After
A year after Hermione Obliviated Draco, the Order received a Patronus.
Hermione knew its shape even before she heard his voice.
“Potter. I have information you need. I’ll come alone to the secure location of your choice. Bring Granger and the Weasel, if that brings your little heart comfort.”
Word-for-word the same message he’d sent the first go around.
Hermione started hyperventilating.
“It can’t be for nothing, Harry. Turn him away! He—he can’t—after everything!”
She’d wasted away over the last year, and now that this came, she couldn’t risk him. Couldn’t risk her heart and her hope. Not again.
“It could be a trap, Harry,” Ron said as he tried to comfort Hermione.
“No.” Harry stared at the spot where the Patronus had been. “It’s too similar.” He turned to Hermione. “We have to go.”
In the end, Harry and Ron went. Hermione tore her cuticles to a bloody mess at Grimmauld Place as she waited, trying not to think about what was transpiring.
“He’s safe,” were Harry’s first words upon returning. “No indication that he remembers anything.” Hermione let out a shaky sigh. “But his information is new—and might be just what we need.”
In a meeting with the Order’s top generals, they laid out a new strategy.
Harry designated Neville as Malfoy’s contact, and Hermione stayed safely away.
In two months, almost seven years to the day since Dumbledore’s death, the war was finally over.
“To rebuilding,” Harry raised a bottle, when they all gathered to celebrate and remember. Hermione looked across the circle at Malfoy, still wary around his erstwhile enemies.
Whenever he looked at her, she saw nothing in his eyes except passing acknowledgment. No softening of the lines in his face. Not hostility, but not warmth, either.
She only realized she’d been staring when he furrowed his brows at her and said, “Something on my face, Granger?”
She walked away before she did anything foolish.
Harry rushed to catch up with her. “Why don’t you say something?”
Hermione watched as Malfoy reluctantly entered the social circle of Order members. Only a handful of people knew of his efforts the first time around, and Hermione had modified all but Harry and Ron’s memories anyway.
He was as snobbish and off-putting as ever, but with alcohol and his tide-turning information, people seemed willing, even eager, to give him a chance.
Cho was currently chatting him up. He even graced her with a half smile.
“I’m not going to interfere with his life anymore.” She’d made the decision almost immediately after seeing him again; after all, she had taken it away from him. It seemed the wrong kind of advantage to try to rekindle it herself. “We had something once. I’m not going to force it.”
“But you’re not even trying! Don’t pretend you’re being noble—“
“Leave it, Harry.”
***
Three years later, Hermione found herself once again sitting on a stool at the rebuilt Leaky Cauldron, watching from a distance as various Order members laughed together. Draco was among them, though he still wore his eternally dry and unimpressed expression.
“Nah, Malfoy says he doesn’t need a trauma healer,” said Seamus, now building engineer for every important magical building in the UK. “His mind is a vice he uses to quash anything unpleasant into dust.” He illustrated by pounding one fist into his opposite hand.
The man in question merely raised an eyebrow.
“We all deal in different ways,” said Harry, DMLE badge gleaming. He took a long pull from his bottle and looked to Hermione. Get over here, his furrowed brow said.
Not for me, she responded with a shake of her head.
He rolled his eyes in response, but Draco caught the tail-end of the interaction.
Their eyes met.
“How goes your mission of restorative justice, Your Honor?” he said as he made his way over to her. “Or is it ‘Healer’?”
“I’m not exactly sure what I am.”
He didn’t laugh like others did when she said that.
Over the past several months, she’d found herself in more situations like this, where he sought her out. Tried to strike up conversation, but never forced it.
They sat in silence as Hermione struggled with contrasting desires to stay and run away.
Just before she was about to give an excuse, Draco said, “Granger, I know you don’t like me much, and if I’ve failed to properly apologize for the past—
“Do you remember when I punched you?” The words left her almost of their own volition. She held her breath.
The corner of his lip twitched. “Of course. It was…”
What planted the seed that Muggles weren’t as useless as I’d thought she said in her own mind, as he finished out loud.
He’d repeated it enough times, before, that she remembered now.
Perhaps foolishly, she hadn’t removed that memory. Maybe it was because she’d hoped for a pathway for herself from that first seed of doubt. She now saw how it could have put him at greater risk.
But he was here. Safe. And what was done, was done.
Echoes of the past buzzed loudly in her ears—impossible to ignore.
He took another sip of his Firewhiskey. “Potter seems to think you might know why I feel more relaxed around you than any other person I’ve encountered since the war.” Hermione turned to him in shock. They’d spoken about her? “Care to illuminate me?”
She glared at Harry, who suddenly looked frightened for his life, despite not knowing why.
“I—I’ve no idea.”
Draco narrowed his eyes. “You’re lying.” He threw back his glass, finishing off his whiskey. “But that’s you’re business.”
Before he could step away, she blurted, “Perhaps our hearts know deeper seasons than our memories.”
He turned back to her, eyes searching her face. “You’re a riddle, Granger. And I don’t like unsolved questions.” He leaned against the bar. “Join me for dinner on Friday.”
Hermione’s heart jumped to her throat.
“For a mutual decoding,” he continued, “if you will.”
“Would your girlfriend be joining us?” The words were laced with the slightest hint of acid.
He smirked. “I wouldn’t have pegged you as a Witch Weekly reader.” Hermione’s cheeks reddened. “I’m unattached,” he finished, uncharacteristically letting her off the hook.
“Friday, then,” she said with what little dignity she retained.
After a nod, he departed. “I’ll send you details via owl.”
***
Four courses and two bottles of wine in, and Hermione was having a hard time not confessing everything.
Draco was just as snarky, just as sharp, just as perfect for her as ever.
“What if,” Hermione giggled—actually giggled, “your best friend turned you into a blast-ended skrewt to protect you, but they couldn’t turn you back? Would you forgive them?”
“Blaise doesn’t possess the ability. But also, I’d be a skrewt, wouldn’t I? I don’t think they have any thought processes other than ‘blast’ and ‘screw’…” he paused. “-t.”
Hermione laughed, and he smiled into his glass.
They paused and surveyed one another.
“What if—“ he continued with his turn in the game they’d started, “someone you loved Obliviated you.”
Hermione choked on her wine.
“For your own good. But they never made a move to tell you the truth, even after it was safe.” His eyes were dead serious. “Would you forgive them?”
Her throat burned. Her eyes burned. Her heart would surely hammer out of her chest.
“Wh—? I—“ All the air had left the restaurant. And still he stared at her.
She grabbed her coat and ran.
She wasn’t ready for this. All she’d lost—her heart couldn’t go there again.
It was pouring down rain, and she didn’t even think to cast an Impervious. Apparition point. Where’s the Apparition point?
“Hermione!” A sharp pain sliced through her chest at his use of her first name. Still so familiar, all these years later. She stopped.
“I knew something was going on. I knew!” His voice was angry. “Then Potter confirmed it.”
She buried her face in her hands. How could Harry?
But Draco answered her unasked question. “He was always shit at Occlumency.”
She rounded on him. “You used Legilimency on him?!”
“About my own memories!”
The reprimand stung, and she turned away again in shame.
Her sins and her protection of him—of herself—it had all mixed together until she couldn’t tell which way was up.
She was so tired.
“Hermione,” his voice was right behind her. Suddenly, the rain stopped hitting her; he was protecting her.
She turned and embraced him. “You were safe. Living life. I couldn’t—I’m sorry.”
“Was it to protect me, or you?”
She looked up into his eyes. At the warmth they held again.
With a swipe of his thumb, he brushed the water from under her eyes—rain and tears together. “‘Our hearts know deeper seasons than our memories.’ You really think I wouldn’t have found my way back to you, one way or another?”
Hermione choked out a sob and buried her face in his chest. “I couldn’t dare to hope.”
Draco tipped her face upward by pulling on her chin—a mirror of their last night together. “I’ve watched you. Wanted to know you better.” He searched her face. “Whether it was an echo of something from before or whether this is fated—“ he cut himself off. “I still don’t know what I lost. But I’m hoping you’ll show me.”
A moment passed in silence heavy with history and loss. Then with the rise of her toes and the tentative meeting of her lips with his, she breathed the only answer her heart allowed.
“Let me show you.”