Chapter Text
Draco Malfoy hates Mondays. He hates waking up with the glare of the sun in his eyes, always somehow still hungover despite the anti-hangover potion -- he is still refining the recipe after all -- and the sleeping draught, which is always required on a night he has been drinking to stave off the nightmares that ten years of peace still have not quite banished. He particularly hates mornings like this one, where he yawns and stretches out his arm, and, expecting to feel the silky soft fur of Pallas, his 5 year old Whippet who was a gift from Narcissa one Christmas, he feels the silky smooth skin of a naked witch instead.
Not that he doesn't enjoy having a witch in his bed, of course. He is a fit, young and extremely wealthy man with enough good sense to have avoided any serious commitments thus far, and takes advantage of his freedom to the fullest extent. It is everything that has to happen as soon as she wakes up that immediately fills him with dread. He is well practiced at this routine by now, of course, but it is still unpleasant, and almost always leads to him being just a few minutes later to work than he would prefer to be, late enough that his department head, Harry bloody Potter, is sure to comment on it, or at least give him one of those looks. This is also a part of the routine by now, and he has grown accustomed enough to the cadences of Harry’s humour not to be truly bothered by it, but he would prefer to avoid the attention from the rest of the bloody office if he could.
He turns his head and winces, not entirely due to the added sun in his eyes. The witch in his bed this morning is Astoria Greengrass. No matter how many times he tells her, and himself, that it can never happen again it always does. She knows he is weak on a lazy summer Sunday afternoon; mellowed out after a morning of pick-up Quidditch, followed by mimosas at the manor with his mum over brunch, a mid-day nap in the sun curled up with Pallas, and a few glasses of the finest wines with his best mates at Blaise Zabini’s newly opened beer garden just off Diagon Alley. He supposes he can always change his routine to avoid ‘accidentally’ running into her in the speakeasy style lounge hidden below, but it always feels so good in the moment. And doesn't he deserve to feel good? Isn't that the whole bloody point of life? Of how hard he's worked these last 10 years to restore his family name and reputation? To be respected and feel as if he belongs?
He lets out a deep sigh and rolls over reluctantly. If he doesn't wake her up now, he'll be more than a few minutes late. He can always just leave her asleep, but the last time he tried that she overslept and was late to her job at the Daily Prophet, and sent him a howler right at the end of the morning briefing, which meant that everyone who lingered for the abysmal selection of biscuits on offer was privy to their lack-of-relationship drama. She did avoid him for a full month after that though, and he briefly considers whether a howler is worth getting another month long break from her attentions, but that tempting outcome isn't guaranteed. With her 25th birthday on the horizon, she seems more determined than ever lately. It's all still a bit of a haze -- Merlin! He needs to dedicate some extra time in the potions lab to perfecting this bloody hangover cure -- but he can vaguely recall her bringing up a betrothal contract again somewhere between rounds 2 and 4. He knows he needs to end this thing they have, for her sake as well as his, but he can never seem to find the right words to make her believe that he truly means it.
He finally feels her stirring beside him, and watches the satisfied smile on her face as she wakes up to find his eyes already on her.
“Stori -” he starts.
“Morning Draco.” She purrs.
“Stori -” he starts again, “this is the last time. I mean it.”
She rolls her blue eyes in that way she knows frustrates him. “You say that every time. You never mean it. I am 25 in six months Draco. There has never been a Greengrass witch still unmarried at 25. You know the pressure I am under. I know we will be good together. After 3 years, you'd think you'd have caught on by now. I know you value your freedom, and I would not begrudge you any of it. I know you love your routines, and you already know I fit into them. Nothing much would have to change for you, and I would even let that dog into our room when we are married.”
“Stori, you know it's the dog that chooses to sleep away from you, not the other way round. I've heard this all before, and you've heard my reply. Last night too, if I recall. I'm not going to change my mind. I do not want to marry you. I do not love you. I do not know how to be more clear about any of this!" He was picking up some steam now, but knew anger never helped so he turned his tone to pleading. "You can do so much better than me, and if you let this foolish idea of us go you would see that too. You say that I would still have my freedom, my routines, that nothing would change. If you really loved me, and I really loved you, you would want those things to change, and I would want to change them for you. I do not want a marriage like my parents, like yours, like the one you want. I do not want a marriage at all. I am never going to let anyone pressure me into that.”
Standing beside the bed now, looking down at her, he sees something that gives him an idea. He knows it will hurt her, and certainly earn him a howler, but she needed proof. It's not his fault that she chooses to ignore the reality of their situation. He bends down and grabs the lacy red bra from beneath his bed. “Is this one yours from last week, or Pansy’s from Friday night?”
She looks up at him, stunned. She has always been jealous and insecure over his close bond with Pansy, and he knows that the bra is Pansy’s, as Astoria would never be caught dead in anything quite so ‘garish’ as red lace, and he was the one to strip it off Pansy's lithe body and fling it there afterall. Astoria should know the score by now, they never made any commitments to each other and he's never hidden the fact that there are other witches in his life. Pansy certainly doesn't complain, and is actually rather fond of inviting other witches in to join them. And, Pansy can be trusted to stay sleeping in his bed the next morning and let herself out. If Astoria, after 3 years, still deludes herself into thinking this is anything other than a great shag for him, he needs to do something to help her figure it out.
“PANSY! PANSY? PANSY!” she screams at him, “You had PANSY in your bed on Friday?”
“She's here all the time, Stori, I've never tried to hide that. Pallas loves her, and so do I. Besides, it's none of your business. I don't know how many more times I need to tell you this. You are not my girlfriend, and I won't marry you. If I was gonna marry anyone, I'd have married Pansy years ago.”
This seems to be the last straw. Finally. Astoria is sobbing as she frantically searches for her clothes, slamming the door on her way out. Draco takes a couple of deep breaths and finally starts his morning routine.
Shower. Shave. Breath freshening charm. Freshly pressed suit. Dragonhide boots. Wand in thigh holster. Espresso. Cigarette on the balcony. Ham and cheese croissant. 8:16. Drat. Floo to the ministry. 8:24. Place last week's reports on Potter’s desk. Attempt to avoid his knowing look. Fail. Grab a biccie. Take his usual seat between Weasel and Boot. 8:32. Pretend to listen to Potter drone on about the previous week's successes and failures. Receive his new assignment.
The first thing to catch his eye as he opens the folder? Contact: GRANGER, H.
Draco Malfoy hates Mondays.
Hermione Granger loves Mondays. She loves waking up to the sound of birds chirping on the early summer morning. She loves pulling Crookshanks closer for a morning cuddle. She loves starting her week with 45 minutes of yoga, refreshing her mind and body, preparing for the week ahead. She loves meeting Harry, Ron and Ginny at a new muggle cafe each week, introducing the redheaded siblings to increasingly obscure muggle food and drinks. They were just about running out of new places and things to try at this rate, but Hermione could probably find a new list of recommended cafes on the internet.
Hermione loves her friends, and loves to hear Ron’s wild weekend stories. After their break up 5 years ago, he’s become almost as much of a slag as Malfoy, who’s been a terrible influence on him since they’ve become begrudging partners after Harry’s promotion to department head of the DMLE. She wonders if he hams up his tales, just a bit, in an attempt to either scandalise her or make her jealous. Her life after their break up, hasn’t been anywhere nearly as interesting after all. At least -- not the things she actually tells them about her life. A woman must retain some sort of mystery, even from her closest friends.
They always believe her when she ducks out of Friday night drinks at the leaky early, claiming that she has so much work to do all weekend, and avoids their owls and floo calls until she catches up with them again on these Monday morning breakfast dates. She does allocate at least one Sunday morning a month to the Weasley family luncheon, Wednesday evenings are always girls night in, and she’s always on call for babysitting James, so she still sees them as much as ever.
She just doesn’t let them know that her work, after 8 years of climbing the ranks, is actually starting to get a bit too easy, too boring, and she rarely takes it home anymore, which is why she’s adjusted her workload to take on more fieldwork recently. She doesn’t tell them that she requests an international portkey to a brand new location, and spends her weekends exploring everything the muggle world has to offer. It’s been extremely healing for her, taking time away from the wizarding world, and finding a balanced way to exist as both a muggle and a witch. The handsome muggle tourists she often meets along the way certainly help to ease any loneliness she might otherwise have felt. They’ve been codependent for so long, and with James in their lives and Ron’s romances, their friendship has evolved and she needed something for herself.
She’d spent so long in the boxes she was put in as a teenager; the dependable one, the organised one, The Golden Girl, The Brightest Witch of their Age, the youngest ever Ministry Department Head, the activist, Ron Weasley’s future wife, Ron Weasley’s ex, the workaholic. She’d realised sometime last year, with the help of her Mind Healer, that she clung to these boxes and her routines because they’d provided her with much needed safety and stability after the war and had been necessary for her growth and her rapid rise in the Ministry but now that she’d accomplished almost everything she’d ever wanted to, she needed to see who else she could be. So, the travelling and the muggle men.
Her weekends were a welcome escape into anonymity and pure hedonism, and actually getting away from the war hero fame and her comfortable routines gave her a new appreciation for them when she returned. This Monday though, after they’d finished their food and walked to the apparition point, Harry pulled her aside.
“Mione, do you have a minute to chat about work before we get to work? I would normally schedule a meeting with the department head, but since you’re here we may as well get it out of the way. I’m sure you’re aware of the recent spike in creature deaths. Well, the Department of Mysteries have been in touch and they have a few theories about why certain parts have been going missing. They’ve had someone on the case for a while now, of course they won’t say anything more than that, but their Unspeakable is apparently too busy being mysterious, so they’ve requested an Auror to assist them with some field work. As if us Aurors don’t have enough of our own bloody work to do, now we have to help them out too! But, you know how it is. Collaboration. Anyways, the issue is, some of the evidence we need to collect for them are in Protected Creature Areas, and I’d rather not lose any of my Aurors to a centaur tribe or the mer. I was wondering if you might be open to participating in some extra collaboration and suggest someone to accompany my Auror? It would mostly be as a precaution, to make sure they respect the land and the creature's customs and don’t get themselves eaten.”
Hermione could barely contain her excitement. This was exactly the sort of thing she’d been wanting to do more of -- getting out of the office and actually doing something more than pushing paper to help the creatures she’d fought so hard to protect. Over the last few years as department head, she’d been running such a tight ship and implemented so many procedures she was sure they could manage just fine without her. “Sure Harry! I’d love the chance to actually explore the PCA’s I legislated into existence and get out there and see some creatures in the wild. Just send me a memo with the details and I’ll clear my schedule.”
Her week was looking even brighter already.
Hermione Granger loves Mondays.
Theodore Nott has no idea what day it is, or even what time. The humid summer air blowing through the windows of his expansive Department of Ministries office is stifling. He's sitting crosslegged on the hard tiles, trying to remember what cool feels like. He has no idea how long he’s been sitting like this, but knows it’s been long enough for his whole body to ache. The glare of the sun beaming down on him gives him the idea it might be mid-morning, but he has no idea how long he’s been pondering the implications of the file still clasped in his hands.
When his mind is stuck on a perplexing idea, he barely registers the passing of time at all. This might have something to do with the fact that his current obsession is, in fact, about the passage of time, or rather, how to reverse it. Or at least, that’s his theory.
Years ago, summer before 5th year, he stumbled on an ancient manuscript in the Nott Manor library which claimed to describe the ingredients necessary for a potion that would grant the drinker the ability to travel backwards through time -- at will. They would be able to close their eyes, say the incantation, picture the exact moment in their life they wished to relive, and find themselves there when they opened their eyes. They would, theoretically, retain all their memories but be able to alter that moment and the future of the world, or as much of the future that moment had impacted on. At the time, Theo thought that the long, illustrious list of extremely difficult and dangerous to obtain potion ingredients, nevermind the incredibly complex brewing process, would be far too much work for any wizard to go to the effort for, to simply travel through time once, and to a moment of their own past. At 15, Theo couldn’t picture a single moment of his life so important he’d go through all that trouble to change the outcome, with no guaranteed success, mind you, since the author of the manuscript is unknown and never wrote down whether their experiments had even been successful.
For all that effort, 15 year old Theo rather believed one should gain the ability to travel to any moment of history ever, an unlimited amount of times. You should be able to jump to the age of pharaohs and watch the pyramids be constructed, be able to jump to the age of dinosaurs and see if you could ride a T-Rex, go to the 60s and have a dalliance with Marilyn Monroe, go back and befriend Merlin himself, get a Hogwarts house named after you, any place you want, any time you want.
The war quickly changed his perspective. The day he noticed Draco’s dark mark and learnt of his task, he was so struck by how much that one single action, that one moment in time, would influence Draco’s whole life, and the whole world. The memory of the old manuscript surfaced in his mind, and he wished he had access to a potion exactly like that one, to give to Draco. So that Draco could make a different choice. So that Draco could make any choices at all. Throughout the rest of the war, in any spare moment Theo researched theories of time. The ministry was too unstable, too untrustworthy, too unpredictable, they would never have been able to gain access to a time turner, but if this potion was a possibility, there might even be others..
Thankfully, the war ended the way it was supposed to and Draco survived.
Life moved on after the war, and Theo once again abandoned his ideas about the potion, focussing his time rather on proven, though highly volatile, methods of time travel. He doggedly pursued a career in The Department of Mysteries and now has access to the three remaining time turners. They are loaned out occasionally, but mainly they remain here in his office where he can study them, trying to understand how they are created, and how their magic functions, with the goal of creating more of them. Of course, he’s taken them for a few spins. For research. If his research happened to include some of those teenage fantasies…well, who will ever find out?
For almost 10 years, Theo was able to forget about that old manuscript. A few months ago, however, he noticed a disturbing pattern hidden between the files of the DMLE and the DRCMC. He thought he was being paranoid at first, but he started making enquiries anyway. The letter still in his hand, presumably from last night when he first read it, seems to confirm his worst fears. Someone with a lot of power, resources and magical ability, is going to an awful amount of effort to collect the necessary ingredients for that potion. Someone out there has a specific moment in time in mind they wish to change, wish to change enough that they have meticulously planned out how to obtain almost all the ingredients, and have surely devised a plan and a method to conduct the full year brewing process, all to change one singular moment. Theo also heard from the other Unspeakables that in the months since the slaughter of magical creatures had begun, there has been an increasing amount of whispers between various groups of former dark lord sympathisers, increased attempts at communicating with the death eaters in Azkaban, even a few attempts to escape. Theo is intelligent enough to put two and two together.
He vaguely recalls a panicked owl to Harry Potter late in the night, asking for his best and brightest Auror to collect as much evidence as possible, as quickly as possible, and then he sat down here on the floor, clutching the file about the murdered selkie and spent the whole night -- maybe more than one night?? -- wondering what the fuck else he can do to stop someone from going back in time and helping Voldemort win the war.