Wulfric Macnair had not pressed charges on Draco after it took one wailing house-elf, two shocked board members, and a furious Lucius Malfoy to stop the assault the latter insisted on worsening. Sure, Draco had broken Macnair's nose, chipped and knocked out several teeth, busted his bottom lip, bruised his left eye, splintered a rib, and dislocated his right shoulder, but that was hardly enough punishment. Draco vowed to murder him with his bare hands as he was being dragged away by his father, but all that could be heard was Macnair's delighted laughter echoing behind them.

While Draco had been serious on killing Macnair, neither he nor anyone else believed it would come to that. For his behavior, he was simply suspended from work until the board deemed him stable enough to return.

Draco could give fuck all about returning to work after the disastrous dinner with those pathetic dinosaurs any other day, but this time around the silence in his flat was maddening. Once before he thought the sound of nothing was sweet and comforting, but now Hermione was not there. He thought she would be; he thought he would return home, red-knuckled, awaiting her screams of fury to rattle the walls, but she was gone. Only the books on his center table, her favorite mug on the kitchen counter, and her beast of a cat were the only trace of evidence she had once even been there at all.

"Mister Malfoy!" squeaked an intern by the name of Sanderson (or whatever) when he saw Draco exit the Floo in the main lobby of Malfoy Industries. His eyes were wide with fear as his fingers fidgeted toward his wand on the reception desk. "Sir, with all due respect, your father said you were not allowed—"

"With all due respect, Sydney, fuck off," Draco hissed as he entered the empty lift up to his floor.

When the doors of the lift parted, Draco expected to find Olive at her desk, smirk on her face, and a shot glass in her hand. He was wrong. There was no Olive, no smirk, but there was a bottle of tequila on her empty desk beside a stack of his mail. He grabbed the bottle, scanning the tag wrapped around the neck with a string of yarn that read:

Arriba. Abajo. Pal centro. Pa'dentro.

Here's a token of my gratitude from my homeland.

C. Rivera.

Shane choose that moment to stomp up from the staircase, heaving as he flushed red from his run. "Sir," he wheezed, "you cannot be on the premise until—"

"I won't be taking any visitors today. Understood?" Draco marched toward his office, waving a wrist so the doors would open and allow him in. They closed behind the intern just as he was sputtering out more protests.

Draco settled on his chair, pulling open the bottom drawer of his desk to retrieve one of the many spare shot-glasses he had lying around.

From the moment he opened the cap on the bottle until there was a loud, annoying knock on his office door, Draco did not know how much time had passed. All he knew was that there stood Blaise.

"For fuck sakes, mate," Blaise whistled, shaking his head at what he was looking in on. Simmons (what was his fucking name?) hid behind him, cowering away from whatever curse Draco was going to send his way. He wanted to, he was about to (he warned him about visitors, hadn't he?), but something seemed off about Blaise. Draco hadn't seen him in over a week, and now he was blurred around the edges (or perhaps that was just half the bottle of tequila fucking with his eyesight). "I know you own the company, but I'm pretty sure you can still get sacked for being hammered on the job."

Draco blinked back down to his glass, quite tempted to throw the thing at Blaise, but instead he refilled it. When the golden liquid splashed onto his desk, he swept it into the glass. Blaise scrunched his nose when Draco shot it back.

"Haven't seen you this fucked up since Astoria burned your last flat down," Blaise added, closing the door on Smithers.

"Why are you here?" Draco grumbled as Blaise approached the desk, frowning at the memory of his vengeful ex-girlfriend standing over the ashes of his valuables.

"I brought over some files the Ministry needed—"

"So you're not just Potter's bitch, but his owl, too?"

Blaise's jaw squared and ticked when he clenched his teeth together. Although it was hard to believe, he tended to thoroughly process his thoughts before speaking them out loud. Draco knew there were a few creative insults he desperately wanted to hurl at him, but instead Blaise said, "Someone said I should come see you. I figured you'd still be cross with me, so I needed an excuse to intercept you. This was it."

He dropped a file on Draco's cluttered desk.

After refilling his glass and taking another swig of tequila, Draco hissed, "Remind me to have Lovegood fired. That fucking demented bint can't share confidential information with the twat she's occasionally shagging."

If it had not been for the alcohol he had been drinking since he stepped foot into Malfoy Industries, Draco would have seen the punch coming. Really, he would have. Blaise was a real fucking gent when it came to some fair maiden's honor (the poor pussy-whipped prat). He stumbled out of his chair after Blaise launched over, groaning more in despair for his bottle of tequila smashing from the fall than the throbbing of his nose.

"Luna isn't just a shag, you areshole," Blaise snarled. "She's important to me and I've fucking had it with you undermining that. I don't even know why she thinks you're worth saving since you'll always be a fucking twat."

Draco grieved his broken bottle for a few more seconds before sitting up. He felt his nostrils drip blood down to his top lip as he narrowed dark, silver eyes at Blaise. "Then fucking leave, Zabini. You always were."

Blaise stood absolutely still. Nothing crossed his dark features as he fixed his own sharp gaze on Draco. In the next moment, he rolled his eyes and moved to the other side of the desk. He kicked the chair out of the way to extend a hand out.

"No," he grunted, "I was never going to leave, dickhead. I don't know why, but you're my best mate. That means something, doesn't it?"

Draco took his hand, allowing to be helped up to his feet. "It means you have great taste," he scoffed, "in friends, at least. In women...well, it's always been questionable."

"I don't have a problem breaking your jaw, too," Blaise threatened.

Draco let out a loud, humorless laugh as he marched over to the cabinet at the end of his office. He had a bottle of vodka stashed there for the days Olive did not want to break their two-shots-a-day rule when things got particularly tough.

"Luna didn't send me," Blaise said. "Although, she did show up at the Auror Department to yell at us the other day. It was odd, even for her."

"Then?"

"It was Potter, actually."

Draco stopped scavenging past old letters and dusty books (he wouldn't put it past Olive to have found the vodka and flushed it down the toilet, that heartless bitch) to look back over his shoulder. "Potter? Saint Potter? The Boy-Who-Would-Not-Die? That Potter?"

Blaise mind as well live with his eyes rolled to the back of his head whenever he was in proximity to Draco. The fucker really was insufferable.

"It's not a bloody secret that we're stubborn, you and me," he continued, "and let's face it, it would've taken ages for this row to end. Potter knows that, I guess, because he mentioned how draining it is to be upset at your best mate over something you can't understand."

They stared at one another, eyes locked, emotions out there in the open, and Draco really wanted to throw himself out the fucking window of his office. Of course (deep, deep down) he wanted things with Blaise to go back to normal, to find neutral ground in all of these changes, but he was too emotionally challenged to deal with them. The tequila in his system was not doing much to make the situation tolerable, either.

Still, he thought of her—he thought of his wife, and how she made him want to live on the other side of his demons.

Hermione made him want to be brave.

"Lovegood isn't the problem," Draco forced himself to say. "It's what she represents—what they all represent. They are everything the world reminds me I'm not worthy of having. I thought you understood, I thought that's why we were best mates."

Blaise was having a difficult time with opening up, too. Draco could see that, but he was a better man. A cured man. "Who the fuck knows why we're best mates, Draco; what I do know is that I didn't want to keep despising myself for something I had no control over. We were young, surrounded by bigots who spoonfed us pureblood mania. I just wanted my second chance at something better."

"And Lovegood was your second chance?"

"No," Blaise replied truthfully. "The thing with Luna...it happened out of nowhere. One minute she was just this person with odd stories about her adventures in the Amazonian rainforest, and in the next, I found myself asking about her and lingering by her Department just to have a conversation with her, or by the very least get a glimpse of her."

Draco stopped himself from chuckling at that when he recalled plenty of times when Blaise walked with him to his Evaluations. He had assumed his friend was just being a nosy twat, but in reality, he was playing the field for Lovegood (it was sort of pathetic, really).

"Do you remember Penelope Clearwater? She was a Ravenclaw, a few years older than us?"

Draco gave him a nod. Of course he remembered Clearwater. In fact, he remembered everyone who was petrified by the monster of the chamber of secrets. He had been a very awful boy who had found amusement at all the names on that list.

Blaise's expression grew somber as he glanced down at the scattered papers on Draco's desk. He smudged a blotch of ink further on one of the archives before he looked up. "I was there when she was brought in. Snape had just locked you inside your bedroom to keep you from seeing the mess upon your mother's request. The interrogation went as it usually did, all blood and tears, but Yaxley...He made me take her to one of the empty rooms. He made me stand outside as he..."

He did not need to finish that sentence. Not only were Blaise's horrified eyes enough evidence at what came next, but Draco had heard the story. One of the many. Most Death Eaters were not satisfied with beating their victims into black and blue shades, but they often further humiliated and destroyed them by taking every precious thing they had before killing them. He just had not known Blaise had been forced to be an accomplice.

"You caught him," Draco muttered to his friend. "Two years ago. I remember."

"I wanted to kill him then," Blaise said in a low voice. "I thought I could get away with it because Weasley was outside the hideout, chasing down Rowle, but I had made an oath of honor and justice. So I brought him in. I brought him in and they locked him up in Azkaban. He got forty years."

Draco scoffed at that. Forty years was hardly enough punishment for someone like Yaxley. He had been one of the worst monsters the Dark Lord had created (only Bellatrix won him in degrees of ruthless).

"I pushed for the death penalty for a year. I brought case after case to the Wizengamot to further convict Yaxley, but nothing was happening. I grew angrier by the day, determined to have him legally offed, that I even resorted to blackmailing a few members of the council. One day, after another hearing, I was cornered by Penelope Clearwater. She had gotten word of what I was doing and said as admirable as that was, I needed to stop. She did not blame me for what Yaxley had done to her, so I needed to stop blaming myself. She had not forgotten the damage, but she had decided to stop living the nightmare. She went to therapy and learned to re-engage the world. She's Penelope Jordan now, a primary school teacher and a mother of two. She's happy."

His tortured expression had not exactly faded away, but there was a hint of a smile on Blaise's face now. "I didn't want to give my nightmares the power over me anymore, Draco. I wanted to live despite them, just how Penelope did. That became my second chance."

Draco deserved the broken nose. He had not known much of Blaise's demons because he did not have the courage to look at others' without acknowledging his own. If he had spoken with his friend, if he had asked what memories of war kept him awake at night, then he would have known Blaise deserved to be where he was now. Just because Draco was perfectly fine with condemning himself into the darkness, that did not mean Blaise was not worthy of crossing into the light.

"I fucked up," he then admitted with a grunt, surprising Blaise at how easily that came out. "Lucius suggested I let it slip to the media that I had married Hermione. He was sure it would gain me favor with the board—"

"Wait. Wait," interrupted Blaise, his brows knitted, "you told Daphne? For fuck sakes, mate; out of all the eager journalists out there, you told the one whose mother you shagged?"

"To be fair, if I had to talk to someone I had not slept with or someone who did not know someone I slept with, there would be no one left."

Blaise crossed his arms over his chest, narrowing his eyes at him. "I'm assuming Hermione found out?"

Sighing, Draco gave him a solemn nod before moving back to search for his bottle of vodka.

"So you're giving yourself a celebratory hangover, then? I mean, you finally got what you wanted, right? She left."

With his back turned on Blaise, Draco allowed himself to cringe at the thought. Hermione had left. The empty right side of his bed was proof of that. While, yes, a few weeks ago he had wanted nothing more than for her to disappear, now he could not stand not hearing her hum at her ugly cat, or recount anecdotes of her patients to him over breakfast, or the new things she learned from the research articles her fellow know-it-alls sent her to proofread before submitting them to credible magazines.

"Fuck," Blaise let out a loud, baffled chuckle. "You actually like her!"

"I do not," Draco grunted in defense for his self-preservation, but it hardly sounded believable even to his own ears. He sighed in defeat. "Fine. I might fancy her."

"Fancy," Blaise repeated with a snort. "Mate, you don't drink yourself into an early grave for a fucking crush. You actually care about her."

"Well, now she's fucking gone," Draco returned sharply. "Like my fucking vodka. I looked for her at her old flat and the hospital. Neighbors nor coworkers have seen her. "

Something like sympathy flashed across Blaise's expression before he said, "I don't know, Draco. If Hermione isn't in St. Mungo's, I have no idea where she might have gone. That's her sanctuary. I do know, though, that there's no way in hell she would've gone to Potter or Weasley. They would just gloat about being right about you."

Draco glared as he turned to face Blaise again, but knew he was right. Hermione had never directly mentioned that the Dimwit Duo threw a fit objecting their marriage, but he had clocked in on their bitter attitude toward her. Seeing as everyone in this fucking world knew Hermione Granger was not to be intimidated, she stayed with him despite the disappointment from those she loved. Of course she would not go to them after Draco had—

"Olive," he hissed, distracting himself from his own train of thought.

Blaise raised a brow. "What?"

Draco did not bother to answer Blaise when he rushed past him, grabbing only his wand from the mess on his desk on the way out. He pushed past Scott to enter the closing lift, jabbing the button for the lobby.

If Hermione was missing, the only person savvy enough to find her was Olive Crabbe.

While Draco and Olive seemed to have a completely unorthodox working relationship, they were not friends (at least neither of them liked to refer to one another as such). Their communication took place strictly inside the walls of Malfoy Industries (and the occasional work-related dinner party), so there were established boundaries that were never to be breached. Their homes were the main line not to be crossed (usually, when he felt extra charitable, he would give her a discount to one of the many nightclubs he owned). Yet, when Draco was storming, a wooden door, a faulty ward, and an unspoken rule could not hold him back.

"Malfoy!" squealed Olive after she had fallen off her couch—well, off the husband she had been previously straddling before he kicked open the front door of her small cottage located near Kensington.

"I told you that ward wasn't strong enough," Cyrus Amal (the husband) said to Olive as he sat up, reaching for a throw pillow on the floor to cover his exposed bits with. His wife shot him a glare, cheeks red from anger and not embarrassment. Immediately, Cyrus looked away, clearing his throat as he stood, still holding the pillow firmly to himself. "I'll go find us some clothes."

Unabashed, Olive pulled herself up to her feet, not making any move to fetch a near pillow to cover herself up with. Draco grimaced at the sight as he moved to the clean, un-christened (at least he hoped it was) beige armchair with a green pillow and brown quilt.

"Don't make that face," she huffed at him with indignation. "I just started running last week. I'm looking fit."

Draco made a heaving sound before he narrowed his silver eyes at her. "You said Cyrus was in Brighton."

"He was," she growled, "but arrived today when I called him to say—"

"Don't lie to your boss, Crabbe," he interrupted. "It's in your employment contract, remember? I can fire you for this."

"Actually, she's Olive Amal around here," said Cyrus as he returned from down the hall that led to their bedroom. He was fully clothed now, bringing over a bright pink robe for his wife."She only uses her maiden name at work. And at the clinic. And the Ministry. Basically any place where she's legally forced to provide her true information."

"Mate, you married her. Don't close your eyes on your reality. Though, I won't blame you. She's insufferable."

"Don't force me to become like my family, Malfoy," Olive warned, "because I will murder you."

"Muggle marriage is not recognized by your Ministry of Magic," Cyrus chimed in as he placed a hand on Olive's shoulder, holding her in place like he believed she would really launch herself at Draco and strike to kill. "Plus, it's illegal for a Muggle to live in Wizardying communities."

"Aren't you an officer for the Muggle police department?"

Cyrus shrugged, smiling easily. "I'm bound by honor, yeah, but the woman I love is a witch who wants to live in her birthplace. I follow my heart first, mate. It's stronger than any duty or law."

The Amals were on opposite sides of the spectrum when it came to physical appearance: while Olive was petite and pale, Cyrus was tall, built, and brown. Still, it was never a question as to who was the domineering one in the marriage. Olive shook off his hand with a shove to his ribcage, scoffing in distaste when she said, "Don't become a corny areshole, Cyrus. Please. I will divorce you if you start writing poems about the color of my eyes, I swear."

"Come on, Liv," her husband laughed. "I'm happy. You're—"

"Oi," grunted Draco, "speaking of divorces, I might be on the verge of one."

Olive snapped her neck in his direction, a glare already settling on her face. "What did you do to 'Mione? For fuck sakes, Malfoy, I told you we were going to be best friends! Why are you ruining my life?"

Cyrus frowned and Draco rolled his eyes at her.

"She found out about the slip to Greengrass," he said. "She left and hasn't returned."

"I can't trust you with anything!" Olive yelled at him again, moving to the kitchen that connected with her living room. She grabbed the cellphone that had been on the dining table, her fingers furiously tapping away.

"She really loves Hermione, you know," Cyrus muttered to Draco as he sat on the large couch beside the armchair he was occupying. "If you lost her, Liv will kill you."

To that, Draco thought Cyrus was spot on.

Fortunately, there was a ding and a victory laugh from Olive's place. Draco turned to the noise, unable to hide the desperation for good news from flashing across his pale features.

"She's with your mother."

Draco lost his balance, falling back down onto the armchair he had been getting up from. "What the fuck do you mean she's with my mother? How do you know that?"

Olive raised her phone, looking impatiently at him. "I texted her. She texted back."

He lunged for the device, yanking it out of her hands.

Hey, 'Mione, I currently have your husband at my house, stinking the place up like it's the Hogs Head. Mind telling me where you are so I can send him off to you? Thanks.

P.S. If you're really done with him, we can take half his money and run off together.

I'm with Narcissa. Send the git over, please.

Also, as lovely as that sounds, Liv, Cyrus seems like a good man.

"Yeah," Olive took her phone back, "next time you fuck it up, I'm stealing your wife. Now go to Malfoy Manor before she changes her mind."

Out of all the places in the world Hermione could have run off to seek asylum from his arsehole tendencies, his family home did not even make the list of last-resort. If he could hardly step foot onto the expensive, plush, Persian rugs that were strategically placed to hide the bloodstains of their victims on the ancient, marbled floors, he could not imagine how she could do it. He still heard her shrieks late at night, clawing at the walls just like Bellatrix had done to her skin.

But there she was: sat beneath a grand oak tree, the wind blowing past her brown curls, sending her aroma of cinnamon spice in all directions, twining with his mother's prized hydrangeas and the lavender of their hot tea. She was in the middle of an engaging conversation with his mother, whom appeared completely interested (not in the phony way she often tended to be when others spoke to her) in everything Hermione was saying. They shared a laugh that only fizzled away when he approached the garden table.

"Look at you," his mother said with a displeased sigh, one he remembers from his early childhood when he would return covered in mud. The more her sharp blue eyes roamed over him, the more upset she appeared. "You did not get into another brawl, did you? We warned you about the legal repercussions this can have on your career."

Draco blinked away from his wife's brown eyes to give a second of his attention to his mother. "I insulted Lovegood. Blaise punched me."

Narcissa furrowed her brows, opening her mouth to further reprimand her son, but Hermione placed a hand gently over the hand that rested beside her plate of scones. "Can I have a moment with him, please?"

"Of course," his mother complied after a moment, a fond smile on her lips that made Draco uneasy.

When his mother was far enough from hearing range, Draco turned back to Hermione. He felt his breath hitch at just how beautiful she looked. It was like he was seeing her for the first time. And he was. He was no longer seeing the girl from his schooldays he had a complicated past with; he was seeing her as the woman who helped him put down his walls and step out into the sun.

He was seeing someone he wanted to spend his life with.

"I'm sorry."

For the first time in his life, those words left Draco Malfoy's mouth. And he meant them—really meant them. He felt them, too; the aching guilt made his skin run cold, it made his fingertips numb, and his heart beat in fear that she would refuse him. She was the only person in the entire fucking world he needed forgiveness from for so many fucked up reasons. While this one was not the most important one on the list of terrible things he had done to her, it was the one he desperately needed.

He needed her. He needed her to stay.

"I was angry, Hermione," he continued. "I wanted the divorce and you refused to give it to me. I thought if you didn't want to leave, then I might as well milk it for all it was worth and kickoff Tierra Pura."

"You should have told me," she said with narrowed eyes. "I would have listened, Draco."

"I know," he admitted, "but I just wanted you gone then."

"Do you want me gone now?"

Draco moved to the vacant seat his mother had left. He wanted to reach out to touch her, to feel the warmth of her skin he has been missing (craving), but he settled his hands on the edge of the white metallic table. He looked at her, forcing all of his defense mechanisms to shut down so she could see the truth he was not entirely sure he was ready to confess. Yet, to have her, to have Hermione stay with him, he would swallow his pride a thousand times.

"I don't know how you feel about me, Hermione, but I do know how I feel about you. I know how I feel when I'm with you. I can't exactly word it right, but it feels like living again. Really living. All this time I was just coasting through, hoping my fucking nightmares would not catch up to me, that I didn't search for more. I didn't think I deserved more. Then Blaise said his second chance was wanting a better life for himself, and I realized mine is you."

Fuck. He said it. The words came out of his mouth and a part of him that was terrified of vulnerability wanted to stuff them back in to avoid renouncing the control he had over his own life. But that control was gone. The power was all hers. It had been from the moment he saw her as this beautiful beacon of light that continued shining despite the cracks around the edges. It is why he spent all morning drinking, hoping all the poison will fill up the spaces she had opened and craved her name in.

It fucking pained him to think she was never coming back because of what he had done. He drank because, of fucking course, he shattered the only invaluable thing he had been given because that is exactly what demons do.

Hermione reached for one of his hands, lacing her fingers with his to make him look back up at her. "I wasn't mad because you told Daphne Greengrass where to find us. After learning about your project, how can I? It's revolutionary, Draco. It can change the amount of toxins released into the atmosphere by potion labs that test with—"

"Hermione," Draco cleared his throat.

"Right," she laughed, shaking her head as she had to subdue her unquenchable thirst for knowledge and her strive for righteousness. "I was mad because I was scared. I was scared all these great moment we shared were only lies. After what happened with Finn Conrad..."

Draco no longer had reservations about reaching out to touch her. His free hand went to rest at the side of her face, cupping her cheek as he let his silver eyes bore into her brown ones. "Listen to me, Hermione: I can't change what that arsehole did to you and I can't promise I'm going to get everything right, but I can promise that I'm going to try to be better for you."

Tears glittered in her warm, tender gaze. It made Draco nervous. He was sure she was about to reject what he was offering her, but instead she said, "Don't be better for me, Draco. Be better for yourself."

"Just tell me you're going to stay," he said.

A tear rolled down her cheek, but she still smiled. There was a wave of something so honest in the way she looked at him, it made his heart rattle inside his chest.

"I was never going to leave," she murmured.

Then she leaned in to kiss him.