Thank you for reading my story. JK Rowling owns Harry Potter, not me.
Chapter Two
Luminous stars reflected in Hermione's brown eyes, as she lay in the middle of the street outside her home. It was half two in the morning, and she had conjured a mini galaxy of stars above her head with her wand, a spell Ginny taught her. She was cold, she was exhausted, but she wanted to think.
Ron was at home, snoring probably, in the burrow. If he woke up and she wasn't by his side again, he would worry, maybe. She loved him so much her heart felt like it breaking with the amount of it. But she hated how he had acted tonight.
(Flashback)
Ron hurtled towards them, his mouth ajar and eyes filled with fire.
"What the fuck are you here for Malfoy? You sick sadistic little-"
"Ron, you don't understand-" Hermione jumped in, but she wasn't able to finish, Malfoy was the one to interrupt her this time.
"Don't talk to me like that, Weasel! Go back to slobbering over Fire whiskey with your friends."
"What did you say to me?!" Ron demanded.
"I told you to-"
WHACK. Ron's fist clumsily smashed into the side of Draco Malfoy's face, sending him staggering. Hermione jumped infront of Ron, her face pleading as she held onto his shirt and looked deeply into his blue eyes, she saw the fire in them calm.
"Ron! Stop! He hasn't done a thing honestly, he-"
Crack.
Hermione spun around to find the garden empty, Draco had dissparated. Her heart fell, if had just stayed for two minutes…
Ron took her arm, tugging her back to face him.
"He's gone now Mione, t-that little prat. W-why did he even come?"
Hermione frowned, tears welling in her eyes. There was no point talking to Ron when he was in this state, no point in trying to explain that his school enemy had come to redeem himself and attempt to slowly blur the past six years of hatred into a memory, not make into the present.
Ron wouldn't remember anything she would say to him right now, or understand it. She sighed as he pulled her into a tight hug, wrapping her small arms around his muscular waist. "I love you." He murmured.
"I love you too."
(End of flashback)
The stars blurred through the tears in her eyes and she smiled, she wasn't even sure why. This was ridiculous.
War was over, but Voldemort was still clutching and grasping on people's lives. He was still in control, and it made her stomach turn.
Death Eaters, War heroes, Dumbledore's army, The Order of the Phoenix, everyone was still judged by how they were when Voldemort was in power. Everyone still avoided interacting with each other.
But people had changed, Hermione could see it.
Those who fought with Voldemort were relieved to be normal once again. Not all of them, but some of them, most.
Some people, of course, were still living in darkness, hating any wizard who didn't have a 'pure' bloodline and wishing they still had a leader to follow, someone who was always much worse than them, and made their petty crimes morally acceptable to themselves.
But then there was the people who could finally breathe again, the people who wanted more than anything to forget their past and the way they lived. Maybe at some stage they supported Voldemort, but a lot of them- like the children of death eaters, the ones who attended Hogwarts, were relieved not to continue to follow further in the footsteps of their parents and be purely… evil.
Hermione had despised Draco Malfoy throughout all her years in school. He was the worst type of Slytherin, big-headed and ignorant. And for the most part, he had been just that, a big-headed bully.
But bullies always had their reasons, and Hermione reckoned Draco was jealous, and scared. She had always been consumed with hatred for the blond git, but since sixth year she had seen a different side to him, a regretful, scared, jealous side. He didn't want to be bad anymore, not when being bad got to mean more than just childish bullying. He wanted to change, and this was his chance. She could feel it. But it was made clear to her by her boyfriend that it was going to be a lot harder for him to be accepted as a changed man than she thought.
Hermione sat up slowly, it was three in the morning now, the rain began to fall lightly on her pale upturned face, refreshing and cooling her hot skin.
She apparated back to the burrow five minutes later, her hair beginning to frizz and her makeup long gone. Her parents would never know she had been sitting outside their house for three hours, the daughter they still couldn't remember.
Ron was asleep; his lanky body sprawled out on his bed, half covered by blankets. Hermione undressed, brushed her hair, and clambered into the bed beside him,
His arms found her cold body and they enclosed around her, pulled her in closer to him as he slept.
She smiled, closing her eyes, thinking she could be happy just like this forever. But the familiar nagging in her heart that always started at night time began aching as she slipped from consciousness.
It ached for her mother, who had forgotten about the little girl with brown curls and gappy teeth. It pained for her dad, who would never remember how she hugged him so tight when he dropped her off on her first day of school, or how he wiped away tears of pride as he watched her toddling off with her 'brave' face on, the one they had practised. They didn't remember her laugh, her freckles, the endless cards and pictures and stupid little school art projects that she made over the years and had presented to them with a smile.
They didn't, they wouldn't ever remember how she used to mispronounce words when she was little because of her lisp, or how she used to tell them she wanted to be an astronaut. They didn't remember that she liked one sugar in her tea or that Christmas was her favourite holiday or that September 19th wasn't just another day of the year. They didn't know she was theirs.
They didn't remember her… at all.
After the war, she and Ron had gone to find them, bring them back to London. Hermione had tried and tried to undo the memory loss she had inflicted upon them, but nothing ever worked, and Ron had comforted her as she broke.
Her heart ached for the family she lost, but also for a new reason.
It hurt for the blond boy, who now was somewhere alone in London, his own heart aching. Not because his parents had forgotten him, but because they wished they had forgotten him, and so did everyone else.
Draco apparated outside his apartment block in London, hand clutching his aching jaw. Weasley had hit hard, he had almost a more fierce right hook than Hermione had, when she hit him in their third year.
He scowled as he climbed the grimy stairs to his room, and when he unlocked his door, a foul smell hit him. God, he needed to clean up this dump. Collapsing onto the lumpy couch, he summoned a glass of water. He had no house elf now, and he knew nothing of cleaning spells. Brilliant.
How did muggles live?
He realised it was quite ridiculous to be almost 20 and have no idea how to clean up, it made him despise himself even more. He didn't want there to be anything he couldn't do.
That night he fell asleep on the couch, his thoughts numbed by muggle alcohol.
xxxxx
The next day was a rainy one, and when he felt like a fool standing infront of the girl in the red, supermarket branded t-shirt, his hair dripping.
"The cleaning supplies?" she repeated.
"Yes, and I need to know which ones to buy." He glowered at her, and she shrunk back.
"Okay Sir, this way."
She showed him where the cleaning stuff was stacked on shelves, and pointed him towards the ones he would need.
"Okay, you may…. Leave now." He told her coldly, before adding, "Thank you." He was not exactly sure what else to say, and he realised he had talked to her like a house elf.
What is wrong with me? He thought as he piled a lot of colourful, weirdly named bottles into his basket.
When he was finished paying, and his groceries were thrown randomly into two plastic carrier bags, he walked home again in the pouring rain, missing the warmth of the grocery store.
He would make himself some tea, perhaps, and read the back of the bottles to see what exactly it was he was supposed to use these muggle cleaning potions for. What he wasn't expecting, when he reached the top of the staircase to his room, was to find Hermione Granger sitting against the wall across from his room, just like the way she sat in the garden.
"Hermione?" he asked, and her eyes flew up to his.
"I thought you were ignoring my knocking." She said, awkwardly and embarrassed.
"Your neighbour came out and told me to shut up."
He glowered at the door across from his, stupid neighbours.
"Why did you come here?" he asked her, not even bothering to ask how she had known where to find him.
"I wanted to, em, well, talk to you." She almost whispered.
Draco scowled; did she mean what she had said when she told him she would help him?
He hoped she did, he wasn't even ashamed of his hope.
"Do you want to come in then?" he asked.
She nodded.
Embarrassed, he unlocked his door and led her into his apartment. It was smelly and dirty and dark, and even though Hermione tried to hide her disgust and wrinkled nose, he caught a glimpse of it.
"I'm sorry." He muttered under his breath, "About the mess, I bought cleaning supplies today."
Hermione nodded again. "Don't apologize Draco, I realise you probably weren't expecting visitors."
He laid the grocery bags down on the counter and opened the curtains.
Hermione stood awkwardly by the couch, he had no idea what to say to her.
"This is lovely." She gestured to a huge glass fronted antique looking bookcase that stood by an old television.
"Oh… well I'm not exactly sure what it's used for, it was here when I moved in and I think its electric-"
Hermione cut him off.
"No, not the television, the bookcase. It's beautiful."
His face looked puzzled, and he walked towards it before she could, not wanting her to see what was inside it.
"Thanks, I brought it from my old room."
Hermione smiled.
"What did you want again?" Draco asked, his eyebrows rose.
"I – well, I wanted to talk to you about the… plan. The plan to help you change. But if it's not convenient I can always leave." She told him.
"Oh… no!" he exclaimed. "I mean, its fine. But before we talk, would… I mean… could you help me? Do me a favour?"
"What is it?"
"Help me clean up?"
Hermione looked shocked.
"Of course I will." She said.
"Do you know all the cleaning spells?" he asked her.
"Yes. But before I show you them, I think it would be good to teach you how to clean the muggle way. You bought the cleaning products?"
"Yeah."
"Then let's get to it."
Hermione awoke to find Ron gone. Ginny informed her that he and Harry had gone to play Quidditch. She told Ginny to tell Ron she was gone shopping, then showered, dressed, and apparated to London.
To find Draco's house, she used a simple wand-compass spell that would make her wand spin in her palm, telling her which way to walk to reach what she told her wand was 'Draco Malfoy's Apartment.' It was simple enough.
She climbed a dingy, grey staircase that smelled like pee, and found herself in a hallway lined with doors. The wand pointed her all the way to the one she needed. She knocked taintivly.
"Draco?" She called.
No answer.
She knocked again. No sound came from inside the apartment.
"DRACO MALFOY?" she called loudly, banging with intensity on his door, 313.
A door to her left opened and a fat, bald mad wearing boxers and an oversized dirty blue t-shirt emerged.
"Shut the fuck up!" he called to her, and she cringed back against the wall, nodding. When the man dissapeered back inside his apartment, Hermione slid down the light blue, peeling paint of the wall. She would sit here until he acknowledged her presence. She didn't want to knock again, the man that had come out looked scary, this whole building gave her the creeps. It was a rough place. She had her wand, of course, but she wouldn't want to use magic on a muggle to defend herself, more over – she didn't want there to be a reason to have to defend herself.
It was half an hour later when she heard her name being called. "Hermione?"
She looked up and saw him walking towards her, shopping bags clutched in his pale fingers and rain clutching his hair.
"I thought you were ignoring my knocking." She told him, feeling awkward and embarrassed, "Your neighbour came out and told me to shut up." She stood up
Draco's eyes seemed to darken and he glowered at the door beside his.
"Why did you come here?" he asked her.
"I wanted to, em, well, talk to you." She said, thinking now that this may have been a bad idea. How much had Malfoy had to drink when he asked her to help him?
Draco scowled; did she mean what she had said when she told him she would help him?
He hoped she did, he wasn't even ashamed of his hope.
"Do you want to come in then?" he asked.
She nodded.
Inside Draco's apartment, she felt uncomfortable and out if place, knowing he probably didn't want her here.
"I'm sorry." He muttered under his breath, "About the mess, I bought cleaning supplies today."
Hermione nodded, at least he was planning to clean up, she couldn't imagine he could feel comfortable living like this. "Don't apologize Draco, I realise you probably weren't expecting visitors."
Hermione stood awkwardly by the couch, everything she had planned to say to him suddenly vanishing from her mind.
"This is lovely." She gestured to a huge glass fronted antique looking bookcase that stood by an old television, wanting to break the intense silence between them.
"Oh, well I'm not exactly sure what it's used for, it was here when I moved in and I think it's electric-" Draco thought she was talking about the TV, Hermione cut him off.
"No, not the television, the bookcase. It's beautiful."
His face looked puzzled, and he walked towards it with a worried expression.
"Thanks, I brought it from my old room."
Hermione smiled, he obviously liked to read. She was curious as to what it was he read.
"What did you want again?" Draco asked, his eyebrows raised, pulling her form her thoughts.
"I – well, I wanted to talk to you about the… plan. The plan to help you change. But if it's not convenient I can always leave." She told him.
"Oh… no!" he exclaimed. "I mean, its fine. But before we talk, would… I mean… could you help me? Do me a favour?"
"What is it?"
"Help me clean up?"
Hermione blanched, not expecting that question. The great Draco Malfoy, asking for help for the second time in two days.
"Of course I will."
"Do you know all the cleaning spells?"
"Yes. But before I show you them, I think it would be good to teach you how to clean the muggle way. You bought the cleaning products?"
"Yeah."
"Then let's get to it."
Hermione set him to cleaning the fridge, and she started on washing the dishes. He watched as she transformed the toaster to a radio, and turned on a song. She really was amazing at magic. Rain lashed heavily against the window, mixing with the music.
He turned back to the fridge and continued wiping the shelves, hearing her sing along to the song under her breath, her voice soft. He turned around to see her dancing, swaying side to side in front of the sink.
The song changed from singing to face paced lyrics being hurled out like warped poetry from a rough voiced man, and she didn't sing along with this part. He didn't know muggle music, but he liked it.
He liked the way she danced.
"Hermione?" He called.
She jumped.
Embarrassed, she turned to face him, realising she had been singing not moments ago.
"Yeah?"
"I finished the shelves."
"Okay, well pack the groceries into the fridge then."
He smiled at her. Actually smiled. Not a smirk or an ignorant sneer. He smiled.
Hermione smiled back, feeling so much happier now that she came to visit him.
When he turned away to get the groceries, she watched him for a moment, watched how his head nodded to the beat of the song and his big hands placed the food carefully on the shelves. Rain cascaded onto the grey window. She was glad to be helping.
He was glad she was helping, realising he probably wouldn't have been able to do this alone.
Hermione, he now believed, was not all as bad as he thought she was. For years all he had seen her as was a stuck-up, know-it-all. He hated her because she was Potter's friend, and Potter was a swine. A good for nothing 'celebrity' who used a measly scar to get special treatment. Now he realised how stupid he had been. He was an immature school boy, but now he considered himself a man. He realised It was ridiculous to hate Harry Potter, he realised he had been jealous. Jealous of a boy who was famous for killing Voldemort, the reason his parents were criminals.
He didn't care about any of that anymore. It was irrelevant hatred, and he regretted it.
When they finished the kitchen, the cleaned the sitting room, the bathroom and his bedroom. They cleaned the whole apartment, and Hermione washed everything that could be washed in the washing machine- the cushion covers, the curtain, his bed-sheets, the towels, his clothes, they all smelled like vanilla and violets now. Draco couldn't have thanked her enough.
Hermione beamed at him when they finished.
"WE did it!" she laughed, he laughed too, almost forgetting himself.
"Yes we did! We actually did!"
They collapsed onto the now tidy couch, absent of bottles and food wrappers.
"So…" he trailed off, "Can we start the plan to help me change, for real?"
She looked into his pale gray eyes, eyes that had looked at her despisingly for years. But all she saw was gratitude and hope.
"We've already started, Draco." She told him. "And it's already working."
He smiled a small smile that barley hung on his lips at all, and Hermione's heart swelled.