Apricity – Chapter One

"But you know . . . Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn the light on."

Draco could see her, drowning beneath the ice.

Granger had always been the brightest ray of light in the room. She painted a smile onto a sunlit face every morning, and from the moment he saw her in their shared common room each morning to the moment she closed her dorm room door at night, she wore that smile like a suit of armor. A suit of armor weakened by the frost that had begun to gather in the grooves, collecting bit by bit as it froze her.

And he could tell—she wanted to freeze. She wanted to freeze because then she wouldn't have to think about being the person everyone expected her to be. If she were frozen, then everything could come to a complete halt, and she wouldn't have to be terrified anymore.

She was sitting out in the middle of a snow-covered field, shivering because she thought no one was watching.

She was wrong.

"How do you feel about that?"

Draco looked down at his best mate, blinking off the shroud of his thoughts. His cheeks grew hot as he realized he'd been staring out across the Great Hall at the Gryffindor table.

Specifically, to watch Hermione Granger as she categorized the different components of her salad on her plate by color. As odd as he found it, it wasn't the first time he'd seen her do strange things with her food. It wasn't the first time he'd seen her do something strange, for that matter, because she was a Muggle-born, and Muggle-borns did strange things.

He'd watched her eat and then watched her leave when she was done.

He didn't mean to, need to, or want to stare at her when he was trying to put her behind him. When he was trying to forget about the fact that everything was grey and had been grey since the Summer after Third Year. Though the despondency of whatever curse she'd placed on him had never gone away, it was bearable now. The staring just seemed to happen from time to time. Usually at mealtimes, and usually because she was doing something strange.

"What did you say?" Draco set his fork down on his empty plate, the colorful tattoos on his hand coming into view as he did so. The fork vanished immediately, as the dishes and cutlery tended to do at mealtimes.

Theo grinned. "I said I'm going to kill you. With snow. How do you feel about that?"

"I feel that that would not be ideal." Draco gathered his things up and began stuffing them into his satchel. "I may have to kill you in return. It's only fair."

"Naturally." Theo hopped to his feet and his grin turned wolflike. "But that would imply that you have the power to come back after death. You can't do that."

"I'm a Malfoy," Draco said as he slung his bag over his shoulder. "We have the power to do things you can't even imagine."

Theo narrowed his eyes, gullible as he was, and then pointed at him. "No. Nope. You can't do that. I'm laying you out with a giant snowball, or a sword made of snow, whichever feels more satisfying."

"Why not both?"

Theo's face lit up. "Both. I like both."

Together, the two of them left the Great Hall and headed for the Head common room. As Draco walked, he felt several sets of eyes following their pathway.

He was used it.

In Seventh Year, the last thing his parents had been doing was watching his behavior, and after the Headmaster's death, the Dark Lord had been more interested in his plans overall. With no one watching him, Draco had spent the entire year getting tattoos.

The first one was for fun.

He was drunk, Zabini was insistent, and they were wandering Muggle London for the Hell of it. He hadn't expected it to hurt—nor had the tattoo artist expected the amount of blood that came out due to him having been drinking—but the longer he sat under the needle, the more he found he liked it.

Perhaps it was the vibration. Perhaps it was the pain itself. Perhaps the tattoo was the only thing that he could see in color when everything else was grey.

He wanted more.

So, he got another one the following week. And another one. Then two more. After he discovered a simple pain potion was enough to turn the feeling of the needles into an addiction and a charm sped up the healing process, he got five more within one month. All he had to do was go to Gringott's, exchange galleons for pounds, and he was back to the same tattoo artist.

By the end of April, Draco's arms, chest, abdomen, and back were covered in every color he could think of. Blues, reds, greens, solid black lines, white shading . . . The tattoos were random but they told a story—one that only Draco knew the plot of, and one that he would likely never be able to explain.

And when he couldn't get the image of Granger's veins being melted by the Cruciatus on the floor of his home out of his head, he went and got tattoos across the base of the front of his neck. They stretched across his collarbones, choking him. He didn't take a pain potion before he went.

He got tattoos on the back of his hands to cope with his father's trial, and he got some on the back of his neck to cope with his mother's death. He had so many now that he wasn't sure what to get next.

So, he wasn't surprised that everyone liked to stare at him now.

He probably looked like a Death Eater.

The Head common room was located in the same corridor, behind a more recent portrait of Professor Dumbledore. Draco hated facing the portrait, even though he'd found himself drunkenly apologizing to it after a Hogsmeade trip just last month, but today he was more focused on getting back to the dorm room so he could bundle up before they went outside.

That, and he didn't want to run into Granger unless he had to. It was bad enough sleeping in a room beside hers, but it was even worse knowing that in all the years he'd been seeing her in his dreams, on the night of August 17th, 1998, he'd seen her in a nightmare.

He didn't know what he'd seen or what had happened because it was dark and confusing, but he knew that something had changed in her since then. Something that he hadn't felt before in whatever bond it was they shared.

"You're so lucky," Theo whined, a lock of his wavy dark brown hair falling forward into his eyes. He was much shorter than Draco—who stood over six-foot—and one step of Draco's were two of his.

"Why?"

"Because you get your own dorm room, your own common room with a—with a kitchen, Draco! Do not rob me of my envy!" Theo held up a dramatic finger when Draco tried to protest his apparent fortune.

Draco rolled his eyes and spoke with sarcasm. "No one is trying to rob you. You're welcome to skive off the usage of my personal kitchenette."

"Didn't you say Granger's always there, though? How does she feel about guests using her cooker? Can I keep leftovers in your fridge? They never let me have leftovers at dinner, and—"

"She lurks about." Draco cut him off as they came to the portrait. Sometimes, Theo wore on his nerves, but they'd been friends for so long that there was no way he was letting him fall off the back of the broom anytime soon.

Averting his eyes from the calm gaze of his former Headmaster, Draco muttered the password. It swung open and he led the way inside.

Greeted by the Christmas decorations Granger had put up a week ago, Draco held in a sigh of frustration. He was sick to death of the lights. He could tolerate the floating candles and stars twinkling on the ceiling, but he'd had it with the smell of gingerbread.

His eyes swept over the tree in the corner, a sourness pulling the corners of his lips down, and he made a mental note to put some sort of wrapped gift underneath it so it didn't look so . . . Poor in their shared common room.

What a wild first week of November.

"Whoa," Theo said, eyes widening as he looked at all of the nonsense Granger had put up. "It looks like Christmas blew up in here. It reminds me of—"

"Hell?"

"Not particularly, but . . ." Theo snorted with laughter. "I mean, what sort-of Hell d'you think they're sending us to? If there's gifts, sign me the fuck up."

Draco hung his satchel up on a hook, a distasteful eye landing on Granger's discarded things all over the floor and couch. She'd obviously been studying at the coffee table, and there were two plates and a bowl that had been emptied of food. He cast a glance down the hallway and saw that the door to the loo was shut. He pressed his lips together in a thin line.

"You're mistaken," he bit out through clenched teeth as he glared. "This already is Hell."

Theo looked around and crossed his arms over his chest. He grimaced. "I would have thought Granger was the clean sort. This is . . . Well."

"Unfathomable." Draco ripped his wand out of his sleeve and brandished it. He had lost count of how many times he'd told Granger in a calm tone to tidy up after herself, and he was about ready to stop using a calm tone. He was starting to want to raise his voice, and the last time he raised his voice to another person, it was to Potter.

Granger's books and papers floated to neat stack on the center of the table, and her plates and bowl carried themselves to the kitchen sink. As they set themselves to wash, her purse floated to one of the other hooks on the coat rack, hanging beside his bag. Then, the velvet pillow she'd been using to sit on returned itself to the couch.

Draco brushed past Theo so he could adjust the pillow to his exact liking, his forehead aching from how hard he was glowering.

"I don't think I've ever seen you look so troubled," Theo said, sounding amused.

"I'm going to put wards up to keep her out of the damn sitting room," Draco growled, "if she doesn't knock this shite off."

As he straightened, he turned to face Theo, who looked almost disturbed.

"What?"

"It's weird."

"What's weird?" Draco asked.

"You." He thought Theo's eyes were going to remain perpetually narrowed into slits at this point.

"How am I weird?"

"No, you're not weird. You're being weird. There's a difference."

"No, there's not."

"Oh yes, there is."

"How am I weird?" Draco was so close to yelling.

"You saying 'she' in reference to Granger is weird, mate. You spent the past seven years treating her like rubbish. Like, you didn't even treat her like the rubbish in the bin." Theo lifted his hands and moved them about, pantomiming the shape of a trash can. "You treated her like the bin the rubbish goes into, and then you threw your rubbish into her for seven years. Mate, it's weird."

"It's not weird."

Theo shook his head. "Yeah, it's a—it's a little weird."

Draco knew it was weird. He knew it was all sorts of barmy that he'd put so much time and effort into diminishing a person whose existence had no bearing against his, all because he thought she'd cursed him. He'd acted like the fact that she breathed was a personal attack on his magical core; like the fact that Muggle-borns existed was a threat to Pureblood wizards everywhere.

It was a prime example of his father's venom seeping into his veins and poisoning him from the inside out. After his mother's death that July, he'd made a vow to stop subscribing to the toxic ideals that had caused the war in the first place. If it weren't for those ideals, his mother never would have turned to food to reconcile her stress levels.

"Yeah, yeah," Draco snapped, waving his tattooed hand in a dismissive motion. "But remember that I'm Head Boy. I can take points away from you. So many points."

Theo threw his head back and laughed. "Yeah, you can do that, huh? You're gonna take points away from your own House?"

Draco smirked and moved to retort, but the door to the loo opened suddenly, drawing the boys' attention.

Granger stepped out, looking a little surprised to see Theo standing there. It was only the second time that he'd been in the dorm, and Draco didn't think he'd ever seen her have a friend back to their shared common room. With Potter at the Ministry in Auror training, he saw her either with the Weaselbee, or surrounded by students of all ages for different school-related things.

It looked as though she had quite a lot of friends, so he surmised that either she was a private person, or she was not really friends with any of those people. As for the Weasel, Draco had a feeling she knew that putting him and Weasley in the same room was a bad idea.

Especially with the knowledge that only two people in the entire world knew that Draco and Granger had kissed before.

"Are you just gonna stand there staring, or are you going to be polite?" Draco arched one eyebrow and gestured to a very uncomfortable-looking Theo with mock-theatrics. "This is Theo, although seeing as he fought for the Order, you've met."

Granger ran a hand along her waist-length curls, tousling them backward. "I was just surprised to see you still had friends."

Her words smashed into him like rocks, and he fought the urge to flinch. Something about her insults hit harder than they should have. Like she could burn him with her voice.

He supposed he deserved that, after everything he'd done. He and Granger didn't "speak," so it wasn't like he'd ever had the chance to sit her down and "talk" about the past. And how could he apologize to her for things that likely didn't even bother her? Salazar, the witch had punched him in the face in Third Year and slapped him in the face after snogging him. She was probably doing just fine.

Still. He wasn't a monster. He obviously had friends.

"Yes, Granger, I know it's hard to believe."

Granger walked out of the hall and into the room, her gaze rolling across the tidied-up sitting room, and then he saw her brows knitting together. She walked over to the coffee table and bent over to gather up her books and papers. Draco caught sight of the fact that she was only wearing an oversized jumper and some sort of black cotton trousers that clung to her like a second skin, and he felt his heart going a bit faster.

He averted his eyes to Theo, who was still grimacing.

"Yes, Theo, it's always this awkward," he drawled. "Is that what you were wanting to say?"

"Uhh . . . No, I . . . That's not . . ." Theo's eyes wide, he looked back and forth.

She stood there, hugging her books against her chest as she stared directly into Theo's eyes. She was shorter than both boys, coming only to about Draco's chest, but with the way she carried herself, she seemed taller than both of them.

"It is awkward," she said.

Theo winced. "Yeah, it's a little . . . A little bit so."

It wouldn't be so awkward if Granger wasn't such a right bitch half the time. She said things in a blunt manner and Slytherins—most Pureblood wizards, for that matter—were not accustomed to speaking what was on their minds so easily. Especially not when it could cause negative emotions to breed. Draco had always been the bluntest of his group of friends, always feeling the urge to say what he really thought lest anyone form preconceived notions about him and use them against him.

But he wasn't used to not being the only one.

"In the bathroom for forty-five minutes as usual, Granger?" Draco's voice held a note of challenge as he viewed her.

"Interested in my bathroom activities, Malfoy?" She raised the gentle arch of one eyebrow, which he noticed was as perfectly trimmed as Pansy Parkinson's. "In spite of those tattoos, I didn't take you for that sort of wizard."

Draco ran a hand through his hair in agitation as he once again considered raising his voice. "How would you know what sort of wizards there are? That would require you to have actually interacted with some outside of your two personal idiots."

Her eyes flashed. "I've had enough interactions to know what different types of wizards there are."

"Who?" Draco smirked. "Krum?"

Granger looked up at him then, and Draco was reminded of the fact that the only time that he ever saw her face looking so somber was when she was addressing him.

"I hardly think it's got anything to do with you, but yes, Krum was my boyfriend." She was pale in the face, but her eyes were alight with indignation.

"Yes, because your one-time encounter with a paedophile told you everything you needed to know about what sorts of wizards are out there."

The flames died out within her eyes.

His sneer faltered and disappeared. He hadn't meant to hit any nerves, but it seemed that he had.

He'd hit a big nerve.

"Ohhh, dear." Theo scrubbed his face with his hands and pulled the largest grimace Draco had ever seen him pull.

Granger lowered her eyes for a moment, a strange expression that looked like a mix between puzzlement and languor crossing her face, and then she blinked.

Draco let out his breath and then cleared his throat. He opened his mouth to speak, but it felt like the walls of the room were closing in on him. He wasn't an arsehole. He really wasn't. He didn't want to be, but it was Granger, and she was driving him off his broom mad. With the books on the floor and the dishes and the bathroom trips and—

"You cleaned," she finally said in a tight voice, just when Draco thought he was going to pass out from how thick the air was in the common room. Her eyes scanned the area, roving the floors and the couch as if seeing them for the first time.

"It was a mess."

"Everything was exactly where I left it." Her gaze lifted to his.

"It was a mess," Draco repeated in a slow, incredulous tone.

Theo held up his forefingers. "An organized mess."

Granger and Draco both stared at him. Draco wanted to hex all of the hair off of Theo's head, but Granger laughed. She actually laughed and Draco couldn't help it. He stared.

She had a ridiculously nice set of teeth. Had they always been that white?

He turned to look at Theo, who was looking right back at him with a curious expression on his face. Draco shot him a quick, irritated look while Granger was looking over her shoulder at the kitchenette.

"Yes, my messes are rather organized," she said. "Hm. You even took my dishes, too."

"Right. That."

"Yes. That." She pursed her lips and furrowed her brow, twisting her mouth as though she were lost in thought.

"'That'? What is 'that'?" Theo looked confused.

"The Princess of Gryffindor doesn't like her dishes being touched, moved, cleaned, or otherwise acknowledged," Draco said in a saccharine-sweet tone, his upper lip curling.

"Why?" Theo asked, scratching the back of his head.

Draco turned to Granger. "Yes, Your Majesty. Why?"

As usual, he saw her gaze dip down to the tattoos on his neck and collarbones, and the ones on the part of his chest that disappeared into the open top button of his Oxford shirt. She'd never done much to show whether she approved of them or not, but he wouldn't be shocked if she thought they were reprehensible. She certainly stared at them enough.

He wondered if she knew what guilt they represented.

She glared at him for a moment before she turned her nose up into the air. She tossed her hair behind her shoulder, holding her things against her body with one arm. When she answered, she sounded so much like she had when they were younger that Draco almost felt like his mother was still alive. He pushed down the well of grief that threatened to rise up, refocusing his attention.

"I just don't like my dishes touched when I haven't finished my food," she said, and then she turned on her heel.

"The dishes were empty, Granger!" Draco spluttered.

Granger whirled back around. "They were—"

"In all fairness . . . !" Theo clapped his hands once and rubbed them together a bit. "They were empty. They looked empty."

"Unless you preferred to have a lick of the bowls?" Draco said in a sarcastic tone.

Granger went pale again and without another word, turned and stalked off. Moments later, her dorm room door slammed shut. Theo let out an audible sigh of relief.

"Salazar's beard, that was . . . That was a thing."

Draco glared down the hall, not replying. This wasn't the first time he'd had a negative interaction with Granger, and he was sure it wouldn't be the last. In fact, if she kept leaving her mess all over the common room, he was certain of it.


May 1998

Narcissa Malfoy died two weeks after the Battle of Hogwarts.

It was completely unexpected, as with most deaths, and it hit the Malfoy Manor like a lightning bolt. In the midst of Lucius's trial, which had been expedited in light of his war crimes, Narcissa's sudden coronary came as a shock to not only her family, but to the wizarding world at large.

It was common knowledge that Narcissa had gotten swept up by the darkness of the Malfoy family, in spite of being a Black, and no one in the Order had any desire to put her up for scrutiny under the umbrella of Lucius's dark deeds. And when the information came to light that she had lied to the Dark Lord to spare Harry Potter's life, it was no difficult feat to pardon her of any and all wrongdoing. The wizarding world had laws, but they were built on an archaic foundation of honor and loyalty.

But even though she'd been pardoned, the amount of reputational stress she was under was immense.

Narcissa passed in the middle of the third part of Lucius's trial—the day his victims were testifying to the horrible curses he'd placed on them and their family members. Chirimy Babbitt was on the stand, crying and wailing about her son's perpetually bleeding eyes, when all-of-the-sudden, Narcissa gave a loud plea for help.

She slumped over before anyone realized what was going on, falling right into the lap of her terrified son, and was dead.

Healers scrutinized her body, looking as deep as their magic could go, but they found no blood curses and no dark magic. It would seem that her untimely, definitely-not-expected death was quite Muggle. Aurors suspected foul play, as they were wont to do in the after-war times, and Minister Shacklebolt proclaimed that the incident would be investigated thoroughly, starting with a sweep of the entirety of Malfoy Manor.

Draco Malfoy, however, knew exactly what had killed his mother, and it was the last thing he wanted anyone to know.

Narcissa was a private person, and she was proper. She would not have wanted anyone privy to her secrets that she had not given her confidence to, and the last thing she deserved was to have her shame blasted all over the Daily Prophet in the middle of her husband's trial.

After giving his father one last devastated look before he was led out of the courtroom for an extended recess, he schooled his features into a mask of Pureblood indifference and allowed himself to be escorted home for the evening. When he got there, he did the one thing that he knew was necessary.

Without the use of House Elves—to ensure absolute secrecy—Draco went through the entire Manor the night of her death. With meticulous hands, he collected all of the food that his mother had stashed in hidden pockets in the walls. He left not a single morsel.

He knew he could not use magic to destroy it, as his wand could be checked and spell remnants could be detected, so he gathered it by hand and deposited it into an old chest that belonged to his great-grandfather. He took the treats she'd hidden in her drawers, and the perishables that were stuffed in the chiffarobe, behind invisible blockades in the wall beside her chair in the tea room, and inside of an expensive but old purse in her closet.

Draco put all of it into the chest and carried it out of the house, past her rose garden which now seemed lifeless, and through the woods on their property. He traveled across the magical border and then did something he'd done countless times during Seventh Year to get tattoos: he gathered all of his magic to him and wandlessly Apparated to Muggle London.

In an alley he found himself in, he took out his wand and shrunk the chest down until it was small. Then, he tossed it into the rubbish can nearby and set the entire thing on fire with an incendio. He watched it burn with the cold efficacy of the Death Eater he used to be, and then he returned home to finish his task.

He was stoic and silent while he cleaned her loo by hand, using a cloth, soap, and water. He scrubbed and he scrubbed and he scrubbed, even when the porcelain was glistening white. He scrubbed until sweat was rolling down his temples and his hair was damp from it. Even then, he scrubbed some more.

His mother had always kept her loo clean, but they'd been in a hurry that day. She hadn't gotten the chance to clean it, and she would never have asked a House Elf to do it and risk anyone finding out.

But Draco had known all along. He'd known it since the first time he woke up in the middle of the night as a young boy and found her eating a plate full of food at three-o-clock in the morning. He'd known it when she sat on his bed that day in the Summer, asking him how often he dreamed.

His mother was a Legilimens, and she'd passed it down to him. He now knew she probably walked through his dreams with him while she ate.

"Just a little bit of a snack, my dragon," she'd said the night he'd discovered her, and even back then, the sparkle had dulled in her eyes. "Go back to bed."

He hadn't gone back to bed. He'd sat on the bottom of the stairs and listened while she continuously had House Elves refill her plate. He hadn't known exactly what was going on—he'd just heard her crying. He couldn't tell if it was the food that was making her sad, or if it was something else that was about so much more than food.

When all was said and done in Narcissa's bathroom, he sat down on the floor of his parents' bedroom with his back to the bed, and wept.