Darkness Light: Chapter One
"This horror will grow mild, this darkness light." -Milton, Paradise Lost
Author's Notes: A small minority of you, gentle readers, may see this screen name and scratch your heads in weary recollection. I've posted a fuller explanation under my profile, but after an eight year sabbatical from for my crossover fiction at Twisting the Hellmouth I've had a few plot bunnies that insist on being written. Thank you for reading them.
I've been writing fanfiction since 2000. In that time I've written in a dozen of fandoms on several prominent sites. I've pursued and finished a PhD (this is not reflected in my editing skills- my apologies). I've moved nine times. I've grown up. And I still love these worlds. I enjoy sharing my words with you all, and I am always humbled by the time people take to read and leave feedback.
It feels good to be back.
Disclaimer: I claim no ownership of Harry Potter, only the words on this page.
Hermione had never meant to date Draco sodding Malfoy. He was just always… there. Following her. Making her laugh. Making her lust. Like an especially attractive pebble in her shoe that she never quite managed to shake out.
Her Third Year self would have been horrified. The closest Third Year Hermione had ever come to Malfoy willingly was her first smashing into his face. Her self, right after the fall of Voldemort, would have scoffed as she washed the blood of his followers off of her hands. But the self that had decided to take a break from the Wizarding World after completing enough studies to qualify for a master's degree in Classics from the University of Cambridge found herself in an altogether unexpected position. She had shown up for the first day of classes, feeling nervous despite being several years older than most of the students. At twenty-seven she was hardly... ancient, but many of her cohort were only twenty-two or twenty-three. And most hadn't survived a Wizarding war.
But Hermione liked to be prepared, and this was the first new adventure she had allowed herself in years. Even longer since she had been without Harry and Ron as a significant source of support in her life. So she had paused at the top of the crowded lecture hall, smoothed the nonexistent wrinkles out of her skirt, and determinedly made her way down to the front row of seats.
If she could have bet her weight in galleons as to the least likely scene she would have come across on her first day of her MPhil classes, Draco sodding Malfoy slouching in a seat on the first row would have for sure lost her the bloody bet. She stood for a moment, shock robbing her of speech as her mouth gaped open unattractively. Those first few seconds he ignored the blunt stare as her heart pounded and blood roared in her ears. Years of survival almost had her reaching for the wand in her back pack before Draco looked up and snorted.
"Granger, don't be crass. Shut your mouth and sit down before the lecture starts."
And she never would quite know how her numb legs took his exasperated order as gospel and folded her into the seat next to his. She managed to hold her mouth closed but she couldn't help but staring at him even as the professor came in and began to sort papers.
She hadn't seen him in person in years… since his family had officially been exonerated for their role in securing Voldemort's defeat. For their defection from the Dark Lord's forces. It hadn't been a painless decision. Although Lucius and Narcissa were both very much still in the public eye in certain circles the war had left them aged. Lucius, imperious as always, leaned heavily on his cane and always seemed underweight. Narcissa, while still intimidating, similarly had an unhealthy leanness about her, the look of survival that Hermione knew all too well.
She had run into them both from time to time, at the various Ministry functions she and Ron and Harry were pressured into attending. Show the Golden Trio off, the great war heroes, and shake galleons from the public's pockets. Hermione was too smart to be anything but cynical about her role in the Wizarding World post-Voldemort, but she enjoyed seeing her friends enough to act her part in the play she had no hand in staging.
Draco though, had all but dropped from society's notice. There was the odd mention of the Malfoy heir in The Daily Prophet but rarely a photo.
Studying him, she noticed that the younger Malfoy had finally lost the sharp cast to his features that had lent to his ferret nickname. His late twenties found him looking more like his father than ever, with face taking a more masculine cast. He had the same white-blonde hair of his parents, but though it was longer than was fashionable for the muggle world, it barely brushed his collar. He was still almost painfully pretty for a man, with fuller lips and the same sharp nose, but despite the similarities, he looked… just different enough from his father. While Lucius Malfoy was all sneering indifference and cold disdain, Draco had always been too hot headed for that.
Instead he lounged in the lecture hall seat, all loose limbed as he finally turned to face her, gray eyes dancing. "What's the matter, Granger," he drawled softly, "kneazle got your tongue?"
Suddenly spurred into speech she leaned forward furiously, willing her fingers to still as they itched to reach for her wand once again, "What are you doing here?" she hissed. "Or do you have this confused with some sort of well-dressed mass genocide for muggles?"
She wasn't sure what she expected but Draco rolling his eyes at her was not it. "Nice insult but it lacked the necessary punch to really land. Now if you had said, 'Do you have this confused with some sort of prison for small-minded purebloods who have to learn their place,' that might have stuck a bit better. We do hate to be outdone."
"Malfoy!" she hissed, drawing the brief attention of the professor who looked like she was about to start the class.
He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, disturbing the locks and leaving him looking mildly frustrated. It was reassuring, in a way. "You know, Granger, I sincerely haven't missed the bossiness."
"Yes, well," she shot back, "I haven't missed the prejudice so, bully for both of us. But that still doesn't answer the bloody question- why are you here?"
He looked vexed at her insistent questioning but hardly murderous and Hermione wondered at it even as Malfoy rolled his eyes. "You're not the only one interested in literature, Granger."
"Muggle literature."
At that Malfoy smirked before reaching past her to her book bag, his fingers deliberately touching her bare shoulder as she tensed, ready for… well anything. Almost anything. Slender fingers held one of the required texts for the course- John Milton's Paradise Lost.
She watched, hypnotized despite herself as he traced the spine of the book gently, the tips of his fingers delicately moving over the title. And she was compelled to whisper the quote that had haunted her, the first time she had first read Milton's epic work, "Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven."
Malfoy's quicksilver eyes warmed for a moment and she flushed, suddenly awkward and looked away. "Well Granger, who knew the swoty know-it-all would quote Lucifer to a Malfoy. Lucky for us all, the Malfoy version of Hell is much more in line with a world where Voldemort is dead and buried."
Her mouth snapped shut with an audible sound that would have been embarrassing in less extreme circumstances. Instead she studied him uneasily. His words were the same flip tone of the Malfoy of old. They certainly echoed what many of the Wizarding World whispered behind the Malfoy's backs. That survival rather than a true change of heart had instigated Lucius and Narcissa and Draco's rehabilitation. But the words lacked the bitterness she would have expected from a man left to live in a world where his Lord was no more.
Their professor cleared her throat pointedly at the duo in the front row and Hermione sank back into her seat, facing forward as she forced herself not to glance at Malfoy from under her eyelashes as the lecture started. She dutifully took out a muggle pen and dedicated herself to jotting notes from the three hour lecture, but she couldn't dismiss her awareness of him from her mind.
From the warmth of his coiled body at her side.
He took no notes, he rarely had even at Hogwarts, but she could almost feel his brain working as he absorbed the material Hermione was frantically writing down. By the end of the three hour period, Hermione felt exhausted. Wrung out from tension and something more elusive.
She didn't look at him again, didn't acknowledge him as she gathered her notes and primly put away her papers and pen in her bag.
"Milton was a wizard, you know," came the oddly conversational voice to her right.
Her head whipped over and she spoke without meaning to. "No he wasn't." Malfoy merely raised one supercilious brow. "But… I didn't. I'd never heard…"
"A distant ancestor of the Malfoys, truth be told." Those same pale, slender fingers laid her copy of Paradise Lost on her desk. "There's a lot more to the Wizarding World than Hogwarts, A History, Granger."
She stared at him, wide eyed, and Malfoy rose gracefully. He carried no book bag, and Hermione wondered how he looked so bloody at ease in dark washed blue jeans and a dark gray v-necked shirt. He turned to leave, but it was Malfoy, and he could never resist giving one parting quote from Milton. "Solitude is sometimes best society." The jibe hit its intended mark.
Hermione's lips twitched involuntarily as she slid her book into her bag with the rest of her belongings. "Arse."