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Chapter Text

Chapter 1 Diagnosis: A Very Bad Day.

Hermione Granger-Weasley was twenty-nine, a neuro-magical doctor at St Mungo’s—and dangerously close to forgetting what sleep felt like.

Her patients — spell-damage survivors, memory-curse victims, children whose minds had splintered after trauma — kept her tethered to purpose. But lately, even purpose was losing its grip.

She’d spent years training to become a neurosurgeon—not the Muggle kind, though she’d studied their methods too—but a magical specialist in neural restoration. Her work balanced precision and spellcraft: preservation wards instead of anaesthetic, diagnostic charms that mapped synaptic pathways, and neurological matrices that shimmered like constellations above her patients’ heads. Her team operated inside the brain’s magical field, correcting fractures in cognition and stabilizing the flow between core and cortex.

It was exacting, beautiful work—the closest thing she’d ever found to creation.

She’d been working more and more hours, chasing the impossible balance between brilliance and exhaustion. Head of the department—that had been the goal. She’d published papers, presented findings, built a reputation that finally made her name mean something beyond the war.

And then, that afternoon, the board had smiled as they said no.

“You understand, of course,” one of them had told her, gentle as poison. “Optics matter. The public might think we’re showing favoritism to a war hero.”

She’d smiled back, steady, professional. “Of course.”

They’d thanked her for her understanding; she’d thanked them for their transparency. Then she’d walked out before she shattered something.

The board’s “regret” still rang in her ears as she climbed the steps—two bottles of wine floating behind her, a jar of good olives tucked under her arm. She’d arrived earlier than usual. The house was quiet when she stepped inside. Her parents’ house. The one she’d inherited after moving them abroad for safety during the war. The one she’d spent years turning back into a home.

She heard laughter upstairs. A woman’s laughter.

Her stomach turned cold. She didn’t rush. She just set the olives on the counter, walked up the stairs, and opened the bedroom door.

Ron froze mid-motion. Lavender Brown made a small, strangled sound and clutched the sheet to her chest.

“It’s not what it looks like,” Ron said, voice breaking on the lie.

Lavender whispered, “I’m sorry,” and fled to the bathroom.

Hermione didn’t move. Didn’t shout. She just took one of the bottles, flicked her wand to uncork it, and drank straight from the neck. The wine was sharp and alive on her tongue.

She just stared at the bed.

Their bed.

The one she’d chosen, the one she’d restored, the one she and Ron had built their fragile, imperfect domestic peace upon. Of all the places he could’ve done this — all the flats, hotels, quiet corners of London — he chose that bed.

Something in her went cold and bright.

Ron was talking half dressed — excuses tumbling over each other, accusations disguised as apologies.

“You’re never home. You care more about your bloody patients than about me. You make me feel like I don’t matter—”

She took another sip. Then another. Then she smiled, small and terrible. She nodded at everything he was saying.

“You care more about work than us. You make me feel invisible. You—”

He started to say something else, but the words burned up in the air between them. She didn’t answer. Didn’t even blink. He was just noise now — background static, the hum of a failing radio.

She looked at the bed again. She wanted it gone. Out of her house. Out of her life.

She pointed her wand without thinking. “Incendio.”

Flame leapt across the sheets—hungry, merciless.

Ron shouted, coughing in the smoke.

Hermione watched, drinking. The bottle shook in her hand. Then she laughed—wild, wrong, free. The sound was strange and wild, like someone else’s voice.

“Are you out of your bloody mind?” Ron shouted, coughing as smoke filled the room.

Hermione just stood there, the wine bottle still in her hand, watching the fire eat through everything she’d once protected. She just kept drinking, wine dribbling down her wrist as the fire devoured the room.

By the time the fire brigade arrived — both wizarding and Muggle — she was sitting on the curb, soot in her curls, staring at the black smoke rising from the roof.

Black smoke curled into the sky.

That’s how Theo found her. He Apparated straight from St. Mungo’s in his green medic robes, smelling faintly of antiseptic and baby powder.

He took one look at the wreckage, then at her soot-streaked face, and muttered, “So I guess the board said no—and your poor bed paid for it?”

She handed him the bottle without looking away from the smoke curling into the sky. “I wanted it gone.”

He sat down beside her, took a long sip, and nodded once. “Well,” he murmured, “you’re thorough.”

And the two of them sat there in the glow of the fire — the healer and the patient, though neither would admit which was which.

By the time the fire was out and the Ministry officers finished taking statements, Hermione was running on fumes. Her voice was hoarse from smoke and wine, her hands trembling despite herself.

Theo didn’t ask permission; he just told the officer on duty, “She’s with me,” and Side-Alonged her out of the chaos.

They landed outside his flat — a narrow, lived-in space that always smelled faintly of coffee, antiseptic, and the citrus cleaner he used when he was stressed. Piles of medical journals, healer and medical books leaned against the walls. It was chaos, but clean chaos.

“Bathroom’s free,” he said, pulling off his healer robes. “You reek of smoke and wine.”

Hermione toed off her ruined shoes. “I’ll add that to my CV.”

Theo gave her one look — sharp, assessing — then sighed. “You’re not fine, Granger.”

“I’m functional,” she said, untying her hair, curls matted with ash. “That’s more than I can say for my marriage.”

He didn’t argue. He just conjured two glasses, poured the last of her bottle into them, and handed her one. “Here. Prescription.”

They drank in silence for a while. The city hummed faintly through the enchanted windows.

Steam curled around the bathroom like fog off the lake at dawn. Hermione stood under the shower until the water ran cold, watching smoke and ash spiral down the drain. Her hands still smelled faintly of wine and burnt cotton.

Theo’s flat wasn’t big, but it had good water pressure and better shampoo. She smiled when she saw the bottles — same brand she used, same rosemary scent. They’d discovered it together during their final year at Oxford, when they’d lived in that awful student housing that smelled like mildew and potion fumes. He’d teased her about her “expensive taste,” then stolen her conditioner the next week.

She scrubbed her hair twice, breathing in the familiar scent, letting the heat loosen her shoulders. For a minute, she didn’t think about the fire. Or the board. Or Ron. Or the pitying eyes of the Ministry officers. Just warmth. Steam. Quiet.

From the other side of the door came Theo’s voice — muffled but cheerful.

“I left you clean clothes there! Don’t say I never plan ahead.”

Hermione smiled faintly, water dripping down her face. “You planning ahead would be the first sign of the apocalypse.”

“Already happened,” he called back. “You set your house on fire.”

She huffed a laugh and shut off the water. There was a neatly folded shirt and a pair of joggers on the counter—his, of course, soft from wear. She put them on. She’d cleaned her pants and dried them with her wand, but doing that to all her clothes was too exhausting.

When she finally went to his room, she stopped in the doorway. Theo had only one bed — unmade, but warm, the sheets smelling faintly of laundry detergent.

He shrugged, sitting on the edge. “Don’t get any ideas, Granger. I’m not your rebound.”

She gave a tired half-smile. “You’re a terrible flirt, Nott.”

They lay down without ceremony. Not like lovers, not like strangers—like people who had shared too many nights on hospital floors, too many shifts that bled into dawn. They’d fallen asleep beside each other in on-call rooms, on benches outside neonatal wards, on library couches during their residencies. They’d done it a thousand times before. During late-night study marathons. After watching The Conjuring and deciding sleep was overrated. Back when they’d lived together with six other students crammed into that terrible university house that always smelled of burnt toast and instant noodles.

This was no different—just two people falling into the same rhythm they always had, an old, worn comfort that didn’t need explaining.

Theo switched off the lamp. “Don’t drool on my pillow again,” he muttered.

Hermione turned toward him in the dark, a faint smile tugging at her mouth. “You snore louder than the neonatal ventilators.”

Theo laughed.

Hermione stared at the ceiling. Her body was still humming from the fire, the wine, the silence.

“Thanks,” she whispered.

“For what?”

“For not asking me to explain.”

 “Sleep well, love.”

In the dark, their shoulders brushed. Neither of them moved away.

Sleep came slowly, heavy and dreamless, as if the fire had burned through everything but exhaustion.

Chapter Text

Chapter 2 Symptom: denial. Treatment: tequila.

Next few days Hermione moved through the hospital like a ghost in scrubs. Her badge caught the light as she passed each ward—neural restoration, post-curse rehabilitation, experimental memory therapy—and every healer she passed offered a nod she barely registered. She’d already performed two consults, reviewed three scans, dictated one impossible prognosis.

None of it landed. Her hands still obeyed her, but her mind was elsewhere—adrift in smoke and silence.

The morning blurred into motion: flick of wand, pulse charm, dictation quill scratching at the edge of consciousness. The neural lattice flickered red, then green again. Hermione adjusted the charm with steady hands and dead eyes. When she looked up, the clock insisted it was almost noon. She hadn’t eaten. The world around her felt thin, unreal.

Ron’s message appeared on her mobile halfway through her third consult. We need to talk, I’m in the café.

She read it once. She didn’t reply, but an hour later she found herself at a café near St Mungo’s anyway—half out of habit, half because she didn’t have the energy to avoid him. She was still in her scrubs, hair pulled into a lopsided knot, the faint smell of antiseptic clinging to her sleeves.

Ron was sitting by the window like someone rehearsing regret. He stood when she approached, then didn’t know what to do with his hands.

“I didn’t mean for any of this to happen,” he said the moment she sat down. His voice was thin, pleading—familiar in a way that made her bones ache.

Hermione wrapped her hands around the coffee cup. The heat didn’t reach her fingers. She was tired—of apologies dressed as explanations, of circular fights, of being the problem he needed her to fix. Tired of how, in his eyes, she was always just short of enough.

“Okay,” she said softly, without looking up.

He blinked. “Okay?”

“You have three days to move your things out of the house.”

The silence that followed was dense, almost physical. Outside, London went on as if nothing was ending—rain stippling the glass, buses hissing past, a siren wailing somewhere far away.

“I need more time, Mione...”

“More time?” Her voice was steady now. “You had nine years. You get three days.”

“Come on! This can’t be news to you,” he snapped. “You were always bloody working—always. Like the world would fall apart if you stopped for five minutes.”

Hermione didn’t flinch. She just studied him for a long, unblinking second, as if examining a specimen that had long since stopped surprising her.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” she murmured.

Ron scoffed. “It is a bad thing. You don’t know how to stop. You never did. Everything’s got to be a project, even people.”

She tilted her head, the faintest trace of something—maybe pity, maybe grief—crossing her face. “No, Ron. The problem was that you were always waiting for me to stop.”

His jaw clenched, but he had nothing left to throw. The words hung between them like the last breath of a dying fire.

“Three days,” she repeated quietly, then pushed open the café door.

The bell chimed, absurdly cheerful, as the rain swallowed her up outside.

She felt numb. Like everything was happening to someone else, somewhere far away.

The hospital made her greet Doctor Morgan—the bastard who’d snatched the position that should’ve been hers. A charming vulture in a pristine lab coat, good at shaking hands and climbing ladders, not so good at medicine.

Fine. If St. Mungo’s couldn’t recognize talent when it was standing right in front of them, then to hell with it. Let them keep their politics, their committees, their smug little smiles.

She had work to do.

That night the Potters-Weasley house was painfully warm—firelight, the smell of roasted vegetables, the hum of something normal. Harry hugged her at the door like he was afraid she might fall apart.

Ginny was already at the table, jaw tight enough to crack.

“She’s furious,” Harry muttered as he led Hermione inside.

“I can tell,” Hermione said, managing a tired smile.

Ginny poured her a glass of wine without asking. Hermione drank it in two swallows.

They sat. Silence hung like fog until Ginny finally said, voice clipped and trembling, “She’s… pregnant.”

Hermione blinked. “Who?”

The clock ticked in the next room. No one touched their food.

“Lavender,” Ginny said.

“Gin—” Harry began, but Ginny shot him a glare that could’ve melted steel.

“Lavender Brown?” Hermione asked.

Ginny nodded, looking anywhere but at her.

Hermione stared at the table. “So he cheated, and now he’s reproducing,” she said flatly. “Outstanding.”

Harry winced. Ginny looked like she wanted to set something on fire herself.

Hermione poured another glass of wine. “Don’t look at me like that,” she murmured. “I’m fine.”

It was the least convincing thing she’d ever said.

Harry hesitated. “You can stay here if you want.”

She shook her head. “I’m staying with Theo. I’ll go home in three days. I told Ron to move out.”

Harry nodded slowly, unsure what comfort was even left to offer. Ginny reached across the table, brushed her fingers against Hermione’s wrist—silent, sisterly solidarity.

Outside, the night pressed against the windows, soft and indifferent. Inside, the fire crackled on, burning low and steady, as if mocking how calm she sounded when she said it.

Three days became two weeks. Theo decided that the cure for heartbreak—and mild arson—was clubbing.

Hermione disagreed. He didn’t ask. He appeared in black jeans and a shirt unbuttoned past decency, grinning like a man who’d already won.

“You need dopamine, Granger,” he said, tossing her a jacket. “And tequila. Possibly at the same time.”

“I need sleep.”

“Sleep is for people who haven’t committed minor property crimes. Let’s go.”

Somehow, she did.

The club pulsed with magic—lights bending, music pounding through her ribs. Theo got them past the queue with a charm and a wink. At the bar, he shoved a shot glass toward her.

“To moving on,” he said.

“To questionable life choices.”

The tequila burned. It felt honest.

The crowd swallowed them whole. She let herself be pulled onto the dance floor, let the noise drown her thoughts. She wasn’t Hermione Granger-Weasley, betrayed wife, war hero, overworked healer. She was just a body, laughing too loudly, trying to feel alive.

A stranger spun her around—a tall wizard with dark eyes and a smile that promised nothing good. She let him kiss her. It didn’t mean anything. That was the point.

Theo whistled from the bar, raising his glass. “That’s my girl!”

She laughed—reckless, real for half a heartbeat.

They ended up on a street corner at four in the morning, hair damp from the mist, hands wrapped around greasy hot dogs that steamed in the cold. The city was quieter now—just the low hum of enchanted taxis gliding past, a couple of students Apparating home, laughter fading into the dark.

Theo had somehow acquired two bottles of beer. He handed her one with great ceremony.

“To survival,” he said solemnly.

“To questionable hygiene standards,” she countered, and they clinked bottles.

The beer was terrible. The hot dog was worse. It was perfect.

For a while, they ate in silence—chewing, breathing, existing.

“You think it’s odd I haven’t cried yet?” she asked.

“Maybe,” he said. “Or maybe there’s just nothing left to cry for.”

The city hummed around them—alive, indifferent. Maybe that was what she wanted: a place that didn’t care who she’d been.

“I applied for a rotation in New York,” Hermione said finally, watching the beer foam slide down the bottle’s neck.

Theo froze mid-bite, then turned to her slowly, eyes wide. “You what?”

“I applied,” she repeated. “Neurological exchange program. New Salem Hospital. Just a rotation. Six months.”

He blinked, processing through a mild haze of alcohol. “You’re leaving me?”

She laughed softly. “It’s not permanent.”

Theo pointed his half-eaten hot dog at her, deadly serious. “I hate you.”

“You do not.”

“I do! I hate you. You’re abandoning me for Americans and bagels. Do you know how much I’ve suffered? I went to a club for you. I danced.”

“You danced badly.”

“Out of love!” he said, clutching his chest with mock injury. “You heartless witch.”

Hermione smiled, the first real one in days. “You’ll survive, Theo.”

He took a long swig of beer, muttering, “Unlikely.” Then, after a beat, “Can I visit?”

Hermione smirked. “Oh, please. We’ll see a play on Broadway and complain about Americans butchering real theatre.”

Theo brightened instantly, eyes glassy with both beer and sincerity. “I love you again.”

She laughed, quiet and real this time, the sound curling through the empty street like smoke.

Then she leaned her head on his shoulder, still holding the half-empty bottle. “I don’t know what I’m doing without you,” she murmured.

Theo nudged her lightly with his arm. “You’ll work like a madwoman until I come visit and make you shag someone.”

Hermione let out another laugh—hoarse, startled, genuine. “You’re terrible.”

“I’m practical,” he said, deadpan. “It’s a medical prescription.”

She smiled into his sleeve, feeling the warmth of him through the fabric, the absurd comfort of being seen and not judged.

For a few quiet minutes, they just sat there—two exhausted people eating bad food, trying to convince each other the world hadn’t ended. Maybe it hadn’t. Maybe something new was beginning.

Chapter Text

Chapter 3 Adverse Reaction

Hermione landed in New York through the Floo International Arrivals terminal, stepping out into a haze of smoke and jet-lagged wizards shouting in half a dozen accents. It was Sunday morning—grey, cold, and humming with too much energy.

Her suitcase floated obediently behind her, Crooks was in his carrier, and she clutched a folder of hospital documents under one arm. The rotation was six months at New Salem Medical Center —the largest, most advanced neuro-healing facility in North America.  Hermione had read the brochures twice and the research output thrice.

She still didn’t believe she was actually here.

Her new scrubs were folded neatly in her bag—baby blue, for luck. She’d told herself that if she looked put together, maybe she’d feel that way.

Outside, she hailed a Muggle taxi. The driver gave her a suspicious look when her suitcase was light as feather, but she smiled and tipped well. The ride was long, the skyline unfamiliar—too tall, too loud, too alive.

She dropped her bag, stared around at the crooked space, and sighed.

Her flat was smaller than the photographs had implied. Technically, it was a studio, but the bed was up a ladder and so close to the ceiling that she couldn’t even stand upright—she had to crawl. One of the faucets leaked, the air smelled faintly of old Chinese takeaway, and the window view was a brick wall.

“Okay, Crooks,” she said to her cat, who had just materialized from his carrier with a disdainful flick of the tail. “Looks like this is home now.”

He yawned in judgment.

Hermione set her wand to fixing the faucet, unpacked her books, and fell asleep on top of the covers.

The next morning, she woke to sunlight slicing across the floorboards. Her curls were cooperating for once, glossy and obedient. She pulled on her baby blue scrubs, tied her hair back, and took one long look at herself in the mirror.

“You’ve survived worse,” she muttered.

Then she grabbed her wand, and her courage, and set off for New Salem Medical Center, the hospital that never slept, where magic and medicine met in cold, bright precision. A glass-and-steel monolith that occupied an entire Manhattan block and gleamed like it knew exactly how important it was. Its wards shimmered invisibly in the air, threaded through with charms so refined they almost hummed. Inside, every corridor gleamed white and silver, full of people who looked like they hadn’t slept since the invention of the wand.

She had, of course, read everything she could find about her new boss.

Dr. D. M. Black.

The initials sent her into a week-long research spiral. No photos. No recordings of his conferences. Just a trail of papers, patents, and one lecture where note-taking had been banned because the procedures were deemed “ethically delicate.”
Dr. Black’s reputation was polarizing brilliant, unorthodox, impossible to supervise. He combined Muggle neurosurgical technique with wand-guided wards, using Legilimency to read neural echoes during surgery. Legilimency wasn’t for diagnosis anymore; it had become part of the toolkit — a way to trace memory patterns, to see where the curse damage lived. It was controversial, borderline illegal in some jurisdictions. Which, naturally, meant Hermione found it fascinating.

By now, she knew his publication history, his preferred anaesthetic drugs and wards, and the rumour that he’d once rebuilt a patient’s neural core using mirrored spell matrices alone. What she didn’t know was his first name. Or whether he was the kind of man who tolerated questions. But she had plenty — and a plan for his brilliant mind.

She arrived early thank Merlin. It turned out to be the right instinct—her credentials had somehow vanished into the bureaucratic void, and she spent twenty minutes watching the receptionist argue with a self-aware quill that refused to spell her surname correctly.

When the camera finally flashed for her ID photo, Hermione blinked, dazed, and immediately hated it.

Brilliant. Six months of being identified as the woman mid-sneeze.

“Alright, Doctor Granger-Weasley,” the receptionist said brightly, handing her the badge. “You’re all set. Orientations on the fifth floor, locker room to your left, vending machines accept Galleons or credit cards.”

Hermione stared at the laminated badge for a beat too long.

“It’s Granger,” she said quietly. “Just… Granger.”

“Oh—but it says—”

“You know what,” Hermione interrupted, forcing a small smile. “It’s fine.”

The receptionist nodded, oblivious. “Well, welcome aboard, Doctor Granger-Weasley.”

Hermione exhaled through her nose, tucking the badge into her pocket before she had to look at it again.

Perfect. Her first act in America: die of embarrassment while her failed marriage trails behind her on official paperwork.

“Thank you,” She said, forcing a smile. “Have they granted me access to the theatre yet?”

The woman looked confused. “The what?”

“The operating theatre,” Hermione clarified.

The receptionist blinked. Then she laughed—warm, incredulous. “Oh! You mean the OR. I thought you were asking about Broadway, honey.”

Hermione’s lips twitched. “Not this week.”

“You have clearance, but your chief needs to sign it. Welcome to New York,” the receptionist said, still chuckling.

Hermione adjusted the strap of her bag, glanced down at her baby blue scrubs, and murmured under her breath, “Right. OR. Not theatre. Got it.”

A fellow was waiting for her in the lobby—tall, in his forties probably, smiling, far too awake for seven-thirty in the morning.

“Hello,” he said warmly, stepping forward with an outstretched hand. “Welcome to New Salem Medical Center. I’m Dr. Daniel Geller, one of the neuro-magical fellows here. I’ll be showing you around before your first case review.”

“Lovely to meet you,” Hermione said, matching his smile even as her brain tried to remember if she’d already read one of his papers.

He glanced at her badge, then back up at her with unmistakable enthusiasm. “Dr. Granger—the Dr. Granger, from St. Mungo’s Neural Restoration Unit? It’s an honour.”

Hermione blinked, startled. “I’m not sure it’s quite that dramatic.”

“It is,” he said earnestly. “Your paper on memory-curse reactivation protocols is required reading in our department. The chief will be thrilled to have you here.”

Before she could respond, the elevator doors slid open, and a tall witch in a slate-grey suit stepped out — clipboard in hand, bun immaculate, the kind of presence that made everyone sit a little straighter. She reminded Hermione of McGonagall.

“Dr. Geller,” she said briskly. “Is this our new fellow?”

“Yes, ma’am. Dr. Hermione Granger-Weasley.”

Hermione flushed. “Just Granger,” she corrected quickly, the words tripping over each other. “It’s—just Granger.”

The woman extended a hand. “Welcome, Doctor. I’m Dr. MacMillan, Chief of the Center.”

Hermione shook her hand. “Thank you for having me.”

MacMillan smiled—professional, approving. “We’re pleased to host you. You’ll be under Dr. Malfoy’s supervision during your rotation.”

“Sorry,” she said carefully. “Who did you say?”

“Dr. Malfoy,” Geller repeated, still cheerful. “Head of the department. Brilliant, a bit terrifying. Don’t let him see you sweat.”

Hermione almost laughed, it must be a confusion. Every paper she’d read listed Black as the surname. Even the hospital brochure had used it.

The name gave her stomach gave a small, traitorous twist.

But Geller kept talking, oblivious. “He’s English too—Harvard pre-med, then residency here. He’s been in the States for ages.”

“I’m sorry—who?” she asked again, frowning. “Dr. Black, surely? The Head of Neuromagical Reconstruction? That’s—he’s the one listed on every publication.”
Her voice faltered near the end, uncertainty creeping in where confidence should have been.

MacMillan blinked, then smiled like she’d asked a perfectly reasonable question. “Ah — yes. Malfoy Black, we called him just Malfoy here.”

Hermione’s mind stalled.
The air went thin; her pulse tripped.
She’d read D. M. Black’s papers a dozen times. Quoted them. Built her fellowship on them. The man was supposed to be a mystery — an academic ghost.

Not him.

Her breath caught. Malfoy. She is being blindly admiring bloody Malfoy’s work.

The name dragged up old corridors and worse memories: blood on marble, laughter that sounded like cruelty. The boy who once stood smirking at her, saying Mudblood like it was a curse worth dying for.

Of course. The universe couldn’t give her a single bloody break.

Since the board’s rejection, everything had been circling the drain anyway.

She wanted to turn around and leave. Forget the fellowship. Thank you so much.

But… she was already here. She’d rented a flat. Crossed an ocean.
She wasn’t a quitter.
So she’d swallow her pride, keep her head down, and finish the fellowship like a professional — even if the universe clearly thought it was hilarious.

Also, she needed him.
She had a theory — one she’d been chasing for years — and he was the only person who might help her prove it. If she could convince him to work with her… or at least let her borrow that impossible mind for a while, she might still salvage something out of this disaster.

She swallowed hard, forced a polite smile, and heard herself say, “Of course.”

MacMillan nodded, pleased. “Good. He likes punctuality. And opinions. Preferably not at the same time.”

Geller chuckled. Hermione didn’t. “I read his work” she said in disbelief.

“Then you know what you’re in for,” MacMillan said dryly. “Try not to argue with him before your first surgery. He enjoys it too much.”

Geller grinned. “You’ll see what she means.”

Hermione forced a polite laugh, though something about the warning made her pulse tick faster.

Dr. Geller led her through the hospital’s main wing, speaking cheerfully the entire time while Hermione tried—and failed—to commit the layout to memory. The place was a labyrinth. Corridors looped into one another like enchanted arteries; every hallway lined with gleaming glass panels that reflected her back a hundred times over. Everything was glass, or white, or too bright—so bright it bordered on hostile. The air smelled faintly of antiseptic and ozone, humming with restrained magic.

Geller walked backwards as he talked, pointing out various departments. “Neurodiagnostics on this level, ORs one through four upstairs, cryogenic spell storage down that hall—don’t go in there unless you enjoy frostbite—and the staff lounge is, uh… somewhere near the east elevators, I think.”

Hermione smiled faintly. “I’ll find it by next month.”

“You’ll adjust,” he said with a grin. “Everyone gets lost their first week. One of the interns ended up in the cardiomagical ward and accidentally assisted in a heart charm replacement last year.”

“Efficient,” she murmured, ducking as a floating diagnostic drone zipped past them with a chirp.

They passed glass-walled labs where healers in pale scrubs moved between muggle monitors and enchanted instruments. Machines hummed beside hovering spellwork, medicine and magic stitched together in practiced rhythm. Hermione slowed despite herself — irritation giving way to reluctant fascination. Trust Malfoy to end up running the one place that actually looked interesting.

“You’ll like the tech here,” Geller said. “We run both magical and Muggle protocols simultaneously. Your British ward system was one of the models they built off, actually.”

Hermione blinked. “Really?”

He nodded. “Dr. Malfoy adapted part of it for memory-loop reconstruction. You’ll probably assist him with a few of those cases this week.”

Hermione’s pulse tripped slightly at the name, though she kept her tone neutral. “I read his paper on occlumency-guided surgery. Innovative.”

“That’s one word for it,” Geller said dryly as they approached a glass door labelled Department of Neural Restoration and Spell Trauma. “He’s… brilliant. And a nightmare. You’ll see what I mean.”

Hermione smiled politely, trying to ignore the faint tightening in her heart.

They moved past a row of enchanted glass doors that shimmered with patient IDs and diagnostic sigils. Every healer they passed seemed to mention his name—casually, reverently.

“Dr. Mafoy handled that case himself.”

“Dr. Mafoy’s neural lattice reconstruction was flawless.”

“Dr. Mafoy reviewed my report personally.”

Each comment was threaded with the same tone: admiration, deference, a little awe.

They reached the surgical floor, where a wall-sized board glowed with names, procedures, and coded wards in progress.

“Oh, look,” Geller said, scanning it. “He’s in surgery. Want to take a peek?”

Hermione hesitated. “Wouldn’t that be—”

“Totally fine.”

Before she could protest, Geller was already leading her up a narrow flight of stairs that curved toward the observation deck.

The operating theatres—ORs, she reminded herself—looked like something out of a dream: sterile white space, wards pulsing gently above the surgical field, hovering instruments gleaming with enchantment. Through the glass, she could see half a dozen healers in pale scrubs moving with precise, synchronized efficiency.

At the centre of it all stood him.

Malfoy was already in full surgical dress: gloves, mask, enchanted lenses glinting faintly under the lights. His movements were economical, confident, the kind that came from repetition bordering on obsession.

“Okay,” he said, voice filtered through the charm that carried sound up to the gallery. “Larissa’s picking music today, right?”

The accent hadn’t changed. Sharper now, but still silk over steel. Hermione’s pulse lurched in a way she hated.

One of the technicians smiled under her mask and nodded, and a beat later, the speakers crackled to life—Shakira, fast and defiant, all hips and vengeance.

Malfoy laughed under his mask. “From heartbreak to revenge—excellent choice, Larissa. Let’s roll.”

The laugh was the worst part. Too alive. Too familiar.

Hermione gripped the railing, watching from the observation deck as the room below transformed. Lights narrowed. Instruments floated into position. Wards flared. Every gesture was deliberate, confident—grace where she remembered cruelty.

This wasn’t the boy who sneered at her across classroom desks. This was a man who commanded magic like an extension of his body, as if the world had been rebuilt to suit his precision.

And damn him, he was brilliant.

Hermione felt the tug before she could stop it—the gravitational pull of mastery, of someone who knew. Her stomach turned.

When the surgery ended, he stripped off his gloves, barked an order to his team, and left without looking up. The gallery glass caught his reflection just long enough for her to see his eyes: grey, sharp, unreadable.

It hit her like déjà vu and whiplash at once.

Geller handed her a stack of forms thick enough to count as a cry for help. “Sign these, initial the scary bits, and find caffeine. Cafeteria’s down the hall.”

She nodded, though her hand still trembled slightly as she reached for a pen.

D.M. Black, she thought bitterly. Of course it had been him all along.

Hermione did as instructed. Coffee, paperwork, mild existential panic—an easy start to the week.

She was halfway through a consent form when a cluster of nurses swooped down like curious magpies.

“New fellow!” one of them said brightly. “Fresh meat!”

Hermione smiled—warmly, genuinely. She’d learned long ago that nurses were the heart of any hospital. “Hermione Granger. Nice to meet you.”

They introduced themselves in turn — two women, two men, all scrub nurses.

“You met Dr. Malfoy yet?” one of them asked, eyes bright with gossip. “He’s British too.”

So much for a fresh start.

“I have,” she managed, her voice polite, steady. The kind of steady that took effort.

“He’s right there,” another nurse whispered, nodding toward a corner table.

Hermione didn’t have to look. She could already feel him—some impossible, magnetic awareness humming through the air. Still, her gaze betrayed her.

He was sitting alone, long fingers curled around a mug, reading something, his face was behind it. Calm. Controlled. As if he hadn’t just upended her entire sense of reality.

“You’ll adore him,” the nurse said brightly. “He’s really nice… once you get past the whole strict, terrifying aura thing.”

Hermione smiled tightly. “I doubt that.”

The nurses dispersed with knowing grins.

She straightened her posture, smoothed her scrubs, and walked over. Guess now’s as good a time as any.

Bloody Malfoy.

“Hi,” she said, polite, neutral. But her hands shook a little.

She couldn’t see his face at first—just pale hands, a shock of blond hair, the faint tilt of arrogance she’d recognize anywhere. He looked up mid-bite of a sandwich.

He froze. Then choked. Actually choked—full cough, water spill, the whole thing.

“Merlin’s—” He grabbed a napkin, still coughing. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

Hermione blinked. “Hello to you too.”

He stood so fast his chair shrieked across the floor. The cafeteria fell quiet, every conversation slicing off mid-word.

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

Heat crept up her neck. “I—work here?”

He swore again—vicious, under his breath—then grabbed her elbow and pulled her out of the room before anyone could start filming the reunion on their bloody devices.                                                                                                                                                          

In the stairwell, he rounded on her, his badge still hanging crooked around his neck.

“What is your problem?” he hissed once they were out of sight.

“My problem?” Hermione snapped, yanking her arm free. “You’re the one who faked your own surname!”

“Black, actually,” he snapped, jaw tight. “It’s my mother’s name.”

Hermione’s eyebrows lifted. “Of course. Reinvention through genealogy.”

He bristled. “Some of us had to rebuild our reputations from the ground up.”

“Some of us didn’t set them on fire to start with.”

His nostrils flared. “Brilliant. Still a self-righteous nightmare.”

“And you’re still an arrogant prick.”

“Glad to see you haven’t changed either.”

They stood there, breathing hard, the air between them humming with disbelief and eighteen years of bad history.

Chapter Text

Chapter 4 A Heartbeat Off

The Hogwarts Malfoy was gone.

This man was taller, broader across the shoulders, the muscle of someone who still carried his precision in his body. He moved elegantly—every motion measured, deliberate.

“You’re out. Go back to England.” He didn’t even look at her—just turned, like the conversation had already ended.

Hermione grabbed his arm. “I’m not.”

He froze, then looked down at her hand like it was a contamination risk. “I’m head of this department, Granger. What I say goes.”

Her voice sharpened. “Why would you let me go?”

“Because I don’t need you here to fuck up everything I’ve spent years building,” he said, low and dangerous. “So, pack your things and go.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she shot back. “They already hired me. I signed a contract.”

For a split second, she almost threatened to go to HR — to remind him that procedure could still trump arrogance. But she didn’t. He knew things no one else did. If she wanted this fellowship to mean something, she needed his cooperation. Better to keep him civil. For now.

Draco finally looked at her then—and the expression that crossed his face made her stomach twist. It was old and familiar. A ghost from another lifetime — an echo of the boy she refused to follow.

Something flickered in his eyes—anger, or shame, or both—but he turned away before she could name it.

“Come on, Malfoy—”

“For fuck’s sake, Granger.” He spun on her, eyes wild.

She blinked. “Okay… what am I supposed to call you then?”

His jaw clenched. “Sir.”

Hermione barked out a disbelieving laugh. “You want me to call you sir? Really?” She tilted her head, eyes narrowing.

“Yeah,” he said, voice flat as concrete. “Also, you don’t exist.”

Her mouth fell open. “Excuse me?”

“One step I don’t like,” he said quietly, “and you’re out.”

Hermione lifted her chin. “You can’t fire me. I’m a fellow.”

Draco leaned back to the wall arms crossed. “No,” he said, tone turning almost pleasant. “But I can be very persuasive. The board loves me. Who do you think brings in the sponsorships?”

She frowned. “Sponsors?”

He smiled without humour. “Welcome to North America, Granger. Everything here has to feed capitalism three times a day. Research, equipment, patients—it’s all an investment. And I’m the best investment they’ve got.”

She stared at him, incredulous. “You sound proud of that.”

“I sound realistic,” he said. “So do us both a favour: don’t bother me, don’t embarrass me, and try not to do any heroic shit this time.”

Hermione stood in the corridor, pulse thudding in her throat, the word sir burning on her tongue like acid.

He turned on his heel, coat snapping behind him like a curse.

He left, muttering under his breath, “I take one week off and they hire Hermione bloody Granger. Unbelievable.”

By the afternoon, she’d buried the argument under caffeine and protocol. Hermione found herself standing at the front of the Department of Neural Enchantment and Cognitive Restoration — N.E.C.R., as the staff called it. The space was vast and bright, all glass panels and suspended sigils humming faintly in the air. A dozen healers in identical grey scrubs stood scattered around the long table, coffee cups and diagnostic scrolls in hand.

Geller was grinning like a proud host.

“Everyone, this is Dr. Hermione Granger-Weasley — joining us from St. Mungo’s Neural Restoration Unit. She’s published some brilliant work on memory-curse reactivation and cognitive lattice repair.”

Hermione smiled tightly. The name hit like static in her ears. Granger-Weasley. She’d corrected it half a dozen times already, and each repetition only seemed to make it stick harder. Heat crept up her neck as polite applause rippled through the room. She forced her hands to stay still, professional, steady, even as her cheeks burned.

“I read your paper on temporal dissociation matrices,” one witch said eagerly. “It was incredible.”

Another added, “We still use your stabilisation protocol on long-term Obliviation cases.”

Hermione smiled, professional and warm, though she could feel the heat of his silence across the room.

Malfoy stood at the far end of the table, arms folded, expression unreadable. When the others quieted, he finally spoke.

“Good. You all know who she is.” His voice was clipped, all steel. “Congratulations on the citations. Unfortunately, citations don’t close cranial wards.”

A few laughs rippled through the room. Hermione didn’t join them.

Draco’s eyes flicked to her, sharp as a scalpel, and whatever softness the others might have imagined in him vanished. “Orientation’s over. Get back to your cases.”

He turned away without another word.

The team scattered, the energy collapsing as fast as it had flared. Hermione stood there, still clutching her tablet, jaw tight.

Geller leaned toward her as the room emptied. “Don’t take it personally. He’s… like that with everyone.”

But she could tell he wasn’t. Not quite like that.

Malfoy disappeared into his office — a sleek, glass-walled space at the end of the hall. The door sealed behind him with a soft click. The fellows shared one chaotic room, stacked with files and mismatched chairs; his office was immaculate, quiet, and impenetrable.

Through the glass, Hermione saw him sit, head bowed over his notes, every line of his body carved in irritation.

He didn’t look up. Didn’t have to.

She could feel the message anyway: you don’t belong here.

The next morning, the tone shifted. It wasn’t indifference anymore. It was war, dressed as protocol. He made her life miserable. Of course he did.

The bastard was loved by everyone at New Salem—nurses, techs, interns, residents, even the other fellows. He was competition, but he was too good to hate properly. His precision, his poise, his impossible competence—people didn’t resent him; they admired him. He was meticulous, professional, charming with everyone who wasn’t her. And being handsome—absurdly, infuriatingly handsome—and looking that good in scrubs didn’t help.

Hermione told herself she didn’t notice. She noticed constantly.

Draco didn’t look at her when she walked in, he looked at the watch in his wrist. “You’re late.”

She wasn’t. It was six fifty-nine.

He handed her a clipboard without meeting her eyes. “You’ll observe. Don’t speak unless spoken to. Don’t touch anything. Don’t breathe on the spell matrices.”

She bit her tongue so hard she tasted blood. Bastard.

The team gathered, tense and silent. He ran through the surgical plan with machine precision. Hermione stood beside him, invisible and fuming.

Mid-procedure, he fired questions like curses.

“Primary indicators of cortical feedback failure, Dr. Granger?”

“Uh—” She was caught off guard.

He didn’t let her finish. “Wrong. Next.”

The intern beside her flinched. Hermione’s stomach knotted; the answer she’d been forming was right, but he’d already moved on, voice smooth and sharp.

“Someone get me the right answer before she embarrasses us all.”

An intern blurted, “Latency drift in the stabilizer—”

“No.” Draco didn’t look up. “Re-read Contributions of Cortical Feedback to Sensory Processing Cortex by Dr. Jang. Try again.”

Silence. The room felt colder.

“Basic literature, people,” he said mildly. “This is a hospital, not guesswork.”

Hermione kept her eyes on the lattice, jaw set.

By the time the operation ended, she’d been cut down in front of everyone — not shouted at, not insulted, just undermined so precisely it hurt worse than either.

He peeled off his gloves, tossed them into the bin, and turned to her with a calm that was pure acid.

“Dr. Granger, your hesitation nearly cost that patient a fragment of his memory lattice. Try reading before you show up next time.”

Her jaw locked. “With due respect, I wasn’t the one who—”

“Don’t.” His voice dropped, low and dangerous. “Don’t finish that sentence.”

She didn’t. The air between them hummed like a live wire.

For the next two days, he made a sport of her.
Every case, every round, every meeting — he found new ways to dig the knife in.

“Is that really your reading of the scan, Granger? Fascinating. Incorrect, but fascinating.”

“Try again.”

“Slower this time. Maybe you’ll keep up and don’t kill anyone”

When she offered input during case reviews, he talked over her.
When she stayed silent, he accused her of disinterest.
When she smiled — gods forbid — he called it arrogance.

Even the nurses had started exchanging looks, that quiet sympathy reserved for whoever happened to be Malfoy’s latest victim.

By the third week, she was running on spite and espresso.
He was relentless.

During one procedure, he stopped mid-warding, wand hovering. “Dr. Granger, remind me—what’s the cortical delay threshold on a triple-bind occlumency circuit?”

“Point-zero-one-four seconds,” she said automatically.

He smirked behind the mask. “Point-zero-one-five. You’re off by a heartbeat.”

She didn’t look up. “Your heartbeat, maybe.” She muttered.

He froze for half a second—just long enough for the scrub nurse to glance between them, wide-eyed—before he carried on as if nothing happened.

The tension built like static. Everyone felt it.

She scrubbed in with him during her second week for a memory reconstitution matrix. A minor case, technically—but the kind of delicate, high-risk work that made her pulse tick faster.

He was already in the OR when she entered, charming the techs and nurses as though it came as naturally as breathing. He let them choose the music again, teasing the anaesthesiologist about her playlist.

“Don’t make me operate to Celestina Warbeck,” he said, voice smooth beneath the mask. “My focus is directly correlated to how much Shakira we avoid.”

Laughter rippled through the room. He looked effortlessly at home—steady, professional, terrifyingly confident.

And then, halfway through prep, he turned to her.

“Doctor Granger,” he said, tone all polite efficiency. “Walk me through why we isolate the hippocampus before suppressing the amygdala.”

She blinked, caught off guard by how easily he could pivot from flirtatious charm to surgical interrogation. “To stabilise the patient’s emotional—”

“Wrong.” His voice was sharp, precise. “Try again.”

She swallowed. “The hippocampal barrier regulates the—”

“Still wrong.” He didn’t even glance at her, wand moving with effortless precision. “You’ll learn. Eventually.”

The words weren’t cruel, but they were cold enough to sting. She felt the heat rise in her cheeks, the quiet ache of being dissected in public, and said nothing.

He didn’t look at her again for the rest of the operation.

By six, everyone else had gone home. He was still at his desk, working, when she tried to slip out.

“Where are you going?” he said without looking up. “You’re not done.”

“I’ve been here eleven hours.”

“Sir” He said totally enfuriating.

“I’ve been here eleven hours…. Sir”

“And you’ve learned nothing.” He stood, crossing the space between them. “You want to work in my department? Then you’ll stay until you can tell me the complete structure of the occlumency-feedback ward without notes.”

“That could take hours, is a two hundred page procedure.”

He smiled — not kindly. “Then you’d better not waste any.”

She stayed and so he did. It was already 9 pm.

He watched her through the glass of his office, silent, a ghost in the reflection. When she stumbled over a procedure and looked up, he opened the door just enough to let his voice cut through.

“Pathetic,” he said softly, almost bored. “You were sharper when you were twenty.”

Hermione looked up from her notes, eyes red, hair half out of its tie. “I’m still in my twenties, you bastard,” she snapped.

The corner of his mouth twitched—something between a smirk and a sigh. “Then you need better skincare,”

The audacity of this man.

She slammed the file shut. The sound cracked through the silent lab like a spell misfiring.

“Go to hell, Malfoy.”

He stopped, turned halfway, smiling, “Already there, Granger. You’re just late to the party.”

“You don’t have to be such a bastard,” she said, voice raw. “I came here to do a fellowship, not to be humiliated.”

“You can go back to St. Mungo’s if you don’t like it.”

“Bastard,” she muttered again, quieter this time, mostly to herself.

He didn’t reply. Just went back into his office and shut the door, the sound soft but final.

Hermione stared at the glass wall a long moment, then moved to the lab and turned back to the simulation console. Her hands shook as she reset the neural matrix, anger burning through her fatigue.

She pulled her mobile from her pocket and dial.

Then Theo’s voice, warm and groggy. “It’s—Merlin, Hermione, it’s three a.m. Are you dying or just regretting life choices?”

“Both,” she said flatly, eyes on the flickering lattice. “He’s here. Draco fucking Malfoy.”

Theo was instantly awake. “What?”

“I can’t talk now. I’m running a simulation.”

“You called me, mad woman… and a simulation of what, your patience?”

“Something like that.”

“So how,” Theo drawled, voice thick with sleep and mischief, “did our favourite Death Eater crash-land in the States?”

Hermione smirked faintly, wand still tracing patterns over the simulation field. “Neurosurgeon. Head of Magical Neural Reconstruction. Goes by Dr. Black now.”

Theo snorted. “Oh, so the Dark Mark’s just a trendy tattoo now?”

“He’s… different here.”

He chuckled, static fizzing through the line. “They always are, right before they start throwing Avada and terrorising Muggles.”

“Theo.”

“What? I’m just saying—maybe check he doesn’t keep a basilisk in the staff fridge.”

Hermione rolled her eyes but couldn’t stop the ghost of a laugh. “He’s insufferable, not homicidal.”

“Same difference,” Theo said, his tone softening just a notch. “Watch yourself, Granger. Don’t let him turn your fellowship into another war.”

Hermione smiled, eyes fixed on her work.

“I’m not afraid of bloody Malfoy,” she muttered, the light from the ward casting sharp gold across her face.

Theo’s laugh crackled through the speaker. “You keep telling yourself that, love.”

She didn’t answer. The lattice shimmered and shifted under her wand, bright, intricate, alive—like a pulse she could control. Her smile sharpened.

“Night, Theo.”

“Now go to bed, woman.”

“I can’t,” she said, voice catching on exhaustion. “He made me stay.”

A pause. “Hermione.”

“Yeah?”

“Then make him regret it.”

She smiled, mischievous — of course she would make him regret it. Eyes fixed on the swirling lights of the neural field, she breathed into the handset, “Working on it, Theo.”

She ended the call, slid the wand across the simulation once more, and whispered, almost to herself,

“Let’s see how the great Dr Malfoy handles me,” she whispered, resetting the lattice.

The lights flared—bright, intricate, alive.

Chapter Text

Chapter 5 Procedure Notes: Countermeasure

She stayed at the hospital. Of course she did. Where else would she go?

She’d done this before — a thousand nights at St. Mungo’s, half-asleep in the on-call room, living on caffeine and sheer defiance. The bed was thin, the lights too bright, but she didn’t need comfort. She needed focus.

The lab was empty except for the hum of the containment wards and the low pulse of the simulation console. She spread his research across the table — Black’s—no, Malfoy’s—papers, all of them. She’d already read them once, but now it was war.
And maybe that was the point. If she could map the pattern of his thinking, she could anticipate it, outsmart it—use it. She didn’t just need to beat him. She needed him working beside her, whether he liked it or not.

By one a.m. she’d memorised the structure of the occlumency-feedback.
By two a.m. she’d memorised his entire week’s surgical schedule.
By three a.m., she was tracing spell-patterns through his most recent theories, muttering counter-theories under her breath.
By dawn, she’d found a flaw. A small one, buried in the calibration of the neural stabiliser — elegant, subtle, but there. She fixed it. Improved it. Perfected it. She rerouted the stabiliser’s feedback charm through an auxiliary ward — cleaner, safer, faster.

Something he hadn’t thought of. Something he’d hate her for.

When the sun hit the glass walls of the department, Hermione was still there, hands steady, eyes burning with that particular brand of vindictive brilliance. Her hair was magically flawless, every curl charmed into place with surgical precision. The on-call room might’ve broken lesser witches, but she thrived on indignation and caffeine.

She wasn’t tired anymore.

She was ready.

She drank two cups of coffee—black, punishing, effective. Bought a box of Muggle doughnuts from the all-night café across the street—glazed, sugared, cinnamon—and dropped them at the nurses’ station with a bright, weaponised smile.

“Fuel,” she said. “For the people who actually keep this place alive.”

They adored her instantly.

By seven, she’d already run diagnostics in two recovery wards, corrected an intern’s wand angle mid-spell, and had the poor boy thanking her for the privilege.

When the glass doors hissed open and he walked in—immaculate coat, coffee in hand, that effortless arrogance that filled a room before he did—Hermione was standing at the main console, perfectly calm.

He froze for a fraction of a second when he saw her there, poised and smiling.

“Morning, sir,” she said sweetly, emphasis sharp enough to draw blood.

Malfoy’s jaw flexed. “You’re early.”

She tilted her head. “You’re late, sir.”

He narrowed his eyes, reading the confidence in her posture, the gleam in her eyes. Something in his expression shifted—wariness, irritation, maybe even the faintest flicker of fear.

Whatever it was, Hermione enjoyed every second of it.

Smug bastard.

Let the games begin.

He started in on her the moment rounds began—question after question, each more absurdly complex than the last. Neuro-magical feedback ratios, occlumency thresholds, the ethical boundaries of invasive cognition spells. It was interrogation disguised as instruction, and every healer within earshot knew it.

Hermione didn’t flinch. She answered fast, clipped, precise—her tone scalpel-sharp, her wand hand steady.

“Correct,” he muttered after the first.

Then again after the second.
By the third, his jaw tightened.
By the fourth, he stopped walking.
After the fifth, he just stared at her.

Hermione met his gaze, calm and bright as glass. “Was there another question, sir?”

He stared at her for a moment, then turned back toward the ward, coat flaring behind him, voice cool. “Carry on, Dr. Granger.”

She allowed herself the faintest smile.

Score one for the fellowship.

He avoided her for the rest of the day. She called that a victory.

In the hallway outside Neuro Diagnostics, Dr. Geller fell into step beside her, arms folded behind his back, eyes dancing with amusement.

“So,” he said lightly, “I hear you performed a clean public execution this morning.”

Hermione blinked. “I answered clinical questions.”

“Mhm,” Geller said, nodding gravely. “With surgical precision. No hesitation. Minimal blood loss. Beautiful work. Do you teach a masterclass, or was that a one-time demonstration?”

Hermione fought a smile. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Granger, please,” he said, lowering his voice as they waited for the lift. “Residents are whispering your name like it’s a forbidden spell.”

The lift doors opened. They stepped inside.

“Dr. Malfoy looked… entertained,” Geller added, pressing the button for the OR floor.

“Entertained?” Hermione echoed. “He didn’t say a word to me for the rest of the day.”

Geller leaned against the wall, smirking. “Exactly.”

“Coffee, Granger?” Geller asked when they stepped into the fellows’ office that afternoon.

Malfoy, already standing with a cup of steaming coffee, cut in smoothly. “She’ll need it. She’s reviewing the post-op readings.”

Hermione blinked. “I am?”

“You are,” he said, already walking away.

She watched him go, the corner of her mouth twitching in a smile. Post-ops were an intern’s job. Everyone knew that.

Sore loser.

But Hermione did them anyway. If Malfoy wanted to play this game, fine.

She’d play it better.

She pull another all-nighter. By the time the interns arrived, she was already halfway through the reports, wand tapping to pull up neural readouts and vitals. At first, the interns hovered by the doorway, unsure whether to help or run. They were painfully young, all eager eyes and trembling clipboards, desperate to prove they weren’t useless.

“Don’t just stand there,” Hermione said lightly. “If you want to learn, come here.”

They scrambled forward. Soon she had them working in rhythm—checking spells, comparing readings, making them explain what they saw. It wasn’t chaos; it was energy. She found herself enjoying it, the way teaching always calmed her, the quiet thrill of watching understanding click behind someone’s eyes. She even laughed once—an honest, startled sound—when one of the interns accidentally bewitched a clipboard to orbit her head.

They were younger, fun, and unguarded in a way she’d forgotten existed. And for the first time since landing in New York, Hermione felt like herself again.

She ended up having lunch with them—a noisy, mismatched little group of five. Three girls, two lads. All of them running on caffeine and ambition.

They crowded around a too-small table in the cafeteria, laughing over awful sandwiches and trading stories about disastrous rotations. They reminded her of herself and Theo during their early days at St. Mungo’s—too clever, too competitive, too sleep-deprived to realize they were happy. They’d always wanted to win, always been a little unbearable about it.

Hermione felt something loosen in her heart just remembering it.

The interns peppered her with questions.

“What’s it like at St. Mungo’s?”

“Did you really publish that paper on neural spell degradation?”

“Do British healers actually use tea as a treatment protocol?”

She laughed, answering what she could, deflecting what she couldn’t. It was easy, natural.

Then one of the girls—bright-eyed, all innocence—asked, “Does your husband mind you being in here this long?”

Hermione froze mid-bite, the question catching in her throat like glass. She coughed, hard, and reached for her water.

The table went awkwardly silent.

“Oh—sorry,”  She said turning red “I didn’t mean—”

“It’s fine,” Hermione managed, forcing a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “He’s not really… in the picture anymore.”

“Oh, I just… I read your ID badge. It says Granger-Weasley, so I thought—”

Hermione smiled or at least made the attempt. “I couldn’t change my ID before I arrived,” she said evenly. “A deeply regrettable oversight.”

The joke landed lightly, but the truth of it settled like stone. She was tired—tired of the paperwork, tired of the questions, tired of dragging a dead marriage around on a lanyard. The bloody divorce papers were still crawling their way through the Ministry, and until they cleared, she was tethered to a name that no longer belonged to her. Or maybe never had.

Ashley nodded quickly, cheeks flushing. “Right. Of course. Sorry.”

Hermione waved it off, forcing a brightness she didn’t feel. “Don’t worry about it. Bureaucracy—worse than any curse.”

That got a few nervous laughs, and the conversation stumbled forward again—someone teasing the arrogant intern, someone else asking about her favourite diagnostic charm.

But Hermione barely tasted the rest of her lunch. Her smile stayed fixed, polite, perfect.

“Can you explain that paper about long-term Obliviation protocols?” one of the arrogant interns asked, leaning forward like he was testing her.

“Of course,” Hermione said easily.

With a flick of her wand, a holographic brain shimmered into the air above the table, pulsing with faint golden light. The interns gasped softly.

“So,” she began, slipping into her lecturer’s cadence, “memories are stored as matrices—interconnected neural and magical patterns. Long-term ones consolidate in the hippocampus, but they’re networked through associative clusters with the prefrontal and temporal regions.”

Her hands moved as she spoke, guiding the projection—highlighting sections, tracing pathways. “Now, in Obliviation cases, the spell doesn’t simply erase memory; it severs the magical link between the encoded matrix and its emotional index. The memory remains, but the access key—the affective bond—is gone.”

She was so absorbed in explaining it that she didn’t notice him. Malfoy had appeared at her side, silent, watching the hologram spin. The interns straightened instinctively.

Hermione continued, unaware. “My theory is that if we could dull the amygdala—temporarily quiet the emotional alarm system—and initiate a sympathetic restoration sequence, we might reactivate the original matrix. In other words, uplift the implanted memory and rebind it to the real one.”

 “You can dull the amygdala,” came his voice from behind — clinical, composed, and too close. “With a ward and a class-three neuro-sedative potion.”

Hermione turned, startled. Malfoy was standing there, arms crossed, gaze fixed on the hologram. He wasn’t mocking her—he was thinking.

“You’d have to bypass the limbic feedback,” he went on, stepping closer. “Otherwise, the patient’s body would reject the emotional influx.”

Hermione met his eyes. “That’s what the restoration ward is for.”

He tilted his head, studying her. “You’re proposing integration rather than re-encoding.”

“Yes,” she said, pulse quickening despite herself. “Restoration, not replacement.”

For a moment, the room was utterly still. The interns glanced between them like they’d just witnessed something sacred—or dangerous.

Malfoy gave a short nod. “Interesting.”

Interesting. From him, that was nearly intimate.
Hermione felt something low and electric hum beneath her ribs. She hadn’t realised how numb she’d been, how quiet her mind had become—until he started provoking it.
Debating him wasn’t just a challenge. It was oxygen.

Then he turned and walked away, leaving the air between them humming with the ghost of the conversation.

Hermione exhaled slowly. Interesting, he’d said. Coming from him, that was practically a sonnet.

“Come, Dr. Granger,” he said suddenly, already turning toward the door.

A collective uhhhh rippled from the table.

Hermione shot the interns a warning look. “Eat your lunch,” she said, and followed.

He didn’t wait for her to catch up—of course he didn’t. His stride was long, confident, deliberate. She matched it, refusing to let him set the pace. They cut through the corridor to one of the diagnostic labs, glass walls reflecting the sterile white light. Inside, runic arrays glowed faintly across a suspended neural projection—someone’s partially reconstructed memory matrix.

Malfoy stopped before it, folded his arms, and nodded toward the image. “Show me.”

Hermione blinked. “Show you…?”

“What you were describing. The restoration model. Can you reproduce it here?”

Her irritation melted into focus. “Yes,” she said.

With a flick of her wand, she summoned a new projection. The floating brain map pulsed as she began layering the wards she’d theorized—delicate lattices of blue and silver.

Malfoy circled behind her, silent but close enough that she could feel his attention, sharp as static.

When she finished, he stepped forward, examining the spellwork. “You’re accounting for feedback loops through the ventromedial pathways,” he murmured. “Not bad.”

“Not bad?” she echoed.

“Calm down, Granger. It’s a compliment.”

“It’s vague,” she said.

He glanced at her, a ghost of a smirk tugging at his mouth. “Then make it better.”

That was the problem with him—he made it sound like a dare. And she’d never been good at walking away from dares.

“Run a simulation,” he said.

She moved to the practice table. The lab lights dimmed automatically, sensors flaring to life around the training dummy they all jokingly called Rick. The artificial brain hovered above it, pulsing in shades of violet and gold as Hermione calibrated the charms.

She took up the wand-stylus and began the procedure, voice low and precise. “Initiating cortical isolation… hippocampal containment ward stable… amygdala sedated.”

Malfoy stayed silent at first, watching from behind. She could feel it — that kind of attention that didn’t press so much as hum in the air, the awareness of being seen too closely.

Then she touched the fornix, and the simulation flared red with a sharp buzz. Like the muggle game Operation.

Hermione winced, muttered something unprintable, and adjusted the spell matrix.

Behind her, his voice came low and close. “Your angle’s off.”

She froze. He was right there now — close enough that his breath stirred the loose curls at her neck, the scent of antiseptic and something clean and sharp underneath.

“I know what I’m doing,” she said, but her wand hand wavered.

“Then do it,” he murmured.

She exhaled slowly, forcing her focus back to the model. Her wand tip traced the spell again — measured, steady, deliberate. The holographic brain pulsed once, then settled into a cool, steady blue.

“There,” she said. “Stable.”

For a second, neither of them moved. The hum of the simulator filled the silence.

He was puzzled by her theory — she could feel it, the faint narrowing of his eyes, the quiet calculation that meant she’d actually caught his attention.

Then his voice came from just behind her ear — not teasing, not gentle, just intent. “If you start in this region,” he murmured, “the limbic system will flare.”

She didn’t turn. “I know.”

“But if you go slowly—here.”

He reached for her wand arm, guiding it a fraction to the left. His touch was firm, precise, professional—and still somehow too much. She should have hated this, should have snapped at him, should have pulled away from the arrogance and the control he wrapped himself in like a second lab coat.
Instead, something far worse punched beneath her ribs—exhilaration. Sharp. Electric. Wrong.

Her pulse stumbled. Absolutely not. Not this. Not him. That way lay madness.

But working with him was like standing too close to a storm. She couldn’t look away.

“From here,” he continued, his tone all instruction, “the response is contained. The system stabilizes. Then—” he adjusted the angle again “—with the scalpel, you cut along this axis.”

A soft click sounded as the simulator accepted the movement. The projection shifted, the memory matrix opening like a flower under spell light.

“There,” he said. “Now you have access.”

She didn’t answer. She just nodded, eyes on the holographic brain, pretending that the only thing unsteady was the light. Her breath caught. For a second she couldn’t move. His warmth pressed against her back, steady, unhurried, the sound of the simulator filling the space where air should have been.

Hermione swallowed, aware of his hand still over hers—the heat of it, the scent clean and somehow familiar. She felt something she couldn’t name, sharp and fleeting, gone before she could look at it directly.

Then he released her and the air cooled at once.

He lingered a moment longer, expression unreadable. Then, briskly. “I’d like you to continue this research. You’ll have access to a lab. It’s stocked with everything you’ll need.” A faint pause. “On top of your other responsibilities, of course.”

Hermione met his gaze, forcing her face neutral. “Of course.”

He turned toward the door. For a fraction of a second, something like a smirk flickered there—a private acknowledgment of the shift between them.

Touché, Malfoy.

And damn him for it.

But, she felt oddly weightless, her pulse a quick, uneven drumbeat in her ears — and the ghost of his hand against her skin refused to fade.

Chapter Text

Chapter 6 Arrhythmia

The patient lay beneath the stasis ward, a web of silver light suspended above his skull. He’d suffered a cerebral haemorrhage when a misfired curse ruptured several micro-vessels in the temporal lobe. The bleed had destabilised his memory, scattering fragments of stored experience like broken glass through the neural field.

The procedure was part neurosurgery, part spellcraft: sealing the ruptures, restoring the lattice, re-anchoring the patient’s memories. Hermione’s duty was to control the stabilizers — twelve floating orbs that kept the pressure wards balanced and the magic synchronised with the body’s electrical rhythms. It reminded her too much of the Muggle operating theatres she’d trained in: the antiseptic air, the hush, the weight of a life measured in monitors and light.

Malfoy’s wand moved with mechanical grace along the cortical line — every motion calculated, every question a blade.

“Dr. Granger,” he said without looking up from the neural lattice, clearly annoyed. “Perhaps you can explain why the stabilizer keeps lagging in feedback calibration. Or is that beyond your current comprehension?”

The room went still. Nurses froze mid-motion. Above the operating table, the patient’s vitals floated in shimmering. The stabilizer runes pulsed amber — a warning. If feedback lag reached critical levels, the lattice would auto-collapse to prevent an arcane surge, ripping every healing ward down with it. Neural reconstruction would halt mid-procedure. Best case? Permanent motor damage. Worst case? Cardiac arrest on the table.

Her hands moved to the stabilizer console, rune-light washing over her skin. The interface thrummed beneath her palms—runic circuitry and core-crystal logic tracking arcane flow in real time. The stabilizers were fine. The lag wasn’t mechanical—it was arcane routing interference. A ward problem. His ward problem. The one she’d been waiting for him to notice.

She didn’t bother to look at him. “The calibration’s holding,” she said evenly. “The fault’s coming from a feedback loop in the secondary containment ward.”

Malfoy’s head snapped toward her. “I design it, the wards don’t loop.”

He was wrong. And if she waited for him to see it, the patient would pay for his pride.

Hermione stepped at his side.

“Let me,” she said, already moving next to him.

“Dr. Granger,” he said, warning now. “Do not touch the lattice.”

She ignored him.

It was sacred ground in the OR, and only the lead surgeon was allowed to touch it. The lattice didn’t just hold neural pathways—it held identity, memory, the echo of who someone truly was. The closest thing magic had ever made to a map of the soul.

She touched it anyway.

Her wand moved fast, slipping between golden threads of containment. She traced the arcane current—there. A recursive ward bind, nearly invisible, turning back on itself and overloading the stabilizers.

She didn’t argue. She didn’t explain. She just fixed it.

One silent bypass rune. One precise cut. One reroute.

A nurse gasped. Another whispered a prayer.

“Granger,” Draco said, voice lethal with restraint. The only thing stopping him from exploding was the presence of witnesses.

Hermione’s eyes didn’t leave the console. “Wait,” she murmured. “Just wait.”

The readings dipped again—then surged, colour bleeding back into the air.

The vitals snapped from yellow to green. Stable.

The hum of the lattice deepened into a steady rhythm, a living pulse that filled the room.

Malfoy’s hand hovered mid-spell, suspended between fury and disbelief.

Hermione exhaled once—slow, controlled. “Secondary containment loop steady, vitals stable”

For a moment, no one dared breathe. Then the monitors steadied completely, a soft harmonic ringing through the chamber.

Malfoy finally lowered his wand. “Who authorized that modification?”

“I did,” Hermione replied, calm and certain.

A muscle ticked in his jaw—something between irritation and unwilling respect. Hermione didn’t smile, but triumph settled under her skin like warm electricity.

Somewhere behind her a nurse muttered, “Holy shit.”

Geller grinned like it was Christmas and patted her back when they broke scrub. “Excellent work, Dr. Granger.”

Malfoy didn’t say a word. He just walked out of the OR, every line of his back rigid.

But she caught it anyway— the smallest tremor in his control, and it felt like victory.

Arrogant, pale, brooding bastard. She hoped it stung.

She showered fast. Silver traces of containment residue still dusted her forearms when she tugged on clean scrubs. She had just tightened the drawstring of her trousers when the door slammed open so hard the lockers rattled.

“GRANGER!”

Malfoy stormed in, eyes still wild, crackling with leftover ward energy like he hadn’t cooled down since the OR.

She jolted. “Merlin—warn a person next time.”

He blinked, as if only now registering where he was. His gaze flicked over her—damp curls escaping her tie, scrub top loose from the shower, a brief strip of bare skin showing where she’d just tied her trousers. His eyes lingered half a second too long before he forced them back to her face. His jaw locked, hard.

“What,” he said, voice low and lethal, “the hell was that?”

“Me doing my job,” she said, head tilting, shoulders relaxed like she wasn’t still riding on surgical adrenaline.

“You’ve been reading my work,” he said finally. Quieter now. Controlled. Worse than shouting.

“Wasn’t that the point? To learn from senior research?” She asked calmly.

His gaze sharpened. “Don’t play stupid. That bypass trace you threaded into the containment layer—nobody improvises that. You studied my lattice design.”

She lifted a brow. “You published half of it.”

“Not that half,” he snapped. “The recursive routing structure isn’t public. It’s encrypted in departmental archives.” He stepped closer, every line of him coiled. “Which means you had clearance. Which means you accessed restricted files. My files.”

“Someone had to,” Hermione said evenly. “Unless you wanted the patient to stroke out on the table.”

“I had it under control.”

“No,” she said. “You didn’t.”

His nostrils flared. Her pulse drummed. Neither looked away.

“You violated the lattice,” he said. “In the middle of live surgery.”

“I corrected it.”

“You overstepped.”

“You were wrong.”

He stared at her—furious, offended, and something else beneath it. Not confusion. Calculation. He was reassessing her.

 “You overrode the lead surgeon mid-procedure. That’s gross insubordination, Granger. Don’t test how far I’ll push this.”

“I’m sorry,” Hermione said—flat, controlled—“but the patient would have died if I’d left your mistake in place. I’m sure the board can tolerate a little insubordination if it keeps the mortality rates down.”

The words hung between them, thick and electric. The room felt too small. Too warm. Too alive.

He studied her like a puzzle he was furious he hadn’t solved first.

She hated that he could look down on her just by standing there, taller by a head, still in command of the space. She hated that he thought that mattered. Fear had nothing to do with it. She might have been shorter—but she was smarter.

He spoke first, accusing and quiet. “Why didn’t you tell me you could work at that level?”

“Because,” she said, chin lifting, voice razor-steady, “you’re a narcissistic, condescending asshole.”

Something in his eyes hardened. Dangerous. “I’m your superior in that OR.”

“Please,” she scoffed, heat flashing. “You made that very clear when you had me doing discharge summaries for weeks like a bloody intern.”

She stepped closer, refusing to back down. “I’m a fellow, Malfoy. I’ve done the work. I’ve published. I’ve changed protocols. You don’t get to underestimate me just because it makes your ego more comfortable.”

Silence.

His jaw locked. “Then prove it—without undermining my wards.”

“Next time,” she shot back, stepping into his space so he had to feel her breath, “build better ones.”

“Next time, Granger,” he said, stepping closer again, voice low, “you clear it with me before you touch my wards.”

For a heartbeat, neither of them moved. The air between them felt charged, like the seconds before a spell goes off — sharp, electric, waiting.

He stepped back first. Breath audible. Controlled again, but only just.

“Careful, Granger,” he said, voice silken with threat. “You’re playing in my territory.”

She looked at him. “Happy to play. Raise the stakes whenever you’re ready. I’m getting bored”

Something dangerous sparked in his eyes. Fury, yes—but beneath it, unmistakably, something else. Something alive. He took in one breath, slow and sharp, like he was trying to decide whether to hex her or drag her closer.

He didn’t smile. But there was a shift in him—like a man who’d finally found a worthy opponent.

He leaned in, voice molten steel. “You think this was a win?”

“It was.”

His gaze dropped to her mouth for half a second—unintended, involuntary—and that was worse than anger. That was a promise of future disaster.

He stepped back, control snapping into place like armour. “You have no idea what you’ve started.”

The door slammed behind him.

Hermione stood very still. Her pulse shouldn’t have been racing. She shouldn’t have wanted him to turn back. And yet—

—there it was.

Chapter Text

Chapter 7 Neural Overload.

In the days that followed that confrontation, Hermione threw herself into work with clinical precision. She was deep in phase two of her neural memories reconstruction project, logging eighteen-hour days between the lab and the OR. Her research notes had grown into a small empire of rune sketches, annotated brain scans, and magical energy graphs taped across two walls of the lab like a map of her mind.

She was good here—undeniably, unarguably good. Geller trusted her with high-risk cases. The residents followed her instructions without question.

Progress was measurable. Predictable. Safe.

She and Malfoy orbited opposite corners of the ward like boxers between bells—hatred holstered, a fragile white flag rustling between them. No smug wand-pointing corrections. No barbed feedback disguised as pedagogy. They spoke only when the work required it. Strictly professional. Too professional.

They scrubbed at the same sink, read the same charts, passed instruments over an open skull with an ease that bordered on intimate. She didn’t like that word—intimate. It was inaccurate. Misleading. Still, something coiled between them she didn’t have a name for, and naming things was usually her specialty.

Once, their hands nearly brushed over the sterilization tray. Neither of them looked at it. Neither of them looked away.

So when Ginny’s message arrived—Harry’s birthday this weekend. Come home?—Hermione stared at it longer than she should have. Maybe she needed a reminder of what home used to feel like.

Home. Ridiculous word. Sentimental. Dangerous. She wasn’t sure she had one anymore.

She typed back: I’ll come for the weekend.

Theo was on call and couldn’t make it. Try not to set Weasley on fire without me, he had replied. She told him she wouldn’t. He didn’t believe her.

Theo started out in paediatrics before specializing in neonatology. He saved premature babies for a living—tiny things wrapped in wires and impossible hope. For someone so blunt and aggressively chaotic, she had seen him in the NICU—sharp, fast, clear-headed. He could intubate a preemie in under a minute, recalibrate a vent by instinct, and make decisions in chaos without ever raising his voice. She’d seen him sing to newborns while he placed central lines, low and off-key, like music could convince them to stay in the world. She’d seen him talk to terrified families with impossible gentleness, coaxing them into smiles as they held their tiny babies skin-to-skin for the first time.

She’d also seen him at 3 a.m., drunk out of his mind, dancing like a menace and cursing like a pirate, grinding on strangers with zero shame and even less rhythm and describing sexual encounters with a level of detail no one had asked for.

But that was Theo. All chaos, all heart. Somehow, both versions of him were entirely real.

Truthfully, she wanted him there—not as backup, but as ballast. With Theo around, the floor stayed under her feet. Without him… well, she wasn’t sure.

So, when Friday roll over, she packed a small bag, left Crooks enough food for a month along with several enchanted water bowls and a cooling charm on his rug in case the summer heat was too unberable. She locked the lab, looked once at the New Salem skyline—steel, ambition, motion. She hesitated before stepping in. Instinct told her not to go—turn around, stay safe, stay numb.

She should have listened.

Later, she would wish she had.

But she didn’t. She went anyway.

Back to London.
Back to people who thought they still knew her.
Back to a life that didn’t fit anymore.

Hermione stopped by the psych ward before going to Harry’s. She tried to visit—tried being the generous word for it. Some days there were words. Some days there was recognition. Today there was nothing. Just distance, and eyes that didn’t quite see her. Hope was starting to feel like self-inflicted cruelty. She needed to move fast.

By the time she reached Grimmauld Place, her nerves were frayed and her chest felt scraped thin. She still knocked.

Inside, the house was already shaking with life—voices, music, laughter bouncing off walls that had once held nothing but shadows. Gryffindors never did anything quietly. Harry’s birthday wasn’t a party—it was a ritual. A yearly declaration from the war generation: we survived. Now drink and dance.

The door flew open.

“HERMIONE!”

Ginny Weasley hit her like a comet—perfume, red hair, and unapologetic force of nature energy. Hermione was pulled into a hug that qualified as a medical risk.

“You came!” Ginny said into her shoulder, sounding relieved in a way Hermione didn’t quite know what to do with.

“Of course I did,” Hermione said, and she was proud of how steady it sounded.

Ginny grabbed her wrist and pulled her inside, already talking too fast. The house glowed—charmed lanterns floating at the ceiling, a wireless blasting something aggressively celebratory, and bodies moving everywhere. The house was packed—same as always on Harry’s birthday. Ministry officials and Aurors, Healers in loosened robes, old classmates, friends of friends of friends. Even a photographer from the Prophet floated somewhere near the back, pretending not to take pictures. Memory wearing the mask of celebration. Familiar. Loud. Exhausting.

“Everyone’s going to lose their minds,” Ginny said.                       

Hermione doubted that. People didn’t lose their minds over her. They remembered she was brilliant, reliable—fine. She was the serious one. The no-fun, all-business one. That was the story everyone told about her, and eventually she’d started telling it too. She was those things, but she was more. She always had been. No one seemed willing to see past the version of her they’d already decided on—the one trapped in history, in old wars, in someone else’s expectations.

The Weasleys were clustered near the fireplace, a gravitational family pull that warped the room around them. Hermione braced before Molly even turned.

It had been six months since she’d seen Molly last— In a Ministry mediation room, with an overworked solicitor, by Ron’s side who refused to make eye contact. The word divorce and cheating had never been spoken out loud, but it filled the air like smoke.

Now Molly smiled like none of that had ever happened.

“Oh, Hermione, dear!” She crossed the room in seconds, soft arms, warm perfume, hands framing Hermione’s face like she was still twelve. “You look thin. Are they feeding you in America?”

“I’m fine,” Hermione said, because there was no other acceptable answer.

“How’s work?” Molly asked, as if discussing Hermione’s career was safer than acknowledging reality.

“Busy,” Hermione replied. That word carried miles of distance.

“Of course it is,” Molly beamed. “Brilliant girl like you—always doing incredible things.”

Compliment, redirect, avoid. The old choreography. Molly didn’t ignore pain—she smothered it in motherliness until it couldn’t breathe.

Hermione let herself be guided through greetings—Bill, Fleur, their children sticky with cake; Arthur with gentle eyes and grease on his sleeves; Percy nodding like they hadn’t once tried to morally assassinate each other; Charlie, naturally, was still in Romania or Norway or wherever dragons made him feel less alone. George laughing at all the right moments but nowhere in the eyes. There was a time she would have reached for him. There was a time she would have known how.

Now she just kept moving.

Ron, notably, was not here yet. He was never on time and some things didn’t change.

Harry found her before she found him.

“MIONE!” he bellowed across the room like they were still seventeen and running late to class. He was already half-drunk, cheeks flushed, tie crooked, voice carrying over the crowd with reckless joy.

She didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath until she let out a small laugh. “Harry! Happy birthday.”

He pulled her into a hug that was pure muscle memory—eight years of war and aftermath had burned that embrace into them. He squeezed tightly, like she might disappear again if he didn’t hold on.

“You came,” he said, letting her go just enough to look at her. His grin was lopsided, boyish, too honest for a room like this. “You actually came.”

“I said I would,” she shrugged.

“You say a lot of things,” he shot back.

She huffed. Fair.

Harry and Hermione hadn’t fallen out. They’d just… existed apart. That happened after wars, after marriages, after lives diverged into completely different shapes.  They didn’t talk every week—sometimes not even every month—but the loyalty was unchanged. If Harry called at three in the morning, she would show up. If she ever called, he would too.

He slung an arm over her shoulder. “Drink?”

She smirked. “Define drink.”

“Free.”

“Acceptable.”

He steered her toward the bar table and grabbed two firewhiskies. Before she could take a sip, he hesitated—eyes shifting, softening. Something nervous flickered through him.

“What?” she asked.

A beat. Then—

“I’m going to be a dad.”

Hermione didn’t react at first. Not because she wasn’t listening—but because her mind needed one more second to process the sentence.

She turned her head. Ginny stood ten feet away, watching them. Arms folded. Eyes bright. Glowing. Hermione felt her heart tighten—not painfully, but deeply.

“Oh, Harry.” Her smile came slowly but genuinely. “That’s… Harry, that’s incredible.”

Relief broke over his face and pulled her back into another hug. He smelled like whiskey, woodsmoke, and something she couldn't name—something warm.

Harry Potter, who once fell asleep clutching his wand like a lifeline. Harry, who had been made into a hero before he ever got to be a boy. Harry, who had walked into death and won. Harry, who had spent years trying to build something that didn’t hurt.

He did it. He chose joy and somehow kept it.

“I’m happy for you,” she said quietly. And she was. Fully, achingly, honestly.

Harry was pulled away by a chorus of congratulations and shots being forced into his hands. People orbited him—hearts pulled toward gravity.

And Hermione—Hermione stood still.

Everyone had moved forward.

They built lives. Homes. Futures. They made new memories that belonged to the present, not the war. Their lives expanded.

Hers… narrowed. One specialization. One hospital. One research project. Purpose without place.

Harry pulled back, face glowing, already being pulled away by someone who wanted to toast parenthood or offer godfather jokes.

He disappeared into the celebration, orbiting Ginny with the ease of someone with a center of gravity.

She reached for a fresh glass from the bar table purely so she would have something to hold. The noise swelled around her again—Seamus shouting from the kitchen, explosions of laughter by the fireplace, someone already starting an ill-advised game of drunken dueling in the hall.

And then the atmosphere shifted. Not loudly—not dramatically—just a subtle ripple, a change in air pressure.

Hermione didn’t have to turn around to know who had walked in. Her body already knew.

Ron Weasley had always carried a particular kind of gravity—familiar, unavoidable, heavy in a way she could feel before she saw him. Years of shared history didn’t fade; they just sank deeper until they pressed on the lungs.

She turned.

He looked… well. Better than the last time she’d seen him. Healthier. He moved easily through the room, smiling at someone behind him, posture relaxed. Comfortable. Belonging.

And then Lavender stepped out from behind him.

Pregnant.

Very pregnant.

Ron’s hand rested over hers on her stomach as they walked, casual and intimate, the ease of a couple who had already survived whatever needed surviving between them.

The room didn’t fall silent—but Hermione did.

Her nervous system didn’t spike, didn’t break, didn’t panic. It did something far worse—it went quiet. The kind of quiet that came before medical decisions you couldn’t undo. The kind of quiet that told her: move carefully.

They saw her.

Ron hesitated—surprise flickering just enough to betray that he hadn’t expected her here—then adjusted quickly, guiding Lavender forward like nothing was strange. Like everything was normal.

Hermione didn’t move.

He reached her with a small nod, polite, distant in that mild-English way that made strangers feel safe and people who knew better feel cold.

“Hermione,” he said.

“Ron.”

Lavender hovered beside him, unsure if she belonged in the moment. She didn’t. None of them did.

“You look well,” Ron said, and the line was so absurd she almost laughed.

“I am,” she lied. Voice smoothly. Steady. Correct.

“Congratulations,” she said, nodding at Lavender. She didn’t congratulate her ex-husband’s pregnant girlfriend out of grace—she did it because she refused to be small.

Lavender blinked, clearly caught off guard. “Thank you,” she said softly. A hand drifted over her belly, protective. Reflexive. Painfully human.

Hermione watched the gesture without flinching. Some part of her brain—detached, clinical—registered the odds of complication based on gestational size. Medicine was easier than emotion. Emotion had variables.

Ron shifted. “We didn’t know you were coming,” he said.

“I didn’t either.” Her voice had gone efficiently emotionless—the tone she used in ORs when brains  were open and bleeding. Necessary tone. Survival tone.

Silence settled over them —familiar silence. The silence they used to sit inside during the last months of their marriage, when nothing was wrong out loud, and everything was wrong underneath.

Ron gave a polite nod like he’d completed a social obligation and steered Lavender toward Harry, who pulled them both into a hug. Ginny squealed. Molly cried happy tears. The room swelled with easy warmth, the kind she could never quite step into.

Hermione stood alone for a moment, spine perfectly straight, drink untouched in her hand.

Perfect. Now she was the one left behind.

They would have children—best friends just like Ron and Harry, growing up together, Sunday lunches at the burrow and matching jumpers and a family that fit. And her? She would become a cautionary tale. The divorced academic who chose her career and ended up alone. The eccentric aunt in America with too many cats and a personality described as a lot. Who drank peach schnapps alone on Christmas, and sent thoughtful, wildly inappropriate presents from America because she didn’t know what children liked anymore. The tragic cautionary tale with bad tea and worse timing.

She was already on her fifth drink and halfway through a very serious mental debate about what kind of cat would make a good sibling for Crooks—something low-maintenance, maybe ginger, preferably judgmental—when Ron reappeared.

He didn’t come with Lavender this time. He didn’t come with a peace offering or a question that mattered. He came with his hands in his pockets, shoulders loose, casual confidence of a man who still believed—deep down—that no real door had ever closed between them.

He glanced around to make sure no one was listening, then leaned in—not intimately, not conspiratorially—just like he had business to handle and she was an item on the list.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you something,” he said.

She already knew she wouldn’t like it. “All right.”

“Since you moved to New York,” he began, with the false patience of someone who assumes a reasonable request is coming, “I was wondering if I could rent you the house.”

Hermione blinked once.

“The house?” she repeated.

“Our house,” Ron corrected. Too quickly.

“My parents’ house,” she corrected back, calm, unblinking. “The one I own.”

He exhaled through his nose, annoyed she was turning this into a detail. “Yeah, whatever. It’s just sitting there empty. Lavender and I are looking for somewhere for when the baby comes and it doesn’t make sense to let it go to waste.”

There it was—not cruelty. Entitlement. The quiet assumption that Hermione’s life was still partially his by default.

She stared at him. People moved around them—laughter, music, bodies swaying past—but the moment froze. Her house. The only thing she’d kept. The one place that was supposed to be hers. Her inheritance. Her proof of belonging. Her last link to two people who no longer remembered she existed.

And Ron wanted to live in it with someone else. With his mistress.

A laugh almost escaped her—not because it was funny, but because the absurdity of it bordered on cosmic cruelty. Of course this was happening. Of course tonight could still get worse.

Her grip tightened around the glass—not out of anger, but necessity. She needed something solid to hold onto while she kept her voice from shaking.

“That won’t be happening,” she said.

Ron frowned. “What? Why not?”

“Because it won’t,” she said.

He stared at her like she was being deliberately unreasonable. “You don’t even live in it.”

“That isn’t relevant,” she said. “It’s not available.”

He gave a humorless laugh. “Merlin, you’re being difficult.”

There it was—the old script. He stepped into it without thinking. He always did. When Hermione said no, it became a personality flaw. A moral failure.

“I’m not being difficult,” she said, tone flat. “I’m setting a boundary.”

He scoffed. “Same thing with you.”

Hermione didn’t flinch. She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t break.

“Ron,” she said quietly, “this conversation is over.”

For a moment, he looked at her. Really looked. And there was something like disbelief in his eyes—like he still didn’t understand how she had slipped so far out of his reach.

Then his expression hardened. Because if Ron Weasley didn’t understand something, he attacked it. He wasn’t cruel. He wasn’t malicious. He was just used to the version of Hermione who softened things for him. Who explained herself until he felt better. Who made the uncomfortable easy.

That Hermione was gone.

“You don’t have to be like this,” he said, irritation cutting through his voice.

“Like what?” Hermione asked, neutral.

“So—so rigid.” He searched for safer ground. Landed on familiar blame. “So difficult.”

There it was. His favorite adjective for her. Difficult. The word he reached for anytime she stopped making his life effortless.

“I’m not being difficult,” she said. “I said no.”

He scoffed. “Same old Hermione—has to control everything.”

“It’s called a boundary,” she said.

His jaw flexed. Her calmness always infuriated him. “You know what? I don’t deserve this,” he snapped. “I waited for you.”

Hermione didn’t answer. She didn’t reward unfinished sentences.

“For eight bloody years I waited,” he continued. “While you went to Oxford and never looked back. While I sat in that house convincing myself we still had a marriage. While you built a life somewhere I didn’t fit anymore.”

There it was—not truth, but his truth. The story he told himself.

“I didn’t leave to hurt you,” she said. “I left to study.”

“You left me,” he said, and pushed on. “I supported you. I stayed while you moved on. You think I didn’t know about you and Nott?”

Her brows lifted to the smallest degree. “There is nothing to know about me and Theo.”

Ron laughed sharply. “Right. Just best mates who did everything together. Funny how you were always too tired for your husband but never too tired for him.”

“This again Ron?…” she rolled her eyes  “He is my friend, he still is”

“Yeah. That’s obvious.”

Hermione stared at him. “Say what you actually mean, Ron.”

“I mean you replaced me long before I ever touched anyone else.”

Silence felt cold and heavy and not new.

She could have reminded him who stood by him after the war when he couldn’t sleep, when he couldn’t breathe, when grief was a living thing he tried to outdrink. She could have said she didn’t replace him—she outgrew the shape he insisted she stay in.

But explanations were a kindness she no longer offered him.

“You cheated on me in our own bed,” she said. “With someone who is now carrying your child. You don’t get to play the martyr.”

Colour crept up his neck. “I never meant to hurt you, Hermione—”

“But you did,” she said.

“—but you just stopped being there,” he said, voice rising. “You shut me out. You acted like my feelings didn’t matter—”

“You didn’t tell me what your feelings were,” she said. “You said you were tired. You said you missed me. You never said you were lonely. You never said you were unhappy. You never said you wanted something different.”

“I shouldn’t have had to,” he snapped.

There it was.

Hermione nodded.

 “What?”

“You wanted a wife who could read your mind,” she said. “I wanted a partner who could use his words.”

His jaw tightened. “We didn’t even shag for over a year.”

“There it is,” she said. “The thesis.”

“You never touched me. You didn’t want me. I was alone.” he said. “What was I supposed to do?”

“Not cheat,” she said. “Not lie. Not treat betrayal like a scheduling issue.”

He went still—humiliated, angry, wounded all at once. “You twist everything—I don’t know why I ever thought I could get through to you—”

“Then don’t,” she said coldly. “Go cry to Lavender, Ron. File a complaint with someone who still gives a damn. But leave me the fuck alone.”

“Of course. Walk away,” he bit out. “Run away, Hermione. That’s what you do, isn’t it?”

She was done.

“I didn’t run,” she said, voice lethal. “I left. And don’t you dare bring up my house again.”

She snatched a bottle from the table and left.

The thing was— Ron wasn’t entirely wrong. That was the quiet, unfixable truth between them. They had married too young—nineteen and twenty, still half-feral from the war, mistaking survival for compatibility. They moved into her parents’ house, tried to build a future among furniture that didn’t belong to them, filling empty rooms with plans they weren’t ready for. She left for Oxford, and something between them stretched too far and never snapped back. He felt abandoned. She felt trapped. Neither of them knew how to say it out loud.

It didn’t excuse what came after. It didn’t rewrite betrayal into tragedy. But it was still true. She hadn’t fallen out of love with Ron. Not immediately. She had just quietly, gradually, outgrown the life he wanted—and he resented her for it long before either of them said the word divorce.

Ron may have been unfair tonight. Cruel, even.

But he wasn’t lying when he said something between them had broken long before Lavender.

She stayed in the kitchen for a moment, eyes closed, knuckles pressed to the counter. She needed air.

If one more person hugged her or smiled at her like she wasn’t unraveling, she was going to scream. So she slipped out the back door, down the stone steps, and into the overgrown yard behind Grimmauld Place. She didn’t stop walking until she reached the old Black family greenhouse—glass cracked, vines swallowing the frame, forgotten like everything else that didn’t fit anymore.

She sat on the cold steps and stared up at the sky, drinking straight from the neck of a bottle she hadn’t bothered to identify beyond alcohol. Tequila, judging by the burn. She wasn’t drinking to forget—she was drinking to feel something other than rage.

She was halfway to regret existing when someone sat beside her.

Neville.

“Hey, Nev,” she said, voice low, tired. Familiar. Safe. “Please don’t tell me I look like I’m about to have a breakdown. I already know.”

Neville huffed a quiet laugh. “I was going to say you look tired.”

“Brilliant,” she said flatly. “maybe I should change my skincare routine”.

For a moment, neither of them spoke. It was… nice. Or at least quiet—the kind of quiet that didn’t demand anything from her. The tequila softened everything at the edges, like she was wrapped in a heavy blanket she hadn’t asked for but couldn’t shrug off.

“Are you drunk?” Neville asked.

“Yes,” she said, snorting before she could stop herself. “Sorry—I don’t know why I laughed. My face is just… detached from my brain right now.”

Neville smiled, nervous in that kind, bumbling way he always had. “Hermione, can I—can I talk to you for a minute?”

She turned her head, studying him. Sincere eyes. A little too earnest for her current level of emotional durability. Still, he was someone she trusted not to shatter her tonight. “Sure. What’s up, Nev?”

He took a breath. Then another. His hand twitched like he was debating grabbing hers, and for a horrible second she thought he might try to hug her.

“I love you,” he blurted. Then winced. “Shit. That—I wanted to say that more smoothly. That was terrible. Ignore the delivery.”

Hermione stared at him. Her brain short-circuited.

“Sorry,” she said finally. “I think I—what?”

Neville looked like he might actually throw up. “I didn’t mean for it to come out like that. I just—I've been trying to say it for a long time and tonight I saw you out here and you looked… not fine. And I didn’t want to waste any more time.” He exhaled. “I’m in love with you. Properly. Have been for years.”

Oh God. No. No no no no no.

Hermione let out a small, shaky laugh—the wrong reaction entirely—and immediately slapped a hand over her mouth. “Sorry, I’m sorry. That wasn’t—I’m just— drunk. And startled. And sorry. Did I say I was sorry?”

Neville’s cheeks flushed but he pressed on, desperate and determined. “I know this is probably terrible timing after everything with Ron, but I just wanted you to know you’re brilliant, Hermione. And kind, and strong, and you’ve been through so much. You deserve someone who sees you. Someone who chooses you.”

And then, as if fate were actively mocking her, he reached out and touched her hand.

Hermione went very still.

She stared at their hands, at his fingers, warm and hopeful over hers. She should say something gracious. Gentle. Anything. Except her thoughts were folding in on themselves like dying stars. She could handle betrayal. Rage. War. Trauma. But this—this sincere, expectant softness—made her want to crawl out of her own skin.

“Do you think—” Neville’s voice was quiet now. “Could we ever be something more than friends?”

Hermione’s brain had left the building.

Her heart slammed once, like a fist to the chest. She was too drunk for this conversation. Too tired. Too raw. Too destroyed by everything else already breaking inside her.

“I—” she croaked, then cleared her throat. “I need to go to the loo.”

Neville blinked. “What?”

She stood up so fast the world tilted. “I just—I need to go to the—I’ll be right back.”

She would not be right back.

She bolted—through the kitchen, across the hall, up the stairs. She didn’t stop to think or breathe or look at anyone. She grabbed her coat, her purse, and her wand, and by the time someone called her name, she was already gone.

She went straight to the Floo station.

She paid extra for an international transfer on the spot.

By the time she stepped back into her New York flat, she felt hollowed out—emotionally vacant in a way that felt dangerous. 

She dropped her bag and collapsed onto the sofa without turning on the lights. The silence pressed in—too heavy, too honest.

She tried to cry.

She felt it rising—pressure behind her ribs, heat behind her eyes—but nothing came. Just that awful, familiar numbness. She’d been living inside it for months. Holding everything in suspension. She knew, one day, when it finally cracked, it wouldn’t be gentle. It would be catastrophic.

A sound escaped her—small and humorless. Then another. And suddenly she was laughing. Sharp, breathless, unhinged. After everything—her parents not knowing her, Ron asking for her house, Neville handing her his heart like she was capable of holding anything—this was still her life.

The laugh broke. Something inside her tore loose.

The first sob punched out of her like a wound splitting open. Then another. And then she was crying—really crying. Not neat, not manageable. Violent. Gutting. The kind of grief that drags you under because it has nowhere else to go.

It wasn’t about Ron. Or Neville. Or London.

It was the grief of someone who had finally understood she no longer belonged anywhere. Someone who kept moving but never arrived. Someone stuck.

A small weight landed against her shin. A warm head nudged her forehead once—insistent, grounding.

Crooks.

He climbed into her lap with the slow, unimpressed dignity of a king returning to his throne and curled into a tight ginger ball. No questions. No judgment. Just presence. His purr rumbled through her bones like a lifeline.

Hermione gripped his fur and let it happen—the full collapse she’d been outrunning for months.

For once, she didn’t try to stop it.

Chapter Text

Chapter 8 Everything Under Control – sort of.

Theo blinked at her through the screen. “Neville Longbottom said he’s in love with you? Are you okay?” He paused a beat, then lifted a finger. “Actually—don’t answer that. First I need to laugh until I pass out.”

“Don’t be a dick,” Hermione muttered, dragging a hand over her face.

“Oh no, love,” Theo said, settling back in his chair with dangerous delight, “you were the dick. You left the poor sod there—with all his feelings—like abandoned emotional roadkill.”

“Shut up,” she groaned. “I panicked. I—should I call him? I should call him, right? Merlin, I should call him.”

“Oh please do,” Theo said. “In fact, put me on the call. I want to watch. Consider it enrichment time for my soul.”

Hermione scowled at him through the screen. “That’s not all.”

Theo’s eyebrows rose. “There’s more? Brilliant. I swear I will never miss another one of Potter’s birthdays as long as I live.”

“Ron asked if he could rent my house.”

Theo went very still. “Rent. Your. House.”

“Yes.”

“The house your parents left you?”

“Yes.”

“The house your ex-husband has no legal, emotional, or metaphysical claim to?”

“Yes.”

Theo nodded once, sharply. “And did you kill him?”

“No.”

“Disappointing, but continue.”

“He also accused me of shagging you.”

Theo snorted so hard he nearly choked. “Finally. Someone said it. About bloody time.”

“Be serious.”

“I am deadly serious,” he said. “Weasley’s wanted to punch me in the face since the day he met me. Also—not the first person who assumed we were shagging.”

Hermione groaned. “Why does everyone think that?”

Theo sipped his drink, bored. “Because we actually like each other. People find that suspicious.”

Hermione glared at him.

“What?”

“There is more…”  She said. “Ginny is pregnant.”

Theo brightened instantly. “Oh! Little Chosen Ones on the way. Good for them.”

“Yeah,” Hermione said softly… then she made a face.

He watched her for a moment, expression shifting. “And how do we get from Potter spawn to your emotionally catastrophic face?”

Hermione hesitated. Then, quietly: “Everyone is moving on. And I’m just… stuck.”

The words hung between them—quiet, dangerous, honest.

Theo didn’t flinch. “Love, not everyone moves at the same speed. You’re not stuck. You just chose a different path.”

Her throat tightened. “But—”

“But?” he prompted.

She exhaled. “I thought I wanted that life. Marriage. Kids. A home. All of it.”

Theo nodded once, slow. “Yeah. And then you became a neurosurgeon—known worldwide for two things: being unreasonably good at brain magic and having the emotional availability of a brick wall.” He took a sip of something dark from a mug. “Hermione, you got married at nineteen. I had bangs at nineteen. Everyone did stupid things at that age.”

A startled laugh escaped her—small, unwilling, frayed. “I wasn’t stupid.”

“No,” he said. “You were grieving. And young. And loyal to a history that stopped fitting long before you admitted it.”

She looked down. “Maybe I should’ve fought harder.”

“For Weasley?” Theo scoffed. “You don’t fight to keep a sinking ship. You swim away and thank physics.”

“You’re an arse,” Hermione muttered, though the corner of her mouth twitched like she hated that he’d made her laugh. She checked the time on her mobile  and groaned. “I’ve got to go. Big surgery today. My first lead here.”

Theo lifted his mug in a lazy toast. “Break a leg, doll.”

Her personal life could burn for all she cared—on the table, scalpel in hand, she was a queen. Control was the only thing she had ever trusted. And today, control meant life.

Everyone was watching.

Hermione had spent three days preparing for this surgery—revising protocols, calculating risks, planning contingencies. The OR hummed with restrained magic, a low thrum beneath the sterile lights. Machines whispered in time with the patient’s heartbeat.

Her first lead procedure. A seventeen-year-old witch with a tumour coiled through the hippocampus like invasive ivy. One misaligned sigil, one slip in the lattice, and the girl would wake without her memories—or not wake at all.

Tumours were dangerous in Muggles—cruel. Cells gone feral. Predictable.

Magical tumours were predators.

They fed on magic, burrowing into the core until the body began to fail. Spells misfired. Reflexes died. Systems shut down one by one. And if the core collapsed, there was no survival and no mercy. It didn’t turn you into a Muggle. It hollowed you out from the inside and left a corpse.

“Granger,” Malfoy said from behind his mask, voice smooth, controlled. “You pick the music. Your surgery, your lead.”

She hesitated. “Me?”

He arched a brow. “Unless you want me to hum.”

Hermione smirked at him and tapped the console. Taylor Swift. Look what you make me do.

Half the women in the OR cheered. One of the young healers actually fist-pumped. Someone at the back said, with deep spiritual conviction, yes, doctor.

The dark pop beat filled the theatre, smug.

A choice. A threat. A promise. Her surgery, her rules.

As everyone took their positions, Hermione adjusted the stabilizer runes and muttered along, barely above a whisper.

 I don't like your little games
Don't like your tilted stage
The role you made me play
Of the fool, no, I don't like you

Malfoy turned slowly, horrified. “You cannot be serious.”

She met his eyes, with calm and deadly polite. “You let me choose.”

He stared at her for a long beat. Something sharp sparked behind his mask—annoyance, maybe… or admiration disguised as disdain. His eyes narrowed.

 “Inspirational,” he said dryly. “Let’s roll.”

The first incision charm flared. The room dissolved into focus: light, rhythm, control. Hermione’s mind fell into rhythm: wand–scalpel, inhale–exhale, focus. Malfoy’s voice cut through occasionally—quiet corrections, calm observations—but mostly he watched. The students in the gallery held their breath.

Mid-operation, the monitors screamed.

Oxygen saturation dipping.

“Pressure’s dropping fast!” a nurse barked.

“I see it.” Hermione’s wand traced a stabilising arc, gold light tightening around the core-seal matrix. “She’s bleeding through the neural link— magical core leak starting.”

“Pull out,” Malfoy ordered, voice suddenly sharp.

“Suction,” Hermione snapped.

The scrub nurse moved instantly, sliding the suction wand into the field to clear pooling blood before it overflowed into the seal. Visibility returned in pulses of red and gold.

“Granger, you’re losing field integrity—pull out, now.”

“If I pull now, the tumour will tear through the core threads,” Hermione said, low and precise. “she won’t survive the magical rebound.”

Malfoy didn’t question her. “What do you need?”

“Containment dome, dual layer,” she replied. “Blood and arcane isolation.”

That earned a flicker of surprise from him—dual containment mid-operation was suicidal under standard protocol.

But he just said, “On it,” and moved.

He stepped in beside her, shoulder nearly touching hers. The field lights caught in his gloves as he lifted his wand. Hermione raised hers. Their magic ignited—her gold, his cold silver-blue—and snapped together like two halves of a locked spell. The OR went silent as the dome sealed around the surgical field with a low thunderclap of pressure.

“Scalpel.”

The nurse slapped it into Hermione’s palm. Steel and spellwork, sharp enough to cut enchanted bone. Her wand hovered above it, controlling blood flow. Every movement exact. Ruthless. Beautiful.

The tumour pulsed—a mass of corrupted magic fused into neural pathways. It glowed like molten gold and rot. Every heartbeat risked a core rupture.

Hermione cut. Clean. Unhesitating. A thread of magic lashed toward her hand—

Malfoy blocked it before she could blink, ward flashing in midair.

They didn’t speak. Didn’t need to.

“Pressure falling—seventy and crashing!” Hermione’s heartbeat pounded against her ribs—loud, violent—but her hands stayed precise. Emotion was irrelevant. Execution was everything.

She didn’t look up. “Counter-seal vector seven. Full lock.”

“Full lock will overload the grid,” Malfoy warned.

“Then don’t let it.” Her gloves were slick now—blood, spellglow, sweat. She tightened her grip and forced her fingers steady.

His jaw tightened. He shifted his stance and matched her rhythm, grounding her spell with his own. Their magic braided—volatile, perfectly synchronized.

The tumour fought. It convulsed once, then writhed violently, trying to anchor itself to surviving neural tissue.

Hermione’s voice cut through the rising noise of alarms.

“On my count—cut power to the inner magical core.Three—two—one—now”

They had already severed every blood vessel feeding the tumour. Now came the part that turned senior medics pale—the arcane cut. The tumour had infiltrated the patient’s magical core, siphoning power and corrupting output pathways. The only way to remove it was through Neural Arcane Partitioning—isolating the infected segment of core from the rest before shutting it down.

High-risk. One miscast, one unstable surge, and the core would collapse. Organ failure. Brain death. No second chances.

Malfoy moved in beside her, recalibrating the anchoring runes with controlled precision. His wardwork didn’t flare like a duel; it pulsed like a life-support system fighting to stabilise a crashing patient.

"Feedback surge in quadrant three," Hermione said through gritted teeth.

"I see it," Malfoy muttered, already layering in a secondary bind. "Hold the primary channel—I’ll reroute the excess magic before the dome fractures."

The containment field flexed again. Somewhere behind them, alarms wailed and medics braced to intervene if the rupture broke through. Hermione didn’t look back. She held the line.

The tumour ripped free in a spray of gold-lit blood.

For one suspended, silent second—it hung between them, writhing inside the seal. A parasite of stolen power.

Raw core energy flared white-blue—pure, devastating light. Then, it died. The tumour fell into the basin like slaughtered meat.

Silence.

The monitors steadied.

Hermione lowered her wand. “Field clear.”

“Seal the rupture points,” Hermione said, voice steady again. The chaos had been burned out of the room—only precision remained.

Malfoy flicked his wand and wove a secondary containment around the patient’s magic core—a cooling ward lattice to stabilize the damaged channels. Hermione followed with restorative runes, closing the brutal pathways the tumour had carved into living magic.

“Core integrity at seventy percent and rising,” one of the healers reported. “Stabilization holding.”

“Good,” Hermione said. She didn’t look away from the field. “Let her rest.”

They moved to the bleeding vessels next. Clean, efficient teamwork—the kind that didn’t need words. She sealed them one by one, cauterizing and stitching tissue with a blend of steel and spellcraft. Malfoy reinforced binding charms, finishing each structure with almost obsessive precision.

“Vitals stable now,” someone breathed, relief cracking through the tension at last.

Hermione nodded once. “Close,” she said.

Sutures formed in a neat, unbroken line as she finished the last incision. She lifted her wand and traced a final diagnostic pass across the chest. Everything held. No leaks. No magical recoil. No arcane backlash.

Her shoulders sagged from exhaustion, but she didn’t step away. She could cut through chaos, hold bleeding minds together with sheer will if she had to—but this, this part, always broke through her armor. The human part.

She leaned close to the sedated girl.
“I know that was terrifying,” she whispered. “But you made it. I’ve got you.”

A heartbeat passed. The monitors pulsed steady, like an answer.

She straightened and finally exhaled. “Surgery complete.”

Around them, the OR stared like they’d just witnessed a myth born in real time. But Malfoy didn’t look at the monitors or the patient. He was still staring at the empty air where the tumour had been. His mask hid most of his face, but his eyes gave him away—wide, astonished, alight.

“Flawless,” he said quietly. “Utterly flawless.”

She blinked, caught off guard. “Thank you.”

Ridiculous, she told herself, that a single word could land like a pulse beneath her skin. Professional. Stay professional. Do not react.

He turned back to the table, but she caught the smallest curve of his mouth — not a smirk, not quite. Admiration, cloaked in irony.

The doors swung open, and the OR erupted in claps, in chatter and movement. The corridor lights buzzed faintly, the antiseptic air biting against her skin. Hermione peeled off her gloves with shaking hands, leaving faint smears of gold residue on her wrists — remnants of the containment field that hadn’t yet faded.

Her heart was still thudding in surgical rhythm.

His  words kept looping through her head like a heartbeat that didn’t know how to stop.

Someone applauded once before remembering where they were. A dozen people in the room were trembling—some from adrenaline, some from awe.

Across from her, Malfoy pulled off his gloves with slow, controlled movements. His gaze never left her.

Behind the glass, she could still see the team moving — the patient being prepped for stasis transfer, the golden threads of the neural ward fading one by one. The girl was alive. Whole. Memory lattice intact.

“Beautiful work, Doctor!” one of the nurses said.

“Flawless extraction,” added one of the residents. “I’ve never seen someone handle the pressure drop that cleanly besides Dr. Malfoy.”

Even Geller appeared, grinning like he’d won a bet. “What did I tell you? Terrifying.” He pointed at Malfoy. “He’s speechless. I didn’t think that was medically possible.”

Hermione laughed, the sound shaky with leftover adrenaline.

Someone shoved a cup of water into her hand. Someone else patted her shoulder. She tried to thank them, but her voice was still catching up with her heartbeat.

Malfoy stood apart from the crowd, his eyes met hers across the room.

“Congratulations,” he said, tone calm but threaded with something quieter, something almost proud.

“Thank you,” she managed.

He gave the faintest nod, then turned to the charting board as if the moment hadn’t happened.

Hermione looked down at her shaking hands, smiled, and finally let herself breathe.

By the time she finished her post-op notes, the corridors had thinned to a low hum of magic and machines. The adrenaline was wearing off, leaving her pleasantly hollow. She grabbed a cup of terrible coffee and leaned against the nurses’ station, just breathing.

Behind her, the nurses were whispering. Not subtle, not trying very hard.

“Did you see them in there? The dream team.”

“She’s the first person he’s ever let run point.”

“Maybe that’s why he was smiling for once.”

Hermione pretended not to hear, eyes fixed on the patient chart glowing before her.

Another voice, softer. “They’re saying Malfoy finally found his match.”

She stirred her coffee, watching the ripples. “I’m standing right here,”

The nurses laughed, a little embarrassed, a little thrilled. One of them handed her a fresh pastry. “You earned it, Doctor.”

“Thanks,” she said, biting back a smile.

As she walked down the hall toward the lounge, she caught sight of him through the glass window of the observation room—bent over a chart, hair mussed, profile lit by the cool blue of the diagnostic lights.

For a second, she just stood there, watching him work. Then she turned away, shaking her head at herself.

Dream team, she thought wryly. Sure. What could possibly go wrong?

Hermione was back in the locker room, halfway through changing into clean scrubs. A dizzy post-op patient had vomited on her— down her front, into her shoes, and somehow in her hair. Humanity was a cruel joke. She’d taken the fastest shower of her life, scrubbing until her skin went pink, because she was used to human fluids but vomit had that specific smell that made her soul try to leave her body.

Her scrub trousers were already on, her damp hair twisted into a messy bun, bra still clinging to her shoulders. She dug through her locker for a clean top, muttering to herself about the tragic lack of respect for personal boundaries in medicine.

Malfoy froze in the doorway.

“How did you come up with that approach?” he asked, words tumbling out before his brain caught up. “That access point shouldn’t have worked, but it did. The patient’s already responding—no sight loss, no motor delay—”

She blinked at him, incredulous. “Do you mind?”

His eyes went wide. “Oh—oh. Right. Yes.” He spun around so fast he nearly got concussed by the door frame. “Sorry. I—wasn’t looking. I mean—well, I was, obviously, but—”

Hermione pulled her shirt over her head, trying not to laugh. “You’re terrible at apologies…  and knocking.”

“Years of practice,” he muttered to the wall.

“You can turn around now.”

He did—carefully, eyes fixed on her face, not her body. For a second, the tension between them hung sharp and strange.

“I shouldn’t be here,” he said, almost to himself. “But I’ve been replaying that incision for hours, and I couldn’t—” He cut himself off, jaw tight. “I needed to understand what you did.”

She crossed her arms, still catching her breath. “Reversing the path reduce the cortical trauma. It’s less intuitive, but less invasive.”

He studied her, genuinely impressed. “That’s… brilliant.”

Hermione raised a brow. “Did you just say brilliant?”

He nodded once, slow. “You didn’t lose the lattice. Or the field integrity. That shouldn’t be possible.”

“Apparently it was,” she said. Her voice came out low, steadier than she felt.

Silence followed—slow, heavy, electric.

He didn’t just step closer—he erased the distance. Enough that she could feel his breath against her cheek.

“You’re brilliant,” he said quietly. “I don’t like having you here… but you are.”

Her back hit the cool metal of the locker behind her. They were inches apart now. Close enough for her pulse to betray her—hard, insistent, pounding in her throat, in her ribs, everywhere.

She forced air into her lungs. “You’re brilliant too,” she said, barely above a whisper. “I read your paper on memory loss and reconfiguration. It was—” Her pulse stumbled. “—extraordinary.”

His gaze dipped to her lips. Quick. Intentional.

The heat that moved through her was instant and terrifying. She could feel his breath now. He smelled like clean soap, antiseptic, and magic—sharp and cold, like winter air before a storm.

He lifted a hand.

For a heartbeat, she thought—no, felt—that he was going to touch her. His fingers hovered just beside her jaw, close enough that she swore she could feel the ghost of his skin against hers. A single inch. A decision waiting to happen.

He didn’t take it.

Instead, his palm was on the locker door beside her head—knuckles tense, tendons strained, like he needed to anchor himself to stop something far more reckless from happening.

He drew a line. And Hermione had never wanted to cross a line so badly in her life. Her heart thundered, shaking through her chest. She was certain he could hear it.

Neither of them moved.

Seconds stretched long and unbearable. Something dangerous lived in the silence. Something she didn’t have a name for yet.

Then he exhaled—and stepped back.

“Early rounds tomorrow,” he said, voice low and controlled, as if nothing had happened.

Hermione swallowed. “Right.”

He reached the door, paused, and glanced back. The look he gave her wasn’t soft. It was fierce.

“Welcome to New Salem, Dr. Granger.”

The door clicked shut behind him.

Only then did she see her hands—pressed flat to the locker to steady herself—still trembling.

Chapter Text

Chapter 9 Clinical Proximity

That morning, the department felt different. Not louder. Not busier. Just… charged, as if the air had been magnetised overnight.

Hermione arrived early—coffee in one hand, charts in the other—pretending not to notice how the nurses at the station went quiet as she passed. Not openly, not rudely. Just the kind of quiet that meant people were talking.

“Morning, Doctor,” one of them said—too bright.

“Morning.” Brisk. Professional. Untouchable.

Or that was the plan.

Her stomach had been tight since dawn—since the locker room, since him walking away. Since the curve of his mouth that might have been a smile or something else entirely. She hated that she’d noticed. Hated that she’d replayed it. Worse—she hated that some unruly part of her wanted to keep replaying it.

By eight, the whole team had gathered for rounds. Malfoy was already there—leaning against the desk, hair immaculate, sleeves rolled, composed to the point of severity. He didn’t look at her. Not once.

Good. Fine. Safer.

“Dr Geller, update on Ward Three,” he said, flipping a chart with surgical focus.

Hermione listened, pen in hand, taking notes she didn’t need. She could feel him in her periphery—the way one feels a storm building behind glass. He kept his eyes on the pages in front of him. She kept hers on her clipboard.

For eight minutes straight, nothing slipped. Then it did.

A glance. Nothing more. Nothing less. But his eyes met hers across the circle of doctors—and the air shifted. Like gravity changed.

She looked away first.

Assignments were made. Cases distributed. Plans agreed. Efficient. Sensible. Safe.

She buried herself in the lab—forced logic, clean equations, controlled variables. Nobody questioned how long she stayed or why she needed to. Nobody tried to take her parents’ house under the polite guise of “practicality.” Nobody announced glowing pregnancies like life milestones she was failing to reach. Nobody handed her their heart and begged her not to drop it. No ultimatums. No expectations. No emotional landmines disguised as conversations. Just her, her research, her lab. A place where nothing asked to be loved back. Where numbers stayed where you put them. Where magic obeyed, unlike people.

But isolation could only do so much. Eventually, even silence started to press on her ribs.

That afternoon, the lab lights developed a low, electrical hum—the kind that happened when you hadn’t eaten, hadn’t moved, hadn’t unclenched your jaw in hours. Hermione stood over a suspended neural interface, eyes burning from focus, magic steady but fraying at the edges.

She recalibrated the spell lattice again. And again. And again.

Each time, the same result: memory fragments extracted successfully—reintegration unstable. Meaningless data. Nothing that would survive in a human mind. Not like this.

She exhaled. Frustration wasn’t productive. Emotion wasn’t productive. She set both aside—deliberately—like tools she didn’t need.

For a moment, she stood completely still, hands braced on the table.

She knew what she had to do.

And she hated it.

Legilimency wasn’t mind magic. It was trespass dressed as skill—the kind of thing people justified with words like necessary and efficient while pretending it didn’t strip a person down to bone and memory. She didn’t trust it. She didn’t trust anyone who used it.

And she especially didn’t trust Draco Malfoy.

At least—not at first.

But once he stopped being a bastard and started treating her like a fellow instead of an inconvenience, things… shifted. He wasn’t a nightmare to work with. In fact, that was the problem. He was calm under pressure, relentlessly precise, allergic to mediocrity—and worse, he had a way of working that reminded her of herself. The same ruthless standards. The same refusal to be wrong. The same quiet, gnawing hunger to fix what everyone else called impossible.

Professional respect was not trust. She reminded herself of that often.

And he was still the only one who could help.

Before she could stop herself from making a mistake she couldn’t take back, she gathered the folder, and turned off every light in the lab one by one.

Her reflection ghosted across the glass as the room went dark.

She straightened her coat, lifted her chin, and gave herself the only truths that mattered:

This wasn’t personal.
This wasn’t emotional.
This was research.

She could control this.

Hermione didn’t knock.

She stepped into his office and closed the door behind her.

“I need to talk to you,” she said.

Malfoy looked up from his desk, pale brows drawing together in a quiet frown. “All right.”

He didn’t invite her to sit. She did anyway.

Her posture was composed, precise—every movement economical. Only her fingers betrayed any tension, clasped too tightly around the folder.

“I have a proposal.”

One of his brows lifted. “I’m listening.”

She slid the folder across his desk. “Co-paper. Memory restoration and neural reintegration. My research has hit a wall. We can extract damaged memories, but the new neural pathways won’t bind. Fragmentation sets in and cognitive dissonance follows.”

His eyes flicked to the folder, then back to her. “You said we.”

“I need a Legilimens,” she said plainly. “Someone who understands mental architecture—not just magically, but anatomically. You trained in both.”

“You want me to go inside people’s minds,” he said, voice unreadable.

“I want you to help me repair them.”

“With what exactly? Sentiment and stubbornness?”

“With precision,” she fired back. “Legilimency can do what surgical magic can’t—it can recognise pattern logic. You could help me knot submerged memories and anchor them to a stable neural matrix before warded reintegration.”

“And in exchange?”

She met his eyes. Didn’t blink. “You’ll be listed as co-author. Full credit. Full collaboration.”

He studied her, slow and deliberate—a diagnostic gaze she refused to flinch from. “You don’t like me.”

“Not relevant.”

“You don’t trust me.”

“I don’t trust anyone,” she said. “Also not relevant.”

“And yet here you are. In my office. Asking to work with me.”

“Do you ever stop narrating things back like you’re in a noir film,” she said dryly, “or is that compulsive?”

His mouth twitched. Controlled. Dangerous.

“Why me,” he asked quietly—not a question so much as an admission that he was taking this seriously.

“Because,” she said, leaning in just slightly, “you’re the only person in this department who understands what minds actually are. Not machines. Not archives. Not wounds. Systems. Adaptive systems. And because—”

She stopped.

He waited. Patient. Too patient.

“Because,” she said, choosing the safest version of the truth, “no one else is good enough.”

Silence thickened—charged, not empty but full of commentary neither of them voiced. Intellectual combat disguised as conversation.

Malfoy rested his elbows on the desk, fingers steepled. “Convince me.”

Her jaw tightened. “I just did.”

“No,” he said mildly smug, with infuriating calm. “You presented a summary and made an offer. Convince me.”

She inhaled slowly through her nose. “Your ego is exhausting.”

“Your pitch is lazy,” he countered. “If you want something from me, don’t bore me. Try again.”

Her pulse ticked faster—not from nerves, but from irritation sharpened into something like heat.

Fine. He wanted a fight? He would get one.

“Every current memory protocol fails because it treats trauma like a splinter,” she said. “Remove it, heal the tissue, done. Minds don’t work like that. People build themselves around what hurts. You can’t cut trauma out—you integrate it, or the system collapses.”

He watched her like he was already mapping her blueprints.

“The hippocampus stores explicit memory; the amygdala stores emotional response. After magical trauma, they split. You get cognitive dissonance—people who remember the facts but feel nothing, or feel everything and can’t recall why. My protocols can restore the damaged neural pathways—but not the meaning that holds them together. Clinical potions can rebuild structure. They can’t bind coherence. Legilimency can.”

“So you don’t need a surgeon,” he said. “You need someone foolish enough to step into active trauma structures. Repeatedly.”

“No,” she said. “I need someone brave enough. There’s a difference.”

His expression shifted—barely. “Flattery, Granger? Getting desperate already?”

She didn’t flinch. “I chose you because you don’t scare easily. And because you don’t underestimate patients. Or me,” she added, quieter.

He stood and moved around the desk—not leaving, but closing the distance. He leaned against the edge, arms folded, gaze locked on her with unnerving precision.

“What makes you think I’d risk my career—and my mind—for your project?” he asked softly.

She held his gaze. “Because you care more about the truth than you do about rules.” Her voice dropped. “And because this will change everything we know about restoring the mind. You want to be there when it happens.”

A beat. Then his mouth curved—not a smile. Something sharper.

“You assume a lot about me.”

“I’m correct.”

“Arrogant.”

“Efficient.”

Their eyes locked. Neither moved.

Something dangerous flickered between them—mutual recognition neither of them wanted but both of them felt.

Finally, he said, “No.”

Hermione blinked. “No?”

“No,” he repeated, pushing off the desk. “Not unless I get full access to your case files, complete authority over mental warding protocols, and veto power over subjects.”

She rose to meet him, chin lifted. “Fine. But I get equal veto power. First-draft rights. And final say on theoretical framework.”

He stepped in—close. Too close. “Non-negotiable term number one: you never open a mind without me.”

She didn’t step back. “Non-negotiable term number two: you follow my neural safety parameters.”

He leaned in, voice cold and razor-edged. “Try not to get sentimental about the subjects.”

She matched his stare. “Try not to enjoy breaking into people’s minds too much.”

Something flickered across his expression—not quite guilt, not quite offense. Uncomfortable. Vulnerable for half a second before it vanished behind ice.

“What?” she asked.

He didn’t answer. Neither of them moved. Neither surrendered an inch.

Fine. Boundaries first. She pulled a notepad from her folder and clicked her pen. “Ground rules. Rule one: you don’t enter my mind.”

A low breath escaped him—almost a laugh. “Already insecure, Granger?”

“Already invasive, Malfoy?”

His mouth curved, a slow, deliberate provocation. “If I wanted in, you wouldn’t know until I was finished.”

She didn’t blink. “Try that and I’ll hex you so hard you won’t be able to tell your arse from your head.”

His brow snaps up. “Is that how you talk to collaborators now? Rude.” He feigns huff and sits back, amusement flickering in his eyes.

She fought a smile, then continue “Rule two: full transparency. No hidden findings. No secret data.”

He leaned closer, reading as she wrote. He shouldn’t have been close enough for her to feel the heat of him—but he was. And her pulse—traitorous—noticed.

“Done,” he said. “Rule three: no unstable minds.”

She shot him a look. “We’re literally studying memory trauma. Every mind will be unstable.”

“No actively deteriorating cases.”

A hesitation. Then a curt nod. “Fine.”

“And no personal connections,” he added. “No subjects you care about.”

Her pen paused—just for a fraction. “Fine.”

He watched her too long. “What’s on your mind?”

“Don’t psychoanalyse me,” she said without looking up. “It’s tedious.”

He smirked. “Is that rule four?”

“Yes. Rule four: no psychological profiling.”

He inclined his head—conceding. “Rule five: we consult each other before using advanced Legilimency techniques.”

“Define advanced.”

“Deep-structure dives. Archetype extraction. Memory reclassification. Anything that alters cognitive architecture.”

“Agreed. Rule six: if either of us senses overload—neural or emotional—we pull out.”

His eyebrow lifted—predictable. “Going to laugh, Granger?”

“No,” she said crisply. “I’m going to pretend you’re a mature adult and keep writing.”

“Bold assumption.”

She ignored him. “Rule seven—”

“Last rule,” he cut in.

She looked up. His expression had changed—less mocking now, quieter. Sharper.

“Rule seven,” he said. “We don’t lie to each other.”

Her grip tightened around the pen.

“That’s unrealistic.”

“It’s necessary.”

“We’re scientists,” she said. “If you want data integrity—fine. No falsifying results. No withholding neurological reactions. That I’ll agree to.”

He shook his head. “No. No lying. Full stop.”

Her pulse kicked. Too much. Too honest.

“That includes you,” she said. “You don’t get to hide behind being cold and unreadable.”

“I wasn’t planning to.”

She searched his face, calculating the cost—not only of working with him, but of whatever this was already becoming. Finally, she wrote it down.

“Rule seven: no lies,” she finished, and tore the page free.

He took her pen, signed beneath her name, and slid the contract back toward her. “Seven rules. How dramatic.”

“Relax,” she said, folding the page. “They’re rules, not Horcruxes. You won’t lose a piece of your soul.”

His mouth curved—sharp, amused, dangerous. “Debatable.”

Their eyes held. A contract in silence.

“Deal,” he said.

Her heart thudded once—traitorous, deep—but her voice stayed level. “Deal.”

She gathered the contract, spine straight, mask flawless.

As she reached for the door, she didn’t miss the way he watched her go—like someone had opened a door to a room he hadn’t known he wanted to enter.

Chapter Text

Chapter 10 Ethanol-Induced Honesty

She’d said yes before she could think better of it—karaoke night, the department’s idea of “team bonding” and, apparently, her unofficial welcome to New Salem. The interns had begged—wide-eyed, caffeinated little creatures who still believed joy was real and karaoke could fix trauma.

It was Friday. If she was honest, needed the distraction.

Because back home? A social wildfire was already burning. Everyone had somehow heard about Neville’s sudden and very tragic declaration of love. And how she had—according to Parvati, Seamus, and now apparently Dean —fled the scene faster than a Death Eater the minute the Dark Lord died. And then flooed across the Atlantic like a criminal.

She had tried to text Neville. Really, genuinely tried. She even opened the message thread and typed: Hey, I’m really sorry about— and then deleted it. Then: I didn’t mean to run out like— delete. You’re amazing but— absolutely not. Even she knew that was the prelude to a war crime.

Everything she wrote sounded like an excuse. Because it was.

The truth was simple and awful: she didn’t like him that way. She never had. She’d never thought of him that way—not once, not even in a maybe if we were the last two people alive on earth kind of way. Neville was… kind. Familiar. A friend, sort of. And now he had handed her his heart and she’d dropped it like a hot cauldron and fled continents.

No goodbye. No explanation. No emotional processing. Just: Nope. I choose America.

Ginny had sent a text that said, Hermione, are you alright?
Harry had sent one that said, What the hell happened?
And Theo had sent one that said, HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Everyday. 

She and Malfoy had already fallen into a routine—not officially, not verbally, but undeniably. Every night after work, they ended up in the lab. Not because they planned it. Because they didn’t know how not to. Days belonged to patients and politics; nights, somehow, belonged to them.

They worked well together. Annoyingly well. Malfoy insisted they start by reviewing the full theoretical framework of her research—six years of work—which he treated like a personal attack on his standards.

“This dataset is outdated, Granger.”

“It was the most current at the time.” She rolled her eyes.

“At the time you were what—twelve?”

He was impossible. Pedantic. Condescending. And devastatingly good at this. He challenged every assumption, tested every claim. He forced her to sharpen everything she thought she already knew. It pissed her off. She liked it anyway.

They had acquired a permanent corner of the lab and an evolving ecosystem of coffee mugs and takeout cartons. Dinner became a side effect of academic warfare. They argued over neural lattice integration like other people argued about politics or religion—heated, relentless, thrilled to be right.

The worst part wasn’t his ego. It wasn’t hers. It was that she looked forward to it. The late nights. The arguments. The way he listened—really listened—and didn’t flinch when she got vicious with logic.

The way their minds locked into the same current and refused to let go.

Working with him was dangerous.

Liking it was worse.

So yes. She needed tequila.

Badly.

“The whole department’s coming, Dr. Granger! You have to come!” One of the interns said.

So she went.

New York summer was merciless, even at night—thick air that clung like guilt. She wore a light dress, tied her hair up, and promised herself she’d only stay for an hour.

The bar was already vibrating when she arrived: interns doing shots, Dr. Geller was performing a strangely sensual rendition of “Sweet Caroline,” and someone in the corner arguing which was the best song.

It wasn’t just the interns. The neuro crew had migrated together—residents, ICU leads, two morally bankrupt attendings, and Geller, the other neurosurgery fellow. Hermione wasn’t technically part of them—she was just a visiting fellow on rotation—but neurosurgery operated like a cult. If you didn’t cry during rounds, congratulations: you were in.

Neurosurgeons had a reputation—no social filter, god complex, allergic to sleep, clinically attractive but emotionally unavailable. They didn’t believe in foreplay; they got turned on by clean suture lines and rare neural anomalies.

Someone once said “talk dirty to me” to a neurosurgeon and they whispered myelin sheath integrity.

The rumor wasn’t that the neuro team lacked feelings. It was that they’d removed them for efficiency. It was probably true.

She ordered a margarita—and somehow ended up drinking four. Maybe five. Medicine was about approximation. For a while she sat with the interns and a couple of residents, watching people take turns on stage, each performance a war crime against music. Someone attempted Adele and got publicly humbled. Someone else performed “Mr. Brightside” like a personal exorcism. Hermione clapped like a polite British hostage and let the night loosen around her until everything felt warm and slightly stupid.

If Theo ever found out she went to karaoke without him, he’d send a strongly worded text—and then floo himself just to sing backup.

She was at the bar, refreshing her drink, when the interns spotted her and started waving like lunatics. Before she could protest, someone thrust a microphone into her hand.

“Come on, Dr. G! Your turn!”

Hermione laughed—half in horror, half in surrender. She was a little drunk, only here temporarily, and for once—she didn’t care. She needed a break—badly. And if public humiliation was the price of it, then cheers, baby.

Someone shouted that she had to sing something British—probably expecting Oasis or Queen or The Beatles—but she, in an act of cultural terrorism, chose Fergie.

“How come every time you come around
My London, London Bridge wanna go down like—”

And she didn’t just sing—she performed. Her body remembered before her mind did. The way she used to move with Theo after finals week—music too loud, tequila too strong, hips loose, pulse wild. She dropped into rhythm like she’d never left it, hair falling, dress clinging, laughing like someone who had finally stopped giving a single fuck.

The team went wild. Two of the interns jumped onto the stage beside her, shouting the lyrics like a backup act at a dive bar concert. The crowd cheered, phones up, drinks sloshing, laughter spilling out of every corner. Even Dr. Geller was clapping.

When the song ended, she stumbled off the stage to applause, half-drunk, half-dazzled, clutching the microphone like a trophy. Someone pressed another margarita into her hand, and she accepted it with the triumphant lack of caution that only came after six rounds and a bad idea.

Her gaze caught on a familiar silhouette leaning against the bar—Draco Malfoy. White shirt, sleeves rolled, jeans that had no business looking that good. No smile. Just that still, unreadable expression he wore when he was deciding whether to engage—or destroy. He hadn’t been there when she arrived. But he was here now. And he’d been watching her long enough to make it feel deliberate.

Like he’d caught her doing something illegal. Or interesting. Or both.

“Dr. Granger, you got it girl!” one of the interns yelled.

“Queen of London Bridge!” another toasted.

She bowed dramatically and took a sip of her drink, lime and sugar stinging her lips. Her heart was still racing with the beat of the music, her hair sticking to the back of her neck, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt so light and happy.

Malfoy didn’t approach—he materialised, silent, already beside her. No greeting. Just that unblinking assessment he did when he was deciding whether something.

He didn’t speak right away—just let the silence hum between them, broken only by the sound of her straw scraping the bottom of the glass.

“You hide well,” he said, voice unreadable. “I almost believed the version of you from work.”

She squinted at him, brain three seconds behind her mouth. “Wow. You really opened with psychological analysis. At a bar. During karaoke.”

Her gaze caught on him again and she tried to sound unimpressed. Dangerous game, considering how drunk she was.

“You weren’t here before,” she said. “I thought you weren’t invited.”

“I’m the head of the department,” he replied. “I’m invited to everything. I just choose not to attend… most of the time.”

She turned toward him, smile lazy and lopsided. “So what—came to supervise? Or sing?”

He gave her that faint, infuriatingly amused smirk. “If I do something, Granger, I don’t do it halfway. And it wouldn’t be Fergie.”

She laughed—loud, unfiltered, the sound surprising even herself. “That’s your loss. It was brilliant.”

He tilted his head, eyes dragging over her flushed face, her hair, the way her bare shoulder caught the dim light.

“It was… something,” he said. “I didn’t realize karaoke was a required component of neurosurgery.”

She rolled her eyes. “It’s called fun, Malfoy.”

“Right,” he said softly. “Fun. I vaguely remember that concept.”

Her gaze lingered on him longer than she meant to. There was always something about him that looked carved, precise, like he’d been built under pressure.

“You should try it sometime,” she said, swirling the straw in her drink.

“I am,” he murmured, gaze fixed on her. “I’m watching you.”

The bar noise blurred again—the neuro crew, the music, the lights—and for a moment, it was just the two of them, their reflections caught side by side in the mirror behind the bottles.

She laughed. “You’re drunk.”

“You’re shitfaced.”

“Professional term, is it?”

“Your frontal lobe left the building fifteen minutes ago.”

Then she cocked her head. “What would you sing now?”

He studied her over the rim of his glass. “Something old and nostalgic, Bowie probably”

“Bowie?” she teased. “Really? That’s your vibe?”

He blinked when she said Bowie—like she’d just insulted a sacred relic.

“Obviously.” He took a slow sip of his whisky, eyes on the stage. “You’d be surprised how well ‘Life on Mars?’ sounds at 2 a.m. in a bad pub.”

She smirked. “I’m surprised you sing at all.”

“I don’t,” he said simply.

“Not even in the shower?”

His eyes flicked toward her, slow and lethal. “You want to know what I do in the shower?”

Heat curled low in her stomach. That was not where she meant to take this—probably. “Maybe,” she said, too honest even for someone with tequila in her bloodstream.

She held his gaze and took another sip of her drink, smiling like someone who didn’t understand the meaning of danger. His mouth twitched—half challenge, half warning.

He gave a small, reluctant smile. “You’re having too much fun, Granger. I thought you were all rules and business.”

She turned to him, one brow raised. “I brewed Polyjuice Potion in the girls bathroom at twelve. You don’t know shit about me.”

He laughed—quiet, genuine, startled out of him like he hadn’t meant to. It hit her harder than it should’ve.

“Are you singing again?” He asked.

She grinned, reckless and glowing. “Mm-hm. Wanna find out?”

Before he could answer, she was already on her feet, weaving through the crowd toward the stage again. The inters, bless them, screamed her name like she was headlining Madison Square Garden.

“Okay,” she said into the mic, breathless, cheeks flushed. “This time—an American classic.”

The opening chords hit, and a wave of delighted screams rose from the neuro crew. A few people in the crowd turned toward her. Including him.

Draco Malfoy’s brows drew together in faint suspicion—right before recognition hit. She saw it land on his face. Good. Let him try to clinically process this.

Hermione lifted the mic and sang too, smug for her…

“I think I did it again,
I made you believe we’re more than just friends… oh baby—”

Malfoy buried his face in his drink. She didn’t have to hear him to know he’d just muttered something like for Merlin’s sake.

The crowd loved it—actually loved it. People started clapping, chanting along, cheering her on with absurd, chaotic enthusiasm. So she let go. She laughed into the lyrics, moving with the beat, hips rolling, hair whipping over her shoulder. She found the rhythm she hadn’t felt in years—messy, loud, and alive.

She caught Malfoy watching her again and—because some petty, wild part of her wanted to—she leaned into the chorus, eyes locked on his.

“Oops, I did it again…”

She pointed straight at him on “I’m not that innocent.”

He didn’t look away. Didn’t flinch.
He just tipped his glass in a silent toast and gave her a slow, wicked smile—like he already knew.

Someone whistled. Someone else yelled her name. Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. And yet—somewhere between the stupid choreography and the burn of neon margaritas—she was having fun. Honest, stupid fun.

She finished with an overly dramatic hair flip, earning another wave of cheers before hopping off the stage. Her pulse was racing. Her cheeks hurt from smiling. Her dress glittered faintly under the neon haze as she made her way back through the crowd.

She slid onto the stool beside Malfoy like nothing had happened.

Her heart was still thudding. She hoped to hell he couldn’t hear it.

“You’re staring,” she said, catching his look.

Before he could reply, she reached over and stole his whisky, taking a long swallow like it was hers by right. The burn hit instantly. She made a face, scrunching her nose. “How do you drink this stuff?”

“It’s meant to be sipped, not inhaled.”

She set the glass down and leaned in closer, lowering her voice just enough that the din of the room wrapped around her words. “I didn’t know you were the type to show up to karaoke night.”

“I didn’t know you were the type to grind to Fergie in front of hospital staff.”

She laughed, breathless. “I wasn’t grinding.”

“You were,” he said, eyes glinting.

She lifted her glass in mock salute. “Guess we’re both full of surprises.”

He held her gaze. “You’re a little dangerous when you stop behaving.”

Her smile softened, the playful edge thinning into something heavier. “You came to check on me, didn’t you?”

He didn’t answer right away. Just looked at her—stared—like he could already tell this night would ruin his equilibrium.

“I came to see if you were all performance,” he said. “Or if there was something real under all that control.”

She gave him a little smile “And what’s your diagnosis, Dr. Broody?”

He studied her like he was already in her head. “You’re not as controlled as you want people to think,” he murmured. “Which makes you… interesting.”

Her pulse kicked—but her mouth moved first. “Interesting isn’t a diagnosis.”

“It’s a warning,” he said.

There it was—the danger. He said it like a clinical fact, but it wasn’t. It was a line crossed. A door opened.

Her pulse rebelled. So she killed the moment before it could become real.

She covered it with a grin and tugged on his sleeve. “Come on, Malfoy. Karaoke is cheaper than therapy. Sing one with me.”

“Like what?” The corner of his mouth tipped. She’d gotten to him.

“Toxic?”

“No.”

“Ugh, you’re such a Papa Don’t Preach,” she shot back.

He actually laughed then — a real one, the kind that startled him as much as her. “Papa Don’t Preach? You’re unbelievable.”

“You are,” she shot back, slurring only slightly, “you’ve got that whole brooding moral panic thing going on.”

“Brooding moral panic,” he repeated, amused. “I’ve been called worse.”

She grinned, eyes bright and wicked. “Come on, Malfoy. One song. You can keep lurking like a vampire after.”

He shook his head, finishing the rest of his whisky. “I don’t sing, Granger.”

“Are you afraid I’m better at karaoke than you?” she teased.

He looked at her— for a moment. Something tightened, then loosened. The whisky had smoothed his edges. Not dulled them—polished them.

Then, quietly. “Fine. One song. But I choose it.”

Her eyes widened, half in victory, half in intrigue. “What are we singing then, Dr. Malfoy?”

He rose—uncoiling rather than standing—and nodded toward the stage. “Something you won’t expect.”

“Please tell me it’s not Bohemian Rhapsody.”

He gave her a look that was pure danger and charm all at once. “Worse.”

And before she could stop him, he walked up to the DJ, whispered something, and the opening chords of “You’re the One That I Want” from Grease began to play.

Hermione’s jaw dropped. “You did not—”

“Oh, I did,” he said, offering his hand. “Come on, Granger. Let’s see if you can keep up.”

Hermione froze for half a second—then broke into helpless laughter. “You absolute menace,” she said, grabbing his hand before he could even think about backing out.

He looked faintly horrified, which only encouraged her. She spun him toward the stage. Momentum and the team did the rest—microphone in his hand, Dr. Geller already filming.

“I got chills—they’re multiplyin’…  and I’m losing control,” he sang, deadpan but perfectly on pitch, his voice low and smooth enough to draw a few scandalized whoops from the audience.

Hermione howled. “You can sing!”

“Don’t make it weird,” he muttered into the mic, though he was definitely smiling.

“You already made it weird,” she shot back, sliding into her verse. “You’re the one that I want—ooh, ooh, ooh!”

She danced around him like she’d done this a hundred times—hips swinging, arms up, perfect rhythm. He didn’t stand a chance. Every time he tried to retreat, she closed the space, circling him like some bright, teasing orbit.

“You better shape up,” she sang, pointing at him.

He arched a brow. “’Cause I need a man?”

“Exactly,” she said, voice cracking from laughter.

By the time the bridge hit, they were both breathless, laughing, her hair sticking to her temples, his collar undone. When their hands found each other mid-spin, the crowd roared, and for a split second—amid the sweat, the lights, the drunken noise—it felt like gravity had rewired itself to pull them closer.

Her palm was warm against his. She shouldn’t be thinking about what his hands would feel like on her hips. And yet—there it was. A reckless thought. A dangerous one.

When the final “You’re the one that I want” rang out, they both shouted it into the mic, completely off-key. The bar erupted.

Hermione leaned against him, panting and laughing into his shoulder. “Told you it’d be fun.”

He looked down at her, voice soft and dry. “You’re dangerous, Granger.”

“Only recreationally,” she said, grinning up at him.

The DJ started another track, the residents were chanting her name again, but for a moment neither of them moved. Her fingers were still tangled in his; the heat between them had shifted from stage lights to something quieter, heavier, harder to joke away.

Draco swallowed, his voice barely audible over the next song. “You’re making it very inconvenient to pretend I don’t like you.”

 “What?”

“Nothing.” He let go of her hand. “Just… good performance, Doctor.”

He slipped away toward the bar before she could answer. She watched him go, heartbeat still drumming in time with the song that wouldn’t end.

She wasn’t drunk enough for this.

Or maybe she finally was.

Chapter Text

Chapter 11 Viral Rounds

Hermione’s head was thumping like a cursed drum. Every sound in the ward was amplified—heels on tile, paper rustling, the distant hiss of a coffee machine. Her soul was leaking out through her temples.

She looked like hell. Her reflection in the staff bathroom mirror confirmed it: mascara smudged, hair fighting gravity, skin the exact beige shade of regret. Margaritas and karaoke—a fatal combination.

Her senses had returned with cruel efficiency, bringing with them the full weight of last night’s memories: the tequila-fuelled bravado, the microphone, the screaming interns, the fact that she willingly sang in front of witnesses. She closed her eyes. She needed to leave the country. Fake her death. Assume a new identity. Something with goats and mountains. Albania was famously remote.

Instead she pressed her palms to the sink, inhaled sharply, and muttered, “Professional. Controlled. Not dying.” Then flinched at the echo of her own voice—too loud. Way too loud.

She wanted to crawl into a hole and stay there until everyone involved in last night’s humiliation died. Preferably soon.

By the time she staggered into the neurology wing, her crew and nurses were already whispering in small, conspiratorial clusters. She caught fragments as she passed: “She danced on the bar,” and “Dr. Malfoy was totally there.”

She pretended not to hear.

Pretended she didn’t remember the way he’d looked at her, or how close they’d stood when the crowd had blurred away. She shoved all of it behind the thick wall of caffeine and professional detachment. Hermione downed a mug of coffee and chased it with water because, as every responsible healer knew, alcohol caused dehydration—and also ruin, humiliation, and possibly demonic possession.

Her phone buzzed. She answered without checking the screen.

“HERMIONE JEAN GRANGER, YOU WENT TO KARAOKE WITHOUT ME!”

She winced, holding the phone away from her ear. “Don’t scream, Theodore! My brain is fragile.”

“I have one rule,” he said, voice full of theatrical betrayal. “One! No karaoke unless I’m present to witness the chaos.”

“It wasn’t chaos,” she lied.

“Oh really?” Theo drawled. “Because my interns in Paediatrics are texting me about a viral video of you grinding to Fergie.”

She closed her eyes. “There is no video.”

“There are three,” he said cheerfully. “One from the front, one from the back, and one from a very brave soul stationed directly under the stage. Legendary camera angle, might get nominated for an arts award.”

She groaned into her hands.

Theo continued, relentless. “Tell me you at least hit the high note in ‘Oops!… I Did It Again.’”

“Goodbye, Theodore.”

“Wait—was he there?”

Hermione froze. “...Who?”

Theo’s tone sharpened with smug delight. “Don’t play innocent, you sinner. Draco bloody Malfoy was at that bar, wasn’t he?”

Before she could respond, the door to the staff lounge opened.

Dr. Malfoy walked in—immaculate, violent levels of composed, holding a file in one hand and a black coffee in the other—as though last night simply did not exist in his reality. Hermione’s stomach hit the floor.

“Gotta go,” she whispered into the phone.

Theo’s voice shrieked, triumphant: “Tell Daddy Karaoke I said hi—”

She hung up.

Malfoy passed her in the hall, calm as ever, a ghost of amusement in his eyes.

“Morning, Granger.”

She nodded back, pretending her pulse hadn’t spiked. Maybe he really had forgotten. Maybe he hadn’t. Either way—she was doomed.

He handed her a file without a flicker of recognition. “How’s your head?”

She blinked, matching his calm. “Fine. Why?”

“No reason.” The corner of his mouth threatened treason. “You were very… musical. Tragic taste, admirable commitment.”

Hermione went crimson.

She opened her mouth, but he was already walking away, tossing over his shoulder, “Next time, we’re doing Bowie.”

She turned—and nearly dropped her chart.

“No,” she whispered, horror dawning.

Draco blinked, startled, then laughed—quiet, amused, infuriatingly composed.

“Oh, Merlin, Godric, Morgana—Obliviate that,” she muttered, covering her face. “Just—wipe it from existence.”

He tilted his head, eyes gleaming. “I could try, but it was rather memorable.”

“You sang Grease with me, Malfoy!”

“You made a compelling argument.”

“I danced around you like a maniac.”

“You did,” he said, voice calm, deliberate. “Remarkably well, actually.”

She gaped. “You’re enjoying this.”

“Immensely.” He turned toward his office. “See you at the staff meeting, Granger. Take a hangover potion and stay away from patients; I’m not interested in a lawsuit.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I’m on lab duty today.”

“Good. Try not to blow anything up—I like this building.”

The door closed behind him. She let out a strangled sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a scream.

Her mobile buzzed again.

Theo: Tell me he sang. Please tell me he sang.
Hermione: We’re never speaking of this again.
Theo: He sang, didn’t he?

 “Next time, I’m drinking water.”

buzz.

Theo: Found this video of you and Malfoy. So, you are shagging right?

Hermione froze mid-step in the hallway. The blood drained from her face. She opened the link and immediately regretted it.

There she was—hair wild, cheeks flushed, absolutely screaming “You’re the One That I Want” into a microphone. And there he was, right beside her, smirking like sin incarnate, perfectly unbothered while she danced around him like it was a West End audition.

The camera panned to interns chanting “Dr. G and Dr. M!” like it was a ship name.

She groaned aloud.

Hermione: We’re never speaking of this again.
Theo: Oh, we are. For the rest of our lives.
Hermione: I’m dying of embarrassment.
Theo: You say that now, but you’re trending on MedTok.
Hermione: That’s not a thing.
Theo: It is. Also… he smiled at you.
Hermione: Goodbye, Theodore.
Theo: You smiled back.

She shoved her phone into her pocket, mortified beyond reason—and nearly collided with the man himself.

Draco caught her elbow to steady her. “Careful, Granger.”

She looked up, caught off-guard by the warmth in his eyes. “Right. Sorry. Busy morning.”

A ghost of a smile tugged. “So I hear.”

She shook her hair. “Don’t.”

He let her go, disappearing into his office, coffee in hand, maddeningly calm.

“Obliviate me twice,” she muttered.

She was doing everything in her power to look composed. Hair tied up, white coat crisp, coffee in hand like a shield. Inside, however, her soul was curled in a foetal position, screaming delete the internet. Whispers followed her down the hall to the lab. Someone hummed “Oops!… I Did It Again” as she passed radiology. Someone else gave her a thumbs-up.

She refused to make eye contact with anyone.

She hid in the lab until lunchtime, buried behind vials and notes and the blessed protection of sterile silence. No interns. No gossip. No Malfoy. Just her, caffeine, and the slow, dignified recovery of her will to live.

By noon, she risked the cafeteria. Coffee for survival. Chips — French fries —  for emotional support. She sat alone at a corner table and pretended her life was not actively on fire.

Geller dropped into the seat beside her with the energy of a man who lived for other people’s humiliation.

“Oh, look! Our favourite fellow has graced the cafeteria with her presence,” he announced loudly enough to draw attention from nearby tables. “You can move, Granger. Didn’t think you’d be able to after that performance.”

Hermione stared at him in horror. The cafeteria speaker played a cheerful pop song. Birds probably sang somewhere outside. Life went on. And she deeply wished it wouldn’t.

A shadow fell over their table. Tall, composed, smug.

Draco Malfoy stood there holding a tray like he owned gravity. “Dr. Granger.”

Her soul died a silent, violent death.

They ended up eating together. Or rather—Hermione tried to become invisible while Geller refused to let her die quietly, and Malfoy conducted lunch like a diplomatic summit. He was infuriatingly composed. Perfect posture. Crisp shirt. Calm expression. He ate like a man with no hangover, no shame, and no humiliating karaoke memories haunting him.

She wanted to hex him square in the jaw.

Geller, of course, was teasing relentless.

“So,” he said, pointing a fry at Malfoy, “were you aware our fellow here is secretly a pop star?”

Malfoy didn’t even blink. “I was made aware.”

“That’s it?” Geller asked, scandalised. “No commentary? No tales about how she bewitched us via Fergie?”

Hermione strangled her napkin.

Malfoy calmly sipped his coffee. “If your definition of ‘bewitched’ includes off-key shrieking and questionable motor coordination, then yes.”

Her mouth fell open. “Excuse me?”

Geller cackled.

Malfoy didn’t look at her. “You’re excused. Permanently, if there’s another karaoke night.”

Hermione felt heat rush up her neck. “For your information, I hit every note.”

“Every wrong note,” he corrected smoothly.

Geller practically clapped.

Hermione stabbed a fry. “You didn’t even dance.”

“I didn’t need to.”

“Because you were busy smirking.”

“Observing,” he corrected. “There’s a difference.”

She glared. He took another unbothered bite of food. Geller sat back, grinning like this was the best entertainment he’d had since the last departmental fire.

The tension stretched. It wasn’t romantic tension. It was homicide-adjacent tension.

Hermione stabbed her fries.

Malfoy finally glanced up at her, that infuriating ghost of a smirk tugging at his mouth. He was enjoying this. She could tell. She could feel it.

She kicked him under the table.

He didn’t even flinch.

Psychopath.

Geller beamed. “Relax, Granger, karaoke night is a rite of passage. Everyone has at least one career-ending video on the internet.”

“I do not,” she said.

“You do now.” He sipped his iced tea, unbothered. “Could be worse. Mine was three years ago—I sang Imagine, cried on stage, and tried to unionise the entire surgical department.”

Hermione blinked. “You cried to Lennon?”

“I wept,” Geller said with pride. “Collapsed emotionally. Proposed universal healthcare. It was a moment.”

A sharp sound escaped Draco. An actual laugh—low, brief, genuine before he killed it with a throat clear like he resented having felt joy.

Geller pointed triumphantly. “See? Even Dr. Malfoy laughs.”

The conversation shifted to patient charts and upcoming procedures, but the damage was done. The rest of lunch passed with her plotting murder, Geller instigating war, and Malfoy radiating smug composure like a weapon.

The worst part?

The bastard never stopped looking amused.

She stepped into his office before the end of her shift, knocking once before letting herself in. Malfoy didn’t look up—just kept writing something in a file with surgical precision.

“I think I’m going home now,” she said bluntly.

That made him glance up. “Why?”

She crossed her arms. “Because every time I try to let my hair down—metaphorically or literally—I apparently leave a trail of gossip and digital humiliation behind me.”

His brow creased. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means I’m done being conscious today. May I go?”

He set his pen down. “Did something happen?”

Hermione laughed without humour. “Do you know something called MedTok?”

“Yes.”

“We’re viral.”

“I know.”

She blinked. “You know?”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “I was tagged.”

“Tagged?” she repeated, horrified. “Who tagged you—actually no, don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. I’m going to go home, crawl into a hole, and wait for death.”

She turned toward the door.

“Or,” he said casually, “you could stay and run a simulation with these parameters.” He slid a file across his desk toward her. “Because I have our first subject for a dual procedure.”

She froze. Then slowly, slowly turned around.

Her eyes dropped to the file. Neural Reintegration Candidate – Class Three Trauma. Legilimency-assisted restoration approved pending ethics clearance.

Her pulse fired awake.

“You’re pissing me,” she whispered, opening the file with trembling fingers.

“Nope,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “Enjoy, Granger.”

She skimmed the data—injury notes, memory collapse pattern, trauma lattice scans. It was real. It was happening. Their theoretical work was moving into practice.

Her hangover vanished. Her humiliation evaporated. Her brain snapped into focus like a blade sliding into place.

She looked up, breath catching with something dangerously close to joy. “This—this could work. If we stabilise the neural lattice here—”

“And bind meaning before procedural extraction,” he said, nodding. “I know.”

She grinned. Real, bright, alive. “I’ll get my notes—I’ll be in the lab.”

She rushed out of his office, file in hand, energy blazing.

The door swung toward its frame behind her, and just before it clicked shut she heard his voice—low, not meant for an audience, more thought than speech. “There she goes—bloody hurricane.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 12 Do No Harm (Except When You Must)

The project was moving at a speed that shouldn’t exist—three months doing the work six years refused to. The whiteboard glowed with pale-gold runes: a stabilising lattice for long-term memory recovery. She’d built it like a surgery—slow, precise, unforgiving.

Draco stood beside her, reading. If everything held, they’d attempt their first dual-channel procedure: her lattice to open archived pathways; his Legilimency to bind memory back to feeling. His wand traced neat sigils over her runes. Precision like that shouldn’t be attractive. She refused to let it be.

“If we’re opening archived pathways and binding latent structures,” he said, sketching a clean sigil spine, “we have to stress-test the lattice charm against dual-channel feedback.”

He made it sound clinical. The truth was simpler—and far messier.

Hermione’s lattice charm didn’t skim surface thoughts; it upended the shelves. Obliviation, long-term Imperius, implanted memories, even dementia—every cognitive wound left a mark. The lattice didn’t distinguish between them. It dragged everything up at once, real and false tangled together. Chaos by design.

That was where Legilimency came in. Not as a weapon—as a scalpel. Only a Legilimens could dive into the wreckage, separate truth from invention, and stitch each memory back to the feeling that made it matter. Without that emotional anchor, memories slipped, faded, or collapsed into psychosis.

It was like building a puzzle—if the puzzle were someone’s entire life, half the pieces were lies, and the whole thing exploded if you put one piece in the wrong place.

Easy.
Peasy.

“It holds,” Hermione said, not looking up from the patient file she’d been annotating. Her notes were neat. Her fingernails were short.

“We haven’t stress-tested.”

“It holds,” she repeated, too evenly.

Silence sharpened. He turned. She felt it before she saw it—the attention, the narrowing, the calculation.

“How do you know?” he asked.

She capped her pen. “Because it does.”

“Granger.”

She ignored him, flipping the page like he wasn’t even there.

His voice dropped. “Tell me you didn’t run an unapproved prototype on a patient.”

She finally looked up—slow, unimpressed. “Don’t be an idiot.”

He reached for the folder. She slapped his hand away.  “Of course I didn’t.

“So what did you do?”

Hermione set the file aside. “I tested it.”

“On—what? A simulation? A neural replica?” His tone was scalpel-clean. Interrogation mode on.

Her eyes moved once, a tiny betrayal of emotion. “I tested it.”

“Define tested.” He stepped closer.

Silence stretched. Too long. Too telling.

Her eyes flicked away—just for a second. “On myself.”

The room went quiet. Monitors ticked. His expression didn’t change, but something behind his eyes did, like a blade slotting home.

The neural lattice wasn’t a diagnostic charm—it dismantled the mind. It forced the brain into a theta state, the borderland between memory and dream, where identity unravels. Archived memories surface raw. Boundaries collapse. Without an anchor, the self can drift—fragment—fail to come back.
No one ran it without a monitor. No one ran it alone.
Except her.

“You tested it on yourself,” he repeated like he eared wrong. “Tell me you didn’t do it alone.”

“I had a reconnection ward set to trigger me back after twenty minutes—”

“Granger.”

“It was years ago,” she snapped. “It’s not a big deal.”

He stared at her like she’d said gravity was optional.

“Not a—do you hear yourself? You could have scrambled your neural baseline—permanently. Do you understand that? You could have severed autobiographical continuity, erased entire decades—”

“I didn’t.”

“—or come back without stabilising affect. No emotional cohesion, no anchor to self. People don’t survive that, Granger—they drift until they stop responding. Best case, you lose time. Worst case? They feed you through a tube and call it a coma.”

“Malfoy,” she snapped. “I said I didn’t.”

Their gazes locked; neither blinked. Her pulse sat high in her throat, infuriating and obvious. She laced her fingers together so her hands wouldn’t show it.

“So?” he said tightly. “What did you see?”

“That’s private,” she said. “The only thing that concerns you is that the lattice charm works. It opens archived cognition, it’s attracted to trauma patterns, and it primes the emotional network for Legilimency to reconnect pathways. That’s what you needed. Now you have it.”

He watched her with scalpel patience. “You talk like someone bargaining with a loaded wand.”

“You wanted results. You have results.”

“That’s not why you’re here.”

She lifted her chin. “Excuse me?”

“You’re desperate,” he said. Quiet. Precise. A blade slipped between ribs. “That’s why you came to me.”

A laugh broke out of her—too quick, too sharp. “I came for a fellowship.”

“Right,” he said. “And I’m the Queen of England.”

She held his gaze until her voice steadied. “Okay, Your Majesty”

He didn’t laughed. “You don’t test on yourself unless you’re running from something. Tell me what you’re trying to fix.”

“I’m trying to help people.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“It’s the only one you’re getting.”

The silence stretched. Thin glass underfoot, waiting to crack.

“You’re lying. And I let you—because I thought you’d trust me by now…  before I had to force this. But fine. Let’s talk about Subject JD-34 and Subject CD-35.”

Her stomach dropped.

He spoke before she could build a wall. “Because as far as I’m aware, this research is for wizards. Those subjects are Muggles.”

“How do you know about that?”

“I read your logs.”

“You—”

“You’re deflecting.” He folded his arms. “Try again. Why are you experimenting on Muggles?”

Her pulse stumbled. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I know enough. I know you’re violating at least six international ethics clauses. I know you anonymised the data but hard-coded initials. I know JD and CD were both subjected to early-stage lattice charm exposure—without magical support, without access to cognitive warding, without informed consent—”

“That’s not what happened.”

“Then explain it.”

She didn’t move. Couldn’t move. The room felt too small. Too exposed. Too close to a line she had sworn never to cross again.

He took a step closer. Not angry now—calm. Surgical.

“Spill the truth, Granger. Or I’m out.”

She met his eyes. And for the first time since arriving in this hospital, she felt real fear—because he wasn’t bluffing. He would walk if she didn’t. He would take the lattice and the work and the promise she had built out of penance, and he would leave. She couldn’t afford that. She couldn’t afford anything.

“We said no lies.”

Her heartbeat roared in her ears. “Fine,” she said, voice tight. “I’ll tell you. But you’re going to tell me something first.”

His eyes narrowed. “What.”

“How you became a Legilimens.”

“I’m not the one withholding information and doing experimental magic on myself,” he said. “So wrong move.”

Her stare didn’t flinch. “I’m saying a truth for a truth. I was there when you testified. You never said—”

“Don’t deflect,” he snapped. “We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about the Muggles. Now.”

“No.”

His expression didn’t break—it detonated. “No?”

“That’s what I said.”

He stepped in so fast the temperature seemed to drop.

“You didn’t misfile a report. You didn’t make a mistake. You hid people in your research and rewrote the logs. And you thought I wouldn’t see it. That’s what you think of me.” He stepped in so fast she felt the air shift. “You think you can walk into my lab with altered logs and expect me to just sign off because you are the golden girl that could do whatever you want?  Because of your brilliant theory? You think I’m that easy to manipulate?”

Her spine straightened. “I’m not manipulating you.”

“You’re lying to me.”

“I am protecting classified data.”

“Bullshit.” His voice turned lethal. “There are two names in your subject list that don’t belong in any study approved by this hospital. So I’ll ask you one more time nicely—who are JD #34 and CD #35?”

“No,” she said again, and this time it sounded like steel. “You don’t get to demand answers you won’t give. You want the truth? Then give one first. How did you become a Legilimens?”

His breath left him in a sharp exhale. Not surprise—rage. “You don’t get to bring that up like leverage.”

“Truth for a truth,” she repeated.

“You are not negotiating with me.”

“Then leave.”

His jaw locked. For a moment he looked like he might rip the room apart with raw magic alone. Instead, he gave her a smile that wasn’t a smile at all.

“Fucking brilliant,” he muttered.

He turned, grabbed his coat, and walked out. Just fury. The door slammed hard enough to rattle the ward lines.

Hermione didn’t move. The silence he left behind wasn’t empty—it rang, like an alarm.

“Great, Hermione. Just great” she muttered, dragging both hands through her hair until it hurt. The monitor lights blinked back at her, indifferent. Clinical. Unmoved by human stupidity.

She exhaled, long and shaky.

Fine. Let him walk. He hadn’t taken his wand. Or his bag. Or his notes. Which meant he’d be back. Eventually. Probably to shout some more. Fantastic.

She should have left it at that—return to the data, to logic, to clean problems with measurable outcomes.

But instead she found herself moving. Out of the lab. Down the corridor. Searching for him before she could justify why. He wasn’t in his office. Or the nurses’ station. Or the staff lounge. The on-call room was empty too—bed unslept in, lights off. Her pulse ticked faster, annoying in its insistence.

She hesitated only a second before pressing the lift button.

If she were Draco Malfoy—furious, cornered, hiding teeth with sarcasm and precision—where would she go?

The answer came before she admitted it to herself.

Up.

She hit the button for the rooftop.

A hunch, she told herself. Just a hunch.

But the truth landed, quiet and undeniable: she knew him well enough now to find him.

And that terrified her more than the fight.

The cold night slapped her cheeks awake as she pushed open the door.

He was there. Leaning against the railing, looking over the city like he wanted to set it on fire with his mind alone. Rigid shoulders, jaw clenched, breathing too evenly to be calm.

She hesitated, then walked toward him.

He didn’t turn. Didn’t pretend not to know she was there. His voice came like controlled poison.

“What do you want?”

She stopped a few meters back. Close enough to be heard. Far enough to give him room to strike.

“I’m not here to fight,” she said carefully.

“I’m out,” he said, eyes still on the skyline. “Find someone else to help you break the world.”

She swallowed the instinctive burn in her chest. “You don’t get to say that after walking away in the middle of a conversation.”

“That wasn’t a conversation,” he said. “That was you dragging me blindfolded into a maze and acting shocked I didn’t enjoy it.”

“You’re being dramatic.”

“I’m being cautious,” he shot back. “Because I know what happens when someone plays fuckng god with a human mind and says trust me. I’ve lived that story. I’m not living it again.”

She stepped forward. Just one step. “You think I’m dangerous.”

He finally looked at her. The city’s light cut across his eyes like a blade. “I think you’re lying. And people who lie always have a body buried somewhere.”

She held his gaze. “Then ask me again.”

He shook his head. “No. You had your chance. And you made it a transaction—truth for truth. That told me everything I needed to know.”

His voice didn’t rise. He didn’t shout. That was worse.

She folded her arms. “I’m not the enemy here.”

“Then prove it.”

“Give me a reason to.”

“I did,” he said. “I showed up. I worked. I trusted you— probably more than I should have.”

Wind whipped between them, sharp and cold. Hermione stared at him, chest tight.

“Malfoy—”

“No,” he said. “Either you tell me who those subjects are, or we’re done. Tonight.”

“I… I find… it hard to talk about,” she said. And dammit—it was true.

He turned on her like a storm breaking. “So what?” he snapped. “You find something hard to tell me, and your brilliant solution is to throw shit in my face so I know how you feel?”

“That’s not—”

“What are you, twelve?” He didn’t raise his voice; he didn’t need to. “You have a brilliant mind and you’re choosing grunts and evasion? Try language, Granger.”

Her jaw clenched. “Don’t—”

“No,” he bit out. “You don’t get to play the wounded genius now. You pushed me. You backed me into a corner and used something you knew would hit. That wasn’t strategy. That wasn’t research integrity or some noble quest for truth. That was punishment.”

She flinched. “I didn’t—”

“You knew,” he said, stepping forward, eyes burning. “You knew exactly what you were doing the second you said the word testify. You went straight for the one thing you thought could shut me up. You wanted me defensive. And congratulations—it worked.”

Her breath caught, but he wasn’t done.

“You want to know what I hate?” he said quietly—viciously. “You already know how I became a Legilimens. Everyone does. It’s on record. It’s in the fucking newspapers. You didn’t ask because you wanted to know. You asked to hurt me.”

“I didn’t—”

“Don’t lie to me,” he said, voice deadly calm now. “You used my past to buy time. You used it to dodge a question. And if that’s how you work—if that’s who you are —then we are done here.”

He looked at her one more time.

“This is why I didn’t want you here. Because I knew, one day, you’d use what you know about me to break me.”

Then he stepped back like he finally meant to walk away for good.

She could taste something metallic in her mouth. Panic, maybe. Shame. All.

“Malfoy—”

“What,” he snapped.

“I wasn’t trying to hurt you.”

“Then what the fuck were you doing?”

She forced herself not to look away. “Surviving.”

She folded her arms tight over her ribs. She didn’t talk about this. Ever. Theo was the only one who knew. Not Harry. Not Ron. No one.

And now he was going to drag it out of her.

“Well?” he said. “Who are they, Granger.”

Her nails dug into her arms, she felt cornered, tired, angry. “JD and CD are my parents.”

He turned sharply. “What?”

“My parents,” she snapped, shaking already. “Jean and Charles Doe.”

His stare bored into her. “What happened to them?”

She didn’t answer.

“Don’t lie to me again.”

“I’m not lying.”

“Then answer the question.”

Silence stretched. She felt it—pressure building like a storm against glass. Her throat closed. She hated this. Hated that he was looking at her like he had the right to push.

She forced the words out like broken bone. “I obliviated them.”

He stared.

“I was trying to protect them.”

“You erased them.”

“I said I was protecting them!”

“You erased their minds… that’s illegal. It’s a Class A Memory Violation.”

“YES!” she screamed, shaking. “YES, I DID IT! ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?”

He stepped closer, furious. “You wiped your parents and buried it in falsified research logs—”

“I saved their lives!”

“You played god—”

“I SAVED THEIR LIVES!”

Her voice cracked, exposed and furious. “Do you think I wanted to do that? Do you think I wanted to tell you that I broke the only two people who ever loved me without condition? Do you think that was fun for me, Malfoy? Did you enjoy digging until you hit blood?”

Her chest was heaving now. Tears burned but she refused them. Rage held them back—for a moment.

She choked on a sob. “They refused to leave! They said they wouldn’t abandon me, they said I was still their child—” She pressed a fist to her mouth, a broken sound escaping. “They were right. I was a child. And I made a child’s decision.” Her shoulders trembled. “I wiped myself out of their lives. I gave them fake memories—new friends—new history. They took Crooks and moved to Sydney. They opened another dental practice.” Her lips shook so hard she could barely speak. “They were happy.”

The word happy fell apart in her mouth.

He didn’t move. Just stare at her. And that—merlin—that made it worse.

“I missed them,” she whispered. “Every day. Every minute. I thought—if I could fix it—if I could bring them back—maybe I didn’t have to live with what I’d done.” Tears ran freely now, raw and silent. “I hate myself for that. For wanting them back. For being so selfish I tried to undo it.”

She looked at him through blurred vision. “I triggered the lattice. I lost control. The two narratives slammed together. They screamed—merlin—they screamed so loud I thought—I thought—” Her breath hitched violently. “I broke them. I broke their minds. I trapped them between two lives and now they don’t know who they are.”

She pause.

“They are alive, if you can call that living” She stopped fighting the tears. They shook out of her in waves. “They’re in a psych ward in London. They don’t know why they are hurt. They don’t know why they cry. They don’t know if they ate or if they like each other.  They don’t know me.” She let out a sound halfway between a sob and a laugh. “They think I’m their nurse. They smile at me like I’m kind.”

She hugged herself tighter and swallowed, eyes burning. “Last time I was in London, my father asked me if I thought his daughter would visit.”

Draco went still.

“Sometimes that happens,” she said, voice shaking. “Sometimes… a piece of them remembers they had a daughter once. But it never lasts. They expect someone else. Someone who doesn’t exist anymore.” Her breath broke. “They don’t know the girl they’re waiting for is sitting right in front of them.”

She dragged a trembling hand across her face. “And I can’t even correct them. Because it would be cruel to tell them the truth. Cruel to make them grieve for me all over again.”

She covered her face, ashamed of the way her hands shook. “I did that. I did that. And I will never forgive myself.”

When she finally looked back at him—she wasn’t fierce. Or brilliant. Or composed. She was wrecked.

“This isn’t theory,” she whispered. “This isn’t ambition. This isn’t research. This is punishment. This is the price. If I don’t finish my work, if I don’t find a way to untangle those narratives—my parents die inside a mind that doesn’t belong to them. So yes—I tested the lattice. On myself. Alone. Because I deserve every risk it carries… because I am desperate”

She swallowed, voice gone raw. “So now you know.”

She waited—for disgust. For judgment. For him to finally walk away.

She didn’t realize she was shaking until breathing hurt. She didn’t expect him to move.

But he did.

He closed the distance between them and pulled her into him with a rough, unpracticed motion—like instinct had gotten there before thought. It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t even steady. His arms wrapped around her with the hesitance of someone who had never been taught how to do this. Like comfort was a foreign language he refused to pronounce correctly.

He held her anyway.

Her fists stayed trapped between them, shaking against his chest. He didn’t let go.
No words. No consolation. Just heat. Pressure. A brutal, human anchor against the collapsing night.
He smelled like winter air and something that should never have felt safe. But it did. 

She didn’t hug him back—her arms were trapped against his chest, fingers curled in nothing.

Still, he held on. He stayed.

His voice was rough, like gravel fighting to stay steady, arms still around her. "I should hate you for lying.”

She nodded, shaking. “I know.”

“I should walk.”

“I know.”

He didn’t let go, but he pulled back to look at her properly—as though the pieces of her had rearranged into something he finally understood. Not the version in control. The version in ruins. “I don’t.”

Her breath stilled. “Why?”

His anger didn’t disappear—but something in it shifted, turned inward. “Because I know what it’s like.”

She looked up. “To what? Destroy people you love?”

He met her eyes. “No. To live with it.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 13 Breach of Protocol.

He changed with her—not dramatically, not in some cinematic burst of revelation—but in a way she could feel. Subtle, deliberate, like he had finally located the missing piece of a puzzle and quietly set it in place. And she could breathe again. A breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding for years. Relief, maybe. Or the faintest suggestion of safety.

After the rooftop, neither of them spoke about it. They never said we should talk or what happened back there or are you all right. Maybe rooftops weren’t meant for emotional autopsies. The wind made people defensive. So did honesty. She cried like a child, he held her until the shaking stopped, and then—without a single word more—they went back to work. That was the thing about them: resolve first, disaster later.

They spoke easily now, but only about medicine. Procedures. Patients. Research. Their language was clinical; scalpel-clean. They didn’t ask personal questions, didn’t mention parents or past lives or sins buried in memory. They respected the rules they never wrote aloud. At the hospital, people still called them the Dream Team—two brilliant minds moving like a single organism in the operating theatre. She didn’t correct anyone. It was easier that way.

But beneath it—beneath the professional surface—there was a quiet, loaded something. It lived in the pause before he answered her. In the way his gaze held hers half a second too long. In the knowledge that he now carried a piece of her she had never given to anyone. The part threaded with fear.

She kept waiting for the fallout. For him to turn, to threaten her, report her—Ethics Board, Ministry, it didn’t matter. Obliviation outside Ministry sanction was a felony. She had committed it on blood kin. He had every reason to bury her with that knowledge—legally, professionally, morally.

He never did.

Still, she waited.

She was on call that night, covering for Geller. Her rotation didn’t even require on-calls, but she didn’t mind. It wasn’t like she had weekend plans or a social life to protect. Friends? Please. Her only real friend was in London.

She was in the staff lounge, head in a fridge full of questionable food items, trying to determine which sandwich looked least likely to induce death, when she saw a light still on down the hall. His office.

Of course.

She knocked once and pushed the door open a crack. “What are you still doing here? You’re a workaholic, you know.”

He looked up from whatever he was reading. “What are you doing here?”

“Covering for Geller. He had… a birthday? Or a camping trip? Something involving something like that…. I stopped listening.” She leaned against the doorframe. “Anyway, I’m starving. Want to split a pizza?”

They did.

They sat in his office with two paper plates and a greasy American pizza that, to Hermione’s dismay, seemed to be drowning in ketchup. Malfoy didn’t even flinch—just folded his slice like a New Yorker and bit in.

“Why do they put ketchup in the sauce?” Hermione muttered, inspecting a slice like it might attack her.

“It’s tomato,” Malfoy said.

“It is absolutely ketchup... your taste buds are already dead”

He shrugged. “You get used to it.”

She didn’t believe that for a second, but she ate anyway. Hunger won over principle.

He wiped his thumb on a napkin and looked at her. “Can I ask you something?”

Her pulse flickered. Dangerous question territory. “Yeah. Go on.”

“Why didn’t you ask the Ministry for help with… you know.” His tone didn’t change, but she felt the shift. The subject. The one stitched into their silence since the rooftop. “Why hide it at all? You’re their golden girl, aren’t you?”

Hermione stared at him—then laughed. Actually laughed. “You’ve been away from England too long if you think that.”

He frowned. “What does that mean?”

“The Minister hates me. The Wizengamot would set themselves on fire before they ever helped me.”

“Why?”

She looked at him. He looked back, patient. Waiting.

She sighed. “They don’t like my voice. Or my ideas. Or the fact that I don’t shut up when they tell me to.”

“Why?”

“Are you five?”

He gave a half-shrug that somehow counted as a yes.

Hermione picked at the crust, thinking. “Because I make noise. Because I don’t play the game. I called them out on their corruption, their hypocrisy—internationally, not just at home. I threw Amnesty reports at their faces when they tried to keep Dementors in Azkaban. They wanted me to ‘soften the language’ and ‘be reasonable.’ But there is nothing reasonable about creatures that eat souls being used as prison guards. I don’t care what crimes someone committed—our justice system cannot be built on torture. Prison is supposed to be rehabilitation, not state-sanctioned psychological execution.”

She heard it then—the edge in her voice. Too sharp. The voice Ron hated. Lecturing again, Hermione, he would say. Always lecturing.

She drew a slow breath, reached for another slice of pizza, and pretended she hadn’t just revealed the part of herself most people found inconvenient.

“The Prophet called me unhinged,” she added dryly. “Said I was ‘emotionally compromised’ and ‘hostile to Ministry stability.’ I called it moral consistency.” She took a breath. “Harry backed me. He knows exactly what happens when the Ministry decides someone is guilty before they’re even given a trial. Sirius spent twelve years in Azkaban for a crime he didn’t commit—no hearing, no defense, just a Dementor’s kiss waiting at the end. If that’s our definition of justice, then yes—consider me unhinged.”

He studied her for a moment—careful, measuring. “So you made enemies.”

“No,” she said flatly. “I made honest statements. They made enemies.”

She took a sip of her drink.

“Wizards are still living in the medieval era when it comes to law and human rights—it’s delirious. And the cherry on top? The Underage Protection Act.”

“You did that?” he asked, stunned.

“I wrote it with the Magical U.N. and forced it through every international channel I could. I got UNICEF and half a dozen global organisations to sign it so the Ministry couldn’t ignore it. Children are not soldiers—not legally, not ethically. But during the war… both sides used us anyway. Hogwarts became a battlefield. We were under eighteen, all of us, still students—child soldiers by every international definition. So yes, I made it law that the children of Death Eaters couldn’t be punished for their parents’ crimes. Guilt isn’t hereditary, and trauma isn’t criminal. Magical law needed to say that—officially.”

Malfoy’s expression flickered, something fragile breaking through the polished surface. “You’re telling me you’re the reason I walk free?”

“I’m saying the law is,” she corrected. “I just wrote it”

But the words felt heavier than she meant them to. Because she remembered the nights drafting that clause—faces of their classmates hovering like ghosts in the margins. Some had scars, some had graves, and some—like him—had been left standing with nothing but hunted eyes and silence.

“There are enough studies on coercion and psychological manipulation to understand exactly how Voldemort built loyalty. Fear. Isolation. Threats. Torture. That isn’t free will—it’s survival. But the Ministry didn’t care. They wanted blood. They wanted to make an example out of anyone with the wrong last name. Bastards.”

Her jaw tightened. “So yes, I made it law that children can’t be tried for the crimes of adults. It’s common sense. It shouldn’t have taken a war and an international legal battle to put that into writing—but it did.”

“So that’s why you left?” he asked.

Hermione shook her head. “No.”

It came out too fast, too defensive. She stared down at her slice of pizza, picking at the crust like it might buy her time.

“I didn’t leave because of them,” she said. “I left because—” Her throat tightened. She hated when truth felt like weakness. “I couldn’t breathe anymore.”

She didn’t look at him as she spoke.

“They stalled my promotion. Gave my position to someone who thought ethics was a suggestion. My research hit a wall, funding got slashed, and every time I opened my mouth I was told I was ‘too ideological’ or ‘too emotional’ or ‘too loud.’” She huffed a humorless breath. “They wanted me grateful for being tolerated. I don’t do tolerance.”

She shrugged, eyes still fixed on her hands. “Then this fellowship opened. It felt like… a door. One last door before giving up. So I took it. I didn’t think, I didn’t plan—I just ran toward something that wasn’t London.”

Her voice dropped, quieter now. “I don’t belong there anymore. England doesn’t want me. And I’m not sure New York does either. Maybe I don’t belong anywhere now.”

She had said too much. She could feel it—the recoil under her skin, that old instinct to seal herself shut before someone used her softness against her. Vulnerability was leverage. And she had just handed him a loaded weapon and trusted him not to fire.

She finally glanced at him, expecting judgment—condescension, maybe. Instead, she found him watching her with something far more dangerous.

Understanding.

He didn’t speak right away. For a moment she thought he wouldn’t answer at all—that he’d let the silence float there, clinical and sterile, until it died between them like everything personal always did.

But then he said, quietly, “I didn’t come here to belong either.”

He didn’t look at her as he spoke.

“As soon as I was cleared for international travel, I left England. Packed a bag and vanished before the papers could write another think piece about whether I should be allowed to buy groceries.” His voice was flat, almost bored, but the truth in it wasn’t. “I went to Germany first. Thought anonymity would feel like freedom. It didn’t. It felt like drowning in a room where no one even noticed you existed.”

Hermione watched him, still.

“I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t have a plan. I just… didn’t want to be there anymore.” He paused. “When the vaults were finally released, I enrolled at university. Worked. Studied. Built something that was mine, not my father’s or my past’s.” His lip curled slightly. “I kept my head down. Here, no one knew shit. They’d heard vague rumours about ‘fanatics in Britain,’ but they didn’t know the names. Didn’t know mine. And I didn’t want them to find out who I was.”

He glanced at her then, eyes sharp, tired. “I didn’t run because of guilt or exile. I ran because I wanted a life. And England made it very clear I wasn’t allowed to have one there.”

He picked up his pizza again. “And then you showed up.”

“Yeah,” she said, reaching for her drink. “And you almost died choking on a sandwich.”

He choked a laugh. “I did not.”

“You turned purple.”

“I did not turn purple.”

“You made this sound—” she recreated it, a horrible strangled gasp.

His mouth opened. Closed. He stared at her like she had committed blasphemy.

Then—he laughed.

Not a small exhale. Not that smug huff he used when amused by his own superiority. A real laugh, low and warm and startled out of him against his will. He glanced away like he regretted letting it escape. Hermione’s heart pulled tight.

“Well, forgive me. One moment I was eating in peace, the next you materialised in my hospital like some cosmic punishment. I thought I’d actually died. That you were about to walk in, tell everyone what a piece of shit I was, and I’d have to start from zero all over again.”

Hermione stared at him. “Why the hell would I do that?”

He gave a short, bitter laugh. “Because it’s what I would’ve done.”

“Well, congratulations,” she said dryly. “You’re projecting. I didn’t come here to punish you.”

“No?” His tone was sceptical.

“I wasn’t exactly thrilled to see you either,” she shot back. “You were a total bastard to me.”

He didn’t flinch. Which was annoying.

“Still am sometimes,” he said.

“At least you’re self-aware.”

“At least you’re consistent.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Meaning?”

“Meaning you treated me like a contagion the second you saw me. Don’t act like you didn’t.”

“I treated you like a colleague I didn’t want,” she said. “Which, newsflash, I didn’t.”

“And yet here you are... you did karaoke with me and dance like you liked me”

“Oh, shut up and eat your chemical pizza.”

For a moment, neither of them spoke. And then—inevitably—he asked another question.

Because he always did.

“Why the law?” he asked suddenly. “The under-eighteen law. Why fight for that one?”

She didn’t have to think about it. “Because it was fair, Malfoy. Everyone makes mistakes when they are desperate.”

He shook his head, a faint disbelieving smile tugging at his mouth. “You are something else, Granger. Every time I think I’ve got you figured out, you throw another bomb at me.”

“I didn’t fight that law for you,” she said.

“I know.”

“But,” she continued, before she could stop herself, “I remembered how you looked.”

That made him pause.

“The last year we were at Hogwarts. And after. In—” she swallowed “—in the Manor.” Her voice stayed steady, but it cost her. “You didn’t look like a villain. You looked like a prisoner.”

He didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Didn’t blink. Just stared at her like she had reached across the table and pressed her fingers to a bruise he had spent years pretending was gone.

She went on, softly, “Children pay for what adults choose. They always do. That law wasn’t about you, Malfoy. But yes—I thought of you when I wrote it. Because someone had to.”

He exhaled, long and slow. Almost a laugh, almost a curse. “You’re driving me insane.”

He looked like he was duelling something inside his own head—every muscle tight, every nerve pulled taut. Something broke across his face, a decision or a surrender.

“Fuck it,” he said, almost to himself.

He stood. Fast. Too fast. Before she could think, before she could breathe, he crossed the space between them. Instinct pulled her to her feet and suddenly he was there—close enough that the air changed temperature.

His hands came up—not rough, but urgent—as though he needed to hold her still to see her properly. His palms framed her jaw and their foreheads collided, not gently but like gravity had dragged them together. She inhaled sharply.

He stared at her like she infuriated him. Like she was necessary. Like both could be true.

“You are driving me insane,” he said again, voice rough. Closer now. Realer. “Some days I—” His teeth pressed into his bottom lip, fighting the rest. “Some days I think I hate you.”

Her pulse thudded against her ribs.

His eyes flicked to her mouth, then back to her eyes. “And I don’t.”

Time didn’t move. She waited for him to step back. To laugh. To ruin it. He didn’t. He just stood there, breathing her air like it hurt.

He was waiting. For her to push him away. To tell him no.

She didn’t.

She should have. Every rational part of her said don’t—don’t be reckless, don’t be seen, don’t want—but she was so tired of surviving her own life she almost didn’t care.

She reached for him. Her hands slid into his hair, fingers fisting at his nape as she pulled him down, closing the last inch of oxygen between them.

Then she kissed him.

It was starvation. Heat crashed through her as their mouths collided, teeth clashing, breath tangling. He stumbled a step backward like the force of her knocked balance out of him, then made a low sound in his throat—a sound she felt like a pulse between her ribs—and hauled her closer.

Years of restraint caught fire.

Chapter Text

Chapter 14 Prognosis Uncertain

They were already moving before she realised they were—stumbling, pulling, colliding—his mouth on hers, hers dragging him closer like she was afraid he might disappear if she let go for even a second.

Her back hit the wall. She gasped into his mouth. He swallowed the sound.

Heat rushed through her, violent and sudden. She hadn’t been held in so long—really held—that her nerves misfired, every inch of skin waking up too fast. It was overwhelming. It was addictive. She didn’t care.

His mouth broke from hers only to trail down her jaw, her throat, reverent and unsteady. She tipped her head back without thinking, giving him more, clutching at his shirt like she needed proof he was real.

“This—” she managed, breathless, “—this can’t happen.”

“I know,” he said against her skin, voice wrecked. “I know but—you’re just—” He let out a frustrated sound, low and rough, like words weren’t enough and he hated that. “Bloody impossible.”

Despite everything, she smiled. He saw it—and kissed her again, like that smile ruined him.

His hands moved over her, greedy but still on top of her clothes, like even now he respected a line neither of them had drawn out loud. Her body arched into him anyway.

Bzzzzt. Bzzzzt.

Then—her pager went off. A harsh, vibrating buzz between them.

Reality punched through.

She pulled back with effort. “Trauma wants a consult,” she said, voice uneven. “I have to go.”

He didn’t let her step away. He pressed one last kiss to her neck “Tell me you’re ignoring it,”

Bzzzzt. Bzzzzt.

She groaned. “I can’t. I’m on call.”

He didn’t move. “They’re always whining in trauma. Someone trips hits their head, and suddenly it’s a bloody consult. Useless bastards.”

Her breath ragged, hair tangled. “You’re my boss. You’re not supposed to say things like that.”

He laughed, low and unrepentant, still stroking a piece of her hair between his fingers. “I’ll say worse if it gets you to stay.”

She shoved him back, palms flat against his chest, as if distance could rewind the last thirty seconds. Her lips felt swollen—kiss-bruised—and her pulse was still stumbling out of rhythm. Fury burned hot beneath her skin, not just at him but at herself, at the timing, at how dangerously easy it had been to forget why she shouldn’t want this. Why she shouldn’t want him.

And worst of all—how much she didn’t want to walk away.

“Five minutes,” she heard herself say before she could stop it. “I’ll be right back. Okay?”

His eyes dragged over her face.

“Make it three,” he said.

She didn’t realise she was still holding his shirt until she forced herself to let go.

And then she was gone—racing down sterile corridors, cheeks flushed, hands trembling, wanting nothing more than to get through the next bloody trauma patient so she could run straight back to the mistake still warm against her skin.

The trauma consult was not, in fact, a consult.

It was a catastrophe wrapped in stupidity.

A middle-aged wizard had attempted to brew an illegal stimulant potion in his basement cauldron and—because natural selection had taken the night off—had leaned over it while it was still steaming. The resulting explosion lodged metal shrapnel, ceramic fragments, and potion residue in his scalp, face, and neck, making him look like a particularly tragic porcupine.

Hermione stared at him in the trauma bay.

“You brewed this at home?” she asked.

“It’s not illegal,” he wheezed.

“It’s classified as a Class-B restricted substance.”

“Only if you sell it.”

“You were making twenty litres.”

“litres?”

She rolled her eyes.

“it’s a miracle you can still string sentences together with a shard lodged in your frontal lobe. Most people in your condition struggle with cognitive function or impulse control—though yours is clearly optional.”

He tried to shrug and nearly passed out from blood loss.

She sighed. “Prep an OR.”

Which was how she spent the next three hours irrigating potion burns, extracting shards of cauldron from a man’s skull, and controlling arterial bleeds. Three hours. No water. Gloves soaked. She barely remembered how to blink.

By the time they wheeled him to recovery and she peeled off her surgical cap, something hollow sank in her stomach.

The hallway outside the OR was quiet. Too quiet.

She checked Malfoy’s office on autopilot.

Empty.

The lights were off.

No leftover pizza. No coat. No sign he’d been there at all.

He was gone.

Hermione stood in the doorway for a long moment. Her pulse still wasn’t steady—not from surgery.

Of course he left. She told herself it didn’t matter. That it was better this way. Cleaner.

Professional.

Safe.

She didn’t believe a word of it.

She scrubbed off the blood and potion residue in the on-call shower. Her hair was still damp when she made it back to the staff lounge, curls dripping onto her scrubs. She dug a chocolate bar out of the supply cabinet—breakfast, dinner, coping mechanism. She went to her locker and grab her contraband book the one she kept hidden behind departmental policy manuals. The cover was torn, pages warped from steam, the title embossed in cheap gold. It had almost no plot. It was pure chaos and yearning and terrible metaphors for sex.

She shut her locker but it didn’t silence him. That last kiss kept replaying like electrical interference—sharp, persistent, unavoidable.

She collapsed onto the narrow on-call bed, kicked off her trainers, and unwrapped the chocolate like a medic opening a field dressing—fast, desperate, necessary. She let herself sink into the guilty pleasure of brainless fiction and cheap sugar. Anything not to think about Malfoy.

He probably already regretted everything. He’d walk it back, find a way to make it sharp and cruel. Pretend it hadn’t happened at all. Tomorrow would be a disaster. He’d be a bastard. She’d be ice. Business as usual.

Merlin, what a mess.

She was halfway through a chapter titled His Reckless Hands (which, for the record, contained no hands yet and very little plot integrity) when someone knocked, probably a nurse.

“Come in,” she said, not looking up.

The door opened—and everything in her stilled.

“I’ve been looking for you all over the bloody hospital,” Malfoy said.

He stepped inside. Closed the door. Locked it.

Her heartbeat stumbled.

“I was in the OR,” she said, pushing herself upright, tucking her legs beneath her to feel less exposed.

“Having fun without me?” He moved closer, deliberate, like a storm making landfall.

“Trauma case. Exploding cauldron. Shards in the frontal lobe.” She broke off another square of chocolate, mostly to have something to do with her hands. “Didn’t affect voluntary motor function.”

He hummed low, eyes fixed on her mouth as she spoke. “Really. How big were the shards?”

She smiled. “Big enough.”

His gaze darkened.

That was all the warning she got.

His hands caught her face and his mouth crashed onto hers—hungry, claiming, as though restraint had never existed. Her book slid to the floor. The chocolate hit the sheets and smeared against her thigh. Her pulse blew apart.

She didn’t think. She just—burned.

She kissed him back like she had been starving for the taste of him, like hours without him had been a personal insult she now needed to correct. His kiss was ruthless, impatient, a dragged confession: he wanted her and he didn’t give a damn if it was a mistake.

Her spine hit the wall behind the bed before she realised he’d moved her. He kept going—mouth rough, relentless—his breath tangled with hers, their movements frantic, fierce. He kissed like he resented every second they’d wasted pretending they didn’t want this.

“I thought you regretted it,” she breathed, lips brushing his.

“I don’t regret things I want,” he said, and kissed her again, harder.

She laughed softly against his mouth, already dizzy. “You vanished like a vampire. Cloak—cape—dramatic swoop—self-loathing. The full package.”

“I don’t wear capes,” he muttered against her throat, teeth scraping lightly as he dragged his mouth down, tasting her skin like he had a right to.

Her hand slid into his hair, grip tightening when he bit—not hard, but enough to make her gasp. “Would’ve suited your flair for brooding.”

He lifted his head, eyes molten. “I didn’t disappear. You did.”

“I had a trauma case,” she said. “Emergency OR.”

“I waited,” he said. “Three hours.”

Her breath caught. That shouldn’t affect her. It did. Deeply. “I would’ve stayed,” she said quietly, “but my boss is a pain in the arse.”

His mouth curved, wicked and close. “Sounds like a reasonable man.”

“He isn’t.”

“No,” he murmured, brushing a teasing kiss against her lips, “he isn’t.”

His hands roamed—down her ribs, over her waist, gripping her like he was grounding himself. Her body moved without permission—leaning, yielding—her knee sliding around his hip to drag him closer.

He made a sound then—rough, low, helpless—and she felt it all the way through her.

He pulled away first.

He stayed close—forehead nearly against hers, breathing like he’d run here. His thumb dragged once along her jaw before he forced himself to step back.

“Not here, Granger,” he said, voice ruined. “Tomorrow the entire hospital will be whispering about it, and you’ll pretend you don’t care while actually plotting my homicide.”

She swallowed. “You planning on leaving again?”

“No.” He didn’t hesitate. “I’m planning dinner. Friday.”

She stared. “Dinner?”

“A real one. With tables. And cutlery,” he said. “Brace yourself.”

Her pulse jumped. This—whatever this was—should terrify her. It did. But fear wasn’t winning tonight.

“Okay,” she said.

Something flickered in him—something quiet and dangerous and sincere. “Okay.”

He kissed her again, one last hit of devastation. Then he was gone—coat over his shoulder, door unlocking with a click.

“Get some sleep,” he said.

She didn’t.

She sat on the narrow on-call bed long after he left, lips swollen, heartbeat reckless, chocolate melted warm against her skin—and for the first time in a long time, she didn’t dread what came next.

She wanted it.

She texted Theo: I just did something catastrophically stupid. Please advise before I do it again.

Chapter Text

Chapter 15 Pulse Oximetry: Red Dress

Hermione balanced her phone against a stack of books and leaned in close to the mirror, sweeping her wand curling her lashes.

“So,” Theo said through the screen, sprawled across his bed like a Roman aristocrat in exile, “are you shagging tonight or pretending you don’t want to shag and then shagging anyway?”

“We’re having dinner,” she said, checking her eyelashes. “Normal people do that.”

“Normal people don’t spend forty minutes on curling eyelashes for someone they’re not planning to climb like a tree.”

She capped the eyeliner harder than necessary. “I’m not planning anything.”

Theo snorted. “Did you shave your legs?”

She didn’t answer.

“Case closed.” He grinned. “Use protection.”

“It’s not—this isn’t—Merlin, Theo.”

“It’s fine. I support your terrible decisions. Just—” his tone softened without warning “—be careful, yeah?”

She hesitated. “I am.”

“Liar.”

Hermione hesitated, lipstick paused halfway to her mouth. “I’m… kind of nervous. I haven’t—since Ron—and…” The words came out tangled, fragile.

Theo froze on screen. Then, in horror: “You are telling me Weasley was the only man you’ve ever shagged?” He dragged a hand down his face. “Oh, Hermione. You lost so many opportunities.”

She glared. “Can you try, just once in your life, not to be emotionally useless?”

“I am being emotionally understanding,” he protested. “I’m grieving. Grieving for the vibrant, chaotic, absolutely feral sexual potential you wasted on that man.”

Despite herself, she laughed—and hated how much she needed to.

Theo’s voice softened, as if he could feel it through the screen. “Hey,” he said gently. “Look at me.”

She did.

“You don’t owe anyone anything tonight. Not him. Not the past. Not the idea of who you were supposed to be by now.” He tilted his head. “If you want to go, go. If you want to kiss him, kiss him. If you want to run, I’ll buy the train ticket and meet you at King’s Cross with a bottle of gin. No judgement.” A beat. “Even if his talks you in dirty neurosurgeon.”

Hermione groaned. “He does not...”

Theo scoffed. “Hermione. Your voice changed pitch when you said that. You’re already down bad.”

“I am not—down anything.”

“Liar,” he said, delighted. “Send me your location in case he avada you. And also so I can stalk you both online later.”

Hermione rolled her eyes and held up a black dress in one hand and a red one in the other.
“So… this one,” she said, lifting the black, “or this one? The red is a bit too tight, I can’t breathe in it if I eat.”

“Has it ever—ever—occurred to you,” Theo said, “that I am a man who lives on black coffee and spite? I am not emotionally equipped to choose between seduce-him-but-pretend-you’re-innocent black or destroy-him-and-his-family-line red.”

She rolled her eyes. “You are useless.”

“But….”

“What.”

He smirked. “Wear the red dress. If you're going to commit a catastrophic mistake, at least be hot doing it.”

“Okay wait,” she said, disappearing off-camera in a rustle of hangers and mild chaos.

Theo blinked at the empty screen. “Right. Brilliant. I love talking to furniture,” he announced to no one. He leaned forward, chin in hand. “If you can hear me, Granger, this is not how interventions work. You don’t vanish mid–emotional crisis wardrobe change. It’s very rude.”

A muffled voice came from somewhere off-screen. “This isn’t an emotional crisis, it’s a date.”

Theo scoffed. “With Malfoy it’s both. Like a buy-one-get-one-free deal but cursed.”

There was a thud, a hissed “shit!”, and the sound of a zip struggling for life.

Theo rolled his eyes at the ceiling. “Also, if you die trying to put that dress on, I’m not doing the eulogy. I’ll ask Neville, and you will die twice of embarrassment.”

From somewhere off-camera she called, “Neville’s sweet.”

“Exactly. He’ll cry halfway through and mention you once held hands during a war flashback. Tragic.”

She reappeared, tangled halfway into the red dress. “For the record, Neville moved on. I talked to him, now he’s dating a botanist named Mara who composts for fun. We’re all very mature here.”

Theo snorted. “Pff. That’s what he told you so he wouldn’t look pathetic.”

“Don’t be a dick.”

“I’m not being a dick,” Theo said, leaning closer to the camera. “I’m being realistic. You broke the boy’s heart. He grew a beard and started rescuing endangered shrubs to cope. That’s not moving on.”

Hermione angled the camera toward the mirror.

“Okay,” she said, smoothing her hand down the deep red dress that hugged her waist. “How do I look?”

Theo’s reaction was instant and explosive. “HOLY FLAMING HIPPOGRIFF.”

She rolled her eyes. “Be serious.”

“I am being serious,” he said, sitting straight up in bed like a resurrection spell had been cast. “You look like sin. You look like the reason men go to war. You look like—hold on—I need a cigarette and I don’t even smoke.”

“It’s just a dress.”

“It’s a warning sign,” he said. “And are those heels? Hermione Jean Crisis Granger—are you wearing heels for this man?”

“They’re just shoes.”

“They’re an intention.”

She flushed. “You’re being dramatic.”

“You’re wearing lace under that, aren’t you?”

She froze. “What? No.”

He grinned, sharklike. “You’re a terrible liar. Also I can see the straps.”

“THEO.”

“I’m not judging,” he said. “I’m supportive.”

She grabbed her clutch and took a breath. “Okay. I have to go.”

Theo watched her for a beat—expression shifting, softer now. “Text me if you panic,” he said quietly. “Or if you need an excuse to leave. I’ll fake a medical emergency. Or a real one. Dealer’s choice.”

Her chest tightened. “I know.”

He smiled. “Go. Try not to ruin him too quickly.”

Hermione ended the call, slipping her lipstick into her clutch. A slow smile tugged at her mouth.

“He better not be too easy to ruin,” she muttered to herself.

Malfoy lived in the Meatpacking District.

Of course he did.

Hermione followed the address until she was standing in front of a sleek industrial building wedged between a designer gallery and a cocktail bar with a bouncer who looked like he bench-pressed cars for fun. The street glowed under warm amber lights, slick with the residue of a recent rain. Taxis hissed by. Somewhere nearby shouted, someone laughed too loudly, already drunk.

She glanced up at the building again. All steel and glass and modern edges. Clean lines. Controlled. Beautiful in a cold, masculine way—exactly what she would have expected from Draco Malfoy if she ever allowed herself to imagine where he lived. Which she hadn’t.

Much.

The wards were down, or so he said, but power still pressed against her skin as she stepped closer. Ancient, precise, unapologetically elitist magic.  

She smoothed her dress, swallowed, and took a breath she hoped looked like confidence instead of mild terror. Then she raised her hand and knocked.

She wanted him—badly enough that it almost scared her. The memory of his mouth on hers had haunted her all week, replaying at the worst possible moments, leaving her restless and sharp with wanting. Now she was here and her pulse was a live wire under her skin with anticipation.

But want came with a shadow. She hadn’t been with anyone who wasn’t Ron in a long time—and even with Ron, intimacy had turned cold long before the end.
She felt out of practice, like a locked door rusted shut. She hated the idea of being laid bare, of someone seeing just how starved she really was. Wanting was dangerous. Wanting meant risk. And yet—here she was, trembling with it.

A heartbeat. Two.

The door opened.

And Malfoy forgot how to speak.

Hermione stood in the hallway—red dress, dark curls spilling over her shoulders, eyes sharp enough to cut. She wasn’t wearing a lab coat or scrubs or exhaustion. She was lethal.

For a second—one unguarded, catastrophic second—something raw flickered across his face.

Then he hid it.

“Granger,” he drawled, leaning on the doorframe like he hadn’t just been punched in the soul. “You clean up—”

“Finish that sentence carefully,” she warned.

His mouth curved, appreciative and wicked. “—spectacularly.”

She’d expected his flat to intimidate her. She hadn’t expected him to.

Something shifted in the air between them—too fast, too soon. Too predatory. Too Dangerous. She reminded herself: casual. Anything else was a risk she couldn’t afford.
Malfoy looked good—unfairly good, the bastard. Dark jeans, a white T-shirt, hair a little undone like he hadn’t bothered trying and somehow still managed to look devastating. And he was barefoot. Normally, that would have been a firm no—she didn’t do barefoot men—but somehow, right now, it was doing unspeakable things to her. God. It had been too long.

“Should I take my heels off?” she asked, arching a brow. “Are you one of those people who has a meltdown over floor germs and bans footwear indoors?”

His gaze dipped—slow, unapologetic—tracing the line of her legs before meeting her eyes again. There was a hint of danger in his voice when he said, “Don’t take your heels off.”

Her lips curved. “No?”

“If anything,” he drawled, “take everything else off and keep the heels.”

She let out a soft, wicked laugh. “You wish.”

He stepped aside to let her in, but his eyes dragged over her like a hand, unapologetic. “If I had known you owned a dress like that, I would’ve asked you out months ago.”

She walked past him, pulse wild but posture collected. “You didn’t ask me out. You made a demand.”

“Semantics,” he said, closing the door behind her. “I got the result I wanted.”

“You think you did.”

He looked at her then—really looked—and something dark sparked in his eyes, like a promise. “I know I did.”

As soon as she stepped inside, something huge and black launched itself at her from the side.

She barely had time to gasp before a giant, fluffy mass of fur skidded across the hardwood, claws scrambling for traction, tail a violent blur.

“Nox. Down.”

The dog obeyed—technically. He sat, but his entire body vibrated like self-restraint was a personal tragedy.

Hermione stared. “You… have a dog?”

Draco scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck, resigned. “More like the dog has me. But yes.”

Nox let out a hopeful whine and pressed his massive head against Hermione’s legs like they were already lifelong friends.

“You… have a dog.” She said again.

He frowned. “Is that a problem?”

She didn’t answer. She was already crouching.

“Oh, look at you,” she cooed. “Aren’t you handsome—yes, you are—oh my god, your face—come here—”

Nox launched himself at her like a furry missile, tail wagging so hard it looked medically unsafe. He scrambled into her lap, then her chest, then what looked like an attempt to merge with her ribcage entirely.

Draco stared, horrified. “Nox. What are you—no, we talked about boundaries—”

She giggled as the dog aggressively worshipped her with licks. “You’re perfect. I love you. You’re the best boy I’ve ever met.”

“Don’t corrupt my dog,” Draco snapped, pointing like he was addressing a hardened criminal. “Nox, don’t let her manipulate you. She may smell nice but she can absolutely kill you if she wants.”

Hermione looked up, deadpan. “I only kill entitled men.”

Nox whined lovingly and attempted to kiss her again, like he had chosen a new god. He was licking Hermione’s hands, her wrists, her face.

She laughed—actually laughed—and Draco froze at the sound like it physically hit him.

Nox melted like butter under her hands and flopped onto his back, shameless in pursuit of affection. Draco watched, mildly betrayed.

“For the record,” he said, attempting aloof and landing somewhere closer to resigned affection, “he doesn’t do this with strangers. And he doesn’t whine. Ever.” He glanced at the dog. “Have some dignity.”

Nox wagged harder, entirely without dignity.

Draco cleared his throat. “He still thinks he’s a puppy.”

“How old is he?”

“Two.”

Her brows lifted. “How big is he going to get?”

He grimaced. “I’m afraid to ask.”

Nox lumbered off in search of a chew toy—or a small planet to destroy—and Hermione finally had a chance to take in Draco’s flat.

He poured them drinks at the kitchen island.  Music played from a sleek sound system, low and unobtrusive. Some kind of modern jazz. Pretentious, smoky, and absolutely the kind of thing he’d play just to seem unbothered.

Everything was deliberate. Chosen. Precise.

His flat was exactly what she expected and still annoyingly impressive.
High ceilings, exposed brick, steel beams. Black and chrome accents everywhere. A brutally minimalist kitchen. Leather and glass and edges sharp enough to wound. Dark hardwood floors, a leather sofa the exact shade of expensive whiskey. One wall was taken over by bookshelves: rows of heavy medical tomes and dense academic texts, interrupted occasionally by something unexpected—a vintage vinyl, a worn novel, a photo she couldn’t quite see. The coffee table was smoked glass.

It looked expensive, masculine, and cruelly curated—like a magazine spread titled We Get It, You’re Single.

Of course it was immaculate.

Not sterile—just controlled. And yet the space didn’t feel cold—probably because of the mammoth black dog currently sprawled across a designer rug like a furry dictatorship.

She accepted the wine glass Draco handed her. Their fingers didn’t touch—but it felt like they did.

“Nice place,” she said, wandering deeper inside.

“Try not to sound so surprised,” he replied, lounging against the counter like sin poured into denim.

“It’s a little predictable,” she said.

“Predictable?”

She gestured vaguely. “Brooding modern single doctor with an overpriced sound system. Yes, shockingly on brand.”

Draco laughed, low and disbelieving. “So you came here to insult me?”

“It wasn’t an insult,” she said, completely unconvincing. “But, come on… you do give off a certain energy.”

“My energy,” he echoed dryly.

She nodded with mock seriousness. “Yes. Expensive emotional damage.”

He stared at her, fighting a smile he absolutely did not want to have. “You are aware you could just say you like the place.”

“I did,” she said looking around.

The only thing out of place in his perfectly curated flat was the chaos of dog toys scattered across the floor. A gigantic rubber lobster. A squeaky chicken leg. Three—no, four—assorted tennis balls, all chewed within an inch of their lives. Two stuffed dragons missing wings, a half-destroyed rope. Evidence of chaos that didn’t belong here but stayed anyway.

Hermione crouched again, delighted. “These are your toys? These are excellent toys. I cannot believe you are this bloody cute.”

Nox barked once in agreement, then trotted off only to return proudly with a slobbery ball, dropping it at her feet.

She laughed, genuine and warm. “I like your dog.”

“Nox” He said.

She blinked. “You named him Nox. As in—the extinguishing charm?”

 “He’s very black,” Draco said defensively.

She laughed. Of course.

She sank into the sofa—far more comfortable than its severe leather appearance suggested—and set her glass on the table.

“So,” she said.

“So,” he echoed. “We can go out, or we can order in. Your choice.”

She opened her mouth to answer—something teasing already forming—when one hundred thirty pounds of black fur attempted to sit directly on her lap. Hermione burst out laughing as Nox enthusiastically tried to kiss her face.

“Nox,” Draco groaned. “You are not a lapdog. Get down.”

The dog ignored him entirely, tongue out, absolute chaos.

Hermione was breathless with laughter. “I’m sorry, does he think he’s the size of a rabbit?”

“He still thinks he’s tiny,” Draco said, rubbing a hand over his jaw in resignation. “Nox—bed.”

The dog obeyed, begrudgingly, retreating to a large cushioned bed by the window. He lay down with the dramatic sadness of a Shakespearean actor.

Hermione shook her head. “I can’t believe you have a dog.”

Draco looked genuinely puzzled. “Why is that so hard to believe?”

She studied him for a moment, then shrugged. “I don’t know. Kind of… softens you.”

His expression shifted—something like surprise, maybe even something close to vulnerable, before he covered it with a smirk.

“Careful,” he said. “You’re dangerously close to implying I have a heart.”

She met his eyes. “I didn’t say that.”

Heat flashed between them, sharp and electric. Drumroll. They both felt it.

“I got lonely,” he said simply. No theatrics. No smirk. Just truth. “He’s good company.”

Hermione blinked, caught off guard by the honesty in his tone. Her fingers tightened around her glass.

“I adopted him after they dismantled a clandestine breeder in Brooklyn,” Draco went on, eyes flicking briefly toward Nox’s massive shape on the dog bed. “He’s a German Shepherd—supposed to be tan and black, but he came out all black. Breeders didn’t want him. He was a month old. Sick. Too small.”

Her chest tugged in tenderness. Bloody Malfoy… she wanted to hug him and kiss him.

Draco’s mouth twitched. “Then he got big and chewed through half my furniture. Nearly ate a Louis Vuitton briefcase. I respected the commitment.”

"I like this version of you," she said before she could stop herself. "Softer."

His gaze flicked to hers—surprise first, then something guarded. Like she had reached out and touched a live wire she wasn’t meant to find.

“What did you expect? That I’d still be behaving like I was seventeen?”

“Maybe,” she said honestly. “That was the only version of you I ever got to know.” She held his gaze. “That—and the fact that you hate liars and you’re obsessively good as a surgeon.”

He took a slow sip of his drink, eyes steady on her. “I’m just saying—I grew up. I had to. I’m almost thirty, Granger.”

“Age doesn’t guarantee growth,” she said.

He huffed a quiet laugh. “No. It doesn’t, but happened, at least for me.”

The air between them tightened, fragile and strangely raw. He didn’t look away from her, and she didn’t want him to.

This was not the Draco Malfoy she remembered. This man had history in his eyes. Weight in his voice. Edges, yes—but ones carved by life, not arrogance.

Something old and sharp lived in the space between them. Something new and dangerous began to form beside it.

“I wanted to talk to you,” he said.

Hermione set her glass down. “Okay.”

Draco exhaled, bracing himself. “I’m not sorry I kissed you.”

Her pulse stuttered.

“I’m not sorry you came here tonight,” he went on. “Or for whatever happens next. But I don’t want to mix work with… this.”

She held his gaze. “And what is this?”

“No idea,” he admitted. “But it doesn’t touch the hospital. We keep it clean. Professional. Whatever happens outside—fine. Inside? No.”

Her brow lifted. “So you’re laying down rules now?”

“I’m saying I expect you to act professionally.”

Her lips curved—slow, dangerous. “Funny. I was about to say the same to you.”

“It’s not forbidden,” he said. “You’re a fellow, not an intern. There’s no policy against it.”

“But,” she said, waiting.

“But I don’t want the rumors. The vultures. The gossip. I don’t want people watching us and deciding what to think before we do. And I’m guessing you don’t either.”

Her expression softened a fraction. “No. I don’t.”

He nodded once. “Then we keep it quiet. Separate. Contained.”

Her mouth tilted. “You make it sound like a hazardous material.”

His eyes flicked briefly to her mouth. “Maybe it is.”

She hated how easy this was—how fast he made her forget the rules she’d built to keep herself intact. Wanting someone was already dangerous. Letting them see it was worse.

Before she could answer, a slobbery plush chimera was suddenly dropped into her lap.

Nox stared up at her, vibrating with hope.

“Oh,” she said, caught off guard. “Is this for me?”

He wagged his tail so hard his entire back half participated.

Draco groaned. “Do not encourage him. He’ll bring you every toy he owns.”

“That sounds like a threat,” she said, tossing the toy across the room. Nox thundered after it, skidding, snorting, triumphant.

“It is,” Draco said. “He’ll never stop.”

Nox returned and deposited a new toy in her lap—this one a mangled stuffed snitch with one wing missing. He stared at her, waiting.

Hermione laughed. “He’s trying to figure out which one I like.”

“He does that,” Draco muttered like it was a personal tragedy. “Tests people.”

“And what happens when he decides?”

“He becomes… committed.”

Nox dropped a third toy at her feet—this time something that looked like a decapitated stuffed dragon, its fabric entrails spilling out. He sat proudly, tail thumping like a faulty engine.

Hermione wiped tears of laughter from her eyes. “Committed to what, exactly? Mass toy homicide?”

Draco watched her, unreadable, the rim of his glass resting against his lower lip. “Committed,” he said slowly, “to being in his life.”

The laughter faded from her face, replaced by something softer. Something that hurt a little. “That sounds… permanent.”

“It is,” he said simply.

She froze—not visibly, but enough that something in her chest shifted.

Nox nudged the toy harder against her thigh. She threw it again just so she had something to do with her hands.

He didn’t take his eyes off her.

Nox returned triumphantly with the mangled stuffed Snitch and dropped it into her lap again, hopeful.

Hermione scratched behind the dog’s ear. “Well, if you have to know, Nox,” she said gravely, “I don’t like Quidditch. So no Snitch.”

Draco choked on his wine. “You—don’t?”

“Nope,” she repeated. “It’s just chasing balls in the air while grown men scream.”

“That,” Draco said, scandalized, “is the entire point.”

“And it’s boring.”

“Boring?” He stared like she’d confessed to drowning kittens. “Granger, people have been murdered for less.”

“By insecure athletes, maybe.”

Nox, sensing tension, returned with a squeaky broom and placed it on her knee like an emotional support offering.

“Sorry, love,” she told the dog. “Still no.”

Draco looked between her and Nox in disbelief. “You’ve turned him against our national sport.”

“He deserves better influences.”

“You dated Viktor Krum,” he countered. “One of the best Seekers alive.”

“I did,” she said. “He only talked about Quidditch. Once you get past the accent and the shoulders, there’s not much there.”

Draco blinked. “You were bored by Viktor Krum.”

“He was sweet, also had the emotional range of stale bread. Covered in biceps.”

Something dark flickered in Draco’s eyes. “And I suppose you prefer… intellectual stimulation.”

She met his gaze without blinking. “I like men who can talk about more than themselves or brooms.”

A beat. The air sharpened.

Nox dropped a rubber dragon at her feet. Neither of them looked away.

“Good to know,” Draco said softly.

Nox gave up trying to mediate and wandered off with a dramatic sigh and his rubber dragon. The jazz swelled low and smoky in the background.

They hadn’t moved closer, not technically—but somehow the air between them had pulled. His hand rested on the back of the sofa, then drifted lower, almost idly, brushing the fabric of her dress. A casual touch. Too casual to be innocent.

His fingers skimmed her knee, slow. Testing. He watched her face when he did it.

“I like this dress,” he said.

Her pulse beat against her throat. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” His voice had gone lower, rougher. “It’s distracting.”

She tilted her head, eyes steady on his. “Is it?”

“It is now.”

His knuckles trailed a lazy line along her thigh, just inside the hem.

She could have stopped him. She didn’t.

Her lips curved—not sweet, not shy, something far more dangerous. “I wonder,” she said softly, “what you’re going to do when you see what’s underneath.”

His breath left him, slow and deliberate. He smiled—not nice, not polite. Predatory.

“Granger,” he murmured, “you’re playing with fire.”

She leaned in, unflinching. “Maybe I like the burn.”

His mouth curved, lazy and dangerous. “It’s still distracting.”

She arched a brow. “You could try looking at my face.”

“I am looking at your face.”

“You’re looking at my legs.”

“I’m multitasking.”

She laughed, soft and warm and entirely against her better judgment. She leaned back into the sofa, just enough to let the moment stretch. His hand stayed where it was—not moving higher, not pulling away—just a quiet promise resting on her skin.

“I have a theory,” he said.

“This should be good.”

“You like provoking me.”

She didn’t deny it. “Maybe.”

“Why?”

“Because you bite.”

He huffed a laugh. “I don’t bite.”

“That’s the biggest lie you’ve ever told.”

Their eyes locked. A thrill moved between them—alive and dangerous but held back by restraint. Not yet, it said. But soon.

She didn’t know who moved first. One second they were teasing, the next he was over her—knee sinking into the sofa cushion beside her hip, hand sliding up her thigh beneath her dress. He kissed her like it had already been decided, like this was inevitable, like they had wasted too much time already.

Hermione’s hand found his hair, fingers curling, pulling him closer. He made a low sound against her mouth, the kind she felt in every nerve. Heat roared beneath her skin. His palm skimmed higher.

And that was exactly when fluffy interruption landed beside them.

THUD.

A rubber lobster—soaked in drool and betrayal—dropped between their chests.

They froze. Draco lifted his head slowly. Nox stared back at them, tail wagging so hard his entire body swayed with pride. He barked once as if to say: friendship is temporary, playtime is forever.

Hermione burst out laughing against Draco’s shoulder. He closed his eyes like he was praying for strength.

“I’m going to kill you,” he muttered to Nox.

“No you’re not,” she said, still laughing.

“Mate, you are seriously cockblocking me right now,” Draco told the dog, dead serious. “Unbelievable. I feed you. I shelter you. I cook for you and buy you toys. And this is how you repay me?”

Nox barked once and dropped the soggy lobster even closer, as if doubling down.

Hermione was laughing so hard she had to wipe tears from the corners of her eyes. “He’s just trying to get attention.”

Draco’s mouth tipped into a smirk. “He likes you.”

“He likes that I validate his chaos.”

“That too,” Draco said. “But trust me—Nox doesn’t latch onto people easily. He’s… selective.”

She rubbed behind the dog’s ears. “Selective, huh? So he has trust issues?”

Draco took a slow sip of his drink, eyes steady on her. “Most of us do.”

The dog just stared at him, tail thumping in smug, slobbery defiance.

Draco groaned, dragging a hand down his face. “Come on, lad. Five minutes. Give me five minutes.”

Nox barked louder, thrilled by this new game.

Hermione leaned back against the sofa, cheeks flushed, dress rumpled, lips kiss-swollen—and she was smiling. Really smiling. Something unguarded and rare.

Draco caught the sight and—despite everything—his expression softened.

“Dinner?” he said, voice calmer now, hand still resting possessively on her thigh.

She nodded, breath still unsteady. “Yeah. Dinner.”

But she didn’t move. Neither did he.

The night was still young. And this was only getting started.

Chapter Text

Chapter 16 Increased Heart Rate

Her laughter faded, but not the heat buzzing beneath her skin. Draco was still close—too close—his hand still high on her thigh, and the look in his eyes told her the only reason he hadn’t kissed her again was because of the smug, panting dog at their feet.

Her voice came out low, almost reckless. “Maybe we should move to your bedroom.”

His gaze sharpened. The pulse in his throat kicked. She held his eyes when she added, softer, “We can eat later.”

He didn’t need to be told twice.

In one smooth motion he lifted her from the sofa, hands firm beneath her thighs. A startled sound escaped her before she caught onto him, legs instinctively wrapping around his waist. He carried her like it was effortless, like she weighed nothing, like he’d been wanting to do it for far too long.

She huffed a breath against his neck, half a laugh. “You’re a show-off, you know that?”

His mouth brushed her jaw as he walked. “You haven’t seen anything yet.”

Somewhere behind them, Nox released an offended bark—betrayed, once again.

His bedroom matched the rest of the flat—dark, expensive, intentionally impersonal. Massive bed centered against the far wall, low and modern. Dim lighting. A floor-to-ceiling window that looked out over the city like a silent witness. Everything was black, grey, white, or metal. Masculine. Controlled.

It fit him too well.

He set her down on the edge of the bed, but didn’t step back. His hands stayed on her thighs like he wasn’t ready to let go.

She let her fingers trail lightly down his chest, stopping just above the hem of his T-shirt. “You know, I should’ve guessed your bedroom would look like this.”

“Like what?”

“Like you googled ‘wealthy bachelor aesthetic’ and clicked the first result.”

He huffed a laugh, brushing a strand of hair from her face. “You’re still talking.”

“I do that sometimes.”

He hummed, gaze dropping briefly to her mouth before meeting her eyes again. “I thought we said eat later—and that included insulting me.”

“We did.” Her pulse jumped. “But I don’t reward arrogance.”

“That’s a shame,” he murmured, leaning just slightly closer. “Because I’m spectacularly arrogant.”

She smiled, wicked and soft at once. “I know.”

He leaned in further, his breath grazing her lips. “And you like it.”

Her voice didn’t shake. “Unfortunately.”

Heat flared between them again—slow, magnetic, unavoidable.

He stood between her knees, fingers brushing the hem of her dress again, lazy and deliberate.

“So,” he said, studying her like he was already unwrapping her in his mind, “what’s under this dress that I’m going to like so much?”

Hermione lifted her chin, somehow her pulse was steady now—not shy, not nervous. Certain. She wanted him, and she was going to get him.

“Me,” she said. “Naked.”

Something dark flickered through his eyes. His breath left him in one quiet exhale, and for a moment he just looked at her—like she’d said something obscene, holy, or both.

Then, very softly, he said at her ear, “Show me.”

She let her fingers slip beneath the straps of her dress and slowly drew them down her shoulders. His gaze followed the movement like gravity.

He wanted to see. She wanted to let him.

She had chosen what was underneath carefully—deliberately. She knew the power of women’s lingerie when weaponised correctly. Black lace, soft and sinful. Barely there. A whisper more than fabric. The kind of lingerie designed not for comfort but for ruin.

The dress pooled at her waist, and his expression changed. Hunger softened into awe. Control gave way to want.

Draco’s eyes dragged over her like a touch—slow, consuming, reverent in a way that made her skin feel too tight—she had him.

He reached for the fabric at her waist, intending to tug the dress the rest of the way off, but she caught his wrist.

“Slow,” she said.

His gaze flicked up to hers. A silent question. A test.

She rose from the bed, still holding his wrist, and stepped back just out of reach. The dress slid to the floor in a soft whisper of fabric, leaving her in nothing but black lace and intention.

Then—because she knew exactly what she was doing—she turned slightly, as if considering something only she could see, and reached behind herself to unhook her bra.

He closed the distance in two steps, fingers replacing hers at her back. “No,” he said quietly, voice like gravel. “I said show me. I didn’t say do it without me.”

The straps slid down her arms, forgotten, as he turned her back to face him.

A shiver chased over her skin, hotter than his hands. He wasn’t going to just let her control this. He was going to meet her, match her, take it apart and build it into something else entirely.

For a second, neither of them moved—like they were hovering over a line they both knew they couldn’t uncross. His hand stayed on her hip, fingers firm, possessive heat seeping into her skin. She could feel him breathing. Could feel herself wanting.

Her voice came quieter now, instinctive honesty slipping in beneath the hunger. “This isn’t a mistake,” she said—more to herself than him.

Her fingers found his, twining on instinct. The warmth of his palm steadied her pulse; it felt like a silent vow neither of them knew they were making.

His eyes didn’t waver. “No,” he said. “It really isn’t.”

And just like that, it settled—whatever was about to happen, it wasn’t thoughtless. It wasn’t reckless. It was inevitable.

His thumb brushed slow circles into her waist, and she felt it everywhere. He leaned in and kissed her—not hungry like before, not impatient, but deep. Intentional. A kiss that didn’t ask permission because it somehow already had it.

Her knees nearly buckled.

Heat flared again, stronger this time, and Hermione tugged at his shirt, fists curling in the fabric.

“Take it off,” she said.

The look he gave her in return was pure sin. “Yes, doctor.”

He dragged his shirt over his head and tossed it aside before pulling her back against him. His mouth found her throat, a slow, claiming kiss that sent heat spiraling low in her stomach.

“You are so not what I thought you were,” he murmured against her skin.

Her breath caught. “What does that mean?”

He kissed along her jaw, smile brushing her cheek. “I thought you’d be… restrained. Careful.” His hand slid over the curve of her hip, fingertips teasing the lace. “Prudish.”

Hermione huffed a laugh, tilting her head back as his mouth moved lower. “And now?”

He looked up at her through half-lidded eyes, hunger and surprise tangled together. “Now I know better.”

She smirked faintly, fingers threading into his hair. “You always did underestimate me.”

He caught her throat with his lips, palms gliding up her arms in a rough promise. “Never again.”

He said it like a confession, and maybe it was. Something in his eyes had shifted—something honest, something that didn’t feel like a game.

“Good,” she said quietly. She leaned in, letting her lips hover just above his, not touching, making him wait. “I’d hate for you to keep getting me wrong.”

His breath hitched—just enough for her to feel it.

She slid her hand down his chest, nails grazing lightly over his skin, and felt every muscle tighten under her touch. She stopped at the waistband of his jeans but didn’t go further—not yet. She wanted him to feel the pull. The wanting. The patience breaking slowly.

His jaw clenched. “You’re doing that on purpose.”

“Yes,” she said honest.

A low sound left him—half laugh, half warning—and then he caught her wrist, not to stop her, but to hold her there.

He looked at her for a long moment. And then—softly, truthfully—he said, “You’re dangerous.”

She smiled. “You started this.”

“And I’m going to finish it.”

He was still looking at her like he was trying to decide whether to kiss her again or drop to his knees.  He leaned in, mouth brushing her jaw again, slower this time. Possessive.

His voice was low when he spoke against her skin. “I’ve wanted to do this every time I’ve looked at you.”

Her pulse throbbed everywhere. “You haven’t even seen me naked before tonight.”

He gave a quiet huff of air that might have been a laugh. “That never stopped me.”

Something dark and electric moved through her. She caught his chin, forcing his eyes to meet hers.

“And you’re wasting time talking—”

He didn’t look away.

“—instead of doing it.”

The shift in him was immediate. Like he’d been waiting—for that invitation, for that line, for her to choose him back. His mouth crashed into hers and her body reacted before thought existed. She kissed him hard, dragging him closer, teeth grazing his lower lip. His hands gripped her hips, pulling her flush against him.

She felt him—hard through his jeans—press against her stomach as he backed her toward the bed, never breaking the kiss. They fell onto it together, her on her back, him bracing above her, one hand sliding up her thigh, pushing it open. She let him—welcomed it—heat pooling between her legs so shamelessly she shifted against him, seeking friction that made them both groan.
He kissed down her throat, slow and deliberate, and when his teeth closed gently around her skin she gasped—sharp, involuntary pleasure.

He murmured against her neck, “You like that.”

It wasn’t a question.

She exhaled, hands in his hair, pulling him back to her mouth. “I like you right there,” she said. “Don’t get cocky.”

He laughed, dark and pleased. “No promises.”

His hand moved again, this time sliding between her thighs, knuckles brushing the thin lace covering her. She jerked when he found just the right pressure.

His breath hitched. “Fuck, Hermione.”

Her stomach tightened at the sound of her name in his voice—raw, nearly broken. She clenched a fist in his hair and dragged his mouth back to hers in answer.

She didn’t want space between them. Didn’t want air. She wanted this—messy and consuming and real.

He pushed her panties aside and slid two fingers along her, slow, exploring. Watching her. Testing what she liked. She arched, breath catching. Then he did it again, just a little firmer this time. Her hips moved with him before she could stop them.

He smiled against her throat.

Her breath came rough. “Don’t—” she managed.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t get gentle on me now.”

His eyes flashed, and she swore she felt it deep inside her.

He pressed his forehead to hers. “I’m not gentle.”

Hermione’s hand flew to his shoulder, nails digging in as her lips parted on a helpless sound. He watched her, eyes heavy, mouth parted like he was tasting her reaction.

“Beautiful,” he murmured.

The word hit dangerous. No one had said it like that in years—with belief instead of flattery. It rattled something she hadn’t known was locked.

“Don’t—” she warned again, breath shaking. “Don’t say things like that.”

“Why?”

“You don’t mean them.”

He moved his fingers and she broke—soft, breathless, back arching off the bed as he began to move inside her, deep and steady.

“I do,” he said simply, like it was the easiest thing in the world.

His rhythm changed—deeper, slower, deliberate. Not teasing. Learning her. Claiming the pace as his.

Hermione’s thighs trembled enough to make her bite her lip to keep quiet. She didn’t want to be quiet. She didn’t want to be careful.

“Draco—” She didn’t even know what she meant to say. His name came out as a low plea anyway.

He lifted his head, eyes burning into hers. He looked wrecked already, and he was still fully dressed below the waist. “You feel incredible,” he said, voice rough. “So fucking tight around my fingers—I can’t wait to be inside you.”

A shiver tore through her. “Do it.”

He huffed a stunned breath, somewhere between a laugh and a curse. “Bossy,” he muttered.

She caught his jaw, forcing his eyes to stay on hers. “Now.”

He withdrew his fingers so suddenly she gasped at the loss—and then she watched his expression shift into something dangerous.

Without breaking eye contact, he brought his fingers to his mouth and sucked them clean.

Hermione forgot how to breathe.

He dragged her panties down her legs with a slow, devastating patience that made her ache. He kissed the inside of her knee, then a little higher. And higher. And higher.

When his breath brushed over her, warm and deliberate, she felt her entire body tighten.

He looked up at her from between her thighs—hair falling forward, eyes locked on hers, mouth unbearably close. “Tell me if you want me to stop.”

She let out a shaky laugh. “If you stop, I’m hexing you.”

His mouth curved—dark, pleased—and then he lowered his head and licked into her slowly, like he wanted to savor every reaction.

Hermione’s hand flew to his hair instantly, fingers burying in the soft blond strands as her hips lifted off the bed. “Fuck—”

He groaned against her, tongue moving with an obscene kind of precision. He didn’t rush. Didn’t fumble. He took his time tasting her, exploring her, like she was something he’d waited years to touch.

She could feel heat building, pleasure twisting tight and hot, her entire body reacted.

He gripped her thighs and held them open, steady, relentless. His voice vibrated against her. “Let go.”

She didn’t know if he meant her grip on his hair or everything else. She let go anyway. She broke—moaning, shaking. He didn’t let her run from it—he followed her, lips and tongue working her with maddening control.

He groaned like her voice fed him. She could feel herself close, pleasure coiling sharp and fast, unbearable.

It had been too long since anyone had touched her, kissed her. She felt like she was burning—his fingertips reopening old nerves, carving heat into her skin. It was too much and not enough all at once.

Her climax hit brutally, rolling through her so hard she cried out, fist twisting in his hair, thighs trembling around his shoulders as he kept licking her through it, refusing to let her fall too fast.

He didn’t stop until she was shaking, until her body gave in to the tremor. Then he pulled back—slow, deliberate—and pressed a kiss to the inside of her thigh. It made her laugh, uncontrollably, a sound caught somewhere between disbelief and relief. Her skin was on fire; every touch sent her tipping over the edge again.

“What’s so funny?” he asked, voice low, almost amused.

“Nothing,” she managed between breaths, still laughing, so high on oxytocin that every nerve felt raw.

He looked wrecked. Starving. But give her a moment.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, voice unsteady when he finally spoke.
“Get up here. I need to feel you.”

He was over her again before she fully caught her breath, caging her in with his body, heat radiating off him. He kissed her—slow, consuming, filthy—and she tasted herself. Something about that made her moan into his mouth, made her pull him closer.

His jeans were still on. It felt wrong. Unfair. She fumbled at the button, desperate, and he actually groaned against her lips at the feel of her hands working him open.

“Fuck,” he muttered, forehead pressed to hers while she pushed his jeans down his hips, dragging his briefs with them. His cock sprang free—thick and flushed and already so hard it made her ache. Her mouth parted in a quiet breath she didn’t mean to give.

He caught the sound. Smirked—just a little. “See something you like?”

She rolled her eyes. “Always so smug.”

His laugh was broken, disbelieving—she barely had time to feel triumphant before he grabbed her thigh and hauled her closer, right to the edge of the bed. The shift made her gasp and cling to him, desire tearing through her again.

“Lift your hips,” he said, voice like smoke and gravity.

She did, and he guided himself through her, sliding against her in one maddening, perfect stroke that made both of them swear under their breath. He didn’t push in—not yet. He just moved like that, slow and teasing, driving her insane.

“Draco—” she warned, raw.

He looked at her like she was something he’d survived for. “Tell me you want this.”

“I asked for your bed,” she said through a shaky breath. “What do you think I want?”

He went still against her, breathing hard. “Say it anyway.”

“Always your ego…” Her heart pounded. She rolled her eyes, but her voice broke the tiniest bit. “I want you. Happy now?”

His restraint threatened to snap—she could feel it in the way his fingers dug into her thigh, in the tension carved into his shoulders. He pressed just the tip  inside her—stretching her, making her gasp—and he froze, like the feel of her almost undid him right there.

“Merlin Hermione—” His voice was a rasp.

She dug her fingers on his shoulders.

He thrust in slowly—deep, thick, relentless—until he was fully seated inside her and she cried out, arching into him. He held her there, chest rising and falling hard against hers, forehead pressed to hers like he needed the contact to stay sane.

“Look at me,” he said softly—like he needed it too.

She did, but it felt like too much, too intense.

He withdrew, then thrust again. Deep. Her fingers clenched around his shoulders, back arching helplessly as he set a rhythm—firm, claiming, unhurried but devastating. He moved like he wanted her to feel every inch of him. Like this wasn’t about getting off. Like this was about making something real.

Hermione couldn’t think. Couldn’t speak. Just—felt.

He ground deeper, hips rolling into hers, she gasped, fingertips dragging across his skin. His breath stuttered, rhythm faltering for half a second before he caught it again and groaned against her mouth.

Her sounds came without hesitation now—raw, honest, taken from somewhere she didn’t guard. Every thrust had her clawing at him, hips rising to meet his, chasing more.

She was already close again. Already shaking. Already—

Between thrusts, their hands found each other and stayed joined, knuckles white, fingers locking and unlocking like they couldn’t decide whether to hold on or surrender.

Her vision blurred. “Draco—fuck, I—”

His pace didn’t break. His voice was a growl against her ear. “Come on.”

She shattered.

It hit harder than before— Overwhelming. Her cry tore free, body clenching around him, he swore and drove into her deeper, chasing it. She clung to him, trembling, boneless, lost.

He didn’t stop. Didn’t even slow. He fucked her through it, relentless, jaw clenched like he was holding back something brutal. He was close. She could feel it—every muscle in him drawn tight, sweat on his skin, breath rough and uneven.

He pushed her higher on the bed and pinned her there with his body, thrusting harder now, deeper now, all control gone. She felt wild under him, consumed.

He buried his face in her neck and let out a broken sound.

He thrust once more, deep, and came hard—shuddering against her, cursing under his breath, holding her like his body didn’t know how to let go.He stayed inside her as he caught his breath, forehead pressed to her collarbone, her hands still on his. Quiet. Real. Too much.

He kissed her shoulder. Once. Soft.

“Fuck,” he breathed. Almost a prayer.

Hermione didn’t trust herself to speak.

When everything stilled, their hands were still twined. He didn’t pull away, and she didn’t make him. The silence between them felt charged, alive, like magic still humming under their skin.

She’d meant for it to be casual, simple. But simple had never felt like this—like every breath had weight, every heartbeat spelled his name.

She finally found her voice again, though it came out rough. “I get why you’re so smug now.”

He lifted a brow. “What?”

“Is there anything you’re not good at?”

A muscle ticked in his jaw. “Feelings,” he said. “Relationships.”

She let out a short, laughed breath. “Good to know.” She rolled her eyes. “Really selling this whole experience, Malfoy.”

His mouth curved—tired, crooked, a little wicked. “Setting expectations. I’ve heard that’s healthy communication.”

She huffed. “From who?”

“My dog.”

She almost laughed. Bastard.

He shifted above her just enough to look down at her properly, and something flared in his eyes—not heat, not quite tenderness, something heavier than both. Something like realization.

“And you,” he said quietly, gaze dropping over her bare body like a secret he now owned. “Miss Golden Girl. Perfect grades. Perfect career. Perfect control.” His hand slid lazily down her thigh, squeezing just enough to make her shiver. “Filthy.”

Her breath caught—not from embarrassment, but from the way he said it—like he liked it. Like it mattered.

“Don’t get used to it,” she said, chin lifting.

He leaned in, brushing his lips along her jaw in a slow, claiming kiss. “I already am.”

She arched a brow at him. “I’m a woman, not some perfect trophy. There’s a difference.”

His gaze dragged over her, slow and unashamed. “Fine,” he said. “A filthy woman, then.”

Her mouth fell open in outrage. “Excuse me?”

He just looked far too pleased with himself.

“Don’t even start,” she shot back. “You’re the one who did the—” she mimed sucking two fingers into her mouth, then recoiled at herself—“that. You did that. I am a lady.”

He laughed and shook his head, like he couldn’t believe her.

“Mm,” he said, unconvinced. “Ladies don’t make sounds like that.”

Her jaw dropped. “I absolutely did not—”

He interrupted by repeating—perfectly—one of the broken little gasps she’d made when he’d had his mouth between her thighs. Low. Throaty. Devastating.

Hermione threw a hand over her face. “I hate you.”

He smirked and pressed a kiss to her wrist. “You really don’t.”

She gave him a flat look, though she couldn’t stop the curve pulling at her mouth. “Smug bastard.”

“Filthy lady,” he shot back—laughing now, actually laughing, low and wrecked and still breathing against her skin like he hadn’t quite recovered from her.

She shoved his shoulder without force. He didn’t budge. Of course he didn’t.

God help her—she liked this. The warmth of him. His weight on her body. The ridiculous, stupid, aching softness of this moment—like they’d slipped past restraint and landed somewhere dangerous.

Her smile faded before she could stop it. She swallowed. “This can’t be a thing.”

His expression didn’t change. “It’s a thing.”

“It really isn’t.”

He leaned in, kissed the corner of her mouth like he was tasting honesty. “Say that again when you’re not still trembling.”

She glared at him. Mostly to hide the fact that he wasn’t wrong.

Nox barked from the other side of the door, impatient as ever.

Draco closed his eyes. “I swear to God, that dog is dead to me.”

Hermione snorted and covered her face with her hands.

She told herself this was meant to stay simple—no promises, no depth—but nothing about him was casual. The pull between them wasn’t just want; it was recognition. When his magic brushed hers, it didn’t clash. It fit. Like a lock finding its key, like something in her finally clicked into place. Every touch made it worse, or maybe better. She couldn’t tell anymore.

And then he kissed her again. Slower. Too slow. The kind of kiss that made promises nobody should make at midnight.

Chapter Text

Chapter 17 Against Medical Advice

They were still in bed, he traced her like he was memorising her—fingertips dragging in slow, sweeping lines over her hips, her stomach, up between her ribs. It wasn’t sexual now. It was worse. It was intimate.

A shiver slipped through her before she could stop it.

Draco didn’t comment. He just kept touching her with that unnerving focus of his—like he was cataloguing every inch, claiming it as something he now had the right to know. His fingers slid over her ribs, her collarbone, then up to her shoulders. When his thumb brushed her breast, her breath caught—but he just continued that same deliberate path down her arm.

And then he stopped.

Hermione’s heart clenched. She didn’t move. She didn’t pull her arm away. But something hot and defensive flickered in her chest.

Armour up.

The faint ridges of scar tissue were still visible along the inside of her forearm, the letters uneven, carved once with a sadist’s patience. Mudblood.
It healed long ago. Magic and time had faded it. But some things never disappeared entirely.

The mark was barely visible now—you had to look closely, or touch, to even notice the faint ridges.
She never covered it. It was what she was. What had happened. Something she’d survived.

He brushed his thumb over one faint pale line, slow, careful—as if checking whether it would hurt. She couldn’t read his face. He was drunk on heat minutes ago, now he was silent. Sober. Studying. Too perceptive.

Silence settled between them. Sharp.

He didn’t look horrified. Didn’t pity her. Didn’t even look surprised. Just… aware. Deeply, painfully aware.

Hermione felt a familiar instinct stir, the old one—curl away, pull her arm back, make a joke before the quiet could turn dangerous.

“Don’t,” she said quietly, before he could speak.

“I wasn’t going to,” he said, voice low but steady.

She didn’t like pity. She didn’t do pity. She hated when people asked just to make her feel like the poor girl who’d been hurt.

No.

She had endured torture. She had built something after that—brick by brick, with her own hands and her own mind.

Her chest tightened, defensive. “Everyone always wants to ask about it.”

“I’m not everyone.”

His thumb brushed lightly—tentatively—over one of the faint, jagged letters. Not claiming, not soothing, just… there. Present with it. With her.

“You know what it is,” she said, not sure why she needed to say it out loud.

He met her eyes. “I do.”

Her throat tightened. “And?”

“And nothing.”

Silence pressed, heavy and bare.

He didn’t look away. “We both have marks that don’t fade.”

She inhaled sharply.

He held her gaze, steady, almost gentle. “This one is just the one people can see.”

Something raw and electric moved under her ribs—recognition, grief, fury, maybe all of it. He wasn’t touching her scar anymore, but she still felt the weight of his words against her skin.

He didn’t apologize, but  He didn’t flinch. He didn’t step away.

And that—Merlin—meant more than she had any language for.

He didn’t look away from her as he lifted her arm, slowly, deliberately. She let him. Maybe because she understood what he was doing. Maybe because stopping him would cost her more than she was willing to pay.

He turned her wrist gently and pressed his mouth to it. Not a soft kiss—not comfort. Something else. Something like agreement. Like he was saying: I see it. I know. I won’t look away.

Her pulse jumped against his lips.

He kissed her again, lower this time, along the inside of her forearm. His mouth brushed over the faded letters Bellatrix had carved there—a ghost of old violence—and Hermione felt the air leave her lungs in a slow, unsteady exhale.

She had always thought that kissing scars—those dramatic gestures people swooned over in novels—was stupid and a bit cringe. But here, now, with him… it wasn’t stupid at all. It was intimate in a way that felt dangerous. Tender in a way she wasn’t prepared for. Maybe it was only because it was him. Or maybe she’d been wrong her whole life.

Before she could speak—before she could ruin it by thinking too much—he was already moving, lowering her arm, pulling her back beneath him with a certainty that felt like gravity.

The shift was seamless—emotional force folding back into physical heat as his body settled over hers again. His skin was hot, his breath rough, his eyes dark in a way that had nothing to do with sex but would absolutely drown her in it.

He dragged his mouth along her jaw, then her throat, his voice low against her skin.

“I’m not finished with you.”

A shiver rolled through her, molten and sharp.

He smiled against her. Dangerous. Devoted. He dragged his hand between her thighs again. She gasped when he stroked her, body answering him instantly—but this time she didn’t let him set the pace.

She caught his wrist.

His eyes flicked to hers, heat darkening. “What are you doing?”

She didn’t answer. Instead, she slid her hand down his arm, slow and intentional, fingers weaving with his for a heartbeat before she let go and pushed at his chest—not roughly, but with quiet certainty.

Lie down.

He understood without words. She liked that.

He let her guide him onto his back, head sinking into the pillows. His hair was a mess, collarbones flushed, chest rising slow. He looked up at her like she was something dangerous he’d let loose on purpose. She liked that too.

Hermione moved over him, swinging one leg across his hips until she was straddling him again—this time fully in control. Her bare skin slid over his and his breath caught. She could feel him already hard again and the power of that—how fast he wanted her again—lit a dark spark in her blood.

She let her fingertips trace down his chest. Nothing rushed. Nothing wasted. She was deliberate now, sensual in a way that made his hands curl into the sheets like if he touched her too soon, he’d lose something important.

His voice was rough. “You taking your time with me, Granger?”

Her mouth tilted, not quite a smirk—something slower. “Mm. Maybe.”

She dragged her nails lightly down his abdomen and watched his muscles jump beneath her touch. She leaned down and kissed him, but not like before— Slowly this time. A kiss that said: I know what I’m doing to you. And I want you to feel all of it.

When she finally pulled back, his pupils were blown wide. She reached between them and slid her hand along his, stroking him once—smooth and sure. His jaw clenched.

“Fuck,” he breathed, hand gripping her thigh now. “Hermione…”

She guided him to her entrance—but didn’t sink down. Not yet. She circled her hips just enough to make him feel her heat, her slick sliding over him maddeningly. Teasing not for playfulness—but for control.

He swore again, a sound torn from his chest. “You’re going to kill me.”

She laughed—quiet, breathless—and pressed a finger to his lips. “Shhh, don’t distract me.” The soft sound held more power than any sharp retort, her eyes glittering with mischief. “God, you are a talker.”

She sank down onto him—slow. Excruciating. Deliberate. Taking him inch by inch, watching the way his control snapped and reformed and snapped again beneath her.

His hand shot to her waist, gripping tight. “Christ—you feel—” His head hit the pillow. He had to start again. “You feel unreal.”

She rolled her hips, adjusting to the deep, perfect stretch of him. It made her gasp—made pleasure spark hot and urgent again—but she held his eyes, refusing to break first.

“Still think I’m pure and proper?” she asked, breath catching on a moan as she found her rhythm over him—slow, rolling motion that made both of them tremble.

He looked wrecked. Reverent. Dangerous.

“I think,” he rasped, breath uneven, “you’re going to fuck me unconscious.”

Her nails trailed down his chest again, slow enough to qualify as a warning. “Relax,” she murmured. “I’m certified in CPR… now shhh.” The last word was a breath against his mouth—light, commanding, impossible to disobey.

He grabbed her hips harder.

“Don’t shush me,” he said, half scandalised, half amused.

“Shhh.” She did it again, softer this time, moving over him with deliberate ease—like she owned the moment, his breath, his silence.

Heat shot through her at the command in his voice—pure, unfiltered, wicked—and her body answered before thought caught up. She ground down, deeper, harder, rhythm tightening, pleasure flooding every nerve.

His head tipped back, a sharp sound falling from his throat—raw, unguarded. She felt that—felt powerful, felt wanted, felt seen.

She braced her hands on his chest and rode him—stronger now, faster, the wet slide of their bodies filling the room with shameless sound. His grip on her hips turned bruising. She didn’t want him gentle.

He dragged his gaze up her body again—and something in him broke.

He sat up suddenly, chest pressed to her, arms locking around her waist, still buried deep inside her as she rode him.

Of course he did. He couldn’t possibly let her have all the power; he had to match it, challenge it, turn it into a game they both knew he wanted to win.

His mouth found her shoulder, then her throat—kissing, biting, worshipping. He fucked up into her now, matching her rhythm, filling her harder, deeper. She felt every thrust like a strike straight to the center of her.

“Merlin—Hermione—loose for me—let me feel it…”

Her breath stuttered. The words slid under her skin, igniting everything. She didn’t care if it was reckless. She didn’t care if it was too much. She didn’t care if this ruined her. She gave in—completely.

Her climax tore out of her—violent, consuming, molten heat flooding her veins, shaking. He crushed her to him and fucked her through it—relentless, savage and came with a groan against her neck. Raw.

He stayed inside her, breathing hard, his forehead pressed to the curve of her shoulder, one hand still tangled in her hair like he didn’t know how to let go.

Hermione closed her eyes.

She didn’t let go either.

Time blurred. Neither of them spoke for a long while, and the silence didn’t ask them to.

They stayed tangled together, moving only when the need to touch outweighed the stillness. Lazy sweeps of fingers along ribs. The brush of a thumb over a cheekbone. A kiss pressed to a shoulder. A kiss returned to a jaw. Nothing rushed. Nothing demanded. It felt… dangerous, how easy it was to stay like this.

She didn’t know how long they lay there—minutes, an hour, forever.

His body was warm against hers, solid and anchoring. His skin was soft over hard muscle. He smelled like heat and sex and the faint trace of her perfume on his throat. She shouldn’t have liked that as much as she did.

She let her fingers drift over the line of his chest, tracing lazily, and felt the steady rise and fall of his breathing under her palm.

Comfortable.

That was the threat of it. Comfort was always the beginning of danger.

They drifted in and out of sleep like that—slowly, reluctantly—until sometime later when her stomach betrayed her with a violent growl that practically echoed in the quiet room.

Her eyes snapped open.  Brilliant. Survived war, saved the wizarding world, unmanned by hunger.

She considered the ethical dilemma before her:

A) Wake Draco and ask if raiding his kitchen was socially acceptable.
B) Quietly break into his kitchen like a food burglar.
C) Starve out of pride.

After fifteen full seconds of moral debate, she nudged him. “Malfoy. Malfoy. Wake up.”

He made a low sound. Very male. Very asleep. Very not helping.

She poked his shoulder harder. “Wake up, I have a question.”

One eye opened. “If it’s whether I’m up for a third round, the answer is yes.”

She shoved him. “It’s not that.”

Both eyes opened now—interested, amused, and far too awake for someone who’d just been dead asleep. “Shame.”

She rolled her eyes. “Am I allowed to rummage through your kitchen or is post-coital theft frowned upon?”

He blinked once. Twice.

Then he laughed—quiet, smug, unfairly attractive in the dark. “You woke me up to ask for snacks?”

“I was being polite.”

“You weren’t.”

“Fine. I was being borderline polite.”

He shifted onto his back, hands behind his head, watching her like she was the best kind of chaos. “You could’ve just gone to the kitchen.”

She frowned, like the answer was obvious. “That would be rude.”

“You can go through my kitchen,” Draco muttered, voice still rough from sleep. “But all you’re going to find is wine, dog food and protein powder.”

She stared at him like he’d just confessed to a violent crime. “You said dinner.”

“I was going to order in.”

“You lied.”

“Technically,” he said, stretching with unearned arrogance, “I never specified where dinner was coming from.”

She narrowed her eyes. “I want burgers.”

He blinked. “Burgers. At midnight.”

“Yes.”

A pause. “Plural?”

“Like three.”

His brows rose. “Three burgers.”

“Cheeseburgers,” she clarified. “And a Coke.”

He stared at her like she was a medical anomaly. “You’re going to die of a stroke.”

“You’re going to die of a hex if you don’t feed me.”

He dragged a hand over his face totally amused. “God, you’re like a gremlin.”

She smirked. “You already got me wet, so your argument is invalid.”

He choked. Actually choked. Then laughed—helpless, unhinged, like someone had unplugged his brain and replaced it with static.

He muttered something in French—definitely French, and definitely obscene—then grabbed his phone. “Brilliant. Fine. What do you want on the burgers?”

“Chips.”

“That’s not a topping.”

“And onion rings,” she added, completely unbothered.

He stared at her. “Do you also eat souls?”

“Only Slytherin ones.”

His mouth curved—lazy, dark, entertained, he planted a soft kiss on her. “Order’s on its way, demon.”

He pulled on grey joggers—low on his hips because he was a very handsome problem—and headed out to the living room. She watched him go. Broad shoulders. Muscles. Silver light turning his skin mythic.

Too beautiful. Too dangerous.

She escaped to the bathroom. Cleaned up. Finger-combed her hair into something that vaguely resembled intention. Rolled on the fresh underwear she’d stuffed into her purse—originally meant for a graceful exit, not a post-sex burger detour—and stared at her red dress. Wrinkled. Beyond saving. An unwearable crime scene.

She needed something else.

So she stole one of his black T-shirts. Soft, oversized, and long enough to be illegal in several countries.

Good.

Barefoot, she padded out.

Draco was in the kitchen, drinking water straight from the bottle, watching her with an expression that did not belong in the “casual hook-up” category.

 Nox trotted over, cheerful and shameless, and dropped a slobbered stuffed dragon at her feet. She crouched, scratched behind his ears, and threw the toy. He shot after it, tail wagging like she’d just announced he was the love of her life.

“Do you want some water?” he asked.

“Yes, please.”

She picked up her wine glass instead and drained the final mouthful.

Draco stared. “That was not water.”

“It has some percentage of water.”

He opened the fridge, grabbed a bottle, and handed it to her with the air of a man reluctantly accepting adulthood. “Drink this before you die on my watch.”

She was about to fire back with something cutting when the doorbell rang.

Hermione moved to answer it out of habit—bare legs, T-shirt, post-sex hair and all—when Draco’s arm appeared out of nowhere, blocking her path against the wall.

“Granger,” he said, voice low, “you are not opening the door with your ass out.”

She looked down at herself, then up at him. “It’s just food.”

“It’s not just food,” he said. “It’s a nineteen-year-old delivery boy who doesn’t get to see—” his gaze swept down and up slowly, darkening—“that.”

She lifted a brow, amused. “Possessive of me already, Malfoy? Bit fast, isn’t it?”

He stepped closer, not smiling this time. Something else flickered beneath his expression. Something unguarded. “Don’t test me.”

She didn’t look away. Didn’t flinch. Didn’t give him the satisfaction of reacting.

Before he could launch into another territorial monologue about her legs and weaponized nudity, she stood, walked right past him.

“Oh God, you’re so prude for a doctor,” she said—light, lethal—and opened the door right in front of him.

The delivery guy blinked. Took in the situation. Blonde, shirtless man behind her. Woman drowning in said man’s shirt. Hair wrecked. Bite marks. Air thick enough to cut with a dull butterknife.

Hermione smiled brightly. “Hi. Order for Malfoy.”

The guy nodded, stunned into silence, and handed her the bag. Draco stood behind her like a scandalized Victorian widow, one hand dragging down his face.

She opened the door, paid, and gave the delivery guy a generous tip. “Cheers,” she said with a quick smile before closing it again.

When she turned back around, Draco just stared at her in disbelief.

“What?” she said, setting the food on the counter.

He pointed at her again. Uselessly. “You—”

“Yes?”

“You—you—” He was actually struggling.

“Words, Malfoy.”

“You answered the door.”

“Yes.”

“You answered the door—like that.”

“I said I was going to.” She opened the first bag of fries and stole one. “You can’t say you weren’t warned.”

He looked shocked.

She passed him a fry without looking at him.

He took it. Immediately.

They stood there eating fries for a moment in silence. His T-shirt hung off her shoulder. Their bodies kept drifting closer on their own, like they had no concept of personal space anymore.

“You’re impossible,” he muttered.

“Correct.”

He grabbed the ketchup, opened a box of onion rings, and handed it to her without being asked. He hadn’t stopped glaring at her since she opened the door.

She grinned around a mouthful of fries. “Jealousy looks weird on you.”

She wiped a bit of ketchup from the corner of her mouth, watched him watch her, and said it without apology.

“I don’t like jealous men. It puts me off.”

He didn’t react right away. He finished chewing, set his food down, and leaned both hands on the counter like he was bracing himself.

“I’m not jealous,” he said.

She scoffed. “You nearly had an aneurysm because I opened a door.”

“I wasn’t jealous,” he repeated, eyes steady on hers.

She arched a brow. “Then what was that?”

“Possessive.” He didn’t flinch. Didn’t soften it. “Difference.”

She stared at him for a beat. It wasn’t what she expected him to say. Not the word. Not the unapologetic weight behind it. “Possession isn’t any better.”

“It is when it’s honest.” His voice was lower now, slower. “Jealousy is insecurity. Possession is clarity.”

Her breath caught before she could stop it. “Explain.”

“You open that door,” he said, stepping closer, “in my shirt, with my mouth still on your neck, smelling like my hands on you—”

“Draco—”

“—and every man alive would know you’d just been fucked. By me. So yes, I cared. And I’ll care tomorrow. And the day after. And every time someone looks at you too long.” His jaw hardened. “I won’t apologize for that.”

The air changed—heated, heavy.

She didn’t step back. Instead, she lifted her chin, pulse shaking but steady. “You don’t own me.”

“I know,” he said. “But I’m not pretending I don’t want to.”

Her voice came quieter, not softer—sharp, precise. “What does that mean?”

He didn’t hesitate. “It means I want you.”

“That’s not an answer,” she said.

His gaze dragged over her face, down to her mouth, then lower. He looked like a man who had run out of patience with restraint. “I don’t do lies. I don’t do pretend. I don’t do casual.”

“You just had sex with me on your bed and your kitchen counter is probably next. That seems casual.”

He shook his head once. “No. Sex is easy. Not looking at you is hard.”

Her stomach tightened.

His voice dropped—measured, dangerous in its honesty. “I want you. I’m going to keep wanting you. I’m not going to apologize for it. And I’m not going to share.”

The air shifted—too much, too fast, like altitude change she hadn’t prepared for. Her pulse skittered.

She held his gaze, pulse thudding, and forced her voice to stay steady. “Well. I do casual. And I don’t like possessive men. You don’t own me—you never will. So.”

The word hung there, sharp as a line being drawn in sand.

“I don’t want to own you,” he said, too quickly.

Her brow lifted. “You just said —.”

“I know, but—Merlin, Granger…” He scrubbed a hand through his hair, visibly fighting with himself. “I’m not trying to stake a claim on your existence. I just—” He exhaled, defeated. “Can you at least not answer the door naked? Okay?”

She didn’t know what to do with that truth. With him. It was too real, too soon, too sharp. If she stayed in the moment, she’d say something reckless and irreversible.

So she reached for the nearest distraction—food. The universal emergency exit.

Hermione took the first one and bit in without hesitation—thick patty, melty cheese, grease dripping down her wrist.

Heavenly.

A small, involuntary sound of pleasure slipped out of her—deep, satisfied, absolutely obscene.

She didn’t even realize she’d made it until she felt him staring.

She glanced up. Draco was motionless across from her, burger in hand, doing nothing except watch her with the kind of intensity normally reserved for classified magical artifacts and morally questionable research.

She blinked. “What?”

He didn’t move. Didn’t even pretend not to be affected. His voice was a little rough. “You can’t make sounds like that around me.”

“I didn’t,” she said around another massive bite.

“You did.”

“I was eating.”

“That was not eating,” he said darkly. “That was… a situation.”

She smirked and deliberately took another bite, slower this time, humming through it just to watch his jaw tick.

“You’re going to pay for that,” he muttered.

“I look forward to it,” she said, taking his fries without asking.

She finished all three burgers. Every bite. Didn’t apologize once. When she was done, she wiped her fingers on a napkin and reached for his drink like it belonged to her.

He watched her, fascination written across his face. “I don’t understand you.”

“Good,” she said. “You’d get bored if you did.”

She finished stealing the last of his fries and looked entirely unrepentant about it. He was still watching her like she’d rewired his brain without permission.

“What is there to understand?” she asked, genuinely curious.

He shook his head slowly, eyes dragging over her face like he was still trying to decipher her the way he’d once unravelled ancient curse scripts. “You… you’re so—” He stopped, visibly irritated by the limits of human vocabulary. “You’re so fucking smart it hurts to be around you sometimes, but then you’re reckless, push too much. You’re self-righteous about law and human rights and—Merlin, you should be—and then—”

His gaze dipped to her mouth, lingered, then travelled lower in a way that stripped the air between them. “—you’re sexy as sin, and you eat three burgers like it’s afternoon tea, and you make filth sound like philosophy.”

She took a slow sip of his drink. “Yes.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes.”

He stared at her.

She stared back.

Then—slowly—his mouth curved. “Unbelievable.”

She smirked. “You knew that already.”

“Unfortunately,” he said, leaning a little closer, “I’m starting to like it.”

She didn’t smile back—but she didn’t look away either.

“I’m also stubborn,” she added, wiping her fingers on a napkin. “Annoyingly so.”

“I’ve noticed,” he said dryly.

“I’m always right.”

He huffed a laugh. “Tragic.”

“And,” she went on, unbothered, “I don’t really like to talk about feelings.”

Draco leaned back on his stool, arms folding slowly as he studied her. “No?”

“No.”

“Is that a boundary,” he asked, “or a warning?”

She met his gaze without flinching. “Yes.”

Something flickered across his face—equal parts challenge and interest. Dangerous combination.

“I don’t mind difficult,” he said.

“I’m not difficult,” she corrected. “I’m precise.”

He breathed a quiet laugh. “You are a professional nightmare.”

“And yet,” she said, stealing another fry he absolutely did not offer her, “here you are.”

He watched her for a beat, eyes darker now—not from hunger this time, but from something more real. Something that saw her and didn’t back away.

“Yeah,” he said softly. “Here I am.”

He gathered the trash with one hand and flicked his wand lazily to vanish it, then walked past her—casual, smug, infuriatingly bare-chested. As he passed, he slapped her ass. Light. Teasing. Pure Draco Malfoy provocation.

“Let’s go to sleep, Miss Granger,” he said over his shoulder like a bastard who knew exactly what he’d just done.

Her head snapped toward him, brows lifting. “Malfoy.”

He turned, innocent as sin. “What?”

She stepped in close—close enough for him to feel her breath when she spoke. “Harder next time.”

His eyes went black.

No smirk. No comeback. Just raw hunger.

He didn’t say a word—just reached for her wrist and dragged her back to the bedroom like a man with a mission.

Hermione followed, smiling to herself.

God help her—she might actually enjoy this.

She woke to the subtle shift of the mattress—his weight moving beside her. Morning light slipped mercilessly past the curtains, washing the room in a cool gray-gold glow. Her body felt heavy and warm, muscles pleasantly sore, skin still humming with borrowed heat from the night before.

Draco was just sitting up. She watched him through half-lidded eyes, quiet, unobserved. He raked a hand through his hair, pushing blond strands back from his forehead. The sheet had fallen low on his hips, and she took a shameless moment to appreciate the view—long spine, lean muscle, sleep-warm skin. It wasn’t fair for anyone to look like that in the morning.

Then she heard it—soft but persistent.

A miserable, lonely whine from the other side of the closed bedroom door.

Nox.

Her lips curved sleepily against the pillow. “Oh, he is sad.”

Draco made a low sound—half a groan, half defeat. “He’s going to make me pay, I can feel it.”

Hermione stretched, the motion slow, lazy, like a cat. “He wants breakfast.”

“That’s his fake motive.” Draco reached for the T-shirt he’d worn last night and dragged it over his head. “He really wants to shame me morally.”

Nox offered a more dramatic whine.

Draco threw his head back and exhaled like a man facing trial. “Unbelievable.”

Hermione watched him pad barefoot to the door—gorgeous, annoyed, entirely unaware that she was never going to let him live this down.

He cracked the door open.

Nox didn’t walk in. He exploded into the room—many pounds of legal emotional damage—launching himself at the bed with a desperate howl of abandonment.

Hermione cracked up as Draco swore under his breath.

“Traitor,” he muttered, but Nox ignored him and immediately climbed onto Hermione like a large, furry anvil, aggressively burying his face into her torso and snorting with relief.

She gave in, laughing, petting his stupid, glorious head. “Hi, Nox.”

Draco watched, resigned. “He likes you.”

“Of course,” she said, scratching behind the dog’s ear. “I like him.”

“You just had sex with me,” Draco said, pointing at himself, deadpan. “And the first creature you greet in the morning with enthusiasm is my dog?”

“Yes.”

Nox licked her chin triumphantly and shoved his head under her arm again with a pathetic whine that translated perfectly into I suffered emotional abandonment for seven hours. Hermione scratched his ears and pretended not to be charmed. Draco pretended he wasn’t jealous of his own dog.

“He needs a walk,” Draco said at last, resigned to his fate.

Hermione glanced up at him from where she lay tangled in sheets and fur. “You’re taking him out like that?”

He looked down at himself—barefoot, bruised from her nails, jaw shadowed, hair a crime. Then he gave a slow shrug. “New York is full of weirdos. Might as well look like one.”

She almost smiled.

He reached for a hoodie draped over a chair and tugged it on. Before he went out for Nox’s leash, he leaned down over the bed, bracing one hand on the mattress beside her hip. He kissed her once—soft, unrushed—and then again, slower, like he wanted to memorize her mouth before stepping out the door.

He pulled back just enough to brush his nose against her cheek.

“I’ll buy breakfast,” he murmured. “Stay.”

Her pulse kicked.

Stay.

The word shouldn’t have landed the way it did. It was too early for requests like that. Too early for invitations that sounded like choices with gravity. Too early for him to say it like that—not hopeful, not casual.

Certain.

He kissed her shoulder next, lips warm against her skin. Then he was out straightened, clipped the leash to Nox’s collar, and headed for the door.

Hermione called after him lazily, “Don’t forget coffee.”

He glanced back over his shoulder.

“Don’t move,” he said. “I mean it.”

Then he was gone.

While he was out, she took the rare opportunity to not overthink. Much.

Theo had texted her—three times, escalating in drama—so she replied to confirm she was alive and not buried in a shallow Malfoy-dug grave.

Did you shag? he shot back instantly.

Hermione stared at the screen, rolled her eyes at how predictable he was, then sent him a single flame emoji.

It was the most honest answer she could manage without typing a full dissertation.

She found the bathroom, turned on the shower, and stepped under the hot water. Her body ached pleasantly from the night before, and she winced at the constellation of bruises already blooming along her hips. Arrogant bastard. She smiled.

Then came the tragedy.

He only had one bottle in the shower. One. Shampoo. Men were terrifying.

She read the label. Cedar, smoke, glacier minerals, alpha-omega power scent. Whatever that meant. It smelled like someone bottled arrogance and sell it. Also—no conditioner. Monsters walked among society and she had found one.

By the time she stepped out, she had accepted her fate. Her hair was going to stage a rebellion. She combed it into a loose knot at the base of her neck, minimal effort, French-girl-in-exile chic. Done.

She slipped her dress back on—freshly pressed with a flick of her wand—and padded barefoot into the kitchen. The tiles were cool under her feet, annoyingly pleasant. That was the problem with his stupid flat: it was too easy to exist in. A dangerously comfortable habitat.

She grabbed her mobile, hunted for the sound system, and after failing to locate a single button, knob, rune, or soul-bound touchscreen panel, she muttered, “Ridiculous,” and surrendered. Mobile on the counter. Volume up.

She found his ungodly expensive espresso machine on the counter. Chrome. Sleek. Aggressively masculine. And entirely unused. She squinted at it like it was a puzzle. Then looked it up online.

Ten minutes and one YouTube tutorial later—victory. Steam hissed, espresso poured, life magic returned to the world.

She was just pouring the second cup when the door opened. Draco walked in with a coffee bag under his arm and Nox trotting smugly at his side.

He stopped in the doorway, blinked once, then stared at the espresso machine like it had personally betrayed him.

“You got that to work?”

She handed him a cup. “Did you think I couldn’t?”

“I’ve had it for a month,” he said, genuinely offended. “I can’t make it do anything except scream at me in Italian.”

She sipped her cup, unbothered. “It said to descale it.”

“What does that even mean?”

She shrugged. “No idea. But it worked.”

He watched her over the rim of his cup, suspicious. Then—slowly, begrudgingly—he tasted the coffee.

He froze. Blinked. Lowered the cup.

“…marry me.”

Hermione snorted.

“I bought bagels,” Draco said, setting a paper bag on the counter. “There’s cream cheese in the fridge.”

Hermione pulled the fridge open—and stopped shock in horror.

Everything inside was organized with surgical precision. Glass containers, evenly stacked. Labels. Alphabetical order.

She stared in silent judgment. “This is a cry for help.”

Draco took another slow sip of coffee. “It’s a system.”

“It’s a disease.”

“It’s efficient.”

“It’s unhinged.”

He didn’t even blink. “Says the woman who ironed her dress with a wand.”

She pointed a warning finger at him. “That was just to look good. This”—she gestured at the fridge like it contained the evidence board of a crime—“is you being a serial killer.”

He smirked.

She leaned in further, scanning shelves of perfectly stacked meal-prep containers arranged by date, and what looked suspiciously like glycemic index. “Do you… schedule your meals by the hour?”

“No.” He opened a cabinet with the solemnity of a priest revealing scripture. “By macronutrient.”

She stared at him.

He stared back.

Nox barked once, which somehow felt like commentary.

Hermione closed the fridge gently—as if afraid to disturb whatever ritual kept the food aligned to the lunar cycle—turned to Draco and said with clinical gravity, “You’re frightening. This, combined with that one weird Too-Man shampoo in your shower, is how documentaries start.”

His brow rose. “Too-man shampoo?”

“You know the one. Black bottle. Smells like pine, aggression, and emotional repression.”

Draco folded his arms. “It smells clean.”

“It smells like a werewolf trying to sell cologne,” she said. “You’re frightening.”

She found the cream cheese and set it on the counter. He sliced bagels with unnecessary precision—like even breakfast had to meet performance standards. They moved around each other easily, too easily, and that was probably why he finally asked it.

They ended up walking back to her flat that afternoon. Nox trotting proudly between them—because she needed clean clothes and insisted on checking on Crookshanks.

Crookshanks was, predictably, thriving. Regal. Slightly offended by the intrusion. She topped up his food for the third time in twenty-four hours. Draco accused her of overfeeding; she accused him of not understanding feline emotional needs. They left in a stalemate, Crookshanks the undisputed winner.

They didn’t plan to spend the whole weekend together. It just… happened.

One moment they were having breakfast, the next it was afternoon, then evening, and then Saturday vanished like a miscast Disillusionment Charm. At some point, she made him walk to the corner pharmacy to buy shampoo and conditioner that didn’t smell like glacier minerals and posh men. He complained the entire way—loudly—but still carried the basket, paid, and muttered something about “false advertising” when the bottle claimed silky softness.

They ordered food again because neither of them had the emotional energy to pretend they might cook. They half-watched a film, which turned into him mocking the script, which turned into her laughing into his shoulder, which turned into his mouth on hers, which turned into them never finishing the film. Or wearing clothes. Or leaving the bed until sometime past midnight.

They slept twisted together and woke up the same way—her knee between his, his arm slotted under her waist, the warm, steady weight of him at her back like they’d been doing this forever instead of two days.

On Sunday night, she finally went home, he complained, Nox cried when she closed the door.

Crookshanks was fine—indignant, but fine. Her flat felt smaller than she remembered. Quieter. Her bed felt cold. She lay awake longer than she meant to, staring at the ceiling, trying to work out whether she had just made a stunningly beautiful decision—or a catastrophic one.

Maybe both.

Chapter Text

Chapter 18 First Symptom of Addiction

Hermione arrived at the hospital early on Monday, long before the corridors filled with footsteps and clipped greetings. She settled into the fellow’s office, organised her notes, discharged a handful of weekend admissions, then slipped down to the lab. Her latest reports were waiting. She skimmed through them again, searching for inconsistencies that refused to appear. The simulations held. The lattice protocol behaved exactly as she’d designed it to.

Soon, the board would expect a formal presentation of their findings—every hypothesis, every test, every ethical safeguard dissected before the project could move into clinical trials. No new procedure touched a living mind without their approval. Still, for the first time, possibility felt close enough to touch. They even had a potential candidate—someone who might finally benefit from everything she had built.

She moved to the staff room, exhaustion settling in only once she’d stopped moving. Leaning against the counter, she bit into an apple while the coffee machine grumbled to life, filling the quiet space with the rich smell of caffeine and sterility.

His scent reached her before his voice did—clean, expensive, unmistakably him.

“You’re in early,” Draco said as he stepped into the room.

“I came at six,” she replied, not looking up at first. “Couldn’t sleep.”

She turned toward him.

His smile was small, knowing. “Wonder why that is.”

He was infuriating. The bastard had no right to look that good at this hour—tall, crisp shirt, hair a little too perfect for a Monday morning. For a moment, she felt the inconvenient tug of something like… oh, no. Absolutely not.

They had been apart for a few hours, not weeks. And this was casual. Very casual. Casually casual. Her brain needed sleep, distance, a Theo lecture on detachment—because this was casual—and caffeine. In that order.

Casual, okay?

“I don’t know what you’re implying,” she said, narrowing her eyes, “but don’t.”

Draco’s mouth curled—devilish, poised for a comeback that would absolutely ruin her morning caffeine levels—but the staff-room door swung open.

“Monday, huh?” Geller groaned, stepping inside and heading straight for the coffee machine like a man in crisis.

Hermione exhaled, grateful for the interruption. Draco leaned a shoulder against the counter beside her, clearly unbothered by the audience, clearly still ready to drop whatever scandalous line had been loading on his tongue.

Geller launched into a ramble about his weekend—some disastrous date or mowing the lawn or something. Hermione nodded and hummed in the right places, answering his questions with the minimum number of syllables required to appear polite. Draco, infuriatingly, looked amused.

Her phone buzzed on the counter.

Draco: You slept better than okay wrapped around me. Naked

Heat shot up her neck.

She locked the screen instantly, as if it might burst into flames. Draco took a slow sip of his coffee, his expression perfectly neutral, the picture of professional innocence.

The devil.

“Rounds, people?” he said, his tone clipped and dry as if he hadn’t just detonated her nervous system with a text. He pushed off the counter, already heading for the door. “Come on.”

Hermione set down her apple, pulse still embarrassingly uneven, and followed.

Rounds went smoothly. Until they didn’t.

They moved through the ward with their usual rhythm—post-ops, recoveries, pre-procedure checks, the routine hum of a Monday settling into place. Geller presented his epilepsy case, a teenager with recurrent grand mal seizures, and Draco outlined the plan with effortless precision — mapping out outcomes, risks, alternate pathways before anyone else had finished their notes. Hermione listened, not because she needed the refresher, but because she liked hearing him think. The clean logic of his mind unfolding like a spell she couldn’t look away from.

She wasn’t staring. Obviously.

She was a professional.

If her brain briefly wandered into fascinated territory… maybe bordering on entranced… possibly drooling a little — that was between her and whatever higher power was judging her.

Somewhere along the way, competence had become… magnetic.

Once rounds dispersed the interns like startled pigeons, Hermione handled a handful of consults. A follow-up on a shunt adjustment. Two migraine evaluations. A potential surgical candidate who, thankfully, only needed recalibrated charms therapy.

It was—annoyingly—an easy day.

She absolutely did not think about Draco. Not once.

…Twice.

Fine. Three times. Possibly four if she counted the moment she caught his reflection in the glass of the nurses’ station like some arrogant Greek statue haunting her peripheral vision.

Completely casual, she reminded herself. Utterly, unquestionably casual.

Her brain did not seem to care.

At lunch, Hermione sat in the cafeteria with a bowl of spaghetti, using surgical precision to avoid splattering sauce on her lab coat. Beside the pasta sat three brownies on her tray — unapologetically lined up like reinforcements for whatever fresh hell the afternoon might bring.

Geller dropped into the seat beside her and paused mid-reach for his fork. “Planning to code from hyperglycemia or…?”

“They were two-for-one,” Hermione said, deadpan. “And the cashier gave me an extra because I looked ‘tired as fuck.”

“That tracks,” a nurse said, stirring her soup.

Draco arrived then, taking the seat across from Hermione — because the universe had a sense of humour. His tray looked like a nutrition poster: grilled chicken, quinoa, steamed vegetables. Not a carb or joy molecule in sight. Of course.

The table settled into the usual lunch chatter — updated guidelines on concussion spells, a complaint about how the new charting system required six clicks to document a single symptom, someone asking if the night staff truly microwaved fish in the break room (they did).

Hermione twirled her spaghetti with the steady hands of a surgeon diffusing a bomb. She lifted a forkful — it dangled, wobbling, seconds away from launching red sauce across her lab coat and her entire medical credibility.

Draco’s eyes followed the pasta… the brownies… then her. The corner of his mouth betrayed him.

“Don’t,” she said, a lethal whisper.

He remained silent, expression saintly, as if he hadn’t texted her filth that morning.

She managed the bite without disaster, inner victory swelling.

Geller nodded toward her brownies. “So, if you die mid-shift, can I have one?”

“No.” Hermione shielded the tray with her forearm. “I’d haunt you.”

Her phone buzzed beside the tray.

Draco: I’ve been picturing you all morning… legs over my shoulders, those sounds you made… fucking addictive.

Hermione’s eyes snapped to him. He was eating his vegetables, serene. Vegetables. Like he hadn’t just committed war crimes by text.
Psychopath.

Her hand trembled slightly as she reached for her water. She could control that. What she couldn’t control—no matter how many surgical techniques she’d mastered—was the heat rising up her neck, painting her cheeks in obvious betrayal.

“Are you alright, dear?” one of the nurses asked, glancing over.

Hermione cleared her throat. “Yes. The sauce is… spicy.”

Draco didn’t look up or speak. He just smirked into his roasted vegetables like a smug, clean-eating bastard.
She seriously considered launching a brownie at his head. Or at least his stupid perfect hair.

Instead, she reached for the second brownie and bit into it with the silent rage of a woman at war.

She thought about texting him back.

Something equally filthy. Something that would wipe the smug off his face and leave him shifting in his seat. A perfectly calculated response—clinical, explicit, poetic in its depravity. She had the vocabulary. And the evidence.

But.

They were surrounded. Nurses. Residents. Geller making noises as he bit into an apple. Someone would definitely read over her shoulder and need to be Obliviated. And she had the afternoon block. Consults. Meetings. A presentation to prep. Being reduced to incoherence in the on-call room—even deliciously—would derail everything.

Still, her fingers hovered above the screen.

The on-call room. Merlin. It wouldn’t even take long. They’d done worse with less time. Less privacy. Less fabric.

She took a breath. Bit the inside of her cheek. Forced her thoughts back to her food.

Just eat your brownie and pretend.

Across the table, Draco glanced at her, expression unreadable except for the twitch at the corner of his mouth. He knew. Of course he knew.

“So, what did you do over the weekend?” Geller asked, stabbing a forkful of lettuce and aiming it at Hermione like it was a formal interview question.

“Laundry,” she said.

He blinked. “All weekend?”

“Yes.”

A nurse snorted. “That’s bleak, Granger.”

“It was deeply cleansing,” she said, without looking up.

“And you, Dr. Malfoy?” Geller turned, tone almost taunting.

Draco didn’t even pause chewing. “Studied anatomy.”

The table stilled. Someone coughed. Hermione focused very intently on her brownie.

Geller tilted his head. “Like… for a presentation, or—”

“Recreationally,” Draco said, completely deadpan, eyes fixed on Hermione just long enough to make her want to scream.

She took a long sip of water and did not make eye contact. Under no circumstances was she encouraging this man. This menace.

And yet. Her ears and other parts were burning.

Conversation moved on. Charts, scheduling conflicts, someone complaining about the broken coffee machine on the fifth floor. Hermione finally relaxed enough to reach for her last well-earned brownie.

A hand appeared. Fast. Precise. Surgical.

Draco plucked the last one of her brownies off her tray as if it had always belonged to him. Hermione glared at the now-empty square of plastic where chocolate joy had once lived.

Her head snapped up. “That was mine.”

Draco, already mid-chew, looked entirely unrepentant. “Thank you, Dr. Granger,” he said, tone smooth as a freshly sanitised scalpel. “Your contribution to my glucose levels is appreciated.”

“That was mine,” she repeated, scandalised. “I earned that brownie. I performed three consults. I answered twelve pages. I stitched a man who tried to sabre-open a champagne bottle. I—”

“You also misdiagnosed that neurological case for a full six minutes before I arrived,” he added lightly, as if providing an insight.

Hermione narrowed her eyes. “I didn’t”.

The cafeteria buzzed on. Charts, schedules, burnt coffee, human suffering. All background noise.

She stared at her tray once more, betrayed and brownie-less.

“I hope it gives you cavities,” she muttered, stabbing her spaghetti with enough force to qualify as assault.

Geller had the misfortune of sitting across from them for the entire ordeal, and his expression suggested he was witnessing a highly unnecessary subplot unfold during his lunch break.

Draco’s answering smile could have been bottled and sold as smug superiority.

“Page me if you need help with that cerebellar case. Or if you happen to find another brownie.”

He met her glare with infuriating calm, lifted the brownie in a silent toast, and took a bite. Slow. Deliberate. A wink—quick, private, criminal—before he rose from the table.

Just a stolen brownie and a smug exit.

He disappeared through the cafeteria doors, leaving Hermione holding her fork like a weapon and the nurses blinking after him.

Silence settled for a beat.

Geller exhaled through his nose, the way one does when accepting that the youth are ridiculous but harmless.

Hermione stared at the door, she hated how much her pulse tripped over itself because of it.

She thought afternoon was safe, Malfoy was in surgery, she was reviewing a chart in the lab when her pager buzzed once: OR5 – scrub. Now.

Malfoy. No explanation. Of course.

She found him in the scrub room, already at the sink, sleeves rolled, the hard line of his jaw illuminated by OR-light. He didn’t acknowledge her, but the air tightened as soon as she entered — like the room exhaled only when they stood in it together.

She took the sink beside him.

“You paged?” she asked, neutral.

“A double case. I need a second pair of hands I can rely on.”

No “hello,” no “please.” Just clinical necessity with a metallic undertone that didn’t match his voice from this morning.

Hermione kept her gaze on her scrubbing. “You have three senior residents available.”

“I said, ‘rely on,’” Draco replied, rinsing. “Not ‘tolerate.’”

Her pulse responded before she permitted it to.

They entered the theatre. Masks on, eyes forward, both of them slipping into the version of themselves the hospital believed in: composed, brilliant, untouchable.

The silence between them wasn’t cold — it was charged. Contained. The kind of silence that could combust if mishandled.

Once the first incision was made, the world narrowed to precision and magic. They worked with the terrifying synchronicity that had become their signature. It wasn’t romantic — it was worse. It was instinctive.

He reached; her wand was already there.
She adjusted; he’d anticipated it.

A hive mind built on too many shared hours — not all of them professional.

“Clamp,” Draco said.

She passed it without looking.

A nurse mumbled under her breath, “Seriously, how do they do that?”

Hermione pretended she didn’t hear. Draco, of course, showed no reaction at all.

When they transitioned to the second part of the procedure — delicate, high-risk — Draco leaned slightly closer to her, voice low enough that no one else could catch it.

“Keep your focus here,” he murmured, eyes on the spell matrix forming beneath his wand. “Not on whatever you’re trying very hard not to think about.”

“Stop projecting your inappropriate thoughts,” she said evenly. “Some of us are working.”

“I am working,” he replied, tone smooth, unreadable. “Very hard.”

The double meaning brushed against her skin like heat. She did not look at him. He didn’t need her to.

Minutes later, the operation ended flawlessly. Draco pulled off his gloves, exhaled once—quiet, controlled, the kind of breath a person takes to put their walls back up—and when he looked at her again, the man from this morning was gone.

“Good work,” he said, mask still on. Professional. Flat. Not a flicker of the man who had texted her about being wrapped around him naked less than nine hours ago.  

Hermione stripped her gloves, equally neutral. “As expected.”

Their eyes met for a fraction of a second — too quick for anyone to see, long enough that her stomach tightened.

Draco turned away first. “We’ll debrief later.”

“Obviously,” she replied.

When they stepped out of the OR, a resident walked by and Hermione instinctively put more space between them — two colleagues heading in opposite directions.

Draco didn’t look at her again, but as he passed, his voice was low enough for only her to catch.

“Next time, try not to think about my mouth when I’m holding a scalpel.”

Hermione froze. He didn’t slow, didn’t look back.

Unreadable. Filthy. And completely in control.

Which made him far more dangerous than if he’d smirked.

Hermione didn’t mean to follow him.

Truly.

She intended to turn left toward the charting station. She intended to breathe, reset, remember she was a rational adult with a medical license and self-respect.

But her feet moved after him with surgical certainty, like her body had made the decision without consulting her brain. Draco took the corner toward the service corridor, heading for his office. Quiet. Unmonitored.

Wrong choice for both of them.

Hermione caught up to him halfway down the corridor. He didn’t hear her coming — or maybe he did and didn’t care — but she grabbed his coat sleeve and pulled him sharply into the nearest supply room. The door clicked shut behind them, shelves of gauze and potions crowding the air with disinfectant and something illicit.

Draco barely had time to turn before she pushed him back against the shelves.

“Stop,” she hissed, breath uneven. “You’re doing this on purpose. You’re driving me mad.”

He opened his mouth — probably to deliver something devastatingly smug — but Hermione didn’t let him. She kissed him. Hard, ruthless, silencing.

He froze for half a second, a gasp caught against her mouth, and then he kissed her back with a heat that made her grip the front of his scrubs just to stay upright. It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t careful. It was the opposite of the lie they were trying to live.

Together, they didn’t pretend.

When she broke for breath, Draco’s voice was low, rough, not at all professional. “You accuse me of doing it on purpose as if I’ve ever pretended otherwise.”

“You’ve been texting me like that all day,” she whispered, forehead still pressed to his. “You know exactly what you’re doing.”

A ghost of a smile touched his lips. “Of course I do. My place tonight?”

“No.” Hermione forced space between them — or tried to. “This was… it was a one-time thing.”

His gaze dropped to her mouth, still swollen from him. “You spent the entire weekend in my bed.”

“I know,” she said, barely audible. “I know.”

“Granger.” Just her name. Quiet. Dangerous.

She exhaled, surrender slipping out before she could stop it. “Fine. But only tonight. And that’s it.”

She stepped back, smoothing her coat, composure snapping back into place like a starched collar. “We need to leave separately.”

Draco nodded, eyes still dark, breath still uneven. “You go first. I need a minute.”

Hermione bit back a laugh — soft, helpless, a little triumphant.

For someone so unreadable, she’d just unravelled him in under sixty seconds.

She spent the night with him again.

And the next.

And the one after that.

Always the same cycle: she’d swear it wouldn’t happen, swear she was done, swear she had discipline—and then she’d end up in his bed, wrapped around him like she belonged there, losing syllables of his name against his throat.

The nights were a blur of heat and teeth and helpless wanting—her moans muffled by his skin, the scrape of her teeth at his shoulder, his hands steady on her hips like he could anchor both of them. And then the quiet after. The slow strokes down her spine, the warm press of his mouth to her hairline, the kind of softness that was far more dangerous than the sex.

Every morning, she tried to undo it.

She always said she wouldn’t stay. She always gathered her things. She always left—on principle, on self-preservation, on the delusion that distance could fix this. She would Apparate back to her flat, feed Crooks, grab clean clothes, remind herself she had an independent life not orbiting Draco Malfoy.

And then… she’d Apparate straight back.

Like gravity hadn’t asked permission.

And Draco never once told her to go.
Not even subtly. Not even politely.
He just… let her be there. As if her presence was expected. Normal.

He’d get up early, because of course he was one of those running-at-sunrise-with-purpose people. A routine-and-discipline kind of man. He’d leash Nox, tie his running shoes with maddening efficiency, and—every morning—he’d glance over at her and ask, calm as anything.

“Coming with us?”

Hermione laughed the first time. “I don’t run.”

Draco had looked her over, no judgement, just quiet assessment. “You could.”

“It’s not in my skill set,” she said, wrapped in his blanket like a gremlin. “I’m more the ‘I have a fictional boyfriend in my book and he needs emotional support while I eat chocolate on the sofa’ type.”

Draco paused mid-lace, glanced at her over his shoulder. “Should I be jealous?”

“Of a fictional man?”

“You talk about him like he has better abs than me.”

She snorted into the blanket. “He does.”

The twitch at his mouth gave him away. “Liar.”

And he never pushed. Never guilted. He kissed the top of her head like it was the most natural thing in the world, took Nox, and left her to burrow back under his duvet with her book and stolen chocolate like a heathen.

It should have been horrifying.

Casual didn’t mean knowing where the mugs lived, or which cereal she loved and he pretended not to like but kept buying for her. Casual definitely didn’t involve a dog waiting at her door in expectation — as if she was part of the routine.
As if she lived there.

This was a mistake.

A slow, soft, addictive kind of mistake.

And she kept committing it like a crime she had no intention of stopping. A repeat offender. She’d passed the last exit back to safety days ago, and every night she kept accelerating.

The worst part?

She liked it.
She liked him.

And that was the most dangerous violation of all.

Chapter Text

Chapter 19 Defibrillator.

The ward had finally settled into that fragile, smoothly-shift quiet—monitors humming in soft sync, footsteps thinning, the hospital exhaling after the chaos of the day. Hermione lingered at the nurses’ station, clutching her clipboard like it was the last thread holding her life together.

Several nights. Several. All of them spent at Malfoy’s. Wrapped around him, doing unspeakable, surely illegal and definitely delicious things—only to drag herself back here each morning and pretend they were two professionals with boundaries, restraint, and a functioning grip on sanity.

She was spiralling, and not even in an interesting medical-mystery way—just the regular I am losing control of my life and kissing the problem repeatedly way.
So she was trying—honestly, truly trying—to establish distance. To stop. To not think about him. To un-Malfoy her brain long enough to remember she once had a life with rules and sensible choices.

Every day, the façade cracked a little more. Like when she’d casually touched his shoulder while explaining a procedure in the lab—just a light, instructional tap—and three interns had gasped as if she’d performed a live marriage rite. Or when he’d brushed a crumb from her cheek in the cafeteria, thumb grazing her skin with devastating gentleness, and half the table had gone silent in reverent horror.

Rumours spread like a hospital-acquired infection—fast, persistent, and impossible to fully treat. Hermione tried to ignore them, which was difficult when she kept blushing like an idiot. Malfoy, naturally, looked composed and faintly offended by the very suggestion that he could be involved in workplace gossip.

Hermione was finishing her shift notes—mind half-fried, caffeine barely keeping her upright—when a voice cut through the corridor. Familiar, rich, and far too loud.

“Excuse me—can you point me to the Neuro department? I’m completely lost.”

The pen slipped in her hand. She knew that voice.

Her head snapped up. Eyes went wide. “Theo?”

From somewhere down the hall. “YES!... MARCO?”

Hermione laughed, the sound bursting out of her. “POLO!”

“HERMIONE!”

“THEO!”

He appeared in the hallway. He’d only gotten more infuriatingly handsome with time—tall and lean. Long limbs, messy curls that brushed his forehead, and those unmistakable green eyes: bright, amused, and a little too knowing. Theo Nott, looking like the memory of every good thing that ever happened in her early twenties.

The clipboard slipped from her fingers and clattered to the floor.

Before her brain could catch up, her body was already moving. She ran. Interns scattered like startled pigeons just in time to avoid the collision, laughter breaking out of both of them the moment they crashed together.

Theo dropped his bag, arms wrapping around her waist as he lifted her clean off the ground and spun her in a dizzy circle. Her hair flew, her pulse soared, and her heart—traitorous thing—felt twelve again, giddy and weightless.

It hit her with the force of a blow: how easy this was. The uncomplicated joy. The kind of love that didn’t make her flinch or brace. Love that didn’t demand she ration pieces of herself to survive it.

“Theodore Nott, you absolute menace!” she said between gasps, still half in his arms.

“You run!” he shot back, laughing so hard he nearly dropped her.

“I wasn’t expecting you until tonight!”

“I got an earlier Floo arrival,” he said, still grinning like sunshine itself. “I couldn’t wait another minute to see you, witch.”

They started bouncing in place like idiots, clinging to each other, both laughing so hard tears were leaking down her cheeks. Around them, nurses were trying and failing to hide smiles.

“Is that her husband?” someone whispered.

Hermione choked on a laugh. If only the universe dealt in simplicity.

Theo spun them once more and announced to the corridor, “I’m her emotional husband. Superior to the legal kind—comes with dental and loyalty.”

She pressed a kiss to Theo’s cheek, the kind of kiss that came with a thousand shared histories—study nights, heartbreaks, tequila-fueled karaoke, and midnight laughter.

Theo just threw his head back, looking far too pleased with himself.

“God, you look exactly the same,” she said, breathless laughter still clinging to her voice.

“And you look radiant,” he said, like it was the most obvious fact in the world.

Behind the nurses’ station, Draco stood frozen mid-sentence, looking like a hawk about to murder the sky. His jaw was sharp enough to cut through steel.

Theo noticed him immediately—of course he did—and his grin only widened.

“Ah,” Theo said softly, still holding Hermione close. “So that’s Dr. Malfoy slash Black.”

Hermione felt her stomach do a dangerous flip. “Don’t start.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Theo said, already starting.

Hermione dared a glance toward the nurses’ station—Draco’s expression had not improved. If anything, he looked like someone had just misfiled his MRI scans under “miscellaneous.”

She dug into her coat pocket and shoved her keys into his hand. “Here. You have my address. Go wait for me there—I’ll be done in two hours. And don’t mess with Crooks.”

Theo clutched the keys to his chest like she’d given him a newborn. “I would never disrespect the ginger king.”

Theo winked. “Tonight we party, Granger.”

“Yeah! Nott,” she said, fighting a smile, emphasizing his name just to make him roll his eyes.

Theo scowled. “Use my full title next time”.

She sighed in theatrical defeat. “Fine. Tonight we party, Doctor Chaos-God Theodore Nott”

Theo beamed. “Thank you. Finally, someone uses my full medical title.”

He kissed her forehead and swaggered off down the corridor, leaving a trail of giggles and speculation behind him.

Hermione exhaled, turned back—and met Draco’s eyes across the nurses’ station.

Someone nearby whispered, “Who is that?”

 “Apparently,” Malfoy drawled “a very early Floo arrival.”

Hermione blinked, lips twitching, a blush creeping up her neck. “He’s an old friend.”

Draco’s tone was smooth as ever, but his eyes were volcanic. “I gathered.

Hermione was finally done. She signed off the last chart, slung her bag over her shoulder, and felt exhaustion shift into something fizzy and anticipatory…  Friday evening, no rounds tomorrow, and Theo waiting at her flat like a chaos deity. She could practically hear the music already—him raiding her kitchen, pouring drinks, making jokes loud enough to wake the entire building. A proper catch-up. Laughter, gossip, comfort. She’d needed this kind of uncomplicated joy for months.

She checked her reflection in the lift doors: hair slightly wild but not a total disaster, lipstick still surviving. Good enough.

When the doors opened, the corridor was blissfully empty—except for one figure leaning casually against the nurses’ station, tie loosened, sleeves rolled, the picture of reluctant authority.

Draco.

Of course.

He glanced up from a file, and for a fraction of a second his gaze softened. “Leaving early?”

She smiled, trying to keep her tone light. “It’s Friday, Malfoy. Even neurosurgeons are allowed to have lives.”

He closed the file, stepping a little closer. “So I’ve heard. Big plans?”

“Just dinner,” she said carefully. “Old friend in town.”

His mouth twitched. “The hugging enthusiast from earlier?”

Hermione groaned, pressing a hand to her forehead. “Don’t call him that.”

“I’m just identifying him correctly,” he said, almost teasing but with that quiet undercurrent that made her pulse pick up. “It was quite the reunion. The interns are still recovering.”

“He’s family,” she said, meeting his eyes. “Theo and I go way back.”

“Mm.” He leaned against the lift wall, voice low and dry. “Way back to…?”

“University,” she said quickly. “Shared flat, too many exams, too much caffeine. That sort of thing.”

He nodded once, but he kept looking at her, like the words were heavier than he meant them to be.

“We go way back, Granger. And I don’t spin you around.”

“In public you don’t,” she tried, offering the joke like a hand outstretched.

He didn’t take it.

For a brief second, his expression was… unguarded. Something almost vulnerable flickered across it, gone so fast she wondered if she’d imagined it. But it left a hollow tug in her chest all the same.

Hermione swallowed.

“Theo’s my friend,” she said. “That’s all.”

“So… you’ll be coming over late tonight?” Draco asked, voice too light to be casual.

Hermione shifted her bag on her shoulder. “I won’t be coming over at all. I’m staying with Theo this weekend.”

A tiny pause — not long enough to be obvious, but long enough for her to feel.
Draco’s jaw moved once, a barely-there clench, before he smoothed it away.

“All weekend,” he repeated. Not a question, but it landed like one.

“Yes,” she said, keeping her voice even. “We haven’t seen each other in months.”

He nodded slowly, eyes studying her like he was trying to read past the words. “And at what point,” he said, tone soft but edged, “Do I get the honour of being introduced to this… emotional husband of yours?”

Hermione’s breath caught. “You’ve met,” she said quietly.

Draco’s voice dropped, quieter. “I didn’t… I just stood there while he grabbed you.”

Hermione blinked. “Grabbed me? Draco, he picked me up, not—” She paused, shook her head. “What I meant is you both went to Hogwarts. Same year. Same House.”

His frown deepened. “No. I would remember him.”

“You wouldn’t,” Hermione said softly. “Theo was different back then. Quiet. Shy. Not someone people like you noticed.”

The flicker in Draco’s expression was fast—pride, ego, something sharper.

Hermione held his gaze. “And he was busy surviving his own war.”

Draco’s voice came out low. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“That,” she said simply. “Exactly what it sounds like.”

Draco looked at her like she was being difficult on purpose.
Maybe she was.

But the flicker of confusion behind his eyes — real, unguarded — pulled the sharpness right out of her. Hermione stepped closer and pressed a quick kiss to his cheek, gentling the moment.

“Theo is my best friend. My person,” she said quietly. “Don’t start a competitive macho thing. You’ll lose.”

His mouth twitched. “Is that a threat?”

“A fact.”

A breath passed between them — less tense now, but honest.

“I’m not doing anything,” he said, voice lower. “I just… want to meet him. Properly. If he’s in your life.”

“You don’t have to,” Hermione said, softer than before, almost careful. “We don’t… have to blend everything… Don’t you think? What we have can stay just ours. Separate is simpler.”

Her voice stayed steady, but she felt the tremor beneath it—a cowardice she dressed up as logic.

The word separate seemed to land somewhere she hadn’t aimed. Draco didn’t react, not outwardly. No frown. No sharp breath. Just… a stilling. A brief, disorienting quietness, like the room had lost a degree of warmth without the temperature changing.

His gaze shifted—not away from her, but inside himself. As if something had knocked loose in him and he had to gather it quickly, before it showed.

When he looked at her again, something was different. She couldn’t name it. Not cold—not exactly—but distant in a way that made her feel like she’d missed a step in a conversation she thought they were both having.

A small nod. Too small. “If that’s what you want.”

It was almost nothing. Almost.
But the version of him from seconds ago—the one who kissed her like he forgot about consequences—had vanished. In his place stood the polished, impossible-to-crack Dr. Malfoy she first met. Composed. Controlled. Untouchable.

 “I’ll see you on Monday, Dr. Granger.”

Dr. Granger.

Not Hermione.

The switch shouldn’t have mattered. It was professional. Sensible. Exactly what she’d just asked for.

So why did it feel like he’d taken something back?

She ignored the tiny, stupid twist low in her stomach and stepped out quickly, before she could say something she couldn’t take back. She slipped out of the lift the second it opened, a little too quickly to pretend it was graceful.

Even so, she saw his face before the doors shut—an expression tight with something unsaid, hovering between a protest and the restraint of someone who knew pushing her would only make her run faster.

She told herself it was self-preservation. It felt a lot more like self-sabotage.

The music hit her before she even reached her floor.

Dua Lipa — loud enough to rattle the stairwell. Hermione groaned into a smile. That man had been inside her flat for two hours and was already violating tenancy noise laws.

She unlocked the door and pushed it open.

Theo was in her kitchen like he owned the deed, sleeves rolled up, hips swaying, blender whirring. Red liquid sloshed in a jug that smelled like summer and bad decisions.

He spotted her and beamed. “You want me, I want you, baby—”

Hermione didn’t miss a beat. She grabbed the glass he slid toward her, took a sip of the red daiquiri — strawberry, cold, perfect — and sang back, “My sugarboo, I’m levitating—”

Theo kicked the fridge door closed with his heel.
And sang together, loud enough to upset a Crooks.

“The Milky Way, we’re renegading—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah—!”

He grabbed her hand and spun her under his arm, mock-dramatic, like they were on stage at karaoke night again. Laughter shot through her chest — bright, unfiltered, easy.

Hermione hadn’t realised how much she missed feeling like this until it was flooding her kitchen.

Crookshanks sat on the counter like a wronged child, staring at her with the full weight of abandonment trauma.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” Hermione said, setting down her bag. “You were fed.”

Theo leaned over and scratched Crooks behind the ears.
Crooks hissed.
Theo hissed back — just as aggressively — then resumed petting with the confidence of a man who had never once feared consequences.

Hermione blinked. “Why are you like this?”

“He started it,” Theo said, as if that explained everything.

Crooks, horrified but also begrudgingly accepting the affection, remained frozen in place, tail flicking like an insult.

Draco’s flat was quiet, careful, warm.
This was… chaos. Her chaotic love. And Merlin, she’d missed it.

“This is really good,” Hermione said, taking another generous sip of the red frozen daiquiri. “Dangerously good.”

“Thank you,” Theo said with a solemn little nod. “I’ve decided I should open a bar. Exclusively for doctors.”

Hermione arched a brow. “Doctors?”

“Attractive ones,” he clarified, pouring himself a second glass. “The kind I can flirt with shamelessly and eventually seduce.”

She snorted. “So… a very niche business model.”

Theo raised his glass. “Quality over quantity, Granger.”

“Sooo,” Hermione said, topping up her drink, “you came early. What happened to Martin?”

Theo made a tortured face and collapsed backwards onto her sofa like he’d survived war. “Only horrible things, Hermione. Unspeakable. I’m still spiritually unwell.”

Hermione winced. “That bad?”

“He called me bro,” Theo said, eyes haunted.

Her mouth fell open. “No.”

“Yes.” He pointed at himself as if presenting Exhibit A. “Me. Bro. And not once! He said it during sex.”

Hermione covered her face. “You’re lying.”

“I wish I were.” Theo sat up, sloshing his drink like a man recalling a near-death experience. “At first, I thought he was admiring himself in the mirror — which, fine, I respect self-worship — so I politely looked away to let him have his moment. Then I realised he wasn’t admiring himself — he was making eye contact with me through the mirror.”

He pressed a hand to his chest, traumatised.

“He pointed at me and went, ‘Yeah, there, bro.’”
Theo shuddered. “Bro. Do I look like someone’s gym buddy? Or like I sell crypto on Instagram in my free time? I am not a bro. I’m… whatever the opposite of a bro is. It’s a deal-breaker.”

Hermione wheezed. “BRO?!”

“BRO,” Theo repeated, staring into the void. “What was I supposed to do?”

“What did you do?!”

He took a tragic sip of daiquiri. “What any sane person would do. I continued and dissociated.”

Hermione almost choked on her drink. “Theo!”

“I left my body like a ghost and watched the whole ordeal from the ceiling. Truly horrific.” He stared at Hermione, wounded on a spiritual level. “Why are the pretty ones always weird?” Theo groaned and flopped sideways. “Martin had the arms… the abs… the everything—” His brain visibly rebooted mid-sentence. “—you know what? Maybe I don’t care if he calls me bro.”

“But you do…” Hermione shook her head.

He held up a finger. “Alright, I cared. I cared deeply. It haunts me. Every time I blink, I hear bro echoing in my skull.”

Hermione snorted. “Trauma.”

“Severe trauma,” Theo agreed. “I blame the protein shakes. They’re destroying brain cells. You can’t drink three a day and still know how to speak to another human.”

Hermione was still laughing when she collapsed beside him on the sofa. “Well, Draco drinks those protein shakes and he hasn’t lost any brain cells. And he definitely doesn’t call me bro.”

Theo’s head snapped up like a fox catching scent. “Oh? Malfoy has been promoted to first-name basis?” He placed a hand over his heart. “Hermione, darling… how hard is he shagging you?”

“Shut up,” she said, though she was grinning. “And… hard enough.”

Theo let out a scandalised gasp, clutching at invisible pearls. “Oh, do tell.”

Hermione shoved his shoulder. “I am far too sober to be giving you details.”

“Fine. Stay right there.”

Theo was already blending another batch of daiquiris, because restraint had left the building an hour ago. Within minutes, they were all buzzing—on rum, gossip, and the giddy thrill of oversharing.

“Alright, Granger, enough suspense. I want details.”

She sipped her drink, trying to look unbothered. “Such as?”

“Everything. Was it good? How’s the stamina? Is he one of those selfish, finish-and-roll-over types, or the kind that takes his time until your toes curl and you see God?”

Hermione didn’t flinch. She took a slow sip of her daiquiri, set the glass down with surgical precision, and met Theo’s gaze evenly.

“Yes.”

“But there is a contradiction there, Granger…”

“Theo.” She looked him dead in the eye, voice steady as a scalpel. “Yes.”

Theo clutched his chest like he’d been shot with joy. “Darling, I am so jealous and so happy for you at the same time.”

“There’s a problem,” she said.

“An STD? Haemorrhoids?”

Hermione stared at him, horrified. “Theo, why would your brain go there first?”

“Because we’re doctors. Differential diagnosis and all.” He shrugged, utterly unbothered.

“You’re disgusting. And no.” She sighed. “The problem is… I think he’s mad at me right now.”

Theo blinked. “Why?”

Hermione waved a hand, attempting nonchalance and achieving cardiac-arrest levels of suspicious. “It’s nothing. We just… may have had a small disagreement. A tiny one. Microscopic. Practically theoretical.”

He gasped. “Did you say you don’t see a future? You did, didn’t you? You broke his little rich-boy heart—”

Hermione stared into her glass, the red slush melting faster than she could drink it.

“I think…” She exhaled, choosing each word like it might explode if she dropped it wrong. “He wants something more serious than I do. So I keep him at arm’s length.”

Theo didn’t speak immediately. He just nodded, slow and thoughtful.

“Does that work?” he asked gently. “Keeping him there?”

Her throat tightened. “It has to.”

“Oh, babe…” Theo’s voice softened, all theatrics gone. “Ron really did a number on you, didn’t he? You don’t have to keep him at arm’s length.”

“I do.” Hermione’s reply came too fast, too rehearsed. “I’m here for a couple more months. It’s not serious. There’s no future. And even if I stayed… what’s the point?”

Theo stared at her like she’d just said the sky was optional. “Because you enjoy it? Because you are practically living with the man, Hermione.”

She opened her mouth, closed it, then crossed her arms like a shield. “It’s convenient. That’s all. We… fit logistically. Our schedules sync. It’s—efficient.”

Theo’s eyebrows climbed into his hairline. “Efficient. You’re describing great sex and emotional intimacy like it’s a dishwasher cycle.”

Hermione flushed. “I’m not— it’s safer this way.”

“Is it?” Theo asked gently. “Or does it just hurt in a way you’re used to?”

Her breath faltered.

Theo leaned forward, voice soft but impossible to escape. “Keeping him at arm’s length—does that actually protect you? Or is it just a slower kind of heartbreak?”

Hermione swallowed hard. “If I don’t take it seriously, I can’t lose anything.”

“That isn’t how it works.” Theo shook his head. “You’re losing things anyway. You’re losing the parts that could feel good.”

Hermione blinked rapidly, as if refusing tears by sheer will. “I’m not… I’m not doing this again, Theo. I won’t fall apart over someone. Not after Ron.”

“And I get that,” he replied. “But—”

She raised a hand, almost flinching at her own reaction. “Don’t. I can’t… that’s my boundary.”

Theo took another sip of his drink, slumping deeper into the cushions.

Hermione nudged him with her foot. “Are you sad about Martin?”

“No,” he said immediately… then grimaced. “I just don’t like being called bro. I have survived many indignities, Hermione, but that one? That one left spiritual bruising.”

She laughed—soft, affectionate. The kind that only Theo could pull out of her.

But Theo watched her a second too long for it to stay light. “How are you, though? Really.”

Hermione’s smile faltered. She stared at the melting pink in her glass.

“Good.”

He didn’t blink. Didn’t move. Just… waited.

Hermione huffed out a breath and sank further into the cushions. “Fine.”

One raised eyebrow.

She groaned. “I’m still stalking Lavender on Instagram.”

Theo’s lips twitched. “There it is.”

“I’m not proud of it,” she muttered, hauling Crookshanks into her arms despite his offended yowl. “It’s pathetic, I know.”

“It’s human,” Theo corrected. “Also mildly masochistic, but human.”

“I know.” She rubbed her forehead. “But she’s having a boy. The whole thing looks… perfect. Like some flawlessly curated fairytale. Like the love story of the century.”

Theo’s expression folded, warm and protective.

“We tried, remember?” she went on. “And I couldn’t, so I moved on. He kept asking, and I shut him down. And now it looks like he just… replaced me.”

“You really dodge a bullet there” Theo set his drink down and shifted closer, their knees touching. “You’re not sad about him, babe. You’re sad about the story.”

Hermione’s throat tightened. “I don’t think I have any feelings left for Ron. Truly, I don’t. But I feel like—like I’ve been replaced in the narrative of life. Like I’m the deleted chapter and she’s the final draft.”

She swallowed and it caught—small, humiliating.

Theo hummed, brushing her shoulder with his. “Yeah. Of course you feel that. He didn’t grow, didn’t change—just swapped you like a bad jumper that never fit him anyway.”

A breath escaped her. “Yeah.”

“Being replaced isn’t your fear, Hermione. Being forgettable is.”

Silence settled for a moment—not uncomfortable, just… exposing. Theo was the one person she allowed to call her shit out like that, and unfortunately, he knew her disgustingly well.

“I haven’t checked in a while…” Hermione said, chewing her lip. “I’ve been distracted.”

Theo’s head snapped toward her like a plant to sunlight. “Distracted?” His grin was immediate and indecent.

She opened her mouth to deny it, but he held up a hand.

“And for the record,” he added, settling back with a smug sigh, “I don’t blame you. Malfoy grew up yummy.”

Hermione’s head whipped toward him. “Theo!”

“What?” He threw his hands up. “He did! That boy went from pale child ghost to revived by forbidden magic and now he smolders in corridors.”

Hermione pressed her fingers to her brow. “You cannot say things like that.”

“I can, and I will. I’m a scientist. I observe. Scientifically speaking: delicious.”

Hermione bit back a laugh. “Can we not objectify my—”

She stopped. Too late. The word sat there like a tripwire.

Theo’s eyes gleamed. “Your…?”

“My… colleague,” she said pointedly, reaching for her Daikiri  as if alcohol could erase moments.

Theo let out a scandalised gasp.

“Colleague? Hermione Jean Granger. Be serious. You’ve basically been wrapped around him like a weighted blanket with a PhD, and the most intimate label you can muster is colleague?”

Hermione’s jaw flexed. “It’s accurate.”

“It’s avoidance,” Theo said, voice gentler now but sharpened with truth. “And not the cute kind where you pretend emails don’t exist for three days.”

Hermione opened her mouth, but he shook his head.

“Babe… Ron really did a number on your self-esteem. We’ve covered that. He rewired the way you trust people—made you doubt your instincts, made you think love is something you should survive instead of enjoy.” Theo sighed. “And maybe Malfoy is someone you can trust. Maybe he isn’t. But you’re not even letting yourself find out.”

Hermione huffed a small laugh. “He is… different from who we knew at Hogwarts.”

Theo tilted his head. “He was always wired for intensity. Just needed de-Dark-Arts-ing.”

Hermione snorted. “That’s not a verb… and change of subject… please.”

“I’m thinking I may switch back to dating women,” Theo declared, reaching for another spring roll like he needed fuel for the decision. “Men are a lost cause.”

Hermione nodded solemnly. “A reasonable conclusion supported by extensive field research and recent traumatic events involving the word bro.”

“Exactly.” Theo pointed at her with his chopsticks for emphasis. “Women at least communicate. And moisturise. And know the difference between pet names and fraternal greetings.”

Hermione smirked. “Also, statistically less likely to high-five you afterwards.”

Theo shuddered. “Don’t even joke. One man did.”

Hermione covered her face with both hands. “No. I’m choosing not to believe you.”

“Yes. And he said, ‘Nice teamwork, champ.’” Theo took a drink like he was cleansing his soul. “At this point, I’m one queer encounter away from converting to celibacy.”

“You’re dramatic.”

“I’m traumatised,” Theo corrected. “There is a difference.”

Hermione leaned her head on the back of the sofa, watching him with a fondness she didn’t have to name.

“For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’d be switching back. I think your preferences have always included ‘whoever treats me well and makes my brain spark.’ Gender optional.”

Theo paused, eyes flicking to hers. “Look at you, being all wise at me.”

“It happens occasionally,” she said lightly. “Don’t get used to it.”

Theo nudged her knee. “Still. Women. Might be time.”

Hermione shrugged thoughtfully. “Then go on a date with a woman. See if the universe sends a sign.”

He considered this. “If she calls me bro, I’m moving to a monastery.”

Hermione raised her glass. “Fair.”

“I shagged a paediatrics fellow a couple of weeks after the bro incident,” Theo said, as casually as mentioning he’d bought new socks. “Women are nicer than men.”

Hermione blinked. “We are.”

“Yes” he said. “She had kind eyes and a Gryffindor moral compass. It felt right.”

Hermione held up a hand. “How can you— you know what? I don’t want to know.”

Theo leaned in, waggling his brows. “Like… specifics?”

“Don’t.” Hermione grabbed a cushion like a shield. “Please, I’m begging you.”

Theo threw his head back laughing. “Relax, princess. You think I traumatise you for fun?”

“Yes.”

He considered this. “Okay, fair. But I promise—no anatomical storytelling without consent.”

“Thank you,” she said, relieved.

Theo settled back, still grinning. “For the record, it was lovely. Women listen. And communicate. And there was cuddling, Hermione. Without me having to file a formal request.”

Hermione softened despite herself. “So what’s the issue?.”

“But…,” Theo admitted. “she was moving to Dublin for a research post, and we agreed not to long-distance it. Adults, mature, civilised, heartbreak-free. Very boring of us.”

“Proud of you,” Hermione said, gently bumping his leg with hers.

“Thank you.” He exhaled dramatically. “Still, one more disastrous man, and I’m becoming strictly lesbian‐adjacent.”

“Lesbians would chew you up and spit you out with a Yelp review,” Hermione said.

Theo clasped his hands to his chest. “How dare you!.”

Hermione laughed, sinking deeper into the cushions. The air between them hummed with ease—like this wasn’t just catching up, but coming home to yourself in front of someone who already knew the unpolished parts. With Theo, she never had to pretend she was fine.

Ten minutes later, Theo had made a third batch of daiquiris. Then a fourth. Then—because they were allegedly emotionally intelligent adults with catastrophic impulse control—a fifth.

Somewhere between Batch three and the moment Theo declared “Feelings are cocktails for the soul,” the living room became a dance floor. Hermione queued the Spice Girls, and they screamed the lyrics with the unhinged conviction of people who had survived the nineties and earned the right to be feral about it.

Crookshanks watched from atop the bookshelf like a judgmental chaperone at a school disco, tail twitching with generational disappointment.

They danced until they were gasping—Theo slick with sweat and theatrics, Hermione loose and laughing in a way she hadn’t in months. During Stop, Theo attempted a high kick that nearly took him out. Hermione caught him by the shirt mid-air, saving both his dignity and her floor from a skull imprint.

“So. Plans.” Theo bounced onto the sofa like a toddler possessed by espresso. “Tomorrow, we begin at the Met, because we must appear cultured to the Americans.”

“We’re not cultured,” Hermione said.

Theo placed a hand on his chest, scandalised. “We fake it. We stand in front of art. We tilt our heads. We whisper, ‘Capitalism is the real abstract expressionism,’ and then leave before anyone asks follow-up questions.”

Hermione pinched the bridge of her nose. “That’s… not how culture works.”

“It is for us. Then, luncheon—” he said the word like he was about to faint on a chaise— “at a violently American restaurant. I’m thinking Cheesecake Factory. I want a menu that reads like the extended edition of Lord of the Rings.”

Hermione snorted. “You’re deranged.”

“Thank you. Then we stroll through Central Park for controlled sunlight. Just enough vitamin D to prevent rickets, but not so much that we start making eye contact with strangers and feeling emotions.” He shuddered. “We must remain pale, miserable, and vaguely damp, like all good Brits who carry umbrellas even when it’s sunny.”

“We have that personality?”

“Don’t fight it. It’s genetic.”

Hermione raised a brow. “And after that?”

Theo leaned back, fingers steepled like a villain. “A surprise.”

“Mysterious.”

“Naturally. Then—prepare yourself—I have procured tickets to Mamma Mia! on Broadway. We will sing, we will cry, we will pretend Sir Ian McKellen once played Donna.”

“He… wasn’t in Mamma Mia.”

“He could have been and he would’ve devoured the stage whole,” Theo said with theological certainty. “Meryl would have had to fight for her life.”

Hermione laughed into her drink. “Then what? Cocktails?”

“No. Then we pilgrimage to the M&M’s Store.”

She blinked. “Why.”

Theo stared at her like she’d missed the point of existence. “Because I need to stand in a cathedral of artificially-coloured chocolate, inhale the scent of corporate joy-manufacturing, and allow the capitalism to enter my bloodstream. It’s called sightseeing, Hermione.”

“And for tonight…” Theo announced, wiggling his eyebrows like a magician about to commit a crime. He performed a dramatic flourish—ta-da!—and a joint appeared in his hand.

Hermione’s eyes widened. “Theo. Seriously?”

“This,” he declared, presenting it like the Crown Jewels.

“You know how many brain cells that kills?”

“You know how many of your brain cells have been begging you to stop thinking for five minutes?” he shot back. “They wrote to HR. They’re unionising.”

Hermione stared at the joint. “We haven’t done that since uni.”

“Which is exactly why it’s overdue. Spiritually, medically, ethically overdue.” He held it up between them. “So… shall we?”

“You’re an idiot,” she said—affectionate, resigned—then lit it.

They passed it back and forth, laughing and coughing like amateurs. Warmth fuzzed through her veins; Hermione felt her brain gently unplug from the mains. Soft. Floaty. Pleasant. Like finally stopping the endless internal monologue she lived inside.

They somehow ended up singing Crazy by Aerosmith, dramatically and off-key, until Crookshanks abandoned them entirely and flew—well, stomped with offended paws—to her bed, tail lashing like a final insult.

Hermione lay star-shaped on the rug, staring at the ceiling like it held the secrets of the universe. “He is mad at me,” she announced to the light fixture.

Theo, half upside-down on the couch, blinked. “He? Malfoy?”

“Yeah…” Hermione exhaled, the word stretching like melted cheese. “He called me Dr. Granger and not in a kinky way… .” She pulled a face—an oddly accurate imitation of Draco’s wounded-pride glare.

Theo frowned. “He called you Dr. Granger in a kinky way?”

Hermione didn’t answer quickly enough.

Theo sat up like he’d been electrocuted. “Oh my god, do you role-play scrubs? Hermione, tell me you don’t have a lab-coat kink. I can’t survive that revelation sober.”

Hermione blinked, the words sliding through her haze like they had to swim to reach her. “It’s not that,” she mumbled. “It’s… I just—” The thought floated out of her head like a balloon. “I forgot.”

They stared at each other. For a moment, the room shifted—heavier, closer, like the truth was finally in the air between them.

Then one of them snorted. The other cracked. And suddenly they were both laughing—helpless, ridiculous giggles shaking the seriousness right off the moment, dissolving it into something warm and safe again.

“You know what really haunts me… since I was little?” Hermione said, still starfished on the rug, eyes wide with cosmic dread.

Theo hummed, considering. “Hmm… being Muggle-born?”

“No. Smurfette.”

Theo turned his head slowly. “The blonde from The Smurfs?”

Hermione nodded gravely. “She is the only woman in an entire village of men, Theo. And not all good men. There’s the angry one, the chaotic one, the weirdly muscular one, and the old man in red—Papa Smurf is basically a cult leader in a nightcap.”

Theo blinked. “This took a turn.”

“How does the dating system even work?” Hermione demanded, voice rising with genuine concern. “Where do new Smurfs come from? Are they grown in mushrooms? Is she expected to—” she waved a helpless hand, unable to finish, “—repopulate the species?”

Theo stared at her for a full beat.

“Babe,” he said, “you’re stoned and inventing feminist lore for blue Belgian elves.”

Hermione grabbed his sleeve. “But what if she didn’t choose that community, Theo? What if she was assigned as the token woman? The designated female of a culty mushroom commune?”

Theo lifted a finger, eyes widening like he’d just been chosen as a prophet. “Wait—are the Smurfs a metaphor for wizarding Britain? Because now I’m spiraling.”

Hermione gasped. “Theo. They are. Tiny, isolated community in the woods, obsessed with tradition, led by one old bearded man. Everyone has a designated role. No diversity. No therapy.”

Theo snapped his fingers. “Gargamel is the Ministry.”

“No—Gargamel is Fudge during fifth year.”

Theo sat bolt upright. “And Smurfette is literally brought in as the only girl, expected to hold the emotional labour of an entire society.”

Hermione clutched her heart. “Like Hogwarts… but blue.”

KNOCK KNOCK. A sharp knock on the door jolted them both.

Hermione froze. “Was that—?”

Theo’s head whipped toward the hallway like a meerkat on high alert. “Are you expecting someone?”

“I don’t invite people over even when I’m sober,” Hermione whispered. “It’s probably nothing.”

Another knock. Louder.

Theo’s eyes widened. “Maybe it’s a Smurf.”

Hermione slapped his arm. “Don’t say things like that!”

A third knock—rapid, impatient—made Hermione shoot upright so fast she swayed on her feet. “Okay. Okay. Someone is definitely there.”

Theo clutched a cushion like a shield.

Hermione pulled the door open, attempting—poorly—to rearrange her face into Sober Professional Human.

Draco stood there.

And in the half-second before either of them remembered their masks, something raw flashed across his face—surprise, softness, something unguarded and not meant for witnesses. Like he’d come prepared for a conversation, but the sight of her knocked the script clean out of his head.

Of course the universe would send a plot twist to her doorstep.

Chapter Text

Chapter 20 Toxicology Report

Draco was staring at her. Or maybe through her. Hard to tell. Those eyes always looked like they were solving an equation she hadn’t been given.

“Granger, are you—”

She stared at him for a long moment, trying to decide if he was real or part of the daiquiri. Then she leaned in and poked his nose. “Boop.”

“Oh, you’re real. Good. How are you? I was just thinking about you, and now—look! You’re here. We have daiquiris. We were about to order pizza. You want? Unless you’re gluten-free now? You look like someone who went gluten-free for moral reasons.”

“I—no … what?” he said, still catching up.

“Perfect,” she said before he could finish. “Theo! Add another pizza—Malfoy eats real food again!”

Theo lifted his glass. “Doctor Malfoy! The myth, the legend.”

Draco gave a short nod.

“See?” Hermione said brightly, grabbing Draco’s sleeve and tugging him inside like a friendly hurricane. “Now you’ve met. Worlds united. Magical diplomacy achieved.”

“Granger—” he started, but she’d already half-turned toward Theo.

“Where’s the blender? I want to make him try it, Theo, it’s so good—”

Draco’s voice had that clipped tone again — the one that made even air feel like it was standing to attention.

“Granger—”

She blinked. “What?” He had two faces. No—one face, but it was doing something strange with light.

He caught her wrist before she could wander toward the blender. His hand was warm, firm. Professional, like he was checking a pulse.
Oh. He was checking her pulse.

“Your heart’s racing,” he muttered.

“Because you’re here,” she said solemnly, then immediately started laughing.

“Your pupils are dilated,” he said, the words falling somewhere between concern and reprimand. “You’re flushed too. How much sugar’s in that drink?”

He didn’t. Of course he didn’t. His eyes did that flat, grey, you are a walking malpractice risk thing.

“How much have you had?”

“Not enough to lose motor functions, too much to Apparate. Somewhere in the middle.”

He sighed—long and suffering—and went to the kitchen. A moment later, he pressed a glass of water into her hand. “Drink this.”

“Oh, Doctor Malfoy, prescribing fluids,” she teased, but the glass was cold and felt fascinating against her palm. She took a sip. “See? Hydrated and delightful.”

“Try coherent next,” he said, and she could feel the scolding vibrating off him like static.

She wanted to tell him coherent was overrated. That she was tired of being coherent—exhausted, really. That she wanted to be free, but every time she tried, it felt like failure dressed up as rebellion.
The thought swirled with a dozen others, heavy and bright and unfinished. She stared at him, wishing he could see how hard it was for her to let herself want anything. She was always trailing behind, too cautious, too late.
But when she opened her mouth, the whole chain of thought slipped away like smoke.

“You’re so mad,” she said, grinning at him, because he was — mad and shiny and beautiful and real.

“Apparently the only sober person in a five-mile radius.” he muttered.

She giggled, nearly spilling her drink. “Then we balance each other out.”

He stared at her for a long second, as if contemplating defibrillation, then turned toward Theo like he was filing a complaint with management. But Theo slid over to make space, his hand brushing her knee when she sat. Familiar, casual. She didn’t even think about it, just laughed, hair sticking to her cheek.

“Draco, you have to try this—”

“Not now,” he said. The words weren’t loud, but they landed like a closed door.

She frowned, confused, but the blender kicked in, and the sound swallowed the moment whole.

By the time it stopped, she’d already forgotten why his jaw looked like it hurt.

“Hermione…”

She blinked at him, daiquiri glass halfway to her mouth. “Oh, I’m Hermione again? Thought I’d been demoted to Dr. Granger.”

He exhaled, jaw tight. “It—can we talk?”

Before she could answer, Theo cut in, far too pleased with himself. “Dr. Granger, and not even in the kinky kind of way, apparently.”

Malfoy made a face so pained it could’ve cleared a ward. “You told him about that?”

“Of course,” Hermione said, gesturing at Theo with her glass. “He’s my best friend.”

Theo nodded solemnly. “Her emotional husband, remember? Comes with inappropriate stories.”

Hermione laughed, a little too loudly, trying to drown the weird tension twisting in her chest. Draco did not laugh.

“Oh, you’re the angry Smurf,” Theo announced, delighted.

Hermione nearly spilled her drink laughing. “He’s totally the angry Smurf.”

Draco blinked. “What’s a Smurf?”

She and Theo looked at each other and completely lost it, doubled over, helpless laughter spilling across the room. Draco just stood there, expression neutral, the kind of neutral that meant he was not amused. Which, somehow, made it worse.

“Little blue creatures,” Hermione gasped between giggles. “Happy ones. Except there’s one who’s always angry—”

Theo added, “And congratulations, Malfoy, that’s you.”

Draco’s mouth moved, barely. “Fantastic.”

Hermione grinned up at him, still laughing, warmth fizzing through her chest. “Don’t worry, you’re a very attractive Smurf.”

Theo snorted into his glass. Draco’s sigh.

“Can we talk?” he said again, voice low and too steady for the room.

Hermione blinked at him like it was a complex medical question. “Sure… about what?”

“You,” he said carefully. “You texted me. Remember?”

She squinted, brain gears grinding with visible effort. “I did? When? Did I… say something?”

Draco sighed — that slow, suffering kind of sigh only she seemed to inspire. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone.

Theo leaned forward, eyes wide, delighted. “Ooh, he’s got receipts!”

Draco ignored him and tapped the screen. The room filled with Hermione’s own voice — slurred, loud, and far too cheerful.

“Heeeeeey Maaaalfoooy,” her voice drawled through the speaker, the word melting into about seven vowels. “Are you mad? Don’t be mad. Or—wait—maybe you should be mad? No, no, no, that’s idiotic. Don’t be mad, Malfoy! Come over… we realized Hogwarts was a cult and we ma—”

Hermione stared at Draco, mortified. “I don’t remember saying that…” Her jaw fell open. “That’s not me,” she insisted—utterly unconvincing.

Theo wheezed into the sofa cushion. “It’s literally you, babe.”

“I sound like that?” she whispered, horrified.

Draco’s mouth twitched — halfway between a frown and a smile he didn’t want to have. “Apparently, yes.”

“Wait—hang on—you actually came because we said Hogwarts was a cult?” she asked, blinking at him as if she’d just uncovered the secret of the universe.

Theo added, deadpan, “It was a cult.”

Draco just rubbed his temple.

“So are you mad or you aren’t?” she asked, eyes half-lidded but focused, as if the answer required medical precision.

“I…” Draco hesitated, and that alone made her blink. “I was worried. You sounded… nothing like yourself.”

Theo grinned, glass in hand, tilting his head towards Hermione. “This is her. She’s like this when she’s actually happy… you just don’t know her.”

Hermione giggled, slumping into the sofa. “See? Diagnosed by Doctor Nott.”

Draco looked at Theo — that silent, assessing kind of look that could sterilise a room. Theo just smiled wider, the human equivalent of a dare.

For a heartbeat, nobody spoke. The only sounds were the low thump of music.

Every time she set her drink down, another water turned up. One by the sofa. One on the coffee table.

She finally noticed. “Are you multiplying them?”

“Just staying ahead of the dehydration curve,” he said dryly.

“You’re ridiculous.”

“You’re high,” he countered, already conjuring another.

Hermione watched Draco’s face, trying to read him through the haze. Everything about him looked too clear — edges too sharp, voice too steady, like he didn’t belong in this warm, spinning room.

She wanted to tell him that she was fine. That she was happy, the kind of happy that felt like breathing again. But her brain forgot how to form the words, and by the time she found them, Theo was already laughing at something else, and the moment slipped away like smoke.

They ate pizza straight from the box, grease on fingers, laughter in the air. She and Theo slipped into that half-banter, half-telepathy mode they’d perfected years ago — where they didn’t need full sentences to make sense, where every look was its own inside joke. It felt so easy. So familiar. They talked over each other, interrupted, laughed until their sides hurt.

At some point, Hermione remembered Draco was there.

He sat across from them, neat even in chaos, a slice untouched on his plate. He was smiling — politely, faintly — but not really.

She knew that smile. The one he used in board meetings when he was enduring idiots.

Theo made a joke about Crookshanks starting a union, and she collapsed into giggles again, only dimly aware that Draco hadn’t laughed once.

She chewed another bite of pizza, warmth buzzing under her skin. “You’re awfully quiet,” she said eventually, turning to him.

He lifted his eyes to hers, that precise kind of calm that made her stomach twist. “Just enjoying the show.”

Theo grinned, “You look like a man experiencing second-hand weed.”

Draco’s mouth curved, not quite a smile. “That’s… accurate.”

Hermione giggled again, but a tiny ache opened somewhere beneath the laughter — the sober part of her brain whispering that he didn’t belong here, and she’d invited him anyway.

Draco suddenly straightened, eyes narrowing on Theo. “I remember you.”

Theo froze mid-bite, clutching his chest like he’d been hexed. “Merlin’s sake, warn a man before yelling memories at him.”

“You were at Hogwarts!” Draco said, voice rising in astonishment.

“Yes,” Theo said slowly, still eyeing him.

Draco leaned forward, a touch of disbelief in his tone. “You were the quiet wallflower lad — everyone thought you didn’t have a voice at all.”

“Malfoy!” Hermione half-gasped, half-laughed.

Theo nodded solemnly. “Accurate, though. You’re not wrong.” He turned to Hermione. “You didn’t believe I was at Hogwarts either when we met again at Uni. Thought I was some bloke trying to chat her up.”

Hermione giggled into her drink. “You were!”

Theo grinned. “Partly. But I had to summon a yearbook to prove I wasn’t lying—showed her the only photo I appeared in. I was behind Goyle, half-cut off by the page margin.”

Draco blinked, then let out a surprised huff of laughter. Hermione melted into the sofa, warmth buzzing under her skin, watching them — her past and present finally overlapping in the same room, ridiculous and human and somehow… right. Maybe he was right all the way. Maybe.

“I thought you wanted to steal my clinical rotations,” Hermione said, pointing at him with mock accusation.

Theo threw his hands up dramatically. “Oh, Hermione was totally mad about her clinical rotations. She had to be first to sign up, first to present, first to breathe. Once—” he turned to Draco, dead serious “—she petrified me just so she could jump over my body and sign the board first.”

Draco gave half a smile, small and unwilling, but it softened the air between them.

Hermione burst into laughter so hard she nearly dropped her slice. “I did!” she gasped between laughs. “Oh, Merlin, I’m so sorry, Theo—but in my defence, you were stuck in Derma that month, and I was covering Surgery all on my own—doing bloody heart surgery while you were prescribing moisturiser to teenagers with spots.”

Theo pressed a hand to his chest. “I spent three hours immobilised on the floor, watching my dignity roll away.”

“You were fine!” she said, tears of laughter streaming down her face. “I left you a sandwich!”

Draco just stared between them like he’d stumbled into a completely different genre of conversation.

Theo patted his knee, solemn. “Welcome to the madness, Malfoy.”

Hermione grinned at him, cheeks flushed, daiquiri glow softening the edges of everything. “Madness is the only thing keeping us sane.”

“Speaking of madness,” Theo drawled, leaning back, eyes half-lidded but wickedly alive. “On a scale of one to ten, how high would you rate your ability to shag someone who calls you bro in bed? Bear in mind—he’s stupidly fit, gorgeous really. And stupidly stupid. Like—tried to say neonatologist and went with ‘baby doctor’ instead.”

He aimed the question straight at Draco.

Draco blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Scale of one to ten,” Theo pressed, deadly serious. “Be honest.”

Hermione, already giggling, lifted her glass. “Two,” she said. “And that’s with tequila involved.”

Theo gasped. “You are not reliable. You dated Krum for six months and the man couldn’t even say your name properly.”

“Fair,” Hermione said, sipping her daiquiri. “But he didn’t call me bro. That’s sacred ground.”

Draco frowned, caught somewhere between horrified and fascinated. “Wait—who said bro to whom?”

“Theo’s boyfriend,” Hermione supplied, perfectly casual. “He dates gym lads and then complains that all they do is go to the gym.”

Theo gestured helplessly. “They trick me, Hermione. They have shoulders and poor communication skills. It’s not my fault.”

Draco muttered, “You need therapy.”

Theo nodded solemnly. “I am therapy.”

Hermione snorted- Draco looked like he was rethinking the question.

He sighed, the kind that pressed at her ribs. “How uncomfortable was that, truly? Because the real question is… can you come back from it or not?”

Theo gasped theatrically. “I thought you’d just frown and vanish.”

“I told you,” Hermione said, nudging Theo with her knee, “he’s not the same as Hogwarts.”

Draco’s brow lifted. “So that was a test?”

“No,” Theo said, smile sharpening. “This is the test.” He set down his glass and leaned forward, suddenly, blessedly sober. “What are your intentions with my Hermione? And think very carefully before you answer.”

The room went quiet except for the hum of the blender and the soft tick of the oven cooling. Hermione felt the daiquiri glow slide sideways into her chest, warm and a little frightening. She looked at Draco—too clear, too steady—wishing the air didn’t feel so thin.

“Don’t answer him,” Hermione said quickly, somewhere between a laugh and a plea.

Draco’s gaze flicked to her, then back to Theo. “No, I will.” His voice had gone low, calm, steady enough to cut through the haze. “My intentions are between her and me. Because what matters here—” his eyes lingered on her “—is what she wants. Not what you think.”

“Oh, I like him,” Theo said, delighted. “He called me a wallflower, but he’s got that… dom-daddy aura. You know, the I’ll-destroy-you-but-you-will-beg-for-more  vibe.”

Hermione choked on her drink, coughing, daiquiri spraying down her wrist.

Theo tilted his head. “Do you go to the gym?”

Hermione slid off the sofa entirely, laughing too hard to breathe, her cheek pressed to the carpet. “Merlin, Theo, stop talking—”

Draco just exhaled slowly, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Why do I feel like I’ve walked into a fever dream?”

Theo raised his glass again, perfectly unbothered. “Welcome to the family.”

Draco didn’t answer. His expression was a study in stillness, but his eyes — those were a storm. Hermione thought he might finally laugh, or leave, or shout, but he just stayed there, silent. Draco kept appearing at the edges of the room, a silent orbit of refills. Glasses clinked, vanished, reappeared. She started to think hydration might be a love language.

Theo turned to the blender. “Another round?”

Draco’s chair scraped softly against the floor. “No.” His voice was quiet, final. “I think I’ve had enough.”

When Hermione looked up, he was already watching her — not angry anymore, exactly, just something colder.

“Your pupils are less dilated,” he said, clinical again.

She smiled, still twirling a lock of his hair between her fingers. “You’re such a doctor.”

“I can’t believe you came,” she added, voice lighter than she felt.

“You asked me to,” he murmured. Then, after a pause that felt like a warning: “Can we talk a minute? In the hallway?”

“Sure.”

The air changed as soon as the door closed behind them.  The laughter from the living room bled into a muffled echo — Theo’s voice, the bass of the music, Crookshanks yowling like a protest banner.

Draco leaned against the wall, folding his arms. The corridor light was too bright after the warmth of the flat; it made him look like he’d stepped out of a different world entirely.

She tried to smile, but his face stopped her. He wasn’t angry in the shouting way — this was the quiet kind, the kind that made you want to check your own pulse.

“You scared me tonight,” he said finally. His tone wasn’t soft. It was the kind of calm you got when you’d run out of other options. “That message didn’t sound like you. I thought something had happened.”

Hermione blinked, slow. “Something did happen,” she said, faintly smug. “We ran out of rum.”

He didn’t even sigh this time. “You’re laughing. I’m being serious.”

“I know.” She rubbed her arm, only now realising she was barefoot. “It was just one of those nights, Malfoy. Nothing tragic. Just me and Theo being idiots.”

“Right.” His eyes flicked over her — her hair, her flushed face. He looked like he was taking inventory. “You never sound like that. Not even when you’re drunk.”

That landed differently. It wasn’t judgment. It was something closer to hurt.

“You came all this way because you were worried?” she asked.

He didn’t move. “Because I care.”

The air felt heavy then—thick with everything she hadn’t meant to ask for. It pressed at her chest, quiet and unbearable.

“You shouldn’t.”

“I know,” he said. His voice was quieter now, but the edge was still there. “But I do anyway.”

The silence stretched. The fluorescent light hummed like static. From the living room came the faintest echo of Theo singing about levitating.

Hermione exhaled, half a laugh, half a sigh. “You really know how to kill a good high.”

“I was mad,” he said.

“I knew you were.”

“I don’t like playing games, Hermione.” He didn’t raise his voice; it was surgical, restrained. “I told you, I don’t like lies. I don’t like half things. I don’t like not knowing where I stand with people.”

Her laughter died. She sobered instantly, like the words themselves cleared the air.

“I like you,” he said softly, and that softness was worse than shouting. “That’s obvious.”

“I… Draco… I…” she managed, the syllables slipping like wet glass. “I don’t…” Her voice caught, useless against the weight in her chest. “I don’t know how to do anything different.”

He watched her for a long moment, the muscle in his jaw working once before he spoke. “Me neither,” he said finally, the words low and stripped bare. “But I’m being honest.”

The air between them felt heavy, real. Too real.

She blinked, and the haze thinned just enough for it to hurt — for her to see the exhaustion in his face, the stubborn honesty he couldn’t help.

This was casual, she told herself again, but the thought sounded brittle, laughable.

And when he reached for her — just barely, like he was afraid she might vanish — she realised the worst part wasn’t that he cared. It was that she did too.

She opened her mouth, but no sound came out.

“Think what you want,” he went on. “Make up your mind. I’m either in or out of your life — but this…” His hand twitched, as if gesturing to the door cost him something. “This chaos. It’s driving me insane.”

She blinked up at him, the fog slipping. “You’re jealous.”

“I am.” His eyes didn’t move from hers. “Not about him. About how unguarded you are with him. You never let me see you like that.” His tone thinned, but it didn’t waver. “You’re always running — coming, going, Apparating out of my flat before I’ve finished a sentence. I feel like a rush with you, like if I stop moving, you’ll disappear entirely.”

It hit her chest like a physical thing. She wanted to make a joke — to deflect — but her brain was too slow, and he looked too raw.

“Think about it,” he murmured. “Please.”

He leaned in for a soft kiss, like he was giving her one last out.

She didn’t take it.

She met him halfway, mouth already open, already wanting. His breath caught—sharp, wrecked—and then his hand was in her hair and his other hit the wall beside her with a thud that echoed.

The kiss collapsed into heat and teeth and too much feeling.

He kissed her like it hurt to stop. Like he was begging her to understand without words.
And she kissed him back like she couldn’t let herself think.

When he pulled away, his forehead dropped to hers, breath ragged.

“I’m not doing casual with you,” he said, low and wrecked. “You want me, then want me. But stop pretending this is nothing.”

Her pulse roared in her ears.
She didn’t know what to say.

But her fingers were still clutching his shirt. The bastard couldn’t say things like that and expect her to stay composed.

His restraint returned before he stepped back with a quiet exhale.

“Have a nice weekend with your friend,” he said. His voice was back to neutral, but the calm had cracked. Then, after a pause, a final cut of practicality: “No more weed.”

Hermione blinked, confusion and affection colliding. “You can’t forbid me to smoke.”

“I’m not forbidding you.” He reached out, almost absently, to smooth a strand of hair behind her ear. The gesture was tender, but his voice was ice. “The hospital does random testing. Don’t be stupid.”

She laughed weakly. “You’re scolding me.”

“I’m keeping you employed,” he said.

The worst part was that she believed him.

He looked at her one last time — that mix of frustration, fondness, and the faint disbelief of someone who’d thought this might finally start. Like he’d arrived ready for something real and found the door still locked.

“Go home, Malfoy,” she whispered. “Before I say something I can’t take back.”

He gave her that small, weary half-smile — the kind that said he’d already heard it all before — and left.

When she went back inside, Theo was still on the sofa, staring at the ceiling, Crookshanks sprawled across his chest like a furry paperweight.

“So,” he said, without moving, Crookshanks purring on his chest, “was that snogging in the hallway or a full emotional breakdown disguised as one?”

Hermione dropped onto the sofa beside him as if her legs had given out. The air felt wrong—too thin, too bright. Her pulse was still caught in her throat, and the echo of Draco’s words hit her again, sharp as a slap.

“It was an ultimatum.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 21 The Waiting Room

“How dare he come to my flat and give me an ultimatum?” Hermione stabbed her spoon into the yogurt “You don’t give ultimatums when you’re in a casual sort of thing. The audacity.”

Theo had been trying—unsuccessfully—to get a word in for the last twenty minutes. They were at a café near the Met, sunlight bouncing off her hair, fury practically steaming off her coffee.

He opened his mouth. “Maybe he thinks—”

“And then he told me to stop smoking. Like I’m some kind of reckless hippie,” she said, wide-eyed, affronted. “I’m a doctor. No—wait—I’m a neurosurgeon. I literally rewire brains for a living. If anyone’s qualified to self-medicate, it’s me.”

“Maybe—”

“And to come to my flat like he’s my—what? My boyfriend? The health inspector?”

Theo sighed, leaned back, and raised a hand in surrender. “No, please, continue your TED Talk. I’m just here for the snacks.”

Hermione glared, spoon mid-air. “You think I’m overreacting.”

Theo stirred his coffee, eyes on her, tone shifting just enough to land. “I think you’re pretending not to understand that he gave you an ultimatum because he actually cares. And that terrifies you.”

She frowned.

He took a slow sip of coffee, watching her reaction like a scientist observing an emotional explosion. “You keep calling it casual because you think it protects you. But you’re already in it, babe. You’ve been in it. He’s just the first one brave enough to say it out loud.”

Hermione’s jaw tightened. “Do you want to be his friend too? Should I give you his number?”

Theo didn’t flinch. “Depends. Does he text back faster than you?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Why are you on his side?”

He sighed, swirling his spoon through the foam of his coffee. “I’m not on his side. I’m on your side. Unfortunately, your side sometimes involves calling you out when you’re sprinting away from someone who actually gives a damn.”

Hermione made a face, the kind halfway between guilt and indignation. “You make it sound like I’m some emotionally stunted toddler.”

Theo arched an eyebrow. “I’ve met toddlers with better communication skills.”

She crossed her arms.

“Look,” he said, softer now. “You don’t owe him a relationship. But don’t act like he’s the villain for wanting something real. That’s not audacity, Hermione. That’s honesty. You just forgot what it looks like.”

Hermione’s voice rose, startling a man at the next table. “He has zero—ZERO—entitlement to call for an ultimatum, Theo”

Theo didn’t even blink. “You’re yelling into your croissant.”

“I don’t care! Who does he think he is?” She gestured wildly with her spoon. “You don’t get to lecture someone about boundaries and then show up at their flat acting like you’re—like you’re—”

“Someone who loves you?” Theo offered, tone maddeningly calm.

She stared at him, mouth open, words scrambling for an exit. “He doesn’t. He just… likes control. He likes things clear and neat and labelled. It’s a Malfoy thing... you should see his fridge”

Theo tilted his head, watching her unravel. “Right. And it’s a Granger thing to overthink every feeling until it dies of exhaustion.”

She groaned, slumping in her chair.

He smiled faintly.

“I’m processing!”

“You’re trying to convince yourself to run away”

She glared. “I hate you.”

“Good,” Theo said, grabbing her untouched toast. “That means I’m doing my job.”

Theo leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “Look, as your only friend in the world—”

Hermione shot him a glare. “You’re not my only friend.”

He didn’t even blink. “Don’t make me talk about your other friends… As your only friend,” he repeated, louder this time, “I’m telling you to stop pretending you’re offended and actually listen.”

She crossed her arms, defensive but curious. “To what?”

“To yourself,” Theo said, voice softening just enough to sting. “Because you’re about to make the wrong choice again, and it won’t be because you don’t care about him. It’ll be because you can’t stop fixating on some stupid detail that lets you feel safe from the real thing.”

Hermione stared at her coffee like it might give her a better argument. “You think I’m sabotaging it.”

“I think you’re scared,” Theo said simply. “And you call it logic because it sounds smarter than fear.”

For a long moment, she didn’t speak. Just exhaled, shoulders sinking.

Theo leaned back, tone brightening again. “Now, finish your coffee and let’s go look at art we could totally paint ourselves but somehow costs more than our entire year’s salary.”

They wandered through the Met’s marble halls, still buzzing with leftover laughter. Theo kept getting too close to the sculptures, eyes wide like a child in a cursed candy store.

“Theo,” Hermione hissed. “Do not touch that.”

“I’m not touching, I’m admiring tactilely. There’s a difference.”

“Security doesn’t think so,” she muttered as a guard’s gaze followed them like a hawk.

Theo waved cheerfully at the guard. “Relax, mate. We’re European. Culture runs in the bloodstream.”

Hermione elbowed him, barely holding back a laugh. “We’re going to get deported.”

He shrugged, grinning. “Let them try. We taught them everything Americans know about civilisation—they should be paying us royalties.”

She rolled her eyes, but the warmth didn’t fade. It was impossible to stay angry with Theo around; he had a way of making the world tilt back into focus, even when everything else felt like it was spinning.

They wandered from Central Park after lunch—Theo’s idea, of course, complete with an unapologetically touristy stop at the Cheesecake Factory. They ate burgers and cheesecake, naturally. The plates were enormous, the portions vaguely threatening.

Theo had declared halfway through his slice, fork in midair, “This is capitalism’s final form,” and Hermione had laughed so hard she almost snorted her Coke.

By the time they made it back into the park, both were mildly delirious with sugar and regret, walking slower than they should have, pretending it was for the scenery.

“I really missed you,” Hermione said quietly as they crossed back into the park. “I missed this. I’ve felt completely lost in life lately… like I’m holding my breath all the time, waiting for something to go wrong.”

Theo didn’t answer right away. They found a bench overlooking the water, the afternoon light spilling gold over the ripples. A saxophonist played something slow and old near the bridge, and a small army of pigeons strutted like they owned the place.

“I know,” Theo said finally. “I feel the same. Like we’re… in between. Not who we were, not yet whoever we’re supposed to be.”

Hermione leaned her head back, eyes half-closed. “Exactly.”

“It’s unsettling,” Theo said. “Like walking through a corridor that never ends. You start to wonder if maybe the door doesn’t exist.”

They sat there for a while, the silence comfortable this time. Just the city breathing around them, and the faintest sense that maybe it was okay not to have arrived anywhere yet.

“When did life get so messed up?” she asked, voice small against the hum of the park.

Theo exhaled through his nose, watching a leaf swirl in the water. “Well… growing up is a kind of trap, isn’t it?”