February
tick tock tick tock tick tock tick tock
Draco hired several clerks to work in the shop despite Blaise's not-so-subtle suggestions that they shouldn't expand their staff, at least not until they had a few months of business under their belts. Draco countered with a reminder that the plan had never been for either of them to work with customers: Blaise would manage the books, Draco would brew the stock. No customer should ever have to deal with either of their faces, Draco's especially.
That logic fit nicely with Draco's inconveniently-timed inability to focus on the thing he'd spent years trying to bring to life. Apart from the catharsis he found brewing stock and not thinking about anything else, he struggled to even walk into the shop, knowing that most of the reason he'd opened it to begin with had been his own financial independence. It had been for him, but it had also been for her.
The air shifted around Draco—an odd angle, a different texture, a bit of a swirl—before it stabilized. He turned to find Theo standing just inside the doorway to his home potions lab, antique key clutched in one hand, eyes screwed shut. Slowly, Theo opened one eye, then the other.
"Oh, excellent. I've survived."
It was a phrase Draco might have found alarming several years earlier, before Theo's descent into experimenting with portkey modifications and testing them on himself—and others—as if that were a perfectly safe thing to do.
"Portkey inside a building?"
"Both coming and going, and I didn't come here first to plot the destination in person. I used some roundabout location techniques—"
"Theo—I'm normally quite interested in your mad magical experimenting, but I'm hoping you're here for a reason." Draco cast several stasis charms on his cauldrons, trying to suppress the surge of anxiety that welled in his chest, crowding out the space behind his ribs with terrible anticipation. He'd seen very little of Theo since their early morning discussion of time travel mechanics and the promise that Theo would see what he could do.
Theo's running list of magical modifications halted. He cleared his throat.
"Right." He reached into his cloak's interior pocket, procuring the time turner Draco had only seen in person once before, but that had taken up so much space inside his head.
It swung on a gold chain: a tiny hourglass in a metal cage.
"I did what you asked," Theo said, letting the implications hang between them with the swaying time turner.
"Thirty minutes?"
"Should be. Since it only travels in time, not space, it has to be used in the exact place you want to be when you travel. And"—Theo dragged his opposite hand through his short hair, grabbing at the roots—"if it's being used to travel in years or fractions of years, it would need to be used at the exact time and day of the month someone would want to travel to. I can't seem to get it more precise than that. So, if someone needed to attend a six o'clock dinner on the twenty-fifth of December, someone would need to use it at six o'clock on the twenty-fifth of whatever month they're travelling from, you see."
"Someone?"
"I'm being intentionally vague."
"Why?"
"Because I still haven't decided if I should let you use it."
"Theo—"
"I know, I know. Of course I'm going to let you use it; I've been working on it for almost a month. I just—" he broke off and thrust the turner closer to Draco, as he looked pointedly in a different direction. Perhaps not bearing witness made it easier for Theo.
Draco reached out, closed his fist around the chain, and waited with an arched brow for Theo to let go. After a series of what looked like calming breaths, Theo did. The top of the chain dangled limply onto Draco's closed fist.
"So. The twenty-fifth, then?" Theo asked.
It took Draco a moment to catch up with the question, stare fixed on the glinting golden object dangling from his hand: the power to change.
The twenty-fifth of December, Christmas day. The dinner with his parents.
"Hermione and I stepped through the Floo five minutes before six."
Theo nodded. "I want to be here. In case—just to be safe."
"Sure," Draco said, suddenly feeling rather numb, rather surreal, like none of this was really happening. Three days separated them from the twenty-fifth of February. In three days, at five minutes to six, he would stand in front of his fireplace using the object in his hands to do—something. Anything. Everything.
—
After three days of nearly no sleep, constantly thinking about what he would do, and a persistent headache that told him he needed to take better care of his body before it collapsed beneath him, Draco stood in front of his fireplace in the exact same outfit he'd worn two months prior. He watched the clock as Theo hovered nervously in his periphery.
"It's set to today's date?" Theo asked for the fourth time in the last five minutes.
"Yes, Theo—"
"It's important—so it knows how long the months are."
"You've mentioned."
"And you must be extremely precise. One month is only .083 repeating of a full turn, it's a very small movement. And you're only going two months—pay very close attention to the notches I've made on the frame around the hourglass—"
"Theo, I know."
"Why aren't you more nervous?"
"I am. Why are you so nervous?"
"This is very illegal."
"So are your portkeys."
"This is Azkaban illegal. Not fines. Not community service. Not probation. You know that right? You will never see anything beyond a prison cell again if this goes badly."
"It won't go badly, Theo. You're brilliant. This is going to work."
Theo did not seem convinced, alternating between wringing his hands and crossing his arms. They both stared at the grandfather clock in the corner of the living room.
"One minute," Theo said, announcing what Draco already knew. He hadn't torn his eyes from the ticking second hand since quarter-til. "Reverse spin, .166 of a full turn." Theo's voice came out barely a whisper, a final repetition of the instructions he'd been yammering since he arrived.
"I'll be careful," Draco offered, knowing it wouldn't help.
He saw Theo nodding from the corner of his eye, still fixated on the clock. "Just don't let Lucius win, yeah?"
"Never again."
Five minutes until six.
Draco would have preferred that his hands had been completely steady. Rather, they shook, nerves prickling beneath his skin and hijacking his fine motor skills.
He lifted the turner to eye level and, with a deep breath, unlocked the hourglass from its resting position. He turned it, barely a move at all, until the two notches on the frame were just aligned—representative of two months of a full year.
The world spun. He'd forgotten how it felt: like cotton in his ears and film over his eyes. Blurred and stretched and disorienting until suddenly—normal.
He turned his head to the left; Theo had vanished.
The flat smelled different: less stale, more living.
He turned further, finding the green tufted sofa sitting in the room with him. Crookshanks sat perched atop it, head cocked to one side as if his little feline senses knew.
"Alright, it's as smooth as I'm going to get it—"
Draco's heart nearly stopped, a painful lurch behind his ribs that felt like a bad portkey, or a muggle movie.
Hermione emerged from the corridor, looking far more nervous than he remembered, hands twisting at the ends of her long curls clipped in a half-up style.
It took his breath away, seeing her, not having her look at him with those eyes that did nothing to mask her disappointment and her grief. He thought he'd prepared himself for the inevitability of seeing her, seeing her in a version—a time—of his life where she hadn't vanished entirely.
Gods, he'd missed her.
Gods, he loved her.
He wouldn't let his father reduce him to the kind of man she didn't want in her life, the kind of man he didn't want to be. Not again, not anymore.
"You look beautiful," he breathed, words rushing out of him before he could even consider if they were the ones he intended to speak. Already, a difference from the original timeline. He'd not told her that, then. What were the consequences to telling her she was beautiful, to loving her as he did?
She stopped, a misstep, head tilted as she smiled, one curl still knotted around her knuckle.
"Thank you. You look—are you alright? You look a bit peaky, actually."
He almost laughed. He probably looked like he'd lost some weight and hadn't seen the sun in several weeks. He rallied, forced the hammering inside his chest to calm; he had thirty minutes.
But he could be allowed one small moment, couldn't he?
He stepped forward, heart stuttering again as she lifted her hands to skate up his chest: so easy, so natural. That ease pulled him the rest of the way in, head dipping, a near kiss. Her fingers continued their ascent, wrapping around the back of his neck, dragging through his hair.
He wanted to kiss her, desperately so, but something in the pit of his stomach held him a breath away, simply savoring this opportunity at nearness. He'd known how much loving could hurt; he'd learned that early on. But he'd forgotten some of the fear. It surged now, such a close reminder of what he had to lose.
"It's going to go well," Hermione said. Her beautiful fingers sent sparks shooting down his spine.
He lifted his hand, placed it atop hers against the back of his neck. "Just because you're displeased with your hair, doesn't mean you should ruin mine."
What an easy thing to say, things he missed saying.
She smiled and it solidified his resolve, crystalizing his amorphous wants and needs to fix into the strategy he'd spent the last few weeks ruminating over, torturing himself with.
He offered her his arm and they stepped through the Floo: a dizzying blur of green, the feel of her hand gripping his forearm.
If he had an eternity and not just thirty minutes, he might never let her go.
Instead, he clenched his jaw as they followed Topsy to the dining room, dread swelling like a growing wave in his stomach, carrying him towards a crash against the shore.
"You seem tense—well, more tense," Hermione said, offering a pulse of pressure against his arm as they walked. He barely faltered, but he felt certain she noticed. He hadn't expected the repetition to hit him quite so hard. He'd known it would happen, after all, but hearing her voice the same concern for his tension that she had the first time he'd been here stung in his sinuses.
"I love you," he said as they walked, having no other excuse or explanation.
When the doors to the dining room swung open, he faced his parents for the first time since Christmas day, the first Christmas day, the other Christmas day.
Just like before, his parents had already taken their seats, hors d'oeuvres already presented on the tabletop. And just as before, Narcissa rose, eyes catching on Draco's exposed Dark Mark. He'd somehow managed to forget, even though he'd rolled his sleeves himself not so long ago, that it had been left on display, another weapon in his arsenal.
He'd almost felt guilty about that, the first time he'd been here. Now, he enjoyed it, a vindictive part of him wanted her to see it, to feel some measure of guilt or shame or disgust.
Just like before, Lucius did not stand.
"Son," he said. "Ministry Representative Granger."
Hermione's fingertips dug into his arm for a beat before she released him, as if determined to stand on her own.
"Hello," she said, a tiny waver in her words. "You may call me Hermione. The formality is hardly necessary." She pivoted her gaze from Lucius to Narcissa. "Your dining room looks lovely."
Narcissa smiled, not quite as forced. "Thank you. Please, sit."
Already, Draco had difficulty keeping track of the things that happened exactly as they had before, and the things that had been altered. What had felt like a perfect memory of their evening sagged under the weight of thousands and thousands of little things that transpired in every second of every minute.
When Draco took his seat, he checked his grandfather's pocket watch; he'd already spent ten of his thirty minutes.
He wouldn't have time to sit through several courses of awkward, painful conversation, waiting for the moment when everything fell apart. He'd have to break it first, in order to fix it the way it needed to be fixed.
When Draco was seven, he and Theo had snuck out on their toy brooms in the Nott gardens. They'd flown way too far, way too fast, in pursuit of a real snitch they'd nicked from a set at Malfoy Manor. Draco had lost control of his broom trying to loop too quickly around a grand, three tiered fountain; he'd rolled, fallen, and landed on hard stone with his outstretched arm, losing the snitch and breaking his wrist in the process. The snitch had been from his father's set, one he'd been expressly forbidden from touching in the past. He hadn't wanted to disappoint his father, so he hid his wrist inside his robes when Narcissa picked him up later in the day.
He couldn't hide it indefinitely, though.
When his parents found out, naturally they'd called for a healer. Draco's wrist had to be rebroken before it could be set correctly. It had started healing improperly: a malunion, they'd called it. The healer gave him a dose of Skele-Gro, a sleeping potion, and by the next morning, his wrist was in perfect working order again.
This dinner didn't feel so different from that: rebreaking a bone that set incorrectly the first time around. A malunion. That's what this was, after all, wasn't it? A bad coming together.
He would need to cut straight to the point of this dinner.
He allowed for five minutes of pained pleasantries.
He sliced through a piece or Cornish Hen, speared a vegetable, took a bite, chewed and swallowed.
Then, he spoke.
"Mother, Father. Shall we skip ahead to the part where you explain why you've decided to insult us by forgoing the most basic social etiquette for receiving guests in your home?"
His voice came out so sharp, so level, so startlingly loud that it surprised even him as it rang through the room. Hermione's head snapped towards him: eyes wide, a deep vertical line between her brows.
"Did you expect Hermione not to notice and me not to say anything?" He directed the question straight at Lucius, barreling down the long table between them.
"Am I to take from this petulant outburst that the basic social etiquette we have employed in allowing this woman to join us at our dinner table on a holiday is not sufficient for your childish wants?"
So very near to the first time. Some reactions were bound to the magic in one's veins, it seemed.
Narcissa cut in, just as she did before.
"It's not—personal, Miss Granger. Not as it has been in the past. But the matters of an Estate require certain considerations." She glanced at Draco, then at Lucius, before returning her focus to Hermione, who sat with a sort of grim determination on her face. "Draco carries two pureblood lineages in his veins, are you aware of that?"
Hermione squared her shoulders: a beautiful specimen in resistance. Draco had forgotten how powerful she could look. Even sitting at a too large dinner table occupied by four.
"Yes, Mrs. Malfoy. I am aware of Draco's past, and of the considerations of an Estate."
Words flew, zipping across the table; he'd forgotten how quickly things had devolved, trapped in his own horror.
"You are not ignorant, then?" Lucius demanded. "You realize what you will cost him: social status, a fortune, his family name? Generations, centuries of history and tradition? You know and you simply don't care? You wish to take my son from me? From his mother, his family?"
"That's why we're here, Mr. Malfoy. This doesn't have to be a zero sum game." Draco heard her deliberation in every carefully articulated syllable.
"And what, pray tell, does that mean?" Lucius snapped.
Hermione flushed, faltered as the words with which she took such care missed their mark entirely. This time, Draco knew what she'd meant.
"It's a theory about gains and losses," he said. "It means that Hermione believes I can still have a relationship with the two of you regardless of my relationship with her."
"She believes? And what of you, my son?"
"I believe you'll revoke access to my accounts should I continue my relationship with her. That you will use this family's money as leverage to get what you want, as you always have."
"Draco," Narcissa said, silver clattering against her plate. She looked at him as if she couldn't quite believe the accusations he'd just hurled.
Hermione looked at him, too. Her expression differed from Narcissa's disbelief. Hermione's look said she couldn't understand him, not in that moment. She had no idea that it had all been hopeless from the start.
"Draco," Hermione started, before Lucius cut her off with his fist slamming down on the table.
"Do you have any idea, girl, the price I've paid to preserve this family? I won't have you tearing it to pieces. In the war alone—"
Draco remembered this part, perhaps more keenly than the rest. Branded into his brain the same way a mark had been branded onto his skin. He savored getting to shout at his father over it one more time. He let himself feel the anger, feel the rage forged by the two months of misery he'd endured because of this pathetic fucking dinner conversation.
"The war? You treated me like cannon fodder, nearly got me killed—"
"Some things couldn't be helped—he would have killed us all."
The first time they'd had this fight, Draco remembered Lucius sounding vicious here, terrifying. Now, he seemed closer to unhinged, to desperate. Draco couldn't decide if he wanted to laugh or scream.
The second time, it happened like this:
He didn't believe his father. Even if it had been a sense of preservation, of wanting to keep all of them alive, that drove him to make the many and varied terrible and unforgivable decisions he'd made during the war, that didn't excuse his actions now. Not the way he treated Hermione. Not the way he treated Draco. He didn't believe that the potential loss of his only son mattered as much to him as his demeanor suggested.
For too long, sidestepping conflict with his father had included with it the comorbidity of maintaining a relationship with him, tenuous and conditional as it was. Even Narcissa, who nearly broke Draco's heart every time he saw her trying, and failing, to force a middle ground where there was none, had limits he did not think she would overcome. Limits that would prevent her from accepting Hermione as a permanent part of his life. Draco could no longer avoid conflict with forced civility in the way Narcissa would have it. Poise and grace and conversation held exclusively through subtext only masked the beliefs she held to as tightly as Lucius did, excusing nothing.
Hermione would be a permanent part of his life.
He wouldn't let his father win this time, not again, not now.
"That's a weak excuse and you know it," Draco said, chest shaking as he exhaled. Adrenaline nearly burned him up. He'd hidden from the flames before, sinking into the cold reprieve his Occlumency offered. Now, he embraced the heat.
Draco had never seen his father's face flush so red, features so twisted in anger.
"Excuse me?"
"Hermione is my family. If you care so much about preserving and protecting this family, then you will find a way to accept her."
Lucius stood from his seat, palms pressed flat against the table as he leaned over his plate. Even now, with all his resolve, the steel in Lucius's gaze nearly forced Draco to balk, shrinking away from the source of that anger.
"This is not a negotiation," Lucius seethed, venom spit like a serpent.
Between Draco and his father, Narcissa and Hermione watched as if this dinner had become their worst nightmares, though perhaps for very different reasons.
"If you do not end your dalliance with this girl I will revoke access to your accounts. All of them. You'll live as a pauper—"
"Do it."
Lucius blinked. The dining room was big enough that if Draco had shouted, he imagined his words would have echoed, knocking on walls and windows as they mocked their recipient. But he hadn't shouted. He'd spoken evenly, in a normal speaking voice, the request he'd waited the whole meal to make.
Lucius blinked again, evidently clearing his head of the fog Draco's demand had cast on him.
"You will have nothing," Lucius spat. "No money, no connections, no nice secret flat paid for by this Estate. I'll have you disinherited. What prospects do you imagine there are for a disinherited Malfoy with The Dark Lord's mark on his arm?"
"Lucius!" Narcissa's voice rang sharp and tight, practically shredding the tablecloth between them.
Draco shot from his chair, pulse pounding behind his ears. He'd never been consciously aware of baring his teeth before, but he could feel it in the painful grimace twisting and stretching his lips.
"It's your fucking fault I have it in the first place." He could nearly feel his mark burning, on display. He didn't know who'd weaponized it now. "Keep your money, keep every fucking knut."
He thought about smashing his plate or throwing his silver, something to exercise the wildfire thundering through his veins.
Instead, all the glass in the dining room shattered.
Goblets, chandeliers, windows: all of it.
The next instant, Hermione had her wand out, immobilizing the explosion. Had she sensed it? His impending loss of control?
Thousands—perhaps millions—of shards hung in the air between them, glittering almost like snow.
Hermione muttered a spell and the glass disintegrated, dust falling to the tabletop, contaminating their meal. When he looked at her, she had a tiny trickle of blood seeping through her right eyebrow.
His heart sank.
Whatever he might have done next got swallowed up by a blur, a spin, cotton in his ears and film over his eyes. A sensation not unlike a portkey, pulling him into alignment with his own body in the new version of a timeline he'd just made.
—
Draco blinked, blurred vision sharpening.
Back in his flat, standing in front of his fireplace again. He grabbed at his pockets; the time turner had vanished.
It wasn't the only thing.
He turned to find an empty space where a green tufted sofa once sat. Which meant Hermione had gotten to Eliot in this new version of events, too. His eyes caught on all the other empty spaces around him that once held her things: books missing from the bookcases, a throw blanket missing from the back of an armchair, her traveling cloak missing from the coat rack.
He released a breath, shoulders sinking, spine collapsing. He spun, nearly jumping out of skin at a sound from the kitchen.
Theo emerged, a tumbler of whisky in each of his hands. Draco whipped his head back around, confirming the time on the grandfather clock: just under five minutes until six.
"I thought I told you to sit down. I'm not letting you use it again right now. Sit. Drink." Theo forced a tumbler in Draco's hands.
He blinked, rubbed his temple, and tried to make sense of Theo's words.
"You—you know I've already used it?"
Theo landed in the black leather wingback beside the fireplace. He shook his head, drew a breath, and looked up at Draco with question. "Yes?" he said, voice lilting, turning what might have been a statement into a question. "Fifteen minutes ago—"
"No, just now."
"Wait—what?"
"I just used it. Five minutes to six."
"You mean fifteen minutes to six."
"No, five. Theo, I just got back. I—" Draco dragged a hand through his hair. A strange burning sensation travelled beneath his skin from his temples to the nape of his neck. "I went to dinner; I didn't let him win. I—I asked to be disinherited and then I blew up—fuck, it was an accident; I haven't lost control of my magic since I was a child—"
"All the glassware. You blew up all the glass in the dining room."
"Yes." Draco didn't have the wherewithal to be surprised by that confirmation, struggling to align an out-of-order series of events. Across from Theo, he sank into the second, matching wingback.
Theo dragged a hand down his face, returning to his brow line to rub his thumb and forefinger along it, pausing with fingers on both temples.
"You've just returned from having, I presume, changed the course of events from that Christmas dinner? Fuck, time is complicated." Theo blew out a breath, dropping his hand from his face. "This—timeline, the one I've always known. That's how the dinner always happened; you blew up all that glass after fighting with Lucius. I just watched you go back and try to propose to her before the dinner instead of planning to do it after. Which didn't work, by the way."
The burning at the nape of Draco's neck travelled down his spine, blooming in a manner consistent with true, earth-shattering panic. The kind of hot fear he felt when he learned his father had been sent to Azkaban in fifth year, or when he first watched The Dark Lord set his snake on a body in his home.
"But why didn't telling my father to keep his money fix it? She still—she left?" He put his glass to his lips and tilted his head back, downing his whisky and experiencing a different kind of burn.
Theo's brows drew together. "She was overwhelmed, I think. Didn't want you to blow up your life for her—something about having to be absolutely sure for something that huge. I—Draco I'm not exactly privy to the private conversations surrounding your breakup. I just know my best friend has been oscillating between furious and depressed. You kept going on about how if ever there was a reason the two of you should break up it was because you put her in harm's way."
"I did."
Theo rolled his eyes as an annoyed scoff slipped from his throat. "Right. Sure. You've been doing a lot of that self-flagellating, too. Shit about how you're a bad influence in her life, just like with Pansy. Which is bullshit, by the way. Finally talked you out of it a bit and now this whole I have to propose to her so she knows how sure I am thing. And—well. Here we are."
Draco's pulse throbbed behind his eyes.
"Why didn't proposing work?" He felt a bit sick, regretting the alcohol he'd just dumped into his stomach. "She said no?"
"You didn't have enough time," Theo said. "We haven't gotten much further than that. This literally just happened."
"Thirty minutes wasn't enough time to convince her to marry me?"
Theo didn't say anything, features pinching as he blinked.
"Thirty minutes," Theo repeated. Not exactly a question, more a confirmation.
Draco opened his mouth to say yes, of course, thirty minutes, but closed it again. His pulse throbbed behind his eyes again.
"I had you extend the time I could stay in the past. I needed more time to fix the dinner."
Theo leaned over and set his glass on the hearth.
"Fuck—Draco. I know I'm good, but. I've already modified it to operate in years. I've modified it to operate outside a clean loop of time, to start new timelines. I've modified it to bring the user back to their starting point after five minutes. And now you're saying I extended that, too?"
Many times in Draco life, he'd felt like an event repeated, a conversation echoed, hovering along the thin line between coincidence and divination. He'd just experienced it in a literal sense, having travelled back in time. But this moment, this was different. This was a near perfect repetition of a conversation he'd already had with Theo, only out of order.
"That's exactly what I'm saying."
Theo said nothing, just started shaking his head. He pulled the time turner from his pocket and started examining it. "Still just five," he muttered, head swivelling from side to side.
"So, I tried to propose. And I feel like I have to assume that something about that…not going well, inspired me to fight with Lucius and ultimately still blow up the glass that I remember blowing up just now because you remember it, too." He dropped his head against the back of his chair. The throb behind his eyes spread, filling out his sinuses. "Theo. If I was just in the dining room, before I left and I—disappeared. The other version of me that would have been left at that table, did he not know I'd already used the turner? I don't—"
"Paradox avoidance, mate. Time would have continued normally for the version of you left behind. At least, I think. I assume. You would have remembered the events as if they happened normally, but not your—I don't know—invasive mindset manipulating the motivations? You wouldn't have remembered another version of you orchestrating things. The mind is powerful; has its own magic. I imagine something like déjà vu happens. You might have felt a bit off, or perhaps like time moved strangely, or conversations repeated. Those sorts of sensations, I suspect."
"My brain hurts."
"Best not think too hard about it. Time is a bit like magic, I think. There are parts we can understand and parts we can't. And the way I'm combining time and magic in this thing?" He lifted the time turner from his lap. "Honestly, we're asking for trouble. It's a good thing we're two responsible adults."
"What? As opposed to children?"
"Can you imagine?"
"I'd rather not."
Theo cleared his throat. Draco closed his eyes. The weight of realizing how much had changed and yet, how nothing had really changed, pressed against his chest, crushing him against the cushions.
"What now?" Theo asked.
A painful laugh choked Draco, caught between his chest and his throat.
"Proposing wasn't a bad idea, honestly. I've had—so many opportunities, plans to do it over the past year and I"—a flash of an idea—"I know when."
Draco opened his eyes, leaning forward in his chair as adrenaline surged, dulling some of the pounding in his skull and the exhaustion weighing down his bones. "I need you to modify it again. I need more time. Thirty minutes should still be plenty. I had a whole plan. Before my father was attacked last year. I—I let all those plans slip away while I was busy at the hospital, choosing him, again."
"He was seriously injured."
"He survived. And now we're here."
Theo tilted his head, an unreadable look aimed at the time turner sitting in his lap.
"How long did it take me to extend it to thirty minutes?"
"A little less than a month. Why?"
"How often do I get the opportunity to try and beat my own time inventing something? I'll have it done in two weeks."
