Disclaimer: The intellectual property and characters of Harry Potter belong to JK Rowling (and sadly, not to me).
(a/n will be at the end of the story. Please do stick around to read it! Enjoy!)
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Somehow, she found him in the Muggle section of the library. Somehow, he still managed to look so... poised and elegant, even with his alarmed face, like how a dancer who'd injured their ankle midway through an act would push forward without showing their audience the pain they were in. And somehow, she managed not to laugh, scream, cry, or punch herself in the face to discern reality from imagination.
If she had the choice, she would have backed away slowly. Very, very slowly. And then she would have ran from the library. But as fate would have it, amongst other things, she had done the complete opposite; she stayed rooted to the ground, mouth agape and bottom lip quivering.
All she could do was stare at his large, rectangular form, barely a metre away from her own petite frame.
She had never truly taken the time to study him throughout the year, always too busy with her OWL preparations. She had noticed changes, yes, with her brief glances; coloured sweaters, albeit in dark and muted tones, hair left to gravity to dictate its path, face more gaunt and worn. But she had never realised how the war had really pulled and shaped him: how his eyes seemed darker and more tumultuous, or how every step he took seemed much more deliberate and careful, like he'd think it out in his head first, or how his smiles never really reached his eyes anymore. But time, as they stood there, wide eyed and unmoving, seemed to slow almost to a halt and she had all the time in the world to scrutinize the lines carved into his skin, the way the dim light fell on his face and his large, searching eyes that was trained on her. She observed the way he was unconsciously rubbing the cover of the book in his hands-a small, black unremarkable paperback and words in white print, "To Kill A Mockingbird".
And it was then she swore she felt her heart stop beating. She would wake up any second then. She would. It was all just a dream, wasn't it? But seconds passed, and she was still very much in this universe, bewildered at the book in Draco's large palms. Had she paid any more attention to his face, she would have seen a faint, pale pink colour in his cheeks, definitely from the embarrassment of getting caught reading a muggle fiction book, and one on social classes at that, and how he'd desperately tried to not look at her. But she was fixated by the little book, that these details never made it into her memory.
As her memory would supplement, she was completely and utterly shocked. She was dumbfounded. Had it been any other book, any book at all, she would have been rather taken aback at him being in the Muggle section of the library, but would have thought nothing otherwise. But it was this book, a book about prejudice, racism and privilege, in the hands of a supercilious, and chauvinistic child. That had pulled the rug out of under her feet, turned her world upside down, and recoloured everything she'd known.
He had, after a few seconds, started to try and cover the book up, as nonchalantly and discreetly as his hands could. But she was completely fixated on the smooth black covers, and the dog ear-less pages, and the remote possibility that it was the Draco Malfoy holding a copy of To Kill A Mockingbird.
A part of her had expected him to ask, "Why were they discriminating against blacks?" And then, she'd smartly throw the question back at him, only changing 'they' to 'you' and 'blacks' to 'muggleborns'. Of course, she knew that he'd never do that, and she'd never get the chance to hit the nail in the coffin and crumble his whole world. He wasn't second only after her for nothing. He was smart enough to see the parallels, to see why they had been racist and bigoted. After all, he was the perfect specimen to study the peculiarities of human behaviour and how we never really seem to fulfil Aristotle's idea of a good life.
To any outside observer who knew nothing about the two people they were looking at, they'd think the couple was a pair of mannequins, oddly placed in the aisle of a library. To anyone who knew them, well, who knows.
"So," she said, carefully, "what are you doing with that?"
He stared at her, wide eyed and blank faced.
"Your book?" she pointed at the object in question.
He seemed to have scared the cat that had got his tongue away at her words. "Reading it."
"No shit."
He rolled his eyes. "Well, what else would I do with it?"
"Doesn't seem like your kind of book."
"And you know me so well do you?"
"I know enough. It's not your kind of book."
"Of course you do, because we've spent like, what? All our 7 years talking to each other?"
"You don't have to talk to someone to know them."
"Really, now? How do you get to know someone?" he sneered.
She could really punch his face right now. "Their actions."
He laughed. She just bore into his face with her virulent eyes. He closed the distance between them with a single stride. His face was inches away from hers. She could feel his breath on her nose when he said, "Pray tell, what do you know about me from my actions?"
She hadn't expected this. Honestly, what was she thinking, walking into a trap like that? What did she know about him? That he was a blood supremacist? He was an evil, wrong-doing child? She'd never watched him before; she never had any reason to. Even when he defected to join the order, they weren't so much as cordial with each other. He'd still remained aloof, and occasionally snarky towards her. She'd reciprocated the feelings.
She watched him pull his head back, then throw it back in laughter.
"Looks like you don't know me as well as you'd tricked yourself into believing, darling," he said, the last word in a tone filled with particular malice. He pushed his way past her, and she could only, once again, stand rooted to the ground while watching his figure retreat into the distance.
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She found him sitting by the lake later that night, like she knew she would. She wasn't a stalker or anything, but she knew he always went there. It was just his spot.
She also knew he wasn't as mean and malevolent as he'd made himself out to be; he'd shown his fair share of worry and care for the Order, including herself, albeit in curious ways. He wouldn't hold a grudge on her, much less hurt her, and that was the only reason she'd dare to approach him after the day's incident.
"What do you want?" he'd thrown the words over his shoulder before she even got the chance to come anywhere remotely close to him.
"How'd you know I was coming?"
"You're noisy. Didn't the war teach you anything?"
She ignored him, plonking herself down beside him, back against the tree. Under the moonlight, the shadows on his face were deeper and darker. It made his face look sharper, like she could cut paper if she ran it across his nose. It was odd, because somehow the moonlight made him look ethereal as well, like an angel. She almost laughed at the irony. He turned to meet her gaze.
"You didn't answer my first question."
"What I want?"
He nodded. It was only then, in the darkness, that she finally took a good look at his features. The colour in his eyes, the small smile lines etched into his face, the eye bags that hung from his lower lash. Everything, she took in everything, like a hungry child devouring everything in sight. She basked in the minute details of his skin, the way it sloped as it was pulled across his bones, the small blemishes across his face. She could have spent hours just staring at him, memorizing every detail of him, until it was all carved into her memory to remain there forever.
But she didn't.
"To talk," she answered.
He broke their eye contact to look at the lake, smiling. "I thought you weren't the talking kind."
"Since when?" she asked, bewilderment on her face.
"Since, 'you don't have to talk to someone to know them'," he chuckled.
"Oh shut up."
"You said you wanted to talk. Now you want me to stop talking?"
She rolled her eyes. "You're insufferable, you know that?"
He shrugged, glints of happiness in his eyes.
"Look, I don't want to be enemies, so truce?" she stuck her hand out. He looked down at it, as though it was a foreign object he'd just found in his backyard: full of wariness, and curiosity that tempted him to poke at it and hold it. He better not just ignore it, that git. She didn't want to walk away embarrassed and rejected.
After what felt to her like the lifespan of our universe, he took her hand, and shook it once. "Truce."
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She'd find him by the lake every night. Sometimes she'd go up to him. And sometimes she'd talk to him, or he'd talk to her, or they'd just sit in complete silence until she left. She was always the first to leave, her tired eyes betraying her. But no matter how long or how short her visits were, or how many words were exchanged while they sat there together, watching the tranquil water, somehow, she always found comfort in them.
She found comfort in him. And that, for an absurd reason she did not wish to find, didn't scare her.
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"Do you never sleep?" she asked one night. He snickered in response.
"No, I'm a vampire."
"Ha. ha."
"Why else am I so pale?"
"Maybe you're actually dead."
"That's not very comforting for you, is it?"
"On the contrary," she said, "A dead Draco Malfoy would be delightful."
"But you would be talking to a dead Draco Malfoy, and that, is mildly creepy."
That conversation ended in one of them shoving the other into the lake, followed by chortles coming from a dry, bushy haired figure.
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She slowly began to find him an amazing companion, filling the spaces in her heart from her missing friends who decided they didn't want to take their last year of school. It wasn't that he was similar to them, in fact sometimes he could be so completely different that she would be taken aback. Rather, it was that he was who he was-opinionated, fast and smart, were only a handful of things to say about him-which made him a friend she wanted to keep. The fact that both of them could agree on so many things, and yet disagree about so many more things was only the tip of the iceberg. She found that she could easily pick a conversation with him; it could be anything under the sun and he'd still be game to talk to her. And yet, she found that she could also be beside him without saying a single word, and he'd accept that and they'd sit in comfortable silence.
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"Granger?"
"Yeah?"
"Can you even see what you're reading?"
"Yeah."
"What are you reading?"
She raised her book just enough so that he could see the cover while she continued to read. From the corner of her eye, she could see him nodding before he turned his attention back to stargazing. What she never saw, however, was his furtive glances to her book every once in awhile, and the question he didn't have enough bravery to ask lingering on his tongue.
The next night, however, he garnered enough courage and asked to borrow the book. She giggled at his excitement when she passed it to him.
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She enjoyed her intellectual debates with him. It made her adrenaline rush and the cogs in her brain turn, all of which she yearned for when she was bored. It was even more enjoyable because she knew he'd always be ready to play the devil's advocate when she wanted him to, and a good one at that.
However, she also enjoyed the silly conversations that occasionally reminded her of drunken people.
"Malfoy?" she had called out one night. It was a full moon that night, and he'd flown up to enjoy the sky. He had even offered her a ride, but she was adamant on staying on the ground.
"Yes?" he had responded from his broom hovering above her.
"Can I call you Drake?"
He slowly descended on his broom before he climbed off and sat himself beside her. "Can I call you Mione?"
"That's unfair."
"How is it unfair? They're both shortened versions of our name."
"Yeah, but you know I hate that nickname."
"Well, now you know I hate Drake, so we're even."
"Its still unfair," she huffed.
"How?"
"Because you won."
She stared at his disbelieving face in mock upset, before both of them burst into laughter.
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"I think it's about to rain," she said, staring up at the sky.
"It's so dark, how can you tell?" he asked, nonchalant as he continued to read his book.
"I just have a feeling."
"Well your feeling is probably wrong and-"
He was interrupted by large drops of water rapidly invading his personal bubble and turning his pages soggy. "Shit!" He slammed his book shut, and both of them clambered up before sprinting across the field.
They both reached the safety of the castle, drenched and breathless.
"I told you so," she managed between her gasps for air. He could only roll his eyes before both of them broke into huge grins, shivering in their wet clothing.
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Their night-time conversations began to trickle into the mornings, then the afternoons, then the evenings just before sunset.
"I'd think with your SPEW nonsense, you'd know the utilitarianism is a terrible choice," he told her one day while they were eating lunch in the Great Hall.
"Firstly, SPEW is not nonsense. It's perfectly reasonable-"
"Yes, yes. Heard this before. Just move on to your second point?"
She huffed in annoyance. He really got on her nerves sometimes. Well, most of the time. And yet, she still spent almost all her time with him. Good going, brightest witch of her age.
"Best choice gives the net utility, and is for the greater good. What is so terrible about that?" she countered, as she crossed her hands.
"The most glaringly obvious: it doesn't take into account human rights," he looked up at her with a look of faux concern on his face, "Does that not bother you?"
"Well, some things have to be sacrificed to benefit the masses. It's not all black and white, you know."
"And you're not certain of the actual consequences of the action."
"That's why you think... logically?" she said it as though it was the most obvious thing in the universe.
"Some things happen without you expecting."
She gave him an odd look while she weighed his words.
"If you're so against it, then what do you believe in?" she asked.
"I much prefer virtue ethics."
She scoffed. "Like you're that much of a virtuous person."
Her eyes grew in horror. No, no, no. She didn't mean it. She wasn't thinking, she wasn't thinking. She wanted to take it back, desperately trying to grasp at the strings holding her words. But they slipped out of her grip, and all that had been said became history. She'd braced herself for the consequences of what she'd said. Of her callousness, her lack of conscious decision making. She could envisage the fall: him storming off, her desperately trying to fix what she'd done, and them losing whatever they had between them. And as much as she was unwilling to admit it, she didn't want that to happen.
She'd grown to accept who he was. Everything that he'd done had shaped him and she understood that. So she took in the whole of him, both the ugly and the pretty. Their conversations had filled his two dimensional shape out. He was no longer a paper cut-out who was only mean and bigoted; he was so much more than that. An amalgam of good and bad, an inconsistent, conflicting person. He was complex and beautiful. She didn't want to lose what she'd first lost, and then later, finally found. Fate didn't have to be so cruel to her, did it?
However, to her surprise, he laughed. "I'm trying, okay." She nodded, confused. He'd done it again: completely went against what she'd expected, and spun her world around until she was dizzy and lost. He kept doing that, recently. Ever since their incident in the library. She'd expect him to do one thing, because he'd done that before. Then he'd do something completely different, like it was the most natural thing in the world. It was maddening, and yet there was something comforting in him being the opposite of what she always expected.
Maybe he was right; some things are out of the reaches of your predictions, no matter how logical you are.
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They sat underneath the tree-their tree-in comforting silence.
It was night again, and his skin contrasted well against the dark sky. She traced the curves on his face with her eyes, the gentle slope of his nose, the way his upper lip was slightly rounder than his bottom, and how his eyelids seemed to be slightly droopier than she'd known. She wanted to speak, but she couldn't seem to find her voice. She'd opened and closed her mouth several times, running what she wanted to say in her head over and over until he turned to look at her.
"What is it?" His voice was patient, and calm, so unlike the first time she'd sat herself beside him under this tree. That clicked something in her brain.
"You're so nice to me, sometimes."
"You don't want me to?"
"No, that's not it," she said, shaking her head. She kept her eyes trained on him.
"Then, what is it?"
"Sometimes you can be so nice. Then sometimes you're so rude and mean."
He looked at her for a moment, before speaking, "And it's confusing?"
"Exactly." She watched his lips curl upwards in a lopsided grin, before it fell back down.
"I'm sorry."
"You don't have to be," she laughed, patting his shoulder.
"No, not about that," he sighed, picking at the grass between their legs, "I'm sorry about what I did. Over the years."
She wasn't expecting that. But then again, she never was, no matter how much she prepared herself. The world had a funny way of working.
"I'm sorry, too," she said, after a moment's worth of thinking.
"You're so nice to me, sometimes," he turned up to look at her, eyes earnest.
"You don't want me to?"
"I don't deserve it."
It broke her heart that he thought the way he did. She placed her hand over his, the tips of grass blades brushing against her exposed fingers. He was only 18. He was just a child. "You do." They were just children. She laced her fingers with him. Her tears were pushing against her floodgates, ready and waiting. She turned back to the lake. "You try, so you do." She blinked her tears away furiously, but there was no stopping them now. She could feel his gaze on her. She refused to look him in the eye. She didn't want to see whatever it was in his eyes. She wasn't ready, just yet.
He'd let go of her hand, and for a moment her heart dropped, the world stopped spinning, and she panicked because she wasn't ready to lose him then. She wasn't ready to lose him ever. But then he'd put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her closer, and everything was okay.
In the gentle glow of the crescent moon, they spent their night sitting in silence, figures huddled while watching the moon slowly move across the swirls of black and blue, before finally falling asleep together beneath their tree.
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a/n: Hello, after roughly a year I'm back with something new! (I decided I should write something happy and sweet after my previous story.) Thanks to all my friends who've allowed me to share my drafts with them and helped me check and improve my work. Also, any constructive feedback or general comments are appreciated. Please do consider reviewing, sharing and adding this story to your favourites if you've enjoyed it; it means a lot to me.
Anyway, thanks for reading this, and there's more comments about this story I have but you can choose to skip it if you'd like.
Firstly, in case anyone was unsure Aristotle's idea of a good life is that we humans have performed our function well. Man's function is reasoning/rational activity. So the activity of living in accordance with reason, man's highest function, allows us to achieve eudaimonia (good life/living well). Well, at least that's what I understood from my brief philosophy lessons. (Apologies if I've messed it up.)
Secondly, I think some people might argue that Hermione would be a virtue ethicist, but I've always seen her as a utilitarian and choosing the right thing to do based on what would seem to achieve the greatest net utility/happiness for the greatest number of people, especially after the war. She thinks it's better to sacrifice 1 person if it means 1000 people are spared. And I think Draco has learnt from the war that he should strive to be a virtuous person, and as such he tries to make choices based on that.
That's all, I hope you liked the story!