Chapter 2
Two Years After The War
Hermione was not a drinker. Sometimes, when her and Ron hosted dinner parties, she would indulge in a glass of firewhisky, but nothing much more scandalous than that. Except for tonight. Tonight she was alone at a bar and she had opened up a tab that just kept growing. She had chosen a muggle bar that night, as she was sure that Ron wouldn’t consider looking in the muggle suburbs for his girlfriend. Or ex-girlfriend, depending on how their next encounter went. It was a nice break, Hermione thought, being surrounded by Muggles who knew nothing of the world that she was currently hiding from. Sometimes she still saw herself as one of them, feeling more at home, sometimes, wandering muggle towns she had never before visited, than she did in her own house. The war may have changed a lot of things for her kind, but it couldn’t change her heart.
“Rough day, too, huh?” A resigned voice to her left interrupted Hermione’s train of thought so abruptly that she jumped a little. Turning her head she was met with the tired eyes of a woman she had never thought she’d see again.
“Parkinson?” Hermione’s tone was one of disbelief, and she felt the need to rub her eyes to clarify the legimatacy of what she was seeing, as if to compensate for her alcohol-addled state.
“Yes, Granger, it’s me.” Pansy considered for a moment, “or is it Weasley now?” Hermione scoffed at that, taking another shot of tequila as soon as she was reminded of her less-than-stable relationship.
“Decidedly not.” Hermione responded in a cutting tone, not aimed at Pansy, but enough to get the point across.
“I see.” Pansy, for all her faults, knew when to let something go, and instead ordered herself a drink, seeming to Hermione to be a fair bit more familiar with the muggle alcohol repertoire than one would expect. Hermione side-eyed the woman as she did so, narrowing her eyes in a way that would have been a lot more subtle had she not been so drunk.
“What are you doing here?” Hermione ventured cautiously - not particularly wanting to get into a conversation with someone she had spent the better part of her youth loathing, but also far too curious to let the point go without mention, and, not too mention, too drunk to care.
Pansy shrugged, as if she hadn’t even considered by she wouldn’t be there, beside Hermione, in a muggle bar. “I was just visiting Draco. I usually need a pick-up after such a venture.”
Whipping her head around to face Pansy full on, Hermione was furrowing her eyebrows so hard Pansy was afraid they may fall off. “Malfoy’s alive?!” She half-shouted, looking completely and utterly confused.
“Hey, keep it down, we don’t want to get kicked out of here. Not this early, anyway”, Pansy added as an afterthought. When she realised that Hermione was still staring at her as though she had told her she was in fact a muggleborn, she sighed and nodded. “Yeah. He lives around here, now. I come to visit every now and again when the guilt gets too much.” Pansy accepted her drink from the bartender and took a large gulp without so much as wincing as the bitter liquid ran down her throat.
“But I thought… We all thought-” Pansy, having shared six years of classes with the genius, couldn’t believe that Hermione Granger was now lost for words.
The dark-haired girl sighed deeply, bringing her hand up to her forehead to rub her temples. She wasn’t sure why she was so willing to reveal so much to Hermione Granger, of all people, but it was nice to have someone pay attention to what she had to say for once. “That’s the way he wanted it. His mother and I are the only two that knew what he did at the time. Since then, he’s told a few, but not en- not many. It shouldn’t matter now, with the Dark Lord gone, Bellatrix dead and Lucius locked up for god knows how many lifetimes, but he’s scared. Scared of what people will think of him for running away instead of choosing to fight against his own family. Or, more accurately, scared of what ‘the Chosen One’ will think.” The last sentence was added on bitterly, as if it were part of a fight Pansy had had a number of times and had yet to win.
Hermione’s features, while still riddled with confusion, were now thoughtful. “He’s scared of Harry? But Harry is probably the person least likely to-” Hermione’s brain had been slowed considerably by the copious amounts of tequila she had consumed in the last few hours, but she eventually caught up with her own thoughts, even if she was unable to express them into any sort of a coherent sentence. “Wait. Malfoy? But Harry was always the one… It’s not like Draco knew.”
Pansy rolled her eyes, not quite believing that she had left one crazy, infuriating genius just to go and spend time with another. “If you don’t start making sense Hermy, I may just have to leave- I don’t care how sober I still am.”
Hermione looked like she was struggling with her thoughts but then she shook her head decidedly. “Don’t worry about it, I’m probably just, you know…” She gestured at the multiple empty shot glasses as compensation for the fact that she couldn’t find the word for ‘drunk’.
Pansy shrugged, taking the silence as an opportunity to buy another drink. Hermione bit her lip and stared Pansy as she did it, as if she had come up with a compromise within her own mind. “So, Draco… is he up for visitors, or is it more of a self-isolation situation?” Hermione tried to sound as casual as possible but failed so terribly that Pansy almost choked on her drink.
Clearing her throat as she did so, Pansy cautiously regarded this intoxicated version of her school nemesis, seeming to only remember to narrow her eyes suspiciously after a few seconds. “You want to visit him?” Hermione cocked her head to the side in a way that Pansy was shocked to realise she found quite adorable.
“Errr… I mean, I wouldn’t be opposed to it… But I was kind of thinking of someone else.” Hermione paused for a second, with the distinct feeling that there was something she shouldn’t saying, but since she was not entirely sure what that was, she kept on. “Harry.”
At that, Pansy raised her right eyebrow, not quite sure how to respond. “Harry doesn’t even know he’s alive, how could he have asked to see him?”
Hermione was thrown a little by that question, but before she could gather her thoughts to come up with a response that made some sort of sense, Pansy sighed resignedly and said, “anyway, isn’t he too busy getting hitched to Weaselette or something?”
Something about what Pansy had said had obviously been the wrong thing, because the walls Hermione put up were instantaneous and cold. Hermione rolled her eyes as she sighed in aggravation and ignored the question, choosing instead to catch the barman’s attention. After paying off her rather hefty tab for the night, she elegantly (or at least it was elegant in her mind) slid off the stool and started walking (or stumbling), out of the bar. “Wait, Hermione!” Pansy called after the girl, completely confused as to what had caused her to leave.
The “Goodbye Pansy,” that came in response dripped with finality in a way that Pansy found oddly unsettling but soon shrugged it off.
*******
A Week Later
Harry hadn’t left his house in weeks. Kingsley had told him to take a break- sort himself out, but he had just taken it as an excuse to isolate himself. Hermione and, less frequently, Ron, came to visit him, but he didn’t have anything to say to them anymore. They were like strangers to him. It wasn’t until the war had ended that the reality of all those years fighting came crashing down on him and he reassessed all the experiences he’d had. He had gained, and lost, a godfather. His personal hero, Dumbledore, whom he had trusted so unconditionally, had turned out to be, well, human, with the ability to make mistakes, just like everyone else. It was a revelation that shouldn’t have been so shocking, but Harry couldn’t help but feel like he’d been betrayed. Crucial secrets about Harry’s own destiny had been kept from him, and why? So he wouldn’t have a chance to run away?
The worst part of it was his own guilt. If he had been destined to be the “Chosen One”, the Saviour of the Wizarding World, then surely it was up to him to have saved all those lives. If he had just tried harder - killed Voldemort earlier, maybe back in first year, or fourth, or even fifth, then maybe George would still have his twin, and Teddy Lupin would still have his parents. And Malfoy… No, he couldn’t even bring himself to think about that one. It had always been about Voldemort and Harry. He should have tried harder to keep everyone else safe, and not just let them convince him that they should help because it was for the ‘greater good’. And now - well now, people he loved had to deal with the consequences of his cowardice and incompetence every single day.
Being an Auror hadn’t helped Harry much in moving on. The fighting that had once come so naturally, had made him feel so in control, became something he dreaded deeply. He couldn’t turn his wand on someone without seeing Voldemort’s face and having every single feeling of panic, horror and fear he’d ever felt, come flooding back all at once. His one visit to a mind-healer - as per the instruction of Hermione - confirmed that he had something called post-traumatic-stress-disorder, but when the healer had offered him some potion to help manage it, he had gotten up, left, and never returned for a second session, some part of him believing that he deserved the anguish the war had caused him.
He knew there were things that made it better - easier to deal with it. Having a clean house, especially when he cleaned it himself, without the assistance of magic, helped, much to the irritation of Kreacher, who was slowly being made redundant. Exercise helped, too, but unless he was able to complete it within the restrictions of 12 Grimmauld Place, Harry decided it wasn’t worth it. Leaving his house meant having to prepare for the abnormally large proportion of intrusive wizards and witches in what was supposedly a muggle area.
And so there he was, the boy who lived, sitting in an armchair that was falling apart at the seems, in a room cleaner than even Aunt Petunia was capable of making, only half-paying attention to the book he was holding in front of his face. He had settled down into the position about an hour ago, and hadn’t noticed it getting progressively darker in the room as the sun lowered in the sky. The warmth of the fire burning a few feet in front of him added to the cosy atmosphere that invited sleep. It was only 7pm, but Harry was drifting off, his hand gently lowering the book onto his lap, and his glasses slowly sliding further down his nose as his head tilted forward.
A few minutes later, he was in such a deep sleep that even the sudden roar of green fire in the fireplace failed to awake him. As Hermione entered (one of) the living room(s), she considered waking her subconscious friend, but then decided she’d better leave it. She was about to turn around and leave, resolving in her mind to return in the morning to check on the troubled boy, when she heard him murmuring in his sleep. Looking at his face, she could see him furrowing his eyebrows and she leaned closer to hear whatever it was he was saying in such a distressed tone. “Malfoy… Not Malfoy…” Hermione’s heart broke at that, and it was all she could do to not tear up. It had been two years, and he hadn’t been able to move on. He wasn’t getting better. He wouldn’t get better unless… Hermione seemed to come to a resolve, and, with her heart a little lighter than it had been seconds before, she turned on her heel and headed purposefully towards the entrance from which she had come.
Pulling out some floo powder from beside the fireplace, she extinguished the natural fire and stepped into it, saying, as she threw down the green powder, “Parkinson residence”.