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There were many incredible things to be found in New York City, for Muggles and Wizards alike: Times Square; the vampire Drag Show off Broadway; the Empire State Building; a bagel shop off of 5th Avenue that always has a queue wrapped around the block, no matter the weather; Central Park; the old witch who lives in Queens that rides her broom naked every third Wednesday of the month.
But the best thing that New York had to offer is a very narrow, very tall building, with a red door, hidden halfway down a dingy alleyway between 42nd Street and 3rd. It’s hemmed in by a Muggle butcher, and a solicitor’s office with boarded up windows. The red paint was peeling in several places, and each window was covered in a thick layer of grime, upon which groups of children were particularly fond of writing lewd phrases.
But this unremarkable door marked the entrance to one of the most famous bookstores in the Wizarding World: Crescent Moon.
To those in the know, the dilapidated door opened up a world built with only one purpose: to satiate the innately curious.
There were seven main floors, all full of magically crammed bookshelves that can multiply right in front of you, or even morph into new rooms, depending on the subject matter. Crescent Moon stocked books covering any kind of magical topic that a person could think of: from various forms of alchemy, potions, history (both the muggle and wizarding kind), to the Eastern tradition of elemental magic. But it didn’t simply focus on academics, either. One could find guides for Pureblood etiquette, what dresses a Witch should wear for her first introduction to Magical Society, or what style of wand movement is most appropriate for the Heir of the family to use while duelling. There were also thousands of Magical novels to choose from, ranging from detective fiction, poetry, romances, and general literary fiction. The Crescent Moon Literary prize was one of the foremost coveted literary awards (Gilderoy Lockhart was always desperate to win one, but had never been fortunate enough to even be shortlisted.)
It wasn’t the one of the oldest bookshops in the Wizarding world, in fact by comparison to its competitors, it was still fairly new.
Founded in 1904 by Margolies Floutner, Crescent Moon had started off as just one large room situated in the attic of the building. Floutner’s father had been an avid book collector, with a love of the strange and delightful, and a knack for seeking out oddity in his day-to-day-life—a trait he’d surely passed on to his only daughter. Soon the store found itself with a cult following, and rapidly grew a massive consumer base.
It wasn’t long before Crescent Moon began overtaking its competitors both locally in New York, and then across the globe, out performing them all in just a matter of years. Despite its fame, the store never strayed from its original purpose: to find and sell any books that were interesting, even if it was only one person. Their prices were notoriously low, and they never strayed into the business of selling anything other than books. The only exception to this rule had been the addition of an extra floor at the top of the building, for a cafe. This had been Margolies’ own daughter’s suggestion. It hadn’t been done for any commercial gain, either. Apparently she became frustrated at having to leave to find a cup of coffee and then return to her books, so she wheedled her mother for a more convenient place to get her caffeine, until she relented.
The installation of an owlery in 1974 was the only other acquiescence to modernity that the store had done. The resulting mail order service became a treasured life-line for many customers who couldn’t make it to New York.
Whatever wars had wracked the wizarding world, Crescent Moon remained a stalwart pillar of excellence, a renowned hub of curiosity, intellectual discovery, and a simple source of pure joy for over a century. From its very inception, the store had a strict non-discrimination policy, much to many a politician’s dislike. Squibs, Werewolves, half Giants, full Giants, House Elves, and many other marginalised characters often found a safe haven amongst the shelves of Crescent Moon.
It wasn’t odd to find oneself rubbing shoulders with famous customers either. Newt Scamander often popped in whenever he was in the city to browse their magical creature section; take the opportunity to sign a few of his books; and check on the cats that roamed the floors.
The cats were a fascination in their own right, and people came from far and wide just to see them. Nobody knew where they had come from. One day they’d just appeared and made themselves at home. Some were small—able to slip between books and underneath shelves, collecting any forgotten books and dragging them back to their rightful shelves. Some were large, reaching almost the height of a house-elf. These animals tended to prowl amongst the more restricted books, guarding both customers from particularly nasty books, and certain tomes from thieving, distrustful visitors. There were probably just under a hundred cats all together, and they mingled with shoppers and workers alike, winding between legs, and accepting affection from those waiting to pay for their purchases. Some even helped carry packages up to the owlery on the top most floor when some patron’s purchases got too heavy and needed to be sent home.
One cat in particular was currently winding itself around the legs of a rather tall man, with platinum blonde hair that fell in gentle waves to just below his ears. The silky strands also fell over grey-slate eyes, and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses were perched on the end of his nose. His head was cocked, and his brow furrowed as he silently mouthed out the book titles in front of him.
Despite being in the Romance section, the man was carrying a large stack of Potion texts in one arm. Draco Malfoy may have changed many things about himself over the last decade, but his pride and vanity remained a poignant concern for him. The texts were decoys—not that he hadn’t already read them, of course—but he carried them around in case he was ever spotted. The image of reformed Death Eater-turned-sort-of-famous-Potioneer clutching a stack of romance novels would be hugely embarrassing.
On this particular day, Draco was currently trying to find a new novel that one of his favourite authors had recommended. He’d spent the last half an hour pacing up and down the fiction section, getting increasingly frustrated because he can’t find it at all, and also attempting to avoid tripping over the feline at his feet.
“Where the Merlin is it? Cat, please get out of the way—I knew I should’ve written it down. No, don’t sit down there— I swear it was Vaughn… Or was it Vaughtner? No, that’s not right, she plays quidditch. Was it Verity?” He continued muttering to himself as he turned down another aisle. “It definitely started with a V, I’m sure of that.”
As he did so, another customer had wandered into the section and overheard him. “Are you looking for Valencia?” they called from behind the bookcase. Draco stilled, blood rushing to his face at being caught.
The voice continued, “Because if so, her work straddles the Muggle/Wizard divide, and so they keep her general catalogue in the Crossover Section on the second floor. But I know they keep some of her earlier stuff just down aisle 37b—Oh.” The woman had rounded the corner and had pulled up short as she saw Draco.
Of all the people Draco Malfoy expected to see in the Romance section of a bookstore in New York, Hermione Granger most certainly did not make the list.
They both stood stock still, assessing the other. The only thing that was moving was the ginger tabby that had finally abandoned Draco’s legs and had trotted over to sit in front of Granger, and was now purring as the witch absentmindedly stooped down to scratch behind its ears. Granger’s eyes darted down the stack of books in Draco’s arms, and he immediately shifted them so that the romance book was hidden by his hand.
At first glance she looked the same as she had at school: all bushy hair, and awkward limbs. But the more he looked, more and more differences seemed to arise. Her hair was still full of volume, but instead of frizz, defined curls now fell gracefully over her shoulders. Her teeth were much straighter than they’d been at school. He had a vague, shameful memory of him in a school corridor jeering at her, and a miss-aimed hex, and a crying figure hurrying away.
She’d grown into herself, Draco noted. Her back straight, shoulders pushed back with the confidence of a witch no longer needing to fight for her place in society. Age had washed away the awkwardness of youth, and in its place was a steady sureness.
She broke the silence first. “Oh, you meant Vincent right? The potioneer?” Her tone was light but her eyes were sharp—piercing. She cocked her head slightly. Searching. Probing. He wasn’t sure, but he definitely felt like she was assessing him. Either as a threat, some old instinct from their past; or just… working out how he fit into the fabric of her orbit.
He nodded almost in reflex.
“Well this is the Romance section.” Obviously . He swallowed the retort before it slipped past his lips as she continued, “I’m sure Potioneers have many a love story to wax lyrical about, but I doubt they commit them to written word.” Her tone was sharp, but there was a brightness in her eyes that seemed to soften her words, so that they were merely teasing, rather than admonishment.
He felt his cheeks heat all the same.
Then she turned, and before he even had the chance to reconsider, Draco Malfoy found himself following Hermione Granger back out into the outer chamber, and the staircases beyond.
Like those at Hogwarts, the staircases within Crescent Moon seemed to have a life of their own. They swivelled, moved, and shifted—all dependent on where its occupier wanted to go. If more than one person stood on them, and they wanted to go to different places, smaller staircases would sprout from the main body, creating the effect of a sprawling tree, with branches reaching out to different heights; winding around others, and sprouting off again at odd angles. The more popular sections had wider, more secure steps, whereas the less popular routes had rickety ladders or single file wooden steps. There were even rope ladders to some sections, but they were rarely used as they often led to a proprietors’ book being dropped on the heads of fellow shoppers.
It created havoc when the store was particularly busy, especially during sale season, when the staircases were constantly expanding and shifting. Healers were hired for the duration of these periods, as so many customers would inevitably fall off and break something in the process.
Draco followed Granger up a relatively sturdy staircase, wide enough for them both to stand side by side. He didn’t, however. He consciously stayed a step behind her, unsure of how to interact with her.
Draco hadn’t seen Hermione Granger since his trial nearly a decade ago, where she, Potter, and Weasley had come to speak on his, and his mother’s, behalf. He wasn’t certain but he was pretty sure that their testimony had been the deciding factor in why he wasn’t sentenced to Azkaban.
He had escaped England as soon as possible, craving as fresh a start as he could. But from what he’d picked up from the papers, Granger had been a powerhouse at the Ministry since she’d started. How she’d ended up working here was beyond him. But then she’d always had an affinity towards books, he supposed.
He then realised she’d turned her head, and was looking at him expectantly. Realising that she must’ve asked him a question, the heat in his cheeks that had only just dissipated, returned with fervour.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?”
She gave him a complicated smile. Not visually—it had just been a simple small uptick of her lips. But he got the distinct impression that she was testing him, and he wasn’t entirely sure he was passing.
“I was just asking if you’d read Vincent’s newest article on his method of dissecting beetle eyes, and their uses in—”
“Itching powders,” Draco finished. She gave him a nod, and her lips twitched slightly. Ten points to Slytherin , he thought. He searched around in his mind for something to add, and began summarising one of the review papers he’d submitted to a Potions Publication a few weeks ago, for her.
Draco, it had to be said, hated Vincent’s work. It wasn’t that he thought the Wizard was a bad Potions Master, he just found the man utterly boring. But as he talked, he watched as her body began unfolding itself from the nonchalant posture she’d been in, and as she began interjecting with her own points, her hands gesticulating with great flourish. And her eyes, the guardedness that he hadn’t realised had been clouding them seemed to evaporate, and seemed to slowly ignite.
Draco, despite attempting to keep a sense of distance between them, found himself leaning into her. His hip was resting against the balustrade, only a hair's breadth away from where her hand was.
“Now, don’t get me wrong, he really is the most boring writer,” she was saying animatedly. “His exposition is dry, and use of language rudimentary at best.” He couldn’t help the grin that shot across his face. He wondered if she would think he was laughing at her, but then she replied in kind, hers a flash of sunrise on a cloudy day. “But I went to visit him at his workshop in Milan the other month,” she continued. “And I can’t describe how phenomenal it was.”
Draco felt his eyebrows rise in surprise. Vincent was notoriously guarded with his process. The smirk she shot him as she read the astonishment on his face, was nothing short of fierce. Something he would’ve beheld on the faces of his friends, not Hermione Granger. But then again, that smirk really did seem to suit her. Maybe savage satisfaction was par for the course, for this older version of the Golden Girl.
She was still talking as the staircase finally reached their floor. The jolt of its contact seemed to pause her flow and she glanced at him. A foreign emotion seemed to tense the corners of her eyes. She swallowed. “I’m babbling too much, aren’t I?”
Draco then realised that he’d not interjected for a few minutes—that he’d let her talk at him instead of listening.
And then he realised it had been uncertainty—that unknown emotion in her eyes, so at odds with that fierce look she’d given him mere minutes ago. Draco felt a hot stab of annoyance at whomever had made her feel that she spoke too much. He felt anger at himself, for probably laying the foundations of that anxiety from Hogwarts. He shook his head, holding her gaze as he did so. “Being passionate over good craftsmanship isn’t a bad thing,” he assured her. The air between them seemed to grow taut. She broke their eye contact first, stepping off the staircase, and towards the closest doorway. He reached over her, and held open the door. As she walked through, he caught the edges of a slightly surprised smile.
“You do something with Potions, don’t you? I’m sure I read somewhere that you’d gotten a mastery?” she asked as she led him down the middle aisle.
Draco turned from where he’d been pretending to browse the books, and stared at her for a long second. She didn’t shift under his gaze, but a faint blush bled over her cheekbones.
“Been browsing the gossip magazines, have you, Granger?” He asked. Any nervousness he had felt around her had vanished somewhere between the fiction stacks and now. The blush grew redder, and Draco found himself oddly transfixed by it.
“No,” she said, attempting to school her face into indifference. Her shoulders were drawn back, hands on her hips. It was a posture he was familiar with from Hogwarts, but more refined. Less clunky. It was better suited to courtrooms, he mused, rather than in between darkened shelves. “It was in the newspapers, too.”
“Oh, so you were checking up on me everywhere, were you?” He felt his lips curve into a smirk, enjoying the way the flush on her cheeks spread further over her face, making the freckles on her nose stand out even more.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “You think awfully high of yourself.”
“So I’ve been told,” he chuckled. “But yes, I do have a Potions Mastery. I work with Hopkins and Twist down in Brooklyn.”
“Oh I know them. They have a great research library there.”
“Of course that’s something you know,” he snorted.
Her answering smile was quick, just a flash of teeth before she caught herself and schooled her expression back into indifference. But that brief flash… it warmed something within him. He wondered if he could get her to do it again.
“Anyway,” she said, clearing her throat. “I’ve probably eaten up enough of your time. This is where they keep Vincent’s back catalogue. I’ll leave you to it.” The air between them had changed, somehow. She gave him another smile, but this one didn’t quite reach her eyes.
Draco would have been willing to let her walk away, if that had been what she wanted. But she seemed to linger. Just for a second, her footsteps wavered, and her shoulder twitched as if she was going to turn around to face him again. As if, despite the collected image she was presenting, she was still wading through uncertainty. As if being near him had pushed her off-kilter—a fact that made him heat with satisfaction. So he searched around his mind for a name and asked, "Do you know much about Olivier Flandres?” He leant against the shelves, and pretended that he wasn’t holding his breath; that his chest wasn’t tight; that his palms weren’t sweating as they held the stack of books in front of him. “If you’re not too busy, of course,” he added.
She hesitated, her body half turned towards the exit. He thought of all the other jobs she must have to do, rather than just talk to him about books he wasn’t actually interested in. He wondered if she could see through his flimsy ploy to keep her talking to him—wondered if he’d read her hesitation wrong.
But then she turned around fully and her eyes were clear, and slightly knowing, as they held his gaze. He didn’t see a single trace of that foreign uncertainty. She shrugged, her lips twitching slightly. “I’m sure I can spare a few more minutes.”
The jaw he didn’t know he was tensing unclenched itself.
She quirked her eyebrow and said, “You know Flandres’s focus is Charms, right? Not Potions.”
The lie came easier than he expected. “There’s going to be a symposium in a few weeks, a collaboration between Thompson and Randall. About the links between Charm wandwork and those used in Potions.”
The smile she was failing to hide told him she saw right through his fib. He swallowed.
But all she said was, “Of course.” There was a glint in her eyes that seemed to grow brighter.
“Well,” she said slowly, one finger moving slowly back and forth on the shelf next to her. “You’ll want to have a look at the research notes on interdisciplinary wand movements that Powell wrote in ‘67.”
Draco nodded. “Alright then,” he said. “Show me the way.”
She turned on her heel and walked them back out into the main stairwell.
Although he was pretty sure she knew he’d made up the need for the information, she remarked, “It’s a fascinating topic. How different wand movements affect the way different spells-or in this case, potions-are actualised. It’s much more nuanced than the average user realises. I really don’t think they covered it enough at Hogwarts.”
“In their defence, I think our teachers were slightly preoccupied with a certain trio of students and the many quests they seemed to undertake instead of doing homework.”
Hermione snorted. “Like fixing a vanishing cabinet?”
The air between them went taut, the memory of his blackened past hanging in the air. He searched her face, trying to find the venom, or vitriol, or pain, in the creases around her eyes. But she just looked at him, one eyebrow slightly raised.
It was a challenge, then.
He inhaled, the air whistling slightly as it passed through clenched teeth. “Sure. Or rescuing an escaped convict right from underneath the Minister’s nose.”
Hermione’s eyes sparked, and that self-satisfied smirk bloomed again. Draco felt some of the tension leave him.
He’d spent a long time working through his past actions, trying to make space for the version of him that did them, and the version of him now, who was trying to be better. Not many people gave him the benefit to learn about that second version of him.
The section that they were heading to was significantly less browsed than before, and its corresponding staircase was narrow, rather rickety and made of worryingly spindly wood. There was a handrail but it was most certainly not sturdy enough for Draco to risk leaning against it.
She was currently musing about the differences in American wandwork compared to what they’d been brought up on. She had this habit of emphasising nearly every sentence with her hands, to the point where she looked like she was conducting some kind of orchestra. It was both adorable and captivating, and Draco found himself wondering when it was he began thinking of Hermione Granger as either of those things.
Unlike before, Draco didn’t try to stand away from her. As such, they were nearly pressed into each other. She stood a step above him, but her body was angled towards him, her thigh pressed against his. From this angle they were nearly the same height, and he found himself cataloguing the small details of her face he’d never noticed before. The smattering of freckles over her nose he knew, but the ones at her temple were more faded. She had a small scar just above her eyebrow, and there were a few laugh lines near her eyes.
When the staircase finally connected with the requisite floor it jolted, a deafening creak as wood collided with wood, Draco jerked slightly, hitting into her legs. He quickly righted himself, but it didn’t stop the feeling of electricity that zapped through him. She stiffened, and her hand froze in its path to right herself in the bannister. Her eyes met his, and the world around them seemed to tunnel, and her chest hitched, matching tempo with his; as if she too, had stopped breathing, just for a second.
And then the moment passed, and she looked away as she climbed the last few steps to the platform.
Draco followed her into the rolling stacks, the darkness around them almost a living being. He looked around, marvelling at the height of some of the shelves, getting a feeling of being back in Hogwarts. Hermione looked at home amongst the ageing volumes, and he really could see how she’d ended up working here. She was running one finger absentmindedly over the shelves, and he could hear her muttering under her breath as she did so, the words tumbling out in a kind of soft lullaby. Her voice rising and falling in time to silent music.
Then she hmm’d in triumph and pulled out a tightly bound scroll and brandished it at Draco with a grin. “Here we are: Flandres’ research paper from both ‘67 and ‘65.”
Draco took it wordlessly and tucked it under his arm, the other still full of the potions books. She then wandered down another aisle, pulling off more and more scrolls, her wand hand swishing with each new addition and soon a small pyramid of scrolls was floating before him grew bigger and bigger.
They wandered around the stacks for what could have been hours, or it could’ve been minutes. But time seemed to have stayed outside on the landing. Inside this shadowy space, where the air was close, and his whole vision seemed to be full of curly hair and a smart mouth, time was irrelevant, obsolete.
Conversation seemed to flow and expand between them, taking up space in the small crevices of the strangeness between them; soon that strangeness had morphed into surprising comfortability.
They reached the exit again, and she turned to him, Draco blinking slightly at the bright light that speared through the crack in the heavy oak door.
“I can send these up to the Owlery and have them flown to Hopkins for you,” she said. Draco nodded. He marvelled at how helpful she was being, for a cause he knew she was aware he’d made up.
They exited and stood on the landing. A long second passed as they stared at each other, and Draco felt like he should leave now, that he’d taken up so much of her time—that she must have other duties she needed to attend to. She cleared her throat, and tilted her head at him, only slightly.
“Are you hungry?” she asked before he could speak.
A few seconds passed as Draco tried to find a hidden meaning beneath what she’d asked, and then when he eventually realised she was being serious he hurriedly replied, “Yeah, kind of.” His face heated at the complete lack of eloquence he seemed to possess around her.
She nodded, her eyes creasing with suppressed laughter, and said, “Great, come on then.” And then she was leading him up yet another staircase.
This one was very wide, made from strong mahogany wood with a deep maroon runner. The steps were large enough to house three people side by side, and Draco found himself bereft at not having a reason to stand next to her. So when she decided to lean next to where he stood on the railing, her hips next to his, his head jerked up in surprise. She was eyeing the large stack of books in his arms.
“Do you want a basket for those?” she asked.
“No!” The words flew out of him, much louder than necessary. She raised her eyebrows. “No, it’s fine,” he repeated more softly. “It’s no trouble.”
He tightened his hold on the bottom book, hoping that it was still hidden from view.
She simply said, “Ok.” But her eyes were calculating, roving over him as they waited for the staircase to bring them up to the highest point of the store.
The cafe and the Owlery were on the same floor, separated by a floating wall of greenery, giving the impression of being suspended in a green oasis. Leaves trailed as far down as two floors beneath them, and the plants moved and changed depending on the season, the weather, and whatever charm their resident Herbology expert felt like that day.
The cafe was cosied away in the domed roof, the curved, paned glass above shedding refracted light across the tables. It was unequivocally the best view of New York in the whole city, as magic allowed the viewer to see as far or as close as they wished—with an expectation of privacy, of course.
Draco had never been. He’d never lingered as long as he had today. Usually he went in with a specific list, ignored all patrons and workers alike, got his purchases and left.
Today had been unusual on many fronts.
Hermione led him between the tables until they reached a secluded couch, the cushions plump and slightly worn, the tabletop scratched and marred with the heavy use of nearly four decades of patronage.
They sat down, and a blanket of awkwardness descended upon them. She picked at a knot of wood on the table, her gaze trained suspiciously everywhere but him. Draco tried to remember how they’d fallen into the comfortability they’d been enjoying over the last few hours, but came up woefully short. He resigned himself to watching her, just leaning into the awkwardness as he assessed her profile.
Eventually, he cast around for something, anything, to say, and settled upon the blackboard menu above the counter. “Oh, they have Earl Grey tea,” he said. The enthusiasm in his voice wasn’t even forced. Merlin, he’d missed English Earl Grey .
“It’s the best Earl Grey tea here,” she said. Her voice was stronger than he expected it to be, with the way she was acting, but then her gaze was on him again, and as their eyes met, the intimacy of the moment hit him. Although they’d shared space on the staircase, and had wandered the stacks with barely a few centimetres between them, and strictly speaking, the table provided the most distance between them than they’d had all afternoon, Draco felt more vulnerable, more raw, than before. Maybe it was the public space, so full of people compared to the privacy of the stacks. Or it was the way when her eyes landed on him, he felt each stroke of her gaze over his skin like a phoenix feather, the skin hot and tight.
He quirked an eyebrow at her, attempting to fall back on old habits; feigning indifference. “I would’ve thought you were a coffee drinker, Granger,” he drawled.
He saw her posture shift slightly: shoulders drawing back and that new smirk of hers spreading over her face. “Why is that?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Well, with the amount of energy you had at school, I always just figured you were constantly hyped up on caffeine.” Draco didn’t know where this was all coming from, but the awkward tension seemed to dissipate with each teasing jibe, so he tried not to overthink it.
Hermione snorted. “I’m surprised you even know what caffeine is. I was always under the impression that Pureblood folk relied only on spell work for that kind of thing.” She’d matched his tone perfectly, and he didn’t fail to notice how she’d shifted her position so that she was leaning towards him, one elbow propped on the table.
“You wound me,” he said, his hand coming up to his chest. She just rolled her eyes.
A waitress ambled up to their table before he had the chance to continue. Hermione ordered them both Earl Grey, and just before the waitress left Draco added on an order of shortbread biscuits. Hermione gave him a quizzical look.
“If the Earl Grey is good here, maybe their shortbread is too,” he said. She didn’t smile at him, but some emotion swirled in her eyes, making them go soft and pliant.
“I love shortbread,” was all she said. Draco felt his stomach erupt, like a cauldron that had been left on too high a heat. He felt the odd sense of familiarity that was somehow both well-worn and foreign. Like deja-vu for another timeline, another life.
Suddenly too hot, her gaze becoming more and more like a brand on his skin, as if she could read the confusion bubbling underneath his surface, Draco jerked his chair back, just a fraction as if some physical distance would help. But all it did was knock the books on the chair next to him, sending them clattering to the floor.
Granger moved, bending down before his brain caught up with the turn of events. It was only when she exclaimed, “I knew it!” that he suddenly remembered the romance book he’d been scrupulously hiding.
Face burning, Draco ducked under the table just as she emerged, scraping the rest of the books in a hasty pile, holding them to this chest as he rose, as if they could act as a barrier to whatever scorn she was about to throw at him.
Steeling himself, Draco forced himself to meet Hermione’s gaze, and found hers creased, and full of mirth. “I knew you said Valencia!” She sounded triumphant, full of glee. But it didn’t sound cruel, as he’d expected. She waved the book in the air. “Why did you lie?” Her tone was light, laughter rounding her vowels and softening her consonants. “I love her stuff,” she said softly. It floated out of her like an afterthought, almost lost amongst the grating of the coffee machine and the surrounding chatter, as her eyes skimmed the back of the book.
“You—” he started, but his words came out wrong and stuffy. He cleared his throat and tried again. “You’ve read Valencia?” He’d tried to imbue his words with confidence, determined not to show her how off-kilter he felt, but from the searching look she gave him, he wasn’t sure he’d succeeded.
She set the book on the table in between them. The colourful cover stared up at him. He swallowed. Her eyes tracked the movement. “Her Beauxbaton series got me into romance novels,” she said eventually. He tore his eyes away from the cover to stare at her. A faint blush was dancing amongst the freckles on her cheeks.
“Really?” He knew the amount of incredulity that coated his words was hypocritical but he didn’t know how else to sound.
She took a second to reply, her eyes calculating. As if she was weighing up the odds of being honest, assessing how he could react, how this turn of the conversation was going to alter whatever weird relationship they’d established during this particularly strange afternoon.
At least, that was what Draco was currently doing.
Eventually she simply said, “Really. I’ve always been slightly dismissive of those kinds of novels—Lavender used to read them all the time.” A sour expression twisted her features at the mention of the girl's name. “I’m loath to admit that she wasn’t all that wrong about them.”
He snickered. Her expression was so put out, so reminiscent of when someone managed to give the correct answer in a lesson before her, it warmed something forgotten inside of him.
“Have you read any Walter?” he asked, suddenly intensely curious about this hidden part of Hermione Granger.
Her answering smile started off hesitant, but as she realised he wasn’t poking fun, that his question was genuine, it widened, her whole face seeming to shine like a Lumos spell had been cast within her.
“Oh I love Walter. The one about the vampire and the time travelling witch? I’ve probably read it four times.”
And thus started an hours long discussion about every romance novel either had read. They barely paused for breath to drink their Earl Grey (just as good as Hermione had promised), or try the shortbread (not quite as good as those he’d had in his youth, but the best he’d tried across the pond).
Eventually Draco noticed the dimming light of the setting sun out of the windows above them, and he cut himself off from a tirade against the ending to a Royalty series that had recently come out and said, “Oh it’s gotten so late, I’ve kept you for too long, haven’t I? You probably need to get back to work. I’m surprised nobody’s come to get you, actually.” He looked around, as if he could see an angry supervisor storming over to steal Granger away from him. When his gaze returned to her, he found her brow puckered.
“What are you talking about?”
“What?”
“Why would someone come and get me?” She was looking at him oddly. Draco had the distinct impression that he was balanced on a precipice, when he thought he’d been stood firmly on solid ground.
He stayed silent, not wanting to say the wrong thing. Then her eyes widened, and she glanced at the stack of books next to him, and then over his shoulder. The focus in her eyes blurred slightly, as if she had fallen into her own mind, wading through the memories of their afternoon.
“Wait,” she said slowly. “Did you think I worked here?”
His feet slipped off that precipice and now he was free falling. Fingers grappling for purchase he managed to ask, desperation staining his words no matter how he tried not to: “You don’t?”
“No,” she laughed. “I don’t.”
“But you… you knew where everything was? You, you offered to take me to the research section—You knew the precise aisle of each author?” With each question he found himself able to pull himself back to more steady ground, the confidence in his voice growing.
Hermione’s expression had morphed from incredulous to sheepish, her fingernail circling the edge of her cup in slightly jerky movements. Her smile was one-sided, just a quirk of the right side of her mouth. “I—” she cleared her throat. “I spend a lot of time here.” Her tone was self-deprecating, and slightly brittle, like she was trying to sound one thing, rather than another. But Draco didn’t know what it was she was trying to hide. His mind was still reeling, his chest a melee of pride, ego, embarrassment, and confusion.
“I didn’t realise you didn’t know,” she said. Her voice was steady but she spoke the words to a spot on his left shoulder.
Draco narrowed his eyes and said, “Liar.”
Her head shot up and met his gaze. She let out a long breath, and then chuckled, running her hand through her hair. Her laugh seemed to cut the tension in half and he let out a breathy laugh of his own.
“I was too embarrassed,” she admitted. Draco just raised an eyebrow at her. “I hadn’t realised it was you, I thought it was just some random person, and then when I saw it was you… I admit, I panicked slightly. But then you just… followed me.”
Draco ducked his head slightly, feeling a flush creep up the back of his neck. He didn’t think he’d ever blushed as much in his life than he had in the space of a couple hours. Hermione continued, “I hadn’t expected you to talk back to me, either.” He picked his head back up to look at her, and found her eyes already trained on him, a small, slightly sad smile playing at the corner of her lips. “It felt nice. To talk about books like that. I don’t get much time to do things like this anymore.” She sighed, and he saw a weight curve her shoulders inward, and he pressed his fingers into the flesh of his thighs, trying to curb the compulsion to lean forward and—he mentally shook himself, focusing back on what she was saying. “Nobody likes to talk books with me anyway. I babble,” she added wryly, but her accompanying smile didn’t reach her eyes.
“So what do you do? Because unlike you, I don’t scour the newspapers and magazines for tidbits of gossip about you,” Draco said. He’d stretched his legs out in front of him, and he nudged her knee with his calf. He’d half expected her to move away from him, so when she pressed her leg back into his, the contact jolted him slightly.
“I work for the Senate,” she said.
Draco pulled himself up, his jaw dropping. “You do?”
She snickered, and shook her head, pressing her calf more firmly into his, “No, I don’t,” she laughed.
“Wicked witch,” he said, but there was no venom in his voice.
“I work for a consulting company in Manhattan.” He raised his eyebrow at her, and she waved her hand. “I know, I know, I sold out. I’ve heard it all before.”
“I didn’t say that,” he said.
“You were thinking it though,” Hermione replied.
“But isn’t it something to do with Magical Creature rights?” The question slipped out before he’d thought it through.
“Aha!” She exclaimed, leaning forward and pressing her finger into his chest. “So you have been checking up on me.”
Draco reached and took hold of her hand, pulling it away from his t-shirt. “Well that makes us both liars then, doesn’t it?”
She snorted, and nodded. “I guess it does.”
“So?” He prompted. “Magical Creatures?” Her pleasantly surprised look cut him slightly. Does this witch not have anyone in her life who asks her any bloody questions? he thought.
She still hadn’t spoken and then he noticed she was staring at the table, at his hand—that was still grasping hers.
He didn’t let go. Instead he just squeezed her fingers slightly.
Shaking her head slightly, Hermione haltingly continued. “Yeah, Magical Creature Rights. Charities get in touch, and then I help them lobby the government, or corporations, or whoever, to get them to stop creature cruelty, or discrimination policies. It depends case by case.”
He was impressed. He shouldn’t have been—it was Granger after all. Of course she’d end up doing something life-changing, something philanthropic, something affirming. But as the case may be, he was impressed. And it showed on his face because her ears turned pink.
She straightened, pulling her hand out from his. Draco leant back in his own char and pretended not to miss the warmth of her palm against his own. But then her foot slid back over to his side of the table and she pressed her leg against his again.
“You should go buy your books,” she said.
“I don’t actually need these,” he admitted.
Hermione grinned at him. “I figured.” She stood up. For a second he was sure she was going to hold out her hand to him. Her fingers flexed slightly but then she slipped them into her pocket and inclined her head instead.
“What?” he asked, dumbly. He was reluctant to leave their table; to go back into the real world.
Amusement crinkled the corners of her eyes, and she smirked at him. There was another emotion swirling around behind the soulful brown of her irises, but before he could get a good look at it, she blinked and it was gone. “I’m going to show you where they keep Valencia’s novels.”
“You really don’t have to, it’s fine—” suddenly she was grabbing his hand and tugging him up to his feet.
Her palm was cool against his own, and surprisingly calloused. Draco allowed her to pull him away from the cafe, and just as he opened his mouth to say that they left the books behind, he glanced over his shoulder and saw them floating behind them. He chuckled. “Never mind,” he said under his breath.
It was only when they reached their oft-trodden stairwell that he noticed she was still holding his hand. He hid his grin in his shoulder and decided not to mention it. “So,” he said instead. “Why did you decide to leave the Ministry?”
She swallowed. “Ask me the easy questions, why don’t you,” she muttered.
He just raised his eyebrow at her. “That was the easy question,” he said. “The hard question is why are you here alone, and not with the other two thirds of the Golden Trio.”
Hermione just pursed her lips, but there was mirth shining up at him beneath her eyelashes. “I didn’t get any work done,” she said after a long second. “No work of any substance anyway. You just spend months going round and round in circles, and anything that does get approved is so watered down from the original proposal it ended up just being lip service more than anything else.”
“But why America?”
They were standing on the stairs now, and she withdrew her hand from his to rest it on the handrail. His own palm felt cold as he crossed it under his arms. She stood on the step above him, just as they had hours earlier. This time he wasn’t trying to keep any distance. Instead he was trying to work out how to close the gap without making it too obvious. Draco could smell her from this distance, but he couldn’t place whether it was her perfume, or her shampoo, or maybe it was just quintessentially Granger: orange blossom—that must be her shampoo; the smell of fresh parchment, and somehow underpinning it all, there was an ever present scent of fresh sea air.
“I accumulated a lot of job offers,” she was saying. “Some of them were ridiculous, most of them were borderline offensive, but one day something landed on my desk after a particularly unproductive session with the Wizengamot. It was from Harding—Daniel Harding,” she clarified. “He runs the Consulting company. It was barely a job offer. He’d just written me a letter, telling me what it was he wanted to do with his company, how magical-creature rights in America were woefully under-lobbied. In fact, I’m not sure he even stated that there was a job for me. I think he might’ve just wanted advice. I don’t know. But I wrote him a letter back, and then the next thing I knew I’d booked a floo to his office and he offered me a job on the spot.”
“And your friends were happy that you were moving halfway around the world?” There was an ugly storm rippling in his chest, something that felt dangerously like jealousy. But if there was one thing Draco was good at, it was ignoring his feelings.
Hermione shrugged. “We’re still close, but life happened, you know?” They’d reached the level they wanted so she lightly tugged him along with her. “We all started at the ministry together. It felt like Hogwarts all over again, like we were getting a chance at doing our final year properly.” He couldn’t keep his eyes off of her profile. The way her face seemed so animated while she was talking; the wistfulness that softened the corners of her eyes as she spoke about her past. It filled Draco with such a fierce wanting he felt unmoored, lost in uncharted waters. “But then Harry left—you know he teaches at Hogwarts now? And then Ron moved up quickly in the DMLE and soon he was off on assignments all the time. We still see each other when we can, but there wasn’t anything keeping me there.” She paused for a second, her eyes finding his. “Or anyone,” she added softly.
The storm ebbed.
They reached the shelves, and he tried to ask nonchalantly, “And now? Anyone here?”
She held his stare for a long beat, before shaking her head and pointing at a book on the shelf above her.
He hmm’ d, taking the book and slipping it on top of the floating stack.
“Subtle, Malfoy,” she said, moving past him to browse the shelves behind him. Just as she passed his ear she went up to her toes, so that her mouth brushed the shell of his ear. “Think I read about that move in a book somewhere…” She pulled the copy he’d originally wanted and handed it to him.
Draco choked on a laugh. He tried to fight the blush that was creeping back over his face, but gave up when he saw a matching blush on Hermione’s face. “Touché, Granger.”
Time once again lost all meaning as they wandered throughout the shelves. Draco was pretty sure the concept had lost all sense of meaning for him. His whole world seemed to sit on an axis of curly hair, a wicked grin; and it smelt like orange and the sea.
“Attention shoppers,” came a voice that was somehow both soft, and persistently loud. “The store will be closing in 15 minutes. Shoppers are encouraged to take their purchases and head to the nearest check out, thank you.”
Draco’s heart sank. He swallowed, trying to shift the heavy feeling on his chest.
“Bollocks,” Hermione muttered. Draco turned to her sharply, shock rendering him momentarily speechless. “Sorry, I’ve just remembered I’ve got a thing tonight—oh fuck I’m going to be late.”
His ears rang, the sounds around them finally filtering through the bubble they’d been in. Other customers shuffling around, the creak of the staircases, the small meows from the prowling cats. The calmness that he’d felt the last few hours shattered and he took a step backwards, out of her space.
The only thing keeping him from doing what he does best and walking away was the look of genuine regret written plainly over Hermione’s face.
Although the atmosphere between them had turned taut with awkwardness, he still inclined his head towards the exit. “Shall we head out then?”
She looked at him for a moment, and her lips parted before she pulled her top lip in between her teeth. As if she was trying to hold in her words. Hermione swallowed and Draco tried to not follow the way her throat moved, or let his eyes linger on the expanse of skin beneath it, dipping down into the buttons of her shirt.
“Let’s go pay for your things,” she said. He snapped his head back up to her eyes.
“It’s alright. You can head off.” He knew his voice had turned stiff, saw her shoulders sag ever so slightly as she catalogued the changes to his posture.
Despite himself, he marvelled at the fire that rekindled in her eyes; the way determination set her jaw.
“No,” she said. “Let’s go pay. You went through all of this for those novels. Don’t fall at the first hurdle, Draco.”
The use of his name on her lips had his attempt at disregard crumbling around him.
He nodded, and followed her down to the tills. He only purchased one of the books, choosing one at random because his mind was still on the way her eyes shined as she looked at him. Luckily there were very few customers left in the store so the whole process took less than a few minutes.
When he stepped outside, however, he couldn’t spot her. But then he caught sight of a mass of curly hair further down the alleyway, a muggle phone pressed to her ear.
She hung up when he reached her, tucking her hands into her pockets against the chilly night air.
They walked in silence out of the alleyway and into the bustling street.
“I’m sorry I have to leave. I had a great time talking about books with you.” There was that edge of longing in her voice again, the same one he’d heard earlier. How this witch wasn’t surrounded by people who wanted to pick her brain was beyond him.
There was a half moment, a pause within which their eyes met and he could see a whole world coalescing in her pupils, and his breath caught in his throat. Because she was reaching for him, arms wrapping around his shoulders, pulling him into her chest.
The hug only lasted a second, maybe two. And before he could even register it, before the orange of her shampoo impressed itself against his senses, she was pulling away.
Before he could even formulate a reply she’d disappeared amongst the crowd.
Draco tried to swallow his bitter disappointment as he watched her walk away. Her hair bounced with each step, and in the shine of the streetlights and the glow of the billboards, made it come alive.
He should’ve done something. Asked her for her floo details, her number—he’d work out how those muggle things worked. Just… Something . But like the fool he was he’d just let her walk away.
He reached into his pocket to retrieve his wand, and instead withdrew a book. Frowning, he flipped it over to see the cover. It was the Valencia novel. Heart racing he flipped through it and his breathing stuttered a little when he saw a scrawl on the title page.
Malfoy Draco,
You came all this way for this novel so you might as well have a copy. If you wanted to talk about it over a Butterbeer or something, just send me an owl.
— Hermi Grang
Hermione
APT 20D
303 E 57th St,
New York, NY 10022
*****
Second Chances
By Theresa Valencia
A story of forgiveness, chance encounters, and new beginnings with old faces.
Liam and Charlotte used to hate each other—rivals in every sense of the word. But a chance meeting brings the two together in the most unlikely of places.
A potion gone wrong, and spell untimely cast leads to chaos and confusion.
Can the two set aside their differences, and allow the magic that so keenly links the two of them, do its job? Will they attempt to cut themselves free, or let the strings of fate knit them together?
Because the magic that the two of them could create together may be strong enough to unite a divided world, and yet also wields the power to destroy it for good.
A choice to be made. A promise to honour. Forgiveness to be earnt.
*****