Timeless

Chapter 5

Chapter Text

I don't know how it is you are so familiar to me - or why it feels less like I am getting to know you and more as though I am remembering who you are. How every smile, every whisper brings me closer to the impossible conclusion that I have known you before, I have loved you before- in another time, a different place- some other existence.

-Lang Leav

Present Time: September 2000 / Draco's Time: October 2004

Hermione Granger

Several weeks passed before Malfoy joined Hermione for lunch again. As soon as he sat down, she asked him how he decided when to come. He responded vaguely, "When I can get away."

Away from what? Hermione wondered. Or was it more a question of who? She guessed that Lucius didn't know about these meetings.

"I'll be here tomorrow and the next day," he added and she filed the information away but stayed silent. She wasn't planning to be here the next two days since she had meetings close to lunch. But she could move them...

Are you seriously considering adjusting your work schedule to accommodate lunch with Malfoy?

Hermione shook her head. She would think about that later. She focused back on Malfoy who was tilting his head to read the title of the book she was holding. She placed it on the table so he could see better. "Have you read this?"

Malfoy grimaced when he read the title. "1984. Yeah, I've read it. 'The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously and accepting both of them,'" he quoted. "What was the word for that again?"

"Doublethink."

Draco nodded and he looked uncomfortable. "I am intimately familiar with the concept."

Hermione knew this. He'd admitted the night of the Quidditch match that throughout the war he'd struggled with reconciling the beliefs he'd grown up learning and his hatred of the horrors he'd been forced to witness. But she didn't want to bring it all up again.

He'd already apologized and she didn't think it was fair to continuously focus on the mistakes he'd made in the past. She tried to steer the conversation away. "One of my favorite quotes is: 'Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.'"

Malfoy cocked an eyebrow at her. "Why is that?"

"It's a good reminder to me. I was, well, when I was younger, I had a tendency to be overly idealistic and thought I knew what was best for everyone." She paused, expecting him to tease her or at least look smug, but his expression was blank.

"But to really love someone," she continued, "you need to understand them. You need to find out where they are coming from. Caring for them while pushing your beliefs on them isn't really love."

She looked down then, embarrassed. She realized then how personal of an admission that had been and didn't know what he was going to do with it. It was a test of sorts, she guessed, to see how he'd respond to this vulnerability. He surprised her with his next question.

"What about the people who love you, Hermione? Do they understand you?"

The answer came quickly to her mind. No. She'd always felt like an outsider in school. At first, she thought it was because she was a Muggleborn, but it was more than that. Even now, she always suspected she didn't quite belong.

Ron didn't understand her aspirations, Harry and Ginny were too focused on each other, and her parents still didn't approve of her living in the magical world (though she admitted they had good reasons). She was always trying to understand and help others, but who was trying to understand her?