A/N Thank you for your patience; sorry it's been a long time since I updated. I'll do my best to keep the pace up.
The two new neighbours went to the local pub, a couple of streets away from their homes.
The atmosphere was a little charged to begin with. Hermione had no experience of walking into pubs with handsome young men, and Draco was on tenterhooks, hoping he wouldn't say or do anything to freak her out. But once they ordered a couple of ciders and some deep-fried miscellanea, both relaxed a little. He told her about his job. She told him about her studies. Seeing as he knew nothing about the English education system, he guessed she was studying for the Muggle equivalent of NEWTs. Something he assumed was a given for himself, until that arse Voldemort turned up again.
He took a long sip of cider. What a very strange world.
After a while, Draco noticed a rather odd mannerism of Hermione's. Initially he thought she was wiping dipping sauce from her chin, but on closer inspection she appeared to briefly touch her jaw – her thumb on one side of her chin and finger on the other.
"Are you okay?" he asked carefully.
Startled, she looked up from her crumbed calamari rings. "I think so. Why do you ask?"
Draco, realising he should have kept his damn mouth shut, mumbled "You, um, keep touching your jaw."
Hermione's eyes skittered to the left, and for a heart-in-your-mouth moment, Draco was sure she was going to bolt. Then she let out a breath. Leaning towards him, she lowered her voice, and he leaned in to match. "I, er, had an accident a while ago, and I broke my jaw. It's all fixed now, but sometimes…"
She seemed to shrink into herself, and Draco kept his hands wrapped around his drink and a deep-fried prawn, lest he terrify her out of her wits by making a sudden movement.
She cleared her throat. "Sometimes I get this idea in my head that my jaw is going to fall off." She dipped a calamari ring in the sauce. "I know it's stupid and physically incapable of happening, but the thought of it happening… in public…" She swallowed and put her food back down on her plate.
He angled his face close to Granger's and whispered "Prepare yourself."
Her cracked lips stretched. "-uck you, -al-oy," she gritted.
He clenched his own jaw and shuddered.
Hermione sat opposite him with a stiff back and closed-off expression, ready to hear him laugh or condescendingly tell her it's all in her head. Which the old Draco would have done. Or said/done something worse. But his face showed nothing but concern. "That's quite a heavy thing to go through."
She looked a little surprised, but nodded.
"Have you seen a Healer about it?"
Her eyes opened wide. "A what?"
Shitshitshit
"Um," Draco backtracked, "one of those doctors that look at people's minds?" Now he saw why his boss made him watch hour after nauseating hour of dramas on the teevee. That was where one hundred percent of his Muggle lingo came from.
"A psychiatrist?" Hermione asked. "Yeah, I'm being monitored by one. I see a counsellor locally." She smiled lopsidedly. "I'll get better."
Draco smiled back, his heartrate back to normal.
"'Healer' is quite a good name," Hermione said thoughtfully. "That's what doctors do – they heal. Or try to, at least. What does a doctor do? Doct?"
Draco laughed, and collected up his empty glass. "Want another?"
"Sure, thank you."
At the bar, Draco put in his order. While waiting for his drinks, he was lightly jostled on his left side by a new arrival. Glancing over, he noticed a young woman with long dark hair half pulled up in a complicated do. Enormous silver hoops dangled from her ears and her bubble-gum-pink lipstick, half of which had disappeared, matched her low-cut halter neck top. Draco didn't glance further down.
"Oops! Sorry!" the owner of the halter neck giggled, flicking a lock of hair over her shoulder with a practised movement and giving him the once-over. "You must be new!" she trilled. "Haven't seen you in here before."
"Just moved in around the corner," Draco replied neutrally. He was still trying to force the revolting memory of Hermione's amost-dead state from his mind.
"Lovely!" the vision in pink exclaimed. "Well, this is our local" – she waved a hand at a small table crowded with five other young women, all looking like variations of the one next to him. They coyly waved to him and giggled. Draco half waved back to keep things polite and hoped the bartender would hurry up.
The pink lady, however, didn't pick up on Draco's lukewarm interest. "Do you like quizzes?" she asked perkily, switching her weight from one foot to another, resulting in a delightful jiggle of her breasts. "There's one every Thursday, and our team's always looking for new members. We're not very good at boy stuff, you know. Oh! How rude of me. I'm Tara." She held out her hand.
Draco missed the offering, as he was collecting up his ciders and preparing to move away.
Tara's eyes clocked the two glasses. "You're here with someone?"
"Yep, over there." Draco nodded at the booth where Hermione sat, oblivious to his new friend as she sat facing away from the bar. "Well. Nice to meet you." Draco squeezed through the medium-sized throng of punters and headed back to Hermione.
At the girls' tables:
"OMG, who is he?" squealed one of the ladies as Tara plonked herself back into her chair.
"Dunno. Didn't get his name." A rare failure, if she must be honest. "But he says he lives around here so I'm sure we'll see him regularly."
I will see him again, Tara corrected in her head. That bloke was smoking hot. A bit pale, but summer was coming. If he wasn't into sunbathing, there's always tanning salons. That short girl in the booth was no match for her.
The evening turned to night, and Draco and Hermione headed home. Six pairs of mascarared eyes watched approvingly as he opened the pub door for his companion.
The conversation was good as they walked the short route to their street, but it stuttered as they came to a stop outside Hermione's front door.
She shrugged out of the jacket Draco gave her when she earlier ran her hands across cold arms. "Thanks for this," she said, missing the faint scent of sandalwood and lime that had surrounded her. "I should make sure to bring a jacket next time." Then she blushed pink in the glow of her front door security light. "If there is a next time, of course."
Oh, good. Draco was wondering how to offer the delicate flower of friendship. "Sounds good to me."
A blushing Hermione was a very cute thing.
"Well," Draco continued, "thanks for your company this evening. I enjoyed it."
"Yeah, me too."
They swapped numbers, then Draco took a step away. "See you later, then?"
Hermione nodded, probably too vigorously. "See you later."
As she turned to put the key in the door, Draco stumbled forward and landed a rather clumsy peck on her cheek. Smooth move, Malfoy, he raged in his head. Worthy of a Weasley.
But it still made Hermione smile, and Draco realised that he liked to see Hermione smiling. So he'd better come up with a few ideas on how to achieve that.
And help her recover her memory, of course.
On the other side of her front door, Hermione touched her cheek where Draco's kiss happened to land.
I kind of feel bad for lying to him about my jaw, she reflected with a guilty pang. Friends shouldn't lie to friends. Or maybe... boyfriend?
I'll just see where it goes, she decided. Maybe I'll tell him what I can remember.
Which isn't much, anyway.