She offers a diplomatic smile of her own, and sweeps her hand towards the table in invitation for him to follow.
She'll make the introductions for him, and it will be like a stamp of approval. Sure, it won't mend all the bridges immediately, but what they'll see is that if Hermione Granger could forgive and move on, surely their petty grudges can be put behind as well.
There is only one more day to go before school actually begins, and Hermione doesn't see Malfoy again after the staff breakfast meeting; presumably he is as busy setting up the tower for the first lessons as she is about setting up the dungeons for classes to begin tomorrow. She has a lesson plan already set, but as every year almost, the arrival of the students makes her a hint nervous - she wants them to like her. That's her biggest problem, and the Slytherins probably can smell it on her.
Breakfast with the staff goes about as well as Draco expected. Wariness and doubt creeps up in the space between their brows, but they accept that he's here to stay, professional in all the ways that matter. The war has been over for five years, and most people have been ready to move on for a long while now. That he's remained courteous and reticent throughout the whole affair, as well as civil to those he'd faced down on opposite ends of the war, is only a point to his favor for now.
Before long, Draco is off to start his new job. He starts with observing the changes brought to the Astronomy Tower to coordinate it with his lesson plans, though he lingers at parapet that overlooks the castle's courtyard. Old memories flash by, half dormant in his mind but not quite forgotten, and they linger now in the periphery even as he turns to shut himself inside his office.
As he typically requires the presence of the night sky overhead to plan his lesson plans, he waits for the evening before finalizing them. For him, that meant missing dinner, and staying up all the way to the darkest hours of the night, when the stars and planets twinkled overhead. He tallies the constellations as maps them out in his mind, and smiles a little when he sees Draco, curled around Ursa Minor. Not quite beholden to the brightest starts in the sky, but ever present.
But he gets hungry eventually, and is forced to put down his work in favor of feeding himself. Dinner should be long over by now, so the next best thing is for him to go down to the kitchens and hope that they won't mind the interruption.
She should have quit working by now, but despite the late hour she's still at it. A grumble from her stomach tells her that she's missed dinner in the Great Hall, but is not safe from the concept of hunger, and Hermione concedes to it.
With a last sweep of her lessons, she sends everything away to its proper resting place and leaves her classroom locked in her wake, heading towards the kitchens.
As she turns a corner, she comes face to face with Malfoy - Draco? - again.
Draco can't even pretend to be surprised that she also missed dinner — he's willing to bet that she lost track of time, planning the year ahead of them. She's always been hard at work even during their school days, a quality he once resented and mocked in her.
"It would be difficult to plan for Astronomy classes if there aren't any stars to look at," he says plainly by way of an answer, nothing mocking or arrogant in his tone. Just a simple conversation — that he can do, at least. "I can't say this would be the last dinner I would miss once school is in session."
A new plate of food appears next to him, and he nods at it. "Yours, I believe."
It makes sense - Sinistra was rarely seen at breakfast, likely because the woman was up in the tower planning lessons at night.
As her food appears, she is confronted with two options. Either they take their respective food and make their way back to their respective offices, or she can make true on her offer to put the mistakes of their childhood (okay, his) behind them and move on.
She picks the latter. "Would you like to join me?" A pause. "I was going to eat dinner in my office, but the table is good enough for two."
The offer makes him pause as well, and he quite doesn't know which option is the safest. Would rejecting her offer be seen as rude and dismissive, or would accepting it subject him - the both of them, really - to an awkward fate full of stilted, small talk and underhanded barbs? Neither experience are worth their weight in galleons.
But they can be civil. They've managed long enough at the staff meeting, under the eyes of so many others that he felt like some form of cheap entertainment that they were all waiting for explode.
This time, however, it'll be a conversation away from prying eyes.
"Certainly, thank you," he says, after clearing his throat thanks to the small, awkward silence. He sits down on the table next to her, eyes fixed on his delicious looking plate of steak and potatoes, an all-time classic. "I take it your own lesson plans are just about done?"
Well, as far from prying eyes as one could go with the house elves, but at least Hermione is not trying to push unwanted socks into their hands; McGonagall promised that they are all getting wages - she was there when the contracts were drafted even, they're one of a kind!
His question draws her attention to the conversation they're effortlessly attempting to have here.
"Yes, just brewing some things for the Infirmary for now," she answers with a small smile. "Are you settling in?"
Settling in? In the very tower where he disarmed one of the greatest wizard of the modern times, which then led to his death and ushered the second war against Voldemort? Quite, though that's a conversation he doesn't necessarily want to have with anyone, least of all Hermione Granger herself.
He savors the bite he's been chewing before opening his mouth. A good, tasty meal, as it always have been.
"Lots of things and places - and people - are familiar enough," he says, not quite answering her outright, but lingering on safer topics. "The tower provides a spectacular view at night, between the stars overhead and Hogwarts' well-maintained grounds. It'll be different sleeping at the highest tower, than it is to sleep in the dungeons. I suppose we'll be exchanging nightly experiences, this time."
He idly wonders what it's been like, sleeping in Severus' old chambers, taking this position, living up to his professional legacy. He doesn't ask that.
"It was so chilly," she admits, practically blurted out, with a bit of a sheepish smile. "I mean, the fireplace is powerful for sure, but it...well, let's say that I am glad that Professors are allowed to do with decorating their sleeping arrangements as they will."
Everything that belonged to Severus Snape is gone - disposed of or in storage. Truth be told, despite the man playing a double spy for so long, despite Harry confirming that he was on the side of the Light in the end, there is no love lost between Hermione and the old Potions professor. The man was a bitter bully, whose prejudice towards muggleborns and students was not only prevalent but also motivated by pettiness. The idea that what, his whole reason to be the way he was had to do with romantic rejection? It made her blood boil.
But the school materials, they remain. Beyond the doors of her office, the Potions classroom remains the same. It is only that the office is brighter, the ceiling enchanted by Hermione to reflect the same sky as outside, the dark colours turned neutral and bright. Her actual bedroom - not that Malfoy cares about that - is more a reflection of who she is as a person than of her role in Hogwarts; books, controlled chaos, a fireplace that always is running whenever she steps inside.
It took her some work to get it there, but she's made the place hers. Much like she's made the role hers, longer than Malfoy has had a chance to do the same with his.
So there is no bitterness when she adds, "I do like the view though. The windows leading into the Lake, they're so fascinating. It makes me miss swimming."
"It wasn't the warmest," he is quick to admit. But it was home, or felt like it. Perhaps it was the decor, reminiscent of the grandeur of the ancestral pureblood homes that he grew up in and around. Hogwarts itself, regardless, has a way of endearing itself to its occupants.
"Sometimes the creatures underwater would stop by and peer through the windows," he says, with a little nostalgia in his voice. "Even the Giant Squid would visit. The common room would be buzzing every time. The first years would definitely enjoy that."
Speaking of which - "How goes the preparations as Slytherin's head of house? Are you ready?" Throwing a lion in a pit of vipers was... going to be something worth watching and watching out for, because Draco knows how vicious young Slytherins could be.
But he supposes Granger - Hermione? - would know that just as well.
"But it could be," she says softly, almost as a way to hint to him that she thinks Slytherin House can have more to it than just snakes, green and leather. "It could be warm - and interesting, like the underwater dwellers coming to say hello? It just needs ...um...incentive."
Which is a diplomatic way of saying it needs its students to not be little shits. Course she can't say much, considering the house she comes from. And Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs aren't saints either. In fact, the closer she gets to her thirties, she more she believes are teenagers are little shits, truth be told.
Back to point, and his question, she shrugs. It's not her first year experiencing teaching to Slytherins. "I like to think I'm fairly prepared. Most of them have had me as their professor for a few years now and will have had time to get used to my method and behaviour. It's the first years that will find it all novel, really, but...that can be told of every year."
She looks at Malfoy with a little smirk, and then shakes her head. "You'll see. The first week you teach first years, you will start seeing...mini-Malfoys and mini-Grangers everywhere." She lets out a laugh at that. "It's a scary revelation to see children with behaviour akin to yours from years ago and think, oh bugger I was such a little git."
He snorts at that, not really denying it — he was a little shit, all things considered. Still is, but probably better at being polite about it.
"I imagine my experience will be a little different for this year alone," Draco says. "I am the new teacher after all, even if the class I teach is not as exciting as - oh, I don't know - making cauldrons explode by mixing worm guts and dried nettles with crushed dragon horn. Just - for example," he adds as an afterthought, because he definitely did not do it when he was a student, and even if he did, it wasn't on purpose.
"A night once or twice a week under the stars mapping out constellations and planetary movements would seem comparatively easy," he says, almost blithely.
In his defense, most students didn't take Astronomy until year three, when they could be trusted to stay awake that late - or until their guardians decided they could be trusted to stay awake that late - so he will have to deal with some more mature specimens. Also the most hormonal ones.
"You do make a point," she says wryly, "but at least none of mine will be making jokes about Uranus."
"Perhaps I'll give them points if their jokes are creative enough," he says dryly. "But that is harmless enough, if obviously childish. I'd wager that most of my worries will lie on preventing the most adventurous students from wandering into the Tower for some late night trysts under the stars."
She lets out a bark of laughter, and shakes her head. "You have two choices, for teenagers will always try to sneak off for a tryst, either in the Tower or the dungeons where it's quiet. You can lose sleep over it and become paranoid about catching them, like Filch, or you can just ignore it and clean up the Tower every morning just in case."
A pause, as she takes another bite of food, and she adds, "If it's any comfort, I have students brew a contraceptive potion in the first semester of their fifth year."
"Professor Sinistra adapted to the second system quite expertly," Draco says, with a tinge of envy and admiration. Now that he has the chance to think about it, outside of Astronomy classes and events at the Great Hall she was rarely ever seen moving away from the comfort of her own office, that even the tower scarcely showed her presence. "I suppose that's what prefects and Head students are for."
And teachers, of course, as they will probably need to patrol once in a while, just as their professors did when they were in school.
Well, that tells her a lot about many things. Like maybe he was not a stranger to visiting the Astronomy tower with some paramours?
Shit, did I really just think in terms of paramours? Am I fifty?
She shakes her head, distracted. "It should be - and in any case, it does no harm. I mean, I don't think it does any harm, as long as it's character building type of rule-breaking. Like clandestine snogging, or other normal things for teenagers to do."
"'Character-building type of rule-breaking'," he repeats, dry as a desert in the highest peak of summertime. "I'm sure such character-building lessons are well worth the inevitable detention that would come their way."
But the implied tone is heard, loud and clear. Anything clandestine that happened during their school years are the very last things Draco would have categorized as normal — though he supposes that makes them very good at recognizing what isn't.
No budding dark lords or chosen saviors will thrive under his watch. Probably.
"I suppose it is for the best that I leave the Tower open," he tacks on later as an afterthought. "Beyond exciting teenage escapades, I wouldn't deprive others the chance to see the stars. They can be rather mesmerizing."
Edited (WOW look at these edits go me) 2021-02-12 08:00 (UTC)
Draco Malfoy laughing, and not at something mean, or some misstep of hers. Will the wonders never cease?
But she is well amused, by his hopefulness that the students will be regulating themselves. As if they ever did that, back when. Then again, it would've been easier to dish out detentions to people caught out snogging, instead of what was actually going on with their lives, back when.
She shakes her head, a little chuckle escaping nonetheless. "Right, give everyone an equal chance to stare at Uranus."
"Yes," he replies good-humoredly, "as well as other interesting sights, perhaps." He could make the obvious joke about being that good-looking that students would want to stare at his face also — he's certainly still vain enough to know and appreciate that about himself — but he'd rather keep the atmosphere as light as it is. He doesn't know what she'd make of that just yet.
Not that he would know what to make of this situation, in the end, sharing dinner with a once enemy, an old acquaintance. The past has a way of catching up to you, sometimes.
"The meal is as good as I remembered," he says as he's finishing up the last few bites off his plate, his tone prim and proper. Not at all tinged with the nostalgia and regret he feels — therein lies a dangerous thought cycle that could only lead him to an early midlife crisis. "I suppose some things will never change."
"Some change is good - even necessary," she manages to quip, quietly, a non-commital little smile on her lips. She's just had a conversation about teenaged mating habits with Draco Malfoy, and neither of them shot off a hex - all things considered, she thinks this kind of change is a success, too.
"Listen, Malfoy," she starts, after finishing up her food as well, and dabbing her mouth with a napkin pulled out of nowhere.
"Your first trimestre will be difficult, before you get the hang of everything. You can reach out, if you need...help, or company. I promise I won't bite." She cracks a small smile.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
a semi jump
She'll make the introductions for him, and it will be like a stamp of approval. Sure, it won't mend all the bridges immediately, but what they'll see is that if Hermione Granger could forgive and move on, surely their petty grudges can be put behind as well.
There is only one more day to go before school actually begins, and Hermione doesn't see Malfoy again after the staff breakfast meeting; presumably he is as busy setting up the tower for the first lessons as she is about setting up the dungeons for classes to begin tomorrow. She has a lesson plan already set, but as every year almost, the arrival of the students makes her a hint nervous - she wants them to like her. That's her biggest problem, and the Slytherins probably can smell it on her.
no subject
Before long, Draco is off to start his new job. He starts with observing the changes brought to the Astronomy Tower to coordinate it with his lesson plans, though he lingers at parapet that overlooks the castle's courtyard. Old memories flash by, half dormant in his mind but not quite forgotten, and they linger now in the periphery even as he turns to shut himself inside his office.
As he typically requires the presence of the night sky overhead to plan his lesson plans, he waits for the evening before finalizing them. For him, that meant missing dinner, and staying up all the way to the darkest hours of the night, when the stars and planets twinkled overhead. He tallies the constellations as maps them out in his mind, and smiles a little when he sees Draco, curled around Ursa Minor. Not quite beholden to the brightest starts in the sky, but ever present.
But he gets hungry eventually, and is forced to put down his work in favor of feeding himself. Dinner should be long over by now, so the next best thing is for him to go down to the kitchens and hope that they won't mind the interruption.
no subject
With a last sweep of her lessons, she sends everything away to its proper resting place and leaves her classroom locked in her wake, heading towards the kitchens.
As she turns a corner, she comes face to face with Malfoy - Draco? - again.
"I see I'm not the only one who missed dinner?"
no subject
"It would be difficult to plan for Astronomy classes if there aren't any stars to look at," he says plainly by way of an answer, nothing mocking or arrogant in his tone. Just a simple conversation — that he can do, at least. "I can't say this would be the last dinner I would miss once school is in session."
A new plate of food appears next to him, and he nods at it. "Yours, I believe."
no subject
As her food appears, she is confronted with two options. Either they take their respective food and make their way back to their respective offices, or she can make true on her offer to put the mistakes of their childhood (okay, his) behind them and move on.
She picks the latter. "Would you like to join me?" A pause. "I was going to eat dinner in my office, but the table is good enough for two."
no subject
But they can be civil. They've managed long enough at the staff meeting, under the eyes of so many others that he felt like some form of cheap entertainment that they were all waiting for explode.
This time, however, it'll be a conversation away from prying eyes.
"Certainly, thank you," he says, after clearing his throat thanks to the small, awkward silence. He sits down on the table next to her, eyes fixed on his delicious looking plate of steak and potatoes, an all-time classic. "I take it your own lesson plans are just about done?"
no subject
His question draws her attention to the conversation they're effortlessly attempting to have here.
"Yes, just brewing some things for the Infirmary for now," she answers with a small smile. "Are you settling in?"
no subject
He savors the bite he's been chewing before opening his mouth. A good, tasty meal, as it always have been.
"Lots of things and places - and people - are familiar enough," he says, not quite answering her outright, but lingering on safer topics. "The tower provides a spectacular view at night, between the stars overhead and Hogwarts' well-maintained grounds. It'll be different sleeping at the highest tower, than it is to sleep in the dungeons. I suppose we'll be exchanging nightly experiences, this time."
He idly wonders what it's been like, sleeping in Severus' old chambers, taking this position, living up to his professional legacy. He doesn't ask that.
"How has the dungeons been treating you?"
headcanons on interior design in hogwarts why not
Everything that belonged to Severus Snape is gone - disposed of or in storage. Truth be told, despite the man playing a double spy for so long, despite Harry confirming that he was on the side of the Light in the end, there is no love lost between Hermione and the old Potions professor. The man was a bitter bully, whose prejudice towards muggleborns and students was not only prevalent but also motivated by pettiness. The idea that what, his whole reason to be the way he was had to do with romantic rejection? It made her blood boil.
But the school materials, they remain. Beyond the doors of her office, the Potions classroom remains the same. It is only that the office is brighter, the ceiling enchanted by Hermione to reflect the same sky as outside, the dark colours turned neutral and bright. Her actual bedroom - not that Malfoy cares about that - is more a reflection of who she is as a person than of her role in Hogwarts; books, controlled chaos, a fireplace that always is running whenever she steps inside.
It took her some work to get it there, but she's made the place hers. Much like she's made the role hers, longer than Malfoy has had a chance to do the same with his.
So there is no bitterness when she adds, "I do like the view though. The windows leading into the Lake, they're so fascinating. It makes me miss swimming."
no subject
"Sometimes the creatures underwater would stop by and peer through the windows," he says, with a little nostalgia in his voice. "Even the Giant Squid would visit. The common room would be buzzing every time. The first years would definitely enjoy that."
Speaking of which - "How goes the preparations as Slytherin's head of house? Are you ready?" Throwing a lion in a pit of vipers was... going to be something worth watching and watching out for, because Draco knows how vicious young Slytherins could be.
But he supposes Granger - Hermione? - would know that just as well.
no subject
Which is a diplomatic way of saying it needs its students to not be little shits. Course she can't say much, considering the house she comes from. And Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs aren't saints either. In fact, the closer she gets to her thirties, she more she believes are teenagers are little shits, truth be told.
Back to point, and his question, she shrugs. It's not her first year experiencing teaching to Slytherins. "I like to think I'm fairly prepared. Most of them have had me as their professor for a few years now and will have had time to get used to my method and behaviour. It's the first years that will find it all novel, really, but...that can be told of every year."
She looks at Malfoy with a little smirk, and then shakes her head. "You'll see. The first week you teach first years, you will start seeing...mini-Malfoys and mini-Grangers everywhere." She lets out a laugh at that. "It's a scary revelation to see children with behaviour akin to yours from years ago and think, oh bugger I was such a little git."
headcanon!!
"I imagine my experience will be a little different for this year alone," Draco says. "I am the new teacher after all, even if the class I teach is not as exciting as - oh, I don't know - making cauldrons explode by mixing worm guts and dried nettles with crushed dragon horn. Just - for example," he adds as an afterthought, because he definitely did not do it when he was a student, and even if he did, it wasn't on purpose.
"A night once or twice a week under the stars mapping out constellations and planetary movements would seem comparatively easy," he says, almost blithely.
no subject
"You do make a point," she says wryly, "but at least none of mine will be making jokes about Uranus."
no subject
Since they're talking about hormonal teenagers.
no subject
A pause, as she takes another bite of food, and she adds, "If it's any comfort, I have students brew a contraceptive potion in the first semester of their fifth year."
no subject
And teachers, of course, as they will probably need to patrol once in a while, just as their professors did when they were in school.
no subject
Shit, did I really just think in terms of paramours? Am I fifty?
She shakes her head, distracted. "It should be - and in any case, it does no harm. I mean, I don't think it does any harm, as long as it's character building type of rule-breaking. Like clandestine snogging, or other normal things for teenagers to do."
The implied thing here is not that we'd know.
no subject
"'Character-building type of rule-breaking'," he repeats, dry as a desert in the highest peak of summertime. "I'm sure such character-building lessons are well worth the inevitable detention that would come their way."
But the implied tone is heard, loud and clear. Anything clandestine that happened during their school years are the very last things Draco would have categorized as normal — though he supposes that makes them very good at recognizing what isn't.
No budding dark lords or chosen saviors will thrive under his watch. Probably.
"I suppose it is for the best that I leave the Tower open," he tacks on later as an afterthought. "Beyond exciting teenage escapades, I wouldn't deprive others the chance to see the stars. They can be rather mesmerizing."
no subject
But she is well amused, by his hopefulness that the students will be regulating themselves. As if they ever did that, back when. Then again, it would've been easier to dish out detentions to people caught out snogging, instead of what was actually going on with their lives, back when.
She shakes her head, a little chuckle escaping nonetheless. "Right, give everyone an equal chance to stare at Uranus."
IT'S BEEN 84 YEARS....
Not that he would know what to make of this situation, in the end, sharing dinner with a once enemy, an old acquaintance. The past has a way of catching up to you, sometimes.
"The meal is as good as I remembered," he says as he's finishing up the last few bites off his plate, his tone prim and proper. Not at all tinged with the nostalgia and regret he feels — therein lies a dangerous thought cycle that could only lead him to an early midlife crisis. "I suppose some things will never change."
ROSE LET ME GET ON THE GD DOOR WITH YOU
"Listen, Malfoy," she starts, after finishing up her food as well, and dabbing her mouth with a napkin pulled out of nowhere.
"Your first trimestre will be difficult, before you get the hang of everything. You can reach out, if you need...help, or company. I promise I won't bite." She cracks a small smile.