records for yesterday. You know everyone who passes through a Floo Hub has to fill out the paperwork. I figured they'd have a record of where Harry Flooed to. Only-'
'Only he wouldn't let you see the records,' Hermione guessed.
'He didn't even have them. I broke open his desk, so I know. He said he hands them over to his boss at the end of every day. Maybe he was lying -
— what does it matter? He didn't have them, and I tried to get them and I couldn't, and that's the end of that, isn't it?'
'This,' said Hermione, folding her arms, 'is why you should have brought me with you.'
'Right. Because the only thing more fun than failing is failing with an audience.'
Hermione glanced sideways at him. He looked tired, and for Draco, filthy: black streaks in his pale hair, eyelashes clogged with soot. He met her gaze with a defiantly bitter one, as if daring her to say anything.
'Wait a second,' she said, and disappeared into the kitchen. Her wand was lying next to a merrily boiling pot of water on the stove. She doused the flame and took the wand in her hand. A few simple spells later and she was back in the living room, a steaming mug of coffee in her hand. 'Here,' she said, shoving it at Draco.
He took it with a look of guarded surprise. 'I thought you said — '
'I know what I said.' She perched herself on the arm of his chair. When he didn't seem to mind, she relaxed slightly. 'Draco, you have to stop thinking of this as something you can achieve by yourself.'
Draco glanced up at her over the mug. The rising steam obscured his gray eyes, the expression in them. 'Stop thinking of what as something I can achieve by myself?' he said lightly. 'World peace? The ongoing search for a really intelligent Hufflepuff? House-elf rights? Not that they deserve rights, the nasty little vermin, did you know that right before Christmas one of them burned a hole right through my favorite dinner jacket? It was the size of a — '
'I was talking about Harry,' Hermione said sharply, interrupting his tirade. 'The fact that he's gone. You didn't let him go, Draco, and you're not solely responsible for bringing him back.'
'I don't recall saying I was.' Draco took a sip from the coffee mug and regarded her coolly over the rim.
'I know I made you promise to look after him,' Hermione said. 'But that's hardly what this is about.'
Draco set his coffee mug down on the table with a bang. 'You were asleep.
I didn't want to wake you.'
'The reason they didn't have any of the records in the Floo Hub is because they send them to the Transportation Department at the Ministry at the end of every shift,' Hermione said. 'Which I could have told you, this morning, if you'd asked.'
'How do you — '
'I spent a summer interning at the Ministry,' Hermione said, with some smugness. 'After fifth year. I worked with Percy — it's actually kind of a funny story, he always used to — '
'Compose all his memos while sitting behind his desk nude except for a sweater set and a string of pearls?'
'No,' said Hermione, crossly.
'Then I don't think your idea of a funny story about Percy Weasley is going to correspond very closely with mine.'
'My point is that the records are at the Ministry. And I could have told you that this morning, and saved you a wasted trip, if you weren't so completely determined to treat this as your own personal quest. It's not, Draco. You're not the only person Harry matters to and you're not the only person who wants to find him. If I thought you could do a better job on your own, believe me, I'd let you try.'
Draco's voice was softly sarcastic. 'I know you would. I have every faith in you to choose the greater good over your own personal interests.'
Somehow he managed to make it sound like an insult.
Hermione glared at him. 'Boys,' she said succinctly. 'You just have to turn everything into these epic quests, these massive personal trials, you're — '
Draco snorted and picked his coffee up again. 'We're retrieving the Boy Who Lived, Hermione, not a mislaid postal order,' he said. 'It is a quest — '
'Just like Harry,' Hermione finished, as if he hadn't spoken.
For a moment she was worried he was going to choke on his coffee. He coughed, managed not to splutter (It was probably in the Malfoy Family Code of Conduct: Malfoys Do Not Splutter), and said, 'Oh, that's creative.
Harry runs away, I have to chase him, and that makes me just like him?
What's next? 'You know, you're just like Odric The Mad Fat Wizard of Bavaria, he was left-handed, too.''
'He was?' Hermione asked, interested.
Draco made a groaning noise. 'So…not…the…point…'
'One day you're going to look back on all this and realize I was right,' said Hermione.
'No, one day I'm going to look back on all this and plow face-first into a tree because I was looking the wrong bloody way. And I'll still be having a better day than I am today.'
'Well, it's your own fault.'
'Did you mix antidote into my coffee?' Draco asked abruptly. 'It tastes foul.'
'Probably because you already swallowed half a pint of ash earlier. It's all over your face.'
Draco gave her a sideways look. 'And you're barely restraining yourself from going at me with a wet handkerchief. I can tell from your expression.'
'Not at all,' Hermione lied.
'Well, leave it. I think it gives me a dashing, rakish look. A look that says
'Dangerous, yet irresistible. Not to be trifled with, yet oddly vulnerable.''
Hermione knew Draco could go on about himself in this vein all day.
'Really? I thought it said 'Drunk house-elf.''
'Perhaps not vulnerable so much as sensitive,' Draco continued, as if she had not spoken. He took another swig of coffee before he went on.
'Boyishly handsome, yet with a dangerous, compelling allure — you did put antidote into this coffee, didn't you? It tastes revolting.'
Hermione leaned close and looked him directly in the eye. 'Yes, I put antidote in your coffee,' she said. 'Because I don't want you fainting on me later when we break into the Ministry and steal those transportation records.'
Draco almost dropped the coffee mug. 'What?'
'You heard me.'
He looked at her with enormous, accusing gray eyes. 'Could you not spring things like that on me when I'm holding mugs of boiling liquid? If I'd dropped it into my lap we'd have a national tragedy on our hands.'
'Oh, give me that,' Hermione said, and took the mug out of his hands. She deposited on the table and turned to look at him anxiously. 'I wasn't joking, you know.'
'I know,' he said. He put his hand up and she took it, and leaned her head against his. She imagined him in the Floo Hub, by himself, making a scene, breaking the desk open, looking for those records, looking for anything, knowing he was standing in a place Harry had been standing hours before. She knew perfectly well why he hadn't brought her with him and it wasn't because she had been asleep. He simply couldn't trust his own reactions, and he couldn't bear being defenseless in front of anyone, even her. Perhaps especially her. She knew that looking at her made him remember Harry and that it hurt him even as he welcomed it, and perhaps sometimes he just had to get away — she could hardly blame him for that, could she?
She stroked his hand lightly with hers, and he let her. 'You don't think it's a stupid idea?' she asked, gently.
'I think it's a very stupid idea,' he said. 'On the other hand, when has that ever stopped us?'
