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“I told you to stay away from me.”
“I think that you don’t really mean that.”
Malfoy’s eyes narrow at her response, studying her for a brief moment before he returns to getting dressed. His tone lacks a playfulness that is normally reserved for her, but she’s confident enough that she’ll be able to coax it out of him.
Hermione rolls onto her back, hiding the slight smile that tugs on her lips as she stretches like a content cat.
“Where do they think you are today?” He asked.
“With my parents.”
“You should go to your parents, Granger.”
“That’s the plan.”
“So I’m just a stop along the way?”
“Something like that.”
That earned her a slight smirk before the band snapped and he knelt back on the bed, crawling over her, an arm on each side of her to prop himself up.
“Granger,” he began, his tone a mix of warning and playfulness.
“Hi.”
“You can’t keep coming here.”
“You keep saying that, and yet,” Hermione gestured lazily between them.
“I mean it.”
“No you don’t.”
“You don’t seem to understand what exile is, do you?”
“Of course I do,” she said, wrapping her arms around his shoulders, her fingers getting lost in the white-blonde hair that was growing too long. “I just know well enough that no one would find Draco Malfoy deep in the Muggle world. I’ve done the risk analysis.”
“Well, in that case, thank Merlin.”
She tried to pull him down closer to her, lips seeking him but he resisted, and carefully moved away from her hold–ending the nice morning she thought they were having.
“What’s wrong?” She asked, watching as he returned to his task of dressing.
Draco turned to her, sheepish in appearance as he tried to fix his mussed hair, hiding the evidence that she had been there.
“You know we can’t keep doing this.”
Her chest tightened, feeling the air in the room change as his gaze turned serious which meant that the night was over. This was their routine. They would have a good day or evening together, and then like the inevitable sunrise so did the issues at hand.
But Hermione knew better, of course she did. She was sensible and practical in contrast to Draco’s surly pessimism. They could and would get past this.
Maybe just not tonight.
So Hermione does the only thing that makes sense at the moment. Leave before she got left.
She pushed off the bed, joining him in the act of getting dressed, ready to slam a door on her way out to make a point. The point being: I’m not ready to give up, I can have both.
Draco, ever observant and accustomed to her fiery mood, opted to try and calm the fire.
“I’m just trying to protect you, Granger.”
She rolled her eyes, pulling on her shirt. “Protecting me from what?”
“From me.”
“Don’t do this again. I thought we were past this.”
“Just because we are, doesn’t mean that the rest of the world has forgotten the past. Some people will never forget.”
“I don’t care about other people.”
“Of course you do.”
“I don’t.”
“You’ll regret it.”
“No I won’t,” Hermione snapped, sounding more and more like a petulant child than a grown woman.
“Maybe not today, or a few months from now, but eventually you will. You can’t really believe that the Golden Girl luster is enough to protect you—us, from the absolute scrutiny and scorn that awaits you should anyone find out where you’ve been sneaking off to all this time. Is this the life that you want? You can’t have both.”
She pursed her lips, pulling in a facade of anger that was meant to cover up how his words cut; the sting of truth, an uncomfortable feeling to try and accept.
He neared her, taking her chin in his hand, forcing her to look at him. She’d expected fire, a look of annoyance, anything but the grim pity on his features. Pity for her.
“We’ll figure it out.”
When she failed to react to what was undoubtedly another empty promise, Draco pressed a kiss against her temple, softening her sharp edges just so.
It had been a reassuring promise, once upon a time, when they were much too preoccupied with the throes of passion and something that should have been forbidden. But now? They were in too deep, each wanting something more but were either unsure or unwilling when it came to the next steps.
She pulled away, ignoring as he followed her through the large home that squirreled away what Malfoy money could afford. Bitterness coursed through her, so much for exile. Even he would manage to still land in luxury after having been cast aside from the same society that afforded him such things.
“Goodnight.”
The war took a lot of things from Hermione, from both of them. The Malfoy’s had been cast out, rejected from the wizarding Britain, even though Lucius would rot away in Azkaban for the rest of his life. Andromeda had left with Narcissa to France, somewhere Teddy could grow up away from the damages of war and sisters could reconcile. But Draco hadn’t made it far.
They shouldn’t have gotten this far.
Parole aurors falling for their charge, how bloody typical of her. But it wasn’t like she had meant for it to happen. They were all glares and by-the-book rules, the check in visits awkward and stilted. Then over time, things had begun to change.
Polite coffee had turned to a glass of wine, a polite kiss on the cheek as he walked her to the door and then they just… unraveled.
Hermione had already made peace with the moral and ethical dilemmas of it all. Her job at stake, the mounting lies to her friends, then the realization that she may have fallen in love with Draco Malfoy.
It was real to her, even if she struggled with the balance.
She tossed and turned that night and the next. Her desk grew littered with letters she’d given up on–eventually even her owl grew tired of her and departed without waiting for the apology note that Hermione just couldn’t conjure up.
Her days at work grew long, getting little done at her cramped desk. Then she’d go home to her cat. She’d see Harry and Ron on Wednesday pub night which broke her mundane routine.
She did this for weeks, thinking that perhaps it was best that she worked Draco Malfoy out of her system. He’d done his time and she’d completed her duty. There was no reason to return, no obligation to see him again.
And it worked, for the most part. She’d built a new routine that didn’t include him.
Work, home, pub.
Work, pub, home.
Work, walk in the park, home.
Work, a work out class, home.
Work, a new cafe, home.
Work, a disastrous date, home.
Work, home.
Work, home.
Work, home.
Home.
Home.
Home.
“Quit staring at me,” Hermione grumbled at the owl on her window sill.
She’d returned to the letters. Attempting again and again to sum up the right words to say. An apology for starters, he deserved that. Others turned angry, others had her wiping frustrated tears from burning cheeks.
She just couldn’t do it. All these weeks of trying to sweat him out of her system had reinforced how much she longed to be at his side. Hermione swore she kept seeing his face in strangers on the street, that his scent lingered on her clothes, she’d imagined his warmth in the sheets of her bed.
Hermione missed the way he turned book pages too loud, how he cursed at Muggle appliances even after he mastered them, the disheveled look he wore when he was still half asleep, losing his usual posh demeanor that he wore like armor.
She longed for another night of mediocre take out, sitting on his living room rug as he talked alchemy theory. But Draco had been irritatingly right. How long could she pretend that it would all work out? The very definition of madness was repeating the same thing over and over, expecting a different outcome.
Maybe madness was reaching for another piece of parchment, jotting down reckless words, and sending it off into the night.
Maybe she was mad, perhaps she always had been.
Her owl returns sooner than expected, her heart jumping at the sight of his familiar neat penmanship.
‘Wherever you go, I want to be.’ said the note.
—
Weeks and weeks went by and Hermione found herself in a familiar position: sitting at her desk, pen at the ready as she tried to work on her correspondence, agonizing over selecting the right words.
“Still at it?” He asked, leaning down to press his lips against her crown.
“Almost finished,” Hermione insisted.
Draco made an amused sound, making her roll her eyes.
“Hurry up then, we’re going out tonight,” he said, then leaving her to her task.
Hermione smiled to herself, watching as she left the room. He moved with such ease here, a freedom they weren’t allowed before. Draco came to life here, and so did she. They were on even ground for the first time, able to be in the sun and move as they pleased.
They had peace and each other.
She opened her desk drawer, taking the postcard out and finally responded to Harry.
Hermione smiled to herself as she sent off the colorful card, the back signed ‘With love, Hermione Malfoy’ and the front proclaimed ‘Greetings from Portugal’.