Chapter Twenty Five

Another knock at the door several minutes after Harry left reminded Hermione she was expecting someone else. She hurried to unlock it and opened the door to a scowling and dripping wet Malfoy.

"Granger. Are you going to let me in or are you going to stand there with your mouth open gaping at me?" he snapped. Apparently Draco Malfoy did not appreciate getting caught in the rain.

"Sorry, come in." She stammered, stepping aside to let him stride in. "Did it just start raining just now?"

"No."He sneered trying to disentangle himself from his thoroughly soaked coat, "but I didn't think you'd appreciate the Boy Wonder seeing me visiting your flat. I got here just as he was entering the building and stood in the rain like a stray dog until he left. Next time you're expecting one of your goody two shoes friends maybe think twice about double booking the evening with a Death Eater."

"I didn't invite Harry over." She sighed and stepped in to help him remove his coat, his struggle was spraying water everywhere and she really didn't want him getting her books wet. "He actually showed up to warn me that you were in town and to see if I wanted any protection."

Malfoy gave snort. "I'm pretty sure you don't need protection from anyone Granger, I seem to remember you having a rather nasty right hook on top of your rather impressive arsenal of hexes."

She wrinkled her nose at the puddle of water forming under him. "I'd offer you some clothes, Malfoy but I don't think I'd have anything that would fit you. You'll have to settle for a drying charm."

He pulled out his wand but hesitated. "May I?"

It was bad manners to cast magic in another witch or wizard's house without permission.

Malfoy was a wizard who had spent a large portion of his life looking down on her kind, for him to acknowledge her and give her the same courtesy as he would a pureblood was a tangible sign that he respected her home and saw her as a real witch.For some reason she found that it meant quite a lot to her.

He was still waiting, watching her expectantly and she nodded, not trusting her voice at the moment. Several spells later he was no longer dripping but merely damp. He rolled his shoulders, unsticking the fabric from them and Hermione tried to ignore the way his lean muscles moved as the fabric clung to them.

He ran both his hands through his damp hair, slicking it back. His shirt rode up, exposing a strip of pale skin and Hermione became exceptionally fascinated with the buttons on his coat she was still holding, her ears warm.

"Hey Granger." Keeping her eyes on the coat she made a noncommittal sound of acknowledgment. "Is something burning?"

Hermione swore, flinging his coat onto a chair she ran into the kitchen and switched off the stove. The semi-cremated remains of her noodles stuck to the bottom of the pot they had been re-heating in.

"Please tell me this sad plastic package wasn't your dinner Granger." Malfoy had followed her into the kitchen and was holding the noodle packaging with two fingers, his nose wrinkled in distaste.

"I didn't feel like cooking after work. I just wanted a quick dinner, "she said miserably.

"But this." Malfoy waved the offending packet. "Is not food."

"It is to us peasants." She said glumly tossing the pot into the sink and turning the tap on, hopefully some water would dislodge the remains of her dinner. When she turned around Malfoy was looking through her refrigerator.

"Malfoy. Get out of my fridge." She said unamused.

"Here, you go and start your little tests." He removed a vial from his pocket and handed it to her, his eyes still scanning the contents of her refrigerator. "I am going to make some dinner."

"You?" She asked bewildered. "know how to cook?"

"Despite what Blasie and my mother seem to think. Yes. I do happen to know how to cook. I may have been born with a silver spoon but that doesn't mean I didn't learn how to use it." He told her clearly offended she didn't think he'd be able to make a meal

"I'm not promising anything fancy but I can promise it will be more edible than your take on blackened noodles that is currently turning to goo in the sink."

Hermione wasn't used to being shooed out of her own kitchen and she was more than a little nervous leaving Malfoy alone in there. It seemed inherently wrong to be trusting him around dangerous pointy objects and fire. Reluctantly she went and gathered the supplies she'd need and began to set things up on the table.

Because the kitchen and dinningroom were separated only by an island she was able to keep an eye on him while they both worked. She found it both mesmerising and annoying how graceful he was as he moved about her kitchen, pulling out pans and items from her refrigerator.

"Hey Granger." he called after a while. "Do you have any wine?"

"For drinking or for cooking?" She asked abandoning the vial and coming into the kitchen.

"Both? Never hurts to have a drink while cooking" He said tossing a shallot up in the air and catching it on the blade of her knife.

"Show off." Hermione muttered as she reached up to the cupboard above the refrigerator to retrieve a wine bottle. After the harsh judgement of her last bottle of wine the previous evening she figured she should pull down something a little nicer, but the bottle she wanted was just out of reach, even when she stood on her tiptoes.

"Here Granger, let me." Malfoy stepped behind her, his hand going to her waist to steady her as he moved to grab the bottle. Hermione barely had time to register how close he was before he had stepped away and moved back to the counter as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

"You know your kitchen is oppressively small." He told her over his shoulder. "Clearly the reparations that bled the Malfoy fortune dry didn't end up lining your pockets."

"I didn't take any of the money the ministry offered." Hermione told him indignantly. "That money was for people who really needed it."

Malfoy turned to her leaning against the counter. "You faced the greatest dark wizard since Grindelwald, saved the wizarding world as we know it, at the cost of your childhood and you didn't even get paid properly?"

"I wasn't going to take the Ministry's payout." She said angrily. "Like I said, the money that was taken wasn't prize money for winning a war, it was supposed to be for people who lost everything."

He raised an eyebrow as if he almost didn't believe her. "That's a lot of bloody work with nothing to show for it."

"Well I think the entire generation of witches and wizards with mixed blood and the muggle borns we saved would beg to differ. And I have plenty to show for it thank you very much Malfoy" she snapped, indicating her arm that Bellatrix had maimed and he recoiled from her as if she had slapped him.

She turned on her heel and returned to the table to finish her tests.

Did he need to take every chance he got to belittle her? Outside of the affection for Blaise, Theo and his mother he seemed so callous and infuriating. Did the war make him so inhuman or was that simply his Malfoy nature shining?

A glass of wine slid onto the table next to her.

A peace offering.

She looked up but he was already striding back into the kitchen. She sighed inwardly, already regretting snapping at him. She had always been slow to anger quick to forgive but Malfoy seemed to have a talent for gettin under her skin.

"I'm sorry Malfoy," she said quietly. " I didn't mean-"

"Granger. You need to stop apologising for things you had every justification in saying." Malfoy told her tightly, his back still to her. "For what it's worth, I am sorry for what my Aunt did to you at the manor." he added. Hermione wasn't quite sure how to take his apology, so she stayed quiet, swirling her wine.

Malfoy put a bowl of noodles in front of her a few minutes later. Hermione was impressed he could come up with something that smelled so good with the rather sparce offerings from her kitchen.

As he extended the bowl the sleeve to his shirt moved, exposing a glimpse of his Dark Mark. She really needed to stop drinking on an empty stomach, it made her impulsive. She reached out and grabbed his wrist. As soon as her hand touched his skin he froze.

"I'll show you mine if you show me yours" she told him, indicating their forearms. She half expected him to rip his arm from her but he stayed very still, his eyes narrowed.

"Is there a particular reason you want to see my Mark or is it just to satisfy your morbid curiosity?" He asked after a moment.

"I've never actually seen one, I mean I've seen it in the sky plenty of times and from a distance but never up close." She said honestly.

He pulled his arm out of her grasp and she let him, expecting him to yank his sleeve down or even to grab his coat and leave, but instead he very carefully began rolling up his sleeve.

His eyes didn't look down at his mark but stayed fixed on her as if he didn't want to look at it. He rested his elbow on the island and leaned over, extending his forearm, offering it to her.

The Mark was horrible to look at.

Under his skin it crawled with dark magic. It seemed almost sentient in a way. She could feel it, it felt like the snake was watching her, waiting to strike but even as repulsive as it was, Hermione couldn't drag her eyes away. The symbol had inspired so much pain, so much death and suffering it was odd to see it again after so much time unfaded and glistening as if Voldemort had never been defeated.

It looked so out of place on Malfoy's impeccably white skin, like someone had spilled an ink bottle of a new bit of parchment. She reached out a finger and lightly touched the mark, the muscles of his forearm spasming under her fingertips but he stayed still.

"Did it hurt?" She asked looking up at him but he was pointedly staring at the wall behind her.

"Well you know the Dark Lord, Granger, was very gentle with me. I barely even noticed when he ripped out part of my soul and then we went out and got oakmilk lattes and gossiped about the latest on page six of Witch Weekly." He snapped sarcastically "Of course it bloody hurt."

"Did you want to get it?" She asked, ignoring his sarcasm.

He was quiet for a moment. "When I was younger I did. I saw my fathers and I thought it was a mark of honour. The physical embodiment of our purity and superiority. I couldn't wait until I was old enough to get mine but by the time it was my turn… no. I didn't."

"Why not?" She asked.

He met her eyes briefly before glancing away. "I didn't want what it stood for anymore. The Dark Lord and I had… a difference in ideologies."

"Then why did you agree to it?" She pushed, genuinely curious.

"Granger I was sixteen." He sighed exasperated. "The Dark Lord had risen from the dead and was occupying my home. People were dying. People I cared for were being tortured. My friends were in constant danger from every side. My father and mother's lives were on the line. And I don't believe being told to pledge yourself to a cause you don't believe in or watch your parents being tortured to death or eaten by a giant snake is much of a choice."

"No," she agreed quietly and removed her hand from his arm. She began to roll up her own sleeve but Malfoy reached out and grabbed her hand, stopping her.

"No Granger, please. I remember" His face had gone even paler than normal. "Let's just eat"

Dinner was a quiet affair, they ate in silence. After, since his vial of calming draught had passed all her tests, she returned it to him. He pocketed it, collected his coat and left.