Unspoken

The downrush of the elevator carriage barely elicited a response from Hermione as her figure swayed with the motion of the car. Her grip on the velvet ropes felt practiced. She stepped through the doors before the metal cages had a chance to pull fully back, as though she’d done it a thousand times.

After what the last eighteen or so hours had thrown at her, she had attained a notable measure of confidence in her position with the Department of Mysteries. So what if it was only Wednesday? Hermione might not be comfortable in her own skin but she was easing into her authority with a modicum of pleasure.

She had spent all of Tuesday afternoon and evening directing security, engaging the services of the Aurors, and deflecting nosy Unspeakables - whom presumably Granger had worked with for at least a year now - without a single person batting an eye at her speech or behavior. Even the Minister of Magic himself had, without notice, called on her in her office and questioned her about the incident and the effectiveness of the new emergency protocols.

Thankfully, that nerve-wracking interview had taken place well after lunch and after she had been able to dig out her precious planner to review Granger’s notes. Her heart rate had been shot for thirty or so minutes - Malfoy would probably have had something to say about stressors post her in-office stitch up - but Hermione had apparently impressed Kingsley enough that he thanked her for her thoroughness after she had taken him to the Hall to view the damage.

She had surprised herself. Reviewing research proposals and funding requests was all well and good in terms of being able to keep up with her predecessor's level of professionalism. But somewhere in that big brain Hermione had inherited, there was also an impressive array of management skills.

After the impromptu visit from the Minister, she had stayed late working on a preliminary budget for the cleanup and rebuilding of the Hall, which would have to be submitted through Secretary Painswick for emergency funding. The inventory of prophecies had been tracked down by her assistant, but a review of what remained undamaged had to be pushed back until access to the Hall was permitted by the Aurors. While she admitted to herself that Elizabeth had been on top of enacting the emergency protocols, Hermione had found herself directing the chaos of the aftermath with little to no equivocation.

It had been mildly exhilarating to exercise the power of her position. Especially when one of the Unspeakables working in the Love Room had attempted to sneak a glance at the Hall again with the excuse of needing Hermione to sign off on the purchase of powdered unicorn horn - a Class A Non-Tradeable Substance even if they were the Department of Mysteries. Hermione had been giving the Head Auror Robards a tour of the Hall so an official investigation could begin. 

She didn’t know if Granger had been able to chastise employees with a single withering stare, but she certainly could. That witch had fumbled her scroll and fled with the parchment still dragging against the tile behind her. 

And so, Hermione Granger swept into work cool and collected and completely unscathed by the remark from the guardsman that she had arrived a little later than usual. 

“Yesterday was an unusual day,” she responded before taking her wand back and navigating her way back to her office. Elizabeth was already waiting at the desk with a new stack of forms, a glowing pink hourglass, and a steaming cup of Assam tea.

Hermione smiled at her warmly, tucking her purple planner under her arm as she accepted the little china cup from her assistant in her left hand while levitating the rest of the pile with her right.

Elizabeth looked dismayed as her boss single handedly took everything to her desk herself. “You could have asked me to do that!” she cried, as though Hermione had stolen her firstborn. 

“I have a wand for a reason.” she laughed, setting her teacup on the little watermark left behind by Granger. It just felt right there. Everything else was placed on their respective piles, with the purple planner right in the middle of the desk. Hermione settled into her chair and said, “You are here to help me stay organized and assist with reports, not to carry my things.” 

“Like you need help staying organized.” complained Elizabeth, pointedly staring at the copious amount of labels on all the shelving. The scrolls were all neatly tucked away and all the books had been lined up so that no matter their size, the edge of the binding was lined up evenly near the front of the shelf. 

“Of course I do,” insisted Hermione, “I mean, look at these piles of scrolls and papers on my desk, who knows what’s in there?”

“You do.” said a flat voice from her doorway.

Her assistant cringed away from the door where Draco Malfoy stood in his lab robes with a large scroll and a handful of glass ampuls in a vial tray. Elizabeth sputtered unhappily and turned to her boss. “Oh my Gryffindor, Hermione, I’m so sorry, I forgot I scheduled him for an appointment early this morning, you were booked for the next two weeks otherwise and with everything that went on yesterday, I forgot to cancel-”

“It’s fineElizabeth. Really. We’re both here, no one is in the office yet and I do have some time. I finished this preliminary budget for the clean up and repair of the Hall last night, but I need you to look it over for errors. Could you do that for me please?” 

Once Elizabeth disappeared with the report and closed the door, she nodded at Draco to take a seat. Her chairs were clear of papers and scrolls now, at least. After the visit from the Minister, available chairs were going to remain a necessity with so many people popping in and out of her office. Had Granger never had guests in her office before? 

“I must apologize again, Malfoy. I haven’t had time to review the report you provided.” she told him.

He paused in the course of leaning to the side to place his vials on the other guest chair and cut his eyes in her direction.

“Naturally, Granger.”

“I did intend to review it in a timely manner.”

“And I’m sure you did. But given the events of yesterday, I assumed-”

“That it would slip my mind?” she finished for him, preparing herself for a tirade about her priorities. 

“That you would be resting.”

Malfoy pointedly let his gaze fall on the shoulder he had healed the previous day. Hermione flushed with shame as she realized that she had forgotten her injury entirely, which spoke highly of his talent.

“Yes, um, thank you. I will. I mean, I did.”

The smirk in the corner of his lips indicated he knew she hadn’t.

She cocked her head, watching his careful movement as he set down his vial tray. Noting how at ease his posture was as he settled into the back of his own chair. He was comfortable in this scenario, confident in his purpose. Very different from the other DOM researchers she had encountered yesterday during all the hubbub. 

“Then why did you come in? You could have sent an owl. Or left me a note.” 

Now he shifted a tad uncomfortably. Malfoy smoothed a portion of his robes to mask the gesture. He finally looked her in the face, grey eyes reticent, and answered, “Your assistant didn’t cancel.”

She was perplexed with the wizard in front of her. He had been sarcastic, rude, and openly accused her of bias in the workplace. Malfoy had kept the case of prophecies from crushing her. He had teased her in the staff room, snarled at her, but laterhealed her rather than packing her off to St. Mungos. Nothing he did made sense. Did he hate her? Was she supposed to hate him? So much of the way he acted around her made it feel as though Granger and Malfoy had long reaching history and thus far in her reading, she’d found nothing of him in the planner.

The only thing Hermione could do was to judge Malfoy for who he was in this instance. And right now, he was a gifted Healer who had come to discuss his research with his supervisor.

“You could have canceled yourself. Or is this project that important to you?” She had a feeling she already knew the answer, but Hermione was curious as to why. 

His pale golden brows furrowed together. “Extremely.”

Hermione waited for him to elaborate and he said nothing further. She couldn’t afford to put him on the defensive this early in the morning when she hadn’t even had a sip of her tea yet.

“I didn’t ask when you came in. Would you like to take tea?”

“I- yes, thank you.”

With a flick of her wand, the witch sent a little piece of paper under the door asking her assistant if she could please bring them another cup and that she’d try not to make this a habit. There was a brief crash and a cry and what sounded like Elizabeth running down the hallway.

There it was again! A thin veneer of disdain on Malfoy’s face and she could have sworn she saw him roll his eyes. What was it about Elizabeth that set him off? She opened her mouth to ask but he cut her off by mentioning, “It was always coffee in the morning.”

Hermione’s thoughts screeched to a halt.

Morning? What mornings?! Oh, please tell me he didn’t date Granger. 

Her eyes snapped to the teacup in front of her then back to his face. The distaste he had for her assistant was gone, replaced by a look of study. She was disquieted with the observation. The last thing she needed was anyone with a history with Granger, romantic or otherwise, looking too close at her habits. 

“At Hogwarts? Especially during the post factum N.E.W.T. seminars.”

School! He and Granger had attended school together. A little piece to the puzzle that was Draco Malfoy. No past romances. 

Thank Merlin.

“Well, we all change as we grow older, don’t we?” she remarked with an unsure smile. Hermione  mentally squirmed, awkward and on edge now that they were talking about her previous self. Or Granger’s previous self.

She still hadn’t quite figured out that one. 

“I used to think you might start subsisting on coffee alone,” Malfoy mentioned.

He was getting comfortable again, moving around in his seat so that he was leaning forward, hands clasped, elbows on knees. Even in a lab robe, the man was an illustration of poise. In comparison, she felt like someone had stuck an iron rod against her spine. She was conscious of the way her hand was gripping her floral tea cup and wondered whether or not she folded her legs the same way Granger did.

Had she really felt confident that she was pulling this whole charade off when she’d Floo’d into work this morning?

“Tea feels less rushed. I feel like I get to savor it a little more.”

That was true. Hermione wasn’t lying, exactly. Just… just being herself while being Granger. She had this.

But then Malfoy chuckled and the sound was so foreign that she accidentally clinked the teacup against her teeth as she raised it to her mouth to take a drink. “Ow- what?”

“I never thought I’d see Hermione Granger trying to slow down.” 

She blinked at him slowly and his smile widened further. It was so genuinely warm that it actually relaxed her. Hermione smiled back, put her teacup down and commented, “I don’t believe you can call a research meeting at six in the morning slowing down.”

He smirked. “You and I both know if the library had been open earlier at Hogwarts, you would have been in there from sun down until sun up or until McGonagall dragged you back to Gryffindor Tower.”

“And what is your excuse for being in this early? Especially as a Healer, you can’t possibly condone keeping these hours.” Hermione pointed out.

“I’m not a work-a-... a work-a-...”

“Work-a-holic?” She finished the muggle term for him.

“Yes. My concentration while I was studying at St. Mungo’s was the brain. Studies have proven sleep is essential for functioning across all spectrums: physical, mental... emotional. I care about this project deeply. So I come in early - I leave early.” His gaze dropped to his feet and absentmindedly tugged at the end of his left coat sleeve, pulling it down further. When he finally sat straighter, his eyes were guarded again. The grey swirled like the London fog. “I did the whole work-yourself-sick thing before.”

She didn’t know what to say to that. The undertone of the comment hinted that Hermione should know what he was referring to. It must be serious to evoke such an expression on his sharp face.

Lucky for her, Elizabeth saved her with the delivery of another cup of tea. Hermione spent a moment reminding herself why Malfoy was there in the first place and dug out the previous day’s report from a pile of scrolls on her left. 

“The Secretary is bound to barge in here at some point to rant about yesterday again, so let’s not waste any more time this morning.  Tell me about the current status of the research.”

Malfoy took her through all the details of the Fairweather Trauma grant. How he and Goldstein, his partner on the project, had started swapping stories regarding difficulties treating patients suffering from mental and emotional trauma post the Second Wizarding World. Their struggles had led them to write a project proposal to work in the Brain Room. Malfoy had done research into muggle theories on post-traumatic stress disorder and had convinced some bigwig named Fairweather to fund the study of magical trauma of the brain.

She listened closely, eyes darting to different parts of the report as he spoke, chest thudding as she realized part of the grant covered research regarding the formation, manipulation, and loss of memory due, in part, to magic.

Mind magic was dangerous and fiddly. People who were afflicted with magic brain damage often ended up in permanent wards at St. Mungos without further medical management plans. Malfoy and Goldstein hoped their research would lead to new remedies for some of the older cases. The project also proposed the development of spells for better imagery of brain and memory function based on similar spells used for diagnosis of physical ailments in Healing. 

Currently they were working on the latter issue, developing a way to display brain patterns tied to memories as well as the memories’ triggers. A spell to create an image of brain activity did exist, but tying it to a memory was the issue. But they were getting closer, he was confident.

“What we really need is access to a pensieve.” he told her in a slightly defensive tone, glancing at the vials he had brought along with him.

“Are these memories, then?” she asked in surprise, peering more closely at the substance within the glass vials. The strands of muddy grey looked nothing like the sparkling vials of memory Granger had left her. “I wasn’t aware that memories could be, er, dull?”

Deftly, Malfoy removed one of the vials and held it up to the light between his thumb and forefinger, shaking it slightly. The dark grey liquid-like wisps roiled in the vial as though trying to push up against the glass barrier. Her brown eyes widened and she looked at her companion for an explanation. 

“These memories are… altered. In a sense.” His voice was tense. 

A small lump suddenly stuck in her throat. She felt her pulse increase slightly as the academic atmosphere took a small turn to a more sinister ambience. Her palms were sweaty, her mouth dry. “What do you mean?”

Malfoy met her eyes and held them in a deep stare. “These memories are, for lack of better terminology, false. Perversions of a memory. These are not the result of trauma, not specifically, but it is magical in nature. And it isn’t part of the original project proposal, but I want to study it. See if it can be... undone.”

“Where did you get these?” she asked in a very quiet voice.

“A colleague familiar with my specialty brought them to my attention. St. Mungo’s was grateful to turn them over as they’ve made no progress.” He stopped speaking for a moment, considering her and the vial, and then seemingly came to a decision. “We decided to not wait for your funding last week. Goldstein tried to process the memories through the brains in the tank and lamentably they went haywire. The primary brain in question started attacking itself. We had to wipe it completely, and needless to say, the other Unspeakables are a little pissed at us at the moment. A pensieve would relieve us of needing to use the brains.”

She chewed her lip and sighed. “Setting the flagrant misconduct of you and your colleague with irreplaceable and highly secret Ministry assets, you said these are false memories. How do you know that if the brain wouldn’t process them?” Hermione asked.

“As I said, a colleague at the hospital contacted me about them. He had to retrieve the memories himself and he said these are more nightmares than memories. These are from three patients that were brought in by their families. There’s a pattern, he said, but he wouldn’t tell me what it was. Just that if I could learn anything and report back, it would help with treatment.” he admitted.

Hermione stared at the vials. 

“I can’t approve this as part of the Fairweather grant,” she intoned. 

Malfoy shot out of his chair, outraged. Before he could do anything more than tower over her desk, Hermione held up her hand and her wand.

“I didn’t say I couldn’t approve this at all,” she said quickly, “Just as not part of the specific grant you are currently working under. This wasn’t part of the parameters agreed to when Fairweather gave the Department the gold for your project.”

“What are you suggesting?” he asked, not yet mollified but eyeing her wand warily as he backed off. 

Hermione put the wand down and motioned for him to sit again. “Get me more information. You have my support, but I need to justify the funding to the administration.”

His jaw ticked but he nodded, gripping and unwrapping the arms of the guest chair. “Thank you. I’ll contact my Healer friend and see what more information he can give me. Do you want it as a report or a proposal?”

“Write it as a proposal. It’ll have to go through the same process as the others, though.” she warned him, gesturing at the stack of proposals on her desk. “And absolutely no more research on these ‘memories’  until it is approved. I’m… willing to overlook this particular instance, given what you have told me.”

Relief washed through the wizard in front of her and he gave her a tired, solemn nod of agreement. “It seems I’m beholden to you yet again.”

There was a knock at the door and, after she was told to come in, Elizabeth announced, “Hermione? The front guardsmen just sent me an interoffice memo that the Secretary is on his way down.” 

“There’s the rest of my morning gone,” muttered Hermione sullenly. She wondered for a brief second if she could get away with wine in her teacup and claim it was rooibos.

Malfoy rushed to pick up his vials and scrolls, sweeping them airborne with the flick of his wand and out into the hallway. “Thank you for your time,” he told her with a small bow. “And your consideration on the extra project.”

“Certainly, I’m just sorry we couldn’t finish talking about the original grant. I wanted to hear more about the charm you are developing.” she said regretfully. 

He gave her a sideway glance as he was walking out and hesitated. She raised an eyebrow at him and he turned back to fully look at her.

“Are you free to speak over lunch?” he asked.

“I, um, I don’t know. Elizabeth! Am I free for lunch?” Hermione called through the door. 

“Not today!” her assistant called back, “And no to the rest of the week, unless you don’t mind lunch being twenty minutes. But you have time on Monday.”

Malfoy smiled at her. That lump came back in her throat, but this time it was followed by a warming flutter in her stomach. Damn, but he was handsome. “I guess I’ll see you for lunch on Monday, Granger.”

“I guess so,” she smiled back and watched as his robes disappeared out into the corridor. The warm sensation was spreading through her face. Oh Morgana, was she blushing?

“Am I putting you down for a lunch date with Mr. Malfoy then?” asked Elizabeth, a little uncertain.

“It’s not a lunch date - it’s a working lunch,” Hermione corrected quickly, “And please do. Actually, could you please send Malfoy a note asking what he wants for lunch and order it to be delivered with mine? I’d appreciate it.”

Elizabeth nodded and went to scribble in the appointment on the desk calendar.

Satisfied with the arrangement, Hermione straightened out the things on her desk, thinking about the meeting she had just had. As she placed a hand on her purple planner, the witch stopped and considered. Draco Malfoy was an expert on the brain and memories. Would it be possible that he might know or be able to help her with figuring out how she had lost all her memories? Maybe there was some way to regain them? Granger had been adamant that it was not possible. She bit her bottom lip. 

No, she couldn’t ask him. The conversation about research had been easy and she was certainly warming up to Malfoy as a person - there hadn’t been any snarking today unless you counted the faces he made whenever he interacted with her secretary. But Granger had been attacked inside the Ministry itself. Down here in the outer corridors of the basement levels.

There was no one she had to trust other than Granger and Granger had said not to trust anyone. 

“GRANGER! Why aren’t the Aurors down here investigating?! I want every Unspeakable interviewed, I want alibis for every employee - every minute of their morning yesterday accounted for!” hollered Painswick, stomping into her office with such fervor that her teacup rattled briefly in its saucer.

Hermione reminded herself that Granger was also the one who had gotten her into this predicament and sighed before standing up to deal with her boss.