Chapter 6: The First Appointment
The door to Selwyn Dynamics closed behind Hermione with a soft, definitive click, sealing away the sterile scent of antiseptic and the Healer’s gently devastating pronouncements. Out here, the air of Diagon Alley was thick with the smell of rain-damped cobbles, frying pasties, and the musty chaos of magical commerce. It should have been a relief. It felt like a sentence.
Her fingers were clenched around a small, square bottle of slate-grey potion—the ‘clarifying tincture’ meant to start repairing seven years of biological sabotage. Severe endometrial scarring. Compromised hormonal pathways. The next cycle will be longer, more intense, and largely resistant to external modification. Healer Selwyn’s voice, clinically kind, echoed in her skull. Without an alpha’s stabilizing presence, it will be medically dangerous. The pain alone could induce magical shock.
Hermione took a deep, shaking breath, trying to ground herself in the mundane bustle of the alley. It didn’t work. The world felt tilted, the noises both too sharp and too distant.
That’s when she saw him.
He was leaning against the brick wall of the adjacent shop, a few paces from the clinic’s discreet brass plaque. Draco Malfoy, in charcoal grey wool and an expression of bored detachment, looking for all the world like he was waiting for a tedious business associate. His arms were crossed, his gaze fixed on a point somewhere over the heads of the passing witches and wizards.
He didn’t look at her. Not immediately.
But every instinct in her body, the new, raw ones the Healer had just painfully outlined, screamed at his proximity. Her skin prickled. The potion bottle grew warm in her hand.
She could have walked away. Should have. The contract said nothing about chaperones to medical appointments. But her feet, traitorously, stayed rooted. “Following me now, Malfoy?”
His grey eyes slid to hers. There was no triumph in them. Just a flat, assessing stare. “The alley is a public thoroughfare, Granger. One occasionally walks through it.” He pushed off the wall, unfolding to his full height. “Although your scent at the moment is distinctly… public. You reek of panic and cheap clinic smoke.”
A hot wave of humiliation washed over her. She drew herself up. “I’ve just had a thoroughly unpleasant hour being poked and prodded, thank you. Something your contract necessitated.”
“I’m aware.” He fell into step beside her as she finally forced her legs to move, heading instinctively away from the crowded main drag toward the quieter edge of Knockturn. His pace matched hers perfectly. “Selwyn’s office is warded. But the general emotional distress bleeding from you in the lobby was potent enough to taste from here.”
She flinched. “That’s disgusting.”
“It’s accurate.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Well? What’s the verdict? Are you going to spontaneously combust, or do I have a few more months to get my affairs in order?”
His tone was flippant, but she heard the razor-sharp edge beneath it. He was asking. This was him asking.
“It’s a mess,” she said, the words ripped from her. She stared straight ahead at the mist-draped lane. “The suppressants. The ones from the apothecary. They weren’t just masking the cycles, they were… corroding the system. Healer Selwyn says it’s like I’ve been pouring cement into my own plumbing.”
A low, involuntary sound escaped him—not quite a growl, more a vibration of pure frustration. “I could have told you that for free, you stubborn witch.”
“I didn’t want your diagnosis!” she hissed, rounding on him. “I didn’t want any of this! I just wanted to be left alone to do my job without my own body betraying me every ten weeks!”
They stood facing each other in the narrow, dim lane. His expression had shifted, the boredom burned away by something fiercer. “It’s not a betrayal. It’s a function. One you’ve been systematically poisoning. For years.” He took a step closer, his voice dropping. “Did she give you the clarifying potion?”
Wordlessly, she held up the little bottle.
“Good. Take it. Every drop, on schedule. It will make you feel like hell for a week as it strips the residue out. Fatigue, mood swings, potential magical fluctuation. Schedule around it.”
“Healer Selwyn already explained the side effects,” she snapped, but the fight was leaking out of her, replaced by a dawning, awful fatigue. He was informed. He had clearly consulted with the Healer, perhaps even before making the appointment. This was a coordinated campaign.
“Of course she did.” He looked away, his jaw tight. “The next heat. When?”
The question hung between them, intimate and brutal.
“Six to eight weeks. Possibly sooner. The timeline is… unstable now.” She couldn’t look at him either. She studied a water-stained gargoyle above a shuttered shop window. “Healer Selwyn said it will be… difficult.”
“That’s a medical euphemism for agonizing and potentially hazardous,” Draco translated, his voice flat. “The Portkey. Have you tested it?”
“No.”
“Do so. Tonight. The copper loop just needs your magical touch and intent. It will bring you to the location. Familiarize yourself with it. Knowing the terrain in advance is a tactical advantage.”
It was so like him, to frame a safety protocol as a military maneuver. It was also, infuriatingly, sound advice. The unknown was always more frightening.
“Why are you here, Malfoy?” she asked, exhaustion making her blunt. “Really. You got your contract. You got me to the Healer. Mission accomplished. You don’t need to babysit me back to the Ministry.”
He was silent for a long moment. A witch bundled in thick shawls hurried past them, giving their tense duo a wide berth. “Because when Selwyn’s diagnostic spells hit the peak of your scar tissue, your scent spiked with pain.” He said it quietly, factually. “It was… distractingly strong. I was brewing a very volatile concentration of powdered moonstone at the time. It became unsafe to continue. I came here to mitigate the distraction.”
Her breath caught. Not concern. Not kindness. A distraction. An interference with his work. That, she could almost believe.
“Well, I’m out now. The distraction is over. You can go back to your moonstone.”
“Not yet.” He nodded toward the mouth of the alley, where the muted glow of a familiar, shabby pub sign swung in the mist. “You need to eat. The potion requires a stabilized core temperature and blood sugar to work effectively, unless you want to spend tonight vomiting swirls of pepto-bismal pink. Also a fact from Selwyn.”
The Leaky Cauldron. Where Harry and Ron and her other life were likely still gathered, celebrating. Where she could not go, not with Draco Malfoy in tow, not with this fresh wound gaping inside her.
“I’m not hungry.”
“You’re a terrible liar.” He started walking toward the pub, not checking to see if she followed. “We’ll use a private booth in the back. You’ll eat soup. I’ll drink a firewhisky I don’t want. We’ll both read the editorial page of the Prophet and ignore each other. Then you’ll go home and touch the Portkey. Basic logistics.”
It was so absurdly, meticulously practical. And she was so unbearably tired of fighting the inevitable. Her stomach chose that moment to gurgle loudly, a traitorous protest of its emptiness. She saw his shoulders tense slightly, a barely perceptible flinch. He’d heard it.
Cursing under her breath, she followed him.
The booth in the back was shadowed and sticky with ancient polish. True to his word, Draco procected a bowl of thick chicken stew and a chunk of bread for her, and a single firewhisky for himself. He then unfolded a copy of the Daily Prophet, vanishing most of it with a tap of his finger until only the editorials remained, and propped it between them.
Hermione ate. The stew was hot, savory, and she realized with a start she was ravenous. The clinic had hollowed her out. She watched his hands as she ate—long-fingered, elegant, one curled around his glass, the other tapping a silent, impatient rhythm on the newsprint. He didn’t look at her. He was giving her the illusion of privacy in a public place, a small mercy that felt enormous.
She finished the stew, the warmth spreading through her, quieting the cold knot of dread in her stomach. “Thank you,” she said, the words stiff.
He lowered the paper a fraction. His eyes met hers over the top. “For the soup?”
“For the… logistics.”
He gave a short, sharp nod and went back to his reading. A moment later, he spoke, his voice low. “The Portkey location. It’s a cottage. Isolated. Heavily warded. It belonged to a great-aunt of mine, one who shared similar… proclivities for privacy. It’s not the Manor. It has no history for you.”
Her spoon clinked against the empty bowl. He’d thought of that. Of course he had. The ghost of the Malfoy Manor’s drawing room, of his mother’s drawing room.
“I appreciate that,” she said, and found she meant it.
Silence settled again, less hostile now, just heavy with the weight of their situation. The pub's rumble was a distant thing. Here, in their dim corner, it was just the smell of old wood, stew, firewhisky, and the subtle, clean scent of him—like mint and frost and something else, something inherently Draco that was currently doing more to calm her ragged nerves than the food had.
He finished his whisky in one last swallow and set the glass down with a definitive sound. “Right. I have a ruined batch of moonstone to reconcile. You have a Portkey to visualize.” He stood, extracting a few silver sickles from his pocket and leaving them on the table. “Take the potion before bed. The instructions are on the label Granger, actually read them.”
He was leaving. The strange, tense bubble of their temporary truce was about to pop. A jolt of something like panic—irrational, instinctive— shot through her. “Malfoy.”
He paused, halfway out of the booth.
She fumbled for the potion bottle in her bag, her fingers clumsy. “What if… what if it happens before the six weeks? What if I’m at work?”
He turned fully then, looking down at her. His face was all sharp angles in the low light, his eyes like quicksilver. “Then you touch the Portkey,” he said, as if it were the simplest thing in the world. “And I will know. And I will be there.”
He didn’t wait for a response. He just turned and strode through the crowded pub, a streak of elegant grey that parted the room without seeming to touch it.
Hermione sat for a long time, staring at the sickles he’d left behind. Then she pulled out the little grey bottle. The instructions, as he’d predicted, were on a label in Healer Selwyn’s neat script. One tablespoon daily, with food. Onset of purgative effects: 2-4 hours. Concomitant fatigue likely. Avoid complex spellwork for 24-48 hours post-dose.
She uncorked it. The smell was earthy, bitter, like crushed roots and regret. Steeling herself, she tipped it back and swallowed the prescribed dose. It tasted of chalk and damp forest floor, and it burned a hot, clarifying path down to her stomach.
Magic shock, the Healer had said. Uncontrollable.
She placed the sickles on top of the copied editorial he’d left behind—Ministry Missteps in Werewolf Welfare, Again—and slid out of the booth. The walk back to her flat was a blur. The potion sat inside her, a dormant little furnace.
Once inside her door, she went straight to her bedside table. The copper knob he’d attached to the contract lay there, inert. She picked it up. It was cool, slightly rough under her thumb.
Familiarize yourself with it. A tactical advantage.
Closing her eyes, she channeled a thread of magic into the metal and thought, firmly, Go.
The hook behind her navel was abrupt, less violent than a Ministry-issue Portkey but just as insistent. The world twisted, compressed, and spat her out.
She stumbled, her knees buckling on a soft, woven rug. The air was cool, still, and smelled of lemon polish, dried lavender, and stone. She looked up.
It was a sitting room. Small, beamed, charmingly old-fashioned but not ostentatious. A fireplace stood ready with stacked logs. A couch was draped in a faded, homely quilt. Bookshelves held a collection of titles that ranged from obscure herbology to dense arithmancy treatises. His great-aunt’s. A woman with similar proclivities for privacy.
It was safe. It was neutral. It was real.
A wave of crushing fatigue hit her, a side effect of the Portkey or the potion or just the sheer emotional toll of the day, she didn’t know. She needed to get back. She focused on her flat, on her own bed, and touched the knob again.
The return trip left her dizzy. She landed back in her bedroom, the copper knob now warm in her hand. She dropped it on the nightstand and fell onto her bed, not bothering to undress.
As she lay there, the potion beginning its subtle, systemic burn inside her, her last conscious thought was the memory of his voice in the dark pub, stripped of all sarcasm, flat with certainty.
And I will be there.