Huge thanks to my wonderful beta, WSquared, for all the ideas and encouragement. Any remaining mistakes are my own. This was originally written for the 2015 DarkArts DarkFest on LiveJournal.

With apologies to Ingmar Bergman for borrowing his title.

Part I

-oOo-

Malfoys took the long view, everyone knew that.

Nevertheless, it took Hermione quite a while to realise how patient they were in pursuit of their aims. She was incredulous when Draco told her how long he'd been watching her and waiting – ever since they'd both joined the Ministry, just after they finally graduated from Hogwarts the year after the war.

"But that was nine years ago! I didn't – I can't even remember speaking to you during eighth year. Except to dock points, I suppose." As far as Hermione could remember, Draco had spent the year under a sullen cloud, refusing to accept that he owed his freedom and continued prosperity to Harry.

"Don't remind me," winced the older and infinitely more attractive version of the petulant boy she'd dismissed as irrelevant back then. "If I'd had a bit more cop-on just after the war, it mightn't have taken three years just to persuade you we could have a civilised conversation."

"Well, I did have to get Ron out of my system first, so it was probably just as well," Hermione admitted.

In the end, the difficulty hadn't been so much deciding that they'd be better off as friends but working out how to actually be friends again. Hermione giving Draco Malfoy the time of the day would not have helped in that process.

Even years after he'd abandoned any illusions of being attracted to Hermione, Ron's reaction to Draco and Hermione being linked had been bad enough. That much she expected; Ron wasn't exactly a riddle wrapped in an enigma.

Harry's reaction, however, surprised her. There wasn't any posturing about how all Malfoys are evil, as she'd half expected. He just gave her a long, measured look before appearing to pick his words with extreme care. "Watch what you're about, Hermione."

"What do you mean?" she asked, forcing him to spell it out. It may be obvious to anyone with more than two brain cells to rub together what Harry meant, but she wasn't going to let him get away with ominous hints.

"I know he wants you to think he's just like anyone else, that he's learnt from the war and everything. But he is still a Malfoy. His family has spent centuries doing their best to wipe out people like you. I'm not sure you can change all that in one go."

That was more measured than she'd expected.

"Listen, I'm not saying we're love's young dream, or anything. It's just – I like him. He's interesting. And I really think he has changed," Hermione said.

"I think so too," Harry admitted. "I'm just not sure what he's changed into."

Hermione didn't pay much attention to his words. Harry had become a vastly superior judge of character than he used to be since the war, but she rather suspected he was suffering from the same Auror overexposure to shady characters that had driven Mad-Eye Moody to regard perfectly innocent objects with distrust. Chasing Dark wizards for a living seemed to affect even the staidest character, and Harry had better reason than most to be paranoid.

Hermione wasn't stupid, though. The moment Malfoy showed any trace of his former pureblood nonsense, he'd be history.

Harry didn't mention his concerns again, and Hermione drifted slowly from seeing Draco occasionally when she had nothing more interesting to do, to not being able to imagine her life without him.

He even went on the annual Granger family trip to the Yorkshire dales, a truly heroic effort given Hermione's dad's insistence on quoting any literary references vaguely applicable to their location out loud. It wasn't that Hermione didn't like Wuthering Heights; she just didn't see any reason to read half a chapter out loud just because they were within fifty miles of a village that may have served as inspiration for Brontë. Draco bore with it magnificently, however.

After that, Draco's proposal seemed like a foregone conclusion, but he still managed to take her by surprise. It was one of her favourite things about him.

"What about it, Granger?" he asked when they were lying in bed with the Sunday papers, surrounded by several batches of cold cups of tea Summoned from the kitchen. Hermione hadn't moved for the last hour, except for turning the page, and the pins and needles in her left leg were getting a bit annoying. She couldn't be arsed to do anything about it though – it was that kind of Sunday. Her favourite kind.

"What about what?" she asked absently as she was scanning an article about import legislation to see if the Muggles had any inventive measures the wizarding world could copy. After all those years, the Department of International Magical Cooperation was still obsessed with cauldron thickness.

"Getting married. My mother keeps asking when I'll stop living in sin."

"Where did this come from? Since when do you care what your mother thinks?" Hermione asked, too gobsmacked to remember to be polite about it.

"Well, I care, too. I'm a traditional kind of guy, in case you hadn't noticed."

Hermione looked around at the ultra-modern flat with a profusion of the latest Muggle-magical gadgets with an expression of scepticism. Much to her amusement, Draco had embraced the post-war trend of adapting Muggle technical advances for the magical world. Sadly, it meant that he no longer was confused by the moving pictures on her Muggle TV. Watching him give it a wide berth whenever he came into her apartment had entertained her for years.

"It's all about the substance, not the appearance. Malfoys always lead fashion. Being modern is fashionable now, so I have modern things," Draco explained patiently.

"Some people would call it 'waking up and realising it's not the 19th century anymore'," Hermione muttered, but Draco ignored the familiar complaint.

"Being married matters. You're … important to me, so I'd prefer to be married. If it's all the same to you," he continued.

Hermione was quite sure Draco's emotional range vastly exceeded a teaspoon, but she couldn't help finding it adorable how tongue-tied he got when trying to say something loving.

It was probably a character flaw.

"No, it's not all the same to me. I'd love to get married to you," she said and realised it was quite true, though she'd never really entertained the prospect before. There would be trouble, of course: Draco's father still preferred to pretend she didn't exist, and many of Hermione's friends were still incapable of seeing anything other than their childhood nemesis when they looked at Draco.

None of that mattered to her – she reminded herself of the dull life she'd be living if she were concerned with winning the approval of others all of the time. She finally let her delight bubble to the surface and kissed Draco, who kissed her back with a vengeance, sweeping the clutter of their breakfast in bed aside with the insouciance of someone who knew a house-elf would be around to clean it up later.

"Ouch! My leg!" Hermione objected, but she was ignored. She didn't bother protesting after that, Draco being quite proficient at expressing himself non-verbally.

There were snowflakes in the air, carried on the edge of the freezing wind. December shoppers looked up in delight when they noticed, pointing and laughing at the reminder of Christmas despite the biting chill. Hermione barely noticed the cold, or the passers-by, and they were halfway to the Apparition point down an abandoned alley when she realised she'd forgotten to put her gloves on. The barely-there feeling of her frozen fingers fit right in with the stone-cold pit in her stomach.

Draco hadn't said anything since they'd left the consulting Healer's office. Nothing at all.

Unlike her Gryffindor friends, he always seemed to know when talking would only make things worse. Or maybe he was as shocked as she was; she hadn't been able to look at him since the freckly, pug-nosed Healer had handed down the verdict.

Infertile, that's what she was. Unable to even conceive a child, never mind bearing it. Apparently, the Healers could detect it was due to Dark magic, while being unable to put a name on the spell. Hermine didn't waste any time wondering who'd cast it – it must have been Bellatrix. Not even Voldemort had hated her more than Bellatrix, and Hermione bore the scars to show it. She wondered absently if there was a track of destruction inside her, charred remains where her reproductive organs once had been.

She hadn't asked. There wasn't any point – the Healer had made it very clear there was no way to reverse the damage. Hermione had to admit the Healer handled it well; she'd stopped short of implying Hermione and Draco were anything other than your run-of-the-mill patients, while explaining that the effects of the curse were permanent no matter how much magic and money you threw at them.

That was it, then – no point trying anymore, waiting anxiously month after month for news that would never come.

The chill seemed to have spread out to her arms now; Hermione was barely able to lift them to take out her wand in order to Apparate home. She swept her cloak around her in a vain effort to stave off the cold, but the heavy velvet folds seemed as flimsy as a spider's web.

Their house was dark and quiet. Like a tomb, she thought. Somehow the idea made a wild laughter bubble up from a dark place inside her. It came pouring out when she couldn't contain it anymore; a wild, cackling sound, and Hermione froze when she remembered where she'd heard it before.

It was the laughter of Bellatrix Lestrange, once she had gone utterly and irrevocably mad. The last time Hermione had heard her laugh must have been just after she'd cast the curse that had ripped Hermione's dreams of ever having children apart. Hermione couldn't remember the curse, but it was hardly surprising – she hadn't exactly been focusing on spell taxonomy in the thick of the battle.

"Sorry," Hermione mumbled to Draco. The fog had lifted a little and she was able to feel sorry for him, too, now. He'd also been swept up in this through no fault of his own – not even Ron could blame him for having a mad aunt. "I'm sorry this happened to you. I know how much it means to you –" She made a sweeping gesture to indicate his heritage: the Malfoy heirlooms in their hall – portraits and exquisite furniture and magical knick-knacks – and instantly regretted putting her regrets into words.

It wasn't their way to spell things out.

They talked about difficult things by seemingly unrelated gestures, like Draco unerringly bringing home lovely bouquets of fragrant lilies every time her period had arrived despite Hermione desperately hoping it wouldn't, this time. It was incomprehensible to demonstrative lovers like Ginny and Harry, but it worked for them. Malfoys preferred to pretend they didn't have any feelings, and Hermione had learnt to appreciate Draco as he was rather than wishing he was different. It kept life interesting.

Acknowledging openly that there would be no Malfoy heir, that the line would become extinct with Draco was like hurling a hand grenade into the church summer fête and expect the vicar to continue to discuss flower arrangements as if nothing had happened.

Unlike her husband, Hermione was prone to talking when she was uneasy. "I keep thinking about it – I can't remember when it happened, but it must have been Bellatrix. It must have – I remember Sirius talking about Black family spells, and how they had their own ways of ensuring 'undesirables' didn't breed." It seemed a lifetime ago, the cavernous kitchen with the manky smell of disuse and mould still lurking in the corners, and Sirius holding court at the table. Some of his tales she hadn't fully understood until much later, when she had seen more death and destruction that she'd ever wanted.

There seemed to be a streak of madness as deep as the river Thames running through the Blacks, and it had found expression in more twisted curses than Hermione could remember. Thank God she hadn't married a Black – she wasn't sure she could have endured bearing the name of the woman who'd done this to her.

To them; it wasn't just about her, she remembered, and flung her arms around Draco in a vain attempt to stave off the cold that had crept into her bones.

She felt a bit less like a statue of ice and more like a human when she was wrapped in Draco's arms. When she shifted a little after a long moment, she happened to catch a glance of him through the enormous, gilded antique mirror he'd insisted they put into the foyer. Malfoys didn't buy furniture, they inherited it.

The agony on his face was unbearable. She'd seen people going to their deaths looking less pained. His eyes were those of a wild thing caught in a trap; they didn't seem to belong in their ornately decorated hall.

"Oh, Draco," she whispered, and his grip tightened until she almost couldn't breathe.

The second and final part will follow next week.