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"Come on Harry, I don't want to have to go to Gringotts and get bloody Muggle money. Let's just go to the Leaky. It's Friday night, I bet loads of people will be there!"
Ron was whining from the moment he stepped out of the floo at Grimmauld Place where Hermione and Harry both lived. Hermione had been washed, dressed and ready with her coat and shoes for over an hour. Harry had come home from work before her and was still half dripping water from his hair onto his shoulders.
Hermione gave Ron a look that told him to back off and drop the point. He gave her a look back that said he wouldn't. Harry sighed through his nose.
"Well, you're just going to have to put up with it, Ron. I'll pay for your drinks if you're that twisted about changing money," Harry replied with as much annoyance as he felt,
the way only lifelong best friends could express without incurring consequences.
Hermione knew why Harry didn't like going to the Leaky. He'd stayed there often when they were younger, as a sort of halfway house between Hogwarts and the Dursleys. Hermione had always gone straight to the Burrow, but the one night she had stayed at the Leaky, it had been terribly depressing.
He hadn't told her this was the reason, but Hermione knew enough about unhealthy associations to make the connection without him needing to. Their unspoken understanding of
each other was the reason Hermione and Harry had ended up living together in the first place. Ron and Ginny weren't the same.
Malfoy ended up at Grimmauld Place by a new coincidence every time. Once, it was because he had found Harry in the arse end of nowhere, and had to apparate him home. He stayed to make sure Harry was okay and Hermione had made him tea while they sat awkwardly on the stairs, listening to Harry being sick in the bathroom.
Another time, Hermione had found an ad in the prophet for a potions ingredients supplier, and it made her realise she'd somehow never set up brewing at home. She dug out some books for home potioneering and wrote a letter to the address asking for a recommendation list of ingredients she should have on hand.
Malfoy had written back, the apparent owner of the shop, and offered to deliver her what she needed and help to set up a small station in one of the spare rooms. He'd brought along one of his own concoctions as a joke, saying she needed to "lighten up, Granger."
She'd shown her true Gryffindor colours by rising to the bait and swallowing half the contents of the bottle. Light streamed out of her mouth every time she spoke for hours later with the side effects of making her feel euphoric and weightless. Draco, as she was calling him by that point, had needed to carry her down the stairs for dinner which he and Harry had foregone to instead drink enough firewhiskey to catch up with her lifted spirits. Every time the fire caused smoke to fume from their nostrils, light would burst from Hermione's mouth as she laughed, and the three of them had stayed up until the early hours of the morning in hysterics.
She didn't know why Draco was in their house that one Saturday night in October. She didn't know how they had fallen into her bed together, bodies joined intimately before she'd even hit the mattress. She didn't know why Draco stayed when she'd woken up two hours later in fits of tears after she dreamt he'd killed her parents.
"I'm sorry, mate. I'm not spending every Friday away from Lavender anymore, and you know she can't come here."
Hermione had been ready for an hour. Coat, shoes, hair done and smelling of roses.
"Well, I can't very well tell Malfoy he's not welcome anymore, he's Hermione's... you know, whatever they are," Harry replied as he waved a hand in her direction, wet hair dripping onto his shoulders.
Ron held his hands up. "Yeah! Yeah, I know, and that's fine. I'm not bothered when we're at the pub all together, but it's different for Lav. We weren't there for seventh year, they were. We never had to watch the bloke tortu—"
"Ron," Hermione snapped, then looked at the floor. "Just go. We'll sort something out, maybe arrange a dinner or..."
Ron gave her a sympathetic, half-hearted smile before making his excuses and leaving through the floo. Draco's footsteps came from the kitchen to the sitting room a minute later, where he'd been pouring drinks for when Ron arrived.
"Hogwarts, the forest of dean, the manor or Godric's Hollow?" Draco asked, lying in Hermione's bed with her head on his chest, his fingers untangling the knots in her hair.
She tried not to think too hard or focus on the details.
"The last one," she said quietly, not wanting to speak the words.
Draco gave her a kiss on the top of her head as acknowledgement. "Fear, hope, sadness or something else?"
It was Valentine's Day and Draco had lit candles around Hermione's bedroom and written her a Muggle greeting card with a felt tip pen. It had been such a surprise after she'd made a running joke of the concept, teasing Draco about how if he really wanted to embrace her roots, whatever that meant, he'd have to start buying her roses and chocolates for valentine's.
He had, and it had been funny and lovely and he got her back for a week of taking the piss out of him by insisting on taking her on her knees, back, side and all-fours before the night was through. She was exhausted and wrung out.
When they had climbed under the covers, Draco blew out all the candles in the room with a wave of his wand, and the overwhelming smell of it had slammed into Hermione's senses, plunging through her memories and dragging her through the rubble in a heartbeat.
She'd panicked, Draco had seen her through it, and now she felt stuck somewhere else. They'd gone through this before and Hermione learned it helped to find closure in whatever space her head was in, once she was calm enough to, before they fell asleep.
"Not sadness. Similar, maybe. Melancholy, I think," she replied at last.
Draco was giving her options, the most frequent answers to her dissociation, and it helped her to pick out where she was and how she was feeling.
"Was there a horcrux there?" he asked, keeping his voice level. Not too firm, not too soft. Objective.
"The snake." She felt guilty to mention the thing to Draco, who'd lived with Nagini in his own home, but when his fingers continued to comb through her hair soothingly she continued. "It had Harry. I had to fight it off because Harry didn't have his wand. I shot so many curses before Harry disapparated us away, out through the window. We didn't even know she was a horcrux yet."
Hermione and Draco moved away from England after they got married two years later. Harry was the only one truly sad to see them go, though others said they'd miss her.
Draco had been a person who was surrounded by the war for Hermione; he was the very first taste of what was to come, all those years ago when he called her a Mudblood and she hadn't even known what the word meant.
Outside, there was nothing of war or prejudice in her daily life, but there would be a sound or a smell that would hit her suddenly and catapult her into the past she could hardly remember anymore. It was difficult because it was unexpected and shocking. With Draco, reminders of the past were neither shocking nor unexpected. He was her past. He was grounding and familiar and broken and scarred. It didn't matter which side they were on because they suffered in exactly the same ways after it. But for others like Ron and Lavender, Ginny, even mere acquaintances from work, Draco was that reminder that smacked them out of nowhere in their daily life. She was sad to leave them but happy to get away.
The connections across the channel were good following change to the international floo network. When Aurélie was old enough, they were able to give her the choice between Beauxbatons which was close to where they lived, or Hogwarts where she'd know a few children already. Aurélie chose Beauxbatons and Draco continued his potions business while Hermione taught at her daughter's school, and all was well.