Legilimens [Dramione]

Curiosity

Hermione Granger found herself re-reading a proposal she had written from scratch for the fifth consecutive time. What else was there now to edit? Practically nothing. 
She had never been a conceited person, but she could proudly say that her proposal was perfect. 
It had been from the first draft, but after five rewrites, she could say it was flawless.

Yet it had been sent back. 

Which was absurd. Had the person in charge of reading and evaluating her proposals ever consulted a Magical Law manual?

Probably not. Certainly not. 

This only made her nervousness skyrocket. There were only two possible options to explain what was going on: those who had the task of supervise and approve her proposals didn't know anything about magical law, and therefore shouldn't found themselves in that position, or, even worse and much more likely, her proposals were not even read, but discarded regardless.

She closed everything, bagging her new and "revised" bill without changing a single comma. If no one told her anything, she would have confirmation that all her hard work was not even being properly reviewed.

She left her office and handed the packaged parchment to Dean, then headed for the ministry archives. 

She was tired of working in a vacuum. They wanted to ignore her proposals? Fine.

She would make them victims of the same bureaucracy they tried to trap her in, deluding her and offering her a poor "sweetener" every now and then. 

No one ever visited the enormous archives of the Ministry in person, and Hermione was grateful for that. She headed determinedly for the section that housed documents on trials that had taken place over the past twenty years, duplicating the inside compartment and hiding the various files in her secretly enlarged bag. 

She had a mission now, and helping Lucius Malfoy would only be a side effect of a much larger plan.

Doing justice.

***

Two or three weeks at the most. That meant he'd have to see Hermione Granger for another four, or maximum six, times. 
And then it would be over.
She had actually helped him. She did more for him than anyone had ever done since his father had been arrested.
Lucius had his faults; Draco was aware of it and knew it was only fair that he pay for his mistakes.
He also knew that Hermione would make sure Lucius rotted in Azkaban as long as he needed to for the crimes he had committed, but not a day longer.
The only thing he had to do was convince first her and then the rest of the wizarding world that his father wasn't responsible for Severus' murder, and he was on the right path.
Everything was going as he had hoped, if not better. Yet he couldn't feel happy about it. 

Happy perhaps was an absurd claim, but he wasn't feeling the sense of satisfaction or relief that he thought he should be feeling. There was something wrong with the whole situation he found himself in, and the problem was Hermione. 
He shouldn't have cared about the mysteries surrounding Hermione Granger, yet so many little things about her had crept into his mind after only a few encounters, and now he couldn't get her out of his thoughts.
He had gotten what he wanted from her, in just three weeks he would be on his way and helping his father.

He shouldn't be thinking about Hermione Granger and her affairs, he didn't have to be so curious about the thousand secrets that suddenly seemed to surround her. Nor should he have found himself secretly rooting for her, hoping that sooner or later she would succeed in finally overturning those old bigots who had been kicking up dust for decades in the chairs of the ministry.

He really needed to stop drinking, he thought, turning his usual drink over in his hands. He and Theo had been drinking for months, giving away bottles left and right, sometimes in a fit of rage they threw them still full against the walls: yet the cellars of Nott Manor seemed inexhaustible. For every bottle they consumed, two more would materialize on the shelf over the fireplace. And although he couldn't explain why, Theo hated this deeply.