Chapter Text
Dark spatters of rain freckle Hermione’s jeans. The air smells like the collective damp of a hundred raincoats abandoned to steam, and somewhere above the iron ribs of King’s Cross, thunder rolls with the languid enthusiasm of a god who’s already bored of his own theatrics. Her rain boots are at least earning their keep– though her socks have staged that quiet, intimate betrayal where they bunch at the arch of her foot, a discomfort so pointed it almost justifies kneeling in public to fix them.
Almost.
But there’s no time for sock melodrama.
A man clips her shoulder as he barrels past, his scarf snapping across her cheek like an insult delivered by haberdashery. He tosses a limp “Sorry!” over his shoulder before dissolving back into the human weather system around them. Hermione tightens her grip on her briefcase– half for warmth, half because holding something steady feels like an act of personal triumph.
She is calm. She is capable. She is… festive.
Well.
No.
Not even on a generous rubric.
Holiday cheer is difficult to summon when the Ministry schedules a mandatory conference less than a week before Christmas and, in a fit of symbolic brilliance, chooses Hogwarts as the venue. “Historic,” they called it. “Heretical,” she muttered into her tea. The theme– Building a Brighter Tomorrow– reads like polite bureaucratic shorthand for Go cancel your plans.
She is meant to present her research, feign admiration for the Minister’s latest “vision,” shake a series of mildly important hands, and return home just in time to repress the memory by New Year’s. She truly does love her work, but singing carols in the Great Hall with people who weaponize the word “innovation” is not on her holiday wish list.
The station is heaving– damp wool, bursts of steam-breath, chatter ricocheting between old brick walls– but there is comfort in the chaos. A place with its own pulse, its own weather. Perhaps it’s the noise, or the scent of doughnuts and burnt espresso, or the trains themselves, steady as metronomes. A small orchestra of mechanical reassurance.
She breaks free of the entrance bottleneck and inhales. Freedom. Fleeting, caffeinated, and absolutely essential.
The main coffee shop’s queue snakes across what feels like several time zones. Typical. But she is not naïve: she knows of the small cart tucked away at the far end of the station that sells better coffee for half the price. She checks her watch– ten minutes until the platform closes. Manageable. Recklessly so.
Her briefcase thumps her thigh as she walks, stuffed with notebooks, index cards, and enough professional dread to power a modest hamlet.
But when she reaches the “secret” cart, her heart sinks. Another line. Another lifetime. The mere thought of train coffee withering her soul like a salted slug. Yet caffeine is non-negotiable. Her mother calls it dependence; Hermione considers it a highly functional religion.
She exhales, sagging. Her wrist aches from the briefcase, her socks have achieved new acrobatic configurations, and her self-administered fringe trim has chosen this exact moment to rebel in multiple directions.
She cranes her neck toward the timing board. Her watch is lost somewhere inside her sweater sleeve– a woolen oubliette– so she scans for the station clock instead.
And then she stills.
Or no– she narrows her eyes.
Steps closer.
Feels her pulse begin a small, accusatory drumroll.
That cannot be right.
Hermione Granger is never late.
Except once.
It’s absurd that her mind returns to that moment now, but panic is not a rational creature. It barrels through memory like a drunk through a hedge.
Fourth year. Just after the First Task. She’d spent weeks keeping Harry alive long enough to battle a dragon, only to realize– mid-sip of scalding tea– that she had entirely forgotten an Arithmancy essay. Hours later her leg was burnt, her essay was a catastrophe, and she earned her only C, courtesy of a lateness penalty.
It wasn’t the grade that stuck.
It was the slip– the single instant her attention faltered and the universe swatted her like a misbehaving fly. The faint scar on her thigh still whispers the lesson: distraction hurts.
So when her eyes lock on the truth– when she finally admits she is, in fact, late– that old scar warms in phantom protest.
She gasps.
Then flails.
Then breathes a tiny, dignified, “Shit.”
And then she runs.
Soon red-faced and breathless, she spots the space between platforms nine and ten just metres ahead. A note flies out of her briefcase as she sprints; it flutters away like a tiny surrender flag. She barely notices. She will not let this happen. She refuses to be the woman who misses the last train.
The brick column looms– the same one she barrelled through every September, the same one she once kissed Ron goodbye beside after the war. It’s right there. Close enough for faith to take over.
For a moment, muscle memory urges her forward– run, trust, disappear through. But she stops short, as though pausing before stepping into a dream she knows better than to believe too quickly.
She slows to a jog. Lets the briefcase slam a familiar rhythm against her hip while her lungs drag in cold air. Her hand reaches out and bumps the column. Hard brick. Unyielding. Insultingly mundane.
She presses her palm to it again, then slaps it– once, twice– enough to sting. She listens for the telltale hum of magic.
Nothing.
The barrier is closed. Which leaves exactly one conclusion: her charmingly antique watch– the one she found at a thrift stall last week and insisted on wearing for the first time today– is, of course, broken.
And she has missed the last portal to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters by three minutes.
Denial arrives like an old friend. Two fingers pinch her forearm. Evidence collected. Case closed. The jury finds: Not a Dream.
Her wand is in her hand before reason can reach the scene. The Statute of Secrecy can file a complaint later. Desperate times, desperate loopholes.
The Hogwarts Express might still be idling just beyond the bricks. If she could coax the magic open– or threaten it open– she could still make it. She is a war hero, for Merlin’s sake.
“Aberto,” she mutters.
Nothing.
“Alohomora.”
Still nothing.
She tries again, louder, angrier. “Alohomora!”
The barrier remains smugly inert. It has the gall to seem pleased with itself.
“Dissendium.”
Silence. She inspects her wand for cracks, curses, or cosmic betrayal. Perfectly intact.
“Finite Incantatem.”
Nothing.
“Revelio.”
A whole lot of nothing.
“Reverto–”
“Christ, Granger. Planning to Avada it next?”
The voice slices cleanly through her panic. Her wand slips from her fingers and clatters to the tile. She spins– too fast, an unwelcome twinge in her back– and gasps.
A man leans against the opposite pillar.
Navy jumper, denim, an overcoat dangling from one relaxed hand. Entirely too calm for someone currently stranded in magical limbo. There’s a sort of measured politeness in his posture– as though he’s observing a mildly amusing exhibit.
But the hair. She knows that hair.
“Malfoy?”
“Granger.”
For a second, her brain produces static. Just pure white noise. Draco Malfoy. Exonerated war criminal. Former daily irritation. Present… what? Civilian? Ghost of Christmas Poor Timing?
He doesn’t even work at the Ministry– not that she knows of.
“What are you–” She cuts herself off and recalibrates her tone. “Are you going to Hogwarts, too?”
“Was,” he says, lazily, like the word is stretching out on a chaise longue. “Not sure about now. The barrier’s closed.”
He looks irritatingly composed. His hair is rumpled– likely rain-induced– but otherwise he’s the picture of post-war civility. Broader. More grounded in his own skin. The faint, familiar shadow of sleeplessness under his eyes, but there’s light in them anyway.
He looks, Hermione realizes with a surprise she refuses to examine, very much alive.
She asks the only question her fried neurons can produce. “Why are you going to Hogwarts?”
“Were,” he corrects immediately. “The proper phrasing would be ‘Why were you going to Hogwarts?’ Considering the plan has been… forcibly retired.”
She blinks at him. Too dazed to be offended. Too confused by the sheer absurdity of her life to volley back.
This is someone she hasn’t seen in years. Someone who has never spoken to her without venom or formality. Someone who once called her a Mudblood with the ease of breathing.
He must mistake her silence for invitation.
“I was headed to Hogsmeade for a personal errand,” he says.
“A personal errand?” Her eyebrows soar, doing the heavy lifting.
“Have a problem with that, do you?”
She doesn’t even have the energy to roll her eyes. Her brain feels like a jet engine winding up for takeoff and then failing spectacularly at thirty feet. Wreckage everywhere.
A station patrolman ambles down the platform, flashlight swinging at his hip with theatrical authority. Hermione briefly considers calling him over before remembering: he wouldn’t understand a thing. No wizarding staff here. Just her– disheveled, underslept, dangerously low on caffeine– and Draco Malfoy, whom the universe has apparently selected as today's companion in mutual inconvenience.
She turns her back on him– and on the whole humiliating situation– and faces the brick barrier again. Determined. Irrational. Stubborn in that particular Granger way.
She will find a way to Hogwarts.
Her mind begins its frantic inventory. Train: gone. Floo–
“No Floo will allow us in, Granger. And the wards have been up since–”
“Since the war. Yes. I’m aware, Malfoy. If you recall, I was there,” she says to the brick, as though it deserves the brunt of her irritation.
“Just checking,” he sing-songs.
Her shoulders sink. The fight softens, spilling out of her as she rests her forehead against the chilled surface. As much as it pains her to admit it, he’s right. There’s no neat entry point. The Floo only connects through the Headmaster’s office– sealed, empty, and very much off-limits. The Anti-Apparition wards were reinforced years ago, broadened to blanket the entire valley and keyed strictly to residents. Hogwarts has become the magical equivalent of a monastery: no visitors, no exceptions.
Even if she calculated the exact coordinates, she’d be Apparating into a vast, pitch-black forest with nothing but her briefcase, her raincoat, and the growing suspicion that her life choices have deteriorated sharply since graduating.
And with a storm tearing across Britain, the wards will be unstable. Splinching herself for the sake of a conference paper feels like a particularly bleak obituary.
Then– stupidly, brilliantly– a thought drops from the heavens.
A car.
Harry and Ron once flew a car all the way from London to Hogwarts.
Perfect. Illegal, impractical, career-ending. A trifecta of terrible decisions. Especially for someone scheduled to speak tomorrow on the “importance of magical regulation in Muggle environments.”
Up next: Hermione Granger– Assistant Director of the Muggle Relations Department and part-time sky pirate. Please applaud politely as she is escorted offstage in chains.
She presses a hand to her forehead. And there it is. The portion of the evening where her brain delights in offering solutions drafted by a committee of sleep deprivation and despair.
Fine. So not a flying car. Perhaps a normal one? A rental? That would take hours. And she hasn’t driven in… well, in longer than she’s willing to admit to anyone– including herself. Rain continues its assault outside. She’s not eager to test her already-questionable driving on slick London roads.
A low, miserable groan escapes her.
Silence from behind. Blessedly so.
She glances back.
Malfoy has slid down to sit on the cold stone, back braced against the wall, a messenger bag resting on his lap. He’s rifling through something inside it– letters? Notes? A bomb? Knowing him, it could be anything.
Since when does Draco Malfoy carry a messenger bag?
A faint carol drifts through the station loudspeakers– bells, cheer, manufactured nostalgia– and his foot taps in time without apparent awareness. His knees draw up slightly, and she catches sight of his boots, the soft grey socks peeking above them. It’s too much. Too domestic. Too normal. She looks away quickly, as though chastising herself for noticing anything about him at all.
Right. Practical solutions.
She should contact someone at Hogwarts– warn them, request entry, beg, threaten, something. Maybe they’ll temporarily lift the wards. Maybe they’ll send someone.
Except: no owlery in Muggle London.
To send a message, she’d have to trek home.
Her flat.
Her flat, which her parents are currently borrowing for their anniversary.
Her parents, who were enthusiastically making use of her sofa when she left earlier.
She closes her eyes with a grimace. Absolutely not. She refuses to walk in on that. She promised them a peaceful, romantic escape. Interrupting because she lost a staring contest with a wall is not dignified for anyone involved.
She is an adult. A Ministry employee. A witch with multiple degrees. She can solve this without barging into her own flat like an accidental voyeur.
Giving up is not an option. There is a way through.
She just hasn’t figured out what it is yet.
And she has no idea when the barrier will open again.
As if summoned by the thought, his voice drifts lazily across the platform. “You’ll have to wait till morning. That’s the next train.”
She exhales through her nose, steady and unimpressed. “And what time will that be, exactly? Do you know?”
He slips something into his bag, unbothered. “If memory serves– seven a.m.”
Seven a.m.
Seven bloody a.m.
That might– might– get her there in time for her presentation.
But it leaves a more immediate problem:
What on earth is she supposed to do for the next twelve hours?
She could get a hotel. Or haunt a 24-hour café and stake out a table sticky with syrup and existential despair.
No. She’ll treat this like an ill-timed layover. There are seats somewhere. She’ll find one, pull out her notes, work on her presentation. Finally get that coffee. Maybe take a dignified half-nap and hope no stranger uses her shoulder as a pillow.
Yes. A plan. And perhaps– by some Christmas miracle– the barrier will open early. She’ll check every hour. Perfect.
With a huff, she shifts her briefcase, finally surrendering to the long strap and slinging it across her shoulder. She peels off her heavy jacket– revealing the cable-knit beneath– and shoves the jacket into her bag. She brushes damp curtain bangs from her forehead and draws a breath.
Is one meant to say goodbye to a train-station acquaintance of five minutes? Has their interaction earned that level of civility? Hardly.
Chin high, resolve higher, she turns toward the main concourse.
“Leaving already, Granger?” His voice glides through the hum of the station– low, amused, insufferably entertained.
She does not turn. He doesn’t need the satisfaction. He’s a blip in an already misaligned evening. She will move on, as she always does.
Reality, as usual, refuses to cooperate. Every chair in the terminal is occupied. Apparently Muggles have also offended the travel gods tonight.
She’ll simply have to wait for someone to stand.
Fifteen minutes in the coffee queue later, she’s still watching the seating area like a hawk. No one moves. No one leaves. Coffee in hand, she makes two laps of the station. Then a detour to the loo, where she grimaces at her reflection– rainy? sweaty? Both?– and half-listens to two women debating dinner plans.
Dinner.
She should’ve ordered a pastry. She’d planned to eat at the welcome reception in the Great Hall. Instead she’s stranded with caffeine, regret, and a watch behaving like it’s in another timezone entirely.
She briefly contemplates throwing the bloody thing into the Thames.
At the bottom of her briefcase, her shrunken fleece pajamas whisper seductively. Would wearing pajamas in a train station be strange? Yes. Would it be too far? Absolutely.
She takes a long sip of coffee. Not yet. Give it an hour. Maybe two.
That hour drifts by in aimless wandering. She circles the same limp station shops so many times that security now regards her as a potential keychain thief.
One small victory: a bag of crisps and a bottle of water (to counteract the caffeine, obviously).
But still nowhere to sit. Every bench, every chair, every patch of wall is already claimed. She’s desperate enough to count the pounds in her wallet—wondering, fleetingly, if bribery is socially acceptable here. Spoiler: all she finds is three galleons, a knut, and seventeen hair ties.
Her knees ache. The sock she’d repaired in the loo has already given up, the heel sliding halfway down her foot.
She tells herself she’s returning to the barrier purely to check– just in case some miracle has occurred. But really, she’s so thoroughly over this ordeal that her eyes have begun to sting, and if she cries near Malfoy, at least she can blame the tears on him.
Either way, her feet lead her back toward the brick columns.
He notices her the moment she rounds the brick columns– something bright flashes across his face before he schools it into a smirk. “Back so soon, Granger?”
He’s still sitting on the floor, but the scene looks strangely… settled. His jacket is folded beneath him for padding, his bag propped neatly against his thigh. And– are those headphones?
Because she is now apparently a woman possessed, she drops onto the floor across from him. Cold brick drags against the back of her sweater before her body meets the ground with a sigh that borders on indecent relief.
A single metre separates her boots from his. She tucks her legs into a cross-legged knot– no unintentional footsie, thank you.
Breathing comes easier now that she’s no longer stalking the station like a lion hunting a seat. This corner is mercifully quiet. Her mind, after an hour of caffeine and chaos, begins to rearrange itself. Puzzle pieces, old clocks that tick too slowly, questions with no clear shape– everything shifts toward coherence.
Except one piece. The most irritating one.
“Malfoy.”
A twitch of his brow. He doesn’t look up. Music leaks faintly from his headphones.
“Malfoy.”
He exhales, soft, nearly resigned. “What can I help you with this evening, Granger?”
“What’s happening.” No inflection. No patience. She’s too tired for either.
“I know as much as you do.” He pulls one earbud free, letting it sit in his hand. “The barrier was supposed to stay open until seven. By some miracle of logic, I’ve deduced that anyone running late didn’t make the train.”
“Yes, I understood that,” she says. “I mean what’s happening now. As in, why we’re sitting three metres from the tracks with our jackets on the floor.”
That gets him. He finally looks at her, mouth curving into a crooked smile. The other earbud slips into his lap.
“I’m sorry– did you just say we? As in a collective noun? As in you and I are… what, exactly? Waiting together?”
Fantastic. One minute in his vicinity and her face is already unbearably warm.
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.” It comes out softer than she intends—more drained than sharp. She drags a hand through her hair. “I just… thought we were trying to figure this out.”
He stills. Not offended– simply surprised, as if she’s handed him something he hadn’t braced for.
“Right,” he says at last, voice lower. “Fair enough.”
The simplicity of it throws her. No smirk. No jab. Just an honest answer from someone she isn’t entirely sure she remembers correctly.
She looks away, unsettled in a way that defies neat labeling. Easier to blame the day– the storm, the sealed platform, the absurdity of sitting on a train-station floor with a boy who once stood as a fixed point on the opposite side of everything she believed.
Whatever this is, she refuses to overthink it. Not tonight. Not while they’re wedged between worlds with nothing but time.
He studies her for a beat. “Well, what’s your plan then, Granger? If concrete chic isn’t your preferred evening, shouldn’t you be heading back to your flat? You do live in London.”
Her brow pulls tight. “How do you know I live in London?”
“Don’t you work at the Ministry?” He shrugs, casual to the point of defensive. “Isn’t that why you’re here? Why you’re going to Hogwarts?”
Oh. Right. That is… reasonable.
“I just assumed you’d live near work,” he adds, too lightly. “You seem like that type.”
Her eyes narrow. “And what type is that?”
He looks down at his boots, suddenly fascinated by their scuffed leather. “Nothing– just meant you liked school, so I figured you’d like work. Thought you’d live close to the Ministry. That’s all.”
“I didn’t love school.” A lie they both recognize instantly. “I cared about school. That’s different.” She tilts her head. “And you cared just as much as I did.”
His silent laugh shakes his shoulders. “Still haunted by that test, Granger?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Arms cross, but the heat in her cheeks betrays her. Of course she remembers. She’ll never forget the single exam he outscored her on.
“What was it again?” he muses. “You forgot there was a backside to the parchment? Missed the last three questions?”
It is eight p.m. on a Sunday night in King’s Cross Station, and Hermione Granger is incandescent about a Fifth-Year Charms exam.
Root cause: Draco Malfoy.
“I was a little busy that year avoiding getting my skin carved into during detention,” she snaps.
His hands fly up immediately, palms open. “Fair enough. Fair enough.”
The tension simmers, held only by the hum of the overhead lights. Hermione exhales, the fight slipping from her shoulders, leaving tiredness in its wake. The frantic energy of the last hour yields at last, replaced by a soft fuzz behind her eyes.
She has entered the part of disaster where the mind begins to rationalize– where chaos becomes tolerable simply because it must. Human beings excel at normalizing change.
“Why are you still here?” she asks, stretching an arm out for her plastic water bottle. The question has been gnawing at her since she spotted him—still planted on the cold floor, perfectly at ease. “I’m sure you have some fancy flat in the city. Or you could book a hotel near the station. Or, I don’t know– apparate home?”
He tilts his head, studying her through half-lidded eyes. A faint smirk curls at the corner of his mouth. “Could say the same for you, Granger.”
Touché.
Yes, she could pay a hundred pounds for a hotel bed she’d spend eight hours on, vibrating with anxiety and watching the clock creep toward dawn. No, she is absolutely not telling him that.
“Plus,” he adds, leaning his head back against the wall, “I don’t particularly want to spend the money.”
She nearly inhales her water. “I’m sorry– what?”
He shrugs, maddeningly casual. “Hotel rates in the city. Ridiculous lately. And rent. And anything else that involves existing indoors.” He delivers it with the same tone one might use for reciting train timetables.
She stares. “Since when have you had to worry about money?”
A faint hum escapes him– half amused, half worn. “Since a while ago, actually.”
“But your family owns a dozen estates and an entire museum’s worth of heirlooms you could pawn for a small nation-state.”
His eyes flick toward hers. No sting, just a spark of humor before something steadier settles in. “The heirlooms were seized. The properties were auctioned. Most of it vanished before I could pretend to mind.” A pause. “Granger, have you genuinely not read The Prophet at all?”
“Not really.” She tugs at her sleeve, embarrassed. “I read Muggle news. And when I read The Prophet, it’s the political bits. For work.”
“Oh.” The word lands softly, contemplative. He nods once, as if that explains everything. “Well. In any case, I’m not throwing money at a hotel when this perfectly adequate stone floor is free.”
She blinks. “So you’re… just going to wait here all night?”
“Looks that way.”
It’s not what she expected– this calm, this faint, almost wry acceptance. It disorients her.
“I didn’t know,” she says quietly. “I knew things were… complicated after the war. But I didn’t realize they’d been difficult.”
He waves it off, gentle but firm. “Don’t go tender on me. I’m fine. Better than fine, most days.” A beat. “Tonight’s just inconvenient.”
She watches him: the line of his shoulders, the quiet honesty he doesn’t bother disguising. It’s disarming– strangely so.
Conversation with him, brief as it’s been, is nothing like running into old schoolmates at that gala last year– effortless, polished, boring. This is different. Less smooth. More… delicate. Like tuning a radio that keeps slipping in and out of frequency.
There’s history humming between them, but not the jagged kind she had braced for. More like the memory of an old injury: healed, but sensitive when the weather shifts.
It reminds her, uncomfortably, of running into an ex– not romantically, but in the sense of someone who once occupied space in her life. Someone she doesn’t quite know how to address anymore, yet can’t seem to walk away from either.
She exhales, settling back against the wall. “You know, you could just go home.”
“I could,” he says softly. “But something tells me I should stay.”
She glances over.
His eyes are already on her. But not in the old way. This time, he looks like he’s trying to learn something, not judge it.
Her fingers itch for something to do, so she rummages through her bag until she hits the stack of presentation notes. Even the brush of paper squeezes her chest. Missing the conference feels unthinkable– part failure, part catastrophe, part cosmic joke.
Maybe she should find an owl. Or wait until midnight. Or appeal to whatever deities oversee magical transport. Maybe the barrier will open if she just… waits. Maybe patience is the entire test.
Merlin, she hates patience.
She looks for a clock– nothing. Her watch ticks on, stubborn and smug, the same traitorous pace that made her late in the first place. She sighs, digs through her bag, and pulls out her mobile. A relic from 2004, held together by optimism and a battery that shifts if you breathe near it. If it lasts thirty minutes, someone should notify the Vatican.
While it sputters awake, the overhead speakers crackle.
Last Christmas.
Tinny. Sugary. Criminally cheerful. It drifts across the station like an affront– too bright for the flicker of bad lighting and the cold, echoing hush of stone.
For one brief, disloyal moment, she sees something else: a warm kitchen, cider steaming, fairy lights tangled around an overconfident houseplant. A version of her life where she isn’t one crisis away from disappointing someone.
Then the thought pops. Gone.
Back to the cold floor. Back to her itchy jumper. Back to her empty water bottle rolling away with all the dignity of a kicked tin can.
And back to a pair of grey eyes fixed on her.
“What?” she snaps. Sharper than she means to.
He blinks, slow, deliberate, like he’s buffering. “Didn’t realize your face was classified information.”
“It is.”
“Right. Duly noted.” He nods– almost awkward– and looks away. But not before a flicker of… something. Curiosity. Uncertainty. Recognition softened by time. Hard to name. Harder to ignore.
Hermione chews her cheek. She refuses– absolutely refuses– to ask what he’s thinking. Curious men with complicated histories and unfair cheekbones are not tonight’s task.
Her only priority is getting to Hogwarts.
Silence settles again, dense and fragile. Every shift of fabric sounds like a broadcast. A cough cracks through the station like a firework. Metal shrieks somewhere far off.
They sit like that for thirty minutes. Maybe more. Time loses relevance once your spine has collapsed into the shape of limbo and your arse has gone numb.
Her body aches. Her pride aches worse. What she wants—really wants—is to shove her hair up, curl into herself, and let out a few quiet, cathartic tears. Just enough to unclog her throat.
But Malfoy sits there like an infuriating monument to composure. Legs stretched out, fingers tapping an idle rhythm, looking neither stranded nor stressed nor existentially compromised.
She will not be the more dramatic one.
Her fingers bend the edges of her notes, softening them further. Weeks of long nights have left their mark—ink smudges, creased corners, parchment wearing thin. Her coworkers had teased her. It’s the holidays, Hermione, go home. But home was just an empty flat and a plant she’d nearly composted by accident. Not exactly a siren call.
When there’s no one waiting– no partner, no kids, not even a creature capable of purring– work fills the gaps. So she keeps filling them. Sorting, fixing, nudging life into order wherever she still can.
The presentation– The Impact of Muggle Studies Integration in Post-War Wizarding Education– had been her quiet attempt to keep progress alive. A gentle push forward. The Ministry rewarded her with fifteen minutes at a conference destined to vanish from collective memory and a reminder to keep it concise.
Once, reform money flowed freely. Pureblood families– Malfoy’s included– had scrambled to fund anything labeled restorative, eager to look repentant. But remorse has a short shelf life. Now the Ministry calls it “refocusing on Wizarding priorities,” which roughly translates to: Sorry, budget’s gone, best of luck out there.
So would her absence matter? To the conference– not one bit. To her– she’d rather not unpack that box.
She exhales, the sound tiny against the cavernous station. When she glances at Malfoy, he hasn’t moved. He stares past the tracks, expression blank in a way that suggests it isn’t blank at all.
It’s edging past nine, the kind of hour that feels like it’s folding in on itself. Hermione’s pretty sure her spine has fused to the wall, which now feels sentient and personally vengeful.
The barrier, naturally, remains closed. If it had opened, she wouldn’t be here, pressed against the world’s least ergonomic wall while Draco Malfoy plays reluctant, blond gargoyle.
Maybe it’s time to surrender. Admit the universe has won this round. She could call a cab, step into the freezing London night, and eventually appear at her parents’ anniversary dinner– whatever married people do to celebrate twenty-plus years. The thought makes her wince, but she’d survive.
Home means an owl, an explanation, and a careful retelling that includes none of this nonsense. A few hours’ sleep wouldn’t hurt. She can return before dawn: fresher, steadier, less tempted to gnaw through stone.
Yes. That’s reasonable. Adult.
She gathers her things with the slow precision of someone packing up a failed expedition. Notes first– crumpled, overworked, accusatory. Then her briefcase. Then whatever patience she had left, which departed the station hours ago without leaving a forwarding address.
She’s halfway to her water bottle when his voice drifts across the empty platform.
“I have to say, Granger… I never imagined you’d be late for anything. Unless you misplaced another Time Turner. Did you? Because that would make this whole ordeal tragically poetic.”
She stills. Of course he would bring that up.
“You don’t know anything about tragic poetry,” she mutters.
He tilts his head, faintly offended. “I’ll have you know I’ve been tragic for years.”
“That doesn’t make you poetic.”
“It should. There ought to be some benefits.”
Her mouth twitches despite her best efforts. “Congratulations, then. You’re an overgrown Greek chorus.”
His brows rise. “That feels suspiciously generous.”
She gives the smallest laugh and zips her bag with surgical finality.
Then– quietly, like he’s testing the edges of sincerity– he says, “I think I’d be quite lonely if it were just me here.”
Her head lifts. Really lifts. He isn’t smirking. He looks like a boy sitting in a station far too big for him, worn down in a way that has nothing to do with sleep.
“And you’re not lonely now?” she asks, softer than she intends.
He shrugs, gaze drifting toward the humming fluorescents overhead. “Not in the catastrophic sense. More in the… background-noise variety.”
She studies him. “Background-noise loneliness?”
“You know,” he says, gesturing vaguely, “the kind you don’t notice until everything gets quiet enough that you can hear your own thoughts. Which, for the record, are dreadful company.”
“That’s not true.” The words slip out unfiltered. “Sometimes being alone is… steadier.”
“Steadier, yes,” he repeats, rolling it thoughtfully. “That does sound like something I’ve said to convince myself of something quite improbable.”
Her spine straightens. “And what exactly are you convincing yourself of?”
“That I’m not unbearable to be stranded with,” he says simply. Then, catching something in her face, adds, “You haven’t tried to hex me once. That’s progress.”
“That’s restraint,” she corrects. “Massive, saintlike restraint.”
“Makes me feel very chosen.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Too late. I already feel special.”
She rolls her eyes, but the corner of her mouth betrays her, lifting. The whole situation feels absurd– two former antagonists discussing midnight loneliness on a train platform like they’ve wandered into someone else’s story.
A family of four clatters past, their noise a brief, merciful reprieve.
When they fade, he glances sideways at her.
“So,” he says, “were you truly about to leave? Abandon your post? Break the unspoken pact of purgatory companions?”
“It’s not a pact.”
“It is now. And you were about to break it.”
She presses her lips together, refusing to dignify that.
He leans back, eyes flicking toward her bag. “You don’t want to go home.”
She freezes again.
“You don’t know that,” she says too fast.
He smiles– nothing sharp, nothing smug, just quietly perceptive. “People who want to go home don’t pack that slowly.”
She swallows. “And what would you know about it?”
He thinks for a moment, jaw tightening. “Enough,” he says quietly.
The word settles between them with inconvenient weight.
She looks away. “I wasn’t going to leave,” she murmurs. “Not really.”
He exhales; something unknots in his posture. “Good,” he says, almost light. “Because catastrophic loneliness was about five minutes away.”
She snorts. “Tragic.”
“Told you,” he says, tapping his chest. “Poetic at heart.”
She’s halfway through stuffing her notes into her bag when she realizes he’s still watching her– really watching her. Not with the old edge, but with the quiet, unnerving attention of someone trying to catch a thought mid-formation.
“What do you say,” he begins, voice breezy but eyes too intent to qualify as casual, “we go see about some other transportation?”
She blinks. “I’m sorry?”
He leans forward, elbows on his knees, like he’s suggesting a harmless detour instead of detonating the structural integrity of her evening. “We could rent a car. Make it before your conference.”
The first thought: He knows too much.
The second: Absolutely not.
The third– and loudest: Why?
“A car?” she squeaks, mortifyingly.
He nods, untroubled. “Mmm.”
“Like… a normal car? A on-the-road, grounded, Muggle-built vehicle with tires and a steering wheel? A Muggle car?”
He laughs– a sound so warm and unguarded she nearly forgets what decade they last spoke in. It’s human in a way she’s never heard from him. Almost… nostalgic.
“I don’t suppose you know of another kind of car?” he teases. “I’ve only ever driven the wheeled variety. If there’s a hovering model I missed, please– educate me.”
“You drive?” she manages. “On actual streets?”
“I do have to get to work every day.” A small shrug. “And the Tube lacks efficiency.”
She stares. “Did you just say you work? Daily?”
His grin widens– slow, wicked, almost boyish. Dimples. Of course he has dimples. Why wouldn’t the universe arm him with dimples.
“Well, we did establish I’m destitute,” he reminds her softly. “You seem surprisingly committed to disbelief.”
For a moment, the whole world goes soft-focus. The history, the war, the rubble of their childhood– all of it retreats, leaving just a man offering something absurd at 9:20 p.m.
“And where,” she asks, “would one rent a vehicle at this hour?” She flashes her mobile. 21:18. “And even then, Scotland is… not close.”
He shrugs again– infuriatingly good at it. “Far, yes. But we’d still get there faster than waiting here, hoping our seven o’clock train experiences a moral awakening.”
Her brows shoot up. “And now we’re a we? A joint travel endeavor?” She taps her chin. “I seem to recall you mocking me for suggesting cooperation.”
She braces for the familiar sneer.
But when she meets his gaze, there is something bright there– unguarded, almost shining. No malice. No armor. Just hope, absurd and startling.
“You really are something, Granger,” he says, voice gone gentler. “Always the spitfire.”
Suspicion winds through her chest– but so does something else. Interest. Reluctant, inevitable interest.
“Who are you?” she murmurs.
He doesn’t answer.
Instead, he stands– smooth, clean motion– then sits back down beside her. Close enough that warmth unfurls from his shoulder into hers. He smells faintly of rain and something old-world: bergamot, cedar. A scent like memory from a life she never lived.
A pale strand of hair falls over his brow. He tucks it back, then extends his hand into the narrow space between them, palm up. Open. Tentative.
“I’m Draco,” he says softly. “It’s nice to meet you.”
His hand hovers over her knee like a drawn invitation. The world hushes around them– wheels fading, luggage softening, announcements dissolving into static. Everything waits.
Hermione’s heart jolts. Her chest tightens. Her brain fires every possible warning.
But reflex– politeness– something older– wins.
“Nice to meet you, Draco,” she whispers, and it lands like a footstep on thin ice.
Their hands meet– light, then firm. Warm. Real.
“I’m Hermione.”
The air shifts– subtle but undeniable– like the night tilts, and the story selects a new branch.