Something about you
It's like a addiction
Hit me with your best shot honey
I've got no reason to doubt you
'Cause some things hurt
And you're my only virtue
And I'm virtually yours
And you keep coming back, coming back again
Certain Things, James Arthur
Staring at Dumbledore's shrine, I can't help but think it's quite ostentatious. I'll be the first to admit that he and I weren't close, but even I know this probably wasn't his style. A giant crimson phoenix rises from a polished marble block while tendrils of magic swirl away from its feathers; it screams at me, and I have to wonder who picked this.
Here lies Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore.
Headmaster. Teacher. Friend.
Missed by many. Forgotten by none.
Bringing flowers seems a little ridiculous now; laying dying flowers on a dead man's crypt even more so. Actually, everything about this moment seems ridiculous. He deserves my apology as much as anyone, but he'll never hear it, and it seems silly to offer it to a gravestone.
Guilt spreads through the centre of my chest, weighing down my limbs until I'm not sure I'd be able to lift them if I tried. The early morning light is soft in the overcast sky, and the red phoenix set against the gray morning looks as if Rowena herself painted it here.
I allow myself a fortifying sigh, grasping for words I wish I didn't have to say. Funny how I don't want to speak them even to a tombstone. No one is around to hear my shame, but still there is something about saying it aloud...
"I should have listened," I mumble at my feet, my head hung low. "Should have taken all the chances you offered and…" Deep breath. "I'm sorry. Sorry it took me so long to figure it out. I know now I did it all wrong—" Shaking my head at my shoes crunching in the snow, the words feel sticky in my throat. I can still imagine the crisp blue of his irises and the way they clouded a shade darker when he was disappointed in me. "I'm still fucking it all up."
I drag my palm down my tired face and groan up at the cloudless sky. This shouldn't be so hard. Shouldn't be so fucking impossible. But it is.
"I'll try and do better, Headmaster. I'm sorry. Again."
Tugging my cloak tight around my shoulders, I turn towards the edge of the Forbidden Forest. I've received permission to be on the grounds this morning, so long as I don't disturb anything and mind the students, and McGonagall has included instructions for finding Snape.
A stone rests against an aspen tree, the only marker Severus Snape will ever have. A charmed glowing doe is engraved in the flat surface of the stone, his initials etched directly below it.
Everything feels a little easier here, shrouded by the cover of the forest. I push some snow away from his tombstone with the toe of my dragonhide shoe.
"Hey, Professor. Not sure if you've been watching, but since you always kept on eye on me in life, I assume you may be in death as well. If you are, don't be mad. I didn't mean for everything to get so positively fucked. But that's why I'm here, groveling for forgiveness to a couple of graves that can't hear me. I don't even know where to start with you." I shrug, closing my eyes and start at the beginning. "Sorry for being a prick when I was a kid. And a teenager. And now as an adult. Sorry that you had to kill Dumbledore."
I've been filled in on the circumstances regarding the death of Dumbledore, but I'm certain that Snape didn't find it an easy task.
"I'm really sorry about that one. You shouldn't have died with his blood on your hands but—" I'm shocked, but the words catch in my throat and hot tears prickle the corner of my eyes. "Thank you for doing it. I'd be rotting in Azkaban right now if you hadn't. You didn't deserve any of what you got, Professor. I hope you've found peace, wherever you are."
I wipe away a wayward tear streaking its way down my frozen cheek.
My lips flatten into a tight line, and the pressure in my sinuses inform me that I need to leave, lest I start weeping like a fucking Hufflepuff.
"Until we meet again."
The roast smells fucking divine. I've barely contributed to it—Molly didn't really let me do much at all— but if she allows me to take some ownership in this little masterpiece, I'm going to fucking take it.
"How do you check that it's done?" I ask, wiping my hands on the apron she's insisted I wear.
She scoffs and points a wooden spoon at my face. "You don't check. You just know. It's a feeling." Her shoulders straighten with pride, and I can't help but laugh.
"That doesn't sound right." I fix her with my best smug expression and lift the apron from my shoulders.
"I told you—" she shrugs. "—some things you can't learn from a book."
The back door swings open, and Granger and Ginny tumble in, arms wrapped around each other and filling the room with laughter.
"Hi, Mum!" Ginny calls and gives me a polite smile as she disentangles herself from her curly-haired friend.
"Hullo, you two." Granger grins, her cheeks kissed pink by the winter air, and she rests her palms on the counter in front of us. "Dinner smells great, Molly!"
"Draco made it." Molly nudges me with a conspiring smile, and I blush, looking down at her proud face framed with frizzy, ruby-coloured curls.
"That's a bit of an overstatement—" I interject, but Molly stalls me, winding her arm through the crook of my elbow.
"You're cooking now?" Grangers brows rise high on her forehead, her milk-chocolate eyes round.
"Another hobby," I murmur. "I'm not all that good, but I stopped turning everything black and filling my flat with smoke, so I think I'm improving—against all odds."
Granger stares at the oven door, and she catches her bottom lip between her teeth, her eyes sparkling as they flit back to me. "Always surprising me, Malfoy."
She turns to follow the way Ginny left, and I hear Molly's soft chuckle at my side. She pokes a finger between my ribs, and I yelp, jumping away from her.
The little round witch starts humming to herself and tidying up the kitchen, flicking her wand in time with the song she's inventing.
"You seem pleased with yourself," I say with a narrowed glare.
"Do you think she'll change her last name?" Molly calls over her shoulder, and my jaw drops. "I bet she'll hyphenate. She's a modern witch. Granger-Malfoy? Malfoy-Granger? I think I like the former." She nods to herself.
My cheeks flame, and I toss the borrowed apron on the counter.
"I think those creatures Looney Lovegood is always prattling on about must have taken over your brain."
I turn my back to her, shaking my head when she erupts in riotous laughter. "Don't do anything too pretentious for the wedding! She reminds me of a garden wedding type of witch!" She calls after me, the door slamming shut on her giggles.
Ron's presence at dinner does little to ruin the surprisingly good mood I find myself in, and when George silences the table to announce our newest product,he grins at me with pride.
I'm struck in the moment how wild it is that I am here. In this home. In this bizarre turn of events.
After dinner, Molly sits with me on the bench outside, casting a warming charm around us and breezing through a conversation about absolutely nothing. Eventually, she moves on to the harder bits. She asks me about my visit to Hogwarts, and I crane my neck as I tell her the bare bones of the visit; I'm unwilling to divulge the flesh.
"I'm proud of you," she says quietly in the darkness, her breath forming a cloud as she speaks.
It's a simple thing. Barely there and hardly noteworthy, but it seeps through my skin and settles deep in my chest, curling in on itself like a sleepy cat.
"Thank you."
She claps her hands together and stands with an exaggerated groan. "Those dishes won't do themselves." She turns to me with a knowing grin. "Actually, they will." Her laughter follows her through the back door, and I sit a while longer on the bench facing the frozen garden.
It won't be long until spring arrives to thaw winter's icy remains, and her gardens will sprawl in an unkempt but beautiful array of wildflowers and barbarous gnomes.
Spring.
Known for rebirth, but to me it's only death. It's when my mum died. It's when I started to die. It's when everything started unravelling.
The back door clangs, and I jump out of my seat and spy Granger tugging her coat on and walking through the snow towards me.
Seeing her here, surrounded by snow flurries in the quiet, I'm reminded of my snowglobe. She's my safe place as much as it is.
"Hey there." She rubs her palms together and brings them to her lips to breathe her heat into them.
I blush when my eyes catch on the curve of her neck, the spot I covered in kisses during my fiasco of a sex dream that left with me a sticky belly button.
"Hey."
"How are you?" It's funny how can she speak to me like she hasn't seen all my horrors.
"I'm good. Keeping busy. And you?"
"Same." She nods along, her lips pursing in thought. "Did you have a pleasant trip to Hogwarts?" Her cheek pulls into an almost grimace as she studies the clear skies.
My heart plunges deep in my belly, and I don't know how the fucking hell she knows about any of it. Surely Molly wouldn't have said something? Maybe McGonagall—"
"Or did you just visit Hogsmeade?" Her voice cracks.
"What?"
"I saw you there, remember? You and Pansy." She's glowering, and in the darkness I can't be sure… but she seems… jealous?
"Oh." I chuckle. "I didn't visit Hogwarts then. Just tea."
"With Pansy." She supplies it factually, and I try—I swear I try—to hide my smirk.
"With Pansy. She's an old friend."
"Ah. An old girlfriend?"
It's official. Hermione Granger would make an absolutely horrendous undercover Auror.
"You could say that." I shrug with an air of nonchalance.
"Is she—" She clears her throat and turns to face me, squaring her shoulders and summoning all that courage her lot is known for. "Are you guys dating? It's fine, of course. I wouldn't care or anything."
My smirk is now full blown as I squint at her flailing in front of me. Jealous of Pansy Parkinson. What a knob. Doesn't she know there will never be anyone but her?
"I'm just curious. As your friend. Friends tell each other if they are dating people, you know. So it's not inappropriate for me to be asking. it's— well, it's proper. Yes. Quite proper."
I have a creeping suspicion that she's talking entirely to herself now as she nods along with her one sided conversation and trains her eyes on the treeline over my shoulder.
I decide it's best to let her stop drowning in this god awful awkwardness and offer her what she's looking for. "Pansy and I aren't dating."
Just there, just barely, I see her release a sigh of relief and hope floods me.
Despair drags me down, drowns me until air is burning in my lungs. But hope?
Hope gives me wings.
And I'm fucking soaring.
"Just tea, then? Nowhere closer for Pug-faced Parkinson to enjoy a cup of tea?" Granger bristles, and I find her completely charming.
I could be honest. I could tell her that I went all the way to blasted Hogsmeade to avoid the chance run in with her on Diagon but I find her envy too tempting.
Something stirs deep inside me when her lips fall for a long moment on my lips. My tongue darts out, dragging along the the flesh of my lip. "When we dated, she made me promise I'd take her. I never got around to it, and since I'm on this damned journey to make amends—"
The words freeze in my throat, which ironically feels fevered, at my slip of tongue.
"Journey to make amends?" Her brows knit together, and she scoots just marginally closer to me.
I'm having a fucking awful time of trying to come up with a good lie, and with a resigned growl, I offer her the truth instead. "It's stupid. Like the hobbies thing… Brenner wants me to make amends with people I've wronged. Madame Rosmerta, Katie Bell. Pansy."
I can't bring myself to tell her she's the last one on the list, the big one. I suppose I could use this moment, sitting in our private snow globe, to tell her how fucking sorry I am, to apologize and beg her to see the person I'm becoming and not the person I was… but not yet.
I'm not the person I'm going to be, and she deserves to hear it from him.
There's no beginning to the hurt I've caused her because it always has been. Me hurting her is as intrinsic as breathing; I don't know any other way. And before I apologize, I'm going to figure out a way to stop it from happening again.
"Oh." Granger directs a few long blinks at me before waking from her trance. "That's brilliant. That's— yes. That's brilliant."
"Do you want to get coffee?" I blurt, and if it wouldn't be mortifying, I'd clamp my hand over my treacherous mouth.
Against all odds she considers it. "Now?"
"Well, no. It's nearly nine o'clock. Just sometime. Do you want to get coffee sometime? As friends." I tag that last bit on the end even though I hate it.
"Oh! Of course. I'd love that. But not Madame Puddifoots. No respectable girl asks to be taken there." She rolls her eyes, and I chuckle. There's no competition, love.
"There's a place near that bookshoppe I ran into you at. The Dirty Grind? I've been frequenting it lately; the coffee is pretty good and the Muggles aren't the annoying sort. Maybe tomorrow morning? Or any morning?" I'm the one rambling now, and I bite my cheek just to get it to stop.
"Tomorrow morning would be lovely. I have a meeting with my lawyer at Flourish and Blotts at eleven, so maybe nine?"
"Lawyer?"
Her lips pull into a proud, face splitting grin, and she scoots a touch closer to me, close enough I can almost feel her body heat. Almost.
"I'm purchasing it," she whispers, though no one is close enough to hear.
I cock my head in her direction. "Purchasing what?"
"Flourish and Blotts! Although, don't mention it to anyone, will you? I don't want to announce it until it's all settled up. You were right, you know—what you said about me. I mean, you said it just horribly—" The trill of her laughter pierces through me. "I don't need to be wasting away stocking shelves, and Maggie was thinking about retiring. My parents weren't Malfoy-rich, but they had been saving some money for me in an account under my name. For secondary education and a wedding, I suppose. There's no way of them having it now, and I think they'd be happy if I did this. It's so me, isn't it?"
I'm stunned, all gaping jaw and stuttering words that fail me. "Gr-Granger. That's fucking brilliant."
"Yeah? Maggie is cutting me quite the deal, and she'll stay on for a while during turnover, but she wants to retire near her kids, which I get. Her husband died in the war, so I think she's ready for life to quiet down."
She's prattling on and on about Maggie and her kids and her plans for the bookshop, but I'm unable to follow anymore. I just stare at the passion in her gestures and the way excitement sparks behind her eyes. I'm bloody ecstatic to see her that excited about something.
I wonder if I'll ever feel that way about anything other than her.
Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap.
I pull my pocket watch from its home in my breast pocket, and with a growl, I snap it shut.
Ten minutes until nine.
I've no reason to suspect that she might stand me up, but the anxiety never leaves. I'm sure it's just as much a part of me now as my fucking prick; the only difference is that I'm constantly aware of the anxiety thrashing against the confines of my skin.
The bell over the door chimes, and I scowl as a happy couple enters, stomping snow from their boots and making their way to the counter. I have also decided that I hate every bell over every door in every shop in London.
"Fucking useless little pieces of—" I mutter to myself, and when it chimes for the second time in thirty seconds I'm ready to rip it off the wall until I see her; she's pulling her scarf from its loop around her neck and shaking her curls free of her hat, snowflakes drifting off and melting in the air.
"Hi, Draco." She grins as she makes her way to me, and I shoot out of my chair. I nearly fucking bow, like I'm about to take her for a spin across a grand ballroom but she catches me in a friendly hug, and I freeze.
If I hug her back now, I'm sure I'll crush her to me and bury my face in her neck, neither of which would be appropriate. So I pat her awkwardly and release her.
"Coffee?"
"Please." Her smile touches her eyes, and before I can stare too long, I lead her towards the counter.
Granger orders a cinnamon vanilla latte, and I double the order, sliding my credit card across the counter covered in stickers.
"A credit card?" She hums, nudging me with her elbow.
I give her a sideways smirk and watch the colour rise on her cheeks. "I've been spending so much time in Muggle London that I figured it was time. Constantly exchanging currency was getting old, so I set up a new account."
She's grinning as I tuck the card in my pocket and lift our two steaming cups from the counter.
"Always surprising me."
Before I can turn back to our table, Ed calls out to me from behind the espresso machine.
"Draco, my man! Can we count on seeing you tomorrow night?"
My eyes flash in his direction, but I simply nod, my teeth baring just slightly as I return us to our spot by the window.
"What's tomorrow night?"
"It's just a show thing they do here. Muggles get up and perform their work. It's kind of weird, but I was here last month. If I attend things once, people seem to think I'm obligated for the rest of my life. Dinners at the Burrow… and work."
Her laughter fills a little void in me, and we spend the rest of the hour talking about Flourish and Blotts and all things Granger— and it feels, for the first time in a long time, that everything is right in the world again.
A/N: Just wanted to take a moment and thank you for following, reading and reviewing. It means so much to me everytime I see your thoughts about this little story come into my inbox.
Thanks as always to my Alpha and Beta, MHCalamas + Ravenslight.
My sweet beta has just launched an EPIC Voldy Wins Multi-chap and guys, it's SO GOOD! Run over and follow it because it's really quite incredible.
Alpha has always posted a Period AU Oneshot thats up and complete, so check that out too!
I'll be back next week, or sooner if I can get my life together lol. MWAH! -LK