Chapter 1
Hermione Granger was not an idiot.
She was top of her class at Hogwarts, the best in her department at the ministry, and helped save the entire bloody world. Even before she even knew she was a witch, Hermione knew she was smart. With the title of “Golden Girl” slapped on top of every newspaper she made an appearance in, she figured others considered her smart as well.
But Ginny was looking at her like she was an idiot.
“In which department?” her friend stressed, taking a break from her tea to curl her short red bob behind her ear.
“International Magical Co-Operation.”
Ginny hummed. “And he started…”
“Yesterday,” Hermione repeated, her foot bobbing up and down beneath the table. “Honestly, Ginny, why would I make this up?”
“I’m not accusing you of that!”
But it sounded an awful lot like she was.
Hermione didn’t know much about the inner workings of departments outside of her own. The Department of Magical Education was generally slow moving and filled with witches and wizards three times Hermione’s age, but it hadn’t taken her long to become the department head. She had the final say on curriculum, accreditation, new professors, and, of course, dealt with the many problems that occurred at Hogwarts.
What she typically wasn’t privy to were new hires in other departments.
But Draco Malfoy wasn’t just any new hire.
“I just think it’s a bit strange,” Ginny continued, after a skeptical beat of silence from Hermione. “He doesn’t exactly need a job, now does he?”
“I suppose not. But it’s not as if you need one either. Harry has enough for the both of you,” Hermione replied.
“Sure, but not Malfoy fortune enough. Mione, his family could probably stay in that manor for generations—never step foot outside—and they would still live more luxurious lives than most of the world.”
“Maybe it was part of his sentencing?” Hermione speculated, leaning back in her chair as the muggle coffee shop bustled around them.
Draco Malfoy has been pardoned. Conditionally. His father hadn’t been so lucky, and his mother had spent a fair bit of time on house arrest, but Draco had been a child when Voldemort attempted his reign. The ministry saw fit that as long as he didn’t get into any more trouble in the years following the war, Draco wouldn’t be implicated. There had been caveats to this pardon, but no one really knew much about them.
Or, at least, those in The Department of Magical Education didn’t know much about them.
“Could be,” Ginny provided. “Isn’t magical co-operation right next to you?”
“Unfortunately. Which is exactly why there were hordes of people walking past my office today. You know, no one really visits magical education otherwise. It was quite the uproar among my colleagues.”
Ginny snorted. “Oh, yes, I’m sure. You and Roberta Dawlish were surely gossiping up a storm. How old is she again? Ninety-two?”
Hermione pursed her lips as she fought back a smile. “Roberta is a kind woman! She knitted you that blanket for James.”
Ginny leaned back and placed a hand along her newly-swelling stomach, laughter still falling past her lips. “And it is a marvelous blanket, Hermione, really. But even you have to admit your job is a bit beyond you in years.”
“It is a lovely career. I make a difference in education. It’s perfect for me,” Hermione insisted, humor withering the serious line of her brows.
Hermione had had the opportunity to be an Auror. After the war, she, Ron, and Harry had all been given that opportunity. But Hermione wanted to finish her last year at Hogwarts. And then the training dates for new Aurors hadn’t lined up with her NEWTs. And then a position in the education department opened up. It was perfect for her.
So she was there, and she was happy. After eighteen years of mishaps and instability and war, Hermione had something concrete. It had been years now and everything remained the same—she remained the same—and she was happy.
“Don’t you ever want more? Something more… exciting?” Ginny casually posed.
She asked her that a lot, in many different ways. Maybe you could travel with me next month, Hermione and Harry tells me there’s a new opening in the Auror Department again and Why are you going to bed at 7 pm, Hermione?
“We can’t all be professional quidditch players, Ginny,” Hermione replied. Her usual reply.
“But you’re Hermione Granger,” Ginny shot back. “You can do anything you want. Do you really want to be cloistered up in an office for the rest of your life?”
“When did this turn around on me? I thought we were talking about Malfoy and the ridiculousness of him in the workforce?”
Hermione always considered herself good at redirection. Ginny knew this, knew that Hermione was actually not good at redirection at all, and still pretended for her friend. With one last disapproving look thrown in her direction, the topic steered away from Hermione’s internalized problems and back to other people.
“So, do you think he’s still hot? You know, in that annoying prat kind of way?”
~ ~
The office Hermione called home was… fine. It certainly wasn’t her dream office by any means. It had one small window that hung behind her desk and projected whatever the weather was outside. It was never able to fully capture the rain the way Hermione liked; it always over-saturated the sky and made the raindrops gather in unnatural patterns. She figured the ministry didn’t put highly realistic rain on Hermione Granger’s window high up on their list of importance. Honestly, nothing in the Department of Education was high on their list.
Hermione hated that the window couldn’t open. It was stuffy underground, her department shoved in the back caves of an already stifling environment, and on days that she found herself “cloistered up in the office,” as Ginny would say, she just wanted some fresh air. But the ministry was underground, and the Department of Education didn’t need magically opening windows.
In the corner of her office was a plush red chair that hardly ever got any use. It was topped by an embroidered pillow Mrs. Weasly had made her when she got the position, and next to it were the shelves. All of the shelves.
Besides the window and the desk and the overstuffed chair, the rest of Hermione’s office was overrun with shelves.
Before working in the ministry, Hermione hadn’t understood the depth with which the education system ran in the wizarding world. For muggles, everything was quite clear-cut. She remembered walking into her muggle elementary school and learning about math and history and science. She had a clear set of rules that replicated every year before. Sometimes, the principal would sit in and observe the teacher for compliance and yearly reviews. Parents complained if they felt the cafeteria wasn’t serving enough carrots.
For magical persons, school was nothing of the sort. Hermione could count on one hand the complaints parents had made regarding the food being served at Hogwarts, but the number of howlers she’d received about a lack of pixie education? Astounding. The sheer complexity of the proposed curriculum for the Transfiguration of Inanimate Light Fixtures? Deplorable. And that still wasn’t a class Hogwarts offered. Honestly, Hermione found herself at the whim of new professors for the better part of her job. If they had a special interest, she was going to receive a ridiculous class proposal about it.
It wasn’t all that bad. She had a comfortable life and a nice apartment to go home to. The shelves there were filled with reading she actually wanted to do, and she saw her friends at least a few times a week. Everything was steady in Hermione’s life, predictable.
And the thing she could always count on most was Bancroft Mortem banging down her door every morning at 8 am.
“Miss Granger, have you received the note I sent you last night? Regarding the complaints from parents?” Mortem called after only one knock on Hermione’s door. He never opened it right away, preferring to talk through the pebbled glass square above the knob instead.
“You can come in, Mr. Mortem,” Hermione called back, pushing her reading glasses into the mass of curls atop her head.
He did so, jerking the wood past the door frame. It echoed down the hall of the department. Hermione’s door was always jammed. “It was about the lesson on house elves in The History of Magic. Many parents are quite upset about it.”
“They are always upset about it, Mortem. It doesn’t make the history any less true.”
Mortem sighed, running his swollen fingers into his greying hair. “But they are quite upset, Miss Granger. Considerably upset.”
Hermione’s jaw ticked as she sorted through the stack of papers on her desk to find the notice Mortem had sent her. Below his anxious ramblings sprawled out in rushed handwriting was a summary of the complaints received in the past week. There was always some time between each one, and Hermione found herself extremely grateful that wizards did not use phones.
How dare you try to indoctrinate my son into—
THE LETTER I HAVE JUST RECEIVED FROM MY DAUGHTER IS THE REASON FOR THE GRIEVANCE I MUST BRING TO YOU—
Never, in my 32 years of being alive, have I—
House elves are a staple of the wizarding world, and while I wouldn’t expect a Mudblo—
Hermione stopped reading. It wasn’t often she was subjected to the hate that was so prevalent before the war, but when she was, it was always because of something like this. Pure-blood families had been taken down a few pegs, certainly, but most of them still had very strong opinions about their way of life.
“Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Mortem,” Hermione said, clearing her throat and waving her wand into the filing cabinet below her desk. “You can send out the same letter from the past few years.”
The piece of parchment that had been copied many times over floated over to the distressed old man, his fingers harshly gripping at its edges when he caught it. “But, Miss Granger, they are never happy about the letter. They always send more after—”
“We can’t please everyone,” Hermione interrupted, sliding her glasses back down her nose. “Any further letters—or howlers—received after you have sent out the parent notice under my name can be placed in the bin. My duty as head of the department will have been satisfied. The curriculum for The History of Magic was extensively researched prior to its application in the school.”
Mortem stammered a few times, shifting his weight between his feet. Whenever she had to make decisions like this one, all of the department acted like a gangle of concerned grandparents. But this was Hermione’s job, and, truly, she couldn’t please everyone.
“Okay, Miss Granger, right away.”
“Thank you, Mortem,” Hermione called out as the door shut with a rather large thud. She would send another repair request at the end of the day. Every time she tried to fix it on her own she just made it worse. She and that door had had quite a few squabbles.
Well, another one bites the dust, as her father used to say. One round of upset wizarding parents down, another endless list of responsibilities to go.
Hermione clicked her pen a few times and attempted to reorient her thoughts. She never used a quill at work—something her coworkers found rather odd—but she reasoned that the amount of writing she had to do warranted a cleaner writing utensil. Quills were messy, and even if you bought the ones that advertised never-ending ink, they always ran out somehow. Never-ending ink was a lie then. Just like the love potions Fred and George used to sell.
She had once asked them what ingredients were needed to—
Thud
Thud
Thud
Hermione’s most intriguing line of thought this morning was interrupted by a rhythmic vibration along her wall. There were many weird sounds at the ministry, but they usually weren’t so close to her. Nothing was ever close to her back here. Other than Mortem.
Another round of banging rattled her bookshelf.
Hermione pushed up from her chair, the legs scraping against stone until they met the poor excuse for a window looming over her desk.
Crack
Crack
Thud
“What in Godric’s name?” Hermione cursed under her breath.
She hesitated, listening closer for a sign of danger. Her wand was gripped tightly between her fingers as she leaned across her desk, neck craning for another sound.
Why was her heart beating so fast?
Hermione calculated the amount of time it would take to round up her out-of-shape coworkers and shove them in the ministry elevator, but at that point, whatever danger lurked on their floor would have wiped them out. It would take too much time. Maybe she could send a patronus up to Harry? Was he even in the building? Maybe the Auror office?
A loud boom resonated in the space around her. It was almost deafening, but Hermione couldn’t decide if it was the true volume of it, or if her mind was exacerbating the waves hitting her ears. When a volume of herbology curriculum from 1852 came crashing onto the floor, Hermione decided that didn’t really matter.
Her first instinct was the window. Hermione spun around, wand now shoved in the waistband of her robes, and gripped at the metal that clearly wouldn’t budge. She still tugged and tugged, breath coming out in short pants.
“Good for nothing—ugh!” she groaned, losing her grip. Great, now she was losing her mind as well. That window obviously wouldn’t open.
This was the education department. Who attacked the education department?
The thought of an angry parent briefly crossed her mind. The house elf unit really did cause discourse at this time of year.
No, that was absurd. She was being absurd—trying to escape out of a fake window at a few little sounds. She’d ridden a dragon for crying out loud. She’d fought multiple death eaters at once. She was, without a doubt, the only one on this floor with any battle experience.
Hermione whipped around to face her door as another bang exploded against her wall. She yanked her wand out one final time, marching over to rip the sticking wood from its frame, ignoring the way her fingers trembled.
Nothing in the hallway. Not even nosey onlookers. Did no one else hear the sounds?
She took a calming breath and listened.
Bang.
There.
She booked it down the hall, curls flying behind her. The sensible shoes she picked out this morning were currently working in her favor. She’d have to tell Ginny that the next time she turned her nose up at them. If she survived whatever the hell this was.
The next bang was followed by a crack, and Hermione saw a door rattle just a few strides away. No screaming though. That could be a good thing. Or a bad one.
Hermione’s chest was uncomfortably tight and she felt as if she were drinking butter beer foam through a straw. She came to a stop in front of the door, and then threw it open.
The room was a mess.
Chairs overturned, walls splashed in an array of mismatched colors, boxes of quills dumped into piles; Hermione likened the scene to a demolition site. This office was usually barren. No one used it.
Her eyes darted around the room, right and then left in quick succession. No one was in here. No one used this office. Why was it destroyed? Who—
The door to the small closet in the back of the room creaked open.
“Stupefy!”
Hermione’s haphazard spell went flying out of her wand. Preemptive, for sure, but it wasn’t logic that was driving her anymore. Light bursted across the room, straight towards whoever—or whatever—was attempting to exit the closet.
But when Hermione was finally able to put a name to the tall figure in front of her, her spell was cast away with a single flick of a wand.
“Already on the defense, are we, Granger?”
Draco Malfoy looked about as messy as the office they were standing in. There was a box of books at his feet, his robes were askew—the outer layer draped over the chair behind the desk that Hermione had missed, and the colors on the wall were mimicked in the ones splashed across Malfoy’s cheek. His hair was longer than she remembered. And a mess. Or maybe tousled was a better word.
“M-Malfoy?” she exasperated, breathless and panting.
He raised a brow. “Did you run up a flight of stairs before attacking me? A bit overeager to welcome the new hire with your aggressive initiation process, no?”
Hermione looked down at her trembling fingers, shaking her head to stop the persistent buzzing in her ears. “Sorry, I—There was banging and I didn’t… I don’t know—”
The heel of Malfoy’s boot clicking made her jerk her head up. “What’s the matter with you?”
She must have moved too quickly, for the next thing Hermione saw was a distorted version of Draco Malfoy. His brows were furrowed, expression puckered into confusion, and then nothing. The buzzing stopped, and Hermione passed out.