"It’s a funny thing coming home. Nothing changes. Everything looks the same, feels the same, even smells the same. You realize what’s changed is you."
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
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Hermione was woken by blinding rays of sunlight shining directly over her eyes. She squinted and blinked against it. Could it really be morning already? Wasn’t it only a few hours ago she’d fallen asleep and – wait. Her blinds were open? Why hadn’t she closed them last night? Hermione opened her eyes and instantly regretted it; the morning light streaming through the window felt as though she were looking straight into the sun, and her eyes burned and watered in response. She shut them quickly with a pained groan, rolled onto her stomach and then buried her face under the pillow. That was when the headache hit. Using her fingertips, she tried messaging the throbbing around her temples to no prevail.
Dear god, this was awful. Was she coming down with the flu?
Hermione lifted her head and turned it to face the opposite wall from the window, blinking slowly to allow herself to adjust to the light. It still hurt, and her eyes were still watering, but she could deal, and gingerly she sat up.
She reached for her wand on the bedside table and used it to flick the blinds down. The room fell into blissful darkness, and only then she let her eyes rove around her bedroom. Everything seemed to be normal, but… but she had this feeling that something was amiss, and as she continued to think, it dawned on her that she could not remember anything from the previous night.
Oh no. She had a hangover?
Hermione impatiently pushed back her bushy hair as she sat straighter, delving deeper and deeper into her mind, searching for something around the room that’ll help her remember…
And then she saw it.
On the right side of her bed, the sheets were rumbled and the pillow had a dent in it, and with in mind that she did not sleep on that side of the bed ever, it therefore indicated that… that… she hadn’t slept alone.
Upon realising this, the memories of last night crashed over her. Hermione’s hand flew to cover the gasp that escaped her, her eyes wide and cheeks flushing.
No, no, no, no, no!
She was so mortified that for a long time she simply sat there, staring. Everything she could have possibly done to embarrass herself she had done it. But if the bed was messed up on the other side, that meant that Draco had actually stayed with her. For how long she didn’t know, but regardless of that, he’d gotten in bed with her. Even after she had been so foolish. Going into pubs to drink in? Conversing with strangers? Spilling out all her sorrows to Draco and then asking to kiss him to staying the night? All on Harry’s wedding too!
It was the last thought that had her getting out of bed. She needed to talk to Harry and Ginny, to apologise, though she had no idea what to say.
Throwing on a t-shirt and jeans before messily tying her hair back, Hermione went quickly downstairs, each step sounding deafening to her ears. But then the closer she got to the kitchen the thumping of her footsteps wasn’t the only thing that had her forcing down a cringe. There was music. Probably a lot less louder than it sounded but music nonetheless, and as she rounded the corner to see exactly why there was music playing, Hermione was greeted with a sight she would never forget. Draco Malfoy was in her kitchen. Swinging his hips along with the music player on the counter, singing quietly to himself as he flipped pancakes up in the air and caught them again with a frying pan.
“Hey, Granger,” he said, flashing her a smile that, had she not already been speechless, might have robbed her of her voice. “I’m cooking.”
“Yes, I can see that,” she said slowly, taking a seat at the bench.
He flipped the sixth and final pancake onto a plate and pushed it closer to her. Hermione didn’t make a move to take one though and continued to watch Draco. He reached for an orange from the fruit bowl and, using his wand, chopped it into quarters.
“Your favourite fruit’s orange,” he explained, answering her silent question as to why there were no apples this morning, and she blinked; startled he remembered something so insignificant.
Draco then picked up one of the pieces of orange and squeezed it lightly over a pancake.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“You’ve never done this?”
“Done what?”
A ghost of a smirk was on his lips. “You’re in for a real treat then, Granger. I don’t even know if there’s a name for this, but it tastes great.” He accioed some sugar and proceeded to sprinkle that also over the pancake.
“How’d you even learn to cook?”
“Ten months of watching you,” he said negligently, now rolling up the pancake. When finished, he pushed a glass of yellowish liquid over to her.
Hermione bent down and sniffed it suspiciously. “A hangover potion?”
“Thought you may want it,” he answered.
As her headache was getting considerably worse, she wasted no time gulping down the potion in one, was going to thank him for making it for her, when Draco handed her the rolled up pancake.
She stared at it.
“C’mon, it won’t kill you.”
“But what’d you do to it?”
“Made it taste better.” He waited a few moments more with the pancake he was offering her, but Hermione still made no move to take it. He sighed and rolled his eyes. “More for me, then.” He bit into it. “It’s too bad though, I mean this things are delicious. Especially in the mor –”
Hermione snatched the pancake from him and bit into the other end. It was the best pancake she ever had – the perfect combination of orange and sugar.
Draco smirked in triumph, folding his arms and leaning on the counter. “Nice?”
Hermione nodded, finishing the rest off.
Looking very pleased with himself, Draco made another one, this time for himself, and both ate breakfast in silence. And while it was comfortable and, well, nice to not be arguing with him, Hermione couldn’t help but feel it couldn’t be this way. Half way through her fourth pancake, she placed it down on the plate and pursed her lips.
“Listen, Draco. This is all very nice and all, and I appreciate your efforts, but we need to talk –”
“No, we don’t,” he contradicted quickly.
She glared at him. “So we’re back to that, are we? Pretending?”
“It’s not pretending.”
“It is,” she insisted. “If we keep ignoring it it’s only going –”
Draco slammed down the knife and fork. “Just stop, would you?” he said angrily, and her mouth snapped closed. Not because he told her to, but because she was unprepared for the wave of sudden anger from him. “We weren’t thinking clearly, all right? It was a dim room, you were drunk and hurt and I was messed up from having to save you from a bar fight to looking after Blaise and Pansy the last few weeks. It was overwhelming. For the both of us. It didn’t mean anything.”
Her heart gave a painful clench at his last words. She hated that they hurt her, because, really, what else had she wanted him to say? That it had meant something? But that would only make everything that much worse. It was best if it didn’t mean anything… wasn’t it?
She must not have spoken for longer than she initially thought, because when she looked back up form the bench Draco was calling her name.
“Right. Sorry.” She shook her head and stood numbly from the stool, pushing her pancake away. She suddenly wasn’t so hungry. “It didn’t mean anything. You’re right.”
Draco’s anger was gone now, replaced by something that looked like regret for the briefest of seconds before he was unreadable once again. “Granger…” he started as Hermione walked past him to the lounge room, where she grabbed her coat. “I didn’t mean to –”
She strode past him to the door. “No, don’t.” Hermione slipped into her coat. “It’s fine. I understand.” Her voice was thicker than usual, and she knew he had to have noticed. But he did not say anything.
“Where’re you going?” he asked instead.
“Harry and Ginny’s. I need to apologise for leaving.”
“I actually think they’re fine with it. They were trying to get everyone else to leave around the time you disappeared, so…”
This made her feel slightly better, but it did not put an end to the tightness of her chest. Hermione turned the doorknob and stopped before she went out into the hall, looking back at Draco. She gave him a small smile. “Thanks for breakfast.” And then she left.
When the door closed with a soft click, Draco put his head in his hands with a groan. That was not what he had intended to say. It was just he had been up all morning preparing breakfast thinking about what to say to her if the fact that he was cooking did not distract her enough to forget last night (as he had foolishly hoped), and had come up with nothing. He didn’t know what to say to her to help make sense of last night, and thus telling her it meant nothing to him was the first thing that came to mind in his panic.
It’d unsettled her more than he’d thought, and she had accepted it without question. It was stupid, but that annoyed him. Did she really think he was that cold? He’d spent the night in her bed – no sex, just sleeping in the most innocent way possible. Didn’t she know he had never done that before? Not for anyone. And he had never slept so peacefully before in his life, with her being by his side. And when he woke up with her face buried in the crook of his neck, her arm around his waist, he had never felt so good in his whole life. Not with anyone.
But then again, Granger was not just anyone.
***
“What do you do when a suicidal elf shows up in the building?”
“Take the elf immediately to the Concealment Room. Offer him or her water out of a plastic cup, wait until the elf is finished and take the cup away again and out of reach, should it use the plastic to harm itself. Keep it isolated until calm.”
“Do you comfort the elf?”
“If it is safe to approach, try. Mostly it depends on the elf. Some will talk, others will prefer solitude.”
“Good. What do you do when the phone rings and an elf or its owner are in a life or death situation and I’m unavailable?”
“Ask the person or elf on the other end to explain the situation and dangers. Write them down. Then find the next qualified employee, or, if all else fails, call you.”
“Correct.” Hermione’s eyes scanned the clipboard. She looked up and smiled. “Congratulations. You passed one hundred percent.”
Alexis smiled, her blue eyes brightening. “Honestly?”
“Honestly. Looks like you’re officially the new assistant. However, you still need to do training with Draco three to four times a week.”
“Oh, that’s fine.”
Hermione placed the clipboard on the table and picked up her pen to fill in the new paperwork for Alexis. “Lesions with him are going well?”
“They’re great,” she said brightly, watching Hermione across the desk. “He explains everything really well. And he’s funny. I see why you’re so fond of him.”
Hermione glanced up with a small smile. “We actually used to hate each other.”
She seemed genuinely surprised by this. “You two? I mean I’ve seen you fight plenty in my short time here, but it’s always looked meaningless. I can’t imagine you hating each other.”
“It was way back in school,” she said nonchalantly, returning to her work.
“The whole Slytherin/Gryffindor rivalry?” she guessed, standing and moving towards the exit.
“One of the reasons. We had very different views.”
There was a long pause. Hermione might have thought Alexis had left had she not heard the door open and close. She looked up again, chocolate brown eyes meeting ice blue.
“I used to go to Hogwarts,” Alexis said finally, hesitating with her hand on the doorknob. “For the first two years before I went to Durmstrang. I started earlier at school than anyone else my age, pushy parents, you know. I was placed in Slytherin. And I was paired up with you in potions once, or maybe twice. I can’t really recall – it was such a long time ago. But I remember you were the only Gryffindor who was actually nice to me. A little wary, but you were nice all the same. And after that, I knew I’d see you again. I didn’t know when, but I knew that wouldn’t be the last time I encountered or heard of Hermione Granger.” She paused. “And now you’re a famous war hero and I’m working with you all over again.”
Hermione put her pen down, looking more closely at the woman in front of her. “It’s funny how some things work out, isn’t it? How people weave their way back into your life again.”
“Yeah,” Alexis agreed softly. “It is.”
***
Draco had just left work and was strolling down Diagon Alley for that ice-cream place he could never remember the name of when heavy steps sounded behind him. Keeping in mind that the sun was steadily disappearing over the mountains and most people had gone home by now, whoever was behind him was walking a little too close to be deemed acceptable.
His fingers eased into his pocket before he spun around to face the intruder, and he would have yelped had he been five years younger.
“Jesus bloody Christ, Weasley!” he exclaimed, lowering his wand. “What is wrong with you? Sneaking up on people like that.”
That was not really what he wanted to say, the sight of the man here being more surprising than he was letting on, but he could not allow for Weasley to think he’d caught him off guard.
Weasley shrugged indifferently, his hands in the pockets of one of those ridiculous sweaters of his. “If I’d called out you wouldn’t’ve stopped.”
That was partly true. Draco might’ve kept going, but he could also have stopped to insult him and then be on his way again. “Look,” he said instead, “if you’re here to beat me up, can it at least wait until I’ve gotten my ice-cream?”
“As tempting as that sounds, that’s not – wait, what? Ice cream at this hour?”
It was Draco’s turn to shrug. “Granger’s making salad, so –” He stopped abruptly, remembering just who he was talking to, and quickly glared at Weasley to cover up his mistake. “Get on with it Weasley, what do you want? I suppose you’re going to tell me I don’t belong in Diagon Alley either?”
“Well –”
Draco snorted. “Figures you wouldn’t have anything else better to do with your time than follow me around.”
“Would you shut up and let me finish?” Weasley snapped, suddenly looking exasperated. “I’m here about what happened at the wedding.”
He had not properly looked at Weasley in about five years, and without him yelling or trying to hex his balls off, Draco noticed how tall he was. When had that happened?
“How nice for you,” Draco drawled. “But I don’t care what happened at the wedding.” He started to walk away when Weasley appeared in front of him, effectively blocking his path. “Move or I will make you move,” he ordered angrily.
“Just listen to me.” And it was evident in his voice that he, too, was getting frustrated. Draco waited, jaw clenched and arms folded so that there could be no mistaking he wanted to be there. Weasley looked a little started that he gave in so easily, but continued on after slight hesitation. “I hate you,” he said, and it was not with malice, just spoken because they both knew it was true.
Draco rolled his eyes. Why had he thought he’d have anything worth listening to? “Ten points to Gryffindor for stating the obvious.” He tried to move past him but, again, Weasley blocked the way.
“I’m here to… to…” He stopped and silence held, but this time Draco did not mind so much because Weasley appeared to be struggling with something, and anything that made him uncomfortable was not so bad. It was rather fascinating, how little there was to say when they weren’t throwing insults at one another.
“About how I behaved at the wedding,” Weasley chewed out at last. “I shouldn’t have said that. You weren’t doing anything and I’m…” Another silence, much more awkward than the first, and then finally; “Sorry.”
For the longest time both men stared at each other. Weasley chewed the inside of his mouth and looked as though he’d rather be anywhere but there; Draco remained impassive, only inside he was having great difficulty figuring out what on earth was happening. Was this even real? Had Hermione’s hair finally reached out and strangled him? Or was it some sort of joke?
“Did Saint Potter put you up to this?” he asked, his voice sounding much more strained than he would have liked. “Or Granger?”
He looked angry at that and Draco relaxed a little. A pissed off Weasley he was used to. “No,” he said. “I’m here because I chose to be. Will you accept the apology or what, Malfoy?”
A pause ensued, and then Draco nodded once.
“Right then,” said Weasley, clapping his hands together. He strode around Draco quickly, eager to get away, and started in the opposite direction.
“Weasley,” Draco called after him, turning around again. The redhead stopped and faced him gradually. Draco thought he looked annoyed again. “I’m sorry too. About what happened to you and Granger.”
It was clear he’d expected nothing more than some sort of degrading remark. And though the words ‘baby’ or ‘pregnancy’ were not mentioned, Weasley picked up instantly what he was talking about. Draco watched the emotions play across his face, his annoyance fading to confusion to surprise to finally that look. The look Granger wore when she’d spoken about the child she would never meet, the look that was akin to sadness but with something else Draco had never seen before.
The hundredth silence between them finally broke when Weasley gave a stiff nod. He then disappeared behind some building, and by the time Draco remembered what he had been originally doing before all this, he realised he was no longer hungry.
He arrived home shortly after to Granger’s salad. She noticed he was abnormally quiet and when she asked why he considered not telling her, only to remember how concerned she’d been about Weasley since the wedding, and so he told her what had happened (all except for the part where he himself apologised). And he thought that maybe all the awkward silences between him and the Weasel had been worth it, just to see her eyes light up like that.
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Next chapter; getting ready for the ball, and then once that chapter is through, it'll be the last Sixth Month Ball, and the climax will build from there.
“I’m only ever going to wear it once!” she protested. “What’s the point? Can’t I wear what I did last ball?”
She grabbed Hermione’s arm, looking scandalised. “Have you lost your marbles?” she demanded. “That’s like fashion suicide!”