Archive of Our Own

“You cannot be serious.”

“I can be, and I am.”

“But this is absurd.”

Professor Hartwicke leaned back in her oversized leather chair, which gave an almighty groan. “It was a random selection. Absurdity was always a possibility.”

“Then select again!”

“Hermione.” The Professor gave her a withering look. “That’s not how it works.”

Professor Amelia Hartwicke had been the resistant Hogwarts school counsellor-turned-art teacher for less than one week, and she’d already solidified her place as Hermione’s least favourite. The school had finally reopened its doors after a year and a half of mourning and rebuilding, and with it, a flurry of adults who hadn’t been able to complete their education were ferried back through the stone walls. At the ripe old age of twenty-one, Hermione found herself restricted by a tie and a particularly itchy grey vest once more.

It was, to put it mildly, extremely uncomfortable to be here.

The castle was the same; the sandstone carvings, the gossiping portraits, the ghosts and the grand, unpredictable staircases that seemed to save their spite for when she was running late, the long tables in the Great Hall, the spiralling towers and animated spires, the hidden common rooms and house colours that littered the bulletin boards. All of it was as known to her as the soft curve at the base of her wand.

Yet, it was nothing at all like the place she’d known, lived, and loved as a bright-eyed teenager. The main difference, and the one that weighed most heavily on her tired shoulders, was that she did not have Harry or Ron to lean on. They’d considered joining her for what would be dubbed their eighth year (despite them never having finished, or even attended, their seventh), but the pair had ultimately decided to join the Auror programme and find their footing in the workforce instead. Hogwarts did not feel like Hogwarts without their dear, steadfast company, but she could hardly blame them for going elsewhere; why would they want to return to the castle that housed so much grief and misery? To see the once lively halls submerged in group consolement? To take a morbid tour of their childhoods, which conveniently skipped over the minor disruption of the war?

She wasn’t alone, exactly. Ginny was here, ready to complete her last two years in the hopes that her efforts as Gryffindor’s newest Quidditch captain would catch the eye of scouting agents. Neville had also returned, though to call him a student would be a stretch. His sights were set on Professor Sprout’s soon-to-be-vacated seat; his return to the castle was not as a pupil but as an apprentice. Other familiar faces filtered the Great Hall during their scanty dinners and sparser breakfasts, but Hermione did her best not to look, to keep her head down and focus on her studies.

For the most part, she’d managed to do just that, but it was no easy feat. Hermione was newly famous and tremendously intimidated by the sudden burden of her name, unable to fully connect with her peers anymore, but she was getting by.

That was, until today.

A condition of the school reopening its doors to aged-out students was the implementation of mandatory therapy. All eighth-year pupils were expected to participate, at least nominally, in the betterment of their mental health. It was a move that would have the public, and more importantly the parents, lauding the school for its remarkable display of progressive thinking.

The project was to be headed by Amelia Hartwicke, a renowned mind healer, bestselling self-help author, and contemporary painter. True to her profession, her first act was to persuade Headmistress McGonagall to offer the students the illusion of choice; they could agree to attend bi-weekly meetings with a designated mind healer, or…they could attend her art class.

Hermione opted for the latter, deciding it would surely be the lesser of two agonies. It had all gone fine, just fine, totally, completely, utterly fine, until—

“You are aware that he and I have a sordid history?” she asked.

Professor Hartwicke, to her credit, did not deny it. “It is well documented, yes.”

“Then you understand why I cannot work with him.”

“It is independent work, Miss Granger.”

A disbelieving, somewhat hysterical laugh burst forth from her lips. “Professor, you want us to build busts of each other’s heads.”

“I do.”

Hermione spread her hands wide at her sides. “That will involve us working together.”

“Very briefly,” Hartwicke acquiesced.

“And looking at each other.”

“Yes.”

“I will not do it.”

Professor Hartwicke slouched, pressing her tongue into her cheek in a gesture that made her appear not much older than Hermione, whose hands were now curled into tight fists in her lap. This expectation simply was not fair—it might have been luck of the draw, but the luck was rotten. She did not want to sculpt that horrible, pointy, repulsive face for the next term, and did not see how being forced to do so could positively contribute to her mental well-being.

“Alright.” Professor Hartwicke leaned forward and plucked her quill from the half-empty inkpot, her neat scrawl scratching across unrolled parchment. “I will adjust your schedule and set up your appointments with Dr Rohan.”

“What?” Hermione’s voice sharpened, dread coiling at her spine like a viper.

“He’s excellent, I assure you,” the Professor continued, her vibrato voice a warbled, snapped-string melody. “I would take you myself, but unfortunately, my timetable is already full for—”

“Why do I need to see Dr Rohan?”

“You are withdrawing from the class, are you not?”

“No!” Hermione sat forward in her chair, chest tightening with a rapid tug. “No, I…I don't want to withdraw. I’m only asking that you assign me a new partner.”

“As I have told you, that’s not how this works.”

“But—”

“Miss Granger,” Professor Hartwicke interrupted softly, setting her quill aside and folding her hands atop the desk. “When this school reopened its doors, it did so for all, not just those on the winning side. This project is not only about healing our student population, it is about uniting them. With that in mind, it would hardly be productive to pair students by who they already like, would it?”

Hermione cleared her throat. “This is a bit more than dislike—”

“It’s this, or it’s Dr Rohan.” The Professor was unflinching, yet still gentle, the dichotomy as disturbing as it was magnetic. “What do you want, Hermione? To sculpt, or to talk?”

She slumped in her chair, defeated. For as much as she hated the answer, there was only one, and it meant she was going to have to spend more time than she’d ever wanted to looking at the finer details of the face of the man who’d—

A knock on the door had her body stiffening, as though the entrant had cast a full-body bind. She didn’t need to turn around to see who it was; she already knew. Professor Hartwicke lifted her eyes to the door behind Hermione’s shoulder, smiling through a sigh.

“Ah, Mr Malfoy, I think I know what you are here to discuss.”

Hermione had never ventured this far east on Hogwarts’ fifth floor. Her studies were always confined to the west, where Professor Binns drifted and mumbled through page after page of poorly documented history, or where Professor Burbage had once tried to convince a certain group of young wizards that Muggles were just as human as they were.

She’d known this part of the floor existed, of course. Luna often delighted in her music studies—both magical and Muggle—while Lavender waxed poetic about her daring use of oil paints for what would turn out to be the final project of her young, short life.

Hermione—studious, academically inclined, notoriously uptight—had never considered herself to possess the gift of artistic creation. She’d never had a reason to come this way. Until today.

The classroom was not what she expected. It was a stark contrast to the ancient architecture of the surrounding grounds; no vaulted ceilings or ogival archways, no stained glass windows and intricate tracery. Instead, the room felt more akin to a modern, industrial workspace. The windows were large with a litany of squared iron muntins, the floorspace was vast and entirely linoleum, the lights were all bright and all-natural, in an artificial sort of way. It was too spacious, too open-planned, to be housed within the confines of an ancient Gothic structure, yet here it was.

Workstations had been set up along the walls of the interior, each fully stocked with tools and materials. Hermione was seated before one of the many windows, facing into the room, directly opposite Draco Malfoy, who was doing a fine job of avoiding her eye. Today was not about creation; today was about preparation, so said Professor Hartwicke when she took her place in the centre of the room, her long robes swapped for a splotchy apron.

“No need to take notes, I want your hands free to handle the tools as we go through them,” she’d said when Hermione produced a roll of parchment.

Begrudgingly, Hermione listened as the Professor discussed every item laid before her in excruciating detail; baseboards for pinning references, a stand upon which she could sculpt her vile bust, an astoundingly large bag of water-based clay, a line of flexible ribs that differed from shallow to deeply serrated, a spool of cutting wire, detail brushes and wooden modelling tools, fettling knives for cutting at the mould markings, needle tools for dry trimming and looped ones for gouging—so many she could not keep up.

“The first order of business is to gather our references,” Professor Hartwicke said, pointing to the far end of the room where she’d set up a small photography set; pale white paper draped over the stone wall.

One by one, the paired students lined up to take their photographs, some significantly more pleased than others. She felt Malfoy shuffle up beside her, though neither of them deigned each other with so much as a glance, electing to keep as much distance as the queue would allow. When it was their turn, they did not offer a helping hand to set up the camera height, nor did they exchange a word to check in. Hermione found herself standing there against the backdrop, hands limp and useless at her sides, waiting for him to begin, frustration mounting with every second he avoided looking through the lens.

“What do you want me to do?” she eventually snapped.

He snorted; an undignified sound for such a well-to-do wizard. “Is that a trick question?”

“For the photographs, Malfoy.”

“Turn around, preferably,” he said, shrugging.

It was immediate, the thickening of her blood as it simmered to a boil. He’d managed to make her feel hideous on more occasions than she cared to count over the years, but she was a startled child no longer, and she would not allow him to do it again. With her hands on her hips, she forced her mouth into a vicious smirk, then turned her back to him.

He sighed, long-suffering and unearned. “That’s hardly going to work.”

“This isn’t going to work,” she sniped.

“Just, fucking, turn in a circle.”

With a scowl and a deep, painful bite to the inside of her cheek, she did as requested, turning on her heel in a lazy motion. When she made it all the way around, he was shaking his head.

“Don’t pull that face.”

Her scowl deepened. “It’s my only face.”

“It’s fucking not, though.”

“I’m sorry.” She curtsied—quite terribly—and swept her arms wide. “Which face would you prefer?”

Malfoy dug his thumbs into his eyes and muttered, almost inaudibly, “This is barbaric.”

“At least we agree on that.”

“Just your normal, boring face.”

She reared back, straightening to her full height. “Boring?”

At the sight of his stilted nod, she turned sharply on her heel, hair whipping forward and catching on her lips and eyelashes. The twitch of his eye delighted her more than any praise ever could.

When it came her turn to operate the camera, he wouldn’t even lift his eyes to it.

“Look up,” she ordered.

He did not. “Where?”

“Head on.” That earned her a cutting glare. “Not at me, you imbecile. At the camera.”

Malfoy looked at the camera for a fleeting, far-too-hopeful second before spinning in a rapid circle. It was, objectively, no different from what she had done—but Hermione was not feeling particularly objective.

“Slow down,” she said, and caught only a second of the devilish glint in his eyes before he turned again, twisting in what might have been slow motion. She clenched her teeth, tasting iron on her tongue. “Must you make this harder than it needs to be?”

“Me?” he asked, hand to his chest in the portrait of practised innocence.

“Just. Turn. Normally.”

“Give. Better. Instructions.”

“Never mind, this is fine,” she barked, fiddling with the camera to save the photos before sending them to print. “You look easy enough to replicate.”

He looked a bit put out by that, which was exactly what she’d wanted. “What does that mean?”

“Oh, you know,” she waved a flippant hand, “such a predictably sneering face you have—”

“That’s rich,” he cut in, stepping closer. “Reckon all I’ll need to do is nail those rabbit teeth and—”

“That jab hasn’t been relevant for years, Malfoy.”

“Yet there you are, getting defensive.”

“You’re such a—”

“Is everything okay over here?”

They turned to find Professor Hartwicke standing with hands clasped over her stomach, a sweet smile on her too-young face. Hermione was not sure how loud her disagreement with Malfoy had gotten, but she was sure that more than half the class were watching them with wide, unblinking eyes.

“No,” she said.

“Absolutely not,” Malfoy echoed.

“What’s the issue?” Professor Hartwicke asked, willfully oblivious. “Is it the camera?”

Hermione sucked in a slow, deep breath through her still-gritted teeth and tried to remind herself that the alternative was sitting in a faux-dimmed room with Dr Rohan and digging up feelings she would rather leave buried. This was difficult, but she and Malfoy would have no reason to speak with each other after today. Sure, she would still have to look at his photographs and sculpt his horribly pointy face, but she could do that quickly enough, then she would be free of it all, done with her mandatory ‘therapy’, no longer living under the looming threat of having to explain herself.

“Everything is fine,” she lied. “I’m finished.”

She left them both and made for the printer, grabbing a mix of still and moving images, all depicting Malfoy’s glowering face. She tried not to look at them as she pinned them to her baseboard, tried even harder not to look up and see if he was doing the same.

It was only one year, only one project, then her life would finally begin.

In the Great Hall, which managed to look exactly the same and entirely different, Hermione took the vacant seat beside Ginny and started talking before the food even materialised. Ignored went her wellington, dismissed was her glass of diluting juice, forgone were the condiments that paraded up and down the long table.

Luckily, the majority of her peers were not only sympathetic to her displeasure but also had plenty of disdain of their own for Malfoy. They nodded along solemnly as she hissed expletives about his utter lack of cordiality, they ahh’d and ohh’d when she regaled the way he’d spoken to her from behind the safety of a camera lens, and they winced with sharp intakes of breath when she finally picked up her fork and jabbed it, more than a little forcefully, into the uneaten cut of beef.

“I can’t believe McGonagall agreed to it,” Ginny said, her face warring between pity and amusement.

“It would reflect poorly if she refused,” she replied, the wind having left her. “It would essentially be admitting that he shouldn’t be here.”

Ginny scoffed. “Yeah, well, he shouldn’t.”

Hermione wasn’t so sure she agreed with that; even the worst of the worst deserved access to education. What she could easily agree on, however, was that his opportunities should not come at the cost of her own, especially when she’d fought so hard to have them, whereas he’d only ever fought to take them away. Perhaps distance learning would have been a better option. There were plenty of Muggle institutions that offered such courses…but no, that felt equally wrong. Hogwarts was not just a school; it was a home, and home should always be welcoming, regardless of Malfoy’s missing appreciation for it.

“It’s not that,” she sighed. “I just…don’t want to look at him.”

Romilda Vane, whom Hermione had not realised was there until that very moment, made a loud humming noise. Every head in their little group turned her way.

“What?” Ginny asked.

“Nothing,” said Romilda, though contradicted herself immediately by adding, “I mean, he’s not exactly ghastly, is he?”

Hermione and Ginny shared a dumbfounded look, to which Romilda promptly rolled her pretty brown eyes.

Ginny lowered her voice to a whisper. “Are you saying you think he is—”

“Hot?” Romilda asked. “Yes.”

“Malfoy?”

“Yes. He’s filled out a bit since school…well, since the last time we were at school.” Romilda bit the top of her asparagus, chewing thoughtfully. “Adulthood becomes him.”

Hermione leaned forward, reaching for the witch’s forehead. “Are you feeling alright, Romilda? Do you have a fever?”

“Shove off.”

Swallowing a laugh, Hermione turned back to her plate, determined not to let Malfoy take up any more of her mental real estate. She had homework to complete, reading to be done, and coursework to pore over; she did not have time for the antics of an old adversary.

Before she could tuck into her now tepid food, a small hand tapped the top of her shoulder. She turned to find a small second-year boy, his face becoming more cherubic by the second.

“Hello, Miss, erm, Hermione Granger?”

She set her knife and fork down, guts churning with anticipation of what she knew was to come, what she dreaded the most. Still, she maintained a pleasant smile as she looked at the boy, who was bursting at the seams with excitement, and managed a simple, “Hello.”

The boy held up a quill. “Can I…have your autograph?”

She had to bite her tongue to stop herself from wincing, had to fight the urge to hide behind her hands when her surrounding peers looked away uncomfortably. Hermione would never regret her part in the war, not the battles she’d won nor the ones she’d lost, but she did regret how visible it left her. Glory was never the goal; peace was. Even still, it was a taste—the briefest, most marginal taste—of what Harry experienced daily; at school, at work, on the streets, all his life.

She wished he were here to catch her eye, to offer a small, bemused shake of his head, to make all of this feel carriable.

“Oh, sorry, no,” she said quietly, stomach lurching with a sharp stab of guilt when the child’s face fell. “But you can sit with us, if you’d like?”

That worked.

“Really?”

“Of course.” She shuffled over, making room where there was none. “It’s your table, too.”

The child, whose name she would not ask, clapped with palpable joy and climbed onto the bench beside her, wide eyes filled with misplaced reverence. Hermione didn’t want the responsibility of that expression, of the expectation placed upon her, but she had it, so there was no other choice but to do something good with it.

“How’s school going this year?” she asked.

“Good,” the kid replied, a little crease forming along the sides of his button nose. “I hate History of Magic. It’s so boring.”

Hermione’s mouth twisted into a curve as she remembered the hours of her youth lost to the droning voice of Professor Binns. It was not one of her elected classes this year, of which she had too many; her N.E.W.T subjects were curated to cast the widest net across the Ministry: Charms, Transfiguration, Defence Against the Dark Arts, Herbology, Arithmancy, Potions, and Ancient Runes. It was a lot, but Hermione had never been one to coast by on the bare minimum.

“It’s important, though,” she reminded him.

The child hung their head wearily. “I know…”

They stayed until dinner was over, tripping over themselves to tell her about their homework, to ask for educational advice she didn’t mind giving, to ask details about the year she’d spent on the run with her friends, which she really did mind, and avoided with practised grace.

Before leaving, her eyes drew across the vastness of the Great Hall, towards a table adorned in green, where she found Draco Malfoy. He was already watching her, brows pinched tight in annoyance at the undivided attention she was receiving; he’d always envied Harry for it. Perhaps in his absence, Malfoy’s fury had befallen her? With a held, hollow stare, she lifted her fingers in a mocking wave and watched his lip curl higher.

Her first attempt at sculpting was a wrestling match. Though it pained her to admit, Hermione was simply not very good at it. They began by beating the air bubbles out of their clay and folding it back in what Professor Hartwicke called the ‘ram’s head method’.

It required a decent amount of strength, which felt good to exhibit, especially given the arsehole in her eyeline. The poorly taken reference photographs mocked her with every replay of his too-slow turn, tempting her to draw devil horns upon his head, as though she’d been reduced to a child. Whenever the urge overwhelmed her, she pressed her fist harder into the clay.

It was an experience of great catharsis, and the only time Hermione felt in control that afternoon.

Professor Hartwicke led them through the initial construction of their rough busts, piling, connecting, and smoothing clumps of clay until each of them sat before a vaguely head-shaped mound. Hermione could not foresee any reality in which she could turn it into a discernible human head. She wouldn’t have been able to carve out her own mother, let alone Draco Malfoy, whom she pointedly refused to look at. The afternoon was frustrating, and the clay structure was lopsided at best, ignominious at worst.

Before she could catch herself, before she could correct her ill-advised course, her gaze caught—like a fish in a trawler's net—the foe in question. His rough bust was completed and, dare she say, absolutely perfect. Not a lopsided edge in sight, no brush marks or bevels or jagged jawlines. She had half a mind to call him out for cheating, despite her utter lack of evidence. His mouth, which was wretched, twisted into a smile, which was positively fiendish, and the only thing left running through her veins was undiluted indignation.

“So,” said Ginny, who had no intention of moving out from under her duvet any time soon, “if you’re not back by seven, I’ll put in a missing persons report.”

Hermione let go of her shoelaces and raised a questioning brow. “Aren’t you supposed to wait twenty-four hours for that?”

“Untrue.” Ginny shrugged. “But even if it was, sleeping with an Auror provides me with certain privileges.”

“An Auror in training…”

“Alright, sleeping with Harry Potter provides me with certain privileges.”

Hermione repressed a head-to-toe shudder and tried her very best not to think of Harry as a sexual entity; she’d known him for too long, too closely, to stand the knowledge of his intimate relations. She zipped her windbreaker up to her chin and grabbed her pre-packed rucksack, determined to leave before Ginny could further pollute her imagination.

“I’ll be back by seven.”

Ginny huffed. “Better be.”

Then she left, because she was an adult, far too old to be at school, and the wards could not prevent her from walking straight out of the grounds. Once past them, she turned on her heel and thought of the Isle of Skye. Her feet found home at the starting point of the Quiraing walk: a carpark, eerily empty in the morning hours.

The cliffs were high and blanketed by a layer of grey clouds, and were she not a witch capable of performing water repellent charms, and were she not once an enemy of the nation, Undesirable No.2, who had spent a formative year traversing the countryside no matter the weather, she might have turned back around. Instead, she tucked her chin into her windbreaker and pushed onwards, walking boots sinking into the mud and squelching upon each release.

The wind and cold rain battered her charms, but not her body, which allowed her the decency of watching where she was going. The skies were grey, fog rolling in like inverted waves over the stone pinnacles, but the steep grassy slopes were bright and evergreen, fed well by the near-constant presence of precipitation. Rain unsettled the soil and released sweet petrichor into the air; Hermione inhaled it deeply, relishing in the aroma as she climbed the winding, boot-beaten paths between rocky structures and over gorges that arched free-flowing streams.

To the east, she could see the village of Staffin, the islands of Raasay and Rona, and the peaks of Torridon stretching high from the mainland. It was beautiful, calming, and enriching in a way that only nature could be, backed by howling winds and the cries of highland sheep, whose curled horns and watchful eyes seemed to follow her every move. Finally, two and a half hours of trekking later, she found herself standing at the summit and looking across a flat, grassy plateau nestled between cliff faces and jutting rocks. Beyond that, hardly visible through the gathering rain clouds, she caught a glimpse of Hebridean waters.

Her thoughts drifted without direction, until she found herself clutching at her stomach, sick with longing for friends who were not where they had always been: at her side. Harry and Ron were not far away, nor were they ones to let contact dwindle, yet she missed them all the same. Ginny missed them too, but at least she was occupied with Quidditch, while Hermione’s only distraction came in the form of her studies and…

Hermione scowled, most displeased to have ruined such a fine view with thoughts of a man so unworthy. She toed the dirt, kicking up the wet mud and covering a nearby patch of stones. He was not welcome in her mind, nor her life, and most certainly not in her studies; she did not have to think about him, she just had to outdo him.

She shrugged out of her bag—whose extension charms were unlikely to be reported by the watching puffins—and pulled out a tarp awning, setting it up over the most inviting rock she could find. Taking her pew, the rain pelting the overhead nylon, she unpacked a block of air-dry practice clay she’d purchased a few days earlier in a fit of madness, and began warming it up between her palms.

Hermione did not want to make a bust, but seeing as she had to, the least she could do was make a better one than Draco Malfoy.

Professor Hartwicke had, Hermione decided, lost possession of her entire mind.

When they’d taken their places at their respective workstations, the expectation was that they would continue their learning of constructing the basic structure of their busts, or listen to the Professor discuss which tools to use for which methods and follow her slow demonstrations. It hadn’t, even in Hermione’s wildest fantasies, been that she would suggest all partnered students sit opposite each other and engage in a light bit of manhandling.

Malfoy choked on his own saliva—disgusting—while Hermione calmly, and with considered volume—shrieked—informed the Professor that she would not be partaking in this particular activity. Professor Hartwicke could not force their hands to each other's faces, not without disciplinary action, but she could make them sit opposite each other anyway, surrounded by their very touchy peers. Hermione did not look away from Malfoy as they waited for the painful exercise to end, and he rose to the challenge, holding her gaze with the same intensity as a hurricane.

She hated to admit it, but his unwelcome proximity managed to throw her. By the time they scurried back to their workstations and began wetting the clay, she was frazzled, lost, entirely unable to keep up with Professor Hartwicke’s instructions on how to build hair. He’d stopped gelling his sometime around their sixth year, but that did not stop her from flattening every clay strand to his clay head. When she risked a glance at his station, hoping to find him floundering or miscalculating or, if she were really lucky, crying, she instead watched him pile enormous heaps of clay to the side of her head with a blithering grin.

He was making her hair…enormous. Like that of a beast, a porcupine with curled spikes, a lion in humidity—it was absurd, and offensive, and annoyed her enough that she grabbed her smoothing rib and pushed his hairline back by three centimetres. Malfoy noticed, teeth clenching in irritation, and lifted his hand halfway into the air.

“Professor?”

Professor Hartwicke turned towards him with a patient smile. “Yes?”

“Do we have any reserves of clay? I fear this will not be enough to replicate Granger's unruly nest.”

“You’ll do with what you have,” said the Professor, a sharp and cutting shutdown. “Five points deducted from Slytherin for bullying.”

“What?” Malfoy sat up impossibly straight. “But—”

“Do better, Mr Malfoy.”

Hermione bit back a smile, but she could not restrain all of her petulance, finding his eye and letting her mouth curve around a silent echo of ‘do better’. His hands gripped the clay harder, expanding her hair to frankly unreasonable proportions, to which she grabbed the end of his clay nose and pulled, making it unnaturally pointy. It went that way—tit for tat, a soundless battle between two people incapable of acting their age—until the hour was up, and they found themselves quite literally up to their elbows in wet clay.

Malfoy arrived at the wash basin just as she did, and both of them weighed up the option of returning to the back of the queue. Ultimately, the need for clean skin was just too demanding. With a deep sigh, he took the spot beside her and got to scrubbing. It was awkward, tense; neither of them dared to speak, neither of them could bring themselves to look. When, around five minutes later, her hands were finally free of clay, she turned to grab the towel and found Malfoy already holding it, spite in his eyes.

He did not offer it to her once he was done, electing instead to toss it over his shoulder with the casual grace of a Michelin-star chef and turn on his heel to leave. Incensed, Hermione flicked her dripping hands at his back, watching rivulets sink through the cotton of his school shirt as he froze. He turned back to her in an instant, something burning in his expression, and she lifted her head to meet him in the middle of this proverbial ring, forgetting entirely about the world around them.

Until someone cleared their throat.

“Are you guys done?” A young witch asked tentatively, holding up her arms, which were coated in slowly drying clay. “This is really overstimulating.”

Acrimoniously, Hermione stepped aside.

She leaned back on her palms, legs swinging over the lip of the potting table, and looked up at the arched glass ceilings of the greenhouse. Beside her, Neville was intensely focused on the re-potting of his asphodel, which meant that he had not really been listening to the last ten minutes of her uninterrupted ranting.

She was not deterred.

“It’s just not a very good plan, is it?” asked Hermione. “Our mandated therapy is to learn every inch of each other's faces? What’s that supposed to do?”

“Hmm.”

“I could grin and bear it if that’s all it was, but he’s so frustrating, purposefully vexing, blatantly irksome, yet I am expected to show him civility?”

“Hmm.”

“After everything that happened, and everything he did…are you not angry?”

Finally, Neville looked up, his brows knitting. “Angry?”

“Yes,” she said. “He was as cruel to you as he was to me.”

Neville leaned back on his stool, spine cracking as he straightened, tools falling limp on the tabletop. His hands were coated in soil, as they so often were, but his eyes were clear as a blue-bird sky.

“No, I’m not,” he said, taking her by surprise. “Maybe I was a little angry at first, but after speaking with him—”

“You spoke with him?”

“Yeah.” His frown deepened. “Haven’t you?”

“We’ve…” Hermione thought about how they’d sniped and snapped and barked words of contempt across the linoleum, of all the narrow-eyed glances and furrowed brows they’d thrown each other's way, but had they spoken? “No, not really.”

“Oh.”

She bristled. “Oh?”

“I assume he would have….he was doing the rounds a couple of weeks ago, apologising to everyone he could find.” Neville winced. “Apparently, some went better than others.”

“He hasn’t apologised to me,” said Hermione, horrified to hear the whine in her voice, to feel her mouth press into a pathetic, unbidden pout.

“Maybe Brandon Cadwallader scared him off.” Neville shrugged. “Heard he broke his nose.”

Her stomach dropped. Brandon was large before they’d grown into themselves. Now, he was borderline cosmic. Malfoy was hardly a runt, but there would be no contest between them if punches were thrown. It shouldn’t matter, and she certainly shouldn’t be feeling any level of pity; if Malfoy was on the receiving end of some shattered cartilage, it would be well deserved—wouldn’t it?

She shifted on the table, uncomfortable with the questions now forming with reckless abandon, because…why hadn’t he apologised to her, out of everyone? Was she not the first person whose pardon he should seek? Why did it sting a little that he hadn’t even tried, that he’d resorted to pushing her buttons at every opportunity? Did she not deserve his remorse?

“If it's that bad, why don’t you see the mind healer instead?” Neville asked. “Seems to work well enough for most of the others.”

She eyed him warily, watched the way his fingers carefully dug a cradle in the soil for his rehomed flower. “Does it work for you?”

“Ah.” His lips quirked. “I prefer working with the plants.”

“Yeah, exactly.”

Hermione turned her head back to the ceiling, letting the rest of their break pass in silence. Still, her mind whirled with fresh questions and curiosities; she was well aware of why she’d turned down Dr Rohan in favour of spending the academic year jousting in the art room, but why had Malfoy?

The sun was only just emerging from beyond the horizon when Hermione stepped into the fresh air. The night had been restless, a maelstrom of anxiety building more potent with every passing hour, for today she would be joining her parents for their six-month check-up at St Mungo’s.

After the war ended, Hermione tearfully admitted to Kingsley that she’d used very precarious memory modifications on her very Muggle parents. He’d sent for them to be collected and taken to the hospital, where a team of healers managed to restore the majority—but not all—of their memories. Their treatment was ongoing, and likely would be for life; the long-term effects of such drastic magic on Muggles were too good a research opportunity to pass up.

Hermione knew they were angry with her. She could see it in their eyes, hear it in the occasional tremble of their voices, could feel it in their tentative touches. They could hardly be blamed for it. She’d ripped their lives out from under their feet and sent them to the other side of the world.

She’d done it to protect them, that much was true, but she hadn’t asked, hadn’t even told them, just betrayed them without so much as a word of warning. They had every right to resent her for it.

Harry and Ron would be meeting her after their appointment, mainly for moral support, also because it had been too long since they’d seen each other's faces. She was desperately looking forward to catching up with them. That excitement, however, was not enough to drown out her worry, which is how she found herself walking along the edge of the black lake, hands tucked into her coat pockets, boots crunching the dew-frosted blades of grass, a bag full of air-dry clay slung over her shoulder.

She hadn’t intended to stay out here for long—it was far too bitter at this time of the morning—maybe to sit for ten minutes and make something easy before returning to the dorms and taking a long, hot shower. Those plans were set alight the second she spotted Draco Malfoy, sitting spread-legged on the lakeshore, and watched him spot her back.

In a flash, he was on his feet, hands fisted at his sides, eyes boring into her like he could sharpen them to cut if only he tried hard enough. It was a stand-off, a battle for territory, a claim to the lakeshore and the dawn’s golden light. It certainly would have been easier to back down, but she did not want him to think that he had a right to even a single blade of grass on the grounds he’s so vocally despised. Equally, she could not claim a blade for herself. She’d left this place and all the children within it behind to suffer, only to return a hero and claim a victory that did not belong to her.

Her conclusion seemed to be shared, for Malfoy’s shoulders sagged from his ears, and the pair lowered to the ground in unison. The distance between them was a gulf, the air was so thick with tension that she was surprised her lungs could breathe it. They turned to the laketop and watched the ripping water dance under rising sunlight.

Hermione pulled out her clay after a few minutes, and with the sharp feeling of Malfoy’s gaze latched to the side of her head, she tried to sculpt a ferret.

The hours Hermione had spent with her bag of air-dry clay seemed to be having an effect, while Malfoy seemed content to rest on his laurels. She managed to sculpt the contours of his awful face with startling accuracy, a feat which Professor Hartwicke was quick to notice.

“Nicely done, Miss Granger!” said Hartwicke, nodding approvingly. “Have you been practising?”

“I have,” she admitted, feeling rather proud of herself. “Thank you.”

“Keep it up.”

Once the Professor's back was turned, Hermione turned her smug look to Malfoy, who returned an award-worthy glare of his own. Her eyebrow raised of its own volition; it was intended as mockery, and that’s exactly how he received it. With a twitch of his eye, she watched him press his thumbs into the cheekbones of his bust—of her face—with more force than was strictly necessary.

Regrettably, this also meant that Hermione became quite suddenly aware of Malfoy's hands. They were larger than she remembered. Then again, so was he. They were not children anymore, no longer war-ravaged and half-starved. Despite the thick layers of clay covering him, she could make out the tendons straining all the way up his forearms, which had been exposed by the need to preserve his sleeves.

It had to be a tactic to throw her off after she’d pulled ahead in their figurative race. Diabolical, really. She would not stand for it.

Pleased with her victory, unwilling to linger and let it be sullied, Hermione packed for the day and exited the classroom. Malfoy, however, remained at his workstation.

The hallways were blessedly quiet, filled only by the echo of Hermione’s deep yawn. A fresh selection of books was crushed to her breast. Late evening study sessions were nothing unfamiliar to Hermione, who’d always enjoyed the more solitary hours in the library and the elbow room they afforded. Tonight, she’d been focused on preparations for her first Ancient Runes examinations, which were due to begin in a matter of weeks. It was one of her preferred subjects, but that did not mean she could rest on already acquired knowledge. The divide of her limited time had to be scrupulous—

Something wrapped tight around her bicep and yanked her backwards into a shadowed alcove.

Hermione cursed loudly, which was unexpected, and kicked wildly at her assailant, which was not. Her books, precious as they were, became means for bludgeoning, flying from her hands to dent the chest of…oh, the universe had a twisted sense of humour.

“What are you doing?” she spat.

Malfoy’s sneer was a reckoning. “Me? What are you doing?”

“Trying to make it back to my dorm without a psychopath dragging me into—”

“You dented it.”

She blinked. “What?”

“Don’t act stupid, it doesn’t suit you,” he snapped, and it was quite possibly the most backhanded compliment of Hermione’s life. “You dented it.”

“Dented what?”

“Really?” He spoke as if she were impossibly trying, and all she could think to do was gape up at him. His eyes narrowed, his jaw pulsed, and he ducked his head to level with hers. “The bust.”

“I…dented your bust?”

“Do you also have a problem with your hearing? Or is it just your gangly limbs?”

Hermione, somewhat confused and mostly enraged, tried to pull away from his unremitting hold. “Get off me.”

He did not get off her.

“You’re trying to sabotage my bust,” he said instead, and she almost laughed.

“Considering how long it took you to carve out a brow bone, I think it’s safe to say you’re doing a fine job of that on your own.”

“So you admit it?”

Her efforts renewed, Hermione spun out of his hands and performed a wildly unbalanced pirouette, only to find herself facing him again. Her head tilted back so that she could not cower from his cutting stare. They were very close now, closer than even the narrow alcove required; near-on chest to chest, every heaved, indignant breath inching them closer still. It wouldn’t take much for Hermione to reach up and wrap her hands around his throat, if it came to it, which it very well might.

“I don’t,” she began, heroically measured, “have time to worry about your shoddy sculpture, Malfoy.”

He seethed. “I’ve seen the way you look at it.”

“Because it is unsightly.”

“Yes, it is.” His smile was utterly mirthless. “As is yours. But you don’t see me punching holes into—”

“You think I would concern myself with punching anything into your sorry excuse for a—”

“Considering you’ve been following me around—”

“Following you?”

“The art room, the lake, the—”

“You don’t own the lake, you arrogant, pompous—”

A stern cough broke through her furious haze and doused her body in cold dread. Malfoy, who appeared equally chilled, turned with her to find Professor McGonagall watching with a put-out expression. They ripped away from each other like snapping elastics, brushing off their robes like they could rid the fibres of each other.

Hermione, who would likely never outgrow her desire to please her superiors, sheepishly shuffled from foot to foot—had they been shouting?

“Miss Granger, Mr Malfoy,” McGonagall began slowly, with a tone of unquestionable authority. “What is the meaning of this?”

Malfoy, in a move that she might have snickered and called him a teacher's pet for if it wouldn’t make her a raging hypocrite, pointed one long finger towards her. “She dented my bust.”

“I did no such thing. Malfoy is hurling unsupported accusations, borne of nothing more than conjecture.”

McGonagall pressed a palm over her eyes and sighed deeply. When she looked at them again, Hermione knew exactly what her next words would be; she had, after all, heard them many times before.

“My office. Now.”

They hesitated; being ordered to the head’s office was never a good thing. At least, it had never been before. McGonagall, however, was not Dumbledore. She was more…trustworthy. More honest. More incapable of sending children to die.

They followed behind her in silence, parading through the halls under the watchful eyes of pitying, patronising portraits. Past the low murmurs from gathering fourth years who were old enough to remember that Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy had been rivals long before the war began.

The headmistress had turned the office of her predecessor into something entirely new. Natural light filtered in through large, rounded windows framed with wooden shutters, the floors were made of cool stone slabs and littered with woven rugs, a fire roared in an oversized hearth and bathed the room in a blanket of warmth. It was homely, could even have been mistaken for a cottage, were it not for the half-moon desk and beautifully ornate bookshelves nestled in the centre of the room.

“Sit.” McGonagall took her place at the desk and gestured for them to join her.

Hermione took one of the opposing chairs while Malfoy took the other, wordlessly dropping into them with tense shoulders. He looked significantly less at ease than she did, and she supposed that made sense; Hermione knew McGonagall, had been part of her school house, had fought beside her in the war.

Against him.

“I sympathise, and I understand, that returning to these grounds after all that has happened must be extremely difficult for you both,” the headmistress began. “However, while you are here you must be aware of how many eyes are on you.”

“Painfully,” Malfoy mumbled.

“You ought to be setting an example for our young students, not scaring them.”

Hermione sat up straighter. “Why is it up to us to set an example?”

“Because,” McGonagall levelled her with a flat look, “for better or worse, you are both quite famous.”

The reprimanded pair barked a joint chorus of, “I know!”

It was so shocking, so staggering, to have spoken in unison with Draco Malfoy, that Hermione could not help but turn and look at him. He did the same, and for the first time since their sordid acquaintance as tender pre-teens on a bustling, magical train, they appeared to be on the same page.

Something unwelcome and far too close to empathy panged against her ribcage; she was famous, indeed, but Malfoy was infamous. If anyone else had caught him cornering her in an alcove, she knew exactly what they would have suspected him of doing.

It was unsettling, to say the least, to discover that she cared.

Before she could perform a much-needed vivisection on her compromised rationale, a knock sounded at the door. Professor Hartwicke poked her head in first, smiling warmly, looking relaxed.

McGonagall let out a relieved exhale. “Ah, Amelia, you received my missive.”

“Yes, sorry, I had to wrap up my last appointment before I could attend.”

“That’s quite alright, thank you for coming.”

“Of course.” Professor Hartwicke padded into the room, her long skirt and slightly shorter cloak swaying with every unhurried step. “Sounds like there’s been a bit of a disagreement?”

McGonagall tipped her head towards them. “Mr Malfoy and Miss Granger thought it necessary to engage in a screaming match…in front of the first years.”

Hermione did not recall there being any first years present, especially not in the evening hours when the library was mostly closed. Then again, she did not recall anyone other than Malfoy, which was innocent enough—he’d been looming, after all.

“Oh dear,” said Hartwicke. “Whatever for?”

“She dented my bust,” Malfoy whined, like a petulant child.

Hermione folded her arms and mumbled, “A categorical untruth.”

“Who else could it be?”

“Why would it be me? Can you provide a single motive, or are you just—”

“Spite? Revenge? Maybe you were envious that I managed to mould a set of ears while you—”

“I’m afraid it was me, Draco.”

All bickering ceased at once, both of them turning to look at Professor Hartwicke, slowly taking in her confession and her shy, guilty smile. Malfoy blinked, Hermione opened and closed her mouth like a fish out of water, and McGonagall looked about ready to be done with it all and join a monastery.

“You…” Malfoy started, the sentence dying an aimless death.

“Yes, I was moving the tables around for another class, and I bumped it,” Hartwicke explained. “I intended to inform you before our lesson tomorrow, but I didn’t realise you were working on it in your own time.”

Impossibly, Malfoy seemed a bit embarrassed to have been discovered. Hermione untucked her foot from behind her chair leg and landed a sharp kick to his shin, which went a long way to replace that embarrassment with bubbling agitation.

“Anything you fancy saying?” she asked sweetly.

He ground his teeth. “Plenty.”

“I’ll wait.”

“You’ll—”

“Enough!” McGonagall snapped, rather effectively. They watched the headmistress drop her head into her hands, heard her mumble something under her breath about one more year, and flinched when her eyes cut to Professor Hartwicke with expectation. “Amelia, do you think it might be wise to assign Mr Malfoy and Miss Granger new partners for this project?”

Professor Hartwicke looked, for a fleeting moment, like she was genuinely considering it. Naive hope bloomed in Hermione’s chest, but then Hartwicke tilted her head, smiled faintly, and said, “No.”

McGonagall pursed her lips, most displeased. “Are you at least going to suggest disciplinary action?”

Hartwicke’s faint smile turned somewhat devilish, and that hope popped like a balloon and sank like lead, landing hard in the pit of Hermione’s stomach.

“Oh, yes,” the Professor said gleefully.

It all felt a bit silly, being twenty-one and squeezing herself into her school uniform to serve detention. She and Malfoy had been tasked with cleaning and polishing the school's many elaborate, high-up candelabras without the aid of magic. Which meant they had to carry around a very tall ladder and take turns to climb it, armed with little more than their own balance and a long feather duster. It also meant, with the height and lack of reliable structural stability, that one of them had to hold the ladder while the other climbed.

It went about as could be expected; they kept apart, snapped at each other occasionally, and glowered in between. Hermione was currently stretching out on the top rung, going so far as to remove one foot to reach the furthest candle, arm stretched outwards.

“Oi!” Malfoy barked from below. “Put your fucking foot back on the ladder!”

His sudden shout made her jump, which made her hold onto the ladder tighter, which meant that she’d unwillingly done exactly as he’d asked. Annoying, that.

“You almost made me fall!”

“You almost made you fall! Stop being an idiot!”

Hermione returned to the task at hand, mumbling something about him being the idiot, which he might have heard, might not have; she didn’t care either way. When the candelabra was shining and she trundled down the ladder to reunite with solid ground, Malfoy was still furious.

“Your recklessness is going to get me into even more trouble,” he accused.

Hermione rolled her eyes. “Your dramatics are going to give me a headache. It was only a little stretch.”

“And if you fell? We don’t have wands, Granger. I’d break my neck trying to catch you.”

She faltered, a frown pulling her brows in close as she tried to parse his words. He’d said them, but he surely could not have meant them.

“You would?”

“From that height?” he scoffed. “Obviously.”

“No…you would try to catch me?”

Malfoy’s mouth slammed shut, as if he had only just realised the implications of his own words. She expected him to laugh at her, to curl his lip and try to intimidate her, to take wild, desperate swipes at her appearance or her choice of friends. Instead, he tucked his chin and looked away.

“Of course I would.”

Hermione stilled, feeling like she might need to hold on to the ladder just to stop herself from falling over; maybe she had fallen, and this was the most peculiar dying hallucination.

“It’s not ‘of course’ at all.”

He hesitated, the fury in his face dimming a little, though only a little, then said, “Well, I would.”

The softness was so unexpected, so bizarre, that it made her breath hitch. Feeling somewhat assured—of what, she did not know—she nodded, and he returned the gesture.

“Alright,” she cleared her throat, desperate to move on. “The next one is yours.”

They carried the ladder to the next candelabra, and Malfoy had to rub his sweaty palms on his trousers before he began to climb. Hermione was sure the heights did not scare him; he was an avid Quidditch player, which left the possibility that he was scared of…her? She mulled it over, and over, and over again until he finally shot her a weathered glare.

“Pay attention,” he ordered, “and don’t fuck around with the ladder.”

She returned a saccharine smile. “Hope you slip.”

Malfoy clicked his tongue disapprovingly, she narrowed her eyes, but he still climbed, and she still stayed vigilant.

The tension was thick and unshiftable in the art room.

Hermione found herself locked in a silent battle with the man working at the opposing station. It began when, after noticing Malfoy use the wrong tool to smooth the line of her clay jaw, and being under the assumption they’d reached some sort of accord during their hours in detention, she’d kindly tried to explain that what he was doing would not only ruin the bust—which was made of her face—but would also result in a massive waste of time when he had to stay behind and fix it.

Before she could finish, Malfoy rolled his eyes and removed the mouth from the bust—her mouth. Startled and instantaneously aggrieved, she thinned his lips and curled them downwards. He added clay to her teeth and made them gigantic. She ripped off his ear. He grabbed his brush and gave her a thick monobrow. She took the looped tool and stabbed it through his unseeing eyes. He pushed a finger through her forehead. She took a serrated rib to the side of his face.

By the end of the hour, their busts were completely ruined; beaten to a pulp. Hermione, in all her bitterness, considered gutting and firing it in the kiln right there and then. Alas, Hermione was also a perfectionist and could not bring herself to hand in a final project that was anything less than her very best.

Malfoy seemed to be suffering the same quandary, meeting her eye from above their decimated piles of clay and releasing a long sigh, mutual violence turning to mutual defeat.

They wet their hands and smoothed over the busts until they were back to identical, faceless mounds. It meant starting again, even though most of their peers were already working on their final touches, but if Professor Hartwicke wanted them to work fast, she should have assigned them different partners.

At the basin, they washed their hands in deafening silence, side by side but never daring to inch close enough to touch. She took the towel this time, and he flicked the water, aiming directly for her face. When she threw him her most fearsome glare, she was almost convinced the corners of his mouth twitched.

The parade of owls swooped low, letters and feathers littering the tabletops or landing in the waiting hands. Letters from home, from worried parents whose children were once tortured within the school walls, or from fresh guardians who were dealing with grieving youth. Hermione’s letter arrived by pigeon; at least her parents were trying.

“You know…” Ginny said, scanning hers. “After last week, I half expected a howler.”

Ginny had dislocated both of her shoulders during a particularly raucous practice session the week before, then opted not to take the rest days that Madam Pomfrey demanded. She’d told Harry under the incorrect assumption that her lover was any good at keeping things to himself. Within the hour, Ron knew, then Ron told George, who proceeded to tell the rest of their family over dinner. Molly genuinely considered pulling Ginny out of school for a good three hours before Arthur managed to calm her nerves, which had been especially fraught since losing Fred.

“Is she trying to lure you home?” asked Hermione.

“With Harry, yes.”

Hermione laughed, pointing to her own letter from Molly. “Me too.”

They giggled, and it was a flash of girlhood that neither of them truly got the opportunity to experience, save for a few fleeting nights in the dorm rooms before everything became too sombre and perilous. If her thoughts clouded her expression, Ginny followed suit; sobering as she looked at the letter in Hermione’s hand, written not on parchment, not with a quill and inkpot, but a crisp A4 piece of notebook paper and a biro.

“From your parents?” Ginny asked.

“Yeah…”

Hermione read the letter twice. It was short, a bit tentative, from two people in the process of relearning everything: her life, her school, her magic, who she was to them, who they were to themselves. It ached to see all the blank spaces they would have once filled, all the missing questions they would have once asked, the lack of stories they would have once tripped over themselves to tell her, but they made sure to remind her that they loved her, and it went a long way to soothe the pain.

When she looked up, she did not purposefully seek Malfoy, but found him nonetheless. He was sitting at the Slytherin table, flanked by Blaise Zabini and Theodore Nott, staring down at his untouched plate, not a letter in sight.

Dawn broke, and Hermione wrapped her scarf tighter against the morning chill that swept between the valley of the surrounding peaks and across the quiet lake. Snow collected at the top of Ben Nevis, ephemeral against the breaking sun, dancing in its golden light. Hermione loved the air at this time of the morning; crisp and cold and sharp in her lungs, the harbinger of a new day.

To say she was surprised to find Malfoy sitting at the lakeshore would be an irrefutable lie. She knew he would be here, yet wandered this way anyway. She considered leaving, or taking her usual perch a safe ten metres away, but it felt…wrong, somehow, to continue ignoring how thoroughly they orbited each other's lives.

So, Hermione took a breath so deep it ached, thought about the earnest way he’d told her he would have attempted to catch her, and wordlessly took the spot directly beside him.

To his credit, he did not immediately bolt.

“What are you doing?” he asked, looking rightfully confused.

Hermione sighed. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

“I…have no idea.”

In lieu of answering, she produced a bag of air-dry clay and began attempting to recreate a nearby pinecone. They remained that way for a while; he watched her sculpt, she tried not to look at him. As the awkward tension ebbed with every amiable minute, they sank further into the grass.

Malfoy was the first to break, thank god, pointing to her pineless pinecone and asking, “What is that supposed to be?”

She withheld her smile. “So many questions today…”

“You’re so fucking—”

“Here.”

She handed him a lump of clay, dropping it into his lap when he failed to hold out his hands. He hesitated for a long moment before ambivalently beginning what appeared to be his own pinecone. Time passed easily, to her surprise; both of them remained focused on their tasks. The soft breeze was only punctuated by the odd curse Malfoy uttered under his breath.

“How did you get good at this so quickly?” he asked, fussing over his sculpture, which was currently falling very wide of the mark.

She lifted one lazy shoulder. “Practice.”

“Hmf.”

Hermione bit her lip, knowing full well that it was not her place to pry into his personal affairs, knowing that she shouldn’t even care to know…knowing that, for whatever reason, she really, really did. It couldn’t exactly do any damage, seeing as their relationship was built upon years of pointed jabs and sparring—of words and wands.

So, she went for it. “You didn’t get a letter.”

Malfoy’s fingers pinched his pinecone just a bit too tightly, leaving little indents in the clay. “No…my father cannot write from Azkaban.”

“And your mother?”

She waited for him to bite, to tell her that it was none of her business, which it wasn’t. Instead, his head dropped forward, his shoulders noticeably sagged, and he let out a slow, shuddering exhale.

“She’s taken my father's imprisonment very hard, and my return to school…my leaving her…”

Hermione nodded. “I understand.”

And she did. Her parents resented her for it too, for taking herself away from them for years, taking their lives and their jobs and their home, for taking away the friends they’d formed over a lifetime of living and changing, for taking away their extended families and the love they’d shared, only to give it all back while standing at a distance. The love remained, but it was coated with grief so thick it was hard to penetrate.

Malfoy eyed her cautiously. “Do you?”

“Yes.” She took a steadying breath and returned to her pinecone. “You’ll see her over the holidays, won’t you?”

“I…yeah. I think we’re going to France.”

“Hmm.” She pointed to the lump in his hands. “Maybe you should show her the pinecone, give her something to laugh about.”

They shared a look, an almost-there smile, which faltered immediately, as if the reminder that they were decidedly not friends hit them both with one wide smack. They stood to leave soon after, offering no goodbyes. He took his pinecone, and she took hers.

“That was intense,” said Ron, from where he was sprawled in the armchair.

Ginny snorted. “Don’t pretend you didn’t enjoy it.”

Together, they have taken over the upper room of the Three Broomsticks, only just managing to evade the gathering crowd of students that flocked to ask for Harry’s autograph. They set up around the fire, just like they used to. Except that Harry and Ginny now have no reservations about locking their legs. And, of course, there was a distinct lack of immediate mortal peril.

“Hermione,” Harry began in a tone that informed her she would not enjoy this conversation, “I’ve got to ask…what is that all over your hands?”

She looked at her palms. “Clay.”

“Clay?”

“Clay.”

“Right,” said Harry. “Why?”

“Well, it’s rather difficult to get off.”

“I know the feeling,” Neville mumbled, lifting his hand to show the soil still etched into the creases. “This is five washes.”

She shot him a sympathetic smile, but Ron was shaking his head.

“Is this your Malfoy project?” he asked.

Hermione winced. “Let’s not call it that.”

“That’s what it is, though,” mumbled Ginny.

“It’s art therapy.”

“Yes,” Harry chuckled, “sounds incredibly soothing.”

“It's going…” She thought about the fights they’d had, the brutality shown to their busts, the glaring and the arguing in alcoves and the ladder and…sculpting by the lake at the first light of day, the shared silence, the mild comfort within it. “It’s going alright, actually. What about Auror training?”

Harry grimaced. “Robards is…”

“A cunt?” from Ron.

Ginny tsked. “Don’t sugarcoat it.”

“The other day he had us running laps,” Ron whined. “Why on earth do we need to run laps?”

“Well, Ron, you might have to chase someone down.”

“We can apparate.”

“Ah,” Hermione said. “Because that option has never been taken away before.”

Ron paused, meeting her gaze, and she could see the memory of their futile chase from the faster, less starved, more agile snatchers flashing in his eyes. Reluctantly, he bowed his head in acceptance.

“I don’t have the stamina,” he admitted quietly.

“Pity the women who take a detour to your bed,” Ginny scoffed.

“Oi, I do just fine—”

She held up her hand. “I don’t want to know.”

“You brought it up!”

The bickering continued, and Hermione could not help but smile as she listened; her friends, her people, all together as they’d fought so hard to be. She wondered if Malfoy had something similar, a group to give him the love that his home seemed to lack, if he was sitting around a fire somewhere, watching them with a smile.

Hermione pulled her sleeve up—for the fifteenth time since waking with a fright—to check that her forearm was not bleeding. The scar remained just that: nasty, risen skin that had healed over, but would never disappear, not from her skin and not from her memory.

She wasn’t sure where she was heading until she arrived on the fifth floor. Hermione padded towards the art room with as light a foot as she could manage. The door was unlocked, so she slipped inside, needing to do something with her hands that was not pulling at her hair or scratching at her arm. What she didn’t need was to find Draco Malfoy already inside, his arms covered in clay, his bust set up before him.

He startled, as did she.

“Sorry,” she said, turning to leave.

“Wait!” he called, and so she waited, peering over her shoulder to see that he’d risen from his workstation. “It’s fine…stay.”

Hermione did not have it in her to argue, so she nodded, took her space at the opposing station, dipped her hands into lukewarm water, and began working on her bust. The feeling soothed her instantly; watching the clay change and morph into something else made her feel useful.

Purposefully, she looked up and found Malfoy staring at his own bust with intense focus, then that focus turned to her. Their eyes held. So did her breath.

“What are you doing here?” she whispered.

“Working out what’s keeping me awake.” He tilted his head towards her bust. “Maybe you should do the same.”

“Maybe.”

She looked at him fully now. Under the dark cover of night, illuminated only by the worktop lamp, the bags under his eyes and the hollowness of his cheeks were accentuated. They’d been that way for a while, she realised, so she added them to the bust. Shallow cheeks, frowning brows, mouth downturned with abject misery, horror resting on the sharp lines of his features. Hermione moved her hands over the bust with a care she’d not previously shown it, and when the night grew thin and the sun peeked through the large grated windows, coating them both in a mild glow, she closed the bust’s eyes and turned it from her.

Just like that night.

She looked at Malfoy once more and found him sitting back in his chair, looking at his work and pulling in deep, ragged breaths. The bust before him was a monument to suffering; her screaming face twisted with anguish and fear.

Just like that night.

They said nothing, but they both understood.

They sat together on the sodden grass, clay in their hands, neither of them paying much attention to what they were making.

“Have you heard about the ball?” she asked.

His scowl deepened. “Unfortunately.”

“The official banner reads Rebuild, Reopen, Reintegrate!”

“It’s like they can’t hear themselves,” he chuckled flatly, and she found herself doing the same.

“Will you be going?”

“I don’t imagine so.”

She frowned. “Why not?”

“I’m not exactly going to be welcomed with open arms.”

Hermione could hardly argue with that; he’d be lucky if nobody spiked his pumpkin juice. “I don’t want to go either.”

He looked over at her with a questioning lift to his brow. “But you’re a guest of honour.”

“Exactly.”

That increasingly familiar silence fell over them again, letting the minutes pass without objection. The lake swayed and shimmered under solar rays, rippled in odd places where the creatures below dared to reach for the surface.

“I’ve been allowed back on the Quidditch team,” Malfoy eventually murmured. “As Seeker.”

Hermione dipped her chin somberly. “Commiserations on your impending loss.”

His eyes narrowed. “You don’t even attend the games.”

“Searching for me in the stands, are you?”

Malfoy turned his face and did not answer. He sculpted a small octopus, she sculpted a robin.

The ball was busy, but the atmosphere was bittersweet. The younger student population filtered through the hall with palpable excitement, while the older few, those who remembered the last time so many people had been present in this room, were visibly strained, Hermione included.

She’d slotted herself into a nice dress—soft pink and flowing skirts—and pinned her curls atop her head, but it still felt wrong. Ginny was busy chaperoning the Quidditch team, Neville was busy dancing, and everyone else was either paired off or, like Hermione, lingering in the corners and looking for a means of escape.

The music was loud, the bodies were pushy, and people she did not know kept trying to shake her hand or take her picture, as though she’d done anything but survive. That morning, she received notice—not an offer—that she would be receiving an Order of Merlin beside her friends upon graduating. She didn’t want it. She didn’t want any of this. It was too much, and Malfoy was not here.

His friends were, though. She'd caught their attention while scouring the room for any sign of him, and they’d offered her nothing but a knowing smirk.

Without saying goodbye, Hermione pushed through the crowd and out of the ballroom, taking the corridors at a light jog and the stairs two at a time, ignoring the questions from the portraits she blew by. She needed to be somewhere she felt in control, somewhere that felt full of potential instead of horror. The art room came into view like a mirage in a desert, and she threw herself into it, sparing no time to cover her dress with an apron before she wet her hands and began moulding the clay.

She was, admittedly, sort of upset that Malfoy hadn’t bothered to show up. He’d told her that he wouldn’t, yet she’d deluded herself into thinking he might decide to suffer through it with her, that they could find a table at the back and pass each other air-dry clay until the night ended. She couldn’t blame him for it, but she could feel...whatever it was she felt.

It wasn’t worth dissecting.

His face was beginning to take shape, and she needed the reference less and less. Something was off tonight, though. Maybe his eyes? She’d reopened them, and now couldn’t quite get the shape right, couldn’t match the expression he wore in her head, it was too…something.

The door burst open, making her jump, and in the frame stood Malfoy. He wore a well-fitted suit and looked more than a little frazzled.

“Malfoy?”

“You weren’t there,” he said.

“What?”

“I looked for you at the ball, and you weren’t there.”

“Oh.” She blinked, surprised. “I looked for you, too, but I assumed you weren’t coming.”

He ran a hand over the back of his head. “I wasn’t planning to, but…”

“I see.”

After an awkward moment, Malfoy sheepishly removed his blazer, rolled up his sleeves—which she watched with far more interest than she ought to—and began working at his own station. He shrank her too-big teeth and moved his long fingers to shape her face with startling delicacy. He was being nice, which was odd, and all the while she struggled to capture a single one of his expressions.

It was impossible to say what had changed to make the work she’d already done so wrong; his snarl and the smug way he looked down his nose didn’t seem to fit. She tried, and tried again, failing each time to capture the truth of him.

Finally, after what could have been half an hour, she let out a frustrated sound and pushed away from her station to pace the room, aware of his tracking eyes.

“What’s the problem, Granger?”

“The problem?” she laughed falsely. “Everything is the problem. The bust is…ruined. I can’t fix it. It doesn’t look anything like you. I’m going to fail this class and be forced to speak with Dr fucking Rohan until I graduate, and the ball was so awful. Everyone was looking at me and taking my picture, and I hate it, Malfoy. I hate the glory and the fame and the people who think it means they know me. I hate that my friends aren’t here, I hate that my parents don’t understand, that out of everyone in the world I could be honest about this with, for some reason, it's you. I hate that I have to stand on a stage and accept an award like I’ve earned it. I hate this stupid dress and its stupid skirts that keep getting caught in my stupid bracelet, and—”

Malfoy stood abruptly, took three long strides to where she stood, and wiped his clay-sodden hand down the front of her dress. She gasped, leaping out of his reach and looking down at herself in utter shock. Then she took in her own hands, equally covered, and retaliated, marching up to him and smearing clay over his cotton shirt.

They broke apart, breathless, looking at the state of each other, and… burst out laughing.

Hermione threw her head back and cackled, holding her aching stomach with clay hands. Malfoy leaned against his workstation for support as his body shook with laughter, his chin dipped low, his eyes watering. The sound of their mania filled the room and brought it to life.

It was possibly, if not certainly, the first time either of them had laughed like this since the war, and absolutely the first time they’d laughed together.

When Hermione approached Malfoy at the basin after class and asked about his weekend plans, she expected a rebuff, maybe even some mockery, but she hadn’t expected him to answer honestly.

“I have none.”

She stared up at him, dumbfounded. “Do you want some?”

Which is how they ended up hiking through the highlands in search of fairy pools. They’d been at it for hours already, and despite her forewarning that Malfoy should equip himself with appropriate footwear and enough water, he’d done neither.

“This is inhumane,” he said.

“It’s fresh air.”

“It’s torture.”

Hermione rolled her eyes. “You’ve always had a flair for the dramatics.”

“Dramatics?” he echoed incredulously. “You told me we were going for a walk.”

“And we’re walking.”

His complaints did not cease until, finally, twenty minutes later, they passed a suitable enough rock formation to sit upon. Relenting, Hermione shrugged off her bag and began handing out the pre-prepared food she’d brought. When she handed him a Freddo to rebuild his energy, his eyes widened.

“Granger, I think someone has sat on your chocolate frog.”

She smirked. “It’s not the kind of chocolate frog you’re thinking of.”

“It’s Muggle?”

“Yeah, I mean, it’s just chocolate, but that one isn’t going to jump out of your hands.”

“Brilliant.” He ripped open the foil and bit it clean in half, looking beyond pleased.

Hermione watched him with faint amusement. “You know, they used to cost ten pence.”

“What’s that?” he asked through a mouthful, which was very undignified.

“Muggle money.”

“Is that a lot?”

“No, that’s the point.” She took the wrapper from him and pointed to the price. “It keeps going up.”

Malfoy’s face was blank, his jaw working as he chewed. “Worth it.”

Next came Twiglets, which he promptly spat into the grass—Malfoy was a hate-it kind of guy, it seemed—then Monster Munch. She held out the opened packet for him to try; he took one and held it up like a skull in a play. She had to bite the inside of her cheek to stop herself from laughing.

“A paw?” he asked.

“Famous misconception. It’s a monster, look…” Hermione leaned over and turned the crisp around.

Malfoy frowned at it, concentrating hard. “It’s a troll?”

“Not exactly, but that could work.”

“And I eat it?”

“Well, yeah.”

He popped it in his mouth without hesitation, eyes going wide as he crunched it between his teeth, and it was so strangely endearing that the crumbs he managed to spill all over himself didn’t even matter.

“What the fuck?” he asked.

“It’s good, right?”

Malfoy took the packet from her. “What is this flavour?”

“Pickled onion.”

“Bizarre.”

“If you don’t want the rest, I’ll—”

He twisted away from her, holding the crisps out of her reach like a child. “I didn’t say that.”

She held her hands up in surrender and left him to it, turning her attention back to unpacking their food, handing out sandwiches. He was clearly surprised that she’d packed him anything, accepting his lunch with a grateful nod. They ate on the rocks, watching the brook trickle down the hillside. He ate a Jammie Dodger next, following her lead when she split it in half and licked at the jam first, his eyes darkening as he watched, and when he did the same… oh.

Mistake.

His tongue collected the jam with one slow stroke, which did something unfamiliar and unspeakable to her. She cleared her throat and turned towards the hills, determined not to watch him eat another bite, lest her sanity escape her. When they were done—blessedly—he helped her repack.

“Do you come out here often?” he asked.

“Most weekends, yeah.”

“Alone?”

“Preferably.”

He gave her a funny look. “Then why did you invite me?”

Hermione wasn’t entirely sure. “You said you didn’t have plans.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Why did you agree to come?”

A pause, followed by a slightly confused murmur, “You invited me.”

She smiled, small, but shared. “That’s not an answer, either.”

When she put her rucksack back on her back, he could not mask his distress at the thought of walking another step, and she took pity on him.

“Let’s try and get back before it rains.”

“Thank fuck.” His head dropped on a chuckle, then lifted slowly, wind-blushed face turned to the clouds. “I’ll admit that the fresh air was nice.”

“Told you.”

“Shut up,” he said, biteless. “Are you coming back next weekend?”

She nodded. “I was going to visit the viaduct.”

“Want company?”

Hermione looked at him, expecting the desire to be alone to raise its head. She hadn’t been joking when she’d told him she preferred it that way. It was an activity that kept her alive during the war, traipsing across landscapes, and she’d never expected to share it with anyone other than Harry and Ron. Yet, Malfoy‘s expression was undeniably hopeful, his cheeks were flushed from chill and exertion, his hair flat from the light rain. He looked good, smelled good, and his company wasn’t so bad out in the open.

So she shrugged and said, “Sure.”

It was easier to stay with her parents in an Edinburgh hotel than it was to return home. It was nice to explore the city together, to see a show none of them had ever seen and eat dinner at a restaurant none of them had been to.

“I’ve been taking art lessons,” she said when her father enquired about her school work.

“Art?” he echoed, bushy brows shooting high. “Wow. I didn’t think that would interest you.”

“Neither did I,” she admitted. “But…it’s helping.”

Her mother touched her arm lightly. “With all the war stuff?”

The war stuff. Such a hilarious, innocent, tepid way to approach it, but she appreciated that her mother was willing to go there at all, so she smiled as warmly as she could manage.

“What kind of art are you doing?” her father asked.

“Clay sculpting.”

“Oh!” Her mother beamed. “Will and I used to have to do that all the time at the clinic, didn’t we? The kids always hated the taste of the paste.”

“I remember,” Hermione said fondly. “It really is foul.”

They laugh, it’s light and wonderful, and when her mother slipped an arm through hers, Hermione leaned closer.

“Will you show us when it’s done?” her mother asked quietly.

“If you want to see.”

Her father frowned. “Why wouldn’t we?”

“Well,” she said, blushing slightly. “It’s nothing spectacular.”

Her mother squeezed her tightly. “Of course it is, you made it. We are so proud of you, darling.”

Hermione hid her face, feeling warm, feeling teary. Unwillingly, she wondered how Draco Malfoy was spending the holiday, if his mother was with him, if they’d been able to bridge the gap between them, if she would tell him that she is proud of him, too.

Hermione cupped her hands over her mouth and joined the roaring cheer from Gryffindor's Quidditch stands. Harry and Ron had requested a full recap of the game from her, which she categorically would not be able to provide, but she was trying.

Free time had become increasingly limited as exams approached, which resulted in her spending less time in the art room; her hands ached with the need to work on the bust. Her weekends, though, were still reserved for hiking, usually with Malfoy. Sometimes, he even led the way. They sculpted by the lake in the mornings, they trundled over the hilltops at each other's side, and they talked.

Gryffindor caught the snitch at the eighty-seventh minute, seconds after Ginny scored what Neville described as ‘an absolute beauty’ of a goal. Hermione followed her housemates down towards the pitch to celebrate, where she caught sight of Malfoy retreating with his team—the losing team—into the lockers. She took a small sculpture out of her pocket and sent it his way, a badly proportioned and poorly painted snitch. It bumped his shoulder, and he caught it, twisting it to read the inscription:

‘Commiserations.’

He looked up and found her immediately, the corners of his mouth tilted up, then he slipped it into his pocket and stepped into the lockers.

Hermione was feeling a bit unsteady after stopping at the Three Broomsticks, but she was allowed to be, because she was an adult stuck at school and she’d just taken her first round of N.E.W.T’s. Wanting to sober up and hoping to find the person whose company she sought more than anyone else’s these days, she made her way to the fifth floor.

“Granger?” Malfoy asked when she entered the classroom.

He looked really good, and warm, and there was something about his smell that was just…yeah, good. Like clay, or paint, or a brittle breeze by a body of water. She looked at his bust, which had come a long way since she’d last seen it. To her astonishment, he’d made her look sort of…lovely. Splatterings of freckles covered her nose, a soft smile curled her mouth, her eyes were curved with kindness, her hair tamed.

She didn’t understand.

“What have you done to it?” she asked, pointing at the bust.

He turned to it with furrowed brows. “I thought it looked pretty good.”

“Yes, but that's what I mean. It is good…and pretty.”

Malfoy sighed, locked his clay-covered hands together, rolled his lips between his teeth, looked around the room like he was trying to find a speedy way out of this conversation. When he found none, he turned back to her with a resigned look. “I’m only sculpting what I see.”

“So that’s…how you see me?” she asked hesitantly. His nod was firm and singular. “Oh, right.”

“You’ve done the same to yours,” he pointed out.

Hermione turned to her bust, only to find that he was right; his clay replica looked better, gentler. She shook her head, feeling even dizzier than she had five minutes ago. “What are we doing? I mean, we…you and I, we—”

“I don’t know.”

She turned her head towards him, taking him in. He was not the person she thought she knew, his face was not the one she’d twisted it into. So, Hermione, never being one to give in to fear, stepped closer to him. He turned in his workstation, widening his legs to make room for her, lifting his chin to look up at her face.

He was, she acquiesced, sort of beautiful.

“I have a theory,” she whispered.

He swallowed hard. “Feel free to share it.”

She leaned closer, until their noses were touching, then she took hold of all that supposed Gryffindor courage and pressed her lips to his. He was on his feet in less than a second, filthy hands fisting at the back of her now-filthy shirt as he kissed her back. Clay was on her clothes, in her hair, along the line of her jaw, everywhere he touched. She didn’t care. The kiss was raw, utterly consuming, his tongue ran along her lower lip, and she allowed him to deepen it into something perfectly rough and furious and needing, their bodies colliding in a desperate—

He pulled back.

“Why do you taste like beer?” he rasped.

In a poor effort to clear her head, she pressed her hand to it. “Because I’ve had beer.”

Malfoy froze. “What?”

“We went to Hogsmeade to celebrate the exams—”

“Shit.” He stepped back, looking ruffled and wild. “Shit…we can’t do this. I won’t do this.”

He turned on his heel before she could make sense of it, didn’t even stop to wash his hands, leaving her alone and confused and…humiliated. Mislead. Hurt.

Hermione looked at the bust she’d made and felt an overwhelming rush of anger—at him, at herself—because he was Malfoy. He’d relentlessly bullied her, called her a Mudblood, hurt her friends for years, made it his mission to ruin Harry’s only place of peace. She threw herself down on her stool and got to work, curling his lip back into a sneer, narrowing his eyes into a scowl, until it looked more like the petulant, hateful boy she remembered.

In her rage, she shoved it into the kiln and set it to fire.

She was too scared to visit the art room for two days, and when she finally summoned the courage to step foot inside, she was relieved to find it empty. Malfoy’s bust was still there, still pretty, still made of soft clay. She wondered if he, too, had been avoiding returning.

Her bust was still in the kiln. Her heart stuttered when she opened the lid to find that it had exploded in the firing process; she hadn’t gutted it. She threw the shards away and grabbed a fresh bag of clay, and there was an odd sense of relief that followed. Hermione tossed it around to get the air bubbles out and began again, working through the sunset and under the glow of the high moon.

She made him softer, not like the boy she’d remembered, but like the man she was beginning to know.

Loch Shiel appeared otherworldly in the sunrise. The trees were beginning to thin as winter rocked through the highlands with increasing force, the grass crunched over her walking boots, and under Malfoy’s, who had finally invested in a decent pair. He was able to keep a better pace these days, offering significantly fewer complaints.

Hermione pulled him to a stop, gesturing to the view. “Look at that.”

He did. “It doesn’t look real.”

“Right?” she agreed, inhaling deeply. “I love it up here.”

Malfoy hummed, cleared his throat, and looked at her. “I’m surprised you invited me.”

She recalled doing so at the basin. They were some of the only remaining few still working on their projects, taking their sweet time to get it right. He’d asked her to repeat herself twice when she’d invited him to hike.

Something wet hit her head, and she tilted her chin to the sky, taking in the sight of looming clouds. “Did you feel that?”

“No?”

“It’s going to rain.”

Malfoy scoffed. “No, it’s not.”

“Rain just hit my face.”

“It cannot have,” he said. “I checked the forecast twelve times before we left; they all said it was clear skies.”

“You trust that more than your eyes?” she asked, pointing up.

“It’ll pass.”

Soon, they were setting up a small tent in what might have been classified as a torrential downpour, laughing each time the poles slipped through the mud. By the time they fell inside the tarp, they were sodden and shivering. He dried her with a quick wave of his wand, and she returned the same care. Once dry, they settled down to watch the rain fill the loch from the tent opening, sipping tea from a shared thermos.

“I’m sorry about the other night,” she said.

Malfoy shook his head. “No, fuck, I shouldn’t have just left without—”

“I practically jumped you, it wasn’t fair.”

“Granger, that’s not why I left.”

She held her breath. “It’s not?”

“I…” He turned to her, looked right in her eyes, and didn’t stammer once. “I wanted you to do it. I just didn’t want you to do it if you were drunk.”

Realisation dawned on her with painful suddenness. “I wasn’t drunk. I’d only had—”

“I wasn’t going to risk it.”

She watched the swallow of his throat, took in the grip he had on the thermos, let herself linger on the pulse of his jaw, and remembered how feverishly he’d kissed her back. “So if I were sober…you would have stayed?”

“Yes.” He looked pained. “I shouldn’t, though. After everything I’ve done, I shouldn’t even be sitting in this tent with you, let alone…”

“Let alone?”

He pinned her with a heated, knowing look. “Let alone.”

She took the thermos from his hands and set it aside, turning to face him fully, to look into his face, which was just as beautiful as it had been under moonlight in the art room. She wanted to sculpt it, her hands twitched with the need to feel every rise and fall of it, so she asked.

“Can I touch your face?”

Malfoy looked taken aback. “Why?”

“It’s supposed to be helpful for the bust, isn’t it? And, well,” she squared her shoulders, “because I want to.”

His expression softened, but he leaned back when she moved to take his face between her hands.

“What?” she asked.

“It seems only fair that we be granted equal opportunities.”

She bit back a smile. “I suppose it does.”

His fingers came close to her jaw. “May I?”

“You may.”

He touched her cheek, she touched his, gentle and reverent sweeps of their thumbs, full cups of their palms, fingertips smoothing over every feature, tracing brows and noses and ears. Finally, he pressed his thumb to her lip, and she mirrored the action. His eyes fell to her mouth, and she simply could not take it any more.

“Forget about the rest,” she said quietly. “It’s just us out here.”

“I can’t forget about the rest,” he said.

“Then set it aside.”

“Granger…”

“Malfoy,” she laughed. “Here and now, in this tent, what do you want?”

He stopped, stared, then bent forward and kissed her. It was…amazing. His mouth was hot against her own, his tongue kneading a plea for entry, and she wanted more of him, all of him. His hands were in her hair, on her neck, hers found his shoulder, and they were moaning into each other's mouths with abandon. He nipped at her bottom lip, and she pressed her tongue against his own, until they were left breathless.

“I don’t understand how this happened,” she gasped, pulling back. “Or what this feeling is. I don’t—”

“Me neither.” He hauled her closer. “Do you care enough to stop?”

“God, no.”

He kissed her again, and again, bruising now. They scrambled over the floor of the tent, unwilling to part for a second longer than necessary. Clothes came off without thought, hands found homes on exposed skin, every touch blistering and beautiful. When his fingers dipped below the waistband of her pants, and hers brushed along the hard tent of his boxers, they both hissed.

“Are you sure about this?” he croaked.

She was too delirious to understand. “Which part?”

“Doing this with me, I’m—”

“I know who you are.”

He pushed up, searched her face intently. “And?”

“And,” she smiled, “I want this with you. I want you.”

His release of breath was shaky. “Thank fuck for that.”

They kissed, they stripped, they kissed again. He sucked a mark into the base of her throat, licked her nipples until she was writhing under him, mindless and wanton, needing the press of his body more than the air in her lungs. She touched his chest, the old scar lines, his nipples, she bit into his collarbone, licked along his clavicle, mad with desire.

“You’ve got to stop,” he groaned, so she stopped, and a ruined sound poured from his throat. “Fuck, don’t actually stop.”

“But you said—”

“I said you’ve got to, not that I want you to, otherwise I’m going to lose my mind.”

“Oh?” She pushed him onto his back and straddled his waist. “Is that all?”

Watching his slackened, glazed face, she crawled down the length of him and took his pulsing cock in her hand, before guiding it straight to her mouth. At the first hollow of her cheeks, Draco Malfoy did lose his mind, and what a powerful feeling it was to be able to reduce him to such a state. His hands were fisted in his hair, his thighs tensed below her hands, and she sucked the salt from him like it was the only thing she could ever conceive of wanting.

Eventually, he blew out a sharp breath, bending down to haul her up, barking a sharp, “Nope.”

“Hey!” she yelped as he flipped her onto her back.

“Hey nothing, you just tried to suck the life out of me, you fucking Dementor.”

“You’re such a baby—oh!”

He spread her legs and ran his tongue along the seam of her cunt, moaning into her, lapping slowly while her hips bucked instinctively. Before long, Hermione was the one falling apart; riding his face, watching his satisfied eyes drink her in, feeling every lick and suck of his maddening, wretched, wonderful tongue.

“You’re a vision,” he said, all gravel.

“Shut up.”

Her body was trembling now, barely holding on, but he didn’t seem to mind.

“Fuck, yes, on my tongue.”

It was his enthusiasm, in the end, that did her in. Before her orgasm even ebbed, he was crowding her, lining himself up with her still sensitive cunt, nudging her forehead with his nose. “Condom?”

“You brought one?” she asked hazily.

“I always carry one.”

“Absolute magnet, are you?”

“Just an optimist.”

She laughed, the sound wild and lost for air. “Since when?”

His body shook with mirth. “It’s a recent development.”

“Well, I’m clean and very much on birth control.”

“Me too. As a whistle.”

“No need for it, then.” She hooked her legs around his waist, then stopped, leaning back to look at his flushed face. “Wait, you’re not a virgin, are you?”

His eyes flashed. “Fuck off.”

“What? It’s not a bad thing to be.”

“Are you?”

“Fuck off.”

“Exactly.” He bit her ear playfully. “Can’t have you thinking I'm a novice.”

“Careful,” she moaned. “Hubris can lead to humility.”

“You talk a lot.”

“Maybe if you’d hurry up and just—”

She broke off on a cry when he thrust into her. The world rearranged, volcanoes shifted landscapes, continents broke apart and fused to new ones, the world began to spin the other way, and Draco Malfoy was deliciously, perfectly warm inside her.

“Jesus Christ," she breathed.

Malfoy, whose mouth was now in the curve of her neck, asked, “Are you religious?”

“Why? Reckon we should have waited till marriage?”

He stilled, shook his head, and she smiled when his laugh reverberated against her skin. “The things that come out of your mouth…”

They fucked steadily, like they were both aware of the need to pace themselves, lest this bliss come to an untimely end. Every kiss was lingering, every bite and claw was needing, and Hermione felt unmoored, seasick, like she was afloat in the loch below. Rain pelted against the tent, but she couldn’t hear it, for the inside was warm, the inside was safe, the inside was where Malfoy was.

When he came, shuddering waves of pleasure pulled at the muscles in his back, and she felt them with her fingertips. He landed flat atop of her and pinned her down, his arms tucked around her back, his face buried in her throat. It was the most comfortable she’d ever been.

“You’re crushing me,” she sighed, content.

“You’ll live.”

She would, so she held him back, and they remained that way for a long while, listening to the weather. Eventually, he rolled away and cleaned her up. It was sort of nice, maybe even romantic, to let him do it. Her body was loose and relaxed in a way it hadn’t been in years. Malfoy seemed unable to stop touching her, and that was okay; it gave her permission to do the same.

She still didn’t understand what this was, but it felt too good to question.

“I’m not actually religious, you know.”

He huffed a quiet laugh. “Yeah, I got that.”

For a while, they talked. For a while longer, they sculpted. After that, they fucked again. When the moon rose and the rain ebbed, she thought about packing up and returning to the castle, but it was the weekend, they were adults, and Malfoy was snoring into her shoulder. The dead weight of his arm across her waist acted like a blanket, so she closed her eyes, deciding that one night in the wild would hurt no one.

“Where were you this weekend?”

Hermione looked up from her breakfast. It was exam week, which meant everyone was up and about far earlier than they wanted to be. Ginny eyed her carefully from across the table, her fork pointed like a knife.

“You didn’t come back to the dorms,” she said. “I almost reported you missing.”

“I was camping.”

“Alone?”

Hermione pushed some beans around her plate. “Is that so hard to believe?”

Romilda leaned over and took a triangle of toast from the rack. “It rained all weekend.”

“It did,” Hermione confirmed.

“Weren’t you cold?”

“No, I—” Flashes of Malfoy warming her up with his hands and tongue swam in her vision. “I used…warming charms.”

Both girls shared a conspiratorial smirk, and Hermione felt her face burn. When Neville dropped down onto the bench beside her, she almost wept with relief. That was, until Ginny turned her devious eyes on him.

“Morning, Nev. Say, what do you think?”

Neville rubbed his eyes. “About?”

“Ginny—”

“Hermione went camping this weekend. All weekend. Alone.”

Neville turned a tired smile her way. “Was it nice?”

“Very,” she said. “Thank you.”

Neville noticed her reddened cheeks, and his eyes widened. Slowly, very slowly, he scanned the room until he found Malfoy. Whatever he saw had them widening more, had him covering a cough with his curled fist and turning away from her with pink ears.

“Quite, uh, quite the weather for it,” he said.

Hermione willed herself to turn to mist.

At night, they found each other in the art room. Malfoy sculpted her bust to have lowered eyelids and parted lips. Hermione sculpted him with focused brows and gritted teeth. They fixed it before they left, but he took the opportunity to press her against the wall of an alcove and kiss her until her knees went weak.

It was so odd, yet it felt so right.

When he pulled away, he leaned back against the wall and looked down at her, dishevelled and fighting a smile. “It’s going to rain again this weekend.”

“So they say,” she said huskily.

“Perfect for hiking.”

Hermione twisted her hand into his shirt and pulled him closer.

“So they say.”

In the tent, their naked limbs locked, they passed chunks of air-dry clay back and forth.

“Exams are almost over,” he said.

“If you are trying to remind me that I ought to be studying right now, don’t bother, I already know.”

“Granger, we both know you could take your exams with a blindfold on and still receive Exceeds Expectations.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Is that a compliment?”

He smirked. “I’ve paid you a few now.”

“That’s true.”

He twisted the clay harder, concentrating—it was cute.

“What are you going to do after?” he asked.

“Not sure yet,” she sighed, leaning against him. “I’ll probably end up at the Ministry. There’s lots to be done there, and I can probably do some of it well.” He snorted, and her eyes narrowed. “What?”

“You just can’t help yourself, can you?”

It wasn’t a dig. If anything, it was said with tangible fondness. She gave his shin a little kick anyway, for good measure, but he caught her ankle and kept it there, and her skin fizzled at his touch.

“What about you?” she asked.

Malfoy lifted a lazy shoulder. “Mother needs me to return home.”

“She’s still…?”

“She’s doing better, but not good.”

“Is that what you want to do?”

He sat back, truly considering it, and Hermione gave him time to think on his answer, wanting to know the truth, whenever he found it. Finally, he nodded. “Yeah, I think so. The estate is in limbo right now. Maybe, for once, I can do something good with it.”

“You can,” she affirmed without hesitation.

“You sound sure.”

“I am.”

He glanced at her. “Why?”

“Because I know you’ll do it.”

He paused again, then asked in a smaller, more vulnerable voice, “How?”

“Because I am very clever.” She grinned, leaned in to kiss his cheek, her stomach fluttering when he closed his eyes to her touch. “And because I know you. Or, I’m starting to, at least.”

His returning smile was private, raw, a little thick with emotion. She did not ask any more, and neither did he, but when he set his hand upon her bare thigh, he did not remove it.

In a twist that shocked absolutely nobody, Hermione passed her N.E.W.T’s with flying colours. To congratulate her, Malfoy sent a neatly parcelled box with a crudely sculpted Order of Merlin inside, the inscription commiserating her upcoming award. She laughed, slipping it into her pocket, and looked up to find Ginny watching.

“Are you and Malfoy sleeping together?”

Hermione spluttered, blinked, choked, went beet-red. “What? No. I—we—I…”

She stopped herself, because not only doth she clearly protest too much, and Ginny knew it, but because she was not ashamed of Malfoy, nor the things they did together. In fact, she was rather pleased about the whole thing. So, she lifted her chin and met Ginny’s bright eyes.

“Yes.”

Ginny’s grin split wide. “Fucking knew it.”

“If you have an opinion, I suggest—”

“Oh, give over, the man practically knelt on the floor and apologised to me at the start of the year. I get it.”

Hermione reared back, stunned. “You do?”

“Yeah.” Ginny shrugged. “Plus, he’s hot now.”

Hermione felt relieved. “He is. It’s annoying.”

“Well, so are you,” Ginny laughed.

“Annoying or hot?”

“Both.”

Hermione smiled, but it was short-lived, for she had yet to tell Harry or Ron about whatever it was she had with Malfoy. They wouldn’t understand; they hadn’t been here all year, they hadn’t spoken to Malfoy or seen any of his changes, they hadn’t been on the receiving end of one of his apologies.

Then again, neither had she.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Ginny hummed.

“No, you don’t.”

“They’ll be fine with it.”

She bristled. “You cannot possibly know that.”

“But I do,” Ginny bumped her shoulder. “They said as much.”

Hermione whirled on her. “What?”

“Yeah, he wrote to them.”

She went cold from head to toe. Ginny, however, just plucked an apple from her pocket and took a large bite.

“When?”

“I dunno,” Ginny said, her mouth full. “Probably around the same time he was weeping at our feet.”

“He hasn’t even apologised to me, and he’s writing to them?”

Ginny’s look was pointed. “Would it work?”

“Huh?”

“If he wept at your feet, would it work?”

Hermione scowled. “No.”

“Exactly.”

Would she want it? Not really, not ever. She’d always been more about actions than words, and he’d shown her his remorse, had he not? He’d let her in, changed, been gentle with her. He’d also been a total shit, but she sort of liked that. Still, it might have been nice if he’d tried.

“Come on, all the young owls will be taken if we hang about,” said Ginny.

They made for the owlery, and Hermione shoved her thoughts of Malfoy to the back of her mind. She scribbled down her results for her parents, and she did not worry about their response to her peculiar education; she just knew they would be proud.

“Oh, you two have truly accomplished something remarkable!” Professor Hartwicke exclaimed, hand over her heart.

The final art lesson of the year had come to a close, and Hartwicke, with a secretive gleam in her eyes, had finally come to view their work. Hermione and Malfoy shared a glance, the pair of them keenly aware of the Professor's apparent scheming.

“Shall we set them side by side?” Hartwicke asked, clapping her hands with glee.

“What for?” asked Hermione.

“Photographs, of course.”

They did as she instructed, placing them beside each other on the counter and stepping back. Professor Hartwicke looked at them in silence, then, with careful hands, she turned the busts to face each other. The result was…interesting, to say the least. When she was done taking photos, and she’d exited the room with a sly wink, Hermione turned to Malfoy and found him already looking at her.

“Well,” he said, amused.

“Did you do that on purpose?”

“Flattered that you think I could. Did you?”

She straightened. “Yes.”

“Did you really?”

“Obviously not.”

They had, entirely unwittingly, built companion pieces; when lined up, the busts peered at each other perfectly. Clay Hermione looked up with a small, fond smile. Clay Malfoy looked down with absolute tenderness. They looked at the busts, at the culmination of the year they’d spent in this room, and not-clay Hermione slipped her hand into his.

“I heard you’ve been on a bit of an apology tour this year,” she said.

Malfoy winced, going a bit red in the cheeks. “That rumour has some merit.”

“Begs the question…”

“Which one?”

“Where’s mine?”

His hand dropped from hers. “Ah.”

Hermione took in his nervousness, letting it spark her own. “Do I not deserve one?”

Heat flashed in his eyes. “Granger, you deserve…so much more than a stupid fucking apology.” Reaching up, he tucked an escaped curl behind her ear, and her heartbeat kicked up into a bluegrass tempo. “You deserve change. Not just nominal, but real, measurable change. That’s what I wanted to show you. I just didn’t expect you to become such a huge part of it.”

She wrapped her fingers around his wrists, holding on tight. “Is that why you spent the first half of the year driving me up the wall?”

“No,” he simpered. “That was purely because you are also very, very irritating.”

She batted him away, tempering a smile, and looked back at the busts, which were gazing at each other lovingly.

“I am sorry, though—”

“I know,” she interrupted, because he was right; she didn’t need an apology. “Are you going to fire her up?”

Malfoy turned to the busts, too, considering. Then, slowly, a smile pulled at the edges of his divine mouth. “No, I don’t think so.”

“Really?” She gaped. “After all that?”

“Yeah.”

“Why not?” she asked, a bit put out; it was their project, their union, their story, and he didn’t even want to—

“I’ll put it under stasis so I can keep working on it.”

Hermione frowned. “But it’s finished.”

“No, it’s not, and neither are you.” He tossed her a shy glance. “I want to keep it, to change it as you change, to record the way time touches you.”

She was lost for words, her eyes prickled with building, uncharacteristic tears, her throat felt too thick to speak, yet she tried, “Do you mean—”

“Yeah.” He took a deep breath. “I told my mother about you. I told my friends about you. Fuck, I’ll tell anyone and everyone that even though I’ve been a horrible, rotten fool for most of my life, and I don’t deserve a second chance, I want one, and I want it with you.”

Hermione swallowed, blinked a few times, and wiped away the escaped moisture from her cheeks. “Alright then.”

Malfoy chuckled, waving his hand to her bust. “What about you? Going to throw him in the kiln?”

She regarded the bust with a long sigh, then turned and wrapped her arms around Malfoy’s neck. His hands found purchase on her waist, and they gazed at each other, just like the busts before them, with an ocean of love in their eyes.

“I’d better not.”

He laughed, she did too, and they smiled into a kiss that carried a thousand promises, clay on their hands and hearts, a lifetime of remodelling ahead of them.