Détraquée

by Hystaracal

"All her growth was the conveying of a corpse of hope." It was definitely the worst of times. Follow Hermione as she navigates through the quagmire: saving the world, getting top grades, falling in love, lust, and a whole lot of trouble; and comes out of it hopefully at least partially sane. (Super slow burn)

92. 92

A/N: I own nothing but this so-called plot

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Among the uncountable ways in which Hermione's Mondays have had a poor start, she would award 'receiving a letter from Cormac McLaggen' pride of place. There was nothing admirable about the way he had managed to distil his patented brand of obnoxiousness into a short and simple missive, requesting a meeting to "have a chinwag about the House-Elf rhubarb."

Her response, quickly despatched to avoid the rising tide of good sense, said: Six O'clock, Wednesday, at Finnigan's.

His rejoinder, arriving early in the afternoon while she was at work, said: Six O'clock, Wednesday, at THE LEAKY CAULDRON.

There was nothing charming about the way he had carved his aggressive enunciation into those three capitalised words. The reason for his insistence was far too obvious – Seamus did not allow the press into his establishment. Tom welcomed them.

Telling herself, over and over again, that to him, Ogden was Uncle Tiberius, was the only way she survived sending him a final confirmation.

If she could get him to sign before anything else, she could make a speedy escape. But knowing that creep…
Hopefully someone she knew would wander into the pub and she could sink her claws into them. If nothing else, she would use her galleon to summon Theo; the shop was near enough and he could spare a few minutes towards a noble rescue mission.

Hermione also had an abundance of Mondays that ended poorly.

Have another, you sweet thing.

Barros called for her.

…Only to make a show of putting her work away, as though keen to give the impression that Hermione had been the one to insist on an impromptu gettogether. Then she made a series of hand gestures – here's the church and here's the steeple – and set her chin on the pointed roof.

"Tell me," she commanded.

Hermione, the steadfast grim soldier, abided by that command.

"I'm going to see Professor Slughorn after work today," she added at the end of her report, "And I'm meeting Cormac McLaggen on Wednesday. On Saturday, I have appointments with the Managing Director of Ellerby and Spudmore, as well as the Editor-in-Chief of Phantomlight Publishing."

"Make sure you have something expensive and edible for Horace Slughorn."

"Already taken care of."

"And what after these meetings?"

"I… think it's done."

"You think it's done?"

"It is done. It's… ready. Unless you would like to look it over once more?"

"I couldn't bear to."

"There's one more thing," Hermione muttered, peering through the gap between Barros' fists to see all the people, "I'd like to submit it as an independent petitioner."

She was slow to glance upwards, but quick to register the understanding on Barros' face. She knew that Hermione knew about the Yaxley debacle. She knew that Hermione knew that she knew. It was one dreadful vortex of knowing, gathering momentum in the scummy pond of politics.

"What was that?" she asked, only to hear Hermione say it again.

Hermione said it again.

"Why?"

"I would like you to be on the bench, to have a vote." It wasn't really a lie.

Barros raised a withering brow. The church collapsed.

"And you think I will vote in your favour?"

Hermione was genuinely thrown back. She blinked.

"Well, of course!" she exclaimed.

At first, it was a twitch, almost like a tic. Then it became a quiver. Then it revealed what it truly was: A suppressed smile.

Barros' send off was predictably cutting and lacking in the fanfare of civility. But Hermione stood in the space between their offices with a strange, strange feeling. It reminded her of being summoned by McGonagall after she'd got herself involved in some mess or the other with Harry and Ron, for a special, private scolding. There was more disapproval, sterner reprimands, but there would be one point when the tirade would pause. Hermione would use it to her advantage, to put forth a weak defence for her conduct.

And there would be a twitch… almost like a tic…

Not even a quarter of an hour later, Hermione beheld a full, unsuppressed smile from Horace Slughorn. She'd stepped into his humongous office straight from the Ministry, and found him behind a desk, looking at her like he had been doing nothing but sitting in wait for a very long time. Fanned out in front of him were four FSA newsletters.

After much fanfare and inordinate gentility, he pushed all four towards her – he wanted her to sign them. What a world it was, where the cost of one of his signatures was four of hers. She clenched her jaw under an obsequious smile and got through it.

Three signatures and a box of pricey sweets, she mentally amended as she slid the box across his desk.

When they finally arrived at the point, he wore the same banal, tickled-pink look of wonder as when she used to recite verbose bits of theory that nobody else had thought to memorise.

"I hope you will lend your support to the cause," she completed.

His smile spread. Like cold hard butter that tears through bread.
Something something something. Ain't that a kick in the head?

"You know I have the highest regard for…"

Attentiveness suddenly trod on ice. It slipped. It skidded past blurring minutes, seeing nothing but a vividly coloured smoking jacket.

A crackling log brought things back into focus.

Slughorn Leghorn was blustering away, absentmindedly tweaking the lapels of his jacket. Firelight reflected off his scalp.

"—Surely you can understand…"

She placed the binder exactly where the newsletters had lain. A list of surnames like a row of crystallised pineapple.

"I'm meeting Cormac dayafter," she cut in with no attempt at subtlety. Between the behemoth sofas, velvet curtains, and general abundance of tassels, there was no place for it in that room. "I have a feeling his uncle Tiberius Ogden must have urged him to reach out."

"Ms Granger," he sighed, "You have great ambitions and wonderfully loyal friends. You will go far. I believe you will accomplish anything you put your mind to–"

"Harry suggested I name the contract after Dobby, and I agree. He saved our lives. We wouldn't have been here if it weren't for him. It's very important to Harry that we honour Dobby's memory and what he stood for."

"Undoubtedly. Cer– cert–"

"That night wasn't the only time Bellatix Lestrange might have got the better of me, if an elf hadn't intervened. Even here at Hogwarts… and that poor elf was killed, too."

"That's most unfort–"

"Can you imagine, Professor, that people have the effrontery to justify subjugating House-Elves by invoking the innate workings of nature… to me, who not long ago was accused of having unnaturally acquired magic?"

Slughorn blanched. Tiny glassy dots of sweat appeared on his head. It was almost as satisfying as if she herself had smashed a bottle over it.

"But it's so heartening to have the blessings of someone as influential and perspicacious as Madam Elena Barros."

She gave that name some time to disseminate before continuing –

"Mr Fawley – the elder, I mean; owner of The Ivory Grotto – was immediately on board. He even had the hotel's elves' living quarters spruced up, at my request."

Something was muttered from under a moustache that quivered. Hermione smiled.

"I'm sure headmistress McGonagall told you that Hogwarts stands firmly behind this motion. I can't imagine anyone who was present at the battle and witnessed how bravely the elves fought alongside us would be against granting them rights and a life of dignity."

That enormous, gregarious man was trying to disappear into himself by lifting his shoulders up to his ears. He watched her with beady eyes like a mouse peering out of a tiny crevice.

"I do hope you'll continue to subscribe to the FSA newsletter," Hermione said amiably, "And to its message of equality for all magicfolk, beings, and creatures."

He knew what she was doing. He knew that she knew that he knew. It was a bright green feather of knowing caught in a circulatory draught.

Slughorn's clumsy fingers caught hold of it and dipped it in a pot of ink.

Bent him to my will, didn't I, Draco?

Under a strong disillusionment spell, Hermione climbed down the stairs, dodging students who were headed down for dinner. Landing on the third floor, the sound of her footsteps changed. Her vision tunnelled and the walls refracted all her worries.
Hermione walked into the Hogwarts library, and when she became visible once more, she was smiling.

Madam Pince didn't greet her with any degree of fanfare, or even recognition for that matter. She glanced perturbedly at the permission slip that Hermione had cajoled out of Slughorn and said, "Fine. Go on."

It felt like a regrounding, a sprinkling of water on thirsty roots. The old half-thought that had reemerged as a whim during her morning run solidified – just as she needed it to. Something just for herself, a pet project, a retreat…

Her finger was a little boat bobbing over undulating book-spines as she sought something that went beyond Advanced Eccentric Enchantments and A Guide to Spell Modification. A challenging quest for someone who had scoured the restricted section many times over...

"Do my eyes deceive me? Ms Granger?"

Professor Flitwick hobbled lightly down the narrow path between two shelves, his limp markedly improved, his hat a bit off-centre, and his arms full of books.

Exactly whom she needed. She wanted to fall to her knees and thank the unplanned rhythms of the universe for finally being in sync with her. She ended up following Flitwick to his office, hurling questions at him through dinner, and having a late dinner with him in his office while still, hurling questions.
He bid her farewell at half past nine, as she slipped from his office to her living room with arms full of books and notes.

There, she spread everything out on the blue and white carpet, turning them into ships in the ocean while she was the demiurge looking from above.

People were inherently simple. That was it. Everything else – the multitudes and complexity they apparently contained – were gathered, nourished, and treasured the way Slughorn collected people of influence. Motivations were calculated, guile was cultivated, equivocation measured, cunning worn like a slimy armoury, shrewdness, fandango… all to keep from sinking in the scummy pond of politics.

Because life was so very long, fate was cruel, and hell was other people.

It was endless. Cyclical. Exhausting. Dispiriting. So stupendously, mind-numbingly boring.

Hermione closed her eyes and saw a bright white castle hidden amid the hills of Friedberg. A path from that castle led down to a cluster of cottages where students of Advanced Magical Studies stayed.

She would go there in three years.

Till 2003, she would put everything she had into ensuring her original plan for House-Elf emancipation came to fruition, one step at a time. By 2003, she would be where Kathy was now, and she would be ready for the REPTILEs.

Then she would take a year off, and let herself become the simple, hungry, gobbler of knowledge that she was.

Draco could take up potioneering, or arithmancy, or multiple courses like she planned to. At the end of a long day of learning, they'd share a meal in their cottage and talk about what they'd studied. They'd have Bavarian beer in charming little pubs, walk around, sit on benches, and look at views. They'd end up, always, in their soft, warm, Draco-approved bed…

The scene vanished like a curtain had fallen, revealing absolute chaos. The Room of Unbidden Things, where ideas were towers of old, yellowed newspapers, worries turned into howlers that screamed bloody murder, plans were bluebell flames hissing and darting around like feral snitches —

Tiny Tartan Hermione flickered into existence.

Silencio.

Arresto Momento.

Real, human-sized Hermione opened her eyes.

Parchment cut to size - Agglutino - Page 126 of The Laws of Charm Amalgamation -

binding or sticking - Spelling Solution takes eight months to brew

An orbit - set path - Hitch your wagon to a Star - Cohaeresco -

Page 73 of Properties of Charms and Complex Imbuing - Changeable infusion

Protean - like spokes of a wheel - ad - Paging Dr Granger -

A draught bath will take at least three weeks to be effective

Sonitus - controlled hovering charm - page 12 - Leviosa - deleo -

Green alarm clock — name on the back — — insum —

Lumos Rubicundus

Commutatio - Incepte - Testing testing - Sonorus -

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The day of Clementia's hearing was beastly cold. Barros' team was the first to arrive in the courtroom, barring the scribe.

Hermione, who had been up all night, became proficient in the art of yawning with minimal jaw movement. She found herself staring too long at things, entranced by the shape of light puddles, lulled by the sound of Kathy's incessant foot tapping. She was sitting in the bottom of a vial. Her eyes were watering.

Eventually, five plummy plum-robed plutocrats claimed their bench.

"Where are the representatives of Nimbus Racing Broom Company?" Ogden asked.

Many minutes went by and they still did not make an appearance. A bailiff was sent off to make inquiries.

The Spectre poured befuddlement draught into Hermione's vial.

Some half an hour later, when tiny bubbles had collected along the surface of her glass enclosure, the bailiff returned with a man wearing stuffy robes in a shade of grey that only Draco could look good in. He had a warbling voice that struck vibrations into the draught. Capillary waves danced above her head.

It was decided, by the esteemed representatives of the Wizengamot, that the pittance that NBRC was offering as compensation was perfectly sufficient for what Clementia had endured. Barros shot up and said it was not acceptable to the claimant. The grey man argued that the amount had been calculated in accordance with Clementia's salary and benefits in the year 1989. Barros' rebuttal was silenced by the arrival of a howling memo that declared time was up and the courtroom needed to be prepared for the next dispute.

A Mexican wave of shrugs made its way across the high bench. Oh well then. Another day then. NRBC was fined for causing delay and wasting the honourable Wizengamot's time – a sum that exceeded what they were willing to pay Clementia.

Hermione swam up to the top. Her balance roiled.

A sombre procession made its way upstairs, led by a deathly white Clementia and an openly incensed Madam Barros. Upon reaching the atrium, their despondent claimant begged off from engaging in further contriving and made a hasty exit.

In the lift, Barros began rattling instructions with the speed of a livestock auctioneer. Kathy was scribbling, scribbling, scribbling, Takumi disembarked on the next floor for he had been instructed to pay a visit to the NRBC office.

Hermione rubbed her eyes.

Rubbed them again when she was back in her chair and Kathy had run off to the admin office and Barros was locked up in hers. Rubbed them as she wrote a letter – coherency was questionable – she had to read through it multiple times.

By the time the work day concluded, her vision and movement had convinced her that she had wound up inside a painting by Chagall.

Shades of blue, a floating goat, Hermione grew a fishtail and flew to the owlery to send her letter to Ginny.

It was to Ginny, wasn't it?

She doubled back to make sure she had written the correct name on the envelope.

Hopefully by this time tomorrow, a mass boycott of Nimbus brooms would be underway.

Yawning as she carried a cup of tea to the study, Hermione surveyed the destruction caused by her all-nighter. Crumpled balls of parchment lay strewn all over the flat like the remnants of a brutal hailstorm. While she added two careful drops of revive potion to her cup, she observed the fruits of her labour: Four rolls of postcard-sized parchment, with a Quick-Quotes quill inside each.

Gulps of tea brought her out of an azure-tinted dreamscape.

It was time to conduct more diligent testing. Her methods kept escalating till she found herself running laps between the kitchen and study, stumbling often, and expending the burst of energy that the potion had bestowed.

Panting in the hall, she had no choice to admit that she needed assistance.

Every other avenue discarded (which meant that she didn't consider them at all), Hermione wound up in another, exponentially more decorous hall, pacing towards Draco's room.

She knocked; he opened the door in a semi-undone condition, like she had caught him in the middle of undressing. Four buttons loosened, shirt untucked, hair scattered like it had just experienced the brush of a woollen jumper.

"What happened to you?" he asked.

What had? She hadn't given much thought to her own condition. 'Ragged', she imagined, might've been a good term for it.

"I've been scrambling," she huffed, "From room to room."

"Why have you been scrambling?"

"I'm… it's… I need your help."

There was a horrible, plaintive undercurrent to her request. 'Desperate' was the perfect term for it. It delighted Draco.

"Could you come with me, please?"

He pushed his door open a little wider. "I can help you well enough right here."

Her condition made it so that it took her a few seconds to understand what he meant.

"Not that!" Heat imbued an already heated body. "Please, just come with me. I've put something together, and I need someone to help me test its limits."

Draco was no longer delighted. The gap at the door narrowed.

He said, "There are only two things for which I am willing to get dishevelled and out of breath. You've ruled out the first, quidditch is obviously out of the question, and you mentioned the word scrambling… so, no thank you."

A blatant, thoughtless refusal like that did not sit well with Hermione. His lidded, supercilious expression didn't help matters either. She reached out, grasped his arm, and began pulling him down the hall.

"Excuse me?!"

He said a lot more with added colour, and she was able to completely disregard his sputtering till, unfortunately, he remembered the size-and-strength advantage he had over her. He brought them to a halt just a few steps away from the door to the sitting room.

Hermione spun to face him, brimming with pugnacious determination.

"Why must you always kick up a fuss?"

She dug her heels in the ground and tugged. The aforementioned size-and-strength advantage conspired with Newton's Third Law of Motion and acted against her. Draco managed to reacquisition his arm.

A sound of deep aggravation raced up her throat when he turned around, but he only took out his wand to shut his bedroom door. Those same glowing chains that decorated Theo's door appeared on his as well.
Demonstrable disdain characterised his lope around and past her. When he reached the fireplace, she was sure he'd run off somewhere else… until she heard him call out her address. She pushed in after him.

"This way," she ordered.

If he was going to be needlessly contemptuous then so was she. Once she had him in the study, she administered the treatment originally devised for Zacharias Smith during DA meetings. She launched information at him without bothering to see if it met its target. And while she spoke, she unfurled two rolls of parchment.

"I had this idea while I was talking to Gwenda Bardsley at Mungo's. It's a way to send messages without using hands, wands, or elves. I've placed a protean charm on the parchment, and of course, these are Quick-Quotes quills – it would've taken much too long to make my own – they will write your message for you. I've also imbued a modified sticking charm and an anchored binding spell that… Well, see for yourself. Incepte."

The parchment fluttered into the air and hovered by her head, just a little above eye level.

"No magic needed to keep it in place." Hermione walked around to the other side of the desk. "Once I wrote my name on the slot in the corner, it bound itself to me. The quills work as usual – Scribo and sisto to make it start and stop writing. Now, to send a message, all I have to do is append a name." She pushed forward the other piece of parchment on which she had written 'Draco Malfoy'. "Scribo ad Draco Malfoy. And see? A message just for you.

The words she spoke appeared on his parchment, while it glowed red and emitted a little bell-like tinkle.

"They only ring if the amplifying charm hasn't been activated – sonorus or silencio – depending on whether you want the messages to be read out aloud or not. Those took the longest time to properly imbue. Sisto. Would you like to give it a try?"

He didn't.

"All that's left is for me to test the strength of the charms. That's why I was scrambling. Go to the kitchen, please, I want to see if there's any delay over short distances."

He didn't move, forcing her to finally look his way and contend with his part-bemused, part-mutinous glare.

"Do you need a map?" she asked.

Sometimes words were excavation tools. From under years of personal evolution emerged young Draco's Mien of Petulance.

"Get on with it," she huffed, blowing away the final layer of dirt.

The actor strutted off stage; a surprisingly controlled performance. Considering his stiff movements, Hermione gave him some time to reach his destination while meandering around the room, very pleased with the way the quill and parchment followed her every step.

A minute later she said, "Have you reached?"

Seventeen seconds went by before her parchment glowed red and Draco's voice announced, yes.

Not good. She hadn't experienced any lags before, but it did take time for her to get from the study to the kitchen…

"Are you responding as soon as you receive my message?"

Twenty seconds.

No.

She lost her rag and tore towards the kitchen ready to tear into him.

He had made himself a cup of tea, and was leaning against the worktop while eating chocolate biscuits out of a tin that she had been saving for a day that she could spend in bed with a book.

"Do you ever take a break from being an intolerable–"

The parchment repeated her words, just a fraction of a second behind. Mockingly.

Her broken spirit revived Draco's wounded one. He grinned with exultance and for pity's sake, it was a gorgeous look on him.

"I'm going downstairs," she muttered, scratching her arm while boring holes into the floor, "To take a round of the neighbourhood. Could you please respond in a timely manner? By that I mean immediately?"

"Of course I will," he said affably, "Anything to aid the advancement of magical communication."

To his credit, his responses came promptly from then on, while she was in the lift and all through her circuit of the neighbourhood. However, since he had reclaimed his panache, none of her simple questions were answered correspondingly. Or answered at all.

She asked him which room he was in, and he said: "Leaving a mess in the wake of magical invention is an embarrassing cliche. Honestly, how long does it take to vanish a few bits of parchment?"

She asked him if her voice was loud and clear, and he said: "Having a tidy desk means nothing if the insides of your drawers look like junk shops after an earthquake."

She was forced to silence her parchment when he made an inquiry into the colour of her underwear, right when she was passing by a large group stationed outside the pub. From then on, she was forced to snatch the parchment out of the air everytime it glowed red.

All in all, the trial could be deemed a success. She returned to the flat satisfied… but ticked off… in need of some more reviving tea… excited… overwrought… big yawn… her eyes watered… she rubbed them…

He was in the study, lounging in the desk chair, well pleased and at ease.

"Finite," she mumbled, aiming for the parchment and quill hovering by his head. They landed tamely on his lap.

For some ruinous reason, her subconscious decided that a wad of parchment by her foot was an exposed landmine. Half her body did its best to avoid contact and the other half stayed put.
She tripped over her own feet – stumbled – skittered – scrambled for purchase and found it at the edge of the desk.

Brilliant. Dynamite.

She straightened, placed her quill and parchment on the desk, clasped her hands, and waited for the inevitable, lancinating dose of wit.

Draco grinned with all his perfect, gleaming teeth.

"How does someone who looks so poised and graceful standing still, move in a manner so completely devoid of grace?"

That was unexpected.

The verbal javelin made a perfect landing midway between compliment and insult, and Hermione, with no idea which way to go, held onto it and spun round and round till she felt that she ought to be wearing sky-high heels and sparkling lingerie.

She decided to simply ignore him…

"I'd like to increase the distance even more now, so if you could go—"

…and since that was the wisest plan of action, Draco would not stand for it.

"Look at you now," he intruded, "Svelte and lissom as a sprite. One would expect you to glide around — But no. You're like a drunk Erumpent on a blood-fuelled rampage. Flee fast, good gentlemen, or you'll come underfoot."

She scowled. "I may be a little clumsy when I'm distracted, but I'm not some uncoordinated buffoon, skittering and stumbling–"

Something – (his expressive little smirk) – told her exactly what he was thinking about. He tilted his head in a charming, ludic manner that instantly made her want to take the parchment's place on his lap.

She would've curled up against his chest, tucked her head under his chin and said, 'Help me'. He would've asked, 'What else have I been doing?'

She would've said, 'Help me more,' and he'd have wanted to know, 'Help you with what?'

She would've told him… 'With anything. Everything. Just help me.'

She moved away (the very soul of grace), putting the armchair between them.

"What shall I call these? I had pagers on my mind while devising them, and parchmenter would be a suitable homage, but it's such an awkward sounding word. And, well, there aren't any actual pages involved in pagers. No other muggle counterpart – radio or tele-communication – would be a good fit. Well… I suppose these are somewhat similar to walkie-talkies but–"

"Similar to what?"

"Walkie-talkies. Another muggle communication device, also called handheld transceivers. I could… maybe… call them… Floatie-Writies… but that's a bit of a mouthful, don't you think?"

"Granger, are you a Scrambly-Rambly?"

He made her want to eat her own arm.

She scooped up the nearest ball of parchment and hurled it at him.

It didn't even traverse half the distance between them, landing pathetically by the back legs of the armchair. They both eyed it with equal and opposite disdain, then looked at each other.

Draco moved like a viper. Within a blink, his wand was out. A pot of ink zoomed across the room and upended over Hermione's head.

She shrieked.

Deep black ink dribbled down her hair, onto her face and shoulders.

"You – you – complete and utter – arsehole!"

She gaped at him, mouth open… and she felt a thick gloop slide down the side of her nose.

Tergeo, she thought, Tergeo, tergeo, god damn tergeo.

But tergeo was never enough for her hair. She would need to shampoo it twice, at least.

"What is wrong with you, you inveterate wanker?"

"You threw that at me."

"It didn't even touch you! It came nowhere near you!"

"It's the thought that counts," he sniffed.

A sinister, simmering pall fell over Hermione, as real as a sudden shower of ink.

"You are done for, Malfoy."

She raised her arms and every single crumpled ball of parchment in the room rose with them. After a whispered incantation, they darkened and grew heavy and sodden with water.

Draco shot up to his feet. "What do you think you're–"

Splat!

A wet missile hit him square in the chest. Crisp white shirt soaked. Tiny specks dashed across his face.

"You bi–"

Splat!

On his left shoulder. He stumbled back.

"Fucking stop or I'll–"

Splat!

His stomach, just above the belt. He turned around and raced towards the door.

Splat! – His lower back. Splat! – she missed. It hit the wall. Splat – his calf.

Splat! – On the door as it closed behind him.

"Open the door!" she yelled, hammering her fist against it.

"You are deranged!" he shouted back, "Fucking mad!"

"Open the door or I'll break it down!"

"This is your rented flat, you flaming lunatic!"

There was no locking charm that could best her. Hermione bent slightly, peering at the knob —

A jet of ice cold water gushed through the gap beneath the door, soaking her from feet to waist. She screamed, jumped back, all the floating missiles fell to the floor —

Draco displayed his size-and-strength-and-speed advantage to its best potential. Before she knew which way was up, it was down. She was slung over his shoulder, her legs caught in a vice made of his arms, and the side of her face pressed against the cold, wet patch on the back of his shirt.

"Put me down!" she rasped, she warbled… it was a command tragically devoid of forcefulness. "Put me down or I'll –"

"As you wish, you hellcat."

She was thrown into bed. All the air left her lungs. Draco climbed on top of her, straddling her legs and locking them in place, and pinning down her arms with an iron grip.

"Now what?" he asked through gritted teeth.

Glittering droplets on his face. Droplets as far as his shirt was unbuttoned.

"Now this," she said and flicked her wrists, sending a stinging hex up his arms.

He let out a strangled howl and she promptly brought her freed hands to his ribs, pressing –

He recovered much too quickly. They were back where they started, except he kept his palms against hers, making any sort of movement impossible.
The only solution Hermione could think of was a brutal knockback jinx that would send him flying against the wall and snap his spine.

"Think tickling is a potent weapon, do you?"

"No," she said immediately.

A flash of teeth: An evil grin that marked the end. She was completely finished after that.

Wriggling fingers found every inch of her torso no matter how much she thrashed or tried to push him away oh god for god's sake stop please stop okay sorry fine please stop okay Draco stop stop Draco all right I concede please I surrender–

"You surrender?"

–Yes yes YES for the love of – stop stop –

He stopped. Palm against palm, once again bolting her in place. Fingers woven between hers. Face much closer than before. Victorious gleam in mesmeric eyes.

He waited while she caught her breath. While she blinked away tears of uncontrolled laughter.

"I won."

"Only – because – I – let – you," she panted.

"Is that so?"

"Yes. Because I – draw the line – at murder."

"The unimpeachable morality of Hermione Granger," he murmured.

Then he kissed her. Whatever little progress she had made on regaining her breath was eviscerated.

His lips and chin were cold. His mouth was burning hot.
A hard push. A pull on her lower lip. His tongue found hers, tied up a helpless moan.

They didn't kiss often enough. They went too long without touching, without being pressed so close that not even air molecules could fight their way in.

Draco shifted, and she felt against her hip how very ready he was for what such a kiss inevitably entailed.
And she… couldn't ever imagine not being ready...

He didn't relinquish his hold on her hands. His fingers only tightened, slotting in the space between her knuckles. She squeezed his hands back, yanking her legs out from under him and throwing them over his hips.

He shifted again, properly aligning them and when he rocked against her she wailed – muted wail, muffled wail, for his mouth never parted from hers.

Still not relinquishing her hands.

Moving against her, faster and rougher… and kissing her.

Draco's kiss was the anti-dementor's kiss. It launched a great soulful efflorescence, where every inch of her body mind and soul reached the flourishing limits of their capabilities —

What?

Dunno.

Hand freed. Clothes shed. Wet clothes. Soaked trousers clung on with the determination of suction cups. She told him to vanish them and he didn't seem to have the presence of mind to make a comment about that.

The touch of two fingers and the slide of damp naked skin severed her brainstem.

XXX

She belted her dressing gown four times while he dressed, so she wouldn't give into cataclysmal temptation that would see her going up to him to wrap her arms around his waist and nuzzle her face against his still bare chest.

He turned as he picked up his shirt, and his back put on a beautiful demonstration of how all the various systems in the body came together to create movement. Gliding shoulder blades, tightening longissimus, stretching trapezius, the sinuous curve of his spine as an arm slid into a sleeve…

"Draco, will you sign my petition?"

"Yeah," he said, casually. Unhesitatingly.

He turned again as he buttoned up, head lowered and focused.

She went to the study.

There were small puddles all over the floor, expanding on her previous comparison to the aftermath of a hailstorm. She had dried those and was vanishing fallen missiles when Draco came in.

"I'm meeting Cormac tomorrow, by the way," she said, sending him a quick look, "He's expressed some interest in the project."

"Cormac?"

"McLaggen."

"Ah."

Her hair tumbled forward as she bent over her satchel to fish out the TEMP/HELP binder.

"I asked to meet at Finnegan's but he was adamant about going to The Leaky Cauldron."

She opened it to the right page, laid a quill across the parchment and pushed it towards Draco, who was listening to her with an impassively raised brow.

"He wants the press to be there."

Draco picked up the quill. She spared him a scowl as she went to retrieve a fresh pot of ink from her junk shop drawer, and winced at the crack when she unscrewed the lid.

"I'm fairly certain he wants it to look like something it isn't."

Draco frowned questioningly while dipping the quill in the pot.

"He wants the press to catch us there… so it looks like we're… well. But that obviously won't be the case. It won't be what he's trying to make it look like it is."

Articulacy ended when an attempt to convey something important began.

Draco put the quill down.

Struck dead with dismay, she asked, "Why? What's the matter?"

He ran a hand through his hair.

"I'll sign it tomorrow."

"...Tomorrow?"

"What time are you meeting him?"

"Er… six?" she breathed.

He left the room.

The rejoining of her brainstem must have been tenuous, for it came apart again. She followed after him.

"Bye?" she said, but he slipped into the fireplace without a word.

He was the human equivalent of a spanner. He was a landmine. He could spin her and toss her into space, into a nebulous galactic realm, and bring her right back to the exact same spot where nothing was the same.

She had meant to tell him to take his Floatie-Writie home, so that further tests could be conducted. She'd planned to clean up the flat, have a shower, call for some takeaway...

She wished she could talk to mum as she, stretched out on the sofa, drifted off.

---

Hermione ventured where she hadn't been in over four years, since she'd given up trying to impress Victor through her letters – The sports section of the Daily Prophet.

(Why hadn't she thought of him sooner?)

There was not a single castigating word against Nimbus. She wasn't expecting a furore, but there weren't even a few-roar…ies.

…She hadn't slept very well.

There had been dreams – vivid, whacky, outrageous dreams like a grotesquely exaggerated commedia dell'arte performance – and all she remembered of them was that they had been.

Things were bleak in the office. Takumi's unflappable tenacity won him a five minute confab with someone from NRBC whose designation was not disclosed, but that enigmatic individual only doubled down on what the grey man had said during the hearing.

At six P.M. sharp, Hermione stood a few metres away from The Leaky Cauldron, scuffing her shoe against the damp pavement and wondering if she had been mistaken in the inferences she had drawn the day before. There was no delivering glimmer of pale blond in the vicinity.

A voice called out her name.

She looked over her shoulder and practically keeled over. For there was Draco. And Theo. And George. And Angelina, Lee, Oliver Wood, and Conrad with his moustache.

"Where's the hulking young rapscallion?" George asked when they'd neared.

"Erm–What?"

"Shouldn't we get going?" Theo asked cheerfully, "Don't want to keep him waiting."

Hermione wrenched her eyes away from him, and aimed a very significant glare at Draco, before beginning a fretful march towards the pub. He understood, quickly coming ahead to march beside her.

"What's happening?" she hissed from the corner of her mouth.

"Don't ask me. Theo's the one who decided to assemble an army."

"You… told him…?"

"Hearing McLaggen's name set him off," he shrugged.

Then he smiled, arrogant and self-congratulatory. It should have been hideously annoying. It should have made her whip around and send everyone else packing.
But evidently, she had developed a Pavlovian association between that smile and a whacking great orgasm.

She sped up even more, leaving him, and the resolute troops behind.

The Leaky Cauldron was as busy as you'd expect on any given evening. Even so, Cormac McLaggen was easy to spot. He was even brawnier than she remembered, a brick of a man stuffed in a tight white jumper, sitting at a table right in the middle of the pub. His eyes locked in on her, very predator-like, like years hadn't passed, like she was still diving behind quidditch stands to escape that same horrid gaze.

He stood up, walked around the table, arms lifting…

A chair from the next table shot out of its own volition and fell into his path. He was startled, staring at it like it was a misbehaving child, before once again looking up. This time, he noticed the coalition fanned out around her.

"The fuck's all this?" he demanded.

"Hullo McLagging, old mate!" George piped up, "You didn't think you were the only one intrigued by our Hermione's enterprising venture, were you?"

(Please stand by while words permeate an inordinately thick skull.)

"It's McLaggen," he growled, most put out.

"I'm sure it is."

Everyone sat. Chairs were pulled up from hither and thither, and soon that small table for no more than four, was expanded to accommodate a party of nine.

Within one quick dekko, Hermione spotted a glint of a camera lens in the corner booth. A simple melting charm took care of that; a lot more subtle than what she had done to Bozo's camera. The poor sod wouldn't realise something was off till he tried to develop his pictures.

"Now then, McSlaggen," George continued –

"McLaggen!"

"How have you been? The last I saw you, McFloggen, you were trying to teach the future keeper of Puddlemere United how to properly cover the hoops. Isn't that right, Oliver?"

"That's right," Oliver nodded much too dourly, "You're the reason I had a gammie arm and couldn't play in the first match against Ravenclaw. Where've you landed up then?"

"I keep for the Wigtown Wanderers," McLaggen muttered.

"No," Oliver barked, "You don't."

Tom came by with mugs of ale, and McLaggen tried to use that slight disturbance to bury the words, "Reserve team."

"Pish." Oliver was not going to let anything get buried. "I've watched a few reserve league games, and you weren't there. Didn't even make that cut, eh?"

"Oh, be nice, Oliver," George rebuked, "I'm sure McHaggis is a great–"

"McLaggen!"

He'd gripped his tankard so hard that Hermione thought the handle would crumble.

What the hell was going on? She turned to Draco, hoping to grab his attention and get some sort of explanation from expressive, Draco Malfoy Eyebrow Movements — he was already looking at her. Smirking and lounging in his chair, arms crossed.

"Love," George addressed Angelina, "You have some fond memories of McBraggen as well, don't you?"

"McLaggen!"

"Oh yes." Angelina, unlike Oliver, was completely composed, "Worst trial of my life, after half my team got itself banned from playing. First time a prospective beater put two of his own teammates in the hospital wing."

If nothing else, Cormac showed he was capable of improvement. The year following that, he had put only one of his teammates in the hospital wing.

"Aw, you're being too harsh on poor McWagon–"

"Argh!"

"How about we let Hermione speak now," Theo chimed in.

Darling Theo, never letting her be forgotten. Even when that's exactly what she desperately desired.

"Who are you?" McLaggen yapped.

"Steady on, McCracken! Surely you recognise Theo Nott?"

Hermione stepped in before George's head was separated from his body. She began her spiel, abbreviated for the sake of her target's circumscribed intellect, and brought out the binder as quickly as possible.

Everyone signed, even Conrad (while twirling his moustache). Draco leaned forward as he did, pinching the quill between thumb and index finger like he sometimes pinched her —

Not now.

Theo signed for the second time, as did George, before passing it onto –

"Here you go, McNoggen."

The quill was snapped in two. Hermione repaired and handed it back.

He didn't even look as he drew a realistic illustration of a strand of his own wiry hair. It could very well be read as McNoggin. Or Mimbulus mimbletonia.

When Hermione said thank you, he gave her a very dirty look.

"Incidentally, McHaggis–"

"It's McLaggen, you damn thundering arsewipe!"

"By gum, you're a loud one! My sincerest apologies, McLuggage–"

"What the fuck you playing at, Granger?" McLumpit bayed, loud enough to startle surrounding patrons.

Hermione gave herself a shake. "I beg your pardon?"

He carried on, even louder – "What did you bring this circus with you for, huh? I took time out to help you out a bit, get you in with Uncle Tibby, and this is what I get? Bunch of manky fucking clever clogs and a bloody Death Eat—"

McLaggen's chair went flying back and all four legs snapped, sending him and his considerable bulk crashing onto the floor. In addition to that, his tankard exploded... which... that one wasn't her doing.

She had magical, crepitating rage rushing through her blood, inciting her to put that loathsome maggot's head through the table. To hang him from the rafters and slowly peel his skin off and then make him eat it.

Every single patron in the pub had stopped what they were doing, to stare. The photographer in the corner was kneeling on his table and snapping away with his defective camera.

"We're done here," Hermione spat, getting to her feet. She waited till McLaggen, barking and yowling, dripping with ale, had stood up too, then pointedly erased his name from the binder.

There was a loud screech of wood on wood… and Draco was storming out of the pub.

Theo went after him. Hermione wanted —

"MY UNCLE TIBBY WILL–"

"Oh, shut the hell up, McGaggin'," she snapped, (received a reluctant, pitying snort from George,) and took off.

The photographer was also making a beeline for the exit; a confundo redirected him towards the bar.

It was drizzling outside. People's walks had slowed, and some shops had begun to close. She saw Theo standing nearby, staring down the alley despondently, and when she reached his side he gave her a sad little shrug.

Draco was already far ahead, catching every single ray the lamp posts were emitting.

Hermione chased after him, while swiping a hasty hand over her face to cast a glamour. She had suffered enough gawking for one lifetime.

He ducked into the lane of workshops and she accelerated.

"Draco!" she called when she'd dived in after him.

He barely faltered and kept on walking.

She called out again, glad that all the shutters were down.

"Draco!" she gasped, winded, finally close enough to grasp his arm.

He turned to her with vehemence, which quickly turned to… alarm?
Oh, right. The glamour. She let it drop and his mouth thinned with anger again.

"Are you all right?" she asked, trying to sound benign rather than chesty.

"Cracking." He snatched his arm away.

She peered up at him, wondering how to say no, you aren't without saying the words no, you aren't. That lane was so badly lit, and they were standing near the edge of the ambit of one lamp's influence. Gentle spray of water turned into a sandstorm. There were diamonds in his hair.

"Why did you erase his signature?" Draco asked, gruff with rancour.

"He's a vile, chauvinistic slimeball," Hermione replied promptly, "I don't want to be associated with the likes of him."

Not what Draco wanted to hear. He scowled deeply.

"Don't act like that came as a surprise to you. You knew exactly what he's like, and you still agreed to meet him, because of who his uncle is. You needed his signature."

She opened and closed her mouth helplessly, silently imploring him to see her sincerity and concern for him.

"Do you honestly think that's the first time someone's called me a Death Eater?" His inflection twisted around the words. "And it won't be the last."

"Who–"

"You really hit the nail on the head when you said that the Ministry palmed me off to Kenny because they could find no other way to punish me."

"You know that was in jest!"

He scoffed. "Two of the other candidates kicked up such a fuss when they saw me. Ring the alarm bell, it's a blooming Death Eater." Again, the twist. "They both got much higher positions.

Drizzle was gathering momentum, threatening to become a downpour. But if Hermione shivered, it was from the chill in his eyes.

"For the first few weeks on the job, Fiona was the only one who spoke to me."

Hermione hated that. She had some sort of horrible, internal reaction to it, that felt like acid reflux.

"The point here, Granger, is that going out on a limb for this is absolutely meaningless. You will accomplish nothing. It is not warranted nor remotely appreciated."

Her hair was getting heavy. Cold had sunk through all the layers she had on. And Draco still wasn't finished.

"There's an entire species banking on you, is there not? You'll make a hash of your project if you don't clamp down on the impulse to jump to everyone's defence. Antagonising the Chief Warlock's nephew was–"

"Why did you bring along Theo… Oliver… George… if not to antagonise him?" Hermione posed in an oddly quiet and ponderous voice, completely antithetical to his.

It was very jarring. She was sure she would be screaming. Her throat was raw and tense like she had.

"I didn't ask them to come," he ground out.

She had always loved the sound of rain pelting a cobbled street. The beat was so dynamic and entrancing; far better than rain on the roof of a tent in the middle of hell.

That sound was all that existed while they stared each other down.

Until, far in the distance, a cloud rumbled. One of the lamps hissed and flickered.

"My aunt is expecting me for dinner," Draco said, low and quiet, now matching the character of her voice.

She stood shivering when he stalked off, and watched him till he reached the end of the lane and got consumed by shadows.

She sneezed. It ran like a current through her body.

The nearest apparition point was back in Diagon and she shuffled towards it. The shopping area was almost completely deserted, save for a few people cowering under brollies.

She left her cold, sopping clothes in a pile on the bathroom floor, and stood under a blast of hot water.

Theo came by for dinner, and after the initial few enquiries, they ate in silence. They were so good at sharing each other's sadness.

Till late in the night, she sat in her balcony, watching it pour, sipping on tea with a healthy splash of Pepper-Up, the chime above her head going ballistic.

She wished to cry. She could only shiver.

She had meant to write to Victor. She didn't want to.

Those four enchanted rolls of parchment were cold, too. She'd lost all interest in them.

She missed mum.

---

At last, on Thursday morning, there was something of worth in the sports section.

Harpies back out of Nimbus sponsorship deal; return brand new Ultrafast VR4 brooms.

There was not a whole lot to it beyond that headline, just that the coach, Kippler, had released a statement saying that the Harpies would not be affiliated with a company that didn't treat its women employees fairly. It was a small snippet crammed in a corner, while the page was dominated by an expansive story about the Spanish League final.

But it was not small enough to escape Barros' sharp eye. Hermione was called upon, questions were asked, all of which came under one umbrella response: "I just wrote to a dear friend. Some good old catching up."
Hermione was thrown out with a not-so-surprising lack of consequences. The desperation on everyone's faces, post the disastrous hearing, had made it fairly clear that she would get away with some minor underhand tactics.

Reaching the canteen a bit earlier than usual, she initially sat alone, quietly nibbling on a tartlet. Around ten minutes later, Justin dropped into a chair, dragging it close to her and telling her about the upcoming weekend tour of Wizarding London for muggleborn children. Five minutes after that, her table was surrounded. Draco sat across from her, Fiona and Arnold on either side, and they, along with Justin, struck up a conversation about the Spanish League final.

Hermione, quiet even now, kept her eyes lowered and imagined a different scenario, with just two at the table…

He called her sly. He told her it was absurd that she could get away with so much.
How indiscriminately you wrap people around your finger — Why haven't I been able to do it to you — Well, I am awfully inflexible, Granger … (He plucked off a bit of his chocolate cake with a fork and held it up to her mouth)

The sound of Justin getting up brought her back to her senses. She decided to leave with him, smiling briefly at the other three.

Draco's frown stayed embedded into her vision for hours.

At half past nine at night, she broke out of the enchantments surrounding Starthistle Hill and into a phone box. It would've been early in the morning, warm and summery, in Melbourne, and mum should've been out in her garden, greeting the day.

The phone rang five times before she answered.

"Hello?"

"Hi, mum. I hope I didn't wake you?"

"Of course you didn't wake me. How good it is to hear your voice!"

Hermione closed her eyes as they filled with tears, and she leaned back against a wall.

"How are you? How's dad? How's everything?"

"Business as usual here; except your dear dad has become obsessed with paragliding. Says it's the closest he can get to being on a broom. I cannot think of a single encounter with the Weasleys that has ended well for me."

Draco would have loved that. Go on, Granger. Tell your mother off.

"How about you, sweetheart?"

She hesitated for a moment. A motorcycle zoomed across the road outside; its roar was loud, its light painted the glass around her.
Hermione gave her mother a sanitised, halcyon version of her life. She didn't know why – she had promised she wouldn't do that anymore – but it was a compulsion that she couldn't temper. Everything was fine, the contract was shaping up nicely, her friends were well, her colleagues were well, her boss was being supportive and accommodating.

"Charlotte's wedding invitations arrived yesterday," mum told her, "Yours as well, along with a note saying that they would have mailed it to you, had there not been such ridiculous secrecy surrounding your life and whereabouts. You're going to have to come up with a good story for them."

"Right."

"We will, too, of course. First time we're coming face to face with the whole gang since the disappearance. They're simply raring to have a go at us. It's going to be an absolutely hellish weekend, and we simply cannot beg off, at the risk of being subjected to further disdain. Mal and Vicky have been conspiring, if you'll believe it. Their combined rage awaits us."

Silence at both ends.

"I'm sorry," Hermione whispered.

Some more silence.

"No," mum said shakily, "I'm – I'm sorry, I–"

"You're allowed to still be angry with me, mum." Hermione closed her eyes again. "I know you've forgiven me, and you love me. But you can still be angry. You should be angry for as long as you need."

Mum sniffled. Hermione wished they could hug.

"Incidentally," mum spoke in a bracing, slightly high-pitched voice that she used when going for a deliberate topic change, "You're allowed to bring a guest to the wedding. So… will you be?"

"I don't know."

"Oh, Hermione. You still haven't–"

"I'll let you know."

Mum sighed heavily. "How is Draco?"

Draco was – like everything else – fine. Thriving.

"Mum," she said through her teeth to keep her voice even, "Can you tell me the recipe for your special hot chocolate?"

Later that night, she lay in bed, reading the evening's paper.

The Prophet, exhibiting its usual knack for insensitivity, had let a man write the article, and he maintained a spirit of condescension and befuddlement throughout the piece. There was a shamefully abbreviated account of NRBC's conduct, and a more concerted elaboration of how brazen and indecorous the Harpies were.

A quote by Gwenog Jones was printed in bold — You [censored] blokes are the problem! You can't [censored] us, expect us to house your [censored] little babbers, and then punish us for it!

Also out that day: A new edition of The Quibbler, featuring a piece on what they'd decided to call 'Granger's Elf Liberation Drive'.
G.E.L.D.
Geld.

However, the article in itself was sweet. Written by Luna, it opened with an interview with the elves that worked in the flower field room, before branching out to cover broader elf-related issues…

…Hermione closed her eyes and rolled over to Draco's side of the bed…

Good morning.

Exciting stuff in the papers. Meaghan McCormack, keeper for the Pride of Portree, regular sister of a Weird Sister, and four months pregnant at the time, had a lot to say.

Over the course of the day, there were whispers that the uproar might've spread internationally. It was said that the organisers of the Spanish League were brassed off with how much advertisement space they'd happily handed over to Nimbus.
She really ought to write to Victor…

Like a wilting vine seeking warmth, Hermione crept into Ben's office at lunch. She stroked the floral porcelain of her tea cup while she told them how the meeting with McLaggen went up in flames.

Bickie offered her a slice of lemon drizzle cake and said, "Bad man who insults Hermione's friends is not a friend of House-Elves."

Was Hermione a friend of House-Elves? How many times had that been brought into question?

It was very difficult to contemplate the damage sending McLaggen to the ground might have inflicted. Her thoughts were once more an overgrown hedge, and barbed wires surrounded the area most needing to be pruned. They left deep gashes all over Tiny Tartan Hermione, who (smeared with camouflage paint, secateurs clenched between teeth) was attempting to crawl under them.

Even with all the tolerance and good judgement Ogden had previously shown, she couldn't imagine how he'd react to whatever bloated, hyperbolised version of events McLaggen would relay to him…

Tiny Tartan Hermione committed Harakiri with the secateurs.

Ow — OW. Barbed wires spread across her lower stomach. She pressed a palm against it and cast a warming charm, while she sat back in her chair and watched Kathy pace up and down the tiny office, trying to memorise a very long scroll listing international law amendments of the past century.

Would her legacy be that of a misguided do-gooder? That headcase Chronic Crusader, fighting for those who wanted none of it. Inflicting advocacy where it was neither warranted nor remotely appreciated.

Mind and uterus, in tandem, became dense, barbed snares.

The twinges in her stomach conquered everything else soon enough, when she was once again leaving Starthistle Hill. She returned with a heavy bag, and laid out her loot on the dining table.

Hot shower, comfy fleece pyjamas, more warming charms on her stomach —

She conjured a big black mug and into it went Cadbury's Drinking Chocolate, hot milk, a splash of Bailey's… another splash for luck… a good measure of dark rum… a sprinkle of cinnamon.

It tasted heavenly. Irresponsibly rich. The forbidden drink. Its aroma had haunted her as a little girl, but she had never been allowed to sample. Sip after sip she took, standing by the table, watching firelight dance inside the rum bottle.

She watched as it turned green.

Draco stood like a Ministry bailiff would, when sent to fetch an absconder. But bailiffs didn't wear soft looking brown jumpers, and tapered joggers that showed off their long, limber legs; and they didn't at all inspire complete willingness to surrender. She wondered if he had come to tell her off again, or to declare his intention to never see her again… which couldn't come at a worse time as she had plans to spend the entirety of the next day in his flat.

"I have come to collect," he announced sternly.

Raging dread melded with the discomfort in her stomach. Nevertheless, she refused to play along with such staginess. He would have to be unambiguous for once in his charmed life.

"I helped you with your floating scrolls when you asked–"

Sure. That's exactly how it had played out.

"–You are under obligation to return the favour."

"Do you think," she queried with profuse imperiousness, "If you had come in, said good evening Granger, and just asked for my help, that I would have refused?"

He glowered.

"You must have confused me with someone else. Perhaps someone who needs to be dragged, kicking and screaming, when help is required."

He was riled up. Good.

A slow, angry drawl – "Theo expects a farewell party."

"Perfectly fair."

"Tomorrow."

"Obviously. When else? It's his last day in town."

"Will… You… Help… Me."

"Plan a farewell party?"

"Yes."

She smiled. Her face made her do it. "Of course, Draco."

Now, she could truthfully tell mum that everything was just fine.
Draco approached the table. An acrid frown took in the display.

"What's all that?"

"Have a taste." She held out her mug.

His mouth had been everywhere. All over her. Why did the act of him taking a sip from her mug make her flush and want to look away?
She didn't look away, though, and caught the infinitesimal jump of his eyebrows. He approved.

"I'll fix you one while you fetch some parchment, envelopes, and pens from the study. Pens are–"

"I know what they are," he huffed.

"Just making sure. You bark at me when I mention muggle things without an explanation. Also, do bear in mind that you are fetching these things for party-planning purposes. You are not doing me a favour. I wouldn't want to upset our tally of obligations."

She received daggers as he left the room, and her face smiled even wider. A contortion it determinedly maintained while she made a second mug of boozy chocolate.

[Let it be very clear that her face was a separate entity at that point. She was not responsible for its actions.]

By the time Draco returned, she had settled on the sofa and pulled the coffee table a bit closer. He pushed their mugs to the side, and went about arranging things in an absurdly punctilious manner. Envelopes in a perfectly aligned stack, one bit of parchment in front of each of them, pens placed horizontally on top.

His movements were taut, his manner was offish. Heaven help her, she was going to have to give him yet another lesson in moving past moments of vulnerability.

Finally, when he sat back, picked up his mug, and looked blankly at her, she briefly gave up battling against her face.

"Shall I make a list of people to invite?" she broached smilingly.

He made a go ahead gesture.

"You could write out the invitation?"

"Fine." He put his mug down and picked up a pen.

Hermione began jotting down names. From the corner of her eye, she noticed Draco making no progress at all.

"Having trouble?"

"No."

You are cordially, he wrote.

"Maybe we can include a charming little couplet," she suggested.

"A couplet?"

"Yes." She – Her face grinned. "I have a hidden talent for poetry."

"I must insist you keep it hidden."

"I'll have you know my attempts display a lot more sophistication than rhyming thing, ring, and king."

Draco's hand hovered midair for a few beats, before he put the pen down. She felt him lean in a bit, and bent proportionately closer to her parchment.

He said, "There she sat, Her-meow-ne the cat, Swishing her tail indignantly–"

"Words with no merit, From Draco the ferret, Licking his chops malignant–"

"Why the fuck are you inviting Potter?"

The glare she shot him was twofold – One for a question like that, and one for clipping her wings of poesy.

"Why shouldn't I?"

"Theo and Potter aren't friends. I can… accept inviting Weasley, though I can't really stomach it. Is it the case that you simply cannot invite one without the other? Like Tracey and Patil, they cease to exist if they can't hold hands and rub up against each other every few minutes?"

Glare multiplied tenfold. "We can't invite everyone except Harry. That's horrible. Besides, Harry and Theo are friends."

Her face lifted into a small smile as she remembered a bottle of unwise, egregiously cheap whisky and a tent in the middle of hell…

"Please pull yourself out of whatever mawkish memory you've sunk into and remember that it's my flat."

She tightened her jaw and underlined Harry's name three times. "Also Theo's flat. Theo's party. Harry's getting an invite, deal with it. And honestly, isn't it high time you grew up? What possible reason is there to cling onto old rivalries now, after everything–"

"Ours is a rivalry that will stand the test of time, Granger. It is steadfast, eternal, unmoved by the sands of –"

"Oh, please. It's patently childish. You've fought on the same side and made it out by the skin of your teeth. You've shared ownership of more than one wand–" (How he scowled.) "You're more alike than you realise. I think you'll appreciate Harry's sense of humour."

"He almost killed me. And threatened to do so again, not that long ago."

Ah, yes. When you made a face of abject disgust at the thought of being with me.

"He wasn't himself then," she muttered, "He apologised."

Draco resumed writing the invitation.

"What about Ron? You get on perfectly well with the rest of the Weasleys. You're downright friendly with Bill, George, and Ginny."

"Forced cooperation isn't friendliness," he bit back.

"It's been nearly two years, Draco. I don't think you can call it forced anymore. I sure you'll appreciate Ron's sense of humour, too–" (How he scoffed.) "I'm not saying you should get chummy with him – absolutely not that – but this pointlessly hostile posturing can stop. After all, you learnt to endure my presence."

Draco set the pen down again.

"I am…" He stared at her. "...Genuinely offended on your behalf."

Her face wanted to rip into half a grin — No, no, no. Submit to me, you beast.

She turned back to the list.

"They're wonderful people, Harry and Ron."

A fed up exhale.

"Honestly, they're–"

"Shut up, Hermione."

He'd got a bloody good hang of the game. A sharp and brittle shut up… but then Hermione, in his voice…

She tried again.

"I'm just saying–"

"I know you are. You always are. And shut up means I want you to stop saying."

"Plan your own party then!"

"It's Theo's–"

"Shut up, Draco."

Her delivery lacked both flair and command.

He put a final full stop on the invitation and settled back with his mug. Watching her. She momentarily forgot how to spell Seamus.

"Finnigan?!" Draco erupted, "Is this a farewell party or a gathering of your admirers?"

"Are you going to say that Seamus isn't Theo's friend now? God, is there anyone you don't object to?"

She wasn't going to let him distract her anymore. She was hungry. Eighteen people on the list so far. Who else… Who else…

"He's a detestable dog with two dicks – and for some reason you're more than happy to let him have his hands all over you."

"Seamus has never touched me."

Giving George leeway was never a good idea, but maybe they could ask Lee or Angelina to invite whoever else they thought ought to be there?

"He's touched you plenty."

"Frankly, I seriously doubt he's even seen a naked woman in… erm, the flesh. All that braggadocio is a sad cover up. You should pity him."

"I save my pity for those who are being subjected to his company. Namely, myself, thanks to you, because you're so fond of–"

"Theo is fond of him. He thinks he's amusing."

"You think it's amusing to have some randy degenerate pawing at you."

She almost threw down the list. But she didn't, because her composure had developed the resilience of a cockroach ever since Draco Malfoy happened to her.

"I do not," she hissed, "I've told you this before, he's ribald and stupid, but he'd never actually do anything untoward."

"You have an innate and definitive insight into just about everyone's character, don't you?"

"I've known him for nine years. He's harmless. Dean's the one who kissed me–"

"What?"

Oh bother. And bother her composure. She set the list aside and took a long pull from her mug. How was he able to draw such candour out of her, while simultaneously making her so weary of every word she said?

Spanner. Landmine. Orbit-disrupter.

"It was a long time ago," she mumbled, "Ginny had just left him for Harry and he was desperately unhappy."

She knew he was looking closely at her; even though she refused to meet his eye. She could feel it like he was compressing and manipulating the space between them.

"And you welcomed his advances?"

"No. He… er, caught me by surprise."

"He forced himself on you."

"It wasn't like that. Anyway… I pushed him away, he was horrified and apologised at once. I didn't speak to him for a while after. But it's been years and we've obviously moved on."

Reaching the bottom of her mug, she gazed down into the empty blackness. Pray, form a vacuum and suck me in, won't you?
The mug exhibited mug-typical behaviour, so Hermione finally turned to Draco. He was licking chocolate off his upper lip, eyes like jagged icicles catching the first rays of dawn. She couldn't look away. She would stand under those icicles till they broke off and skewered her.

"So this is a list of your admirers," he said.

"Is not."

"Who else have you had a tryst with?" He barrelled over her objections. "Weasley? Well, of course, Weasley–"

"Nothing ever happened with Ron."

"George Weasley?"

"No!"

"Jordan? Wood? Oh, what about Longbottom? You're always so quick to jump to his defence."

That was the last straw. She had to take back control of the situation, and she knew exactly how to do that.

She crossed her arms, raised her chin, and said, "Padma."

Yes. His expression. Exactly. Round six thousand goes to Granger.

Slowly, the barefaced surprise melted away, revealing something dangerous. A head-lowered, softly-smirking, arm-sliding-along-the-back-of-the-sofa kind of dangerous.

"You had a tryst with Patil?"

The low, rough timbre of his voice gave her goose pimples.

"We kissed. Once," she whispered, "We were drunk… in… in the library… and it… happened."

He pushed his tongue against the inside of his cheek while he absorbed that.

"Goodness, Granger. What sort of shenanigans did you get up to in the library? Wearing pretty knickers, kissing girls…"

"I–"

He shifted closer, eyes boring into hers.

"Were you pressed up against a bookshelf?"

She shook her head dumbly. "No, we –"

"Was your uniform, inexplicably, three sizes too small?"

"It was after Slughorn's Christmas party. I was wearing a dress. Padma was –"

"How short?" He leaned in. "Up to here?"

He placed her hand on her knee cap, large and hot as coals.

"A little higher," she whispered.

Glittering icicle eyes. Flushed perfect cheekbones.

"Here?" His hand slid above her knee.

"Little more."

"Here?" He gently squeezed her thigh.

"Yes."

"And your hair?" He glanced at it, hanging around her face, then settled on her mouth. "Up or down?"

"Down," she croaked.

He wet his lips. Hermione's chest was going to explode.

His hand began sliding even higher —

She locked her fingers around his wrist and stopped him.

"I have my period," she blurted.

First, he reacted with the predictable male panic that that word educed, blinking away from her mouth.

Then he scowled.

"It is deliberate, isn't it?" he griped, "You enjoy doing this. The most twisted and sadistic little game you could come up with."

"What are you – What?" she sputtered.

"I don't know which one of your old flames told you that such coquetry is cute, but let me assure you–"

"What are you on about? I just – you asked!"

He shot her a very dark look and emptied his mug.

After that, they carried on quietly, duplicating the invitation and putting them into envelopes. His fingers brushed against hers every time something passed between them, and he kept breathing out heavily like each touch was akin to a thousand papercuts. Once they were through, Draco arose stiffly and moved towards the fireplace to send them.

"Will you come back?"

He glanced over his shoulder.

"I'll make you another if you are," she added, waving her mug about.

Please, please, please, please.

"Make it stronger."

Hermione had to pace around for a bit to recalibrate. She ordered dinner, prepared their drinks – both stronger, and eventually, landed back on the sofa.

Her nose danced above the rim of her mug. Chocolate was the antithesis of smelling salts.

It shouldn't have taken him so long to attach some letters to Rodion's leg…

Shortly after a disembodied arm delivered a bag of takeaway through the floo, he returned, and she was quick to initiate another discussion about party particulars. He wasn't bothered at all; sat back all taciturn and nonchalant, even when she cautiously suggested letting Seamus handle the drinks. He was lounging, in fact, draped against the corner of the sofa, long finger idly tapping against his mug, faint flush of inebriation climbing up his face like a rising rufescent fog, legs parted at a thirty degree angle…

Over dinner, he asked her how she'd managed to imbue charms and set up magical triggers on the Floaty – No – the Parchmenter – No – the thingy without a good long soak in a Fixing Draught. Multiple, metaphorical versions of herself rubbed their hands in glee as she explained tethering charms and how she had figured out a way to sandwich transfixion charms between each layer of magic.

"A separate figo between each spell prefixed with a figere keeps it all in place. Of course, they will eventually wear out, but I am quite sure they'll last as long as the Quick-Quotes quills."

"How did you work that out?" he asked, and bit into the last sweet date wanton.

"I had a chat with Flitwick. And well… lots of experimentation–"

"Ah, yes. You are big on experimentation, apparently."

She burned bright red but ploughed on. "And I wanted to figure out a way to do it without potion baths. They take too long and don't allow so many spells to exist simultaneously. I do however want to imbue the protean charm using a Fixing Draught in the future, so that it's as potent as it can possibly be."

"What's the point if every other spell eventually wears out?"

"I want the charm to have unlimited reach, so you can send a message to anyone as long as you know the name they've printed on their parchment. All the parchments will be marked with a bindrune, so they'll be connected, irrespective of when they're made and who makes them. It'll be like a… a… brand new network of communication."

He sat back, crossed his arms, and contemplated her from under his fringe.

"What?"

"Will you humbly refrain from patenting this creation as well?"

She shook her head. "I'm going to speak to Mr Weasley about it. I believe he knows someone in the Patents Office."

"Good."

Infinitesimal jump of his eyebrows. (Approval.) Then a slight lowering. (Interest.) A gentle tilt of the head. Immediately. Svelte and lissom.

Hermione jumped to clear the table. Draco collected his plate and followed her into the kitchen.

When she turned away from the sink, he was right there, pushing his chest into her face. He braced a hand on her hip and reached behind her to place his plate. His hand didn't move as the other pulled out his wand. He muttered scourgify into her hair and she heard the plate wipe itself clean.

Then he pulled back. She looked up.

Clenched jaw. Red cheeks. Why the everloving —

She hooked her arms around his neck and kissed him. He tugged her tight against himself with a low moan and…

They really really didn't kiss enough.

By Jove, they didn't. If they did, she'd never have reason to question the utter rightness of the world. He rubbed his tongue against hers and fisted the back of her shirt. She stroked the skin behind his ears with her thumbs, pushing up higher and higher on her toes…

She kept her eyes closed for a few seconds after they broke apart, keeping the moment inside herself for just that much longer. When she opened them, she looked directly into his eyes, and the moment stayed riveted between them.

"Make me another hot chocolate," he murmured.

"Even stronger than the last?"

"Why not."

He pressed his mouth against hers once more, firm and quick.
His hand slid around her as he stepped back, lingering for a moment at her waist.

She prepared two more mugs, his a little stronger, hers less so. Her emotions were volcanic. She needed to keep her wits about her.

As they each took their first sips, she tried to come up with something safe and absorbing to talk about. But there was chaos in the upper storey. Heart was a roaring flame, brain was being cooked. Ears were smoking.

"Have you had time to read anything by Hypatia?" Draco asked casually.

"Yes!" Hermione cried with disproportionate enthusiasm.

Draco lurched with surprise.

"Erm, sorry. I mean, yes." She nodded ardently. "Just this weekend I read the transcript of her lecture at The Academy in Crete. She drew the most fascinating correlation between basic numerology, Euclidean geometry, and fixed planetary movement that can be used to determine the hour when the consequence of any given action would occur…"

Conversation was quicksand. She ended up summoning the book and they poured over it, reading fragments and excerpts and testing out theories by throwing things and wonkily balancing them on the edge of the table.

Draco had not overcome his struggles with grasping the Ancient Greek number system and the concept of no zero.

"— just a symbol to them, Draco. The notion of nothing, numerologically, was considered a paradox."

"But if something isn't going to happen, the probability is zero–"

"Exactly! It isn't. It's nothing–"

"But you need that zero to determine what's one. How could they have formed a comparative—"

She dragged him to the study, muttering wait, wait, just hold on.

Stained glass lamp lit, a flood of gold, a muted spectrum — She hunted along the shelves till she found November's Journal of Advances in Modern Arithmancy that had an article about a recent breakthrough: Experts finally crack the code behind mysterious Proto-Hellenic tablet discovered buried in the Pontic steppe...

The argument carried on and on. They had to repeatedly cast warming charms on their drinks. Draco conjured the usual high back leather armchair. Hermione conjured a blackboard and drew graph after graph… solved equation after equation… until finally —

"Oh, all right. You've made your point. Put a sock in it."

Draco scowled and drank deeply. Hermione, slightly out of breath, fell into her own armchair. Her lips quivered and pulled up. She could make a graph to chart the correlation between narky Draco, vindicated Hermione, and how endearing she would find him at any given moment.

"Ah," she sighed, "the harsh acerbity of the Dracoish patois. Put a sock in it means, 'Granger, you are right and I am a doughnut', does it not?"

She'd tried to mimic his voice. It was a travesty. Draco's mug was almost at his mouth. He paused. Lowered it.

"It absolutely does not."

Hermione shook her head. "Roughly. The subtleties of language are often lost in translation, especially when one as crude as Dracoish is involved."

"It's far superior to that twee and sentimental dialect, Grangerese, in which every sentence needs to pay deference to its misguided lodestar."

"Grangerese is the language of universal truths and – Where are you going?"

He'd set his mug on the footstool and stood up.

Looking down his nose at her, he drawled, "Ordinarily, I'd say 'the bathroom'. But if I were to translate that to Grangerese… Let's see. I am going to accommodate a pathetically human, biologically inescapable weakness. Then I will, helplessly, commit the sin of expending precious water. However, the great truth-spewing Granger once told me that unlike muggles, magical folk are capable of producing clean, potable water with a simple charm. Therefore, we can all ease our minds for I will not be inflicting any lasting damage on nature."

She laughed as he left, staring at his straight back and gently swinging arms. She laughed again, to herself, after the bathroom door clicked shut. With both hands she brought up her mug and rested it against her chin, biting her lip over the laugh that wouldn't desist.

She put her mug down next to his, stood up, and looked at the scene: His mug and hers, his huge chair and her smaller one. Papa bear and mama bear. Shut up, Hermione.
Pressing slightly shaky hands against leather, she cast a strong preserving charm, encasing his magic in hers.

She returned the journal to its rightful place, and ran her fingers along precious spines. They dragged down along the side of the shelf, to the next row of spines. Someday, when she was very very old, she would open a library, and it would be full of marvellous books collected and selected over a lifetime. Muggle and magical. Fiction and non. Journals and magazines. Storey on top of storey, full of stories. It would be the Tower of Biblio and she would live in a small room at the very top…

My chin cupped in both hands, high up in my garret
I shall see the workshops where they chatter and sing,
The chimneys, the belfries, those masts of the city,
And the skies that make one dream of eternity.

"Are you caressing your bookshelves?"

She hummed in affirmation, without turning around.

He perched on the arm of his chair, facing her, and her vision blurred because she was so focused on the periphery.

"I love my bookshelves."

He laughed softly as she turned to him.

"A person's bookshelves are their biography. And – Oh, before I continue, please understand that I don't care if I sound twee or sentimental. All right?"

"Granger, you've never given me any reason to believe you care about how you sound."

"Hmph. As I was saying, a person's bookshelves are their biography. It's the story of their lives spread across completely independent stories…"

"Is this the hidden talent making itself known?"

She resumed caressing. "It's amazing how a book binds itself to the time when you first read it. Its pages hold so much more than just words… they absorb your emotions… they're time-capsules… they're full of little pockets containing pieces of your soul…"

"Speaking of souls, you are piercing mine with your eloquence. Like a red hot rusty poker."

She narrowed her eyes at him. He grinned.

"Go on then," he goaded, "What secrets do these here bookshelves hold? Tell us the story of Granger, in books."

"Why should I?" she sniped.

"Because you're simply dying to."

She was. She had been since she was thirteen and had first come up with the idea.

She walked her fingers up the narrow wood.

"It won't be complete," she mused, "A lot of the books I read as a kid are sitting in my parents' attic on the other side of the world. The furthest I can go is… here. The Canterbury Tales. The last book I read before McGonagall showed up. It took ages to get through, and mum had to help me because it's all in Middle English. Post-McGonagall, we have… these. Science books and encyclopaedias – mostly physics – because I was so determined to unearth an explanation for magic. I thought I'd find something written between the hard lines of scientific facts. My parents knew it was a pointless undertaking, but they were too gobsmacked and baffled to do anything but go along with it. We gave up when we reached nuclear fission. There were no answers."

She lovingly stroked the spine of Hogwarts: A History.

"After my first trip to Diagon Alley, I only read magical textbooks, books on magical theory, history, society… something from every bloody section of the library. I was used to being an outsider… but being the ignorant one was… untenable. That first year, I was a complete basket case. Even before I became friends with Harry and Ron and had to contend with riddles and three-headed dogs and evil forces…"

She'd said… a lot, hadn't she? She peeked over her shoulder, and he hadn't budged. Mug resting on his knee. Brows furrowed and face intent. Attentive. Listening.

She turned back and continued.

"After that, my reading became defined by what the three of us were going through. Second year, I read as much as I could about the founders, Hogwarts… potions books… got access to the restricted section… But… I did get through a lot of Wodehouse, as well as David Copperfield while I couldn't sleep… er, when I was… stuck in the hospital wing…"

"When you were Her-meow-ne."

Huff. "Yes. Then I was out of commission for two months."

She drifted from one shelf to the other.

"You see these?" she asked, pointing out a row of thick, spiral-bound books, "My parents compiled these every year, for me to read over the summer. They're a condensed version of everything I'd have learnt had I gone to regular – er, muggle school. A bit of every subject."

Draco cleared his throat. "May I borrow those?"

She smiled and didn't let him see. "Of course. Before third year, mum decided it was time I got my politics straight, after I told her how backwards magical society was. Here begins the development of class consciousness." She chuckled. "I think you could do with some Marxism in your life.
"I read half of his row, and these volumes of classical poetry, when Harry and Ron stopped speaking to me. But I had too many lessons… Sometimes I was tempted to use the Time-Turner to steal a few hours of blissful peace…"

"You had a Time-Turner? In third year?"

"Yes. Dumbledore gave it to me. Terribly irresponsible, don't you think?"

"It's mad. And–"

"Fourth year, I lost my head researching things for Harry. Dragons, for god's sake. How to breathe underwater. Yeesh. …All these compendiums of advanced magic...
"That following summer, I read everything by Wilde, by Heller, Saki, more Wodehouse. I just needed to laugh. I read them while stuck in that awful room… forced to clean that awful house… Draco, you must read Wilde and Heller."

Forward march.

"I got a bit more into…" Her ears warmed, "...Romance over fifth year. There wasn't much time to read, and life revolved around Dumbledore's Army and the OWLs, but Austen kept me sane. Alcott. Brontë. Fitzgerald…"

A sideways shuffle.

"The summer before sixth year, I read fifty-seven books."

"Fifty-seven?"

"Mmhmm."

"How on earth did you have the time?"

"They weren't all War and Peace. Some were anthologies of short stories. I read more than one at a time, usually one fiction, one non-fiction, interspersed with poetry. I couldn't sleep – residual pain from Dolohov's curse wouldn't let me. When I did manage to get some shuteye, I'd wake up screaming within an hour. The first time it happened, I terrified mum and dad, so I only got into bed while they were at work. Initially, I tried to read about spells and magic – I had to prepare; everything was horrible – but not being able to do magic, or practise the spells was making me lose my mind. And I just… switched off. I decided… hmm… it was my last chance to just be myself. Precocious young Hermione, daughter of dentists and a voracious reader. I locked myself in my room and did nothing but read muggle books."

She also snuck out to visit Pete sometimes. He didn't need to know that.

"Your parents just… let you be?"

"I hadn't told them anything and acted like everything was normal. I overheard them talking once; they thought I was finally displaying teenagerish tendencies. They thought I was lovesick over Ron — Stop it. You were with Pansy Parkinson. Anyway, I read all of these." She swiped a hand over multiple rows. "Some of which I later… gave to Theo… for… and… Oh."

Her hand paused over a particular book. She pulled it out and spun around. He had that pensive, slightly stern look to him, just like that night on the Astronomy tower. And just like that night, it made her want to hold his hand. Instead, she held out the book. He flinched like she had hexed him.

Camus' The Rebel.

He watched, eagle-eyed, as she flipped it open to the pertinent page; as she pulled out the folded bit of parchment…

"Don't," he rasped, "Don't open it."

She froze. "What is it? The… spiral thing?"

"My mother's handkerchief." He stared at the slip between her hands like it was threatening him with bodily harm. "What's left of it. She had given it to me over the holidays and I forgot to return it. There was an accident, one night, while I was working on the cabinet. A fire." He tore his eyes away, focusing on his knee. "I can't… read those words again. Can't look at them."

"Would you like me to destroy–"

"No!" He exclaimed with a rush of air. His shoulders were limp. He looked wildly up at her – blink – down at his knee. "Would you object to… leaving it there? On that page?"

Wordlessly, she put it back and closed the book. She turned and walked slowly to slide it back into place, and stayed in that position for a bit, with her arm raised. Heart was a charred, smoking piece of coal, brain was enveloped in fumes.

She turned around and returned to her chair, first perching on the edge, then leaning back and back till her shoulders were pressed against the cushion.
Draco slipped onto the seat of his.

It was strange, the silence, after such a prolonged exposure to her own voice. Lost and faded echoes of it lingered, but they didn't sound like her anymore.

Both their mugs had to be rewarmed.

"Being tortured was the most cinematic experience of my life."

That didn't sound like her either. Draco looked up sharply. He was sitting in line with the little glass dragonfly on the lampshade. It became a blue blob of light on his cheek.

"Vivid… rousing… and musical. Ugh, the music. It was loud, intense, like I was in the middle of a concert hall. These were songs that I loved, that I used to listen to all the time… and I can't anymore. Even a few opening notes send me running."

Hermione took a large sip. Chocolate – that could help one recover from a brush with a dementor – could not drive away crowding demons of a hideous past.

"One of them was a prelude by Chopin." She stared out the window across the room. "Theo smuggled me into the music room, and you played it. You played it beautifully. It made me think of…"

"Of?"

"Um."

"Of what?

"The words you don't want to think of."

Transparent curtains. Thick foggy glass. Thin layer of frost. Swirl of mist. It is sweet, through the mist, to see the stars —

"Why did you forgive me?"

The swiftness with which she turned her head made her dizzy.

When she blinked, she saw Ron glaring disbelievingly.

When she opened her eyes, she saw Draco staring defiantly.

Ron. Draco. Ron. Draco. Ron. Draco.

Like a lenticular picture.

"You had already forgiven me," he added, "Even before I'd apologised."

"Yes."

A line appeared between his brows. She wanted to rub it away and tell him it didn't matter. Because she loved him now.

"Why?" he ground out, "How?"

It mattered to him.

"You didn't make it easy," she murmured, and a tremor shot up her legs. "You didn't make it easy at all."

The line deepened – a tightly closed third eye. His head lowered, the dragonfly took flight, settling on the flushed pink bridge of his nose.

"You were so consistently obnoxious; so hateful, onerous, and nasty. Yes, I had… said some things, but I did try to apologise, and you…" She stopped to take a breath. "Everyone was so sure you had changed, to some degree. But everything you did and said made me want to keep hating you."

She couldn't take her eyes off him, and he seemed to be in a similar predicament. His gaze was like eager fingers digging through the chaff in her head to get to the point.

"Being in the Hogwarts bubble helped. We were just… we were. All those afternoons in the library… I don't know. Our conversations went from spiteful to aggravating to interesting and I just ended up getting to know the person in front of me. By the end of it, I knew you were different, and…"

She shrugged.

And you made the world stop. And then you stopped. To listen. To me.

"And?" he pressed. His voice was heavy.

"And we ate cake in your room. You gave me… some sort of explanation…" She shrugged again. "I decided to believe it. Believe you."

They lifted their mugs in unison. She watched him over the rim. The dragonfly's wings fluttered over his eyes; grey opals turned into blue sapphires.

Back to grey.

"I could tell you more," he said slowly.

"More?"

"I still can't present you with a tidy trajectory for when and how things changed. I wasn't sitting there measuring my bigotry – I was just trying to stay afloat."

He shifted his weight, setting his elbow on the arm of his chair. The dragonfly perched on his shoulder.
He let out a weighty breath, a solid thing that lodged itself in the machinery of Old Time's factory.

"Those galleons that you'd made," he said, "The prototype for the scrolls, aren't they?"

"Yes."

"I was so bloody proud of myself for using your tricks against you. I put Rosmerta under the imperius curse in the beginning of October. Jolly proud of that, too. It was the only unforgivable I'd managed to get right. I bragged about it to Snape, because he wouldn't stop following me – something between a shadow, a sentient oil spill, and the most miserable Pogrebin. I told him I had it all under control. My plan was foolproof. I called you a."

His jaw clicked. She looked away.

"I'm sorry."

"I know."

"Snape tore my head off for it. Told me that if I ever used that word in his presence again, the Dark Lord wouldn't be my biggest worry. He asked me how it felt to be stealing ideas from a muggleborn who was unequivocally better at wielding magic than I was." Draco laughed vacantly. "As if I hadn't been asked that a hundred times before. As if I hadn't lived with it for years, had it festering under my skin until I decided it didn't fucking matter because I was intrinsically superior and there was nothing you could do about it."

She did not want to hear that. She didn't want to look at him saying it. She wanted to bolt from the room.

She couldn't move.

He wouldn't meet her eye.

"He was crowding me against the wall, bearing down on me, threatening me. I wanted to hex him, but I just couldn't. I was incapable of aiming a simple stunner at Severus Snape… and I was expected to murder Albus bloody Dumbledore. When Bell got sent to the hospital, I spent an entire day and night being violently sick. I didn't want to do it. I didn't. None of it.

"The Dark Lord was very busy that winter. Between hunting for the Elder Wand, building alliances with giants and Dementors, he spent only a couple of nights at the Manor. Merlin, he made those nights count. When he was, mercifully, away, I went flying. I ought to have been in the library, searching for spells to help me with the cabinet, but…"

He finally looked at her.

"...but not being able to put those spells to practice was making me lose my mind."

He held her gaze for just a second or two.

"At first, I kept to the manor grounds and surrounding areas, because I was afraid he – or Bellatrix – would return at any point. But soon enough, I was close to bursting out of my skin. They'd what – torture me? Kill me? For flying? Fucking fine. A necessary end, will come when it will come, etcetera. Draco shall go forth.

"I flew down to Warminster, circled the town for a bit. Then I decided to get down and walk. It was stupid, careless, but I was not in control. I felt like I had been imperiused… by myself. Some wretched part of myself. It was telling me to join in with those simple townspeople, chuck it all. For a minute, I even considered leaving my mother to her fate. The very next minute, I almost threw myself in front of a passing bus.

"I found a pub, a grimy little hole, with a scraggly ginger behind the bar. Could have well been a Weasley. I got a drink, sat in a corner, and just… watched those people. Those muggles. Inferior and ferine. One man looked like Zabini. One girl had Daphne's hair. One twerp had a stupid, hangdog expression like Longbottom. I had three drinks while they went about their evening… drinking, talking, laughing, getting sloshed enough to sing…

"I kept going back. Days were hell and that shitty pub became my refuge. I kept shifting closer to the middle so I could listen in. Most were having a moan about their jobs, their families. Normal, mundane rubbish. One entire evening I heard two chaps argue about religion and inward reflection. They kept quoting one… Kirk... Ego... something. The next evening, I…"

He scratched his jaw.

"I went home with a muggle girl."

Another acid reflux-like burn.

"While flying back, all I wanted to do was zoom over to Azkaban and shout about it. Would you like to know what I just did, father?

"The evening after that – two days before Christmas – I got drunk enough to approach those chaps who'd been discussing religion. I simply barrelled into their booth and asked them what they were talking about. Niles and Waller they were called, couldn't have been more than three or four years older than I was, and they were discussing Solipsism, The more I listened, the more I was sure they were nitwits. But only nitwits in my head, apparently. I wanted bash my skull in and free myself from the reality in had purportedly created for me. Finally, they asked me what I was reading, and I told them History of the World by J. M. Roberts, which made them laugh for a very long time. But they... we talked about wars across centuries. I managed to salvage my reputation by bringing up Coriolanus. We talked about sodding Shakespeare. After a while, they asked me if I'd seen the latest film adaptation of Othello.

"The next thing I knew, I was being shoved into a ramshackle black car, and we were hurtling towards Trowbridge. They dragged me into a lamentable little house with crumbling walls, up a narrow staircase, into a room the size of your kitchen. I was forced to sit in a large leather sack, in front of a television, handed a bottle of piss-poor vodka…

"...I watched Othello."

His eyelids were lowered and the shadow of his eyelashes hid his eyes completely.

"By the time it finished, Waller had crawled away somewhere and Niles had passed out on the floor. I was completely off my face… can't say for certain how I made it out of that house, or into a nearby… park? I think? I had no idea where I was, so I summoned Fellow–"

"Falo," he repeated slowly, for Hermione had asked, "My mother's elf. He brought me back home… however, the state I was in… I made things needlessly challenging. Splinched myself, but I wouldn't allow him to fetch mother. He healed me the best he could."

("Where did you splinch yourself?"

"My leg."

"The scar on your shin?"

"Yeah.")

"Christmas." A weighted pause. "Was when mother gave me her handkerchief. I had to be given hourly doses of calming draughts all through boxing day.

"Niles and Waller had me do shots of every kind. Sometimes, after they'd drunk far too much, they'd walk around the empty streets to sober up before they could drive back. I'd silently trail behind them while they talked about… about, oh fuck me, ideas. Concepts that went flying over my head because I was stuck grappling with the most basic dichotomy of life and death. They did, in fact, talk about the fallacy of dying one night. Granger, would you believe me if I told you I held my tongue? That same night, they took me back to their ghastly home to watch Much Ado About Nothing.

"The Dark Lord threw a party on New Year's Eve. All creatures from the nine circles showed up. There were Dementors in the hall. Someone brought entertainment; a muggle couple. The man had the same outlandish hairstyle as Niles – shorn all over save for a bristly strip going down the middle of his head. He could have been Niles. Niles could have been him. Our guests took turns having their fun with them, while the Dark Lord indulged in some of the finest wine from our collection."

Draco shifted to the opposite side of his chair. Dragonfly hopped to the other shoulder. Hermione vanished both their mugs, and he flexed his hand like he had forgotten he'd been holding onto something.

"The night before I was to return to Hogwarts, we drove to a nearby hill. Niles and Weller dropped down on the hard, frozen ground and began waxing poetic about the fucking stars, as you do.

"But they didn't stop at the stars. They mapped out the solar system, talked about ships and giant cameras flying around space, being controlled by muggles sitting here on earth. They went back a billion years, forward a billion years, yapping on and on about endless expansion…

"Kept going deeper, wider… cosmology, metaphysics, time and matter… The universe hanging on top of me got bigger, heavier, more vital, and I was so small, so insignificant… the magic inside me, even smaller… so fucking incidental… so run of the mill compared to the absolutely perfect set of conditions that allowed the world to come into existence…

"I wanted to stay on that hill forever…

"I wanted to be who I was… on that hill… forever…

"For I knew, the next morning, I would have to force myself to become something I absolutely was not.

"I was not a killer."

He finally lifted his eyes. She saw what he was seeing. The whole universe. The impossible vastness. Scintillating silver starlight.

I would, to compose my eclogues chastely,
Lie down close to the sky like an astrologer…

"You know what Dumbledore said to me that night on the tower? Draco, you are not a killer. I had to try and convince both of us otherwise."

"You went straight to him? Once you got back to Hogwarts?"

He nodded.

"And he turned you away."

A splash of water fell on the back of her hand. She was – had been – weeping. Oh.

She reached up to wipe her eyes.

"Did you ever see Niles and Waller again?"

"No."

"Will you?"

He shrugged. Eyes dropped.

Hermione rubbed her face. When she withdrew her hands, Draco was leaving the room.

She heard the click of the bathroom door.

He was still putting himself back together, after thoroughly, piece by piece, carving and cleaving himself out of every place, thing, and person that contextualised him as who he was Before. Save for Theo and his mother, Draco Malfoy had jettisoned everything from his past.

But he wasn't running away. The thing of darkness had been acknowledged.

It was no wonder he had reforged and redefined her with a kiss. He had drawn his arms around her, and pulled her into After.

She put what he had just told her alongside what he had divulged that first night in her flat… that last night at Hogwarts… two slices of raspberry and vanilla cake…
Maybe there was a trajectory, barely discernible from the gory trajectory of war —

A door opened, there were footsteps, and another door creaked.

Hermione ventured out into the hall and saw his shadow slide across the gap under the bedroom door.

She made a stop at the bathroom – studied, for a moment, her blanched complexion and red eyes –

In the unlit bedroom, Draco had removed his jumper and was lying in bed in a plain white t-shirt, staring at the ceiling. His mouth was a thin line and his arms were stiff by his side.

She stood by the bed, one knee on the mattress, and stared at him, sensing a dilemma hovering over the horizon of her thoughts. But she let a gale of temperance sweep across the landscape, dispersing it.

He had been through it that evening. They both had been going through it all their lives. They had known fear that grew like a raviging tumour, loneliness like hypothermia, hopelessness that shrunk and dehydrated the spirit.

Why should they nurse such fragility all on their own? Her bed was their raft, wasn't it? It had weathered a storm, it could withstand the weight of a tiny shelter.

She climbed in and pulled his arm aside to make room, and kept her eyes averted as she settled at his side. His scent, the first whiff of which had come to her months and months ago on a summer afternoon, brought out the lost freshness of that winter night. She nestled her head against the curve of his neck. Her palm slipped across his chest and came to a rest at the base of his ribcage.

He had gone completely still. Shallow breaths. She wanted to slide her hand upwards to check if his heart was hammering as wildly as hers.

Slowly, he relaxed. He did not shuffle away.

"The Dark Lord would have killed my mother if you hadn't let me go."

He – and so many others – had such a bizarre notion of her probity; nobility. Did he think she had done it out of kindness? Fairness? Pity? Largesse?
She had been so scared, confused, stupid, and myopic.

She curled and uncurled her fingers, running them over his chest. It wasn't a comforting stroke, but it wasn't not one either.

"That's why I helped you," he said, "At the wedding."

Oh, all the ways they had collided over the years. Loathing, rage, jealousy, vengeance, obligation, barter, compromise…

…And now…

Now his fingers were twirling the ends of her hair.

I love you.

"Draco. I… I… hexed Snape once."

"When?"

"First year. I thought, erroneously, that he was jinxing Harry's broom during a match. So I placed some bluebell flames on his robes."

Draco exhaled hard, his stomach caved.

"You're very partial to fire, aren't you? Have a hidden arsonist streak as well?"

"No. It's just that fire is… sure-fire."

He groaned and she felt his chin brush against the top of her head.

"You are an efficient witch."

"Nothing if not that." She closed her eyes.

"I hexed Hagrid."

"Draco. Why?"

"You know why."

"That was your own bloody fault, you horrible–"

"I used to leave dungbombs in the greenhouses for Sprout to find."

"What did Sprout ever do to you?"

"She expected me to take herbology seriously."

"Prat. Did you try anything on McGonagall?"

"Don't be daft. Of course not."

XXX

She woke up because she'd heard a loud banging noise.

It was still dark. She was alone in bed. The curtains were fluttering and the balcony doors were open.

She scrambled out in a panic, grabbing her wand off the nightstand.

"Draco?" she croaked, "Draco, are you all right?"

He was standing with his back to her, straining over the railing so that his face pushed past the shield and into the cold night.

"What are you doing?" she whispered.

"Nothing," he clipped, without turning, "Go back to bed."

"Are you –"

"I'm fine."

"What –"

"Go back to bed, Granger."

His delivery brooked no arguments.

For some time, she stood just on the other side of the doors. Then she moved to perch on the bed. Then she lay down.

She closed her eyes quickly when he finally came back inside. The doors rattled as he closed them, the impact reached the bottles on her dressing table.

He climbed into bed and she stayed up till his breathing evened out and deepened.

---

The next time she awoke, cyanic dawn was staining the curtains. She had forgotten to darken them again.

And she almost broke down crying.

She was lying on her side, in a semi-foetal position, and Draco's chest was expanding and contracting against her back. His breath was in her hair, glancing off the back of her neck. His legs were folded along hers. His arm was draped over her waist, underscoring her own arm. Moving just her eyes, she looked down at them, side by side, his dwarfing hers —

Strong and masculine but long and elegant; a smattering of hair, gentle ridges of veins, ending in a loose fist, half-resting on her small and narrow hand. Her wrist was hidden under his.

She was so warm. Whole and safe and perfect.

The day hadn't begun, the night hadn't ended. At that unspecific hour, she was separated from the world. She had no compunctions to be anything, to put herself into structures and boxes as dictated by life, time, and perception. She was only Hermione, as raw, as bare, as unaffected as she'd ever been. She was a woman, small and delicate, fragile and young, wrapped up in the arms of the one she loved.

If Draco were to ask her where she wanted to stay and who she wanted to be forever, this would be her answer.

Gradually, morning began to demand acknowledgement –

A light of recognition fills
The whole great day, and bright
The tiny world of lovers' arms.

Draco pulled in a deep breath. As he breathed out, his arm slid away. He turned to lie on his back.

His normal, sleep-heavy respiring resumed. Hermione slipped out of bed and got ready for her run.

She did not run.

She plodded.

As though, instead of trainers, she had put on enormous clown shoes, or squelching wet flippers. That same ungainly gait brought her back home, where Draco was asleep, still. She peeked into the study, and lingered, staring at their chairs, still locked in conversation.

After a very long shower, she entered a bedroom sans Draco. The bed had been made. She dressed quickly, scurried into the living room, and there she found him, lying on the sofa, face hidden behind the paper, having a cuppa tea.

Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, Rosie Lea.

Her shoulders fell with relief.

"You made just that one cup?" she asked quiveringly.

A distracted yeah while he flipped a page.

When he spoke again, Hermione had brewed a cup of her own and was sat at the dining table, penning a letter.

"You've thrown the league in a disarray. There's major infighting happening among the Arrows. More than half the team wants to boycott Nimbus, but the coach is chummy with Whitehorn."

"What kind of coach sides with a company over his own team?"

"A bad one. There's unrest in the Spanish League, too."

"Yes, we'd suspected that would happen. By next week, international teams will be joining in."

"Oh?"

She heard the crinkle of the paper being lowered.

"I'm seeing to that right now."

She smiled absently while trying to frame sentences in their simplest form.

"How so?"

"By writing to Victor."

"Krum?"

"Yep."

There were a few beats of silence before he pulled the paper back up.

A while later, he had stood up and was stretching his back with his hands behind his head, expanding his torso, lengthening his spine and neck. He hadn't put his jumper back on, and the tightening muscles of his arms were displayed in all their glory. He bent backwards a bit, causing the front of his t-shirt to lift, revealing a hint of that trail of fair hair beneath his navel.

Good lord.

Hermione forced herself to look outside the window. It was shaping up to be a decently sunny day.

"I have to be at the Ellerby and Spudmore main office in an hour," she squeaked, "I have a meeting with Burkhard Glöckner."

"I'll come with you."

She moved convulsively.

He was so beautifully, brightly lit up, that same shadowed young man from the night before.

"There's a museum of brooms through the ages on the first floor," he elaborated, "I haven't been since I was fourteen. Hopefully they'll have some new additions."

Hermione ran her tongue along her teeth. "I have to go to Diagon next."

"As do I."

"We could go to Mabel's after, to pick up the cake."

"Fine."

He left, briefly, for a change of clothes, and Hermione munched on some toast and read the papers in a way that demonstrated that fine practice long perfected by the corporate sector: Tokenism. Upon his return, she had a Scrambly-Ramby moment, which was really a diversion so she could quickly disengage the part of her that was clamouring to greet him like they'd been parted for years.

It was all for naught, because soon they were in the lift, and all she could think about was the last time they'd been in there together. Sweat beaded along the back of her neck. His cologne needled her self-control. The brush of his sleeve against his coat when he moved his arm reminded her of the sound it made when she shoved it off his shoulders…

Out in the bright morning light, things began making sense again. They apparated to the outskirts of Milton Keynes, to what looked like a small parrock to muggles, but was actually multiple large buildings owned by Ellerby and Spudmore. Bronze gates under an arch upon which those same names were boldly embossed, welcomed them into a sizable area. The manufacturing unit was near the back, emitting smoke and sparks from tall chimneys. There was a large multi-storey warehouse to one side. The main office was in the middle, a tall building with hundreds of arched windows.

Hermione and Draco walked inside, and split up in the lobby.

She was made to wait for close to half an hour before a woman in flouncy robes took her to Glöckner's office.

He was a very old man with long white hair, sunken eyes, and no interest in House-Elves. He made the latter very evident very early on, so Hermione spoke slowly and waveringly out of sheer spite.

The meeting ended with the most insincere I'm sorry and the most unnecessary I'll walk you out, and the two of them paced towards the lobby in silence.

Draco was waiting by the door. He twitched with surprise when he saw the fossil that had attached itself to her.

"Young Malfoy!" the fossil sibilated, "What a marvellous surprise! Oh, but not so young anymore. You are a man now!"

He stuck out his hand. Draco… looked at it.

Uno, dos, tres.

Glöckner dropped his hand awkwardly.

"I am so sorry for what has befallen your father. Terribly unfortunate."

"Is it?" Draco asked waspishly, "Is it unfortunate?"

Glöckner's eyes darted towards Hermione. "Oh, I am merely offering my sympathies to you, dear boy. We at Ellerby and Spudmore will always be grateful to your family's long patronage–"

Draco walked away. Glöckner's mouth closed with a snap and he turned to Hermione with a look of deep offence. She gave him the sort of steely smile she'd seen Barros shoot at the slimiest of defence barristers and followed after Draco.

As they walked towards the gates she said, "You never told me you knew him."

"Can't imagine how I forgot," he snapped.

"Absolute rotter."

"He was a staunch and open supporter of Grindelwald. You can see why he got along so well with my father."

"How did he escape prison?"

Draco made a noise of disgust. "Fled to England while the arrests were happening, quickly created one of the fastest brooms in the market, let E&S absorb his company, and all was forgotten."

They apparated to Diagon and split up outside Flourish and Blotts. Hermione had to head into the side lane to Phantomlight Publishing, and Draco was off to place orders for the party.

"Wait!" she called out, "Please tell me you wont get into a brawl with Seamus."

He sneered. "I don't brawl, Granger. It's undignified."

"Then please don't–"

He rolled his eyes and stalked off. She rolled her eyes at his receding back.

That next meeting couldn't have been more different to the previous one. Rosheen Coleman was a lovely, lively woman who shook Hermione's hand hard enough to pull it out of its socket. She showed her around the Publishing House; considerably neater and more elaborate than the Lovegood setup. The press was humming and spitting out pages, which were then being sewn together by two bright eyed elves wearing smocks made of old leather book covers.

Hermione's petition received some sustenance at last, and she was about to leave when she was accosted by a batty old woman brandishing a book in her face.

"Oooh Hermione Granger! Lookie, it's Hermione Granger. It's me book launch today, Ms Granger. Smile for a photograph, won't you love, for me book launch…"

Flash! Click!

She had to wrestle herself free, but not before her desperate, offhand comment, ("I'm sure your book is wonderful and insightful!") was taken as an official statement for the press release – after omitting the first two words.

She grumbled about it to Draco when they met again. He had a large paper bag in his hand. The wind and sun were playing with his hair, and it looked like a champagne whirlpool.

"What was her book about?"

"Apart from that, the meeting went well. I would have hated it if my final appointment hadn't been successful. They have some impressive titles under their belt, too. I mean–"

"Granger."

"What?"

"What was the title of the madwoman's book?"

"Psssth mmphuns."

"Didn't catch that, sorry."

She ground her teeth. "It was Portents and Premonitions: A Guide."

Draco threw his head back and laughed.

Such a cruel contradiction.

Draco laughing at her expense,
Was its own recompense —

They apparated to Regent's Park with her hand wrapped around his elbow.

Her hands were deep in her pockets while they walked to Mabel's bakery.

The woman greeted her cheerfully, and added with a cheeky wink, "Every time you visit, it's with a different young man."

"I brought Theo here last summer," Hermione muttered at Draco's raised brow.

With another bag in hand, they walked back to the park. There, behind some trees, she gave him a rolled up parchment with a quill in between.

"It's yours," she maffled, "Already has your name on it."

She watched him slide it into his pocket, feeling ridiculously diffident, before looking up.

"I'll come by around half five?"

"All right."

"Um. See you."

He lifted his hand and made a shooing gesture.

She stuck her tongue out at him, took two steps back, and spun.