A/N - If you'd believe it, I have literally 50+ pages of this written, so in hiatus I am not!
Ever Since We Met, The World's Been Upside Down…
1977
.oOo.
November 7, 1977 - One Week after Halloween
[Lily POV]
The summer after the Longbottoms rescued her from the precipice of the Wizarding World with the same ease they might pluck a cherry from its stem, Lily and Frank had begun to devise a secret language. It wasn't intentional, of course, in fact, their later more concerted efforts at intimacy had only resulted in clumsy, sterile kisses and unlacing laughter. Lily and Frank were not going to be each other's sweethearts, and despite the years they spent at the top of their class together, they hadn't yet become friends, too dissimilar in disposition to seek the other out. So it wasn't a troll that brought the two together, instead, it was the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery, and the disciplinary hearings they were summoned to attend at the Ministry of Magic for their offenses against it.
"Lily Evans?" Frank asked politely when he saw her. "What crime have you committed? Or shall I guess?" The good natured amusement with which he speculated the cause for what she was sure was her impending expulsion astonished her. She gripped the notebook in her lap, where she had noted the outcomes of the hearings over the past five years to hide her shaking hands. Softening, Frank took a seat next to her.
"Listen, McLaggen was in here two weeks ago, set an entire muggle store on fire trying to set off a firework, and he made off with a slap on the wrist. Whatever you've done, I'm sure you've got nothing to worry about, right mum?" Also noted in Lily's book were statistics, and how her type of witch might not be so lucky. She had a hunch, poring over the old case files that Professor Binns had kindly mailed her over the summer, that that was the whole point.
"Of course she does, dear." Lady Augusta, from whom Frank had inherited his shrewd eyes, was also decidedly not the source of his earnest heart. She was bored, however, and felt kinship, or pity, perhaps, for the young witch. She plucked Lily's notebook from her lap, satisfied with what she saw. "Or would have, anyways, straighten your skirt, young lady, and Frank, the door."
And, just like that, on nothing more than a whim and with nothing more than a pointed hand on her shoulder, Lady Augusta's astonishingly pureblood presence in the room helped Lily avoid her near certain expulsion. Lily was grateful, and Frank, thumbing through her notebook, disgusted, and with the illusion of civility having been ripped open like curtains in front of their eyes, they began to see the other. And, the longer they looked, the more of the other they began to see in themselves, like the push and pull of the same tide. Like both the forest and the fire.
She saw him then, thought of him, orderly shining a light from the tip of their wand in her eyes, asking the very same questions the two had dutifully jotted down patients' answers to during a brief stint interning at the hospital in a summer full of opportunities. And thank Circe for it, because she knew just what to ask of Hermione, who seemed, for once, just as in need of help as she. It was times like those, the do-or-die, when the heat of the flames she'd kindled threatened to overtake her, that she felt her friend the closest.
"Miss Granger, I'm happy to say it looks as though everything above your neck is in perfect working order."
Well, Lily didn't know about perfect, but she'd take it. It had to be working well enough, she figured, given that nobody had strapped her to a gurney yet for losing her mind. She'd passed their memory tests, with Hermione's help, of course, and if the selected truths she had shared with Harry was enough to satiate him, she'd make it out by the skin of her teeth, or by the brights of her mind, as Augusta Longbottom used to tell them. She gestured to the rest of her body- and below?
"Ah yes. Well, we'll have to keep watch, and you remain absolutely forbidden from exerting yourself, but I suspect you'll be ready for visiting hours in no time if you keep away from your voice. Don't think we can't hear you two whispering all night when Mr. Potter comes 'round. There'll be no more of that."
She widened her eyes, feigning innocence. Technically, she wasn't supposed to be speaking, and technically, he wasn't supposed to be visiting, but she supposed it was easier to say no to her than Harry.
"Be good, Miss Granger," the orderly said, rolling up her parchment and pointing her feathered quill at Lily, who, despite her mottled neck, despite the harrowing night that passed her and the uncertainty ahead, thought of the way the world had suddenly opened up to her that fateful summer only after she stood on what felt like its very edge, and grinned.
.oOo.
Draco had spent, he was loathe to admit, and as Blaise took great glee in pointing out, a…not-inconsequential amount of time observing Harry Potter. When they were younger, it was out of anger, or jealousy perhaps. By the time they had gotten to sixth year, it was out of fear, and even a bit of respect. What he hadn't done, of course, during his not-so-silent vigil, was spend any particular time with the man. So when Hermione, in her absence, had inadvertently had thrust him into Harry's heliocentric orbit, he wasn't quite sure how to feel. Since it had become clear that Hermione would be fine in time, Harry would seek him out in the mornings, a smile, a wave, and once, horrifyingly, when his hands were full with a mug to his lips, a wink over a cup of coffee.
"Do you think he is like this all the time?" he asked Padma. In the past two years, it appeared that Harry had fallen into an ease with his celebrity, he was affable, approachable, and more often than not, seemed to have adapted his once-mentor's twinkle in his eye. But, Draco had assumed that it was for show, or at least, for his friends. But here they were, with nothing to be gained by the Boy Who Had it All, having to play this horrific game of niceties. "He cannot possibly be so happy sober."
"I'd imagine any day someone isn't actively trying to kill him is a good day for him. But, now that you mention it, do you think we should start bringing a flask?" She picked up a glass of grapefruit juice in front of her and swirled it around as she might a flask of baneberry tonic. "Vodka, maybe? Champagne?"
"Champagne? Out of a flask? If you want to rough it, go have breakfast with Weasley," he said. Padma flipped her thick braid over her shoulder, picking up the croissant on his plate.
"Maybe I will." He and Padma had been a bit strange ever since Hermione, ever since he told her what she had said. He had debated keeping it to himself, but her admission had been so strange - call her Lily - he had to tell her.
"She's been knee-deep in this woman's life's magic working on the wards," Padma frowned. "And I'm sure that snake venom did something to her brain…its not inconcievable for her to just have been a bit addled."
"Addled? You don't think we should, you know, do something? Say something?"
"Say something?" Padma scoffed. "Absolutely not. To whom? Potter? He'd just tell the Medi-Witches, or the Aurors, and they'd fry her brain faster than you can say Longbottom." This, he knew, was true. Wizarding magic, although deeply interested in the mind, wasn't exactly…refined when it came to matters of the brain. There had been some talk, in the more academic circles, at least, that the case of Frank and Alice Longbottom was perhaps in part worsened by the Wizarding World's primitive understanding of what the Muggles would call neuroscience. Although she was too couth to say it, this was widely assumed as the reason Hermione refused help from the Ministry to help her find her parents and restore their memories.
In the end, they decided to do what Hermione had done, monitor the situation herself. Padma's sister, he learned, was a nurse, and had sent them updates on the various testing Hermione had undergone. So far, so good, so they decided to reserve any further plan of action until they saw her themselves.
So, here he was, uncomfortable with what she had said, uncomfortable with the way Padma's brow had furrowed when he told her about the kiss, and deeply, entirely uncomfortable with the saccharine ways Harry Potter showed his gratitude. In today's particularly harrowing instance, it had escalated to popping up behind him in dark rooms.
"Draco Malfoy!" Draco staggered backwards, hitting the cobbled wall of the owlery behind him. "Man of the hour!"
"For fucks sake," he hissed. By instinct, he had put his hand on the hilt of his wand, and Harry's cheerful expression did not change as he disarmed him just as quickly. "How long have you been there?"
"Thought I might find you here," Harry answered, avoiding the question. "Walk with me?"
It was a question, he supposed, but not much of a request, considering he still had his wand. He tipped his chin by way of a yes.
"Good lad!" he said, clapping his hand on Draco's back in a way that made him feel conspiratorial, but to what, exactly, he wasn't sure. On the way down from the Owlery, they stopped to chat with, it seemed, every person, House Elf, ghost and professor that walked by. On occasion, after the war, Harry would be seen walking around Diagon Alley with Teddy Lupin strapped to his chest. "Got to get him used to people, you know," he had said to whatever middle-aged mother had asked him, and then ran to Witch Weekly to tell them. Get him used to the masses, he imagined Hermione telling him. Otherwise, what was this about?
"So, listen." he said as they turned down a quieter hallway. "You've heard Kingsley and McGonnagal want a hearing, the whole show?"
Ah yes, the usually mild-mannered Minister, who, upon getting word of what had happened at the castle the night of the All Hallows Ball, had stormed into the Great Hall, an assortment of nondescript workers following suit.
"Are you running a school, or a future penitentiary, Minerva?" he bellowed. McGonnagal, who had spent the better part of the night corralling traumatized students back to their rooms, flew into a rage.
"Your aurors came into my school to illegally detain one of my students when you knew I would be distracted, and you dare ask me that question?" She had been so angry, he heard later, that the stone knights lining the halls drew their swords.
Harry, and later Draco, of course, had missed this commotion, having been pulled into Hermione's mess with her damn snake. It did not, however, spare them from the fallout, as they had technically been implicated with the phoenix heart, the illegal questioning, and conveniently for Hermione who was not fit to take the stand, her contraband snake.
"So I've heard."
When two third years rounded the corner, Harry led them up a set of stairs that had, like him, appeared seemingly out of thin air.
"Couldn't get any of us out of that, unfortunately, although as far as I'm concerned it'll be mostly a formality with us, and more a question about the aurors and school, where do we go from here, all that sort of thing," Harry rolled his eyes, clearly unmoved by the increasingly tense relations between the school and the Ministry, and the precarious position in which this would put Draco and his magical probation. He stopped at the top of the stairs, letting his bag fall off his shoulder in a thump.
"Anyway," he said, stooping down to rummage through it, the bag seemingly swallowing his arm up to his shoulder. "I think I've done you one better. Two better, actually." Finding what he was looking to, Harry sprung to his feet, presenting Draco with an envelope. "Oh, this too," he added, returning his wand as an afterthought.
The last thing Draco wanted was another favor. He had come back to Hogwarts for exactly that reason. To make something of himself that could stand separate from his father, the Dark Lord, and especially from the whimsical generosity of Harry Potter. He thought to tell him no, to shove off, that he had no intention of being any further indebted to him anymore than he wanted to be his friend. But, as he handed Draco an envelope, Harry looked on as if he had given him a gift on Christmas morning.
"I can't," he said, shaking his head. "Holidays aren't for another month," he landed on. Diplomatic.
"It's the least I can do, considering. I insist." He gestured towards the envelope. Go on.
The first of the documents took him a moment to understand. It was in Ministry letterhead, affirming that one Draco Malfoy, with specific approval, could be allowed to use magic outside of the castle during his magical probation. This type of exemption had been unheard of; you were either like Blaise, who had no magic for the year but was free to travel, or like him, a wand on his person only within the confines of the castle.
The second, although easier to comprehend, was far more confusing. A cheque. For a considerable amount of money. On the bottom, the note simply said - Investment.
"Into your potions, obviously, you and Patil, if she'll have you. I'll have Slughorn on a trademark as soon as you say the word ."
An exception that would have him leave. Money to let him do it. An impending trial that could drag his marred past back to the surface. Draco felt his blood rise to his skin, the sensation stinging across across his Dark Mark.
"Is this a threat?" he asked, cutting him off. The question hung thick in the silence between them. When Harry didn't answer, Draco continued. "You've made it incredibly obvious you've been having me followed, Potter, you nearly took my head off earlier this year and you probably sicced your Ministry dogs on me, so if this is a threat, I've got to say, I prefer the fucking duel."
Harry, usually serene, sometimes unmoored, furrowed his brow. No, Draco decidedly did not like being on the other end of watching Harry, who squinted while he took Draco in. Finally, he sighed:
"Come on, then" he said, stooping down to pick up his bag and slinging it over his shoulder. When Draco made no signal to move, Harry rolled his eyes. "If you're so nervous, here," he said, jabbing his wand out, and it took a moment for Draco to realize that he was offering him the handle. A bit ironic, he thought, since they both knew that Harry, lucid, hardly thought about him enough to lob a curse, but if it was a peace offering, Draco knew he would be wise to accept. He shook his head, but agreed to follow. When they found themselves in the Astronomy wing of the seventh floor, he wished he hadn't.
"Why are we here?" They stood in front of the stone wall, from which the doors to the Room of Requirement would sometimes reveal themselves. Draco had taken great care to avoid the room entirely, in fact, the last time he had seen it had been on the back of Harry's broom, the image of Vincent Crabbe's bulging eyes and melting skin often appearing behind his eyeballs, lest he actively shut it out. Did Harry know? Remember?
"I'm trying —" Harry started, suddenly hoarse, and Draco suddenly realized that perhaps this was not about him at all. "I've been trying to find something of my Mum's in there. Something Hermione found, except, I don't know where she's found it, exactly, and I can't get the door to come up." He turned to face Draco then. "How'd you find us, back in fifth year? Dumbledore's Army. You didn't know exactly where we were in there, and it's not like you needed to be practicing your DADA, although maybe you should have."
"I wanted to be where you were, I suppose."
Harry raised an eyebrow.
"Romantic. But it's not working. I think I might- because I can't remember her, I've seen a couple pictures, I suppose, but I can't conjure her up."
It was funny, in a morbid sort of way, that everyone knew Harry Potter was an orphan, and yet, Draco had never quite considered what that meant. To just, not know. He thought that maybe he should apologies, express condolences, but he couldn't bring himself to. Instead, he considered the dilemma at hand.
"Why don't you ask Hufflepuff?"
"What?"
"You know, like the rhyme? Helpful Helga lends a hand…" Draco trailed off. Two dead parents also meant he was raised by Muggles. Yet another morbidity everybody knew, and yet didn't. "Rumor is she made this room like Slytherin made the Chamber, so you could try and ask her."
Harry fell silent again, concentrating on the wall in front of him. Before long, a door appeared, not the large, old wood he was accustomed to. It was smaller, white, with purple and pink flowers painted across the front as if by a child's hand. Whatever this was, Draco wanted no part in it. He shifted his weight back and forth.
"Now what?"
"I didn't think we'd get this far, honestly. I don't know." Harry held a hand up as if to knock, and Draco was surprised to see his hand was shaking.
"Could you?" he said suddenly, turning back towards Draco, and for the second time that day, Draco felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He cleared his throat, wiping his hand against his cloak. Heat rose to the top of his neck, and although he had long forgone the formality of a tie, he felt his collar constrict against his neck. He made it as far as putting a palm against the handle, jumping back when it singed.
"I can't."
"You can't." Harry said. Of course you can't, he didn't, and the heat that had been rising up like bile in his throat flooded his face. So he did know. What was this, some kind of lesson?
"This is sick," Draco said, shaking his head. "I - just, fuck off," he said, turning on his heel.
Harry waited until he reached the top of the stairs to call out.
"If I wanted to hurt you, you know I wouldn't waste my time with a threat. " There was an edge to his voice that handn't been there before, and in a twisted way, it made Draco feel relieved. There it was, the tension, out in the open. "Open your eyes, Malfoy, I am trying to help you."
"By what? Using your dead mum to lure me out to see where I killed my fucking friend?" Draco knew he had gone too far when he said it, Harry strode down the hall and despite himself, Draco stepped backwards.
When the two men were face to face again, it wasn't anger, he saw, but grief. Harry took off his glasses, covering his eyes with heels of his palm as though he didn't want to see who he was talking to when he spoke next.
"They put up a fucking plaque," he said, "where I killed my godfather, and I had to go and cut the red ribbon on it. For his tremendous sacrifice, or whatever the fuck they had me read. I had to say thank you. Draco, I am trying to help you," he said, waving his hand in the air. His glasses clattered to the ground.
"If you want to stick around after word gets out that Draco Malfoy saved the day, I could honestly care less. But when they make you open this door, and the ones at the Manor, and at Gringotts, and Azkaban, and they shove a camera in your face while they do it, don't say it wasn't because you didn't get a choice."
With that, Harry turned and left, the white door with the painted flowers shrinking back into the brick behind him.
.oOo.
November 15, 1977
[Ginny POV]
In the days after Hermione had been hurt, everything felt…familiar. The tenseness, the whispers, the furtive glances. The last time a snake had injured a classmate, Ginny had been the one to let it loose, and she couldn't help but find it just a little bit funny that the castle looked to her now to help set it right.
"Friendly fire," Ginny assured those who asked. All a mistake. There was no evil lurking around the corners, slithering through the pipes (although it was true that Neville hadn't tracked down Desdemona, who has presumably acclimated to the other demented flora and fauna of the forest). Of course, Hogwarts felt more like a glass house than a stone castle, and every reverberation threatened to knock it over. When Kingsley had come tearing into the castle that evening, Percy Weasley, who retained his position as Junior Assistant to the Minister, was hot on his tail, making a point to find her amidst the chaos.
"I've got to go find Skeeter to drown her in paperwork before this hits the press," he said. "Anything I should know?" Anything he should know? She thought about telling him that everything was fine, that she had it under control, but then she thought to Hermione. A truth, or a version of it.
"It was an accident. Whatever happened today, he - we," she added as an afterthought, because it had been the four of them. "We saved her life."
"Oh, Gin," he groaned. "I really wish you hadn't said that."
It was that flippant, but truthful we, because all four of them had been in the room when the potion was finished, that had landed her, Ron, Padma and Draco in the current Wizengamot proceedings. She has just wrapped, Padma and Draco having goone before her to tell their sides of the events that had landed Hermione in the hospital, and the castle in a panic. Despite knowing nothing could really happen to them, having been involved in a daring rescue and she was learning, what was apparently a significant achievement in potion making, Ginny was relieved to be released to join the others while the chairs deliberated. They sat together in a small balcony of just four rows overlooking the plum robes beneath them. There were two other such balconies, ones that Kingsley had installed in an effort to increase transparency. Across from them was one for a small number of seats open to the public, and on another, reporters. Although no cameras were allowed, Ginny was determined not to make a show of herself, so she straightened her expression to one of neutrality instead of shock, when Padma Patil brushed away tears on the stand below her, describing the way Hermione looked when they found her. She wasn't sure if Draco felt the same weight she did, although she supposed with good reason. He was laying across a row of chairs in the back, a copy of the Prophet covering his face.
It was as much emotion as the usually stalwart Ravenclaw was willing to share that day, she supposed, as Padma greeted her with the slightest nod when she rejoined them. Padma was sitting in the first row, watching the scene below in seemingly idle interest.
"Has he died?" she whispered, gesturing back towards Draco, and Padma shrugged.
"You're welcome to check."
Ron had taken the stand now, and try as she might, Ginny could not focus on her brother, her gaze instead wandering to a familiar mop of black hair. She stood against the railing of the balcony, fingers tight against its cool metal. The last time they had been here was for the war trials, and Harry had vacillated between haunted and bored.
"What? It's not like we forgot what happened next," he told her mother, good-natured, when Molly had smacked Ginny awake when she had fallen asleep against his shoulder. And that, of course, was the whole of it at the time, they had both been through it, both remembered, both tried to forget. But this, though, these new proceedings, something about Harry, about them, seemed different. Since he hadn't technically been involved in the transport, brewing or administration of the contraband, and also, she guessed, because he was Harry, wasn't exactly a part of the trials. Instead, he sat below, not three seats away from Kingsley, McGonnagall's large bag in his lap. Every so often, he leaned in, whispering to Kingsley or Percy. When had Harry taken an interest in affairs of the state, beyond what he had to do, anyways? And why wouldn't he have told her about it? There was a lot, she supposed, she didn't know about her boyfriend. She didn't know if it was hard for him, or easy, or how he felt about anything, really, except that when he was with her, they were happy, and in love. Maybe that should be enough. Padma leaned forward, shaking her out of her reverie.
"I think they'll decide what to do about us before they get into what to do about the Aurors, and the castle, generally." Ron, she realized, had finished.
"You think we'll have to stay for that?"
"And what, miss the show?" Padma scoffed. "I, for one, am thrilled to see what happens when we find out that none of these men can actually govern. Although, your fiancee's hasn't looked half bad, honestly."
Ginny frowned, leaning over the balcony again to get a peek at Harry. He said seemingly little aloud, but asked pointed questions, and when he whispered to the men besides him, someone would get up, she realized, and the deliberations would take a different turn. Before she could discern what it meant, Ron threw the doors of their balcony open.
"Could we just banish Malfoy to Siberia already, I'm bloody starving," he asked, cold air rushing in from the hall behind him.
"Nobody's being banished, Ron, honestly," Ginny said.
"Bet he'd volunteer to get out of the rest of this week, wouldn't you?" Without waiting for an answer, he plucked the tented paper off Draco's head and tossed it to the ground, making his way towards the front of the balcony.
"Hell, I might take a week in Azkaban over having to wait the rest of this out with you lot." Ron, perhaps a bit too loud, was just the right amount of loose.
"Do I get a say, or-" Draco grumbled, still waking up.
"Oh, you'll be wishing you were kissing a Dementor by the time Rita Skeeters through with you. What do you think it'll say?" Padma tore off a piece of the muffin she was eating, extending it to Ron.
"Oh, the papers?" Ron asked, loping over the rows between them to meet her hand. He considered the piece of muffin as he thought. "From Death Eater to Death Defeater." Ron popped the proffered pastry into his mouth. "Potter's Post-War Rehabilitation Plan Works," he said around a mouthful of crumbs. Unable to help herself, Ginny turned around to look at Draco, who wore an expression of such aristocratic disdain that she laughed aloud.
Below them, McGonnagal turned around, finger to her lips, and Ginny, tired of turning half of her heart over in her brain, pulled away from the balcony. She picked up the copy of the Prophet Ron had dropped and sat next to Draco, opening it in front of them, lest anyone turn around to see her shit eating grin.
"What?"
"Malfoy's Hit Jobs Now 0 for 2 - Why Is it that He Still Can't Finish The Job?" she asked, catching a sliver of a smile before he put his head in his hands.
.oOo.
November 20, 1977
[Ron POV]
Ron Weasley felt a bit like he was playing chess, except not the part where he was winning, or losing, even, but the slightly uneasy, a bit exciting feeling he would get when he hadn't quite figured out his next move. Really, he'd felt this way often, if he thought about it, the last boy of a poor family, the best friend. He was happy, fulfilled, back then and still now, but the whole year has just felt so strange. A good portion of his time was spent with Harry and Neville, taking up projects around the castle, but with the newest serpent massacre at the castle, they had been snapped back to the world outside their newly reconstructed Hogwarts cocoon.
Hermione had been gone now for nearly three weeks, under strict supervision and not allowed any guests, but it was to be any day now, and where the castle had first plunged into chaos, it has petered out, and they were back at the Wizengamot. And technically, after today, he didn't have to be there anymore, but something about the proceedings, and moreso, the debates after, had caught his attention. Someone on the floor had suggested they bring back the Tri-Wizard Tournament to promote unity, for fucks sake. He could hear Harry choke on his drink from the floor. They had broken for an intercession now, and Ron thought he might return to the castle.
As he walked the halls, stretching his legs, Padma Patil spoke from where she was seated in a windowsill. "Do you think it's perverse,?" She took a bite from an apple, reaching down to offer it to him without removing her eyes from the window.
This, Padma's sensibly short nails and the ever closing space between the one time dates, was another kind of uneasy, but this one was one he kind of liked. Padma was perhaps less prissy and more private than he had originally thought, and now that they had begun to spend bits of time together, Ron could see why Hermione had taken to her so. She wasn't one to argue, or complain, but she had been bringing increasingly loud breakfast items to the balcony each morning, seemingly oblivious to the ruckus her entire tea set was causing. Eventually, he realised, she was using this to express her displeasure with the court with a level of plausible deniability. To test this theory, he reached into his bag and offered her a carrot when the Tri-Wizard Tournament had been brought up, and she returned him a look of such unrepentant mischievousness, as if she was pleased to bring him into her private bemusement, he found himself returning the same one.
He looked back at the apple in front of him. Instead of taking it from her hand, he leaned in, cheek brushing against her knuckles as he bit into the offered fruit. When he withdrew, Padma said nothing, but he must have moved his chess piece correctly, because she pulled her bag towards her, offering him a space on the ledge. Padma had climbed on a bench to reach, but Ron, with his significantly longer limbs, just jumped up.
"How so?" he asked when he settled, the two knee-to-knee.
"These people, most of them, anyways. They're the same ones making the decisions as before." It wasn't exactly true, as Kingsley had undertaken unprecedented efforts at cleaning shop, but it wasn't entirely wrong either, as post-war Wizarding Britain, fashioned in part after its savior, favored rehabilitation over any punitive punishments.
"Kingsley's been unprecedented, you know."
"I know. I'm not saying they're bad people, Ronald, its just, how can we look to build something new if we're being led by more of the same?"
Ron paused, considering. He thought about Hermione, sequestered away for what was in part, he knew, her hubris, but also, it seemed, her desire to do something different. A different kind of potion, a different kind of friend.
"Maybe its time for something different," he said. The two were silent a moment, looking at each other because they were unsure where else to look. In the sunlight, Ron could see the rounds of her cheeks darken slightly.
Just then, Ginny rounded the corner. "You ready then?" In a gesture of goodwill, Padma and Draco had decided they'd take the remnants of the potion that had saved Hermione to St. Mungo's, allowing their potioneers to study its properties.
"Actually, Gin, we might want to stick around. Do you think the two of you can handle it?" He looked to Padma, wondering once again if he had read her right. And again, she said nothing, but he recognized her private merriment in the way she turned down the corner of her lips to hide a smile, and looked at Ron out of the slightly crinkled corner of her big, dark eyes.
"Oh. Right then," Gnny said, looking unsure. "Nice to see you, Padma,"
"Despite the circumstances," she answered with a tight smile. "Apple?"
.oOo.
[Harry POV]
Harry Potter, dogged as ever, had tried to ask, demand, charm, barter, force and even cry his way into a visit with Hermione for days. They had kicked him out when the last time he had visited, they had laughed so hard she tore a stitch. In the end, he thought the poor nurses just tired of him, waving him in. Plus, he had the good sense to bring them lunch today. He had stopped by the Leaky, laughing at the voracity with which Hermione tore the bag he tossed on her bed.
"Horseradish?" she asked.
"Extra. They were disgusted to have to make not one, but two." He threw his cloak on the back of a chair, and sat heavily on her bed. "You wouldn't believe what those idiots said today," he groaned, falling back onto the bed. He had spent so much of his days trying to be the right Harry. Here, with Hermione, and with Ron too, although certainly not at the castle, he could just be.
"Oh, it can hardly be as bad as what I've dealt with since you've been here last. You remember that bloke Jones? He's been so rude."
"Jones? Isn't he the one in a coma? The one you've been reading to?"
"Well, yes, but the MediWitches won't let me anymore. They said they think Macbeth is stressing him out, but honestly, I think its because a Muggle wrote it."
"A blood purist? Even in his sleep?" Harry laughed, too hard, as did she, and the two laughed until tears formed in the corner of his eyes.
"Tell me about the idiots, Harry," Hermione said finally, and he did, not realizing that Hermione had slowly been taking bites of his sandwich, despite the fact that she had her own.
"Excuse me!" he said, snatching it back. "How did I not know we both ate our sandwiches this way, by the way?"
"As abominations, you mean? I don't know. I guess we didn't have the time."
It was sobering, that in fact, between the running, the fighting, surviving, that perhaps they really hadn't.
"Well," he said, "I think we've got about an hour before that one attendant comes back-"
"The one who reminds you of Aunt Petunia?" she interrupted.
"-and throws me out, so bring me to speed, would you?" he asked. "What's that Macbeth bloke up to?"
"It's not the bloke, Harry," Hermione said, pulling out a worn book from a drawer by her bedside. "It's the good Lady you need to be worried about."
.oOo.
[Ginny POV]
"That wasn't so bad," Ginny said as they exited the Potions office at St. Mungos. Unlike the Ministry, they were not hung up on its legality, rather, fascinated by its ingenuity, and by extension, Draco.
"Not so bad? It was a bloody nightmare, is what that was." Draco had spent most of the meeting turning an increasingly violent shade of red. For someone who had been so braggadocious as a youth, it brought her great satisfaction to watch him become increasingly flustered.
"What do you mean? They were nice!"
"They were too nice. Merlin's sake, if any of them were competent at their jobs, they wouldn't have to thank us for doing theirs for them."
"Oh, of course, Malfoy. Burdened already by fortune and bone structure, the genius must truly have been a step too far." She put a solemn hand on her heart. "I'll be thinking of you during this very difficult time."
"I'm not a genius. A third of one, maybe," Draco answered. "You know what, whatever," he said with a scowl, tossing a hand up. "Should we try and see Granger? Take the piss out of her instead?"
"I dunno, I swung by with Neville yesterday and they didn't let us in."
At this, Draco stopped their brisk walk down the hospital hallway. "You wanted to muscle your way through a door and you brought along Longbottom?"
A fair point. Plus, they already had visitors badges on today.
"Fine. Look mean, will you?"
"I am mean." Which, he was, to the poor attendant manning the receptionist desk who tailed after them, trying to keep them out. When they made it to her room, Ginny was somehow not surprised to see through the window Hermione, awake, hair piled on the top of her head sitting cross legged on her bed, Harry in a chair beside her. She looked to be reading something, the swot, and Harry had said something that annoyed her, because she moved to hit his shoulder with it. He had gone to the Leaky, she knew, she could smell the damn horseradish from outside the door.
"I'm so sorry, I just started my shift, I didn't know he was in here. Perhaps her visiting policy has changed? Let me take a look."
"You do that, then," Draco hissed, and normally, Ginny would step in, trying to smooth things over with the young girl. Instead, relieved that her friend was alive and well, and tired of wondering if she would be interrupting, she thought about herself. She watched them for a moments more, both contented and confused by the scene before her, and turned to Draco abruptly.
"D'you want to get something to eat?"
He paused. They had been becoming, not friends, exactly, but friendlier. Perhaps this was a bridge too far. But he'd have to be the one to tell her. Instead, Draco shrugged.
"Better than the Wizengamot, or DADA. You want to know what the best defense against the Dark Arts is?" he asked, ushering her past Hermione's window.
"What?"
"Being bad at them."
Ginny grinned as they rounded the hall, finding a side staircase."You were bad at them weren't you. Can't say I'm much better at court proceedings." She waited for the door to close behind them to say -
"Besides, if I have to listen Padma eat one more three course breakfast with cutlery she stole from the Great Hall, I'm going to jump off the balcony, " she said, and neither bothered with good taste as their laughter pealed down the austere stairwell of the hospital.
.oOo.
A/N - Hi! Thanks for reading. I still find myself wanting to write about this story, I hope you are enjoying reading it. Let me know what you think :)
