Hey! So, I started writing this the day before yesterday for procrastination, and it has ended up being one of those really important things that you write. And here we are, me having written lots every day and having just finished the final part tonight. It's a little different from usual.

This is going to be in four parts, and I hope you enjoy this!

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Hermione

Dating Draco Malfoy. One of the less believable things I've done in my life, even with that crazy Wizard War a few years back. I'm never quite sure how it all happened. One day he wasn't in my life, the next he seemed to be there every second, with his sarcastic remarks not quite hitting the hurtful button anymore. Instead he just seemed… Tame. One day he wasn't in the office, the next he was waiting in the elevator with me, and walking just as purposefully towards the Magical Relations offices, and dumping his own messenger bag onto the empty desk next to mine. In the exact place where I could not ignore him. He set up a quill, two ink bottles, and what honestly looked like a copy of the quibbler, and turned to face me.

Go on, ask, he seemed to be determined to demand. I raised an eyebrow at him instead, and opened the drawers for the files in my desk, beginning to rifle through them. He hauled out his own bumf of paper and remained staring at me for the next thirty seconds.

"Nice to meet you. I'm Draco Malfoy, I like reading, and I am a hard worker. What's your name?" he asked, breaking through the silence. Complex. What is he on?

"Hermione Granger. Hard worker, love reading, and tend to work alone."

"You didn't work alone in the war."

"That's different." I paused, thinking. "I saw your case file. The Bulgarians weren't impressed, but you did a good thing."

"How did you get clearance for that?"

"I'm high security level."

"So, you're important."

"Not important enough to warrant actual change," I quipped finally.

He smirked, muttered a smiling okay and went back to his papers. I churn through the next ten pages of parchment, analysing the data quickly and making several notes in red ink along the margin about things that should be changed for the new Ethiopian Treaty. 'Offer them more goats' was not a good enough improvement from the last things I suggested, so I crossed it out. Beside me, Malfoy uttered a single harsh causing my annoyance at him to flare up suddenly.

"Sorry, what did you say?"

"Maybe we should offer them more goats, that's all," he replied, shrugging. I scowled.

The days pass a little like this for a long enough time. Banter-filled mornings, lunchtimes, afternoons, and long evenings when things go wrong during the day. One instance in which Malfoy picked up Chinese Takeout and wine while we sorted through the latest trouble in Hungary. He bought red, which is always a mistake for me in particular. Sifting through the latest news stories, we found humour in everything, and migrated to the floor of the small room.

It's always difficult to remember what happened next. It being a Thursday, we couldn't leave to sleep in the next day, so intended to just wait out the drama of the problem. (The Hungarian Minister of Magic decided he wanted to transport seven Hungarian Horntail's to be representatives of Hungary in the Quidditch World Cup, and obviously not many others were in agreement with him.)

I was slumped against the wall, wine glass tumbling back against my chest, and Malfoy was writing a letter, balanced upon his pile of folders he left in the office after the first month of arriving. He took a bite of his cold chicken while I took a prawn cracker from out under his nose. I'm not sure whether he was laughing at me or him at this stage. I laughed along with him, anyhow.

We played a game called twenty-one questions. Surprisingly something he hadn't heard of it, it being a muggle thing, usually belonging in a world filled with silly dramas and not magical ones.

I told him that too, and yet we played.

Favourite colours, films, and other questions which were more open than others. Ones about the war, and about family, and things which are fuelled by the red wine that we could no longer escape in our states, occasionally scratching out suggestions onto the work, but not really paying attention anymore.

We worked through the night.

At two in the morning, I was feeling that horrible thing called attraction, and towards Draco Malfoy. His smiles seemed softer – he was probably just drunk – and his remarks seemed even more less offensive than they had been as of late. His hair was funny, and his eyes were so blue that they shocked me every so often, when I asked him about the nature of other animals in Hungary, and when he asked me whether we should arrange a meeting with Magical Sports. I was reminded of him playing quidditch – something I hadn't been interested in up until that point. I wasn't reminded of how much of an arse he could be, but what a brilliant man he had become.

It was hot in the office, and the lights were off. His leg nudged my own by accident as he fell a little bit further into light sleep. I poked him awake again, as his quill slipped further down the parchment. He smiled blearily at me.

At three in the morning, we had both finished another glass of wine, and broken out some popcorn from my drawer for emergencies.

"I really think everyone would agree to just the one Horntail," Draco mused.

"You're still on that? I'm working on the UN agreement," I yawned.

"Someone tired?"

"Maybe," I muttered, smirking at him. "One Horntail is more reasonable than seven, that is true." He smiled back at me, sipping at his nearly empty wineglass. "I should be in bed," I laughed. He didn't reply to that one, brushing my arm as he reached around me for a crinkled and slightly chewy prawn cracker. It crunched into our small silence. Gross.

At three-thirty I was staring at him again. He looked strange when he read, in a good way. His brows furrowed when he concentrated, and as he asked me to translate a rune used by the Swedish Head of Games Committee.

"Broomstick," I translated.

"That does make sense," he conceded.

"What's the sentence?"

"The keeper has a new broomstick. For a moment there, I was honestly convinced it said 'chalice', and that would make no sense." I laughed, leaning closer to glance over the script. "It looks similar, right?" he asked, turning to face me.

Suddenly our noses are almost touching and I am stuck halfway between moving in and moving very far away at a very quick pace. But Draco isn't moving away either.

Slowly, experimentally, we both move closer, our noses bumping lightly, and lips brushing against each other. For a moment, it's not wrong. Then for longer than a moment, it's wonderful. It's clear that the attraction is reciprocated, which feels good. It feels right. But then we stop, as Malfoy pulled away from me.

"We need to finish this," he murmured, more quietly than ever.

"Okay," I replied, because I was convincing myself I was too drunk at this point to care whether he wanted to kiss me or not.

At five in the morning we sent everything off.

Seven owls, and three large letters to the post office.

That's everything I tried to remember.

Three, barely endurable, weeks later, Draco Malfoy asked me out.

"Let's go out," he said. Not in any particular way. He just said it. Maybe a suggestion. "But not Chinese. That was nice, but too much takeout and I'll get bored of one of the greatest muggle things."

"When, where, and why?" I didn't turn to face him, instead working my way through a proposal to the Minister of Magic, Kingsley Shacklebolt.

"Friday night, a restaurant, and because I like you."

"Okay."

"Really?" He sounded surprised.

"Yes."

Friday night, he picked me up from my apartment in the city, smiling a little too awkwardly for my liking, but appearing to be pleasant enough. I donned my jacket and lock the door. When he started walking I noticed a limp he'd got since earlier in the week.

"What happened to your leg?" I asked, politely enough. He paused.

"Oh, I fell over the over day," he replied once he seemed to get the other part of his brain back into gear. I frowned back at him but let it go.

The night passed in a much better way than our drunken evening had, with Draco being courteous, and neither of us having to do work in between bites of meal and sips of wine – white this time, so I could keep my head a little more – and asking even more questions than the previous night. At the end of the meal, we split the bill – because I hate to have it any other way – and he walked me back through the twilit streets. At some point, he started holding my hand, and it made me feel nervous, but a good kind of nervous.

I didn't invite him inside on the first date, or the second, or third. By the fourth, I was invested in him. By this, I mean that I felt the attraction on a whole different level. Seeing him in the office. Getting an owl or memo from him. Anything which reminded me of him. It all made my tummy churn.

He was invited to brunch with my parents after the third month of us dating. When he arrived, he was limping again, and his smile wasn't quite as brilliant as it usually was, at least for the first half an hour. After that, he was joking with my father, and politely explaining his mother's loving and stranger antics to my mother, and holding my hand beneath the table. After ten minutes, I began to notice other things about him and the way he was holding himself. He wasn't sitting upright, and he was tense.

"What's wrong?" I asked him as we were leaving.

"It's nothing," and he pecked me lightly on the cheek, hugging my mother and shaking hands with my father in the ultimate sense of formality. It was sweet, but I was worried still. We held hands walking around with my parents until it was time to leave. Then we returned to my flat. I asked him to move in with me, and he agreed, albeit less enthusiastically than I originally imagined. But he agreed, nonetheless.

Two weeks later, and my apartment was filled with boxes of our things. We laughed and smiled on that day, relishing in the joys of finally being able to be together for long into the night, and well into the next day. We managed to make it work while at the Ministry as well, signing disclosure contracts which announced we had moved in together We were consummate professionals, as well as unashamed lovers. It was almost complete bliss. Draco and I shared everything together, except one thing.

One night he came home bruised and bleeding and far less confident that he ever was.

"Hey, Hermione, do you have any of those frozen peas?" he called through to the lounge, his voice nasally from the bleeding nose.

"Oh my god, what happened to you?" I cried out, rushing to the freezer and grabbing a roll of kitchen towels to try and stem the blood flow dribbling over his pale hands.

"It's nothing. Don't worry about it. Just some idiot," he remarked casually, but flinched away when I moved the peas towards his face. I frowned, entirely uncertain. "Hermione, I'm alright. I'm here with you. Everything is good." And he smiled through the blood, as if he really did mean it.

"I'm serious Draco, what happened?"

"I just got in a fight I wasn't meant to be in," he answered easily, wincing. "You know, drunk people can't throw punches." He laughed unsuccessfully.

Three days later it happened again, but he didn't tell me. I saw the bloody kitchen towels in the bin, and I noticed how his eye was yellowing very slightly, different from the bruises he had from the other night.

"Who's doing this to you?" I interrogated.

"Who's doing what?" he replied, completely innocently.

The next evening, he told me that he loves me, and that it's important that I know that, no matter what. I wasn't sure whether I should be scared, but I was worried for him no matter what. I loved him too. We kissed lightly and settled down to watch Britain's Got Talent, with me not knowing how close I should get without hurting him. It seemed impossible that he wasn't keeping something from me, but at the same time I couldn't believe it.

Life continued in almost the same was as before for an entire year. Draco and I were in love, and it was wonderful to be so free with someone. Our jobs were leading us all over the globe, together, and our families had even met. There was barely any hostility in our friendship groups.

We had a perfect day around Autumn time, nearing winter.

Pancakes for breakfast. Morning watching television. Then out to see a bit of the beautiful corners of the city we have both grown to love even more than before. The sky was a clear, pastel blue, and it was cold enough to wear a woollen hat and scarf. Draco wore his Slytherin colours, and I opted for a scarf my mother had bought me for Christmas the previous year. We laughed, ate dessert in the middle of the day, and then took Chinese takeout back to our apartment, with some red wine and popcorn. Like the very first night we connected, those many months ago.

He told me that he loved me, again. Sat beside me on the sofa, he had put down his wineglass. An expression had come over him. Something more vulnerable than anything I had seen before. I brushed the hair out of his face and kissed him lightly on the lips, thanking him for the most perfect day I'd had. He touched my nose with his and then he said something. What was it that he said?

I think he said he was sorry. Why?

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Thanks for reading!