Author's Note: This was written for the 2017 D/Hr Advent Fest. My thanks to the mods for running this fest and everyone who nominated me to write for it. It was a pleasure, as always. Thanks as well to my beta, S., who read this and provided feedback even though fanfic isn't "really his thing." Love you, dear.
My prompt for this fest was "icicles."
Blood Over Bone
Draco stood with one hand braced against the mantle and stared into the hearth with unfocused eyes. Twilight fell early on the longest night of the year, and the fire had just lit itself. It was little more than embers now, orange and red, barely visible beneath the stacked logs. As darkness descended, the glow would grow wings and reach for freedom, but it would find no succor on the library's stone floor.
He hadn't been in here in months and had almost forgotten the room's close comfort, how the full bookshelves and rich colors made the space feel smaller. The smells of leather, ink, and brandy conjured memories of childhood. The simpler, pre-Hogwarts times: learning to read in his mother's lap, playing chess with his father.
But nothing remained static. Space had been made on a nearby shelf for new arrivals. Her personal collection, extensive and colorful, the spines creased, bumped, and torn. Each book imperfect and physically loved, distinct in almost every way from the collection his father had curated. A knit throw blanket - red, gold, and obviously handmade - lay piled at the foot of the chaise. Its pillows remained punched in by an elbow, or perhaps by the spine of the new hardcover on the side table.
This was her refuge.
He knew it, and most days, he respected it, lingering in the nearby rooms, hoping for a glance of her, but never crossing the threshold.
Tonight was different.
Tonight, he had to see her. And to get to where she was going, she had to pass by.
As if on cue, he heard her, her heels clicking against the marble floors in such a way that he wondered if she were late.
This time, it was the Ministry Solstice Soiree. Employee-only, meaning that he - a mere businessman - had not merited an invitation. But the occasion was irrelevant. It had been a family dinner a week ago and a night out before that. A shopping trip, a birthday party, a visit to the salon… She had made a dozen excuses between then and now, each more innocuous than the next, providing him no reasonable means of reproach or cause for suspicion.
And yet he knew. How could he not? The lightness in her step and in her eyes. Her face transformed by unconscious, secret smiles. Her perfume - something like autumn apples and warm honey - so intoxicating that he had snuck into her bedroom to check that she wasn't secretly brewing Amortentia. She wasn't, of course, but the confirmation simply made his reality that much harder to bear.
She was going to see him: the man she chose, the man Draco hated. The man he had never had a reason to envy until now.
"Don't go," he said as she passed. He sounded broken, desperate, even to his own ears. Maybe he was.
She paused, and hope lit in his chest. His heart stuttered as he turned, unprepared for the sight of her. A long, strapless, midnight blue gown, glittering with inlaid crystals. Sloping shoulders dusted with freckles. A graceful neck adorned with a simple diamond pendant and matching studs sparkling in her ears. A chignon that, by design or destiny, could not quite contain the mass of her chocolate-brown curls. A passive expression, lips and eyes and forehead a study in neutrality, as nonplussed by him as he was struck by her.
"You look beautiful."
Her indifference subtly rearranged into defiance, and Draco felt the nascent warmth in his chest wink away, a match flame against a gale.
"Don't go," he repeated. "Please."
"Why shouldn't I?"
The question was painful, but her tone was worse: derisive and dismissive, a subarctic lance into the center of his chest. He winced at the phantom pain and tried for honesty.
"Because when you come back, you smell like him."
Her eyes widened and her lips parted, a silent expression of shock as her infidelity was made unavoidably real. Then, she hardened - a jutting jaw, a raised chin, eyes like ancient amber. She walked away from him with squared shoulders. He watched her leave until she turned the corner, then he retreated into the library. He collapsed onto the chaise, head in his hands, tears burning in his eyes and the back of his throat. The distant whoosh of the Floo confirmed it.
She was gone.
He hadn't asked for this. None of them had. But the Ministry had gone ahead with it anyway, the Magical Being Preservation Act. Colloquially, the Marriage Law. It was designed to repopulate the post-war wizarding community with healthy children from a diverse magical lineage while not-so-subtly undermining the historically dangerous idea of pureblood superiority. On the latter, the law would undoubtedly be successful. On the former, Draco still had his doubts.
Though the Ministry was barbaric enough to take away their choice in marriage partner, it was not so cruel as to force consummation. Instead, they took a laissez-faire approach: familiarity would foster friendship, friendship would foster love.
Resistance was appealing, particularly to his pureblood peers. Theodore Nott was the first to try. He was also the first to be made an example of: failing to arrive at his original summons, suffering a week in Azkaban for his noncompliance, and being dragged - filthy, pale, and shivering - into the Ministry for Magical Compatibility Analysis anyway.
Nott was matched; they all were. And a week later, in a letter so brief it was delivered by a Scops owl, Draco was congratulated and wished a lifetime of happiness with his betrothed: Hermione Granger.
Even five months later, he could still feel the shock of it, disbelief sizzling just below his skin like static. The fury had faded, though, as had the insane ideas of escape it had brought. In its place dawned a gentle horror, which grew steadily over the months of their marriage and was largely responsible for his current misery.
Because the Ministry had been right.
Cold as she was toward him, Hermione was magnetic. And try as he might, there was no fighting it: Draco was iron drawn inexorably into her orbit.
More than her beauty or her intellect, Draco admired her resilience. Every interaction with him was rimed with frost, every glance filled with contempt, as if he had forced her into marriage or had gamed the system and chosen her intentionally. But when she didn't think he was looking, he saw a kindness in her that could not be broken by circumstance. She was polite to her personal house-elf, bookending the simplest requests with "Please" and "Thank you." She was respectful of his home - their home - ignoring the portraits that, despite Draco's frequent and increasingly violent corrections, still shouted obscenities at her. On their rare visits, she was cordial to his parents, despite having every reason not to be.
Some nights, when he was sure she was asleep, he stood outside her door and wondered if he would ever get to see the woman she was with him. The warm, vibrant, courageous witch who he could not come close to deserving, but Fate had paired him with anyway.
The long night dragged forward until, at last, the grandfather clock struck eleven. Draco accompanied the heavy chimes through the manor's empty halls and stepped outside on the final, resonant clang.
He could have flown or Apparated, but what was the point? He had nowhere else to be tonight. And as he breathed in the frigid air, Draco felt clearer. More focused. The walk would do him good.
He left his wand unlit. The waning moonlight, which reflected off the thick layer of snow, was enough to guide his way to the dark edge of the manor's surrounding forest. He followed a thin, winding trail through the woods and stopped at the edge of a clearing. At its center was a crackling fire. When he was a child, Draco had never given the white, oddly shaped kindling more than a moment's thought. Only when he was older did he realize they were bones.
He'd last visited five months ago, when the sentinel oaks were full and green and their boughs bent low to form a bower. Wild roses in peach, pink, and red had danced under the weight of busy insects, and the air had been heavy with pollen and perfume. It had been a beautiful day - idyllic, really - but for his somber expression and the stiffness of Hermione's shoulders. Their legal marriage had taken place in a Ministry courthouse, but the Malfoy Manor required more: a union of blood over bone.
Now, a different sort of ritual was required, still of blood and bone, but not of unity. The solstices were for strength, for shedding blood for the manor, the land, and the family. The oaks were still bent, heavy now with icicles that were large and sharp enough to kill a man.
His skin prickled as he crossed the tree line, and the fire flared as if in greeting. He stood beside it, holding out his hands briefly to warm them, then shrugging out of his cloak, which he draped over his arm. The little fire threw off a deceptive amount of heat.
The fire grew as midnight approached, and Draco watched it with dispassionate eyes. She wasn't coming. Part of him had harbored the smallest hope that her kindness would extend to keeping this tradition, but it seemed she was willing to sacrifice only so much. He couldn't blame her. And though it wasn't ideal, these were times of relative peace; the manor would survive another year.
Draco readied his wand, but paused when the crack of Apparition - muffled by the dense forest and its snow-covered trees, but no less distinct - broke the silence. He looked over his shoulder and watched Hermione approach.
A tightly curled fist hitched one side of her gown up to her thigh. The other side trailed behind, catching on the bare twigs that stuck up from the snow. She stumbled once in her heels as she crossed the circle's bounds. Her eyeliner and mascara, so precisely applied when she had left for the evening, were smudged, creating dark circles beneath her eyes. She had been crying.
But she wasn't now. Her face was stoic, set, like she had made a decision and was actively trying not to regret it. She looked vulnerable, and it surprised him.
Their gaze met briefly. Her whiskey eyes shone rich amber in the firelight, then midnight struck. The bone fire exploded into an inferno that shot twenty feet over their heads and licked at the low-hanging icicles.
Draco worked quickly. He drew his wand across his palm, hardly feeling the pain of it, and curled his fingers. The blood pooled, and he darted his hand into the fire, twisting his palm and opening his fingers. His blood hissed in the heat, instantly burned away. Hermione mimicked his actions, and the sound of her blood hitting the fire followed a few seconds later.
The fire disappeared with a roar that left him breathless and blind, and the sudden absence of sound made him feel alone. Then Hermione shifted beside him, her arm brushing his, and he remembered: for better or for worse, he would never be alone again.
Hermione broke the silence, her voice low and hoarse. "Ron and I are finished." She paused, then, thickly, as if she were swallowing tears: "Susan is pregnant."
Draco felt her tremble and, because he didn't know what else to do, draped his cloak across the line of her shoulders, smoothing it against her skin.
A sob ripped through her, and the magnetism between them was no longer one-sided. Hermione fell into his arms, and her tears soaked into the fabric of his shirt as she mourned the death of her first love.
Draco closed his eyes and held her tightly, even daring to press his cheek to the top of her head. He ached for her because he knew her pain. He knew the fear of giving up one life and settling for another. Only he had done it months ago, and she was doing it now.
But maybe she didn't have to settle. Maybe he could be the man she deserved. The wizard who was polite to elves, covered those damn family portraits, and let the past stay where it belonged. Maybe, after they got to know each other, he could even make her smile.
She pushed away from him, wiping her streaming eyes on her hands and streaking black across her cheeks. The fire rekindled, and with its light, Draco felt a strengthening unrelated to the solstice. He readjusted his cloak over her shoulders and, taking her hand, led her out of the forest.
How could he love her? They were practically strangers.
How could he not? She was his wife.
The End