Draco Lucius Malfoy was not a good man.
He had been a coward and a bully in his youth, regurgitating the hateful dogma that his father whispered into his impressionable ear.
He stole, he cheated, he lied. He did everything in his power to try and fulfill his destiny and become the abhorrent man he was supposed to be.
But somewhere along the way he'd grown a conscience. The annoying little bastard at the back of his head that told him what he was doing was unequivocally wrong, that challenged him at every turn with conflicting views and kept him up at night pondering the eternal fate of his soul.
His conscience had only ever taken human form twice before. Once as his late wife, and firstly as an annoying, bushy haired, buck toothed girl named Hermione Granger.
She made him question everything he had ever been told about Mudbloods, blood status and wizarding class, and he hated her for it.
Draco went out of his way to be extra cruel to her, his soul on a high when he'd get a reaction from the vivacious little witch. Every class, every break for the first two years of school, his eyes would scan the crowd in hopes of finding that god awful mess of curls just so he might get the chance to taunt her; even make her cry if he was lucky. She was sure to notice him then, to remember him in a way that his vile upbringing taught him was appropriate.
Draco would come home from Hogwarts, desperate to find ways to talk about the trio of self-proclaimed saviors of the wizarding world. In particular, the infuriating know-it-all Mudblood who somehow disgusted and fascinated him all at once.
He told his mother, father, aunts, uncles - anyone who would listen - scathing tales of Potter, Weasley and Granger; exhilarated at the mere mention of Hermione. He simply needed to discuss her. This girl who was brighter than the professors who taught her. This witch who somehow made fire seem dull in comparison to the light which burned in her eyes. This mudblood who challenged everything he had been told, who made him want to feel what it was like to be good.
But Draco Malfoy was not a good man.
He had come close to becoming a decent human being with Astoria. She pushed his already failing faith in Pureblood elitism over the edge and forced him to rebuild his core set of beliefs and values from the ground up. She made him want to be good for the first time in years, but it all came at a price that he knew fate would one day exact.
And when that day came and his world shattered around him like a curtain of breaking glass, he collapsed into himself, drowning in liquor while fully intending to die, trying anything to numb the pain of grief which threatened to consume him every waking moment.
A hard, resounding slap from his mother had pulled him out of his sorrow induced stupor as she threw in his face the harrowing reality that Scorpius would be raised without a mother and a father at the rate he was going. The realization brought him back, and if he couldn't find the will to live for himself, then he would live for his son - for the innocent, sweet child who had no say in his arrival onto this cruel world, born to a physically broken mother and a mentally broken father.
From that moment forward, Draco vowed that he would never become to Scorpius what his own father had been to him - a nightmare responsible for all the pain and suffering he had ever endured.
But it was hard, so unbelievably hard to raise a child - sometimes Scorpius would cry for hours on end, searching desperately for the one who had brought him into this world only to find Draco, tears of frustration and pain in his own eyes at the sheer inability to do anything to help. He cursed Astoria for leaving them both behind. Cursed her for being utterly selfish and stupid for agreeing to marry him in the first place, for having a child she knew she wouldn't be able to help raise.
Those were the times he sent Scorpius to spend the evening with his doting grandmother, assuring Narcissa that he was fine and embracing his son, telling him to be "a good boy for nanna" before heading straight to the nearest brothel.
He had been so careful with his virginity in his youth, waiting for the right woman as he'd been trained to do. No frivolous sex with those of lesser blood was to be permitted, so he spent his Hogwarts years chaste and mostly innocent. Astoria had been his first, and they explored each other lovingly and gently. But his reservations died with her and he wanted to lose himself in the depravity he knew he deserved.
He wanted to feel something.
Within the whore house's heavily perfumed walls and silken sheets, he broke the last promise he made to Astoria while debasing himself between three or four women, all nameless brunettes he refused to make eye contact with while he fucked them into oblivion, trying without success to fill the gaping void in his soul.
"Promise me you'll find happiness again - with someone kind and gentle who will love our son. Promise me you'll find someone to take care of you."
But he didn't. He wouldn't.
Instead, he spent his time in fleeting, meaningless relationships with vapid, vain women who did little more than act as a cock warmer for him when he got bored.
And then he went to work one day and saw her...
He recalled the way his heart dropped into his finely polished shoes in a mixture of trepidation and annoyance at the sight of Hermione.
She had looked at him in fear and disgust, and he suddenly realized she still saw him as the cruel little boy who traumatized her at school, but there was something different about her that bothered him….
Her small face was sallow and pale, her wild, unruly hair tamed in a boring knot behind her neck, and her eyes...he remembered most vividly the dull sheen of her almond brown eyes - the fire in their depths now fully extinguished.
What had happened to her?
Weasley had happened. That ginger shit had ruined his tempestuous mudblood, cowed her into a monotonous life of domestication so he could overlook her at every turn.
And now when he had a sliver of hope, an infinitesimal chance that he might have her as his own, she was going to turn him away because of some worthless woman he had used for sex? Because of her unfulfilling marriage to that overgrown Weasel?
No. He would stop at nothing to achieve his goal - he would lie and cheat and steal, just as he always had.
No, he was not a good man.
He watched Granger like a hawk now as they stood alone in a bathroom stall; her beautiful, delicate features wrought in worry and denial as she struggled to process the lie he had just fed her.
"B-but how...why?"
"It's an old, convoluted magic, Granger. All I know is that people connected by the red thread are destined lovers, regardless of time or circumstance - bound together by Fate itself," he fibbed effortlessly. It saddened him somewhat that the years he'd spent trying to reform his character could fall apart so fast.
But it was necessary.
She was close, so close to believing that the strange pull between them was fate - that they were destined to be together - when in reality, Draco had no bloody idea what the enigmatic spark was.
All he knew was that he wanted Hermione Granger more than he wanted anything.
He always had, it had just taken him sixteen years and a lost marriage to figure it out.
"I don't understand," she muttered
"Nor do I," he said, watching her instinctively grab her wedding ring. "All I know is that when I see you, I feel certain of something…"
He needed to be careful - push too hard and she would run.
The only thing that stood in their way was Weasley. Draco knew Hermione was hanging onto the threads of decency in a desperate attempt not to sully her marriage vows, and he respected her for holding out for this long, but Draco was more than persistent; he was ruthless.
So he created an excuse - an otherworldly, magical excuse - for her to finally pluck up the courage and be rid of that human toilet she called a husband.
"Ronald...my marriage? You're telling me it's all pointless?" Hermione gaped, glaring at him as though he were indeed the fork tongued serpent she'd been so wary of in their youth.
"Not pointless, Granger. Just tangles in the thread," he explained, his heart hammering loudly as he gauged her reaction - brows furrowed, thick lashes fluttering as her chest heaved up and down with each exaggerated breath she took.
Merlin, she was beautiful in every way imaginable and it took every shred of willpower to keep from shagging her blind. But if by some grace of God she let him prove his affections, he would worship the very ground she walked on, he would love her with every ounce of his soul in ways Weasley could never even dream of.
All she had to do now was give him the chance.
Draco Lucius Malfoy was not a good man, but Hermione Granger made him want to be.