Sugar and Spice

chapter 1

Hermione frowned at the smooth, unmarred surface of wood before her.

The table was new, absent of ink stains and pockmarks made by bored students who'd rather be anywhere but the library. Not her. For the first time in months she could finally breathe, hidden amongst the stacks at her favorite table.

Well, not the table. That one was gone. She slid her chair—also new—closer to the replacement table and for a moment she was tempted to shove aside the thought of why the tables and chairs here in her favorite spot had been replaced, had warranted replacing to begin with. The temptation to shove it down, to ignore, to shut her eyes and pretend this was just another school year was seductive.

And wrong. Too much blood had soaked into the very stone of the castle—Lupin's, Tonk's, Fred's, Lavender's, the list went on—for her to deserve the ability to turn a blind eye when she was still standing and they weren't.

She wouldn't wallow, her friends wouldn't want that, but ignorance and lies—even those told to herself, perhaps especially those—would achieve nothing. She had one year left and she vowed to face it, all of it, head on. She was a Gryffindor and she best act like one.

Hermione retrieved an alchemy text from the bottom of her accumulated mountain of advanced books. Unlike the desks and chairs, the books were old and unscathed, warded against most anything that could lead to disrepair, including but not limited to the hexes and curses hurled during the Battle, like the ones that had—

"Nose already buried in a book, eh, Granger?"

Her fingers curled around her wand, instinctive. Protego, stupefy, expelliarmus, along with a good number of nasty jinxes hovered on the tip of her tongue, but she restrained herself. The war she'd been embroiled in for the last seven years in one form or fashion was over, even if at times it didn't feel like it.

Fingers no longer on the proverbial trigger, she infused as much steel in her spine as she could muster and forced her chin up. Theodore Nott stood on the opposite side of the brand new table with a grimace on his pale face, his dark blue eyes stormy and locked on her wand atop the table.

"Sorry," she muttered.

With the sort of disaffected poise only a Slytherin could display, Nott arched a dark brow. "Apologizing for what, your erudition? That's a new look on you."

She blinked, twice. Smoothing the—was this a conversation? Had she ever had a conversation with Nott? Once or twice, maybe, and only ever to ask him to pass her an ingredient in the potions cupboard. So no, most of her experience with Nott had been of the looking and not speaking variety.

Whatever this was, sweeping her gaffe under the rug was rather un-Slytherin of him when he could lord her war-worn nerves over her head. Then again, he was likely just trying to ignore the fact that she'd nearly hexed him six ways to Sunday for sneaking up on her.

Yes, that was it. As one of only a handful of students returning for an eighth year and one of even fewer returning Slytherins, Nott most likely wanted to make this year as smooth as possible.

Intentions aside, Hermione could be just as big a person as Nott. "No, though I believe we're all entitled to turning a new leaf this year if we choose."

Maybe that was a little too on the nose, because he stared for a moment, so long and fraught with words not spoken that it took everything inside her not to squirm beneath his unblinking gaze. Merlin, his eyes were bluer than the Great Lake and just as difficult to read.

Slowly, he nodded, his eyes dropping to the text splayed in front of her. He smiled, no more than the barest curl of the edges of his lips, but it made her stomach swoop with an intensity that stole her breath. Of all the things the war could've killed and didn't, this just had to live on.