Chapter 2
Draco couldn't remember much, but looking at Weasley's irritating head wasn't helping him recollect much.
"Again," Potter continued, "if you can remember anything at all, it would be extremely helpful for us to get started on this case—"
"You haven't even started?" Draco spat, "what have you two been doing for the last five days since I've been in a coma?" he looked from Potter to Weasley with as much venom as he could muster.
As it was, his current situation didn't lend much to intimidation. He was wearing a blue gown and snuggled under crisp white hospital blankets. His face was thin and he appeared emaciated.
Weasley scowled. "Whoever wanted to kill you obviously planned it meticulously," he began, "they didn't leave a trace. No detection spell has worked. No one witnessed the attack. You were lucky an intern happened to be late to work that day and found you. All of our recordings show only a cloaked figure, probably about five or so inches shorter than you." Weasley paused to make sure Draco was following. "Do you know anyone who would want to hurt you?"
Draco laughed.
"You really are as stupid as you look, Weasley." He gritted his teeth. "Half the wizarding world would rejoice if I was found dead."
Harry sighed and stood up. He pulled a card out of his pocket and set it down on the stand next to Draco's bed.
"Listen," he started slowly, removing his glasses and wiping them on his shirt—like an imbecile would, Draco thought viciously—"We don't want to stress you out, given your… situation, but if you can remember anything, anything at all, just send us an owl."
He walked out. Weasley followed silently. Draco was finally alone. He lay his head back into his pillows and sighed quietly.
He hated this. Physically, he felt weak. After five days of being in a magically-induced coma so that he could remain on a ventilator, his body had lost much of its strength from simply not being able to move. Additionally, all the fluids they had been giving him intravenously had made him very edematous; still, his eyelids, hands and feet seemed puffy, although it had improved tremendously since yesterday.
Worst of all, they had been feeding him through a tube in his nose while he was sedated, and the back of his throat still scratched from that and the breathing tube together. He wished he was in his bed, eating real food, and not this disgusting hospital broth.
He lay deeper into his pillows.
Who did this to him?
He scoffed at the thought that Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley could help him, even if they wanted to (though he was absolutely sure that they did not). He sifted through his memories, trying to think of a clear candidate.
As a Malfoy, he had many enemies. After his parents and he had been absolved of their crimes post-war, many of the survivors felt that they needed to be punished. Public opinion was dead-set against them. Receiving death threats and howlers had become a regular occurrence at the Manor, but that had dwindled down in the last few years.
Back then, avoiding death had been a daily task. Now, it was unexpected that he would be attacked on his way to work, and he hadn't a clue of who would have it out for him.
Voldemort's demise brought a series of troubles to the Malfoys. For one, the grueling task of court was before them. His case was the briefest. Basically, his lawyer had defended him by using the fact that he had been enlisted into Voldemort's Death Eaters before he was seventeen, and therefore could not be held responsible for his actions that year. In addition to the fact that Draco was underage, he was also under extreme duress. With the knowledge that both his parents were in close proximity to Voldemort, Draco had no choice but to follow all orders given to him.
It also helped his case that he had never killed anyone. And it didn't hurt when multiple first and second years from Hogwarts testified at how Draco had faked the crucio curse by shooting harmless red sparks from his wand and commanding them to writhe around instead of truly torturing them as the Carrow brothers had asked him to do in his 7th year.
His mother's case was the next easiest. She had helped the Boy Who Lived. It was easy to prove that she was not truly loyal to Voldemort, and was performing her "duties" under coercion. There weren't a lot of people to testify on her behalf, but Harry Potter did show up to talk of his brief encounter with her on the battlefield; how she had known he was alive, but sworn him to be dead.
She had saved his life. Case closed.
His father's trial was not so easy. For one, anyone who could testify on his behalf was dead. Severus Snape, who had been friends with his father for many years, could have testified how Lucius feared the Dark Lord. He could have told the jury that Lucius was paranoid that Voldemort could at any moment swoop into his home and claim his son for his own, and how when this happened, Lucius was devastated.
Albus Dumbledore, who could have told the Wizengamot that many of his private meetings with Lucius were an attempt to get him to defect. He could have told them that all of these meetings were failures because Lucius could not abandon his family or expose them to that level of harm.
Further, his father didn't exactly have a positive track record with Harry Potter or the Weasley family. The prosecution was quick to remind the Wizengamot how Lucius Malfoy had slipped a horcrux into Ginny Weasley's things in her first year at Hogwarts. Although this piece of information was surely damning, Potter had actually been the one to testify that Lucius had no idea how cursed that diary was, and swore that even Dumbledore thought so.
It also helped that their lawyer was extremely good. Money can buy you anything, Draco thought grimly.
The man was even able to spin the fact that Lucius had not allowed Beatrix Lestrange to call the Dark Lord when they had captured the Golden Trio at Malfoy Manor. He had argued that Lucius had made a show of wanting to call on Voldemort himself, but in reality, there was no other way he could have disguised preventing Beatrix from bringing Voldemort into his home and surrendering the Golden Trio.
Finally, after a prolonged trial that lasted approximately two years, Lucius Malfoy was a free man.
Being exonerated did not mean their lives went back to normal. Far from it, their lives became shite. With no one to talk to but their house elves, both his parents became extremely depressed. Furthermore, Draco couldn't do anything about it because they had insisted that he finish his education and attend Hogwarts for an eighth year.
It was a miserable time for him. He watched as his father, who had already been driven to the brink of madness from constant fear and repeated torture at the hands of an evil master, wither away into a silent and very thin man. He spent most of his days walking the vast gardens of Malfoy Manor alone, and rarely left the Manor for anything.
Why would he leave? He had asked Draco. There is nothing out there for us now.
His position in society was lost. Lucius Malfoy was a gentleman by trade, and had never truly held a real job. His days prior to the rise of Voldemort were passed by social interaction and influence. Yet all of that influence had now disappeared.
His mother was in an equally desperate position. No woman of pureblood origin who had survived Voldemort wanted anything to do with her. Narcissa realized slowly that all of her friendships had been surface level only, and that she was now in her forties with not a single person to call her companion but her husband.
They both spent their days in quiet solitude, only together for meals and tea time.
Throughout the course of his eighth year at Hogwarts, Draco read about his parents' metamorphosis in their letters.
His father's long walks in the garden turned into actual gardening. Draco didn't even know his father knew how to take care of plants, but his father had assured him that the house elves were showing him some of the finer skills of the trade that he hadn't learned during his Hogwarts days. The fact that his father would even stoop so low as to learn from a house elf had made Draco feel faint at the time.
His mother, who had finally grown bored of staring out of the window all day, had decided to join her father in the garden. At first, she assured Draco that she simply enjoyed watching Lucius. But when he started planting narcissus poeticus along the walkways of the garden, his mother couldn't help but kneel down in the dirt and help her husband, as she was very touched by his romantic gesture.
Through the years, his parents had become much softer. Not soft, mind you, but softer still. His father was kinder to his house elves, and Draco suspected this was due to Dobby's infamous betrayal of his family. The house elves in Mafloy Manor still spit on the ground at the mere mention of his name. His father appreciated this loyalty now, and was determined not to mistreat them.
Draco was amazed his father was even capable of self-analysis, and of readjusting his attitude in such a way. For so long Draco felt oppressed under the heavy hand of "Malfoy honor," and he was finally just now starting to see a human side to both his parents, more than two decades into his life.
When Draco left home to pursue a career in Magical Pathology with a focus in Historical and Ancient Magicks, Potions, and Charms, his parents were actually proud of him. He didn't need to listen to lectures regarding that fact that Malfoys did not work, that Malfoy ambition was above such a career, that Malfoys influenced power, not stooped so low to hold it.
And that's when he noticed he no longer felt afraid of losing his parents' love. That was no longer influencing his decisions. More surprisingly so, breaking free from their expectations strengthened their already loyal bond.
The summer after Draco graduated Hogwarts, he started healing school. He had no interest in becoming a healer, but obtaining his degree in healing was essential to becoming a magical Pathologist. The road to pathology was a long one, but luckily, he had not taken a break from schooling and was able to finish at a relatively young age. After finishing his residency in Magical Pathology, and then specializing in Ancient Magicks, Potions and Charms, he had quickly entered a research position at the Ministry. Rising in the ranks at the Ministry had not been difficult for Draco, not only because he was clever, but also because the department only consisted of a handful of people, most of whom were rather old and ready to retire. He was now assistant chief of staff in the department, and grateful.
He wasn't sure if he could have done so well for himself if it were not for his boss, the chief of staff, Edward Daedalus. The fact that Draco was a Malfoy had not perturbed him in the least, although he had been hunted down by Death Eaters himself during the war. This was not only because he was a half-blood with a muggle mother, but also because he was incredibly knowledgeable in the art of Ancient Magicks, which Voldemort was very interested in at the time.
Draco enjoyed his work, mostly because he did it alone.
After the traumatic events of the war, Draco enjoyed silence. Much like his parents, Draco had spent most of his time in the past ten years in deep introspection, reading, and even gardening too. Playing quidditch alone got old very quickly, and he didn't have much desire to hang out with friends and do what was expected of most wizards his age.
He didn't enjoy drinking; the prospect of forgetting one's self was terrifying after what he had gone through. He remembered being forced to go to group therapy sessions with the other Hogwarts students and how terrible it had been to listen to the other students talk about their losses and pain. He mostly stayed silent, except when he was forced to introduce himself. The only other student who was as reserved was Hermione Granger, who always sat so quietly that eventually people gave up trying to speak to the now extremely popular girl.
Draco remembered what she was like that year, and it was very different compared to what she had been like her previous years. Prior to their sham of a seventh year, Hermione was outspoken, always throwing herself into every conversation, so quick to defend others and put herself in the center of every conversation. Draco couldn't stand her, mostly—he reflected—because of his desire to be that person himself. He was constantly hammered with her success in school. As a spoiled only child who had visions of grandeur regarding his family name drilled into his head, he couldn't stand the fact that she was better than him despite what his parents had filled his head with about muggleborns.
As an adult, Draco had to begrudgingly respect young Granger's determination. Although both her parents were muggles, she had closed the gap regarding magical education as quickly as she could, and rose to be the best student of their year. Even as a pureblood, he could appreciate that. However, at the time he had done far from appreciate it.
He scoffed at how he tormented her at school, to the point where she punched him, punched him. That punch had put her on the map in Draco's mind. She wasn't simply Potter's obnoxious friend after that, and he sometimes fantasized about dueling with her, using tearing spells to rip her robes to shreds…
There wasn't much time for childish fantasies during the war however, and that all came to a sudden halt. Eventually, even the thought of the Golden Trio made Draco sick. It all came to a head when they arrived in his own home, and he was forced to try to identify them. He knew damn well that his parents knew what Weasley and Granger looked like, even if Potter's face was deformed by a stinging jinx at the time. However, the desire to stall the detestable Greyback and Beatrix was strong, and he attempted to remain vague about the fact that he did absolutely recognize those fear-stricken brown eyes.
His aunt wasn't a witch, she was a monster. Remembering Granger's thin tortured body on the floor of the Manor's foyer still made Draco sick. The first time he saw her at Hogwarts during their eighth year, he ran to the dungeons and locked himself in the showers to vomit and release hot, panicked tears. The anxiety attacks were constant in the beginning, but eventually, he could tolerate being in the same room with her.
One time he even said sorry, although Granger likely thought it was because he had accidentally bumped her with his chair. They were in NEWT level potions class, and Draco had arrived late. The only chair left open was the one next to Hermione Granger, who was sitting in the front and center desk as usual. Draco sure as hell did not want to sit next to her, but he also knew that if he didn't everyone would assume that it was because he hated muggleborns, and not because he was ashamed to look at her after what had happened.
She didn't even look up at him when he sat down, and continued focusing on her notes while Slughorn spoke about the importance of lily root in stabilizing earthy potions. Draco couldn't focus; he felt like he was being punched over and over.
He could smell sandalwood every time she brushed back her hair.
He wanted to tell her hated her.
He hated her because she was a know-it-all, not because of her heritage. He wanted to tell her he was miserable. He wanted to tell her he was glad her side won, that he didn't even mind that his family had been shunned by all decent society and that they were now friendless and alone, because the killing had stopped and his disgusting aunt was dead.
Sandalwood.
He was suddenly struck by the urge to grab a fistful of hair.
He knocked back his chair and almost fell back, startling her into looking up. Finally.
"Sorry," he muttered, straightening his chair and looking down at his own blank parchment.
She said nothing and looked back down at her notes.
And that was the first and last time he spoke to her that year.
She didn't say much to anyone though, so he was hardly bothered. At least, that's what he told himself. He couldn't stop dreaming about her. Mostly nightmares, but still. He began to resent her for his lack of sleep, yet also became intensely curious about her.
He mostly saw her during breakfast, which was generally quite empty during their final year at Hogwarts given the casualties of the war. They had only one table out, to discourage students from eating only with their housemates. Minerva McGonagall had been stern during her speech on the first day of school – no more rivalries. No more antagonism. The houses would all get along.
Eventually, the curiosity got to the point of madness, and he began sitting closer and closer to her during mealtimes. Once he had been brave enough to sit directly across from her. It was breakfast, and the hall was almost empty. The moment he sat down he realized how strange it must look to her. She had raised her head from her book and given him a long look. It felt like eternity, and Draco knew he had turned as red as a Weasley brother, but he refused to look up from his toast, which he was buttering furiously, focused on it like it was the only thing in the world.
Eventually, she turned her eyes away from him and back to her book. Draco had looked at her hands flipping the pages, eating her porridge, careful not to spill any on the pages. For one furious second, he was gripped with the desire to grab her hand, and pull back her sleeve.
He wanted to see her scar. He needed to see her scar. He needed to touch it, tracing his fingers along that cursed word.
He got up suddenly with a loud scrape of the bench, startling her again into looking up. He was half-way down to the Great Hall before she could even lift her head.
Draco was grateful when school ended. He was also grateful that when Granger started healing school, he was almost finished. He didn't think he could bear to be in close proximity again. Actually, he couldn't bear to be in close proximity to most people, and kept to himself.
Which was precisely why he now could not fathom a guess at who poisoned him. It could be anyone, really. It's not as if he'd had a recent argument with anyone… he didn't have anyone to argue with. He was mostly in and out of the Manor to visit his parents, the Ministry to work, and his flat to sleep in. He didn't go anywhere or do anything. He barely even spoke to anyone.
"Hello Mr. Malfoy, is it okay if we come in?" a small voice asked him. He turned his head to look at the face of a young witch, likely a new healing student.
"Yes."
A line of people walked into his room, and he recognized one as his nurse, a burly wizard in his early thirties. One of the doctors who came into his room was Granger. She stood silently in the back studiously avoiding his eyes while the healing student presented his case to the Attending healer.
"No, thank you." He suddenly said.
All eyes turned to him, including the gigantic brown ones that had been avoiding him. It was his turn to avoid her eyes now, and he was staring directly at the Attending healer.
"I refuse that treatment. I would like to be discharged today." He said firmly, gripping his hands together over his blanket.
"In fact," he added, "remove my IV line now, if you please," he gestured towards his nurse, who looked from him to the Attending healer with confusion, unsure of himself.
"Sir, please reconsider," the Attending started, "your condition is not yet entirely stable. You are now well enough to leave the hospital, yes," he conceded, "but you've grown weak, and will likely need a rehabilitation facility for some weeks."
"Weeks?" Draco arched an eyebrow, "I would rather die now then be discharged to your so-called facility."
He looked at her just in time to catch her rolling her eyes, and fixed her with a glare. Noticing the exchange, the Attending healer said, "Ah, Miss Granger. Mr. Malfoy is your old friend from Hogwarts, is he not?" and without pause continued to say, "Perhaps you can assure him that a rehabilitation facility would be in his best interest."
Draco watched as Granger controlled her facial features into a blank look. He was almost impressed.
"Sir, I do not think Mr. Malfoy capable of being persuaded." She answered innocently.
He was impressed. Where did this Slytherin-side come from?
He scoffed, then scowled, waving his arm in front of the nurse once more, who reluctantly kept his distance.
"Fine." He bit out, and pulled off the tape and IV line in one swift motion. The healing student was staring at him as if he had grown a second head. Granger seemed unphased.
"Please send the bill to my private residence," he spoke as he drew his legs over the edge of the bed, "I wouldn't want to alarm my elderly parents."
He smoothly grabbed his trousers, and put them on proudly, as if no one was in the room.
"Granger, if you roll your eyes one more time, I'll worry that they'll fall out of your head." He bit out, while grabbing his cloak, moving slower than he would have liked.
Hermione laughed, and only he would know that it was a fake laugh, as he was the only one in the room who had known her for almost 20 years.
"Always had such a sense of humor!" she bit out, explaining to her co-workers.
Draco did not answer. He had no intention of causing her trouble at her place of work.
"Where is my wand?" He addressed directly to her, with no idea why he had chosen to ask her.
She regarded him carefully for a moment before she answered.
"All patient wands are kept locked in the security office. If you present your arm band, they will return it to you."
He nodded, slightly embarrassed with the interaction, but determined not to show it.
"Before you leave," she added as he turned away, "you must sign your AMA papers."
"Against Medical Advice?" he asked.
"Yes." She answered curtly.
"I'd be happy to." He said with as fake a smile as he could.
Granger left the room with her shoes clicking against the linoleum floors, and her team reluctantly followed after her. Draco stood impatiently in his room until she returned shortly after.
"You need to sign here, here and here." She motioned expertly, as Draco took the quill she offered him silently.
Sandalwood.
He backed away quickly, startled. Thinking that he was weak from days of sedation, and about to fall, Hermione lurched forward and grabbed his elbow firmly. He yanked it away without thinking, and instantly regretted it.
The silence that followed was awkward. He wanted to apologize and explain. But what was he supposed to say? That her natural scent hit him like a ton of galleons? That because of her, he kept a steady stream of sandalwood incense burning in his office? That he found the smell both comforting and maddening?
Instead, he picked the quill up from the bed, where it had fallen, and signed his name quickly where she had indicated. He handed her the parchment without looking at her.
And again, before she could even look up at him, he was halfway out of the room.
He never wanted to see Hermione Granger again.
XXX
Author's note: thanks for reading everyone! First chapter was littered with editing errors which made me laugh, but hey! I'm rusty. Thanks for joining in on the fun and leave a review 3