Cold Feet

That was the end of the Big Night Out and the beginning of Hermione’s nightmare. Richie, the captain, declared there was to be no mercy when Harry was the first man to pass out in front of his teammates for the second time in less than two weeks. Treacles and feathers didn’t seem like much of a punishment compared to that night’s torture. While Harry struggled hopelessly to regain a useful level of consciousness out there in the middle of the dance floor, Richie draped a black handkerchief over his face and intoned in a deep judge’s voice that, this time, Harry Potter was to forfeit all his body hair – at least, what little had grown back since Hermione scraped off the treacle. Richie waved aloft a ceremonial razor bought specifically for the occasion and the team held Harry down while he was shaved.



Legs, arms, head, chest, head, eyebrows…



“Eyebrows?! No! You’re kidding!” Hermione shouted.



Richie wasn’t.



She pleaded for clemency, but to no avail.



“What are his bosses going to think?” Hermione asked when it was clear that getting married in less than four months wasn’t a good enough reason for the Quidditch boys to leave her fiancé looking vaguely human.



“He can tell them he’s got tired of his fame and is in disguise,” said one bright spark, drawing in a new set of comedy brows above Harry’s startled green eyes with what was probably permanent marker.



“Richie,” Hermione hissed dangerously, advancing on the bulky, six-foot-five man who was nonetheless now looking at her with increasing nervousness, “you may well have ruined my life.”



*



Harry threw up in the cab on the way back to their apartment. He threw up in the cab and all down the side of the cab when Hermione finally managed to direct his bald head out through the window. The taxi driver made her part with an extra fifty Muggle pounds on top of the already extortionate fare to pay for cleaning (though, from the smell of his car even before Harry started vomiting, she doubted the driver would bother to do much more than wipe the seat over with a rag before he picked up his next customer). After that, there was no way Hermione was letting Harry get into bed beside her. She installed him in the spare room with a red plastic bucket within easy reach of the bed.



He had been barely conscious on the way home and was out cold as soon as his head hit the pillow, mouth wide open and snoring like a swamp monster. Hermione took off his shoes and tie but didn’t bother to undress him further than that. She didn’t know where to start. She definitely didn’t want to touch his shirt, covered as it was with vomit, or his trousers, which were drenched in beer ('Please, only beer,' she prayed). He could undress himself and strip the bed when he woke up the following day.



Instead, she stood with her hands on her hips and stared down at him, a sense of nausea in her own stomach.



She’d had no idea how much eyebrows contributed to the beauty of a man’s face until they weren’t there anymore. Harry looked like a big, ugly newborn, and not a human one, either. She would have found it funny if it had happened to someone else’s man. She rubbed her forehead and sighed.



How was it possible that this idiot on the mattress before her had single-handedly saved the Wizarding World from destruction and slaughtered Voldemort, the most evil, murderous, vile Dark wizard in centuries? Harry had had an awful childhood, his parents taken from him before he ever even knew them and the early years of his life blighted by mistreatment and neglect at the hands of his uncaring relatives. Then he’d had to suffer under the awful burden he’d had to carry with him all through his adolescence, the knowledge that he must one day kill or be killed. He had suffered great hardships. He had faced down a vile creature who wasn’t even human anymore, so distorted and ravaged by evil was he, and defeated him. He was a genuine hero in an era when they didn’t really exist anymore. For God’s sake, he wore a tie to work.



And yet, he was also a man who, on occasion, got so drunk, he couldn’t even stand up unaided. He was a guy who hung out with a bunch of men who thought tarring and feathering was fun without even considering the hideous historical undertones.



Hermione thought of Lucia’s tight-lipped smile as her husband Jake and Seamus helped Hermione carry Harry out to the taxi. She thought of Mandy’s concerned little sigh and Luna’s gentle squeeze of her shoulder. Even the other Quidditch widows pitied her. She didn’t want their pity – she had never fit in with those other women; women whom she had actually heard to tut “boys will be boys” when their full-grown husbands were arrested for setting fire to the tablecloths in an Indian restaurant. Like it gave them a license to do what they wanted and damn the consequences. But Hermione certainly pitied herself right then, alone and in charge of the biggest baby in London. She wondered briefly if it was even safe to leave Harry alone in the spare room. What if he choked on his own vomit? What if he died? As she considered the scope for calamity, he let out a particularly loud snore.



“I’ve had enough of this,” Hermione muttered angrily.



Who cared if he did die?



She slammed the door to the spare room behind her.



Why did she find it so hard to hang on to her sense of humour that evening? In all probability, four months was plenty of time to grow back a pair of eyebrows for the wedding photos. Hers certainly never stayed neatly plucked for that long.



It wasn’t as though Harry had suddenly started behaving out of character. Sure, he had got horribly drunk, but he was only that horribly drunk a couple of times a year. After all, she got just as bad, on occasion. Hell, he’d even confessed his true feelings for her while she was crouched over the toilet, puking up the countless martinis she’d just had. And the dinner was a special occasion, and most of the time, Hermione had always been able to convince herself that Harry’s Quidditch club shenanigans were harmless. They were just a form of release. It was stressful, being Harry Potter, being in the public eye. And not only that, but he was also planning a wedding, and had rather a busy job at the Ministry. Surely everyone deserved to go a little crazy sometimes. And she shouldn’t forget that Richie had actually auctioned the opportunity to shave Harry’s body hair off for charity. His friend, Gavin Blair, had paid three hundred Galleons for the privilege and all that money would be going to support orphaned children.



One day, she would look back on this and laugh. One day, she would be proud that her future husband’s humiliation had helped relieve another human being’s pain. That was what Luna told her. But it was no use that night. The good in the situation simply couldn’t outweigh the bad.



Hermione undressed in a rage. The pleasant, drunken feeling she had developed during dinner was long gone; the ride home made her sober up pretty quickly. She took off her dress and hung it outside of the wardrobe to air, though she knew she would have to take it to Madame Malkin’s again. There was to be no getting away with a quick airing this time. Harry had slobbered all over her and wiped his chin, sticky with vomit, all over her shoulder as he begged her to get him home safely during a brief moment of conciousness. She took off her jewellery – earrings, necklace and engagement ring. She tossed the ring into her jewellery box, not caring if it got scratched: a small, symbolic gesture. She was so sobered by this point, she even remembered to take her severely depleted wallet from her sequinned evening clutch bag back into the black messenger’s bag she used every day.



And that was when she found herself sitting on the edge of the mattress, opening her wallet and looking at his card again.



Draco Malfoy.



What was he doing that night, she wondered? Where was he? Was he at home? Perhaps he’d paid someone to watch Alexandra for the night and was socialising with his friends in some expensive Wizarding nightclub where Hermione would never even get past the doormen.



What was his Manor like? When they had been going out, Hermione had never been able to see the interior of his home. Too many wards, curses and deadly spells aimed at keeping Mudbloods like her out. Far too dangerous… But Draco had never really described it to her, not really. She had always imagined him in a shadowy, richly decorated drawing room with high-backed chairs and expensive wood-panelling, the cold walls illuminated by candles flickering on wrought-iron wall brackets, a fire crackling in a huge, ornate fireplace of black marble. But then, she remembered he had a three-year-old daughter now. She imagined the ominous gloom of that room, if it existed, was now somewhat softened by the presence of a pink toy broomstick and a pastel-coloured doll's house.



What did she look like? Alexandra – the name immediately conjured up a sweet little girl with golden ringlets and big blue eyes. Did she look like that? Did she look like him?



When she and Draco were together, Hermione used to lay in bed beside him at night and run her fingers through his white-blond hair, so silky and fine for a man’s, and tell him that if they had a daughter one day, she hoped she would inherit his hair rather than her curly monstrosity. The memory of those conversations gave her a small prickle in her chest. Perhaps Alexandra looked more like her mother…



What was she like, Hermione wondered? This Sophia. What kind of woman left her husband and her baby? More to the point, what kind of woman would Draco have married in the first place? What kind of woman could he have decided was worth committing his life to in such a serious way?



As Harry snored on in the spare room (at least the noise told her he was alive), Hermione sank back in the pillows and found herself imagining the former Lady Malfoy.



She had an idea of the kind of woman Draco was attracted to and Hermione didn’t fit the mould. When they graduated from Hogwarts, and Hermione and Draco had ended up attending the same university (much to their chagrin, of course), Draco had been going out with a girl called Abigail Musgrave. She couldn’t have been more different from the girl Hermione was back then – sophisticated, refined, womanly. She was as blonde as Hermione was brunette, as demure as she was opinionated, as pureblooded as she was Muggleborn. Abigail was a high-born witch of excellent pedigree whose bloodline could be traced back to the time of the Founders of Hogwarts. Hermione was just a low-born Mudblood.



Hermione imagined Sophia to be the same as Abigail Musgrave. There was the French thing, too. She pictured a woman like Brigette Bardot. In her mind’s eye, Sophia Malfoy was golden-haired with blow-job lips and sullen dark blue eyes. Basically, her polar opposite. Just as Harry was the polar opposite of Draco. Draco was silver-blond with skin like alabaster. Harry was tanned and healthy-looking, and when he had hair, it was the darkest jet-black she had ever seen. Draco was elegant, sophisticated and exceedingly upper-class. Harry was over-excitable, a little bit goofy and found fart jokes funny. Volatile and unreadable. Even-tempered and open.



Dangerous and safe.



God, they’d even been arch-enemies at school!



Now, Harry was snoring loud enough to wake Mrs. Smith downstairs, even if she was half-deaf. Hermione groped for her wand and threw a Silencing Spell on the door, cutting his snores off. Draco had never snored.



Since she and Draco had broken up six years earlier, she hadn’t dared to think of him. She had tried very hard to never compare during her post-Draco dating life, but that night, she found herself unable to stop. She compared the dreadful evening she had just endured with the kind of evenings she used to spent with Draco – nights in the most exclusive eateries in England, intimate evenings in Impish restaurants, small places offering delicious Leprechaun cuisine, where the staff knew Draco by name, and often with a group of glamorous, beautiful friends. Hermione compared the stupid Quidditch club widows and their meat-headed men with the friends she and Draco had shared – their funny, witty, intelligent crowd of artists, graduates and socialites. What had become of them? Was he still in touch with them?



And then, inevitably, Hermione was leafing back through her memories, all the way back to the very first time Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy had seen each other not as enemies and rivals, but as someone they could maybe just begin to understand a little.



She thought of herself, aged just eighteen, standing in the common room of her dorm building on campus. She thought of Draco, sauntering in from the Quidditch pitch with his friends. Of course, the old school rivals had discovered soon after beginning at the university that, much to their everlasting grief, not only had they ended up attending the same college, they had also been placed into the same bloody halls of residence! The cruel irony wasn’t lost on Hermione; however, since they had begun their first semester at the university, they had seemed to have made a silent pact to ignore each other’s existence, which turned out to be rather less stressful than their previous schooldays habit of going straight for each other’s jugular. Living in such close quarters, their paths had crossed frequently, but Hermione was too busy with her new friends and her new classes to ever really pay much attention to Malfoy’s swaggering and posturing, and she didn’t doubt the same was true of him.



She only really began to realise how much Draco Malfoy had changed from the bratty, snobbish little bigot she had known and reviled for so long when, one morning early in their second year, she was surprised to find herself standing next to him at the pigeon-holes as she arrived to pick up her mail. Casually, as though he wasn’t more or less turning everything she thought she ever knew about him on its head, he had made some flippant, characteristically disdainful remark about the unreliability and general shoddiness of the university-provided owls. It was the first time he had acknowledged her existence since their very first day at the university, when he had clapped eyes on her at enrolment, let a brief flicker of surprise flit across his usually impassive face, and then turned his head away from her, glowering in restless irritation.



Instantly suspicious – the annoying bastard had done all that was humanly possible to make seven years of her life hell, after all – she had thrown him an annoyed glare, snorted in a highly unladylike manner and stalked off to commandeer an armchair, mail in hand. She noticed his crowd leaving the common room with some relief, and was flipping through her mail when someone took the seat next to her. She looked up and found to her irritation that it was Draco Malfoy, lounging gracefully in his appropriated seat and regarding her with a faintly amused look in his eyes.



“For God’s sake, Malfoy,” she snapped, slapping her mail down on the table and straightening in her seat. “Don’t tell me we’re going to start all this again! Wasn’t making my life miserable for seven whole years enough for you?”



The amused glint in his eye only grew. “A pleasure to see you, too, Granger. Do you realise that we have both been studying and living within yards of each other for the past year almost, and not a single word has passed between us?” he remarked, as though this situation had only recently become apparent to him.



She growled impatiently. “Yes, and I was very much enjoying it, thank you,” she spat.



“No need to be so belligerent, Granger. We’re old acquaintances.” He paused, and the corners of his lips twitched upwards. “You have the room right above mine.”



Hermione frowned at him. “How do you know that?” she demanded.



His lips stretched into a lazy smirk. “Please, Granger. We shared living quarters as Heads for a whole year. I could identify your terrible singing anywhere.”



And that was where it all began. A strange beginning, yes, but Hermione didn’t stomp away in a huff, as she would have done when she was younger. Instead, what started as some light bickering to antagonise an old rival soon flowed into talk about their classes and mutual acquaintances without them ever even realising it. Hermione had forgotten how challenging and – hell, yes, she’d admit it – *entertaining* bantering with Malfoy could be. Before she knew it, she’d been sat talking to Malfoy for three hours.



And not once had he mentioned her heritage or called her a Mudblood. Not once.



The following evening, Hermione had come home from lectures to find Draco lounging in her chair and engrossed in her copy of '1984' by George Orwell. After she had finished yelling at him for scaring her half to death and being so arrogant as to assume he could just invite himself into her room whenever the fancy took him, she had grudgingly made him a cup of coffee in one of the embarrassing chipped floral cups her parents had donated from the family home for her new student pad. Draco didn’t leave her room until midnight.



In the weeks that followed, Draco seemed to be intent on imposing himself into every corner of Hermione’s life, whether she wanted him to or not. He always took a seat beside her in the couple of classes they shared, always appeared at her side when she was on her way across campus, and she would often come in from a hard day’s work to find him elegantly sprawled on her bed as though it was his own, flicking through one of her books or studying the photographs and letters on her pinboard. He seemed intent on making himself a part of her life after seven years of hatred and one year of silence, and she couldn’t for the life of her figure out why.



Then, three months after that night in the common room when he had first spoke to her, Draco Malfoy kissed her. And the reason for his apparent sudden change of heart became abundantly clear. They slept together that night, she and this beautiful, enigmatic, dangerous man. She had loved him all those years ago, and she had hated him even before that, and now, he had become the man she didn’t immediately recognise when he walked into the studio. Divorced. A single father. It was nothing like how she’d expected his life to pan out.



But she hoped he was happy, didn’t she? After six years of not wanting to hear anything but bad news of Draco Malfoy, she could finally wish him no ill will, because all was finally perfect in her world, wasn’t it?



Wasn’t it?



*



Hermione woke to Ginny’s owl tapping loudly on the window the following morning. Gazing blearily over at the alarm clock, she groaned loudly upon realising it was only eight-thirty.



Dressed in her pyjamas, her flesh coming up in goosebumps, she opened the window and retrieved the letter tied to its leg. After the small barn owl had helped itself to a treat from the small bowl she kept on the window-sill, Hermione padded back to her bed, wrapped herself tightly in the warm duvet and started to read.



'Hi, Hermione,



Hope Pepper didn’t wake you up. Can you believe I’ve been awake for three bloody hours already? Francis wanted to play at half past five this morning!'



Which was about the time Hermione had finally got to sleep. Of course that damn owl of hers had woken her up.



'Anyway, we’re still on for coffee, right? Oops, his Highness is shouting for me, so must go. See you in an hour or so.



Ginny'



Hermione groaned tiredly, went over to her desk and scribbled back a brief reply.



'Ginny,



Make it two.



Hermione'



*



At ten-thirty precisely, Ginny and Francis were on the doorstep. Hermione had fallen back to sleep as soon as she had replied to Ginny and was still in her pyjamas when she rang the doorbell as though the house was on fire. She couldn’t wake Harry, though. He would have burned to death in his puke-stained tuxedo. But for the moment, he was alive. She could tell that by the continued snoring. She didn’t dare to look in the spare room. She didn’t want to. She knew that if she did, he would somehow persuade her to deal with his mess by acting all helpless again and she was in no mood to play mother.



“Coffee,” Ginny demanded when she opened the front door.



“Come in,” Hermione replied sarcastically.



“Come out. We’re not going to stay here and drink your awful Muggle instant rubbish.” Ginny stepped into the hallway. “Ugh! This house smells of sick. Dress quickly.”



Hermione assembled an outfit from the various garments she had cast onto the bedroom floor after work during the course of the previous week, pulling on a pair of tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt she had worn the other day.



“Merlin!” Ginny exclaimed when she saw what Hermione had put on without her expert supervision. “I know you and Harry are about to get married but that really is no excuse to give up completely.”



“Tracksuits are fashionable,” Hermione lied.



“Even Muggles wouldn’t find something like that fashionable, and the things I see some of them wearing in the street... You look like *you’re* the one who gave birth six months ago.”



Hermione dragged a hooded sweatshirt over her head and mumbled through the fabric. “If you really want me to leave this house before eleven o’clock on a Saturday morning after a night with Harry’s Quidditch club – especially last night – you’re going to have to put up with the humiliation of being seen with me like this.”



“At least sort your hair out. It’s gone all bushy and horrible again!” Ginny pleaded.



“I don’t care.”



They headed for Starbucks; there really wasn’t much choice, unless they muscled their way into the greasy café ten minutes walk away for some saturated fats and a cup of instant coffee. They used to go there all the time – nothing like a bacon sandwich with ketchup for a hangover – but these days, Ginny refused to enter that place on the grounds of protecting Francis’ delicate lungs. It was going to be a long while before Mustafa banned his clientele from having a cigarette with their breakfast, no matter what the EU ruled.



So, instead, they were bound for their nearest outpost of the Evil Muggle Coffee Empire and their sugar-free muffins and fat-free lattes. In the twenty-first century, even coffee and cake could be joyless.



“I’m buying,” Ginny announced.



“It’s the least you can do after sending that fucking owl to wake me up,” Hermione snarled.



Ginny just grinned at her. She had been grinning like a clown ever since she rang her friend’s doorbell. Nothing could wipe the big smile off her freckled face.



“Ginny, what’s wrong with you? Have you taken something?”



“I may have to ask you a favour…” she began.



It turned out that Hermione’s faith in Ginny’s dating agency fellow had been well founded. The previous evening, after another flurry of owls bearing flirtacious letters, Ginny was practically glowing with happiness.



“I’ve got a date!” she almost shrieked. “An actual date!”



Hermione had the feeling she was about to find out why Ginny was treating her this morning.



“He wants to see me tonight.” Ginny handed Hermione her share of the chocolate muffin. “The big half,” she pointed out.



“He wants to see you tonight?”



“Yes, and if I don’t see him tonight, then I probably won’t be able to see him until the middle of next week, which is ages away. But I can’t find a babysitter. Mum and Dad are insisting on going to that stupid Ministry ball. Hermione, I don’t suppose there’s any chance…”



Hermione looked at her uncomprehendingly. Though part of her mind already knew what Ginny was about to ask her, another, bigger part of it didn’t think it was possible that she would. Her? Hermione Granger? A babysitter? Had Ginny gone quite mad?



“Just between eight and eleven. What do you think? Three hours…”



Hermione didn’t answer her. She couldn’t. She felt slightly strange. She looked at Francis in his pushchair. He was busy sucking the cord around the hood of his sweatshirt into soggy strands. He was at his best when he was chewing his clothes. He’d just been fed, as was content and not screaming.



“He’ll be asleep most of the time.” Ginny reached out and grasped Hermione’s arm. “Please? Pretty please?”



Hermione prayed for some kind of rip in the space-time continuum that would give her the opportunity to come up with some feasible excuse.



“Hermione?”



Even though Francis was six months old, Hermione had never actually spent any time alone with him, unless you counted those extremely brief moments when Ginny left her in charge of the pushchair while she rushed to the bathroom. Even then, she felt like a woman without a driving license left in charge of a car on double-yellow lines just as a traffic warden approached. Those minutes while Ginny was in the bathroom and Hermione prayed that Francis wouldn’t cry, choke or die always seemed to last for hours. And now, she was actually asking her to look after him for three hours.



In her entire life, Hermione had been left in sole charge of a minor for three minutes only once. That was her cousin. He was ten. She was fourteen and back from Hogwarts for the summer holidays. Her aunt and uncle couldn’t find a babysitter to look after him while they went to parents’ evening at his school, and Hermione had agreed to do it in exchange for a few pounds. They hadn’t been entirely happy with the solution but hadn’t had much choice, so they had taken a gamble and decided she was old enough and mature enough to look after her cousin, or at least call 999 if she couldn’t. She spent the entire evening eating snacks and watching TV while her cousin played games on his computer. There wasn’t really any risk involved.



But a baby?



“I can’t tell you how happy just talking to this guy has made me. It’s so special to feel like a woman again instead of just a mother. If I could just get to see him face to face…”



What was she supposed to be doing that night? There must be something. Hermione tore through her mental diary in search of a reason why she couldn’t look after Francis. She would have settled for a visit from Harry’s Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia (like that would ever happen). Then, she flicked through her mental address book to find anyone, anyone on earth, who might be a more suitable candidate for babysitting than her. Didn’t Ginny have any other friends, for God’s sake? What about all those brothers of hers? Perhaps she could drop Francis off at a children’s home for the night.



“Of course, if you and Harry are doing something…” Ginny’s comment was heavy on the sarcasm. She knew full well that the only thing scheduled in their diaries for the night after Harry’s Quidditch club dinner might be an appointment to have their stomachs pumped. “Harry could help you.”



The killer blow.



Ginny fixed her big blue eyes on Hermione. Francis fixed his big blue eyes on her, too. Slowly, theatrically, as though he was a film star making the most of a legendary smile, the corners of his lips began to twitch upwards. He let the sodden sweatshirt cord fall from his mouth.



“See? He loves his Auntie Hermione!” Ginny exclaimed.



And Hermione loved him, she did. She loved Ginny, too. She was her close friend. Along with Harry and Ron, she had been there through some of the greatest and the most difficult periods of her life. They’d never asked much of each other – just someone to laugh with, hang out with and occasionally listen. She wasn’t really asking much now. Three hours of childcare. Three hours for the first time in six months since she became a mother. Three hours with the cute baby who was beaming at Hermione as though he could think of nothing he wanted to do more than spend time in her incompetent company.



A variety of the things a baby could choke on popped up in her mind like a slideshow: peanuts, fish bones, the earring she lost last weekend… So much responsibility. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t do it. It simply wouldn’t be right.



Just then, Hermione’s mobile phone started ringing. 'Saved by the bell,' Hermione hoped. But it was Harry.



Scowling, she flipped the phone open and was just preparing to give her fiancé an ear-bashing when Ginny snatched the phone off her and held it to her own ear.



“Hello, Harry,” she greeted him brightly. Hermione groaned.



“Ginny, you’re holding it the wrong way around.”



Ginny rolled her eyes and turned it the right way up. “Bloody Muggle technology,” she said in mock-annoyance, then held it to her ear once again. “Hi, Harry,” she greeted him again and fixed Hermione with mischievous eyes. “I’m just trying to persuade Hermione to babysit for me this evening but she thinks you guys might be doing something.”



“Not us,” Harry replied guilelessly. “Not after last night. Where are you going?”



Ginny explained about her date. Hermione heard Harry laughing, and then, being the soft-hearted, selfless hero he was, Harry volunteered them both.



“Harry, you’re an angel. Oh, Hermione, you guys have saved my life,” Ginny beamed with typical overstatement. She squeezed Hermione’s face between her hands and kissed her on both cheeks. “How can I ever repay you? Booze? Chocolate? Would you like to borrow my favourite boots?”



“You just have to promise me a blow-by-blow account of your date,” Hermione told her when she was finally able to speak through her shock. She would kill Harry the minute she got home.



“It seems a bit of a shame to have a real-life date at all. It’s been so nice to find an owl waiting on my windowsill every day with a message from him. The weird thing is, this first date feels like it could be the end of it all. If we hate each other at first sight, I’ll be getting no more owls from tomorrow morning, Hermione,” Ginny squealed. “I’ve got a date! What the hell am I going to wear?”



Unlike babysitting, date-shopping was a mission Hermione could accept.



*



When Francis had been changed again, Hermione offered to hold him while Ginny had another coffee. It suddenly seemed important to get in as much practise as possible while Ginny was still around to tell her what she was doing wrong. Maybe it would be okay. It was an odd thing, but there was something about holding the warm, sleepy bundle in her arms that made the sofa seem even more comfortable.



“He’s so pretty,” she remarked, scrutinising the baby. “Which is more than could be said for Harry these days.”



At last, Hermione told Ginny about the eyebrow shaving, the passing out, the vomiting and more vomiting.



“He looks like an alien,” she glowered.



“Can’t you go to Diagon Alley and get some Hair Growth Potion?”



“I sent off an owl this morning, but apparently, they’re out of stock for at least the next couple of weeks. There’s a national shortage of bat’s lung or some other ingredient. Besides, you know that stuff’s unreliable. He could end up looking like a werewolf.”



“Hmm… no wonder he doesn’t want to go out tonight.”



“I’m not going to be able to go out with in public with him for weeks, maybe months. I can’t even look at him without feeling mortified. I mean, Christ, he can’t even put a foot out the front door without getting photographed.”



“Not good.” Ginny pulled a face. “But that’s the Quidditch club for you. You know what they’re like. Ron doesn’t emerge from his bed for at least three days after one of those parties.”



“I wish he wouldn’t spend so much time with them.”



“They’re just a bunch of little boys,” Ginny said dismissively. She seemed determined to fight Harry’s corner now that he had presented her as his white knight. “Harry’s not that like all the time and he’ll get his eyebrows back in time for the wedding. I think.”



“I know it probably seemed worse because I was tired and more than a little bit drunk myself. It’s not as if this happens every weekend or even every other weekend. It’s not the end of the world. But last night, I just shoved him into the spare room, closed the door behind me, and ten minutes later, I found myself sitting on my bed and staring at this.”



She flipped open her wallet with her free hand and pulled out Draco Malfoy’s card.



“Ah-ha. The dashing ex-Slytherin you never think about.”



“I don’t ever think about him. At least, I didn’t until last week.”



“And now, you can’t stop thinking about him, right?”



“That isn’t what I said.”



“No wonder you didn’t have patience for your lovely fiancé last night. Thinking about what might have been…”



“I wasn’t.”



Ginny didn’t bother to contradict her; instead, she peered closely at the address on the card.



“Don’t you think it’s creepy that he’s come back into your life just as you’re about to get married?”



“Don’t start with that psychic shit.”



“People come back into our lives for a reason.”



“It’s just a coincidence.”



“Some call it coincidence. I like to call it fate.”



“I’m engaged. You’re not supposed to be encouraging me to run off with my ex.”



Ginny put down her coffee and looked at Hermione like a teacher who knew her student was hiding something. “Who said anything about you ‘running off with your ex'? You came up with that little thought all by yourself.”



Hermione frowned and looked away.



“I was thinking more along the lines that your ex has come back into your life to show you how wonderful things are for you these days, to help you step into the future with Harry with no regrets. To show you what a great man he is, eyebrows or no eyebrows.”



“Right.”



“It’s interesting, though – your assumption, I mean. And the way you jumped straight to it,” she added wickedly.



“It was my assumption based on what I assumed you were assuming.”



Ginny raised a single eyebrow.



“Oh, forget it.”



“So, have you owled him?”



“Of course I haven’t.”



“Why don’t you meet up and have a proper talk?”



“No.”



“Where’s the harm?”



“I don’t know. It just doesn’t feel right.”



“Why not?”



“Because he’s my ex-boyfriend. Because he’s a part of my past. I only saved this card because I thought you might want to talk to him.”



Ginny nodded, but the amused curl of her mouth told Hermione that she thought brunette was scrabbling for an excuse.



“You’ve got a lot in common now,” Hermione ended weakly.



“Does he have stretch marks, too?”



“I just thought you might want to talk about having kids and, I don’t know, about other things. You got on well with him at university, too.”



“And after you broke up, you made me swear that I would never speak to him again unless it was to warn him that I was about to cut his balls off with a rusty nail-file for hurting my friend so badly. Remember?”



Hermione shook her head at the memory. That was one of the milder pronouncements she had made at the time. “I better go back home.”



“Okay.” Ginny turned Draco’s card over between her fingers with a magician’s flourish, then tucked it back into the breast pocket of Hermione’s jacket. “But I’m not going to make it easy for you. If you want to see Draco Malfoy, *you* have to contact him.”



“Ginny,” Hermione insisted, “I’m never going to use that card.”