Chapter 3: An Unexpected Intern
The heat in the courtyard was a tangible thing, a heavy blanket of lavender-scented air that made the pages of her book feel soft under her fingers. Hermione had claimed the crooked iron bench hours ago, surrendering her shoes to let her bare feet press against the sun-warmed cobblestones. Beauxbatons was a palace of cool marble and elegant arches, but here, under this ancient oak, the world narrowed to the whisper of the silver fountain and the dappled light through the leaves.
Crookshanks was a puddle of orange fur in a patch of shade, his sides rising and falling in a slow, contented rhythm. For three weeks, this had been her sanctuary. No one knew her here. She wasn’t ‘the brightest witch of her age’ or the Head Girl; she was just Hermione Granger, intern, spending her mornings deciphering complex Arithmancy charts in the library and her afternoons here, stealing moments of quiet before the other students swarmed the grounds.
The peace shattered with the sound of lazy, familiar footsteps.
“Of all the courtyards in all of wizarding France.”
Her head snapped up. The book almost slid from her lap.
He looked wrong here. Too sharp, too pale, too distinctly not pastel and graceful. Draco Malfoy stood framed by a vine-covered archway, a black leather portfolio under one arm, his other hand tucked into the pocket of tailored trousers. He was wearing linen, a cream-colored shirt with the sleeves rolled up, but it didn’t soften him. The French sunlight turned his hair into a white-gold halo, highlighting the angular lines of his face. He looked, she thought with a spike of pure irritation, infuriatingly at home.
“What are you doing here?” The words came out flat, devoid of the shock she felt.
He strolled forward, his gaze sweeping the empty courtyard before landing on her. A smirk tugged at his mouth. “Enjoying the climate. Improving my prospects. The usual.”
“Malfoy.”
“Granger.” He stopped a few feet from the bench, looking down at her bare feet with a raised eyebrow. “Embracing the local customs, I see.”
She curled her toes instinctively, feeling absurdly exposed. “This is a closed internship. Advanced Charms Theory. Sponsored by the French Ministry.”
“And yet.” He lifted his portfolio, an identical seal of the French Ministry gleaming on its cover. “Here I am.”
A wasp buzzed lazily between them. The fountain plashed. Hermione’s mind, usually so swift, felt sluggish, caught between the heat and the sheer impossibility of him. “How?”
He shrugged one shoulder, a practiced, dismissive move. “The Ministry owed my father a favor. He thought a summer abroad would broaden my horizons. I was bored.” His grey eyes met hers, and the smirk deepened. “Imagine my delight when I saw the participant list.”
Her grip on the book tightened. “You can’t be serious. You’re going to ruin this.”
“On the contrary. I intend to be thoroughly mediocre. It’s you who’ll be straining to outperform me. Some things never change.” He took another step, invading her space. The scent of him cut through the lavender—crisp, clean, like cold stone and expensive soap. “Scoot over.”
“There are other benches.”
“This one has a view.”
They stared at each other. Crookshanks, from his patch of shade, opened one enormous yellow eye, observed the standoff, and closed it again with a dismissive flick of his tail.
With a noise of pure frustration, she shifted an inch to her left, gathering her skirt. It was a surrender, and they both knew it. He sat, the old iron groaning under his weight. He was too close. The heat of his arm, just inches from hers, felt more intense than the sun.
He stretched his long legs out, crossing them at the ankles. He was also barefoot, she noticed with a start. His feet were pale, elegant. The intimacy of it, both of them barefoot on the warm stones, was jarring.
Silence stretched, thick and uncomfortable. She tried to read her book, but the words blurred into nonsense.
“You’re on page forty-two,” he said, not looking at her. “You haven’t turned a page since I sat down.”
She slammed the book shut. “What do you want, Malfoy? Really?”
He finally turned his head. The smirk was gone, replaced by something more calculating, more opaque. “I told you. I was bored. Hogwarts is a ghost town in the summer. England is dreary. This,” he gestured vaguely at the gleaming palace behind them, “is marginally less tedious.”
“And you just happened to pick the exact same specialized internship?”
“The world is full of coincidences, Granger.” He looked away, watching the fountain. A muscle in his jaw ticked. “Or perhaps I just have excellent taste.”
Another silence, but this one was different. Charged. The air between them seemed to hum. She was acutely aware of every detail: the faint thread of silver in his shirt, the clean line of his profile against the green ivy, the way his hand rested on his thigh, fingers long and relaxed.
“You’ll hate it here,” she said, almost to herself. “They value collaboration. Open discussion. They think hierarchical pureblood nonsense is a quaint, backwards joke.”
A flicker in his eyes. Something dark and fast. “Then it’s a good thing I left my ‘hierarchical pureblood nonsense’ back in the English Channel, isn’t it?”
He said it evenly, but there was a challenge there. A line drawn. See me as I am here, now. She didn’t know what to do with that.
Crookshanks solved the impasse. He stood, stretched, and then trotted directly over, weaving between Draco’s outstretched legs before jumping into Hermione’s lap. He turned, settled, and fixed Draco with an unblinking stare, his purr a loud, possessive rumble.
Draco looked from the cat to Hermione. “Your feline chaperone is even more vigilant abroad, I see.”
“He’s an excellent judge of character.”
For the first time, a real, almost genuine smile touched Draco’s mouth. It transformed his face, making him look younger, less like a statue. “I don’t doubt it.” He lifted a hand, slowly, and reached towards Crookshanks.
Hermione held her breath. Crookshanks watched the approaching fingers, his tail twitching. Draco’s hand hovered, then carefully scratched the space between the cat’s ears. Crookshanks stiffened for a second, then, defying all expectation, pushed his head up into the touch, his purr intensifying.
Draco’s smile turned wry. “See? Even he knows boredom when he sees it. We might be the only two people here who understand that a Merseille Météorologie charm is fundamentally derivative of the Prague school, and that Professor Leclair is a fraud who plagiarized half his thesis from a Russian witch in the 1920s.”
The breath left her lungs in a quiet rush. It was a precise, cutting academic observation, the kind she’d made in her own notes two days prior. He’d read the same preparatory materials. He’d come to the same conclusion.
He wasn’t here to be mediocre. He was here to know.
He withdrew his hand from Crookshanks, his fingers brushing against her knee as he did. The contact was electric, accidental, but it left a brand on her skin. He stood up, collecting his portfolio.
“The orientation dinner is at seven. Try to wear shoes. The French might be relaxed, but they do have standards.” He looked down at her, the opaque mask back in place, but his eyes held a glint of the shared secret, the mutual understanding. “See you there, Granger.”
He walked away, his bare feet making no sound on the stones. He didn’t look back.
Hermione sat frozen, Crookshanks a heavy weight in her lap, the ghost of his touch still tingling on her knee. The courtyard no longer felt like a sanctuary. It felt like the starting line. The lavender air was suddenly suffocating, thick with promise and a peril she couldn’t yet name. The book lay forgotten beside her as she watched his retreating form until he vanished through the archway, taking all the oxygen with him.