Chapter Text
A month later they implement the security questions, after a Death-Eater impersonates Lupin, and Luna nearly dies, barely fighting him off before the real Lupin gets there and stuns him. Let's say you’re coming in from a mission, you ask them one, they ask you one. Negative answer, stunning spell at best. Of course, you're meant to incapacitate them until you can confirm identity and they can be used as a source against Voldemort.
Hermione takes a while to get used to it, she’ll see a teammate in a safe house, and it's five minutes before she remembers. Then Fleur stuns one of the Dolohov's (turns out there's a whole family of blood purists) after he impersonates a contact she’s meant to be meeting, and she starts to remember more easily.
The others are finding it hard to adjust as well. Ron bitches about it every night, having to remember, and figuring out the questions. Hermione keeps her mouth shut, but her eyes always meet his, and he smiles dauntingly, rolling his eyes occasionally, when Ron’s said something particularly pigheaded.
—
She’s been sent up in Liverpool to correspond with their members there and do some research into possible horcruxes. It’s really only a few old wizards and squibs, but you never know when you’ll need a small parchment company or a baker. Anyone who’s on their side isn't on the Death-Eater’s. Connections are good, Hermione's learned. Connections are what really helps you win a war. They've got a safe house there, if you can call it that, for purposes unknown. It’s a nice house, just abandoned. A few wards, a few anti-muggle spells, and bam, they've got a cold little creaking 2-bedroom for themselves.
She stumbles as she lands on the driveway. Apparition gets harder and harder every time, it’s almost like they’re grabbing her as she goes, Apparition is a hard thing to control, but the Death-Eaters are trying. It gets tighter and tighter. You have to be quicker and quicker, too, and she always pictures somewhere else but actually goes to her real destination at the last moment. This time, she’d pictured the local pool in her childhood town. She hasn't been there in years. Since her parents moved. She remembers chlorine and sunburn and her best friend clutches her underwater.
She rolls up her sleeves, wand out, and walks up the driveway to the little house half-concealed by a bout of scraggly trees. She thinks it’s empty inside. Nevertheless, she checks every room as she goes, only finding a couple of spiders and the smell of rats.
She spells the lights. They don't work without a little help, and her blue flame jars don't throw out enough light. She wanders into the mostly empty living room and sits on the couch heavily. She's spending the night here before she goes out in the morning, mostly because she wanted to get out of the palace, and —
Fuck, what was that?
A noise. Feet crunching up the gravel driveway. She gets it on her feet, unspelling the lights. The door opens, closes. They're inside. No hesitation.
“Hello?” he calls. It's a man, it’s a man, that's what she knows. He walks right into the living room, and calls again, “Anyone here? Granger?”
She flies from where she’s couched by the couch, pushing him against the wall, hand on his throat. “Who are you?” she demands.
Whoever she's got pinned groans out, “Fuck, it’s me — it’s me, Granger,”
Her eyes focus, and in the light coming through the kitchen window, Draco Malfoy looks back at her.
“What’s the first thing you ever said to me, ever?” she asks, still not persuaded.
He swallows. “Hi. My name’s Draco. I think we’re in some of the same classes. I — I’m looking forward to the next seven years of our lives.”
It was the first year, before the mudblood comment, before anything else. It was the third day of school, she thinks. Hermione didn't have any friends. She was too loud, too buck-toothed, too much. She'd thought it would be different, now that she was a witch. She thought she'd fit in more, but it turned out to be just like always. Class had just finished, it's lunch hour, and she’s...alone. The others bunch off into chattering groups, going towards the Great Hall, but she...she wasn't hungry. She goes to the library, instead, and misses her first ever lunch.
He finds her there, all prim and proper, slicked back hair and impeccable robes. He hovers in front of her and her book for a moment. She looks up.
“Hi?” she asks, wondering if there was a rule about the library she didn't know yet.
He smiles at her, and it's mean't to look confident, but it doesn't, really. “Hi. My name’s Draco. We’re in some of the same classes. I’m looking forward to the next seven years of our lives.”
She blinks in surprise, then smiles warmly, “Oh. Hello, Draco. My name is Hermione Granger, and I am, too.”
He sat down next to her, and for the next fifteen minutes of that lunch hour they spent studying and talking quietly. Hermione left the library happy, convinced she’d made a friend.
Of course, that was before all the purist bullshit, before he found out who she was, before the hate and the war and anything else. It was before she knew Harry and Ron, really. Fuck, has she known Draco Malfoy longer than Harry and Ron?
She sighs, but doesn't let the wand go. “You have a question?” she asks.
He hesitates, not sure what to ask her. Finally, “was your tea cold?” he asks.
“To me, it was.” She lowers her wand. He sighs. “You valued school as much as me, huh?”
He smiles, a little, hesitantly. “I guess I did.”
"It's funny...we didn't know what was coming at all."
"I found out sooner than you."
She doesn't move. Why doesn't she move?
“Malfoy...why’d you do it?”
He looks at her, and in the dark, his eyes are still inscrutable. “Once your classmates are writhing on the floor of your dining room, the glory of your pureblood lineage seems a little less...glorious. You bled the same, Granger.”
“Right.” She clears her throat. “Well.” She turns away, turns the light back on.
She walks back to the couch, drops onto it. He follows her, and sits in the armchair. It’s a rather close scene. Funny, as if they're friends, and she’s invited him around for a cuppa, barring the fact she just held him at wand point. Maybe they are friends, Hermione considers, and thinks of all the morning spent together, sipping tea, Draco eating toast in heinous, despicable, strange ways.
“Why’re you here?” she asks.
“Gonna go meet a friend,” he says, shrugging, as he drops his bag onto the counter.
“Draco Malfoy has friends?” she says at his expense.
He smiles back at her. “Not half the time.”
They lapse into silence. Hermione stares at where a TV should be.
“The tap is leaking,” he says quietly, looking over at the kitchen.
“Yeah, she says, and looks at it. Drip. drip drip.
“I — should. We should fix it,” he says, getting to his feet, like he has a plan.
Hermione’s so sick of plans. “Probably, but who cares.”
—
A few hours later they’re back in London, in Grimmauld Place. It’s after dinner, everyone with anywhere to be tomorrow morning is gone to bed already, like Lupin or Tonks or the fighters. She doesn't know half their names, they're all Aurors or wizarding folk she never met before it all went to shit, and it seems a bit macabre to meet them now, just when they're likely to die in some unfair way. She doesn't know them, but you can recognise them by sight, by the rings under their eyes, and the heavy gait, maybe a limp, the way their eyes scan around corners. They always look on edge, like they're ready for a fight. She thanks Lupin for shielding Harry and Ron and all the kids, even if some of them hate it, and Hermione does at times too, when they are banished to their rooms. It feels like a punishment, but maybe it’s a gift.
So if you take all of those aurors and important people away, there are a few stragglers that remain, who stay up later. The kids, Hermione thinks, and it's funny how growing up the adults would stay up late, and now it's the opposite. Harry, Ron, Luna, Ginny, maybe Terry Boot or Padma, George, Fred, even Charlie, who usually doesn't stay up, and finally Draco too. He’s sitting around the table with them like he's been there forever, his eyes sparking in the light, his hair worn-in and messy. Hermione can barely tear her eyes away, it's just the abnormality of it, she tells herself. Anyway, Ron's right across from her. She should be looking at him, her boyfriend.
“Now, volunteers for dishes, hm?” Mrs Weasley asks, about to go to bed herself. Every night they have the same whiny conversation, and eventually two people are picked for sacrifice. Hermione went last week and she reckons she has a few days left before it's her turn again. All the others make a big game of it, arguing for what seems like hours over who should wash and who should dry, and there’s always protests when someone’s picked, last night Ginny threw a plate at Ron, only saved by Hermione's cushioning charm. Not tonight, since Malfoy’s opening his mouth and saying, “I’ll do the dishes, Mrs Weasley.”
“Oh,” she blinks back in surprise at him. No one ever volunteers. Mrs. Weasley hasn't held the same deep grudge against him as the others have, but she's still heard all the stories from her children. Hermione remembers that she went to Hogwarts with his father. It must be strange for her too, to see the product of an old classmate who maybe wasn't such a git back then, hear how deep he's gotten into the dark side, and his son. His son, who has come back to the light. It's a funny cycle.
Silence reigns. Draco shifts on his feet uncomfortably. “I do know how,” he jokes a bit sheepishly.
Hermione, desperate to undo the tension says the first thing she can think of. “When did you learn?” They’re all frozen, unused to this sort of banter they engage in, until he chuckles.
He rubs the back of his neck nervously. “Well, um, perhaps last week. I've been watching you all, you see, and I think I’ve gotten the hang of it.”
“There's not that much to do, mate,” Harry says.
Draco shrugs. “How much dish detergent to use, and what that even is? How hot should the water be? Gloves or no gloves? How full the sink? What do you wash first?” He shrugs, “there’s a few, I guess.”
“I’ll dry,” Hermione says. Ron’s eyes flick to her, burning into the side of her head. Hermione pointedly ignores him.
Draco looks at her, smiles. “Thank you.”
So then they stand next to each other, silently, washing and drying, and sometime between the kitchen emptying and filling like the tide, Ginny chasing Fred around and a few of those Aurors Hermione was talking about troop through the kitchen, one of them dragged along by two others, bleeding through a bandage. Their elbows touch because the sink is too small, and normally it wouldn't matter, Hermione wouldn't even notice, but it's not Ginny, or Ron, or Harry, it's him. Some suds and water have trickled down from his hands, and they wet the elbow of her long-sleeve, and Hermione doesn't dare breathe for a moment as the warm water seeps through the fabric and becomes cold, and she doesn’t quite know why.