A/N: JK Rowling owns all things Harry Potter. Post war. Adult humour, English spellings and references. Enjoy.

The day of the funeral, in the house that Hermione and Ron shared, she receives a letter from Viktor Krum. The passage that stays with her, is him saying he wishes he could have done more.

The little house, set apart, but inside the grounds of the Burrow has been filled to overflowing with wellwishers. When the last guest has left, she changes into flannel pajamas, locks all the doors and draws all the curtains. Stoking the sitting room fire, she reads every piece of Viktor's correspondence over the years, before burning them. She used to think how funny it was that Ron would get so jealous over something that was nothing at all. In between each cremation, she takes a hesitant sip of hot cocoa laced with fire whiskey and considers, that it might have been her work that got him killed.

When she is all out of offerings, she curls up under a blanket on the sofa and watches the fire consume itself until nothing is left.

"Drinking alone?"

The bored drawl is directly connected to every hackle Hermione has ever possessed.

"Obviously not," she tells the supercilious features in the glowing embers.

"They all left you?"

"I'm fine," she says firmly, drawing the blanket up to her chin, which only goes to expose her bare toes. She is fine, up to the point that she feels like she might be hollow inside and never warm again.

"I'm coming back."

She runs the length of her wand through her hand over and again, feeling the uneven texture of the vine ripple against her skin. It is the only way she knows to tell herself that this is really real.

She says nothing, stares and stares until the face disappears in a shower of sparks, thinking that the only reason Draco Malfoy would pay a house call is to further his own ends.

-:-

In the Solar at Malfoy Manor, curtains draw themselves against the blank expanse of floor to ceiling windows. Draco's Mother and her new lover enter, otherwise unannounced. In the only room to have emerged unscathed from the War, the vast hexagonal dimensions of the room have always been Draco's favourite place to linger, outside of his Ministry office. There have been changes, everything evolves to survive after all, but the room hasn't suffered under a change in stewardship.

Draco sits back on his haunches and fastidiously extracts a black monogrammed handkerchief from the top pocket of his suit jacket. He flaps it open with a swift movement and wipes the soot from his otherwise impeccable person. His expression is not unlike that of a cat, who, having played endlessly with its food, now realises it is not playing back and may be broken, or possibly in fact dead.

He rests his hands on his thighs, staring contemplatively into the glowing coals while he considers that the unremarkable features of the most remarkably talented witch he has ever met, after his Mother, seem to have embedded themselves on the inside of his eyelids.

"She is not taking it well," Narcissa's low voice interrupts his thoughts.

"Not as well as you," Draco replies diffidently, choosing not to mention the almost indecent speed with which his Mother aligned herself with another Magical house. There are qualities his Mother owns that he admires, and equally those that make him choke with rage. The latter category adequately encompasses the fact that she is even now, unashamedly rifling through his head. Everyone else he could keep out, but never her. He is bound in a way that is both embracing and at the same time, absolutely suffocating.

Draco rises smoothly, turning to look at the pair in the doorway. A tall man with jet black hair left unfashionably long stands behind Narcissa, with his arms about her waist and face tucked into the crook of her shoulder. Narcissa purrs, "you will go."

"It's my time." Draco's reply could be taken as defensive, or affirmative.

He drops the soiled handkerchief to the ornate rug, where it winks out of sight. A freshly laundered folded replacement appears at the snap of his fingers, a testament to Dobby's successor. He replaces the linen neatly in his top pocket and adjusts the point until it sits just so. When he is happy with the result, he slides a long woollen overcoat over the shoulders of his lean frame, adjusting the cuffs for comfort.

"What if she has made the house unplottable?" Narcissa asks suddenly.

"She won't have," Draco replies, drawing his wand. "She wants to be found." The thought of Hermione's blank eyes makes his gut clench uncomfortably. It reminds him of something he chooses to face, only when he has braced himself for the experience of it.

"Don't wait supper for me." He nods his head sharply in good-bye, "Mother, Sir."

A deep cracking noise marks his exit by disapparation.

Narcissa tips her head up and to the side to meet the gaze of the man behind her. "He loves her."

"Enough?"

"Desperately."

"There are rumours about her."

"There are rumours about you," she says lightly, dusting his shoulder with a chaste kiss.

"But those are true," he half laughs, turning her to more fully appreciate his embrace.

"He is my son. He will do whatever it takes." The last is said with a cold certainty.

-:-

She must have fallen asleep, because the sharp rap of the knuckles on glass has Hermione wide awake and panicked. She takes the blanket with her, draped around her shoulders to the frigid terracotta tiles of the mudroom.

"Malfoy?" she calls through the wood of the door. Air surges around the house and scuds down the chimney she left behind, but the wards she has so assiduously placed hold fast. "Malfoy!"

"Are you going to let me in or am I supposed to freeze to death valiantly on your behalf?" His voice is so muffled, it could be anybody. The snarling note is right at least.

"How do you approach a Hippogriff?"

"Fuck off Granger, I Fire-called you twenty minutes ago."

"Lumos minima," Hermione whispers, braced against the drain that even this slight magic takes from her. She doesn't bother to correct the name he uses, he has already had his money's worth at her expense over the fact that she kept her surname rather than taking Ron's. In many ways their relationship is no different from when they both resided at Hogwarts, only now it is coated with the thin veneer that adult responsibilities bring. She draws the deadbolt and cracks the door open, to be presented with Malfoy's back while he scans the darkness beyond.

"Mackerel sky," he mutters to himself, although how he sees it at night is beyond her.

Not long wet, not long dry flits across her mind, random and disconcerting.

His angular shape shouldering inside and refastening the door with infinite care blocks the view of the pale night blooming Minochs that line the rear pathway, planted only last Spring and in full sway.

He regards her with silvered probing eyes. "You look terrible, you should sleep."

"I was until you turned up." Her chin sticks out defiantly, blood courses through her, leaving her jittery in this small, cold space, in front of the man responsible for finding the cooling body of her husband. She is unwilling to give ground to him. This is her domain, as ill-equipped as she feels to defend it.

"Why aren't you in a safe house?" His raises his wand slowly, divining how the wards are set, how many and how strong. His eyes never leave her, although they tighten in the corners at what he finds and his lips flatten, then part.

"Genius loci," he adds another ward, or more she is not sure, the words he uses are sibilant and make her skin prickle. The one she heard is Dark Arts, bordering on the Forbidden, it calls the Spirit of the Place to stand guard. The air feels drier and pensive, like every mote is expectant and watchful.

Among the tall stemmed flowers outside, a long, thin serpent that looked like a stone ornament uncoils from the warmth of a tile hung low on a South facing wall and weaves itself sinuously between the stalks, until it is closer to the back door. The likeness of a Green Man carved into one of the corbels on the front porch peels back leafy eyelids and squints into the distance.

"This is our home. My home," she self corrects.

"I never took you for a fool, Granger." He has his hand on her upper arm, using it to turn her back the way she has come, back to the dying fire in the sitting room.

"I can look after myself." She shakes herself out of his grasp and takes herself ahead of him into the wavering orange firelight, feeling where her clothes chafe against his unwelcome fingerprints from seconds ago.

He huffs through his nose, "and the rest of the Establishment?"

She stands at the threshold, looking back at him, dark in darkness so that only his head and hair stand out. He reminds her of a Bunraku puppeteer preparing for the stage until only his eyes will remain uncovered. "What do you mean?"

"Do you really think this is all about you? How very Gryffindor."

There is a moments pause, before she says, "I thought I might draw them out."

"And do you have any idea of who 'they' are?" He draws off black leather gloves by pinching each fingertip in turn, folds and stows them in a dark overcoat pocket, one on either side. He kicks himself for thinking that her looks were unremarkable. Below wide eyes, pale cheeks give way to a stubborn chin. He fixates on her mouth for a second before pulling away, eyeing the deep 'v' of a pajama top clearly meant for someone larger. The fabric shivers over the peaks of her breasts, made more pronounced when she crosses her arms under them, her wand gripped limply in one hand.

"You came didn't you?"

He smiles thinly at that. He advances as she retreats, his tone harsh and musing.

"I have my reasons. And you let me in, just like Ron did his murderer."

Her reaction is almost too fast to see, an open hand striking at him, first one, reflexively as an answer to the taunt, then both palms in quick successive blows to his face, his head, body any part she can reach. His face turns from shocked surprise to one of grim determination, he raises his hands, crossing his forearms to protect his face, turning aside and cursing half words between the hollow thumps of her landing her frustrations.

He hisses, "fucking stop," belatedly realising she is not in a state to listen, not until she is shaking and he is panting with the effort of capturing her flailing fists. He takes a knee solidly to the meat of his thigh, grunting lowly before forcing his leg between hers as a protective measure and winding the length of his arms around her waist with her arms pinioned inside.

It occurs to him that in all the time that they have worked in the same building, sparred together, Hermione has always belonged to someone else. She has never hit him before, probably because that someone had always steered her away, or deflected the argument onto themselves. Weasley. Past tense. It feels good to have this out in the open. It feels good to have a fight on his hands, something physical between them. He grapples awkwardly with the furious female who is all sharp elbows and stinging palms, so strong and fierce in such a puny package.

"You're a fucking menace," he breathes, hot, into her neck, chest heaving for air, "to yourself," he adds, gripping tighter against her increasing struggles until she cannot move without him moving first.

"We were happy," she spits at him, railing at the tears that rise and fall without her permission. Her shoulders shake, finally grieving. Malfoy's arms redirect, his hands make soothing motions across Hermione's back and shoulders, he rests his chin on her head and breathes her in.

In the morning he will ask her about the lovely pale pink flowers by the back door, and about petals that a man, who was not her husband, told her they remind him of the scent and texture of her skin. Then he will ask her again, to tell him how happy they were."

-:-

The Ministry has been rebuilt, new posts filled and endless paperwork to process. Hermione smiles like she is supposed to at the platitudes and the "good to see you backs." At the end of an honest day's work, she shares an overcrowded elevator car and goes home to an empty apartment. Dinner is a Marks and Spencer microwave meal and there is no washing up, since she eats it straight from the plastic dish, with the plastic cutlery it comes with, in front of Muggle TV.

Her evenings are filled with the torture that is building flat packed furniture, from instructions with exploded pictures and badly translated Swedish. By the time she has finished she has a dozen matching hex keys and a room full of superfluous cardboard. Her kitchen boasts more cleverly disguised places for hiding things than Diagon Alley, her sitting room an array of empty and inviting floor to ceiling bookcases, magically altered to accommodate both the facts that the walls are not flat nor the corners square. Mood lighting is provided by a liquid filled cylinder which encloses a stream of bubbles; from time to time the colour changes, red to green, pink to blue. A canopic jar rests in opulent isolation on the mantel over a boarded up fireplace.

On the second day of her second week, she passes him in one of the corridors some half an hour to the end of the day. He is already carrying his robes, a half dozen yellow roses in one hand and ushering an awestruck intern ahead of him with the other. The young woman's body language is exactly right to appeal to the walking ego a mere step behind.

"Granger," he nods, pausing. Malfoy doesn't say anything else. Anything at all. She could wilt with relief. Every new mention of loss tears at a scab slow enough to heal as it is and anything else isn't something she wants to discuss.

"I hope you are seeing her home," she says evenly. It's none of her business, but she has lost count of the number of times she has had to call Maintenance already. to remove the graffiti about Malfoy in the ladies lavatory.

His lips twitch, as do his perfectly arched eyebrows under his trademark shock of white-blond hair. There is always an aura of restrained something around him. She feels it like the magical field of an untried wand, never knowing if it will do her biding or flay her alive.

"I shall," his low voice grates at her and the last word more than most. "After."

Her chin jerks up, not that he sees, since he has already turned away. He looks surprised to find her still standing there when he reaches to close the guard doors on the elevator, but does not look away once he has found her eyes with his own. Not once, until the car drops from sight. They are almost as angry as her own.