Well I originally wrote this as a personal exorcising of an idea and yet am now posting chapter 2 out of the 25 I've gotten down. Sadly at chapter 25, I know it's maybe halfway through at best but as luck would have it, I might have an ending to get to so half might not be a conservative estimation. Oh wells, enjoy this chapter if you can and depending on how much more procrastinating I do, maybe chapter 3 might be up within the day. I could blame revising as the reason or the fact that I'm missing out on being at the premiere for classes.
Had Bell and Watson Not Tried
Chapter 2
Maybe it was habit on her part or his lack of interest but she never gave away too much for him to see past the glamour and charm to see signs of who she was underneath. He never paused to say he knew in any way that Jean was someone he knew. He never pushed for some telling detail to piece it all together. So when they were both at Flourish and Blotts days earlier, neither gave any sign that they had anything more. She had made her purchase while he went to find his. Neither one paused to say a greeting or to inquire about the weekend. Neither one bothered to cross the distance other than a slight scan of their eyes as they went about their reality. In Hermione's public world, Draco Malfoy was just an old bully of a schoolmate of a different house.
Her parents didn't ask when she called unexpectedly to say she would visit on her day off, they were accustomed to their daughter being busy with work and even the days off were precious and a mystery. She had shown up with her bag and freshly scrubbed down and massaged to oblivion ready to remember that this was her life.
Draco gave it a good stare. He willed it to stop being the reason he was annoyed.
No, magic in any sense of it wouldn't imbue itself into his request and make it so. He had waited for years for a sign, something to give him a reason and now he wanted that sign to go away.
He had promised himself a year ago that he wouldn't do it again. The strain and effort was too much and he simply wouldn't again if it happened. So, instead he sat at his desk overlooking his work for the day willing the reason of his annoyance to stop mocking him. He had come to the office and per usual placed the inconspicuous paperweight among the clutter he kept. It was out of the way enough that no one could touch, a lesson he learned three incarnations ago. No, he didn't need another visitor making friendly with his personal space and tossing his things, especially this object.
No, this time it was Blaise's fault and any other time with any other problem, he would have his friend fix it. Unfortunately, he simply couldn't do so. How could he? There was no way to explain to his friend that he was still seeing Jean. There was no way to explain that she lived in the muggle world without explaining what he couldn't explain.
Draco couldn't even explain to himself how he could go all these years living his life while completely compartmentalizing her.
Could he tell anyone he was ashamed of her? No, not when he couldn't see what he was ashamed of.
Could he tell anyone that things were fine between them the way they were? No, not when he knew the stasis was inherently wrong and forced but possibly the only way they continued to be.
So, the stare was at the now broken mobile as the life left it. He had watched as the battery drained over the course of the week.
He had returned to the office to meet Blaise in order to respond to a legal matter that he thought they had put to bed before he left. He was sure he didn't miss a detail when he left the office to meet her. He had let work leave him when he woke the next morning to her. It was the morning after that the owl came. His father was not pleased with his work. The man had sent him a laundry list of things he expected fixed before Monday and he was to be back to do it. The senior Malfoy didn't appreciate how his son compromised to get the deal down in words and thought it put the wrong side at an advantage. So Draco spent time he didn't want to spend appeasing his father's request. Draco could have had Blaise work on the terms but Blaise was not as familiar with the project so Draco had to return no matter what.
So given a long weekend of work to please Lucius Malfoy's requests, he was due to celebrate. While his first choice was her, he knew it wasn't an option. He could've asked but wasn't in the mood to let reality slam him in the face. He had left early from their weekend and he didn't doubt she found something else to occupy her time. He also didn't doubt that if she found something pressing to occupy her time, she would be less than receptive to his request to meet. Being left once was bad, his not going back immediately was another point against him. He didn't dare risk try to interrupt her time and risk the chance that one of them would be interrupted again. They might have taken time out where they could but the days of fighting for time left them some years ago.
So instead he had opted to go out with Theo and Blaise.
If anything he had traded one bad idea for another. Instead of trying for an actual response that she wouldn't be able to see him, he traded a drunken night out full of drinks and in that instance, bar fight. Somewhere in his drinking, one of his friends chose to chat up the wrong woman and her date took great offense and so did his friends. Between attempts to miss being on the receiving end of a fist, his mobile took the hit for him.
It wasn't till he woke the next morning that he saw the damage. It wasn't simply a cracked screen. He had lived through a cracked screen. No, the bottom of the casing was cracked as well and that was where the charging component was. He stared at the dying power bar instead of having breakfast that morning cursing his luck. He hoped in vain over the course of the week that it was some electronic glitch. Maybe, it was charging and couldn't display such and maybe he wouldn't test his own promise to himself.
He knew better.
It was dying and the only solution was to replace it. If he wanted to keep his lifeline to her, he would replace the thing.
If he wanted to see her again, he would have to go into the muggle shop.
If he wanted to talk to her again, he would have to trek among the muggles alone.
If he wanted to hold her again, he would have to listen to some prat rattle on about features and pricing schemes.
If he wanted more time to figure out if it was the end, he would have to.
Grabbing his cloak, he waved a hand at his assistant to say he was leaving for the day. Let her figure out how to fix his problems at work for a few hours.
He had bigger problems, like being a liar to himself.
It was a hassle but he stopped at Gringotts to withdraw muggle currency, after this past weekend, his supply was draining as it was. If it was a bear to deal with goblins, he only equated muggle salespeople as one notch worse. It was as if they knew he wanted to get out as fast as he could and found every possible detail to keep him there. This of course being after he had to wait for his turn during the peak of the day's traffic.
He must have had some attachment to her. It was his only reasoning for ever going into the muggle world repeatedly whether or not she was with him.
Whatever it was, it was his only explanation why he didn't push things further than they were. He knew she kept him compartmentalized like he did her. He was an inherently selfish man and there wasn't a person alive that didn't know that truth about him. He knew she knew he was selfish, it was the only way he could justify seeing her. In their dynamic, it was either he saw her under the terms they silently established or not at all. In theory, it was a hassle to go out of his way to see her but at the same time, she didn't ask much of him. She never forced him to some work dinner or ply him to be nice to friends or family he had no interest in meeting or cared to bother with. Somehow they had managed over the years to selfishly establish a relationship that was focused on only each other. It was the little life reminders that got in the way and ruined their time together. She had learned to accept that his work or family would call him back to reality every now and then. Like her, he had accepted that what he didn't know would be fine in ignorance. He had lingering suspicions but he never dared to pry. The answers that came evident with time was too damning for him to ever ask for confirmation.
He knew she knew of him, he didn't doubt she could easily read of his life in The Prophet or any other rag. He knew that while his private life outside of them was readily accessible to her if she wished via the gossip of second hand accounts. He knew she was hiding from him. He knew she wasn't who she said she was. He knew she was a persona of the person underneath it all. He simply didn't ask where he knew the answers were too potentially damning. If she had been out for revenge or blackmail, she had years of ammunition and yet to do a thing to him. No, she simply didn't want more than what they had.
He had checked once upon a time for Jean among the records of Hogwarts. She didn't exist within those walls as Jean. There was no mistaking that she was at Hogwarts with him, she knew things offhandedly that couldn't have been passed on from another source, the clarity and comfort in her knowledge was of true personal experience. If anything, he was sure she was never in Slytherin. As he never made friends with the other houses, he couldn't and wouldn't ever bother his former classmates to point her out of their house. Given their time together, he had nothing to gain by finding out who she truly was. He wasn't the one who might invoke any warm reaction from other houses and the likelihood she was friends with someone who had a deep grudge against him, he would only make problems for her.
The potential of who she was and what she was outside of them was too vast and more damaging than the stasis they maintained.
"And this one has a feature to…" Draco tried his best to tune out the poor sales boy who tried to talk up the model that was in his hand. He honestly didn't need anything aside from the function to contact her. He had stated he just needed something that worked. He tried his best sneer and aura of disdain for the whole process only for the boy to prattle on about differences from previous models and its counterparts. He really wanted to punch the prat for not taking the hint.
"There's video chat on this as well but you'll need to add a data plan…" He honestly wanted to hit his head against a brick wall at that.
He didn't need video of her in her real life. Why the hell would he ever ask to see her in her daily environment? Why the hell would he ever want to see proof of the life she led outside of him? Outside of them?
A few more reiterations of telling the boy he didn't care for the features and just needed something durable and he really could care less, he had finally saw the home stretch of the process. He was close to leaving, close to forgetting that he broke his promise to himself. The longer it took, the more he remembered the last time he made the effort and why he made the promise in the first place.
In the end, he justified that it would be rude to not replace the phone. It was rude if he didn't have a way for her to communicate with him.
It simply wasn't done for him to end things via a dead mobile.
So he was only being a decent man by replacing the dead one.
He mentally scoffed at the thought of how he was a decent man.
He was a manipulative, selfish, entitled prat on a normal day and downright rude and demanding beyond reason on top of it all on a bad day.
By the time he had finished the task and weaved his way out of muggle London back to the Manor, he was met with the heavy realization that he had done it again.
It wasn't just that he broke his promise to let things go with the broken phone.
He had told himself he would have let her go a year ago.
He remembered looking upon her one morning wondering why she still met him. He didn't fool himself with some thought about love and he knew they stopped being convenient too many years ago. He didn't think too hard about the why till later that morning when it struck him that maybe the reason why they didn't speak of the future wasn't just for lack of want of change but the fact that he might not have any future with her at all if he asked.
The suspicions that Jean's wants for the future might be radically different and crushing to his, he was getting to the point where the rest of his life was coming upon him. He might not have entertained some happily ever after with her but he didn't want to find that when the time came, she wouldn't be that person. He hated the thought that the years were a potential waste. He had the lingering thought that he was being selfish for naught.
He had known their real lives were weighing down.
The signs were creeping in over the years, the pressure of life that was outside of them. It wasn't just an argument that he was seeing a witch who chose to live as a muggle. It would be simple if that was all that he had to reason out. If that was all it was, then he only had to choose between her or not her.
No, it was all the little things that made a relationship a relationship that wasn't theirs.
No, it was the fact that they never met at their respective homes anymore.
At the start, he picked her up at her flat and even met the silly muggle roommate of hers that first year.
She even stayed the night at his London flat a few times after it was too late to go home.
Now, it was the fact that they spent more time in locations further from their homes. There weren't any quick lunches at the café at the corner from her flat or a quick stop at the shop for stupid things like milk for her tea.
It was as if they started at the height of any relationship and worked backwards.
She had used to listen and ask about his work, his family, his life, hell even his day and in turn he did the same.
Somewhere along the way, they stopped asking about each other. They stopped prying about each other, it was for preservation that they stopped doing so.
What good was it to tell her about the women his mother found for him to date? He didn't date those women long and he wasn't ready to settle down like his mother wished. He wasn't at the point of his life where a proper marriage was a necessity or remotely enticing. It wasn't a matter of wanting to be single but a matter of not needing company to the point of marriage.
If he needed company, if he needed companionship in some remote fashion of the female persuasion, he had Jean.
For that alone, he stopped asking where she was in life.
He had no desire to know anymore.
He knew that she was done with school some time ago.
He remembered the bouts of her imparting knowledge of the body and whatnot. Given his limited knowledge of the muggle world, he had never made the connection if she was healer or some muggle doctor. For all he knew she was a healer in the muggle world.
Like her, he knew she must have dated someone outside of him every now and then but he knew whoever she saw had no bearing on their relationship.
For all he knew, she had married some muggle man who was in the dark about him. While he didn't see it as a truth, he knew it was a possibility that she could have some guy she went home to that wasn't him. If anything, he was certain she hadn't any children given the timeframe they saw each other, he would more than notice if she had ever had children.
No, his ideal image was that like him, she was career driven and he was an after thought.
His fear was that the lack of knowledge was an acknowledgement of truths he didn't listen to.
After all, it wasn't just that their time now was her free hour during work for a late lunch or something part of the norm. No, as time passed, they had settled for trips away. A resort or hotel somewhere different each time but within range that even he could go home with ease and same of her he would assume.
He had remembered once she was called back to work and he had been a prat to ask if it was her husband only to be asked if he cared.
Would he care if she was married with children somewhere?
He knew that even if she did one day, he would still see her if she asked.
It would be when she stops that he would care.
He had yet to see a circumstance in which either would make the call to stop the whole thing.
What would be the final straw for them? He wasn't sure what he wanted, did he need a scandal of blazing details or something trivial to stop it all?