mother, and when he didn't, made her watch as he tore the life out of her. He had stopped being human that day. That had also been the day he had come to the Order, a broken boy, forced to be a man.

"Nice one, mudblood. Perhaps I should let your location slip the next time I go back to the manor." He said, staring.

"Oh, but that would defeat the point, wouldn't it? You'll never find anyone like me, Malfoy. You can't exist without me."

"And that's the root of all our problems, isn't it?" He half-smiled, pouring himself a dram. That night, there were two stains on the table.


He couldn't bear to see his family dying around him, so he ran away.

She was with Harry when they heard the news. She shouldn't care, not really. The battle at Hogwarts was won, but the war wasn't over. Voldemort wasn't dead, but they were so close. And Ron hadn't done a thing to help. He had been spending his days outside a brothel, spending the little money he had left on hookers and cigarettes.

They were going to try – again – to bring him home, when they found him sitting with his back against the dirty wall. His eyes were closed, his head tilted back, and somebody had tucked a cigarette in his front pocket, and written on the side – he asked me to poison one.

They had fought hard, and Hermione and Draco were the last ones back home, following the wizard that had apparated Harry back to the headquarters. He was badly injured, but they knew it would be only one battle, one last fight, before it was all over.

The pretense was that they needed a shower, but they just needed the company. Nobody questioned them as they walked very close together, almost touching, but not quite.

She shut the door behind them, and suddenly it was Hogwarts again.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry." He breathed against her lips.

"Me, too." She kissed him back.

"You're not wrong. Blood doesn't matter. You're not wrong." He chanted whenever he came up for breath.

She gripped handfuls of his hair while he left fingerprints on her waist, trying to hold on to this reality.

Neither needed anything more – buttons popped and clothes tore as adrenaline pumped through both of them. His hands never stopped moving – pushing, probing, asking. They were still standing; he had her pinned against the wall, so she wrapped her legs around his waist and in one quick move, they were one. His sounds were animal as they moved together, furious.

He kept kissing her, biting her. She just raised her face to the ceiling, letting her tears fall off her chin and onto his broad chest. She couldn't bear to see his tears – she was begging him to be the strong one.

They finished together, stumbling backwards, falling onto the stripped down bed. He was still breathing hard when he told her, "I'm going to have to kill you tomorrow."

"Yeah, I know." Her heart beat faster. "Do it, okay? One of us has to live. One of us has to tell the world our story."

"I don't want to." His voice broke. "I...I'm..." He couldn't finish his sentence, but Hermione knew.

"Me, too." She sighed, wondering why the universe wouldn't let them be.


"I love you." He whispered, knowing she'd heard him.

Their wands lay discarded, lost in the battle. It was just them in this corner. He had her pinned against a wall, and she kicked with all her might, but she wasn't strong enough. He held a knife against her stomach, praying for the strength to do it. Quick as a cobra, she whipped out a dagger of her own, twisting it into his side. Shocked, his knife arm jerked, and they both fell backwards in a bloody, messy embrace.


Hermione Granger was rich.

Once the war ended, she got richer and richer – the biographies, the guest lectures, and the public appearances alone set up a college fund for the great grandchildren she'd never have. She took up jobs with the ministry, projects here and there. She liked to vary her jobs – she'd tried her hand at desk jobs and gotten utterly bored. She tried adventures like Charlie's – dragons and other monsters – and realized adventure no longer held her attention. At twenty five, Hermione had seen most of the world, and nothing fascinated her.

Hermione Granger realized then, that the day she had killed Draco Malfoy, was the day she stopped being a human being.

The aftermath of the war had not been kind to the wizarding world. Racism was all but eradicated, but people were still grieving for their losses. The heroes put on a brave face for as long as people needed them to, and then hid. Nobody blamed them – they had seen too much, and they'd been far too young.

Hermione, for her part, bought a penthouse in Mayfair. It was appropriate that her furnishings were green and gold. The oak table in her dining room, on one corner, had one dark brown ring.

She rarely left the comfort of her city home, reveling in the quiet company of her bookshelf and whiskey-rack. The grey sky was her companion, and the city beneath her gave her a sense of reality. There was no magic – at least not the shimmery golden kind she'd imagined as a little girl. The city sapped the glitter out of her life – she liked the grey of concrete. She liked grey.

She apparated back and forth between her house and Harry's country house. It was there that she allowed herself the luxury of fresh air. She swung wildly between dead inside and loving so hard that she wished she were dead. They never spoke of it, but he knew. She knew that he knew about her love for a certain blonde man, and she was almost certain he knew of her sin.

And that was why she loved Harry Potter – he was her comfort. She remembered a quote by Lord Byron, "There's naught, no doubt, so much the spirit calms as rum and true religion." He was like rum for her – going down slow and smooth, bringing soft sleep and happy dullness. The taste remained long after it was gone, and the memory was a friend.

Hermione Granger longed for whiskey.