This story doesn't belong to me, it's everythursday work
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"Confidential."
"Purchases?"
"Yes."
Hermione stared at the man, his shorter height giving her full view of his best attempts at combing over a thin section of hair to hide his balding head. She wondered why he didn't just use a potion or spell, but maybe that was more damaging to pride than combing sideways.
She sat forward, folding her hands in her lap, and held his eyes until he was unsettled. She had learned it best from the person who brought her here – the more anxious you make a person, the more they concern themselves with doing what it takes to make you leave.
"We have proof that Runson has sold something to a man who has used it in the creation of illegal potions, that are being distributed throughout Britain—"
"If that's true, it is not the responsibility of the company. We sell ingredients and potions, all legal, and cannot—"
"But it is the responsibility of the company to cooperate with the Ministry when informed of such a situation. Unless you support such illegal use, and wish to interfere with our investigation. In which case, I—"
"I assure you that we do not support use of our ingredients for any illegal activity, and wish we could help. However, we have confidentiality contracts—"
"Which are invalid when information is requested by the Ministry because it relates directly to a case where the person is participating in illegal activities that are harmful to other people. Then it's a matter of company choice, and in the best interest of the company to cooperate." Hermione raised her eyebrows. "Is it your choice to not cooperate?"
The man pushed his seat back, his face pinched as he stood. "Harrison Black, you said?"
"Yes. And I'll need all the information, including lists of purchases, and address."
(March, 1999)
Draco stepped out, as deep into Granger's personal space as he'd ever been, and pulled the door shut behind him on the manor, or the ghosts, or whatever she might be thinking. He looked down from the snowflakes melting on her cheeks, to the deep red of her robes. She cleared her throat, glaring at him when he met her eyes.
He barely restrained a smirk, raising an eyebrow as he let her simmer in her assumptions until her cheeks were red. There was something in the flash of anger in Granger's eyes that made him feel alive. Ready, alert, prepared for whatever battle she was about to declare.
He was slightly disappointed when she dodged. "Ron is at Harry's." "You're an Auror?"
Her mouth clicked shut, and she looked down at the crest on her robes. She was quicker than he thought she would be at accepting that he hadn't been looking at her breasts.
"Oh...yes. For now." There was a beat of silence, and then she was talking again before he stood a chance to. "In a year or so, I think I'll either go more into the law than enforcement, or the Magical Creatures Department. Making sure the right laws are in place is important, but there are people starting to do good things – though I think I can probably do some a bit faster, and more--"
"Of course you do."
"--creatures really need help now, and no one is doing anything for them. It's a good time, too, since...simpler laws, or less involved laws, are being passed to make the public feel the Ministry is being active in getting things done, when harder laws that the majority of people would be--"
"You're like a bad book, Granger. Full of information that's mostly useless and never seems to end."
"As opposed to you – short, written in Runic, and required reading?" He frowned. "There's nothing about me that's required reading." "That depends on how much one likes runes."
Draco sneered at her and shifted, his bare feet numbing against the wet and cold rocks. "I'm not a puzzle."
"Aren't you? Everyone is. You know, human beings are put together with all these little pieces of other things. It's hard enough to see it for what it is, but to really know everything, you have to look at each individual piece." Granger frowned at
his shoulder. "I'm not sure if that's ever possible with anyone. Or even yourself. There are parts other people see but you don't."
"Then they're unimportant, and you--"
"No." She looked like he had committed a great offense. "Every part of a person is important."
"If it's so small that you don't know it--"
"Or you've got used to it, so don't notice it, or mistake it as part of a bigger piece —"
"Then you see the bigger piece and so still notice it."
"But it could be completely different. It could be very important, the very thing that makes that bigger piece what it is. You know that...those big pictures of a person, and when you get closer, there are hundreds of tiny pictures of that person that make the bigger face? Well, if you ignore the little pieces, you never place them right, and you never see the overall picture. It's just a bunch of tiny images that don't make sense."
He leaned back against the house, and cringed when water seeped into his shirt. "Do you make it a habit of roaming about neighborhoods with doorstep philosophy, or are you here for a reason?" Because wherever she was going was not somewhere he wanted to be with her.
"Harry told me I should bring you to fill out some paperwork." She opened her eyes wide, raised her eyebrows, and lowered her chin. She should have just said it for all her obviousness.
"Have you been spending a lot of time with Weasley, or have you misplaced one of my tiny pictures to somehow get the impression that I'm an idiot?"
She shrugged, and there was a tiny smile where he wanted a scowl. "I'm pretty sure that picture fits exactly right."
He nodded slowly. "I see. So it wasn't so much an accident of misplacement, but your own idiocy that you confused for mine?"
The scowl then, and he smirked as he slid inside the manor, shutting the door on her step forward. He yanked on his boots and pulled on his robe, more concerned with her entering than leaving. She was standing in the same place he had left her, though, and her gaze was too curious for him to hold it.
She cleared her throat as she drew her wand, staring at his arm. "I'm, uh... Well, all right."
She seemed to grow more flustered the longer they stood there and he stared at her, before finally grabbing his bicep. He stared at her striped mitten on the dark of his robe, feeling the dull heat that touched his skin under both. Had she ever touched him beyond the slap at Hogwarts?
The rose wallpaper came into view with a swirl of nausea, and he swallowed hard. "Are you okay?"
He looked down at Granger, somehow shorter beside him than when she stood across from him. "I'm fine."
Her mitten-clad hand slipped from his arm. "You were swaying a bit." She looked up at him then, her lips pursed. "Do you know where the supermarket is?"
His eyebrows knitted together. "What?"
"I mean, I figured you wouldn't look so starved after a few months. You look a bit less starved now than before, but still...sort of starved, and then I thought you might not know where the supermarket is."
He wasn't sure which part to be more offended by. "You really need to reconsider the picture placement, Granger. And beyond that, I still have a house-elf."
Her eyes narrowed. "I see."
He rolled his own. "Concede before you lose."
"That's my advice to you. I'm—"
"You'll always lose. You can argue about it until you're out of breath, but I won't free my only elf, and so you've already lost."
"You know, your-- Uh, Narcissa."
Draco looked over from the fluffy top of Granger's head to his mother standing near the archway of the dining room. "Hermione."
Hermione.
"I forgot the cookbooks. I went directly to Harry's after work, and they're at my flat. I'll bring them next time, I promise."
"Cookbooks," Draco said slowly, frowning at his mother's expression. It was the light air of politeness that meant she was satisfied with the company or secretly plotting their demise.
"Yes." Granger looked up at him and took a step back. "I have one that's five steps or less, and another where everything is done in twenty minutes or less. I don't really have time for..." She waved her hands.
Draco couldn't give a toss about her cookbooks – it was when she had been interacting with his mother that he was interested in. And to the point that they had come round to a discussion on cooking.
"Are you joining us for tea?" Narcissa asked.
Granger took a breath and looked back at him, holding it for a moment in the silence. "No. But thank you. I'll, uh, I'll be back in...three hours? Four?"
"Four would be lovely," Narcissa said.
"Great." She gave him a nod, and then a smile to his mother. "Eight it is, then." She disappeared with a crack, and Draco raised his eyebrows at his mother.
()
Hermione stopped the lighting spell before she finished it, lowering her wand as she squinted at the side of the Runson building. She had noticed the path to the building earlier that day, the dirt that grooved deeper on two sides, familiar from the constant trek of automobiles. She had thought there might be Muggle-born employees who lived in the Muggle world, but the volume of the thrumming engine sounded a lot larger than a vehicle taken to work.
As far as any public record or the business filing with the Ministry said, Runson didn't sell anything in the Muggle world. Yet from the sound of the engine and the amount of crates people were wheeling out, they were transporting a large shipment to exactly there. The crates, however, were not marked Runson but BGC, and three men in suits were discussing something as they watched the workers.
Hermione moved closer to the building, balling up the piece of paper with Malfoy's
address on it. Or, really, the address to a worn down house that hadn't been lived in for at least a decade. She had come back to see if they had another address on record, but now she thought she would learn a lot more by not going inside at all.
(March, 1999)
Everything was a process of learning. Knowledge grew like trees, slowly and searching. Even in all the events that declared Draco a failure, there was not one that stood singularly as the moment in which he realized. There was no epiphany. It was a battle of facts and beliefs, through lines he hadn't known were drawn by others and himself until he crossed them.
He would forget. The house would creak, or wind would batter a window, and he expected the Dark Lord, or Snatchers, or a group of Death Eaters. Not as if they had come back, but as if they had never left. In just a second of time, he was living it again.
It's over, the combined thought as soon as Voldemort fell, the words people told their friends, that they reminded themselves of. But the world could declare anything as some defining moment. Human beings got there by way of teeth, and nails, and strained limbs, and time.
Outside the window of his bedroom, the sun was setting, a burnt orange and red across the sky, and Draco saw the world on fire.
()
Hermione looked up at the man in the doorway as he gave a questioning look to the woman across from her. Hermione straightened from her uncomfortable slouch, easing the ache that had started in her back.
"Billy, this is Hermione Granger."
Billy looked more like he was trying to remember a passing face at a dinner party last year than a person who had had even her grocery shopping evaluated in newspapers. Hermione was glad for it. It was the wide-eyed silence Susan had greeted her with twenty minutes ago that had forced Hermione into concealment spells every time she left her flat. At first, the recognition and appreciation had been flattering, even if she never saw herself as a hero. After so many years, it was nice that the world hadn't passed over the effort, and had acknowledged all they did.
The acknowledgment, however, stopped short, and when they should have been talking about someone else's courage, they were debating the relationship
between her, Harry, and Ron, or repeating some exaggerated story that didn't matter anymore. The war had been won, after all – there were important things to focus on. They had only ever done what they needed to do, out of fear, and compassion, and love, and maybe a little revenge, too. That didn't make them heroes, it made them human beings.
"Auror Granger. I'm here to talk about the events that happened at Riddikulus four months ago. I know you were already interviewed, but the case has changed Aurors and I'd like to interview witnesses myself."
"Oh." Billy looked back at Susan as he nodded. "Right."
"I understand you were there that night as well?"
Billy tilted his head as his eyes moved to the ceiling, half his face scrunching. "Sort of. If you know what I mean."
Hermione moved back to her slouch. "You were intoxicated."
"It is a pub."
"So..."
"Yes. I only saw the bloke two or three times, though."
"Be—"
"He kept looking around," Susan said. "The guy, I mean. Like he was waiting for someone to come, not just looking around. He was by himself."
Hermione nodded. "Mister Liecher, you saw him three times?" "From what I remember, yeah."
"Can you describe those times?"
Billy shrugged, pointing as Susan. "Same as her. Last time was outside, with the other guy, before he ran away. He didn't look like he was about to do something like that."
"But he did stop looking around," Susan added.
Hermione paused, and rolled her quill so the ink wouldn't drop. "This is the second time you saw him?"
"Yeah, right before we went outside."
Hermione straightened at the edge of the couch, stopping herself from leaning back just a little more to crack her back and relieve some pressure. "You saw him right before you saw him again outside?"
"Yeah."
"Not right before," Susan said, holding up her hand. "There were a lot of people inside, so it took us awhile to get to the back. At least a minute or two."
She didn't have the floor plan on her, but she had looked at it before coming, and she knew they had placed him near the middle of the pub. Closer to the front, though.
"Are there any exits beyond the front and back door?"
"Windows," Billy said carefully, like it was a trick question.
"Did you see the man come out of one of the alleys?"
"No. There's only one alley. The left side of the pub is right up against a shop. I mean, there's the back alley, but it's more just a big space before the road—"
"There's no shop right there behind the pub, but there's shops on either side behind it," Billy interrupted.
"That's where they were standing, across the back alley and on the other side of the cobblestones."
Billy and Susan looked distinctly nervous, and Hermione offered a small smile to calm them that she didn't feel. "And you're sure you passed the man one or two minutes before you exited the back door?"
"It could have been longer. It could have been five minutes. Can't really keep track of time when you're pissed." Billy looked over at Susan, who twisted her hand back and forth.
"I wouldn't say five minutes. We didn't stop or anything, just had to wind through people. Maybe five."
Hermione stared down at her parchment, her sight glazed. If it did take them five minutes, it would be fair to assume the front of the pub was nearly as full, and would take at least a minute or two to get through. Another minute or two to walk around the pub and across the road, meet with someone, exchange words... If they were right about the five minutes, it would have, maybe, been just enough time.
"How confident are you that the man across the road was the same man from the pub?"
"Pretty confident," Susan said. "He had his back to us outside, but that hair..."
"He was the only one with that color hair. I mean, you don't miss a thing like that."
"And when we went back inside, he wasn't there."
"You noticed that right away?" Hermione asked.
"After we told some people. The place started emptying when everyone got all panicked, but we looked about..." Billy exchanged a look with Susan. "About five minutes after?"
Wonderful.
(March, 1999)
She stopped a dozen steps from where he stood, her striped mittens clasped together in front of her. The wind ruffled long strands of black hair, and her eyes watered in it.
"Do you want to go for coffee?" Her foot sloshed as she pulled it out of a puddle of water and slush, but it only sunk again when she put it back down. "Or tea, hot chocolate."
Did she think he didn't know who she was, or was she sure that he did? Or maybe she had got so used to wearing that mask of hers to hide herself to the public that it was starting to hide her to herself as well.
Granger didn't do well with the attention. She told him it was embarrassing, and if people spent as much time trying to help the world as they do paying attention to those who do, she might not have ever had to in the first place. She preferred
her books, and the dust of archives, and things like equality and respect for life. Credit was good, adoration was hindering.
She might have been the strangest, most perplexing woman he'd ever met.
He looked back at the headstone, the carved name, and to the patch of ground where the box sat underneath. It almost felt wrong to contemplate it – to have even received the question. It was a dark irony, and a tightening in his chest that might have been guilt, or betrayal, or apology. But Crabbe had made his choices,
and now Draco had to, too.
His feet sloshed loudly through the headstones, flecks of ice and water splashing up against his trousers. Granger waited until he reached her to turn, walking beside him.
()
Fink plopped into the seat across from her desk, the backs of his boots thudding loudly, dropping dirt onto her floor. She frowned, cleaning it up with a wave of her wand.
"Who's Harrison Black?"
She almost dropped her wand.
"Tell Granger that Richard Cleave has been arrested, he sells for Harrison Black. You're on a case I'm not?"
She cleared her throat loudly, closing a line of folders. "It's the Malfoy case." "...What?"
"Malfoy is connected to Harrison Black somehow. I'm not sure exactly how, but I'm figuring it out." Mostly true.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"You've been interviewing the witnesses. I'm concentrating on locating him. We can't do both at the same time without wasting time. Who is Richard Cleave?"
"We can do both—"
"If I think I've got him where we're ready for arrest, I'll tell you, Fink. I'm just splitting up the work. It's a big case."
Fink did a quick tilt of his head which was usually followed by something she didn't like, like I don't know. "It wouldn't be so much work if you didn't want to interview the witnesses again. We're just making harder copies of the originals."
"No. We're making sure we have all the information."
"What information do we need? Former prisoners get a wand trace. Unspeakables check the magic, and it's traced back to the magical signature from that wand. Malfoy's wand."
Black, tapering, sharp point, silver rim. Brown, solid width, blunt, wooden ridge. "What if someone else is using the wand?"
"The magical trace would be different, at least a little."
She shook her head. "If the wand is working well enough for the person to be able to cast things like that, the magic through that same wand would be so close to the magical signature that it could fall within the margin of error."
Fink pushed back in the chair, resting his elbows on the arms and folding his hands over his stomach. "We have witness reports that put him there."
"Never his face. Blond hair. So-so height."
"You're saying...what? Someone set him up?"
Hermione shrugged. "You've read his history."
"Yeah," Fink said, laughter in his voice, "I have. Which is why I don't understand why you're trying to...disprove he did it."
"I mean the last two years. And I'm trying to get to the facts. The absolute truth. I'm not having any person being sentenced on charges I didn't fully investigate. There's a possibility he didn't do it. It's our job to be sure. Either way. Now, who is Richard Cleave?"
(March, 1999)
Granger and Potter led a life he couldn't understand. It was always strange to be sitting in Potter's living room, but he had moments where it felt like he was on the outside of something he'd never seen before. It was both fascinating and disturbing, but always uncomfortable.
"That was fancy, Harry. Is that going to be the new Potter?" The lightness in her voice turned to laughter.
"Go bring those in. Or I'll end up pulling a Granger and burning all the food."
Silence fell, and Draco huffed a laugh at the imagined look on Granger's face. Glass clinked together, followed by footsteps before she emerged into the living room. She had a sour expression, and he thought she was deciding to study cooking in the near future.
She held a glass of Pumpkin Juice out to him, and he took it with a nod. "This guy
was arrested last night for breaking into a pet shop. When they interviewed him, he said he was pulling a Potter in order to free all the animals."
"If he had pulled off an effective Potter, they would have praised his name instead of arresting him for breaking the law."
Granger paused on her way to sitting down, her shoulders hunched forward oddly and her knees bent. He thought she might be offended, but he didn't care – he'd spoken worse truths than that. "Yes, well...if the animals were being tortured or something, the results would be different. The purpose has to be worth the action."
"To him, it was."
"Yes," she said slowly. "But breaking the law is worth it to do the action to a lot of people. Like doing drugs. Or even rape, murder. You can't let a murderer go free because they thought it all made sense."
"Governments have ordered people to kill others in the name of something that government thought made sense, and those people are free. But they're still murderers."
"Yes, but the purpose is worth the action. A Death Eater casts the Killing Curse at you because you have mixed blood. An Auror casts the Killing Curse back to prevent that person from killing them or someone else. The Death Eater's purpose isn't worth the action – the Auror's is. Now, if the Auror walked up to someone and killed them because of how they look, or walk, or where they're sitting, that's murder."
"There are circumstances where the line is not so clearly defined for either side."
"True. But we do the best with what we know." Granger took a gulp of her drink before setting it on the table. "You know, Luna – do you remember her?"
"Lovegood? Yes." It had been a year, not a lifetime. Occasionally he still heard her phantom banging or yelling from under the floorboards.
"She has this book about names that says who we are is decided the moment our parents name us. They even list health problems." She leaned forward, her expression clearly stating how ridiculous she found the idea. He agreed. "Some of them were a bit accurate, though. Harry and Ron's was pretty close to some of their behavior, though it didn't list even some of the bigger traits. You and I weren't in there."
"I'm not surprised." At least not for that reason. He was curious why Granger would bother looking up his name, but maybe it was that business about him
being a puzzle. She wasn't going to find the answer in a Lovegood book. She smiled, unforced and simple, and his gaze attached to it.
"I can see where the theory came in. Things beyond our control that end up shaping part of who we are. But it made me wonder how can it be pretty accurate most the time, and if there's more to what we share as human beings than just..."
"Basic instincts," he said.
"Right! You know, we all have trouble finding the right words at times. We can all be moody. We can all be blunt. We can all be self-conscious. We can all be a lot of things. And so it makes less sense that we're all so disconnected from one another when there's so much common ground in who we are as people."
"Opposing traits can be mistaken for common ground. If you have two people who are stubborn, that's not common ground."
"It's the same trait. We're both stubborn. It's a connection between—"
"It forms no connection because no two people share all the same beliefs, or no fight would be won by one person in both opinions, and so on. One is stubborn about something, the other is stubborn on an opposing belief. They clash, they don't meet in the middle."
"But in the end, you can still both understand the other's point or actions because you recognize their stubbornness in yourself."
Draco shook his head. "I was in Slytherin, a House filled with ambitious people – all the same trait. But the only friends were people who thought they could use one another to fulfill whatever ambition they had. The rest were viewed as having an ambition that threatened yours."
"I'm sure that's not the only reason people in Slytherin were friends."
Crabbe running through the garden of Malfoy Manor with a stick serving as a broom between his legs as Draco ran after him, their fathers' cloaks too big and billowing from their backs. The searching look the first time Draco handed him a bottle of Polyjuice, before he clapped a hand to Draco's shoulder and gulped it back without question. Then his face, anger-wrecked, and disappearing into the flames.
Draco looked down at his drink. "No."
Granger leaned back in the sofa, pulling her legs up and folding them on top of the cushion. He didn't think she'd ever looked so comfortable around him. At least
not on purpose, or because she had meant it.
"You wouldn't be the same with another name, though. I don't know if a name really decides who you'll be, but I do think names match who people are. And you're definitely a Draco. You wouldn't make sense if you were a...Harrison or something."
"Harrison?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Yeah." She furrowed her eyebrows, clenched her jaw, and held her elbows out to her sides as she shrugged her shoulders. "Harrison," she said, her voice strained deeper.
Something clicked in his throat before the laughter bubbled up harder than he could stop.
"What?" she asked, before she was laughing with him, the sounds tangling together in his eardrums.
()
Hermione glanced up at the Healers back in front of her, and then returned her attention to the report in her hand. Longagger buds, the thing Richard Cleave had been arrested for trying to steal, were on strict moderation by the Ministry. There were only seven requests that had been approved and were still active in England, and it wouldn't be common knowledge. She had no idea how Cleave had found out about a location, or why he had been trying to get it. Or why Malfoy had sent him to get it, if that was the case.
She was hoping the Aurors who arrested him found out, and if not, she'd put in her own request to interview. Hopefully under Veritaserum, if the Aurors couldn't get anything out of him.
"Auror Granger."
Hermione looked up from her report and to the empty hallway in surprise, then half-turned to see the Healer standing in a doorway. Hermione returned the small smile of amusement, folding the report as she walked back to her.
"Elisa Cleave," the Healer said, taking a step out of the door.
"Thank you."
"I can give you five minutes or so, but again, she won't wake up. If you get permission from her husband, we can reveal her medical records for you."
Hermione nodded, highly doubting Richard Cleave would even contemplate doing it. She watched the Healer walk down the hall for a moment, then stepped into the room, shutting the door. Elisa was pale and tinted blue in the bright lights spiraling above her bed, but it was the black lines that held Hermione's attention. Like a system of tiny, dark rivers, they seemed to pulse under the skin in her face, throat, and hands, and likely there in the parts she couldn't see.
Hermione took a slow, heavy step forward, her heart beating loudly in her ears and the base of her throat. A bitter, black liquorice, sulfuric stench burned her nose, and an image of long, pale hair spread over a pillow flashed through her mind. There was white crust on the woman's chin, and small bubbles at the corners of her mouth. Hermione had the urge to pull Elisa's jaw down, expose her mouth, but she knew what she would find if she did.
Hermione stepped back, again, again, again, searching for a place to take a clean breath.
(March, 1999)
Draco's breath rushed out of him, pain splintering up his spine, before it slammed into his chest as Granger crashed into him. Her palms pressed into his shoulder and chest as he tried to draw a breath, and his agitation tipped closer to panic when she started shaking against him.
"I told you to get into the armchair," he snapped.
There was a hitch of breath, and then...laughter. She pulled her face out of the folds of his robe, and her mouth was stretched with her eyes bright. She was clearly insane. He was clearly insane for expecting any different reaction from a bloody Gryffindor. Laughing in the face of danger was practically their default.
The Knight Bus took a hard turn, and they went with it, feet skidding and stumbling across the floor before they hit the side of the bus. He balanced himself against the cold glass of the window, his muscles tense at the position of Granger between the stretch of his arms. She was still grinning, her fingers clutching his robe as if he wouldn't crash to the ground with her if she toppled.
He knew he should have lied when she asked him how he got around without a wand. He should have told her he had pet Thestrals, but then she would have been on about magical creatures until his head exploded. It was only slightly less tolerable than the feel of her against him, the way her whole face was lit up as she looked at him, and how it made his chest constrict too much around the increasing rhythm of his heart.
"As soon as the turn ends, run for an armchair before it throws us back again."
She nodded. "Right. I don't know why you complained about this. It's like every time you go out, it's an adventure."
He glared.
()
There was a clicking and scratching at the window, and Hermione raised her hand to wrap around the end of her wand, though she didn't pull it. She had been curious over how he would get inside, and figured flying to the window would have been easier than sneaking or faking his way through St. Mungo's staff. He must have come pretty often if he knew the window location out of the thousands that lined the hospital floors.
She had been nervous that the owl from the hospital or the rumors wouldn't reach him. She had sent him a few owls the past year, more than one with a tracking charm on it, but they never seemed to get there. Or he ignored them. The article about it in the paper had been small and buried, but since he was here now, he must have found it.
The window slid open, bringing in a cool breeze, and a figure cloaked in black edged through the space, lying flat on a broom. He sat up once he cleared the window, dipping the front of the broom down until his feet touched the ground, then swung a leg over the wood. He turned to face her as she stood, moonlight illuminating the side of a nose and mouth before he reached up, pulling the hood down. He looked like he expected her to be there, and was as unhappy about it as she knew he would be.
"I never thought you would get this low, Granger, no matter how much you hate us, or the ambition that could have put you in Slytherin."
She almost rolled her eyes. "I don't hate you, and that should be quite obvious by now." He always had a certain leaning toward the dramatic. "And my ambition is for the benefit of the good, not just myself, so Slytherin could have never been my house."
"I disagree, when you're cutting my father off from the only thing keeping him alive," he snapped. "I—"
"Who said it was me th—"
"Don't give me that shit. I'm–"
"He's not being moved, Malfoy."
He froze, his eyes digging into her as he tried to figure out the answers without asking the questions. The vein at his temple was out, and she had a feeling that the only reason he hadn't pulled his wand like the previous times was because he didn't trust himself with it right now. He was in a rage, and if the article had been truth, he would have had good reason for it. There was no better care than at St. Mungo's.
"You signed to allow the hospital to take money from the Malfoy vaults any time a medical bill needed to be paid. It's still valid, even if no one witnessed the signature, because the signature matches the one at Gringotts."
He barely relaxed. It was the shift of rage to anger, less severe but just as volatile. A storm that remained, while no longer promising to take your house with it. She calmed a little in the face of his accusation, but she still kept her eyes on him.
"I want answers," she told him. "I know this goes far beyond Euphoria, and you need to tell me now before this gets worse than it is."
"It's not your concern, or–"
"Yes, it is."
"Just—"
"It's my case."
His head tilted, and he looked at her in a dark sort of wonder that made her anxious. "That's why you've been following me? Going to all these lengths"–he gestured behind him–"and trying to unravel it all. It's because you're on my case. It's your job."
There was something in the way he said it that made her want to deny it. That made her want to analyze why he would care that it was because it was a case. But those were all for reasons she couldn't think about any more.
She raised her chin. "Yes."
He stepped toward her and she stepped back, the back of her legs hitting the chair. She put an arm behind her, searching for cushion, and then moved around it.
"It couldn't be for any other reason," she told him, her voice stern as he stepped forward. "You've broken the law in more than one way." A step forward, a step
back. "That will obviously have legal ramifications. You—"
"What are you scared of, Granger?"
She held her ground when he took a step forward, and leaned back on his next. "Nothing."
She was scared of so many things, but in that moment, it was of him doing what he looked like he intended to do. She knew that look. It was one of those that rose to the front of her mind when she thought she was safe from it, like doing dishes, or rolling out of bed, or getting caught in rain. One of those looks that had a terrible habit of burning itself into someone's brain.
Sometimes she felt like glass in a hollow of concrete, and even if the outside didn't break, the glass was bound to shatter. And she had worked very hard at building that concrete, at approaching this as statuesque as she could, but he had a habit of ruining her best intentions when they didn't fit his own. He probably thought the same of her.
"It's been over a year, and—"
"I know," he said, and then he kissed her.
A press of the mouth, warm, soft, dry, as her heart slammed, and it hurt. She stumbled back, pushing out hands that met the ones reaching for her, and she pushed them away. Her breath was rushing faster than the kiss deserved, and she felt unsteady.
"Don't do that!" she yelled, taking another step back for more space, more space, and he stayed where he was.
"You don't want to get personal? Leave my father out of it, and give the fucking case to someone else."
She tore her wand out as he turned for the window, summoning his broom. By the time it smacked into her palm, he had disappeared. He must have had a Portkey. Bastard.
(April, 1999)
Draco didn't stop running until he reached the parlor, his feet slapping hard against the floor and his momentum. He breathed in until his lungs were full, and raked his fingers through his hair three times. She wasn't in the parlor, so she must not have left the front door. Which was good. Which was a lot better than he expected.
He moved down the hallway, and heard his house-elf pop out of the room before he entered it. Granger blinked at a corner, her mouth shutting, and then looked at him in accusation for a second, as if he'd scared the elf away. There was a canvas bag hanging from her forearm, tilted open enough for him to see her initial sewn into the inside edge.
"Granger..." He had thought he might see her today, but that was hours from now, and certainly not at his doorstep.
"Hey! I, uh...brought you something."
She dug into her bag, and he swayed on his feet in front of the hallway, unsure if he should move forward or keep standing in the way. It would be more polite to invite her in, but he wasn't going to. Their interactions were rarely that anyway.
"The other day you said that it was like an infestation of spiders and bugs this month, right? And I told you about the– this." She held up a black box with the white figure of an ant on it, its legs in the air and antennas drooping. "You have to spray it, well...here, I'll just..." She ripped the lid open, half of it tearing and flopping over the side.
"You brought...bug spray."
"Yes. Bug killer. It repels, and when they aren't repelled, they die. Sometimes they get in anyway, and then you find a dead bug inside, but they don't make it long. I got it for Ron, since he's afraid of spiders, and then I did it at my flat, which didn't work as well. But that's because I have to spray inside, since the building owner prefers her own system. Which is inadequate or I wouldn't be spraying inside in the first place, but she won't listen to me."
Granger squeezed the nozzle as she was pushing it onto the large bottle wedged between her arm and chest, and a spray of vapor shot into the air. She looked up at him like a child caught doing something wrong, and she stepped back, waving her hand at the air.
"That wasn't... Sorry. It's not really good if you breathe it in." She cleared her throat, waving harder at the air, her whole body bouncing. Draco kept his eyes firmly on the dance of her curls. "I don't mind some bugs, but it's when it's an overflow that it becomes a problem. Not many people want to wake up with a roach or spider crawling on their face. So I thought I would bring this to you so you don't have...so I don't have to listen to you complain if it happens."
"It wasn't necessary. I—"
"It's for myself, really." She cleared her throat again, staring at his feet for a few
seconds too long, and then raising her chin. "You should get some shoes on. There's a very specific way in which you have to do this, and you'll probably mess it up if I don't show you."
"I'm not Weasley or Longbottom, Granger. I'm capable of performing more than two actions at once, or spraying something without hitting my face."
"And, apparently, you're also capable of making very inaccurate judgments. So it's really in your best interest that I show you first. Where's your bedroom?"
He raised an eyebrow, and it seemed to fluster her for all the reasons he had dismissed directly after she asked. His lips curved, and he rocked forward. "Why do you want to know?"
She huffed, bristling as pink spread across her cheeks, and he decided he liked the color on her as much as the color of her anger. "Because you can't kill the bugs where you sleep."
That wasn't an answer he even contemplated her coming back with. "What?"
"These are smart enemies, Malfoy. And vengeful. There was a cricket I found dead in my room – which I felt a bit bad about, because I like crickets – and then two days later? Four crickets in my room, alive. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to catch them? And the noise? I had to sleep on my couch for a week. Then the spiders came, two dead, thirteen alive—"
"Perhaps your methods aren't effective."
"No, they are very effective! It only happened in my bedroom. I think it was something with the scent of me in there, or attacking where I'm most vulnerable. It's better to let them roam out of the room before they discover something dead, then kill them somewhere else in the house. So they aren't as likely to attack."
"That's completely illogical."
"You would think so, but the next time, I didn't spray my room. One baby spider. That was it. Which I released on the other side of the building, because it was just a baby. But I'm telling you, if you kill the bugs where you sleep, it's going to get messy. They will know, infiltrate, and attack."
Draco stared at her for a long moment, but she looked very dedicated to the belief she was right. Which was just like her, even if she was stating something nonsensical. "It's more likely you did it incorrectly the first time, and did it correctly everywhere else the second."
"Fine," she said, her tone sinister enough to give him pause. "We'll spray around
your room then, Malfoy. Then we'll see."
"My room is on the second floor." Draco clapped his hand, and looked over at the pop of sound. "Bring me a pair of my boots. It doesn't matter which one."
"Please," Granger muttered, but Draco didn't bother adding it himself. "I could have waited while you got them."
"Do you harass Potter as much about his elf?"
"No, because Harry will get his own boots."
"It doesn't take Potter five minutes to get to his closet and back. If it did, he'd do the same. Especially if it meant not having to leave you to yourself while you're looking at the furniture like that."
She blushed again, looking away from the corner table. "I was wondering what I could transfigure into a ladder."
"For?"
"The second floor. Maybe we should just do the roof. How safe is it up there? You've probably never been up there, have you?" She jumped as Blinky appeared between them, bowing as he held out a pair of boots. "And, you know, my theory isn't just mine. There are even universal expressions about not doing dangerous things in personal spaces. If you bring the danger in, more is going to follow it."
"Those are about things more serious than killing bugs, like extortion through your own company, involving friends in business, or shagging a co-worker."
"But the same theory applies. People do dangerous things in their personal spaces because it makes the danger feel safer, when really, it just makes it more dangerous. It even eliminates the safe haven until you don't have anywhere safe anymore... You're wearing those?"
Draco pulled down on the hem of his trouser leg and then straightened up, looking from his boots to Granger. "Yes," he said slowly.
"They look a bit...polished for all the mud outside."
"All my shoes are polished."
She grinned widely, and he knew he wasn't about to like whatever she said. She turned around to throw the front door open, and he followed after her. "Shiny. What is it, do you like to stare at yourself in the reflection? Do you judge—"
"We don't all have to avoid the mirror to attempt forgetting the constant disaster of our hair."
"You probably have one of those mirrors that tell you how pretty you are before you leave the house—"
"If a mirror told me I was pretty, I'd donate it to Hufflepuff House with the rest of the rubbish."
"Hufflepuff is far superior to Slytherin, so I suppose that would make your house the scum on the bottom of the b—"
"If you're completely disillusional, which your bug theory only further testifies to. A good, put-together appearance matters, Granger – did you understand that? I know it's something you've obviously not learned ye—ah!"
"...Oh, did that hurt? Because if it's not something you've learned hurts yet..." "Don't—"
"A third time, then?"
()
Hermione's chin slowly lowered to her chest as she stared at Richard Cleave. His face was bright red, tendons and veins sticking up on his neck, and his eyeballs looked to be bulging from the sockets. He was trying desperately not to answer, but the Veritaserum was working against him. Whatever was about to come out, she doubted it was the I like potions answer he had given in his initial interview.
"You were trying to steal it to make a potion. Why are you making the potion?"
"I'm not," he said as Hermione leaned back, saliva speckling the table as the words finally pried his mouth open.
She looked down at her notes. "Okay, it's for a potion. What is the purpose of the potion?"
His chin was wobbling with the strength it was taking to keep his mouth shut, and a bead of sweat ran across the raised, angry veins in his forehead. She almost felt sorry for him.
"A cure."
Hermione's eyes widened as she wrote down the information. She had known
Cleave and Malfoy were closely connected, but she hadn't thought it might have been for this purpose. As far as she had known, there was no cure.
"For your wife?"
He looked surprised, then miserable. "Yes."
"And for Malfoy?" He seemed confused. "Harrison Black?"
The confusion didn't leave. "What about him?"
"Were you also getting ingredients for Harrison Black?"
"No. He didn't know about it."
She doubted that – even if Cleave hadn't known it. It couldn't have been a coincidence. "Then why were you filling an entire bag with the ingredient?"
His face turned a new shade of red, and she contemplated giving him a bit more of the potion to make this an easier process for both of them. "That's what they wanted."
They. "Who is they?"
"I don't know."
"How could you not know?"
"I didn't see a face." The man dropped his head in his hands, his elbows wobbling on the table. "It's my fault."
"How is it your fault?"
"I convinced her to do it with me."
"Do what?"
"Euphoria. I had done it once, she did it twice, and didn't want to do it again. It only works three times, you know? But these two men came up to me, gave me a vial. Told me it was improved, that it went beyond three, and it didn't matter if it had been done three times already. I wasn't supposed to take it."
"Why weren't you?"
"It was for Black. They wanted him to test it, see what he thought. But I took it home, figured I'd say I lost it. I gave it to Elisa. She got sick. She got really sick.
I was already too...I didn't notice until I came out of it."
"You took from the same vial?"
He shook his head. "A regular dose. Or else I'd be in hospital, too. It should be me. It should be me."
Hermione's fingers had tightened around her quill to the point where they were numbing. "You're sure her sickness came from the vial?"
"Yeah. She was fine before that. Perfectly fine. There was something in it."
Something meant for Malfoy. The same something that had put his father near death for a year. The symptoms were the same in Lucius and Elisa, an unexplained Dark magic that Healers were puzzled over. As far as Hermione knew, no one else had the same illness, but she was going to have to check before she jumped to conclusions.
Cleave was sobbing now, whispering and whining things into his palms that she couldn't understand. Hermione recapped her inkwell and gathered her things. She had more questions to ask, but they'd wait. For a little while.
--------------------------------