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Every Monday morning, precisely five minutes after Hermione opens the bookshop and settles back by the register, the blond man ducks through the door and gives her a smile before pretending to peruse the front table.
He always buys the book on the left of the display. It doesn’t matter what she sets out—Austen, Doyle, the newest contemporary romance, a pre-war travelogue of Italy, a collection of obscure Japanese poetry—always the left-most book.
She watches him examine the backs of other books—a pretence—while she sips at her mug of tea. If he made small talk beyond the weather, she might get swept up in romantic fantasies inspired by her latest idle-afternoon-read. But he’s always so primly polite—never grazing her hand when she gives him his change, never staring too long at her face or chest—not even when she wore her lowest-cut jumper just to see if he might.
The perfect gentleman. But it tugs at her, sometimes, usually on Sunday nights when the realisation strikes that she’ll see him again within hours, that she almost knows his face. He’s not handsome, exactly—not like one of those foreign actors with their too-bright teeth and warm tans—more like a classic film star, blond and polished and a little pointy. The kind of face you might grow to find handsome over months of polite interactions.
She doesn’t even know his name. He never pays by card—no signature for a back-order—nothing she can hold up against the bright shop lights and discern information from. A mystery man; her Monday man; a bright spot of familiarity amidst the drudgery of ugh, Mondays.
No one in the tiny village knows much about him either. She asked at the post office, because Gladys knew everything about everyone, and it had been the first time Hermione ever saw the woman stumped.
“That one?” she’d said, tapping a pen against the corner of her mouth. “Only ever see ‘im walking up towards your little shop and then down again on Mondee morns. Bit of a looker though, innhe?”
“I suppose,” Hermione had said, feeling a faint flush creeping across her cheeks. “Only ever talks about the weather, though.”
“Well’n, you ought to give him a different topic.” Gladys had winked and waved the end of the pen dangerously close to Hermione’s nose. “Ask ‘im about those books he buys. Surely he reads ‘em?”
That had been two Fridays ago. Hermione had mulled it over all weekend like warm wine to ward off the winter chill. If she scares him off, then at least she can stop worrying at him like a loose thread on the cuff of her jumper.
“Hullo,” the man says, as Hermione blinks and focuses. “I’d like this, please.”
He sets the novel on the counter—Christie—and gives her a polite smile. “Nasty bit of weather we’re having, isn’t it?”
It had snowed all weekend. Hermione had spent most of it curled up around her fat grey cat—Malkin—reading novels by the fire and hardly noticing the chill.
“I suppose,” she says, giving what she hopes is a friendly smile in return. “I escaped into Austen and hardly noticed.”
She rings up the purchase as the man chuckles softly. “Good weather for a warm romance, I suppose.”
The moment is slipping away from her. He hands her an unwrinkled note and she fetches his change. “What about you?” she says, fumbling with the coins. “Do you really read everything you buy?”
She looks up to see a strange expression flitter across the man’s face—as though the question pained him. And then his face clears, and he smiles so serenely she wonders if she’s just imagining things.
“Of course,” he says, leaning slightly closer over the counter. “Isn’t that the point of buying a book?”
“Buying books and reading them are two different habits,” Hermione points out as she holds out his change. “Like those snobs that have wall-to-wall leatherbounds with uncracked spines.”
She realises, a moment too late, with his dapper coat and stiff collar, that her mystery man is probably the exact kind to have uncracked leatherbounds.
But he laughs—a soft, tinkling sound like silver bells—and plucks the coins from her palm. “Don’t worry, Miss Bookshop. I’ve left my snobbish ways behind.”
He smiles—sort of a smirk—and Hermione relaxes. She sets his book into a paper bag for something to do with her nervous hands.
“It’s just—” she passes the bag over and bites at her lip. “It’s just I feel like I sort of recognise you.”
That strange expression flickers across his face again. “Maybe we went to school together,” he says. “Or cut each other off to buy the last Twix once.”
Hermione laughs. “Maybe.” She hesitates for a moment before continuing. “I wouldn’t know—if it was school—I had an accident a few years ago. I have amnesia. Can’t remember anything from the last millennium.”
“Well,” he says carefully, “I don’t think you missed much.” He nods towards the book still on the counter. “Perhaps we met on a train somewhere and got swept up in a murder mystery.”
She smiles and pushes the book closer towards him. “Do you spend a lot of time solving murders, Poirot?”
“Not since I retired.” He rests his hands on the paper-clad book for a moment and twists a ring around on his pinky. “Now I just read books.”
“A bit slowly, don’t you think?” Hermione says tartly. “Only one a week?”
“Perhaps if the shopkeeper didn’t keep setting out the best of her unsold collection, I’d buy two.” He grins, his tone playful and light. It tugs at her—a sense of déjà vu, as though they’ve bickered back and forth before—but until today they haven’t. She’d remember, surely. Unless it had been before.
“I’ll hold you to that next Monday,” Hermione teases back. “And—would you let me know if you remember me from somewhere?” She fidgets with her fingers behind the counter, where he can’t see them. “Maybe it’s nothing—I don’t want to pressure you—it’s just you seem so familiar. And I can’t tell.” She shrugs, nonchalant, though her heart is banging against her ribs as though it wants to escape.
“I’ll scour my memory.” He smiles again and then tucks the book into one of his coat pockets. “Next week, then.”
“Have a good week! Enjoy the Christie.” Hermione calls after him as he steps through the shop.
He turns at the door, and nods—gives an awkward sort of half-wave—and then he’s gone into the softly falling snow.
Hermione sips at her tea—cold, she makes a face—and stares out after him. She can’t shake the feeling settling around her shoulders like a shawl, that she knows him.
But a lot of people like Twixes. It was probably just a coincidence.
It’s snowing again the next Monday when he comes back—snowflakes dusting his hair and shoulders—and stomps his feet on the mat she set out for that precise purpose.
“I thought about it,” he calls across the shop. “If we went to school together.”
“And?” Hermione prompts when he doesn’t continue. “Did we?”
“I can’t be sure,” he says, with a sheepish sort of smile that doesn’t really suit him. “I went to a boarding school in Scotland—I know, not a trace of any accent, my mother marvels—one of those horribly snobbish ones.”
“Are you saying I couldn’t be a snob?” Hermione says, setting one hand on her hip and affecting her best posh accent. “I could be such a snob.”
He laughs, his eyes crinkling at the corners. “Oh, you’d fit right in,” he teases. “But I was a right wanker back then—very self-important—so maybe it’s better you don’t remember me.”
“So I do know you from school?” she asks, twisting her hands together in front of her.
His expression flashes with melancholy—so fast she almost doesn't notice. “Well,” he murmurs, “why not? I suppose we did.” He picks up two books from the table—not even looking at the titles—and heads towards her. “You’ll laugh when I tell you my name, though.”
“I won’t,” Hermione protests.
“My name’s Draco—” Hermione snorts and covers her face with her hands, mortified, “—Ah, I told you. Draco Malfoy.”
She chokes down the laughter threatening to make her wheeze. “You sound like some—some literary villain. All pomp and posture and orphanage-burning.” There are tears forming in her eyes, blurring her vision. How incredibly rude—laughing at a stranger—she ought to be ashamed of herself.
But the man is smiling along with her. “And what about yours?” he teases. “Hermione Granger—” and she blinks very quickly and stands up straight, “—the bane of my childhood existence.”
“You do know me,” she whispers, an accusation that comes out more like wonder. “Is that why—is that why you keep buying books every Monday?”
For a moment she doesn’t think he’ll answer. He smiles at her—but a sad smile—and runs his fingers through his hair. “Yes,” he finally says. “It’s why I keep buying books every Monday.”
Hermione leans forward, elbows on the counter. “What was I like? No one—in the hospital, they said I didn’t have any parents, no boyfriend or anything—I don’t know anyone that knows me.” The words come out in a jumble, years of aching and longing tripping over themselves in a rush to finally escape.
“You were,” the man says softly, a dreamy look falling across his features, “a menace. Smartest girl in school—which was a real prickle in my backside when I wanted to prove I was better than you, I tell you—and you had a couple of friends, terrible blokes, always getting you into trouble while you’d get them out of it.”
“What happened to them?” Hermione says, leaning even further forward. She can smell his cologne, something sharp and woodsy, something that makes the hair on the back of her neck tingle with—with—
“They finally figured out how to keep you safe,” the man—Draco Malfoy—says softly. Kindly. He’s fiddling with something in his coat pocket, but she’s too distracted by the emotions twisting his features. Sadness—more than sadness—a heartbreaking desolation she doesn’t understand. “It was them that caused your accident, Hermione. Potter and his stupid quest for glory—to rid the world of all its evils—and all he did was destroy you in the process.”
“I don’t—I don’t understand,” Hermione stammers, leaning back from the counter. “Who—What?”
“I’m sorry, Hermione,” Draco says as he lifts something out of his pocket and points it towards her. Her heart leaps into her throat—but it’s just a weird stick, nothing dangerous—
“Obliviate.”
Hermione has just sat down at the counter with a fresh cup of tea when the door to the shop opens with a gust of blustery winter air. A blond man in a black coat carefully shuts the door and dusts snow off his shoulders and hair. He has a look about him, Hermione observes—some sort of classic film magnetism—not handsome but interesting to look at.
“Hello,” she calls out. “Are you looking for anything in particular I can help you with?”
“No,” the stranger says, meeting her gaze and giving her a sad smile. “I’m just browsing.”
She watches him as he examines the display on the table nearest the door. It’s not often she gets a new face in this sleepy little village. Maybe he’s up from London? Passing through? But he’s browsing as though he has all the time in the world to waste in her little shop.
“Let me know if you change your mind,” she says, before turning her attention back to her tea. It’s not really any of her business what he's up to.
After all, it's not like she knows him.