Disclaimer: …Psh. So not mine. You know the drill.

Written for the 2006 Dramione Valentine Fic Exchange.

There are Some

1.1.1.1.

Ironically, the first thing Ron(ald) ("Weasel") Weasley (Esquire) thought when she murdered his libido—strangled it, decapitated it, hacked it to pieces with the most bloodthirsty chainsaw flippin' ever—was that she had gorgeous legs. Legs with feeling. Legs with shape. Legs with lovely, strong calves that curved deliciously from her knees to her ankle to her itty bitty feet.

His thoughts sped through his mind with speed only another sexually repressed man-boy's mind can comprehend right before she looked up, screamed, threw her hand-towel at his face and ran away. Ron didn't see what the problem was, at first, as his mind floated in a pinkish haze and a few freckles rearranged themselves as he grinned goofily into nothing. It was the 21st century, after all. Women were allowed to wear indecent swimsuits without being prosecuted. There was nothing wrong with being seen in scraps of 100 manmade fabric that covered only the necessary areas to avoid completely X-rated exposure.

While his mind still snuggled amongst its cotton-candy pink fog of protection, Ron also began to wonder why Pansy was wearing a bikini in January. Was it part of an arcane Dark spell that required the caster to prance around and tempt innocent bystanders (such as himself) into thinking thoughts that dared not be uttered? He also began to wonder why the top of her bikini was white and rather cottony-looking and why the bottom half of her bikini looked like granny underwear and was bright red with dancing reindeer pictured on its back.

He realized, stupidly, that he had caught Pansy Parkinson in the middle of changing.

He realized, stupidly, that Pansy Parkinson was his neighbor.

He realized, stupidly, that the hand towel she had thrown at him across the hallway was not, in fact, a towel designed to soak up water, but a towel designed to soak up something of a completely different nature.

He snatched the offending woman-pad off his shoulder and shrieked like a fucking girl.

1.1.1.1.

Once upon a time…

Hermione stared into a faraway land, into a faraway place, and spilled scalding milk on her long-suffering cat.

There lived a girl…

"Oh! God! Oh! God!" She panted, hands fluttering in a manner disturbingly reminiscent of Mrs. Weasley and grabbed her flower vase, dumping its contents onto Crookshanks who yowled piteously at the onslaught. He disliked water perhaps more than he disliked Ron. "Oh gosh, I'm sorry, honey…" Picking up her dreadfully spoiled cat, Hermione answered the ringing phone.

"Hello?"

Who lived in a castle that had plaster and concrete walls, and a flat roof, and cheap carpeting in a world that had forgotten its life of nine years past. In a world where those who still remembered had long ceased to care about past grievances.

"Hello?" There was a faint whuffling noise on the other end; hard breathing. "Ron? Is that you?"

More heavy breathing. "Hermione?"

"Ron?" She asked inanely, again. "Ron, are you all right?"

"Hermione…" Ron whimpered over the phone.

"Are you hurt, Ron? Ron? Did the movers drop furniture on you?" She remembered belatedly that the movers weren't due for another hour.

"Hermione…" Ron moaned again, panting into the phone. She got the sense that his mouth was barely a centimeter away from the mouthpiece.

"Ron," She said exasperatedly, "Are you trying to turn me on?"

And those who didn't forgive and didn't forget had been touched by the wicked witch and made better by it, because they'd struggled so hard to turn the tide against the evil king while the wicked witch coughed and cackled and did nothing but watch. When they'd finally emerged, the witch stayed for the aftermath of the damage she had wreaked, and she didn't let her chosen ones forget, for otherwise she would simply disappear into dust and take the stars with her.

"Because honestly, Ron, this is ridiculous."

There was choked chortle. "Hermione, Hermione."

She retorted, "Don't ever say my name in that tone. And don't ever repeat it like that, either."

"I saw Pansy Parkinson in her underwear."

Taken aback for just a moment, Hermione shouldered on. "Now, Ron, Hogwarts was ten years ago. There's no need to bring up moments in your past that will require a few more years of therapy; it's not good for—"

"Pansy Parkinson is my new neighbor."

There was a crash outside her window that only let Hermione say, "Oh, that's too bad, Ron, but like I said, Hogwarts was ten years ago and I'm sure that you can overcome past prejudices (silence)." Then she was forced to look over to her window to see what was making that horrible knocking sound, because she had just cleaned her windows yesterday.

The girl was not very beautiful, nor very gentle or good or kind or sympathetic. Her golden locks were more on the side of brown-golden. Or actually just brown. Shit-brown. They weren't very golden at all, and fanned out from her head like tumbleweeds. Her eyes were mud-brown. She was a creature of the dirt, but from the dirt she learned that those who walked above her had very dirty shoes.

"Ron," Hermione said calmly, slowly walking to her window, "I'm afraid that I have to go."

"Hermione?"

"It's an emergency."

"Hermione? Wait, I'm not done yet…Hermione, what—"

Click.

She walked to her window, inching along the side of her walls, wand gripped in sweaty fingers. A hand scrabbled against the smooth surface of her window, and Hermione swallowed a gasp, hoping that it was only one of her friends playing a very, very bad joke on her. "Alohomora." The window clicked open, the hand stilled, and she whispered again, "Mobilicorpus," with a quick flick of her wand.

Draco Malfoy flew across the room and landed with a thump on her cheap-ass carpet, bruising his not-so-cheap ass in the process. "Oh, God." He groaned as he saw her. "Send me back out the window to dangle above my death."

The girl had seen the cool, green boy before the wicked witch chose them. The cool, green boy had sneered at the golden, dirt girl and called her awful names that the wicked witch thrived on. And after the evil king was gone, the girl had seen the boy again, once, pushed out of a Respectable Establishment that didn't serve members of the dead king's court. He hadn't seen her. Again she'd seen him the year after that, face pressed to the window of a party she was laughing in, dancing in. Nose and hands and girly eyelashes squashed desperately against the window as snowflakes fluttered like the worst clichés behind him. Their eyes had met. He'd yanked himself away, run into the night, and out of pity and a deep, buried empathy she had not followed.

They wasted two minutes staring at each other.

"You." She hissed, pointing her wand at him. "What are you doing here?"

He looked at her sourly. "Well, you pulled me away from your window and brought me into your apartment."

It startled her, a little, how easily he used the quintessentially Muggle word…'apartment'. It was odd coming from Malfoy's lips, lips inherited from generations of Malfoys who had put those lips only on their pureblood mothers' breasts, only on their pureblood wives' and mistresses' mouths, only on silver spoons that were forged by pureblood wizard-smiths. "What were you doing dangling outside my window."

"I was observing new and unrecorded varieties of fungi that have colonized your building's walls. I will biologically engineer the bacteria to create an incurable disease similar to the Black Plague. I shall release it among the innocent population and become King of the World. Mwahaha." He added pensively, getting up and walking towards the door. "I'm gone, now, so point your wand away from me."

"Why, where's yours?" She taunted, still training an eye (and her wand) on him.

"They broke it." His face closed.

Her wand quivered, and then steadied. "I'm afraid I can't let you leave the premises, Malfoy," she began formally, when he interrupted her.

"I was acquitted of charges, Granger. The last addition to Dumbledore's will; the sodding fool. Spent five years in a Muggle prison—surely you read the papers?—as punishment for various activities performed in my youth, then got out. And now I'm going to be gone, out of your life, leaving you to wallow in the mud with the rest of your kind while I fade into fucking obscurity." He was so bitter; so, so bitter that it soured the taste on her tongue, too.

"Get out." She muttered. Because she hadn't been compared to mud in a long time.

"I'm skipping for joy."

She let him go, still dumbfounded into incoherent thought-babble. Her past had come back to haunt her. Her past had greasy hair and angry eyes.

Nine years.

He had been the one who broke the last catch holding the wicked witch captive. And then he was forgotten in the fury that followed. Because for all that he liked to think, he didn't matter in the world.

Ten minutes later, after she had recovered and had decided to forget the incident and forget once more that Draco Malfoy had ever existed, Ron called her again.

"Hello?"

"Hermione?" He moaned.

"Ron, I don't want to go through this another time. What's wrong?"

"It's worse." He sounded like a kicked puppy. In a way he really was, because Fate was a bitch.

"What is it?"

"Draco Malfoy lives on my other side."

Hermione's world thudded to a halt. "Ronald Weasley, I demand that you find another place to live or I swear to God I will never visit you again."

And then the dirt girl—her name was Hermione Granger—decided that if she ever saw the cool, green boy—his name was Draco Malfoy—again, she'd pummel his ass so hard into the ground that he'd have dirt tattoos on his bum 'til kingdom come. Because he was back into her life and it wasn't that he reminded her of everything she'd lost (because that was stupid and clichéd) but because he reminded everybody else of what she'd lost. And she'd bloody his stupid pointy nose just for that.

The fairy tale's over, folks.

1.1.1.1.

"Yeah."

"Hello? HELLO?"

"Father?"

"HEEELLLLOOOOOO?"

"FATHER, I'M RIGHT HERE!"

"What? WHAT WAS THAT? WHAT DID YOU SAY?"

"I bring you greetings, citizen, from the planet of Mars."

"WHAT? ARE YOU INSULTING ME, DRACO?"

"You're insulting yourself, Father, by yelling like a maniac."

"IT'S THESE DISGUSTING MUGGLE DEVICES. THEY DON'T WORK. I DON'T SEE WHY I'M FORCED TO—"

"It's because you are in prison, Father. It is because you are guilty of crimes against humanity. It is because the guards are more powerful than you and better than you and your wand is broken and nobody cares the fuck about you any more except me."

"DON'T YOU DARE—"

Draco hung up the phone. Lucius's medication must have worn off…by now the guards would have heard his father's crazy talk and would have shouldered him off to the infirmary, injected him with Muggle stabilizers using Muggle needles and Muggle medical techniques, and in twenty minutes Lucius would call again, his mind foggy from the new dose of drugs, and he and Draco would talk civilly to each other and inquire as to each other's health and whether Draco was eating properly (not really) and how the food in high-security wizard prison was (awful).

Lucius had never gotten the hang of the telephone, though.

Draco thought that a part of Lucius's mind refused to learn because a large majority of Lucius's being still liked to keep itself distant from all things Muggle, even if they forged the few connections between him and his only surviving family. Also because it was a small rebellion against his imprisonment and penalty.

Draco chuckled softly. Was it very bad of him, he wondered in a very quiet voice, that he liked his medicated father more than he liked his father when he was in his prime…and that he still loved his father who beat him and belittled him more than he loved the one who clung to Draco like a drowning man?

"Draaaacooo!" Pansy squealed from two doors down. "Come quickly! Oh, God, come on!"

He and Pansy had moved into the apartment block a year ago. They weren't lovers. They were barely friends. But they had that old connection and grasped each other as the only remnants of a life best forgotten. They put one apartment between them because it seemed more private that way. Often they'd forget to close their doors—they were the only two on the floor, though, so it didn't matter, and the last time they'd looked at each other's bodies in lust or even interest, they had been fourteen.

Were the only ones on the floor.

…He couldn't believe he was living next to Ronald Weasley. Living on the same floor, same level as the Weasel. Oh, how the mighty doth fall.

And don't ask how the hell he found himself hanging from Hermione Granger's window. Let's just say that Weasel's gotten better at using his wand thingamajig since last Draco saw him.

If Draco and Pansy hit the jackpot, they'd be living next to Dean Thomas, Seamus Finnigan, Hannah Abbot, Blaise Zabini (oh, wait, he was dead), and maybe even Harry Potter.

Oh, wait. That kid was dead, too.

"Draaacoooo!"

"Fuck it, Pansy, I'm coming!" He hollered back, throwing his door open and storming across to her door. Which was locked. "Do you want me to come in or not?" Draco yelled.

Mudblood had put him in a really bad mood, so he decided to take it out on Pansy, because he hated women then, and Pansy was a woman (although some might argue that, because she had no qualms about making grown men weep).

"I'm coming!" Her high, unmistakably girly voice came through, different from Granger's deep-ish, man-ish one. "God, you're sooo impatient."

"Me?" He almost squeaked in outrage. "You're the one who's all, 'Come ooon, Draco, because there's a big, bad monster in my closet and I need you to squish it for me'! What the hell's wrong, anyway?"

Through the crack she'd made between the wall and the door when she'd opened it, Pansy's eyeball swiveled around, resting on the entrance to her left a little longer than necessary before opening the slab of plywood that people kept trying to pass off as a door and ushering him in.

"What." Draco stated firmly, arms crossed. A very long time ago, his father had told him that it was a good position to assume when one was dealing with hysterical women-folk like his mum.

"Weasel…" She hiccupped. "Weasel saw me…"

"Well, of course he saw you," he started, and then realized he sounded like Granger, so he changed his tone. "Er, what do you mean?"

"He saw me…dressed like…" Pansy inhaled deeply. "…like this." She whipped off her robe.

Draco screamed and covered his eyes. "Fuck, Pansy! Ew! We were over in Fifth Year!"

"Just look, you woman!" Pansy roared.

Draco looked. And then he laughed. And then he thought he might send Weasel a condolence card and some flowers because nobody deserved to see Pansy in her red reindeer granny knickers.

"You're such a jerk!"

He continued laughing like the meanest of the mean, and Pansy began slapping him around, and then the cheap door was blasted off its hinges and the Weasel emerged from the dust like a victorious hero just returned with Pompeii's head.

Pansy screamed and tried to cover herself, reaching hyper-sensitive peaks of sound, sending the cells in his ear canals scurrying for cover. Weasel screeched even louder and higher, scrabbling at his eyeballs and wailing, "I heard screaming! And hitting! I thought something was wrong! Oh, God, keep your domestic troubles to yourselves next time!"

And…Draco kind of thought that maybe it was all right if Weasel lived by them. After all, it had been so long since Pansy had been with a decent guy and she deserved someone a bit better than him, and Weasel had always been a bit better than him. And they were nine years out of school. They were eight years out of the war. They were seven years out of the moment Draco had gone to Muggle prison and lost nearly everything.

It had to have been enough time. It had to.

1.1.1.1.

It had been a week since Ron had moved into his new apartment, surrounded on all sides by Slytherins. Despite all her vows, Hermione had actually been feeling rather guilty that she had left him to fend for himself in his hour of need—that just wasn't what best friends did. They hadn't left Harry, even until the last. So no-fuckin'-way was she leaving Ron by himself with no company and no support and no ammunition.

It was Draco Malfoy. How dangerous could he possibly be? What could he do; hiss at her? Throw pottery at her?

All the same, Hermione grabbed Harry's old invisibility cloak and slinked down the one block to Ron's apartment building with her wand out and eyes open. January was quite definitely the ugliest month of the year, she decided. Everything was brown and gray and slushy and it was cold like Lucius's eyes when he'd looked down at her and told her she—

One. Two. Three. Fourfivesix. Seven. She began counting the lines on the sidewalk to distract her. Damn Draco Malfoy to the seventh hell.

Damn Draco Malfoy to the seventh hell where he will perform seven tasks of unimaginable difficulty and sacrifice and let him never be able to end it until time reaches its end, she amended viciously as she climbed twelve goddamn flights of stairs to reach Ron's apartment on the twelfth floor because she was too scared to use the elevator for fear of getting caught.

Harry had called her a 'vindictive vixen valentine' (and laughed so hard because it didn't make sense to either of them at the time) because, well, she was actually a very jealous and self-centered person, and because he said she masked it all under many layers of softness and sugariness and compassion. She remembers him with only a tiny pang in her heart, now, because it has been nine years.

But she loved him so much. She loved him so much.

And damn, she was crying, and she hadn't done that in a very long time. It would be a rather frightful sight to see drops of water coalescing in mid-air, though, so for the sanity of potential observers, she hiccupped in a deep breath, wiped the dampness away with the back of her rather grubby hand, and climbed the last flight of stairs.

And slammed her back against the wall as she saw Pansy Parkinson for the first time in seven years.

"I told you, I don't need help!" Her nose was as squashed in as it had been all those years ago; Hermione had always taken some small comfort in the fact that although Pansy had nicer hair than hers, Hermione had a nicer nose. "Go away, Weasel! Piss off! Go molest some other old lady who needs help with her groceries, you creep!"

Hermione stifled something that was halfway between a sob and a laugh, because Pansy hadn't changed one bit. Not one bit. Hermione still wanted to leap up and shove Pansy's voice down her throat.

"I'm just trying to help, Pansy," Ron's head poked out of the elevator; the rest of him followed. "Do you even have a job to pay for all these?"

Pansy sniffed at him. "None of your business. And for the love of God, stop trying to make friends with me. I understand that you're bereft and belone—er, alone now that Granger's gone and ostracized you, but go do the manly bonding with Draco. You'd have better luck with him."

Hermione was very proud of her boy when his face twisted in disgust. "You make it sound like it's some sort of sexual activity."

"How would I know what men do to bond? Do you bathe yourselves in blood? Go kill a few ducks? Go get lost in the wilderness for a few days because both of you are too stubborn to ask for directions, and neither of you are intelligent enough to read a map?"

Ron's mouth opened. Hermione silently cheered him on. "For your information, Pansy, Draco and I already bonded. Sort of." Hermione wasn't so proud of him then. She also desperately hoped that Ron's statement was only a means of deflecting Pansy's barbs and that he was purposely making it sound like an orgy took place during aforementioned bonding

"Suit yourself. But—and give those to me!" Pansy snatched her plastic bags away from Ron, huffing angrily as she did so. "Stop trying to act like some fantastic do-gooder, Weasel. It's been, like, ten years, so get over yourself already. You can't replace Potter. You can't be the fucking hero, you know? The war's over and he's dead and you can't bring him back. So piss off."

Hermione grabbed the yellow umbrella from the stand next to her, fully prepared to impale Pansy right through her black heart, but winced and slowly inched it back into its place when she realized she wasn't supposed to be seen. It was a rather cute umbrella. Had a little model of a duckie on the top. It would have looked lovely through one of Pansy's vital organs.

Hermione had changed so much in ten years.

She hadn't read Hogwarts: A History in a very long time.

But occasionally she stared at her wand and whispered an advanced NEWT level spell into it, just to see if she still could…well, if she still could.

Ron's eyes grew dark, and Hermione watched as Pansy's face fell and she murmured, "I didn't mean it, Weasel."

Hermione left, then, because it should be a moment all to them; a moment of truth for Ron that Hermione shouldn't be a part of, and that showed, quite a bit, how very much Hermione changed.

While she was leaving, however, a door opened as she backed away, and she stumbled into Malfoy's place of residence.

She decided that she had died and hadn't noticed, and was indeed residing in a sick dimension of Hell.

The door slammed shut behind her, and she opened her eyes.

It was a…serviceable dwelling. It had no ornaments, no personal items that revealed a part of its resident's character. The only thing present in the apartment that told Hermione that it did belong to a Malfoy and not a very good imposter was an imposing black cane leaning against the wall, emanating a definite air of disdain and power. If canes could possibly do that, then this staff was the kingpin of them all.

And then, of course, Draco Malfoy brushed past her and stopped in the middle of the room, as if waiting for something. As he waited, Hermione observed him with a sinking heart, aware that there was no possible way she could leave until he left.

Crack!

Lucius Malfoy appeared in front of Draco, with what could only be a handler gripping his arm in a fist of wire-braided bone and muscle.

Seven years, Hermione moaned to herself. Seven years without having to look at either of their identical eyes, seven years of forgetting, and then an atomic bomb was dropped on all her hard work because Ron picked the worst place to live in the entire country.

The handler nodded coldly at Malfoy Junior as he took his father's hand in the gentlest, most graceful movement that Hermione had ever seen from him, and most likely would ever see. "One hour?" It was said softly.

"One hour." The handler replied harshly, crossing his arms, and pacing to the other side of the room.

Hermione inched closer to Draco and Lucius, the idea that she was invisible to them sending her a surge of adrenaline at being able to touch those who once would have killed her.

They were silent for a whole minute. Hermione counted.

"Hello, Father," Draco said, finally.

And Hermione's heart broke the tiniest bit when Lucius turned his vacant gaze onto his son, mouth slack, and displayed no signs of recognition. Her heart broke just the tiniest bit more when Draco said nothing and wiped with his sleeve the thin strand of saliva that inched out of the corner of Lucius's mouth.

"Why are you living here?" Lucius said after a while, when his eyes regained a small measure of lucidity; his voice possessed merely a ghost of the authoritarian tone it had before.

"Well," Draco sneered, "I had to give the Ministry all the information I knew and almost all our fortune to keep you from the Dementor's Kiss. Or don't you remember, Father?" Or don't you remember that you wouldn't have done it for me?

Lucius said nothing. His shoulders were stooped, his hair uncombed and messy; walking slowly, ponderously across the floor he stopped at the sink and looked carefully at its faucet.

He walked back a minute later, shakily holding a glass half-full of water in his hands. "Are you thirsty?"

"No." But Draco took it anyway and drank it all.

And that nearly shattered Hermione's heart.

She kind of hated Draco Malfoy at that moment for proving he was human.

1.1.1.1.

"I've been sneaking around for two weeks, Ronald, under Harry's invisibility cloak. It's served its purpose well. I don't understand what evidence you've managed to combust out of cosmic nothingness to prove I must confront…him."

"Hermione…" The woman was easily the most exasperating one he had ever met. And not cutely exasperating, because she didn't pout when she was exasperated, and she didn't do that whole heaving chest thing because she had a big heart and didn't have to breathe in very quickly. She was a rather ugly thing to deal with when she was exasperated. Or angry. Or crying.

He was only allowed to say that, though, because he'd known her a very long time. If someone else said that he'd totally kick their arse.

"I refuse."

"Hermione…"

"I said, no."

"Hermioneee…"

"I don't want to meet and greet him."

"Hermione."

"In fact, I've already met him. You know that already. I don't have to meet him more than twice in my lifetime. Nobody deserves that punishment."

"Hermione."

"I don't care that I'm being rude and that he is probably listening through the door as I speak. Because I don't care, Ron. That's the thing. I don't care."

"Exactly."

"Finally, he says something other than my name."

Ron rolled his eyes. His brilliant friend was so stupid sometimes; that was why she got passed up for promotion at the Ministry and that was why she settled for a mere desk job as an accountant. As a Muggle accountant, at that, because she called the Ministry and everybody in it a plethora of bureaucratic bastards who would kill their children if they received a Ministry-stamped paper telling them to do so. (She was doomed from the moment she stepped through the Ministry doors and gasped in horror as a house elf waddled across her path, carrying coffee to some stuffy office-dweller.) "I told you already, Hermione. He's not…he's different now. It's been a long time. D'you think you could at least try to be civil to him?" Ron paused for dramatic effect. "He's got cleaning duty this week and my kitchen's a mess."

"Oh!" She cried, outraged and inexplicably hurt. "Oh, you're sharing schedules now!"

She was so stupid.

He smiled sweetly at her, big blues reflecting the synthetic light above their heads. "You'll always be my best friend."

"Shut up, Ronald. I hate you so much." Actually, she did in that moment harbor a strange dislike for her (former!) best friend that could have been attributed to the odd, squirming feelings that wobbled around in her stomach at the idea of seeing Malfoy again. She would commit homicide for an escape route right now.

Actually she wouldn't, for the only thing blocking her path to an exit was her (former!) best friend. And she didn't dislike him quite that much, because he brought her chocolate whenever she asked him to.

"So…?" Ron glanced at her hopefully.

"Good lord." She rubbed her temples. "I feel like you're asking me to meet your new girlfriend."

"…Uh."

"Pansy, eh?"

"Yeeeaaaah, I was about to—"

"I'm meeting Malfoy for you, Ron. Don't make this any more difficult for me, please. We'll talk about this later."

There was a creak. "Lovely creature, in't she? What with all the interrupting and near-fanatic desire to listen to herself speak, I'm amazed you've managed to—"

It was instinctive and she cursed herself afterwards for giving in to the overwhelming urge to put the pale, poncy bigot in his place. "Oh, shut your mouth, Malfoy. You've never even been nominated for Mr. Modesty."

He scowled at her, and in that expression she saw a ghost of the spoiled fifteen year old boy (not even a man-boy yet) who strode the halls of Hogwarts and saw his every chance for first place snatched away by those he had looked down on From The Beginning. "Yes, well," he struggled. "At least I've never been the model on the cover of Beavers' Guide to Beauty. Or," his eyes lit up with inspiration, "the cover of Models Like Medusa."

He wasn't very smart, was he?

Something in her expression communicated this thought to him (perhaps it was the raised eyebrow, the twist in her lip, the eyelids drooping in disdain), for he flushed with embarrassment, nearly glancing around for Crabbe and Goyle to shield him from the inevitable snickers.

"Er. Right. Hermione, civil."

"He started it." She defended herself. "Don't rag on me for something that is clearly his fault."

Ron walked out of the door, silently waiting for them to follow him (like effing sheep, they were) into Draco's apartment. They followed. (Because like an effing sheep he was, and because she was a little scared that Ron was angry with her.)

"Why are you here, by the way?" She hissed at him on their way across the hall, finding it much easier to revert to her thirteen year old self than concentrate on the fact that she hadn't seen him since his trial and his following trip to prison.

"Pansy made me." He answered brusquely.

Hermione peered closer and gasped in mingled horror and joy. "Your eye! Did she…" Why, it was almost too good to be true. "Did she punch you?"

Draco slapped a hand to his bruised eye. "No." He retorted defensively, wincing and pulling his palm away. "No!"

She beamed, ignoring Ron's look of warning. She rather liked this new Pansy. She might even invite Pansy to go sock shopping with her if Draco's new coloring was any indication of Pansy Version 6.0. If Pansy hurt Draco's other eye, Hermione would even let Pansy shop for kitchen utensils with her.

"All right. I'm leaving. You disgust me." Ron threw his hands up in the air, an unmanly trait he had inherited from his mother, and walked out with this final message: "You two stay in here and bond until I get back or I'll tell Pansy that you bailed out and I'll never bring chocolate for you, Hermione, ever again." He was a baaaad man. He drove a hard bargain.

A part of Hermione thought that being in a room with Draco Malfoy for an hour wouldn't be so bad, because it had been…a very long time. The shirt Draco wore revealed his forearms, and the skin there was pink and pale and unmarred.

"I despise that kid." Malfoy/Draco remarked a few seconds after the door had quietly clicked shut. The only reason his bare room did not cry out in the silence was because of the two warm, living, breathing bodies that blocked the sound waves from crashing from wall to wall. He seemed to be making a genuine effort to make her feel just a little more comfortable, for he pushed away from the wall and sauntered over to his refrigerator. "Would you…like a soda?" He asked dubiously. "A beer, maybe?"

"A soda would be just fine, thank you," she replied primly, ever-mindful that Ron had made her promise to put up with Draco/Malfoy for just a few moments of her life.

He didn't move. In fact, his eyes and eyebrows and mouth twitched, itching to fit themselves back into the mold they were suited to, before finally giving in and curving into a malicious expression that made him look years younger. The prat even had the nerve to giggle. "Oh, that's too bad, because I don't have any!" He hooted. He cackled. His cheeks grew practically rosy with glee.

A bit mental, that one. "You would fit in very, very well with a group of twelve-year-olds."

"Yes, except that my balls—"

"Oh. Ew. Please don't complete that statement. I have been lucky enough in life to have avoided knowledge of any intimate details revolving around your sordid personal life, and I intend to keep it that way."

"And she still speaks like a fucking textbook."

"On the bright side, my intelligence is high enough that I don't have to resort to vulgar language to entertain or to explicate my meaning."

He shot her a look of contempt. She remembered again how much she hated that look. "You are so annoying. And insecure." He still thought he knew everything.

Hermione slapped him, for no particular reason; maybe because she had been itching to do that since the end of Sixth Year, and maybe because the connoisseur in her thought that the other side of Draco's face looked a bit bare next to Pansy's impressive craftsmanship.

1.1.1.1.

"I forgot my bag." She snarled the next day, walking into his apartment (he never locked the door because no one dangerous ever bothered to come to this floor, and because someone was always there, even if it was only Weasel).

He handed it wordlessly to her from his couch, where he was watching Casablanca on the television. Before she could stomp back out—he swore she had ogre feet—Draco said softly, "Why do people like us have to go through life-or-death circumstances before anything happens?"

She halted briefly at the door. "Because we don't like each other, Malfoy. And we never will." She ticked off her grievances, incensed over the new coffee stain she saw in the corner of her purse and still just a little angry at him for changing. "Because 'people like us' were enemies from the start. Because you…you…because you're an asshole and short of saving my life there is nothing you could possibly do to make anything happen between us, you pervert!"

He paused thoughtfully, and as if the idea had just entered his head, said, "Want to have dinner with me?"

She spluttered in disbelief. "No!"

She stomped out of Draco's apartment and stomped into Ron's and stomped back out of there after screaming at the sight of her (former, people, former!) best friend and a feminine version of her own blast from the past rolling (naked!) on the floor.

To count, three people had now seen Pansy's least favorite (yet most comfortable) pair of knickers. Four, if one counted the hobo Pansy had once drunkenly flashed after a dare from her not-so-best-friend Draco.

Her lunch break happily over, Hermione returned to her singularly unenlightening job and began to think anew, for the first time in years, that maybe she deserved something a bit better than this.

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