Chapter Text
3 Months Later
If the ankle fracture hadn’t killed him, Draco was pretty sure the crick in his neck might. He woke up, rubbing it and grimacing. The dull, popcorn ceiling with it’s suspiciously dark stains greeted him as he opened his eyes. A clattering noise in the kitchen; the heavy footsteps in the hallway, and the spring chill settled around him.
Another day at the Grangers’.
How the mighty had fallen.
Draco stretched, feeling the springs shift as he did. The Grangers’ couch, the old relic he’d been calling his bed for the past three months, groaned in response under his weight.
“The feeling is mutual,” he muttered.
He stood up, wincing as his back cracked, before plodding over to the closet where he’d managed to fit his suitcase. He grabbed some clothes, before heading over to the bathroom to get changed.
The Grangers’ bathroom, like the rest of the house, was in rough condition. Suspicious mouldy spots on the ceiling, a crack in the window that let in just enough wind to give him goosebumps, and a drippy faucet. The dim light flickered as Draco showered.
“Draco!” Hermione knocked loudly on the door, “Draco! I need to get ready!”
“Just a second,” Draco shouted back. He dried off as quick as he could, thankful that he’d gotten the cast off last week and didn’t have to worry about it anymore.
“Draco, I’m going to be late!”
“Christ, come in then!” Draco said, throwing on his boxers. He unlocked the door, at the same time that Hermione barged in.
“It’s unbelievable, you take longer than me to get ready and—” Her brown eyes got big as she looked at him. “Oh.”
Draco raised an eyebrow. At least there was an upside to being stuck at the Grangers’ flat, with their single bathroom.
Hermione let out something like a squeak, as she looked away from him. “You — you should have told me you weren’t decent.”
“Excuse me, Miss ‘I’m going to be late’, Miss ‘Draco please let me in, I don’t care that I can hear a shower running’. And I’m perfectly decent. Even gentlemanly.”
Hermione’s face was flushed — whether it was from the hot steam in the room, or from staring at him, he wasn’t sure. “The point is, Draco, we’re roommates. And I know you’re used to having a butler, and a hundred bathrooms, but you can’t just invite me in when you’re dressed in that.”
“Your Dad makes breakfast in his boxers every Sunday, and you don’t hear me telling him off for being indecent.”
“That’s not at all the same thing, he’s my Dad, you’re…” she gestured wildly at him, “You’re you.”
“Can you be a little more specific? Is it my abs? Biceps? Or just all of me?”
“You’re impossible!” Hermione pushed him out the door, “Just put some bloody clothes on.”
“It’s not like you’ve never seen me in my gym shorts working out before.”
Draco smirked as the door slammed shut on his face. Another upside to staying at the Granger’s: getting to have fun with Hermione off-ice. Despite the odds, they’d managed to adapt to being flatmates fairly well, helped by the fact that Hermione spent most of her time skating, or working at the pub, and Draco tended to go from the gym, to the park, to the library until it was too late to stay out.
A loud cough came from behind him.
Draco froze, before turning around to see Hermione’s father, Mr. Granger, glaring at him from the kitchen doorway. He was a well-built man, with a thick moustache and a receding salt-and-pepper hairline. Draco was pretty sure Mr. Granger could smile, but he’d only seen the man frown, scowl and glower at him whenever he was in the room.
He looked disapprovingly at Draco, who was suddenly much more aware that he was stood in the middle of his skating partner’s parents house in his boxers. “Uh. Hermione needed to use the bathroom.”
Mr. Granger narrowed his eyes, “I don’t trust you, Malfoy.”
Draco nodded. “It’s really very kind of you and your wife to let me stay here with you.”
“And you’ll thank us for the kindness by not harassing my daughter.”
“Harassing? No, really, Hermione barged in on me like this, so if anything, she’s the one whose doing the…harassing…” he trailed off as he noticed Mr. Granger’s unchanging expression. “Never mind.”
“Exactly,” Mr. Granger said, before he returned to the kitchen. He let out a curse, “Bloody eggs!” And judging by the burnt smell, Draco was pretty sure he knew what the problem was.
Draco yanked out the first change of clothes he could grab and threw them on, least Mr. Granger glared at him some more. He settled on the couch, grabbing his cell-phone and checking his inbox.
Another day, another rejection email.
In the months since they’d gotten back, Draco had been throwing himself and Hermione at the sponsorships. He’d hit up every single athletics company, water bottle company and even, one particularly desperate evening, a hair care line to ask for sponsorship.
Most didn’t respond, and the ones that did generally all followed the same template: thank you for applying, but you do not fit the criteria we have for sponsorship.
“Anything?” Hermione asked from the doorway.
Draco shook his head.
She nodded, doing her best to hide her disappointment.
“If we started posting on instagram, we could generate some positive press,” Draco suggested.
“No.”
“We’ve got to try.”
“No!” Hermione’s voice shook slightly, “No, and that’s final.”
Draco didn’t even try to hide his disappointment. For the past three months, they’d been locked in a battle over socials. After the Challenger, their already sordid reputation had taken another hit; for the week it seemed that every tabloid in all of Great-Britain had taken great pleasure in showing every detail of their downfall.
Hermione insisted that they ignore every request for an interview, and didn’t even respond on their own socials to some of the crazy allegations. The Daily Prophet had blamed the whole thing on drug use, while others had speculated that Hermione had cheated on Ron with Draco, and one even speculated that his father and Hermione had been having an affair the entire time.
Horrific didn’t even cover it.
Draco had spent the last weeks practically begging Hermione to agree to do anything on their socials to respond, but Hermione refused. They’d been locked in a statement ever since.
“We should just delete our socials completely,” Hermione had told him. “Social media never did a single good thing for us, and I don’t give the tabloids more fodder to talk about.”
“Or we can tell our side of the story, Hermione! Unless you want the entire world to think we’re talentless cheaters.”
“The only thing we’ll give them to judge us on is our skating. Once we start winning again, the papers will either ignore us, or report on that.”
To say it was infuriating was an understatement. But Draco wouldn’t go behind her back, being ridiculed by the entire country was better than having her be angry at him again.
Instead, he kept sending emails to various companies, and kept getting the same responses.
“Have you finally gotten rid of the wackspur?”
Draco startled, nearly dropping his phone before looking back and seeing Luna Lovegood waving at him from the front door. He wasn’t quite sure what to make of Hermione’s best friend. The first time he’d met her, he thought she was odd. Three months later, he still thought she was odd.
He wasn’t even sure why Hermione was friends with her, the two seemed to have absolutely nothing in common.
“Gotten rid of what?”
“The wackspur,” Luna repeated, as if he was the weird one for not knowing what a fictional alien-monster-fairy thing was.
“No,” Draco replied, beginning to research even more companies. “Hermione’s late for work, so she can’t talk.” So please leave, he implied.
Luna shrugged, before sitting down on the couch next to him. Her scratchy, gauzy skirt hit his wrist, before she pulled out a half-knit sweater. She let out a contented sigh, as she began to knit.
Draco grimaced. It looked like Luna was here to stay. Whatever, he could ignore her if necessary.
Quickly making sure Luna wasn’t looking at his phone, Draco did a quick google search. Lucius Malfoy. Narcissa Malfoy. He hadn’t heard from them since the hospital, and apparently they were still keeping their heads down. It still hurt, but he’d decided not to dwell on them.
Nothing turned up online, so Draco quickly deleted the page.
“Do you thin this is too pink?” Luna asked, pointing at one of the pompoms she was attaching to the knit. “I don’t want to attract fortis rays.”
What had his life come to that this was a somewhat typical weekday morning for him?
“Daddy wrote an article about them—”
Wait. “An article?”
The bathroom door opened, Hermione ran out. She’d tied her curly hair into two plaits, and had a hat over top of them. She didn’t want to be recognised in public, apparently. Neither did Draco. The pair of them had joked about dyeing their hair, Draco going dark, and Hermione going platinum, before Draco managed to talk her down from that. Once they started posting again, they’d need to be recognisable, He hadn’t told her that reasoning of course, but Hermione didn’t want to risk the bleach either way.
She was grabbing her coat, “Oh, and Draco? I’ve got good news.”
“Yeah?”
“Mr. Jameson, at the pub? A bartender quit, so there’s an open position.”
It was the day he’d been dreading. He’d managed to put off working at the dreaded pub because of the cast, and then he’d had to strengthen his ankle. The last thing he wanted to do was spend time working in a pub, making minimum wage when he and Hermione should be concentrating on skating and getting sponsors.
But he was on thin ice with the Grangers already.
“Fantastic.”
“You can pretend to be excited.”
“Woohoo, the pub!”
“Now you’re just being obstinate.”
Draco rolled his eyes, “Is there an interview?”
“Hardly. Come down with me tonight, and, as long as you don’t mess anything up, you’ll probably get it,” Hermione said.
“Brilliant.”
“Hi, Luna,” Hermione said. “I can’t stay to talk, but I’ll see you later, alright?”
“Goodbye,” Luna said. “Draco will keep me company.”
Hermione smirked. “He’ll love that, won’t you?”
“My day keeps getting better and better.”
Hermione began putting her shoes on. She gave them a little wave, before leaving the flat.
As soon as she did, Draco faced Luna. “You said your father wrote an article?”
“Oh, yes. It’s very informative. I even illustrated the rays.”
“What does your father write for? Is it a magazine, or a newspaper? Or some kind go blog?”
“Daddy writes for a very good magazine,” Luna said. “It’s quite prestigious.”
A prestigious magazine that let the author’s daughter illustrate some of the article? Draco doubted it. But if there was a chance that Hermione would allow Luna’s father to interview them, he had to take it. “What’s it called?”
“The Quibbler.”
Draco had never heard of it. He began to look it up online and found it rather quickly. This latest edition featured the headlines: Aztec Technology: the New (Old) Frontier, Is ‘Nessie’ The Loch Ness Monster Misunderstood? And of course, Fortis Rays and the Dangers of Pink.
It was nonsense. Ridiculous nonsense that probably only conspiracy theorists and new age people bought.
But at the rate they were going, Hermione would never agree to a single interview, or a post. They’d spend half their lives working in the pub, struggling to find any time to skate, and to find the money to afford to skate until in a few short years, they’d get too old. They’d be lucky to find even a half-decent rink to coach at, considering their reputations were in the trenches.
The Quibbler. Just how desperate were they? And even if they were that desperate, could he even convince Hermione to agree?