Chapter Text
“And this way is your office —” Percy is explaining as they round a corner. It's her first day of the job at the DOMC — Department of Magical Creatures. She’s been wanting to work here since she started B.A.R.F. Now, it’s happening. It feels like a fever dream, honestly. She can't believe it. It's almost like the war never happened, only now people get out of the way automatically and stare at her with the widest eyes she's ever seen. She's hoping with exposure it'll wear down.
They turn the corner, and she smacks right into someone coming the opposite way.
“Oh,” she says, and looks into his face.
“Hi,” he says, and something in his eyes makes her think this is the most off-guard she’ll ever see him. He hadn't known she was working, or if he had, he hadn't been expecting to see her.
“Hi,” she half-whispers back, eyes just as wide as the people she complains about.
His brow crumples, and he just looks down at her, saying nothing. She can smell him.
Another addition steps in, snapping the moment like a high-tensile line. She jumps away from him guiltily. “Ms. Granger, I’m so sorry,” Percy apologises profusely, “I —”
She blinks, stammers, clears her throat. “Percy, it’s fine," she finally manages, interrupting him.
“Agreed," Draco— Malfoy says, curt and professional. “Good to see you, Granger.”
She looks away, murmuring “and you," as a last resort. There is just a moment where nothing happens and then Malfoy walks past them, continuing on his course.
“Honestly, if I had known —” Percy rushes to apologise again.
She laughs simply, trying to quell the feeling in her gut. “Really, Percy, it’s okay," she says sincerely, "the war is behind us now.”
"If you say so, Hermione. I just...your history."
"He was a child soldier, just like me," she says firmly.
Percy has heard this rant before, and he knows how it will end, so he just nods and marches off down the corridor, Hermione following, blinking back the memories.
It was night, and she could hear everyone clattering around distantly, on the lower floors. She wasn't meant to be there, but she had to.
There was something about him. He waited in the square for seven hours without moving. They finally went out, and then dragged him in, limp like a rag doll, with that glassy half-smile on his face, with the dull look on his eyes. He seemed dead, that was it. It seemed like they'd killed him, and there's nothing that she wanted more than to see what that was like.
She’d crept into the room they kept him in upstairs like a robber, making sure she wasn't seen, wasn't heard. That no one would suspect their perfect little Gryfindor princess was somewhere she shouldn't be.
Once she was inside, she just froze. She stood at the door and wondered if he'd acknowledge her, the one staring at the wall. After a moment, he moved, swung upwards to stare at her, like the marionettist controlling him had realised she was looking.
“Granger,” and his voice is thin, like the rest of him.
“Hi,” she blurted out, suddenly feeling self conscious, “I — I’m sorry to be here, bu —”
“Did they send you?” he looked sick. Hermione's aunt had cancer, and he looks like she did, with his skin and his eyes and just the way his cheeks are hollowed. There's a terrible look people get when they are sick. He has it. She wondered what happened to the pink-faced boy at the table in the Great Hall, roaring with laughter next to his friends. She supposed the same that happened to the little bookworm looking for a toad in a train carriage in first year. They grew up. Things changed. The world became magic, and then normal, and then fucked.
“Who?” she asked, her voice wobbling.
He was curt and nondescript, “Order.”
She swallowed and braced her palms on the door behind her. “No," she said quietly, "I’m here on my own.”
He smiled, and smiling in itself is a nice act. You smile, and it means you're happy, which means you're having a nice time, but with Malfoy, it’s more like a snarl, with a mocking edge in his narrowed eyes. “Gryffindor Granger never could leave well alone, could you?”
She swallowed and crossed her hands. “Why are you here?”
His face where it was turned towards her seems to break. “I — I,” he shivered violently, his spine rolling up and down, “I didn't know what I was getting into. Voldemort — he lived in my house,” he bent his head. “He lived in my house," Malfoy repeated, like she should know something else, whatever that means.
Hermione watched him and didn't know what to say, “I'm sorry,” and her voice came out quiet, like a mouse.
“You lot are always sorry,” and he’s crying now, tears running down his cheeks, “always sorry, but you never fix it.”
She’d left after that, along the hallway, down the stairs into the room she shared with Ginny, the one thankfully empty she flung herself against the door, locked it and tried to breathe, and put her hand over her heart, and wondered what the fuck was wrong with her, the fuck she was thinking.