Chapter 16: The Unfortunate Flat-Swap
It felt like a launchpad. She showered, the water almost painfully hot, and let the steam curl around her as she planned absolutely nothing. For once, her mind was deliciously, purposefully blank, occupied only by the memory of grey eyes and a single, silently mouthed word.
Morning dawned clear and bright. Hermione chose her clothes with a focus that felt tactical: dark trousers, a simple green silk blouse that made her skin glow, bare feet on the floorboards. She brewed tea at the kitchen counter, her body angled toward the window, a live wire of anticipation strung taut across the alley.
His windows remained dark, the blinds drawn. She checked the time. Nine. Ten. A flutter of doubt, cold and slick, coiled in her stomach. Had she misread it? The silence from across the way began to feel heavy, mocking.
Then her Ministry badge seared hot against her hip. She cursed, fumbling for it. Robards’s voice, clipped and urgent, crackled through. “Granger. Code Silver. My office, now. Portkey leaves in five.” The connection died. Code Silver. A compromised international treaty. It would take hours, possibly days.
“No,” she said aloud, to the empty flat. The word was a stone dropping. She stared at the dark windows, frustration a sharp taste in her mouth. She scrambled for a quill and the nearest paper—a receipts ledger. She wrote just three words: Ministry. Emergency. Later.
She folded it into a swift, precise paper aeroplane, tapped it with her wand, and whispered the targeting charm. It shot from her fingertips, banking sharply on a magical current, and slipped through a barely-open vent on his balcony.
She grabbed her bag and vanished from the flat with a soft crack, the taste of her tea still on her tongue.
Across the alley, Draco was currently shirtless and swearing at his own front door. Theo stood beside him, looking unrepentant. “I only leaned out to check the weather,” Theo said, his voice flat. “The wind caught it.”
“You are a fully grown wizard who owns a multi-million galleon company,” Draco snarled, jabbing his wand at the intricate Malfoy-family locking runes. “Alohomora doesn’t work on these, you idiot. I have to dismantle it like a bloody curse.”
He’d been ready. He’d waited, letting the tension build, watching her move in her kitchen from the shadow of his blind. He’d just turned to finally, finally leave when Theo’s panic had echoed up the stairs. The timing was catastrophically bad.
A paper aeroplane zipped through the balcony door and smacked him squarely in the chest. He caught it, unfolded it. His jaw tightened. Ministry. Emergency. Later. The flutter of hope in his chest turned to lead.
“Problem?” Theo asked, peering over his shoulder.
“Shut up.” Draco crumpled the note, shoved it in his pocket, and redoubled his efforts on the lock. His shoulder ached, a dull, pleasing throb from the bruise. He focused on that feeling, on the memory of her back against the wall, instead of the hollow delay.
By the time the door clicked open, two hours had bled away. Theo slunk into his flat with a half-hearted wave. Draco crossed to his window immediately. Her flat was empty, a single light left on over the stove. The purposeful emptiness of it felt like a slap.
He tore a page from a potions journal. His quill hovered. Don’t be pathetic, he told himself. He wrote, Hope it’s suitably dramatic. I’ll be here. He charmed the paper into a sleek, fast-flying hawk that soared across the divide and perched on her copper kettle.
He waited. The sun climbed. His own work—charts for a Wolfsbane derivative—lay ignored. He watched a team of wizards in protective gear arrive at her building’s front entrance. He straightened, concerned, until he saw the sign they magically adhered to her door: Bundimun Fumigation. Do Not Enter for 12 Hours.
He laughed, a short, incredulous burst of sound. Of course. The universe was actively conspiring. His hawk returned, a new note clutched in its talons. Infested. Apparently. Can’t go home. The handwriting was rushed. Below, she’d added, This is absurd.
A fierce grin spread across his face. The game was back on. He was formulating a reply, something about offering temporary shelter, when his own floo roared to life. Pansy Parkinson stepped out, her eyes blazing.
“Don’t speak,” she commanded, striding toward him. “The shipment of Augurey feathers from Nigeria has been dyed the wrong shade of violet. It’s a catastrophe. You’re coming to the warehouse now to hex the exporter.”
“Pansy, I’m in the middle of something.”
“You are in the middle of staring at an empty flat like a sick crup,” she said, grabbing his arm. “Theo told me you broke his lock. Your tragic pining funds my fabric imports. Move.”
She dragged him toward the floo. He shot a last, desperate look at Hermione’s windows, now being sealed by the pest crew. He vanished in a whirl of green flame.
Hours later, Hermione sat on a hard chair in a Ministry briefing room, the smell of chemical citrus from the fumigation clinging to her robes. Robards droned on about clause violations. Her mind was across the city.
A tiny, delicate glass butterfly, shimmering with internal light, landed on the parchment before her. It was so beautiful the Junior Auror next to her gasped. Hermione cupped it, felt the warmth. It opened its wings, revealing miniscule script. Augurey feather crisis averted. Pansy is a tyrant. Your turn.
She hid her smile behind her hand. On the margin of her official memo, she wrote, Still trapped. They’re debating comma placement in subsection twelve. It’s hell. She tapped the note, and it folded itself into the butterfly again, which zipped away up an air vent.
The exchange became a secret lifeline. A miniature dragon made of blue flame delivered a single coffee bean to her windowsill the next morning. She sent back a sprig of her jasmine, charmed to never wilt. He responded with a first edition page from a book on arithmancy he’d clearly tracked down at great expense, with a single line underlined: Irresistible forces meeting immovable objects.
She sent back a chocolate biscuit from the Ministry canteen, charmed to be eternally warm, with a note: This object is movable. Try harder.
That evening, finally cleared to return home, she stood before her clean, chemical-smelling flat. Across the way, he was at his window, a glass of wine in hand. He looked tired, but his eyes were bright. He pointed at her, then pointed down at the street between their buildings, and held up ten fingers.
Ten minutes.
Hermione’s pulse kicked. She nodded. She quickly changed, her fingers fumbling on her buttons. At the nine-minute mark, her floo flashed. Harry’s head floated in the emerald fire.
“Hermione? Thank god. We’ve got a lead on the London Lethifold but we need your cross-referencing on the movement patterns. Can you come to Grimmauld? Now?”
She closed her eyes. The laugh that escaped her was half despair, half delirious humour. “Harry, you have literally the worst timing in human history.”
“Is this a bad time?”
She looked at the window. Draco was putting on his jacket. “Yes,” she said, the word thick with frustration. “It is the worst possible time. But fine. Give me two minutes.”
She scrawled a final note. Lethifold. I’m so sorry. She sent it with the glass butterfly, which now seemed to fly with a weary tempo. She saw him catch it, read it, and slam a hand against his window frame in sheer exasperation.
He looked up, met her gaze. The space between them wasn’t just charged with want anymore—it was thick with a shared, comic desperation. He shook his head, but he was smiling that real, crinkled-eye smile. He placed his palm flat on the glass.
Hermione pressed hers to her own pane, the cool surface a poor substitute. She nodded, a promise. Then she turned and stepped into the green flame, the taste of lost opportunity sharp and bitter on her tongue. The game, however, was far from over.