*chapter varies from original posted on AO3 due to explicit content*

Thoughts of their conversation at the cafe distracted Hermione all weekend. She wondered what it must have been like for Draco as a child. His words stuck with her. Everyone comes into the world as a blank slate. Some things came hard-wired in, of course, but she's always believed that the end product was more due to nurture than nature. Things would have turned out so if he'd grown up in another household; they might have even been friends — they had the same taste in books, which was enough for her.

To make matters worse, she hadn't slept well last night. Waking in the early hours of the morning with her chest heaving and a throbbing ache between her legs, she'd groaned in frustration. The events of the last few weeks had clearly addled her mind. It wasn't a nightmare that had awoken her, but she almost wished it had been.

Strong arms holding her, hot breath panting into her ear, searing kisses along her collarbone, delicate fingers tracing the lines of her body, grey eyes smouldering with desire… Hermione pushed the memory of the dream away and rolled over, trying to sleep. Dreams are just our minds trying to process, and clearly I've been under an undue amount of stress. Everyone has weird dreams sometimes.

Unfortunately, her body had other ideas, and she had difficulty falling asleep. Instead, she grabbed a romance book from her nightstand, flipping to a marked page trying to distract herself. When the book had slipped from her fingers and she was drifting off to sleep, she realised that while she normally thought of the male main character in her book as brooding, dark-haired, and chiselled, at some point the image had shifted — this time, he'd had pale blonde hair and grey eyes.

Fuck.

Anxiety fluttered in her chest as she left for work Monday morning. After their coffee chat last Friday, Draco had been quiet, and most of the day passed in companionable silence as they both worked independently. Now, she wondered if he regretted what he had shared, and if he would withdraw again if he did.

When she entered the DMLE, yawning, she discovered a to-go cup and a scone sitting on her desk. Picking up the scone, she took a bite and smiled — lavender. When she took her breakfast into the conference room, she found Draco leaning casually against the table, drinking his coffee and reading through the notes Hermione had made on the wall over the past few weeks. As she entered, he moved behind the table, putting more space between them. She felt some colour rising to her cheeks as she remembered her dream from last night.

"Granger." He greeted her with a nod as he took a seat.

The conversation was pleasant; the strain of their first few meetings was nowhere to be seen. Instead, the atmosphere felt almost… comfortable. As Hermione explained several ideas for how they could build the program, Malfoy took careful notes, asking questions in all the right places.

When she in turn asked him about the work he'd done, he explained how he'd developed a new treatment style by taking some of the traditional Mind Healer concepts and blending them with psychiatric techniques he'd learned at a Muggle University in America.

Setting aside her shock at his mention of Muggle psychiatric techniques so as not to interrupt his explanation, she tried to focus. Had she really heard him correctly — Muggle Uni? She was sure her mouth was hanging open.

The concept had started forming as he'd worked with his own therapist. When he began to open up about his past, delving into feelings and memories he'd been suppressing for so long, he experienced an overwhelming flood of emotions. It was so intense it threatened to drown him and blocked his ability to process and recover. As a way to make the trauma easier to manage, his therapist had encouraged him to focus only on a single event at a time instead of trying to address everything at once. At that point, Draco realised that Occlumency might be able to help him now, as it had in the early post-war days.

Immediately after the war, while Draco was in Azkaban, he'd begun using Occlumency to block his own ability to access his darkest memories. It worked well — until it didn't. Over time, Draco began experiencing surges of memory as they escaped the barrier he fought to maintain in his mind, seeming to press harder on him the longer he kept it in place. As the walls crumbled over and over again, he despairingly realised it wasn't something he could maintain indefinitely.

When his therapist had recommended isolating events, something had clicked for Draco. He had never tried building walls around individual memories, and when he tried, he found that it was quite effective and easier to maintain. It required a lot more focus and intricacy that his previous method: using brute force to dam off an entire section of his mind. Using Occlumency to section off individual memories allowed him to remove the walls one at a time when he was ready to examine them in therapy (and later on his own) without becoming overwhelmed. He'd successfully taught others to use the same technique, making their initial (unofficial) therapy sessions less emotionally taxing and more effective.

Once he'd started working with other people, he had experimented with using a Pensieve to revisit memories. It was risky and certainly not advisable for all individuals — or all memories — given the immersive nature of the experience. However, in several instances when dealing with shame-based memories of childhood, he'd found it helpful to revisit the memory with his friends. This allowed them to experience the memory as an adult, which made it easier to see how toxic their childhoods had been.

Additionally, throughout their sessions, he talked with the individual about their views on blood purity, helping to unravel the toxic lies, and, over time, helping them better understand Muggle life. He found that direct interaction in Muggle society was the best way to help others understand that the Muggle-borns who came from the non-magical world were not different at all.

Hermione took thorough notes of each stage and the tactics as he had described them, pausing him occasionally to ask follow-up questions.

As they talked, he expressed his fears that he might be unable to support program participants that he didn't have pre-existing relationships with. Everyone he had helped to date had been his friend since childhood; his knowledge of their lives had been something he'd relied on heavily while working with them. He'd known them, and knew that they were receptive to help before he engaged with them. As such, he worried he wouldn't be able to replicate his success.

Hermione asked whether Draco had any ideas for how they might approach potential participants in a way that wouldn't be off-putting. They tossed out a few ideas, but neither was confident they'd found a decent solution, so they tabled the discussion for another day.

They worked into the afternoon and she adding to their plan, which she was drafting on the board, and Draco jotting down notes in his journal, as they asked one another questions and explored potential solutions together.

Several times throughout the day, she had startled herself, forgetting that it was Draco (and not someone else) sitting at the table speaking with her. It was still a surreal experience to be talking with him so casually and without animosity — she worried it might be too good to be true.

As they wrapped up their planning for the day, they each finished compiling their notes in silence. A question still burned in Hermione's mind, but she was concerned that asking it might break whatever fragile trust they were developing. She decided that she wouldn't truly be able to trust him until she knew. She closed her laptop (she often transcribed her notes from the board to her computer at the end of the day) and watched him for a few moments.

His hand gripped the quill elegantly, and he wrote in broad looping strokes. He'd put on his glasses a few hours ago — she noticed he seemed to be adorably self-conscious about them and wouldn't put them on until his eyes started bothering him, which was foolish because they made him look rather dashing. A strand of hair had fallen across his forehead and caught against the rim of his glasses. He paused, looking down at his journal, and absently traced his lips with the feathered end of his quill as he worked out what to write next.

"Draco," she began softly.

He gave a noncommittal grunt of acknowledgement as he continued to play with the quill, drawing her attention in a very distracting manner. The action was fascinating to Hermione, and she felt slightly hypnotised. It was such a casual action, something that had happened naturally. She realised that many of his previous actions, even when he'd appeared at ease, had felt scripted and planned. This was new.

"You never answered my question."

He looked up, confused. "What question?"

"Why are you doing this?"

Seeming to consider how to answer, he gave her another searching look. There were a few moments of silence where Hermione wondered if she shouldn't have asked.

"Because sometimes all you need is someone to believe in you… to believe that you can do better… become someone different than the world says that you are. There are so many people who never get that chance. I want to change that," he said evenly, holding her gaze.

They stayed like that for a few moments, staring at one another as if trying to see into one another's soul — to the people they were underneath and didn't want the rest of the world to see.

This time, it was Draco who broke the spell as he moved to pack his journal and quill before standing to leave.

"Until tomorrow, Granger."

"Until tomorrow, Malfoy," she replied quietly.

Hermione stayed for some time after that, his words bringing to mind the conversation she'd had with Ron just a few weeks ago:

"I'm just lucky to have friends who believe in me. I know not everyone has that. Not everyone gets a second chance."

She wondered if Draco had anyone that believed in him.