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Chapter Text

SOMETHING IN HER face was different these days. The angles of her cheekbones had kept their sharp look from the year she had spent on the run, and her eyebrows remained slightly furrowed even after all this time. She didn’t bother trying to hide the scar that ran through her left eyebrow, especially since eyebrow slits had grown so popular in fashion in the past few months, but the scar on her upper lip she disguised under dark lipstick she was never seen without. And sure, there were other cosmetic choices she had made to make herself feel like a different person from the girl she had been just a few years ago, but that wasn’t it. 

It was her eyes.

Where there were once flecks of gold there was now only darkness. Flickers of light and warm chocolate brown had faded to a flat shade of what they once were. Empty. 

She reapplied her now smudged wine red shade to her lips with a practised precision. Ran through her hair, tugging up slightly at the roots to fluff out any flatness despite there not being any. Wiped the remaining white powder from under her nostril, and left the bathroom back into the thrum of bodies and the booming bass.

Back to where no one needed her. 

 ---------------------

“Jean! Where the fuck did you disappear to again last night girl, I was lookin’ everywhere for ya’.” 

She smiled, the scouse accent coming from her friend like a soft reminder she was not where she used to be. Becca was a kind girl, too skinny from the preference for Monster Energy and a cigarette over a meal but she wasn’t one to judge. Her frame had never quite recovered from the emancipated state she had arrived to Manchester in over a year before. 

“Wouldn’t you like to know.” Hermione always sounded ridiculously posh when compared to Becca, her London upbringing impossible to hide despite her attempt to rid herself of the open vowels in her accent.

“I know you’re tryin’ ta remain mysterious, like, but you ain’t fooling me girl. Did you fuck off with that blond fella that were watchin’ you from the corner?”

She didn't dare show it, but her heart may have just stopped. 

“Blond fella?”

“Come off it girl, the right fit blond fella at Off the Square. It ain’t big enough for you to not have noticed.”

Something about Becca’s words put her at ease. She didn’t actually know that many blond guys, and none of them would fall under Becca’s description of ‘right fit’.

“No, I actually went home alone- again! Why is it I can’t find a decent fuck in this stupid fucking town!” 

Becca laughed at that, seemingly decently distracted enough to miss the way her breathing had become shallow. 

“Careful saying that around here girl, you’re far too southern for that shit.”

The two girls continued their march down Oxford road, the rain soaking through Becca’s trainers as they headed back towards their shared house. 

----------------------

She often thought Leah would have gotten on well with her old friends. It made her giggle to think that friends from both sides of her life- and both with  L names- each happened to seemingly have some sort of seer blood- or in Leah’s case, just some sort of sixth sense. 

They were sitting together in the grotty living room of the house they shared in Rusholme. Student housing was never a sight to behold, but this one at least was not mouldy or full of rats. Leah, as Luna often asked to do, was absentmindedly playing with her curly hair as they watched Legally Blonde again on the small TV Tristan had moved from his room for the benefit of the rest of them. 

The house was full for once, with all 6 residents of the lovingly dubbed  ‘Chaos House’ actually within the four walls instead of out at various parties, raves or partaking in other dubious activities with varying levels of legality. Becca was enthusiastically relaying the story of the night before to Tristan and Taylor, while George was unenthusiastically cooking some sort of leftovers involving kimchi and fried chicken. Mark was upstairs avoiding the whole affair- again. 

The six of them had met at a party last September. She remembers watching Tristan, Taylor and George, all huddled together whispering about something while Becca was wandering around with a bottle of Mezcal attached to a speed pourer. She had tried her hardest to get out of even going to this particular shout, but her flat-mate Becca was already pissed enough that she had refused to go to a single freshers event or any of the course mixers with her. Of course, she was supposed to be lying low and remaining out of sight of anyone who may potentially notice her, but as she continued to drink warm tequila and watch her charismatic new friend dazzle her way through this room of newly independent first year university students, she began to think letting go of her tense shoulders a little wouldn’t hurt. No one from her past would even think to look here- the notorious bookworm and ruthless runaway at a freshers party at the University of Manchester? Not likely. 

And so she began to let go. She wandered over to the three she had watched pass a baggy of something between themselves earlier, drank heavily, kept quiet but not too quiet, and made three more friends. 

Thus began her descent into proper student life. Somewhere between the underground raves in Withington and the deeply regrettable nights at 42s, she stopped checking over her shoulder for someone she used to know. She was someone totally different now, and no one would find her here. 

“Jean! I was just saying you took a key off that girl you met at Hidden last night and then ran off somewhere, I didn’t see you after that. Your turn, spill!”

She looked up slowly, smiling as if she had something to hide.

“I went to the bathroom, necked on with her for a bit, and then the bitch called me a ‘great experiment’”

Lies. 

“No!”

“Yes she did! She said ‘she’s glad she got to try it once’ and then fucking left me high and dry in the bathroom stall.”

Lies.

“No fucking way girl, what a bitch!”

“I know! So I dipped, I was waved and ready for bed by that point anyway. That extra bump was borderline K-holey anyway so that was the joyous end to my night.”

“Urgh, boring! Anyway I decided I wanted to…”

Becca carried on with her story, explaining how she ended up staying the night with the current girlfriend of the guy she had been dating when she was sixteen, when Leah whispered in her ear. 

“Hiding from your past doesn’t mean you have to hide your present from us too.”

Fucking seers. 

--------------------------

She once again found herself staring in a bathroom mirror, documenting all the ways she differed from how she used to be. Her olive skin had mellowed with all the rain and cloud Manchester frequently found itself in. She used to hide her freckles, but now they made for a nice addition to soften her features that seemed to be hardened by her new style of makeup- all smudged eyeliner, dark shadows, glitter when she was out and dark lipstick always. She had a streak of white through the front of her dark curls- dyed with frequency by Leah. That had originated as a dare set by Becca, but she liked it so much she never bothered to change it back. 

While in the past she may have hidden her figure behind large jumpers, ill-fitting jeans and whatever shoes were most practical for running and dodging whoever was out to get her this time, the new her settled into a style that enhanced her shape instead. She was currently sporting a tight red dress covered in black lace and seamed under the bust to create a baby-doll or milkmaid look. The tattoo right at the top of her thighs just poked out from the bottom of the dress, her long legs leading down to her chunky black boots. The heart necklace she wore had been leant to her by Taylor, and the sunglasses were stolen from some bloke at this party when he tried to share his spliff. 

All this skin on show meant her tattoos were out on full display- at least nearly all of them. Her right arm was covered in swirling patterns, stars, runes and other delicate shapes of her own design. A large, delicate lily sat on her right forearm. A swirling sun design surrounded by dotted stars and runes on her right shoulder. The antlers of a stag poking out from the back of her dress below the sun. The tattoos on her hip, however, were hidden.

She had never thought of herself as pretty- it felt as if the whole of Hogwarts had seen to it that she didn’t. But as of late, she found comfort in her appearance. Her scars and tattoos told the tale of where she had been throughout her life, the story of where she came from written in thin pink lines and black inky swirls. She had let her hair grow wild and long, embracing her chaos on the outside at least. Being around the girls at university had made her appreciate the use of makeup as fun, instead of a tool for attracting suitors. She no longer hated what she saw in the mirror- perhaps because it was all new. She had created the girl in front of her. She was all her own. 

-----------------------------

Stepping out into the mess of drunken party goers in the dark hallway, she was surrounded by the smell of smoke from tobacco mixed with the sweat and heat of the full house. Someone in Fallowfield had decided that posting their address with the caption “rave time” on the university forum would be a wise idea, and so the place was packed. The feeling of the bass from the speaker ran up her legs as it permeated the walls and vibrated throughout the house. A girl had a guy pressed against the wall outside of the bathroom, the pair stumbling forward and into the neon lights and tiles as soon as she stepped out. 

Heading downstairs, maneuvering carefully into the middle of the winding bodies and open living room. She opened her mouth as a girl she knew from her philosophy class poured from a bottle with a red label. She wound her hands up the girl's body, swaying against her as she felt bodies pressed all around her. 

Places like this, she didn’t have to think. She didn’t have to exist, she could simply just be. 

Whether it was the K she and Becca had done before arriving, or the countless drinks she had consumed while at the party, something let time pass without consequence. Moving, touching, swaying in time to the rapid music. Hours later, or maybe just minutes she didn’t know, she was dragged out from the middle of the crowd by a sweaty and clearly high Leah. Leah smiled lazily up at her, kissing her straight on the mouth before continuing to lead her out of the main room towards the backdoor. 

The answer to ‘where is all the furniture’ became immediately apparent as she stepped out into the surprisingly large back garden. It was quieter out here, and her housemates (minus Mark) were all gathered on sofas in what was clearly a mock up of how the living room furniture was usually arranged on the inside of the house.

Too far away to really make out the other figures, she waved dismissively at them before turning back to Leah to see the girl had already disappeared. At least out here is cooler, she thought somewhere in the back of her mind as she headed past her friends and over to where a pile of bottles and unused cups sat in disarray on the kitchen table and chairs, now arranged carefully on the lawn. 

Once she had poured herself another drink, she headed towards where her friends were huddled together around what was usually the living room table, now sitting on the patio surrounded  by the two sofas and the armchair. White lines and small bags lay almost discarded on the table, a dirty bong and grinder sat beside them with a pack of cards and a few stray cups of liquid. Just like at home, she thought. 

“Having fun?” she semi-slurred out, her heavy eyes barely glancing at the rest of their company as she arrived to stand in front of them.

“Jeaaaaaan!” Taylor and Tristan intoned together, the friends so often in sync it was a wonder they didn’t get mistaken for siblings more often than they already did. She thought she heard someone scoff and repeat her name with a giggle, but at present focusing on more than one thing at once would make her head spin. 

“Jeany baby, we’ve made some new friends! You’re going to like them, they’re all posh twats like you girl,” Becca grinned up at her, the manic look in her eye making her nervous for all the reasons it definitely should. 

“Yes yes, George has gone off with one of them already but they’ve played ever so nice with their stash,” Taylor said, half mocking the overly sweet tone Jean had heard her use to get freebies in the past. 

“Oh good, glad you’re having fun,” she said blurrily, “have you seen Leah, she was just here and then she disappeared and I wanted to-”

She was cut off by a squeal from Becca.

“I forgot to tell you the best bit! Do you remember the fella I noticed the other day?”

“Becca, please Leah first she looked like she was about to take off-”

“Well it turns out he’s mates with our new friends-”

“And you know what she can get like when she crossfades sometimes it doesn't agree-”

“And he’s heading back over here right now! Blondie! Comere!”

“Holy shit.”

His voice rumbled through her like a shockwave. Her spine tensed, shoulders pinching in the moment she recognised his aristocratic tone. Two words, and her whole world seemed to slow. Her breath hitched, her eyes blowing wide before narrowing as she spun to face him.

White blonde fucking hair. 

He too looked different. His hair now seemed softer, slightly wavy and pushed gently out of his face rather than scraped back. He stood in a long sleeved black t-shirt and blue jeans, a pendant around his neck looking far too casual for her liking. He looked softer, older, no longer the pointy, thin boy she remembered from two years ago.

And there weren't nearly enough people around them to hide it. It was entirely too quiet outside the house, away from the dark strobing lights and booming noise of the party inside. The way they locked eyes, the fear in his or the rage in hers. The way they both stopped, as if the world around them had faded away and all that was left was each other. 

The way he seemed to cower before her.

The way she rolled her shoulders, stepping back with one leg as if about to run or fight. 

And then he opened his mouth. Her name fell from his mouth as if a prayer, a whisper to a god no longer listening. Only then did she realise she had never heard him say it before. Her first name. 

“Hermione.”

---------------------------------

Draco Abraxas Malfoy, former death eater and current most eligible bachelor of the wizarding world, was bored. 

Despite Theo’s many promises that his new muggle friend’s party was not going to be the same old drivel that Draco had become accustomed to during his year dossing about across the UK, it turns out that muggle university parties were largely all the same. Some girl was being sick in a bush, people were pinging off their heads on various powders and pills, and there were far too many strange noises coming from behind locked doors. The same bodies writhing in rooms filled with smoke, flashing lights and the same booming drum and bass remixes of boring songs. 

Draco now considered himself an expert at navigating these things. He would smile through lowered lashes at whomever looked his way, drink an obscene amount of horrible muggle whiskey mixed with coke, and then stumble his way back to whichever friend’s apartment he was crashing at. Sure, getting a hotel room would make more sense as a filthy rich pureblood, but passing out on his friend’s sofas or in their spare rooms somehow felt like a ‘fuck you’ to all the aristocratic bullshit he had been raised on. 

Theo was making out semi-enthusiastically with a muggle boy on a sofa some twat had put in the garden. Pansy was chatting to said boy’s girlfriends, racking up lines on a coffee table (also outside for some fucking reason). 

Fuck, he was bored.

He would give anything for a bit of excitement right now. Someone to do something unexpected and thrilling, something for his twat friends to laugh about tomorrow as they nurse their hangovers with potions and greasy food their parents would turn a nose up at. 

It had been 2 years since his trial, a year since his house arrest ended and Draco had been trying to find a thrill for that long. Something about living on edge with a murderous megalomaniac running a cult out of his ancestral home meant peace felt wrong. He felt as if he was doing something wrong by relaxing, looking to fill the void left from finally not running off of fear for his and his parents’ lives. 

Maybe that’s why he entered the muggle world in the first place. At first it was a rush, mingling with people his parents despised. After a while though, the thrill wore off and he realised that both worlds weren’t so different; both were boring. 

Partying came next, throwing himself at whatever event his friends were attending that night. It seems that most of his Slytherin housemates also wanted to escape the confines of their upbringing, either through the muggle world or the wizarding party scene. Draco had grown used to spending evenings in dark rooms with loud music and too many bodies, until that too became boring. Nothing was exciting for long, nothing made his heart race anymore. 

One of the girls Pansy had been talking to was now chatting enthusiastically to a new addition to the group on the patio. Her long dark hair was a mess of soft curls and waves, flowing over her shoulders and down to her waist. Her short dress showed off her long slender legs and her varying tattoos flowing down her arm in intricate swirls. She was holding a plastic cup, shaking her head lightly as the blonde girl sat beside Pansy emoted enthusiastically, gesturing towards Draco himself. 

And then she turned around.

There it is. The heart pounding, blood rushing in his ears. There's that feeling he had been chasing for so long and god it felt good. 

He thought he was going to be sick. 

He thinks he spoke, an admission of shock he usually did so well to hide. 

He couldn’t help it, his breathing had stopped and eyes were blown wide. Hers were narrowed, murderous as she took him in. Fuck.

Her name tumbled from his lips involuntarily, a prayer to the night that she might not stop looking at him like that.

“Hermione?”

----------------------------

However long they stood staring at each other he didn't know. He remembers Blaise bursting out into laughter, shouting about how Draco had finally gone mad. He remembers Granger’s friend looking at him like he truly had lost his mind, trying to get Granger’s attention to no avail. It wasn’t until she had turned heel and sprinted back into the house of drunken university students and tagalongs that he realised that was the first time he had ever called her by her given name.

Fuck. 

Theo was smirking at him, looking over from the guy who had been clearly trying his absolute hardest to take Theo home. The girl Granger was talking to was yelling, asking what the fuck was going on and why her ‘best friend’ had looked like she had seen a ghost in Draco. Pansy was trying to calm her down, to no avail.

“Theo, did you know?”

Theo’s smile shifted, softening to what could only be described as pity from his oldest friend.

“Know what? What the fuck is going on, why did Jean leave?”

Jean? Now that was interesting. 

“No mate, I didn’t know.” Theo spoke the words softly, as if to placate a crying child or a scared animal. 

“Fuck.”

“I know.”

Blaise was still laughing, Pansy had now moved on to trying to get information about the redhead she had been talking to earlier. 

“That wasn’t Granger you big dolt” Blaise wheezed out, wiping tears from the corners of his eyes. 

Theo and Draco made eye contact again. This whole thing was fucking absurd. The blonde girl had run off into the house after Granger now, leaving the four snakes in the company of the redheaded girl and Theo’s apparent latest pull- not that he had seemed to do much pulling. The redheaded girl was too high to really care about what was going on, it seemed. 

“How do you know Jean?” Theo’s fella slurred out. Christ. 

“Jean?” Theo asked.

“Oh do you not know her? Seems like ya do.”

Is that how she did it? All it took was a name change and a new city?

“Oh uh, we don’t really,” Pansy cut in, finally catching on, “She just looks like somebody we used to know.”

------------------------------

Fuck Fuck Fuck.

Fucking fuck.

Fucking shit fuck.

2 fucking years. She had got away, she had made it out. No one had found her, she had sent all the letters back unanswered, ignored patronuses and pretended she didn’t miss them. Her wand was in a box under her bed at her uni-house for god's sake. She escaped.

Hermione Jean Granger had left the wizarding world following the conclusion of the second wizarding war and never looked back. She wrote a series of testimonies, packed up her flat in Diagon Alley, sold her parent’s house and disappeared without a trace. She had been meticulous, looking over her shoulder at every corner for months until she thought people had finally given up looking for her. She made it clear she didn’t want to be found. 

No one had heard from her, seen her, even had an inkling where she was for 2 fucking years.

She was meant to be a ghost, a memory left behind in the world that never wanted her, stole her teenage years and gave her no thanks for it. Even after everything she did for that world, she was just an intruder from another universe in the wizarding world’s eyes, and so she left. 

Until he fucking showed up. 

Of course it was Malfoy; who else would it fucking be. 

The pointy-faced, bigoted cunt of a death eater himself. Someone she had promised her self she would not think about again. 

She loved the life she had built for herself. Her nightmares were sparse these days, sleep coming easily from long nights spent drinking and snorting and dancing with strangers in dark rooms. She studied- that was something from her old life she couldn’t bear to push down, her swottiness. She had friends here, friends that only knew ‘Jean’, the London party girl who somehow maintains a first average and works any hour she can get to make ends meet. 

She wasn’t ready to give it up. 

The moment she had seen that git’s blonde hair, it was all over. Rage like she hadn’t felt in 2 years flooded her body, filling her veins like ice and rushing to her cheeks with heat. She was shaking, she could feel it, staring into his grey eyes as if she could make him disappear with a look. 

Someone to her left started laughing, snapping Hermione out of her daze. All her life she had been brave. A Gryffindor through and through, always courageous, never cowardly. 

She wasn’t Hermione Granger anymore. 

So she ran. 

 -----------------------------------

“Jean?” The soft voice drifted through her closed door early in the afternoon. Hermione had fled the party like a woman possessed, walking halfway back to the house before stopping to call a cab. She had curled up under her covers with a pen and paper, sketching out different ways to reverse the damage one little word could do to her carefully crafted life. 

“Jean, can I come in?” 

Taylor and Jean weren’t close like Jean and Becca or Jean and Leah were. They were friendly enough, but there was a careful distance placed between them that Hermione didn’t want to risk removing. Out of the three girls, Taylor seemed to actively dislike the way Hermione avoided talking about Jean’s past. While Leah was observant in a way that was unnatural, saying things randomly that she had no business picking up on, Taylor was observant in the typical, probing, nosey way. She noticed that Jean didn’t go home for holidays, didn’t have any friends from home that wanted to visit her unlike the rest of the house, and didn't seem to exist before moving to Manchester University. 

If Taylor was there when Draco had stupidly called out her name, she would no doubt have questions Hermione was not ready to answer. She would probe and nag until Hermione lost her mind and either relented to her questioning or had to run away again. 

“Jean?” 

Hermione sighed, weighing up her options miserably. Slowly, she dragged herself out of bed, the loss of the warmth from the duvet only seeming to amplify her anxiety. 

“Jean I just want to- oh good morning sunshine, what’s pissed you off so much this late in the day?” Taylor was grinning at her, smug glee written all over her dark features. 

“I just got up. What’s wrong?” Hermione groaned out, moving back so Taylor could bounce over and flop onto her bed. 

“So I met a girl last night,” Hermione rolled her eyes at this, “And she talked about going to an elite private school in Scotland, kids from all over the country moving there and boarding and learning unconventional lessons.”

Well shit. 

“So you shagged a posh girl? This was worth waking me up on my day off for?” 

“Well, she was friends with a fella with a very strange name, Balise or something like that,” Taylor was smiling saccharin up at her now, like the cat that got the cream, “And he was trying to interrupt us to ask about you.”

“Me?” If it weren’t for the wonderful powers of occlumency, Hermione might have dropped down right there in a panic.

“Yes, you. He seemed to be under the impression that you were called Hermione, not Jean, and you went to school with them. Pansy seemed less convinced, trying to tell this guy you just looked like Hermione and that he knew as well as anyone else that Hermione was ‘gone’, which was incredibly dark for a party but live laugh love I guess.”

Ah, double fuck. The rest of the snakes had been there too, seen the whole thing as well as her own housemates then. She was so screwed. 

“Pansy? Is that the posh girl?” Hermione kept her voice level, a faux confusion bleeding onto her face and into her tone. 

“Yes, she seemed to think that this Hermione girl died or something and her friends were covering it up which is wild but that's the aristocracy for you, anyway I-”

“You shagged a member of the aristocracy?”

This seemed to pull Taylor’s attention, her bright red cheeks and spluttering telling Hermione all she needed to know. 

“We didn’t- I didn’t- she left to chase after her blonde friend when he ran after you.”

“He chased after me? Why?”

“Well clearly he thought you were this dead girl from his school.”

Hermione’s palms were starting to sweat. This was a lot to take in all at once after all- not only did she run into the last people on earth she would expect to see at a muggle university house party in the middle of Manchester of all places, but the wizarding world presumed her dead or something similar. She supposed, if she were to be in their position, at some point the goodbye letters and the lack of items taken with her could suggest a dark ending for the golden girl at her own hand. However, she never meant to make her friends think she was dead. Did they grieve her? Did they spend days with raw throats and dry eyes from crying themselves dry, as she did when she first moved to the rainy city? 

Did they still? 

Hermione had to purposefully draw her attention back to the conversation at hand. Taylor had gotten herself sidetracked, going on about how Pansy  was the prettiest girl she’d ever seen but she seemed to maybe have a mean streak she wasn’t sure she liked. 

“So then I said something about you not really sounding like this Hermione girl- apparently she was a right prudish swot- and then Pansy started laughing saying something about ‘thank god I couldn’t sleep with anyone friends with that brown-noser’ which just didn’t really sit right with me- like the girl is dead or something there’s no need to speak like that- but then Pansy also seemed more uncomfortable than before so maybe it was just a defence mechanism? I don’t know it was all very weird vibes, but she’s going to come here later and we’re-”

“She’s coming here?” Hermione sat up in her office chair, having slumped down over the course of Taylor’s rant. 

Taylor gave Hermione a strange look, eyes narrowing as she took in Hermione’s now blatantly panicked expression. 

“Uh, yeah we’re pre the Off the Square event together, she said she’s never been since she just moved to the area with her friend- the brunette bloke Tristan was busy with.”

Hermione needed to get out of the building immediately. The walls seemed to be crumbling around her, and for the first time in months she felt her magic itching to cast wards or at least hold her wand again. Buried in a box full of things from her old life under her bed, she hadn’t touched it since at least May. 

“Oh, shit yeah I forgot about that. How hard do you think Becca would kick my ass if I skipped that tonight?” There was no way Hermione could go, not knowing that at least Pansy fucking Parkinson was going to be there, likely at least Theo or Blaise as well. 

“What?! You can’t bail Becca is desperate for us to have a full house night out, we haven’t had one since we all moved in here. Even Mark is coming!” 

“I know but-”

“No buts, you have to be there. You’re not getting out of this, Jean. You’re coming, end of.”

There has to be a solution for this. She could try casting glamours, but that would stop her muggle friends from seeing her there too. Pansy seemed unsure it was even her anyway, and she did look fairly different. Maybe if she wore something outrageously slutty and covered her face with some stupid sunglasses, they’d all be too pissed to notice it was her anyway? She could bob in, make an appearance with her friends and then ditch the moment she got the chance. 

Oh this was going to go horribly. 

“Fine, but I’m pre-ing at Clarissa’s.”

Taylor squealed, launching into an explanation of how she was going to show the aristocrats how to play rage cage, while Hermione swallowed back bile. 

Chapter Text

“I’M TELLING YOU, it was Granger!” Draco ground out from where he lay sprawled across the leather sofa in Theo’s penthouse apartment. He was fiddling with his wand, this conversation having gone on for what felt like hours already as his friends debated what apparently only he saw. 

“No, no, no, Harry said she was dead,” Theo repeated as he passed through the room, running in and out of different doors as he looked for various cups and bottles to get ready for another night on the piss. 

“It was in the Prophet,” Pansy added, “and since when is it Harry?”

Theo flipped her the middle finger as he darted back out of the door that led to the spare bedroom. Blaise laughed loudly as he did so, throwing more pistachios in his mouth as his smile opened his mouth. 

“Regardless of what Saint Potter and the weasels say, it was fucking her, I’m telling you!”

“It was not, Granger wouldn’t be caught dead in a dress like that in this life or any other. Her hair was different, and there's no way Granger got away with hiding those legs even if only Gryffindor was seeing them. Everyone and their dad would have been after her.”

“She did manage to bag Krum for the Yule ball,” Blaise interjected.

“Only because he was a nonce.” Pansy dismissed Blaise with a wave of her hand, “Victor Krum being into little girls doesn’t mean anything, did you see the girl he’s shacked up with now? The only thing she has in common with Granger is that she’s far too young for the creep.”

“Total DiCaprio.” Theo yelled from the bathroom. 

“Who?” Blaise responded, ignoring Pansy completely.

“Shut up about Krum for a minute, yeah? I’m telling you, that was Granger.” Draco was not going to be persuaded otherwise. He was the only one who saw her properly, the others rolling too hard to give her a second glance. He was the only one that saw the fire in her eyes, the burning hatred as she recognised who he was. It was her, it had to be. 

“Well I guess I’ll see in an hour won’t I?” Pansy huffed, flopping back onto the sofa in defeat.

“Huh?”

“I’m going to drink with Taylor before we go to this thing tonight. I can see if you guys can come too?”

“Yes!”

“Absolutely not!”

Blaise and Draco glared at each other, waiting to see who would break first. 

“I’m not going to a grotty uni house!” Draco hissed out.

“If Pansy ‘the snob’ Parkinson can go, so can you and I. She might be there!”

“You don’t even believe it’s her!”

“I don’t care if it is or isn’t her, she is hot!”

“You didn’t see her face! If you did, you would know it was Granger!”

“Look we can go, you can test for wards and magic use on the house to know if it is her or not, and then when you find out that there’s no residual magic in or around the house because it is NOT Granger, we can go to a bar and wait for the others to get bored of their silly drinking games. Next up, who the fuck is Taylor and why does she know this fake Granger?” Blaise whirled on Pansy before Draco even got the chance to point out how useless of a journey it would be to leave the centre of town only to have to travel back into town for the event. 

Pansy was blushing. 

“Oh, she’s just a girl I met last night. She lives with Jean- that’s fake Granger’s actual name by the way.”

“Oh my god, is Pansy interested in a muggle girl? I don’t know which part I’m more surprised by!” Blaise looked beyond smug at what to him was a revelation. 

“Oh come off it she was shagging Daphne all of sixth year,” Draco said, returning to messing with his wand as he waited for Theo to finish pissing about and sort their drinks. Blaise started sputtering at Pansy who just looked uncomfortable at Draco’s offhanded reference to something she thought was still a secret. 

“I thought she was shagging you in sixth year!” Blaise finally managed to wheeze out between manic giggles and confused splutters. Draco started just laughing at that, while Pansy went from uncomfortable to disgusted. 

“God no,” the dark haired girl said, “Draco was always off doing his dark shit in sixth year, far too depressing for me. At the time I thought he was having a torrid love affair or something, turns out he was just… yano?”

The mood went sombre in an instant. The war had ended over two years ago, and the friends had been reunited for just as long, and yet they never could manage to face the elephant in the room. What each of them had done to survive, to try to remain in their places in society as the horrors reigned on around them. Draco never spoke about his part in the war, and they still only had a faint image of what happened to him following that summer before sixth year. Draco had stilled significantly, barely daring to breathe.

A dead bird. A tiny dead bird. His mother was going to die, a dead bird. The apple had a bite in it, but the dead bird. It was so small, the dead bird, the dead bird, the dead bird, the dead bird, the dead bird, the dead bird, the dead bird, the dead bird, the dead bird, the dead bird, the dead bird, the dead bird, the dead bir-

“Who wants what?” Theo burst into the room, cluelessly breaking the silence as he held aloft bottles of whiskey and tequila. 

-----------------------------

“This is ridiculous, Zabini.” Draco was in dark jeans and a white t-shirt, a black bomber that probably cost more than each tenant's rent slung over his shoulders. A dark metal pendant hung from a chain on his neck, the Malfoy signet ring and two others gifted to him in recent months decorating his hands. He knew he may still look overdressed for the muggle party scene, but his mother might have a heart attack if she were to see him like this. 

Far too much whiskey in too short of a period lead to Pansy insisting that the boys all join her and Taylor at the house in Rusholme, the lot of them carefully apparating into alleyways close enough that they did not have to travel far but far enough away that they still had to walk to arrive at their destination. Pansy was wearing a short dress and stilettos, despite Theo’s insistence that she would be better in literally anything else.

Her dark bob styled to be slightly messier and wavier than the usual severe look she went for, Pansy strode up to the front door of the house and knocked loudly. There was already music and shouting emanating from inside the place, but the door swung open with such immediacy that Pansy jumped back in shock. 

“Taylor, come get ya girl!” The blonde who stood before them screamed up the stairs behind her as she rested slightly against the door, “Come in guys, come in, welcome to Chaos House!”

“Chaos house?” Pansy was shrugging her blazer off gingerly and looking around for somewhere to put the designer piece of clothing. 

“Jean’s idea of a joke, she started calling it that when we were still looking for places to live last year. Says she hadn’t lived anywhere so busy since she was in sixth form staying with the family of her best friend, something about a big family. Says every proper house needs a name, posh cunt.” The blonde was scouse, the speed of her words almost hitting Pansy in the face as they rushed out. 

Draco shared a look with Theo, who shook his head. 

“Anyway, come in, come in, we’re playing rage cage, you'll love it, high stakes lots of fun.” 

All three boys looked at Pansy in alarm, but she was already being led through a door at the end of the entry hall. Her jacket had been discarded by the blonde over the bannister of the stairs, much to the brunette’s dismay. 

“Sorry, where’s your bathroom?” Draco called out, fiddling with his wand where it sat in its holster inside his jacket.

“Up the stairs, take a left. All the rooms have names on them, it’s the one without!” the girl yelled back at him. As he turned to head up the stairs of the tiny house, Blaise grabbed his arm and whispered furiously at him. 

“Right now? Seriously?”

“I have to know.”

“Why is this so important to you?”

“Blaise, just drop it.” Theo lifted his hands up to try and get Blaise’s attention, to no avail. 

“I just need to know.”

The two men stared each other down for a few seconds, before Blaise eventually gave in and stepped away towards the door the blonde and Pansy had disappeared through. 

“Draco…” Theo looked pitying again. Running a frustrated hand through his pale hair, Draco clenched his jaw as he waited for him to say something else, but nothing came. 

“I just need to know.”

Theo nodded softly, his warm brown eyes staring up into Draco’s icy ones. He smiled softly, the kind of smile you give to someone you know you can’t help, and then followed Blaise through the door. 

Slipping up the stairs, Draco paused as he was faced with four different doors. Three of the doors had names on them; the leftmost one had ‘George’, the one closest to the stairs on the right decorated with a glittery pink ‘Becca’. And then there was the one at the back, almost tucked away between ‘Becca’ and what Draco presumed to be the toilet. 

‘Jean’.

It only took 2 strides for Draco to have his hand on the toilet door. He was turning the handle, ready to quickly perform the spells he needed too and get the fuck out of her, when he paused. His heart was pounding, his mouth dry with anticipation. If there were wards on this house, he had found Hermione Granger. He would no longer face the ire of the magical community if he returned their golden girl to them- he would be the hero that brought one third of the trio of saviours back to Wizarding Britain. 

Except, the thought hardley crossed his mind before he dismissed it. He didn’t want to return to that world or win back their favour, there was no point in even trying when he knew all anyone would see him as, was a death eater or a spoiled socialite. He just needed to know.

Without thinking, he dropped the handle of the bathroom, whispering a soft ‘alohomora’ with the wand he barely registered slipping out of its place at his side. He darted into the room, silently closing the door behind him.

After taking a moment to regain control of his breathing, he finally allowed himself to look around the room he was in. ‘Jean’ was not as neat as he was expecting her to be. There were a few items of clothes strewed across the office chair pulled out from the desk in the far left corner. The desk itself was full, notes and cans of some sort of bright drink littering the thing. There were fairy lights strung haphazardly all over the ceiling, and a few pictures of the residents of the house posted on the wall next to the metal shelving unit filled with books, bottles of booze and what was clearly meant to be an artsy attempt at a hidden bong. The bed looked soft, covered in pillows and blankets and slightly unmade, as if it was made in a rush with little care. 

This was not the room of Hermione Granger. 

Everyone knew how uptight Granger was, how she stuck to the rules as if it gave her meaning in life. Her desk was always organised to the point of insanity, quills lined against the edge near the inkwell in the exact same manner every lesson. She was wound up tight like a spring ready to explode, and this just looked like the room of an average uni student. 

Contrary to popular belief, Draco’s fascination with Hermione Granger did not start in Hogwarts, back when he was brainwashed and still entrenched in blood supremacy and death eater ideology. As the war raged on, his belief system crumbled until he could recognise he had been dragged into a cult by his own family. In times he was not monitored, he read and learnt and observed muggles in London with the intent of comforting himself with proof his parents had been right; instead he was faced with the ugly truth that everything he had been taught about his supremacy by virtue of his ‘clean’ blood was a lie. 

And then, during the battle of Hogwarts, he watched Hermione fucking Granger’s too thin frame descend on the fight like some sort of mythical thing. She was completely ruthless, her long hair a halo of tangled curls as she fought her way fearlessly through the raging battle. Something inside him was clearly broken, since watching his school nemesis take a dagger that had been strapped to her thigh and stab it through the neck of someone who had been torturing a fellow student in the courtyard in which he once threw taunts at her in had awoken something desperate inside him. That was the moment he saw her for what he now knew her to be- magnificent. 

He followed her from afar from that point on. He watched as she gave interviews, seeming more and more separated from the Weasleys and leaning more into Harry’s side until he too seemed to move away from her. 

And then she disappeared. And that desperation transformed into despair, a need to find her and a want to get away from it all, to avoid facing what was becoming more and more likely to be the truth; Hermione Granger had killed herself after everything his family had put her through. He blamed himself, of course; it was the obvious thing to do, wallowing in self pity that he was at least partially responsible for the death of who he now knew to be the greatest witch of his age. Pansy, as she was packing to run away with him, called him pathetic for it. She probably wasn’t wrong, and yet that lingering self-hatred sparked this impossible need to prove Hermione was here, she was alive and she was here and she was just hiding and it wasn’t his fault. 

Taking a deep breath, Draco began casting. 

And there was nothing. 

No wards, no residual magic, nothing. No spells had ever been cast, potions been brewed, divination attempted, nothing. Jean was a muggle.

It wasn’t her.

Chapter Text

HERMIONE GRANGER WAS not a drinker. She had a glass of wine with dinner every once and a while with her parents, a couple of butterbeers at parties in the common room, but she never let anyone see her get drunk- aside from the night Ron had left them on the hunt.

Jean Gallager, however, was a drinker. 

She could shoot back tequila slammers like it was her job to do so. She seemed to rarely be graced with a hangover, hardly ever drinking to the point of sickness, but she would drink anyone under the table given half the chance to. Not to mention all the other ways Jean inebriated herself that Hermione Granger would have found appalling.

So, when at 1am she found herself in the middle of a bouncing crowd, her head buzzing with the familiar feeling of the hit of whatever it was Clarissa had given her in the bathroom, she was more comfortable than she had been since she ran into her old classmates the night before. The whole thing had left her mind with the booming music and sweaty bodies pressed against her. 

Clarissa was a girl from one of her classes at university. She was tall and willowy, always slightly dishevelled in a way that made it look as if she knew something the rest of the world didn’t. She had long dark hair, pin straight and almost inky with the box dye she religiously used on it. Jean was not nearly as close with Clarissa as she was with her housemates, but they got along well and Clarissa was an easy addition to the group whenever they wanted to change the dynamics slightly. She also was not at the party last night, nor did she invite the exact people Hermione was trying to avoid round to pre-drink at her flat, so she was the automatic choice for tonight’s festivities. 

Plus she always had something fun in her bra. 

Hermione was pleasantly numb, tingling slightly as the booze and drugs swam through her system and worked out the knots of stress she had on her soul from the night before. The dark lights were permeated every so often with flashes of vibrant colours, purples, blues and greens dancing across her closed eyes and sending her to another place entirely. 

Hermione reckoned if she had been in this room sober, she would have been sent straight into some sort of panic attack. Instead, she was in heaven.

Someone had their hands on her hips now, kissing the back of her neck with kisses too soft and at too straight of an angle to be a man. Slowly turning her head, she blinked through her dark, long lashes to see Becca, grinning dopily as she too drunkenly swayed to the music. Hermione turned fully, running her hands through Becca’s hair and grinding her hips up against the blonde girl’s. She saw a flash of ginger as Taylor grinned at her before turning away. 

Jean and Becca were closer than close. More than once they had drunkenly fallen into bed together, friendly casual touches turning heated under the influence of the club lights and the booze in their system. The first time it had happened Hermione had panicked. In her mind, Becca was already a risk to her identity as Jean, someone who had already become too close and started to ask questions every now and then. To her, this could either ruin the first friendship she had in her new life, or lead to more questions than Hermione was willing to answer. Not to mention it was the first time she had ever even considered she might not only fancy rolling around with men- not that she had much experience in that department either. 

Instead, they both decided to act as if nothing had changed. As if they didn’t know the curves and concaves of each other’s bodies, the breaths and moans they made when the other touched and licked and sucked them. 

Now it only happened occasionally- but Becca was still likely to find Jean on nights where she didn’t want to seek a body out for herself. 

Becca’s hands were moving up her side now, her mouth once again pressed against the junction between Hermione’s neck and shoulder. They moved slowly together in time to the music, bodies around them adding heat to what was already warming Hermione’s body. 

Then she saw him. His blue eyes piercing into her soul as she moaned softly at Becca’s action, the noise slipping from barely parted lips and stunted by the gasp she let out from meeting his gaze.

Draco Malfoy was here again, watching her muggle best friend leave small marks on her neck in the middle of a muggle club. 

She had forgotten her friends were drinking with the Slytherins tonight, completely unaware of who they were to Jean. She had allowed herself to get sloppy again, two years of hearing not a single peep from her old life allowing her to slip into a state of false security. 

Somewhere in the back of her mind, a gruff voice grunted out “constant vigilance!”.

She wanted to run again. She wanted to escape before he realised it really was her, before he could grab her and steal her away back to the world she tried so hard to escape. But she had already ran once, and today she was having far too much fun watching his cowardly little face stare at her as if she was a ghost or a feral dog about to pounce. 

She smirked at him, a grin even the slimy git himself would be proud of, sliding a hand up into Becca’s hair and angling her face so she could capture the blonde girl’s mouth with her own. She maintained that eye contact, watching as a flush began to bloom on his alabaster cheeks, opening her mouth to allow Becca’s tongue inside. It didn’t last long, Becca pulled away and drew Hermione’s attention away from the tall boy. 

“I’m getting a drink, you coming?”

Hermione shook her head, instead nodding towards the smoking exit. Becca smiled up at her, remnants of Jean’s lipstick blushing her lips, before disappearing towards the bar. 

Hermione had to get the fuck out of here. 

Stepping out into the smoker’s area, Hermione relished the nip of cold air against her exposed skin. She had opted for a silky slip dress today, the blush purple fabric plunging deep on her chest and the slit on the side almost reaching the junction of her thigh and hip on the right side. The dress was short, the tattooed words across her thigh displayed by the slit and the slinky fabric clinging to her curves, shimmering slightly as she moved. Her heavy boots and layers of jewellery felt like armour, covering her with metal and leather even if it was all just decorative. The smudges of dark eyeliner and glitter across her eye lids looked messy, as if she had just been pressed up against a wall somewhere and thoroughly ruined by someone in the best way possible. 

She pulled out her pack of cigs and the bejeweled lighter Becca had gifted her for her birthday a few weeks earlier, breathing out heavily into the night air as people around her chatted loudly.

“Granger.”

The sound of the deep voice made her drop the cigarette straight from her mouth. She spun around, glaring up at the pale, tall body she was faced with as she did. 

“Who are you?” She tried, knowing it was far too late for that but not willing to take this lying down either.

“Cut the shit, I know who you are.”

Now that was more fun. A little fire from the king of ice himself. Hermione wanted to laugh as she thought that, but even her wankered brain managed to keep that to herself. 

“No, you don’t. I’m leaving, tell Becca I’m going to see our old friend.”

Without giving him a moment to respond, Hermione dashed out of the roped off section of the pavement and darted down an alleyway to her left, cutting through the northern quarter like a bat out of hell. 

Catching a bus out of the city centre didn’t take long, and her breathing began to finally even out as she realised that Draco was not on the bus with her- it seemed that he did not follow her at all. As she wandered through the streets between the bus stop and her house, she prepared herself to face an interrogation tomorrow. Surely, there was no way the group of wizards and the witch hadn’t told her friends that she wasn’t who she said she was. There was no way she would be able to stay much longer here, but maybe if she did enough damage control she would be able to leave for a new city without hurting the people she had grown to love here too badly. She would need to find a new job though, and that was going to suck. 

Stepping into her house, something was off. The place was dark, plastic cups and ping pong balls littering the place as the clear remnants of drinking games her friends had played prior to heading into town. The air was still, but there was something different that hummed through Hermione’s blood and caused the ends of her hair to spark slightly. She moved silently through the house, slipping weapons out of hiding places and grabbing a spare wand she had hidden in the living room, just in case. 

She hadn’t cast a single spell for months, but she knew someone was here. She felt it, felt their magic wash over her as she stepped towards the stairs leading to her bedroom. It was like a drug, filling her senses in a way she didn’t even realise she missed. 

She readied herself for an attack, standing outside her own bedroom door. The name label Leah had made them all was staring at her mockingly, the name she chose for herself that was now all going to have to go away. 

She stepped toward the door, wand in one hand, dagger in another. 

Slowly, so slowly, she waved her wand ever so slightly, the door creaking as it drifted open. 

Immediately she sent a silent disarming spell towards the shape sitting in her chair, followed rapidly by an incarcerous. The noise of indignation seemed involuntary from the figure now bound to her wheely office chair, the light still obscuring his face. She flicked the switch, not surprised to see the blonde grinning up at her with a hint of mischief in his eyes she had never seen before. 

“Hello, Granger. Long time no see.”

-------------------------------

Draco Malfoy was tied up in her bedroom. Draco fucking Malfoy, sole heir to the houses Malfoy and Black, Slytherin prince of the pureblood brood, was tied up in her bedroom, in her muggle university house. 

The universe really loved fucking with her, didn’t it. 

Having thrown up strong silencing charms and anti-apparition wards, she was now sitting on her bed, staring at the grinning blonde. He was not able to talk to her, but he was still able to get across exactly what he thought about the whole situation without using words.

“I’m going to lift the silencing spell, and you’re going to answer my questions, understand? I won’t tolerate you fucking around with me, and I won’t let you go until I know my future here is safe.”

Malfoy seemed to falter at this, the grin dropping slightly as he nodded, waiting for the spell to be removed. She eyed him a small moment longer, already questioning her decision to not just obliviate the oaf and send him on his merry way, back to his charmed life of money and affluence over the wizarding world. 

“What a dirty mouth you have these days Granger. Say, did the drugs or the swearing come first?”

She shot up from her bed at this, a dagger now resting on the man’s sternum. 

“I’m not taking shit from a fucking socialite, Malfoy. Are you fucking high?” The adrenaline had dulled the buzz Hermione had got from Clarissa, but Malfoy seemed to still be floating somewhere not quite on this earth. 

“Are you fucking Becca?”

“I’m asking the questions here. Who knows about me?”

Malfoy was grinning up at her again now, seeming quite comfortable with the knife pressing into his body. 

“The others know I think you’re you. I don’t think they believe me though, none of them have gotten a good look at you and this house had no residual magic or warding so they figured you were just a doppelganger. They think I’m mental, but I was right.”

His words did little to calm the fire inside of Hermione.

“And the wizarding world? Does anyone back home know you found me? How did you find me?”

Malfoy started to snicker then, clearly not in his right mind, his pupils blown wide and his smile almost manic. 

“I only talk to those fucks that were in this house earlier. Do you know that Pansy likes to lick cunt too, just like you? Fuck if that wasn’t the hot-”

A knock on the door cut him off, both of their heads shooting towards the sound.

“Shit shit shit shit shit, Malfoy, get into my bed.”

“What??”
“Get into my bed right fucking now, you’re not going anywhere, we aren’t finished with this conversation.”

“I don’t-” She cut him off with another silencing charm, undoing his bindings and yanking him towards her. She tugged him onto her bed, rebinding his hands together to her bedpost before dropping the locking charm on the door and the muffling charm. Climbing onto Malfoys lap, she pleaded with him to go along with this silently as she called out, “who is it?”

Malfoy nodded slightly, a glaze coming over his eyes as he stared at where her thighs lay on either side of his body.

Before anything else could pass between them, Hermione dropped her wand down onto the bed hidden by her leg, right as Becca flung the door open, completely naked. 

“Oh my god!” Hermione cried out, while Malfoy’s mouth dropped open and eyes bugged nearly out of his head. Becca seemed unfazed. 

“Well, I can see you’re busy, Jeanie-baby. Unless you want to-”

“Nope! No no, we’re good here thanks Becca,” Hermione was blushing aggressively, while Malfoy seemed intent on finding anything other than Becca or Hermione to look at. 

“Right you are, have fun you slag!” Becca flounced out of the doorway, her perk arse swaying slightly as she headed to her own room. Hermione immediately threw the wards back up, jumping off of Malfoy the moment she got the chance.

“Not. A. Word.” She hissed at the blushing boy, who began to grin dopily up at her again as she lifted the silencing charm once again. 

“Just thought your girlfriend would be more upset, seeing her girl on top of another person- a man at that!”

“She’s not my girlfriend.”

“Just a fuckbuddy then, yeah Granger?”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“No.”

Even as he said it, Hermione could see Draco’s eyes starting to droop. He was high when he broke into her room, and now he was falling asleep in her bed despite being literally tied to the bed. Which trickster god decided to fuck with her today.

“Malfoy, you can’t stay here, and I’m not done talking to you.”

“They looked for you, at first yano.”

“What?”

“Oh yeah, monitoring loads of places, even Olivanders. leaving notices in the Prophet, all sorts.”

“Olivanders?”

“You left your wand behind. Eventually they took your goodbyes to mean you’d chucked yourself off a bridge or something- dark I know. The Weasley twin, the funny one, he was the only one who kept putting notices in the Prophet, but Theo seems to think Potter still holds out hope.”

“There are wand shops other than Olivanders.”

“Clearly.” Draco indicated with his head at the wand clutched in her hand. He was staring at her as if in awe now, a man possessed. “You did it. You got out.”

With that final comment sitting heavy on Hermione’s soul, the tall man seemed to drop to sleep in her bed. Hermione was at a total loss- that was far too much information and yet none of it was helpful at all. George Weasley still looked for her- Ron gave up? Theodore Nott was friends with Harry? They truly thought she had killed herself?

Ignoring his final words, the way they scratched at a part of her brain she wasn’t ready to address, Hermione adjusted Draco’s binding so he could sleep more comfortably, before curling up in the large chair across from him. She doesn’t know how long she sat there, staring at a person that represented all she left behind when she ran away. The sky had begun to soften, birds singing softly somewhere beyond the street she lived on, by the time she gently dropped off into an uneasy sleep.

Chapter Text

DRACO WOKE WITH a stiff groan. His neck and shoulders were aching, arched above his head at a slightly awkward angle, and the bed he lay in was too warm. Slowly opening his eyes, wincing as the bright lights of midmorning hit him, he took a moment to adjust before trying to look around. He couldn’t move his arms, something soft holding them into position against the bed frame. The room he was in was small, but it was light and soft, a warmth emanating from it that Theo couldn’t achieve in his penthouse if he tried. Had he gone home with someone last night?

Slowly, a person came into his view. She was small, curled up on an office chair in an almost foetal position, her long curly hair fanning out across her face and shoulders, obscuring her identity.
Long curly hair, almost like…

“Granger! Let me go!” 

The figure startled, reaching for a knife she had lay on the desk and looking around wildly like a frightened animal. Her gaze finally landed on him, confusion gracing her features for a mere moment before she slowly smirked at him, settling back into the chair in a lazy position and beginning to fiddle with the knife between her fingers. 

“Now, why would I do that?” She wasn’t even looking at him, glancing briefly at his bound hands before focusing on the cold metal against her fingertip.

“What kind of psycho ties someone up like this? Let me go, why am I here?”

“You mean you don’t remember?” 

“Remember what?”

“Breaking into my house? Accusing me of faking my own death? Becca?”

Slowly, fragments of the night before trickled through his mind. The memories were still fuzzy, as if slightly out of reach for some reason or another. He was tied to the chair first, and she had threatened him with the knife she currently was toying with. Her friend had come in, completely naked, and Granger had lay on top of him, her soft thighs barely grazing the sides of his own body as she moved over him as if they were lovers, not enemies. 

“Shit, Granger I’m so-”

“Save it you fucking junkie. Does anyone know I’m here?”

Draco shook his head, his own mortification at breaking into Granger’s home while off his face on whatever it was he was given by Taylor causing his throat to go dry.

“Good. Is it going to stay that way?”

“Why?”

“The fuck do you mean why? Does it seem like I want to be found?” 

Seeing her in the daylight, Draco could finally see her properly- see the changes the past two years had graced her with. The last time he had seen Hermione Granger, she had been practically skin and bones, her hair frizzy and wild as if she hadn’t brushed it in a very long time. She was covered in blood and grime from the final battle, her eyes distant and haunted as she walked past where he and his mother sat waiting to be arrested- she had barely spared him a glance. She had walked hunched over, as if making herself as small as possible would  help hid her from whatever was to come- he supposed that was a habit from years of being treated as if she was inferior, and then spending a full year being hunted by people with the same tattoo as him. 

Now, her cheeks no longer held that hollowness she used to, though they remained high and defined, giving her face an air of elegance she had lacked in their youth. Her hair was much longer, and no longer out of control- the curls and waves flowed around her softly, a streak of bright white adorning the front pieces on either side. Her lips looked slightly smudged, the remnants of a dark rouge adorning the edges of her mouth. Makeup was smudged around her eyes, the overall effect being oddly alluring despite the dishevelled nature of the look.

And then there were her eyes. 

He never knew those eyes, not really. He dreamt about them sometimes, both before and after the war. Before the war, they were different shades of brown and gold as he never saw them up close, despite his shame filled fantasies of watching those eyes as she came undone. After the war, the version of those eyes that he saw as he slept were black, filled with pain and betrayal as she was torn apart by his psychopathic aunt on his own drawing room floor. After so long imagining those eyes, what he wasn’t expecting was how blank they were. They were flat, dull, devoid of much emotion other than apathy. She wasn’t an occlumens as far as he was aware, but perhaps he did not know as much about her as he told himself he did. 

She was still small, but her legs seemed stronger now, her shoulders slightly wider with muscle she didn’t have before. She had a small scar on her upper lip, and one on her eyebrow too.  She looked so different, while still being the same girl he saw from across the great hall. 

“Why don’t you want to be found?”

Hermione ignored that question entirely, instead opting to swing around gently in her chair, staring at the knife in her hands. 

“Why didn’t you contact Harry, or even Skeeter?”

She seemed to be avoiding looking at him now, waiting to hear his answer with an almost disinterested look on her face- not that that was fooling him. While she might not care about Skeeter, everyone and their mothers knew Hermione would have done anything in the world for Harry Potter. She seemed ready to die for him at the drop of a hat, ready to give up her whole life for the boy who lived. The day she ran away from the wizarding world, Harry Potter had disappeared for an entire week, missing ministry functions thrown in his honour and refusing to speak to or see anybody. Months later, when Ginny Weasley threw a public fit asking the dark haired wizard to please ‘just move forward’ and to ‘move on’ like the rest of them had, everybody knew exactly who she was talking about. The wizarding world mourned the loss of so many after the battle of Hogwarts, but then they began to carry on. The shops opened, pubs began to fill back up, people moved forward. It was common knowledge, however, that Harry Potter seemed to reject the world without Hermione Granger. When he started to agree that she was in fact dead, as everyone else seemed to believe, the wizarding population of Britain seemed to sigh with relief, thinking their saviour was done mourning. But nothing changed. He seemed stuck. Even Ron managed to move on, but not Harry- and strangely enough, not George Weasley either. 

George Weasley was a mystery to Draco. He had always had a soft spot for the mischievous twins, their pranks always having an intelligence and flair to them that even Slytherin house could admire- when they weren’t the victims. He didn’t think they were particularly close with Hermione- sure, she stayed at the burrow over holidays, that was a well known fact, but in school she was rarely seen talking to them aside from berating them for whatever scheme they had last cooked up. 

But George Weasley was the only person still looking for Hermione Granger. George Weasley was the only person who seemed to believe she was still alive, still holding out hope that the golden girl hadn’t lost her mind and killed herself. 

“Or George Weasley?”

Granger’s eyes snapped to him sharply, a panicked look crossing her face as she straightened in her chair.

“What about George? Did you tell him?”

“No, Granger, I didn’t tell anyone other than my dumbass friends you were here. Can you please untie me, they’ll be wondering where I am, I'm sure.”

“Why not?”

“Why did you run away?”

“I didn’t run away!”

“Sure fucking looks like it!” 

Hermione looked wild, now sat as if she were about to pounce across the room and punch the blonde man in the face. 

“You don’t know anything, Malfoy.” Her voice was dangerously low, those blank eyes finally showing a spark of fury as she glared at him. 

“You up and left, Granger. You ran away from everything you fought so hard for, and for what? To get high at a grotty muggle clubs in a city no one knows you in?”

“You. Know. Nothing.” 

She was practically steaming. If Draco tried hard enough, he was sure he would be able to see the ends of her hair sparking.

“Fucking explain then? I’m clearly not going anywhere.” He huffed, flopping back down onto the bed he had barely noticed he was straining away from. 

“I don’t need to explain myself to you,” she practically spat. They spent a moment glaring at each other, the seconds drawing out as if an eternity had passed. Hermione looked wild; nostrils flared, eyes narrowed and sharp, leaning forward as if she were about to pounce. 

A sharp rapping at the door cut the tension like a knife, and with a rapid swish of Hermione’s wand Draco found himself freed from the oddly soft ties that were binding him to the bed. He sat up immediately, rubbing his wrists and swinging his long legs over the side of the bed to face the door. Hermione slipped her knife into a drawer on her desk, agitatedly running her hands through her hair causing the roots to fluff and reminding Draco of the slightly wilder look her curls had back at school. 

“Cover your sexy selves, I’m coming in!!”

Draco could swear he heard Hermione curse.

The girl Pansy had been with all night, Taylor, threw open the door and practically jumped into the room, almost knocking over Draco as she flopped onto the bed beside him on her back sighing happily. 

“I fucked the aristocrat!” she grinned up at Hermione, barely addressing Draco as Hermione smiled tightly down at her, “Jeanie you would not believe the things this girl can do with her tongue, she was like- oh hello Draco, you’re not who I thought was in here.”

Hermione cringed as her roommate greeted her old high school bully like an old friend. He was looking straight at her, a barely concealed smirk sending her back to fourth year as Taylor regaled them with the tales of her evening with Pansy. Draco was trying his best to find a place to find an exit, knowing he couldn’t leave without his wand but Granger couldn’t pass it to him with a muggle in the room. Hearing about his own best friend’s (and ex-girlfriend for that matter) cunnilingus technique was not his idea of a good morning. 

“So, Draco, did a biblical exploration of Jean here finally convince you she isn’t your dead lover?”

“What?”

“The fuck?” 

Hermione and Draco burst out simultaneously, both looking at the ginger girl as if she had lost her goddamn mind. 

“What?” Taylor was smirking coyly, glancing between the two in what Draco was sure she thought was an innocent manner. 

“You thought I was your ex?”

“You know that’s not what I thought.”

“Then why does she think-”

“I got a little bit obsessive there, asking about you ok?”

Hermione snorted at this, looking away with a roll of her eyes as she crossed her arms. Draco flushed, and Taylor started giggling as she continued to look between the two of them, clearly loving the drama. 

“Look,” Draco rushed to correct himself, “understandably, I got a little over excited at the idea that you were… who I thought you were. No one has seen… Hermione Granger for so long and no one truly knows what happened to y-her.”

Hermione was staring at him again, confusion written across her face. Taylor seemed slightly unsure now, the entertainment from the situation draining as Draco cringed and Hermione - Jean- seemed to become more and more uncomfortable.

“Well, with that I’m going to fuck off. Jean, I’m coming back later to discuss this.” Taylor pointed between Draco and Hermione as she stood up, grinning mischievously as she left the two wizards to figure out what the fuck just happened. 

Once she left the room, Hermione turned back to Draco with a level of amusement in her eyes Draco had never felt directed at him before. 

“Your dead lover?”

“They made their own conclusions! I never said that!”

“Your dead lover, for fucks sake Malfoy!”

“Can I please have my wand back?”

“You made my housemates believe that I was your dead lover!”

“No, I made your housemates believe that Hermione Granger was my dead lover- not on purpose! Not on purpose!”

“Oh because that is so much fucking better! Christ Malfoy how do you accidentally convince MY housemates that I was a doppelganger of your dead lover! Why do they think Hermione Granger is your dead fucking lover?”

“Can we stop saying dead lover?”

“How Malfoy!”

“It wasn’t me!”

“What the fuck does that even mean?”

“Just the others were teasing me in front of your mates about how since the party the other night I kept going on about how I thought it was well, you?”

“Fine, fine, whatever you fucking want Malfoy, why didn’t you tell anyone I was here?”

“Because!” Draco stood up, turning to face Granger as he threw his hands up exasperatedly. There was a venom laced in his tone that wasn’t there before, the sneer curling the corners of his mouth evident that he was over whatever game the two of them had been playing. “We’re not exactly welcome in the wizarding world Granger. I didn’t want to stay there anymore than you did, why would I bother going back for you.”

This was clearly not the answer Hermione was expecting. She stared at him, her eyes wide and her lips falling slightly apart as she seemed to be figuring out what to say next. It looked like her brain was moving a million miles an hour, trying to make sense of all the information she had received in the last 24 hours. Eventually she shook her head slightly, settling on something to throw back at the blonde man before her.

“You accused me of running away? You acted as if it was insane of me to want to get away from that shitshow of a culture and, and what?! You expect me to believe you and your friends are just doing the same thing?”

“Yes!”

“The fucking nerve of you Malfoy I swear to Mer-”

“You were meant to be the best of us. You’re a Gryffindor, you were meant to be brave and stay and fix things and endure the fallout Granger. We have always been nothing but cowards.” 

With that, he snatched his wand off the desk, and swept out the bedroom without looking back. 

Chapter Text

IT WAS WELL over a month before she saw any of the Slytherins again, and since the incident with Malfoy in her room she had not been able to concentrate on anything else. She drifted from place to place, classes and shifts and parties, with no real connection to the world she was living in. She felt as if she was on borrowed time, constantly glancing over her tense shoulders as she waited for the other shoe to drop. Despite holding Malfoy essentially captive in her room overnight, she was yet to suffer any real consequences; at least, not in the wizarding world. 

In the muggle world, however, Draco fucking Malfoy seemed to be all any of her housemates wanted to talk about. Becca in particular was absolutely beside herself at the whole thing- she was convinced she had ‘manifested it’, repeating that she knew it was going to happen the moment she saw Malfoy ‘eye-fucking’ her at the club the other night. Besides the fact that Jean continued to point out that seeing someone clubbing in Manchester more than once is an insane coincidence, Becca still seemed to believe that it was clearly written in the stars, asking Jean when she was next seeing the ‘blonde stallion’. 

Taylor was equally enthusiastic, but she was choosing to focus on ‘dead lover’ of it all. She took the exact opposite stance to Becca, insisting that Draco was probably a creepy stalker that was only obsessed with Jean because she looks a bit like his ex-girlfriend. Hermione was desperate to refute this claim, but that would lead to more questions about how Jean even knew that was the case and so it was just not worth trying. Hermione did try the approach of ‘well it wasn’t him following me here was it, it was Pansy following you’ but Taylor didn’t seem to care. 

The boys seemed less fussed, just seeming entertained by the idea of Becca interrupting Jean’s “shag-sesh” with Malfoy with her own attempts at seduction. 

Leah’s reaction, however, was hard to gauge. She had kept herself quiet on the whole affair, but sometimes Hermione would catch her staring as if she had just finished an elaborate puzzle and was finally seeing the whole picture. Somewhere between satisfaction and confusion, it was the face of a person who had all the answers, but the answers themselves still didn’t make sense. 

Hermione knew that it was only a matter of time before she ran into one of the purebloods again. Despite this, walking into her living room to see Pansy Parkinson with her head between Taylor’s tits on a random Tuesday afternoon still caused her to drop her mug.

“Sorry, sorry! I’m leaving!” Hermione turned on her heel to disappear up the stairs, but Taylor stopped her with a shout asking her to come back to meet Pansy properly.

“Holy fucking shit.” Pansy was completely frozen, staring up at Hermione like she was seeing a ghost; likely because to her, she was. A few seconds more passed with the long lost enemies watching each other carefully, waiting for the other to move. 

Pansy broke first. 

“So, you’re the famous Jean. I heard you had my friend quite tied up this past week.” She was sporting one of those famous Slytherin smirks as she watched Hermione carefully, waiting to see her reaction. The old Hermione may have blushed, squirmed slightly and looked away, but Jean was not the girl Pansy remembered from school. 

“Well yes, but I’m pretty sure he liked it enough. Stayed the whole night, didn’t he?”

Pansy laughed openly at this; not the cruel laugh Hermione was used to hearing directed at her from back at school, rather a hearty, melody guffaw that had Pansy lifting her chin and slightly shaking her head. 

“Oh Jean, you have no idea.”

Pansy was looking her up and down now, a pensive look crossing her face as she scanned from the curls piled on top of Hermione’s head in a messy bun, to the tattoos across her arms and chest, to the visible tattoo on her thigh in her tiny cotton bed-shorts, to the sliders on her feet. Hermione felt utterly exposed, like a fruit being examined for picking.

In turn, Hermione was taking in Pansy as she was now. Her short black hair was still bluntly cut with bangs framing her perfect eyebrows and cheekbones, but now it seemed to carry a natural wave that gave Pansy a more casual, classy look than the severe straight pointy bob she had back in sixth year. Where her upturned nose once made her look like some sort of pug, now it was more button-like on her more mature face, balanced out by the softer look of her hair and the sharpness of her cheekbones. She was still slender, her frame that of someone whose diet was designed with a body shape in mind, not taste. 

Taylor coughed awkwardly, breaking the tension building between the two old nemeses, both of them realising they’ve been staring at each other for far too long for it to be considered normal. Hermione smiled at Pansy, picking up her mug and moving through the living room into the kitchen without another word. She could hear Taylor whispering frantically to Pansy, asking what the hell had just happened, but Pansy seemed to be unable to find an answer that would satisfy the redheaded girl. Once her mug was in the dishwasher, Hermione moved swiftly back through the living room without another word, heading back up to her bedroom.

Some time later, there was a soft knocking at her door. Hermione stood slowly, preparing to face the black haired girl on the other side of the door; Taylor banged loudly on her door, Becca rapped quickly and aggressively, Leah often forgot to knock, and the boys rarely came to her room at all. 

“Did they teach you how to knock during those fancy tutoring sessions with your governess, Parkinson?”

“Fuck off Granger and let me in, Taylor has made me come up to apologise.”

“Don’t call me that here.” 

Hermione turned around and sat at her desk chair without another word, practically able to hear Pansy roll her eyes as she did so. She stared scathingly up at the dark haired girl, waiting for her to say something. Pansy was now standing beside her bed, her arms crossed and a mildly uncomfortable or irritated look on her face- Hermione wasn’t sure which. 

“None of them know who you really are then?” Pansy bit out, seemingly pissed off for some reason that she wasn’t ready to share with Hermione straight away. 

“No, they don’t. I plan to keep it that way, understood?” 

Pansy scoffed, shifting her weight from one side of her body to the other and rolling her eyes again. 

“Why leave?”

“Why stay? The thanks I got from the world that never accepted me for sacrificing my whole childhood was being told it still wasn’t enough to truly be one of them. I got sick of it, so I left.”

This did not seem good enough of an answer for Pansy. 

“You are a beloved war heroine, the brightest witch of our age, you have tons of friends and family ready to die for y-”

“No I don’t. I have Harry ready to die for me, maybe some of the Weasleys, but no family. The war took that from me, and the ministry was unwilling to help me get them back. Molly Weasley won’t say it out loud because it would upset her precious son in law, but she thinks it would have been better for me to die in the war- then I wouldn’t be causing such problems in her daughter and son’s love lives. I was only the brightest of my age because I spent so long catching up with everyone born with magic, it looked impressive from the outside. Being a war heroine means nothing when you’re just ‘impressive for a mudblood’, anyway.”

Hermione had kept her voice clinical and cold, listing facts as if merely two years ago all of these things didn’t haunt her enough to leave everything behind. She watched Pansy flinch as she said the slur that no longer means anything to her. Long nights alone in a new city had dulled the ache over time, the pain being worked through with bottles of wine and blasting music in dark rooms. The dark haired girl across from her was silent for a long time, a pained expression barely concealed behind her aristocratic manner as she cocked her head slightly to the side, thinking. Eventually, she seemed to come to some conclusion as she set her head right with a determined furrow of her brows. 

“Let’s go for a drink, Granger.”

-----------------------------------

It took a while to convince Taylor that Jean wasn’t taking Pansy somewhere to murder her, but 45 minutes later found Pansy and Hermione sitting together in a small underground bar in the centre of town, Hermione with an old fashioned and Pansy with a dirty martini. This bar was one of Hermione’s favourites in the city- it was dark, a little too warm, and the floors were sticky, but the brick walls and candles reminded her of nights sneaking to the great hall to watch the enchanted ceiling as she dreamed of a future where she felt she truly belonged somewhere. Plus the cocktails were amazing. 

They drank their first drinks quickly and in silence- and their second. By the time the bartender had poured their third, Hermione was feeling the slightly dazed-ness behind her eyes, her shoulders rolling back and her posture opening as she began to relax.

“So, start from the beginning, Granger. What made you decide to run away, really?”

“Like I said, why stay? I wasn’t wanted; revered? Yes. Needed? Maybe. But wanted? Not really. Hermione Granger was a means to an end for most people, everyone wanted something from me but they didn’t want me. I was so tired, so traumatised, so sick of living in a world I felt I didn’t belong, so I left.”

“Weren’t you and the Weasel King together?”

“No no, he didn’t trust me after the months me and Harry spent alone on the run.”

“Alone? I thought you golden trio were together the whole time?”

“Nope! The ginger bastard ran away for a few months in the middle there. Ran home to his mummy, missed 6 meals a day and being tucked into bed at night too much.”

The words slipped from her much easier after a few drinks, an unladylike snort escaping her as she recalled Ron’s tantrum in the forest. 

“He left? What a bitch.”

“Oh you have no idea! Once, in fourth year, he screamed at me for thirty minutes just because I went to the Yule Ball with Krum and not him. He only remembered I was a girl once half the school turned him down!”

“Oh I remember that! Draco couldn’t keep his eyes off you that night- if I’m honest neither could I. That year was very enlightening to me, unfortunately for my pureblood line.”

“Me? Really? I felt like a prissy princess, at least after that dressing down from Ron.”
“Oh fuck that cunt Granger, he was always a jealous bastard.”

“I loathe to think he found out about me and Fred.”

“FRED WEASLEY?!”

Hermione was smiling openly now, the drinks continuing to be delivered to their table as they chatted and chatted away. Her eyes were heavy and her head was starting to spin as the alcohol warmed her stomach and loosened her traitorous lips; Pansy seemed to be succumbing to the booze too, the blush on her cheeks incredibly flattering in the flickering candlelight. If it weren’t for Taylor, Hermione might have considered leaning in a little closer, lowering her lashes to give her face that darkened look she knew worked on so many people. Instead, she found herself merrily laughing and chatting with the girl that not hours before she was worried was going to be the downfall of her life here. 

As the night went on, it got blurrier and blurrier. Hermione remembers stumbling into some shitty club playing indie music at some point, swaying her hips with Pansy beside her and downing jagerbombs at the bar without concern for what her head was going to be like in the morning. She remembers smoking in an alleyway beside the club, sharing the cigarette with a truly sloshed Pansy who left lipstick marks on the filter and smiled widely with her teeth as she continued to talk to her. And then, she remembers nothing. 

Chapter Text

“WHAT THE FUCK?”

Draco walked into the living room only to be faced with Hermione Granger, passed out on the floor beside Pansy. Pansy was snoring slightly, and Hermione was sprawled across the carpet as if she had fallen while sitting beside the sofa and then not bothered to get back up. One of Theos ridiculously expensive bottles of wine was now empty, the bottle lay discarded near Pansy’s head. The girls both had various stamps on their hands, and there appeared to be a traffic cone poorly hidden behind the leather armchair in the corner of the dark room. 

Neither girl stirred as he exclaimed, clearly out from the count from the night before. He could have sworn the girls hated each other as early as yesterday, and yet here they were curled up beside each other as if they spent their shared youths braiding each other’s hair and not hurling insults across the great hall.

“Draco? Why are you yelling?” Theo called out from his own room, not bothering to come out and see what was going on for himself. Draco didn’t reply, still stood gaping as he tried to find the words to even explain what was going on in front of him. 

Draco had been avoiding running into Granger again at all costs since the last encounter they had. He could not have embarrassed himself more, not only breaking into her bedroom whilst high out of his mind from a pill given to him by Becca or Taylor- he didn’t remember which- but proceeding to pass out in her bed while tied up, and admitting that he too was running away from the wizarding world. He was jealous of the way she had managed to truly leave it all behind, and he was furious that she got the life he was chasing for himself with seemingly no real effort. He, Pansy, Theo and Blaise had all decided to move away from the general wizarding community after his probation was over, agreeing that it would be the best thing for all of them since most of wizarding britain now hated anyone even mildly associated with the wrong side of the war. 

However, it was not as simple as they had expected it to be. Everybody hunted them down, from their families that refused to let their heirs go to those that believed the young adults did not get punished to the extent that they should have been. However Granger had managed to avoid being seen by any paparazzi or bounty hunters yet was beyond him, and he was beyond infuriated that she was so loved and managed to leave without a trace, while he was so hated and couldn’t escape if he tried. 

“Draco?”

Theo burst into the room, yanking a t-shirt haphazardly over his lean frame. Dark golden curls stuck up in random directions as he struggled his way through the door, an expression of mild panic displayed on his features. 

“Drac- what the fuck?”

Draco looked over at Theo with equally wide eyes, shaking his head slightly as he finally closed his slightly open mouth. God forbid Granger was to wake up and catch him gaping at her like a caught fish. This week had taken years off his life as it was.

“What do we do?” Theo asked in a hushed whisper. He had his head cocked slightly to the left as he squinted over at the two barely dressed girls on his living room floor.

“I don’t fucking know!”

“Holy fucking shit is that Hermione Granger?”

Theo seemed peeved merely to have been proven wrong, the glare on his face obviously meant for Draco despite the fact it was currently directed at the drunken messes on his floor. He was chewing the inside of his cheek, eyebrows furrowed as he allowed the next moments to pass in silence, the only sounds in the room the soft purring of Pansy as she slept. Draco hadn’t come clean to his friends about what had happened all those weeks ago at Granger’s house, merely telling them he had spent the night there by accident- they made their own lewd conclusions from that and left him be. But here was the proof he was right all along, the secret he had decided to keep splayed out like chaos incarnate on an expensive rug. 

“Shit.” Theo jumped at the sound of Draco’s voice, breaking him out of the stupor the sight of Hermione Granger asleep on his living room floor had put him in. If Draco had looked closely, he would have seen the sweat starting to develop around the tanned man’s brows, the way his olive complexion pales ever so slightly and his hands had begun to very softly shake. His breathing had become slightly laboured, manual, and he was staring at Granger as if she were about to set him on fire through some ridiculous sleep powered magic.

“What the fuck are we going to do?” Theo asked again, softer this time with a panic or distress in his voice that Draco really didn’t understand. 

“Well we should start by waking the stupid fuckers up, they’ll probably need some sort of hangover breakfast and-” Draco started, but Theo cut him off.

“No, no, what the fuck are we going to do about Granger? She’s alive, she’s here and she’s alive and Harry is going to lose his mind.”

“Why the fuck are you bringing up Potter?”

Draco understood really. He knew that Theo had just found out a piece of information that could completely change the chosen wonder-boy's life for the better, and for some reason that Draco was honestly scared to ask, this mattered to Theo. Draco vaguely remembered Theo mentioning Potter by name recently too, but had been so focused on the Granger of the matter that he had completely glossed over the whole thing. He also knew that for whatever reason, both known and unknown, Hermione Granger did not want to be found. He knew that she was so desperate to not be found that she had willingly given up magic, she had left everything and everyone she knew behind and move to a completely different country with the intention of never coming back. 

And for some horrible reason, that made Draco unbelievably happy. 

The default assumption any sane person would make upon hearing that Draco Malfoy is glad that Hermione Granger left the wizarding world is that it is because he hated her based on her blood. He had spent far too long meticulously crafting the image of the perfect son for his father; a muggle hating, pureblood heir to a throne built on blood money and murder. Between the Malfoys and the Blacks, Draco knew he descended from a line filled with more murder, torture, deception and hatred than any other single wizard in the country at least. 

It wasn’t that though. When he had lay in bed the night after his stupid breaking and entering of Hermione’s bedroom, deciding whether or not he was going to reveal that he had found the saviour of the wizarding world at a drug filled lust fueled club night in Manchester, he had also concluded that the giddiness in his chest didn’t stem from the fact she was a muggle born that had left the wizarding world. It was that deep down, some horrible part of him was glad that the golden trio hadn’t come out unscathed. He was glad that the three people that were always given the right choices to make, left the war just as fucked up and ruined as he did. 

He wanted out of the wizarding world too. Witch Weekly had made it clear that they were at least willing to overlook his crimes thanks to his good looks and his sizable bank holdings, but anyone else only looked at him with disgust or hatred. He had ruined his own damn life for beliefs that weren’t truly his own, and now he was only an object or vermin. 

And so part of him was glad Hermione wanted out of that world. He wanted to keep her as his secret, a private joke that he had with himself that he alone knew what the entire wizarding world wanted to know. She was just as fucked up and broken from the war as he was, and wasn’t that just delicious. 

He should have known that it wouldn’t last, with Taylor and Pansy continuing to see each other and the invitations for the other Slytherins to join them again becoming more and more frequent as the weeks passed. He knew it was only a matter of time before this little secret he had held tight to his chest got out, and god if it didn’t kind of hurt to think about. He liked having secrets, knowing he was in a room with people that didn’t know what he did and feeling special for it. It was pathetic and childish but it was how he felt. He wanted to keep Granger to himself, no matter how dangerous of a concept that was. 

So finding her passed out in his and his friend’s shared home was certainly less than ideal. Kind of nice to be on the other side of this scenario this time around, sure, but still less than ideal. 

“I’m bringing up Potter because he is going to lose his god damned fucking mind if he finds out I know where his best friend is! I have to call him. I have to explain that it isn’t my fault-” Theo’s rambling became nonsensical quickly, mumbling under his breath as he started to switch rapidly between Italian and English in his panicked state. Draco was truly baffled- what did Theo care what Potter thought about him? 

Regardless, his pacing seemed to rouse the girls. Pansy was blinking blearily up at them from the sofa now, scowling as if they had stepped on her puppy and not just woken her up at what most people consider a reasonable time for a random Wednesday morning. Granger seemed to be stirring slightly too, makeup smeared down her cheeks from sleeping in such an odd position on the floor without properly removing it. Now she wasn’t as covered in dark eyeshadow and lipstick, Draco took notice of a few scars he didn’t know she had. Her upper lip, across her forehead and through her left eyebrow, a faint one on her neck that looked like a slash across her throat. He wondered, briefly, if she struggled to explain those to her friends without the help of glamours, but then her eyes snapped open and she shot upright, looking wildly from Pansy, to Theo, to Draco. 

She looked fucking wild. If Draco was honest, she looked fucking glorious. She was deranged, a caged wild animal suddenly ready to fight to escape. In the moments it took for her to rapidly look around and take stock of her situation, and to then push herself onto her feet and advance on the tall blonde man, she looked like something out of a fable, a wild thing that had to be believed to be seen. Draco was in awe, he knew he shouldn’t have been but he was, right up until he was slammed against the wall and a dagger was held to his throat. 

“What the fuck!”

“Granger what the hell!”

Theo and Pansy yelled out simultaneously, both suddenly standing staring at Granger with their hands spread as if they were trying to placate a panicked stray. Theo seemed more shocked, fear darting across his face as Granger focused solely on Draco, her cold blade pressed into the soft skin of his jugular. Pansy, however, seemed more angry, as if she knew this could happen but still was fuming that Granger dared to touch her friend. 

And Granger, barefoot in a tiny silk slip dress with lace around the hem, a halo of curls wild and huge framing her slender face, a mad glint in her eyes Draco could almost compare to that of Bellatrix Lestrange. She was virtually snarling, her anger more than making up for the height and strength Draco was sure he had on her.

And this is exactly what he had meant. Hermione Granger was broken. She would attack first, no questions to be answered, she was not the perfect Gryffindor princess she had appeared to be through their schooling. He wanted to play with this fire inside her, make her bend and break and let her ruin him. This split second is all it took for Draco to decide that, yes, he was glad that Hermione Granger left the wizarding world; he was much more glad he found her though. He had spent months bored out of his mind, being chased by people who couldn’t do more than heckle or beg at him.

Right now, his heart was racing. He could see the darkness in her that he sought out in clubs and drugs and ruin, she had the spark inside her that he wanted for himself. And he was going to take it, one way or another. He could ruin her, or she him, as long as she kept making him feel like this. 

He liked having her knife pressed to his throat. 

It helped she was fucking hot. 

Slowly, he raised his hands to her wrists, encircling them both as he smirked down at her. He didn’t try and move them away from himself- in fact, he seemed to be pressing the knife ever so slightly harder against the length of his throat. He felt a low groan escape from somewhere deep in his chest as he watched her irises blow wide at the gesture, his own eyes glinting back at her. 

“You.” She growled at him. 

“Me.” He was sure his grin was wolfish, perhaps he even looked as wild as the witch before him. 

Granger cocked her head, the corners of her lips turning up ever so slightly. 

“Are you going to pass out on me spontaneously again?”

“Not likely.”

“Have you told anyone?”

“Obviously not.”

“Plan on it?”

“No promises.”

With that, Hermione slammed Draco slightly into the wall before jerking back violently, swirling the dagger around her fingers lithely. He still didn’t know where she even got the blade from, as she didn’t appear to have any pockets (or if he was being honest, a bra either.) Pansy and Theo looked like they were each about to shit themselves, eyes wide as they stared at the two of them with trepidation. 

“Hello Theodore, how have you been?” Hermione broke the silence, smiling over at Theo as if the last few seconds hadn’t even happened. A dull ache from being slammed against the wall twice had bloomed across Draco’s back.

Theo looked like he was in pain.

“I’m good?” His answer was toned as a question, as if saying the wrong thing would trigger Hermione to throw a knife against his own throat. Draco was learning that his best friend was somehow on a first name basis with at least two of the golden trio- somehow he doubted he had the same relationship with Ron. 

“Good, good, how’s Harry?”

This was the wrong thing to say to the curly haired brunette. A slight whine escaped his lips, and he collapsed heavily back onto the sofa behind him, not answering the question and instead staring at the floor in misery. 

“Ah excellent,” Hermione spoke with the confidence of someone who didn’t reek of tequila, grinning around at them before focusing back on Theo, “Molly likes you as much as she likes me these days then, yes?”

Theo nodded slightly, before flopping over onto his side and mumbling incoherently. Draco felt like he was having some sort of slightly erotic, slightly terrifying fever dream; Pansy looked like she was feeling much the same way. 

“Right then you posh fucks, what’s for breakfast?”

—----------------------

Three things stood out to Draco as he watched Pansy and Hermione eating stupid fancy sourdough toast with butter and jam in his friend’s flat. Number one; he had never seen Granger anything other than stressed before. She always had a tension in her shoulders, a furrow in her brow that signalled to everyone around her that she was thinking too hard about a problem that wasn’t hers to fix: constantly. Yet here in this foreign kitchen she was hungover, dishevelled, and by all accounts should have been in an absolute tizzy about the state she was in; instead she was lounging around as if this was nothing out of the ordinary- just another Wednesday morning in the life of Jean, he supposed. 

Number two; his friends had been keeping things from him. At least Theo was hiding some sort of relationship with the fucking saviour of the wizarding world, so who even knows what everyone else was hiding from him too. Not only was Theo hiding this friendship with Harry Fucking Potter, apparently Hermione Fucking Granger knew about it despite having removed herself from the wizarding world entirely not long after the conclusion of the war. He was sure she left before his trial, but he still wasn’t entirely sure when she went. That means that this was something Theo had potentially been hiding from him for years, as long as Granger had been away. 

The final thing that stood out to him was that everyone else seemed to be on first name fucking basis with Granger. Pansy had one foot curled loosely around her fucking ankle for gods sake. Was this some sort of memo that he missed? Was Azkaban so long that all of his friends from school somehow turned around and formed close, meaningful relationships with the same girl they used to bully together at school? How the fuck has that even happened?

A giggle from across the table brought him abruptly back to reality. A head began creeping up his neck and down his ears as he made eye contact with the bushy haired girl in question, who was leaning toward Pansy enough that the brunette could whisper something in her ear. Granger was snickering, nodding as she held eye contact with Draco, who abruptly looked away and scowled. How the fuck has he got himself in a position where Pansy Parkinson was whispering and giggling about him with Hermione fucking Granger? What alternative reality has he been dropped in?

“Right then, Malfoy, we’re clearly going to be seeing slightly more of each other than I think either of us anticipated-”

“Because you’re dead.” Draco interrupted Granger’s words sharply, snapping his head back to look at the pair of girls with slightly more ire than he was used to directing at least towards Pansy. 

“Yes, yes, I’m dead, the wizarding world mourned me. Good heavens, the tragedy! I must break out my black robes and lace!” Granger pretended to swoon against Pansy with the sarcastic retort, her hand raised to her forehead as she rolled her eyes, “Will God show no mercy! Think of the children, the poor poor children!” 

Pansy was giggling uncontrollably now, patting Granger’s head and playing along by pouting dramatically across at Draco. The range of emotions Draco had felt in the last half hour were starting to make his head spin. 

“Christ woman, you were saying?”

Still snickering, Hermione sat back up and shook her hair back over her shoulder where it had fallen messily in her antics. 

“Right, ground rules. No muggles can find out who I am, no muggles can find out you know me from before the past month, no muggles can know I am not who I say I am. You cannot bring up school, the war, or anything to do with our past together. In front of everyone else, I am an awkward one night stand you know nothing about. Do you understand me?”

“Jesus, Granger, what have you told these muggles? Do they know anything at all about who you are?”
“Do they fuck,” Hermione scoffed, her face set back in the sharp, fierce look that seemed to be more akin to a resting face these days than the semi-scowel he was used to seeing grace her features. Everything about her now seemed sharper, more dangerous, more volatile. “They think I’m a normal London girl called Jean Gallager. They think I’m a weirdly private person, but that my family moved to a different country when I moved to University so that’s why I never visit them and they never visit me. I don’t have friends from school, and I don’t have any reason to go back down south. I didn't exist in their minds prior to September last year.”

“And if we do see each other, you expect me to call you…”

“Jean.”

“Right.”

“Right.”

They sat like that for an uncomfortable amount of time. Granger was staring him down, as if waiting for him to say something else; hopefully something stupid. Draco equally was looking back at her, waiting for her to break and keep talking- something she seemed awfully fond of nowadays. 

Neither broke. Pansy got up awkwardly, waving her wand and setting the dishes off to wash themselves in the sink with a neat bit of nonverbal magic she had been practising over the summer. Hermione too got up, keeping her eyes trained on Draco until she absolutely had to look away to turn towards Pansy, quietly mumbling something at her before sauntering over to the sofa where her shoes lay scattered on the floor. Theo had shifted to be sitting on the sofa, holding a steaming mug of mint tea as if it were a lifeline, staring over at the wall of nothing across from him. Draco watched as he looked up at her with wide, terrified eyes, his mouth slipping to be slightly agape before his gaze dropped down to his tea and he clapped his mouth back shut. 

Granger seemed to take some level of pity on him, telling him something that made his gaze shoot back up to her as he shook his head vehemently. Draco couldn’t make out what she was saying, as she spoke fast and soft and was on the other side of the room, but he could see Theo was now nodding slowly and looking no less troubled than before. Granger pulled on her shoes while still talking to Theo, who went back to staring at his tea. The curly haired gurl straightened then, spinning to wave dramatically over at Draco and Pansy. 

“Well, snakes, this was a pleasure. Let’s totes do it again sometime- Pansy, you’re my new drinking partner. Turrah!”

With that, she swept out of their flat. A few moments passed, the sound of the slamming front door releasing a breath sharply from Theo as he looked up at the other two, still in the kitchen area and facing him.

“So, we found the golden girl.”

Chapter Text

THE NEXT TIME Hermione saw any of the Slytherins was at a dive bar somewhere underground in the Northern Quarter, just over a week after her over-zealous night of drinking and secret spilling with Pansy. She had spent the day at work already, pumping out lattes and mochas and stupid frozen drinks that would make her mother cringe based solely on the content of sugar in the first ingredient of each alone. Her head was pounding, there was almost definitely syrup in her hair or on her arms somewhere, and she was running on free coffee from the shop and not a lot else. By the time she finished cleaning the bar and locking up the shop for the day, she knew Taylor would already be tipsy, hanging off either Becca or likely Pansy herself as she told grand tales of her wonderful childhood right there in Manchester. Becca would be interrupting, saying that Manchester was nothing compared to the great and wonderful Liverpool, and soon the two would be essentially listing off streets, gigs or bars that made their own hometown better than the others. A typical Friday night.

The new additions to tonight came in the form of Theo, Malfoy, and Pansy. Taylor had been completely thrilled, if not slightly suspicious, when Hermione came crawling home on Wednesday morning the week before, nursing a serious case of beer fear and the knowledge that Pansy’s first kiss was in fact not Draco Malfoy but one of the girls from Beauxbatons. Since then, she had been bugging the rest of the house to come out and meet the rest of them properly- not on drugs, not while already wankered, and not while nakedly trying to seduce a roommate.

Hermione still wasn’t entirely sure how she was going to pull off pretending to be a one night stand of Draco fucking Malfoy’s, so was hoping that between the tequila cocktails this particular bar specialised in and the absolute exhaustion she was running off after several days straight of ten hour closing shifts, she will be able to get away with not really interacting with the Hogwarts alumni much. 

The inside of the bar was hot and stuffy compared to the mid-November chill of the night air. A DJ was set up in the corner, playing weird mashups of popular R&B songs with indie-sleaze, which created a not super pleasant sound which only enhanced the worst parts of two genres of music Hermione admittedly enjoyed. There was a large crowd of people closer to the DJ, but the bar was pleasantly empty and her friends had found a table close enough to the stairs that lead to the door that there would be an infrequent breeze to cool them down as they drank and chatted. She had been right in regards to her guess about Taylor, who had an arm slung around Pansy’s shoulders as she gestured wildly with her hands. Becca was shaking her head viciously, wagging a finger in Taylors direction while speaking at the two boys across the table from her just as loud as Taylor. They were, however, arguing over the fact that Taylor was in fact posh by virtue of her attending a grammar school as opposed to the high school Becca had attended. Oh the irony. 

“Jean! Jean good, look you’re posh as fuck and from London, did you go to grammar or high school?” Becca pounced on the fresh blood to interrogate.

“Oh uh-” Hermione began her standard reply of ‘private, my parents are dentists’, but unfortunately Pansy jumped in first.

“Gallagher was at boarding school- like us.”

Both of her housemates turned to stare at Hermione as if she had grown two heads. Pansy almost looked apologetic.

“Oh you posh cunt!” Becca burst out laughing, but Taylor seemed confused. She looked between Pansy and Hermione, eyebrows furrowed and a slightly hurt expression on her face. Hermione coughed awkwardly, looking away and waiting for the argument to resume- it didn’t. Taylor’s sour expression brought an awkward tension to the table, as the three girls looked between each other and the floor. Becca was still laughing. 

Theo clapped his hands together loudly looking around, “Right then, now we’ve established that Her- uhm, her majesty queen Jean is a fellow posh cunt, how about a round of shots on daddy’s bank account?”

Taylor still wasn’t talking much, but Pansy took the excuse to leave the table to help Theo carry the drinks he was heading to the bar to buy. This left the three girls that lived together- and Draco. 

“Taylor-” Hermione had barely said two words so far tonight and had managed to piss off her friend. 

“How the fuck does my girlfriend already know more about you than I do?” Taylor whipped around accusingly, looking at Hermione with betrayal and anger written plainly across her features. Hermione’s left eye almost twitched in irritation at the baseless accusation hidden in that question, trying to reason with herself that it was because Taylor and Pansy were new to their relationship which always left Taylor full of anxiety and insecurity, but Taylor wasn’t wrong. One night of drinking had given her and Pansy a confusing sense of kinship borne from their shared history and previous position as rivals at the side of Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy’s messier, louder hatred of each other. Her uni friends loved her, and knew everything about her life as it was now- but nothing before. 

“She doesn’t, I just mentioned it in passing the other night since they all went to a boarding school too! Don’t be like this,” Hermione had never been one to beg, but the whining tone slipped into her voice without meaning to. A moment passed of further awkward silence, as Taylor refused to look up at Hermione while she couldn’t look away. More and more Taylor had been expressing her distaste towards the lack of knowledge they had about her past- while Hermione was becoming increasingly frustrated at Taylor’s sense of entitlement to it. As if the stories she had from school wouldn’t have them dragging her to therapy at the last moment, cursing her friends to suffer the same nightmares she did. It would be a cruelty to condemn them to her own fate.

“I’m going to help them with their drinks,” Malfoy was rubbing the back of his neck as he slipped off his chair and headed towards the bar. No one bothered to acknowledge his departure; Becca was frozen, uncomfortably watching the interaction between the two girls, her eyes darting back and forth between them. Hermione hadn’t even sat down yet. 

“We know nothing about you Jean! Nothing! And these new people come in with their daddy’s money and secret dark pasts and you just open right up to them? I don’t understand, why are they so much better than us?”

“Taylor…”

“No! I need a real answer, not some bullshit about a passing mention? Pansy wouldn’t remember a passing mention!”

“But that’s all it was! She probably just remembered because they also went to a private school. It isn't a big deal, honestly.” Hermione was already starting to get fed up with this conversation. Taylor was clearly taking this way too personally, the anger radiating off her as if she had the right to it. 

“So it’s not because you’re as rich as they are? Have you looked down on us like this the whole time?”

Hermione scoffed loudly at this, rolling her eyes as she set back into a defensive position, crossing her arms. 

“We are nothing alike.”
“Come off it Jean, you all went to different private boarding school for fucks sake, are you really trying to tell me that your parents aren’t some lords and ladies as well?”

“That’s exactly what I’m trying to tell you! They’re a whole different breed to me, if we had gone to school together they would have treated me like dirt on their shoes. I was a scholarship kid, for fucks sake.”

“Scholarship? To a boarding school? Jesus Christ Jay, what else don’t we know about you?”

“Uh, my parents are dentists?”

Taylor scoffed, crossing her arms with an exaggerated huff of air as she glared at Hermione. She had clearly run out of steam for this argument but stubbornly refused to back down either. Shaking her head, Hermione opted to ignore the glare she was receiving from her housemate, opting instead to just slip onto one of the stools around her table and finally take a sip of her drink. 

“How was your day, Jean?” Becca asked, clearly trying to extend an olive branch on  Taylor’s behalf. Hermione smiled at the small girl, who’s soft expression was a welcome juxtaposition to Taylor’s harsh one. It allowed Hermione to launch into a dramatic retelling of her 6th consecutive ‘day from hell’ at the coffee shop, with enough drama and stupid customers that Taylor began to relax again, finally. Halfway through Hermione’s story about how ‘flat-white Barry’ had once again spilled his entire drink on the shop floor, the Slytherins made their way back over to the table with what looked to be three shots of various coloured liquids per person. Protests were heartily ignored, and before long the warmth of tequila and whiskey had flooded Hermione’s chest and relaxed the muscles in her shoulders as she joined in some debate Taylor had started with Theo about football versus rugby- scrubbing the shock from her face that the wizard knew what either of the sports were. 

The night continued on much more smoothly, with alcohol serving its intended purpose of social lubrication perfectly. Hermione found herself frequently and somewhat involuntarily sat beside Draco as they moved from bar to bar through the Northern Quarter, but managed to avoid even performatively interacting with him much at all. She watched him sipping expensive whiskey in cheap bars, laughing with her friends as if he had known them as long as she had, and unfortunately it only increased the niggling feeling she had that he perhaps was more human than she had previously given him credit for. She tried not to notice the way he would also react instinctively to any loud noises, ever so slightly flinching at a more aggressive scrape of a chair or tightening his knuckles at the slam of a door, She ignored the way he frequently seemed to be subtly patting the space where his wand holster must have been sitting beneath his jacket, ensuring that his wand would be in reach in a split second if he needed it; just like she had when she first moved to Manchester. 

Pansy did the same thing with her thigh holster, her eyes darting around the room like she was waiting for someone to burst through the doors and drag her kicking and screaming away from her friends at any moment. Theo appeared to be the most relaxed of the bunch, and even he seemed slightly flighty, sitting on the edge of all his chairs in order to be ready to jump up and dash away at the drop of a hat. They were all prepared to run, to fight- the war had never left them either. And wasn’t that just some sort of sick comfort for her? For the girl that ran away, the girl that fought and was tortured for a world that bullied her out mere months after a slur was carved into her arm, it was a comfort to know that other people couldn’t leave the horrors behind. 

Perhaps she was less alone than she thought. 

At some point around two or three am in a dark, smoky basement where a DJ was blasting D&B through some blown out speakers, Hermione came to the startling realisation she was absolutely shit faced with a bunch of Slytherins; and even worse, she was having a great time doing it. She was moving with the thrum of the music, her body pressed between Pansy and Becca as they swayed and bounced. She knew Draco was watching her again, but it was beyond her current capacity to care. Theo and Taylor were doing shots at the bar, Taylor having quickly realised that he alone had her capacity to throw back the nauseating straight liquor like she could. What Taylor had failed to realise, however, is that for some reason Theo’s ability to hold alcohol far surpassed hers. It was clearly no surprise to Pansy when he carried her back over to the group of them, signalling that it might be time to head out for the night as Taylor turned green. 

Someone suggested going back to Theo’s flat- whoever it was was now deep on Hermione’s shit list- reasoning that it would allow for the thoroughly sloshed Taylor to be watered and sent to bed in the shortest amount of time. 

That of course, was why Hermione was now sat beside Draco Fucking Malfoy, someone she was yet to get through a civil conversation with, on a sofa too small for just the two of them yet too big for just one person when the living room was this full. Theo’s apartment was big, but the living room was clearly furnished with just the Slytherins in mind. Two smaller sofas facing a larger three seater, all made from the same dark leather surrounding a soft rug and facing a fireplace which appeared to be electric to the muggles in the room; Hermione could see the spark of unending coal beneath the wood and flames. Blaise had apparently disappeared off to Italy to visit his mother, a statement which allowed Taylor and Becca to bring up how posh the group surrounding them were once again. 

“We’re only fucking 20, what do you mean he just skipped off to Italy?”  Taylor exclaimed around a mouthful of some horrendously sloppy burger, blissfully ignorant to the distaste rolling off Pansy in waves. Apparently, the blood purity and bigotry was something she was able to overcome in the past two years- the society manners was not. 

“He’s visiting his vineyards too, don’t you worry sweetheart; he’s far richer than the rest of us that’s for fucking sure,” Theo told her, happily munching on the chicken nuggets Hermione had bought for him. It was yet another fever dream experience for her- three in the morning ordering Theodore Nott Jr chicken nuggets from an overly bright takeaway while Pansy and Draco tried to figure out what her housemate wanted to sober up. 

“His fucking vineyards?” Taylor exclaimed at the same time Draco told Theo enthusiastically to ‘Fuck right off!’ 

“God what’s next, are you guys literally part of the aristocracy or something?” Taylor asked, flabbergasted. The silence that followed her attempt at humour was unfortunately telling; the corner of Draco’s lips turned down very slightly while the tips of his ears began to flush pink.

”You’re taking the piss right now.”

”Look we’re a very old family-“

”You are telling me you are LITERALLY an aristocrat-“

“-and the title and money goes back generations-“

“-your fucking pointy faced lordship are you kidding me-“

“-and it’s not like anyone you know would have heard of us since half your-

“-Jean I cannot believe you’re fucking him!”

Theo snorted loudly before bursting into laughter, while Pansy choked on the glass of  wine she had poured herself at some point during Taylor’s rant about Draco’s aristocratic background. Draco’s face was fully flushed red, and Hermione leapt away from him immediately at the accusation, muttering some trumped up excuse about needing whiskey. By the time she made it back to the living room, Draco’s head was in his hands, Becca also looked much more uncomfortable than she had before and the other three occupants of the room were roaring with laughter. 

“Please give me that.” Becca pointed at the bottle in Hermione’s hands, grimacing in a supposedly grateful way when the confused witch quickly obliged, flicking off the cap and taking a deep drink before handing the open container over to Draco who took it without looking up. 

“What did I miss?” Hermione asked, her vision still blurred as she looked around the room of people she still couldn’t believe were all sat drinking together. 

“Well, princess, it appears you and Draco both managed to leave out a little detail from that night you spent together, involving one miss Rebecca Prince over here” Theo supplied happily. Becca grimaced again, looking like she would rather be sinking deep into the floor than being watched at this moment. 

“Ah, well in that case, Draco?” Hermione stuck her hand out for the bottle she had just surrendered, downing what remained in her own glass in one gulp as she did so to raucous laughter. 

----------------------------------------------

Hermione groaned loudly, the light streaming through the open blinds stinging her still closed eyes. Her head was heavy, and her stomach was flipping as if she either needed to eat something immediately or alternatively upchuck anything she did have in her system. The sheets she was surrounded by were blissfully cool and soft against her bare skin, the mattress unbelievably giving under her hips as she rolled over to make contact with someone else in the bed. Assuming it to be Becca, she moved to wrap her arms around the girl’s waist, only to instead find a solid, long torso and wide shoulders under her hands. 

Gasping loudly, she let the light slam painfully onto her eyes as she snapped them open and threw herself further from the mystery man- the platinum blonde mystery man. 

“Fuck.”

“Oh do be quiet Granger, my head feels like it's being bombarded over and over again over here,” Draco groaned, rolling over and opening one eye in a squint, “If you are getting up be a doll and get the curtains will you? I forgot to close them last night with everything else going on and I feel like I need to sleep until it is dark outside.” 

“Malfoy?”

“Yes?”

“I’m in your bed?”

“Astute observation as always swot, ten points to Gryffindor.”

“Why the fuck am I in your bed?”

“We were sleeping until you decided to wake me for a fucking trivia game, are you going to close that blasted curtain or not?”

“I’m naked.”

“You are in fact not naked, Granger, wrong answer, I’ll take those ten points back.”

Hermione finally pulled the covers away from her chest, looking down with a panic before gratefully seeing sleep shorts and a tank top- Pansy’s, based on the ridiculously luxurious feel of the fabric against her back and stomach.

“Oh thank god.”

“Rude.”

“Oh shut up Malfoy, why am I in your bed?”

“I told you already, to sleep you fucking cretin now let me get back to it.”

“Yes but why am I in YOUR bed, Malfoy?”

Malfoy sighed deeply, rolling over fully and propping himself up against the headboard, resigning to his fate of little more sleep this morning (afternoon? One of them.) The bedsheets slipped down his torso exposing his upper body and arms, giving Hermione a glimpse of a tattoo on his lower abdomen and the scars from the bathroom incident in sixth year before he crossed his arms and glared at her. 

“Because, you insufferable fucker, you decided to plop yourself down in here last night after me you and Becca finished the whiskey, Pansy polished off the wine and Theo and Taylor got into the tequila I had tried to hide under the sink. Becca changed you, stating that it was nothing she hadn’t seen before- enjoy not getting a moment’s peace from Theo for the rest of time by the way.”

”Yes ok, well then why are you in bed with me?”

”I’m not going to sleep on the fucking sofa am I? It’s my bloody bed.”

”Blaise’s room?”

”Warded.”

”Becca?”

”Theo’s room.”

”Theo?”

”You’d rather sleep with Theo than me?”

”I mean he never wished me dead to my face. Plus he’s nice on the eyes.”

”I’m nice on the eyes!”

Hermione snorted loudly while Malfoy pouted dramatically at her declaration, before she corrected herself quickly, slipping a mask of disgust onto her face. 

“So to clarify, you’re too much of a snob to sleep on the sofa, so you decided the best course of action was to get into bed with me instead of, I don’t know, moving me?”

”I said I wanted my own bed, not that I am such a gentleman to deny you one.”

”You’re a fucking wizard! Transfigure a sofa!” 

“Ooo Granger you bad bad girl, are you suggesting I break the law, all so you can avoid sharing the bed with me?” Draco leaned forward, leering at her in a way that made Hermione’s skin feel hot, “Pity, I was quite enjoying your roaming hands.”

Ripping the duvet from her body, Hermione practically leapt from the bed before whipping back around to face Draco with a face full of fire and fury. 

“Oh calm down kitten, no need to get your claws out.”

This comment seemed to be the final straw for the seething witch. Wound up, hung over, being purposely riled up by her childhood bully after waking up practically on top of the smug bastard: this was not the start to the day Hermione had been expecting. Dashing towards him without a second thought, she swung her hand with clear intent of making a repeat performance of third year. What she hadn’t been expecting, however, was for Malfoy’s own hand to dart out, grasping her wrist harshly and yanking her forward back onto the bed. 

“Malfoy-“

”Don’t. Damage. The. Face.” Malfoy was smirking at her, his hand still circling her small wrist tightly as his eyes bore into hers, “Hurt me wherever you want, however you want, just not the face sweetheart, it’s the moneymaker these days.” 

Hermione’s ears were ringing, rage and heat flooding her body and warming her face significantly. Malfoy was far too close to her for the second time today, the warmth from his still bare chest radiating towards her own. She was sure she was blushing with rage or just the proximity to Malfoy, having gotten up close and personal with his blonde self a few too many times in the last months for her liking. If Harry could see her now. 

“You’re an asshole.”

“And you’re in my bed. Are you done just saying things, or must I endure more of your morning witterings before I can go back to the wonderful dream I was having?”

“Get fucked Malfoy.”

“Are you offering?”

Yanking her arm away, Hermione exhaled with sharp huff as she scrambled back off the bed. Malfoy looked just as relaxed as he had before, his hair mussed from sleep and eyes still heavy with something unrecognisable.

“You’re disgusting, Malfoy,” Hermione hissed out, looking around for something to cover herself up with. Her clothes from the night before were folded on the desk in the corner of the room, but the skimpy dress she had chosen was not going to cut it and the clothes she had worn to work were in her locker in the coffee shop.  Giving up on that endeavour reasonably quickly, she chose to head out into the rest of the apartment in search of her friends and maybe some caffeine of any description. 

“You could at least say thank you!” Malfoy yelled at her retreating form, laughing loudly as she slammed the door shut behind her. 

Chapter Text

DRINKS WITH HER housemates and the Slytherins quickly became at least a weekly occurrence which Hermione was finding harder and harder to deny was at least a little bit fun. Being around people she knew her whole teenage life as enemies turned out to be excellent drinking partners, Pansy in particular seeming to find Hermione’s new brand of particularly dry cruel humour enjoyable. Taylor seemed even more suspicious of the pair of them, but never mentioned the argument from the bar that first week again. 

Theo was an enigma, as was Malfoy, but Pansy was easy to get along with now she wasn’t attempting to hand her best friend over to a homicidal megalomaniac.

November slowly bled into early December, with Hermione’s life as Jean becoming increasingly more full by the day. Essays, exams, parties, work, going to bars or clubs with the Slytherins and trying to hide her double life from her muggle friends, she barely had a moment to herself anymore. 

The final day of the first semester found the group back at the bar from the first time they all collected together, this time stuffed into a booth in the back corner that was certainly made for four people, not seven. Pansy was squashed tight between Hermione and Taylor, with Becca taking Hermione’s other side. Blaise had returned from Italy a few days earlier, and wanted to be included in whatever it was they were doing with their lives, so was pressed against the wall with Theo and Malfoy on the other side of the table. The table in question was littered with empty cups and shot glasses, a pile of empty paper plates that once held pizzas piled on one side. This time, the DJ seemed to be going for a country theme with the music, but was drowned out by the buzz of the crowd inside the place. It was stuffy, and Hermione was grateful once again for wearing the slippery silk dress and sturdy platform boots with her leather jacket, so she was not too sweaty despite the close quarters and the atmosphere of the room. 

“And that was the point where Draco- stupid fucking moron- decided to throw a he- cup at Harry’s head! So this new maths teacher comes storming over, my god I have never seen him so shaken up in my life!” Blaise had decided to regale a heavily doctored version of the ferret incident from fourth year. Trying to explain why the rest of them- and Hermione- found this tale quite so amusing was difficult without being able to explain exactly how Moody scared Malfoy, but the girls seemed quite content to take his word for it. Hermione was giggling quietly, watching as Malfoy seemed torn between intervening with his version of events and letting Blaise tell it however he wanted. Taylor was enjoying Blaise’s theatrics, and Becca looked slightly thoughtful as she listened intently. 

“You had a friend called Harry, didn’t you Jean?” Becca turned the attention to the slim girl beside her, and Hermione felt a weight drop very suddenly in her stomach. She was absolutely sure she had never mentioned any of her old friends to the girls- only that she had lived with them at points and she didn’t have contact with them anymore due to an unfortunate series of events she would rather not talk about. Had she drunkenly spoke about them? Where had she messed up?

“I uh, yeah. How did you-?”

“You seem to have nightmares sometimes, and we’ve shared the bed a few times. You just mentioned him in your sleep, were you two close?”

All eyes were on Hermione. Taylor was the only person at the table who seemed surprised at this revelation; three of the Slytherins were all looking at her with varying expressions of pity and guilt. Malfoy, however, was blank. His eyes were dull, his face completely free of any expression. Was this what Hermione looked like when she occluded too? 

“Uh, yes we were close. I haven’t seen him in a long long time though, but the time I did know him he was like a brother to me.”

Theo scoffed at that suddenly, looking away as the attention of the table turned from Hermione to him. He was shaking his head slightly, only noticing his little outburst had been caught when he looked back at Hermione, who had one eyebrow raised. 

“Theo?” Becca asked hesitantly, at the same time Hermione said, “Something to share, Nott?”

Theo seemed to contemplate his next answer carefully, lifting the pint glass to his lips as he stared at Hermione in apparent bewilderment. When no one else spoke further, he made up his mind. 

“He clearly was not like a sibling to you if you were so fine to just leave him behind and never speak to him again.”

“What does he mean?” Taylor asked, leaning forward to look at Hermione. 

Since leaving the wizarding world, Hermione had found herself more willing to give in to her emotions. If anything, it had brought her an overwhelming sense of calm to allow herself to feel things there and then instead of pushing it down, usually being able to be cold and collected a majority of the time. However, with the reminders of her past showing up to every pub and bar in Manchester with her new friends in tow, a boiling rage she had managed to keep a lid on for years seemed to have reappeared within her. The tendency to snap and react, to force a woman as a beetle into a jar or lead a teacher to a pack of murderous centaurs, the want for fight and chaos that sat just beneath her skin began screaming to be released again. She could feel it now, with Theo staring her down and accusing her in front of everyone of abandoning her friends. He was not supposed to know anything about her when they were with the muggles, and here he was laying her insecurities bare in front of Taylor and Becca. 

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” She bit out, the tone at the table having shifted dramatically from a mere moment earlier. All that humour from Blaise’s storytelling had died a little death with the mere mention of Harry’s name from Becca.

“Well it’s true isn’t it?” Theo said, taking a false light tone that did not match the furrow of his brow or the curl of his lip, “You left him, left London and fucked off to never speak to them again. I mean do you even go back for yule, or reach out every once in a while?”

“How do you know I don’t?” Hermione tried, angrily glaring towards Theo while trying to indicate towards Becca and Taylor with her head. 

“Oh I just know. You abandoned everyone you knew, didn’t you?”

“Theo…”

“Just forget it, ‘Jeanie-baby’. Everything works out for the golden girl, and everyone else around her has to just pick up the pieces of her crazy. Isn’t that right?”

“Theo!”

“Hey!”

“Nott that is enough!’

Pansy, Becca and to Hermione’s surprise Malfoy all spoke at once, while Taylor seemed lost in thought that was creasing her brow and making her stare at Hermione as if she was a puzzle she could not solve. Blaise just looked lost. 

“Whatever. I’ll see you guys at home.” Theo grabbed his coat, sliding out of the booth and storming out without another word. Mere moments had passed since the ferret story was being told, and now Hermione was being stared at by her bewildered friends in the aftermath of an unexplained attack on her person by someone Taylor had described as a golden retriever puppy a few days earlier.

“What the fuck was that?” Blaise spoke first, looking between Malfoy and Hermione as if either one of them had an answer. Hermione was boiling, her skin feeling too tight and the lump in her throat reminding her that anger was not all she felt at the thought of the life she had left behind. Malfoy still had the blank expression, his eyes dull and boring a hole into Hermione’s face. 

“He clearly has had a bad day or something, that was so random!” Pansy said, awkwardly laughing as she tried to smooth over the awkward tension that had settled around them all. Becca looked mortified, as if his outburst was somehow her fault. 

“What was he on about, Jay?” Taylor asked, the look in her eyes indicating no real concern for her friend- only suspicion.

“He was chatting shit, I have no idea what he was even on about I can’t lie.” Hermione spoke confidently, praying the way the words burned her mouth did not become too obvious to the rest of the group. 

“Anyone up for some beer pong?” Pansy tried to push past the conversation, but Taylor was now almost sneering at Hermione and the rest of them were watching the fire Theo had started spread.

“Well clearly he was onto something, does he know more about your past then we do as well then?” Taylor cocked her head, the booze in her system fueling the lingering bitterness from the first time they had brought the others here weeks ago. She was smiling, the upturn at the corners of her lips twisting her face into a cruel approximation of joviality. 

“He was clearly projecting, Taylor, what is your problem now?” Hermione felt the way each pump of her heart flooded her system with the simmering rage, flushing her skin in a way sure to make her appear guilty to the rest of the table. 

To be fair, she was guilty. She had left without ever turning back, never truly considering returning to the magical world except in the wee hours of the night, the witching hours of dark and calm where she couldn’t escape all she had left behind. It was in smokers areas where people reminisced about their own pasts with friends they’ve had their whole lives around her, while she was left avoiding the topic since her grief wouldn’t let her lie and her bitterness wouldn’t let her return. She was guilty, she left and according to the Slytherins she was also largely presumed dead. 

Theo’s stake in all of that, however, was unexplainable. He had no reason to hate her, he had no reason to spit acid and cruelty in front of everyone and risk blowing everything she had built for herself over an offhand comment about Harry Potter. As far as she could remember, Harry and Theo had never even interacted. They were as she and Daphne Greengrass or Ron and Blaise Zabini were to each other- nothing. Perhaps he had suffered from the loss of a friend or a partner, perhaps his parents had left following the war like she knew many of the unconvicted but grey area witches and wizards did throughout that fateful year. But it felt like Harry’s name was the trigger for him- the mere mention of her love for him brought something out of the boy that he had no right to take out on her. 

“Do you really not know? Do you think me and Becca like living with a stranger?”

”I’m not a stranger though am I? You just don’t like that you don’t have unfettered access to my deepest darkest secrets Taylor, but I am allowed my privacy. Leave it, we were having a nice time weren’t we?”

”I’ll take that as a no for beer pong,” Pansy muttered quietly, staring into her pint with such irritation you would think the amber liquid had spat on her louboutins. 

“Where did you go to school?”

”Taylor,” Becca put a soothing hand on the redhead’s arm, but she carried on paying her no mind in favour of dredging up her suspicions.

”Who are your parents? What were your friends' names? Where did you grow up? What did your parents do?”

”They were dentists!” Hermione rolled her eyes, “You know this I’ve said it before. I explained I left home in awkward circumstances, my parents don’t live in the UK anymore and that’s all that really matters.”

“You could be a fucking serial killer for all we know? Or from a cult!” Taylor was leaning across Pansy now to hiss at Hermione, venom in her eyes, “You clearly did something for there to be no one left to love you.”

The table went even more still, if it were possible. Pansy looked as if she weren’t breathing, and Blaise was looking down at his lap. Draco was watching Hermione, and the furious tears filling her eyes were only increased by the overwhelming feeling of judgement coming off him in waves. Becca had a hand to her mouth, staring at Taylor with wide eyes. 

“I’m going for a smoke.” Hermione practically spat the words, as she motioned for Becca to move out of the way. She did so silently, the pity in her eyes suffocating Hermione. Weaving through the bustling crowd in the bar, Hermione climbed the stairs leading to the street two at a time, not noticing the blonde chasing after her. She leant against a wall, pressing her hands hard into her head, resisting the urge to slam her head against the wall. 

It wasn’t so much the fact Taylor had accused her of being a stranger to them. She had purposely avoided any indications of her past, never volunteering information and doing all she could to avoid lying about her past too. 

But the fact that no one loved her anymore? 

She had broken Ron’s heart, she had abandoned Harry after near enough destroying his and Ginny’s relationship merely by existing. Molly and Arthur surely despised her for messing with the love lives of both of their youngest children, not even knowing about her- other indiscretions. Gryffindor tower never truly bonded to her, her outwardly swottish ways turning most people away even as she privately learned how to let go and have fun. Apparently George was still looking for her, but she was sure that was purely out of obligation and nothing else. She was alone.

And now it seems even the new people she had herself come to care for saw her as a frustrating mystery to solve, not a person they wanted to just accept. She had shed her bookworm persona in favour of this party girl lifestyle, studying only when she got the chance instead of every spare moment she got. She became confident, sexy, and badass. And it still wasn’t enough. 

It was never enough.

A gentle hand on her shoulder made her jump out of her reflective state. The hand had almost immediately withdrawn its light pressure on her person, the figure beside her awkwardly stiff and formal. 

“Malfoy?”  Hermione muttered, looking into his grey eyes that were still dulled from occlusion. 

“Granger,” Malfoy shifted almost imperceptibly, the air between them thick with decade old tension and unresolved bickering. “Are you alright?”

She might have been able to keep the shock off her face, but it bled into her voice as she virtually gasped out a “What?”

”Are, you, alright?”  He was visibly uncomfortable, his posture perfect to the extent it barely looked comfortable. 

“I’ll be fine, Malfoy, thanks,” Hermione rolled her eyes, leaning her head back towards the bricks as she huffed out visible air into the frosty night sky. Manchester was always cold, never as cold as Scotland really but this time of year the chill was comforting. Like coming home. 

“It’s not true.”

”What?”

”It’s not true, what she said. They mourned you. You were loved.”

”Malfoy…”

He moved closed, leaning beside her on the wall and looking down at her. The angle was slightly awkward, an intimacy built from the clear effort to be sincere. 

“Don’t listen to Taylor, she’s just bitter it seems we know you better then her. She’s jealous.”

“She’s right.”

Malfoy took pause at this, still looking down at her as if she was something to be fixed, a puzzle to be solved. 

“Whatever image was drawn of me by the prophet when I went off and killed myself or whatever it is they said I did is a lie. I had no one left.”

“But Potter-“

“I don’t want to get into this tonight Malfoy, just trust me when I say my leaving was for the best, for absolutely everyone.”

The silence following her statement was suffocating, so Hermione filled her lungs with nicotine and tobacco instead. Malfoy sticking his fingers out, and her unquestioningly passing the cigarette over, watching the curve of his jaw and contour of his cheekbones as he took a deep drag, tipping his head back as he let the smoke leave his lungs in one gentle breath. As he handed it over, the gentle brush of fingers seemed to jolt him awake, his jaw clicking as he took in a deep inhale.

“I just wanted to take this opportunity to apologise-“

”Malfoy-“

”No, please just. Hear me out? I don’t think I’ll be drunk enough and still of sound enough mind to do this again any time soon but you need to hear it.”

Hermione searched his face for any indication he was taking the piss of her. She had never been amazing at reading people, but the past few years of being on edge has at least advanced that skill that she likes to think she could tell if her childhood bully was toying with her. 

“I am sorry for it all. I will never be able to truly make amends for the war-“

”Malfoy-“

”-or my family’s treatment of you. I am sorry for my own part in that, as well as my treatment of you throughout school. I regret every name, every cruel word and inhumane comment directed both at you and the rest of my peers, but you stand out especially as a victim of my ignorance. I was wrong, and I was mean. And I’m sorry. And I’m sorry that our mere appearance in your life has screwed you so thoroughly as well. I never meant to see you again, after that party. I thought you were a ghost, a trick of the universe to punish me for my wrongdoings. And then at Polly’s and in your house- god that was fucking insane of me wasn’t it?”

Hermione chuckled at this, lost in his intensely serious demeanour until he mentioned his previous breaking and entering escapades. 

“I’m just sorry for it all, Granger.”

If the first pause in conversation was suffocating, this one was burning Hermione alive. Each nerve ending across her face and chest felt alight with the conflicting emotions racing around her head. He was staring at her now, the glimmer of truth and sincerity bleeding through the occlumency he had softened for the purpose of this conversation. They stood there for slightly longer than she was sure was comfortable for either of them, the cold winter breeze toying with their hair as they watched each other react to what Malfoy had just said. 

Eventually the silence had stretched on too long, and Hermione opened her mouth to reply, to say something, perhaps to berate him further or maybe even accept his apology, even she wasn’t sure, but at the precise moment she opened her mouth to make a decision a tall man stumbled out of the door leading back down into the bar carrying a small woman along with him. Carrying was perhaps a generous approximation of what he was doing, he was more like dragging the dark haired woman down the street as she seemed limp in his arms, her head lolling back with each paranoid look the hulking figure took around him. 

“Hey!” Hermione was surprised to find it was not her own voice that had caused the man to jump, but instead the booming timbre of Draco who was moving swiftly towards the two. The man sped up momentarily, before looking over his shoulder again and stopping completely, dropping the poor woman like a sack of potatoes to the floor. She wasn’t even wearing a jacket. Her short dark hair spilled across the pavement like blood, the stilettos on her feet clattering as she fell. Familiar stilettos.

The sight of a wand clutched in the attacker’s hand was all it took to freeze Draco and Hermione’s swift advance. His face was shadowed as if in complete darkness- some sort of cloaking spell Hermione was not familiar with she was sure. Malfoy was slowly inching his hand towards his side, clearly about to reach for his wand, but he was too slow. A stunner blasted from the stranger’s wand, sending Malfoy to the ground before Hermione had even truly processed what was going on. 

And then she was back in the forest of dean. She was back in the corridor of Hogwarts, or in the room of requirement in fifth year, or in the department of mysteries. After spending so long on edge, fearing the day someone eventually hunted her down in Manchester and dragged her back screaming to the wizarding world she had finally moved on from, the validation in the form of a terrifying attempt on the Slytherins helped her find a sense of clarity. Dropping to the floor almost in sync with Malfoy, she practically pounced on the figure, sweeping his legs out from beneath him by swinging her leg out at the last minute and swinging her body to the side violently. The figure crashed down with a grunt, quickly rolling over onto his side to get back up just to catch the glint of silver metal as Hermione plunged her dagger she had whipped out of her thigh holster into the wand hand of the stranger. The figure yoweled out in pain, collapsing onto his back which allowed Hermione to crawl the length of his body and grab him by his lapels, trying to see the face behind the attacker. The charm held strong, and so she resorted to just smashing his head hard against the pavement below. Once, twice, three times. 

He stopped moving, stopped trying to grasp at her with his uninjured hand. Shaking, Hermione’s hands released the coat of the figure whose face was slowly coming into focus in front of her eyes. Her breaths were coming out in stuttering short huffs, her eyes blurry as the adrenaline pumped through her system keeping her from completely panicking. This person, who she could have killed for all she knew, was a wizard trying to kidnap someone she had come to just about consider a friend, her first wizarding friend in two years. He knocked an innocent woman out to do gods know what with her, and in doing so completely destroyed any sense of safety Hermione had. He had seen her, seen her face and who she was with and where she was, and now she would have to go back to panicking every time she left the house.

She needed to erase his memory, but she couldn’t do it. She couldn't bring herself to get her wand out in this muggle alleyway for love or money. She hadn’t done magic outside of her house since she left for Manchester, and she just couldn’t bring herself to break that streak today. The mental block had her straddling this unconscious stranger in a side street, meters away from two more of her unconscious friends and just a few stairs away from the muggles she lived with. She was so fucked. 

Malfoy was stirring beside her- clearly the stunner was intended as a warning rather than a true damage inflicting hex- but Pansy was still flat out against the pavement. The person below her was now completely visible but was thankfully not someone she immediately recognised.. Hermione didn’t know what the fuck she would have done if a face she knew had appeared below her. Friend or enemy, it was a small blessing it wasn’t she had any sort of history with. She knew soon other people would be heading out of the bar for a smoke or perhaps to find the three of them, so there wasn’t time to make a full decision.

“Granger?” Malfoy groaned out groggily, blinking blearily over as he came too. 

“I need you to obliviate him, Malfoy,” Hermione snapped out, studying the person still trapped under her thighs. 

“What?” Malfoys stupor was broken by her harsh tone, moving slowly onto his feet and over to where she was standing. 

“Quickly, he’s seen us all, I need you to get rid of us,” Hermione supplied hurriedly, glancing over to the door again. 

“Granger I can’t, it's a tracked spell it would lead them straight to us!” 

“What? Since when??”

“Since I was sent to Azkaban, obviously!”

“They have the trace on you??”

“No, they have a marker for dark spells on my wand.”

“That’s something they can do?”

“It’s a new thing, they invented it during the war trials.”

“Fuck me.”

“I know right! You should take me to one of you renegade wand shops, get me free of this bullshit so I can obliviate randos who attack us in the middle of fucking Manchester!” Malfoy seemed to work himself up more and more as he spoke, the rage finally catching up to him as he looked down at the three people still on the floor.He sent a simple renervate at Pansy’s prone figure, moving to help the pair of girls off the dirty floor.

“What happened!” Pansy whispered, her moving lips disguised by Hermione’s mass of hair, “I want to go home, someone tried to-”

“We know, Pansy, we’ve got you, the bouncer has him and we’re going to go home now ok?”

Hermione gently lifted her to her feet, pressing the short girl’s weight against herself in support while Draco moved over to help on the other side. 

The whole scenario was so weird Hermione couldn’t decide if she wanted to laugh or cry, but right now Pansy just needed to be somewhere safe and warm. Draco rushed down the stairs into the bar, swiftly gathering their friends with some trumped up explanation as to what had come down; Hermione would have to confer with him later on to get their stories straight. By the time he returned with the others, Blaise was already ordering a taxi to get them all back to the Slytherin flat and Taylor was a woman possessed, storming over to where Hermione held Pansy and practically snatching the dark haired girl out of Hermione’s grasp. Draco moved over to Hermione and wrapped an arm around her shoulder, the facade of them being… something other than long lost school rivals weighing heavy on her mind as she relished the warmth his body pressed against her. 

Something small, something harsh and bitter in her relished in the comfort of another’s arms around her- the warmth of his body seeping across to hers as he tugged her close in show to the only two people who didn’t know the truth about their relationship to one another. 

“Let’s go back to ours.”

Chapter Text

BY THE TIME made it back to the Slytherin’s flat, the adrenaline had fully worn off and Hermione felt just about ready to drop. Malfoy had stopped holding her the moment they had all set off, and as much as it pained her to admit, Hermione loathed the loss of heat and comfort that came from the gesture, however fake it had been. She had slept around plenty, spending nights with people she met at parties or friends of friends, but it had been a very long time since she had been held for the sake of being held. Harry and the Weasleys had always been easy in their affection; Harry would frequently drop a kiss to her forehead, Ron would sling his arm around her jovially, Ginny would share her bed and usually end up spooning her somehow. She had lost all of that, the easy connection she once maintained broken after how everything had gone down. Her and Becca’s contact had always been sexual in nature, and Taylor was rarely affectionate at all. The same went for the rest of her housemates; they just weren’t close like she had once been with her wizarding friends. 

Draco’s brief touch had sent her spiralling, and she was trying desperately to not internalise that fact too hard. She knew she was just desperate for that human connection, the way another person felt whilst pressed up against you that was so absolutely delicious, and yet as she watched him instruct Becca and Taylor with helping Pansy to bed and ushering Blaise around to set up Becca somewhere to stay, the way his warmth leached through her thin dress in the frigid night air blazed like an inferno in her mind. 

He was attractive, that was undeniable. Broad shoulders that were lacking the muscle he had maintained before sixth year but still kept their breadth, high cheekbones and a sharp square jaw. His nose was sharp but he had grown into it through adulthood. He was hot, there was no denying it as much as she would have liked to have been able to.

It was more than that though. The Draco Malfoy she had known had been snobby, boring, completely obsessed with family and legacy; this Draco Malfoy was witty and sarcastic and bitter. The chip on his shoulder felt like a matching wound to hers, fucked up twin tattoos that exposed their similarities to Hermione far more than she would like to admit. She had on several occasions in the weeks following the war gone as far as to defend Malfoy’s actions, forcing herself and Harry as a result to remember that while they had no choice but to fight for good for the sake of their own lives, Draco Malfoy had no choice but to fight for evil for the sake of his life and that of his family. But that was only truly a defence for his actions regarding the war; his behaviour through their schooling told a tale of a spoilt bully who used his supposed superiority to crush everyone else around him under his perfectly polished boot. 

And yet she now found herself inexplicable dismissing his previous behaviour. He was simultaneously softer and yet hardened by the world around him now, his jibes were in jest rather than a way to truly get under her skin and into her bones as they had been in the past. As he ordered people around, he settled naturally into the leadership role; even if it was just for something as simple as sleeping arrangements after a high intensity night. 

And he had defended her to Theo. He had the audacity to stand up to his friend on her behalf, even if it was only a few words, and then he dared to fucking apologise to her. He seemed sincere, desperate almost. He was apologising for his behaviour through the war and before it, and he seemed to mean it. And wasn’t just the most terrible thing Hermione had ever fucking heard. 

“Jean?” Hermione’s head snapped up at the sound of her name being called from across the room. Taylor and Pansy stood at the entrance to Pansy’s bedroom; Taylor looked annoyed that she wasn’t already in bed,while Pansy’s eyebrows were furrowed for a different reason: “Thank you for looking out for me.”

“Of course,” Hermione’s voice came out breathier than she had intended it to. Three pairs of eyes seemed to be fixed entirely on her, and she tried to mentally block the blush she could feel creeping up her neck at the feel of it. The two girls retreated into Pansy’s room, with Becca already settled on the settee in the living room and Blaise practically already snoring from in his own bed. 

“Jean?” Draco was the last person standing, aside from herself. He stood beside his own bedroom door, his hand ever so slightly outstretched towards her in invitation; one she knew she should deny. Every bone in her body was insisting that she turn him down, find a way to sleep in the living room even if it meant crashing on the fluffy carpet for the second time since the other wizards had made their way back into her life. 

But his bed was so soft, and she now knew the warmth of his body. She knew the way the planes of his torso felt pressed against her side, and despite the fact she knew he wasn’t offering to hold her to sleep or anything as ridiculous as that, she couldn’t stop herself moving forward to join him. It was reckless, and it was against everything she had ever told herself about Draco Malfoy- but she was not Hermione Granger here. She didn’t have to think about what Ron or Harry or Ginny would think about her crawling into bed against the man who teased her relentlessly at school; she could slip between those silk sheets knowing they would never, ever know that she and Draco knew each other at all. Hermione Granger was dead. 

And Jean Gallagher suddenly wanted nothing more than to be in bed with Draco Malfoy.

The pyjamas Pansy had leant her last time were laid out on the bed, with Draco having slipped off to the bathroom while she changed. The room was exactly as she remembered it being; long dark drapes, dark wood, emerald green sheets. It was the perfect Slytherin cliche of a bedroom, and it could not have been more fitting for the silver king himself. 

What did surprise her was the stacked desk in the corner of the room Old copies of the Prophet, issues of the Quibbler, various books both fictional and non-fiction but all clearly muggle, and one solitary copy of the Tales of Beedle the Bard. The plush carpet beneath her bare toes almost tickled as she crept over to the desk, pressing the tips of her fingers to the children’s book with the reverence it had earnt for its role in ending the war; not that anyone else really knew that. Why the fuck did Draco Malfoy have a children’s book in his bedroom? 

“How much money do I have to pay to get you to stroke me like that, Granger?” She could practically hear the smirk in his voice, his lean frame leant against the now closed door. 

“Oh, you can’t afford me darling.”

“You want a bet?”

He had no shirt on again, the plaid green pyjama bottoms hanging indecently low on his hips as he stalked towards her. 

“Oh I promise I am interested in nothing you could possibly offer me, Malfoy.”

“No, no, call me darling again, sweetheart. I liked that,” Malfoy practically whined, the smirk still on his face as he came to stop directly in front of her. He was far too close, Hermione could almost feel his gentle exhales against her face as she looked up at him. 

“I bet you did.”

“Mmm, I am a slut for praise, sweetheart.” This was too much; this was not how they were. They had only made peace with each other that very evening, and since then Pansy was attacked, Hermione’s continued existence almost got revealed to the wizarding world and she almost killed a man for the first time since the war ended. They didn’t flirt, they didn’t tease each other and smirk and come close to each other, he mocked her and she loathed him. This was all wrong, and yet she was frozen in place, basking in the warmth rolling off his naked chest like a radiator. 

“We should go to bed,” Hermione almost whispered, ignoring the fact her mind was flashing through a clip show of all the depraved things they could do instead. 

“I thought you’d never ask,” Draco smiled properly then, his straight teeth bared wickedly at her; he did, however, move out of her way and moved around to the side of the bed he had clearly chosen. She remained frozen beside the desk, watching his cat-like movements as if he were a predator about to strike. He climbed into bed, settling himself in before looking over to see her still standing where he had left her. She could almost see the moment he softened, the fake flirting he had been using as a defence slipping away into something that almost looked like pity. 

“Hermione,” there he was again, uttering her name again as if it were his to use as he pleased, “Come get in bed, you need rest.”

And it was so soft. She had not realised how much she had longed for someone to say her name- her real name- and ask her to climb into their shared bed. Even if it was just for the night. Even if it wasn’t real, and they were just sharing a bed for appearances sake. Even if he was someone she should consider an enemy. It had been so long, and she was so, so cold.

“Okay.”

He moved the sheets for her, making space for her in his bed to climb in comfortably without touching him at all. He lay there on his side, watching her settle herself into her side of the bed, not saying a single word about her clumsy movements or the way she shifted over and over again until she was suitably tucked up and facing away from him. And then he rolled over without saying a thing, turning off the lights in silence, settling himself in again with his back to her. 

“Do you think I killed that man?”

The question hung in the still night air. She couldn’t tell if she had voiced the thought that had settled in the back of her brain to a sleeping Draco, or if he had chosen to ignore the question entirely in favour of not engaging in needless complicated conversation. But she needed to speak the words aloud, to have someone potentially acknowledge that she may have done something terrible that night; worse still, she had done it with no hesitation, and no remorse. At least not in the moment. 

Just as she had resigned herself to stewing on her words alone, Draco’s body shifted clunkily over to face her back, his words spoken into the back of her neck. 

“You didn’t do anything wrong.”

Her breathing paused almost involuntarily, the hairs on the back of her neck raising at the soft warmth of his breath ghosting across the bare skin there. She didn’t want to make a sound or shift a single inch, lest she break whatever fragile moment this was.

“Granger,” his voice was a plea, or maybe a prayer, “you did nothing wrong. In fact, if it had been you that had been hit by the stunner I would have done so much worse.”

She moved herself then, flopping over to face him.  All of a sudden his face was right there, his eyes wide in the darkness as he looked at her with more real emotion on his face than she had seen in years. She would be lying if she said he didn’t have the same expression reflected back at him in her own face. 

“Worse?”

“So, so much worse, Granger.”

Chapter Text

SHE SHOULD HAVE seen it coming, having fallen asleep almost nose to nose with Draco fucking Malfoy, yet for some peculiar reason she hadn’t expected to wake wrapped around his torso, with his own strong arms clinging to her like a life line. It wasn’t comfortable in the slightest; it felt more like desperation, as if they sought each other’s warmth in the cold night air in spite of themselves. 

It was the most perfect torture. Warm, bare skin pressed against her own, lean muscle pulled taught around her waist and shoulders as he cradled her to his bare chest. It would be so easy to pretend this was not Draco Malfoy she was clinging to, that she wasn’t using someone she should hate as a pillow after what to most would have been an incredibly traumatising night- luckily for her, she had been through much, much worse. She wanted to pretend; to hold onto this fantasy that she was safe and wanted in this man’s arms, and that her whole world wasn’t about to potentially come crashing down around her. 

Draco had managed to fend off a majority of the other girl’s questions the night before, citing the ‘shock’ as to why they should leave her and Pansy alone for the time being and for everyone to go to bed. But soon, they would be up and it would be time to lie to them all over again. The niggling leftovers from her goodie-two shoes days sometimes forced the guilt of the situation to the front of her mind, wondering if she would ever stop lying to the people around her. Perhaps the only way to truly do that would be to return to the wizarding world, but that simply was not an option. 

“Granger?” His voice was still thick with sleep, the slightly deeper tone making her feel uncomfortably warm wrapped in his embrace. She moved to get away from him, to try and pretend she hadn’t been basking in the way his arms had made her feel. He didn’t let up his hold though, his arms staying locked in place as she wiggled experimentally. 

“Good morning, Malfoy,” She hummed, “Are you going to let me go?”

“Five more minutes,” he replied, pulling her back to the position she had woken in, “I’m enjoying pretending.”

What a horrible thing to say. How dare this man holding her as if she were a fragile thing say such an endearing thing to her, knowing that it wasn’t real. It was all pretend, them faking intimacy and familiarity with each other’s bodies in front of their friends, just to keep their alibi with muggle friends that seemed to like her less and less every day. 

“Malfoy,” she started, pushing away from his body once again to look at him where he lay beneath her, completely unphased by their closeness. 

“Granger,” he looked dazed, his eyes still cloudy and sparkling from sleep, the occlumency that usually shadowed his features seemingly wiped away by the night’s rest. He seemed warm, the ice in his blue seeming deeper. Hermione hated him, she hated that he was worming his way out of the locked cage she had him held in her mind. The dungeon that looked Grimmauld Place, where she kept all the people that had wronged her and tortured her and that she had killed in the name of good, no matter how bad it had made her soul feel. How dare he lie there and look soft and kind and ruin the calculating, cold, cruel man she had kept in her mind. 

“Granger?” He asked again, more insistent this time. She had disappeared into that place of contemplation, her eyes probably going funny with how hard she was thinking, “ are you alright?”

“Yes, why wouldn’t I be,” she didn’t dare move, not wanting to move away but not trusting herself to move any closer. 

“You might have killed a man last night, and Theo and Taylor were both pretty damn harsh too. It’s ok if that’s not-”

“He wouldn’t be the first, and you know it.”

The spell was broken. He had shattered the bubble with the reminder of the night before, the memory of bashing the hulking man’s skull into the concrete smacking into her harshly and leaving her reeling. Yet another thing to throw down the corridor where Walburga Black screamed slurs at her, where Regulus Black stored the only evidence of his final betrayal, where Harry likely lived with Ginny now. His face was so unfamiliar it was almost funny, yet another reminder that she was not as acquainted with the wizarding world as she thought; she really only knew the Order, and they only knew her out of necessity. 

She rolled away, climbing out of bed and grabbing the green knitted jumper folded over the desk chair. Her feet were so cold, but all she wanted to do was run away. Pulling the soft knit over her head, she moved towards the door without thought of what might greet her on the other side. 

“Granger? Granger wait just one-”

“It isn’t a big deal, I’m going to check on Pansy and then I have to do a stock check at the store tonight- in fact what time is it, I could get it done before close if I-” 

“Granger listen to me-”

“The software crashed halfway last time and it took nearly an hour to re-input-”

“Granger will you just stop-”

“And I refuse to stand here in this fucking room for one more second when I could be counting sachets of brown sauce.”

“What’s wrong with my room?” Malfoy seemed genuinely offended, his tone petulant like a child as she reached for the handle of the oak door. Hermione couldn’t help it- she turned on her heel to look at him with her eyebrow raised, amused despite herself. 

“I know it’s a bit cliche, but-”

“There’s no but,” Hermione interrupted, her lips curling up at the corners as she observed the man standing shirtless with his hands on his hips in front of her. He looked absolutely ridiculous; sleep mussed hair, sleep still in the corners of his eyes, his pyjama bottoms riding dangerously low on his hips exposing the faintest line of dark blonde hair leading somewhere Hermione really, really should not be thinking about. Ever. “Your room is exactly what I thought any one of you bloody Slytherins would have had in your room. Your bedsheets are Slytherin green for god’s sake!”

He had the audacity to roll his eyes at her, shifting to cross his arms across his chest as he looked at her with more emotion than she expected him to be capable of. 

“You like my Slytherin green bed sheets.”

“I do not.”

“You do.”

“I don’t!”

He was moving towards her, cat-like in his slow, calculated steps.

“You like my sheets, Granger, admit it!”

“I will do no such thing.”

“You like how soft they are.”

“Don’t”

“Oh you absolutely do.”

He was close enough to touch now, his arms moving away from his chest as he stepped into her personal space like it was his to share. 

“You like my sheets, you like my bed,” he put a hand up to the door frame, almost caging her in against the door, “and you like cuddling too, apparently.”

Hermione huffed, rolling her eyes as she crossed her own arms, ignoring the way her hand felt like it had been sparked as it brushed his still bare chest to do so. She fell back against the door, all fake bravado as she looked up at him with a challenge in her eyes. 

“I don’t.” 

“Oh, Granger, Granger, Granger,” she loathed to think of it, but what he was doing right now could only be described as purring, “you might even like me.”

“As if.”

“Mmm,” he hummed, lifting a hand to wrap a curl around his finger before dropping his hand to grip her hip in those stupid hands of his. He had a knack of drawing unintentional actions from her it seems, her breath hitching as she felt the lightest of squeezes against her hip bone. How could such a small action be so fucking filthy? She felt dirty, more so than all of her nights spent with her best friend. It was absolutely intoxicating, and she was fighting with every bone in her body not to lean into the touch. Instead, she stayed as still as she could as he leaned in even closer, the heat of his breath brushing across her cheek as he whispered, “you can have me, if you want.”

She couldn’t breathe. There was not a universe in which Draco fucking Malfoy just said what he said, to her. She could rip him apart if she wanted to. She could make him scream, find all the places that hurt the most as he begged for her mercy. She could fucking ruin him. 

Instead she closed her eyes. Let her head fall against the door, his nose nudging her to move her head to the side too to expose her neck to him. She almost swore she felt his lips ghost that spot just below her ear when the very door she was leant against began to be absolutely pummeled from the other side with angry fists and hushed arguing. 

The spell was broken once again. Twice, in a very short period of time, she had been hypnotised by this fucking veela, drawn in by his softly spoken words and warmth only for the moment to be thankfully ruined by reminders of the outside world. She snapped her head back up, pushing the blonde away with an almost embarrassing urgency before adjusting the jumper that hadn’t even been moved and pulling the door open. 

Pansy stood behind a furious looking Taylor, both still in their own pjs. 

“Sorry, are we interrupting something?” Taylor asked completely disingenuously before barging into the room with Pansy hot on her heels, apologetically grimacing at the both of them. 

“So,” Taylor whipped around as Hermione closed the door behind the two of them, “Does anyone else want to explain what the fuck happened last night?”

----------------------------

It took far, far longer than Hermione would have liked to convince Taylor that everything was alright. Pansy, Draco and herself had repeated their admittedly very flimsy story six or seven times by the time Taylor was ready to leave it alone, and even then she was looking at Hermione as if she had purposely stepped on her cat or something similar. If Hermione was being honest, she found it completely pathetic the way Taylor was behaving; the fawning over Pansy and the sudden complete hatred of Hermione seemed less out of genuine concern for her girlfriend and instead an attempt at showing Hermione Pansy was hers; as if Hermione cared. Pansy was hot, it was nice to have someone who was not afraid to touch her causally every now and then in a platonic way, but Hermione was not interested in the slightest. Not that Taylor cared. 

It was in times like this that Hermione found herself missing Leah, despite the girl’s… oddities. Leah was so similar to Luna it was almost freaky, and she had that horrible all-seeing mysteriousness about her that sometimes set Hermione on edge, but she was always good at talking Taylor down from her constructed high horse. She balanced the redhead’s fire, but recently Leah had been off visiting friends and family around the country more than she had been at the house. 

So instead of her usual mediator, she had two Slytherin’s with tethers as short as her own. Pansy looked embarrassed by the whole situation, while Draco had retreated back behind his occlumency walls once again, the deep blue of his eyes faded back to icy grey. Pansy managed to drag Taylor back out of Draco’s room, apologising again for her girlfriend’s interrogation as she gently pulled the door closed behind her.

“Fuck,” Hermione breathed, running her hands through her knotted hair as best she could, while Draco stood from where he had been perched against the desk and shook his head in an amused manner, “I don’t ever want to get on her bad side again, she just does not shut up.”

“Why is she so convinced you’re trying to sleep with Pansy?”

“Right!! You noticed that too?!”

“I mean, the girl essentially tried to accuse you of drugging Pansy at one point. Why are you friends with her?” Draco had moved over to the chest of drawers next to the door, grabbing another jumper and a pair of jeans out of the bottom drawer as he spoke. 

“She’s not usually like this, she just has stopped trusting me ever since I had that night out with Pansy.”

“To be fair, you both ended up sleeping in the living room that night.”
“So what?”

It was Draco’s turn to give her the arched eyebrow now, his clothes clutched in his hand as he waited for her to answer her own question. 

“Oh whatever, Malfoy, she doesn’t care about that, she cares that Pansy seems to know more about me than she does. She’s self centred and nosy, but that’s not my problem to fix.”

“Why don’t you just tell them more?”

“I can’t be arsed trying to keep track of lies, it’s so much easier to just not say anything.”

Draco shrugged at this as a ‘fair enough’ gesture, moving towards the door once again as he effectively ended the conversation.

“You get dressed Granger, you’ve apparently got a stock count to do.”

Hermione groaned loudly as he moved out into the living room where Becca was still clearly asleep on the sofa, mouth hanging wide open as she snored softly. He grinned cheekily over his shoulder at her reaction, before pulling the door closed once again and leaving her to stew with her thoughts in the silence of the bedroom. 

How was she supposed to act normal, knowing she probably killed someone last night? As much as her bravado to Draco was genuine enough, it was not her first time killing someone and she had done it far more brutally in the past too, but this was the first time this sort of violence had bled into her new life. The war was over, it had been for a while, so why was Pansy being kidnapped by strange wizards from the muggle world? How was she supposed to go into work and count fucking impulse unit items and packets of decaf pods, knowing the blood on her hands was fresh again? How was she supposed to trust anyone around her, knowing there were wizards hunting her friends down, again?

How was this happening to her again?

Chapter Text

IT ALL CAME back without a moment’s reprieve. The paranoia, the fear of discovery, the constant looking over her shoulder waiting for the flash of red or green to fly at her and ruin her whole life once again. At work she spent far longer than she really should be hiding in the back office; the paperwork had never been so meticulously perfect, but her staff clearly had noticed something was going on with her. Not that she really cared if a group of baristas she barely knew thought she was being a bit lazy- from in the office she could watch the CCTV and mentally make note of anyone who seemed even the slightest bit strange. 

She stopped showing up to lectures and seminars again, instead repeatedly emailing professors for catch-up work with flimsy apologies and half baked excuses of sickness or family grievance. She started clinging to the Slytherins more too, keeping an eye on them as if her unstable self was going to really be any real protection to the group of snakes if they were attacked again. 

Becca and Taylor noticed, even Mark noticed, that she was being weird. Taylor still had a chip on her shoulder that Pansy had clung to Jean the way she had following the attack, as if her girlfriend had not just been through something incredibly traumatic. Becca on the other hand seemed to be walking on eggshells around the lot of them, as if any moment they were going to burst into flames if she said or did the wrong thing. Nights out became messier, less about having a good time with one another and more about chasing their thoughts away with tequila and deafening music in humid clubs or dodgy bars. She had managed to avoid being one on one with Draco again since, but with the winter break rapidly approaching she became startlingly aware that even he would be a better choice over spending the next few weeks alone. 

It wasn’t until a few days before Christmas that Taylor and Becca headed back to their respective family homes, each of them wishing Jean a merry Christmas and surprising her by saying they would be back for New Years Eve with Pansy and the others. She had expected them to be celebrating at home with their high school friends like they had last year, leaving Jean to drink herself into oblivion on her own. Instead they seemed to have made plans with Pansy, and by proxy with herself and the rest of the Hogwarts alumni living in Manchester. It felt like a recipe for disaster if Hermione was being honest with herself, but the little monster inside her head told her that it would be fun. She was almost itching to get the residual adrenaline out of her system, desperate to fight or fuck away the energy until she no longer felt the need to run as far away from all of this as she possibly could. 

Christmas passed without thought, Hermione not even bothering to acknowledge the celebration. She knew the Slytherins had gone to Blaise’s vineyard for Yule; she had been invited but the idea of trying to sneak out of the country via international portkey did not seem like the most sensible idea as someone who was technically in hiding. So she spent the time sat in her room at Chaos House, eating Chinese takeaway and catching up on the lectures she had decided to miss from the last three or so weeks of the semester. The week between Christmas and New Years always felt a little strange, but this year it was less odd than usual since she hadn’t treated Yule or Christmas as anything special. It was actually fairly nice, not having to think about anyone else for a little while. 

And then her reprieve ended. 

Becca, with her blonde locks now dyed a dark wine red, bounded into her bedroom the morning of New Years Eve with a bright smile on her face and conspiracy in her eyes. 

“Jean! Are you ready for some fun?”

-------------------------

Becca had always said that wine red was ‘totes Jean’s colour’. Her long dark curly hair had been carefully styled with mousse and gel and plaits and little golden hair cuffs that shimmered under the club lights. Her dress was simple; a deep, almost black red with a high neck and long sleeves, but it was so short it was borderline indecent and the back scooped so low that any lower Hermione would not have been able to wear any underwear. The fabric was soft, slightly heavy so it draped beautifully, and paired well with her knee-high black boots where her wand and dagger were carefully stored away. She hadn’t bothered with any special makeup, just her usual liner and dark lipstick, but she felt good for the first time since the attack outside the bar; thought that likely had something to do with the little white lines Taylor had generously racked up as a peace offering. They had been out for only a few hours; midnight was fast approaching and Hermione could barely feel her skin as she let the bass of the music wash over her, her arms wrapped around Becca’s shoulders as they swayed and bounced to the beat. 

Malfoy was watching her, as had become usual in these situations. He had a girl with him at the bar, someone with low-waisted baggy jeans and a crop top that showed off her flat stomach, the girls pin straight hair a dark blue colour under the flashing white lights. She was clearly flirting, and Draco seemed perfectly happy to smile and nod and lean over her as she did so, but every so often his eyes would flick up to find her in the crowded room. Every time, she would find him looking at her for a moment before she moved around again or he looked away, and the music would be a little quieter for just a moment. A brief moment of peace in the buzzing room, the air ever so slightly more electric. 

As the countdown started, she felt Becca crowd her space even more than she had been at the same time she watched Draco lean into the girl at the bar. She barely felt the graze of Becca’s lips on hers as she watched Malfoy sweep the girl closer to him as he attached his face to hers, a sloppy first kiss at the stroke of midnight. 

Air. She needed air. 

Tucking a piece of hair behind Becca’s ear affectionately, she smiled slightly before signalling she was going for a smoke as the remixed version of Auld Lang Syne blared out from the speakers. She didn’t look back, didn’t register the look of hurt on Becca’s face or the fact that Malfoy was watching her go from where he was no longer kissing that strange blue haired girl, all she could focus on was getting outside where the cool night air would wash away the nausea from whatever was happening inside her. 

The smokers area was blissfully empty, a fact that would not register as suspicious to Hermione until later on. The cold night air nipped at her exposed skin as she lit her cigarette with the lighter Becca had bought her for Christmas, the heat from the flame gently kissing her cheeks as she sucked in a mouth full of smoke. It wasn’t like she was jealous, she just never expected Draco fucking Malfoy to kiss… well anyone really. He was still new to the muggle world, and he seemed so uninterested with interacting with strangers the way Pansy and Blaise and Theo seemed all too eager to do. 

“Granger.”

Fuck. 

“You ok?” He had no right to sound as concerned as he did, and yet here they found themselves again; Hermione pissed off, smoking outside the place all of their friends were blissfully drinking themselves into comas, with Draco fucking Malfoy staring at her with false concern written across his face. 

“Fine.” She refused to look at him, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed against her body as she blew a mouthful of smoke in the opposite direction to where he was standing. It was stupid to be out here, with snow starting to gently fall from the dark skies. It was so fucking cold, and she was so fucking angry, and Draco was here bothering her as she smoked again. 

“Granger, I-”

“Draco Malfoy.”

Something about that voice sent shivers down her spine, something familiar in the way the man standing at the other end of the dark outdoor area held himself as he stared them down. His face was cloaked in the same way the attacker at the start of the month had been, that blurry dark blob where his face should be still radiating anger. 

“Can I help you?” Draco said, moving to stand ever so slightly in front of Hermione in what could have been seen as quite a protective way. She dropped her cigarette to the floor, pressing her boots into the ground to put it out as she grabbed her wand as subtly as she could, pretending to adjust her boots. 

The figure didn’t say another word, sending a wordless stunning spell towards the pair of them instead. Draco had barely managed to grab his wand from his side holster before he had to dive out of the way, throwing a shield up as fast as he could before a second hex blasted into where he had been standing. Hermione instinctively sent a slicing jinx at the attacker’s thigh, catching the man off guard as he threw more offensive spells Draco’s way. Blood began gushing from the fresh cut, the figure stopping to slowly look at the girl he clearly had thought was just a muggle friend of Draco's until she attacked him.

“Hermione?” 

That voice was so familiar, and yet Hermione just couldn’t place it. It was like it was muffled, the memory stuck somewhere in her brain where she couldn’t quite reach it. But he was already back to attacking Draco, sending spell after spell at his shield, knowing it wouldn’t be long until Draco couldn’t hold it any longer. Hermione began on the offensive, knowing Draco was unable to cast anything in his own defence other than the shield he currently was barely holding together. 

“Hermione, stop it!” The figure yelled, the red lights flashing forward over and over again as they traded blows. Something hot caught her hip, burning through the fabric and sending the smell of singed flesh through her nostrils.

“Granger!” Draco yelped, watching helplessly as his shield shattered. 

She didn’t even think. She didn’t really have to, the green light almost moving in slow motion as she and Draco dived in opposite directions to avoid the unforgivable this stranger had thrown at them. The spells flowed from her wand as if with a mind of their own; another slice to his ankle, an expelliarmus, a blasting jinx that sent the large figure to the floor. The man rolled over, grabbing a knife from a holster she hadn’t noticed on his thigh. He was on his feet again, hobbling towards Draco. No, no no no  no no. Her hip was blisteringly painful, her vision going blurry with panic and pain and exhaustion. 

The knife sparkled as the attacker brought it down onto Draco, his shield thrown sloppily back up as he tried to edge away from the beast with the blade. 

She hadn’t even noticed she had moved again. 

She didn’t notice the feeling of warm blood gushing from the man’s neck onto her arms. 

She didn’t register the figure collapsing to the floor beside Draco, his eyes wide and focused on the knife in her hand that had just plunged in the side of this man’s neck. 

All she could see was Draco, helpless and tired, with a knife inches from his face. 

The knife slipped from her fingers as she moved towards Draco, his eyes still fixated on the blade she had left behind. She knelt next to him, eyes roaming for any visible injuries as his own shaking hands came up to rub his face a few times. 

“We need to get out of here,” He muttered, looking from the knife, to the gurgling man, to the blood coating Hermione’s hands. 

“Yes,” Hermione replied simply, oddly calm. The rushing noise in her ears was so loud, it was hard to think of anything else. 

“Fuck, Granger.”

“I know.”

“You just-” 

“I know, I know.”

“For me?” 

“Yes.” 

“Why?” 

Hermione sighed, standing back up as she cast a simple cleaning charm on her hands and face where blood was splattered all over her, and then healing the wound on her side. She couldn’t do anything about the ripped dress; hopefully the other girls either wouldn’t notice or would believe she got caught by something. She knew the man’s face would be revealed soon, and that they needed to dispose of his body somehow, but right now all she could think of was going home and grabbing the first bottle she found. 

“You can’t defend yourself properly. I wasn’t just going to stand here and watch you die.”
“Like I did?” 

She didn’t want to talk about it, instead shifting over to where the man was finally done convulsing and gurgling. Blonde hair, blue eyes, square jaw. 

“Holy fucking shit, is that Cormac McLaggen?”

“Mmm,” Hermione was examining Cormac’s vacant expression, willing the fact she just killed someone she had gone to school with to make her feel anything other than relief. 

“Fuck, Granger, you just killed-”

“Don’t.” 

Draco seemed to be panicking more than she was, as she thought back to her days in the war. A few disillusionment and cleaning spells and a complicated transfiguration later, there was a small wooden cube where Cormac’s body had once been, the blood had been wiped from where he had bled out on the floor and Draco was looking at her with an unreadable expression on his face. 

“What?” She snapped at him, putting the wooden cube in her handbag as she shook out her hair in an attempt to look like she hadn’t just killed a man. 

“How did you-”

“Barty Crouch Jr turned his dad into a bone and buried him in the forbidden forest during our fourth year. His body was only found once Barty’s wand was snapped, I figured it would work for me too.”

“What the fuck.”

“I know.”

Two quick side-along apparitions later, and Hermione and Draco were back in the club as if nothing at all had happened, as if there was not now a slowly decomposing body spelled to look like a tiny wooden square sitting six feet under in the Forest of Dean. The music was now too loud, every body that touched hers feeling like a threat as she dragged Draco along by his hand to a corner of the room where they could at least pretend they had never left if their friends asked. She started moving to the music, placing Draco’s hands on her hips as she swayed along to whatever the new DJ had decided was ‘the anthem to take them through this new year.’

“Granger?” Draco had moved even closer to lean down and yell in her ear, the music nearly deafening.

“We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

“Granger, please-”

“Tomorrow, Malfoy! I can’t think about it, just, tomorrow. Please?” She was looking at him, his eyes bright and clear and full of concern as he held her stare. Slowly, he nodded as he joined her movements, his hands tightening on her hips as she sighed in relief. They stayed together for a while longer, moving through the venue and downing shots as if it was their last night on earth- for all intents and purposes, it might as well be. The booze warmed her belly as she grinded close to Malfoy, the alcohol clouding his eyes in a way distinctly different to occlumency and yet just as jarring. He seemed to want to cling to her, finding ways to touch and grab at her for the next hour as they avoided their friends to appear wrapped up in one another. 

By the time the group found each other again, she was leaning into his touch too. The thought of Cormac’s body laid out on the pavement was still there in the forefront of her mind, but her apathy towards the oaf and the feel of Draco’s hands on her bare skin on her back had let her shove it into that same cage she had once kept Draco himself in; the place where every other body she had created was stored. Everything was fine, and she had only done it to protect Draco and herself. Everything was fine. 

Becca rolled her eyes at the sight of them, smiling cheekily at the close pair before whispering something to Taylor who appeared just as amused by the comment made. Pansy, however, looked completely taken aback, being aware that their previous ‘encounters’ had been completely fabricated in order to maintain Hermione’s identity as Jean. Hermione stayed close to him for the rest of the night, his arms often wrapped around her waist as he stood behind her any time she interacted with someone else. It was as if they were seeking each other’s warmth, using the closeness to try and heal the wounds left on their souls from being attacked mere hours before. 

The collective decision was made to crash at the Slytherin’s flat again, the lot of them stumbling through the centre of town with the crowds of other inebriated partiers at god knows what time in the morning. The cold air was a shock to her body like it had been the first time she left the club that night, but this time Draco was there with an arm thrown over her shoulder protectively as they strolled down Deansgate to their building. 

Taylor waggled her eyebrows at Hermione as a drunk Pansy dragged her to their bedroom, fire in her eyes that was disgustingly apparent to everyone around them. Becca seemed to be crashing in Theo’s room, something that earned a raised eye from Blaise but Hermione knew to be platonic. 

And then they were alone, standing in the kitchen in the low light of a lamp, drinking a night cap they really, really didn’t need.

They had barely spoken since the group had joined them, despite their near constant attachment to each other. In fact, it was the first time in hours Draco didn’t have a hand on her waist or hip or curled in her hair; the loss was more apparent than Hermione would have liked it to be. 

“Do you want to-”

“No.”

Draco barely began to ask the question before she snapped at him, happy to let Cormac rot in the cage in Grimmauld place just a little bit longer. She didn’t want to think about the repercussions of her actions, what it meant that she had essentially killed a man for Draco Malfoy; a man she had known, had been on a date with, who knew her friends and fought on the right side of the war. She hadn’t just killed him, she had plunged a muggle dagger into his throat as if it was the easiest thing to do in the world, and buried him so his family would never have a body to bury as long as everything went to plan. She was either a psychopath, or so deep in denial that she may as well make her new home there. 

“Hermione,” His voice was deep, thick with something she wasn’t sure she recognised as he almost growled her name. Her given name. She snapped her eyes to his, seeing them dark and warm and hot. They blazed with an intensity Hermione had never felt before, his jaw clenched as if he was fighting back the words he wanted to say. 

“What?” She didn’t need this right now, she just wanted to climb into his stupid Slytherin green sheets and pretend the outside did not exist and she had not just literally killed a man for him. 

He didn’t respond, simply put his whiskey down on the side. He stalked towards her, so similar to how he had back at the start of the month when she had last brutally attacked a man attacking her new friends. He placed a hand on either side of her on the countertop, caging her in where she leant as casually as possible against the cold marble.

“Malfoy,” She sighed, ignoring the thrill that shot up her spine at finding herself back in this position, once again trapped against furniture as Draco fucking Malfoy purred pretty things in her ear despite her just behaving like the monster she is right in front of him. 

“You just killed a man for me, Hermione, the least you can do is call me by my first name, no?” His eyes were roaming her face, heavy with the weight of booze and what she presumed knew to be lust, as much as she was denying it. She knew she likely looked similar, pretending that the heat of his hands so close to her hips was intoxicating. 

“Drac-”

She had barely got the first syllable of his name out before his lips were on hers. 

Chapter Text

So soft. 

That was the first thought running through Draco’s head as he practically slammed into Hermione’s body. Her lips, still stained with slightly smudged lipstick and tinted by tequila, they were so damn soft. Two soft pillows that did nothing to defend against the startling clash of teeth that accompanied the jolt of his hip bones pressing her against the cold marble countertop. The action practically forced her to arch deliciously up into him, her own hips and chest flush with his body as he drank her like the first glass of water after days in the desert. 

The very concept that he was kissing Hermione fucking Granger should have at least registered in his head, if not being a startling reminder that his life was so very off track compared to his 12 year old self’s plan. But the only things he could think of were ‘so soft’ and ‘god, finally’.

Finally, I get to taste her. Finally I get to feel her, those perfect tits pressed hard into my chest as she breathes into my mouth, as she takes my breath for her own. It wasn’t some fairytale first kiss, it was needy and hungry and messy, tongues pressing clumsily against each other as they fumbled to his door. Her legs wrapped around his waist, the chunky boots likely leaving bruises on the top of his ass as he hoisted her higher and all but slammed her against the inside of his bedroom door. Her dress was easy to take off; his shirt and trousers significantly less so as he moaned fleeting promises into the skin of her neck. Each touch elicited a sharp intake of breath, a guilty moan or muffled groan as they moved perfectly out of sync with each other, stumbling over first time touches and stolen bites of soft flesh. 

Pressing into her felt like nothing he had ever felt. It was too scary and exciting to be coming home, too perfect and familiar to be something completely new to him. Each thrust she met with her own desperate rise of her hips, the cadence they created fast and dirty and all too desperate to be truly unexpected. He knew with the way her nails dragged track marks down his back she too was expecting this as much as he was; waiting to see if he would ever make the first move or if she would be first to make it for them. Her breathless pants were something he prayed no one but him would ever hear again, knowing somewhere deep inside him that this would likely not be the case. Feeling her tighten around him as he played with her breasts and kissed the corner where her neck met her shoulders, biting hard as she squeezed and moaned deep and uncontrolled.

Then came the after, the breathing in sync as the moment ended and slowly the realisation of what they had just done came crashing over Draco like a bucket of ice cold water. There was not a single universe in which what they had just done would be ok for Granger when she eventually stops panting and takes a moment to think about what had just gone down. All he wanted was to stay in this moment; body slick with sweat and the smell of her surrounding him as he just breathed. 

“Draco,” Hermione almost hummed his name, the air still seemingly knocked from her lungs as she rolled over to face him, propping her head up on her hand. He swivelled his head gently to face her, looking up to where she was slightly higher on the bed. 

“What does this mean?”

Of all the god forsaken questions she could ask, it had to be that one. He knew she had had casual hookups before, not least with her own roommate, so how could she lay there glowing and perfect and all bared to him and ask him what sleeping together meant for them. He wanted to say ‘nothing, we’re just friends if barely that,’ but the words got stuck in his throat as her hair cascaded down her back in thick, colourful waves. Instead, what came out was a fairly pitiful “what?” as he gazed up at her, likely looking like an awestruck toddler. 

“We fucked. I killed a man for you, and you helped me hide the body,” she rolled her eyes as Draco scoffed at that, “and I was just wondering how you would like to move on from here?”

“Move on?” The very thought of moving on seemed preposterous to him, the suggestion that the best and also worst night of his life, at least since the end of the war, could just be swept under the rug and ‘moved on’ from causing his chest to clench with anxiety and hurt. 

No, in fact, how dare she? How dare she change the colours he saw in the world; breathe him back to life after what felt like a lifetime of grey misery, only to ask how to move on right as he finally got to see over the top of this mountain they had been climbing? 

She looked at him with one eyebrow lifted, waiting for him to answer his own question without even noticing the spiral she had sent him down with just a few words. 

“How do we move on?” He simply repeated her own question again, waiting for those big brown eyes that seemed to be shimmering gold in the low light of his bedroom to cotton on to the ridiculousness of the very notion of moving on. 

“You tell me how we move on from this Granger, because I certainly am in no rush to,” He kissed the first part of her bare skin he could reach, slowly. He moved across to her stomach, keeping his eyes raised at her as he worked his way up her body until he had kissed and crawled his way up to her mouth, desperate to feel them even if it was to be the last time. 

“If you can tell me you don’t want to keep doing this, then I will move on.” Hovering over her, his words were a warm blanket warding her bare skin from the cold wash of reality. 

“Draco,” She whispered, his lips peppering a line down from her jaw to her collar bone.

“Or we carry on as we have done,” the words came slightly slurred, the movement of his lips hindered as they pressed to her skin, “We act as we already do around our friends, our shared friends, and then I bring you back in here and I fuck you silly.”

“I killed someone for you, Draco.”

She did. The frozen, numb part of his soul sang a song of victory that not only stemmed from Hermione’s bloody hands, but from the way her lips wrapped around the syllables of his name. The void he held inside him since the war, the boredom that only comes after a lifetime of constant high stakes, was finally, finally dissipating. 

“I think I liked it.”

Her voice was a whisper, as though the confession was less voluntary and more stolen from her. It was clearly as much of a shock to her as it was to him, her wide eyes snapping to his where he now gazed up at her. She liked it. 

“You liked it?”

“Yes. He can’t hurt anyone else now, I know that for sure. It feels good.”

Of course. Of course perfect princess Hermione liked it because it made her a hero, not because there was something terrifyingly addictive about someone trying to hurt you, and you destroying them for it. Draco himself had only killed one person in the war, a snatcher he had been forced to execute for attempting to abandon the cause- a young man, only a year or two older than Draco. They had staged it as a fight, giving each man a knife and telling them to have at it with each other; everyone knew that the malnourished and rejected snatcher would be no match for a marked death eater. Still, the poor lad fought to the very end, a viciousness toward Draco even he had no idea the poor boy held in him. Like Hermione, Draco found a sick satisfaction following the light leaving his opponents eyes. Some sort of sadistic validation that Draco was stronger, that he was better.

Hermione, however, was notorious within the death eater ranks. A ruthless fighter, she was known for never using the unforgivables and yet still managing to inflict maximum damage on anyone who attacked her or Harry. The recruits from the year below them at Hogwarts whispered her name in fearful reverence, whilst older death eaters spat her name and talked openly about all the things they would like to do to her if they got their hands on her. It was disgusting, but it was done out of fear- the one thing they feared most was dying at the hands of a muggleborn, let alone one as well known and well regarded as Hermione Granger. Her kill count was never publicised, with her fighting for the winning side, but Draco reckoned had she fought for evil she would likely be notorious like Sirius Black had once been, locked away in maximum security in Azkaban and left to go mad. 

“I see,” was all Draco replied. 

“Yeah.”

“I thought it was hot.”

“What?!” Hermione exclaimed loudly.

“Yeah, you stood over him and me with that knife in your hands, hair all wild and sexy and panting- of course it was hot!”

“Draco Malfoy, do you have a knife kink? She teased back, looking down at him with humour in her eyes he had never seen directed at him before. 

“Shush, let’s get back to you, hm? Stabby stabby, murdery, murdery…”

The giggle she let out as he poked her side was light, the sound juxtaposing the topic so much it felt wrong to be so pleased by it. This was by far the most bizarre 24 hours of his entire fucking life.

“We should sleep.” She muttered. He hummed his assent, gently rolling back to his own side of the bed and settling into the covers as she continued to stare at him. She reached over to the bedside table, the elegant line of her waist and hips stretching out as she turned off the lights, flopping back down onto her side in the dark. The silence stretched on, the conversation over but clearly far from done. Draco wasn’t ready to sleep, he wasn’t ready to face tomorrow yet. A new year, his life already so changed from this time last year. 

The little part of him that liked to nag, that picked and pried and pulled every last thread of a thought until it completely fell apart, had decided to latch onto something supremely stupid and yet it had him unable to rest. Would their relationship change now? Did sleeping with Hermione mean they would no longer fight, no longer be at each other’s throats after nights out or argue over stupid pedantic details while their friends roll their eyes and laugh about their animosity? He, freak as he was, loved the rage that would boil beneath his skin with every cruel remark they made towards each other. He wanted to flirt with her and it rile her up, not flirt back. That sounded stupid and toxic or whatever but the thought that he would likely never be pinned to a wall by his throat as she snarled at him, vicious and seething, was honestly a little bit devastating. The first time he had seen her in his flat back in October was what had reignited him, a confirmation that he was not completely dead inside and the fire he had felt after seeing her in September was real- she woke up the side of him that could feel things again. Mundanity was not suited to him, and with their fights and spats he enjoyed being alive again just a little bit more.

“Malfoy?” Hermione murmured in the dark.

“Yes, Granger?”

“I still hate you.”

At her words, he rolled onto his side and dragged her close, tucking his face into the space between her head and shoulders and pressing a gentle kiss to the skin there.

“I hate you too.” 

Chapter Text

SHE SHOULD HAVE known better. The thought that the people who had sent him would have had a way to track Cormac didn’t even cross her mind, but two weeks later when the ministry came knocking, it was all she could think about; she should have known, she should have known, she should have known. She should have realised that he wasn’t going to be working alone; the familiar glamour used to disguise both people who had attacked her friends in the last month alone should have been a dead give away. 

They came in the early evening in the middle of January, barging in through the front door as Hermione was cooking dinner, chatting to Becca and Leah. Taylor and Mark were playing cards at the dining table, and Tristan was on the sofa on the phone to someone from back home. George was out with his girlfriend, some sweetheart he had met by coincidence a few months previously having worked together a few years earlier and crushed on hard. Their reacquaintance had led to a very whirlwind month, going from not having spoken in years to suddenly attached at the hip.

She felt the wards tingle against her skin, and then rattle violently through her bones as someone set a containment charm on the house. The whole house shook with the force of it, the room going silent as plates and cups clattered on the shelves. 

“Get behind me,” Hermione instructed, moving to the door leading to the kitchen as the others moved closer to her- Tristan was still on the phone, now sat up explaining what was going on.

“Jean?” Taylor had stood up, distrust and fear lacing her cry. 

“Just, stay behind me.” She slipped her wand out from where it was holstered to her forearm under her comfortable muggle sweatsuit.

The front door blew off its hinges with a thundering bang, two Aurors dressed in modern robes similar to that muggle police special forces wear pouring into their small student home. Leah screamed and ducked down, while the others crowded together behind where Hermione was now standing, knife in one hand, wand in the other, glaring menacingly at them all. The group of them came to a halt when faced with the scene; beloved war heroine, Hermione Jean Granger, wand raised against the law enforcement she had once worked to help. 

“Hermione Granger, you are under arrest for the murder of Cormac McClaggen. Anything you say or do will be used in testimony in front of the court of the Ministry’s choosing, with imprisonment with immediate effect. Yield, or face further punishment at the will of the Minister.”

The muggles behind her burst into a flurry of noise and protest, all yelling simultaneously either at Hermione or at the Aurors.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“That is not the correct arrest statement! What’s your badge number?”

“Who the fuck is Hermione Granger”

“Jean, did you fucking kill somebody?”

“What the fuck is going on here?”

“You will not harm these muggles. You will not touch these muggles, do you understand?” Hermione forcefully stared the lead Auror down, a boy she recognised from the year above her at school. Hodgkins, or something similar? Hopkins, perhaps. He saw the fury in his eyes, as if this was more personal than she would usually assume- perhaps a friend of Cormac’s? She couldn’t remember.

“Why did you do it, Hermione?” He asked, familiarity in his tone- yet she could truly not place the man.

“He attacked me first.”

“Cormac was after Draco, not you.” Ah. So the ministry is the one targeting them, or at least they are involved. Just fucking perfect- not only did she kill a bounty wizard, it was a fucking ministry sanctioned one. Sending off a quick patronus to Pansy, she watched the two men tense as the wisp of light escaped the room. 

“Taylor, I need you guys to go to the flat.”

“What the fuck is-”

Hermione didn’t take her eyes or her wand off the Aurors, but the force in her voice was unmistakable. 

“Go to the others, and they’ll explain everything.”

“Hermione-”

“Just go!” With that, she shot a weak stunner off at the nearest Auror, and all hell broke loose. Tristan had grabbed Leah and shoved her behind his back, ducking behind the sofa with her as blasts of light flitted around the enclosed space violently. Taylor and Becca were screaming again at all three wizards, with Hermione trying to put up enough of a fight they would both have to take her in, giving the others a chance to escape. 

“Go! Now!” Hermione yelled, the four of them only hesitating a moment before dashing out the back door into the garden. A stinging jinx caught her shoulder, the familiar burn throwing her back mercilessly to the night two weeks ago when she had last dueled for her life. Sweat was beading in her hairline and upper lip, adrenaline thumping in her ears as she sent harmless charm after harmless charm, shielding from the attacks she knew by heart from the few weeks of Auror training she had helped Harry complete. 

She wanted to run so badly. She needed to escape this house, but she knew no one would be able to get in or out properly until she had been taken from the premises. Another jinx caught her knee, her whole body buckling to the ground with the pain of it. Her shield faltered just long enough for vines to burst from the ground at the command of the Auror who had been speaking, wrapping round her wrists and keeping her down. She prayed to all the gods she knew that her friends had not carried on watching through the window- there was nothing she wanted less than to be seen in this position, kneeling at the foot of these men who had sent people to kill her friends, who had once been her comrades and now fought to take her down. She should have been lethal, should have fought like she did in the war or on the roof, but the thought of her friends watching her murder what they perceived to be two police officers was just a little too much for her to bear. 

“Stay down, Hermione.” 

“You’re going to fucking regret this, Hopkins.”

“You fucking killed Cormac!”

“Yeah, and he deserved it too.” Hermione spat lowly, glaring at the men standing above her. She wished she had made him suffer. The shorter guy who had yet to say anything moved behind her, cuffing her hands roughly as the vines retracted and hoisting her to her feet. 

“You were a war hero. What the fuck happened? Why aren’t you dead?” The man behind her said, speaking as if he could possibly know her and her story from the articles and books written by people jumping to cash in on her and Ron and Harry’s misery, their pain. Their battles, commercialised and monetised by people who hid behind blood status and so-called ‘neutrality’ throughout the war, and proceeded to slander her name across the press following the order’s triumph at the battle of Hogwarts. They called her near enough every name in the sun, backhanded compliments at every turn as she was paraded around by Kingsly like a prized calf trussed up for market- the perfect muggleborn witch, supporting the new regime as if it was really any different to the way things were. 

She didn’t bother to respond to him, choosing instead to smile up at him wickedly as Hopkins glared down at her, before he grabbed one of her arms and began to strong arm her out of the room. She shook violently trying to either shake his grasp or at least make sure it took both of the arresting wizards to get her back to the ministry. She caught a glimpse of ginger hair at the window as she looked briefly over her shoulder, before she was dragged from the house.

Taylor had been suspicious for a long time now. Becca was blinded by her love for the girl, Leah was merely cryptic and unhelpful, and the boys of the house honestly seemed to not really care at all about her theories and musings. But something was very very wrong with Jean Gallagher. 

When they first met, Jean had seemed like a normal fresher- a bit jumpy, a bit awkward and nervous, but overall a good laugh and interesting enough to talk to if you avoided any topic surrounding her past or family. She seemed to come out of her shell as the year went on, smoking and drinking with the rest of them, settling into university life just like the rest of them did. They signed a lease together in the January, ready for the new year in September well in advance to make sure they could all live in the same house for their second year- Becca’s idea, of course. Jean was not the most organised, often seeming to be rushed and a little flustered, the cool collected illusion being shattered by her hungover panicked yells that she was going to be late for work.

This year was different. It was only a year on from them choosing to live together, and up until September Taylor was sure she knew the person she was across the hall from. Sure, a little lacklustre on the history part but that could be because it was a hard topic or just because there wasn’t much to say.

That party in September did it. Draco, staring at Jean like she was some sort of ghost or goddess, calling her by another name she couldn’t remember now- and more importantly, Jean fleeing the scene. She had explained it away with false confusion and baffled sounding laughter, leaning into the illusion that she had never met the boy before- but Taylor was now certain that was a complete lie. 

Pansy’s reaction to seeing her was another mark on Jean’s ledger. They seemed familiar in a way Taylor couldn’t quite explain, trying to fight down the jealousy monster inside her whenever Jean seemed to catch onto a joke Pansy made faster than she did, or referencing things under her breath that made Pansy snort or grimace. It was if they knew each other, had some sort of long history that Taylor was not permitted to know. That easy comradery between each other, like they had experienced things together they were not telling the others. That first night, where she had watched the two girls  hiss and spit at each other in their living room as if they knew and despised one another was utterly bizarre, a pre-existing animosity that quickly formed into friendship following that equally bizarre night out the two of them had. 

By the time November rolled around, Taylor was sure Jean had been lying to them the whole time. That she kept her past to herself for a reason, and that she somehow knew these people that had entered their lives so suddenly, and for some reason they were also lying for her. The whole situation was dodgy as hell, and then Theo had his own little blow up at Jean about some boy named Harry, and that ended any chance in Taylor’s mind of her ever trusting Jean ever again. There was not a doubt in her mind that this group of post, private school twats knew Jean personally, and there was some sort of dark, bitter history there that Jean had clearly tried to leave behind- perhaps, so too had the rest of them. But for whatever reason, they all decided that Taylor and Becca did not deserve to know what was going on there. 

And now whatever fuckery just happened. She was frozen in shock, watching her roommate fight and scream and be dragged out of the house, accused of murder. The police called her another name too, Hermione Granger, bitterness lacing their words as if they knew her personally in a way that only furthered Taylor’s theory that something bigger than just Jean was happening here. She was desperately trying to ignore the fact they seemed to be shooting fireworks at each other as she rushed her friends out the back door, the lot of them standing awkwardly in the garden while Tristan fiddled desperately with the lock on the gate they had never bothered to open before. The others were muttering and panicking as quietly as possible, throwing looks over their shoulder like they were hiding from someone- it took a moment for Taylor to realise, they were. She wasn’t sure if it was from the policemen that had broken down their front door, or Jean.

“Just wiggle it!”
“I am wiggling it!”

“Not enough!”

“Are they coming?”

“Where’s Jean?”

“What the fuck is going on.”

“Hurry up Tristan!”
“I’m fucking trying!”

“Taylor, can you see them?”
Deep in thought, Taylor almost missed the direct address to her, jumping slightly at the mention of her own name. Creeping towards the window, her back slouched forward as if that would help hide her from the officers arresting her housemate. Peeking over the window, she just caught a glimpse of Jean in her jeans and crop top, handcuffed and being manhandled roughly out the door. She looked feral, her hair wild and appearing to be sparking, a rip on her jeans leg near her knee that wasn’t there before. The most horrifying part, at least to Taylor, was the fact she was smiling.

Chapter Text

HARRY POTTER WAS having an incredibly bad time. The paperwork on his desk was bordering a structural marvel, weeks and weeks of complaints, follow ups, civilian reports, witness statements, anything you could possibly think of covering his desk. Months and months of tracking a rogue sect of one of Fenrir Greyback’s packs, only for it to turn out to be yet another case of fear-mongering at the hands of the remaining pureblood aristocracy that pretended that they were better than they once were- a lie. 

The paperwork alone would have been utterly suffocating, and then you mix in his fairly unfortunate personal life as of late, and really he felt like this might actually be his rock bottom after all. He had thought this the day before, and the day before that, and the day before that, and the day before…. For a long time, basically. 

There was some sort of commotion happening in the atrium of the DMLE, but he was determined to not be one of those rubbernecking rookies currently gossiping and watching whatever criminal was currently being perp-walked through to the holding area of the pen- one of the ‘new’ features that ensured people this was the ministry of the new, not the ministry of old. It definitely was not just the old cells with a new name, no no, the ministry promises they’re different. A lie. 

“Mother of Merlin, is that really her?”

“I thought she was dead.”

“Look at her, she’s fucking feral.”

“Did she always dress like that?”

Ah, fuck it. I guess he was going to be one of those rubbernecking rookies today then. Standing up slowly from his desk, Harry stretched his back out before moving out of his cubicle down to see what all the fuss was about. There were some fairly high profile cases ongoing as of late, and perhaps one of the extraction squads (read: bounty Aurors) had finally caught up to some of the Slytherins that were attempting to leave the wizarding world. 

And then the world stopped. 

Or at least, the world suddenly slowed down almost completely, Hopkins and Rutberg walking the last person Harry expected to see towards the holding cells- sorry, holding area. 

“Hermione?”

She was indeed dressed differently. Baggy jeans hung low on her hips, the hint of a tattoo peaking out across her hip bone. A tight, cropped tank top stretched across her chest, the words ‘ironically hot’ in neon red across the black fabric. More tattoos decorated her arms, swirling black ink he could not make out the details of from this far away. She had filled out slightly again, her collarbones no longer poking out and her arms no longer worryingly boney- an effect the war had on her that he had not really even realised until right now. Her hair was longer than he remembered, warmer toned than he remembered with lighter parts at the front, wild and curly like it had once been at school, almost sparking at the ends just like it used to. She was magnificent.

She looked over as he said her name, not seeming as surprised to see him as he was her. She smiled wickedly at him, sending him a wink before she was whisked out of sight and he was left in the atrium, standing like an idiot as his whole life just changed because of Hermione Granger- again. 

Two and a bit years ago, London. 

“You have no fucking right to say that to me Harry Potter, you really don’t.” Hermione was crying. Harry had made Hermione cry, and it was not the first time it had happened recently either. Ever since the end of the war, his resentment at the sacrifices he and everyone else had made, thanks to Dumbledore’s insistence on using child soldiers to carry out a task he could have done himself years prior, had been growing and growing inside him like some sort of vicious monster. Everyone around him had been hurt by this, nasty quips and cruel remarks slipping out without him meaning to say them at everyone and everyone. He had just told Hermione she was just jealous of Ron for having a family, and that is why she was refusing to date him- not  only was this definitely not true, but it unbelievably cruel considering he and Dumbledore were why she did not have a family any more to begin with. But he couldn’t help it. Hermione in particular was the most fun to get his energy out with, because everyone else just lay down and took his nastiness- Hermione fought back.

“Wah, wah, wah, I just don’t see why you can’t just get over whatever it is you have against him and give him a chance!”

“Because I don’t want to date him, Harry? Why is that so hard to comprehend? Is your brain so puny from quidditch injuries that you can’t fathom that maybe, just maybe, Ron isn’t that much of a fucking catch?”

“Oh get over yourself, Mione, it’s not like people are lining up around the shop to take you out, is it?”

Ginny walked in as he said this, his and Hermione’s arguments somehow always managing to have her as a participant at some point. Him and Ginny had decided to give it a real go, now there wasn’t a psychotic murdering bastard out to kill him and steal his soul, or whatever his ultimate evil plan for killing someone a quarter of his age was.

“Fucks sake, are you two arguing again?” Ginny groaned, as if she didn’t purposely seek them out from hearing their shouting. 

“Fuck off Ginny.” Hermione rolled her eyes as she spoke, glaring at the redheaded girl as if she had personally offended her- which knowing Ginny’s behaviour recently, she probably had. 

“Don’t speak to her like that.”

“Sorry Harry, I forgot how precious your Weasleys are to you.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“You put every single one ahead of me every single fucking time Harry! Ron left us! He left us alone in those forests and you expect me to turn around and want to fuck him? Spend my life with him?”

“Oh get over yourself, Hermione.”

“Get over myself? Says Mr ‘I am the chosen one’.”

“Have you ever been able to let anything go in your entire life?”

“Are you being serious right now?”

“Hermione, you’re being a bit dramatic.” Ginny chimed in, earning herself yet another glare from Hermione and an exasperated sigh from Harry.

“Fuck off, Ginny.” Hermione said again, this time with far more venom. 

“Hermione, what is your actual damage?”

“You’re fucking kidding right now, right? Like you’re actually having a laugh? My damage?”

“Yeah.”

“My damage?”

“Yes Hermione, your damage. Why can’t you just pipe down and take what you can fucking get for once.”

“I think Ron is not exactly ‘what I can get’.”

“You think anyone else is going to want you? What with your fucking know-it-all, ‘fuck everyone else’ attitude?”

“Better than your current ‘I saved the wizarding world so I can treat everyone around me like shit’ shtick. Are you not tired Harry?”

“Tired of your fucking attitude.”

“Oh my fucking god-”

“No, you’re walking around like you’re the only one who lost someone in this war Hermione and I’m fucking sick of it, you-”

“I know I’m not the only person who fucking lost people, Harry, god how stupid-”

“And now you’re refusing to go to any of Kingsley’s events-”

“Oh you mean the events where Kingsley parades us around like his little trophies while refusing to even try and help me find my parents-”

“What happened to your parents?” Ginny asked somewhat innocently, only to be ignored in favour of Harry continuing to yell at Hermione over the top of her. 

“Kingsley fought just as hard as the rest of us-”

“I’m not saying he didn’t-”

“And now he’s trying his best to patch together the whole of the community-”

“He’s not even trying to push through any new legislation-”

“It’s been 4 months, Hermione, not even-” 

“I’m just saying if he really wanted to make any sort of change-”

“Oh give it a rest Hermione, do you ever get down from your high fucking horse-”

“I will if it means you giving your head a fucking wobble and realising that nothing is going to change, and we’re still going to be treated as lesser than, I’m still being called your ‘muggleborn best friend’ and everyone is still behaving as if my competence is miraculous considering my heritage, you’re still being used for your fame and face, Ron is still being ignored by everyone despite being mostly there for both of us, nothing is going to fucking change!”

“He’s being ignored by you too!”

“Just because I don’t want to shag our best friend does not mean I don’t think he’s being overlooked! Why is this such a foreign idea to you?”
“It’s not like it would be the first time you shagged one of your best mates though would it? What’s so different about Ron?”

“That was one fucking time Harry, will you just let it go!”

“It was more than once and you know it. If you can do it then, what’s different now?”
“We’re not confined to a fucking tent with only each other’s company, for one.”

“What.” Ginny whispered, once again ignored in favour of the on-going row.

“Oh is that the only reason you shagged me? You were bored, with me as your only option. Cheers, Hermione, thanks a lot.”

Hermione had gone red at that, suddenly looking nervously to Ginny as what Harry had just admitted to finally catching up to his brain. All the anger he was holding was suddenly gone, this stupid argument about nothing real feeling as stupid as it was all of a sudden. Ginny was standing very, very still, looking between them with fury blazing in her amber eyes. 

“You slept with him.” It wasn’t accusing. It wasn’t aggressive. But Hermione still shrunk down in herself, the fear in her eyes apparent.

“Look, Gin,” Harry started, but she just turned her ire on him.

“You fucking slept with her? Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Ginny-” 

“What the fuck is wrong with you? You slept with that??”

“It’s not what you think-”

“Then what is it Harry? Do you love her?”

“No, Gin, I-”

“Because clearly she doesn’t love you.”

“Ginny!”

“You had me, and you chose that?”

“Oh as if you weren’t sleeping with half of Hogwarts while we were away. We were broken up, we were lonely and cold and sad and all we had was each other. We had been abandoned by Ron, we know each other so damn well and we just… we just fell into it, I don’t know.”

Harry hadn’t noticed Hermione slipping away somewhere inside her brain. He didn’t notice how she almost physically shrank as she crossed her arms across her body, as if she was shielding herself from more attacks that were inevitably going to come.

“You just fell into it?” Ginny’s voice was dripping with contempt.

“Yes? Do you want me to say I regret it or something? I can say it if that’s what you need to hear, but it would be a lie.” Why couldn’t his mouth stop fucking moving? 

“You slept with Hermione, and you don’t even regret it?”

“No, I don't regret any of it.”

“You’re literally trying to palm her off on my brother, you were just screaming at her to give Ron a chance, and now you’re seriously trying to tell me you don’t regret fucking her?”

“Jesus Christ, can I just catch a break here?” 

“You fucking slept with her! You slept with her. Fucking hell, how can I forgive you for this?”

“Forgive me for this? Did you or did you not sleep with Blaise Zabini while me and Hermione were literally being hunted down?” 

Hermione gave a little gasp at that, looking between the couple with wide eyes. 

“That was different.” Ginny spat. 

“How the fuck was that different?”

“Because it wasn’t my best friend! It wasn’t someone I still spend all of my time with, someone I expect to see every day after the fact!”
“Alright then, how about Neville? Or Luna?”

“You slept with Neville?” Hermione seemed to not be able to help asking. Ginny turned to her once again, glaring at her viciously. 

“You slept with Harry.”

What an unfortunate time for Ron to walk in, training bag in hand. He and Harry had started Auror training less than a month ago, the first time since first year they were not studying at the same time as each other. The Ministry decided they would work better apart, for now- one of the only decisions the government had made that Hermione had vocally agreed with since the war ended. Ron dropped the bag to the floor, his eyes wide. 

“Ron…” Harry started, but it was too late. Ron turned around, and walked away again, leaving Harry to chase after him. Whatever occurred in the bedroom between Ginny and Hermione after that, he wasn’t sure; moments later, he was nursing a bruised jaw and being instructed in no uncertain terms by both Weasleys present to ‘get the fuck out’, Hermione having rush past him in tears and out to the floo seconds before Ron’s fist collided with his face. 

Ginny made sure to make it abundantly clear the next day that she never wanted to speak to his ‘stupid, specky git face ever again,’ with Ron insisting that they both just needed some time to figure out where to go from there. Hermione was not responding to his letters or floo calls, with George Weasley of all people showing up a few days later letting him know that she just needed some space as well. In the space of 30 minutes, Harry had managed to blow up his entire social life, all over a stupid argument he never should have started in the first place. 

Two weeks later, the letter came. It was simple, a short goodbye from one of the people he thought was going to be in his life forever. 

Harry,

I can not do this anymore. This world has become too much for me to bear, my life no longer really mine. All we fought for, all we suffered for, and all I am is a means to an end. So I am taking those means away. I leave my wand to you, as well as anything else you may take comfort from, or wish to burn. 

Goodbye, 

H.J.G

The words in front of him blurred as tears splattered onto the page, his heart beginning to race as he considered all the things that goodbye could possibly mean. Was she leaving the country? The wizarding world? Was she running away, or was she… no, Hermione Fucking Granger, savior and golden girl, would not kill herself. Right?

Getting to her flat was a blur. It seemed as if she hadn’t even left, if it weren’t for the small package neatly folded on her kitchen table- a box containing her wand, her locket, and Harry’s jumper- the one she had basically stolen from him while on the run. It still smelled like her; bergamot and lavender practically woven into the very fabric. Shaking hands lifted the soft knitwear to his face, inhaling deeply as he tried to keep his breaths steady, his heart calm. 

“No, no no no no no no…”

He wasn’t sure how long he sat at that kitchen table, clutching the soft jumper to his face and sobbing into it, his choking cries becoming hoarser and hoarser as he just couldn’t stop. The sky outside had turned murky by the time he finally began to calm down, the thought of trying to go home hurting too much to fathom. Grimauld Place was a nightmare when on his own as it was, which was likely why he had been spending quite so much time at the burrow until he managed to go and mess that up too. There was no way in hell he could go there today, not with the thought of Hermione having done something terrible stuck in his head like a bad song. Crawling into Hermione’s meticulously made bed, a small chirrup from Crookshanks, whom he had not even realised was still in the flat, set him off all over again. If she was just running away, there was no way she would leave her beloved cat behind- she had fought tooth and nail over that cat with everyone and anyone, and now here it was, alone. Just like him. Crooks had never really let Harry touch him before, but that night he allowed Harry to cry into his fur, cuddling up on his chest and purring like it was going to make it okay. 

George showed up the next day, to Harry’s surprise. He too had received a letter, and upon seeing Harry’s tear-swollen eyes proceeded to burst into tears himself. While Harry wasn’t aware of some sort of close relationship between Hermione and George, she clearly meant something to him as he kept muttering about finding her and “she can’t have gone far.” It was utterly heart-breaking for Harry to watch the boy who had lost so much, lose even more right in front of his eyes. George insisted on reporting her disappearance to the ministry, adamant there was something to be done. He dragged Harry to the DMLE, presenting their matching letters- George’s included a couple of extra lines, but they both essentially said the same thing- and insisting that a missing person’s case be opened immediately. Roman, the elderly ex-auror sat behind the desk, looked absolutely bored out of his mind, but filed the paperwork as requested and let them know someone would get back to them asap. By the next morning, it was all over the news; Golden Girl Gone. 

Ron showed up at Grimauld within an hour of the headline hitting the papers, begging Harry to tell him it wasn’t true, and she wasn’t really gone. They sat together for the first time in weeks, trying to process the idea that they may never see Hermione ever again. It was not a foreign concept to either of them at this point- losing someone they loved. But Hermione had never not been there, for either of them. Even when arguing, even when she was fucking petrified, she still managed to help them both in one way or another. But now she was gone, it seemed. 

A week later, he blew up at Molly and Ginny for muttering under their breaths about ‘how it was for the best’, after listening to Ron, George and Harry discuss the ongoing case. It was no secret that Molly was not always Hermione’s biggest fan, and the fact she blamed Hermione for the destruction of both of her youngest children’s love lives was not all that surprising considering her reaction to the articles about Harry and Hermione in fourth year. Ginny, however, Harry expected better from. She had always been somewhat reasonable at least, hot-headed in the moment but logical once she had a moment to breathe. The fact she seemed glad Hermione had left, possibly ended her own life, was fucking despicable in Harry’s eyes. He had stormed out of the Burrow quite dramatically, even taking the front door to prove a point, after yelling quite loudly about how the world had lost enough, and how dare they celebrate losing another. Ron had tried to follow, apologising for his mum’s behavior, but Harry just asked for a little space, and disapparated away. 

Perhaps that is how he found himself at a muggle pub just outside of Diagon Alley, a double of the shittest whiskey he had ever tried sat awkwardly in front of him as he glared at his hands wrapped around the glass. How could he have let this happen? She was supposed to be his best friend, and instead he let himself take out all his anger on her, pushed her away until she felt like she had no one. There was that ringing in his ears again, that rage that he always blamed on the piece of Voldemort that lived inside him, but may well have just been him all along. 

“Harry Fucking Potter.”

He heard his name somewhere behind him, the voice not all that familiar but not completely unknown either. He turned around to see Theodore Nott, glaring at him from a table away, green eyes not that different from his own flashing with something like contempt. He turned back to his shit whiskey, taking a far too big gulp to try and empty the glass and be done with it- unsuccessfully. Grimacing, he forced himself to keep staring at the glass, curiosity burning at him like the alcohol in his throat. 

When he finally did finish the drink, he turned to face Theo again, but he was gone. Shaking his head like that would fucking change anything, he made his way out of the dingy pub and out onto the street, so deep in thought as he turned into the apparition spot that he did not notice the same green eyes as before, glaring once again from the alley he had stepped into to. 

“You have a bad habit of being everywhere I go these days, Potter.” Theo didn’t seem to mean this badly, necessarily, but it certainly did not come out like a compliment either. In the dark streetlight from the pavement nearby, he was absolutely striking- curly soft brown hair that honestly reminded him of Hermione’s, cut short and neat around his ears and back of his head, and left to grow slightly longer on top. He was tall, taller than Harry, but perhaps shorter than Ron who had always towered above him and Hermione. Broad shoulders, high cheekbones- the perfect picture of a handsome, aristocratic asshole. 

“The fuck do you want, Nott.” Harry spat, moving to push past him deeper into the alleyway, only for Nott to step out in front of him. 

“Why? Running home to the golden girl? Oh wait, she’s gone isn’t she.”

“Fuck off.”

“She’s gone, and you’re drowning your sorrows in a muggle bar? Appropriate I suppose, it’s not like the saviour of the universe could slum it with us normal wizards in Diagon anymore.”

“Nott…”

“No, no, special treatment for you, always.”

“Would you just leave me alone-”

“Forget all the missing Slytherins, Hermione fucking Granger has gone and offed herself and the whole world has to stop-”

He didn’t even mean to, but suddenly Nott was pressed against the hard brick of the wall, groaning from the impact of being slammed and pressed against the rough surface. 

“You don’t know anything, Nott.”

“No clearly,” Nott still smirked at him, despite the fact he was currently being pressed very hard against a wall by the one person who, right now, could probably beat the everloving shit out of him and get away with it by virtue of being ‘the chosen one’. 

“She’s not gone.”

“Of course not.”

“And you need to leave me alone.”

“Of course, pretty boy.”

“And-” god damn it, was Theo not trying to fucking flirt his way out of this right now? Pretty boy, really?

“And what, Harr-eee,” Nott leaned his head down slightly, his eyes incredibly dilated for someone being threatened against a wall. Was he enjoying this?

“Just leave me alone.” Harry didn’t let go, but he did loosen his grip slightly as his grip on the situation faltered. The whiskey was hitting him hard now, that blissfully warm fuzzy feeling he was chasing earlier now not so welcome as it blurred the lines of whatever was going on here significantly. He was so full of emotions he couldn’t make heads or tails of any of it.

“You need to let go, Potter,” Nott said, smirk unmoving on his stupid, stupid, very pretty face. Harry was sure he meant it like ‘let go of my shirt and stop pressing me into this wall’, but everything was all over the place in Harry’s head right now, and a horrible flash of another way he could let go right now flashing across his eyes, salacious and not as unwelcome as it should be. 

“Just let go.”

He was so fucked. He barely knew Theo Nott, they had barely spoken even tonight, just a few antagonising lines shared between them. And yet, Harry found himself slamming his mouth against Theodore Fucking Nott’s. Theo groaned immediately, his hands reaching for Harry’s hips and dragging him closer so their whole fronts were flush against each other. What the fuck was he doing? He had never even considered men, not seriously. He knew Sirius and Remus had been… something, and that had never been strange to him, not really. And sure, Victor Krum made him blush, almost as much as Cedric Diggory had. And yes, Dean Thomas had always cut quite a striking figure, Harry often having to look away to refrain from staring when he was shirtless in their dorm. But he liked girls, there was no doubt about that. He had never had any doubts about that. And yet… this did not feel wrong. Impulsive, reckless, stupid, yes. But not wrong.

It didn’t feel wrong when Theo apparated himself and Harry into what he presumed was Theo’s flat, not breaking their kiss to do so. 

It didn’t feel wrong as they stripped bare, touching and kissing and marking like they couldn’t stop. 

It didn’t feel wrong waking up pressed against bare skin, still smelling like sex and debauchery.

It didn’t feel wrong at all.

Chapter Text

HERMIONE GRANGER WAS cold. They had thrown her in what they called the ‘holding area’, which were definitely just the old cells with a new name for PR’s sake. Stone walls, stone door, stone bench, it was a very typical dungeon-looking affair that allowed Hermione to dream up all the ways she was going to get out of this particular scenario. Maybe she could convince Kingsley or whoever was in charge these days that she hadn’t been the one to sever Cormac’s carotid artery, and that she had no idea what was going on, those Aurors were clearly evil or anti-muggleborn or something of the like. Or, maybe she could pull the whole ‘I am a war hero, you know?’ card, play into the self defence angle. However, that would definitely involve explaining why she was on a rooftop with Draco Malfoy on new years eve after essentially accidentally faking her own death and running away to a city 200 miles away from everyone she had grown up with. Perhaps not. 

Harry’s shocked face as he watched her be carted through the DMLE was burned into her brain. He looked so betrayed, so surprised- it honestly reminded her of their third year, when she had essentially snitched on him to McGonagall after Sirius sent him his dream broom. Back then, she supposed, that was one of the worst betrayals he had experienced whilst old enough to understand what the feeling of betrayal was, the nuances of Dumbledore’s constant betrayal of his trust not yet revealed and deeper, darker betrayals still in the future. She wanted to feel bad, but honestly she had a lot more to deal with right now than ex-best-friends-slash-one-time-lovers who believe they are owed your time and energy. If Pansy Parkinson and the rest of the Slytherins were to be believed, he gave up looking for her a long time anyway; George Weasley had apparently continued asking questions, posting ‘have you seen this witch’ signs in the Wizard Wheezes shops and insisting any time the press came anywhere near him that she was still alive. 

Harry had signed the papers confirming presumed death. 

That honestly hurt. If it had been Harry that had left, sending cryptic notes and disappearing in the night after a large fight between them and the rest of the Weasleys, she would have given up at absolutely nothing to get him back to her. For what now felt like a short few years in the grand scheme of things, he was her entire world. She was prepared to fight, kill and die all for him, and he gave up looking for her after a year. Just one year. 

He didn’t come to see her either. Probably for the best; who knows what could have happened if they had been allowed to be in a room together right now. He was still the hero boy wonder, based on how Pansy had described the state of the wizarding world when she and the rest of the Slytherins jumped ship. And Hermione was now a convict, handcuffed in a small stone cell somewhere in the DMLE, accused of murder after having faked her own death. They certainly had chosen different paths after Hogwarts. 

Some minutes or hours or days later- she wasn’t sure- someone came to collect her from her cell, talking about transporting her to more secure cells ‘for her own safety’. This of course sounded like them trying to hide the fact they had a presumed-dead muggleborn war-hero in prison for murder in the highly accessible DMLE. The guards were rough with her; to be fair, she was chirping at them like it was her job, making little jokes and trying to rile them up for some sort of entertainment. It occurred to her she got bored very easily now, after years of constant stimulation and entertainment from her friends and work in the muggle world. 

They were taking her somewhere out of the ministry all together, appearing to be heading towards some form of muggle transport- another baffling development. Sure, a struggling prisoner posed incredibly high risks of burns or splinching when transporting them through floo, apparating or portkey, but that had never bothered the ministry before. Now they were taking her to something disguised as a muggle police van- and no, the irony was not lost on her. No matter how many questions she asked, or times she yelled through the little hatch leading to the cab of the van demanding for someone to just fucking respond to her, she could not get a response from them. They must have been driving for a couple of hours, at least that’s what it felt like, when they eventually came to a slow rolling stop somewhere. The wizards in the front of the cab seemed to be having some sort of argument, with both car doors slamming suddenly as they seemed to get out of the car and move away to where they could no longer be heard. 

Moments later, the doors to the back of the van swung open violently, a dark figure silhouetted against the January sunset. Hermione scrambled back as best she could while still handcuffed and shackled, pressing her body into the corner of the bench inside the van. 

“Hermione?”

“Potter?” Now that was an unfortunate slip of the tongue- too much time with Slytherins. 

“Did you just call me fucking Potter?”

Harry helped her climb out of the van, unlocking the shackles with a set of spells and twists before levitating the unconscious drivers back into the cab, and locking the back of the van back up. Hermione was honestly somewhat speechless, watching the perfect soldier for the light essentially breaking her out of jail and hiding their tracks as if he had done it a thousand times. This year was slowly winning the award… not the worst year of her life, but perhaps the weirdest. Definitely the weirdest. 

“Harry,” she eventually managed to hiss, keeping her voice low as if the knocked out Aurors could hear her, “What the actual fuck are you doing?”

“What does it bleeding look like, Mione? Now get under the cloak, I’m going to reset them.”

“You’re going to what?”

“Cloak, now.”
“Harry, wha-”

“Get under the fucking cloak right now, Granger, or I swear to god I will stun you and put you back in this fucking van.”

That shut her up, taking the cloak from his hands and watching as he disillusioned himself almost flawlessly, melting into the background as he crept towards the cab. She watched him send a complex confundus, obliviate and renervate combo towards the pair in the seats, before stepping back slowly and watching the van proceed to drive away without even checking they still had their precious cargo. 

Harry materialised almost right in front of her, yanking the cloak away from her body and looking at her scathingly. It was still mid-January, and so her casual crop top and jeans and bare feet were not exactly doing much to keep her warm, days worth of grime and dust from the cell coating her body like the most useless jacket in the world. Her hair was probably massive with the rage, greasy and matting. Her wrists were red raw from the shackles, her eyes bloodshot from the lack of sleep. 

“Hermione.”

“Potter.” 

“Doubling down, are we?”

“Well I clearly don’t know you anymore, why would I not use your surname?”

“You don’t know me anymore? You’re fucking dead, Hermione, you sent a suicide note and disappeared over two fucking years ago, what the fuck? If anyone doesn’t know the other, it’s fucking me.”

Huffing and rolling her eyes, Hermione crossed her arms and stared back up at him defiantly, glaring as if she was bored by this whole interaction. Had he gotten taller?

“Well?” Harry asked, crossing his own arms around his broad chest. 

“Have you gotten taller?”

“Oh my fucking god, you’re a joke. I just risked my whole career for you, and you don’t even give me an explanation?”

“You declared me dead after less than a full year, Potter, I don’t think I owe you an explanation, no.”

“Stop calling me Potter.”

“No.”
“What the fuck? Who the fuck are you? Tell me something only Hermione Granger would know.”

“Like what?”

“Like what’s my patronus?”
“You have to be fucking joking, you literally have one of the most famous patronuses. It had a whole article dedicated just to the damn thing.”

“Well when was the first time I cast the patronus charm successfully?”
“You’re literally an Auror, Potter, surely you can come up with something that hasn’t featured in the prophet or got spread around Hogwarts like dragonpox.” She would gladly admit it, she was calling him potter to wind him up now. 

“Well can you just fucking say something that will prove to me it is my dead best friend I’ve just helped escaped ministry custody, and not some other crazy bitch.”

“One time when we were on the run, I let you cum in my-”

“OKAY! Okay, fine, yes whatever.”

“Did our past indecencies not make it into the prophet courtesy of your girlfriend after all then?”

“Ex-girlfriend, and no she thought it would be more embarrassing for her if the prophet was right about us shacking up together while on the run.”

“Sounds about right.”

There was a moment of very awkward silence, the two of them just stood staring at each other with years of growing resentment and regret stretched out in front of them like a wall they just couldn’t climb. The tips of Harry’s ears were slightly pink, either from the cold or from Hermione’s crass way of confirming her own identity; Hermione’s toes had begun to go numb.

“What the fuck did you do, Hermione?”

“You’re going to have to be more specific.”

“Why the fuck were you in ministry custody? They wouldn’t tell me anything, claiming I was not allowed anywhere near the case since it was ‘so close to home’, but fuck me Mia, you disappear for two and a bit years and then show back up under arrest and my brain is doing some pretty mental backflips over here.” Gods, no one had called her Mia in a very long time. It was private, between just the two of them, a whispered moan that turned into a tender nickname between the two of them, one that never went away even as their fleeting intimacy dwindled after Ron came back to the tent. Harry didn’t notice her momentary stillness, barrelling on with his ranting rambles. 

 “As far as I am aware, you could have fucking killed someone-”

“I did.”

“-or assaulted someone or-”

“I guess that too, really.”

“-be in with death eaters-”

“In a sense, yes.”

“Or stolen something-”

“That was only a few times.”

Harry finally stopped rambling then, as if everything she confirmed was finally catching up with him. To be fair, if you had told her four years ago she would be a thief and a murderer, somewhat on the run and shagging Draco Malfoy with somewhat embarrassing regularity since New Years Eve, she would have obliviated herself probably. 

Or, she would burst into tears. Wimp. 

“You killed someone?” Harry looked truly distraught now, perhaps the realisation that he had just broken a suspect out of prison for shits and giggles. 

“I did.”

“Not in the war?”

“Not in the war.”

“Why?”

“He was hurting someone that belonged to me.” She wasn’t quite sure what made her phrase it like that, the possessiveness over her new friends crawling in as she faced Harry. They were hers, they were her secret and she had no plans on outing their location to a fucking Auror, even if that Auror had once been the person she trusted more than anyone in the world.

“What the fuck Hermione-”

Hermione shrugged, Harry’s hands scrubbing over his face as he took a few steps away from her before circling back towards her. 

“What the fuck are we going to do?”
“We are doing nothing,” Hermione snapped, “You are going back to your picture perfect life as Kingsley’s little trophy, solving little cases and going home to whatever witch currently has your fancy-”

“Hermione-” Harry tried to interrupt, but Hermione held up her hand to silence him as she continued.

“And I am going to go home, try to explain to my friends why I disappeared from the house for several days, catch up on my missed classes and go back to how things were before a fucking hit-wizard tried to kill me and my friends.”

“A hit wizard?”

“Oh don’t pretend the Ministry isn’t in on it, how else would we have been found? Trackers on wands, really Potter? They’re fully grown adults being treated like children, and they can’t even defend themselves when they’re attacked.”
“Wait, wait, wait, are you talking about the Slytherins? Malfoy, Parkinson, The-, uh, the rest of them?”

Well shit. Harry always did have a way of riling her up, letting her run her mouth and calling back to things that she didn’t mean to slip out, but just did. He was a fucking menace for it. She guessed the cat was out of the bag, may as well go full throttle. Now that could be a fun game; how wound up could she make Harry by calling him Potter and talking about her sex life with Draco Fucking Malfoy?

“Yes, I’m talking about Draco.”

“Fucking Draco? Since when has it been Draco?”

“Probably since he bent me over the kitchen counter in his flat and-”

“Fucking hell, shut up, stop, no, no, no, no, stop-”

“Made me moan so loud it woke up Pansy who was not so thrilled about it either, but then Theo-”

“Theo?” The tone in his voice was unmistakably different here, the hurt so evident it shocked Hermione out of her teasing. 

“Uh, yeah, Theo Nott? Tall, dark, sexy as hell, bit of a temper and utter flirt?”

“Oh, uh, yeah of course, that Theo? You’re, uh, friends with him?”

Her next words were cruel, upon reflection, but after Theo’s outburst at her at the start of December and Harry’s sudden ability to move past her description of the way she and Draco had accidentally announced to their friends they were hooking up for real now, she decided a little prodding and experimenting will get her the answers she needed and get Harry to move away from the topic of what she had done wrong. 

“Friends is one way of putting it, sure. He and Draco like to share, and as you know I’m used to a group of three so we all sort of-”

“Stop lying to me, Hermione.”

“I’m not lying! Theo is a very generous lover, he worships me like-”
“No he doesn’t!”

“Yes he does, Potter! He’s so sweet and gentle with me that-”

“Would you just stop fucking lying!”

“I’m not lying!”

“Yes you are!”

“And how would you know?!”

“Because he! He! He, uh,” Harry stuttered a stop, his hands curled to fists by his side as he closed his eyes and looked away, his jaw tensing. She could see the hurt, far more than Harry had expressed at her for her leaving so far.

“How do you know I’m lying, Harry?”

He was raging. It was unusual to see someone else’s hair sparking, Harry’s dark curls glittering with the fury he was clearly trying to tether down. But he didn’t back down, he didn’t say anything more as he just looked at her, a stranger in his best friend’s body. She waited a little longer, wanting to taunt him a little more but deciding the sensible thing right now would be to back down.

“Can we go somewhere? My toes are cold.”

The small wizarding town Harry apparated them to had a pub where, mercifully, no one would judge her too harshly for having bare feet in the dead of winter. It was small, mostly empty and the patrons of the spot seemed more interested in their beer and gobstones than looking at whoever had set off the bell at the door. The pair slipped into a booth, Hermione tucking her feet under her bum to try and bring some feeling back to the frozen digits. It was awkward again, Harry’s anger and Hermione’s prodding leaving them in an even worse place than they had begun. Eventually, Harry let out a heavy sigh to break the silence, leaning forward with his hands clasped and his forearms pressed against the table, looking her dead in the eyes. 

“Hermione, you left me. You left me essentially alone, you convinced everyone you had fucking killed yourself, You disappear for two and a bit years and then reappear having apparently murdered someone. Can you please just give me something so my conscience will let me sleep tonight for letting you out?”
“It’s complicated, Harry.” He looked at her as pleadingly as she had ever seen him, that hurt and distress from earlier never having melted from his face. 

“I couldn’t do it anymore. I was so broken from war, my family gone, the people I had fought for unwilling to help. You were a ticking time bomb, one second being the friend I had known and loved, the next exploding and causing pain to all who tried to keep you close. Fred was gone, and he meant more to me than I think anyone ever knew. He was my first, did you know that?” 

Harry’s mouth dropped open slightly with her admission, shaking his head gently as he stayed silent. 

“I suppose you could say we were together, for a while. Never told anyone other than George and Sirius, and then it all just got a bit too complicated and we left on good terms, decided to keep it between us. Keep it special. Plus, you know what Ron could get like; he was always so upset about his brothers getting what he wanted. It would only make that complex worse, knowing that Fred and I… Anyway, with the Weasley’s now hating me, the Prophet still referring to me as your ‘miraculous muggleborn friend’, Kingsley wanting to parade me around like some sort of prize while being unwilling to help me find my parents- I needed out. I needed you to not find me, and so I left. I left my wand, got a new one in a village near Chester, then forged my way into the incoming fresher class at Manchester University. I figured, it’s a big enough city to not be found, but it’s also well known enough that you wouldn’t bother looking there. I have no history with the place; why not just go for it. I lived as a muggle, I didn’t even set wards or protect myself really, aside from my blade and wand. I got a job, I studied, I partied, I moved in with my cool muggle friends. Harry, I was so fucking happy.”

Harry looked genuinely enthralled by her tale, his eyes slightly glassy as he listened. 

“Then in September, I went to a house party in Fallows, and there they all were. Pansy and my roommate were virtually on top of each other, Blaise was flirting with Becca like it was his job, Draco and Theo sat on the sofa with them. Draco stood up, called me by my real name, it was a whole thing for the five of us to convince my friends he was mistaken. Very dramatic, almost lost friends over that. And from there, Pansy and Taylor started dating, we all started hanging out, Draco and I grew close. There shouldn’t be much more to say than that, except bounty wizards or something keep popping up and trying to kidnap or kill my friends; one stunned and began dragging Pansy out of a bar, another attacked me and Draco on a roof on New Years. That was the one I killed, he tried to kill Draco and I just… acted on instinct I guess. Your Aurors busted my front door down in front of my muggle friends, I doubt they remembered to obliviate them either so that should be fun for me to try and fix. And, yeah that’s the short version I guess.”

Harry was looking at her like she was absolutely insane. 

“So, uh, are you going to let me go?”

“Fuck, Hermione, I didn’t realise-”

“It doesn’t matter now. I had finally found a life I was happy with, and it has once again blown up in my face because of stupid wizards with big egos. Can I go, or not?”

“Are you not worried about these hit wizards? And no, I don’t really want to just let you go, I just got you back and now you want to run again?”
“Harry, you don’t have me back. I’m sorry, but it's the truth. I have a new life, new friends, I can’t come back; not when nothing has changed. Not when the only person still looking for me was George, and even then it is out of obligation to his dead brother more than it is for me. I just want to go home. I want to try and sort out my life, try and get back to normal. This isn’t some big mystery for us to solve and fix like when we were at school; someone is coming after us, we’re just going to have to try and stop them if they try again. But I’m not hunting down a hit-wizard-for-hire ringleader to destroy his evil operation, and I’m certainly not barralling through the ministry demanding justice for my friends when I am the person who has killed someone. It was self defence, sure, but I still did it. And I don’t regret it. If someone was attacking my friends, I’d do it again. But I’m not hunting anyone down; we’ve done enough of that for a lifetime. Are you not tired, Harry?”

Harry was looking at him now, his eyebrows furrowed. She waited, letting her emotional outburst settle over them, letting it stew in Harry’s mind. He didn’t respond for a long time, staring at her intensely for several minutes before looking out towards the rest of the bar, dotted with people who didn’t know who he was, what he had done. 

It did feel nice; being anonymous. It was like a nice blanket, keeping the anxiety that usually accompanied outings into the wizarding world at bay. Harry had the unfortunate reality of knowing what a life of anonymity had felt like; the luxury of not being known by anyone as a child, even if he was treated like less than a person during that time, was one he know could look back on and recognise as such. Once upon a time, he could go out to the shops near his home without his hand being shaken on the street. Now, he could barely step foot out of the wards surrounding Grimauld before he was bombarded with paparazzi, still determined to photograph his every mundane moment in case he did something different for once. The fact the tabloids and Prophet were still not bored of him was a testament to how little had gone on in the wizarding world since the downfall of Voldemort; how little had changed. ‘Harry Potter leaves the house’ was still an interesting news story to many, and so he had very little opportunity to be in public, and alone. 

“You want to go back to Manchester?”
“Yes, I do.”

“Even though someone is out to get you?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve killed, assaulted, stolen, forged.”

“I have.”

“And you want to go back?”

“Yes.”

Harry nodded to himself, looking her dead in the eyes as she answered each of his questions. 

“Go.”

“What?”

“I cannot in good conscience help you get back there, but I won’t stop you from leaving. If you want to run away from me again, be my guest.”

“Harry that’s not fair,” Hermione started, rolling her eyes at him before she could stop herself. 

“Yes it is. You left me, you left Ron, you left Neville and Luna and Ginny, you left George. You ran away. I don’t know how to forgive you for that yet. I don’t want to let you go, I can’t fathom just letting you walk out of that door and potentially never seeing you again, but I am not able to help you anymore either. I have to let you go.”

“Harry…”

“I thought I might have loved you. Once, in moments alone, I thought I might be able to fall for you the way I did with… anyway, yeah. I could have loved you like that, in another life.”

This she was not expecting. There was never any discussion of anything like this at any point, they had never talked about being more than just friends even when they were undeniably so. Harry had never indicated to her that he had felt more; then again, Hermione hadn’t either. Maybe she had, or could have, or maybe she didn’t. Her emotions from that time in her life are tightly sealed in a box in her mental arrangement of Grimauld place, locked in the cellar with all the other things she had to forget lest they break her. 

“I have to go, Harry. I can’t come back, I don’t belong in that world anymore-”

“You do! You can come back, stay at Grimauld with me and-”

“Harry, I am wanted for Cormac McClaggen’s murder. I cannot come back.”

Harry paused for a moment at the name, before shaking his head slightly and looking down.

“Will you write?”

“I will try.”

They both knew it was a lie.