More Than A Job
Hermione breathed heavily, her curls sticking to her face with sweat, the magic she’d invoked pulsing through her still, as the binding circle dissipated into a rush of sparkles. The last thing she saw was Draco, reaching for her as she passed out.
Perfume. A lot of it. Cloying and filling her nostrils with the saccharine scent. It was like the pleasurable smell of lavender, but nauseating and sickly. Murmurs echoed above her, whispered secrets and machinations.
‘Have you seen him recently?’ A female, sharp and impressionable.
‘No. He recently left. I made him take some Pepperup potion, his pallor is exceedingly severe. He practically lives by her bedside, reciting poems, casting and sleeping. His self-sacrificial state is unbearable to watch. It’s like 6th year all over again.’ This was a male, posh british accent, laced with concern.
The female started up again, ‘Theo, he was considering suicide in 6th year, but only didn’t because of his mother who died later on. We were bloody passive observers, powerless to his pain last time. Perhaps if I doused the bed with cold water she’d finally wake up. Blaise is coming tomorrow by the way, finished his trip to Japan with Luna, they’re portkeying to the manor in the afternoon. Not the Irish bastard who usually takes them, the nice fisherman…’
Hermione stopped listening as the girl rambled on above her, her perfume strong. Draco had considered suicide? The same man who’d brought her pastries, who’d opened his home to her, who’d supposedly visited her bedside every day. Her heart clenched, pain reverberating through her body. The cynicism she’d held for him had melted, but now it was gone. All she wanted to do was wake up. Tell the visitors that she was okay. That Draco needed to be okay.
This mental space the last months had pulled her into was jarring. She needed to escape- fast.
She started with her legs, moving them ever so slightly under the thick blankets, pins and needles all through her body shaking and twisting as she tried to move, to get out of this straightjacket of a slumber. She was confined, trapped. Her brain, her body, her magic was trying. But it wasn’t an easy escape. She’d blacked out and now she was waking up. She stretched herself out, finally able to embrace the release from the coma's icy grip.
Then she fell.
Her shocked-filled brown eyes widened as she prepared to meet the floor, her wandless magic weak and vulnerable, much like her emotional state. Before she smashed her face onto the blood red carpeting purple magic enveloped her body and the solemn ‘Petrificus Totalus,’ echoing through her ears.
She'd finally broken free of one kind of entrapment, only to be bound again, this time by another person’s hand. She could see, but that was the only thing she could do. Her body was locked in the invisible chains the spell provided, congealed and coated in them, completely irremovable with the pathetic excuse for wandless magic she had at her disposal. It was a frightening role reversal, being weak. She usually was the most intelligent, quick minded, and held the most magical prowess. She was severely weakened by the coma, but she couldn't even perform wandlessly. She was effectively a squib. It was the antithesis of what she’d been working for her whole life.
But, perhaps she could use this for her own disposal, lying there, a debilitated patient. She could listen in. Her vulnerability could ensure an eavesdropping session.
‘What the fuck you do that for Pans? You can’t immobilise her, remember Draco needs the mudblo-,’ he caught himself, ‘Hermione. Reverse the spell and then he’ll apparate here, see her and everyone’s jolly as fuck.’
Pansy attempted to interject, but he wasn't done.
‘Reverse the spell, Pans,’ the male voice snapped, his frustration evident.
Pansy scoffed but flicked her wand. The petrification unraveled like invisible threads unwinding from Hermione’s body, and she gasped as air flooded her lungs. Every inch of her trembled as she regained control. Hermione forced her head to turn toward the voices. She blinked, vision sluggishly adjusting to the dimly lit room. Pansy stood with her arms crossed, looking unimpressed, while Theodore Nott—not Blaise, not the Irish portkey smuggler, but Theo—stared at her with something close to relief masked under exasperation.
‘Bloody hell,’ he muttered. ‘She actually woke up.’
Pansy was less impressed. She flicked her hair over her shoulder, her intoxicating perfume still suffocating Hermione. Hermione swallowed thickly. ‘Where—’Her voice cracked. She coughed, throat raw and unused. ‘Where is he?’
Theo exhaled through his nose, rubbing his temple. ‘Losing his mind somewhere between grief, exhaustion, and absolute fucking devotion to you, apparently.’ He crouched beside her, eyes scanning her face like he was looking for something.
‘I’ll repeat myself,’ she said, ‘Where is Draco?’
His name felt foreign on her tongue, it’d been so long since she spoke it. Her heart clenched at the thought of him suffering because of her. Pansy gestured silently to the door of the wing, and she stretched up from the bed, releasing herself from the silk sheets like a pearl from an oyster. As she stepped forward, though, her balance teetered and she grabbed onto a mahogany rocking chair to steady herself. She moved her magic into her right hand, the buildup ensuring the spell would succeed, it had to.
The chair, with a burst of sparks turned into a matching pair of crutches, supporting a blood-replenishing potion. Uncorking the bottle, Hermione swigged it in one go, relishing the feeling of the blood filling her veins again. She clutched the crutches and began, feebly limping off, using the vague direction Pansy had supplied. She didn’t even know how long she’d been out for, didn’t know where she really was. All she knew is that-
She stopped. A note on the floor. Out of place in the opulent marble. She turned it over, consumed by intrigue. It was new, the ink still wet, staining her palm. But she wanted to know what it said. Her heart raced as she unfolded the note, the delicate parchment crinkling in her hands. The words written in an elegant, flowing script seemed almost too deliberate, too precise to be a mistake.
‘Dots To-do list: Master Malfoy has insisted upon the Mistress Granger to be sent home immediately after waking up. He will check if the late Mistress Narcissa is awakened and inform Mistress Granger.Dot will find the Mistress Granger and send her home. Dot is sad about this task but she supposes it's this or slicing half her ear off with the dagger that Master Malfoy does not know she has. Not many masters believe in punishment anymore but Dot does, very sincerely so…’
The words blurred together. He wanted to send her home. Of course. This was expected, after her services were performed, she left. It didn’t stop hurting though. Her heart ached, a tight knot forming in her chest as she stood, torn between the duty she owed and what she felt. With a crack, Dot apparated in front of her, gently taking the note from her hands with a solemn smile.
Dot’s smile was almost pitiful, but it held a certain understanding—one forged by years of service and unseen sacrifices. The house-elf stood there, her small form barely visible against the grandeur of the room, yet there was something in the way she held herself that made the moment feel heavier than it should have been.
“Miss Granger,” Dot’s voice was quiet, but it carried a weight of unspoken thoughts. “Master Malfoy… he means well, but he’s not always easy to understand, is he?”
Her unspoken response had untold volume as she adjusted her robes and placed her hand into the house-elf’s small, wrinkled one. She would await his reply on whether it had worked, and then move on. Saying goodbye would be painful and a raw, depressing thing for them both. It was best to leave without it, and keep her breaking heart intact. And she cursed herself for thinking there was anything beyond that icy sheath he held up.
With a sharp, definitive crack, they were gone.
24 Hours Later (present day)....
Hermione wasn’t crying. She was delighted. It was fitting, really, that it’d worked. She’d gone looking for him and found Dot. Dot had sent her home. The olde magick had worked. Narcissa was back. She smiled, and as she did it wasn't forced. It was completely real. And she kept smiling all the way to work. She smiled at Mora, her face hollow, but still smiling. She clipped her heels all the way to her office, the smile raw on her face, plastered, but still there. Smiling as she collects her keys and opens the door, the metal cold and sharp in her hands. The smile remained, her jaw clenching with the weight of it.
She allowed the tears now. The salty lines were bittersweet relief, an allowance that she’d been discarded and she was perfectly alright to be sad. She was perfectly justified in her sadness, even though she might have just walked away from the only person who had ever truly understood her. She was distracted, unfocused and hungry. Her gaze flickered to the crumpled note. She had won. She had won.
And yet, her hands still trembled as she reached for her papers, something deep inside her whispering that she’d traded one ghost for another.
The placid little Ministry worker she was was going to snap sometime. Something was always going to happen. And when Hermione snapped, the ear splitting cacophony was unbearable. Draco was something that had happened. Draco. He was all she wanted to see, every day, his face. Smiling through his gray eyes at her, bringing in scones, sleeping splayed out on each other's shoulders, the fire crackling with untold stories.
She snapped.
And that's why she was storming towards Malfoy Manor, with a blazing resolution she hadn’t felt since the war. She was burning. She couldn’t leave, her sadness had melted to resolve, her heart powering her towards the grandocious manor, towards him.
She wasn’t going to back down now, she had to go there and tell him how she felt. Even if the house elves ended up shunning her, it wouldn’t grow into a seed of deep rooted regret. She transfigured her robes as she went, the drab ministry ones turning to a simple but effective pale yellow. Her every step was purposeful.
The grandeur of the Malfoy Manor entrance hall loomed around her, cold and unyielding, but Hermione wasn’t going to let it intimidate her. Not now. She adjusted the hem of the yellow robes, inhaled sharply, and strode forward.
Fine. If she had to open every damn door in this place to find him, she would.
The first door led to a dimly lit study, the scent of parchment and old books filling the air. Not here.
The next was a formal dining hall, empty save for the flickering chandelier above. Not here either.
Her frustration mounted as she pushed open yet another door.
In this one there was but a house elf, its shadow darkening the floors as it scrubbed at them vigorously.
Hermione barely registered the house elf, her focus narrowing as she moved forward, each step deliberate, heart pounding in her chest. Not this room either.
But then, as she turned to leave, she heard a sound. The faintest whisper of movement from the far side of the room. She stopped.
The house elf paused, its scrubbing ceasing, and Hermione met its eyes, both of them silent for a beat. The elf’s gaze shifted away, as if it too had an inkling of where she was headed, before it offered a brief bow.
“Miss Granger,” the elf spoke in its high-pitched voice. “Master Malfoy’s study is down the hall, second door on the left.”
Hermione’s heart skipped a beat. She nodded curtly, grateful for the unexpected assistance, and made her way toward the direction the house elf had indicated.
She stood outside the door, her breath uneven, her pulse thrumming in her ears. The weight of everything—of what she was about to do, of what she had to do—pressed against her chest.
Just go in, Granger.
Her fingers curled into fists at her sides. Stop thinking and go.
So she did.
Hermione closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, and pushed the door open.
“I love you.”
The words tumbled out the moment she stepped inside, before she even looked at him, before she could lose her nerve. The confession, raw and unguarded, spilled into the air like an irreversible spell.
When she finally opened her eyes, Draco was staring at her.
His expression was unreadable, silver gaze locked onto hers, lips slightly parted as if the words had stolen the breath from his lungs.
A single moment stretched between them, unbearably thick, unbearably fragile.
Then, suddenly, he moved.
In one swift step, Draco closed the space between them, his hands framing her face, his lips crashing onto hers like she was the only thing anchoring him to the earth.
Hermione gasped against his mouth, her fingers clutching the front of his robes, clinging to him, to this. He kissed her like he’d been waiting, like he’d been desperate, like he was trying to pour everything he couldn’t say into her lips.
And then—
“Oh fuck.”
Hermione froze.
Draco did too.
The sound of someone clearing their throat made her dread creep up her spine. Slowly, she peeled herself away from Draco’s grasp, turning her head toward the room.
And there they were.
Blaise. Theo. Pansy. Luna?
All of them sitting around, wine glasses in hand, their expressions varying from amused to outright entertained. Luna was leaning on Blaise, a smile settling on her lips as Hermione stared back, mortified.
Theo smirked, swirling his drink. “Well, that was dramatic.”
Pansy raised an unimpressed brow. “You do realise we’ve been here this entire time, right?”
Hermione felt her soul leave her body.
Draco exhaled sharply, fingers tightening around her wrist as if silently telling her not to bolt.
Blaise took a slow sip of his wine, setting the glass down with a clink. “So,” he drawled, lips twitching. “Are we finally acknowledging the fact that Draco’s been a miserable sod without you, or—?”
Hermione groaned and buried her face in Draco’s shoulder, mortified.
Draco just huffed a laugh, pressing his lips to her hair. “Shut up, Zabini.”