Chapter Text
It was the end of the third week when Hermione approached Draco's small desk with the closing speech draft that he’d written in hand. She was wearing what looked like a new skirt suit, length appropriately right above the knee but hugging her hips in a way that made him actively remind himself not to stare as his eyes continued to lift. And then he eyed the parchment in her hands where he could see scribbles of notes in the margins and a handful of cross-outs.
“Hi.” She greeted him awkwardly, “I went through and edited the draft you put together for the closing speech. It was—quite good.” She forced the compliment out. “I made some changes and added a few things I thought we could discuss here, if you have a few minutes.”
“Of course.” He cleared the desk, levitating what he’d been working on to the shelf nearby as she spread the parchment out and delved into her changes, which included a fresh paragraph to bring in her own experience as a first-year muggleborn, as he’d left space for her to do. Hermione also brought up a few points she thought she wanted to add, but was curious of his opinion on. He gave her his best, most respectful feedback and she crossed-out and rescribbled new notes where applicable before she piled the parchment together again and handed it to him.
“Overall that was a very good draft. I can tell a lot of thought went into it.”
“I am nothing if not articulate and well-spoken.” He gave her another smile that she eyed warily.
“Right. I also wanted to say thank you,” she cleared her throat a bit, “for leaving space for me to write in my own experience. That was a good idea and clearly something I’d want to come directly from me.”
”It wasn’t for me to write,” he said simply, “I just filled in the closing remarks around it that would summarize the program so that you could focus on the meaningful bit.”
”Right,” she said again, looking conflicted on how to appropriately respond. “So, if you could make those edits and get another draft to me on Wednesday—”
“I actually have a free Saturday and I noticed you tend to be here on Saturdays as well, I could come in tomorrow to finish this up for you. I know there’s only a week until the program starts and I’m sure you’ve got plenty to do. My three-days-a-week schedule makes it difficult to complete everything I’d like to help with sometimes.”
“I contractually cannot ask you to do that.”
“Well I’ve uncontractually offered.”
She took a deep breath, “I guess I would see no need to send you home if you showed up here in the morning on your own free will. I really would like to have that sealed away before the week starts so I can focus on the final materials and do some dry-runs.”
“Then I will see you on Saturday morning.”
O-o-o-o-o-o-o
Draco walked into the Muggleborn Initiatives Office early on Saturday with a box of scones, croissants and muffins from a local bakery by his home, as well as two cappuccinos.
“Good morning,” he greeted Hermione as he walked into her office.
She looked up, brows furrowing again as she looked down to the items in his hand and his eyes simultaneously roamed over her weekend office attire that included an unusually low cut, though baggy, sweater and, if his glance served him correctly, muggle jeans. He tried not to stare down the V of her sweater, but with her leaning over the desk just so, he could see an alluring amount of cleavage as he dragged his eyes back to hers.
“I’ve noticed you prefer cappuccino,” he said as he set it on her desk, willing the huskiness out of his voice as he cleared his throat and tried to stop thinking about what her chest might look like bare to him. That was never a thing he’d have the privilege of seeing. “So I picked one up for you as I was grabbing my own. And I also brought some breakfast. I don’t know your preference so there’s an assortment of bakery items.”
“You did not have to bring breakfast,” she said as she looked at him, not-so-inconspicuously pulling the cappuccino towards herself.
“Well, it’s here if you’d like anything. Enjoy the cappuccino.” He bit down the sting at her lack of appreciation, which killed any lingering fantasies that may have been forming as annoyance took its place.
“Thank you.” She said, clearing her throat.
Draco took his seat at the small desk and quietly played out a very frustrated conversation in his head about manners and niceties and gods he was trying, and didn’t she see that? He ate all of those things down, too, with a deep breath before focusing on his task as he sipped his own cappuccino and reached for a scone.
They worked in silence for half a day before Draco finished the edits on the closing speech and returned to her desk. “This should be all set. I can get started on something else if you’d like. I don’t have plans until later.”
She hesitated before shaking her head, “No, that’s alright.” She took them from him, setting them to the side, and looked back at what she was working through.
“Are you sure there’s nothing else? Or if you’d like to check in the edits I’ve just painstakingly been working through today to make sure there's nothing further on those?”
“I’ll remind you that I did not ask you to come in today, Malfoy.” She didn’t raise her eyes to his.
He could feel the frustration bubbling again, “Yes, but I came anyway. To help you, because I know your time is limited before the programs start.”
“On your own accord.”
“A little appreciation would still be nice.” It came out colder than he'd meant it too, and more snippy. It was just one brush-off too many.
She looked up this time, “Ah, there we are. Is there anything else you’d like to say?”
“I just—“ he felt a groan rumble in his throat as he swallowed it down with everything else, ”I’ve been doing everything in my arsenal to make nice these last few weeks and you’ve given me nothing. It’s infur—it’s difficult. I don’t know why you’re being so damned difficult.”
“Well first, I feel like this is the first genuine thing you’ve said to me since you walked into this office.” Draco scoffed, but she continued, “And second, I told you on day one that if I had any other choices, I’d have denied your request again. You have—surprised me with your work and work ethic, I’ll give you that. But this fakely-nice routine is just wearing on me.”
“It’s not a routine,” he said through gritted teeth. “I am trying to show you that I’ve changed. That I respect you.”
It was Hermione’s chance to scoff now. “You don’t pretend to be something you’re not to prove change, Malfoy. If you’d come in here as someone believable, perhaps I would have felt differently. But all of this ‘I appreciate the opportunity’ rubbish; the unsolicited coffee and scones; the weekend chit-chat; the pleasant smiles—I don’t buy that. That’s not Draco Malfoy; even a reformed Draco Malfoy. That’s something deceitfully constructed to appear humble and kind, which is quite the opposite of being humble and kind. It doesn’t make me believe you’re some miraculously benevolent version of yourself.”
”Well maybe I’m not, but I’m trying,” the words came out with such emphasis that silence fell between them for a moment as the impact hit. And then he continued, “Look, I may reign myself in and consider my words and presentation more carefully when I’m here, but it doesn’t change the reason I’m doing it.”
“You mean to complete the community service hours required by your parole after your year in Azkaban?” The initial sting of her tone in this conversation had abated to a degree and there was something else there now, something pushing him to explain, something that had seen what she had been looking for this whole time and now wanted more.
“No, I mean the reason I keep requesting to do those hours with your department.”
“And why do you, Malfoy? Why torment my desk with your requests after I deny them each year?”
“Because I just—Fuck—because I want to do something to give back to the people I directly impacted in the war. And in my mind, one of those people always had to be you.”
There was another static silence between them after that came out. He’d meant it. And it had been clear that he’d meant it. She couldn’t possibly think he was just saying that as a show.
“And you think this will make up for it?” She finally said.
“No.” He said defensively, “Not at all. Not even—not even close. It’s just something I can do for now. Until I think of something more that would mean anything.”
Her eyes moved between his for a moment before her voice softened for the first time, “There’s nothing you can do to change the past,” she said. “You shouldn’t feel obligated to make it up to everyone. Just—you did your time in Azkaban, Malfoy. You’re doing your community service hours. That was your sentence. Just get on with your life like we all had to. You don’t have any more debt to pay.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t agree.” He stood his ground. “If there’s more I can do, I have to. And you can think that’s just something I’m saying to sound humble—or whatever, but it’s not. That’s what I’m going to keep doing whether you believe me or not.”
They stared at each other for another minute and he couldn’t tell what she was thinking.
“If you’d like to stay, there’s the final itineraries that need to be written out cleanly and duplicated to add to the program materials. Your hand-writing is neater than mine, as I’ve learned.” She gestured to an itinerary in the corner of her desk with edits all over it.
“I can do that.” Draco picked it up as he summoned a roll of fresh parchment from the shelf along the wall and walked over to his desk and sat.
“And Malfoy,” he looked back up at her. “Just be yourself. This persona you’ve been showing me isn’t going to make me like you. I don’t need a watered down version of anyone in my life. I don’t have time for it.”
“Duly noted,” he said stiffly, turning back to the itinerary in his hand and beginning to scrawl the final details onto a fresh sheet of parchment, feeling like something had been accomplished, though he wasn’t sure exactly what.
O-o-o-o-o-o-o
He didn’t try so hard, after that. It wasn’t that he wanted her approval any less, it was just clear that being formal and polite was only coming off as contrite and insincere. He was reformed. He was a better man than he had been. He could be himself and still be those things.
He was quieter over the next week; kept his head down and completed each task that was handed to him by the team. He barely spoke to Hermione because he didn’t really know what to say. That persona was the only one he’d practiced around others. He’d always had a point to prove in the presence of those who were not his close friends. So he barely knew how to act now; uncharacteristically self-conscious that maybe his real self still somehow wouldn’t be what she wanted.
He’d endured a decent amount of what he'd experienced as pain and suffering in his life, and that was not including his one-year sentence in Azkaban. He’d survived torture and battle. He’d lost friends and family. He was not immune to the grief of war or the darkness that lingered. He’d had to suffocate through more darkness in prison in the form of a daily pummeling of depression and remorse. Something he could never really prepare for, even when he knew what was coming. So of course those things followed him, even now. But he could put it away, tucked in the back of his mind as he carefully curated the persona of someone unburdened and humbled. Calm and collected. Professional and respectable. Someone that could slip back into society and have some kind of positive impact that wouldn’t be received with disdain. It was a persona that had worked in most of the departments he’d volunteered in.
Even with the personal pain he’d endured in his life, he didn’t feel he had the privilege of outwardly coping. Of being traumatized or hurt. Of trying to figure out his place in everything and grieving over the childhood he’d lost. Because he’d been on the other side. He'd caused pain and suffering to the people who deserved to move forward from the war. He could not move forward in the same way. It wouldn’t be fair. He deserved to feel uncomfortable and to make himself the least-offensive version of himself that he could for others to bear being around. So that's what he'd always tried to do. He probably should have assumed that if anyone was going to see through the facade, it would be Hermione Granger.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o
”What’s this?” Hermione asked as Draco handed her a parchment of notes the Thursday morning before the program sessions would begin the following week.
”If you want my honest self, I’ve got some opinions on the program materials.”
Hermione’s eyes scanned the parchment as her brows furrowed. “You’ve got a lot of opinions, apparently.”
”I think it’s important to remember that although the program is preparing them for school, it isn’t school. And I think introducing some of the more technical material is going to bog them down; bore them even.”
“You think the interrelation of wizards and part-humans is boring to a muggleborn?” She asked, setting the parchment down and pointing to one of his notes on scratching out the history of goblin rebellions and part-human rights movements.
“I think the level of detail you plan to go into is… robust. It's a little overkill when you’re just trying to introduce them to the world. As I’ve suggested—” he gestured for her to move down another line on the parchment and her eyes fell to it as he continued, “I think an overview of the different magical creatures, beings and part-humans would be more interesting, and in that session you can always note that at Hogwarts they’ll learn more about the relations between magical brethren, both positive and negative throughout history as we’ve worked our way towards coexisting in the most cooperative way.” He quoted the suggestion as he'd written it.
Hermione let a long breath of air out of her nose as her eyes darted side-to-side across his suggestions. And then she grabbed a quill without looking up and started crossing out certain suggestions. He almost groaned before he saw her circle or underline other items and then nod down at the paper.
”Alright, I see your point,” she finally said. “I’ll rework the section I had planned for wizarding and part-human conflict.”
”Seemed like a good way to continue to let them be bright-eyed about the inner workings of the magical community. Maybe when they meet a goblin or a… house elf… they’ll care about their welfare as much as you did, when you were their age. They are the future of magical cooperation, after all.” His tone was light, with a hint of jest at her days slinging S.P.E.W. badges.
Hermione looked up at this, their eyes meeting as his stomach flipped like it had started to do recently. There was always something so deep; so captivating in her eyes. There was always something searching for more there. He wanted to give her more. He wanted her to see him.
”I wouldn’t have thought you’d care how a first year might look at a house elf.”
“I care enough. But I assume you care a lot,” he said simply. Her mouth opened slightly and his gaze fell to her lips. He realized, in that moment, that he didn’t think there was anything quite as hot as Hermione Granger preparing to speak.
”I do care,” she said. “Perhaps I was too focused on the content and should have stepped back to think about the message.”
”We’re a team, Granger,” he gave her a grin. “I‘ll leave you with my suggestions. Let me know if you want to debate anything else in there.” And once again, he felt her eyes on him as he returned back to his small desk on the other side of the room.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o
“So the first summer program starts on Monday,” Hermione broke him from his thoughts later that afternoon as he looked up at her. “The whole team will be participating in the operations of the program and since you are volunteering through the summer, we’ll need you there as well in an assistant capacity.”
“Sure,” he nodded.
“Do you have any questions or—anything before you’re thrown into a room of muggleborns and their muggle parents?”
“I have no issues with that,” he tensed and the words came out sharply. It’s not how he would have responded in the past, but she’d told him not to sugarcoat his personality. And that’s how he felt about the question.
“I meant, is there anything you'd like to know. I wasn’t insinuating that you wouldn’t want to be in the room.”
“Hard to tell, sometimes.” He said quietly before thinking, “I don’t have any questions. I’ve done enough studies on muggles since I left Azkaban. I’m not ignorant to their culture anymore.”
Hermione just nodded slowly, taking that in before she cleared her throat, “And obviously you’ve been through the itineraries and materials so you know what’s coming in the program. You’ll mostly be assisting with room prep for the different sessions, transporting our materials and helping people find their way from one place to another.”
”Alright.”
“Alright,” she echoed before she started to turn for her desk again.
“Granger,” he heard himself saying before he’d fully thought through his next question, “Is there a reason you didn’t tell me I’d be participating in the program until today? I’ve heard you all talking about it since I started and I’ve never been mentioned in the plan.”
She looked at him, considering his question before she squared her shoulders back to him, hands coming together in front of her as her nails clipped against each other in a pensive sort of habit. “I didn’t know if I wanted you there,” she finally said. “It would have been near-impossible to run with three of us, but I just couldn’t decide if the benefit of another assistant was worth having to see you in a room full of bright-eyed eleven-year-old muggleborns. I want them to see the best of the wizarding world. I want them to be prepared for Hogwarts in some sort of similar way that those growing up in wizarding families are prepared; I want them to have some kind of equal footing to those who grew up around magic. And I didn’t know, four weeks ago, how you would look at those kids. If they would feel that different way that purebloods look at muggleborns... I didn’t want them to feel like I did, walking into a world and realizing they were different; that they had to catch up.”
This was it. This was the moment—the opening he’d been looking for. This was the moment he could apologize like he’d been waiting and waiting to do… he opened his mouth, the words on his tongue… but they didn’t come out. This moment wasn’t for him to take from her. He wanted to apologize. It was the entire reason he was here. But he didn’t want to make this about him.
”Yes, I guess that’s fair,” he said evenly. “For the record… I wouldn’t look at them in the way you feared, but I obviously get why you’d think I would.” They looked at each other for another moment, the apology in his eyes but still not pushing its way out before he continued, “But for some reason you’ve decided to invite me anyway. Is that just because you logistically need a fourth person?”
”Yes and no.” She sighed. “Yes, we logistically need a fourth person. But I also have come to my own personal conclusion that I don’t think you’ll make these kids feel like you made me feel. I think I am starting to believe that you care to some degree. I’ve read and reread that closing speech you wrote a hundred times. And I know I gave you the notes to hit, but you still wrote it. And it came off genuinely. Like it was a real send-off for these kids into the wizarding world. And I am—really appreciative of that.”
He nodded, “It was. It’s… what I thought you’d want to say to them.” She was… appreciative. His mind was reeling as he let the words roll through his head. She believed that he cared. She appreciated that he’d written something that was a real, genuine send-off. This felt very, very good.
”Because you know me so well,” she rolled her eyes.
“I do actually feel like I know you pretty well, Granger,” he gave her a small crooked smile at this. “Maybe not all of your personal life details, but you— “ he paused for effect, “I know you.” And the scary thing was… he felt like he did. He’d been following her career for years—hoping to get this opportunity—and between their interactions in school; the close watch he kept on the Golden Trio, and her academic achievements, her actions during the war and his time spent with her in the last month, he felt like he understood Hermione Granger: her goals, her motivations, her values. He’d studied her from afar at Hogwarts, trying to understand how someone like her could best him at every subject. And he’d studied her here; read through her notes in the margins of materials and speeches she’d written—the ones that made it into final drafts and the ones that didn’t—he felt like he could write an entire thesis on Hermione Granger and the intricacies of her hyper-focused, ever-working, ever-expanding mind.
“The personal details are important to really know someone, Malfoy. And you’re right that you haven’t been given the privilege of those things. So you can’t really know me.” She was serious now, more serious than he’d thought she’d be on this particular subject.
”Alright, then give me a chance to,” he said smoothly, raising his eyebrows like a challenge.
“To what?”
”To know you.”
There was a moment where they just looked at each other again as she contemplated him and then she gave him a very small pull of her lip, which almost lifted to a smile. “Let’s just get through this program.”
He dipped his head and as she started to walk away, he quietly murmured, “That wasn’t a no,” just loud enough for her to hear. But she didn't respond. And that, too, felt like a little win.
O-o-o-o-o-o-o
“So how goes it with Granger?” Blaise asked from across the table at the back of a swanky lounge of a wizarding cocktail bar in west London on Friday night. The bar was easily missed by muggles, similar to the Leaky Cauldron, with its broken welcome sign and off-path entrance in the alley kitty-corner from a low-budget 24-hour diner.
“Better… I think,” Draco said. He still didn’t love the way his friends’ eyes twinkled every time they asked about her, but he was feeling more confident in his standing with her so it wasn’t as frustrating to talk about. “I’m figuring out how best to get through to her. I thought she’d appreciate a humbly-respectful approach from my end, but she called me out for being disingenuous. So I am trying to just… be myself. Little by little.”
“I don’t know that I’d recommend that approach, either,” Blaise grinned, covering it with his glass of firewhiskey as he took another sip.
“Fuck you, I’m not a terrible person,” the word anymore held in his throat as he cut it off with his own sip of firewhiskey.
Blaise sighed, “You’re not. But you’re also not humble; I’m not surprised she called you on it. Look—” he sighed again. Heart-to-hearts weren’t exactly a Slytherin’s comfort zone. “—you put in the work to muddle through your past and make changes. Just—just be confident in that. Granger’s too smart for you to fool her with anything else.”
“I know,” Draco conceded. “I’ve been working on it. She seems to be coming around a bit more now that I’ve cut the niceties.”
“It seems like you actually enjoy working with her; from what you’ve said.”
“Yes,” he said the word carefully. “She’s very… focused on the mission; determined to make it as beneficial as it can be for the incoming students. She really cares, you know. Makes everyone around her want to step up. She’s a good leader. I like working with people who know what they’re doing.”
“You have a lot of kind words for someone you’ve only been working with for four weeks and don’t ‘like’.”
“Well I’ve known her half my life, haven’t I? Even if it was from afar and in a blinded-by-hate sort of way in school. I still saw the things she did and why she did them. I just see it all a lot more clearly in retrospect; maybe not from her point of view, but I see her point of view and I get it all now like I didn’t then.”
“That’s a hell of an improvement from the past, Draco. Hope you know that.” And there was a sincerity in Blaise’s tone that told him it was something he truly, as his friend, wanted him to know about himself.
“Yes, it is,” he said firmly. His friends had been in his corner for years while he muddled through it all; while they all did, to some degree. But Blaise had never really leaned into any kind of allegiance to the Death Eaters, though he hadn’t sided with the Order, either. His parents were firmly out of it, as were Daphne’s, in neutral, under-the-radar territory. Blaise had almost fully cut ties with Draco seventh year for his blatant support of the Dark Lord, if not for his begrudging need as his friend to try and pull Draco back from the dark any time he got the chance to speak his mind; any time he saw Draco’s determination wavering. And he was there when Draco was ready to admit he was wrong after the war.
Theo and Pansy understood, more clearly, the pressures he’d dealt with. Their parents were loyal to the Dark Lord. Their parents wanted them to be on their side of things when it all went down. Theo was vehemently against anything his father wanted, although he’d been inundated with the same sentiments on blood purity enough in his childhood that it had retained some sort of power in his mind, even if he didn’t want to join the Death Eaters in defiance of his father. He’d shaken those blood purity notions quicker than any of them in the years after the war. He was, arguably, a better person than most of them were; annoyingly likable, social and empathetic. Made it easier for him to see other points of view, when he’d been ready to look.
Pansy inherently thought she was better than everyone else at that stage in her life, not only because the ideals of being a pureblood were hammered into her, but also because she’d always been told she was perfect; brought up as the golden child in her family and attaining near-perfect grades through school. She’d needed to do some work on herself in a similar way that Draco had. But she, too, had never fully leaned into the way of the Death Eaters. She wasn’t a violent person. She couldn’t bridge the gap between the idea that she was better—that being pureblood was better—with the idea that they should kill muggleborns. She might not have wanted to befriend them, but she also didn’t want to kill anyone and she thought the Dark Lord was mad for carrying out the pureblood ideals in this sort of fashion. Mad and terrifying. But she'd had to reconcile with the fact that she'd tried to hand Potter over to the Dark Lord before the final battle in her state of heightened fear.
“You playing quidditch on Sunday?” Blaise asked, changing the subject as he noticed Draco going into one of his momentary thought spirals from their current conversation.
“Can’t,” Draco said, pulling himself back to the present. “It’s program week so I offered to finish the last minute prep on some of the materials for Monday morning.
“Don’t you only volunteer Wednesday through Friday?”
“It’s a big week,” he shrugged as though it were no big deal, “They need all hands on deck and that is my job description. I’ll be helping all week.”
”And Sunday,” Blaise murmured.
Draco sent him a glare of a glance before responding, “Yes. And Sunday.”
“Alright,” Blaise said, that annoying smirk back on his face. “We’ll have Pucey fill in for you as seeker, then.”