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All of This	By : Hypersomniac Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Draco/Hermione Views: 6265 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 7
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

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All of This

Story Summary: After the war, Draco’s relationship with everyone is tumultuous at best, but none more so than the one he has with none other than Hermione Granger… If you can really call it a relationship. [non-canon pairing, canon pairings, DH-compliant, ignores epilogue] Central theme loosely based off of the Blink-182 song of the same title.

Draco stared up at the high kitchen window bleakly, scanning the sky for the telltale black owl that should be arriving. It came every day, like clockwork, bearing a neatly folded length of parchment emblazoned with the Azkaban seal. He knew this, but still his heart plummeted as the dark spot appeared in the distance. He considered turning it away, but doing so would confirm that he hadn’t read the persistent letters. He may immediately set each one ablaze, unopened and unread, but he wasn’t sure he was ready for them to know that, to permanently sever that tie.

His family wasn’t perfect. His family wasn’t even a good one, truth be told, and the last few years had been more than enough to teach him that. But he wasn’t especially good himself, either. Only his age and claims of coercion that saved him from the same fate as his parents. But still, they were his parents, and that was a tough bond to break. It definitely wasn’t a decision he was ready to make now.

Now, with everything going so poorly. Potter and his friends were the newly sung heroes of the wizarding world, the poster children of the war. He had seen them both many times in the corridors of the Ministry. Potter and the Weasel were newly-appointed aurors, and Granger had been made undersecretary of the Department of Muggle Relations.

He nearly snorted with laughter when he had heard that one. How perfect for the muddy little know-it-all. But snorting was unbecoming of a Malfoy, and since the final battle he had preferred to keep a low profile. Laughing at one of the great heroes in public would probably not achieve that.

The only people who really treated him normally anymore were Blaise and Pansy, and that wasn’t even entirely true, he supposed. Blaise was too busy trying to maintain his innocence with the rest of the Zabini family – his parents had been much more low-key during the war – to really even talk to him, and although Pansy was over regularly and still warmed his bed on more than one night, she didn’t seem to hold quite the same admiration for him that she used to. She never really looked him in the eye, and if she did her eyes were cold. It wasn’t personal; she held the same look for anyone who happened to be around her. The war had changed Pansy in her own way, and she seemed hollow, cold. She was broken.

Draco wasn’t nearly self-pitying enough to consider himself the same way. He wasn’t broken, like her or so many of the others who had set beside him in class, or fought beside him, or against him on that day. He wasn’t even defeated like so many. It was strange, the people who carried that look. He had seen it on Potter, and even Granger. The self-righteous, godly trio looked defeated. Draco couldn’t figure it out. But he didn’t dwell on it, either. If they held some regret, all the better. Best they suffer with the rest.

No, what Draco felt most of all was shamed. He felt he had been tricked, and betrayed, by the very people who he was supposed to trust above all. But that wasn’t special. He supposed most people on the losing side of the war would feel that way.

But then, maybe not. He was sure his parent’s owls were full of his father’s assertion of the rights of blood, and the evils of the tainted muggleborns, or his mother’s pleas of understanding, of how she had done it all for him, to give him a better life, in a better world.

He knew all that. He knew all of it before the war, and during the war. The same words were probably spoken at his Christening, for all he knew. That was how long he had known with absolute certainty of his family’s beliefs and morals.

He hadn’t questioned them once.

Until that day, with her lying on the floor, her blood flowing free, with Bellatrix standing over her, that insane glint in her eyes. She had looked at him, her big brown eyes hard and determined, but a shadow of fear and defeat lurking deeper. And she had shamed him. With one look, she had undone all of that, and she had shamed him for simply believing what he had been told all of his life was true.

But it wasn’t her fault. Not really.

So as the owl finally swooped in the window and down to the table to blink at him scornfully, he set his jaw, remembering whose fault it was. He took the letter and tossed it in the sink.

“Incindio,” he snapped, flicking his wand at the letter, which promptly burst into flames. The owl, startled at the blaze, shrieked and gave flight, nearly cuffing Draco with his wing.

The letter blackened and burned, and Draco turned his back on it, somehow disappointed. Burning the letters never fixed anything. It never changed his childhood, or his family, or erased that look she had given him on that day. It never washed away his feeling of shame. There was no sense of repentance in the act.

But he was a Malfoy. And Malfoys did not apologize. They did not admit fault. They did not repent. They just put one foot in front of the other, day by day, and carried on.

Hermione Granger chewed her quill thoughtfully, her brow knitted as she surveyed the document in front of her. One of the first of many unpleasant tasks in her new office was to approve new living arrangements for the many, many wizarding children left orphaned by the war.

For most of them, relatives would be taking them in, which was easy enough. But for the still-astounding remaining number, her office had to find homes, even if they had to include the muggle community. There were a few scattered squibs and even witches and wizards who had opted to leave the wizarding world who they would approach to take in a child, especially the older ones either attending school or old enough to be showing signs of magic. The infants and toddlers could possibly be adopted or put into foster care with actual muggles, provided they were monitored in the interest of secrecy. But that would involve a lot of manpower and even if it worked there were still the children whose powers had already begun to manifest, and even school-age children. Hiding their magic would be nearly impossible, and disclosing it to the muggles would be a huge breach in their secrecy laws at a time when they were arguably at their weakest in centuries.

Perhaps Professor McGonagall would consider keeping the Hogwarts dorms open year-round. But then that would involve government funding, and sad to say that this wasn’t the highest priority in the ministry at the moment.

She stared at the names until they began to blur, spreading into a sea of too many needs and not enough resources.

She sighed, sitting back and rubbing her eyes. It seemed more with each passing day that the Ministry giving her the title of Undersecretary was just an excuse to heave more problems on her with the expectation that she could fix anything. Sure, because fighting a war before she was even done with puberty hadn’t been enough of a service to the wizarding world.

Truth was, Hermione was tired. She was tired of being the person that everyone turned to. At least during the war she, Harry, and Ron had been a team. Well, it had really been more her and Harry than anything at times, but she had rarely been alone in it. But since the war things had been different, and not in the way she expected.

She thought that the death of Voldemort would signal the beginning of peace, and that she would finally get to relax. But it had just been the beginning. It seemed like every day more problems surfaced, and more people were turning to Hermione to fix them. Ron and Harry were off doing their auror thing, a job which they said was actually pretty boring in the wake of the war, but which they both enjoyed, leaving her to deal with the more technical problems. Finding ways to fix and disguise the damage inflicted on the muggle world during the war, setting up relief funds, meeting with heads of government as a representative of the magical world, it all seemed to fall on her.

Hermione felt like she was reaching her breaking point, and she just wanted to quit. Was there really any shame in that? Had she really not given enough? Did she really owe anyone anything more?

She sighed and stood up, gathering up all of her papers and shutting the folder that held them and stuffing it in the top drawer of her desk. She would deal with it tomorrow. She couldn’t face any more of this today.

She strode purposefully to the elevator, pretending not to hear anyone who tried to speak to her in the still-busy corridor. Tomorrow. She would deal with it all tomorrow. For today, she was done.

She reached the Floo without much incident and jumped in without a thought, spinning through the flames until she was deposited onto the hearth in Grimmauld Place. She brushed the soot from her robes and surveyed the room quickly, stilling her movements to strain her ears for any evidence of the other occupants. There was no sound to suggest that Ron or Harry were home. She breathed a sigh of relief and swept upstairs. It wasn’t that she didn’t like living with Ron and Harry, and she and Ron were still together, sort of, but it was nice to have a few moments alone. It had become a rare sort of luxury.

She went into her room, dropping her bag on the small chair by the door and unfastening her cloak before dropping it on top of the bag. She went into the adjoining bathroom, flipping on the wizarding wireless as she went and stripping down to her underwear to draw a bath.

As the tub was filling and she twisted her hair up to keep it dry she met her own eyes in the mirror. She sighed, her hands dropping to brace on the sink as she moved closer to her reflection. She looked tired. Her eyes had taken on a hollowed quality. Her gaze flickered to the series of thin white scars on the inside of her arm. Mudblood. It was forever a part of her, a reminder. Some days looking at it made her feel strong, like she was a survivor, a fighter. Today just wasn’t one of those days, it would seem.

Today the scar screamed, look what I did! I won! I beat the bad guys, I vanquished the monsters, I saved them all! Wasn’t that enough?

Did she really need to do more?

She turned off the water and sunk into the bath up to her chin, inhaling the lavender scent of her bubble bath deeply. She felt her muscles relax and let her eyes close.

When she opened them again the water was cold and she could hear Ron and Harry banging around downstairs. She sighed again and pulled the plug, standing and wrapping a towel around herself. This was her life now, she thought as she opened the door to her room and started to get dressed to go downstairs and see Harry and Ron. She might as well get used to it.

AN: So just a bit of an intro chapter to kick things off, sort of explain where the characters are at this point. It’s about a year after the final battle.

So, thoughts, comments? Concrit welcome, flames forbidden. :)

Thanks so much for reading!
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All of This