Chapter Text
It starts – as so many things do – with guilt.
People say desire is the main motivator for human action and interaction, the more subconscious, the more powerful, and they are right.
But guilt is a close second. Followed by money.
And so it is unforeseen circumstances powered by an abundance of guilt which get her into her precarious situation in the first place. That and Susan Bones.
Really, it starts because Susan Bones notices something which the entirety of the Weasley clan as well as Harry and the newly-minted Ginny Potter do not: Hermione starts bringing her own lunch to work. Now this, in and of itself, is innocuous. The Ministry cafeteria isn’t that good.
But -- Hermione has never before brought her own food. This is a new development, and Susan Bones notices but immediately forgets about it, until other things start to happen, and odd evidence starts to pile up.
Hermione stops going out for drinks after work. Stops going out to dinner with everyone. Has excuses not to go to at least three concerts and several of Ginny’s Quidditch matches, and that’s when Susan does notice.
To be perfectly fair, at that point everyone else has noticed as well, but only in order to complain about it good-naturedly. The words ‘stodgy’ and ‘old’ fall quite a few times in conjunction with Hermione’s name and she laughs at the teasing and Susan wonders how none of her friends notice how strained it is.
So eventually she corners Hermione, in her own office.
“When did you run out of money?” Susan asks, point blank, and Hermione’s jaw drops.
There is a long moment of silence before Hermione takes a deep breath and squares her shoulders.
“How did you know?”
Susan looks at her pointedly. “Packed lunches. No extracurricular activities. You look both harried and worried. And tired. Often. Almost all the time lately, to be honest.”
Hermione’s hand goes to her hair and Susan laughs. “No, your hair is the same glorious chaos it’s always been.” Then she leans forward. “At first I thought it was job-related, but we both know your work is both stellar and exemplary so it couldn’t be that.”
Hermione sighs. “It’s not that. You’re right.”
“Of course I’m right,” Susan scoffs and really . Like that was even an option. Hermione is blazing a trail for creature rights through wizarding law all the way up to the Wizengamot. One day they’ll have an elf Minister of Magic at the rate she is going, but that’s not the issue right now. “So what is it then?”
“I can’t tell you, Susan.” Hermione’s shoulders slump and she looks dejected and smaller than Susan ever thought possible. Hermione is not a person who has ever looked small, but in this moment she does. Small and forlorn. It is extremely unsettling. When she looks up there is something defeated in her eyes, and she doesn’t quite manage to meet Susan’s gaze and that’s the most unsettling thing yet. Hermione keeps the most rigorous eye contact of anyone Susan’s ever met. From sympathetic glance to death glare, Hermione Granger averts her eyes for no one, and certainly not in direct conversation. Something is wrong.
“I really can’t tell you”, Hermione says again, her voice resigned. “It’s not my secret to tell, you see.”
She looks sad now, and Susan has to stop herself from patting her hand. “You can talk to me. Maybe I can help.”
Hermione laughs a singularly joyless laugh. When she looks up, her eyes are exhausted.
“Oh?” she says. “And what can you do to help?”
“Get you into free housing for starters,” Susan answers, and watches in delight as Hermione’s mouth snaps closed. “With a small stipend to boot.”
Hermione’s eyes widen. “Tell me.”
---
Every day is exactly the same.
He gets up and gets dressed and goes out into Muggle London for coffee. He doesn’t much like tea anymore, doesn’t much like many things anymore. He likes egg salad sandwiches from Prêt-A-Manger and pasties from Gregg’s, on the days when everything doesn’t taste like sawdust. He likes all food that doesn’t remind him of formal dinners with ten courses and white linen and silver flatware.
He likes going to Hatchard’s because the bookstore’s wooden paneling and oddly-shaped rooms remind him enough of his old life to be comforting, yet are different enough, modern enough not to cause pain. He spends most of his days there, picking books at random and reading for hours on end. His living room shelves look like a Muggle library by now and he loves reading about things that don’t remind him of anything from his old life whatsoever.
Like physics.
The fact that the Muggle world has unbreakable laws of nature is fascinating. He reads Harald Lesch and Michio Kaku and frequently something called ‘science fiction’ -- which seems to be an unconscious fusion of physics and magic. Written by people who know nothing about magic.
And he really likes beer, the darker the better. Wrought-iron beer Theo called it, back when he was still able to visit. They went on a few pub crawls trying to find the darkest, bitterest beer in London. They managed it several times before Theo was found out. They haven’t seen each other in years now.
He’d like to stay inside.
He’d like not to have to leave his living room, just sit out his punishment on the large, ugly, comfortable couch and slowly go mad.
But he can’t. He can’t because there’s always a flatmate. They change, vary in age, sex, and temperament, but he’s never alone.
And more importantly, he promised his mother. Promised her to come out on the other side, and the only way out is through. So he gets up and gets dressed and goes out into the swirling metropolis and tries to fill his empty days the only way he knows how.
But every day is exactly the same.
---
“How can you possibly still have him under supervision? It’s been years. Years !”
Hermione is out of breath. She knows that compared to the very calm and collected figure before her she must look somewhat deranged, but she is livid, and she is not above yelling at the man.
Minister of Magic or not.
Kingsley Shacklebolt merely raises a distinguished eyebrow at her outburst and closes the door behind Hermione.
“Miss Granger, what a pleasure,” he says, deep voice entirely unperturbed, which is not helping Hermione’s anger at all. “You have a grievance?”
“Yes.” It’s a hiss. “Malfoy. You have Malfoy wandless in Muggle housing with a watchdog. After a decade . It’s not right---”
“Miss Granger. Please have a seat.” There is a sharp undertone to Shacklebolt’s voice now, and Hermione drops into the chair across from his desk.
“It has not been a decade,” he goes on, very much the Minister of Magic now. “It has been nine years and four months, and he has another eight months to go to complete his sentence. You should know this. You were at his trial.”
Yes, she had been. She and Harry and even Ron had testified on his behalf and Draco had not spared them a glance, not one.
“His sentence was for five years of house arrest and five years probation,” she says. “I remember it well.“
“That was before he refused to go back to Malfoy Manor.”
“He what?”
Kingsley leans back in his chair and sighs. “He refused to take his house arrest. Said he was never stepping inside those grounds again, said we could throw him into Azkaban for all he cared.”
Something odd stirs inside of Hermione. She doesn’t examine it.
“So, since we couldn’t actually condemn him to Azkaban,” Shacklebolt nods imperceptibly, “we had to modify the arrangement to ten years without magic and with supervision. He agreed and handed over his wand on the spot.”
“I didn’t know,” Hermione says and wonders why it feels like guilt. She did her part, spoke at his trial, and never thought of him again.
“I find it somewhat confusing that you’re here berating me for his treatment while Susan Bones tells me you’re applying to be the next supervisor,” Shacklebolt goes on, and Hermione feels heat creep up her face. She’s a hypocrite.
Because she is going to take advantage of Malfoy’s sentence. Free room and board and a paycheque make short work of her fury.
“I’m sorry, Minister,” she says. “It’s true. I do want the job.”
“Are you certain? You’ll have to keep a keen eye on a former Death Eater with whom you share a difficult past.”
Hermione laughs and her hand reflexively goes to her left arm, right about where the M is. Difficult past indeed. Kingsley is being very ministerial these days.
“I’m sure,” she says, and nods. She lived through six years of Malfoy’s petty torture and a war. She can do this.
---
The apartment is in Bloomsbury, the kind of place only Malfoy Galleons can afford. It is in one of the rows of white townhouses complete with brass numbers and carpeted hallways and silent elevators. When she opens the door to the apartment proper the first thing she sees are enormously high ceilings and top to bottom windows, before a voice next to her says, “No. Not you. ”
Hermione looks up and sees Draco for the first time in nearly a decade.
He’s tall. So much taller than she remembers. His face is rounder and his hair very short, but mostly, he is no longer a boy. None of him is still a boy. For a moment it throws into sharp relief just how very much he had been a boy, back then.
He’s leaning against the kitchen counter, a scowl on his face and says, “Granger. Are they trying to torture me for the last leg of my sentence?”
Hermione shakes her head. “Torture you?”
Draco briefly squeezes his eyes shut and swallows hard.
“I apologize,” he says. “It was an unfortunate choice of words.” He takes a deep breath. “But I do have to wonder why they got you to watch me for my remaining months. I haven’t violated a single stipulation.”
“They didn’t get me for this,” Hermione says. “You are not being punished. I volunteered.”
He stares at her.
She doesn’t blink. Malfoy doesn’t need to know. Nobody needs to know. “It’s not because of anything you did, I promise.”
“I bet,” he sneers, but it sounds slightly unsure. She’ll take it. Then he turns on his heel and marches straight off through a door on the left. The door slams with a loud bang, and Hermione can just make out the words bloody hell . Mostly because Draco is yelling them.
Out loud.
Hermione turns towards the door on her right. That must be her room then.
---
He sits down on his bed, shaking with rage and humiliation and shame. Looks at his closet.
There are bottles behind the closed door, many, many bottles. Bottles of all shapes and sizes, some in boxes, some done up in wrapping paper and ribbons, some in paper bags.
All of them bear his name.
Maybe today is the day to break one of them open.
---
It’s not much.
She pulls her clothes and books from her handbag and restores them to their proper size, but it doesn’t amount to much. She thinks her possessions would hardly have filled two Muggle suitcases, a fraction of a trunk. They cover only half of her mattress. For which at least she remembered to bring sheets.
The last thing she retrieves from her bag is a small cherrywood box, the size of a matchbook in its diminished form. She never restores it. She carries it with her everywhere she goes, sometimes takes it out to hold it in her closed, clenched fist, but never restores it. She squeezes the box hard in her left hand, squeezes until her knuckles turn white, and then returns it to her handbag and sighs.
“I’m sorry I said ‘torture’.”
Hermione turns to see Malfoy leaning against the doorframe, trying for nonchalance and failing. His fingers fidget with his shirt cuffs. Then he looks at the bed. “Is this all you brought?” She cringes a little at that, but he doesn’t seem to notice. “Are you not planning on staying long?”
She smiles. It takes effort. “No, I’m here for the foreseeable future,” she says. “This is everything I need.” And it is.
She retrieves a hanger and starts to put away her clothes by hand, because using her wand in front of him seems unnecessarily cruel, even if he is being, well, Malfoy . From the corners of her eyes she can see his mouth open and close in surprise, but decides to ignore it. At some point he will go and then she can close the door without being rude and then---
Well.
She exhales a measured breath as she puts down her shoes in a neat row and tries not to think about the fact that there are no plans for ‘then’.
It is Saturday. There are a few reports she can look over, and at least two reference books to read, and at some point she will have to figure out dinner, but other than that, there are no plans. She has nothing to do and nowhere to go until Monday morning. The weekend stretches empty before her.
She straightens up with a sigh and finds Malfoy watching her. She knows that look. He had that look often back in their former life, puzzled and figuring, calculating. He’d been so much smarter than his friends, smart enough to fathom the depths of a given problem, and it seems he still is.
But he is not going to figure out her life. She won’t even let her friends take a crack at that.
Instead she reaches into her bag one last time and pulls out a bottle of firewhisky. The man at the Diagon Alley shop had tsked at her when she’d reached for the cheapest bottle on his shelf and handed her this one instead.
“On the house,” he said. “Only a proper bottle will do for a war heroine.”
And Hermione smiled and tried not to cringe at the fact that all it took for her to be offered free drinks for the rest of her life was losing half of her friends and her family, acquiring a few scars that won’t heal, and getting a spot of PTSD. Well worth it.
“Here,” she says and Malfoy’s eyes grow wide when she hands him the bottle. “I thought I’d bring a gift. Make it less awkward.” She smirks. “Which has worked a treat so far.”
He grins absent-mindedly, eyes still glued to the label and then looks up, even more puzzled. “You show up here with a handful of robes and two pairs of cheap shoes and yet you somehow have a 350 Galleon bottle of firewhisky? How is that possible?”
Hermione chokes.
Malfoy almost laughs. She can see clearly how he stops himself at the last moment, turns, and walks into the kitchen. She follows him without a word.
Opening the bottle is complicated. Opening the bottle without magic is impossible. There’s a silver dragon’s head wrapped around the bottleneck, jaw firmly clamped over the cork, and no amount of force can pry it apart. Finally Malfoy slams the bottle down hard, his mouth a thin line, his jaw muscles jumping.
“Go ahead,” he says, his voice strangled and bitter. “Do it.” When Hermione pulls her wand from her sleeve, he closes his eyes. “Don’t use an unlocking charm,” he whispers, and so she aims Relashio at the dragon’s snout. The head retracts in a shower of sparks and lifts the cork straight out with its teeth. Hermione puts her wand away as Malfoy pours a fingerful into two tumblers and holds one out to her.
“Oh no,” she says. “It’s for you. I wanted to--- because you see it’s so nice of you to share your flat and it’s such an imposition with having to accommodate people, I know---” she’s babbling , Merlin help her--- “and so I thought it was the least I could do, seeing as I---”
“Salazar fucking Slytherin just take it , Granger.” He sounds thoroughly out of patience. “It’ll do you some good.”
Hermione takes the glass and knocks it back.
It tears a path of flame down her throat. From very far away she thinks she can hear Draco’s voice yell, “Granger, no! That’s a sipping whisky!” but she cannot be sure, because pain such as she hasn’t felt in a decade squeezes her windpipe shut as she coughs and coughs and coughs and coughs . She feels his hand clap her back hard and then a cup being pressed into her hand, but she can’t pay attention to any of it, busy as she is, trying to expel her own esophagus.
“Drink this,” he says.
Hermione wants to point out that she is currently both choking and coughing and cannot possibly ingurgitate anything, but she can’t find the breath to do so, and then she finds herself straightened up by the shoulders with force, feels the rim of the cup clang against her teeth, and his voice, hard as flint, says, “ Drink .”
And somehow she finds a fraction of a second to swallow.
Whatever it is is cool and her coughing stops the moment it goes down. She takes a deep breath, and another, and wipes her face with her shirtsleeve.
“That was bracing.” Her voice sounds like gravel.
“I’ll say.” He smirks. “You realize of course that grown men three times your size with decades of firewhisky experience don’t do what you just did.”
“I can see why.”
Draco laughs out loud and for an endless moment the world stops . Hermione has never heard him laugh, ever, not once. Snicker and smirk and grin and sneer--- Merlin, back in their potions cave he could sneer the mocking right out of the condemnation--- but never laugh. Suddenly he is an entirely different person.
One she’s never met.
He refills the tumbler and once again holds it out to her. “Let’s try this again, shall we?”
She shudders. “Oh please let’s not .”
“Think of it as a learning experience.” He forces the glass between her fingers. “Here’s a new skill for you to master.”
She gives him a full-body eyeroll, but he just clinks his own glass to hers and nips. So she huffs and takes a small sip and this time the burn is pronounced, but not altogether unpleasant. She starts to feel a bit looser, a bit more comfortable in her own skin, a shade less anxious. She tries another sip and another and now the burn is just a very lovely warmth.
Malfoy’s face is once again serious as he tops them both off once again and she feels a smile spread across her face, languid and easy. She feels good. Better than she has in a long time. The sharp edge of worry which has been chafing her for so long just melts away and she wants to thank him-- for what she’s not quite sure-- when his voice cuts through her newfound contentment like a scalpel.
“So, Granger.” His eyes are narrow, his jaw set. “Why don’t you tell me why you’re really here.”
Of course. That’s his game. Ply her with liquor until she spills all her secrets. But Hermione Granger, war heroine, Wizengamot advisor, and Brightest Witch of Her Age is not going to fall for his clumsy Legilimency substitutes, especially when her reasons are her own and have nothing to do with him at all. Not that Draco’s supreme arrogance will even let him consider that notion. After all, the world revolves around the Malfoys. Or at least it used to. It’s quite possible Draco still operates under the mistaken premise that it does.
Maybe it’s time to disabuse him of that notion.
Hermione straightens up and pulls back her shoulders. “None of your business,” she says as haughtily as her loose limbs will let her and then she manages to stalk off and slam her bedroom door with a maximum of force and a minimum of wobble. It’s louder than his door-slam was earlier and she is ridiculously proud of it.
Then she sits down heavily on her bed and tries to decide if this is the worst idea she’s ever had, or if that honor still belongs to a few decisions she made during the war.
Such as breaking into Gringotts.
It’s not until she’s in bed, almost asleep, that she remembers Draco’s voice in her doorway. I’m sorry I said ‘torture ’. It occurs to her that he may have meant that more than she realized.
---
She should not be here . He keeps coming back to that.
She should not be here with her wild hair and her wide smile and that dark cloud overhead. Not with the weight he can see pressing down on her shoulders from miles away, and those furtive glances at his life without magic, not with all this history between them.
The trail of hatred and fury and blood between them.
There are days when he gets up to find her in the kitchen making coffee by hand, because she does everything by hand, because she’s fucking kind and considerate and empathetic and hasn’t pulled out her wand since she opened the whisky bottle, and it makes him so angry he wants to shake her.
How dare she?
How dare she be nice to him?
And she does all these things with nonchalance, all these simple things like cooking and laundry and ordering take-out and putting money on an Oyster card, all these things he had to teach himself in a long, tedious, cumbersome process riddled with mistakes and humiliation, and it is absolutely infuriating because she grew up Muggle, because she just knows all these things and they’re no trouble for her at all.
She says good morning and how are you? and sometimes did you have a nice day? and asks him if he needs groceries when she goes to the market and sometimes he manages curt but polite responses and other times he can only give her a nod or a shrug, but she never seems to mind.
And that’s the most infuriating thing of it all.
She should not be here.
And he has to stop dreaming of the drawing room at Malfoy Manor.
---
Ginny is slow. Being very pregnant will have that effect on people.
But she’s not just physically slow, it appears she is mentally lacking these days, because it takes her three entire weeks to figure out that Hermione no longer lives in that shoebox in Croydon. No, Hermione is the latest recruit for the Bloomsbury flat duties and that cannot stand unanswered.
Ginny leaves Susan Bones - also known as the unfortunate messenger - sitting at her cafeteria table and makes her way up to Hermione’s office at once.
She doesn’t even apologize to Susan, who now has to finish her tea by herself.
When Ginny walks through Hermione’s door, several things become immediately apparent.
First of all, Hermione is about to leave. She is standing next to her desk in her winter cloak, bag in hand, hood on head, putting on mittens. It is 2:54 PM on a Thursday and Hermione Granger is about to leave the office. For the day. Ginny has to fight the urge to check with Harry if his scar is hurting, or the world is otherwise coming to a screeching halt.
Second of all, Hermione is not altogether glad to see her. She hides it behind a large smile, but her “Hello Ginny!” is perfunctory at best. She is clearly preoccupied.
And third of all, Hermione glances at her watch and at the clock above her door at least three times in quick succession. She’s not just leaving the Ministry early. She has an appointment. A time she wants to keep.
Ginny is unimpressed by all of it. She’s here to hold the Golden Girl accountable for what seems to be a serious lapse in judgment, and everything else can wait. So Ginny ignores all indicators that this is A Very Bad Time, waddles over to the chair in front of Hermione’s desk and awkwardly lowers herself down. Everything is awkward these days.
“Godric’s bloody balls,” she wheezes as she tries to find a comfortable spot. There isn’t one. “What in Merlin’s name were you thinking?”
Ginny can tell from the look Hermione shoots her that she fervently wishes she could Accio her Time-Turner right now. Or at the very least transfigure Ginny into one. Ginny calmly meets her gaze head-on. They stare at each other for long moments and then Hermione laughs.
“Are you going to clean up your language once the baby comes?” she says.
“Not a chance,” Ginny answers, rubbing her side. “Not as long as this one keeps kicking my kidneys.” Then she narrows her eyes, fixes Hermione with her most disapproving glare. “And don’t change the subject. What in Salazar fucking Slytherin’s name possessed you to go share a flat with Malfoy?”
“It’s a gorgeous flat in central London which I get paid to live in, surrounded by no less than four apparition points and two tube stations,” Hermione says, her voice a full octave higher than normal. “Why shouldn’t I live there?”
Ginny leans forward. As much as she can. “Where do I even start, Granger? You are sharing. A flat. With Malfoy .”
And then Hermione’s face changes. There is something new in it now, something hard and bitter and tough, painful; something Ginny has never seen before. It is the absolute absence of justification. It’s plain to see that Hermione is not going to explain herself, not to Ginny, not to anyone.
And she doesn’t.
“My reasons are my own,” she says instead, and there is finality in her tone. “And I think I should be allowed to make my own decisions.” It’s almost icy. Ginny swallows hard.
“Of course you can make your own decisions,” she says quietly. “If anyone has earned the right to make all of her own decisions, it’s certainly you. But---”
Hermione looks at the clock again, ostentatiously, and Ginny finds herself flustered.
“Hermione, is something the matter? Should I be worried?”
Hermione laughs and it sounds exasperated and not a bit cheerful. But then she smiles and at least that is genuine.
“No, Ginny,” she says. “Everything is fine, I promise.” She sighs. “I just don’t need people questioning me. I know what I’m doing, and you know that I know what I’m doing.”
“Always,” Ginny says.
“Always,” Hermione repeats. “So just--- I don’t need a But-He-Was-A-Death-Eater speech. I don’t need to be ‘talked sense to’. I don’t need to defend my reasons. But I do need to go.” She picks up her scarf and starts to wrap it around her neck.
“Fair enough,” Ginny nods. “You certainly don’t need to do any of those things. But please know that you can talk to us.”
“I know,” Hermione says, and then she rolls her eyes and smiles and her mouth loses that hard line. “Obviously I know that. Seeing as it is all I have ever done since I met the lot of you.”
“There has been a lot of talk over the years,” Ginny grins. “But I do seem to remember a fair amount of action as well.”
“You fight one war,” Hermione mumbles, and then they both grin. Hermione looks at the clock one last time. “I’m really sorry Ginny, but I must go. I’m late as it is.”
Ginny gets up. It’s a process. “Will you at least come to dinner one of these days?”
Hermione nods as she locks the door behind them and turns towards the lifts. “I will,” she says and gives Ginny a hug. “Give my love to Harry, and I’ll come to dinner soon.”
And every fiber in Ginny’s body knows that Hermione has no intention of doing so at all.
---
When Hermione comes home that night there is a bottle on the doorstep.
Or rather, a gorgeously wrapped and beribboned box sporting an ornate label reading Dom Pérignon in gold-embossed letters. There is an equally ornate card tied to one of the dangling ribbon ends, with for Draco Malfoy with kindest wishes written in a scrawling, slightly messy script. Hermione knows very little about wine and even less about champagne, but she knows that this? Is champagne . Of course his friends would send him little gifts like this. He was probably bathed in Dom Pérignon as a baby. Especially since sparkling wine was actually invented by two teenage wizards who wanted to give their wine some ‘excitement’ back in 1374 and had nothing to do with monks at all, Benedictine or otherwise. Hermione may not know wine, but she does know her history.
That 350 Galleon bottle of firewhisky she accidentally ended up with as a welcome gift was probably par for the course for one Draco Malfoy.
Cheap-ish, even.
The thought makes her grin and roll her eyes at herself. She’s had a genuinely awful afternoon and it’s making her petty and that’s not a good colour on her. She takes a few deep breaths and then picks up the box, which is surprisingly heavy, and opens the door.
Malfoy is on the couch when she enters, and starts to say ”Good even----” when he catches sight of the package and goes white as a sheet. He jumps up and closes the gap between them in three large strides and rips it from her hands. The corner scratches down the inside of her arm with force.
“Where did you get that?” His voice is a hiss.
“Someone left it at the door,” she says. “No doubt one of your many admirers. It came with ‘kind wishes’.”
“Hardly.” He disappears into his room and she hears him slam something loudly, most likely his closet door. Or maybe a safe. Who knows what Malfoy considers essential furniture. Either way, he’s not sharing his spoils and Hermione realizes that she really wants a glass of something .
She pushes up her sleeve to rub the nascent welt on her arm when he comes back into the living room.
“Are you all right?” His voice is quiet. “I’m sorry if I----”
Once again he stops dead in his tracks before he can finish his sentence and stares. His face loses all remaining color, which was not much to begin with, and then Hermione follows his gaze and realizes that it’s her arm he’s staring at. Her arm with its rolled-up sleeve and its scratch mark and the letters M U D B L exposed, the lines still red and clearly visible after all these years.
She pulls down her sleeve. For a moment Malfoy looks like he is going to vomit, or pass out, or both. But he does neither and so they stand there, in utter, interminable silence, until he turns around slowly and walks back into his room like a marionette with every single string clipped.
The door closes softly behind him.
Hermione stares at Malfoy’s door for a long time. Then she marches straight into the kitchen, pours herself a shot of firewhisky and starts to think.
She realizes that she has been here nearly a month and knows nothing at all about how Draco spends his time. She has not been watching his comings and goings - in open defiance of her directive - because keeping track of him that way seems both cruel and unnecessary. He doesn’t have a wand, he’s covered by a Trace charm, and he obviously hasn’t violated the terms of his sentence in almost a decade. She’s not going to infringe on the little privacy he has left.
But she has also never asked him about his days, or what he does, or even how he is really doing - other than perfunctory small talk. Not once. And that, Hermione decides, finishing her whisky, is going to change.
Right now.
She refills her tumbler and pours a second one and marches straight to Malfoy’s door and knocks. Hard. Several more times than necessary.
When he rips his door open and says “ Granger ” in that tone that throws Hermione straight back into a dingy potions dungeon in Scotland, she shoves the glass at him and says, “Stop it. Stop your sulking and have a bloody drink with me.”
Which shuts him up so effectively, Hermione is struck speechless herself for a moment. Then she walks to the couch and waves at Malfoy, who carefully closes his door and then moves towards her as if none of his joints have been oiled in a decade. He sits down stiffer than a board. Hermione feels compelled to make herself excessively relaxed in the wake of his rigidity and practically pours herself into the opposite corner, loose-limbed and comfortable. She realizes that the whisky bottle is still on the counter and without thinking summons it, wandlessly, with a twist of her hand.
Draco goes very still, more so than he was, and Hermione looks at him, mortified.
“I am so sorry,” she says. “I swear, I didn’t mean---”
“That’s quite all right, Granger,” he says coolly. “You have been exceedingly courteous this whole time, much more so than your colleagues. Please don’t worry about it.”
His eyes tell an entirely different story. They look betrayed, and Hermione imagines a never ending parade of witches and wizards come and go through this apartment, flaunting their magic at every opportunity, because Hermione knows, knows, that people are not the bigger person ever.
Well, hardly ever.
“I really am so sorry,” she says.
He doesn’t look at her, but he nods. The tips of his ears go faintly red. She has never seen him blush before.
“I want to make peace,” she goes on.
“We’re not at war, Granger.”
“Aren’t we?” she asks, and his head snaps up and for a moment there is something naked and vulnerable in his expression before his mask of perfect indifference settles back down. But she’s seen it. He’s listening.
“It seems to me like we never left the war, you and I,” she says softly. “We’re still both paying for it, at any rate.”
Malfoy barks a bitter laugh. “You, Granger? War heroine, Golden Girl, Brightest Witch of Your Age? Whatever could you still be paying for? You won .” He leans forward. “Good prevailed, and I’m glad it did. I mean that.” His eyes narrow. “But don’t sit here in my living room that doesn’t actually belong to me, that they pay you to sit in, and try to be friendly. I don’t need your pity. That’s the last thing I need.”
And Hermione sees red.
“Pity?” she says, and oh, her voice is so much louder than she intended, but she can’t lower it for the pure rage building inside her. “You think I pity you?” She takes a rather large sip and it burns sharp and hot, but instead of choking her, it adds fuel to the fire.
“You were the bane of my existence, Draco Malfoy.” She’s nearly shouting now. “You made my life hell from the moment I met you. You and your friends and your house and everything you stood for. You bullied me within an inch of my sanity, you made jokes about my inevitable demise, you called me Mudblood before I knew what it meant . Pity is not what you have, you ignorant twat.”
She glances at Malfoy and he looks--- shell-shocked. His eyes are wide and he doesn’t seem to be breathing.
Hermione exhales and tries to unclench her teeth. This is not what she wanted at all.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “That was a long time ago, and we were different people then. I know I was.” She refills her glass. “But don’t assume you know anything about my life, and what I do or do not pay for. And don’t think I pity you, because frankly, I don’t have any pity left inside me.”
There’s a sharp intake of breath on the other side of the couch, but Hermione keeps going.
“I really wanted to make peace,” she says, and takes another sip. “Since we’re going to share this space for a few months at least. I wanted to ask you what you do, because I know nothing about your life. And whether you maybe want to have coffee sometime and not talk about the past at all whatsoever.”
She looks up just in time to see the left corner of Malfoy’s mouth quirk upwards in the ghost of a grin. It’s something.
“But I can’t right now, because I’m too angry, and it’s all your fault.” She shakes her head and gets up. “Let me know if you ever remove that chip from your shoulder. Maybe we can try this again.”
As she enters her room, she thinks she hears him say, “I’m sorry.”
But her door is already closed and it’s too late to open it again.
---
He doesn’t sleep at all that night.
All he can see are the letters on her arm, and her face as she said, don’t assume you know anything about my life . The thin line of her mouth, the hard glitter in her eye.
Hermione Granger is paying for something, that much is clear.
And she’s fucking lovely to have around, unobtrusive and considerate and thoroughly decent, and she was about to have a real conversation with him tonight, and then he went and bollocksed it all up.
He’s a piece of work, he is.
Deep down he wonders if he has lost the ability to connect to other human beings completely. If this will be his life, disjointed and solitary, biting every hand that reaches out towards him.
It’s no less than he deserves, but his traitorous soul quails at the thought.
---
She doesn’t sleep at all that night.
All she can see is the expression on Draco’s face when she shouted at him. Part of it was shock, and part of it was anger, and a lot of it, most of it, was that perfect indifference Malfoy wears like bloody armor, but underneath that, underneath it all was something Hermione was not prepared for.
Sadness.
---
The following evening finds Hermione in the kitchen, making a sandwich, when his voice suddenly sounds behind her. “I don’t do anything.”
She jumps and turns and he’s right there, in the kitchen doorway, leaning against the jamb and looking at nothing somewhere to the left.
“Sorry,” he mumbles. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“It’s fine.” She exhales a deep breath. “Still as quiet as a cat, I see.” She smiles and the tips of his ears go bright red. But he’s still not looking at her. “You were saying?”
He sighs. “You asked what I do. The answer is, nothing. I do nothing.”
“What do you mean, you do nothing.”
He shrugs. “I’m not allowed anywhere near any magical work or establishments, and I’m not qualified for anything Muggle. Mostly I read.”
She stares at him. “Mostly you read?”
“Yes.” Still not looking at her. “I figured out the Underground and coffee shops and a good bit of Muggle London. I found a bookstore I like.”
“You found a---- what do you read?”
“I like something called physics,” he says, so low she can hardly hear it. “And science fiction.” There is the ghost of a grin. “And also cappuccinos.”
She wants to smile but she can’t, because all she can see are days and months and years stretching towards an endless horizon, thousands of empty hours’ worth.
She can’t breathe for a moment.
She can’t speak. It’s too awful.
“A decade,” she finally whispers and tears spring to her eyes. “A decade of nothing?”
“Are you crying?” There’s just enough of a sharp sneer in his voice to snap Hermione back to the present, but when she looks at his face there is no derision in it at all. And he’s still not meeting her eyes. He just looks tired.
Hermione straightens up and shakes her head. Not on her watch.
“That’s changing today, Draco Malfoy,” she says, marches out to the dining room and spills the entire contents of her bag onto the table. Malfoy merely turns in the doorway, eyebrows raised, as she makes stacks of scrolls and pamphlets and reference books before she sets down a handful of quills and three half-empty ink jars.
Then she looks up in challenge and defiance.
“I am currently rewriting large parts of centaur legislation,” she says. “We have few laws regarding centaurs and what we have is abysmal. It’s a shamefully neglected field and requires a large amount of very detailed research and you are going to help me.”
Malfoy chokes. He coughs almost as hard as Hermione did her first night of firewhisky. It takes him a minute to get himself back together again and then he wheezes, “You want me to do what? ”
“Help me. Help me research laws and precedent and write legislation.”
“You can’t possibly be serious.”
Hermione scowls. “I am not letting a first-rate mind like yours go to bloody waste because everyone at the Ministry has come down with a case of irretrievable stupidity.”
Malfoy shakes his head.
“I can’t, Hermione. I am fruit from a poisonous tree. Everything I contribute would be tainted.” His voice is quiet and determined but underneath she could swear runs a current of longing, and she knows she’s got him.
“Shut up,” she says. “First of all, no one needs to know until your sentence is served. But you will get credit afterwards, I’ll make sure of it.” He looks baffled and she plows on. “And second of all, I get to pick my research assistants with complete discretion.”
“You have assistants?”
She huffs. “Not currently. They tend not to last very long.”
And Draco laughs out loud.