Chapter Twelve

Changes

Jane rushed down the stairs in a flurry of confusion.

"I'm late!" she yelled at the open door of the study as she rushed to put on her coat and hat. The weather had finally started to cool down enough to allow her to layer her favorite accessories and she was taking full advantage of it.

"It's your first day." Draco drawled lazily from the study's open door. He leaned on the door frame and still holding the book he had been reading. "I'm not sure that a good start." He teased and raised an eyebrow at her.

"It's not!" she snapped at him as she grabbed her purse and started digging into its depths, looking for her car keys. "They're not here." She panicked, but Draco had already closed his book, crossed the room and retrieved the keys off of the end table on the other side of the living room. He walked back to her calmly and held them up for her. She closed her eyes and took a couple really deep breaths before taking them from him.

"You're going to do fine," he said, putting his hands on her shoulders and looking at her closely. She was dressed to impress in a professional style muggle dress. Her coat and hat matched both her dress, purse and the impossibly high heels that he wasn't sure how muggle women walked in without breaking their ankles.

"You really think so?" she looked up at him with the expression of someone out of their element. He had spent enough time in the Dark Lord's presence to sympathize with that feeling. Luckily, Jane wasn't in service to the darkest wizard in recent history though. She was just starting her new position with the Ministry of Magic's newest department, The Magical Cooperation for Muggle and Squib Relations, MCMSR for short. He thought that the name was ridiculous, but the department itself was a good addition to the ministry's roster. It was about time that the magical world started allowing the Squib and Muggle relatives of Witches and Wizards to have some more say in the way that things went. He knew that just because a Squib married a muggle didn't mean that their children wouldn't have magical abilities.

"I know so." He reassured her. "I mean, not everyone gets approached for a job without even applying. You're going to do great."

"They only asked me because you're doing so well here. I'm not sure that's a true testament to anything I'm doing because you've been so cooperative." She fidgetted with the keys in her hands, and glanced looked at her watch again.

Draco couldn't help himself but laugh. "Trust me, being in the ministry you'll get to hear about who I was before all this." He gestured to the room around them. "You're going to find out just what a testament it is that I've been cooperative for you."

She smiled a little and nodded. "Thanks." She gave him a quick hug and then rushed out the front door.

Draco watched the door close behind her and turned to look at the empty house around him. The last time that he had been alone in the house was the night of the doomed clubbing trip, and that didn't really count since as soon as he stepped inside the house he had found Hermione there waiting for him. Resigning himself for a quiet day he went to the kitchen for snacks and settled in for a long day.

Hermione rushed up the hallway, her mind running a mile a minute as she tried to mentally sort the paperwork that she knew was waiting for her in her office. She had a nightmare of a mess since one of her cases refused to touch anything that he deemed beneath him. Which, unfortunately, seemed to be everything. She had tried just about everything to try to convince the man to start embracing the muggle lifestyle, but it wasn't working and the board was pushing to have him sent to Azkaban since he wasn't willing to work with his host at all.

She was rushing forward, rummaging through her briefcase when she ran into someone. Sending both her and the other person sprawling out on the floor of the atrium. She was already apologizing when she looked up and saw Jane getting to her feet and apologizing as well.

"I'm sorry!" Hermione said as she flicked her wand and straightened out Jane's dress and hair from where the fall had disheveled them. "I wasn't paying attention to where I was going."

"It's alright," Jane said looking down at a sheet of paper in her hand. She looked slightly defeated. "I'm so late already, and I can't find where I'm supposed to be."

Hermione looked down to see a map of the building, but like all things, in the magical world it wasn't still like a Muggle map would have been, but instead seemed to be moving and flashing with the names of the different departments, their offices, and the ever-changing set up of the offices and labels and names.

"MCMSR?" Hermione asked. She had heard that Jane had been offered a position in the new department, but hadn't heard if she had accepted it yet. The meeting about Draco's case was an uproar over the fact that his host would be leaving him alone during the day to come to the ministry to work. Hermione left work that day more than happy to have Kingsley on her side. Without him, Jane would've never got the job offer at all, and even though she was Draco's host, this job was still a great opportunity for her. Draco wouldn't be living with her forever.

"Yeah." She sighed and looked down at the map again. Hermione caught a glimpse of two rooms on the fifth floor flashing read with warning labels on them.

"Come on… I'll show you where you need to go." Hermione said, and the two women set off across the atrium towards the proper lift.

After depositing Jane off with her new boss and explaining her tardiness, Hermione had rushed off to her office to start sorting through her workload, but her mind kept wandering to Draco. She kept wondering what the man was doing. Did he have enough in the kitchen for a decent lunch? Or, she wondered if he was bored. She knew that he still wasn't over the loss of his father and the conflicting emotions that he had about the man still plagued him as well. Not able to stand it anymore, she sorted through the most important of her work and left the rest for another day. Making sure that everything was in order, she stood and taking a deep breath, she apparated.

As soon as she materialized in the study she knew that something was off. The whole house was dark, and it was the middle of the day… it shouldn't be dark. Pulling her wand out of her jacket pocket she stepped forward out of the study to see all the curtains were drawn and that the tv was on. Draco was sprawled out on the sofa, under a large blanket and she could smell popcorn. He wiped his eyes quickly before looking at her.

"This movie… sucked!" he said with conviction. "I'll never let you go," he said in an imitation of a woman's voice and mimed holding onto someone, and then he just opened his hands. "She. Let. Go." He looked over at Hermione with true shock and horror on his face. "And there was room for both of them! She didn't have to chuck him off into the damn ocean!"

Taking another look at the television she recognized the music from the end credits of Titanic and burst into a fit of laughter. "Seriously?" She asked pointing at him to the tv.

"Seriously!" he barked back as he fished the remote out from under the blanket that he was covered in and turned the tv off with it. Hermione laughed as she flipped on the lights and went to sit on the other end of the couch with him. He drew his legs up for her to sit but stretched back out for them to set in her lap as soon as she was seated. She gathered up the blanket and pulled it to where it was covering her legs as well as his.

"I ran into Jane at the ministry. She was hopelessly lost." She looked over at him to see that he wasn't wearing a shirt. She tried to make her eyes look at his face, but she couldn't help herself but admire the sculpted bare chest sitting across from her.

"You help her find the department?" Draco was reading the back of a soda bottle, he was so intent on it that it looked like he was memorizing the ingredients. She still felt a blush creep onto her face as he gave one of his signature smirks, he knew that she was looking.

"Of course I did. I'm not sure who's idea it was to give the muggles a magical map, but those poor souls are in for a culture shock today." They both laughed as they imagined of what could be happening inside of MCMSR today. "You going to hole up in here and watch romances films all day?" She reached down to where the bowl of popcorn was sitting and grabbed a few pieces. She popped a few in her mouth and threw the others at him.

"I don't have anything else to do," Draco said as he cut his eyes up to hers. There was no malice in his statement, but she could hear an undertone of sadness.

"Let's go do something…" She said.

He raised an eyebrow at her, "And what are we going to go do?" he asked.

"I don't know… muggle stuff." She answered as she pushed his feet off of her lap, making him sit up in the process. "Go get changed. Today, you're not going to sit around here moping and watching sappy romances like a little old lady."

He laughed as he stood, stretching his arms over his head. Hermione felt her breath catch as she watched his lithe muscles reveal themselves with the movement. He looked down at her and she snatched a random book off the end table to try to hide the fact that she had been watching him so closely. Her face turned beet red as she heard him chuckling as he went upstairs to change.