Chapter Text
She could feel his eyes on her.
Not the incidental sweep of attention that passed between students in the Great Hall each morning—glances traded over goblets and half-finished conversations—but something far more deliberate. It lingered. It pressed. It settled with quiet insistence at the back of her awareness until she could no longer pretend it wasn’t there.
It felt almost tangible.
Hermione sat a fraction straighter, the movement so slight it would have gone unnoticed by anyone but her. Even so, her body had already responded before her mind could fully catch up—her pulse quickening, her breath shallowing just enough to notice. There was a tightness beneath her ribs, a restless energy that made her skin feel too thin, too aware.
She resisted the urge to turn.
Instead, she lowered her gaze with careful precision to the plate in front of her, as though the act itself required concentration. The toast had long since gone cold, its edges stiff beneath her knife as she dragged it absently through a thin smear of strawberry jam, spreading the red unevenly across its surface without intention.
She had not properly seen him yet.
Only the briefest glimpse—platinum hair catching the early morning light as he passed through the doors of the Great Hall. It had been enough to register, enough for something instinctive and unbidden to tighten low in her chest before she had dropped her gaze again, almost too quickly.
As though she already understood what looking would mean.
Beside her, Neville leaned forward without warning, stretching across her space toward the newspaper Ginny had flattened against the table.
“Sorry, ’Mione,” he murmured, distracted.
Hermione shifted slightly to accommodate him, her attention slipping despite herself toward the shifting images scattered across the front page of the Daily Prophet.
Her own face stared back at her.
She stilled.
The photograph moved in its endless loop—her head turning slightly, curls pinned back with more haste than care, her expression composed but not entirely convincing. Harry stood at her side, posture rigid, gaze fixed awkwardly somewhere just beyond the frame, while Ron’s mouth was set in a fixed smile she knew too well.
Behind them rose the statue.
Ten metres of enchanted gold.
Even rendered in ink and shadow on the paper, it gleamed too brightly, too perfect, too polished. Hermione felt her stomach twist as she looked at it, the memory of that day rising unbidden.
The press of bodies. The weight of expectation. The suffocating brightness of it all.
She remembered standing there beneath the Ministry’s open atrium, the lights catching against the gold until it burned at the edges of her vision. Remembered the applause—loud, insistent, unrelenting—and the way it had seemed to echo in a hollow space somewhere inside her.
She had smiled when required.
She had nodded when spoken to.
She had played her part.
All the while, unable to shake the quiet, persistent certainty that something about it was deeply, fundamentally wrong. She had made it out of the war. She did not deserve to be memorialized in gleaming permanence.
“I can’t believe they even let them back here,” Ginny muttered beside her, her voice low but sharp with disapproval.
Hermione barely registered the words.
Another photograph shifted on the page, pulling her gaze.
A pale face.
Drawn. Hollowed.
Her breath stilled.
Draco Malfoy stared out from the paper, his expression distant, as though whatever thoughts occupied him existed far beyond the reach of the photographer’s lens. As the image moved, his gaze flickered—then slid away, dismissing the moment with finality.
She recognized the moment from the Ministry hearings.
The trial chambers had been stifling, the air thick with tension and the unspoken weight of judgment. Names had been called one after another, each echoing faintly against the high stone walls as the accused were brought forward to recount their actions, to construct their defenses, to wait—sometimes in silence—for the verdict that would follow.
Hermione had stood at the back, concealed beneath a carefully woven Notice-Me-Not charm, her presence reduced to something easily overlooked, if it was gleaned at all.
She had needed to be there.
Needed to see him when his sentence was delivered. To witness it with her own eyes, rather than trust the distorted language of Ministry reports or the embellished retellings that would inevitably follow.
In her hands, she had held a folded piece of parchment, its edges softened by the pressure of her grip.
Her defense of Draco Malfoy.
Every word had been chosen with care, rewritten until it struck the balance she needed—measured, precise, impossible to dismiss. She had not known if she would have the courage to use it, to step forward and allow the charm to fall away, drawing the attention of the entire chamber onto herself.
But she had been prepared to try.
If the tide had turned against him—if the weight of his name had proven too much—she would have spoken.
She had imagined it in fragments. The shift in the room. The sharp intake of breath. The way his expression might change—
In the end, she had remained where she was.
The sentence had been delivered cleanly, almost with a sense of reluctant mercy on account of his youth. Temporary confinement in Azkaban until the conclusion of his hearing. Thereafter, restriction to the grounds of Malfoy Manor until the start of term. A year of probation to follow.
Relief had come swiftly, disorienting in its intensity. She had slipped out of the chambers silently. He would never know she had even been there.
“-Hermione!”
Ginny’s voice cut through her thoughts, sharp enough to pull her fully back into the present.
Hermione blinked, the memory dissolving as the Great Hall rushed back in around her—the low hum of conversation, the clatter of cutlery, the faint warmth of morning light filtering through the high windows.
“Are you even listening to me?” Ginny pressed.
“Sorry, Gin,” Hermione replied, turning toward her with a small, apologetic shake of her head. “I lost track for a moment. What were you saying?”
Ginny exhaled, flicking her hand from the paper spread in front of her to the Slytherin table across the hall. “I said Malfoy looks bloody awful. Not that he’s ever been a picture of cheer, but honestly—look at him. He doesn’t even look fit for class.”
The words lingered.
For a brief moment, Hermione considered ignoring them.
Then, slowly, she turned.
Her gaze found his immediately, as though something had already aligned the path between them.
Across the Great Hall, seated among the Slytherins, Draco Malfoy was still watching her.
The connection settled between them with a weight that made her chest tighten.
There was no mistaking it now. His attention was fixed, unwavering, and far too deliberate to be accidental.
Ginny had not exaggerated.
He looked… awful.
Not merely thinner—though there was a sharpness to his features that had not been there before—nor simply tired, though the shadows beneath his eyes suggested sleep had not come easily of late.
There was something more.
His shoulders were held too tightly, his posture rigid in a way that suggested control rather than composure, as though every movement had been carefully measured before it was allowed to exist. He looked so far from the boy she knew before the war.
Hermione found herself studying him more closely, her eyes narrowing slightly.
If he intended to stare her down like this, as though he had something to say, then he could at least have the decency to approach her. He had never lacked for boldness before.
So she held his gaze.
Steady. Unflinching.
A quiet challenge, offered without a single word.
For a moment, the connection between them seemed to stretch across the rows of students, building into something tangible and charged.
Then, abruptly, Malfoy looked away.
The break was sharp. Their connecting the fluttering ends of a taunt ribbon cut free.
She watched as his hands moved, fingers closing around his teacup. He lifted it and drained the contents in a single, swift swallow, the line of his throat tightening with the effort.
A flicker of distaste crossed his face, subtle but unmistakable; his mouth tightened, his brow drawing in faintly, as though the tea had turned bitter on his tongue.
Hermione frowned.
Draco Malfoy took his tea with milk.
And three sugars.
Hermione spent the next several mornings watching Malfoy with quiet, increasingly pointed attention.
Or rather, watching what he did with his tea.
It had become a habit—one she didn’t fully understand and had no real justification for. She would arrive at breakfast, take her seat, and within minutes her eyes would drift, unbidden, across the length of the Great Hall to the Slytherin table.
He never drank it properly.
Instead, Malfoy would lift the cup, pause just long enough for the motion to feel deliberate, and then tip the entire contents back in a single swallow. Always too quickly. Always with a faint grimace that followed immediately after, like whatever he was drinking was more obligation than preference.
It shouldn’t have mattered.
People were allowed to change their routines. People were allowed to dislike their morning tea.
And yet something about it refused to settle in her mind.
It wasn’t logical, not in any way she could defend, but the inconsistency of it clung to her thoughts in a way that felt almost irritating. Malfoy had always been precise and controlled in his habits, particular to the point of predictability. This new behavior felt wrong in a way she couldn’t quite articulate.
“You know,” came Luna’s voice suddenly, soft and close enough that Hermione actually startled.
Her shoulders jerked slightly as she turned, startled out of her focus. Luna was leaning in from Hermione’s right side, her expression as calm and unbothered as ever, as though she hadn’t just caught Hermione staring across the Hall with far too much concentration.
“You could always ask him what’s in the tea,” Luna added lightly.
“I— I’m not,” Hermione began too quickly, stumbling over the words as heat rose sharply in her cheeks. “I don’t care how Malfoy takes his tea. It’s just—”
She faltered, realizing too late that she had already dug herself into something that sounded entirely unconvincing.
“He could at least be considerate of everyone else,” she finished, a little more firmly. “His grimace is right in my line of sight every morning.”
Luna hummed thoughtfully, as though this explanation held far more weight than it probably deserved.
Hermione immediately busied herself with her plate, pushing it slightly away from her. This was absurd. Malfoy could drink his tea however he liked. He could throw it back, pour it in the lake, ignore it entirely - none of it was her concern.
She was not his keeper.
She would let it go.
She would.
“Are you finished eating already?” Neville asked as she stood, gathering her books and nudging her plate aside.
His tone was casual, but when Hermione glanced down at him, she caught something looming beneath it - concern, faint but unmistakable. It made her hesitate for half a second longer than she intended.
She knew what she looked like.
She had noticed it in mirrors, in passing windows, in the way her robes hung slightly differently than they had the year before. The war had taken more than it had returned. Food had been scarce when it mattered most, and afterward… appetite had never quite returned in the same way.
Things tasted different now. Bland. Ashy with the reminders of all they had lost.
“I’ve got to run,” she said quickly, slipping an apple from the bowl at the center of the table. “I promised Professor Slughorn I’d help him prepare batches of Dreamless Sleep for Madam Pomfrey last week, and I want to get started before classes.”
It wasn’t entirely a lie.
She had promised Slughorn the potions. She just hadn’t intended to begin quite so early.
But staying felt worse.
If she stayed, she would have to explain the way her thoughts kept circling back to a boy she had spent years trying not to think about in any coherent way.
So she left quickly, before anyone could press further.
She felt their eyes on her as she went, but she didn’t look back to confirm it. The doors of the Great Hall closed behind her with a soft finality.
Hogwarts, without Harry and Ron, was still something she hadn’t fully adjusted to.
Intuitively, she had known it would be strange. The absence of them wasn’t just physical - it reshaped the way the castle felt, as though familiar spaces had shifted slightly off their axis. Even conversations seemed to pause differently now, as though expecting voices that would not arrive. But it had been important to her that she complete her schooling in its entirety. A feeling Harry and Ron were quick to point out they did not share, as they jumped at the first chance to begin Auror training.
She walked down the corridor at a steady pace, fingers tightening slightly around the spine of her books as the familiar stone walls of Hogwarts passed around her. Portraits murmured as she went by, suits of armor shifting faintly, the castle breathing in its own slow, ancient rhythm.
She hadn’t spent much time here since her sixth year. The Battle of Hogwarts notwithstanding, she had been on the run nearly all of last year.
And her sixth year had been… tense. Fractured. A constant undercurrent of panic and calculation, of trying to hold steady while everything around them tilted closer and closer to collapse. The waves of violence had been lapping at the edges of everything they tried to pretend was normal.
And Malfoy -
The thought arrived before she could stop it.
A small corner of a corridor, dimly lit. The distant echo of footsteps. The hush of the castle at night, when everything felt finally still enough that she could breathe without feeling as though the world might crack under it.
“Let me help you,” Hermione whispered, voice tight—almost pleading. She had to make him understand. “I can help you. Please, just tell me what’s going on.”
Panic had bloomed sharply beneath her ribs, rising too fast to control. How could he not see that she had to do something? That standing by wasn’t an option she was capable of choosing?
His silver eyes flickered.
For a moment, something unreadable passed across his expression before he stepped closer instead of away, hands settling firmly at her back and drawing her in with certainty.
His silver eyes deepened to a steely grey, and he pressed his hands widely against her spine, pulling her in close to his chest. She breathed deeply. He smelled of clean soap and expensive cologne. His hands pressed soothing strokes against her back, “Shh. It’ll be okay. Don’t worry. I’m stronger than you give me credit for, Granger.”
She knew even then he was saying it to stop her from asking more questions. To stop her digging. For the moment, she let his warmth reassure her anyway.
The memory slipped, as quickly as it had come.
Hermione blinked once, firmly, as though that alone could push it back into place where it belonged.
She adjusted her grip on her books and continued walking.
The Potions corridor was just ahead.