Chapter Text
“I must say, I miss the days when I could read the newspaper in the morning without seeing your prissy face on the front page.”
A copy of the Daily Prophet lands on the desk, skidding into Draco’s view but he doesn’t look up from where he’s filing paperwork, his quill scraping effortlessly across the piece of parchment. “Sounds like a miserable time to me.”
Potter scoffs from where he stands just ahead of Draco’s desk, one hand slipped into the pocket of his heavy coat, the other clutching a paper cup filled with cheap coffee from the canteen downstairs. “Believe it or not, I much prefer seeing Voldemort’s face on it than yours.”
Draco makes a disinterested sound in the back of his throat, adding his signature at the bottom of the parchment with a flourish. “I’ll have to pass on that sentiment, I’m afraid."
With a flick of his wrist, he sends the file he’d been working on flying to the bureau where it lands neatly on top of the pile and opens the next one in front of him. “Anything interesting today?”
Potter makes a sound of dissent, sipping from his coffee. “A couple Trolls broke through the wards down south. Caused quite a havoc in the streets but no one was injured. I’ve sent Killian and a couple others down to get things under control. Other than that, just the usual routine paperwork.”
Draco fills out the file, barely needing to focus. He’s done it so many times, it’s practically muscle memory. “I see. And the witch coven?”
Potter pauses — the only indication that he hadn’t been expecting the question. Then, slowly, deliberately, he asks, “How did you get wind of that?”
Draco slams the file shut and tosses his quill down, leaning back in his chair. Folding his arms across his chest, he finally meets Potter’s bright green eyes. “I saw it on your desk when I came in this morning. Looked like a pretty dangerous situation. One that would need only the most competent Auror to see it through.”
Potter is silent for a moment. “Yes.”
“So imagine my surprise when I saw it wasn’t assigned to me.”
“There are other capable Aurors in this department, Malfoy, believe it or not.” Potter raises an eyebrow, taking another sip of his coffee.
“Might I remind you, just last week, Crawley botched the Armitage case by sleeping with the maid—who, in case you’ve forgotten, turned out to be the felon we’ve been looking for for months. ” Draco cocks his head, sarcasm dripping off his tongue. “Forgive me if I’m skeptical.”
“To be fair, she did slip him a Love Potion. And, anyway, you needn’t fret. I gave the Coven case to someone equally as competent as you.”
That gets Draco to pause, his fingers ceasing abruptly where they’d been rubbing his jaw. He meets Potter’s eyes, reads the knowing smile twitching at the edge of the Head Auror’s lips and sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose, briefly.
Draco’s voice is clipped and tightly controlled when he speaks again. “I see.”
There’s a glitter to Potter’s eye that Draco doesn’t like. “She is as good as you, you know.”
“I know.”
“Might be the only one who is.”
“Flattered, really.” His voice is a dead-pan — but his gut has done that terrible thing that it does whenever he hears, sees, thinks of her.
“The Coven case will be closed by tonight,” Potter tells him, adjusting the strap of his satchel over his shoulder. “She’ll have the file on your desk by five, I can tell you that.”
Draco taps his ring against the edge of his dark oakwood table. “She better. I’ve got plans tonight.”
Potter’s eyebrow arches higher, disappearing into the shaggy dark hair that falls over his forehead. “Another date?”
“How’d you know about the first one?”
“Look down, you fucking twat.”
Draco does, eyes finding the copy of the Daily Prophet Potter had tossed onto his desk upon entering. On the front page is a badly taken image of himself, pinning a lithe witch up against a wall in some alley outside a bar.
It’s not a great quality photograph — but it’s obvious what had been going on, what with the witch’s leg hitched up over his hip, her dress riding up to expose a toned creamy thigh. Draco’s head is lost somewhere against her neck, his pale hair the only thing truly visible to distinguish who he is.
The headline is something along the lines of a womanizing Malfoy heir. Draco, frankly, isn’t interested in learning about this womanizing Malfoy heir.
“Well, it’s not with the same witch.” He pushes the newspaper aside, under the precariously tall tower of files he still has to complete today.
“Shame. I thought this one was the one .” Potter’s sarcasm is not lost on him — but he pointedly ignores it. “Wasn’t a good enough shag, was she?”
Draco flips open a new file. “A gentleman never tells.”
“You lost your title of gentleman the moment you started collecting witches like Chocolate Frog Cards.”
“You should try it,” Draco responds, absent-mindedly, gaze focused down, quill at work. “If you throw your net wide enough, maybe one of them will endeavor to remove the stick you always seem to have up your arse.”
Potter rolls his eyes. “Clever.”
“I do try. Now, will you leave me to my work or must I put up with your presence for much longer?”
Potter surveys him with those sharp green eyes from behind those dark-rimmed spectacles and then twists on his heel, heading for the door. “You are not allowed to clock out until Hermione returns with the Coven file.”
Again, that nauseating twist in his gut. “Wonderful. My chances of having a nice, peaceful evening are looking slimmer by the minute.”
“You were going out to shag your third witch this week.”
“Yes. Nicely and peacefully.”
Another roll of eyes from the Head Auror. “Keep your cock in your pants for one night.”
“Unlikely,” Draco purrs as Potter steps out of his office, slamming the door shut behind him.
———
It is half past seven in the evening when the sound of a wand clattering onto a table pierces through Draco’s haze.
He has about half an hour before he needs to meet his date for the night and Granger still hasn’t returned so he’d continued with his paperwork, moving onto files he’d normally have to fill out tomorrow.
But now, he hears her in the silence of the office, the sound of her wand clattering onto her desk, her footsteps as she moves around outside.
The sun has long set and the department has long since emptied out. Potter had poked his nosy head in to make sure Draco was still at his desk before he, too, swaggered out of the building, whistling to himself.
Draco had only just resisted the urge to transform his boss into a rare species of rat.
The door to his office is shoved open but Draco doesn’t look up, intent on keeping his gaze directed down at the forms he’s currently filling out. It’s always better that way. Always better to act like she doesn’t exist — because she does exist and just that fact takes up entirely too much space within his brain.
She strides forward without a word. No greeting, no announcement of her presence. Just the click of her boots on the tiled floor before she chucks the file onto his desk. It lands with a slap, just within his peripheral vision.
He knows how this goes. He won’t look up. She’ll leave. They won’t speak or acknowledge each other’s presence or do anything that remotely even suggests they’re anything more than colleagues. At least that’s how the routine usually goes. How it’s gone for the past year since the whirlwind ended and they went back to being strangers.
Strangers. It’s a ridiculous notion to Draco. There’s nothing strange about her. He knows everything there is to know — how she looks first thing in the morning (beautiful), how she takes her coffee (black), how she smells (parchment), how she sounds as he wrings her pleasure from her in waves (delicious).
He doesn’t know if those things have changed in the past year. He doesn’t think he’ll ever find out. He’ll just let her go, let her stride out of his office and slam the door shut behind her. Listen to her pack up her things and leave the building, the click of her boots echoing throughout the empty halls. They won’t interact until the next time he’s in charge of paperwork and she’s assigned a case or vice versa. That’s what he should do. That’s what he usually does.
But this time, he scents blood — and it’s really not a conscious movement, the way his eyes flick up, meeting hers just as she turns on her heel to leave.
It’s the first eye contact they’ve made in a year — but she doesn’t pause, obviously disinterested in whatever made him look up.
He would let her go — should let her go — but she’s covered in blood, one entire sleeve of her previously well-pressed white shirt soaked through with it. There’s more splattered on her neck and jaw — but her hands are pristine, obviously scrubbed clean.
He knows that too. How she hates killing — harming — anything. How she feels the need to scrub her hands raw under scalding hot water to try and remove any memory of it.
It was always on those days she was more urgent. She would yank at his clothes, ripping his shirt off him, pulling his trousers down — and he had been more than willing to let her take over, to let her clamber on top of him and ride him until she exhausted herself and didn’t need to think about what she’d done anymore.
But he’d stopped being a source of comfort for her a long time ago — and there was no use dwelling on ways he used to help her when he couldn’t anymore.
Her back is to him now — let her go, let her go, let her go — but there’s more blood, blooming on the back of her white shirt. He knows it’s hers. He’s sure he could tell it apart from scent alone.
She’s going to leave. The door will fall shut behind her with a damning click. He’ll never be in her vicinity again — not until they’re forced to interact like this again. If this counts as interaction.
Let her go.
“You’re bleeding.”
It’s out of his mouth before he can stop himself — and there is a fluttering of rage within his chest. He knows what it is — that traitorous, possessive nature of his that wants to bleed dry the being that did this to her.
She pauses, her hand wrapped around the doorknob where she’d been about to pull the door shut on her way out. For a long moment, he thinks she’s going to ignore him and continue on her way out. He’ll take the blow to his ego and she’ll probably dream of new ways to gut him in his sleep tonight.
But then she turns halfway — just enough that he can see her profile, the blood staining her jaw and her neck. Again, that pulsing of rage within his chest.
“I was assigned to the Coven case.”
She hasn’t spoken to him in a year. Hearing her voice — hearing her words directed at him — is more of a jolt than he originally thought it would be. She sounds tired.
“I told Potter that case should’ve come to me.” He hadn’t meant for it to sound the way it did — but she turns, abruptly, eyes narrowing at him.
“You’d be dead if it had.” Her hair, usually done in one thick braid, has come free, curly strands framing her face. “Those witches wanted nothing but blood.”
Draco stands then and her gaze follows him up. It stays trained on him with all that predatory Auror focus as he rounds his desk, slipping his hands into the pockets of his trousers. “They seem to have got it.”
He nods at her clothes — at the blood that continues to bloom through the white of her shirt.
She glances down at herself and he sees her throat convulse around a swallow. Then, she tips her head back up, angling her chin in that way that he’d learned meant she was determined.
“I disposed of them,” she says, flatly.
Draco watches her, perching on the very edge of his desk, both hands gripping the wood on either side of him. She looks right back at him, her shoulders rising and falling with each carefully controlled breath.
“There was no other way,” he tells her, softly. There is no reason for him to say it. He shouldn’t be trying to comfort her.
The honey-brown of her eyes flickers and then hardens. “I’m an Auror, Malfoy. I’m well-aware of how to dispose of threats to my life.”
His mind flashes back to the way she would appear within green flames in his fireplace, her eyes haunted. She would grab him by the collar before he’d even finished greeting her, pulling his mouth down to hers. He’d only have time to band an arm around her waist as he stumbled, the other hand catching on the mantelpiece behind her to steady them both before she’d be tugging at his clothes.
On those nights, she never wanted to move from wherever she found him. If he was cooking in the kitchen when she arrived, she’d have him bend her over the counter. If he happened to be flicking through files, sprawled in the reclining armchair, she’d charm their clothes off and climb on top of him. If he was in the shower, she’d slip in next to him and sink down onto her knees. She was ravenous those nights. He’d always wondered if she knew that was how he felt about her all nights.
And afterward, despite it all, she’d bury her face in his neck and he’d press a kiss to her hair and trace his fingertips over her skin. They never talked about it — but she’d always look a little less haunted afterward.
Draco wonders if she’s remembering just as he is. From the way her eyes dim in the intensity of her hatred, he thinks she is.
Then, she turns to go.
“Granger.”
Again, she pauses, her hand gripping the doorknob so tightly, he’s sure she must’ve lost feeling in it.
Draco steadies himself and pushes off the desk, keeping his eyes fixed on her back as he approaches her the way one might approach a spooked horse. “Let me have a look.”
“I’m fine,” she says, still facing away from him but her voice sounds strained. “I’ll go to the infirmary.”
“It’s after hours, Granger. You were the only one who hadn’t returned from a mission. Potter sent everybody home.”
The muscles in her shoulders tense. More blood seeps through her shirt. “Then I’ll heal myself.”
“Yeah?” Draco says, softly, as he halts, standing right behind her now. He’d forgotten how short she was compared to him, the top of her head reaching just below his collarbone. “Is that before or after you pass out from blood loss?”
She’s so rigid — a statue in front of him. He doesn’t even think she’s breathing. “I don’t need your help.”
“For fuck’s sake, Granger,” he says, exasperatedly. “Let me heal you. I’m proficient enough to at least stop you from passing out on your way home. You won’t even be able to Apparate like this.”
He can almost hear her warring with herself in her head. She’s so stubborn — it’s driven him insane more than once — and entirely too rational. On more than one occasion, they had exploded into heated arguments just to end up with one of them underneath the other.
She doesn’t voice her assent — only releases the doorknob and reaches for the buttons on her blouse.
Draco doesn’t move, hands in the pockets of his trousers, as she shrugs out of her white shirt. She isn’t shy — why should she be? It’s nothing he hasn’t seen before a dozen times — but she’s still tense, every muscle within her stretched taut like she wants to run.
As soon as the fabric peels off her, Draco’s vision flashes red at the wounds on her lower back — three large gashes resembling claws that slashed through her. It takes everything in him not to seize her shoulders and demand who did this to her.
Instead, he inhales a deep breath and reaches for his wand. “Animagus?”
She nods, reaching to move her braid over one shoulder to keep it out of the way, the other hand gripping her blood-soaked shirt. “Wolf.”
He casts a Scourgify, vanishing the dried blood, although the wounds still leak. His next spell is a diagnostic — and they both study the full-body image that shimmers in front of them.
“There’s a laceration on your thigh too.”
“Minor. I’ll deal with it at home.”
He doesn’t push his luck. The fact that she’s still standing in his office is more than he’d been expecting. Her profound hatred for him has only seemed to have grown over the last year.
“Deep breath.”
He doesn’t touch her as he sets about healing the gashes, although it would be easier if he did. But if he can manage like this, he’d rather do it this way. He doesn’t know if he can control himself otherwise.
The silence between them is so thick, he almost feels it like a physical shroud hanging over them. Like he could reach out and touch it if he wanted to.
He tries not to think about the scent of her — parchment and coffee, tinged with the metallic bite of blood. Tries not to think about how he aches to free her hair from her braid just so he can see it down again.
He feels it the moment his magic washes over her, the way she shivers. Draco focuses on healing her, ignoring the freckles on her back that he used to trace as she slept.
It’s over, he tells himself, firmly. It’s over.
He stitches up the gashes, gritting his teeth when she makes a strangled sound of pain. He never wants to hear that noise again.
When he finishes a couple minutes later, she’s already moving to shrug on her shirt — but this time, he stops her with a hand to her elbow.
The contact startles her — jolts him too — and she pulls away as he turns her to face him. Her eyes are unreadable, her jaw tight as she looks up at him.
“Your arm,” he murmurs, finding it difficult to speak.
She glances down and he refuses to follow her gaze, especially when she is half-naked in front of him, in just a black bra. Silently, she holds her arm out and he has to take her wrist in his hand, forcing himself not to inhale at the touch.
She’s as stiff as a board, pointedly looking away as he heals the wide gash on her bicep, the smaller lacerations dotting her forearm and palm. His normally sharp tongue can’t think of anything to say to ease the tension, to make that guarded look on her face fade.
But he draws it out longer than he has to. Channels his magic, slowly and steadily, drags his wand over the wounds as meticulously as he can. He hopes she’ll chalk it up to his attention to detail — and not the fact that he doesn’t want to let her go.
But he can only pretend so long — and the last stitch is barely in place before she wrenches out of his grasp, shrugging on her shirt.
“Thank you,” she says, tightly, like it pains her. She already has one foot out of the door, fingers rapidly buttoning up her shirt. This is it. One entire year of no interaction for this.
He can’t stand it. It feels like losing her all over again. And Draco Malfoy hates losing.
“Granger.”
She whirls, desperate annoyance flashing on her features. “What?”
He stares at her and she stares back, her chest heaving considerably more than it had been a couple moments ago.
He’s missed looking at her — really looking at her. All he’s gotten in the past year are sneaky glances across the office, only to see her bent head as she pores over papers or her side profile as she nods along to Potter or some other equally annoying tosser.
The freckles dotting the bridge of her nose, the chestnut brown mane of curls barely restrained into that thick braid, her little Cupid’s Bow. The delicate column of her neck. The most intelligent pair of eyes he’s ever seen.
“I…” Draco struggles, unable to piece together a sentence that doesn’t make him sound like an absolute twat. It’s ridiculously difficult. He finally settles for a quiet, “I’m sorry. For…For everything.”
Granger stares at him, eyebrows raised, the air of condescension apparent. “You’re sorry?”
“Yes,” he replies through clenched teeth. Whoever decided apologies were necessary needed their intestines pulled out through their mouth. “I am.”
Her lips part in disbelief and she laughs then — but it’s cold and lacks any hint of amusement. He aches to hear the real one — the one rich with joy that always made him feel like he’d ingested too many Sugar Quills.
“You’re sorry,” she deadpans and she looks fearsome, even with all the blood cleaned off her. “For what exactly?”
Hadn’t he just said it? “Everything.”
“You’re going to have to be a little more specific.” She steps closer, her gaze sharp enough to cut. He resists the urge to take a step back. “For leading me on? For making me look stupid? Or for cheating on me?”
He doesn’t flinch but almost turns away. “I didn’t cheat on you.”
“Oh, was it already over then?” she spits, rage flickering to life in the deep brown of her eyes. “Forgive me. I must’ve missed the memo.”
“I ended things with you before I slept with her.” It tastes bitter on his tongue, a truth he doesn’t want to admit.
The disbelief on her face is easy to read. “Yes, of course you did. How could I forget? You gave me a whole twelve hours before you went and fucked another witch.”
“I needed—” Again, he struggles to find the words. “I just needed it to be over.”
Tell her the truth, that traitorous voice whispers somewhere deep inside him. Tell her.
“My apologies.” Sharp sarcasm drips off her tongue, her eyes narrowing. “I didn’t realise I was keeping you hostage.”
She turns on her heel — and his hand lashes out on instinct, gripping her elbow and tugging her back. She attempts to break free but he tightens his grasp and yanks her close.
Parchment and coffee. The blood is fading now.
“I did what I had to.” His voice is soft and deadly. He can count her freckles from this proximity. His pulse is beginning to pound.
“Yes. You left me—and have fucked a new witch every week since,” she responds, bluntly. Her eyes flick to the desk behind him and she nods at the copy of the Daily Prophet that still lies there from this morning. “Yet, every single one you seem to be oh-so-conveniently caught with looks exactly like me.”
Draco goes still and her eyes flick back up to meet his. His fingers are still wrapped around her elbow and he can’t seem to let go, although she looks like she wants to murder him and string him in decorative pieces across the office.
“So is it really over, Draco?” she sneers — and he knows she’s learned that cutthroat tactic from him. “Or is this just another manipulative strategy to try and rope me back in?”
“I’m free to sleep with whoever I want to. As are you.” He’s lying through his teeth. He thinks he’d commit several felonies if he learned she’d slept with someone else.
“At least I had the decency to keep it out of the public eye.” She yanks free from him now but doesn’t step back.
“Decency?” His temper flares and he shifts closer, towering over her. She doesn’t back down, only follows him up with her eyes as the height difference becomes more pronounced. “You think you were being decent? Do you know what the not knowing did to me? Do you have any fucking idea how it drove me insane?”
There’s a flicker of confusion on her face but it’s gone in an instant as he continues to press on. “At least if I knew which tosser you were seeing, I would’ve been able to chalk it up to a rebound. I could’ve made sure I was better than he was, could’ve had a laugh over which undeserving twat you were spending your nights with.”
He can’t think around the pounding in his ears, the fury that she inspires with him with just a couple off-handed comments. “But you’ve kept it so under wraps. Not a single sighting of you and your new beau—and I’ve been left to drive myself insane over who could’ve possibly taken my place.”
“Are you seriously doing this?” Again, that disbelieving laugh. “If I’d known keeping my sex life private would’ve offended you this much, I would’ve done it earlier.”
“You’ve avoided me like the plague.” There’s a tinge of desperation in his voice now. He can’t help it. She does this to him. “I would’ve taken anything— anything— that let me know how you were doing.”
Her eyes flicker and harden, abruptly. “Don’t act like this is you caring about me.”
She takes a step closer, stabbing a finger into his chest and he misses this so much, he feels he may collapse. “This is about you and your stupid possessive streak. You’d get jealous if a houseplant was taken from you.”
“Creative.”
“Occasionally.” She looks at him a moment longer and then spins on her heel again, making a beeline for the door. His desperation grows exponentially.
“You said it yourself,” he says around the knot in his throat. “Every witch I’ve been with looks like you. Why do you think that is?”
She slows as she reaches the open door, fingers grasping the knob. There’s so much he wants to say, so much he wants to convey — but he can’t.
“Hermione.” He’s so quiet, almost pleading. He doesn’t know how they got here — but here they are. “Please.”
She twists around again, glaring at him — but there’s raw emotion plastered on her face now, her voice rising. “You left me! You slept with someone else not even twelve hours after. You are the lying traitor here. What could you possibly be asking of me?”
He has no answer. Tell her the truth.
But he can’t. It would ruin everything he’s done thus far. It would all be for nothing — and he’s worked so hard to get here.
She stares at him, chest heaving, half-expectant, half-disbelieving. He wants to gather her up against him and bury his face in her hair. Maybe she reads it in his eyes because she swallows hard.
“Right then,” she says, sounding a little choked up. “I hope you never find what you’re looking for, Malfoy. Goodbye.”
She’s gone then, the door shutting behind her with a damning click, leaving nothing but the scent of parchment and coffee in his office.