"Well Granger, are you going to stand there all day boring holes in my back with your eyes or are you going to say something?" She jumped as if struck. He had been facing away from her, how could he….
"It's your shampoo. All these years and you still smell like apples."
"Do not use Legilimency on me, Malfoy," she ground, but it hadn't felt like a spell, there had been no sense of him near her mind. Her theory was confirmed when he laughed.
"So, you do still speak. I was beginning to wonder. I don't need magic to know when you're around, I never did. Besides, my sentence is up at midnight. I assume that's why you're here, isn't it? Are you an Auror now, Granger, coming to tell me I'm free, but not to step a foot out of line? Or did you just want to see how the mighty have fallen."
She laughed aloud, and the bitterness of it made him turn finally, putting down the tool he had been working with fastidiously in place with a neat line of others. He looked curiously at her then, truly looked, and his brow furrowed in puzzlement.
"You've changed, Granger. That holier than thou look isn't in your eyes anymore. Can it be you've learned that your damned Gryffindor nobility isn't the balm you thought it would be? I'll admit you do look good this way, but then, you always did." She had braced for the expected insults but his quiet observation took her by surprise.
"I'm surprised you would have ever noticed, Malfoy. How could you deign to look at a filthy Mudblood other than to ridicule?" There was a flash of something in his steel colored eyes, something that was both frightening and alluring. Gods, she should never have come. Even in his youth Draco Malfoy had been a force to be reckoned with, now as an older, and much more experienced man he exuded a quiet sense of danger that put her back up like a nervous cat.
"Those were my fathers words, Granger, I don't use then anymore, I haven't for a long time. Why are you here?"
"I wanted to give you something. I didn't think the Ministry would be, hmm, willing to relinquish it without an argument so I decided to procure it. Happy Release."
She heard his breath suck in as she handed him the slim black wand, and like the first time he held it she saw a luminous silver blue light shine briefly from his skin. The aura was the color only the most powerful wizards ever produced.
"How did you get it?" She shrugged.
"It wasn't that difficult, trust me. Good luck, Malfoy. We all deserve at least a bit of that." He caught her hand as she went to turn away, and she saw something slip behind his guarded expression.
"Wait. Have a drink with me, for old times sake. I know we were never friends, but Gods, it's been years since I've spoken to anyone from the wizarding world. It's…"
"Wearing?" she supplied. He nodded.
"Let me just close up the shop, and there's a pub not a block from here. I take most of my meals there nowadays, it's simpler."
Merlins beard, of all the complications in life these days this one I hadn't forseen. She'd been watching me for days, the purchased wards and protections I wasn't allowed to cast myself had given me the alarm as soon as she arrived. And yes, I had smelled her shampoo, that alone would have told me a thousand times that it was her. Now she's walking beside me as if nothing ever happened all those years ago, that we didn't go through hell and back to save a world that I am now not so convinced really should have been saved. What the hell was I thinking, asking her for a drink as if we're simply old acquaintances? But what else are we, really?
They found a booth in the back and ordered pints. Hermoine felt oddly surreal looking at him, sitting there in muggle clothes, with a muggle beverage in his hand, so obviously comfortable in this setting that once he would have been appalled to even think he could be caught in. His wand sat on the table between them and he seemed almost reluctant to touch it, and his expression was completely unreadable.
"I need to know how you got it." he finally said, his voice quiet. "You and I both know Kingsley Shackelbolt had no intention of giving that back to me, ten years or no. I'm quite sure he was hoping that by now someone would have been accommodating enough to kill me."
"I daresay that's true. I broke into Kingsley's office and stole it. What's he going to say, that the wand that he was supposed to have given back to you and didn't was stolen?" Despite his increasingly dark mood Malfoy couldn't restrain a chuckle. She cocked her head to the side curiously, the corners of her mouth tilting up slightly.
"What?" She shook her head.
"I think that might be the first time I've ever seen you really smile. It looks good on you."
Don't let that get back to the wizarding world, will you? Malfoys don't smile, at least not where anyone can see it. We smirk, we sneer, and sometimes we even snarl, but never smile. We're terrifying, aristocratic, purebloods, you know."
"Well, you don't smile for good reasons at least," she grimaced. "But I notice it didn't strain you so much to do it. Has living in the muggle world corrupted you, Malfoy?"
"My parents would certainly think so, as would most of their friends. Maybe they're right, Merlin knows I haven't thought of any of these people as worthless muggles for a very long time. Well, not most of them, at any rate. I certainly don't see what benefit our supposedly 'pure' blood has done for my family."
"It's probably a good thing you think that way, because if you intend on coming back you're in for quite an adjustment."
"Ah yes, saint Potter saved the world with the weasel, the mini weasel and the snotty know it all at his side and now the purebloods are reduced to living like common folk, with the gods in their heaven and all right with the world, right? That's how the papers were playing it when I was sentenced. To hell with Serverus, and me, and let's be sure not to mention that Dumbledore allowed a severteen year old muggleborn witch into that den of vipers…" he cut himself off, gripping his mug tightly, nostrils flaring. Gods, Hermoine thought, he really was rather magnificent in a rage. How the hell had he gone form the sneaky ferret of SLytherin to this blond avenging archangel? Well, maybe archangel was putting it a little thick, nephilim might be the better description for a reformed Malfoy, handsome as sin and still the son of the devil himself. But as usual, she had issue with what came out of his mouth.
"Are you out of your tiny mind? Draco Malfoy, have you completely cut yourself off from the world? Do you really know nothing of what has been going on for the past ten years?" He looked a bit taken aback by her vehemence and scowled.
"I read the Prophet for a time when I was first sentenced, and I kept in touch with a few people, but you know as well as I that the Order never really liked me, they simply saw me as a useful tool, and the Death Eaters would have liked nothing more than to string my corpse from the highest window in my own manor.
"I found that there was not very much left for me in the world after the war, so I went to find a new world that wouldn't constantly remind me that I couldn't use my magic, someplace where effectively being reduced to a squib wouldn't matter a damn. I had to start over, woman, I had nothing left to build from."
"I…I'm sorry," she said quietly, wincing at the expression on his face; and looking into her caramel eyes he could see she truly meant it. "Lashing out has become the norm for me, I suppose. I never thought of how it must have been for you. Everything happened so fast, and then we were all being treated like heroes and Harry and Ron and the rest wanted to move on, and it was like we never lost anyone, like it didn't matter as long as we beat Voldemort, and believe me, I wanted him to die, I wanted him to die slowly and painfully for what he did, and I was caught up in it for a time, too. By the time I realized what was happening it was too late." Draco frowned as her tone turned tense.
"Too late for what?" She sighed.
"The war was too frightening, the fact that the Dark Lord was able to survive for so long terrified people in a way that an ordinary monster never would. When people become frightened they make bad choices. There was a tremendous outcropping of hostility to pureblood families, even those who had never been Death Eaters, and there was a vendetta so paranoid against Death Eaters that everyone lived in terror of being arrested. The Ministry saw the civil unrest begin to grow and authorized bounties on the heads of werewolves, vampires and death eaters. That worked for a while, but people never seem to get enough reassurance, and when the paranoia started again they formed the Marriage Laws to stop it. Well, that or to take everyone's mind off their other problems."
"Marriage Laws? What…" she held up a hand.
"Now when a person reaches the age of twenty if they are not already married they are required to do so. Moreover, two purebloods can no longer marry, only pureblood with muggleborn. If you don't chose a spouse, well, the Ministry steps in and does it for you."
"And who did you chose, Granger?" he asked, a muscle suddenly jumping in his jaw, his eyes going from warm grey to cold steel in a second. "Saint Potter himself? Or maybe the Weasel?" She snorted.
"Not bloody likely. Harry and Ron had stopped speaking to me by then. They couldn't be associated with a former Death Eater, you know, no matter the reason I took the mark. They were very reasonable about it, explained that while they personally could vouch for me it just cast a distasteful aura on the Order itself. The Ministry informed me that because of my service to the Order they wouldn't arrest me, but let's just say life became, unpleasant. There were no jobs for me with the decent wizards and the death eaters obviously hated me. I started to hunt bounties, it was the only way to make enough galleons to get by. Then I got my owl informing me that I was to be paired off with Goyle. I left the next day."
"Christ Granger, you're a bloody war hero! That Mark is a battle scar. They should have been throwing roses at your feet! How the bloody hell…"
"How is your case any different? Who really knew, Draco? Who? You knew, and Severus, and Dumbledore, the rest of the Order was told we were doing something important but not what; are you surprised that they didn't really back us up once they saw what we had done? What we had to do to maintain the illusion? Severus was cleared, posthumously, for Dumbledore's murder, Minerva saw to that, though even that was difficult. Thank Merlin Severus didn't live to see what became of all our sacrifice."
"Obviously things have gone to hell in the proverbial hand basket, but you still haven't answered my original question. I hate to sound like I'm looking a gift horse in the mouth, Granger, but it's not as if I can picture you stealing my wand out of Shackelbolts office and then tracking me down to give it back just out of a sense of fair play. Care to tell me what's really going on here?"
She flushed and dropped her eyes, and he nodded slowly. There was always an angle, that was one thing that never changed, be it the muggle or the wizard world. He felt his lip curl in a start to the trademark Malfoy sneer and consciously forced his face back into calm lines. Whatever had made her come seeking him out must be quite desperate and probably illegal. Now what the hell?
"Spit it out, woman, don't make me have to use legilimency to get it out of you." She actually hissed at him, and he raised an eyebrow.
"Try it and see what happens. Do you really think you could penetrate my mind considering my background? I lived and breathed Occlumency for years against Voldemort and was never caught, and I should feel threatened by a wizard who hasn't held a wand in a decade?" His eyes narrowed. Gods, how was it that this witch always managed to piss him off?
"Shut it, Granger. I may be out of practice but let's not forget who it was that had to play the part of Riddle's head inquisitor. If you recall there was far more to my job then shouting "crucio" whenever the Dark Lord wanted some entertainment." She paled, then two hot spots of color hit her cheeks remembering all the times Voldemort had decided that Draco would be the recipient of that particular curse, with her as the vessel to administer the punishment since it amused him to have a mudblood as a Death Eater to rub in the nose of the pureblood maniacs like the Malfoys.
"Draco, I," he waved away her words with his tattooed hand.
"Save it woman, I know, you didn't want to do it, it was part of the spy game we played, etc etc. And that's even the truth, so far as it goes. You apologized long ago. Just tell me what you want, what got you out here to use my wand as a bribe for me to help you." At that her eyes grew wide.
"Help me? I don't need your help, Draco, I'm doing just bloody fine on my own. I want the Ministry cleaned out, the whole bloody lot of them. The whole thing needs a good cleaning and an attitude adjustment. You might be the only one who could even make a start at doing that. I wanted to ask you to use your influence and your money to try to fix the mess that the politicians have made now that you'll go back to take your place in society."