LOVE FOR TENDER

Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining.

We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each other.

Under a tree in the cool of the day, with the blessing of sand.

Forgetting themselves and each other, united

in the quiet of the desert.

T. S. Eliot

Chapter 1 - You won't take my love for tender

Hermione Granger had no idea where she was when she woke up. Her mouth was dry and her head was pounding and to make matters worse there seemed to be an awful lot of ambient noise and light and movement.

Sadly, this state of affairs had become the norm for her over the past year.

She slowly opened her eyes to reveal buzzing overhead fluorescent lights, black-painted walls, and something that sounded like a Muggle cement mixer…but turned out, as she examined it through squinted eyes, to be a floor polishing machine. I've passed out in that after-hours club, then, she thought, and now it's after-hours for it, which likely meant sometime in the early afternoon, to judge by the harsh light glaring in through the unshuttered windows. The janitor seemed unaware that he had company, as he seemed rather intent on his work and also because the floor polisher was so horribly loud.

Sitting on the floor next to the beat-up and sagging black leather sofa where she'd crashed was a partially-empty drink graced by a few tiny, floating ice cubes. She grabbed the glass, heedless of germs or alcohol content, and guzzled down the contents, which turned out to be watery gin and tonic. Better than nothing, and at least marginally healthy, she thought.

The janitor finished the area near the couches then unplugged the machine and pushed it off down a hallway, which was some relief. She wished he'd have closed the blinds behind him, but as she didn't intend to stay here any longer than necessary, and was concerned that she might pass back out, it was just as well. She slowly sat up and took stock of the rest of her surroundings. There was a large bank of casement windows with a view of the rather nondescript street that she recalled Apparating to. Under the windows, there was a bar and a DJ station that she also recalled. The leather sofa on which she rested was one of three similar ones in the room. Next to the large bank of windows, there was a pair of battered green metal doors. There were light fixtures—currently unlit- on the matte black walls.

And Draco Malfoy was lounging on the second of the three couches, about three feet away from her, also looking rather discomfited at the amount of light in the room, although there was no spent drink on the floor near him.

"Granger?" he croaked, as their eyes made contact.

"Malfoy?" she said, as she took note of the purple beaded bag looped firmly on her wrist. It was missing a lot of its beading and had seen better days, but the Undetectable Extension Charm on it still held. She opened it up and reached in for her wand. It was still there.

"Should have told him to bloody go away," he muttered. "Sorry."

"Er…" she began, feeling decidedly un-intellectual. "That wouldn't have been very nice," she finally finished, after a rather long pause.

"I'm doing him enough of a favour that I don't have to be nice all the bloody time," Malfoy said.

"Wait…is this your club?"

"Of course it is. Note the green door, and the subtle lighting motif." She glanced at the light fixtures, which at closer inspection were, unsurprisingly, coiled snakes. "Everyone knows about the Silver Serpent, it's been open since the 1970s in one form or another. I can afford to be understated," he said, as he swung his legs over the side of the couch and slowly sat up. "If you need the loo, you may want to run there now before he starts cleaning it." He raised his wand and muttered Accio Duo Evian, and two water bottles zoomed out from behind the bar toward the couch. He caught them neatly in both hands and then tossed the second toward the couch where Hermione remained slumped. "Go on, I'll find the Hangover Potion while you're there, I'm fairly sure there's at least one bottle behind the bar."

She slowly stood up, her head still pounding. "Don't you need any?"

"I don't drink," he said, as she started off down the hall, first slowly, and then quicker, realizing that she was definitely in urgent need.

When she returned, having splashed a bit of water on her face and put her recalcitrant hair up in a scrunchie she'd found in a dusty corner of her bag, Draco sat at a table that he'd likely conjured, on which rested the two bottles of water, a potion bottle, and what appeared to be a box of breakfast pastries.

"Don't think those Muggles will miss these," and he gestured with his wand toward the window, which revealed a blue panel truck with SOHO DOUGHNUTS painted on it parked on the street outside, "At least they never have before." The front door was slightly ajar, and he jerked his wand to close it.

Hermione sat down and promptly downed the potion. Now was not the time to distrust Malfoy or worry about old school rivalry, especially since she felt very little like an educated woman at this point. She followed up the potion with a healthy slug of water and a large bite of chocolate doughnut, which was very good and very filling.

"Have as many as you want, looks like you can certainly afford to." Hermione had never gained the weight that she'd lost as a result of the war; the only advantage she saw to this is that Muggle club wear looked good on her.

"Thanks, Malfoy," she said, after she finished the first doughnut and selected a second. "You know, this may sound rather odd, but I thought the janitor looked a bit familiar…but he must be a Muggle, so I suppose not…"

"Of course he looks familiar, didn't he chase you down at the Ministry? Or at least that's what I recall you saying in the trials."

"Yaxley?" she asked, incredulous, as the sound of the floor polisher started again, this time, thankfully further away.

"The very same, he requested the day shift and I obliged him."

"Wait…do you…is this…are the…" Hermione wasn't sure exactly how to frame her next question. She recalled reading that Draco was overseeing a group of Death Eaters who'd recently been released on parole from Azkaban.

"Yes, all the parolees work here and live upstairs. I'm letting my parents deal with the mess at the Manor for the time being. My father hadn't bothered with this place since the early 80s, but I'd always wanted to run a club, so here I am." He paused for a moment and lifted his wand, then listened for the floor polisher to shut off, which it obligingly did. "Oi, Corban!" he said, in a slightly louder tone. "The pastries arrived!"

"You didn't actually steal them from the Muggles, did you," Hermione noted, after she took a long drink of water.

"Of course not—I have them delivered for him," and he nodded in the direction of Yaxley, who was clutching a large mug of some sort of beverage.

"Miss Granger," Yaxley said, and gave a perfunctory bow in her direction, before heading directly to the doughnut box and selecting a chocolate one. In fact, Hermione noted, they were all chocolate, which made a lot of sense, seeing as how Yaxley had spent quite a bit of time in Azkaban. Even without the Dementors, it was a depressing enough place.

For a short while, all of them ate their breakfast wordlessly. After he'd finished his third doughnut, Yaxley nodded to Draco and said, "Back to it, mate," and headed back down the hall. Shortly after that, the floor polisher started up again.

"So," Draco said, taking a long and considered look at Hermione, "whatever should we do about that Marriage Law business? You seemed to have an awful lot of opinions on it last night. Well, this morning, honestly speaking."

"Can you?" Hermione said, after she'd paused to finish her second doughnut and the entire bottle of water. Draco raised his wand and sent another one hurtling through the air to land neatly next to the empty one.

"Can I what?" Draco replied, summoning another bottle of water for himself.

"Speak honestly."

"When I bloody feel like it, which I definitely do at the moment. But apparently you require a great deal of, shall we say, social lubrication to do so, or so Walden was telling me before he finally shut down the bar."

"Walden Macnair?" Hermione asked, feeling more and more outnumbered each moment.

"The very same; seems he's got a talent for bartending, although I only ever saw him do his…er, other business. You obviously enjoyed his expertise quite a bit, though," and he looked pointedly at the nearly-empty glass on the floor. "He finally just carried you over to the couch; you were the last…er…witch standing—well, sort of—and it was long past our regular closing time." Hermione glanced over to the other couch, where she saw a dark-green tartan blanket that she hadn't previously noted crumpled up near where her feet had been. And her shoes were neatly arranged on the floor as well.

She dimly recalled a large bald man with a mustache, goatee and eye patch, who had rather obligingly provided a number of G&Ts to her. And she also dimly recalled ranting at him about the news that had dominated the Daily Prophet for the last year; all the while, he'd nodded and occasionally thrown in a random "Aye," or some such. She didn't recall any Galleons or even Muggle credit cards changing hands, though, even though she possessed both in abundance.

"Bloody hell…" she groaned.

"Consider those drinks on the house," Draco said.

"Er…thanks. I think." Hermione replied, after a long while, during which both of them finished their waters, and Draco consumed another doughnut.

"Least I could do," Draco said, as he stood up and stretched. "Seriously, though, Granger…we need to talk about this Law, because we both know that you and I and a number of the others here," and he swung his arm wide, presumably to indicate the rest of the building housing the paroled Death Eaters, "…are going to be intimately involved with it." He perched back down on the arm of the sofa.

"I'm considering relocating to America," Hermione blurted. "Or, er, possibly Australia. This law is utter bullshite."

"Such language," Draco said, holding his hand over his heart and giving an over-exaggerated mock swoon. "Not a horrid idea, though you'd better get on it. You've left things rather late—last I heard, the owls are going out next week."

"Bloody sodding hell…" Hermione groaned. She'd come home late one night from the Ministry after a series of meetings concerning the Birth Rate Crisis. The Marriage Law had been brought up by several aged Wizengamot members; apparently, it was not without precedent, although the last time it had been enacted was during the Black Plague.

Ironically, the same night, she'd discovered Ron, who'd proposed to her the previous month, entwined on her couch with Verity, the shop assistant from Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. She'd tossed both of them out, and sent Ron's belongings out the door behind them. The next morning, she'd given her notice at the Ministry and begun a months-long wizarding pub crawl, which had culminated in her doing Dragon Breath Shots in the Claw and Stang on Knockturn Alley the previous evening with a group of disreputable-looking witches and wizards and following them to the exclusive after-hours club, when they invited her.

"I mean to say, you're otherwise unoccupied, you've already quit the Ministry, and last I heard, Weaselbee as well."

"It's more like he quit me in favour of…" she let her voice drift off as she stared down at her stocking-covered feet. Ron had moved on from Verity rather quickly to a rotating selection of witches…including, ironically enough, Romilda Vane and Pansy Parkinson.

"I read the gossip columns, Granger, no need to rehash all that."

"Well, my job was even more tiresome than he was," she muttered. "Bloody bureaucratic imbeciles."

"If you want to be matched up with a perfect Pureblood prince, though," Draco said, tossing his hair as if to put himself in the running, "You're going to have to clean up your act a bit."

Hermione stood up. "I have absolutely no intention of being matched up with any sort of Pureblood, much less any of those who reside within these walls!" By the end of her sentence, she realized her voice had become loud and strident and the floor polisher noise had stopped, and there were two men standing in the hallway entrance staring at her. She closed her mouth quickly.

"All done, laddie, Walden and I are going out for a fry-up," Yaxley said, as the very slightest ghost of a smirk crossed his face. Macnair stood impassively but Hermione nevertheless felt he was somehow staring at her.

"Very well, you know the drill," Draco said, and walked over to the two men. He waved his wand over them quickly, nodded and said, "All good, see you later then."