A Chance Encounter
Usually, Draco’s walk home goes by faster than his walk to work. Perhaps because he doesn’t dread his destination as much.
He always keeps his head straight ahead, refusing to glimpse into the windows of other people’s lives. Ignoring the shops and restaurants filled with muggles enjoying their lives.
And because he usually keeps his head down, he doesn’t notice her at first. A young woman balancing three brown grocery bags in her arms, all the while trying to open the door to a shop.
It isn’t until he is just a few steps away that he notices how precarious the items in the bags are perched. He is also interested to find that the bags are teeming with books.
Her right arm is holding tightly onto two of them and her left is clutched around the other, her key in her left hand missing the keyhole over and over.
Draco’s first thought is let her struggle.
He nearly passes by when she must sense him.
“Excuse me, could you give me a hand?” She waves her keys about like a madwoman and Draco stops walking.
“It’s the little gold one,” she says, waving the keys once more, nearly crushed beneath the weight of her bags.
Draco can’t just ignore her. He does have some of the manners bred into him as a child.
Besides, it’s just opening a door. As soon as the woman sees him, she’ll regret having asked a stranger.
“Sure,” he takes the keys and inserts the little golden one as she instructed. Turning it, the door pushes in.
“If you wouldn’t mind just holding it for me,” the woman says from behind her bags.
Draco pushes the door open further and steps into the shop.
It is a bookshop.
A rather packed one. His first thought is that there is nowhere for her to put the bags of books she is carrying.
He wonders if he should take one of the bags from her arms, but she is already ten paces into the store, headed for a check-out counter near the back.
“Thank you,” she calls over her shoulder and Draco does a double take.
The woman has thick curly hair, that makes him think of-
“Granger?”
The woman, yes- Granger, turns around as soon as she’d unloaded the bags and her eyes disappear beneath a rather lovely fringe she hadn’t had last time Draco had seen her.
“Malfoy?”
When had he last seen her? She hadn’t been at his sentencing, but he vaguely remembers her at the trial. And he’d seen her during the final battle, across the courtyard.
He turns for the still open door, intent on limiting their interaction to the acknowledgment of their identities.
“Thank you for getting the door,” she blurts, stepping towards him. The rows and rows of books are close together, but there is a ten-foot aisle that they stand at opposite ends of.
“I should go,” he gestures to the doorway.
She opens her mouth but doesn’t say anything.
He leaves, as quickly as he can manage, cursing the fates for forcing Hermione Granger on him when he is already despondent.
He doesn’t turn around, even when he hears the door close.
It’s only another block to his flat and then he can just pretend it never happened.
She’d looked different.
Sure, she still had the untamed curls and the freckled complexion, but there was a serenity to her that she had never had in school.
Draco supposes she might have healed after five years. If only enough that she no longer grieves in every moment.
What else had she done in five years?
She works in a bookstore. A bookstore that doesn’t open until well after 5’oclock. Draco doesn’t know much about muggles, but he can’t imagine that is a very smart business model.
Is she married? Had she been wearing a ring? He can’t recall.
Draco lets himself into his apartment and makes quick work of shedding his uniform and his painful boots.
Was she with Weasley? Why in Merlin’s name does she work in a bookstore?
He could go ask her. It’s less than a three-minute walk. He’d never noticed the bookshop before.
Draco heads back into the bathroom, intent to wash the day away.
She hadn’t pulled her wand out. Not that there had been time for it. And why should she be frightened of Draco? He couldn’t make sparks happen without his wand, much less cast any kind of offensive spell.
Not that he would have.
“Myrrh, Moonwart, Aconite,” he lets the water flow over his face and down his chest, slowing his breathing.