Houses Competition piece about Hermione and her evening with new best bud himself, Draco Malfoy. Definitively AU.

HC Y2, HoH, Ravenclaw, Themed (friendship), Prompt: Laptop, WC: 2335

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The door bangs open just as I'm reaching my third hour scrolling through Facebook. I glance up in mild surprise, my eyes shifting back down to the glowing screen of the laptop as I realise it's only Draco. Stupid, annoying Draco Malfoy who barges into my apartment sporadically and angrily. Draco Malfoy who looked as though he should have just stalked across my living room and smashed several priceless vases into tiny pieces. Instead, he's staring at me. Confused, perhaps.

"Granger," he greets slowly, perplexed. "What on earth is that on your lap? Your face is glowing."

"It's a computer, Malfoy," I murmur in response, sifting through old photos and coming across one of me and Ron, two years ago. Ron stares out at me from the screen, his blue eyes lit up from the camera flash and dimples even more pronounced. I glare back at him and the me that stands beside him - happy, slimmer, and so much in love with the redhead next to me. Now I'm caught between wondering whether I should or shouldn't have loved Ron. Whether I even did.

"What in Merlin's name is a computer?" Malfoy opens cupboards, searching for something as he talks. Eventually, he pulls out the biscuit barrel and a beer, coming to sit on the adjacent chair. I'm not quite certain how annoyed I am at him for barging in yet, but I'm sure I'll figure it out in a minute or two. "It looks like a pensive. I can see Ron. That's an old picture of you two... You look..."

"Better," I mutter.

"Different," Malfoy counters. I scowl. "Are you going to tell me about this idiotic muggle contraption or not?"

I click through a couple more photos before responding. "Sure." Then I self-consciously look down at the screen again, seeing the photo of Ron and me at the Potter-Weasley wedding three years ago. It was taken in this really beautiful moment where we were dancing, and the light was good, and our bodies and minds were inundated with alcohol of the smooth, golden kind, and love felt like it really could be real... "A computer processes information. Like someone that reads a book - they take in the information and do something useful with it."

"What are you using it for now?"

"Where are you supposed to be?"

"Doesn't matter." Malfoy pops open the beer and leans close, staring at the laptop. "Tell me. Facebook. What's that?"

"It's social media," I explain, already brimming with frustration. Explaining anything to do with muggle computers and that sort of thing always confuses Malfoy. How could he possibly understand why people use Facebook? Why would he bother? It's like trying to explain quantum mechanics to a grandfather who still doesn't know how to turn his mobile on.

"Like the Prophet? But on a screen instead of paper?" he asks, mouth full of biscuit. Crumbs fall from his lips and all over his shirt, jacket, and trousers. I scowl again, feeling like a mother taking care of a very idiotic baby. "Why is it on a screen? And why is Ron in the news?"

"It's not a news channel, Malfoy - at least, not in the same way as the Prophet," I start, sighing and shuffling back in my seat, knowing that this could be a long conversation during which I would obviously prefer to eat ice cream, drink wine, and wonder why Ron didn't love me in that true love is magical way. "It's a way of sharing news with people you love. Like when you do something good sometime and want to tell family members or friends."

"So it's a way to show off?" Malfoy gets up again, looking anxious and harried. But then he pauses, as if caught between two parallel conversations in his head. "You're not a show-off, Granger."

"It's not like that," I argue, laughing incredulously. "I want to know about their lives, so share things about my own. It's also like keeping a diary - a virtual imprint of what you life is and was."

"A what?"

"Why do you have to be so... Oblivious?" I ask, flicking through the next couple of photos, hoping for another bout of nostalgia to wash over me. Instead, I find a photo of the Golden Trio, in our golden days. A photo my mother took of the three of us, having returned from war a little more damaged than we had expected to be. And the wave of feelings isn't gentle, but it's crashing and aggressive. It brings back the memories of the day, and the realisation that I couldn't even begin to explain to my parents what we had been through.

"Why do you have to be so... Muggle?" Malfoy asks, scowling back at me. "Also, that is such an old photo. Why are you even looking at it?"

"Wasn't that long ago."

My mind disappears for a few moments into the chaos that filled those days.

"So. Virtual imprint. What's that?" Draco interrupts my somewhat profound thoughts once again, sipping on his beer and seeming to get comfortable. It's a wonder he survives at all without even a muggle knocking him over the head with something - whether it be a hammer or a book, either would do the trick.

"It's like a mark - a massive finger print - that goes onto the internet," I respond. Maybe talking about inane things is much better than looking at old, loving photos of my ex and the life I could have had. "It's like you putting up a red flag and the database knowing it's you."

"Hermione, I swear to Merlin if you don't start talking English -"

"Alright!" I shout, my tether breaking in one fell swoop. "Merlin. Alright. The internet. It's like Hogwarts. People everywhere. Someone says something there, it immediately gets spread about and people can find out it's from you. Like the rumour about you and Pansy in the fifth floor broom cupboard - it started somewhere, travelled all over."

"Or the rumour that Ron was cheating on you with... Who was it?"

"Lavender," I snap. Then calmer, "Bloody Lavender Brown."

And there she is. In the photo, dancing with Ron at the Potter-Weasley wedding, laughing in a ridiculously beautiful way, balancing drinks for her and Ron in one hand, and the wine for me in the other. Lavender Brown. In the background, or so I thought.

"You know, she's really not that pretty," Draco comments. I slap him on the arm. "Hey!"

"Don't be mean," I sigh.

"Glass of wine?" he asks. I nod. He knows me too well.

There's a light clinking of glasses in the background as Draco reaches for the large ones at the back of the cupboard and pulls out two - because God knows he'll always pour himself one as well. Two bottles are pulled out and set in the decanter, something my parents bought me for my twenty-first birthday two years ago. A few days after Ron decided to tell me he didn't want me anymore. That had caused quite a few issues within the friendship group. Although, a friendship group that oddly included Draco Malfoy and Ron Weasley within two metres of each other would always be explosive.

"Why is the laptop making you cry?"

Draco's voice shocks me again, all too close to me and my bubble of ridiculous misery.

"What?"

"You're crying," he says. "Is it the light? Because it's pretty bright." I laugh in response, shaking my head. It's not the light. It's the memories of the photos that fill the screen before me. Memories of the explosive, uncomfortable end to a long relationship and a very long friendship. "Is it the picture?"

"It's stupid, I know," I murmur. "Just a picture. But it was when..."

"I know." Malfoy stops me before I can utter another word. He hands me the glass of red wine and sits on the adjacent chair to me. There's this odd, understanding look in his eyes that I've never quite picked up on before. "I know."

"Stupid laptop, stupid Ron," I mutter darkly. "Why couldn't he have been just a bit nicer?"

We sit in silence for what feels like hours, days, years. But Draco is drinking the wine that he prepared, watching me closely, and I'm still staring at that damning screen in front of me. The last remnants of my ridiculous relationship on show for myself and the whole world to see. What is it with the need to post everything online? Having this innate need to make sure you are remembered. But I don't want to remember this part of my life. Frankly, staring at it now, I hate it. Stupid Ron.

Halfway through the third decade of our silence, Draco gets up to get more wine for the both of us, and brings ice cream for which I'm thankful. Then he starts speaking, though I'm only half listening and half paying attention to the buzzing white noise between my ears.

"Ron was an idiot," he says. Not especially comforting. "But the thing about idiots is that they help us see the smart ones in our lives. Without them, we'd follow the mediocre and the dull." He falters. "No, that's stupid. Your life wouldn't have been boring without Ron. Merlin, what am I saying?"

"I think the wine got to you, Malfoy," I laugh, turning to face him. "You're a good friend."

"I'm the worst," he replies, smirking.

Looking at him then, I notice something I hadn't before. Maybe in my slightly preposterous wine-fuelled stupor it's more obvious and it's always been there. But I notice a little bit of light behind his eyes. Back when we were at Hogwarts, there was definite darkness and trouble with him. But now... Now there's something else there too. A goodness. Amongst sharp features and pale skin. Somewhere, in the cold and cynical mind of Draco Malfoy, there is a brightness that eclipses even himself.

"What are you looking at?" he asks.

"Nothing," I smile in return. Then I close the lid of the laptop, stowing it away under the chair. "You know, you really are wonderful." Unconsciously, I settle back, comfortable in his presence. He smiles, almost politely, and nods a thank you. Obviously knowing I'm about to spew more rubbish from my lips. "You've been there for me for a while now. From the war. Through the stuff with my parents. When Ron was being... An idiot." And that is putting it lightly. "You're wonderfully, fantastically, faithfully everpresent."

"Well thank you... I think," he laughs. His laughter is a little bit of warmth. Maybe it's the red wine.

"I really mean it, Draco."

"First name basis are we?"

"Dracoooooooooo!" I shout in response, howling the name like a mating call. Malfoy throws his arms over his head, screaming about the noise, leaving me laughing even harder. "And I am not drunk!"

"You so are," he shouts, accusing me with a pointed finger. "You are absolutely out of it!"

"Drunk on life, perhaps."

The years, and the weeks, and the minutes blur into seconds. They collide at once. The room spins around me a little, but the warmth of the red wine and central heating keeps me steady as Draco says the next words.

"I'm glad you're happier."

They bring me to a crashing halt. They remind me of what I was, just a few hours ago. Poring over photos of an ex-boyfriend who ruined my wellbeing. Ignoring my friends for fear that they hated me too. When Ron broke up with me he said some awful things to follow on from a stream of awful things he'd said to me over the last ten years of our friendship and terrible relationship. That I could never be loved. That I could never be someone he would love. That I never had been. He told me that I was damaged and broken and confirmed every fear I had ever had. That I was dull and too studious and that my dead-end job proved my life was going nowhere.

And on this ridiculous evening I decided to delve into the old photos and bring up everything that ever was in that relationship. Analyse where I might have gone wrong to end up here. Because how the heck did it happen? How the heck did I go from being at the top of my game - friends, a boyfriend, a job that had fantastic prospects - to pushing paper for the Leaky Cauldron and drinking wine with Draco Malfoy in an apartment I don't technically own. Glory days well and truly over.

"Hermione?"

"Hmm?" I respond vaguely, slowly coming back from my mind. Then I remember. "What was your day like? You seemed annoyed."

"Usual stuff, you know," he laughs, a little nervously. I glare back at him. "Went through some Bulgarian legislation - Merlin knows why they let me do that - and came across a few issues with other members of departments. As usual."

"Who was it this time?"

"Just a bespectacled idiot and his ginger mongweasel." Then he grins. "Don't worry, they're dealt with."

From that point on, the evening is much improved. I don't fall back into the pattern of overthinking and analysing every word, but instead hear about and discuss the agreements the Ministry is trying to put through with Bulgaria. Malfoy and I debate the benefits and consequences of the merging departments. We order in Takeaway and eat on the floor, watching old favourites and new binges until early next morning.

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Thanks for reading!