A/N: Okay, I really should stop making promises at when a fic will be ending – I know I said this was supposed to be the last chapter, but that turned out to be a lie. It'll be the next one. That way it'll be ten, a nice round number. Thanks for sticking around and sorry for the long wait!

Chapter Eight

Three and a half years ago

The war ended on New Year's Eve. The reality was that she could have slept for months into the New Year, but instead she was here, after 12 hours of exhaustion-induced sleep, cramped into the largest venue they could find that hadn't been reduced to smoking rubble.

It was a victory party. Everywhere she looked, people's faces were shiny with tears, their hands glued to whatever booze they could find, trying to somehow transform their grief into triumph through some alcoholic alchemy. They would celebrate today. They would sleep for weeks on afterwards. Then they would wake up and try to refamiliarize themselves with the world – reacquaint themselves with routine, with clocks, with walls, with rules. This all the while knowing they would mourn over the dead for the rest of their lives.

After knocking off a few hours of her sleep debt, Hermione had taken a long, glorious shower. After months on the run, she had forgotten how it felt to have hot, running water on her skin. She lathered herself and cried, rubbing herself raw, wishing there was some way she could wash the war off of her completely. But when she looked across the room, past the masses of people moving and laughing, music blaring around them, she was reminded of how there were some things she would never be able to leech out from her pores. Not just the war or the stench of death, but the boy standing ten yards away from her. Him, too.

As she watched him from across the way, she had to tell herself how much she hated the smugness that radiated off of him. Her eyes traced the lines of his body, the curve of his skull, the pink scar peeking out of the rolled sleeve on his arm. Her mind was foggy from thwarted exhaustion and a sufficient intake of whiskey. God, she hated that she now even drank whiskey – worse, that she liked it. Her first taste of it had been from him – from the hot, moist cavern of his tricky little mouth, all of those months ago. During the war, she had always wondered where he'd been able to steal whiskey from, seeing as how they had often found themselves in some of the most godforsaken, forgotten corners of the world, before she'd found his flask. It was easy to figure out then. It had been enchanted never to run out of whiskey, of bloody course.

He had been in conversation with Astoria Greengrass for at least ten minutes now. He had only sipped from his glass of whiskey twice. Hermione stared at them and wondered where in the depths of hell Astoria had crawled out from – along with the other socialites, she reckoned, Astoria had been hiding out. Perhaps in a well-stocked, lush basement six feet under the ground, far away from the destruction. She didn't have the sickly underskin like the rest of them had, from lack of sleep and poor nutrition and mental exhaustion. No scars or physical disfigurements. She was still as ripe as the day she'd bloomed. She had been well taken care of.

Hermione finished up her drink, knocking it back. When she refocused her gaze, she was only slightly jarred to see that Malfoy was now watching her, too, with a low slung smirk on his lips.

"Fucking disgusting prick," she muttered to herself. She turned around to get away, to get some air, when she walked into Ron. She teetered backwards, caught off balance, and he reached out, grabbing her by the waist and pulling her to him to steady her.

When she looked up at his face, he had a lazy, heavy-lidded smile. His breath reeked of alcohol.

"Oi, Hermione. You having fun?"

"I guess so," she said. She glanced down, noticing that he still hadn't let go of her. "You?"

He chuckled and raised his glass in his other hand. "This helps," he said.

"It seems to be," she agreed. A couple squeezed past, nudging them, and caused her and Ron to be pulled even closer together. She stiffened when he leaned in.

"Hey," he said against her ear. "You smell really good."

Suddenly, there was a flash of Malfoy in her mind. Malfoy kissing her neck, telling her how good the dirt smelled on her. She stepped back, pushing her hands against his chest, before he finally let her go. She stumbled backwards into another group of people, causing them to spill their drinks on each other and loudly curse at her.

"Hermione, what's the matter?" he yelled above the music. He looked utterly confused and distraught. "I thought… we…"

There was a white noise in her ears. "Sorry, Ron, I think I need to get some air."

Then she was off. She propelled herself towards the exit, haphazardly pushing through the people, ignoring their complaints. She didn't stop until she was out of the building, and when she was, she pinned herself to the darkest corner and she sat down on the floor and held herself. She needed to breathe. She needed the world to stop spinning. She needed to stop tasting the whiskey on her lips.

She felt sick. She leaned herself over and stuck a finger down her throat, but there was nothing. Two and a half glasses of whiskey and they were in her blood now, locking up her mind, closing off all the exits. Before she knew it, she was sobbing. How she could be so sad and so happy all at once, she couldn't begin to understand.

Perhaps she should have kissed Ron. Could she have allowed herself to get lost in him, the way she let herself with Malfoy? Would it have worked? It was clear Ron loved her, after all. Even through all of this, there were moments when she would catch him looking at her with something that looked a lot like longing.

But no, no, she was in no shape to be loved. Or to love anyone. Not properly. Not yet, not so soon.

By the time Malfoy reached her, she was glad she wasn't crying anymore. The tears had almost dried up. Her face was numb from the cold.

He didn't say anything to her, just brandished his wand and recited a warmth spell over her.

She didn't look at him. Her eyes burned a hole into the distant plains. "Stay away from me."

He didn't move.

"Are you fucking deaf, Malfoy? Go away. Go back to Astoria. I'll bet she'll know how to suck you off just fine. Granted, there won't be the same thrill of Death Eaters coming to execute you at any moment, but I figure your imagination's vivid enough for the both of you."

He laughed. She wanted to hex that laugh. Watch it explode into a million pieces, and blast it away to Mars.

"That's rich, coming from you," he said to her.

"What the fuck do you mean?"

"Weasley getting all handsy with you, is what I mean."

"Oh, fuck off," she spat.

"That's the third time you've said 'fuck.' I must have you truly peeved, don't I, Granger?" He said it so proudly, like a cat licking itself for leftover blood after a hunt – which is why she stood up, stepped in front of him, and slapped him.

He looked at her for a moment, unsurprised, his eyes instantly darkening from rage. Then, before she could lie to herself, she barreled herself into him, fingers burrowing into his hair, and kissed him.

Always quick on his reaction time, he kissed her back. He pinned her against the wall, and she gasped for breath as she undid the button of his trousers. He, on the other hand, hitched up her skirt and ruined another pair of perfectly new panties, tossing it away behind him on the snow. When he slipped inside her, their moans easily swallowed up by the distant noise of the party, she tried to imagine that he was Ron, but it was difficult. Every time he plunged himself inside her and it shook her core, all she could do was remember that it was him, Draco Malfoy. She had subconsciously memorized every part of him, in every slant of light. Even the feel of him inside her, swollen against her walls, she couldn't separate from the fact that she hated him but deep down, wouldn't have had it any other way.

This was her secret. Buried so deep inside her, she only caught its whisperings when she was allowed to be honest with herself. Add Malfoy into the mix, and it would be her undoing.

When she came, she muffled her cry against his shoulder, her body trembling, her muscles tightening, her bones going slack.

When they were done, he buttoned his trousers and she magically repaired her panties before slipping them back on. She was still slick between her thighs and it made her incredibly self-conscious. He stood in front of her, covering her in case someone happened to pass by, which was something she wondered if he intentionally did.

"Astoria's nothing," he said to her, suddenly, with the emotional depth of a serving platter. "No one."

She looked up at him. If only she had allowed herself to listen to what it was he'd really been trying to tell her, if only she'd ever thought it was actually ever possible. But the truth was, even if she had seen the glimmers of truth behind it, it was still too faint. She was still too jaded by the old world. They fucked each other in dark, forgotten places. Hardly ever looked at each other in public. This was a shameful thing, what they did. Not something worth defending.

If the way he kissed her was in code, she refused to have the key.

"That's too bad," she told him. "She's pretty. You two would fit. In a sickening way, of course, but you'd fit."

He just stared at her, his hair mussed, lips swollen, face half-lit by the distant, filtered lights. "Right. Astoria. And me."

She brushed past him, walking back towards the party. "That's right. The perfect Pureblood girlfriend you've always wanted."

She didn't know how to translate the lump in her throat or the emptiness in her chest, so she didn't.

That night, she didn't see Astoria with Draco again.

ooo

You've got to forgive yourself.

Forgive yourself for wanting him.

For entertaining the inconvenient.

For being human.

Pansy's voice had become an insufferable echo in her head. How had that happened? Pansy Parkinson (sans the Thomas at the time) had been cruel to her at school, sure, but was never more than a slight annoyance due to her trivial status as an instigating cameo in her life. So how had it become that it was now Pansy's irritatingly wise, crisp, moneyed voice that had become the narration to her undoing?

Hermione downed her third whiskey for the night under the watchful eye of Harry Potter, best friend and local bartender supervising her recent alcoholic binge. He made a few cocktails to a group of scantily-clad women before he gravitated back over to her. He had been wearing the same expression for the past hour, one of half-concern and half-amusement. It was rare for him to see Hermione Granger so disheveled. Or so lost.

"Another, please," she yelled above the cacophony of people, swallowing down the burn in her throat.

"Hermione, you might want to slow down," Harry said, leaning closer to her so that she could hear. "Your liver hasn't suffered this kind of abuse in a few years. Maybe give it some time to catch up?"

"Harry, if I wanted your advice, I'd have asked for it," she said. Down the bar, a group of men burst into laughter. "Another whiskey, please."

"Yes, another whiskey for the lady, and I'll have one as well," a deep voice said, as a figure occupied the spot beside her. Harry coolly took in the man next to her, giving him a nod, before setting out to make their drinks.

She must've felt some kind of shock, seeing the fine bone structure of Blaise Zabini's face at a bar like this, much less beaming down at her like she wasn't halfway to getting sloshed – but whatever she felt, it didn't register. This was the intended effect of her recently-instated alcohol consumption.

"Draco told me that you quit the firm," he said, turning to her. "Which is why, I imagine, you haven't received any of my owls. And here I thought you weren't responding because you were completely repulsed by me." Cue the genetically breathtaking smile.

Hermione picked up her fourth whiskey, ignoring the look on Harry's face of suspicion and curiosity as he slid a few beers down the bar. "No, not repulsed," she said. Just in love with somebody else. "Did you receive the memo against in-company fraternizing as well?"

"Ah." He set down his glass. "Well, I received a version of it." He paused, before looking up at her again, as if in thought. "Draco can be very territorial when he wants to be."

She snorted. "Yes, well, you'll be happy to know, then, that he's shit and left the pot," she said. "He left on Thursday. Packed up his shiny little office and his birdlike secretary and went back to headquarters. I'd be off the moon about it, too, if I hadn't made the rash decision of termination."

"Not quite, Granger. Draco made it quite clear you could have your job back at any time."

Hermione snorted. "Right. Ha, ha. Very funny, Blaise."

Blaise was shaking his head. "I'm serious. He can be cruel, sure, but not heartless. Have a talk with your associate Wendelin if you don't believe me."

Hermione stared at him, and he took a long sip of his drink, one part of his mouth quirked up in a smile. "What I don't understand is you seem to have this perception of Draco that is completely contrary to the way you look at him."

She turned away. Her tone was sharp. "Don't."

"I get it. It's none of my business. However, I came to see you because I wanted to tell you," he said, his voice lowering to a gentlemanly murmur, "if things don't work out with Draco, and you'd like a night out being admired by someone like me, feel free to send me an owl." He stood up, giving her a muted smile. "You have a good night, Hermione."

He slapped down a few Galleons on the counter and nodded to Harry. "For the lady's drinks, for the rest of the night."

Then both Hermione and Harry watched as his broad shoulders disappeared through the crowd, barely noticing the awestruck gazes of the women he passed.

"Generous," Harry said, nodding to the path he had cleared. He jingled the Galleons in his hands before he pocketed them. "He definitely left enough to get you nice and wasted for about three uninterrupted days. A real gentleman, that one." He disposed of Blaise's empty glass behind the bar. "Didn't even stick around to carry you home like I'm predicting we'll have to."

"Don't worry," she said. "I don't intend to get sloppy."

Harry chuckled. "Nobody ever does."

Hermione opened her mouth to protest when she caught a flash of strawberry hair from the corner of her eye, and suddenly, Ginny Weasley was beside her, looking effortlessly stunning in a pair of strategically well-fitting jeans and a silk top. She was radiant and beaming, leaning forward with her elbows on the bar.

Hermione took a long drink.

"Harry, was that Blaise Zabini I just saw coming out of your bar?" she asked.

"Funnily enough, yes."

"Doesn't he know this is the lions' den?" Ginny said, before they laughed, and Harry began making her usual: a kind of sugary, colorful cocktail that Hermione had never had the stomach for.

"Hermione, what's the occasion?" she asked her. "You're certainly looking. . . quite glazed."

She had been avoiding Ginny like the plague. This was because despite Pansy's insistences that there had been no infidelity on anyone's part, she still felt guilty – even with the fact that Ginny was known for dating her fair share of successful, handsome men.

"I'm celebrating my unemployment," she said, "and the end of Malfoy's tyranny." Hermione quickly excused herself from the bar, telling her that she just needed some air. This was becoming increasingly true, as it seemed the crowd had multiplied tenfold since she'd last checked, and everywhere she turned there was a body trying to flag down one of their four bartenders for a drink. She pushed through them all and exited through the side door.

She found herself in a damp alley. There was a dying light on the wall a few yards from her, flickering and buzzing pathetically.

As she leaned against the wall, trying to steady her swimming thoughts, a small voice pushed itself to the forefront. It wondered where Malfoy was, what he was doing, and if he was completely done with her, like he said he would be. If he could so easily control his thoughts from wandering over to her with a will power she did not possess. If he was in his obscenely large manor now, reclined in a mahogany office, drinking whiskey, regretting her. Or perhaps he was fucking the brains out of some new woman on his silk sheets, as if meaningless sex was ever the thing to deter inconvenient longings.

And she was here, freezing her tits off in the alley of her best friend's bar. If she hadn't spent the past two weeks in her pajamas reading bad crime novels, she would have claimed this as her new low.

She went home soon after. Harry pocketed the rest of Blaise's generous charity and – much to her chagrin – had pre-arranged a Portkey for her to get home. "The last thing we need is you getting splinched," he said, as he pointed over to a box of beer coasters in the corner. "Sorry I couldn't make it anything fancier, like Malfoy's decapitated head."

She stumbled into bed, but not before she rummaged through her drawers looking for the owls he had sent her, years ago. It was proof that she also had a habit of lingering in his thoughts. Or, at least, that she'd done so, once upon a time.

The first said only one word:

Granger.

Then the second, sent just minutes after the first:

Talk to me.

How funny that last owl was, she thought. She and Malfoy were so specifically adept at words – meaning: the only time they ever used words was if they wanted to hurt each other.

ooo

The morning she owled Wendelin to ask exactly what the status of her employment was – Blaise had been right; Malfoy had marked her off as 'on vacation' and due back anytime she wanted –, she lay in bed and thought about Malfoy. Truthfully, she did this a lot. In some ironic way, she missed him. Except maybe it wasn't so ironic. Maybe it just was what it was, and she was out of reasons to pretend otherwise.

She had a pile of crumpled owls in her rubbish bin. Some had been the result of a late night drink and a sloppy bout of bravery, and some she had penned in the light of early day, with a cup of tea in the other hand. She'd yet to send any of them, but they all seemed to evoke the same sentiment, which was that she wished she could be the girl who could be with him now. The girl who even knew what that would look like. Something great, she imagined. Some days she could get lost in her own fantasies of how it would truly be like if they had agreed to start again on neutral grounds, to unfetter themselves from the murky, charged past.

Mostly, she fantasized how it would be like to kiss him in public. To hold his hand in the street. To see for herself how his eyes could look beneath a startling blue sky, under the warm, shining sun. To talk and not mean to hurt each other, for once.

Someday she would be that girl. But she had to be this girl first. And as this girl, she had to let go, cut the wires, give in. She had to slay the part of her that still had guilt as a nightly bedfellow, and the self-loathing she'd carried on from the war. She had to turn her heart inside-out.

She had to figure out how to let the light back in.

ooo

She eventually mopped herself up, readjusted her backbone, and went back to work. Malfoy's office was gone by then, and so had any other trace of him, aside from the large, silver M hanging in front of their building. After an awkward reunion with Wendelin and a lengthy meeting about what she had missed during her "vacation," she went back to doing what she did best: micro-managing.

At least until she received a mysterious owl graced with the Parkinson-Thomas seal with the address of a nearby café, a time, and two words: Be there.

Why, exactly, she decided to go, despite the fact that it was Pansy and she was an insufferable meddler, she couldn't say – except that Hermione was here now, having a cup of coffee, waiting for a flash of a pristine ivory pantsuit.

She was just brushing off the evidence of a breakfast croissant when Pansy sat down in front of her.

She greeted her with an icy look-over. "Good. You're here."

"Thomas," Hermione said exasperatedly. She noted the way Pansy's eyes narrowed at the crumbs on the table. "What's this about?"

"I see you're back at work, finally," Pansy said. "The whole unemployment look didn't suit you. Neither did the smell."

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Look, I haven't got much time to sit here and listen to your tiny jabs about my life. I've got a pile of work on my desk with my name on it. So cut to the chase, please."

"Fine." Pansy pursed her lips, and then unpursed them. "I'm pregnant."

Hermione blinked. She then squinted at her noticeably flat stomach beneath her form-fitting white dress, trying to discern if this was all some big joke.

"Knock it off," Pansy snapped, in a low voice. "I cast an illusion spell so the bloody paps keep their nose out of it. I'm not an idiot."

"You? Pregnant?" Hermione repeated, unable to wrap her mind around it. What would this sodding baby look like? Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? "That's allowed? As in, in the grand scheme of the universe, you are allowed to procreate?"

"Oh shut up, Granger. I wasn't ecstatic about this meeting, either. But this is marriage, or so I think it is."

"I still have no idea—"

"Dean," she said slowly, talking to her as if she were stupid, "wants you to be godmother."

Hermione stared at her. Had the world just begun to rotate backwards?

"To your unborn child?"

"No, to our baby mandrake – yes, to our fucking unborn child," she snapped.

"But why me?" she stammered. "Why not Ginny, or one of your lot? You must have some snobby relative that'll visit once every year and teach the baby averse morals."

"Don't get me started, all right? I've already had my pick."

It slowly dawned on her, then. She swallowed down the acid rising from her throat. "Right. Let me guess – Malfoy."

There was a hint of pride in Pansy's eyes at the fact before she seemed to realize, yet again, just exactly why she had summoned Hermione here. "Just say yes, for Merlin's sake. It's just a baby. You'll come to the birth and then visit once every year to pretend to bond with it."

"Wait a minute," she said. "Come to the what?"

"Listen, Dean said you're his first and only choice," Pansy continued, firmly. "He said you're one of the best people he knows. Highly debatable, of course, but it's his choice. And… I love him, which is why I sacrificed my morning to sit here with you – not to mention shave off a good portion of my dignity – and ask. Frankly, I think he's testing me. He thinks I'm a snob."

"Except you're not really asking, are you?" Hermione scoffed. "In our entire conversation, you haven't asked me a single thing."

She shrugged, pleased with herself. "Asking isn't really my style."

"Right," Hermione said. "You entitled lot simply aren't born with that kind of capability." She sighed, watching Pansy's face. "Fine. I'll be godmother. If only as a favor to Dean so that his child doesn't grow up to be an unfeeling monster."

For a fleeting second, Pansy almost smiled. This was before, of course, Pansy suddenly rose to her feet, as if she couldn't stand to be seen with her another second. "Dean will be glad to hear it. See you then."

She was just turning away when Hermione called her back. "Pansy, wait."

Pansy turned her head, one dark eyebrow quirked. A waiter passed by them, giving a double-look, as if she and Pansy having any kind of social tie was the strangest thing he'd seen all morning.

"How is he?" she asked. "I mean, have you seen him?"

It had been several weeks and she hadn't seen him in the papers. This was her feeble attempt at trying to make sure he was still alive.

"I did, when I asked him to be godfather," she said, bristling only slightly. "He looked the same as he always did. Works too hard, drinks alone too much. But he's not the one who was in his pajamas for three weeks."

"Two weeks," Hermione corrected under her breath. "Does he know that Dean wanted me to be godmother?"

"I might have mentioned it, in passing." She shifted her bag on her shoulder, her tone softening just the slightest bit. "Goodbye, Granger."

It was only as she walked away that Hermione realized she'd forgotten to ask just how far along Pansy Parkinson-Thomas was.

"Godmother," she sighed, leaning back on her chair. "Shit."

Thoughts? Please review!