Promise me no promises,
So will I not promise you:
Keep we both our liberties,
Never false and never true:
Let us hold the die uncast,
Free to come as free to go:
For I cannot know your past,
And of mine what can you know?
You, so warm, may once have been
Warmer towards another one:
I, so cold, may once have seen
Sunlight, once have felt the sun:
Who shall show us if it was
Thus indeed in time of old?
Fades the image from the glass,
And the fortune is not told.
If you promised, you might grieve
For lost liberty again:
If I promised, I believe
I should fret to break the chain.
Let us be the friends we were,
Nothing more but nothing less:
Many thrive on frugal fare
Who would perish of excess.
- Christina Georgina Rosetti, "Promises Like Pie-Crust"
His long, pianist's finger pressed against her gently parted lips, and she closed them in a ghost of a kiss.
"Don't say it," Draco breathed hurriedly, and Hermione could sense his panic in the way that his jaw clenched and his brow furrowed. It was unfamiliar; it was vulnerable.
"But it's how I feel," Hermione began, her voice soft and slightly wavering, her confidence dashed by his immediate shushing. Shifting under his steady gaze, Hermione pulled the white Egyptian cotton sheets closer around her body. She was always too warm in his room, sweating uncomfortably as she curled close to his cool body, but suddenly she felt quite cold and bitter.
"You know better than to say it." He moved away from her, lying flat on his back and staring at his ceiling with an unreadable expression. Hermione fought not to reach out, stroke his arm, his fine cheekbone, the taut muscle in his neck. "Do not say it, because you know it cannot be returned. I cannot say it to you."
"And why not?" She was angry, though wrongly so. When she and Draco had started this tryst of two months, this affair of shared weekends and mornings and, occasionally, showers and broom closets, he had made no promises. He never said he'd take her to breakfast, which he occasionally did, and he never said he'd introduce her to his friends, which he never did. Hermione thought it was like being caught in the tide, tugged and pulled in every direction, floating somewhere between love, friendship and distaste. Draco was the one in control. Draco was the one who decided what they would do, when and where. Draco told her what to say, unintentionally forced her to feel.
"I value my freedom, Granger," Draco drawled after an uncomfortable silence. "For you to say those words to me, and I to you, would be a lie, and we both know it." She cringed. "I have no disillusions about you. You're free to come and go as you please. I share that liberty." There was a pregnant pause, in which Hermione conjured up pictures of Draco and other women, moving in a way reminiscent of the way they moved together. Reminiscent, because nothing could ever compare to their connection, but similar enough in its baser principles.
"You know I've been with no one else," Hermione argued, her cheeks heating up with a humiliated blush. "No one understands me as you do." Draco snorted derisively, and the blush spread to her chest.
"I understand one thing about you, Granger. Your body." Draco sat up, turned away from her, shoulders tense. He couldn't bear to look at her, hurt and embarrassed, and that surprised him. Had it been Pansy, or Daphne, or even Parvati, it wouldn't have hurt. He may've even laughed about it later.
"I don't know anything about you," he mused, "nor do I want to. I don't care to know of your dreams, hopes, worries, fears. Of your past lovers and friends. I don't care." He stood, crossing the room to grab his dressing robe off of the hook and shrug it on. "You can't expect that I'd share anything of my life with you. You wouldn't understand."
"Because you've never given me the bloody chance!," she said angrily, hurrying out of bed. "I've sacrificed for you, Draco, I've fucking sacrificed for you! I've given you everything, I've let you have me completely. And you- you can't even respect me in return." The tears in her eyes and the lump in her throat made her feel weak and eager to leave.
"Why should I respect you, Hermione, when you haven't afforded me that luxury?" He opened the door to his bedroom, motioning towards it with his free hand. "I believe you know the way out."
"Ron?," she spoke gently into the phone's receiver. "Can you hear me?" The sound of several buttons being pressed accidentally made her smile.
"Bloody thing," Ron mumbled from the other end. "Yeah I can hear you," and she could hear the smile in his voice. "I didn't expect you to call."
Hermione shrugged, though she knew he couldn't tell. "I suppose I'm just lonely," she said with a smile. "How's the mission? And Harry? Tell him I've being asking after him."
"It's going really well, actually. I wasn't too keen on a month in Prague at the start, but it's quite nice here. Harry, the bugger- he's off with some bird right now. To be fair, he's been working himself to death searching for MacNair, but I can't stand being left alone in this bloody flat; everything creaks."
"Ron, you're an auror. You can't tell me you're afraid of a leaky faucet," Hermione said, snorting unintentionally as she laughed.
"I miss you," Ron exhaled and it felt like someone had gripped her heart and squeezed.
"Miss you too, Ron." She meant it. Hermione missed the way things were when she and Ron were together, more than friends, comfortable and happy. They had a definite future; there was talk of a ring, followed by a trip to sea and many children. It had frightened her, at twenty, and that's why she'd left. But now, at twenty-six, she'd give almost anything to have it back, to not be stuck in a permanent limbo, not sure which way was up and which way was down.
Draco thought that Divination was bullshit and a waste of valuable time. It was one thing he and Hermione had agreed on during their school days, though he'd never admit that he had something in common with a mudblood. The fact that he was sitting opposite of a seer in a seedy, Knockturn Alley shop was very unlike him. He'd been walking by when he'd felt the strangest pull towards the place, and he'd learned a long time ago to follow his instincts.
"You have had many lovers, but no love," the seer spoke, breaking through his thought. She held up a finger. "I correct myself: you have had love, and rejected it. You are cold, but not heartless. Just lost. You've always been lost. How long has your father been dead?"
Draco frowned and his fingers clenched into fists. The things about love could be made up, guessed at, but his father's death was true and fresh and the seer had no way of knowing that. He shifted in his seat uncomfortably.
"Two months on Saturday," Draco said roughly, coughing into his fist.
"You've seen the sun." The seer's unseeing eyes and wavering smile concerned him. What did that even mean? Before he could ask, she shook her head.
"The image… it's gone," she said with a noticeable amount of surprise. "Rarely does this happen. Forgive me, but there is no more in your fortune for me to tell.
"You shouldn't have called Weasley." The lips against her ear startled her and a visible shiver traveled down her spine.
"Malfoy," she spat, spinning around to face him. "I'm not sure if you're aware, but this is a laboratory. I have potions that need tending to, and I'd rather you not distract me from that." She turned back around, stirring six times, counterclockwise as she added a raven's beak to the mixture.
"I wouldn't have complained if it had been Potter. Even Zabini would've been better than Weasley, and you know how I feel about that situation." Hermione smirked to herself, thinking of the time she'd ended up in the loo at the Leaky Cauldron with Blaise Zabini, pressed against the stall door as he ravished her within an inch of her life. It had been lewd, and she'd felt so dirty after, but she'd only broken up with Ron the week before. Draco had found out when she'd accidentally let it slip over brunch one Sunday, and had never let her forget about being with his best friend.
Draco scratched his nose absently, continuing. "You know as well as I that I wouldn't interrupt you if I didn't feel it absolutely necessary. Listen to me for a moment." Hermione glanced over her shoulder and, seeing him as deathly serious as he was, figured it best to give him her attention, even if it was just for five minutes as her potion came to a boil.
"If you told me that you loved me, you'd want to leave. I thought about it, Hermione, and I do know you, whether I meant for it to happen or not. When things become too stable, too predictable, you become bored. Bored, or frightened, and you run." His voice cracked, and he cleared his throat.
"I'm not willing to get hurt like that, not for something as banal as love." Hermione didn't agree with that, but she let him continue. "Furthermore, I'd only hurt you in turn. I would stray eventually, just as you'd leave. I can't promise you love, I cannot say those words, because sooner or later I'd be in the bed of another woman and you'd be on your way out the door."
She wasn't sure when she'd started crying, but now the sobs shook her shoulders and tightened her chest.
"Forgive me for my incapacities, but don't punish me for them. Be with me again, Hermione. I can't offer you love or stability, but companionship is something I'm willing to share. I'll care for you, and you'll care for me, and we'll be the better for it. Don't make me walk out of here alone, Hermione."
It could've been his slightly pleading tone, or the way he called her 'Hermione' rather than Granger that made her take his hand and follow him out the door, forgetting entirely about her potion as it spilled over the sides of the dark cauldron. More likely, it was her heart and the fact that he held it in an iron grip, but she wasn't about to admit that.
She wasn't sure how things would turn out, but neither was he. The fortune had never been told.