Work Text:
Surviving the wanton use of an extremely dangerous dark spell tends to have one of two outcomes - (1) the person learns nothing, and goes from bad to worse, either surviving the next few decades by chance and the tolerance and benignity of those around them, or dying young from the same sort of stupidity they displayed earlier (2) the incident becomes the axis around which the rest of their life revolves and everything changes.
For Vincent Crabbe, the good, second option was the one he found himself tossed into in the midst of when he was rescued from the fire he cast and left to wander around the battlefield his school had turned into. All three friends, Draco, himself, Gregory, had stuck together all those years, and suddenly the sight of one another was enough to turn their stomachs. The friendship wasn't ruined, merely exposed for what it was. The trio went their separate ways, fugitives from an open prison. Gregory disappeared, Draco became a sad shell of what he used to be, and Vincent disowned his family and joined the Ministry as a janitor and handyman.
Some years later, that's where Hermione finds him, although for a long while she neither notices him, nor does she recognise him when she does notice him. He's just there, in the background of the vast halls of the Ministry of Magic, cleaning up and fixing things, displaying an hitherto unsuspected (by everyone not a Slytherin) talent for these things. Since he was never a Death Eater, never of any importance, and had taken the prudent step of shunning his dark connections, the government could afford to forget he existed, and they left him alone, which is what he seems to prefer. Hermione, however, is as nosey and inquisitive as she's ever been.
"Is that…Crabbe? Vincent Crabbe? It can't be. Surely?" Cocking her head like a cute labradoodle (the magical creature not the dog breed), Hermione approaches the man fiddling with one of the plaques on the atrium statues. Having lost most of his excess weight, it takes a certain movement of his head to bring back the years all at once, the old days hitting her in the face with the force of a magically animated wall moving at full speed. Only after she hails him, does she wonder why she is doing so. Maybe it is because she heard he'd rejected the past so thoroughly. Few could bring themselves to do so, even after everything.
The young man looks up, already well aware of who is speaking to him. Of course he used to see her around school and now the Ministry far more than she saw, or sees, him, if only because Hermione would, naturally, turn away from her bullies as soon as possible.
"Hey, Hermione," he smiles. "Sorry. For everything. Especially the fire. That was all very stupid of me." Best get it out there as soon as possible.
And because he begins with a natural and genuine apology, Hermione laughs, a pleasant, happy sound, which completes the breaking of the ice.