Authors Note: Hi all! This is my first dip back into fic writing in a long while so please be gentle. I have been reading so much Dramione that this nugget of an idea came to me at work today and I HAD to write it down. I think I'm going to sprinkle in some little easter egg references to other fics I've been enjoying. Nothing plot wise, just a little nod here and there for funsies. Happy reading folks. Would love reviews (constructive criticism and praise is my lifeblood)

Also Crossposted on AO3.

In which a Time Turner is recovered, and an unhappy partnership is formed.

Summer 2002

Hermione closed her car door and walked to the looming iron gate. Of all the places she did not want to be, Malfoy Manor was at the very top of that list. Her official placement for the Department of Mysteries had just begun, and she was tasked with picking up some dark artifacts that had been reported at the Manor. Undoubtably the reason for the late report was Narcissa had finally deemed them not valuable. Or, if she was being generous, maybe she'd just found something Voldemort had stashed away somewhere.

She scoffed. Not bloody likely.

She was trying very hard not to remember the last time she had been at these gates, and what had happened directly after, but the bile in her throat was not helping distract her as much as she would like.

Steeling herself, and reminding herself that she was an adult now, and not some scared teen, she rapped the overlarge knocker.

A house elf appeared with a sharp crack just beyond the gate. Of course, the Malfoys would still have house elves doing their bidding. Because answering the door (or gate) was too much for them.

"Yes, miss?" the elf said, his head tipped slightly to the side. He looked young, for a house elf, maybe 25 or so and Hermione realized with a start that he was probably about the same age as Dobby.

Shoving that painful memory down with the rest she plastered an insincere smile on her face.

"Hello. My name is Hermione Granger. I have an appointment with Mrs. Malfoy." The elf's eyes lit in recognition and a bright smile crossed his face.

"Miss Granger! Of course, Miss!" He snapped his fingers and the gate opened slowly towards her. He started walking towards the Manor beckoning her to follow.

"Miss Granger was being in school with Master Draco! Top of the class!" he said with enthusiasm.

"Um, yes. I was." She wasn't sure how he could possibly know that. Although she supposed Malfoy had probably done his fair share of complaining about her beating him for the top spot in every class, except potions. He paused and turned back towards her, a thoughtful look on his face.

"Miss Granger was a friend of Dobby." he said quietly. He smiled again, a little sadly this time. Hermione smiled back and nodded, unsure of what to say. "Dibble was a friend of Dobby too." He turned again and continued on, and they walked the rest of the way in silence.

They were rapidly approaching the front door, and Hermione was starting to feel the panic start to bubble up again when Dibble suddenly took a sharp left towards another area of the house. She was a little miffed that she wasn't deemed fit to be received through the front door, but mostly just relieved as the mounting terror began to recede as they wound their way through gorgeous, intricate gardens.

They finally turned a corner into a small clearing, which was set up with an intimate seating area, surrounded by a truly impressive array of flowers and greenery. Some, Hermione didn't even recognize. Not that she was any kind of botanist, but she had spent enough time helping Neville study for his Herbology mastery that she was passably familiar with most plants. Magical or otherwise.

She was so taken in by the spectacle that it took her a second to realize that there was someone seated at the small table.

Some Auror she would have made.

Narcissa Malfoy was every bit as imperious and beautiful as Hermione remembered her to be. The last time she had seen her in person was at the trials.

Before they had even begun to process the former death eaters en masse, Narcissa had filed for divorce . Harry had told her that after asking about Draco, it was the very next thing she said once she was in custody. Given what had come out about Lucius's more disturbing involvements during the war, she couldn't really say she blamed her.

Between that, and the positive testimonies of Ron, Harry and herself, Draco and Narcissa Malfoy had come out of the war shockingly unscathed. Lucius, however, would be in Azkaban till he died.

"Miss Granger." Narcissa stood and came towards her. She held out her hand to be shaken, and if she was disgusted by a Muggleborn's touch Hermione saw no signs in her face. Only a cool mask. Their hands separated swiftly, and she gestured towards where she had been sitting. "Please. Sit." Her tone wasn't sharp, but Hermione bristled a little at the implied order.

Professional Hermione. Be professional. She told herself.

"Thank you, Mrs. Malfoy." She sat.

"Tea?" Narcissa asked, sitting in the chair across from her.

"Yes, please." The older woman nodded and snapped her fingers without looking at Dibble. The house elf disappeared with a crack.

Professional.

Dibble returned a few tense seconds later with a tray of tea and tiny cakes.

"Thank you, Dibble." Hermione said, unable to contain herself. She smiled, well smirked, back at Narcissa as she poured herself a cup and took a sip.

"The box." Narcissa said, still not moving her eyes from Hermione's.

Dibble bowed and disappeared again. He reappeared once more, set a small wooden box on the table, and disapparated for good.

They sipped their tea in silence for a minute, Narcissa's eyes roaming over Hermione coldly. Assessing. She suppressed a shiver. Finally, she broke the peace.

"I hear you are a remarkable witch Miss Granger. A veritable catch for the Department of Mysteries." She smiled as though there was something funny about that. Hermione could easily guess what she thought that was. She squirmed for a second before she remembered who she was.

She was Hermione Freaking Granger.

"You heard right. I am." Something almost like anger flashed behind Narcissa's eyes before it was quickly covered by that cool aristocratic mask again. She was much harder to rile than her son had been in school.

Hermione had been rattled by the task of coming to the Manor. A return to the place where she was viciously tortured was not something she would wish on anyone, and it had shaken her well-earned confidence.

But sitting across from a woman who clearly despised her, but who was doing her absolute best to hide it, filled her with a strange sense of pride. She had all the power here. The right side had won the war, and though it had been a few years and their family had come out of it on top, Narcissa still couldn't be seen to be openly hateful towards Muggleborns. Regardless of how she may have felt on the inside.

Once that thought occurred to her, a calm settled over her. She was good at her job. She deserved to be here. And she was not going to let this prejudiced bitch with her awful home ruin her day.

Draining her tea, she gestured at the ornate box between them.

"Your report indicated that you found a dark artifact in your home. Please elaborate." The only hint that Narcissa was annoyed that her passive aggressive intimidation hadn't worked was a slight tick of her right eyebrow. Otherwise, nothing.

"As the Ministry is aware it has taken quite some time for us to go through the entire house. There are a great many rooms you see." She ever so slightly smirked as she took another sip of her tea.

Do not roll your eyes. Professional.

"Go on."

"There have been sealing charms on a few of the doors that have been more…problematic to get through than others. The Ministry's curse breakers were unable to do the job so we had to hire outside help." She fixed Hermione with a disdainful stare as though it were her department and somehow her problem. She swallowed the absurd impulse to apologize. This was turning out to be draining in a far different way than she thought.

God she's good at this. Why isn't she the one in politics?

"When they failed as well, we finally had to have the house elves start on it." The mask was firmly back in place, and Hermione felt a dip in her stomach.

"You ordered your house elves to deal with dark magic curses the Ministry couldn't break?" she fought to keep the disdain off her face.

Narcissa smiled sweetly.

"Yes." She paused to take another sip. Savoring Hermione's obvious revulsion.

Professional. Be. Fucking. Professional.

"I take it they were successful." She gestured again at the box. It was smaller than she had thought, though many dark objects were small and inconspicuous.

"Correct. Though not without costly losses." She felt sick. Those poor elves. Compelled to do something for their masters who gave no shits about their lives except for the monetary cost of replacing them.

Fucking Malfoys.

"What's in the box?" She barely managed not to snap. Her patience was wearing thin, and she knew it. Better to get this over with before she said something she would no doubt regret.

Narcissa pulled the box towards her and opened it, turning it to Hermione.

"I assume you know what this is." Incredibly her tone wasn't condescending, but she knew it was intended that way.

"It's a time turner…but it looks-"

"Corrupted. Yes." She was cut off. "Voldemort, when he was here, did many experiments. This was one of them. I'm not sure what his goal was, or what he was doing to achieve it. That, Miss Granger, is your job."

Hermione was stunned for a second. She had never heard any of the death eaters call him anything other than The Dark Lord, and Narcissa hadn't even blinked. It just rolled off her tongue as easily as if she was saying Stan Shunpike. Recovering quickly, she took the box that was now being held out to her, careful not to touch the time turner inside.

It looked…wrong. There was nothing she could point to exactly to say what was wrong with it. Just that it did in fact look wrong. Like when you enter a room you know well and something is missing, but you can't quite put your finger on what. Before coming here Hermione could have sworn they had been keeping the thing secret before telling the Ministry, but it made her so uncomfortable, she doubted the Malfoys had kept it in their possession any longer than was necessary.

"Now that you have what you came for, you may go." She was being dismissed. Hermione wasn't exactly sure when she had lost the high ground, but she wasn't going to leave without getting it back.

"Thank you, Mrs. Malfoy, for the tea. It was delicious and, " She looked around her, "the gardens are spectacular." She waited for a glimpse of pride to strike before she finished. She slowly looked Narcissa up and down.

"Pity." She said pointedly, turned on her heel, and left. She almost didn't hear the annoyed sniff from behind her, and grinned widely as she made her way back to her car.

"A corrupted Time Turner, fascinating!" her boss, Terrance Spitworth exclaimed, poking it gently with his wand, murmuring diagnostic spells. "No wonder she requested you travel by car. Who knows what Apparating with it would have done. You could have had someone drive you, you know. The fleet is for Ministry personnel, and this would have qualified for use."

"Thank you, Sir, but I like to drive. Muggleborn and all." He smiled fondly at her.

"I understand. Old habits and all that. I still make my tea by hand, the way my mum taught me." He paused wistfully. It was one of the things she most liked about him. He was given to reminisce. He shook his head, freeing himself of whatever memory he was indulging in.

"Now, back to you old fellow." He said to the time turner.

They spent the next two months making notes and running various inconclusive tests. They had simply never seen anything like it. It was frustrating but incredibly exciting to be studying something new. Unfortunate as it was that it had to have come from a wizard as dark as Voldemort.

Summer turned to Autumn, but there was still no progress.

The next week, Hermione was to be going it alone. Terrance would be in the canary islands for his daughter's wedding, and while he was completely obsessed when it came to any and all magical artifacts, he was a father first.

"Keep at it with the research till I get back." He said on his last evening, pulling on his coat, "Not that I don't trust your competence Hermione, but this is nothing like we've ever seen. Two heads are better than one, and frankly I'm beginning to run out of ideas."

"Research is one of my specialties." She said.

All told, she was rather excited to knuckle down at the library and do some real digging. She hadn't had something like this good to sink her teeth into since she was chasing Horcruxes across the country. She didn't miss the constant fear of discovery and death, but she did miss the academic challenge.

That night at their usual Friday night watering hole, she met her friends for drinks. It was Nevilles last night in London before he left to start preparing for his new job as the Herbology Professor at Hogwarts. She was the last to get there and was thrilled to see everyone had made it to send him off. She scooted into the booth next to Ginny and looked around. Harry was sitting on Ginny's other side, arm slung lazily over her shoulders. Neville and Luna were sitting together, moon eyed, staring at each other and adorable. Dean and Seamus filled out the booth across from her.

"Where's Ron?" she asked, taking off her jacket. It had been a miserably rainy day for early August.

"Just finishing up, I think. Lavender called out sick. I think nearer the full moon gives her trouble sometimes. Cho came in to cover." Ginny said. Hermione nodded and looked up to see him walk towards them with a round of shots on a tray.

"Sorry about that. The joys of being the boss." He grinned happily, pulling over a chair from another table to sit with them. When Ron had decided to drop out of Auror training to buy a pub, Hermione thought he had lost his mind. But he had turned the slightly dreary hole in the wall into one of the most popular spots on Diagon Alley. Besides that, she had never seen him so happy. She was immensely proud of him.

He distributed the small glasses to each of them with a flick of his wand and raised his.

"To Neville. The youngest Professor in the history of Hogwarts. Well done mate."

"To Neville." They all echoed.

Drinks flowed and eventually it was past one in the morning. Ron sent Cho home and locked the doors, leaving their group the only ones there. The conversation passed from Neville to Ginny's upcoming quidditch season, to Harrys current Auror cases (the ones he could talk about at least) to Dean and Seamus' upcoming nuptials, to finally Hermione's project.

"So, you haven't found anything?" Dean asked after she explained everything. His thumb rubbing absently on a sleeping Seamus's shoulder.

"Nope. Nada. Not a damned thing. I'm going to spend all next week back in the library. Hopefully I stumble on something I missed the first six times I looked."

"What if what you're looking for isn't in there?" Harry peered around Ginny.

"The ministry has the largest library in Britain other than Hogwarts and I already tried there too."

"The largest public library." Harry said slowly. Hermione spun her head towards him so fast she thought she might have given herself whiplash.

"Do you mean to tell me there is a private library that's larger than the one at the Ministry?"

"Harry," Ginny warned, "You're not supposed to know." He looked back at her sheepishly.

"Yes, but if there was a library that was bigger and more likely to have all sorts of books pertaining to dark magic, wouldn't that be helpful?" Hope sparked in Hermione's chest.

"Yes, but you're not supposed to know about it." Ginny murmured again. Harry grinned at Hermione.

"Hypothetically speaking, if you were an old smarmy pureblood family with an overly large and pompous house," Ginny buried her head in her hands and the hope in Hermione died, "Wouldn't it stand to reason -without any input from me whatsoever - that said house would have a really big fuck off library full of dark and nasty books."

"Malfoy Manor." Harry nodded.

"I didn't say that you assumed it all by yourself."

"You're a shite symbol of authority Harry." Ron laughed.

Fucking Malfoys.

She paced back and forth in her living room for an hour going back and forth on whether or not to send the letter. Eventually with an annoyed flick of her wand she sent it through her fireplace. Groaning at the depths she would lower herself to in the pursuit of knowledge, she sank onto the couch.

Dear Mrs Malfoy,

I would like to thank you again for the opportunity to study the dark artifact found in your home. Unfortunately, there is only so much research we can do with the limited resources of the Ministry. I remember hearing through your son at school that Malfoy Manor boasts one of the most extensive libraries in the country.

Assuming that was not childish posturing, I would be very grateful to be able to be granted access to your family's library, in order to better understand the artifact.

Regards,

Hermione Granger

It made her squeamish to think of sucking up to the Malfoys, but hopefully with a little harmless ego stroking they would let her use their, according to Harry, considerable resources.

Fucking Malfoys.

She thought viciously. And with no hint of irony, settled in for a rewatch of the 1995 BBC classic Pride and Prejudice.

Just as Mr. Collins was making his doomed proposal, a note appeared, hovering in front of her fireplace.

She jumped off the settee and grabbed it out of the air. Even the parchment feels expensive, she thought as she opened the letter, a small thrill of anticipation running through her.

Miss Granger,

My son was not, as you put it, childishly posturing, when he said that the Malfoy library is one of the most extensive in Britian. It is in fact, to my knowledge, the most extensive in Europe.

We are completing renovations on the Manor at the moment, and so we are quite unable to entertain your request.

However, if you can narrow down what it is you are looking for, I can have the relevant works sent to you.

Mrs Narcissa Malfoy

Hermione read the note through twice, and at the end of the second laughed so loudly she woke Crookshanks, who meowed reproachfully at her and stalked out of the room.

"Sorry Crooks." She wheezed.

Of all the rubbish excuses she could have used…renovations?! She supposed it was a bit much to think that they would let someone like her into their home willingly. Not that it stopped them the first time she visited. She absent mindedly traces the scars on her forearm.

Still, at least she was willing to let her borrow some. Perhaps she didn't find Hermione's blood to be quite so offensive after all if she was going to be allowed to touch her precious belongings.

She made a list of all the subjects she could possibly think would be relevant and sent it back with her begrudging thanks. Asking that they please be delivered to her office at the ministry on Monday.

With a renewed hope that she may make some real progress this week, she settled in to watch Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy fall reluctantly in love.

Hermione hadn't been this excited for a Monday morning in a very long time. She had a ridiculous skip in her step that died immediately on entering her office and seeing Draco Malfoy standing in the middle of it.

"What the actual fuck." He rolled his eyes

Very not professional Hermione. Well done.

"Nice to see you too, Granger. I come bearing gifts." He gestured to the huge pile of books beside him, her coffee table almost groaning under the weight. It was almost enough to distract her from her fury. Almost.

"What are you doing here Malfoy?" He gestured again at the books, saying nothing but looking at her as though she was slow.

Breathe. In and out. Slow breaths.

"Why did you specifically have to bring them? And why are you still here? How are you even here, you need special clearance to get onto this floor." She realized as she was talking. He took a deep breath as though he was having to explain something very simple to someone very stupid. She hated him.

"Firstly, these books are irreplaceable and very very old. We can't just be sending them off in the Floo to whomever wants to have a look. Secondly, my mother requested I stay with the books to make sure they are not being misused in any way. Thirdly," He gave her an obscenely smug grin and flicked an origami crane off her desk, "I'm a Malfoy."

Ugh

"I can be trusted not to misuse your books Malfoy I'm not a simpleton." He rolled his eyes again and lowered himself lazily into her couch.

"Surprisingly, on that we agree. I told my mother you would sooner die than damage a precious book. But alas, she insisted, so here I am." So, he didn't want to be here anymore than she wanted him there. Shit. Double shit. That meant there really was no getting rid of him.

"Fine. But do shut up." She grabbed a book from the pile as she stalked past him to her desk, sat down huffily and began to read.

"Fine by me." he drawled, lying back and throwing an arm over his eyes.

Fucking Malfoys