AN: Here's the real beginning of things with a Draco-centric chapter. Please don't forget to leave a review, it makes my day :)
TW: PTSD and explicit reference to self-harm.
"I think it's called karma, Hermione." Ron tells her.
The Daily Prophet is sprawled on her kitchen table, its headline once again devoted to the forever controversial Law for the Legal Follow-Up of Former Proponents of Dark Magic. So many words for so much bullshit, she thinks. God bless, she had not followed Magical Law after graduating.
"It's not karma, it's bullshit. You cannot win a war on the basis that you're the side of Good and Respect and Un-divisiveness and then make laws that step on these ideas. The third article is about how the Follow Up will also be made in respect to the extended member of the families of convicted Death Eaters. How is that Justice?"
"All these families… they're all guilty, one way or another, you know." He takes another sip of the coffee she had prepared. "Guilty of educating their children in believing they were superior. Whatever that was supposed to mean. Maybe they did not hold their wands to the heads of people during the war, but they're still guilty."
"That is not judicial guilt. That is a societal problem."
Ron knows he will not be able to make her change her stance. They have been having this conversation for a long time now and though he feels that there is something in there that ought to make him feel uncomfortable, he is too past caring. Some scars run too deep, he thinks.
As he wanders around her apartment waiting for her to finish getting ready, he spots an open book on her desk that seems to pre-date history itself by the look of it.
"Did you steal this one from the Library too?"
She laughs.
"No, it's a Muggle book, it's been in my mother's family for ages apparently. I'm trying to decipher it in my spare time."
"Yeah, 'cause that's your idea of fun and recuperation." He mocks her.
"Yes, it is, Ronald." She rolls her eyes with something akin to affection seeping in her smile. "Let's go now," she says as she grabs her purse and checks she has her wallet and keys.
"Took you long enough."
.o0O0o.
Singapore, Centre of Government of the Straits Settlement. 1866.
It would be an understatement to say that the damn island was inhospitable. Why his father has chosen to find him a posting on this godforsaken place is beyond Draco's understanding. He does not speak Malay and has wished for a safe adventure in the West Indies, not stuck in what was doomed to become the British Empire's greatest stupidity.
Social life is close to non-existent, with an infinite abundance of men who have made the wise choice to not bring their families with them, under the (more than valid) pretext that the island brings no reward to those tenacious enough to try and challenge it.
Building an administration is a ridiculously futile endeavour. And yet he is tasked in assisting it. Wizards have to be part of this great endeavour, they say. Wizards have to learn and see if this Oriental sorcery is true magic, they say. Draco sneers.
Through the white curtains of the barrack he has to call home, lush greenery and the clearest sky he has ever seen seem to mock his inadequacy to the place.
A knock on the door tears him away from his reverie and Theodore Nott walks in as nonchalantly as the day they met, three months ago, as they were both shipped here by their families.
"Do you not go mad in here?" Nott asks, making himself comfortable on Draco's bed.
"I'd rather go mad in here than out there." Draco disdainfully points to the street, where the stream of Chinese coolies never stops.
"If you had gone out with me yesterday, you might have met someone to your liking." Nott begins, wiping sweat from his forehead.
"At the welcoming party of the Penang's Resident? I doubt that." Draco mocks him.
"There is a tighter-knit party tonight. Please come. You will not regret it, trust me."
"If she is so special, why are you not keeping her to yourself?"
Nott smiles. "You'll see."
.o0O0o.
Singapore, Centre of Government of the Straits Settlement. 1866.
Hermione had dreamed of Kolkota and Bombay. She had hoped to see Yangoon and had sailed past the Cape of Good Hope with tremendous desire for the voyage. She was still feeling blessed her father had agreed to have her come with him on the journey.
Singapore had felt like one more destination, though from the words going around back in London, the place, if it didn't cause a war with the Dutch, would fail soon enough at being anything. Sure enough, the port looks somehow miserable compared to Yangoon's but the place is lively and doesn't look like the doomed city she had been told about.
Theodore Nott is charming, and, most importantly, he is of her age. Women are scarce and though he bears a noble name, he doesn't seem to mind that she doesn't.
"How is it, studying Oriental forms of wizardry?" She asks as they stay on the porch, where some breeze is coming from the sea.
"To be honest, we are not studying much of anything around here. The Resident is mediocre at best and no one thinks there is much to be found in Malay wizardry anyway."
Hermione has to remember her ideas are not those of the world and she bites back the first stern remark that comes to her mind, instead asking:
"Well, we will never know if we don't look, will we?"
When, the day after, Theodore Nott enters the reception room that had almost killed her with boredom alongside another officer, she blesses her good fortune. Theodore's grin is mischievous when he introduces her to Draco Malfoy, and of course the name rings a bell. Is there any MP more obnoxious in the Parliament that Lucius Malfoy?
Of course, the inferiority of her birth lights a spark of disdain on Malfoy's features. This time, she doesn't hold her punches when he starts talking.
.o0O0o.
Even when it stops, it's always there, somewhere, somehow. The images catch him off-guard. The yells, the screams. He still hears the curses. He still sees the rumbles of Hogwarts. He still has to live with the choices he's made and those he couldn't make.
Most of all those he couldn't make.
.o0O0o.
Singapore, Centre of Government of the Straits Settlement. 1866.
"You hate me, don't you?" He asks her.
Sprawled in front of them, the construction work for the new docking facilities of the port seem to be the promise of a brighter future for the island. She offers him one of those smiles that Nott had guessed would be his demise.
"You're stupid. But maybe you're redeemable, who knows."
"You're quick to judge."
"I've seen enough of you already."
"Barely a week since we have met, Miss Granger," he reminds her.
"Well, a week is more than enough to make me feel like I've known you forever."
The words hit strangely home and he finds himself observing the contours of her face with something akin to familiarity.
"Furthermore, you never made any effort to make me believe there is more to you than the obvious," she adds.
"I wish I had more time then."
He wishes she is truly blushing and it not just the inhumane heat that reddens her cheeks.
"Maybe in another lifetime."
"Maybe."
He watches her embark on her steamship and waves her off to the horizon, thinking of what could have been and what will never be.
.o0O0o.
His nightmares are vivid. Sometimes, when he wakes up from them, he hits the wall until he bleeds, until he cries, until there is nothing but the real pain, the one he can patch and heal, and the other pain has been put to rest until further notice.
Theo tells him they all have them, all the time. But that doesn't bring him any kind of comfort.
It is not about what they have lost anymore. Pansy keeps complaining about the new law, about Azkaban, about endless hours spent in the Ministry taking Veritaserum and spilling their guts to ruthless Ministry employees who enjoy making them speak about what they don't need to know. But even that he doesn't care about. Even that doesn't matter anymore.
When he drags himself out of his nightmares, the face of the victors never cease to lash out to him. Posters, radio shows, newspapers. All their golden success and never ending parades don't stop them from looking as ugly as the losing ones do. Even the flamboyant Weasley hair cannot hide how exhausted they all look.
Draco wonders if nightmares haunt them to. A part of him knows they surely do. They killed and lost their loved ones, and ran, and hid, and feared, and all those things are what nightmares feed upon. And he remembers the screams of Granger as Bellatrix scared her for life and thinks that if that feeds his nightmares, what can it possibly conjure in her mind?
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