AN: This fic will update every Saturday plus a few bonus dates.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

When does one begin to forgive?

Is it when you realize that you become what you're immersed in? Is it when terrified gray eyes meet yours across a drawing room and all he can do is refuse to identify you? Is it when he forbids his cronies from using Unforgivables in the Room of Requirement? Or is it later? Maybe it's after the battle is won and you're speaking for him in front of the Wizengamot because he really doesn't deserve to go to Azkaban for being a child in a monumentally difficult situation where there's really no feasible choice to be made outside of the theoretical ones that the people who don't have to live with the fallout pose. It's so easy to stand back and judge in the aftermath when you're free of the consequences and with no appreciation of the situation as it's lived.

Maybe that's where it starts. When you realize that he's really just walked a parallel path next to you, except his is on the other side of the drawn line. When you discover that everything after a certain point has been out of survival instead of belief and desire, and you can't help but wonder where that invisible point of no return lays, whether it was when you met on the train at eleven years old or on a battlefield seven years later or any of the thousands of points between those two pieces of time. The realization that there is no out to the situation at hand and that you just have to play the cards you're dealt in the smartest way possible, just to make it through to see the next round or even the next sunrise. Maybe that's where the empathy starts, and you can begin to heal and learn and grow and move on to the rest of your life, to bigger and better things as you do indeed begin to forgive and then later wholly so in the fullness of time.

Hermione knew that she wasn't fully at the end of the realization because the fullness of time was not quite here yet, but she felt that she was nearing the precipice that came before that. She had been able to step back and think things through objectively during the time away from her two best friends that she used to study and sit for her N.E.W.T.s, seeing as she had been unable to return to redo her Seventh Year at Hogwarts.

Her eyes spied a familiar flash of platinum, and she tracked her gaze back across the room to find him. When she spotted him again, he was standing across the hall, leaning against the wall. Blaise was on one side and Theo on his other, as if they were creating a buffer for him. He'd passed through her mind at the most random of times since she'd testified for him.

Sometimes it was when she was with her friends, and she wondered if he had been able to reconcile with his own friends after his father had turned on so many of his fellow Death Eaters.

Sometimes it was when she was watching Harry and Ginny zoom across the sky at the Burrow, and she would wonder if he was able to have the simple happiness from flying again, having remembered his obnoxious bragging from the First Year's flying class. Hermione had heard some people's punishment after the war involved not being able to fly a broom and had been curious if his wings had been clipped too.

At other times it was when she was alone, and she wondered if he came away from the whole thing as damaged as she was and hoped he wasn't.

Brown eyes briefly met dark blue as Theo turned his head, and she realized she was staring. She turned her head in time to accept the glass of champagne that Harry was trying to get her attention with and graciously accepted the flute. She sipped it and chatted with Harry, listening offhandedly as Ginny chided Ron for piling a plate as high as he could with hors d'oeuvres rather than eating like a civilized person. At least some things never changed.

Harry's attention was eventually called elsewhere, much to his exasperation. All of a sudden Hermione looked up and realized just how full this hall was of people and just how many of them she didn't know. Heat prickled at her skin uncomfortably as her stomach roiled. Her eyes shifted everywhere, cataloging everyone and everything. Her wand was holstered to her forearm under long sleeves, just a moment's reach away, although somewhere in the back of her mind was the knowledge that she should refrain from doing this at all costs. Her beaded bag was on her hip. It had everything necessary to go on the run indefinitely and quite comfortably this time around. She subconsciously began cataloging people as her eyes came across them but once she got to the other side of the room, she stumbled. Theo was still there, along with Blaise, but Malfoy was missing, and now he'd thrown her entire train of thought off. Subsequently, it was the only thing keeping her calm so she resorted to the last thing she knew to do: flee.

She said nothing to her companions but began to head to the back of the hall, just not to the main doors that opened up to the large courtyard where there were even more people about. No, she went left down the largely empty corridor. The passageway had dimmed considerably from where it opened at the large room but something called to her, telling her an exit was imminent if she just kept going.

Minutes later she slipped out the door of the Manor house that this particular gala was being hosted at this month and breathed in the cool air, sucking it down by the lungful as she desperately tried to get her breathing under control. Yet again, her newly acquired panic reared its ugly head when she was in a crowd. It wasn't the first one she'd slipped out of and if she had to keep attending them, she somehow knew it wouldn't be the last. It wasn't enough, the night terrors, the new habit of food hoarding, the constant requirement for her peace of mind to be prepared for literally anything. Her beaded bag was on her person at all times, tonight pretending to be a broach. Of course, that wasn't enough, and she had to add that she now panicked when she was around too many people at once and couldn't keep track of everyone in attendance.

That had been the most belatedly realized gift she'd received from the Battle of Hogwarts, an odd form of agoraphobia. Hermione was fine if she knew everyone who was present but if not, her mind seemed to want to play tricks by making her think she'd seen someone who wasn't actually there or someone who'd died on that fateful night. Her biggest moments of terror outside of the major events were during the battle when she hadn't been engaged in a duel. It had been the times she'd come within a breath of cursing someone who was on her side, oftentimes someone she knew. Those near-misses had branded themselves into her memory enough to do this to her.

The clacking of heels on stone coupled with her own pounding heart had drowned out the sound of her name being called from near where she'd exited. All she knew was that she needed to leave, to get home and away from this place before she landed herself in St. Mungo's psych ward with Neville's parents. Hermione consulted the mental map of the place she'd constructed and headed off towards where she intuitively guessed the Apparition point to be. Her chest was still heaving and why couldn't she get enough air?

Her mind was reeling. She still didn't draw her wand, not knowing if it was safe to any potential bystanders, but she badly wanted to. Even just the feel of it in her hand was calming, grounding. It made her feel in control again.

The deep, familiar voice calling her name didn't penetrate the haze her mind was wrapped in until Hermione finally lost her footing on the cobblestone and went to tumble. Strong arms pulled her back into a hard, warm chest as he heaved her back upright. The slamming of her heart almost blocked out his voice as he began to coach her to breathe. In through the nose and out through the mouth, slowly.

He had to have been familiar, else she would have already cursed him to Bulgaria and back. Safe, an inner voice intoned. He laced their fingers together and began counting, ordering her to breathe in with him to the slow count of four, hold for seven, release for eight. His fingertips tapped along the back of her hand with each count, back and forth along her metatarsals. The feel of him breathing in time with her helped to slowly bring her back to Earth, helped her to wrestle everything back in line.

Finally, when everything settled and the sound of tinkling fountains streamed back into her world, she found herself standing still circled in strong arms. She turned to see who'd saved her and jerked a bit as brown eyes met a pair of calm gray ones.

"Malfoy!" Surprise colored her features.

"Granger," he greeted again, now that she could actually hear him.

He stepped away a foot or so to give her space, sitting down on the side of a fountain and pulling out a cigarette. Lighting up, he watched as she studied her surroundings. She hadn't been out here before but took comfort that even in the midst of panic, she had indeed known where the closest apparition point had been.

"Crowd?" he asked absently.

She paused a moment before nodding faintly as she took a moment to look at him. He was dressed impeccably as always, hair perfectly in place, posture immaculate. There was something in the set of his eyes, however, that spoke of exhaustion. She knew because she saw it in the mirror every single day. She would bet that some glamour charms were in use.

A pale, long-fingered hand patted the space next to him and reluctantly, she sat. She fidgeted, playing with her fingers as he studied her from his peripheral vision in perfect stillness.

"I've had that same reaction. Only advice I have for you is to keep calming draughts on hand and find a vantage point where you're on the outskirts. For the events held at the Manor, I go up to the second-story balcony. So few people know how to get up there that it makes it tolerable," he said, rambling to put her at ease.

She nodded. "That makes sense. It's just difficult since I don't know most of these places," she said, shrugging.

It was surprising he would reveal this to her of all people. Maybe there was something to be said of kindred sufferers.

"I can help next time, if you like," he offered lowly, glancing at her to gauge her response.

She waited a beat, staring back into those steady eyes. Desperately, Hermione wished she could wear a mask as well as he.

"I would appreciate that, thank you," she said with a small smile, "and I also appreciate your help earlier."

He merely nodded before putting out his finished cigarette and vanishing the evidence with a wave of his fingers.

The desire to get back home to her warm, soft bed made itself known again and she stood, him following suit.

"I'll walk you out," he offered, holding his arm out. Hermione caught a glint in the light and noticed he was still wearing the same silver thumb ring he always had.

She nodded in thanks and let him lead her, his warm hand on her back, to a decorative gated grotto. He stopped on the other side, watching as she passed through the wards and pulled her wand.

"I'll owl you," he said.

She waited a beat, stunned. She had no idea why he would owl her of all people, but she supposed she would just have to wait and find out.

"I'll be looking for it," she replied, staring into his eyes once more before Disapparating with the smallest pop.

She arrived at her destination next to the superfluous mailbox, hurrying up the walk and into her warm house, immediately feeling relief when she got inside. After she'd shucked her dress, had half a bottle of wine and a long soothing, steaming hot bath, she allowed her mind to replay the events in the garden. A thousand questions spun through her mind that she had not the faintest inclination of an answer to.

They'd not spoken two words to each other since his trial when he'd thanked her before disappearing down the hall with Narcissa to get processed out and released. He'd hated her since they'd met at eleven years old when he'd first shown her exactly how much like Lucius he could be, and it had largely not changed over the years. Although, she realized with some thought, that after a certain point they had mainly ignored one another, and Draco seemed to reserve all of his animosity for Harry and Ron. She put the entire thing out of her mind, intent on enjoying the bubbles while they lasted.

Two hours, dinner, and a rom-com later, she heard the tapping of an owl at her window.

She didn't know whether to be surprised at seeing Hades, Malfoy's eagle owl, or not. She'd almost expected him to have said it out of politeness if she hadn't already known that when he said that he would do something, he meant it. She'd heard he'd been punished by Voldemort himself for his hesitation to kill Dumbledore and again after they'd escaped the Manor. There was no telling what Voldemort had forced Draco to do under duress in all that time from the summer before Sixth Year until the Final Battle. Whatever it was, it had resulted in a tangible change from the spoiled, pompous, my-father-will-hear-about-this blonde brat he'd been into a quiet, reserved man.

She gave the owl a few treats and watched as he flew back off, closing up behind him. Back to the couch she went, to the remnants of the earlier opened bottle of wine and chocolate torte she'd been picking at.

The note was on thick, expensive cardstock, sealed with silver wax and the Malfoy crest. Popping the seal, she was surprised at the lunch invitation for the next day.

She stared at it while debating. She had a thousand questions she wanted answers to. Least of all, why did she feel safe tucked against him as he coached her back to rationality? Why had he done it in the first place? Had he changed his beliefs at all? Question after question zipped through her brain before she finally tossed the note down and summoned some stationary of her own. If she wanted answers, she'd have to meet with him.

Hermione quickly wrote a reply to send off in the morning before going to bed, wondering exactly when she fell down the rabbit hole into a world where Malfoy calming her, relating to her, and asking her out to lunch wasn't insane. She batted the thought away again of how she had felt safe when he'd pulled her against him. That was too much to add to the pile for one day.

She finally got settled in bed before going through her sleep ritual of relaxing every muscle in her body and shutting off her thoughts.

That night she dreamed of long, strong fingers counting down over and over against her skin as a low voice spoke into her ear.