more tea in silence.
Ron sighed. He was crap at deep and meaningfuls. "I know you've moved on. But I also know you. You don't justforget."
She replaced her tea cup in its saucer with too much force. "Watch me," she said icily. "Trust me. I'm fine, Ron. All I feel towards Malfoy right now is pity."
"Funny, I'm sensing anger."
"I'm not a teenager anymore. These are not romantic times. I'm not about to run to him to rekindle wasted, dead passions."
"They weren' t romantic times when we were eighteen either," muttered Ron. "They were more looking behind your back, running for your life sort of times."
Hermione pretended not to hear him. "If it can be avoided, I' d prefer not to see him."
Ron glanced up. That had been exactly his suggestion too. "Now see, that might be a bit difficult"
"Why?" she asked, frowning. "My work has nothing to do with yours or Harry' s. We hardly cross paths at the Ministry as is."
"Well, because he's living with Harry is why!"
"He's what?" Hermione's eyebrows disappeared into her curly fringe.
Ron had rehearsed this part, at least. "As you know, Malfoy Manor's been under Pansy Parkinson's stewardship. It was all Ministry arranged. By law, they can't declare Malfoy well and truly deceased until he's missing for at least seven years. In the event of a missing heir, the estate is to be run by a caretaker. Parkinson put in a bid for a contract to maintain the place and it was accepted. Malfoy said he didn't want Parkinson to be out of a job in a hurry so he said he'd like for her contract there to continue for the time being. Meanwhile Moody doesn't want Malfoy out of his sight and so..."
"So Harry took him home?" Hermione concluded.
"Yes."
She stood up. "I've heard enough. I'm going to be late for work."
Ron wondered if it was indeed na?ve of him to think he could made the visit that morning without getting his head bitten off.
"Hermione, your supposedly deceased, secret, former husband has mysteriously re-appeared after a five year absence bringing the second most wanted person in Wizarding Europe with him as his prisoner. Under the circumstances, I'd say you deserved a personal day. Take today off. It's your birthday."
**
Oh, there was no way she was missing a day of work.
Ron left via Floo, looking very concerned and not a little bit guilty. Hermione stiffly thanked him for the birthday wishes, the cinnamon buns and saw him off with a peck on the cheek and a sincere promise to visit a lonely Molly at the Burrow soon.
She then sat on the edge of her bed and stared down at her folded hands.
There was an unravelling sensation in her belly. It didn't exactly hurt, but it was still a pain. Like an injury you carried for so long that you forgot about it, except on really cold days when it acted up or when everything in the world and in your head was so quiet that you allowed yourself to remember again.
Only it felt dull now. More an ache, actually, but even as she thought this, it grew sharper and more acute until she was gripping the coverlet of her bed with white-knuckled fingers.
Sometimes, in the moments between sleep and wakefulness, she'd swear the dragon was still at her hip. Still delicately coiled around her leg like clinging, silver ivy.
In the early days, she'd use this phantom sensation to see if she could locate Draco, but feeling and using were two different things. It was always like trying to catch smoke.
The ache was sense memory, nothing more. A magic-induced scar on her soul from Fida Mia that still tingled every now and then. It was not a compass to direct her to him.
Fida Mia had been extinguished when life had fleetingly left her body.
There was no longer a bond between them and Hermione had long ago concluded, with some bitterness, that the absence of the spell had been all Draco needed to come to his former senses and leave.
Leave her. Abandon promises given under enchantment. Abandon his inheritance. He hadn't just walked out on her, he'd walked out on his life.
His account at Gringotts remained untouched. That had given her a morbid kind of hope at first. The more Hermione pondered this fact, the more she insisted that he had not left off his own volition.
Perhaps he had been coerced? Maybe there were other forces at work?
But then the postcards came in that first year he