July
tick tock tick tock
Draco ran a hand through his hair as the Gringotts cart came to a stop, entirely disheveled from the long, winding trip underground to the old estate vaults. The damp chill that clung to every surface so deep underground rendered his hair potions completely ineffectual.
"I thought the trip to my vaults was comically long," Theo said with a low whistle. The sound ricocheted off moist, blackened boulders that Draco assumed existed somewhere in the caverns with them. Huge spaces and low lighting left much to his imagination.
"You should have warned me to bring snacks," Theo said, stepping aside so the goblins accompanying them could begin unlocking Draco's vault. "I would have grabbed some chocolate frogs or something."
"You're being very dramatic."
"Well, I was promised a pint and an evening at the pub. I've been kidnapped, I think."
"You've hardly been kidnapped. We're on a quick errand."
The vault doors opened beside them; orange light spilled from the perpetual sconces mounted on the interior stone walls. Draco nodded his thanks to the goblins and grabbed Theo by the elbow, forcing him inside.
Theo grumbled a bit more, something about losing his precious friend time to bloody errands.
"We're still getting drinks," Draco said. "After."
"Granger has stolen you from me. And now I'm but an errand companion? How sad."
"Hermione has stolen me? You've stolen her—back to boyfriend hunting. You know, Saturdays used to be my day with her."
"Yes, well now you have the rest of the week. And what do I have? Blaise?"
Draco tossed a small box at Theo, who fumbled as it smacked his open palm, and juggled it frantically to prevent it falling to the floor.
"I thought Blaise was your best friend these days?"
"As it stands, he's my only option, what with you being all coupled up and nauseatingly happy." He held up the box, giving it a shake beside his ear in what Draco could only assume was an attempt to discern the contents via auditory clues. "I'm reluctant to make his position as my best friend permanent, however. One can only stomach friends who sit, stare into the middle distance, and ruin antique furniture with smoke damage for so long before one starts to think—perhaps one needs more friends."
"Sounds exhausting being you, Theo."
"Truly, it is." Theo tilted his head and held the box out. "What is this?"
"The reason we're here."
Draco watched as Theo finally took in his surroundings, recognizing the vault they'd entered for what it was.
"Ah—your family's heirloom vault." His eyes darted to the box in his hand. "A ring, I assume? You mean to propose."
"I almost already did." Draco trailed a finger along a shelf of tiaras, wondering idly when any of them had last left this underground prison for priceless things.
Theo seemed to consider that for a moment, tossing the box between his hands. Tension tightened Draco's spine as he struggled to fathom why Theo hadn't opened the box yet. Did he not realize he'd been brought along to provide an opinion?
"It's been well over a year now. I'm surprised you waited this long," Theo said, tossing the box back to Draco.
He caught it with ease, irrationally annoyed that Theo hadn't looked inside.
"Things were—are—always complicated." It was the best explanation Draco knew how to give.
Theo released an overly dramatic sigh, leaning against the closed vault door. "A true Romeo and Juliet, you two."
"Who?"
"Muggle Literature. Granger taught me."
The laugh that bubbled up Draco's throat startled him, unbidden, as images of The Count of Monte Cristo hurtled to the forefront of his mind.
"She's done the same to me. If she comes at you with anything by Alexander Dumas, run."
"Do your parents know?" Theo asked, sidestepping Draco's meager attempt at humor. He crossed his arms in front of his chest, eyes narrowed, head tilted, brow lifted. Everything about him screamed of suspicion. Draco didn't especially appreciate that look.
"Gods, you sound like Hermione."
"It's a valid question."
"I know." Draco snapped the box open, glanced at the ring inside, and snapped it shut again. "I know."
Theo didn't say anything, just kept watching him with an admirable posture that reminded Draco quite keenly of Blaise when he knew something the rest of them didn't.
Draco tossed the box to Theo who, once again, barely caught it.
"Everything with Hermione is complicated," Draco said, eyes fixed on the unopened box in Theo's hands. "But everything with my parents is downright impossible. I've taken maybe a handful of meals with them since my birthday."
"And how has that been?"
Draco knew he meant to ask about the meals with his parents, but all he could think about were the many, many more he'd spent with Hermione.
"I enjoy having my mornings with her. I make better tea, and I can manage toast or eggs just fine." Draco felt a self-conscious flush creeping up his neck, hot and uncomfortable. If there were ever a person in the world Draco might dare to make such admissions to, Theo was that person. "She's been cooking dinners. I get to start and end my days with her—it's just—" he failed to articulate further, eyes landing on the box again: a pointed example of exactly how much he loved the things he spoke of.
"Well, I'm sure that's how your parents feel about each other. And you. Isn't that why your family has always done those regular meals?"
Sometimes, in the nooks and crannies between Theo jokes and his performances, wedged up against his cracks of sincerity and the other things Draco could never seem to get him to talk about, Theo had these bursts of understanding, so sympathetic, that they honestly astounded Draco when they happened.
"I suppose," Draco said. And he did. His parents enjoyed a routine of togetherness, had drilled as much into him throughout his life. It hurt, ached in Draco's chest, to consider that the joy he got from his new routines with Hermione might bear any sort of resemblance to how his parents felt about him.
"So, are you planning on telling them?"
"I've agreed to have dinner with them tonight."
"Does that work on Granger?" A sudden, sharp tone. "That's not what I asked. Here, I'll even clarify: are you going to ask their permission to use an heirloom?" He waggled the box in Draco's general direction.
Draco's lips thinned, pulled tight. He'd brought Theo along for assistance, for a bit of companionship, to share something exciting—fuck—life-changing, with his friend. He inhaled through flared nostrils, held the breath, then finally spoke.
"I don't need their permission, Theo. A Malfoy heirloom belongs as much to me as it does to them."
Theo rolled his eyes, brows lifted nearly to his hairline. "Apologies, orphan here. I'm a little rusty on the parental approval process on ancestral heirlooms." Theo dropped his hands from how he'd been gesturing, rather forcefully, as he spoke. He tossed the box back to Draco. "You're sure you have the right to your family heirlooms?" Theo asked the question quietly, almost silently, as if he wished he didn't ask it at all.
"What does that mean?"
Theo sighed. "Just that—well, you don't really seem like you want to be much of a Malfoy heir."
"I don't want to be their kind of heir."
"Is there a choice?"
Draco snapped the velvet box open in his hands, took a breath, and snapped it shut again.
"Would you just provide an opinion on jewelry?"
Theo did. And without another word about Draco's parents, too.
—
Technically speaking, Draco exchanged more words with Topsy and Tilly over dinner that evening than he did with either of his parents. He hadn't meant it out of spite, or in any sort of defiant display flouting Lucius and Narcissa's traditional sensibilities. But when presented with the option of conversing with house elves or conversing with his parents, the elves quelled his anxieties where his parents did not.
He'd had dinner with them four times since his birthday.
Two meals had to be aborted halfway through the appetizer courses, lest the silent anger swallow him alive. Stares and silence were infinitely worse than awkward conversation, avoidance, or outright anger. The stares felt like judgment. The silence, damnation.
After each of those failed attempts to salvage what had started to look more and more like an unsalvageable thing, Draco went home to Hermione and fucked her as if his life depended on the depths to which he could prove his devotion. He poured his desperation into proving that he could maintain, protect, and appreciate at least one relationship in his life. They all seemed to crumble, seemed to break: brittle little things he snapped with just a touch too much pressure.
The third dinner he took with his parents included one stilted apology from Narcissa for how his birthday had panned out. Silence from Lucius.
Notably, the apology had been for the state of his birthday, not for the things that turned it into what it became. She apologized for no words, no actions, only the results—as if those things were entirely divorced from each other.
He stayed until he finished his entree, declined dessert, and left. When he held Hermione that night he couldn't understand the cleaved feeling in his chest, cracking his breast bone in two. If he held her tight enough, close enough, he wondered if she could fit inside those spaces, fill the cracks herself.
"You shouldn't give up," she told him, lips taking his pulse at his neck as they lay in bed together.
"You, of all people, should not be advocating for them."
Her breath skittered up his neck, coasting around his ear and weaving its way into his hair. Warm and fresh like her spearmint muggle toothpaste. Intimate in a way that awed him sometimes, recognizing the sheer closeness required to feel someone else's breath on his skin.
"It's—a mess. I know," she said, running a hand up his chest and hitching a leg around his hip as they faced each other in the bed. "They keep saying and doing awful things, but—they also keep inviting you, even though they know about me. That must—it's progress, though perhaps reluctant. They don't want to lose you."
She kissed beneath his jaw: a bespoke incantation that sent shivers cascading through his nerves.
"I know you don't want to lose them, either. We can figure this out."
"So optimistic," he'd said, holding her tighter, filling the cracks.
The fourth dinner he had with his parents included a dessert service and an inconsequential conversation about how lovely raspberries and chocolate complimented each other. When he left, Narcissa told him she liked how he'd been styling his hair a bit longer.
Her eyes were watery when she said it.
Later, at home, when he kissed Hermione, she smiled. She told him he tasted like a chocolate raspberry cake. He lifted her onto their kitchen counter, vanishing her knickers as he did, and told her, desperately, that he'd rather taste like her instead.
This fifth dinner, happening so shortly after pulling a ring from the Malfoy jewelry vault—a ring that now sat in his pocket as a reminder, a token of what this all was meant to be for—could be different. It had to be. If Hermione believed they could make progress, find hope in the hopeless, then he would choose to believe her. She was the smartest person he knew, after all.
Lucius and Narcissa greeted him at the Floo.
Lucius cleared his throat as Draco dusted a sparkling cinder of Floo powder from his trousers. "We're pleased to have you here, son."
Draco straightened. A deep breath. Strained words.
"I'm pleased to be here."
"Are you?"
Narcissa's arm shot out, viper fast until it found its target, laying a gentle hand on Lucius's forearm.
"Enough," she said. "We'd like to enjoy our evening. The elves have prepared a lovely six courses for us. Classic french cuisine, your favorite, darling."
Draco must have made a face, a slip of an expression where otherwise he meant to have none.
"Is that—not the case anymore?" she asked.
Such a simple question. But the passage of time, of space, of distance, that it implied, of a divergence in paths, placed his preferences and her knowledge of them on opposite sides of the ever growing valley between them.
Draco put considerable effort into the smile he forced onto his face: a small, tight, insincere thing. But an attempt nonetheless.
"I've been partial to Italian cuisine recently."
The smile his mother returned, much more elegant in its insincerity than his own, wedged its way inside his cracks and tried, fruitlessly, to fill them up.
As they walked to the dining room—his parents two paces ahead of him as he trailed behind, a reluctant dinner guest—Draco couldn't help but focus his every thought on the ring in his pocket, stretching his trouser fabric with every step. It felt like a tiny star he carried with him, a bright spot of hope from Hermione, for Hermione.
Topsy and Tilly greeted them in the dining room. He nodded to Topsy as she delivered a glass of wine to his seat.
"It's nice to see you, Topsy. Mopsy sends her regards." He missed having Topsy around, even if just to stock his flat with food. But autonomy and respect for working conditions—Hermione's words, not his—were the price he paid to keep his witch happy in their home.
Topsy flushed, stuttering her thanks, tiny hands grabbing at her drooping ears out of embarrassment.
Tilly appeared on his left with a crack and a warm towel for his hands.
"Tilly, thank you. Lovely to see you as well. Milly says hello from Nott Manor."
Tilly nearly dropped her tray of towels before squeaking her thanks and hurrying to his parents. When Draco looked up, gaze flicking from his mother to his father and back again, he found that they wore near-identical expressions of confusion, brows drawn tight.
Draco's mouth dropped open in preparation to defend himself, recognizing the struggle for comprehension on his parents' faces.
"Theo," he started. "He does this thing with the sibling elves between our manors, just little bits of correspondence."
Narcissa took a long, slow sip of her wine. She held it by the glass, not by the stem, and that tiny break in protocol, especially for a white wine, felt important somehow. She set the glass down and looked at him, engaging in a rapid series of blinks as lines carved their way across her forehead, broadcasting her confusion.
"And—why?" she asked.
Draco tilted his head. He heard two cracks in rapid succession. Both Topsy and Tilly had disappeared.
"They enjoy it?" he said, not intending for it to sound so much like a question. "I—imagine it's nice? Hearing from their siblings at another estate."
Lucius made a derisive sort of sound into his Viognier.
Narcissa said nothing, made no noise at all.
They consumed five courses in silence, punctuated by cracks of elf magic, silver on china, and Draco's new, rebellious insistence on establishing further correspondence between Topsy, Tilly, Mopsy, and Milly.
During dessert service, Narcissa finally said something.
"You needn't fuss so much over them, dear."
It had been nearly a half hour and suddenly, there they were again, discussing house elves as if they'd never stopped.
But he supposed that was how it went. Carrying on dead conversations couldn't be nearly as cumbersome as carrying on dead beliefs, and his parents had done that for years.
He felt sick. The inside of his mouth had a buttery, saturated quality to it, overindulged from rich foods and spite-driven conversations with the elves. He thought of the ring in his pocket.
He knew he didn't want their permission. He wouldn't inform them of what he planned to do. They knew about Hermione and that would have to be enough. They knew how long they'd been together, roughly, at least. They knew she'd moved in with him several months prior. If they failed to divine from those obvious clues where his relationship with her was headed, then that was their own doing and he would not take responsibility for their intentional ignorance.
More than that, asking for permission to use the family heirlooms, heirlooms he absolutely had a right to whether they wanted to acknowledge it or not, felt like asking to continue his life in the way they saw fit. He had no intentions of doing anything of the sort.
He kept the ring in his pocket.
He kept chatting with Topsy and Tilly.
And he kept his questions to himself when his mother informed him that they were planning a gala at the manor to celebrate Hallowe'en.
He didn't have to ask the questions anyway; he knew the answers. Hermione would not be welcome, which meant he would not attend.
—
Draco loved few sounds on this earth as much as he enjoyed listening to Hermione attempting to withhold a sigh as she discovered yet another new biography stocked at her favorite little muggle bookstore. She turned, hair whipping in violent spirals as her hands found her hips. She leveled him with her best how dare you Draco Malfoy face, and he doubted he could love her any more if he tried.
"How much money have you paid this shop to source all these books? I'm never getting to Eliot."
One of these days, he was going to convince her to let him fuck her right there, right up against that shelf she spent so much time sighing in front of, glaring at him from. He didn't care if he had to buy the whole shop just to lock it up and give them some privacy, if that's what it would take.
He shrugged, enjoying the undercurrent of foreplay involved in winding her up, irritating her just enough that she didn't know whether she wanted to smack him or fuck him. He'd take either, honestly.
"Some," he admitted. "I'm not sure, haven't been keeping track."
He had to stop himself, realizing he'd been tapping his forefinger against the box in his trouser pocket: his constant companion in the form of precious jewelry. He just had to survive another hour or so of book browsing before he could take her to their dinner reservation at their favorite little Italian restaurant. There, in the middle of muggle London, with a Malfoy family heirloom, he would propose to this woman and promise her, officially and permanently, everything he had.
The meeting of muggle and magical felt right, felt important, and he hoped she thought so, too. He'd asked no one for permission: not his father, not hers. He'd thrown every tradition he knew of out the window, except for the ring itself. Their life together would theirs, and no one else's.
The idea of it all both emboldened and terrified him. His father didn't get a say in this. If Draco never started the disagreement, never included him in it to begin with, then Lucius couldn't win.
Hermione sighed again, hands dropping from her hips. She turned and pulled two more books from the shelf, forcing them into Draco's hands. She'd informed him long ago that if he insisted on stocking so many books she'd have to read, he bore the responsibility of carrying them for her. Not her soundest logic, but he complied regardless, a devoted follower to her word.
"Well. I suppose I'll be excellent for obscure biographical facts for famous persons whose surnames start with the letter E in pub trivia."
Draco hummed a sound of acknowledgement, distracted by the weight in his pocket and the drop of anxiety he should probably call anticipation in his throat.
"Though I suppose, we'd have to actually go to a pub trivia with Harry and Ginny to put my skills to use."
He hummed again, eyes searching for a clock somewhere in the shop with them. They had a very important reservation to keep.
She stepped into his line of sight, a brow lifted, hands back on her hips.
"Yes, darling, you'll be fantastic," he said, hoping it was the response she sought.
She let out a frustrated sound of protest. "That's not—what's wrong with you?"
The annoyance in her tone brought his full attention back to her. Not tonight. Not on this date. He wanted intentional irritation, the kind that wound her up. He didn't want irritation he didn't control, not the kind that could sour this day, not when he had such wonderful things planned.
"What do you mean?" he asked in an attempt at devastating nonchalance.
"You're acting odd." She tapped the cover on one of the books in his arms, narrowing her eyes up at him.
"I am not."
She let out a hollow laugh. "If you insist."
"I do."
"I think I know you well enough to know when you're in a mood."
"I am not in a mood."
She laughed again, but not in a cruel sort of way that would normally make Draco bristle; he hated being laughed at. Hermione's laugh, even if she was technically laughing at him, always had this edge of fondness, of kindness. Her laugh sidled up beside his lingering insecurities and said it's okay to laugh, too. In this instance, however, he did not. Instead, he scowled: an attempt to double down on his refutation.
"You're being evasive, nervous. Like that time you tried to give me a ruby necklace out of nowhere—"
Draco could feel himself blanching, blood draining from his face as he resisted the impulse towards a quick, surprised inhale. She didn't notice at first, still prattling on about his comparative quietness when normally he'd be mercilessly teasing her about the new books she had to buy. She caught his stiffness eventually, though, because she stopped, confusion and intuition battling in her features, analyzing his reaction.
"Draco?"
He hummed to acknowledge having heard her as he watched as a muscle in her neck jumped from the tension it snapped down her spine.
"About—family heirlooms. You're not"—she swallowed through a cough—"planning on giving me any, are you?"
What else could Draco do but sidestep such a question?
"Well—I did warn you I would. Eventually."
"Eventually."
"Eventually."
She blinked, tilting her head. She opened her mouth to say something else and Draco experienced a distinct, visceral fear that she was about to ruin everything with that beautiful mouth and terrible brain of hers. He rushed to cut her off.
"If I was considering it"—the words practically fell out of his mouth—"it's been over a year. Since the last time—"
"—Barely over a year—"
"—and we'd been together in some capacity for months before that. It's a long time to be with someone."
"I was with Ron for over three years."
Draco sucked in a breath. He twisted, setting the books he held on a nearby shelf, haphazardly shoving them in sideways, on top of several others being properly displayed. Even in the midst of this conversation, intense as it was, he saw Hermione's focus flicker, stuck on proper reshelving procedures.
"Please don't compare us," Draco begged for what felt like the thousandth time in his life. He knew she didn't do it on purpose, but she did it all the same. Everything could be broken down to a compare and contrast for Hermione Granger's impressive brain. "Three years is—an offensive amount of time for him to keep you in waiting."
"In waiting?" Her tone pitched higher, question ascending in her vocal cords.
"For a proposal."
"I thought we weren't comparing?"
"We're not."
"I don't know what kind of antiquated pureblood customs you ascribe to but three years is"—a pause—"reasonable."
"But not enough? Or enough that you knew?" Where Hermione's tone had lifted, his dropped. The edge in it, bordering on anger, shredded his hope for their evening, leaving gaping flaps where doubt could soar through.
"He did propose."
Draco had to take a step back, a stagger under that axis-shifting piece of information.
"He what?"
"I said no."
Clearly.
Obviously.
Gods.
"This isn't about Ron," she said, voice gentler. She matched the step he'd taken with her own. "It's not that I don't—that I wouldn't—Draco, I love you. I love you even though you keep having this shop stock more and more books so you can win a silly bet we made years ago."
She wrapped her fingers around his left wrist. More intimate than his forearm. Less intimate than his hand. A middle ground.
"I just don't think now is the right time," she said, a whisper. "If you were considering giving me more jewelry."
How could one woman possibly have the ability to so effectively break him apart and then pull him back together again. He reached out, put his hand over hers, lifted it to his lips. He watched as her eyes widened, then fluttered shut, just for a moment.
"I don't want your life to be in constant contention with your parents. I still think we could find a way to coexist." She brought her other hand to his face, fingers sweeping a lock of his hair behind his ear, not dissimilar to how he so often did the same with her. "I don't much cherish the idea of making nice with Lucius"—a strained expression—"but I can be civil. Mature. And I know your relationship with them is complicated. I don't want to make it any more so than I already have."
"I don't care, Hermione."
She blinked up at him.
"I don't care what they think," he said. "I don't care what they're ready for. It's our life, not theirs. Ours."
She pulled her hand away, smile dropping.
"I trust that you believe that. But I worry it won't actually be the case. I think it would catch up to you; you'd regret or resent the fallout that breaking your relationship with them any further would cause."
The ring in his pocket felt like the heaviest stone known to man, weighing him down, dragging him into the earth. He watched her face, waiting to see if she had any other ruthless assessments to layer onto her already vicious analysis.
He exhaled, breath heavy, heart exhausted.
He turned, pulling her books from the shelf again. He glanced at the titles and then nodded towards the checkout.
"You know a lot, Hermione. But you don't know everything."
She didn't respond as she followed him to pay for the books.
