Chapter Text
April 11th, 2008
Hermione slammed the door behind her hard enough to rattle her wrist, heels barking against the marble as she followed the rounded tunnel to the rotunda of lifts. The button flinched beneath her finger—or perhaps that was her hand, trembling with the urge to put it through a wall.
Don’t cry. Don’t you dare.
She ground her molars together until her jaw ached, blinking rapidly against the sting building behind her eyes. The lift arrived with a cheerful ding that made her want to kick the brass grille.
She grabbed the strap hanging from the ceiling of the lift. The leather groaned against her pull—as if it were strapped to a rack for torture—once the lift flew backwards and down its meandering shaft.
Eyes shifted away from her in the atrium—flicking sideways, then down to shoes and briefcases. Hands normally held up in greeting died prematurely at people’s sides, fingers curling back into fists or pockets. The crowds split before her like schools of fish, and she let them. Her chin stayed high, her spine a steel rod, because if she let even one vertebra soften, she’d crumble right here on the polished marble floor.
The automatic Floo clutched her in its fiery fingers and spat her out into her home in Hampstead—her parents’ home previously, both of whom elected to stay in Australia—where Crookshanks snoozed on the couch in a patch of late-afternoon sun. He cracked one amber eye open. Assessed Hermione. Closed it again.
Even the cat knows.
The flat smelled stale. Closed-in. Desperately in need of a good open window, as the flat scent layered beneath the ghost of last week’s candle—a floral blend that had overstayed its welcome.
She ripped her stasis cabinet open—a 19th-century mahogany wardrobe she’d converted, the wood sighing in protest—and slid a semi-clear glass bottle out with a scrape before slamming it on the counter. A hairline crack spidered out from the base. She remained unfazed.
Her wand levitated the fresh cork out with a soft pop as she strangled the neck and filled a thin wine glass until the pale-yellow liquid kissed the rim.
She drained the wine in a few sweet gulps—the concoction stinging her sinuses, fizzing sharp at the back of her throat—smacking her lips and exhaling hard before pouring another. Rinse and repeat. The second glass went down easier. The third, like water.
The wine slowly began suffocating her thoughts as good as a pillow. She fell onto the couch beside Crookshanks, who flattened his ears at the disruption but didn’t move, her unruly sienna curls spreading against the cushion like a halo. She folded her hands over the pilled cotton of her deep mauve robes, edged in black intricate embroidery, and stared at the ceiling. A water stain in the corner looked vaguely like a middle finger. Fitting.
Fuck them. Fuck. Them. All.
Her throat constricted—that awful pressure that came before tears.
It had taken everything in her not to cry in that office. Every scrap of self-control she’d sharpened over nearly thirty-one years of being underestimated. Her Muggleborn Integration Programme. Gone. Seven years of backbreaking, soul-crushing, throat-scraping work. Obliterated. When it’d barely just come out of the womb. Effectively killed in its infancy.
Because of bloody budgets.
Her nails bit into her palms. She uncurled her fingers deliberately, one by one, and pressed them flat against her robes. Breathe.
The Ministry had no problem funding Magical Sports and Games—enough Galleons thrown at broomstick races and Quidditch pitches to rebuild half of Diagon Alley. No shortage of coin for the DMLE or International Wizard Cooperation either. But Muggleborns? Muggleborns were where they drew the line in the sand.
The action was clear—you are second-class citizens. The stepchild ruining a fresh start for the newlyweds.
She swallowed against the lump in her throat. It wouldn’t move. Stubborn thing. Like everything else in her life.
It all hinged on the lack of clear success. Not that success would’ve been an option with the shoestring budget they’d given it. It was a miracle the programme had worked at all.
Knowing the Ministry, it was launched to fail for this very reason. Racist pricks. Like a parent giving a child a mint when they’d wanted a sweet.
She reached blindly for the wine bottle on the coffee table, refilled her glass without looking, and took a long swallow. The ceiling stain still flipped her off.
She thought of the Muggleborn kids. Eleven years old, handed a letter by a stranger, told to abandon everything they knew in four weeks. A metaphorical “here, now leave”. Her own mother’s face flashed behind her eyes—blank and polite, the careful smile of a woman greeting a guest. She swallowed hard against further tears.
The statistics lived in her head like tenants who never paid rent. Muggleborns struggled harder in their first years. Landed worse jobs after graduation. Some gave up and went back to the Muggle world, only to find the exchange rate had eaten their savings. A few Diagon Alley businesses had shuttered just this month, their windows papered over with old editions of the Prophet. The pubs and bookshops were the only ones thriving.
Because people needed a means to escape.
Didn’t they bloody all.
Crookshanks pressed his head against her ribs, purring louder now, as if he could feel the frequency of her unravelling. She scratched behind his ear and felt her throat tighten again.
She’d hoped the programme would help strangle blood prejudice in its cradle. Give Muggleborns a leg up instead of a leg down. Build the case for adult programmes next. Regulations. Rights bills for her kind.
A level playing field.
Was that really so fucking much to ask?
Though she didn’t want to get ahead of herself and dismantle an entire government before the age of forty—she’d take it up in middle age. Her failed attempt at twenty notwithstanding. But she didn’t think about those times. Impulsive and stupid. Brain not fully cured.
Grabbing a navy pillow from behind her head, she pressed it to her face and screamed into it—a raw, ragged, ugly sound muffled into cotton and down. Exorcising the drunk and addled demon inside her chest. She screamed until her lungs ached, until the sound thinned to nothing.
Until Crookshanks’s purr was the loudest thing in the room.
Due to a budgetary shortfall, we are unable to continue funding your programme as it did not meet the full requirements its first year. In order to proceed with the 2009 school year, the remaining funds must be supplemented by a donation, anonymous or otherwise. If not, the programme will be discontinued.
You have until July 31st, Miss Granger.
The words chased themselves like canaries inside her head, just out of reach of every Avada she threw.
She had a little over three months and twenty days to supplement the budgetary shortfall. An enormous sum. Ten times what she had sitting in her vault—and she’d counted it only last month, the neat stacks of Galleons looking so pathetically insufficient against the cavern walls. Her meagre director position in the Muggleborn Liaison Office, a department of three, was not enough. She didn’t even have collateral for a loan—the house wasn’t enough for Gringotts. Though after her little stint with the dragon, she probably wouldn’t be approved anyway.
They’d probably set the dragon on her, actually.
In a word: she was fucked. Not in the pleasurable way either.
The money had to come from somewhere else. Various charities, perhaps? She chewed her bottom lip, tasting wine. Who did she know? Who owed favours? Who believed in this as fiercely as she did?
When the idea struck, she sat up so fast that Crookshanks yowled and tumbled off the couch in an affronted ball of ginger fur. She didn’t apologise. She was already reaching for parchment and quill, knocking over the empty wine glass in the process—it rolled across the coffee table and dropped to the carpet without breaking.
Lucky glass. Lucky, lucky glass.
She began inking inquiries, the nib scratching frantic and uneven across the parchment, her handwriting deteriorating with each line as the alcohol pulled at her fine motor skills.
She could fix them in the morning. Probably.
And then, she shut her bedroom door and wanked her lingering stress away.
April 18th
The press of noise from the Friday crush of the Salty Graphorn squeezed his head like an overtight Quidditch helmet. Bodies packed the bar three-deep, elbows jostling, laughter erupting in sharp barks that scraped against the inside of his skull. His hand shook against the glass—barely, but enough that the sugared rim dusted his fingertip—the swirls of crushed lemon suspended inside like a snow globe someone had just set down.
He curled his fingers tighter. Steadied.
His eyes rarely strayed from the hint of curly wool of her auburn hair, diagonal from him, three booths away. The ends bouncing, tipped in light ochre from the hanging light, while the Weaselette—across from her—threw her head back and laughed at something he couldn’t hear. Hints of a burgundy blouse revealed themselves like a sunbreak through dotted clouds every time she shifted.
Stop staring, you pathetic creature.
He didn’t stop.
“You don’t have to be here, Dray.” Theo leaned forward, elbows on the sticky table, his voice pitched low enough to slide beneath the din. “Just go home and have a quiet drink by the fire.”
Theo said a different version of the same thing every Friday. Draco took a sip of his sugary cocktail in response, teeth grinding against each other behind closed lips. The lemon burned, bright and sharp, a counterpoint to the dull ache that had taken up permanent residence within his chest.
They’d learned to communicate with an almost telepathic quality over the past eight years—born of necessity, forged in a crucible of Draco’s post-war silence. Theo could read the tension in his jaw, the angle of his shoulders, the way his thumb traced the rim of a glass versus gripped it. Grunts. Short answers. The state of his hands.
Sometimes, even the drink he chose. A lemon drop meant I want to be here and leave me alone in equal measure.
“There are quieter pubs.” Theo tried again, turning his glass between his palms. “The Ridgeback’s Rest has private rooms and—”
He was being quite insistent tonight. Unusually so. Draco’s eyes narrowed, flicking from the auburn hair to Theo’s face—the way his friend’s gaze kept darting over Draco’s shoulder, snagging on the flash of red, pulling back.
Of course.
“What do you want?” Draco murmured, voice nearly lost in the ocean of chatter. But Theo could read lips. Another fluency required to keep up with him.
The wavy-haired brunette wizard sighed—long and deflated, pulling his shoulders down—his green eyes dropping to the creamy liquid in his glass and then lifting, drifting past Draco to the redhead in the other booth. His jaw worked. A muscle fluttered at the hinge.
Pining. Brilliant. There’s two of us, then.
“Go.” Draco tipped his chin toward the booth. “I’m fine.”
Theo looked at him with trepidation, lower lip caught between his teeth, then back at the redhead. His fingers drummed a nervous tattoo against the table.
“I don’t want to intrude.”
As if Theo would ever intrude on the Weaselette. The man had the social grace of a golden retriever and the threat level of a sleeping Puffskein.
Draco took another sip of his lemon drop, draining the small glass. The sweetness clung to his tongue, cloying now. Then he withdrew his wand from his sleeve where it’d been nestled in his forearm holster—the fir cool and familiar between his fingers—and tapped the base of the glass. It refilled on its own, the charm keeping tabs. Clever bit of pub magic. He’d settle his bill when the noise burrowed beneath his skin and drove him properly mad—coins thrown on the counter like an offering to long-forgotten gods.
“Come with me.” Theo leaned closer, voice dropping to barely above a whisper. His eyes were round, the sage-green of them particularly pathetic tonight—wide and earnest and almost unbearably hopeful. “Please?”
He must be desperate if he’s asking this.
Draco’s stomach tightened. His fingers stilled on the glass.
Draco didn’t go up to Hermione Granger. He spoke to her only in his fractured mind. In his dreams—the ones that left him gasping and aching and reaching for a body that wasn’t there. Under his breath when he puttered about the kitchen, narrating his sad little evening to an audience of one. Cried her name as he came over his fist, the shame of it hot and immediate, blooming across his chest like a stain.
But there was a difference between speaking and talking.
They talked on extremely rare occasions. Greetings were more common—brief, brittle little exchanges that he held in his mouth afterwards like hard sweets, turning them over and over until the flavour was gone. The barest hint of small talk before she fluttered away like a bee to another flower—one more fruitful and full of conversation.
He held them like diamonds in his heart. Pulling them out to stare at their brilliance when the darkness crept in. The screaming that ripped his psyche to shreds. His chest scraped out hollow by clawed fingers.
Good morning, Malfoy.
Excuse me—sorry, didn’t see you there.
Happy Christmas, Draco. She’d used his first name exactly once. He’d replayed it so many times the memory had worn thin at the edges, like a photograph handled too often.
Their friends were a Venn diagram and a family tree wrapped into one. It was inevitable they’d be around each other, albeit rarely. Under no circumstances did he ever go up to her. It was always she who came to him.
When the group got together, Draco was an afterthought. Hovering along the periphery like a thestral—invisible to most, but seen by those who knew. He was certainly always dressed in the shade of one, like a shadow following a great beast. Black on black on black, sharp-edged and deliberate, as if the colour might absorb him entirely.
Maybe that’s the point.
The closest he came to being visible was on May 2nd every year. For all the wrong reasons. That’s when he’d sit in his tub, the porcelain cold against his spine, and play with the idea of drowning like someone walking on the edge of a cliff—looking down, feeling the wind tug, never quite stepping off. His radio in the corner would play the soft brass jazz of an era he’d never known, only tasting echoes of it in his black-tiled bathroom. Water lapping at his collarbones. Ceiling staring back.
He desired only to be visible to her. But wants and reality were usually two separate things. As far removed as the planet and the moon were.
Theo was watching him. Patient. Hopeful. The kind of quiet that meant I know what I’m asking and I’m asking anyway.
Draco looked at his glass. At the lemon swirling like a slow galaxy. At the auburn hair three booths away.
Maybe today he could climb into a Muggle rocket ship. Just for Theo. He owed him a birthday present, after all.
He drained his glass in one sharp swallow. Set it down with a clink that no one but Theo could hear.
“Lead the way.”
“Looks like Malfoy and Theo are coming over.” Ginny barely moved her mouth; the words squeezed out through a grin tight as a ventriloquist dummy’s.
Curious.
“More like Theo dragging Malfoy, I imagine,” Hermione scoffed, taking a sip of her orange crush. The vodka burned her tongue—sharper than expected, cheap and unforgiving.
Just like the bloody Ministry these days.
The echo of the last word had scarcely settled before Theo and Malfoy were standing there, their shadows falling across the table. The wizards were both monstrously tall—most of everyone she knew was, frankly. She wondered if growing charms were an open secret or if the interbreeding had produced an unintended side effect.
Her gaze landed on Theo, though she was looking at Malfoy.
The wizard of her youth was long gone; in his place, a ghostly apparition—or so it seemed. He was paler than she remembered, practically untouchable, and disappeared without warning from gatherings the way smoke leaves a room. You’d blink and his chair would simply be empty. Glass abandoned. No goodbye.
He rarely spoke. Communicating with hard eyes, a tight mouth, and just a few words—sometimes one. Each syllable rationed like wartime provisions.
During the rare moments their group of friends got together, she made it a point to speak to him. How are you doing? This weather can’t make up its mind, can it? Well, it was good talking to you. Let’s chat later.
But later never came.
Her interactions were a toll she paid to Harry. Years ago, he’d pulled her aside at Ginny’s birthday, the noise of the party blurring behind them.
“You should say hello to Draco.”
“Why would I do that? He just stands there. Doesn’t look like he wants to talk to anyone.”
“Just—please, for me?” Harry had rubbed the back of his neck, the way he always did when asking something he knew was a stretch. “A few sentences. Something about the weather and that rot. That’s all.”
So she’d done so on every occasion. Each one ending the same way. It didn’t seem to make much difference. Like running in place.
And yet she kept running.
Maybe someday, she’d take an actual step forward.
“Hello, ladies!” Theo smiled widely, his drink skimming the edge of his glass in his gesturing grip, a bead of creamy liquid slipping down the side. “Room for two more?”
“Hi, Theodore,” Ginny laughed, and an extra gleam sparkled into her brown eyes—a warmth that hadn’t been there thirty seconds ago. Her olive-green blouse twisted towards him as she fiddled with the straw in her creamy drink, topped with whipped cream and a cherry she’d been ignoring all evening.
“Great minds think alike, no?” He waggled his Screaming Orgasm at her, dark brows bouncing. His whipped cream was entirely gone, along with the cherry. His plush upper lip appeared to be a touch glossy. There were even a few flecks of moisture on the front of his blue-grey robes, trimmed in gunmetal grey.
Subtle as a bludger, that one.
Hermione rolled her eyes. “Looks more like a thin milkshake. Now this,” she lifted her orange crush, the condensation slick against her palm, “is a proper drink.” She nodded towards Malfoy, deciding to pay her toll. “Even Malfoy’s got a—erm, pardon, what do you have?”
Malfoy’s posture transformed from wood to wire as his head craned towards her, the movement slow, almost reluctant. His layered white fringe stirred against his temples. Full lips tensed, like a strung wire.
“Lemon drop.”
His voice was low, smooth velvet, flirting with the border of baritone and bass. She’d expected it to sound hoarse from disuse. It didn’t. It sounded like the sweet note of a cello you’d want to press your ear against.
What an odd thought.
“See? A proper cocktail.” She smiled at him, saluting her tall, straight glass. “To citrus drinks. Cheers.”
His mouth remained a thin line. Eyes like untouched liquid tin—still, reflective, giving nothing back. Though he lifted his glass and took a slight sip. The barest concession.
Her smile faded like a sunset over a ridge as she turned back to Ginny.
Toll paid. Receipt collected. See you next time.
The witch was preoccupied, sipping her drink, gaze locked on Theo with a focus usually reserved for a quaffle.
Hermione swallowed, pasting on a smile as thin as tissue. “Sit down, Theo. Malfoy too, if you’d like to stay,” she said, drumming her fingers on the side of her glass in quick succession, her foot tapping the floor beneath the table in a rhythm only her nerves could hear.
“Thanks, Granger. Don’t mind if I do.” The wavy-haired brunette slid across the bench, elbow to elbow with Ginny, settling in with easy familiarity. As if he’d been looking for an excuse all night, which he probably had been, knowing Theo.
The two had been hovering on something for quite a while. Honestly, someone was going to have to shove them off the edge before one of them combusted.
But Hermione had more pressing problems. Shaped into a pyramid of gold coins, as tangible for her as leprechaun gold.
And then, suddenly, a warm body sat next to her.
One that should’ve felt frigid, like he’d left his icebox for the day to pretend to be human. Or the feeling of a Hogwarts ghost accidentally going through you. But he wasn’t cold at all—that was the strange thing. The scent of cinnamon and clove clung to him like a perpetual autumn, spiced and layered and entirely too intimate for the proximity. Even the warmth of him felt like sun on a cool day, radiating through the narrow gap between their arms.
His robes were black as pitch, the surrounding light swallowed by the cotton. He fingered the interrupted circle of sugar on the rim with long pale fingers, his signet ring winking in the light. She watched the motion without meaning to—the deliberate, idle way he traced the edge, as though the glass were the only thing in the room worth his attention.
“So, what’s the chatter, ladies?” A wide grin stretched Theo’s mouth, revealing a tidy line of teeth, dental charm work apparent in the perfection. “Any hot gossip?”
Ginny looked at Hermione, one brow raised. A question and a dare in the same expression.
Hermione’s mouth flattened. She rolled her eyes, then nodded. She took a healthy swig of her drink. At this rate she’d be sloshed within the hour.
“Hermione here has a little problem.”
“A big one, actually,” Hermione muttered, the glass cold and wet between her palms. “When the Ministry is involved, it’s always big, no matter the circumstances.”
The ease of government—right after the war—was no longer visible a decade later. A side effect of the fog of war lifting, of feeling safe enough to grow soft and forgetful.
Complacency dressed as peace.
“Too right,” Theo said, his gaze sliding to Malfoy with minute ticks across his face—tiny contractions of muscle, faster than she could decipher. Some silent language she wasn’t fluent in.
Malfoy took a small sip of his drink and set it down with a quiet clink. He began fingering the stem, up and down, leisurely. Hermione tried not to stare, though she watched from the barest edges of her periphery—the way the pad of his index finger traced the thin glass, the slight curl of his wrist.
For God’s sake, Granger. It’s a glass, not a performance.
“I need to come up with twenty thousand Galleons by July 31st.”
The number landed on the table like a dead thing. Theo reared back, gaze pinging between all three of them—Hermione, Ginny, Hermione again—as though waiting for someone to laugh. Nobody did. He brought his drink to his lips and took a few big gulps, draining most of the liquid. His upper lip renewed its shine before he wiped it away with a napkin from the middle of the table.
“Why?” Theo asked, brows furrowed.
“They’re going to shutter my programme.” Her voice cracked on the last word, and she hated it. She swallowed hard, forcing the edges smooth. “It hasn’t even been a year!” She groaned, leaning her head back against the booth, eyes temporarily closed. The din of the pub pressed against her skull. “I knew I should’ve asked them to increase the budget, but I was so worried about it even getting funded in the first place—” She reopened her eyes, mouth turned down in a frown, jaw tight.
“You thought you’d just settle. Yes,” Theo’s voice dropped, the teasing bled clean out of it. “I’m familiar with that concept.” His eyes locked hard on Malfoy.
Malfoy’s hand had stilled on his stem. Completely. As though he’d been petrified from the wrist down.
“How’ll you scrape together the gold?” Theo asked, turning back to her.
“Now, that,” Ginny waggled her eyebrows, forearm propped on the table, mouth stretched into a sly grin that Hermione recognised as her pre-mischief face, “is where my brilliant idea came in.”
Brilliant. Ginny’s brilliant idea was stretching the limits of that word. Idiotic. Mad. Insane—those words seemed wholly more appropriate.
Hermione took a long sip of her drink, draining nearly half her glass. The vodka scraped down her throat like a reprimand.
“Please tell me it’s stripping.” Theo pressed his palms together. “I’ve always wanted an excuse to go to a strip club—ouch, Ginny!” He rubbed his upper shoulder, staring butter knives at the redhead. “For the atmosphere! And just to say I’ve been to one,” he chortled.
Ginny pushed his shoulder again, the two squabbling—flirting—it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began.
“Close,” Hermione muttered under her breath.
Malfoy turned his face to look at her. She looked up at him, brow raised. Their eyes caught for half a second—tin against chestnut—before she glanced away.
“Even better.” Ginny lowered her voice, leaning forward, her smile wolfish. “Pensieve sex memories.”
Malfoy’s mouth twitched. Just a hint. Like a branch cracking in the woods.
Hermione took yet another giant gulp of her drink, grimacing at the sharp bite of vodka.
“What in the bloody fuck is that?” Theo asked, his attention now entirely on Hermione with renewed interest, cream-drink forgotten.
“It’s in the name,” Hermione grumbled, stirring her drink. The ice clinked, accusatory. She’d got more vodka on the last sip than she would’ve liked. The ratio was turning mutinous. She withdrew her wand and tapped the glass, quickly refilled itself. She hoped with less vodka this time.
“But how does it work? The whole start to finish.” He leaned forward on his elbows. “I’m a reformed slag and even I don’t know what that is.”
“Nobody stops being a slag, Theo. You just become a monogamous one.” Ginny smiled, though it was soft. Her eyes darkened as they perused Theo’s face—leisurely and deliberately—probably doing what her hands wanted to do.
Theo hummed, a low note that vibrated in his throat, running his finger around the rim of his glass.
“I only learned about it from some other Quidditch players,” Ginny began, dropping her voice conspiratorily. “You know the pay is absolute shite. Some of the more attractive witches learned about a black-market thing that’s sort of gone above ground now.” She sipped her drink. “They have sex and then put their memories into a vial. Then they cast a gemino on it for extra copies. Depending, they can sell for major gold. Like two hundred Galleons on the low end and up to two thousand on the high end.”
“What do you have to do to make two thousand?” Theo shuddered, his shoulders pulling inward.
Malfoy’s brows were furrowed, his gaze steady on Ginny. He’d leaned forward—barely, just a fraction of an inch—but Hermione noticed because she noticed everything about the space he occupied. The way his stillness had shifted from passive to attentive. Like a predator scenting something on the wind. She’d only had scraps before, but now this felt like a meal.
Stop. He’s listening. That’s all.
“It’s usually the most famous players.” Ginny tucked a strand of red hair behind her ear, the flush already climbing her neck. “They find a proper patron of sorts who owls them requests. Depending on the—erm—act,” her face went scarlet, the colour reaching the tips of her ears, “they can demand a huge amount. Especially since the memories aren’t shared with anyone else. Exclusivity sells.”
It was the wizarding equivalent of cam girls. A practice that had always seemed distasteful to Hermione—voyeuristic, transactional, reducing intimacy to a commodity you bottled and shipped. Not that she would outright chastise someone for it. But it was something she’d never thought she’d do herself.
Until now. Her gut roiled like an over-bubbling cauldron, acid and heat churning beneath her ribs.
“Are you going to do it, Hermione?” Theo leaned in, brows raised. His face had lost that teasing quality entirely, the humour sloughing off like a mask removed. A solemnity taking its place that made him look older.
She stirred her drink again—round and round, the ice spinning—her foot tapping beneath the table in a rhythm that wouldn’t quit.
She really, really did not want to do this. As the thought of it settled in the torrential ocean of her mind, her stomach lurched and she pressed her palm flat against her abdomen beneath the table. She was beginning to feel a little seasick over it all. The pub's noise swelled and receded like a tide, and she swallowed against the sour taste climbing her throat.
Being reduced to a body. A thing to be watched, consumed, and replayed. Sacrificing herself for the greater good—again. But what would be left of her? What part of Hermione Granger would she peel away and bottle into a vial for strangers to uncork at their leisure?
Would the sacrifice be worth it?
Her fingers stilled on her glass. The condensation ran cold between her knuckles.
“How else will I get the gold?” She heard the flatness in her own voice and hated it. “I maybe have two thousand Galleons saved, and I’m not willing to bet it all on Kelpie racing.”
A barbaric practice she’d never consent to, anyway. Kelpies deserved to be wild, not kept in small pools and let out to be raced to death.
“Have you reached out to any charities?”
She sighed, pushing her drink forward, and melted into the booth’s fabric back, her spine surrendering. “I spent the past week doing that. Nobody has the capital—not in this economy. And all my favours dried up.” She rubbed her thumb across the condensation ring on the table, drawing a circle that went nowhere.
Like everything else.
“How about a gala? The purebloods are loaded.” Theo chuckled, pointing at his chest with both thumbs. “As one myself, I can confirm.” His eyes flickered to Malfoy.
“Purebloods wouldn’t want to fund anything to do with Muggleborns.” She sat forward, the familiar fire kindling in her chest. “Even post-war. They’ll give something to charities, yes—to save face. A small recurring donation of a hundred Galleons. Practically an insult.” Her fingers tightened around her glass. “But to fund the kind of integration programme I have? Never. It threatens their perch on the pedestal. They just might have to actually work for something then instead of relying on archaic blood prejudice.”
It was a subject Hermione could expound on for hours. A button easily pressed that could either fire up everyone around her or blast them away like a bombarda.
“You could put one on yourself?” Theo offered, head tilted.
She barked a derisive laugh. “With what manor house? And what money?”
Theo flicked his eyes to Malfoy again, expression heavy. She’d almost say the green were shouting, the pupil moving like a mouth.
Malfoy’s lips twitched.
“Mine. I’d fund it.”
Two sentences. Four words total. Delivered with the same inflection one might use to offer the time.
Hermione flinched as though a glass had been dropped—not just two simple sentences lobbed into the middle of a conversation. Beside her, the heat of him suddenly felt scalding.
She turned towards him, searching his face for the joke, the cruelty, the catch. There was nothing. Just stillness. “I couldn’t.” The refusal left her mouth before her brain had fully formed it. “Sorry.” Then, quickly, as if manners could bandage the bluntness—”Thanks for the offer.”
Her scar itched on her arm, like a dog nipping her ankle. The reverberation of a high-pitched laugh rattled around her skull—that laugh, the one that lived behind a locked door in her mind and sometimes slipped its chain. Her throat went dry, the echo of verbal razors that’d shredded it in the space of an hour still sharp enough to cut after a decade. Sweat bloomed heavily on her palms.
Not now. Not here. Breathe. It’s ok.
Malfoy nodded, taking a sip of his drink. Acting as if she hadn’t spoken at all. His face betrayed nothing. The mask was immaculate.
She just happened to look down at his left hand on the table.
It was a tight fist now; the skin blanched white, bringing his blue veins to the surface like rain-revealed tree roots. His knuckles sharp as stone.
Was it trembling?
The fist disappeared under the table suddenly, slipping into the pocket of his robes before she could look further. As if it had never been there at all.
“Why not? Maybe he could loan you the gold at zero interest rate,” Ginny offered, having moved somehow closer to Theo—their shoulders touching now, the gap between them a memory. The wizard in question was subtly shaking his head at her, brows lifted in warning, but she didn’t receive the message. Or chose not to.
Hermione decided to lie.
“That’s way too much to ask for. And I’d never be able to repay back that kind of loan. I’d go destitute on the payments alone.” She kept her voice leisurely, veneering her true emotions. “I also don’t know the first thing about hosting such an event. What if nobody comes? It could all be for naught.” She squared her shoulders. “Not when I could rake in at least half the amount I need with this Pensieve thing.” The last of the words rolled off her tongue as if she were describing brussel sprouts.
She crossed her arms. “At least I can control this. Distribution, charms required, the lot. It’ll only be temporary—just a shy under three months and ten days. The deadline is July 31st.” She exhaled. “But there is one problem.”
“No bloke,” Ginny said glumly, stirring her drink with a defeated little circle.
It was where they’d left off in their conversation before Theo and Malfoy came over. Trying to figure out which wizard of their acquaintance would be a perfect choice for such an enterprise was proving difficult. Nearly everyone was paired off or caught in that quasi will they/won’t they stage. Hermione didn’t feel like being a quasi home wrecker.
“Dean?”
Ginny shot Theo a death glare, the kind that could curdle milk. “Witches’ code, Theo.”
He scratched his head, looking chastened. “Right. Sorry.”
Ginny drummed her fingers on the table.
Malfoy remained deathly still beside her, cheeks slightly hollowing. She could feel the tension radiating off him like heat from a cauldron.
“Blaise?” Theo said, and then hissed—a sharp, sudden intake of breath through his teeth. His leg jerked beneath the table.
Ginny turned to him. “You all right?”
Theo shook his head, eyes pinging to Malfoy again—a look so loaded it practically burst at the seams. “No. Must be a stomachache from the orgasm,” he said tightly, tapping his drink. “Too much screaming,” he muttered, mouth set in a hard line.
Did Malfoy just kick him under the table?
“It needs to be someone we can trust,” Ginny continued, ticking off criteria on her fingers. “Not someone’s ex. Not a stranger.”
“Definitely not.” Hermione shivered, the thought sliding cold down her spine.
“Someone who can keep quiet…” Ginny trailed off. Her eyes subtly moved to Hermione’s right.
Theo’s mouth spread into a sly grin, his torso shifting just slightly—angling towards the man beside her like a compass needle finding north. “Someone attractive.”
Malfoy tensed beside her. She felt it through the bench—coiling, almost bracing—and then the sharp exhale through his nose. He turned to Hermione.
“Granger.” A pause. His jaw worked. “Would you like my assistance?”
She turned, blinking rapidly, an incredulous expression warping her face before she could stop it. His eyes were two twin chips of ice below his darker brows, lips cut in half from being thinned out. A muscle in his cheek twitched—once—and then was still.
It was like trying to read a book in the dark.
Though Theo seemed to be the only one with night vision, as he looked between the two of them, biting his lip hard enough to leave marks. His knee bounced beneath the table.
The question hovered in the space between them, suspended in the sticky pub air. Her mind did what it always did—clicked into analytical mode, assembling a SWOT analysis on the fly. A compulsive habit. Her brain’s security blanket.
Attractive, objectively. Quiet—wouldn’t gossip, barely spoke to begin with. Emotionally unavailable, which meant no messy entanglements—as far she knew. On the threat side: catching feelings. With physical intimacy, it was always a risk. At least for her. Hitting a niche—a pureblood with a Muggleborn. There was a market for transgression, and this one practically sold itself. And—
Her stomach dipped.
Get to fuck Malfoy. Multiple times.
Oh, shut up.
The list was compelling. As the thought cured in her mind, hardening into a decision like clay in a kiln, she felt a small smile twist her lips. It was dangerous and usually preceded either her best or worst ideas—and those had always been the same thing.
“Yes, Malfoy.” She held his gaze. The tin of his eyes shifted—mercury flickering beneath the surface, there and gone. “I think I would.”
