Chapter 2: The Morning After
He was at his desk by six, the sharp smell of industrial cleaner hanging in the air. He’d spelled his robes impeccable, his hair ruthlessly neat. He looked like a statue of a Ministry employee. Inside, he was raw circuitry, sparking with every sound from the corridor.
The memory of last night was a physical burn. She found me in the dark.
At five past seven, the door opened. Hermione walked in, a blur of wool and flying papers tucked under her arm. The morning had put colour in her cheeks. She didn’t look at him, just dumped her bag and began unloading files onto her already-immaculate desk.
“Morning,” she said, the word tossed in his general direction like a spare Knut.
“Granger,” he nodded, his voice carefully neutral. He focused on a completely blank piece of parchment, pretending to read it.
The silence stretched, broken only by the rustle of paper. Then he heard the soft click of a thermos lid. The smell of Earl Grey, faintly citrus, cut through the sterile air. His stomach clenched. He kept his eyes down.
A minute later, a second click. This was followed by the sound of her chair rolling, her footsteps approaching his desk.
He looked up.
She was holding a second Ministry-issue mug. Steam curled from it. She placed it deliberately on the corner of his desk, on a clear spot between two stacks of Lestrange evidence ledgers. Black. No sugar. Just how he took it.
He stared at the mug. The ceramic was a bland, Ministry brown. The steam rose in a lazy spiral. It felt like a test. A trick. A poison.
“I always brew too much,” she said, her tone casual, but her eyes were on his face, watching for a reaction. “Waste not.”
A hundred responses crashed in his head. A sneer about charity. A cold thank you. A question that would give him away: How do you know how I take it?
He said nothing. He gave a short, sharp nod, his fingers curling around his own cold quill. His eyes flicked from the coffee to her. She was already turning back to her desk, but he caught the slightest tension in her shoulders, as if braced for a blow.
He let the coffee sit. Let it cool. The scent of it taunted him. An offering. A peace treaty. Or a reconnaissance mission.
“We should start with the inventory from the Sussex safehouse,” Hermione said, all business. She pulled a thick file forward, but her eyes flickered to his untouched mug. A tiny line appeared between her brows. “Unless you’ve already reviewed it?”
“No.” He finally reached for the mug. The heat was a shock against his skin. He took a sip. It was perfectly brewed. Bitter. Strong. It scalded his tongue, a pain he welcomed. “Sussex is fine.”
They worked. The rhythm was familiar, a tense duet. She read aloud findings; he cross-referenced with prior arrest ledgers. Her voice was clear, clinical. He made terse notes, his script a barbed wire fence across the parchment.
“Item 47-B,” she read. “A silver hairbrush, ornate, engraved with serpents. Testing revealed remnants of a complex strengthening potion on the bristles, likely used for… well, for hair.” She glanced up. “Bellatrix was always vain about that.”
The name hung in the air, a rotten scent. Draco’s quill stopped. He could feel the ghost of his aunt’s laugh, the crazed look in her eyes as she talked about purity, about curls.
“Catalog it under ‘Vanity, Dark Arts Adjacent’,” he said, his voice tighter than he intended.
Hermione looked at him for a long moment. “Already did.”
They moved on. Jar of cursed honey. A set of blood-blackened silverware. A music box that played a tune that induced sleepwalking. Each item was a piece of his family’s grotesque legacy, laid bare under the fluorescent light for the Brightest Witch of Her Age to dissect.
His coffee mug emptied. The hum of the overhead lights was a constant drone.
It was Hermione who broke the next long silence. “Last night,” she began, not looking up from a description of a cursed tapestry.
Drago’s entire body went still.
“You said you spilled ink.” She turned a page, her finger tapping lightly on a paragraph. “But the floor by the supply closet. I noticed a smudge of red. Like wax. Or sealing wax.”
He slowly leaned back in his chair. The leather creaked. “Your point, Granger?”
“Red tape,” she said, finally meeting his gaze. Her brown eyes were sharp, inquisitive. “The box was spilled. You were gathering it. But you said ink.” She tilted her head just a fraction. “A simple mistake, I suppose. Memory is fallible under stress.”
He held her look. He saw no mockery there. Just that relentless, unbearable curiosity. She was piecing him together like one of her cases. It was more intimate than an insult.
“It was a long day,” he said carefully. “The ink was earlier. The tape was after. I misspoke.”
“Ah.” She nodded, as if filing the answer away. Not satisfied. Just catalogued. “Well. The forms were replaced. That’s what matters.”
She went back to her file. He felt like he’d been scanned by a Seer.
They broke for lunch at one. He stayed at his desk, claiming he wasn’t hungry. She left, returning twenty minutes later with a smell of fresh bread and a new, determined set to her jaw.
“Right,” she said, pulling a small, heavily-warded box from the bottom of the evidence pile. “This is the last one from Sussex. The notes say it’s ‘personal correspondence, unsorted.’ The protective charms are…” She trailed off, her wand tracing the intricate, shimmering web of magic around the lock. “They’re nasty. And personal. Keyed to blood, I think.”
“Let me see.” He moved around the desk before he could stop himself. He stood beside her chair, looking down at the box. The magic had a familiar feel. A particular, cruel elegance. It smelled like the drawing room at the Manor.
Hermione moved her wand, murmuring a standard counter-charm. The web flared a vicious orange, and a spark jumped, snapping against her knuckles. She hissed, pulling her hand back.
“Don’t,” he said, the word coming out more harshly than he meant. “It’s not meant to be broken. It’s meant to recognise.”
“Recognise what?”
“The hand that placed it.”
He reached out. He didn’t use his wand. He simply spread his fingers over the top of the box, near the lock. He didn’t want to do this in front of her. He didn’t want her to see the magic welcome him. But the alternative was watching her get shocked again.
The shimmering web pulsed. It didn't attack. It seemed to hesitate, to taste the air around his skin. Then, with a sound like a sigh, the wards dissolved. The lock clicked open.
The silence in the office was absolute.
He pulled his hand back as if burned. He could feel her eyes on his profile.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. There was no triumph in her voice. Only a somber understanding.
He retreated to his side of the desk, the ghost of his family’s magic clinging to his fingertips.
Hermione, slowly, lifted the lid of the box. Inside were not letters, but a stack of photographs. She lifted the first one.
Her breath caught.
She turned it around for him to see. It was a moving picture, taken in the gardens of Malfoy Manor, before the war had turned them into a prison. His father, looking sternly at the camera. His mother, offering a thin, polite smile. And him, maybe fourteen, standing between them, his hair perfectly in place, his expression one of bored superiority. A perfect, pure-blood family portrait.
The next photo was of Bellatrix, laughing, twirling a knife. Then one of a much younger Draco receiving his first broom.
Hermione sifted through them, a history of his life in glossy squares. Each image was a nail in his coffin. She didn’t say a word.
Then she froze. Her fingers tightened on the edge of a photograph. The colour drained from her face.
“What?” he asked, his voice rough.
She turned it. It wasn’t a family photo. It was a surveillance shot, taken from a distance. Grainy, but clear. It showed Hermione herself, maybe eighteen, walking down a muggle London street, her arm linked with her mother’s. They were both laughing, carrying shopping bags. A sunny, normal day.
On the back, in his father’s crisp script, were two words: Granger. Mudblood.
The air left the room.
Draco felt the floor drop away. He saw her hand begin to tremble, the paper rattling softly. He saw her eyes fix on that horrible word, her lips parting slightly. He saw the sunny street, the laughter, and the label that had condemned it all.
“I didn’t know,” he whispered. The words were ash in his mouth. It was the most inadequate thing he’d ever said. “Granger, I swear, I never saw this.”
She didn’t look at him. She carefully, deliberately, placed the photograph face down on the desk. She placed her palms flat on either side of it, her head bowed. Her shoulders rose and fell with a deep, controlled breath. When she finally looked up, her eyes were bright, but dry. Shattered, but fiercely present.
“I believe you,” she said, and the sheer, unexpected grace of it struck him like a physical blow.
She closed the box. The click of the latch was final.
“We’ll need to log this under ‘Threat Assessment, Historical,’” she said, her voice miraculously steady, all professional protocol. But her next words, soft and directed at the closed lid, were just for them. “It seems our shared history just got a new filing cabinet.”
She stood, picking up the box. “I’m going to take this down for enhanced warding. I’ll… I’ll need a minute.”
He just nodded, unable to speak.
As she reached the door, she paused, her hand on the frame. She didn’t turn around. “Drink your coffee, Malfoy. It’ll get cold.”
Then she was gone, leaving him alone with the ghost of her shaking hands, the taste of his own bitter apologies, and the steaming, untouched mug of coffee he’d just made for himself—a pathetic, transparent attempt to replace the one she’d given him, which sat, stone-cold and full, in the bin beside his desk.