Chapter Text
It had been three days since she’d brought Draco back from Azkaban.
The days since had blurred together into a relentless rhythm. Mornings at the Ministry, afternoons at Grimmauld Place, nights with Ron.
Her hours at work were consumed by the logistics of the upcoming release program. Pansy Parkinson had agreed to take Theodore Nott in at Hogsmeade and would bring him along to the weekly support group she ran out of the back room at the Three Broomsticks. It was a fragile experiment in reintegration, one Hermione had championed from the start, but lately, her conviction felt stretched thin.
The rest of her days belonged to Draco. Managing him, monitoring him, trying to balance empathy with vigilance. He was raw and unpredictable, and every time she left him alone she felt the uneasy prickle of risk that he might set more than a portrait on fire in her absence. He didn’t ask for much, mostly books, but anything he asked for she provided. When she’d floated the topic of clothes again, he’d only asked for sweatpants and plain black or grey shirts. He didn’t look right in them, not at all, but when she’d pressed on why he didn’t want to wear anything else, he’d mumbled something about being too scrawny to fill out suits right now.
And at night she went home. To Ron. Their fight, the one that had once left the flat in near silence, had finally subsided into something gentler. Ron had been patient, careful. He’d started talking about normal things again: dinner with friends, a weekend away, “something nice” to remind them of ordinary life. Hermione said yes to everything, though she had no idea how she’d make time. The peace between them felt so fragile, she didn’t dare test it.
When Harry returned from his trip to Estonia chasing leads on a new pureblood extremist group forming, he walked straight into the storm.
Susan Bones had gone to Azkaban earlier that morning expecting to meet Hermione there, collect Draco Malfoy and escort him to a Ministry-approved halfway house. Only when she arrived, there had been no Hermione. And no Draco.
By the time Hermione arrived at the Ministry that afternoon, Harry was waiting.
He stood at an enchanted window of his office, arms folded, shoulders tense, watching the streams of muggles walk through central London. When she entered, he didn’t turn right away. “Hermione. Would you like to tell me why Susan Bones thinks you disappeared with a war criminal?”
Hermione closed the door behind her with a quiet click. “Because I did. Though he isn’t a criminal, technically.”
Harry’s jaw went slack. “You what?”
“I took him from Azkaban myself. I had field clearance-”
“You had conditional clearance,” he snapped, whirling to face her. “Hermione, that’s not the same thing! You were meant to plan the transfer, make it happen through official channels, not orchestrate an unauthorised extraction!”
Hermione didn’t flinch. “The halfway house wasn’t ready. You know that. The wards were unstable, and the tracking charms were glitching. I wasn’t about to throw him into a containment wing that barely functions-”
“So you decided to vanish with him?” Harry’s voice rose, sharper now. “Hermione, do you have any idea what that looks like? The Head of DMLE’s deputy disappears with Draco Malfoy and doesn’t tell a soul? Do you know how many bloody owls I’ve had from the Wizengamot today? Do you realise what the prophet will look like tomorrow morning?” She wasn’t sure that she wanted to.
She met his glare evenly. “Then tell them I acted under your supervision.”
He laughed, short, humourless. “I can’t keep doing that.”
Hermione’s throat tightened. “Doing what?”
“Covering for you.” His voice dropped, weary now instead of angry. “Every time you go off-script, I’m the one who cleans up after it. Do you have any idea how hard it’s been keeping this place from tearing itself apart? I’ve got corruption hearings, pure blood families lobbying ministry officials every other week, and now a missing prisoner who happens to be Malfoy. You can’t keep expecting me to save you from the fallout.”
Hermione took a step forward. “I’m not asking you to save me.” She wish she could. She wished, that for once, he would be the one to save her. She’d saved everyone else so many times, him more than anyone else.
“The hell you aren’t!” Harry slammed a hand against the desk. “You think I don’t see what’s happening? You bend the rules because you think you’re the only one who knows what’s right, and I let you because-” He stopped, the words catching in his throat.
“Because what?” she pressed, voice soft but trembling.
He stared at her for a long, heavy moment. “Because more often than not it’s true,” he said finally. “Because you’ve been right more often than anyone else I’ve ever met. But this?” He shook his head. “This isn’t you being right, Hermione. This is you crossing lines you used to draw for everyone else. I don’t even know where you’re keeping him, for starters.”
She swallowed hard, fingers tightening around the strap of her satchel. “I didn’t do this for him. I did it because I don’t trust the ministry not to chew him up and spit him out more than they already have. I have him in Grimmauld place.”
Harry exhaled sharply and sat down, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “You’re babysitting Draco Malfoy in my safehouse.”
“I couldn’t wait for you to get back from Estonia. By the time I filed everything, there would be dozens of people interfering and trying to sink their claws into him for their own agendas. He wouldn’t have survived another week in that place, Harry. Besides, I know you hate Grimmauld place, and he needs a place to live that is quiet, that no one knows about.”
He looked up at her, eyes tired and pained. Grimmauld place was a sensitive topic. It always reminded Harry of Sirius. “You know what? You can take the house, I don’t want to see it anyway. Lord knows the Malfoys own enough property as it is, I’m sure they’ll enjoy getting a new one, even if it is a shithole. Is that the only thing you need?”
“No,” she said, too quickly. “I need a week of annual leave, to make sure he’s settled. He’s my responsibility, I can’t keep leaving him all day like I have been.”
“Responsibility,” he repeated, ignoring her request. “You’re not responsible for him, Hermione. You don’t owe him. If anything, the prick owes you.”
“I owe the truth,” she said. “And the truth is that someone kept him in there for a reason and there’s someone at the ministry trying to interfere. Unless you still believe Katie Bell killing herself was a last minute act of guilt. They were using a dementor on him, Harry. All of the dementors were supposed to be gone. None of it is adding up.”
Harry leaned back, staring at her for a long moment. His face had gone pale at the mention of dementors. If she could get him to understand even a hint of what Draco had been through, maybe he would make him realise why she had done all of this. When he finally spoke, his voice was low, defeated. “You’re burning yourself out trying to save someone who might not even want saving.”
“Maybe,” she said softly. “But I’d rather burn out doing that than sit behind another stack of forms pretending it’s enough.”
The room remained still. The dying embers in the fireplace crackled softly.
Finally, Harry reached into his drawer, pulled out a sheaf of parchment, and slid it toward her. “I’m not letting you use your annual leave doing more work,” he said. “I’ll assign you confidential field-work to keep eyes off of you, if you really think this was an inside job. Bones can pick up the rehab for the ones being released soon, you’ve got too much on your plate.”
Hermione nodded, relief flickering briefly across her face. “Thank you.”
Harry shook his head, looking at her. Pleading, tired eyes. “Don’t thank me. Communicate with me next time. Tell me what’s going on. If there is some sort of conspiracy going on it’s something I need to know about. Just remember I can’t keep covering for you forever. I’ve got enough fires to put out without you lighting new ones.”
She hesitated at the door, looking back. “I know.”
“Do you?” he asked quietly.
She didn’t answer. The door shut softly behind her.
The lift ride down from Harry’s office felt longer than usual. The hum of Ministry chatter pressed against her skull, but Hermione barely heard it. Her mind was still replaying Harry’s words. You’re not responsible for him. You don’t owe him.
But she did. Not in the way Harry thought. Not out of guilt or penance, or even to put right something that the ministry had clearly gotten very wrong. She owed him out of the same sense of obligation she felt when she held doors open for strangers. She owed him like she owed saying thank you to muggle bus drivers, she owed him in the way she smiled at babies being pushed past in their prams. She owed him the same obligation of being seen as a human being that she gave everyone else, and worthy of care because of that, personal feelings aside.
By the time she Apparated outside Grimmauld Place, the late afternoon light had turned murky. The townhouse loomed like a bruise against the row of identical facades, its wards whispering faintly as she stepped forward. The old magic still recognised her; the door creaked open without a sound.
Inside, the air still smelled faintly of smoke, but now with a new scent of half rancid cleaning supplies. Kreacher’s touch, she suspected, though the elf had made himself scarce since Draco’s arrival and she’d hardly seen a glimpse of him save from a long ear darting behind a doorway at night. Hermione closed the door behind her and took her coat off then hung it, tugging at the knot of tension in her shoulders.
“Malfoy?” she called, softly at first.
Silence.
She frowned, walking through to the drawing room. The fire was burning low, embers casting restless shadows across the walls. Draco sat in the armchair nearest the hearth, one leg crossed over the other, pale hair catching the flicker of light. He didn’t look at her as she entered, just stared into the fire with that same distant, unreadable expression that unnerved her.
“You’re late,” he said finally. His voice was quiet.
Hermione set her things down on the side table. “I had work to finish.”
“I gathered.” His eyes flicked toward her now, silver and cold. “Potter finally catch up with you?”
Her stomach tightened. “How do you-”
“Educated guess. You left your notes on the counter.” He nodded toward the parchment she’d been using the night before. Ministry forms covered in her handwriting. “They mentioned he was returning today. You’re not very good at hiding things, Granger.”
Hermione drew in a slow breath. “If you were reading through my private paperwork-”
“Relax. I only read enough to know you’re in trouble,” he said, leaning back in the chair. “And that you broke me out early when you weren’t meant to.”
“Someone had to,” she muttered, moving toward the fire. Her hands were far too cold. She didn’t have the warmth or energy in her to argue with him tonight.
He gave a short, humourless laugh. “You think that makes you noble?”
“I think it makes me right,” she said sharply.
For a moment, the silence between them was taut and stretched, like a wire pulled too tight. Draco’s gaze was steady, unreadable, but something in his face softened by the tiniest sinew, almost imperceptibly.
“You look tired,” he said.
Hermione blinked, thrown off. “I’ve had a long day.”
“Long week, more like.” His eyes flicked toward her again, assessing. “You shouldn’t keep running yourself into the ground. I imagine it makes people suspicious.”
She shot him a dry look. “You’re one to talk about appearances. And as Harry told me today, I don’t owe you anything. Especially not looking presentable.”
That earned the faintest smirk.
She turned away, pretending to fuss with the fire poker, but the quiet pressed in around them again, heavier now, charged. The crackle of the flames was the only sound.
Finally, Draco spoke again. “You shouldn’t have come back for me.”
Hermione froze and turned her head over her shoulder to look at him. “What?”
“You heard me.” His gaze was still fixed on the fire. “You’ve tied yourself to something that’ll ruin you if you’re not careful. Potter’s right, loathe as I am to admit it. You don’t owe me anything.”
She straightened, looking at him quizzically. She couldn’t tell what angle he was playing this time, but whatever it was, she was sick of hearing this phrase today. “Don’t presume to tell me what I owe, Malfoy. You weren’t there when they paraded the rest of your lot through the hearing rooms like livestock. You didn’t see what was left of them before we started trying to reform the system.”
Something flickered in his expression; pain, anger, memory. “I was there,” he said softly. “Just because I was behind a different door doesn’t mean I didn’t hear the screaming.”
Hermione exhaled, the air trembling between them. “Then you understand why I had to do something.”
He looked at her for a long time, eyes shadowed and searching. “You really believe you can fix this, don’t you? Fix me.”
“I believe that if the system is broken, someone has to at least try to put it right.”
Draco tilted his head, studying her as though trying to solve a riddle. “And you think that someone is you.”
She met his gaze evenly. “If not me, who?”
For a moment, neither of them moved. The fire popped, sending a trail of sparks up the chimney. He was watching her now, not with malice, nor pity. Just quiet understanding. As if they were two people standing on the edge of the same cliff for different reasons.
After a moment, he rose from the chair. “You should eat,” he said. “You look like you’ve been arguing with the entire Ministry.”
“I have,” she said, half a laugh escaping her.
Draco’s mouth curved faintly, the barest ghost of a smile. “Then you won’t win tonight.” He turned toward the door. “There’s tea in the kitchen.” As he left, Hermione sank into the chair he’d vacated. The cushion was still warm. She stared into the flames, Harry’s words echoing in her mind. You don’t owe him. Maybe not. But someone should.
Hermione wasn’t sure how long she sat there after he’d gone. The fire had burned low again, down to the last thin shivers of flame, but she couldn’t bring herself to move. Her mind was a tangle of Harry’s disappointment, Draco’s hollowness, the gnawing sense that she was juggling far too many things and that one of them was bound to come crashing down soon.
When she finally stood, the silence of Grimmauld Place felt heavier than usual. Every floorboard creak sounded too loud, too aware. She found Draco in the kitchen, standing at the worn counter with his mug of tea, untouched. His sleeves were rolled up, hair mussed, the faint shadows under his eyes darker than ever.
He looked up as she entered. “You should sit before you fall over.”
“I’m fine,” she said automatically, though she wasn’t. She sat anyway, hoisting herself up on the kitchen counter. For a long moment, neither spoke. The tick of the old clock on the mantle filled the silence.
Finally, Hermione cleared her throat. “We need to start working seriously on your recovery.”
Draco didn’t react at first. Then he turned his head toward her, expression unreadable. “Recovery,” he repeated, as though tasting the word.
“Yes,” she said firmly, forcing her tired voice into something close to professional. “We’ve taken the first step, you’re out. But that isn’t enough. You need to begin rebuilding some kind of routine. Physical therapy, trauma therapy, memory work, emotional stabilisation-”
“I don’t feel like doing anything,” he interrupted, quiet but blunt. “Except sleeping.”
Hermione frowned. “You can’t sleep through the rest of your life, Draco.”
“Watch me.”
Her patience thinned at the edges. “You can’t hide in Grimmauld Place forever. Eventually the world is going to start asking questions, and you need to be ready to answer them. The Wizengamot will want a statement, the healers will want progress reports-”
He looked at her then, really looked, and something in his eyes made her stop mid-sentence. The usual sharpness wasn’t there; only exhaustion, a rawness that pulled the breath out of her chest.
“I don’t want to argue today,” he said quietly.
Hermione blinked, startled. “I’m not trying to argue, I’m trying to help. Malfoy, if I don’t produce some sort of evidence of what we’re doing in here, they’re going to investigate me.”
“I know,” he said, voice soft. “But I can’t. Not tonight.” He rubbed a hand across his face. “I don’t want to be him right now.”
She hesitated, unsure what to say. Suddenly the reluctance for him to don his old attire made sense. He was avoiding thinking of himself as who he was, because that person had far too much for anyone to cope with on their shoulders. “Then who do you want to be?”
His gaze lifted to meet hers. “No one. I don’t know. Maybe just someone sitting in a kitchen who doesn’t have to explain himself.” He paused. “And maybe you could forget you’re Hermione Granger for a few hours too.”
The words hung between them, strange and fragile.
Hermione felt something twist inside her chest: sympathy, fatigue, maybe even relief at the thought of not having to carry the mantle of responsibility for a little while. Slowly, she exhaled.
“Alright,” she said finally. “Just for tonight.”
Draco nodded once, almost imperceptibly, and reached for his mug of tea.
They sat in silence after that. No talk of therapy, no talk of the Ministry or Azkaban or what came next. Just the low hum of the old pipes, the flicker of candlelight across the cracked tiles, the faint rhythm of their breathing in sync. They were simply two people sitting across from each other in the half-light, too tired to be anything else. They lingered in the kitchen a while longer, each lost in their own thoughts, until the silence grew too heavy to hold. Hermione rose first. “Come on,” she said, her voice hoarse with tiredness. “It’s warmer in the drawing room.”
Draco hesitated, then followed her. The fire had burned down to a low glow, embers pulsing faintly like the heartbeat of the house itself. Hermione crouched to stoke it back to life, coaxing the flames higher until they licked against the grate. The warmth spread slowly, softening the edges of the shadows.
Draco lowered himself onto the rug in front of the hearth, legs folded beneath him, hands braced loosely on his knees. He looked… not relaxed, exactly, but present. Grounded in a way she hadn’t seen since he’d arrived. Hermione sat opposite him on the floor, cross-legged, careful to leave a comfortable space between them.
For a long while, neither spoke. The quiet was companionable, filled only by the crackle of firewood and the faint hum of the house settling around them.
Eventually, Draco said, “I’ve been reading the novels you left in the study. I know they’re not new, they’re all filled with your pencil marks. You clearly have too many books.”
Hermione smiled faintly. “There’s no such thing.”
“You say that,” he murmured, glancing toward a stack he’d piled beside the fire, “but most of them are either about social justice or some moralising fiction.” His gaze flicked back to her, amused. “You read like someone trying to fix the world by understanding it. So idealistic.”
“I suppose that’s accurate.” She tilted her head. “And you? What did you used to read?”
He was quiet for a moment. “Whatever was forbidden.”
Hermione’s lips curved. “Naturally.”
He smirked faintly, but it faded as he turned his eyes back to the fire. “Mother used to hide certain books under the floorboards. Muggle literature, mostly. Poetry, novels. She said they were ‘too dangerous’ for polite company, which of course made me devour them at twelve.”
Hermione’s brows lifted in surprise. “What sort of books?”
“Milton. Dante. Dostoevsky. Shelley.” His voice was soft, reflective. His hands trailed over a book at the top of his pile. He opened it, the pages whispering like brittle leaves. “The Portrait of Dorian Gray was one of the last things I read while at Hogwarts. My mother said it was a lesson in vanity much needed.”
Hermione snorted. “She sounds like a wise woman. I can’t imagine Hogwarts you getting the message though. What did you think it was about?”
He looked up at her, the firelight catching in his pale eyes. “About what happens when you let someone else define your soul for you.”
Hermione blinked. “That’s not the usual takeaway.”
“I suppose not.” He closed the book carefully. “But isn’t that what happens? He becomes the portrait they paint of him. The monster, not the man.”
Hermione tilted her head. “You think he didn’t choose that?”
“I think he stopped believing there was a choice,” Draco said. “Once enough people tell you what you are, it’s easier to live up to it than fight it.”
Hermione watched him for a long moment, her throat tight. “I used to hate that book,” she said softly. “It made me angry. How selfish he was, how cowardly. But I read it again, years later, and it didn’t feel like a story about vanity anymore. It felt like a story about shame.”
Draco’s gaze flicked to her again. “You’re too empathetic for your own good.”
“And you’re too cruel to yourself.” Hermione studied him, the firelight dancing across his face. “Wait. You said you were reading Dostoevsky at twelve? And I’m supposed to be the nerd?”
Draco looked at the fireplace. “Well. Crime and punishment didn’t make sense to me until I read parts of it again in Azkaban when they let me upstairs. What about you? I assume you weren’t smuggling romantic poets under your pillow at Hogwarts.”
She laughed quietly. “No. I was too busy rewriting my Charms essays. But when I could read for myself during summer holidays… Austen. Woolf. A little Brontë.”
“Woolf?” he repeated, tilting his head. “Of course. Melancholy, introspection, an excess of moral conviction. You’d get along.”
Hermione gave him a mock glare. “You sound like you’ve read her.”
“I have.” He hesitated, gaze dropping briefly to the fire. “Mother liked To the Lighthouse. She said it was the only book she’d ever read that felt like remembering a dream.”
“That’s beautiful,” Hermione said quietly.
“It was the only time I believed she wanted more than what she had,” he mumbled. The words seemed to slip out unguarded, and for a moment he looked almost startled by his own honesty.
Hermione didn’t press. Instead, she said, “I doubt you’ve heard of my favourite book.”
“What is it?”
She gave a soft, tired laugh. “You’ll think it’s dull.”
“I already do,” he murmured.
“Middlemarch,” she said, ignoring him. “By George Eliot.”
Draco raised an eyebrow. “Never heard of it.”
“I’m not surprised,” she said lightly. “It’s a collection of different books. There’s a woman who wants to do something meaningful with her life, but she keeps getting caught in… smallness. Small people, small expectations, small compromises. She tries to change the world and ends up changing herself instead.”
Draco pulled a face. “Sounds depressing.”
“It’s not,” Hermione said, though her smile was wistful. “It’s honest. Dorothea, she’s not perfect, but she tries. She thinks she’s destined for something grand, but what really matters is the quiet good she does that no one ever sees. It’s about the way one person’s choices can ripple through other lives, even if the world never notices.”
Draco looked at her for a long minute.
“You are so utterly predictable.”
She didn’t fight it, because he was right.
The fire dimmed and flared again, casting long shadows that stretched and shifted across the walls. For the first time since she’d brought him here, the house didn’t feel haunted. Hermione realised she was smiling. Not the polite kind she wore at the Ministry, but something real, quiet, unforced. Draco noticed too, though he said nothing. His gaze lingered on her a fraction longer than necessary before he looked back to the fire.
Neither of them spoke again after that. The silence wasn’t awkward this time.