Fight Club

Hermione Jean Granger had become acutely aware of two things:
1. She was decidedly approaching the most dangerous tier of Underground Fight Club attendance, seeing as she could taste the blood streaming from her eyebrow for the third time this week.
2. That one Draco Lucius Malfoy, Auror and Glorified Babysitter, was going to be completely and absolutely livid.

She was also keenly aware of the fact that Pansy Parkinson had absolutely no intention of letting her off easy, particularly because the stakes of the fight were so high that she simply couldn’t give it up. Spitting, Hermione raised her head, squaring off her shoulders to meet Pansy’s eyes. She had always has a way of speaking through a stare, her eyes boring into Hermione as if to say “You could just tap, it would be over”. Hermione sniffled, slowly drawing her fists up to her nose. There was no way she was going down, not unless Pansy knocked her out. Considering that that particular occurrence of events meant that Hermione had lost the bet, she wasn’t keen on allowing it. Pansy tossed out a left jab, braids swinging with the movement. Hermione sidestepped, making to return it with a right hook, when a force gripped her body, ripping her back against the makeshift rope. Through the blood oozing down her face, she made out Pansy, who had been unscrupulously torn away in quite the same manner.
“That. Is. Enough.”
The entire crowd quieted, whipping around to watch none other than Head Auror-War-Hero-Boy-Who-Lived-Chosen-One Harry Potter descend from the rafters, with his partner, Auror Draco Malfoy close in tow.
“How the fuck did they get in here?” Pansy seethed, “I thought there were wards on the door”. Hermione gritted her teeth, and spat “There aren’t any wards on the upper windows, I didn’t anticipate them floating from the bloody rafters like a pair of barn owls.”.
“Barn owls, eh Hermione? I’ll take it as a compliment, I’ve been told I’m rather dashing in feathers.” Harry forced a smile, but she read the concern in his eyes. She couldn’t think about that. She didn’t know how to explain that THIS was the only thing that made her feel. Feel anything, actually. Full stop. She didn’t know how to tell her dearest friend that while he had found solace in his wife, in his son, that she had been rolling around in the literal dirt atoning. His gaze softened slightly, and the spell around her and Pansy released, both of then slumping unceremoniously to the floor. “Great news though, ‘Mione. I was able to keep you out of jail, again, but Shacklebolt says its your last shot. I worked out a deal with him. Say hello to your new roomie!”. Malfoy slunk out from behind him, which was fairly comical considering he dwarfed Harry by about 6 inches. Add to that the look of deep, impenetrable annoyance, and he made a convincing imitation of Crookshanks just before a late dinner. Harry attempted to soften the blow with a set of enthusiastic jazz hands, but between Malfoy’s big reveal and the blood loss, Hermione simply looked him directly in the eyes, and vomited on the floor. Harry clapped Draco on the back, striding off with a friendly “Cheers, mate! Enjoy!”. Hermione lifted her head, and became acutely aware of a third thing: she was SO totally fucked.

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The walk back to her flat was torturously silent. Not that Hermione had loads in particular to say to Malfoy. He had tailed her for the last 3 weeks, trying to discern where exactly she was finding these clubs. For the same three weeks, Hermione had been tailoring her wards, and adding complex layers of charms, which allowed the locations to rotate intermittently. The idea was quite similar to the principle of the vanishing cabinet. She could enter the janitor’s closet at the Leaky, and appear in the basement of the club. Turns out she had been a bit cocky though, and forgetting those windows was an oversight she would not commit again. As they approached the flat, Hermione turned to Malfoy, wincing as she remarked, “Your assistance is no longer needed, thank you.” She made for the door—well, hobbled—and just as she reached the handle, a very large hand blocked her entrance. “Unfortunately, Granger, those will not be the terms of this agreement”. He flashed a folder with a thick packet in front of her face, and she groaned—probably louder than necessary.
“Malfoy.”
“Granger”
“I can not say this any more emphatically. You are not welcome to babysit me inside my own home”
“Trust me, this isn’t option number one for me on a Friday night”, he drawled,”In fact, I can think of nowhere LESS I would like to be. However, if I’d like to retain my employment at the DMLE, I am obligated to watch you read these papers, and then watch you sign them.”
“Open the door and show me terms.” Hermione was tired. So tired.
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After about 45 minutes of flipping, nodding, signing, and resigning herself to her new life with Britain’s Number One Ponce as an unwanted roommate, Hermione Granger found herself showing Draco Malfoy to the second bedroom. As he entered, he summoned a small toiletry bag and crouched to the floor, summoning a toothbrush from it.
“I’ll leave you to it, then”, she murmured, backing out of the doorway. He inclined his head slightly, and returned to his repeated Accio-ing. A bottle of shampoo, a pair of sweatpants, trainers. She stopped, but before she could ask, he explained. “That bag you had in Hogwarts? Harry mentioned it to Shacklebolt. He approved the use of the charm for aurors on long-term assignment. It’s a beautiful spell”.
“Oh, well”, she wasn’t quite sure what to say, but landed on “thanks”, after a pause awkward enough to rival her face upon receiving her Order of Merlin.
“Night, Granger”
“Good night, Malfoy”.
She retreated to her own bedroom, mulling over the new stipulations on her life. No international travel, no after-hours library access, no errands alone, no popping out to the shops. In order to continue receiving her Order of Merlin benefits, Hermione was effectively house arrested. If she broke the terms of the contract, she was arrested arrested. Okay, she thought to herself, maybe the fighting was a little much. What she couldn’t come to terms with, though, was how she was going to spend her time. She had dedicated weeks to perfecting those wards. For the first time in Hermione Granger’s insufferable life, she had no clue what she was going to do next.
——————————————————————————————————————
As he settled into the cushions, Draco Malfoy pondered how exactly he had ended up in this position. His conscription into the DMLE had him expecting the worst assignments, but this? He had spent the last six moths hunting dark wizards, questioning them, sometimes brutally. He had been forced to infiltrate their minds, scooping out their darkest secrets with the orders to drive them mad, if necessary. But now, with one wall separating him and the Brightest Witch of His Age, he was laden with uneasiness. Potter had asked him to tail her, fine. He wanted to know which fight club she was attending. It had been weeks before Draco had realized she was using a method he recognized, a spell he had once perfected.

After trailing her to the janitor’s closet, he had stepped through, only to be bounced back out of the door. Several more frustrated attempts yielded nothing more than bruises—on his arse, and his pride— at which point he commandeered resident wild-card Theodore Nott. Shortly after shoving him into the closet, Theo had returned moments later, relaying the location--the warehouse basement. They’d pinpointed the location, and even though he and Potter had flown there on brooms, he insisted on Leviosa-ing them down. Something about not missing an opportunity for theatrical flair. It wasn’t until the 3 minutes before they’d descended from the rafters that Draco had been informed that his entire job description was now “facilitate the rehabilitation and growth of Hermione Jean Granger from burnt out, self punishing mess to Genius Do Gooder of all Wizarding Society.
He had been ready to drag Potter into the ring himself to beat the horrific idea out of his head, but Potter insisted.
“It has to be you, mate. Trust me, it’s just gotta be you.”. He rolled over, trying to adjust. He hadn’t fit in a queen size bed since 5th year, and his two options seemed to be the aluminum crunch (stuffing his body into a ball like the cover off a tin of takeaway) or the Footless Auror (self explanatory, he thought). Opting for the latter, he rolled Potter’s words around, trying to puzzle them out. Sometimes, Potter had feelings. Good ones, instinctual and firm, that he’d chase down to their inevitable completion. Draco had seen it these months, watched that often reckless intuition play out time and time again. Most of the wizards he’d chased down had come in on a tip from Potter. He wondered at himself a bit. His mandatory rehabilitation and assimilation course had been dull, dreary even. He’d found himself questioning his hatred for Potter, parsing through the root of it. He had never fully believed the blood purity mess, certainly not since Hermione Granger had arrived at Hogwarts. It was difficult to imagine muggle-blood as a disadvantage when she seemed to have all the answers. She had always had more, a twice-life compared to pureblooded kids.

He pushed it around in his head, turning over the pieces of Granger and Potter intersecting in his life. He was trying, supposedly, to quit occluding, but it turned out that the former museum setup in his mind worked wonderfully for helping him process—rather than hide—his issues. Gone were the days that memories, experiences, were molded and caressed into artifacts never to be touched again. In fact, on a particularly bad day, he had snatched the vase that held the memory of one of his father’s particularly nasty punishments and hauled it, full on softball style, at one of the marble walls of the museum. He had watched it break into shards, the memory spinning upwards in a plume of silver smoke, flashes of it fixing in his retinas. He had slumped to the floor in the middle of the room, and sobbed. Memories of memories. He felt that sometimes, that was all his life had amounted to. Just as Draco had finally begun his descent into sleep, guaranteed to be dreamless if the potion he’d chugged had anything to say about it, he heard several things in quick succession. First, the sound of a window squeaking open, followed by a thump on the roof, which produced a string of exceptionally vulgar curses from one Hermione Jean Granger. He hauled himself out of the bed, guessing from the eddying sound that she was, in fact, tumbling towards the edge of the roof. He made his way to her bedroom, turning towards the fluttering curtains, and poked his head over the edge of the sill.
“So”, he smirked wickedly, watching Granger furiously shove her hair out of her face and attempt to reorient, “is this rooming with me really so terrible that you’d sooner fall off the roof? I hadn’t even started snoring yet.”