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Chapter Text

and it would've been sweet
if it could've been me

MARCH 17

Set between chapters 10 and 11

Lily watched Marlene storm off in an elegant fashion, so graceful and eerie that it couldn’t possibly be categorized as storming off or even walking off. Instead, it felt like she simply evaporated into thin air, her signature smile plastered across her face as she left a trail of bittersweet perfume, betrayal, and destruction behind. 

Something ached in Lily’s chest as she watched Hermione shoot lasers into Marlene’s back, her fists balled up, as if she considered chasing her and throwing a punch or two any. There was this unfamiliar sort of energy around her, something that Lily dealt a lot with during her career—that was the bittersweet realization of your own failure, of not living up to your own expectations. Has Hermione ever felt like that before? Lily couldn’t be sure, but a part of her that knew Hermione oh so well, better than the most, realized that this would be one of many ‘firsts’ the younger woman would experience while mingling with high-scale politics in Washington. It was a constant cycle of victories and failures, a never-ending game of tug of war. It seemed that this round of the game went to the Black campaign, with Marlene as the face of the game and with Narcissa as the mastermind behind the scenes. 

Lily quickly closed the distance between them, gently placing a hand on Hermione’s lower back. It still made the younger woman flinch as she whirled around, a fire in her eyes slowly dying down as soon as she registered her. Her shoulders slowly fell. While her composure stayed air-tight and unbreakable, Lily dived into warm hazel eyes and watched Hermione crumble from within. 

“Oh, honey,” Lily muttered, pulling her into a tight embrace. Hermione immediately melted into it, and it felt like all the fight left her, the bristling energy Lily witnessed only moments ago evaporating into thin air, much like Marlene did. “Do you want to leave?” she asked tentatively, pulling away and glancing at Hermione’s face. She tucked a strand of hair behind the younger woman’s ear, unable to help the gentle gesture even if she tried. Lily heard plenty about the way Hermione’s boyfriend was treating her lately, and she knew that Hermione probably wasn’t getting any tenderness at all. 

Hermione seemed to melt at the gesture, briefly closing her eyes and nodding. She whispered something so quietly that Lily, distracted by the soft movement of the younger woman’s eyelashes, didn’t quite pick it up. 

“What was that, sweetheart?”

Hermione let out a little laugh, shaking her head, as if how distracted Lily could be at times was actually cute. “I said,” she mock-whispered, “let’s get out of here before I murder someone.”

Lily had to bite her lower lip to keep herself from laughing. “I wouldn’t particularly mind it if the whole murder thing didn’t mean I wouldn’t be able to work with you anymore.”

Hermione’s shoulders fell once again at the mention of work, and Lily sighed, pressing her lips together. “Come on,” she said, tugging at the younger woman’s wrist and nodding towards the exit. “I know exactly what you need. And we can talk on our way there.”

They left, Hermione’s hand settled firmly in hers. Lily couldn’t help but think that while Marlene, as beautiful as she was, only left destruction in her wake, Hermione wasn’t leaving anything behind at all. She was only moving forward. 

As they got into Lily’s car and drove away from a tall, imposing skyscraper with glass walls and broken expectations, Lily could see new plans slowly forming in Hermione’s head, for the younger woman was intent on taking back what was rightfully theirs, rightfully Andy’s. That fire, that determination burning bright in not just warm, but scalding hot hazel eyes, was one of the things she admired most about Hermione. 

She still remembered the first time she truly saw it, two years ago, in a third-year Stanford student who spent the entire week of her autumn break working on her political communication paper instead of hanging out with her friends downstairs. Lily remembered joining that young girl for lunch breaks, marveling at the hard work she was doing and thinking to herself that maybe, one day, hers and Hermione’s paths would cross as something more than Harry’s best friend and Harry’s mother. Now, two years later, she remembered this one week in November with unbearable fondness, realizing that all her what-ifs and could-have-beens regarding Hermione’s future in politics were slowly but surely morphing into reality. 

Lily looked at Hermione as the younger woman rambled and positively fumed, and she couldn’t help but smile at the sight, her heart suddenly so full for no reason at all.  

They stopped by McDonald’s drive-through before heading towards Hermione’s apartment building in downtown Washington. Lily killed the engine in the middle of a mostly deserted parking lot and was fully prepared to take her takeout bags home to watch another episode of Grey’s Anatomy or Body of Proof— she was quite enjoying medical dramas lately. Instead, Hermione reached for the bags in the backseat and handed Lily’s order to her with a tentative smile on her face. The nervousness, the anger, and the feeling of having failed seemed to seep out of her in an instant, and only tenderness remained, all soft edges around Lily and no desire to leave at all. 

Lily would be a fool to refuse Hermione’s company when she kept craving it so much, so she opened her cheese sauce and offered some to Hermione as she chewed on a couple of lukewarm fries. 

“You’ve been quiet for a while,” she commented. 

Hermione sighed, dipping a fry into cheese sauce with a kind of melancholy that had nothing to do with takeout. She chewed unbearably slowly, most definitely using herself good manners to give her some extra time to think. 

Lily didn’t mind. She kept eating, and while she wasn’t always the most patient person (at least according to Nymphadora), she has always had all the patience in the world when it came to Hermione. Her eyes would fall on her wristwatch as she reached for yet another fry time and time again, and that was how she knew at least seven or eight minutes had passed before Hermione finished her fries, took a few sips of her orange juice, and finally spoke up. 

“I just can’t help but go back to every interaction I had with her, you know?” Hermione let out a loud sigh, looking away, as if she couldn’t bear to look at Lily right now, clearly afraid of something. “I know I fucked this up. There were signs, and some of them were so subtle that none of us noticed them— not even you or Andy, with all your years of experience in politics and years of knowing Marlene. So I can’t exactly blame myself for not picking up on the manipulation techniques that seem so obvious now, but felt like sincerity in its truest of forms back then. But I keep thinking—what if I just—what if I looked harder, or—”

“Hey, hey, hey,” Lily muttered, shaking her head. “None of that, do you hear me? You didn’t know what to look for.” She leaned forward, reaching for Hermione’s hand and slightly squeezing it. She wanted there to be a firmness to her touch, to her gaze, but there was only softness in them as she lightly caressed the younger woman’s skin. 

Hermione shook her head in response, as stubborn as ever, but didn’t pull her hand away. “I didn’t tell you, because I didn’t think much of it when I first heard it—but now, I just keep thinking…” She let out a long sigh, rubbing her right temple with her free hand. There was so much weariness in this gesture and in her voice that she suddenly seemed to be well over forty, and not like someone who graduated university not so long ago. “So, I’m most definitely breaking the NDA I signed by telling you this, but when I went to Marlene’s office to deliver the invitation to dinner, I overheard her talking on the phone. She said she was working on it, and she didn’t forget what was done for her, and that the person she was talking to would get what they wanted, like they always did,” Hermione rushed to say, glancing at Lily, as if afraid to meet her eyes for longer than a few seconds. “And now, with how everything went down today… I’m almost entirely sure Marlene was on the phone with Narcissa.” 

“Mione… Even if she was, you couldn’t have known it. From what you told me you heard, I would assume a million different people other than someone from the Black campaign. Especially considering the kind of business Marlene runs—” she stopped abruptly, noticing that Hermione wasn’t really listening to her. She squeezed her hand once again, hoping it would draw her attention. Thankfully, it did. “Listen to me, honey. Andy and I had known Marlene for years, and we weren’t able to call her bluff. Even if you told us about that overhead conversation, it probably wouldn’t have made a difference, and you know why?” 

“Why?” Hermione whispered. 

“Because of context,” Lily replied easily, her lips twitching in a small smile. “You were able to put all the pieces together into a complete picture, connect all the dots because now you know that Marlene worked with the Blacks. That overheard phone call fits into this picture because of that context. But without it? Anyone would see it as nothing suspicious. A simple conversation.” 

Hermione shrugged reluctantly. “I suppose you’re right.” 

Lily gasped mockingly, leaning forward. “Come again? I just love hearing it.”

Hermione rolled her eyes, unable to stop herself from smiling, and to Lily, it felt like a personal win—even more of a win than the younger woman’s admission of her being right, which followed seconds later.

The comfortable silence settled between them, post-admission, and Lily hoped Hermione knew that it wasn’t her fault (she most certainly didn’t, but Lily would spend weeks, if needed, proving her that it wasn’t). Come to think of it, it was more her own fault and Andy’s fault—they were the one who had known Marlene for ages and were aware of her background with Narcissa. It would be nice to say that they should have predicted it, should have seen right through her and used her intentions against her, but can anyone outsmart a professional con artist? After all, Marlene had always been exceptional in the game of pretend, second to Narcissa Black. 

But, most importantly, how can you fix things when a political fixer fucked you over? Lily had no idea, but she knew that by the time of the morning briefing tomorrow morning, she was supposed to have dozens, with step-by-step instructions and clearly stated outcomes, and so was Hermione. Andy made clear she expected it from them. 

The sharp ringing sound made Lily jump in her seat as Hermione fumbled for her phone. An annoyed sigh escaped past her lips as soon as her eyes settled on the screen before she put her phone on mute and turned it screen down. Suddenly, she seemed more exhausted than ever.

“Was it Ron?” Lily asked, making an educated guess. 

Hermione huffed. “Am I that obvious?” 

“Just a little,” Lily mock-whispered, giving her a small smile. “Wanna talk about it?”

“I don’t know if there is anything to talk about at all,” Hermione admitted, shrugging, as if intent on making it seem a much lesser deal than it actually was. “He is still being awfully unsupportive of my career choices, and I’m—I’m just not sure I can handle it right now.” 

Lily could see all the things Hermione couldn’t bring herself to say: how exhausting it was to fight with Ron all the time because she suddenly had to advance in her career; how disappointing it was that her boyfriend wasn’t the person supporting her most of all; how unfair it was that Harry was taking his side, and not hers. And at that very last thought, something burned in Lily’s chest, hot and ugly, because she knew that wasn’t how she raised her son. He was supposed to respect women, and support women who had big career aspirations, just like Lily had when Harry was growing up. But it seems that all the work she had done was quickly getting undone by Ronald Weasley, the typical picture of a midwestern unsupportive boyfriend. Yet, it wasn’t the most infuriating thing, as Lily half-expected it to be. 

The most infuriating thing was the way Ron kept hurting Hermione whenever he refused to support or understand her. Lily was many things, but she wasn’t an idiot (at least, according to pretty much everyone but Nymphadora). She could hear Hermione’s hushed, distressed whispers as she lingered in the hallways of almost-empty campaign headquarters during their late evenings for far too long. She could hear exasperated sighs and almost-even pleas for understanding, or the way Hermione’s voice would, quite reasonably so, go from softly pleading to gradually irritated. As she peeked out of the briefing room or her office, she could see Hermione’s knuckle-white grip on her phone or the way she would sit down on the nearest chair and drop her head into her hands right after hanging up. 

Each and every time Lily witnessed an instance of Ron being an unsupportive asshole (that was how she labeled these occurrences in her head, anyway), her heart ached with the desire to do something nice for Hermione, something to make her smile, washing away the deep-rooted sadness that seemed to be ever-present in the past two weeks. Of course, her heart also ached from the desire to punch Ron, but there was her reputation to think about—she was a part of a presidential campaign, after all. Plus, she wasn’t exactly sure Hermione would appreciate it, and Harry would most definitely stop talking to her for a while, so punching Ron Weasley in the face had to be a hard no. 

She remembered Hermione’s second year in undergrad, the right hook Draco Malfoy gifted Ron for his birthday, and briefly entertained the idea of phoning Narcissa Black and asking if her son could pretty please punch Lily’s friend’s awful boyfriend. Then, of course, Lily realized that Narcissa would probably find a way to use this against them later on, so that plan had to go, too. 

So, all she could do was try and counterattack every one of Ron’s absolutely childish behaviors. Lily liked to think she was quite successful: she would bring Hermione warm Earl Gray tea right after her conversation with Ron ended, lead her to her office, and both of them would take five or ten minutes to settle comfortably on Lily’s couch and just talk. That was something Lily absolutely adored about Hermione—the younger woman liked talking, at all times. She rambled incessantly, sometimes ranted, and, less often, even full-on vented (mostly, the ‘venting’ part was reserved for anything that included Narcissa Black, one way or another). 

Hermione liked sweets more than anyone Lily had ever met. She wasn’t sure that much sugar was healthy, but it improved Hermione’s mood drastically, so she kept providing; just little things she could always run out and get from the snacks machine right by the entrance—M&M’s, KitKat, snickers, lots of sour worms, basically anything she could get her hands on. Lily would stop by Hermione’s office, knock on her door and barge in with a handful of snacks. Hermione’s face would always light up at the sight of her—though the snacks were probably responsible for such a joyful reaction, come to think of it—and let her sit down on the edge off her wooden desk and chat a bit while Hermione devoured an orange sour warm (her favorite) or anything chocolate-covered. And sometimes, Lily would drive up to a grocery store after work, despite how much she wanted to just go home and slip under the covers, and find the most exquisite box of chocolate they had to offer, only to leave it on Hermione’s desk the following morning. 

It was quite easy to pick up on Hermione’s basic moods and needs, and Lily was quite proud to say that she almost even excelled in it. And the fact that right now, the last thing Hermione wanted to do was go back to her apartment and face Ron and maybe even Harry, wasn’t exactly rocket science. 

“You could stay over at my place, if you want,” Lily offered, shrugging with an air of feigned nonchalance to it. The words left her mouth before she could really think them over, yet it felt like something that made the most sense. After all, she had already extended an invitation the night before, and—God, she really hoped her apartment wasn’t a fucking mess. Lily really needed to start cleaning up a little in the morning instead of putting everything off until late evening. 

“Oh?” Hermione asked, straightening up in her seat and looking at her with something closely resembling hope. 

She looked beautiful like that, Lily thought; exhausted from a full work day and a regular Wednesday betrayal from someone she thought she could trust. Her eyeshadow faded a little, not as bright as it was in the morning, and there were bits and pieces of mascara under her eyes. Hermione’s lipstick, a calm shade of coral, wasn’t really there anymore because of all that nervous lip-biting Hermione did at CNN and on their way to McDonald’s. Her fingers were stained with grease and salt, and Hermione had to use the back of her hand to ‘scratch’ at her nose when it itched. She smelled of a strange, truly baffling mix of the latest newspaper, more–expensive-than-the-average floral perfume, and cheap takeout eaten in the front seat of someone else’s car. And yet, despite what most might see as imperfections, Lily couldn’t quite remember ever seeing a more beautiful woman than Hermione Granger was at that very moment. 

“Come stay with me. Please,” Lily said, a little bit breathless. She reached for a couple of napkins and cleaned her fingers, because she desperately needed to fidget with her jewelry and she was not about to touch real gold while stained with the grease from McDonald’s fries. 

She felt calmer as soon as her fingers found her wedding band, the one she only kept wearing for appearances now—Lily was sure some nosy blogger would notice it if she took it off for more than a few hours.  

“I mean it, Mione,” she said, firmly but softly, and she couldn’t help a small smile tugging at her lips. “You don’t even have to go up to your apartment for the clothes—you can borrow mine. And you have your Mac, your chargers, and your planners and notebooks with you, so really, why would you go back?” Lily chuckled lightheartedly, meeting Hermione’s eyes head-on. 

She felt dizzy and had to swallow past the lump in her throat at the realization that her words were laced with the faintest of double meanings, and that Hermione probably noticed it, too. There was an unmistakable ‘why would you go back to him? ’at the periphery of Lily’s mind as she asked her question just a few seconds earlier, because how could there not be something like that? Ron was so out of Hermione’s league, and everybody who ever met the two of them knew that perfectly well. 

Hermione was driven, ambitious, very goal- and achievement-oriented, and she strived for perfection in more ways than one. Yet, her determination never quite had this cutthroat quality to it, she was never malicious, and her recognition of her self-worth never became arrogance even for a millisecond. Hermione was benevolent, incredibly goofy under her professional attire and long discussions on political philosophy, and she loved with everything she had—Lily knew it perfectly well. And for a love like that, an incredible, exquisite person like Hermione to be spent on some who not only didn’t deserve it, but could never match it, match her? That was something Lily never understood. 

Because she knew Hermione. She knew that Hermione needed a boyfriend—a partner who would be equal to her, just as driven as she is, but secretly soft under the carefully crafted surface. She needed and, Lily knew, wanted someone who would support and understand her desire to advance her career; someone who could understand missed dinners and late nights after taking over a new job, doing tasks of at least four people, and partially running a presidential campaign. 

And if something in the back of Lily’s mind told her that she was that person, that she understood and supported, and that she was just as driven and ambitious as Hermione, yet still incredibly gentle and loving—she chose to ignore it. Because Hermione looked at her and smiled oh-so-brightly, the first real smile this evening ever since the stunt Marlene pulled, and asked Lily if they could leave right now, because she really wanted to curl up under a blanket, drink some wine, and talk for hours about plans and strategies before falling asleep. 

She immediately said yes. 

It was Hermione , after all; what other choice did Lily ever have?

Chapter Text

MARCH 19 

Set between chapters 10 and 11 

The headquarters of the Tonks campaign were eerily quiet as the night settled in and the hands of the clock next to the entrance door crawled closer and closer to midnight. Lily let out a loud sigh that bounced off the walls of an otherwise empty conference room after she finally finished cleaning the newly acquired gigantic whiteboard (they recently had to upgrade to the biggest size the company could offer). 

Lily gathered all the folders, documents, and notebooks in her hands and headed out, turning off the lights with her right elbow as she walked through the conference room door. The majority of the lights in the main open space were out, except for the lone desk white-lamp Hannah left on by accident—not a rare occurrence—and a soft trickle of warm yellow coming from the partially closed door of Hermione’s office.

The corners of her lips twitched in a small smile as Lily headed there, not even bothering to stop by her own office first to drop off all the paperwork. She slithered through the opening in the door and managed not to open it wider, yet it still gave the slightest creaking noise that alerted Hermione to her presence. 

She was momentarily rendered speechless by the sight of Hermione: even exhausted after an almost eighteen-hour workday, she still looked utterly beautiful. She sat in the corner of the couch, curled up not unlike a cat, with the sleeves of her sage green button-down rolled up to her elbows. Her heels were kicked off, lying underneath the coffee table, and Lily could see Hermione’s dark beige blazer thrown over the back of her chair out of the corner of her eye. 

“I would have knocked, but then I would risk dropping a mountain of papers right outside your door,” Lily said, smiling sheepishly. 

“Don’t be silly—you, of all people, don’t need to knock, and you know it,” Hermione brushed her off. “Come on in—you can just drop these on my desk.” 

And so Lily did. she moved a little too fast, eager to join Hermione. When she finally sat down next to her on a too-comfy couch, she let out a loud, relieved sigh. 

“Tired?” Hermione asked, and Lily turned her head slightly to the right to be able to see an understanding smile on Hermione’s features. 

“I feel like somebody ran over me with their car. T wice, ” Lily groaned. Ultimately, she knew what she was signing up for when she accepted Andromeda’s offer to join her presidential election campaign, but Jesus Christ. 

Hermione let out a raspy laugh, her voice exhausted after so much talking during the day. 

“It was probably Nymphadora.” 

Lily gasped mockingly. “How did you know? ”

“You and Nymphadora metaphorically run one another over with your cars on a daily basis,” Hermione noted, giving her a very pointed look. “If Andy let you out of her sight for longer than five minutes, the two of you would probably get rid of the metaphorical part of the equation.”

Well, Lily couldn’t really argue with that. 

They shared knowing smiles in perfect unison and fell silent. If Lily had to choose what she loved the most about their dynamic, it would be this—their ability to enjoy each other’s presence in complete silence in the midst of bursts of lively conversations. Some people were like the calm before the storm—Lily distinctly remembered both Narcissa and Marlene belonging to this type—but Hermione was much more rare. to Lily, she was the calm during the storm, and that was simply priceless. Working on a presidential campaign came with too many storms and all kinds of natural disasters to count, so Lily would never take for granted each chance she got to wither a storm with Hermione by her side.

“You've got your thinking face on,” Hermione drawled. “Penny for your thoughts?”

When Lily turned to look at Hermione, she found her in a slightly different position: arms laid on the back of the couch, her head resting on top of them. She was sporting a content little smile that Lily came to associate with their daily end-of-an-exhausting-workday conversations.

“I was thinking that you’re my serenity,” Lily answered truthfully, for it never crossed her mind to lie. “Before you joined the campaign, everything was so much more hectic, you know? It wasn’t until I got to experience these past two weeks with you that I realized how much peace you bring into my days.”

“Careful, or everybody is gonna think you’re playing favorites,” Hermione teased.

Lily could only roll her eyes in response. “Honey, I guarantee you, everybody here knows you’re the favorite. Probably because you also happen to be their favorite.”

“You flatter me,” Hermione hummed. Then, she straightened out in her seat, yawning, stretching her arms as she did. as she tilted her head slightly to the right to take a better look at Lily, Hermione winced.

“Are you okay?” Lily asked, immediately alarmed. she couldn’t help it—she found herself noticing even the slightest shift in Hermione’s mood or level of comfort.

“Uhum, don’t worry,” Hermione brushed her off, but relented under Lily’s pointed gaze. “I sort of—nodded off on top of my desk during lunch break, just for twenty minutes or so. Unfortunately, that was enough to fuck up my neck and shoulders.”

“Want a massage? It will help with the soreness,” Lily offered, because, apparently, she was absolutely hopeless and stupid, and had zero self-preservation skills.

“You would do that?” Hermione perked up. “If you did, I would owe you for the rest of eternity. or for the rest of the week, at the very least.”

Lily let out a laugh. “Turn around.” 

Hermione did turn around, immediately scooting closer. Lily began with gentle massaging of Hermione’s shoulders before moving on and tilting her head slightly forward to be able to release some tension knots in the back of her neck. It seemed to be working, judging by the content little noises Hermione made as Lily softly yet firmly kneaded at her skin. 

After five or maybe seven minutes, their position shifted as if by sheer force of gravity: Hermione’s back was suddenly slumped against her chest, and Lily’s hand moved up from the back of her neck to softly scratch at Hermione’s scalp 

“That's really nice,” Hermione whispered. “Don’t stop.”

“Yeah?”

Hermione hummed in agreement. “Are you enjoying it? Because I certainly am.”

Lily let out an incredulous little laugh. “I am, in fact, enjoying it very much.”

“Good.” Hermione swallowed, suddenly tensing up as if in quiet apprehension; Lily couldn’t help but frown. “Because there’s something I need to tell you, and you’re not going to like it. So it’s probably best if you are doing something you’re enjoying when I tell you.” 

Somehow, Lily instantly knew who Hermione would be talking about. Hermione was indeed right—she wouldn’t like it one bit. 

“What did he do ?” Lily seethed, not even trying to contain the traces of irritation in her voice. Yet, her ministrations on Hermione’s scalp still remained tentative and gentle, completely unaffected by her change in demeanor, and perhaps that was why Hermione melted into Lily even further. 

“Oh, nothing much, I promise. He just—insisted that he escorts me to the gala,” Hermione muttered. 

Lily could feel her wince as the words fell from her lips, because it was, in fact, a little too much from Ronald.

Lily was supposed to be Hermione’s date for the gala—for work, of course; but they planned on sticking together throughout the event, doing some networking with potential campaign donors, then stealing too much champagne from the waiters and trashing the Black campaign and Narcissa Black every chance they got. Lily had to admit that she was more than looking forward to it. 

“I'm sorry,” Hermione said quietly, picking up on Lily’s line of thought. “I wish it could’ve been you.”

And oh.

To Lily, that sentence felt exceptionally loaded, full of double meanings and words left unsaid; yet she knew, instinctively, that it was much simpler for Hermione: she genuinely wanted Lily  to be her escort instead of Ronald, and that was it—nothing more, nothing less.

“I wish it could’ve been me, too,” Lily whispered, and if she knew she meant something larger, grander than simply being Hermione’s escort, she chose to ignore it; hide it somewhere deep within where nobody—especially Lily, especially Hermione—wouldn’t be able to reach it.

They fell silent once again, so Lily resumed her gentle ministrations on Hermione’s scalp and listened to the younger woman’s quiet humming. She got lost in it entirely; so lost, in fact, that she didn’t hear the sound of heels on hardwood floors before a familiar voice finally reached her ears, bursting the Hermione-only bubble Lily had found herself in.

“Hey, Mione, do you need a—”

The two of them sprang apart, startled by the sudden interruption in a near-empty office. For some reason, Lily was not at all surprised to see Nymphadora on the doorstep of Hermione’s office, the door fully opened now.

“Dora,” Lily breathed out, “what are you doing here?” 

Nymphadora made a show of narrowing her eyes in quiet suspicion and glancing between the two of them for twenty or thirty seconds. She found what she was looking for in one of their faces, it seemed, for she looked calmer—not as affronted—when her eyes landed back on Lily.

“Mom forgot her senator phone in her office,” Nymphadora explained with an easy, fond smile as she waved her hand with what must have been Andromeda’s senator phone. “I was picking it up when I saw that the light was on. Was pretty sure Hermione nodded off, so I thought I would offer her a ride.”

Lily fought the urge to frown in obvious displeasure. Nymphadora’s offer seemed unusually nice and would surely be much appreciated if Hermione was the only person  left in the headquarters, but she wasn’t. Lily was going to offer Hermione a ride or call her an uber, but she hadn’t had a chance to do either of those before Nymphadora showed up.

“What do you say, Hermione?” Nymphadora asked, looking past Lily. 

Lily whipped around, her gaze drawn to Hermione seemingly against her will. She watched as Hermione gave Nymphadora a slightly reserved yet grateful smile before she said, “Thank you, but I was actually thinking of crashing at Lily’s?”

It was a half-statement, half-question, and the letter part was certainly directed at Lily as Hermione’s warm brown eyes flickered to her. A burst of warmth, much like from sitting right by the fireplace on a cold winter day, spread through Lily’s chest as she nodded a little too eagerly. 

Hermione broke into a smile.

“Oh?” Nymphadora asked, and Lily could almost hear the traces of quiet apprehension and suspicion in her voice. “I thought you lived with your boyfriend?”

Lily watched the way the light in Hermione’s eyes dimmed, her shoulders slumping at the reminder. She turned to face Nymphadora and gave her the best glare she could muster; to her credit, Dora was baffled enough to take a small step back.

“She does,” Lily replied, unamused. “But we have a lot of things to go through in preparation for the gala—coordinating the strategy for buttering up potential donors, as well as Bathilda, and working out the details of Andy’s upcoming public appearances—so we need to be back here by five in the morning.” 

“And it’s convenient that Lily lives so close to the headquarters,” Hermione chimed in, keeping her voice even.

Nymphadora narrowed her eyes at them but relented.

“Whatever you say. Anyway, I will see you tomorrow,” she said. “But, unlike the two of you, I'm not a workaholic and won’t be showing up before eight in the morning.” 

Nymphadora saluted them goodbye and flitted out of the office as quickly as she came in minutes ago. Hermione and Lily remained seated, and both of them held their breath as they listened to the sound of Nymphadora’s retreating steps. Only when the entry doors of the campaign headquarters opened and then closed did they breathe out in some strange sort of baffled relief. 

When Lily finally risked a glance at Hermione after, she was met with a forlorn, thoughtful expression normally reserved for either anything ron-related or their strategizing sessions in the conference room. 

“Hey,” Lily called out, scooting closer to her on the couch. “Penny for your thoughts?” she reached out with her right hand, softly lifting Hermione’s chin with the back of her index and middle fingers. 

As their eyes met, Hermione couldn’t help but smile, yet the thoughtful look still remained. 

“Nymphadora is right, you know,” Hermione muttered, catching Lily’s hand in hers and dropping it in her lap. She looked down and started fidgeting with the gold bracelet on Lily’s wrist, moving the emerald-green charm from one place to another. “I do live with my boyfriend. I just—shouldn’t I want to come home to him after a long workday? Shouldn’t I seek his company when I'm exhausted? Ask for comfort?”

“Not when his company does the exact opposite of what it should do,” Lily replied, her voice soft as feathers. “Think about it. What makes you feel better after an exhausting day at work?” 

“Talking to you, spending time with you.” Hermione’s response was immediate, as if she didn’t need a single second to think about it. “I suppose, if I'm your serenity while we are working, you are my serenity when we are finally done.”

Hermione looked up to meet Lily’s eyes, and she couldn’t help but smile in response.

“Aren’t we one hell of a dream team?” Lily asked, grinning.

Hermione let out a little laugh. “That we are.” 

“Okay, so,” Lily began, getting up from the couch and heading towards Hermione’s desk. “I still need to drop off this mountain of paperwork at my office and pick up some of my things, so how about we meet outside in a few minutes?”

“Works for me,” Hermione chimed in.

After a brief exchange of smiles, Lily loaded her arms with what felt like a million folders. She walked to her office, her steps unusually fast, and didn’t even bother turning on the light—by now, she knew the layout of the space she spent most of her day in better than she knew where everything was at her apartment. She put down the paperwork on her desk, deciding to deal with it tomorrow; then quickly packed her MacBook and planner in her handbag before throwing a beige trench coat over her shoulders. 

Lily headed for the exit, scrambling to get the headquarters keys out of her handbag. As she stepped outside, breathing in a lungful or crisp night air, her eyes immediately landed on Hermione. She was leaning on the side of Lily's car with a content smile.

“A walk or a car ride?” Lily inquired as she turned around and locked the doors to the headquarters with practiced ease.  

“A walk,” Hermione muttered, coming closer and looping her arm through Lily’s. She tugged slightly, and so they started slowly moving in the direction of Lily’s street. “I need those seven minutes of fresh air to sober up.”

“Drinking at work, Ms. Granger?” Lily teased, shooting her a sly grin. “My, my, who would’ve thought.” 

Hermione rolled her eyes. “I did not mean sobering up in that way—and don’t pretend you don’t have four different stashes of whiskey right next to your desk.”

Lily didn’t need to feign surprise at that one.

“How do you even know that?” she asked, her jaw hanging open in utter disbelief.

Hermione smirked. “Believe it or not, Nymphadora told me where I could find it on my first day.”

“I'm gonna kill her,” Lily groaned. 

“Now, murdering your boss’ daughter sounds a little counterproductive to me,” Hermione quipped, “so I would strongly advise against that. But you do you.”

Hermione shrugged with feigned nonchalance, and the two of them burst out laughing not even two seconds later. As if drunk on laughter and smiles, as well as too exhausted from their too-long workday, Hermione leaned into Lily’s side even more, as if afraid her legs would give out any second. Lily ignored the tiny little flutter in her chest and made sure to keep a strong hold on Hermione’s hand. 

It didn’t take them long to Lily’s place—as Hermione commented, she was, indeed, a genius for renting out an apartment so close to the headquarters for the duration of Andromeda’s presidential campaign. To Hermione’s utter despair, the lift was out of order, so the two of them were forced to carry their heels as they climbed the staircase to the fifth floor.

By the time Lily unlocked the door to her apartment, Hermione was half asleep to the point of almost face-planting into Lily’s ’Welcome Home!’ doormat. Thankfully, Lily was there to grab her wrist and tug. 

Their bodies collided, and Lily effectively ended up being pressed to a now-closed door. She let her heels drop to the floor along with her apartment keys. The charms on the silver-colored keychain she brought from Italy last year gave a loud clank as they hit the hardwood floor, suddenly startling Hermione.

Lily hummed quietly, settling her hand on Hermione’s waist and snaking her other hand on Hermione’s stomach, somewhat afraid Hermione would topple over and end up sprawled on her living room floor. 

“If I didn’t know you better, I would've thought you were, in fact, drunk,” Lily muttered, slowly sitting Hermione down on the edge of her bed.

Then, she headed to her closet, opening a drawer and finding a spare comfy t-shirt and shorts for Hermione to sleep in. She was just fishing for a pair of spare underwear and socks—just in case Hermione’s feet got cold during the night—when Hermione’s words had effectively frozen her in place and time. 

“Just tired.” Hermione yawned. “Is that the guest room? It smells different. Like you.”

Lily was glad that her back was turned to Hermione, for it was impossible for the younger woman to see the blush coloring Lily’s cheeks. Granted, even if they were facing each other, Hermione would have probably been too tired to notice much of anything—apparently, anything other than the smell permeating Lily’s bedroom.  

“And what do I smell like?” Lily inquired, unable to hold back the traces of curiosity that laced the gentle syllables of every uttered word. She held her breath, waiting in quiet reverence.

“Like apples or pears in winter, fresh and crisp—no, actually, like lilies in spring. or a little bit of both,” Hermione mumbled. The words were followed by a quiet thud ; as Lily cast a quick glance over her shoulder, it became clear that staying in a vertical position was clearly too much for Hermione—she ended up falling backward, spread out on Lily’s bed. 

“It's my perfume,” Lily explained, putting the makeshift pajamas by Hermione’s side. “And no, it’s not the guest room—the bed is not made there, so you’re going to spend the night in my room.” 

Hermione opened her eyes just a crack.

“And you?” she asked, confused.

“I'm gonna make the bed and then sleep in the guest room,” Lily explained, letting the corners of her lips twitch in a small smile. “I should go, and you should sleep.”

“No!” Hermione rushed to say, suddenly alert. She sat up, startling Lily, and grabbed her wrist; her touch was soft yet firm. “It’s your bed. Don’t go. Stay. Let's share it.”

Lily allowed herself the luxury of looking into Hermione’s unfocused chestnut-brown eyes as she caressed the underside of her wrist.

“You’re so sleep-deprived that a passerby would think we were heading home from a bar , not from an office,” Lily chastises. “So forgive me for taking everything you say with a grain of salt, Ms. Blood Alcohol Concentration of At Least 0.05 Percent.”

Hermione gave her a slightly suspicious side-eye. “But I didn’t drink alcohol today.”

Lily let out a soft exasperated sigh, choosing to ignore a surge of warmth spreading through her chest like wildfire at the image in front of her.

“There are numerous studies done on the topic,” Lily explained. “Moderate sleep deprivation produces impairments in cognitive and motor performance equivalent to legally prescribed levels of alcohol intoxication.”

Hermione blinked once, then twice, looking up at Lily as if she had just told her penguins can fly. It took everything in Lily not to burst out laughing right that instant.

“Can you say that again but… slower?” 

“Thank you for proving my point,” Lily smirked. 

“Technically, you didn’t. I lied. I stole some whiskey from your secret stash while you were still stuck in the conference room,” Hermione informed her. The exhaustion, it seemed, was put on the back burner and briefly replaced with an incredibly adorable sort of smugness. 

Lily let out a fond laugh. 

“And my initial point was—you’ve had very little sleep lately, and your brain is so tired that it feels just the way it would feel after a few alcoholic drinks. Your decision-making abilities are not at its finest right now, especially if we add that whiskey into the mix, so I'm gonna spend the night in the guest room.”

“There's this person who slept slept with me when my alcohol concentration level was much, much higher than 0.05, so don’t worry about it,” Hermione brushed her off. “It’s—it’s your bed. You’re entitled to it.”

Her words, however, had the opposite effect. 

“Hermione,” Lily started, careful as if not to spook her, “did you mean to tell me that you were—taken advantage of when you were intoxicated?”

Hermione blinked once, then twice, as if she wasn’t sure of the answer herself.

“No, I mean, yeah. But it’s neither here nor there. Also totally unrelated to our conversation.”

“Was it him? ” Lily could barely force the words out, yet was ready to applaud herself for how well she managed to contain her fury. While she remained calm and collected on the outside, soft and gentle with Hermione like usual, on the inside, she burned with thinly veiled rage even at the tiniest possibility of—of—

“What? No, Lily, no, it’s not—it’s not Ron, I promise. It was years ago, when I was still studying at Stanford, and it’s in the past, okay?” Hermione rambled, suddenly much more alert than she had been in the past twenty minutes. 

She tugged on Lily’s wrist that she still held loosely in her grasp, and Lily obliged, sitting down next to Hermione. 

“It’s just—don’t go. Stay. It’s your bed.” 

Lily frowned. “Does that mean you want to sleep in the guest room?” 

Hermione let out an exasperated breath that bordered on being an annoyed groan. 

“No, that’s not—I mean that I want you to stay . In this bed. Where I will also sleep,” Hermione explained, her words sharp and existent, accompanied by distracted fidgeting with the emerald-green charm on Lily’s bracelet. 

“What do you—“ Lily started, yet the realization dawned on her before she could finish the question. “Oh.” 

“Yes, oh, ” Hermione mocked, not unkind. “It's just—at my place, I sleep in the same bed with the person who makes it a point to mention how disappointed he is in me first thing in the morning and last thing in the evening. I would just like to, to—to feel—“ 

Hermione gestured wildly with her free hand, as if the feeling she was speaking of was so all-encompassing she couldn’t possibly put it in the confines of any language. Lily smiled oh so softly, suddenly so full of the same all-encompassing, inexplicable feeling. They sat in silence for a while, simply looking at each other as a quiet sort of understanding settled between them.

“There is a spare toothbrush under the sink,” Lily spoke up, clearing her throat. She freed her hand from Hermione’s grasp and stood up, instinctively straightening out tiny wrinkles on her black slacks. “I will go fetch our chargers while you get ready for bed.” 

And so she did; and if her hands were trembling as she fumbled for two identical chargers inside both of their bags, she chose to ignore it. As she passed by the kitchen, she grabbed two bottles of water before heading back to the bedroom. She deposited the water on both of the nightstands, put their phones to charge—it wouldn’t do them any good to sleep past their five in the morning alarms—and took her favorite set of comfy pajamas 

As Lily registered the tell-tale sound of running water in the shower coming from the master bathroom, she headed for the guest room, silently thanking Andy for insisting that the guest bathroom should always be fully stocked. She brushed her teeth, took a quick shower, and changed her clothes, unable to stop the content little sigh that slipped past her lips as soon as the soft cotton of her oversized yale t-shirt settled against her bare skin. 

She came back to her room to find Hermione shifting her weight from one foot to another in some sort of penguin-like way as she stared at the queen-sized bed in front of her. 

Lily smiled. “You can pick any side you want. It doesn’t matter much to me.” 

Hermione broke into a smile and hurried to the left side of the bed. It wasn’t long before both of them were settled comfortably, ready to catch the four-something hours of sleep that night—the most they could afford.

And despite the fact that Lily fell asleep on the right side of the bed for the first time in decades, it would be the best night of sleep she had in weeks.