Great Cotillion: Pairing - Hermione Granger & Draco Malfoy

It only takes a twitch for the strings of fate to twist.

I know because I control them myself, the delicate, knotted mess of strands meshing around these fingers, playing fate's music for the world to hear, see, experience.

Sometimes, the victims of my strings do not like my manipulation, or do not know of it. But I am Destiny. My job is to manipulate mortal lives when the tides of fate pull me in one direction or tie me in another.

Nothing is set in stone. Hatred, prejudice, separation - they are not obligated to stay that way forever.

Hermione Granger never told Harry or Ron, but in December of sixth year, she found Draco Malfoy alone in a stairwell by the seventh-floor corridor.

It really was ironic, for just ten minutes ago, she had been listening to Harry's persistent accusations that Malfoy was not on the map, that he was leaving the castle at that very moment, that he was a Death Eater.

Yet there Malfoy was, in this secluded corridor (everyone was studying for finals), sitting with his back to her, impossibly white-blond hair glinting in the sun. He was so well-hidden by the shadows of the narrow stairwell that she had nearly missed seeing him.

Hermione came to a halt a few meters behind from where the back of his head peeked out. She knew it was him just by his posture, straight, stiffened back but head hunched down. It was familiar from Harry's extensive observations, fresh in her mind from breakfast earlier that morning. For a moment, she considered turning back and going the longer way to the Gryffindor Tower.

But she hesitated. Something kept her eyes on the image of Draco sitting there. She couldn't even see his face, couldn't see anything but the strands of his hair, but she took one step forward, and another, and another, inexplicably drawn to his hunched form. She for a moment disregarded the fact she hated him - because something was inquiring inside of her, compelling her to pretend this was any other student at Hogwarts, to see if something was the matter with him.

She took another step and her shoe scuffed on the ground.

Almost before she could blink, Malfoy jerked upright, jumping to his feet and turning on her. Hermione gasped in surprise, flinching as she saw his wand pointed straight between her eyes. It wasn't until he hardened his glare that she realized she had pulled out and was pointing her wand at him too.

"Malfoy-" she choked out in her shock, but her wand remained steadily pointed at his chest.

Draco Malfoy's grey eyes narrowed at her with more disgust than she had ever seen on his face before in the past five years. He looked at Hermione as if she was all the evil scum in the world, as if she was the manifestation of everything he hated and he was angry, disgusted, and annoyed at her all at once.

He jabbed his wand at her, and that was when she noticed his hand was shaking; yet his voice was cold and hard and filled with icy hatred as he spat out, "What do you think you're doing, Mudblood?"

Hermione blinked, affronted. Her momentary curiosity for him waned within her, buffered by the usual irritation she felt setting into her skin at hearing the way he said "mudblood".

She sighed, lowering her wand. "Walking past you," she said finally, exasperatedly.

He didn't lower his, only raised his eyebrow at her. She rolled her eyes, and started walking forward, ignoring the tingles in her stomach. His eyes bore into hers when she was in front of him.

The grey in them held dangerous instability.

"I'll let you get away with it this time," Draco breathed at her. He finally lowered his wand, but when she looked down, his hand was clenched so tightly around it in a fist that his arm was shaking.

She looked at his face again. He didn't seem to notice how tightly he was clenching his arm, and kept glaring at her as she noticed his gaunt face, sunken bags, and tightness around his eyes.

Concern rang like bells in her head, not by her own volition. Once they rang, she could not quiet them, and Hermione blurted out before she could stop herself, "Malfoy… Are you okay?"

Draco recoiled from her, literally taking a step backward.

Hermione knew at once that she had trotted into dangerous territory. She watched cautiously as a series of mixed expressions rapidly flew across his face, until he set his jaw and pushed his mouth in a firm line.

"Granger, you're more bold and stupid than I thought," Malfoy said. He raked his eyes over her face. "What gives you the right to ask that?" He jerked his chin toward the other end of the corridor. "Just go. That's two things I'm letting you off for today."

Hermione stared at him, then shook her head slowly. "You're better saving that pity for yourself, Malfoy."

She stepped back once, then twice, before letting out a long breath and spinning on her heel.

She did not catch the expression that exploded from Draco Malfoy's heart to his face as she left the hallway - the emotion breaking free from the ice mask he had perfected in the past months. It seeped across his skin and bones until every inch of himself was covered, and then he was being consumed once more by pangs of his heart.

I reiterate: it takes only a twist, a coincidence, for the lines of fate to twist.

For example, if Hermione Granger never forgot her book in the Gryffindor Tower, Draco Malfoy never would have realized that it was not the color of her blood he hated most - it was the nosy, unwanted, intrusive warmth that it pumped to her heart.

By the Easter holidays, Draco Malfoy had learned the art of avoiding his parents, aunt, and other Death Eaters in the house, if he could help it. But there was one place he avoided, even more than people: the drawing room.

Draco could never go into the drawing room without hearing her. Granger.

The image of her writhing on the floor under his aunt Bellatrix's wand was blurred at the edges, subject to the abrasive hatred Draco used to toss the memory out of his mind. But no matter what he did, he could not blur the clarity of Granger's screams. They echoed in his mind, ringing in every corner of his brain until he was the one who was blurring, fading into the sharp echoes of her pain and stupid, Gryffindor-ish refusal to speak.

He hated that drawing room. He hated Hermione Granger, now more than he hated even Harry Potter, because at least the memory of his shouts did not stick to him like burrs on wool. He hated to even near that room, yet he was pacing in front of it now, with a disgruntled expression on his face as he finally threw the big doors open.

Draco didn't step in, though he flinched, as if the air of the room and the things that had happened in there was enough to assault him.

"Zabini," he called out coldly. "Get out of here."

A tall, dark-haired boy stood up and turned to face Draco. He chuckled, and Draco wanted to slam the doors shut so he wouldn't have to see his friend standing on the very spot Draco had been standing two weeks ago - or the bareness of his olive-skinned forearm.

"You are the world's most terrible host," Blaise Zabini announced. He did not make an inclination to move.

"I mean it, Zabini." Draco stood undeterred at the door. "Come."

The twinkle in Blaise's eyes faded, but he shrugged. "Can't. I believe your most dreadful, psychopathic aunt requested my presence here. Drawing room."

Draco didn't move. "The walls can hear everything that comes out of your blasted mouth, you know."

"Words are nothing when you have a beautiful face." Blaise flopped back down on the couch as Draco gritted his teeth. "And a beautiful face - that I have."

Draco's mouth twitched, and he took one step into the room, closing the doors behind him. One more. Another, another, another, until he stood in front of Blaise, glaring down at his friend's head of black, curly hair.

"I loathe you," he said from the bottom of his heart, before sitting stiffly next to Blaise.

Blaise was not one to stall or fix his words with art. He went straight to the point, turning to Draco with curious eyes and saying, "Word is that Potter was here."

The blood rushed out of Draco's cheeks. He wondered if Blaise noticed, and stood quickly again, so he wouldn't see that Draco's pale hands had begun to shake. "Are you confirming it or asking, Zabini?"

"Well, you've confirmed it." Blaise leaned forward, clasping his hands together. "What was he like? Who was with him?"

Draco spun on his heel, walking quickly to the window. He heard Blaise get up and follow behind him.

"People," Draco said. "Weasley. That wandmaker, Ollivander. And the - and Granger."

Blaise was silent. Draco wondered how much he understood. "How did they escape?"

"They would have died, if not for Dobby," he revealed after a moment. "She nearly did, would've, by her sheer stupidity-"

He cut himself off and kept his grey eyes determinedly fixed on the window, but saw Blaise's eyes flick over to him in the reflection. "Does that bother you?" Blaise asked quietly, but the drawing room doors slammed open before Draco could respond.

"Draco, my nephew." Draco pushed down the nausea in his stomach that arose at the sound of his aunt's voice. "And Mr. Zabini, welcome."

"It is my pleasure to see you, Madame Lestrange, especially since I imagine you must be quite busy nowadays." Blaise's voice was smooth, even playful as he left Draco at the window to go bow in front of Bellatrix.

"Oh, busy indeed." Bellatrix cackled. "But come. I'm sure you know why I have called you here, Mr. Zabini. Draco? Would you mind leaving your friend here alone with me?"

Draco turned around. He saw Bellatrix's black eyes boring into his stiff form, maybe noting the paleness in his skin. He saw Blaise, smiling pleasantly at Draco even though Draco knew he was aware why Bellatrix had called him here today. He was incredibly good at acting.

Draco met his eyes and nodded. He did not know how this would end; he wondered if Blaise did, and if he did, how he could reconcile himself to the position he liked to call neutral.

"Yes," Draco said, responding to both his aunt and to Blaise, before stalking out of that awful room and shutting the vault of Hermione Granger's presence behind him.

Hermione Granger was running. Not from anything, not from the bangs echoing down the Grand Staircase, but to. To the Great Hall, to the dead lined up in the Great Hall, to the fallen and the living, to Harry and Ron.

Her robes were torn at their sleeves. The steps felt as if they went on forever, but she kept going, kept rushing down -

She bumped into something. She heard a sharp intake of breath, and looked up to see… absolutely nothing.

She reacted almost without thinking. One hand jabbed her wand in the air, and Hermione's other hand lashed out to grasp in front of her. Her fingers caught onto fabric, and she dug her nails in as the invisible air wriggled in its attempt to get away. She poked her wand into something soft, and shouted, "Revealo!"

The air parted. It revealed first the black of the robe she held, then shaking shoulders under the rope, then pale hands holding a wand pointed to the ground, and then the slopes of a face she recognized - and then finally, light blond hair, tarried with dust and dirt.

"Draco," she said, stunned.

Two heartbeats passed before she remembered to lunge forward and wrestle his wand out of his hand - not that he put up much of a struggle, she realized, as she backed away triumphant.

Draco Malfoy stared back at her, pale and without the snarky words that usually came out of his mouth. She remembered watching him cower in front of the older Death Eaters, before Harry helped him on the battlefield. And he was here now, alive but clearly not where he was supposed to be, if he was walking around invisible like that -

"Will you kill me, Granger?" Malfoy's grey eyes locked on her eyes.

When she didn't say anything, he commented, rather hopefully, "You can't kill."

"Neither can you," Hermione spat out. "You are a coward, Malfoy. Hiding out in here while the rest of your side assembles out there. Found out you don't like being part of the Dark Lord's troops, did you?"

Draco's fists clenched. "Shut up, Granger."

Hermione narrowed her eyes at him. She did not know what to do. She was tempted to bind him up and just stuff him in the nearest corner - but judging from the dejected stance he was in, she wondered if that was precisely what he wanted.

She watched as his eyes dropped down from her face. They honed in on something below her chin, and he stared, almost transfixed. It took only a few seconds for Hermione to figure out what he was staring at.

"Your aunt's gift to me," she snarled. Draco looked up again, a strange expression on his face, and she thought she had never seen him more pitiable as he did now, alone. And as she held her wand in front of her, she found she did feel for him a little bit. He was a coward for avoiding the side he chose and probably would choose if given the option again - but then again, he was not with that side now. He was trying to escape from it.

Hermione held up the wand she took from Draco. With a sharp press onto the wood, she snapped the wand in half.

She faced Draco and hoped he could feel the pity radiating off of her in both softness and contempt. She took a deep breath.

"I'll let you go, Malfoy." Hermione winced. "But if I see you again being the slightest bit of a threat - I won't let you go so easily."

She waited until he stopped giving her that appraising look and stumbled up the stairs, probably to hide himself somewhere else. Then Hermione turned around and continued hastily down to the Great Hall.

(She couldn't quite shake off the image of his face from her mind.)

Neither could the dear, conflicted, weakened boy. I felt one of his strings vibrating, and my fingers vibrated with it.

A single twitch can change everything. Most of the time, I am the one who flinches or twitches - but this time, it was all Draco Malfoy's doing. More than anything else, more than his uncomfortable guilt he would unwillingly harbor for years after the war, more than his learning to accept the place in society he had put himself in, his ability to make his own string vibrate like that made my fingers, one tied with his string, one tied with the string of Hermione Granger, inch together slowly.

He didn't know when it began, that intruding flutter that pooled in his stomach when he saw her throughout a day of work at the Ministry.

As the Head of the Department of Law Enforcement, she was incredibly intrusive, too, always popping up out of the corner of his eye, or sounding her voice from her office, so that the more Draco tried to get away, the more he seemed to be pulled back into her voice and presence.

Basically, Draco Malfoy was aware that there was something severely impaired about him, and he had no idea when it began or why it was even there.

He was mulling over this annoying fact as he ate lunch with Blaise sitting across from him, reading an Auror case he had been assigned to - the first since he got recruited four months ago - when the object of his musings entered the Ministry cafeteria. She looked around, her brown eyes critically scanning every point of the cafeteria until she was quite suddenly staring straight at him.

Draco nearly choked on his food as he spun to face Blaise, his shoulders stiffening.

"Oi, Zabini. Can you look up for a second?"

Blaise, the idiot he was, smirked as he took a bite of his sandwich. "Yes. But I don't want to. This case is much more interesting than your face."

"Just look up for two seconds, you bas-"

"Malfoy?"

Draco winced. Blaise looked up, and his face lit up into a grin. "If it isn't Granger."

"Hi, Zabini." Draco finally looked up to see Hermione Granger in her blue robes, standing next to their table. She looked at him. "Can I sit here? I have some things to clarify with the report you gave me yesterday, Malfoy."

Blaise scooted over, and Hermione sat behind him, pulling out a notebook and quill as Draco stared at her, wanting to throttle his own heart if that meant it would stop beating all quickly and making him look a fool, in front of Blaise who was observing Draco with a growing smirk on his cocky face -

Hermione was flipping through her notebook. "I swear I put it in here," she muttered to herself. She wrinkled her nose in annoyance. "I must have left it back in my office." She looked up anxiously at Draco. "You'll still be here on lunch break, right? I can go grab it really quickly."

Blaise kicked Draco under the table so hard that Draco jumped in his seat. Hermione arched her eyebrows at him questioningly.

Draco threw Blaise a glare before getting up and telling Hermione, "We can just go to your office to meet. I'm done here anyway."

Hermione agreed, "Alright. Sorry about that." She got up as well, nodding a goodbye to Blaise as Draco began walking ahead toward the elevators.

"Draco," she said, as they waited for a free lift. "I've been meaning to ask. How's the new job?"

"Improvement from the old one," he said, his mouth curving into a smirk.

"Good." Hermione looked at him with those brown eyes, and shook her head, almost disbelievingly. "I still can't believe - you're in the law enforcement department now."

"Are you implying something?" The lift arrived with a ding, and they stepped in it together.

Hermione flashed a smile at him. "Just wondering what my younger self would think if she heard that." She grinned devilishly. "Take advantage of the fact and boss you around."

"As if you don't do that already." At her grunt of protest, he drawled, "Don't worry, I'm kidding, Granger.

Her eyes flickered over to him once more, but this time when their eyes met, he did not look away. Instead, he angled his body toward her a little, tilting his head in contemplation.

For a brief moment, Draco thought about her back in school, and how much he had despised her and Potter and Weasley, until sixth year came and he discovered that there were things he hated much more. He thought of the scar he knew was still on her neck, saw the warmth in her gaze as she looked at him now.

The lift lurched to a stop. One of the quills resting on top of Hermione's notebook rolled off and onto the ground.

Hermione and Draco bent down at the same time, and reached for the quill. Draco reached it first, but Hermione's hand followed, and landed along the curves of his fingers. Immediately, the annoying feeling in his stomach (he was going to murder it, whatever it was) intensified. He swallowed, noting his and Granger's proximity, looking away and closing off his facial expressions before they could meet eye contact with their faces so close.

"This is why I don't do good deeds," he said, standing up deliberately. "Most people try to do them on their own."

Hermione, still bent over, rolled her eyes. "You are so arrogant, Draco." She got up and leaned against the railing next to him.

And standing there with their backs against the railing of the lift, Draco flexing his hand within the folds of his robes, there was a slight smile on both of their faces. And when the lift finally shuddered to the stop, the sound it made clicking into the wall sounded almost like the twang of a taut string being strummed into place.

Those like Death and Cupid are harbingers of fate, meaning they relish on their ability to bet on the paths of human lives.

But as Destiny, I am the one that creates those paths. Cupid's arrows may be more ornate, but if you look closely, each arrow follows the path of a thin red string connecting one person to another. That string splits into two majestic ones, twirling together in a mass of palpitations and sweet melodies, until they mesh together to a knot crafted out of the strength of possibilities.

For any of you who read my story "Soulmates" that I wrote way long ago, consider this part of that story, a.k.a. another set of moments that Cupid didn't feel the need to touch upon in that story.

~Summer