Hermione was finishing her cottage pie when she heard the doors to the Great Hall fling open. A hush fell over those still partaking in the supper hour before the hall exploded in a cacophony of sound.
"Always an entrance with you two." Seamus quipped, moving over on the bench to allow Ron to slip in beside him. Harry slid in across from him, settling himself in between Dean and Hermione.
"We made it just in time for afters!" Ron said, spreading his arms out in front of him, cracking his knuckles as a huge smile spread across his face.
Hermione took a second to look him over.
Auror training seemed to be doing Ron many favors, the most obvious being the confidence that seemed as plentiful as his freckles. As he began lobbing food onto a plate that had appeared as he'd sat down, she noticed his every movement spoke of assurance.
A quiet confidence.
Contentment.
Only a week into training and it seemed he'd taken to it like a kelpie to water.
Happiness infused her; though she didn't love him as a romantic partner, she still loved him. Regardless of how, Hermione just wanted him to thrive, to be happy.
Glancing across the hall, she caught Theo's eye.
Tension she hadn't realized she wore as a mantle around her shoulders melted as she realized his gaze held nothing but warmth; no jealousy, fear, or anything resembling censure.
After years of putting up with Ron's callous emotional tantrums and fits of jealous impotence, the fact a wizard she fancied appeared to not only trust her with her own mind but also their fledgling relationship without fear was heady.
"So, that's him then?"
Hermione felt the words brush against her ear, the whispered question meant for her alone. Her reaction though was completely different to the one Theo elicited when his words had traveled the same path earlier.
One enticed and lit a fire to her senses, one felt benign… just warm air against skin.
Both, however, felt like home.
"It is." She relied, dabbing at her lips with her napkin and placing her fork sideways on the plate alongside her knife.
"Hmmm… are you sure he's interested? I'm not sensing even a hint of jealousy from over there."
She turned and swatted him, laughing a little.
"Because abundant jealousy is the mark of a healthy relationship!"
Harry held up his hands in mock surrender, a smile stretching across his face as they jostled each others shoulders in affection.
"I'm just saying, no squinted stare promising pain or glares of intimidation thrown toward me or at Ron's back… we must be adults!"
'Oh how I missed Harry.' She thought.
"Before you do anything you think is heroic or protective, don't." She speared him with a look.
Harry's face lost what mirth it had, and hurt flashed across his feature.
"I meant what I said in the letter. Ron did too. You'll always have my, our, support. In whatever you do or choose. But," he tucked an errant piece of hair that had flipped down over his forehead behind his ear, "you don't need a keeper Hermione, or our permission."
"Thanks Harry."
Another weight she hadn't noticed she carried slid off her being at his words.
How young they were, yet how many lifetimes had they lived in the past year alone? Harry of a year ago wouldn't have been so calm, so rational… not when one of those he considered family were impacted.
Then again…
"I wonder if you'd be saying the same if it was Malfoy."
She smirked when his grin tightened, his eyes flickering briefly toward the Slytherin table. Something flickered across his face she couldn't discern before he fixed his gaze back on hers.
Direct and unguarded.
"I'd hope by now that you'd know that we'd do anything for you. Even support you if… well… if it was Malfoy you fancied."
"Don't give yourself hemorrhoids forcing that out Harry." She laughed. "It's not! He's not. Though I appreciate the sentiment regardless."
"Right. Well. Glad that's sorted."
His smile seemed lighter as he reached for the spoon of the treacle tart, piling some on his plate.
"So tell me Hermione… how much time are you really spending in the library so far?"
———-
"And then they showed us how to escape being bound. Not just throwing off incarcerous wordlessly or wandlessly, but also muggle ways."
Ron's eyes were alight with excitement as he regaled Hermione and Ginny with tales from some of their first classes.
"Ropes, something metal called…" his nose scrunched up in concentration as he snapped his fingers.
"Handcuffs." Harry supplied.
"Thank you! Yes. Handcuffs. Nifty things, those. Anyway, Yates did some sort of muggle magic trick and poof! He was out. Can't wait to be able to try it myself."
The four were meandering through the castle, by unspoken agreement taking unfamiliar corridors to avoid being hit with assaults to their memories and emotions. With only a week to begin acclimatizing, Hermione knew firsthand how randomly a flashback could hit her and bring her down.
She knew Ginny did too.
No one returning was left unscathed by being back to the place where they'd all lost so much… regardless of which side they'd supported—either through familial ties or by their own cognizance—none of them had had time yet to become numb to their surroundings.
To process the losses and muddle through their grief.
War was merciless in its destruction of innocence.
Harry and Ron didn't have this advantage of gradual re-exposure, and despite their noncholance, she could see their gazes searching the shadows, their bodies bracing as they rounded a corner.
Hermione walked between Harry and Ginny. She'd been jostled there almost desperately by the witch beside her, who was doing her best to appear casual and unfazed as they chatted about inconsequential nonsense. If one gave her naught but a glance, they'd be fooled. Hermione, though, could see the slight tremble of her arm as she held tight to the strap of her book sac slung over her shoulder, heard the sharpness of her shoes against the cobblestone—her gait belying her discontent.
Harry was a study in opposites, his hands deep in his trouser pockets, his whole body turning slightly inward on itself. As if by making himself visually or spatially smaller, it would somehow dissolve the cloud of things unsaid that seemed to grow the longer the four of them walked.
She looked around Ginny to catch Ron's eye as he finished his enthusiastic recapture of what appeared to be his favorite class, lifting her eyebrow and throwing her eyes sideways toward his sister.
Ron's shrug and grimace did less to ease the knot in Hermione's chest than the way his eyes slid to Harry at her appeal as to what to do.
A flicker of… something, the same something she couldn't identify earlier in the Great Hall, flit across Ron's face as gazed upon their best friend.
Resolve hardened his features.
"Hey Gin, I need your opinion on something. Weasley business, super secret. Can we just…" He motioned toward an open door they passed leading to an apparently unused classroom; given the dust upon the desks visible through the opening.
Not the smoothest segue but Hermione would take it.
"We'll keep walking, give you some family time. Send a patronus when done and we'll meet back up." Hermione said, looping her arm through Harry's and pasting a smile on her face as she beamed up at the mate she'd all but adopted as a sibling in her heart of hearts.
"I wanted some alone time myself with the chosen one… before the adoring masses descended."
She laughed at the scowl Harry threw her at the ridiculous nickname, and pulled him down the corridor with a 'Ta' thrown over her shoulder.
The knot in her chest grew tighter, more leaden, as from the corner of her eye she saw Ron reach toward Ginny, his arm sliding around her shoulder and pulling her close; her face crumpling as she watched Harry and Hermione walk away.
———
"So Harry, what's your favorite class? We've heard Ron's, but what's your week been like?"
A few beats of silence passed before Harry turned and tackled Hermione in an embrace.
"Merlin I've missed you." He breathed into her hair. "It's strange being separated. S'not just me either. Ron shut himself in the loo for an hour at the Burrow after we dropped you and Ginny off at Kings Cross."
Hermione squeezed him back, holding on as long as he needed. It felt good to be with Harry again, like wrapping oneself in the coziest sweater you know will always fit no matter how worn the thread or distorted the edges.
"The first day here without you… going to classes… it was lonely. I kept thinking you'd be around the next corner, or turn to tell you or Ron something only to realize you weren't there."
She pulled back to look at his face, her hand reaching out to gently tuck the hair that'd grown with abandon over the summer behind his ear.
"Your hair's finally starting to settle down," she grinned as they turned to keep walking, making their way toward the shared common room. "Must be the length smoothing out your… not quite curls, but whatever made it look like—"
"A scaregriffin's nest?" Another voice broke in.
"What—?" Hermione started but Harry cut her off.
"Malfoy."
Harry's voice was flat, cheeks pink and eyes sparking with something Hermione couldn't place—she assumed from the insult. Standing in front of them in the hallway, leaning against the wall, a half-eaten green apple he must have snagged from the great hall in his hand, was Malfoy.
Hermione saw Harry's eyes rest on where Malfoy—Draco— had just taken a bite, before he wrenched his gaze away.
Beside Draco stood Theo and Pansy, their book sac's resting on the floor at their feet. They looked bored, but she could see the tension. It vibrated almost invisibly but it was there nonetheless.
"How does that even make sense, Malfoy?" She asked, reverting back to last names, rubbing the bridge of her nose in frustration.
The last thing she needed at this moment, any moment really, was for Harry to shut down because of something Malfoy said. She couldn't handle a walking shell of her best mate, not when she was doing her best refill and rebuild her own.
Or worse, to have Harry lash out.
The last time his anger had exploded upon Malfoy, it had been horrid. If it hadn't been for Professor Snape, in either unknowing enabler or mender, well... neither would be standing where they currently were.
Tension edged with the tang of the start of a lightning storm filled the air around them. Hermione hoped to diffuse it as soon as possible.
She glanced at Theo, who just raised a shoulder and shrugged. He shook his head a bit ruefully, as if to say, 'T'was bound to happen sooner or later.'
"It's Draco now, Hermione. Tsk tsk." The blond in front of her lifted a regal brow that mirrored the tilt of his smirk. "And it makes perfect sense. A scaregriffin is what wizarding farmers use to keep away ravens and other predators. It's a magical beast that roams the fields—mix of griffin and thestral—not sanctioned breeding outside those regulated to do so of course. It's nest, well… I'll leave that to your imagination."
He waved his hand in the direction of Harry's head, then winked.
He bloody winked! At…Harry?
'What in Merlin's name?'
Theo rolled his eyes, glancing down at his nails, inspecting them with what Hermione thought looked like resignation. She felt her stomach flip at being able to possibly determine that, despite only a week into their friendship. Their… reacclimatization to one another.
Pansy rubbed the bridge of her nose, eyes closed, and Hermione swore she heard "bloody albino peacock" under the witches breath.
"So Hermione. Whom is this then? A friend you haven't seen fit to introduce?"
"Oh sod off Malfoy, you great git!" Harry shoved his hands deep in his pockets of his jumper, shoulders slumped, his face a study of fatigued boredom as he glanced at Malfoy-no, Draco. "What game are you playing at? You fail to recognize me at the manor and now I don't exist at all?"
Hermione sucked in a sharp breath at his words. At his casual reference to the manor.
Though all the color drained from his face, two pink spots appeared high on Draco's cheekbones. Before Hermione could say anything he spoke.
" Old habits and all that." He waved a hand as if batting away a fly. "Got your attention though, didn't it? Potter"
He took a step closer, stepping just outside of crowding into their personal space.
"Now, I will say this once, and only because I owe you more than you could possibly begin to comprehend."
Theo coughed, Pansy sighed, and Hermione stifled a laugh at Harry's face.
It was one of her favorite 'Harry' looks, a mixture of disbelief and suspicion that made him look rather constipated.
"There once was a boy who wanted. Wanted something so badly, but went about it in all the wrong ways and mucked it up. For years, everything he said and did, all that he emulated, was wrong. Wrong reasons, wrong context, wrong… everything."
His voice lowered to almost a whisper, and Hermione found herself leaning slightly toward him so as not to miss a word. She noticed Harry doing the same.
"And then, when he began to realize that maybe he'd had the wrong end of the stick all along, he was utterly trapped, expecting death at every corner. Yet for some reason, the boy-who-lived-to-be-a-pain-in-his-arse, who had not only witnessed the worst moments of his life but participated in them, freed him from his trap not once but multiple times, and then stood up for him at his bloody trial. His public trial, where he was to face all the wrong that he had lived. Embodied. Yet he was set free. And he once again was faced with what he'd wanted from the very beginning… if still possible."
Draco appeared to steel himself for something, before slowly reaching out his hand.
"I heard Harry Potter has come to Hogwarts. I'm Malfoy, Draco Malfoy, son of Narcissa Black and—." He broke off, a shadow passing over his face before his mask—the one Hermione had come to recognize from the past week he wore—slipped back on and he continued.
"Some consider me a giant git, though I fancy myself having a bit more depth than that. Enough to put myself on the line to pretend like I couldn't, wouldn't, recognize him when it counted."
Hermione sucked in another sharp breath, and she felt Harry still beside her.
"Despite being of the wrong sort, I've learned there truly are wizarding families better than others. The Weasley's are one of those families, and I hope to emulate them in the coming future. Welcome to Hogwarts, Potter, it's a pleasure to make your reacquaintance."
And Draco, with his hand outstretched, waited.