"I suppose we weren't that great together. Not really."

She stirred her tea clockwise three times. It was what she always did, after putting in milk and two sugars – it was a wonder the sweet, milky mess didn't make her recoil. They'd been working together for five years now, and he still hadn't been able to convince her to try a nice cup of Darjeeling with a slice of lemon instead.

"I should have known it wouldn't last when he wouldn't let me get a third bookcase," she said. "Never trust a man who doesn't like books."

"Didn't you end up getting one anyway?" her interlocutor asked.

"Yes, but that's not the point. What I mean is..." Despite sounding as confident in her conclusions as ever, she looked away from her cup of tea and let her gaze drift.

There were plenty of things to look at in the park, surrounded as they were by Muggles of all descriptions. The little coffee shop by the pond had been invaded by Spanish language students, pushing aside the usual clientele of office people in suits and the odd tourist. The sun was shining and not even the eager chatter of the students could drown out the frenetic chirping from the bushes around them. Little blue and yellow flower buds were scattered on the warm brown earth, where a herbaceous border would bloom later on in the year. The weather was almost warm enough to take your coat off. It seemed odd to be talking about breakups when spring and new beginnings were upon them.

Unwittingly echoing his thoughts, Hermione summed it up: "It's strange, but I'm almost relieved it's over. It's like it's done with now, so I can start again."

"Does this mean you'll finally tell me what Seamus had done that time you came into work with blue pixie wings?" While Draco had a long-term objective in mind, he wasn't about to turn down an opportunity to gather a little blackmail material.

"You wish!"

"Here, you look like you need another glass." Draco pushed the half-full bottle of quite nice Bordeaux across the table to Hermione, who poured it into her glass with scant regard for the vintner's hard work. She tossed back most of it, and set her glass back on the table with a little too much force.

"Bugger," she muttered at the mess. Draco vanished it.

"Tell me," he commanded. It wasn't just idle curiosity: something was obviously wrong. She hated high heels, and she wasn't even looking comfortable in her more-fashionable-than-usual dress. Meeting her at Davenport's was the icing on the cake. It was Draco's kind of place, filled with hard-eyed pure-bloods with more taste than brains, and the last thing he'd expected was to run into Hermione sitting on a lonely barstool, defiantly stirring a sickly-looking cocktail. He'd thought she'd relax once he'd got her into a booth with something decent to drink, but apparently it was worse than that.

"There's nothing to tell. Other than that Blaise is an idiot, but you probably knew that." She still wouldn't look at him.

"That became painfully obvious around fifth year." Draco had to admit that Blaise had been markedly less stupid about certain things than he had been himself, for instance in refusing to join Voldemort's side at the height of the war. However, if Hermione was happy to disregard the past he was perfectly willing to join in.

"Maybe I should have asked you about him before I agreed to go out with him." Hermione looked like she actually was considering it. "Would have saved me a wasted evening."

"Rest assured I have an inexhaustible fund of incriminating anecdotes about my fellow Slytherins, for future reference."

Hermione cracked a smile at that, and Draco noticed that her shoulders had relaxed a little.

"Cross-referenced and colour-coded, of course?" she asked.

"Naturally. You know how I enjoy my filing." They leaned towards each other, seemingly oblivious to the well-dressed crowd right next to them. Like they were the only people there who really mattered. "So tell me," Draco demanded. "In the interest of keeping my material current, what did Blaise to do incur your displeasure?"

This time, she actually told him.

By the time he'd got his breath back and hauled himself back up to a sitting position, Hermione had finished the better part of the bottle. Draco couldn't care less – he hadn't laughed that much for years.

"A threesome? With his ex? He's an even bigger chancer than I thought!"

"I told you he was an idiot."

Draco suspected that Blaise had said some less complimentary things about Hermione's sexual prowess (her nickname in Slytherin had been the Virgin Saint of Gryffindor, after all) – his lunatic request wasn't enough to explain her strained demeanour when Draco had bumped into her. Hermione seemed to have brushed it off now, though – his laughter seemed to have dissolved the last bit of tension, and she was her usual self as she got them a second bottle of the same wine.

Maybe Draco should have warned her before she put in the order. He did enjoy listening to her lecturing the waiter about the evils of using unpaid elves to make wine, though.

"This is nice," Hermione said.

That was an understatement: they were on the grounds of Malfoy Manor, in the semi-wild parkland beyond the formal gardens. The elves had spread a blanket and set up a sumptuous picnic (Draco had sworn them to secrecy, in case Hermione asked them who'd prepared it) among the bluebells, and the bright spring sunshine traced its way to them through brand new green leaves, almost transparent in their freshness.

"I thought you needed cheering up."

"Who would have thought you, of all people, actually had a heart?"

"Oh, this is all for my own benefit," Draco said, entirely truthfully. "I hardly want to work with a watering pot, do I?" he added for good measure.

She was about to retort, but then her face softened: "Really. I mean it. Thank you."

This was the moment Draco had been waiting for, but he suddenly didn't know what to say. A tell-tale heat crept up his throat, and he actually stammered: "I – I'm glad. You needed a break."

"That I did. You won't make me believe you did all this yourself, Mr Can't Even Butter A Slice Of Toast," she said, and they left the unfamiliar grounds of actually speaking about their feelings behind.

Draco knew better than to mention Ronald Weasley. Still, the ginger fool's presence hung over the afternoon like a particularly irksome cloud. It was testament to Weasley's monumental stupidity that he'd now let Hermione slip out of his hands not once, but twice. Draco would have been applauding recent developments, if it hadn't been for the way Hermione's smile never quite reached her eyes.

This time, it would take more than a bottle of wine to fix things.

For once, it wasn't raining buckets on the day of the yearly interdepartmental Quidditch match. Most of the Ministry had come out to play or to support their team. It had taken Draco a lot of adroit elbowing to clear a small space for them by the tea tent while Hermione got them refreshments. She was poking fun at the grass stains on Draco's robes when her easy expression was replaced with a tense little smile aimed somewhere over his left shoulder.

Draco turned around with his best sneer at the ready: "Weasley. And Potter, what a delightful surprise."

Both ignored him.

"Hermione, you've got to – " Weasley started angrily, before Potter cut him off with a well-timed elbow and a meaningful cough.

"We – I just wanted to check that you're all right. You haven't been to either The Burrow or our house for ages, and Ron says you've moved out of the flat..."

"Maybe Ronald should have told you what I said when I left, too," Hermione said, grasping her cup so tight it was shaking slightly. You could almost hear the china crack under the pressure.

Weasley's face turned an unflattering shade of red, but Potter refused to be sidetracked: "It wouldn't kill you to tell people who care about you that you're OK, you know."

"Don't tell me that you haven't been keeping tabs on me at work, because I won't believe you," she warned Potter.

"Hermione, we both know you'd drag yourself in to work even if you were dying of Spattergroit – "

"It's not fatal," Draco helpfully pointed out – sometimes, it was painfully obvious that Potter was a half-blood.

" – so that's hardly an indication." Potter didn't seem to have acquired better manners since Hogwarts, and simply ignored Draco. "How are you, really?" he asked Hermione instead.

"I'm fine, Harry. Or I will be." She relaxed a little, before Weasley unwisely cleared his throat. "If you just wanted to see how I was, why on earth did you bring Ron?" Hermione glared at her former lover – partner, Draco corrected himself, he would not go there – like he was a particularly disappointing lab result.

"He brought himself," Potter explained. "Once he'd seen you with Draco, I couldn't shake him off."

Since when was he on first name terms with Potter? Oh, yes, Draco remembered now – the Ministry Christmas party last year was mostly a drunken blur, but he did remember shaking hands with Potter at some point. He swore never to drink mead again.

"Stop talking about me as if I'm not here!" Weasley decided to enter the fray. Draco shifted a little so he had his wand ready; it was only when he'd shook it out of his sleeve and into his hand that he noticed Potter had done the same. He resolutely ignored the sheepish smile on the other man's face and focused all his attention on Hermione instead.

"That would indicate you have something useful to contribute to the discussion. Based on prior experience I rather doubt that's the case," she told Weasley.

"You – "

Weasley was still struggling to come up with a retort when she continued: "Regardless of what passes as acceptable discourse in the Quidditch changing room, most of us tend to employ words with several syllables when we'd like to make a point."

Weasley's initial blush had faded, but now the angry red returned with a vengeance.

"I'll – " he said thickly, his arm instinctively fumbling for his wand.

"If you raise your wand at her I'll feed you to the Thestrals. In small pieces." Draco had aimed for a disinterested drawl, but it came out more tense than he intended.

"You don't have any Thestrals." Hermione looked amused rather than angry.

"Yes, I do. I'm cross-breeding them with the winged horses."

"If you've finished discussing Care of Magical Creatures..." Potter had wrestled down Weasley's wand arm. The other wizard was looking mutinous but seemed to have realised that he'd come off worse in an altercation, whether verbal or magical. "Hermione, Draco, nice to see you. Enjoy the rest of the match. Hermione, come and see us soon," Potter said. "Ginny says hi, and not to mind her idiot brother. Ron, we're leaving."

"You really don't need to defend me, you know," Hermione told Draco when Potter finally had managed to redirect Weasley's attention to the impending Quidditch match instead of glowering darkly at them across the crowd. "Last time I checked, I could hex you into the next room before you'd even got your shields up."

"Oh, it wasn't that I didn't think you'd be able to do it yourself." Draco cleared an invisible speck of dust off his sleeve. Being covered in grass stains after being kicked off his broom by a stray Bludger didn't mean he had to give up on his appearance completely. "I just figured you'd be the prime suspect in case anything would happen to him."

It was the first time she'd laughed properly since she and the Weasel had broken up. Draco chalked the day down as a win, even though his team was thoroughly beaten by the Department of Magical Maintenance.

It had been obvious to the meanest intelligence that Hermione had to get Weasley out of her system before she could begin any serious relationship. Their quick romance after the war had floundered under the pressures of Auror training and being apart, but even Draco knew whatever it was between them went deeper than that.

Ever since he'd realised that Hermione was The Best (and Malfoys always had to have the best): the smartest, the funniest, the bravest, the best at everything, he'd known he'd have to wait for her. Perhaps it had been fortunate that he hadn't realised quite how long it would be. Draco had been patient beyond his wildest dreams, but finally, after more years than he cared to count, he was hopeful that his goal was within reach. Hermione didn't even twitch if you mentioned a Weasley, and she'd even worn a Christmas jumper that obviously had been knitted by the She-Weasley.

She'd only need a little nudge to look at an old friend with new eyes.

Draco got Pansy to throw a party to get Hermione loosen up a bit, and it was working a treat. Now was the moment to make a move, when she was looking forward to the impending holidays and feeling slightly giddy from three glasses of his best champagne. Hermione was even standing under the mistletoe (Draco had made sure there were several on the premises, in various strategic locations), ripe for the plucking. Her hair was gloriously bushy and she was holding her glass slightly askew, pink cheeks begging to be touched.

Any moment now–

"I don't believe this!" he groaned.

Someone tall and dark had swooped in, and rather than hexing him into the next century Hermione was actually kissing him back. Draco could have screamed with annoyance. At least all wasn't lost: she may indulge a stranger in a quick snog under the mistletoe, but she was unlikely to give her heart away to someone she didn't even know. The couple veered slightly and Draco got a look at the man's face. It was strangely familiar –

The only thing that kept him from whirling across the room to tear the couple apart by force was the knowledge that it was exactly what Weasley would have done. Draco was smarter than that: he knew ill-judged displays of jealousy were unlikely to win Hermione, no matter how tempting.

Someone would suffer for this, though. Who in the seven hells had thought it was a good idea to invite Viktor Krum to his select party?

The wind was howling outside, and raindrops had settled in Hermione's hair like tiny, transparent pearls glistening in the light of the roaring fire. Entering The Three Broomsticks was like walking into a wall of warm, slightly smoky air, and it took Draco a moment to get his bearings. Then he spotted an empty corner and steered Hermione there, away from the scattered patrons who preferred staying close either to the bar or the fire.

It took Hermione some moments to untangle her hair from her scarf, while Draco exchanged nods with Madam Rosmerta. He'd been down earlier to arrange for a bottle from his own cellars to be put aside for them. This time, he wasn't leaving anything to chance. When Hermione slipped out of her coat, he was ready to assist her before shrinking it and putting it in his pocket. It was a trick he'd learnt from his father, whose misspent years had entailed a lot of time spent in less than pristine surroundings.

Draco stopped short of pulling out Hermione's chair for her: being overly chivalrous would only make her suspicious.

When Madam Rosmerta swanned over to their table with the dusky bottle on a tray (she hadn't been very pleased with the implications that her own offerings weren't good enough for Draco, but a few Galleons had persuaded her to comply), Hermione's eyebrows soared.

"Ordering for me now, are you? Some people would consider that a bit presumptuous."

"They might. Until they'd tasted it." Draco raised his glass to her. Fortunately he was absolutely certain that his meticulously selected wine would win her over, otherwise he would have been getting a bit concerned now. Maybe he'd played it too strong...

Mercifully, Hermione's curiosity won out on her annoyance. "You're mightily sure of yourself – Oh. Oh."

"Nice, isn't it?" He swirled the liquid around in his glass, enjoying the bursts of aroma hitting his nostrils intermittently. It was an elf-made Bordeaux, from the Malfoy vineyards. No Muggle would ever have heard of it, but in his not-so-humble opinion it beat the pants off any of the Grands Vins.

"I've got to come here more often if that's what they're serving." Hermione looked around at the rugged wizard nursing a tankard of ale at the bar, and the little group of elderly witches sitting near the fire drinking sherry. Apparently, neither struck her as the target audience for fine wine, and Draco rushed in to distract her. He'd tell her later. Well, assuming all went well, he would...

"If I'd had any sense, I would have brought you down here in sixth year instead of trying to do away with Dumbledore," he said, launching himself into his game plan for the evening a bit prematurely. "I bet we would have got on a lot better than you and Weasley."

"Maybe." Hermione smiled, her eyes slightly unfocused as she pondered something, and he was almost tempted to ask her what. "Assuming you'd have overlooked the whole Mudblood thing, of course."

Oh, that.

"Well, I choose to assume I would also have found a way to avoid stuffing my head with idiotic notions. With the right encouragement, my sixteen-year-old self might have settled for being a bit of a prat rather than almost destroying himself and his family. You know, like a normal sixteen-year-old."

"To be fair, I don't think there was a lot of 'normal' going around when we were sixteen. Certainly not for you." Hermione drank her wine in very small sips, as if she was trying to make it last; Draco was itching to tell her he'd another five barrels at home.

The door creaked ominously, and a dark, hooded figure slipped in, dripping rain on the tiled floor to Rosmerta's dismay.

The alternative version of the past hadn't been Draco's only reason to choose The Three Broomsticks. It was unlikely to be frequented by anyone they knew on a wet Tuesday in term time. Draco had also taken steps to ensure the most obvious threat to his plans had been neutralised: Ron Weasley had recently won a holiday in Bermuda. Even if he made it back to Britain from the magical vortex there, he'd be too late to wreck Draco's move. Even so, Draco watched the newcomer with trepidation. It was just his luck for something to happen now, when he was so very close...

The stranger let his hood down, and Draco sat up like his name had been called in class. What in the seven hells was Severus Snape doing here? He hated pubs, frequented as they were by the general public and drunk people, and Draco had left him safely ensconced in his office only an hour ago under the distinct impression that Severus would be correcting essays for the remainder of the evening.

Hermione had turned around to see who was coming in, and when she recognised Severus a huge smile bloomed on her face. Draco gritted his teeth.

"Look, it's Professor Snape!" she said unnecessarily. "I should tell him about my research at the Department, he was so helpful when I contacted him. Excuse me, I'll be right back!"

Normally, Draco wouldn't have rated a schoolteacher two decades his senior as competition. Experience, however, had made him wary, as did the recent Witch Weekly article on the romantic qualities of the spy-turned-war hero (the writer of the article had obviously never been a student of his). The problem with Hermione was that she was far more likely to care about Severus' superior brain than his less desirable exterior. She was also apt to overlook past transgressions – she was here with Draco, after all – and may not even let the fact that he'd been her teacher stand in her way. Severus, unlike Draco, had fought on the right side most of the time.

"I'll come with you." Draco followed her bouncing steps to the bar, and took advantage of being a full foot taller than Hermione by glaring at Severus over her head.

If you mess this up for me I will kill you. I'd prefer not to, considering that you saved my life, but I will. Fortunately, he was eminently able to communicate without doing anything as obvious as bandying words.

Severus raised one greying eyebrow in response, while receiving Hermione's gushing explanations of her experiments with a blank face.

I should like to see you try. But very well, then. I'll expect suitable compensation.

Draco gave him a curt nod, just as Hermione was coming to the conclusion of her study. One did not attempt to order the Head of Slytherin around without paying for it, one way or another. Perhaps one of those barrels of wine would be acceptable recompense.

Severus dispatched Hermione back to their table with five curt words. That she didn't look crushed testified to the fact that he didn't consider her a Gryffindor nuisance anymore, which Draco took note of for the future. That barrel of wine may be a cheap price to pay, after all.

He was casting around for a way of getting back on the subject without making it too obvious, when Hermione displayed her usual tendency to trample all over his plans.

"There's something I've been thinking about for a while," she said, looking at her glass spinning around on its own accord on the worn tabletop.

"Really, because –" Draco may as well have been trying to whistle down the western wind outside.

"You might think it's stupid," Hermione said, still without looking at him,"but I've started to wonder if we wouldn't fit together quite well." She raised her eyes to meet his, and suddenly he couldn't remember what he'd been so anxious to say a moment ago. He'd never seen her look like that before – or not at him, at any rate. There was something soft and warm in her eyes that seemed to melt his brain like candle wax. "What do you think?"

Draco's heart was hammering. He noticed that his hands were shaking slightly, so he wrapped them around his glass. Malfoys didn't tremble.

"I've been trying to get that across to you since you broke up with Weasley," he admitted. His voice was a little too hoarse, but Hermione didn't seem to care. She just smiled; the sort of smile that seemed to light her up from within, making even the dimly lit pub seem brighter.

"Well then, Draco Malfoy," she said, still grinning.

"Well then, Hermione Granger," he said like an idiot. "Let's set the world on fire."

He ignored Severus smirking at the bar. It got easier when she leaned across the table and kissed him. Rosmerta let out an "Ooer" when she passed by their table, but Draco ignored her. One didn't wait years for something just to let the moment be ruined.

-oO THE END Oo-