Chapter 7:
The witch had been hogging the bathroom for entirely too long. Draco fancied a bath and was growing impatient. He wrapped a towel around his bare waist, not really caring if she would be uncomfortable with his scantily clad body. A quick flick of the doorknob and the door readily opened. He entered the bathroom and was overwhelmed by the scent—her scent. He willed himself to remain upright and breathed evenly to drown out her tortured screams as they rang shrilly in his head. "I'm coming in, Granger."
With a shriek, Granger whipped her head from behind the shower curtain and glowered at him. "You couldn't possibly wait until I finished?"
Draco rolled his eyes and crossed to the sink. Look how limber and flexible you are! Swallowing the lump in his throat, he turned away from the shower, lest his traitorous body react to being in such close proximity. I really need to find a witch. "You've been in here for an hour, witch. Not that I blame you—it must be awfully difficult to tame that owl's nest you call hair."
That's when he saw it. The tube of toothpaste, indentations pressed into the middle. Anger and irritation roared within him. "Are you touching my things, Granger?"
The water cut off and her arm reached out to retrieve her towel from the towel bar. "What are you talking about, Malfoy?"
He swung around to face her. "My toothpaste! You've been using it!"
He could hear her sigh behind the shower curtain, the sound of the towel rubbing over her bare flesh as she dried off. "I forgot to repack mine. I didn't think you would mind—I'll get more this weekend."
Fuming, he took a step toward the shower stall, the toothpaste in his hand. "Well you were wrong—I do mind! These are my things, Granger. Mine! We may have to share a bathroom and a common room, but I will not share my things with you! And what kind of uncultured, uncivilized heathen squeezes the tube from the middle?"
Granger pulled the curtain back to peer out, still covering her body and her hair wrapped up tightly in a towel-turban. Her cheeks were puffy and raw—she had been crying again. "Who cares? Honestly. It was one time. I won't touch your things again."
Draco knew his irritation was irrational, but Merlin help him, he could not control his temper. The calm he had felt that morning had been tainted by the swelteringly heavy topics they had discussed in the group. His mood had not recovered in the hours that followed, and Granger was an easy target on which to unleash his pent-up wrath. "Aren't your parents tooth-tenders? Surely, they should have taught you how to properly obtain toothpaste from the tube," he muttered, still agitated and staring at her face.
He watched her features fall and her eyes darted to stare over his shoulder. Curious. "Dentists. They were dentists. Now can you turn around, so I can go to my room?"
"Worried I might spot your boyish figure?" he asked, unnecessarily cruel as he turned around anyway.
He heard her feet pad softly along the tiled floor to her room, and Draco could not help the way his eyes traced her path in the mirror. She had a decidedly un-boyish figure, but he refused to dwell on that fact for too long. Dropping the towel from his waist, he climbed into an ice-cold shower. Something in the way Granger had spoken of her parents nagged at him as he lathered the hair potion onto his head. They were dentists.
o-o-o
The eighth-years were all crowded around Theo at the large table in the common room where he was sketching their ideas for the monument, erasing when necessary and adding when someone made a suggestion. Silently impressed by the former-Slytherin's hidden talent, she listened as Malfoy told the group of his interest in transmutating lead into gold. Hermione was skeptical of alchemy but tried to keep an open mind as he spoke with a fascinating interest and a lilt in his voice that she had not heard in years.
Their design for the monument was simple: a tall statue of Dumbledore in the center, his elder wand raised to the sky—which they would charm to illuminate at all hours as a beacon of hope. A badger, coiled serpent, an eagle with her wings stretched wide, a lion with one paw raised, and a phoenix—to represent their new House—were to rest at his feet. The statue would stand on a glass base, their letters to the fallen rolled and stacked inside it. Only they would know what the rolls of parchment said, but they agreed it would be best if they were visible as reminders of their unspoken words. The glass layer would sit on a thick oak base, each of the fallen names etched into it intricately.
There was some debate as to where to put the fallen Death Eaters names, if at all. Theo was staunchly against having their names appear anywhere on a monument to the fallen, but Hermione disagreed. "Theo, one of the first things we were told is that we need to learn how to forgive. We can't harbor all of the hatred, and they died just the same."
"They were evil, Granger," Theo reasoned, running a hand over where she knew there were scars from his father's past brutalities.
Thinking back to the day they had discussed his desolate and violent childhood, Hermione placed a hand on his shoulder where he sat before her. Malfoy's eyes watched her make contact, homing in on her fingers as she gave Theo a gentle squeeze.
"So were you and Draco," she argued lightly, reminding him of the incorrect prejudices held against them.
"We can put their names—there's only six—on the back and write something meaningful as a caption, not honoring them fully but not condemning them to hatred either," Luna reasoned.
"I'm sure I can think of a good caption for them," Blaise said thoughtfully, knowing it would mean something to Theo even if he didn't quite realize it yet.
"You sure you can turn lead into gold?" Hermione asked Malfoy, her tone clearly letting on that she didn't believe it possible.
Malfoy looked at her with a bored indignance, his grey eyes narrowing and irritation evident in his scowl. "You have no faith in me, Granger. I am not one of those daft idiots you call friends. I think if you would rid yourself of your prejudices, you'd find me quite competent."
Pursing her lips, Hermione stood back. Malfoy was certainly as arrogant as ever, even if his prejudices failed to pass through his lips any longer. She sighed. "It's going to take a significant amount of lead, though. Where are we getting materials? We were never really given a budget, and this is sure to cost thousands of galleons."
Malfoy waved his hand, still clearly agitated. "I have more than enough money to pay for it. I'll send off to my contact here in Scotland. The lead, glass and oak should arrive within two days."
At his offering, Hermione felt a surge of something in her heart, something she didn't understand. Was it…appreciation? She shook her head to herself and stifled down the unwanted feelings. He may not have been evil incarnate, but he was certainly nothing to be appreciated either. His foul temperament made damn sure of that.
"It's going to be beautiful," Seamus remarked, fingering the drawing. "Have you all started your letters?"
"I'm sure Granger's finished hers," Theo teased, reaching up to touch the hand she still rested on his shoulder.
Hermione grimaced at his apparent compliment—in truth she had only finished half. Finding it hard to put into words everything she felt in her heart, she watched as Malfoy shook his head a fraction. "Not yet."
She wondered if that meant he didn't believe she had finished or if he hadn't started. Her mind wandered to the way he had looked when Theo offered Pansy's name—broken. No. Shattered. How absurd that Draco Malfoy should mourn the loss of his love while she mourned the acquisition of hers. In that moment, she knew they mirrored one another. The shattered, damaged fragments of who they had been before poked and sliced into the individuals they were now. The realization unsettled her, and a shiver ran down her spine, a subtlety that did not escape Malfoy's shrewd perception.
"I can finish this by the thirty-first of August if everyone can finish the letters by that point," Theo commented, replacing his graphite pencils into a leather sleeve.
That left two weeks for them to finish writing what needed to be said. "Today's our last actual session, and then we're going to be left alone to work on this. Once I've obtained the necessary materials, I need everyone to bring a cauldron and meet me out here each night for six nights. We've got to work by moonlight to transfigure the metals. Once we've transmutated enough gold, it will be simple to erect the statue," Malfoy instructed, and everyone murmured their agreement.
Hermione breathed a sigh of relief—a valid excuse not to return to the Burrow. Swallowing her guilt, she worried her bottom lip and took a deep breath. "Problem, Granger?" the blond wizard's harsh drawl pulled her from her thoughts.
"It's…nothing…I'll be here," she assured him, mentally trying to formulate the words she would need to harness to write to Ron when she returned to her room.
o-o-o
Two days later, Hermione unwrapped her brand new cauldron. Igniting the remnants of Ron's response letter—one in which he made very clear how hurt he was by her selfish actions—she made her way down to where Malfoy had instructed everyone to meet him. She sauntered through the building and down onto the grounds, relishing the warm air that tickled her bare shoulders.
Malfoy had transfigured a long table, and everyone was standing in separate workstations along its length as he explained alchemy's most basic themes to them. "Chrysopoeia is the transmutation of a basic metal—in this case, lead—to a precious metal—gold. Now, Muggles tried for centuries to accomplish this feat, something they call chemistry. Well, I don't know anything about machines that can bring about particle acceleration, but magic can certainly get us there. It is going to take an astronomical amount of concentration and energy, so I hope you all ate a decent meal at dinner."
Marveling at Malfoy's even tone, Hermione wondered when he had become a formidable teacher. As she took her place at the end of the table, he rolled his eyes at her late arrival. "Welcome, Granger. Good of you to grace us with your presence," he mentioned, his tone clipped and laden with irritation. "As I was saying, I've ordered more than enough lead, but the lead to gold ratio is about one-fifth of the original size and weight. So, it's going to take us approximately three hours a night for six nights to finish. Once the full moon hits on Tuesday, the transmutation will be complete. For now, the gold will appear an ugly bronze color. That's normal."
Handing everyone charmed masks that closely resembled beekeepers' bonnets, he was careful to emphasize, "It's incredibly dangerous to breathe in lead."
Hermione put her mask on and looked around at everyone else. Though Luna looked like her normal self—eccentric, like the mask was made to suit her tastes—everyone else looked ridiculous and laughed at the sight of their Housemates.
Malfoy was before them all, his cauldron already bubbling a bright white. Hermione admired the ancient runes he had engraved along the edges—protective spells, she recognized. He dropped a lead bar into the white liquid and the cauldron began to bubble. He retrieved his wand and placed it on the rim of the cauldron. "Now. The spell is Aurum Adus. You must say it and then run the tip of your wand along the rim of your cauldron, as so…"
Hermione watched as he ran his wand along the edge of the cauldron, taking note of the graceful flick of his wrist. He whispered the incantation three more times, followed each time by three clockwise runs of the wand. "Then, after the fourth round, run your wand anticlockwise three times and say it backward. Suda Murua."
Watching in silent awe and wonder, the group was mesmerized as he used a pair of protected steel tongs to remove a glob of bronze material out of the cauldron. It was, in fact, one-fifth of the size of the bar that had gone in to begin with.
"Tonight, we need to boil the solution that you will drop it into—a mixture of warm salt water, mugwort and the venom of a golden lancehead snake." Malfoy handed each of them a mason jar of warm salt water and two small vials containing each of the other ingredients. "Do not expose any open wounds to the venom—you will regret it. Wear your dragon hide gloves," Malfoy warned as he stepped back. "Pour the water into the cauldron first, one-third full. Then add two drops of venom and a teaspoon of mugwort. Stir clockwise thrice and anticlockwise two times. Repeat twice more until it is all in the cauldron. Then wait three minutes and seven seconds to get an open flame underneath. The mixture must be kept at precisely one hundred and four degrees."
Listening intently, it appeared that everyone seemed to grasp the basic concept. They worked in concentrated silence until a shrill scream pierced the calm night air. Seamus writhed on the ground, foam rising from his mouth, and they rushed to his sides. His hand was turning a ghastly shade of puce, and Hermione stared in horror, cupping her hand over his. "Back off, Granger," Malfoy warned as he stepped forward and knelt next to Seamus. "Back off, I said."
Reluctantly backing away, she watched as Malfoy pulled a vial from his messenger bag on the table and brought it to Seamus' swelling hand. "Dammit, Finnigan, I told you to wear gloves."
"He was!" Neville tried to interject. "There must have been a hole."
"Well, the venom seeped into a cut on his hand," Malfoy spat, running water from the tip of his wand to soothe the burning sensation. "Granger, go get Madam Pomfrey!"
Hermione watched as he pulled a vial of silvery liquid from his pocket. "Unicorn blood? That will curse him!" she shrieked, panic rising in her throat as she tried to pry the vial from Malfoy's hand.
He was far stronger, and he pushed her away with enough force that she fell back on her haunches. "Granger, I don't have time to argue with you. He's going to die if he doesn't drink it. We need Pomfrey. Now!"
Malfoy had his gloved hand clasping Seamus' harshly, trying to reduce the swelling as he glared up at the conflicted witch. Deciding that a cursed life would be better than no life, she rushed to retrieve the Healer. Her feet carried her instinctively, as her mind was racing with the possibility of Seamus' death clouding out every other thought. Not another funeral. Please. Just let him live. Visions of Seamus lying in a casket, draped with the flag of the Irish National Quidditch Team, crowded her mind. Desperate to keep these visions from becoming a reality, she skidded to halt in front of Madam Pomfrey's living quarters.
Three slams of her fist. "Madam Pomfrey! There's been an accident!"
The aging witch flung the door open, dressed in a night robe and hair curlers. "What is it, Miss Granger?" she inquired, already pushing past Hermione and sprinting toward the Hospital Wing.
"By the Black Lake! Seamus Finnigan…" Hermione's voice caught as a lump rose in her throat.
Turning her head a fraction, Madam Pomfrey waved her arm for Hermione to follow. "He what, dear? I need to know!"
"The venom of a golden lancehead. It must have seeped into a crack in his gloves," she replied, clasping her hands as she watched Madam Pomfrey chant the spell to lower the wards to the Hospital Wing.
"Golden lancehead? Why on earth? How on earth?" the Healer seemed unable to properly articulate the questions as she whizzed around and collected the necessary supplies.
Fighting the urge to launch into a long explanation of precisely why and how they had come across the ingredients and instruments necessary to be fiddling with a level of alchemy above and beyond what was taught at Hogwarts, she followed Madam Pomfrey in a panicked silence.
When they came upon the group, Seamus was unconscious and lying limply across Malfoy's arm. Everyone else was circling them, worry etched into their faces. Hermione pushed past Theo and knelt beside Malfoy, who had the uncorked vial placed against Seamus' lips. He massaged his slack jaw and throat, coaxing the unicorn blood down his throat.
"Unicorn blood?" Madam Pomfrey squealed, shooing the group away from where Malfoy held Seamus' limp form. "What is going on here?"
She peered around at the materials and bubbling cauldrons that lined the workbench, their contents ruined. "Mister Malfoy, I will certainly be owling Professor Newton about this! Fiddling with alchemy!"
Fuming, Malfoy turned back to Seamus' face. Hermione could see the tense set of his jaw and by the light of the moon, watched as his pale features began to pinken. When Seamus' swelling began to recede, and color began to return to his face, there was a collective exhaling of relieved breaths. Madam Pomfrey levitated him onto a stretcher, all the while chiding Malfoy for encouraging the use of such dangerous substances. "You know better than this! Students with no experience in alchemy have no business playing with lancehead venom!"
Theo moved to retort her tirade, but Malfoy threw a hand up and shook his head, warning him to stay silent. Hermione began openly crying, the panic having been too much emotion for her. Madam Pomfrey fitted Seamus into a prone position and held his hand above him, helping the fluid to drain out of it, moving quickly to get him inside. "Everyone to bed! Now!"
Watching her retreat into the castle, unconscious Seamus floating next to her, the rest of the group was somber. Malfoy waved his wand to vanish the contents of every cauldron, angrily tossing the cauldrons at their respective owners with a few flicks of his wrist. "That is why you have to pay careful attention to every last detail I tell you! He could have died! I'll do this all on my own," he spat bitterly, his hands balled into fists on either side of him.
"Draco, don't be ridiculous. You'll never transmutate that much lead into gold alone," Blaise tried to reason, slowly approaching his friend as one might approach a mountain lion.
"I can either lie in my bed wide awake or I can work out here all night. Either way, I'm done with you lot," Malfoy leaned over to his cauldron, his back turned to everyone else.
Hermione could feel the anger and dying panic rolling off from Malfoy in droves. His body was shaking slightly and his hand quivered as he pinched the bridge of his nose. The group collected their items in silence. "Are you coming, Hermione?" Neville questioned, eyeing the wrathful wizard.
Shaking her head, she gave him a small wave. "I'll be right up."
Neville hesitated but took his leave, glancing over his shoulder at her once. "What the fuck do you want, Granger?" Malfoy's voice was gruff and his tone cruel. "I said I don't want your fucking help."
Hermione crossed her arms protectively over herself, shivering as the night air kissed her bare shoulders. "You shouldn't have given him unicorn's blood. I'm sure there was something else—"
"He was dying, Granger! I didn't have time to break out the cauldron and play apothecarian," he hissed, turning around to face her with a stony expression.
"Now he's going to pay the price," she argued lightly, taking a single step back as he stepped forward. "A cursed life."
"That only applies to those instances where a unicorn is slaughtered for the sole purpose of obtaining its blood. The blood I gave him was salvaged from a unicorn that died during the War, a casualty. He'll be fine," he replied coolly, challenging her to argue any further.
The iciness in his tone, the seething set of his jaw, and the deep pewter of his eyes made Hermione uneasy. He was giving her a predatory look, haunting and deadly. She snapped her mouth shut, but the fire in her chest was only stoked at the feral look on his face. Like a moth to flame, every synapse in her body was screaming at her to rile him up, test his limits and refuse to back down. Their entire lives, Hermione had been the one to stop Harry and Ron from giving into his taunts. But war changed everything, and she was ready for battle.
He drawled a lazy, "Are we done here?"
Digging her heels in, Hermione pursed her lips. Malfoy appeared to take note of her resistance. "Unlike the rest of that incompetent lot, I've got work to do," he turned on his heel and pulled his alchemy mask back on.
"Why are you such a bastard?" she asked him shrilly, stepping in behind him.
"I guess some people never change, Granger," came his harsh reply.
Repositioning her station, she put on a false air of haughtiness. "Well, I'm not going anywhere."
"Well you certainly aren't staying here," he told her, repacking her things just as quickly as she got them unpacked. "I have no desire to work with you."
Malfoy held such a hateful, horrid attitude. Just as she thought he was getting better, every time he had a moment of reprieve, he went and screwed it all up by turning moody and sullen. His mood swings were enough to give her whiplash, but she found an enticing challenge in trying to keep up.
"Don't be terse, Malfoy. You know this would be far easier with help," Hermione argued, snatching her bag from his grasp.
"Why must you be so fucking contrary?" he demanded, smacking away the vial of now-lukewarm salt water solution.
"Why must you constantly be so foul-tempered and testy? I'm offering to assist you—you know I am more than capable of brewing this potion properly."
Malfoy stared her down, arriving at an impasse that neither would willingly back away from. "Just stay out of my way, Granger."
Feeling triumphant, Hermione pulled her items from her bag and organized them in front of her. She could feel Malfoy's gaze on her as he worked, watching her from his peripheral to ensure that she was doing the correct wand work and saying the incantations with precision. The task, fresh and challenging, afforded her the ability to clear her mind of everything that had plagued it for the last few days. Ron. The War. Malfoy himself—though she could smell the soft undertones of his cologne from where she stood and hear his deep voice as he whispered the spells.
They worked side-by-side, neither speaking as they did. For too-many silent hours, Hermione watched the lithe ease with which he worked, dragging his wand along the rim of his cauldron. His wand, newly obtained and no longer made of hawthorn, held some of the same intricate, unrecognizable runic patterns that his cauldron sported. She'd never had reason to notice such intricacies before, despite having worked together since returning to school. "What do the runes on your wand mean?" she found herself blurting into the solitude.
Malfoy paused only momentarily, looking straight into the bubbling liquid of his cauldron. Though she couldn't be certain, she thought she could see color staining his cheeks in the eye shield of his mask. "Don't you know how to mind your own business?"
"I was just curious. I've not seen someone carve into the length of the wand like that before."
"It speaks of honoring the Ancient ways while creating a path for one's self," he murmured, gliding the end of said wand through the surface of his solution.
Her mouth went slack as she gaped at him, her wand stilling as she stared. Malfoy reached over and touched her gloved hand with his own. "Stir your elixir."
His tone wasn't harsh, but he spoke in a quiet way, seeming almost embarrassed to speak of such things aloud. Hermione wondered why he would be ashamed of admitting that he was trying to better himself, to rise above his parents' station in life. "I had to get a new wand," he continued, and the way he spoke told Hermione that he was giving her a part of himself, raw and uncharted. "They always say that 'the wand chooses the wizard,' but when I went to select a new one, I asked Ollivander to create one using specific components."
Hermione furrowed her brow. Ollivander himself had told her that wands choose who they would serve. She hadn't ever heard of it the other way around but was greatly interested now. "What components are you speaking of?"
"My last wand was made of hawthorn and sported a unicorn hair core. A simplistic combination, served me well for many years. But I felt I needed one with a stronger magical core, something to better serve who I am now after the war. I brought him a switch from my mother's white willow tree. He wove dragon scales together in a thin rope to create a core."
Curiosity was bubbling in her chest and she was fully aware that she was treading dangerous waters when she asked, "Why white willow and dragon scales?"
Malfoy shot her an impatient look before removing his mask and stepping back from his workstation. Hermione removed an ugly bronze lump from her solution before she did the same. "You're not going to leave me alone until you know every tiny detail of my pathetic existence, are you?" he asked, combing his fingers through sweat-sticky hair.
Scoffing, she crossed her arms. "I don't need every sordid, wretched detail of your life. I'm just curious—I've never known anyone to fashion a custom wand."
Malfoy turned his wand over in his hands, looking at it fondly. "Wand lore is fascinating, particularly if you take into account the Old Ways."
"What do you mean?"
He illuminated the end of his wand and extended it in her direction so she could see the work he'd put into it. The way the corners of his mouth twitched spoke volumes. He was proud. Hermione grew increasingly intrigued. "You see," he ran his thumb over his carvings, "we celebrate the ways of those who came before us while pressing forward to carve our own paths. My mother always stressed showing respect to the ancient Druids and their customs—those of her ancestry. My father humored her—he clung more to the pureblood ideologies of the Middle Ages than the ways of earthly magic and honor."
Hearing Malfoy speak of such strong ties being upheld, Hermione wondered at how much of him she had never been made privy to. It occurred to her that she had never held a real conversation with him before this, one in which he wasn't biting or crass. "So why white willow and dragon?" she repeated her question.
Malfoy tilted his head to the side and regarded her in the darkness of the night, illuminated by the pale blue at the end of his wand. "Willow osier is known for its medicinal uses—pain relief and healing among them. Willows are protective and cleansing all in one. And dragons, obviously, hold a special meaning to me. But more than just for my name or the constellation connection. They hoard treasure—more symbolic of lifelong prosperity than anything. They are dangerous, beautiful beasts, but they can be tamed and reined in. Monsters turned to docile creatures."
Instinctively, Hermione knew that he was referring to himself—that his choice in dragon was more than a throwback to his name's sake. "Nox!" he whispered and the gentle glow disappeared. "Go inside now, Granger. We're done for the night." He looked up and, for the first time, Hermione realized that the sun was beginning to rise on the horizon, the sky turning pale pink and golden.
o-o-o
When she entered the common room, it appeared as though no one had been able to sleep. Dropping her things, she inquired about Seamus. Everyone appeared weary and exhausted, but thankfully, no one looked worried. "He's fine. His breathing is still pretty shallow, but it's not death rattles anymore," Blaise answered, stirring a spoon around in a cup of coffee absently.
Relief swept through her own chest. "Draco saved him," Luna whispered and the others murmured their agreement.
"Schoolyard rivalries seem so petty now," Lavender commented, hanging her head as she spoke. "If you would have told me a few years ago that Draco Malfoy would save the life of a Gryffindor, I'd have called you crazy. But here we are." Lifting her face, she trained her big blue eyes on Hermione. "What else have we been wrong about?"
As the others spoke amongst themselves, Hermione herself was trying to wrap her mind around the fact that the prickly man who had worked in resolute silence alongside her all night had been the fast-acting savior. Furthermore, she had difficulty associating this version of Malfoy with who he had been before the War when she believed him Dark. He was an enigma with so many layers she desperately wanted to peel back until his core was exposed for her dissection. She held his quiet admissions close to her heart, unwilling to share the ciphers on his wand and the beautiful, intricate displays of magic he used to set the precedence of who he was to become.
"Don't let his attitude get to you," Theo's voice broke her thoughts as he came to stand behind her.
Clearing her mind, she furrowed her brow. "Huh?"
"I said, don't let his attitude get to you. He was scared. Draco doesn't know how to handle being frightened well—his first instinct is to lash out," he reasoned, moving around to sit next to her. "It is a testament to how he regards you that he didn't hex you into leaving him alone."
"He called us all incompetent because Seamus had a hole in his glove," she mentioned half-heartedly, locking away his secrets deep in her mind.
Theo shook his head. "You're being too harsh on him. You don't understand what he's been through or where he's coming from. I would rather he spit insults at us than withdraw into himself as he did in sixth year. At least then, we know he's feeling something. You need to think back to everything he told you that day we had to share our stories during the group session. Try to put yourself in his shoes and understand where he's coming from. He has probably had the hardest life of any of us that returned."
Hermione lifted her head from her hands and glared at Theo. "How can you say that? He hasn't had to bury anyone he loved," she whispered, disagreeing with this sentiment no matter how different Malfoy had been in those few brief moments by the lake.
Theo gave her a pitying look, wrapping an arm over the back of her chair. "I urge you to talk to him. Maybe not today. Maybe not this month or even this year. But you need to have a serious conversation with him. You'll see—sometimes just because there's no grave to visit doesn't mean that someone hasn't died."
Hermione furrowed her brow at Theo's riddle as the portrait hole opened and the pale wizard filtered through, looking worn and fatigued. With a nasty glare in the group's direction, he made his way back to the Heads' common room. Theo's hand slipped down and cupped her shoulder with a reassuring squeeze. "Why are you so nice to me? To all of us?" she asked him quietly. "You're almost too kind to ever have associated with him."
He looked at her incredulously. "My father was a Death Eater. Not me. I never believed any of his pureblood ideologies. He's dead now, firmly planted six feet under a slab of marble in the backyard at Nott Manor. I want nothing more than for his prejudices to die with him. Draco wants to put his father's beliefs behind him as well, but you have to understand—there was a time he actually believed those falsehoods."
"How can you be so certain that he doesn't anymore?" Hermione asked, biting her lip as she thought of the way he had so delicately held Seamus' body to his chest.
Theo laughed without mirth. "I suspect he hasn't in years. He's a lot of talk—a defense mechanism—but there's no real bite behind any of it."
"He called me a Mudblood in sixth year. He stood idly by as his aunt carved it into my arm with a cursed dagger," she told him, running her fingers over the offending word.
"And, as I've told you, he's paid the price for that every day since it happened. Nothing has ever affected him as perversely as that day, but he had a role to play, didn't he? He couldn't very well let on that his heart had weakened for the Mudblood friend of Potter," Theo reasoned, placing his hand over hers where she touched the slur on her arm.
Withdrawing his hand, Theo brought it to scrub over his own face. "I'm absolutely knackered. We should get some sleep—I'm sure we'll have something to rebuild today."
o-o-o
A/N: Hello, beauties! Thank you for all of the support that's already been shown to me and this story! I'm glad you all seem to be enjoying this rewrite. There was some importance to this chapter that will make sense later, but I had a lot of fun playing with Malfoy here. He certainly ran the gamut of emotions, Hermione, too. Beta love to tectonictigress!
Please review! And don't be afraid to find me and reach out via PMs or on tumblr-themourningmadam!
