There is a reason intelligence operatives have a hard time making friends.

It's the way he bursts into her motel room in Sydney, demanding her help while she's trying to shake off the shell-shock of having her wand snapped, her name blackened because of what must have been a mistake (she's no traitor), her natural magical abilities almost fully denied her.

"Morning, Granger."

The casual greeting jerks Hermione awake. Of all the people in the world, Draco Malfoy is the last person she expected to see perched tailor-fashion at the foot of her motel bed.

"The hell are you doing here?" Hermione jerks the sheet up to her collarbone, aware that she'd only shucked off her outer clothing before collapsing in tears onto the motel bed.

"Really, the answer to that question would be far more interesting coming from you," he drawls in return.

Hermione's hand slaps the bedside table in a futile search for her wand. The movement is not lost on Draco, who looked momentarily almost sympathetic to her eyes.

"It's not there," he says quietly.

She remembers. She knows.

"Why are you here?" he asks.

Hermione wills herself not to break down in front of this man. "I don't care what you know or don't know, Malfoy," she grits through her teeth, "so get the hell out."

"You really think I would miss this?" he returns skeptically, smirking down at her. "The humiliation of Hermione Granger. The great war hero, Severed just as cleanly as those with brands on their arms."

"One big difference," Hermione snarls in return. "You worked for the Dark Lord. I was framed."

"That doesn't make it less funny. Actually, it increases it."

Hermione sighs, expels a gust of breath. "Where am I?"

"Sydney."

Hermione shuts her eyes. "Oh, hell."

"Your little entourage dropped you off here and then let me know. Something about former witches and wizards banding together for support," he says in mocking tones. "So I figure they must believe you and I would be open to that kind of…relationship. Which means you were caught…or framed…for doing something that would help Death Eaters."

"For whatever it matters," she spits, wishing he would get off of her bed and let her dress and mourn in peace, "I spoke out at the MLE against arresting your little girlfriend Parkinson, Zabini, and some other Slytherins. When none could be found to arrest, they suspected me of tipping them off."

Draco assesses her with cold grey eyes. "But you didn't."

"I didn't. They'd have a big chance during trial – I mean, they left Hogwarts during the battle, they didn't join in either side. Then someone found a list of the suspects' addresses in my desk – I didn't write them down, and if I had I would have been smart enough to burn it – and it all went downhill from there."

"No trial?"

"Intelligence specialists don't get trials. They get Severed."

"Ah."

Slightly emboldened by her confession, Hermione tosses aside her bedsheets and gets up, striding in nothing but her knickers and bra across the motel room floor. She can feel the weight of his eyes pressing on her like fingers, but finds that she couldn't care less.

"Laugh, if you're going to," she mutters, pulling fresh clothes from her beaded purse. "Throw in a few insults about my friends and my heritage while you're at it. But when you're done, get the hell out."

Draco unfolds his long legs, standing up at last. "Afraid I can't. Need your talents on a problem in my neighborhood." His face changed from the mocking pose to something more earnest, even desperate.

"Yeah? We all need a lot of things. Right now, I need clothes." She rummaged through her purse a little more, finally emerging with a pair of slacks. She would need to hang on to her magicked purse, she realized – one of the last remaining vestiges of her magical heritage.

"Leave those aside for the moment. There are more pressing matters at hand."

"All you've got at hand are insults. You and I both have magic-less lives to get to, so let's do that. Separately would be best."

"But you don't have a job." Despite his pose of desperation, he had yet to pull his eyes from her cleavage.

"That's not your concern."

"I need you to do a job for me."

Hermione rolls her eyes. "The Ministry hates me almost as much as they do you. Harry and Ron aren't allowed contact – or anyone else of magical abilities. Exactly how and why am I supposed to help you?"

"Someone's trying to kill me."

"Already? Malfoy, you've been Severed for three months."

He pushes back his hair, looking suddenly guilty. "There's a guy that said I need to get out of the neighborhood, or he'll kill me."

Despite herself, Hermione notes that he doesn't appear to be lying. "Why?"

"I think he's like one of those illegal potions dealers in Knockturn Alley…"

"Drug dealers, among Muggles," Hermione interjects, beginning to understand.

"Right," replied Draco, obviously warming to her interest. "And so he says that I can't be in his territory anymore."

"Then move," Hermione replies, picking up her bundle of clothes as a prelude to showering. "We can't move beyond Sydney, but we can move around inside it. Or report him to the police."

As she said it, though, she began to take in the entirety of her situation. When a witch or wizard was Severed, they had nothing. No cash, no job history, no identification, no history of schooling. For Malfoy to make a report would put him in as much or more danger of being thrown in jail. For Hermione to get a job and living space would take cash, a job history, a record of schooling beyond the age of eleven.

"No, wait. Don't go to the police," she says softly.

"Glad to see you're looking at this in full," Malfoy replies in a tart voice. "I tried to buy a bottle of cheap whisky from the corner store. Needed an…identification card…and really, shouldn't they only ask for that if you're trying to buy the good stuff?"

"How are you earning?" she asks, suspicion tinging the question.

"Selling Pepper-up Potion, of course," he says promptly. "It's easy, it doesn't require wand work, and I can get all the ingredients from a magical apothecary that never checks the identity of those who order ingredients via owl delivery. I sell near a retirement community. I bet those Muggles haven't felt so spry since they were our age."

He's thorough, she has to give him that.

"Moving would still be the best option," she returns.

"What, move someplace else where I'd get the same threat?" he sneers. "No, Granger. I need you to help me learn how to shoot a gunnys."

"A gun?"

"Yeah, that. Counter a threat, right? I got one from this Muggle on the corner."

Hermione rubs at her temples. "He's going to laugh and then shoot you dead. It's not like dueling with wands, you idiot."

"So help me."

Hermione presses her forehead further into her palm. "All right." Draco Malfoy's pointless death is not something she wants on her conscience. "Two things, though. We do this my way, and you just watch and learn, all right?"

Draco shifts uncomfortably, and she realizes that he's relaxed enough to the point where he's remembering that she's in her knickers. She rolls her eyes.

"Sure. The other?"

"Let. Me. Take. A. Shower."

He's in the same boat, she realizes, stepping into the shower. Wandless, friendless, no cover identity or papers to prove who he is or to get employment.

She has been framed for the failure of an operation, charged with giving information over to the enemy, and has been duly Severed. He fell on the wrong side of the war, tried to keep himself and his family alive, and after years of trials and appeals, still ended up Severed.

It's better than Azkaban, she supposes.

He's getting along by dealing Pepper-Up Potion to a network of Sydney retirement communities, a black market that she will chide him for but can find no terrible harm in, though apparently someone nearby can.

So Draco turned to her, with her superior knowledge of Muggle life, to help him.

Hermione wonders if she should refrain from telling him that she feels a little lost herself in this place, after so many years with the knowledge that she was a witch.

She still is a witch. But once you've been Severed, you've got nothing. No job, no funds, no documentable history, stuck in whatever city they dumped her in. So you do what you have to.

You make a friend. Or at the least, an ally.

Guns make you stupid. Duct tape makes you smart.

It's the way he doesn't stare at her in wide-eyed admiration, which, to tell the truth, she kind of expected. She first scouts out the drug dealer's home, notes the bulletproof door and finds a hollow spot in the drywall, marking it with duct tape. Then, she goes around the back, finding loose paneling in the wall behind a trash can, carefully unscrewing the bolts, ready to be torn open when she needs them.

"You've got a gun, a potato, and duct tape," he spits, looking as if he was beginning to regret meeting up with her at all. "The gun I understand, but…"

"You wanted my help, and this is going to work," she said, racking the bullet into place, grateful that her father had taught his daughter a few useful things about the Muggle world. "Now, he's home, so get ready."

He swallows, looking rather pale and nauseous, but at her urging, steps forward. "All you have to do is call to him and bring him to the door," she breathes. "After that, you can run away if you like."

The words sting him into action, and he knocks like cannonfire on the door.

"Who's there?" croaks a deep voice from inside.

"It's your friendly neighborhood competition!" Draco says jauntily, before his courage deserts him and he darts behind her. Hermione ignores him as she hears the sound she's been waiting for, the man rushing forward on heavy feet, the sound of a gun cocking.

She fires two shots through the potato (silencing the gun) and through her duct tape mark before hearing his howl of pain.

"So do we go through the door?" Draco gasps in her ear, looking as if he's still not sure whether or not to run.

"He's down, armed, and waiting for us to go through there," Hermione said dispassionately, pulling him along as she raced for the panel she'd loosened earlier. "So we don't. Stay behind me."

She flings the panel open, slipping into the musty den of the dealer's home, creeping up behind the ratty little man as he screams for them to come through the door. When he feels the cold barrel of her gun pressing against his head, he abruptly stills.

"Drop it," she snarls. "It's over." The dealer agrees, and drops his gun to the floor, where she picks it up.

"Do you have any more weapons on you?" she barks. "Draco, check him."

Draco wrinkles his nose and proceeds to run his foot across the man, checking for weapons.

"All right," Hermione says, pulling a little pouch of bandages and disinfectant from her pocket. "You just have a flesh wound in your leg. I know it hurts, but it's not that bad. What you need to do is go to a hospital and clear out of here in the next twenty minutes. If you're not out of here by then, or if you ever come back – " she lets the barrel press against the man's head again, " – that bleeding leg is going to be the least of your problems."

The man stumbles out in a few minutes, clutching a bag of belongings and bandages around his wounded leg. She watches him go. Life as an agent has made her harder. It used to be that she would have agonized over the man's injury – and now she sees it as a bargaining price for getting a purveyor of deadly substances out of the neighborhood. While she had no intention of killing the dealer unless he moved to threaten her or Draco, the very act of threatening still made her tremble deep inside. Between that and being Severed, some days she really wishes that she had chosen a career in the Wizengamot.

Hermione turns to him then, looking for gratitude, or at the very least, a little bit of awe. She was a good operative.

But he is already turning away, with a "Thanks, Granger" tossed over his shoulder.

She sighs then, cursing herself for her naivety.

Dealing with a trained operative is like playing chess with a master. Dealing with criminals (or former criminals), on the other hand, is like playing checkers with a three-year-old: they like to change the rules.

It's the way that he doesn't seem surprised when she asks for his help on her own venture.

Hermione became an operative because she believed she was uniquely skilled to help others. Helping to avoid major armed conflicts, collapsing illegal potions rings, helping to put an end to house-elf trafficking.

She has to work on a smaller scale, now. But she's still helping people.

The man whose daughter was tricked into a "modeling gig" and would be shipped away into prostitution. The woman being framed for a theft that could only be an inside job. The teenage siblings threatened by a local gang leader. They needed help, too.

So Hermione set her brains and her talents to work on them, managing to scrape by otherwise with a dishwashing/hostess job from a restaurant willing to look past her lack of identification. Without the Ministry's help, she's never going to be able to hold the kind of identification that will let her do anything more than this.

But this case…she can't do this one alone. A woman and her two kids, trying to get away from her gang royalty husband. She's going to frighten the hell out of him, make him certifiably insane in the eyes of the law.

But she can't do it alone. Not without magic, anyway.

He looks at her coolly, standing on his stoop and outlining her mission. She trails off near the end, disheartened by his lack of response.

"What do you need me to do?" he asks then.

"I need you to disable his car. Pull out some wires and hoses under the hood or something. This guy needs to feel alone and frightened in a dark parking lot, to feel like people are watching him."

He smiles, and she wonders if she's going to regret this. "Consider it done."

That night, Hermione watches the man cross the parking lot. She cuts the wires on a light as he crosses nearby, engulfing the lot in blackness. Dimly, she can see him turn around in a nervous fashion. She prepares to jump into a car, with the idea in mind that she'd chase him down across the parking lot once he realized that his car was dead.

"Disabling the car now," Draco whispers. He presses a button on the Muggle device, and that was the moment when Hermione realized that he'd become far too familiar with Muggle inventions.

The car exploded in a magnificent fireball, blooming in the darkness like a great flower of destruction. The man screamed and fled.

"I said stop the car from turning on, not blow it into the ocean! Damn it, Draco, what happened to shorting the ignition?" she screeches, over the blare of car sirens going off in the parking lot.

"You said disable; it's not going anywhere," Draco returns coolly, stepping forward with a handful of dull grey dust in his fist. "For when a Reparo won't do the trick…and you find yourself without a wand…anyway, when the authorities get here and find no car and no explosion debris, they'll start thinking he's insane. We're still sowing the right seeds."

He blows the dust in a circuit about the blast radius, and Hermione watches in mute shock as the remains of the car curl up into dust, and the explosion marks everywhere else disappear.

"We'd best get out of here," he says, pulling her by her elbow into the darkness, and she has a moment to consider the warm weight of his palm before the sirens in the distance sound, and she follows him.

When you work as a spy, it's easy to think of people as assets. Resources to accomplish a goal. Because you don't have a personal relationship with an asset. You don't care about an asset. You don't miss an asset when he leaves at the end of the day.

It's the way that he seemed to figure things out so quickly after being dumped into an utterly foreign landscape and was expected to thrive. She respects that, it happened to her when she was eleven.

He never calls to ask her for help with other Muggle contraptions – those, he's mostly figured out on his own. The first time she went over to his apartment to ask for help with a case, she saw a toaster and a blender sitting atop his television set, but ignored it.

After the car incident, though, he begins to call on her little prepaid, hard-earned cell phone. Needs her opinion on a potion that he's brewing – can he do it without magic? Would she like to stay for dinner? Oh, look, it's nearly midnight – they've been chatting that long. They spend many afternoons mixing flash grenades together, planning and plotting their next mission, figuring out their next cover identity.

At first, thinking of it in the privacy of her spare little apartment, she bristles. Did he think her that unable to take care of herself? Was he just softening her up? Because she had a steady job and people seeking her help, damn it. She had plenty of people to talk to, except the ones she most wanted to, the ones who still hadn't managed to send her a secret owl or message –

Hermione blinks, and it comes to her. He's lonely. Draco Malfoy had hidden depths, the ability to thrive where he was planted, even to find the ability to help others, to plot and plan and revise. But he'll never be good at talking to strangers. He manages, but he's still afraid. Despite her faults, Hermione can relate to people, a gift that Draco has never consistently had, a deficiency that's isolating him.

So she begins to reciprocate, asks him for help on her cases, brings over something to add to the meal that he offers.

Hermione only admits to herself that she needs his company as well when she is tucked away in her sheets, thinking about the evening they'd shared. She's been lonely, too.

She can't admit to herself, though, that she enjoyed the play of the light on his hair, the amused darting of his eyes at something she said, or the way the sinews in his arm moved when standing up from the table.

Perhaps it's more accurate to say that she won't admit it.

One of the things covert operatives have to give up is the idea of a fair fight. Spies are not trained to fight fair. Spies are trained to win.

It's the way that he makes what was a tedious task entertaining.

"I still say you should go up to them. Charm them, get them to say something, distract them while I work."

Hermione mixes her powders carefully, stirring with a glass rod. "That's a common belief, but it's less effective. These guys will know to look for a woman trying to charm them. They'll be on the lookout for anyone else. A drunk, obnoxious fellow…much like yourself…is someone they'll want to push away as quickly as possible."

"You just like seeing me get decked." His voice floats from inside her bedroom, where she can hear him rifling through her closet. She sighs in impatience.

"Malfoy, if you ever want to learn anything about Muggle explosives…"

Malfoy retreats from her closet, shaking his head. "You need some all-black clothing, Hermione."

"And you need to sit down."

He throws himself into the chair next to her, like a sulky child. "I'm serious. Why do you think the Death Eaters all wore the same costume? Creates fear. There's unity in uniform."

Hermione shrugs a shoulder. "Point."

"So borrow one of my suits."

"In case you've forgotten, you're about a meter taller than me."

He rolled his eyes. "An exaggeration."

She taps the powder into the canister rhythmically. "But not by much. See here, you just need a little bit. I'll solder the top on to the can with the fuse inside and it'll be ready to go."

"Fascinating. Anyway, you can shrink one of the suits…" he trails off, and swallows hard. It was difficult for them to remember at times what their new limitations were.

"You know, more than anything else, I miss Apparition?" Hermione asks softly, setting down the explosives. "Just getting somewhere, whenever I wanted. Not having to figure in travel time, or not having a way out. It was the freedom."

Draco blinks. "I miss flying," he says plaintively. "It was such a good feeling." It's unexpectedly open of him, and Hermione doesn't want to chance that he'll shrink away.

Instead, she nods. "I miss writing on parchment."

He looks at her as if she's crazy. "I miss brewing potions. Made more sense."

"I miss my cat."

"I miss my owl."

"You had an owl?"

"Zeus."

She sighs. "I miss Harry and Ron."

"I miss my parents."

They sit in silence for a little while, until she remembers their tea is getting cold. She brings a cup over to him, and he takes her hand for a moment, instead of the cup. Her fingers curl around his, and she doesn't feel alone anymore.

Later, they don't refer to it at all.

A nearly-unprecedented level of OWLs. Experience in defense and combat since the age of eleven. A rating with every spell that disables, disarms, or causes mayhem. Still haven't found any defense to Mom crying into my shirt.

It's the way that he manages to soften her parents in the face of their anger at her reluctance to see them.

Helen and Hector Granger did recover from their memory "root canal," as her father charmingly put it. Their feelings on their daughter's actions, however, had been understandably mixed. The fact that she'd been living in their city without revealing her presence was just salt in a half-healed wound.

She never thought she'd be thankful for his tact, but when her parents walk past them on the street, his capability to lie convincingly on the spot comes quite in handy.

"I…I…" Hermione sputtered a bit, looking into the faces of her parents, searching for something like forgiveness.

"Hermione's been transferred here," Draco cut in smoothly. "She said something about surprising you, I think. Draco Malfoy," he introduced himself, putting on the schmaltz with an ease that stunned her into silence. "We work together."

Much as they drilled it into their daughter, Helen and Hector Granger will never forget their manners. The moments they spend shaking Draco's hand and introducing themselves allow Hermione to compose herself, put on a smile.

Draco turns back to her for a moment, and she sees the question in his eyes – Do you want me to stay? She smiles instead. "I'll see you at base tomorrow, then, Draco?"

He nods, and ducks out of the parental line of fire.

"Hermione Jean Granger." Her shoulders slump at her mother's words, and she is ten years old once again. "You couldn't have told us you were on this side of the globe?"

"I wanted to get settled," she says lamely. Her parents' faces tell her that they aren't fooled by this. "I wasn't sure of my welcome. I – " Her next sentence is cut off as her mother thrusts her into her arms. She is overwhelmed, stiff for a moment, then loosens and melts onto her mother's shoulder. Her father comes up behind her to embrace them both.

"You are always our daughter," she says in a choked voice that Hermione can feel straining against her forehead, resting on her mother's neck.

"That never changes," her father rumbled behind them.

As Hermione sniffs and looks up to rub the tears from her eyes, she catches Draco observing them. He's discreet – watching from a distance at the family reuniting. He realizes that she's watching, smiles, and turns away.

He can't do this with his own family, she recalls. His parents were Severed and sent to Oslo. She never has been able to get the reason out of Malfoy. Did he have any choice in the matter? Did he want to be apart from them? Was he trying to contact them at all?

When you work as a covert operative, there's no line between who you are and what you do. You are who you need to be for the operation. It makes you effective, it keeps things simple. But when you spend so much time living with someone else…things get complicated.

It's the way that he's alive and whole and makes some sort of sense in this screwed-up world.

She asked him to go – by himself, she never should have asked him to go by himself – to the house of an ex-drug dealer. Just to scout the place, she said. Don't go in.

He calls her on his cell phone, reaching her as she's in the act of preparing a flash charge for an upcoming assignment.

"What do you see?" she asks, balancing the cell phone between her shoulder and ear as she works on the fastenings.

"All I could see was a lot of bramble and bushes. Man wouldn't know a gardener if one walked up and bit him in the – "

"Is there perhaps another angle that you could try?"

"Yeah. It's called the front door. Left wide open, and – "

"Malfoy, don't!"

"Hermione, it's fine." In that moment, she realizes that he'd been calling her by her first name for quite some time. "The house is pretty much empty." She hears the echo of his footsteps on what must have been the interior of the house. "Nothing but – "

There is the sound of a crash in the background, the dull thud of a door swinging shut.

"A trap. Oh, hell." And that is all she hears before the line dies with a sickening crackle of static.

"Malfoy? Malfoy!" she screams into the phone. "Answer me!" Of course, there is no reply.

Hermione tears out the door, cell phone still in hand, tucking a gun into the back of her pants. Now was one of those times when she really wished she had a car. She hails a taxi with frantic gestures.

"Cabramatta and step on it," she shrieks at the driver, who jumps and steps on the pedal with a muffled curse. Hermione knows that he's going as fast as he legally can, but taps her foot impatiently, wishing she could call Malfoy without raising suspicion of something criminal going on.

The moment they arrive near the house, Hermione throws some bills at the driver and flings herself out the door.

He wasn't a trained intelligence specialist – why had she treated him as one? He played up his adaptation to Muggle life well, but he was just as breakable as everyone else, and far less likely to be aware of that fragility.

She calls his phone again as she runs, trying not to curse at the voice mail message. "Malfoy? It's Hermione. Call me when you get this message. Tell me you're all right."

The sirens alert her to the fact that something is wrong on a large scale. As she dashes down the street towards the address she'd sent Draco to, the fire engines have already arrived at the scene.

The ramshackle house is totally engulfed in flames, broiling before her very eyes.

She runs toward it before she knows completely what she's doing – the arm of a firefighter catches her in mid-stride, spins her around and out of her daze.

"Was anyone in there?" she yells in his face. "Anyone?"

"House is a firebox, lady!" the man chuffs through his respirator. "No way in or out. Pretty much gone by this point."

She stares at the rising flames in horror. She'd sent Draco to his grave, to one of the most horrible deaths imaginable.

Dimly, she realizes that the firefighter is talking to her.

" – name. What's your name?"

But she spins out of his arms and dashes up the street, away from the scene.

She half-stumbles, half-runs back in the direction of home.

Every few minutes, she pauses in an alley, a doorframe, on the corner, to dial his phone once again.

"Malfoy, call me back. Right now."

"Malfoy, are you hurt? Tell me where you are."

"Draco, damn it! Tell me where you are! Tell me you're alive!"

He can't be dead. He can't be. His life, gradually turning the dial to something like good purpose and help, snuffed out. The pain he must have suffered. The only person out here who really knew her.

Shaking, she slumps in the doorway of her apartment, pushing open the door with reluctance, as if going in could confirm that she would never see him again.

"There you are."

The voice spears her to the heart. She looks up, hoping against hope –

And there he is. Elegantly slouched in a chair, looking a bit tired but no worse for the wear, sits Draco.

She stares at him as if he's an apparition, blinking in wonder.

"You owe me a cell phone, by the way," he grumbles, holding up the blackened case of his own prized model. "Had to use it to break out one of the windows. Last time I approach a scene without – "

But what he meant to say is lost as she crosses the room in three long strides, pulls him up by the lapels, and kisses him.

For a very long moment, he's impassive, confused.

Then he kisses back.

There's no greater luxury in the field than working with someone you rely on. When you find someone you can trust absolutely, you want them on every operation you do, and nothing hurts worse than losing a friend to bullets, politics or something personal. But when you have to work alone again, you lock those feelings away and do the job at hand, because as every spy knows, there's time to think about what you've lost after the mission is over.

It's the way he lets her know the decision is hers.

They've been together for six months now. Her mother is charmed, her father not fooled, and Hermione thinks that they may have managed to carve out a bit of happiness in the world. They're helping people and helping each other.

In the mornings, he makes the bagels or toast (she's actually better with the toaster, but it took him a longer time to master it, and it does make him proud). She handles the coffee, remembering how he takes it – two sugars, two creams.

Later, she handles any explosives or mechanical devices they'll need for the day's work, mixing and matching. He handles strategy – he's far more inventive than she ever gave him credit for – planning and plotting their next move to help people. He still sells Pepper-Up Potion at the retirement homes – Hermione stopped protesting that it was wrong when he pointed out that the magical world had been sitting on potential cures that could have helped Muggles for years. She doesn't believe that he's that fussed about Muggles potentially dying for lack of magical intervention, but he does make a good point. She, in turn, tutors students online – the classes are easy to set, and her schedule's more flexible than it was as a hostess.

They aren't rich – they are by no means even close. But they get by – grateful clients sometimes pay them, or cook them dinner. Draco's learning intelligence operations and watching her tutoring sessions to get a handle on Muggle learning – now that he's more resigned to living among Muggles, he's determined to be the best among them that he can be.

Then the Ministry swoops back in, like some apologizing angel. Her name's been cleared, they say. She's to be taken back into the magical intelligence committee in the UK, welcomed back with open arms, her good name reinstated, a wand found for her that fits her just like her old one.

She experienced a moment of terrible joy when she heard it. As an intelligence operative, Hermione had believed in the work she'd done, believed in the worth that she brought to helping the Ministry catch outlaws and shut down criminal rings. This is her chance.

When she asks about Draco, though, the Ministry official just furrows his brow. She'd been proved innocent. That hadn't changed anything in Draco's case.

She tried to talk to him about the whole thing, tried to tell him that she would get his case reviewed in the Ministry again.

He only smiled and gave a rueful shake of his head, walking away every time she tried to broach the subject. So she stopped asking.

They would be there in the morning to pick her up, Apparate her back to London.

His body, curled against hers on the mattress, feels like a question mark. She's not really sure if he's awake or not, but she suspects he is.

She's very much awake, and he can probably tell. But he chooses to respect her feigned state rather than speaking, though his words might come as a relief to them both.

This is when she begins to realize the depth of his conviction. If he thought there was a chance of convincing her to stay, he would have kept her up at all hours, arguing his case.

He did not. Since the announcement came, he walked around as if nothing had changed. Gone through their usual routine (when not working), cleaned his favorite guns, exercised, lay down in bed next to her, wrapping an arm about her waist.

How could she stay, though? Her life is waiting for her to come back and reclaim it. She falls into light slumber, and wakes to find his side of the bed empty.

She dresses, checks over her purse of possessions. Everything that she could fit.

"Draco, have you seen my glass rod?" she calls out, knowing that he'll be there.

"I haven't," he says quietly, entering the room. "I need to get going on that case with the retirees' identity theft, so I thought I'd say goodbye now."

He is almost emotionless, but she knows him well enough by now to understand that this is when he's struggling with some of the greatest emotion.

"I'm going to try and bring you back to Wizarding Britain, Draco. Do you understand me?" she asks, before he can cut her off. "I'm going to get them to let you carry a wand again, and – "

"It won't work," he says softly, coming forward to wrap his arms about her waist. "Hermione. Be logical. I'm still an ex-Death Eater."

"You were a frightened young man pushed into that life when your family was threatened," Hermione whispers, starting to shake and pressing her forehead against his shoulder. "Right now, you're an adult who is making the lives of people around him better, fighting crime."

"By doing illegal things," he reminds her, gently. "Half the things you and I do here each day could get us thrown into Muggle prison, to say nothing of Azkaban. Now, look at me."

He titled her chin up, forcing her to look at him through teary eyes, as if they were both underwater.

"All those years I waited under house arrest for my case to come to trial? I was miserable. I'm not a wizard here, but I'm free. I can come and go as I choose, actually live my life. Now you go, and live yours. Be happy."

Draco kisses her then, and she loses herself one last time in this contradictory man. She'll be back to visit her parents, he knows it, but she knows that he'll make himself scarce. It won't be the same.

He turns away then, without looking back, and strides out the door.

Hermione sits and waits for the Auror to Apparate her back to London, trying to choke back her tears.

When you work in intelligence, you get used the fact that some things are worth risking everything for. You sign up for the lifestyle, or the chance to serve your Ministry, or the dim possibility that you'll help raise the welfare of House-Elves. But finally, it all comes down to putting your ass on the line for something.

It's the way she manages to surprise him, walking into the dim interior of his apartment to find him idly twirling her glass stirring rod in his fingers.

"Knew I forgot something."

The shock on Draco's face slowly ebbed away into wary caution, and he gave the rod a final turn.

"You did," he rasps. "So what are you going to do?"

Hermione tentatively walks forward towards him, taking a seat opposite him in the couch with the sinking seat.

"There are two options," she says quietly, laying her hands flat along her knees to stop them from shaking.

"List them, then," he replies.

She looks down a moment, gathering her words. "What's non-negotiable is that I no longer work for Ministry intelligence. They were all too willing to believe in my guilt before my innocence, and the evidence was shoddy to begin with. I also don't think I want to go back to England, at least for a while."

His surprise shows on his face. "Potter and the Weasel?"

She sighs. This was the part that hurt the worst. "I understand Harry has his family to protect, and Ron's got his parents and siblings to look out for. But still, after all the times I broke the rules for them…you'd think they'd have managed to slip me a note…or something. They sounded like they kind of believed the whole frame job…" Hermione swallows, and looks down at the floor. He could touch her, reassure her, but he's waiting for her to move first.

"Anway," she finishes. "The choices are two – I have my wand and identification. I can figure out some identification from a wizarding source for you, so you can get a wand, and we can live as outlaws, kind of."

He's swallowing dryly – she can tell because he's having some trouble.

"The second option?" he rasps once more.

"I figure out some fake identification for us as English expatriates, and snap my wand."

Draco is very quiet for a time, examining every angle of her face as if her were going to paint a picture of her at this moment in time.

"But you like helping people," he says, in some surprise. "You always said – "

"I do," she finishes, cutting him off. "But I was doing that with someone else here, and I think we were rather more effective. Besides…even if Harry and Ron had been the ones working to clear my name, or if the Ministry hadn't been so quick to dismiss me…this is home now."

They stare at each other across the gulf of the rug. Hermione did not know what to call the look on Draco's face, half-wondering, half-disbelieving – only that she'd always wanted someone to look at her like that.

"I feel like I should be on a knee," he mutters, shaking his head. "Hermione, are you sure?"

"I am," she says, and it's true. She might be helping people on a smaller scale, but they needed help, too. She's also pretty sure that she doesn't want to live so far apart from her parents.

She won't admit to it quite yet, but she's also missed the taste of half-burnt onion bagel in the morning.

"What should we do?" she asks, gently prompting.

He looks at her for another long moment, and cocks his head.

"I say we sleep on it," he answers, drawing her out of the sinking cushions, up to face him, and into joy. "We can figure it out in the morning."