Impression

Author's Note: This fic was written for dmhgficexchange on LJ.

*

If she didn't like school so much, Hermione mused as she trudged through the rain to the waiting carriages, she would be probably be complaining right now about how she always got the boring jobs.

As it was, she was merely downcast at the circumstances surrounding her return for her seventh and final year at Hogwarts. Harry and Ron wouldn't be here, off searching for Horcruxes as they were, and Ginny was only coming back because her parents had chosen to exert what authority they had over her until she was seventeen. Hermione honestly hadn't expected to be coming back either... until, that was, they had discovered that a certain someone had unexpectedly had all charges against him dropped and was planning to finish his schooling as if nothing had happened...

She spotted the someone in question a few yards ahead of her; a flash of blond hair appearing in the narrow doorway of a carriage as he climbed hastily inside to avoid the rain. Hermione found herself in the carriage behind, facing backwards, wondering how much space there was physically between herself and the place where he was sitting somewhere behind her.

Proximity to Malfoy was something she was going to have to get used to.

'Keep an eye on him,' Harry had said. 'See if he does anything suspicious - we don't know what his relationship is to the Death Eaters at the moment. Find out if he's still working for them, see if he knows anything about the Horcruxes. Try to... gain his confidence.'

'How do you expect me to do that?' she had replied. 'He dislikes me at least as much as he does you two. I'm a Mudblood, remember? What can I possibly do to even make him speak to me?'

'Don't you dare shag him,' Ron had said suddenly, as if he were honestly afraid she might do so.

'...I'm sure you'll think of something,' Harry had finished weakly, and the conversation had tapered to an awkward halt.

Thinking of something was rather more easily said than done, though. In all her time at Hogwarts up to now Hermione couldn't recall a single instance where she had started a conversation with Malfoy - and now she was supposed to talk to him enough for him to trust her with his secrets?

Fat chance. She would almost be better off spying on him, if it weren't for the fact that such an endeavour would likely yield few results - he was unlikely to divulge anything of value anywhere it would be possible for her to overhear, even if she had Harry's invisibility cloak or polyjuice or something. He would surely have learned from his mistakes on that front by now. He wasn't stupid, she was certain of that much.

Perhaps a healthy mixture of both approaches would be the answer.

It was something to start with, anyway.

* * *

Their first conversation was, surprisingly, initiated by Malfoy, though what he intended by it Hermione didn't know. She had just walked stepped outside on her way to visit Hagrid when he spoke to her.

'Granger.'

Hermione whirled around, startled, almost losing her footing on the ice-coated stone steps. Malfoy was leaning against the wall by the door, alone, smoking something which smelled decidedly unlike tobacco.

'What do you want?' Hermione said defensively - immediately chiding herself for being stand-offish, but then he was so... unpleasant.

Malfoy shrugged. 'Lots of things. What do you want?'

I want to get away from you and see Hagrid, Hermione thought. Instead, and bearing in mind her purpose for being back here in the first place, she turned to face him more fully and said, 'Lord Voldemort dead.'

'Don't we all,' Malfoy muttered, shaking his head to himself.

'Really?' She felt her eyebrows raise with unfeigned surprise.

Shrugging again, Malfoy looked up at her, studying her with a scrutiny which made Hermione feel more than a little uncomfortable. 'Well, Dumbledore dying didn't help. Maybe both of them dead would.' He extinguished the stub of whatever it was that he had been smoking on the wall behind him and threw it out into the dark. 'What's Potter up to, anyway?'

'That's none of your business,' Hermione replied. Why was he asking her this? Was there some ulterior motive she should be wary of? Or was he just curious?

But Malfoy shrugged once more and, turning to leave, said simply, 'Fair enough.'

Hermione was left to make her way to Hagrid's in a mildly confused state of mind.

* * *

She tried spying on him exactly once.

It was a Hogsmeade day, and as Hermione was walking down towards the gates with Ginny and her friends she saw Malfoy, in front of them, glance around furtively and turn off the path.

Making her excuses to the others, Hermione followed.

The route her quarry took was long and circuitous, and she almost lost him several times in the morning fog that was coming off the lake, but at last he ducked down behind a grassy mound of Earth by the edge of the water and sat down.

Hermione crept up behind him, crawling almost on her stomach up the incline the other side of he must have sat down. His blond head came into view slowly, bent over a book; he was beating a pencil lightly against the pages with one hand, like she had seen him do with his quill in exams when searching for an answer.

She peered over his shoulder and managed to read the first few lines.

12th November 1997

Got a letter from Father yesterday. Burnt it without opening it. Can't deal with him going on at me right now as well as--

Malfoy's head snapped around, and Hermione found herself looking straight into his furious, cold grey eyes.

She gulped, afraid for a moment that he might actually try to hurt her for daring to invade his privacy so. But he simply stood up and walked away, tucking the book under his cloak and muttering something which sounded suspiciously like 'Fucking Mudblood...'

Hermione allowed herself to breathe out and collapse on the damp grass.

Right. She was never doing that again.

* * *

One month now exactly.

Hermione kept telling herself not to worry, that there was sure to be a perfectly good explanation, but... well, she couldn't help but worry, could shee? Not when her two best friends in the world were out on a dangerous quest and she hadn't heard from them in a month. It would make anyone uneasy.

She hovered uncertainly on the path down to the Quidditch pitch, debating whether she really wanted to go and watch another match that Harry and Ron weren't playing in. Ginny would understand, she was sure; she was almost as worried as Hermione was.

'Are you going to move any time soon, Granger?' a voice said from somewhere entirely too close to her ear, and she turned to find Malfoy regarding her questioningly, one eyebrow raised.

'Sorry,' she muttered - why? Why was she saying sorry? To him? - and pushed past him to start walking back up to the castle.

Malfoy followed.

'Aren't you going to watch the match, then?' he asked.

'Apparently not,' Hermione replied irritably. Why was he harassing her? Her efforts to be sociable towards him had failed miserably so far - in fact she had mostly given up on that approach, though God knew what others were left to try - why was he speaking to her now? There had to be some malicious twist to it. 'Why are you following me?' she said.

Malfoy shrugged - a familiar habit of his by now, and one which irritated her to no end. 'I've got nothing better to do.' He stepped in front of her, facing her, forcing her to stop. 'You want to come back to my room and get drunk?'

Hermione was more than a little surprised at this offer, though she couldn't quite muster the shock she was sure had been at least part of his intention in making it. She was too distracted by thoughts of Harry and Ron to feel anything very strongly; but then, perhaps that was why Malfoy had asked her. She couldn't imagine even hesitating to refuse had she been in a more usual state of mind.

As it was she contemplated it for a moment, briefly weighing the pros and cons, then looked up at him and said, 'Yes.'

Malfoy grinned.

* * *

Somehow it had become a routine.

Whenever all the others were out doing something else, be it Hogsmeade visit or Quidditch match, Hermione and Malfoy would retire to his room and drink from his seemingly endless stash of alcohol.

It was almost as if they were friends.

Not that it had helped Hermione in her task nearly as much as she had thought it would. She had dropped words like 'Horcrux' and 'Death Eater' into the conversation a few times, but Malfoy's reactions had been decidedly unrevealing. Then again, it hardly mattered with Harry and Ron still missing and, she reluctantly was forcing herself to admit now, likely dead.

She sipped her firewhiskey, watching from where she was sat cross-legged on Malfoy's bed as the rain trickled down the outside of the room's small window.

He was watching her.

She looked back at him, taking in his carefully relaxed pose; leaning back into the pillows against the headboard and slowly swirling the liquid around in the glass he held in an outstretched hand.

They regarded each other for a moment, silently acknowledging and quietly challenging the other's gaze.

It was Malfoy who spoke first. 'They're dead, you know.'

Hermione looked down. She tilted her glass, admiring the way the light reflected off the surface of the liquid. 'How do you know? Have you got some kind of inside knowledge I don't know about? Connections I'm not aware of?'

Malfoy let the silence seep back in for a moment before replying. 'Granger, I am nothing but what I appear to be - a failure, shunned by all sides. I don't know anything more about the Death Eaters than I do about your little army.' He paused. 'None of that changes the fact that your friends are gone.'

Hermione sighed. 'No,' she said, draining the last of her drink. 'No, I suppose it doesn't.'

He sat up, crawled over to her with his own drink in one hand and reached under the bed for the bottle to offer her a refill.

She accepted it wordlessly.

He settled in beside her, kneeling facing her on the edge of the bed.

Avoiding his eyes, she sipped her drink.

Somehow it didn't surprise her when she felt his fingers tangle in her hair and skim across the back of her neck. What did surprise her was that she didn't try to stop him.

Her fingers yielded her whiskey glass willingly when he gently pulled it from her grasp and set it with his on the small table by the bed. His face moved closer to hers, and she thought she saw the tiniest flicker of hesitation in his eyes before he reached up to touch her cheek. She closed her own eyes instinctively in what she supposed must be an invitation. The skin of his fingers was warm and smooth but slightly hardened - from Quidditch, she assumed. Like Ron's.

No. Ron's dead.

Before she had time to finish the thought properly she felt Malfoy's lips on hers, and banished it to the far recesses of her mind in favour of leaning in, closer, feeding on the sensation of having another human being touch her again.

His hand wandered up her leg and across her thigh under her skirt even as she opened her mouth to his probing tongue. Don't think, just feel, she found herself saying in her head - as if thinking would cause the moment to break.

Malfoy ceased his careful caresses of her neck, pulling his hand away for some other purpose - then, pain.

'Ow!' Hermione complained, even as Malfoy's confused expression and the realisation of what was causing the pain began to make her grin.

Malfoy tried again to disentangle his hand from her hair - to no avail, and more pain.

She ground her teeth together this time to keep herself from complaining and tried in vain to keep the corners of her mouth from twitching upwards. 'Here,' she said, 'Let me do it...'

Reaching up over her shoulders with both hands, she felt carefully along his fingers and knuckles, working out where the knots were and where to pull to loosen them. She would probably have felt rather betrayed by her unruly hair right then if it hadn't been for the undeniable humour of the situation - as it was she had a hard time holding in her laughter until she had successfully freed Malfoy's fingers.

Once she had done so she found herself in hysterics, and only calmed down when she realised that Malfoy was laughing too; and that she had never seen him laugh before without some element of malice in it.

It was at that moment that she fully believed him about his relations to the Death Eaters.

Malfoy, oblivious to her epiphany, was removing his tie. 'Let's get that hideous stuff out of the way,' he said, using it to tie her hair securely behind her head in a ponytail.

At any other time Hermione would have been offended by this description of her hair, but right now she just smiled and kicked off her shoes.

Don't think, just feel, she told herself with new determination, giving herself over to the mess of hands and lips, unfastening buttons and zips and pulling off socks, until she found herself lying beneath him, naked, with his breath on her face and his skin against hers.

Don't think, she told herself, pulling him closer.

Just feel.

She managed it until about half an hour later, when her head was resting on Malfoy's chest and the thought suddenly struck her that the little hairs she was lazily running her fingers through were blond and not red.

Don't you dare shag him, Ron's voice exclaimed in her head, and she burst into tears.

* * *

It didn't happen again for quite some time, and when it did Hermione couldn't help but cry again. Malfoy didn't seem too put out by it all; he just held her until she stopped then wiped her tears with a handkerchief.

It was after one such occasion, at breakfast one morning in May, that she got the letter from Harry.

Her heart felt like it had been gripped in someone's fist the moment she recognised the handwriting. She checked the date at the top of the letter - it had been written two days ago. Suddenly finding it hard to breathe, she scanned the writing for news of Ron.

'They're alive,' she told Malfoy later, standing next to him as they leaned against a wall looking out at the lake.

There was no question of who 'they' were.

He nodded. They both knew what was coming next.

'...I'm sorry,' she said. It was a ridiculous statement - how could she be sorry that her two best friends in all the world were alive and well?

And yet somehow she was sorry, and that was the worst thing of all.

Malfoy nodded again and turned to leave.

And that was that.

* * *

They were at Kings Cross to meet her when she disembarked from the Hogwarts Express for the final time. They spotted each other from quite a distance away, and Hermione abandoned her trunk in the middle of the platform to run towards them.

She reached them and hugged them and they were solid and real, and Ron picked her up and spun her around and kissed her, and that was real, and the whole last year was suddenly just a bad dream.

'Oh, I've missed you!' she declared, pulling the two of them into another hug and not bothering to fight the tears streaming down her cheeks.

Then there was a clunk on the floor behind her, and she stepped back from Harry and Ron to turn around and find her trunk sitting at her feet. Looking up, she saw Malfoy standing next to it.

It took her a moment to react. 'Thank you,' she said, holding his gaze for longer than was strictly necessary.

Malfoy nodded - that old familiar nod of resignation and understanding. Without a word, he turned and walked away.

Hermione watched.

She felt a pang of loss as he disappeared from sight, but then Harry picked up her trunk and Ron took her hand, and they walked back out into the world together.

The End