Author's Note: Thank you to sparrow_ink, quickhidetherum, and keeks1664 for their alpha input. Thank you to my beta, dormiensa, for her sharp eye!
This is the first installation of a series I'm calling Love & Botany. I hope to write the next one (Pansy/Neville) soon. If you'd like to suggest a post-war pairing, please do! No guarantees, of course, but I could use the inspo. :)
Mutualism
Draco wasn't sure what possessed him to offer Malfoy Manor's gardens for the War Orphans' Benefit Dinner.
He'd heard about it through Pansy, who had scraped back enough of her reputation and influence to be allowed to purchase a committee seat. It had been a passing remark, a throw-away, wedged between debate recaps on whether the prime rib would be grade R4L or R4H and the most flattering shade of uplighting for Hogwarts' Great Hall.
He could've just thrown money at the problem. Told Pansy to go wild at her favorite nursery and send him the receipt. The approach would have kept him anonymous and uninvolved, fulfilling the twin priorities that had dominated Draco's post-acquittal existence.
But there it was. The offer fell out of his mouth and onto the table, nearly upsetting the tea service and stunning Pansy into a record thirty seconds of silence. She recovered with an elegant shrug and a promise to relay his offer to the committee.
Draco doubted it would go far. They would probably make a show of it. Debate the matter, force a vote, and record the rejection in the committee's minutes, which would be filed away somewhere dusty and forgotten. Just like he had been.
Wizarding society had eschewed association with the Malfoy name for an entire year. They reviled his imprisoned father, forgot about his heartbroken mother, and actively disdained Draco himself. Just because he'd been able to afford a gifted Advocate and had, admittedly, lucked into a lenient Wizengamot bench. He'd been cleared under the law, but the court of public opinion rendered its own judgment. He had no reason to expect this committee—this unofficial jury of his peers—to be any different.
And then Hermione Granger arrived at his door.
She wore a long-sleeved Weird Sisters shirt, faded denims, and scuffed white trainers. Her hair was pulled back in a high, sloppy bun, and a patchwork fabric bag hung casually over her shoulder. It looked like she popped over during her morning errands. Like a trip to the place she'd been tortured was equally traumatic as a trip to the grocer's.
It was a lie.
Draco knew it was a lie because he could hardly walk past the manor's drawing room without breaking into a cold sweat. He wasn't sure how she hid it. Dissociation? Potions? Or did therapy actually work for her? He wanted to ask, but that would mean admitting he needed more help than he was already receiving. And though he did, Hermione didn't need to know that. Best to keep the depth of his trauma and the breadth of his failure in healing from it a secret.
Still, her composure impressed him. Hermione's gaze was steady and assessing. Unabashed, she looked from his face, down his chest—which today was clothed in a soft, light blue cashmere sweater appropriate for the season—and past his khakis, finally ending at his loafers.
Illogically, Draco felt overdressed, and a frisson of pique caused his lips to purse. Who was she, to show him up in his own damn house? To lord her comfort over him, when he still felt chained to the propriety and expectations of his blood? Ungracious thoughts—old ideas, ugly things that he'd adopted but weren't his own—suddenly reared. His lips continued to twist as the words he would have said just one year ago turned bitter on the back of his tongue.
Draco opened his mouth a fraction and exhaled, breathing away the recrimination and hatred that had, until very recently, defined his life. He was trying something new, a suggestion from his Wizengamot-appointed PsychoSocial Healer.
A blank slate.
Starting everyone from zero, including himself.
It was likely a load of rot.
Impractical at least and impossible at worst, especially opposite someone as antithetical to Draco's upbringing as Hermione. He had injured her and her cause too thoroughly to ever deserve forgiveness. Hell, he hadn't dared to ask for it. But even if he couldn't be on equal footing with her, even if he did have years for which to atone, the Blank Slate method allowed for a certain clarity.
Draco had practiced in theory only, against pictures, under supervision, and actively encouraged by nods from his Healer. He hadn't had the opportunity for a live attempt.
No time like the present.
He envisioned the terms he'd used to categorize Hermione for the span of their shared lifetime. Intelligent. Focused. Mudblood. Swot. They floated around her head, large white letters, bolded, capitalized. But as Draco breathed, they disappeared, leaving only a young woman with hard eyes and a set chin standing in his front garden.
For now, and unbeknownst to her, Hermione had a fresh start.
And now, again unbeknownst to her, Draco could see her.
Before the prejudices and assumptions. Before the new set of terms he'd unconsciously assign and invariably mull over later while nursing a tumbler of whisky.
What he saw intrigued him.
Draco's curiosity dispelled the stab of his own discomfort in exchange for hers. Because the careless attitude Hermione projected was a touch too obvious, too overt, and borderline disrespectful to be anything other than a bluff. Committee business required a certain professionalism, one that Hermione doubtless knew about, considered, and actively chose to disregard. Fisted fingers betrayed her steady gaze; her knuckles shone white as her nails dug into the soft skin of her palms. Her shoulders pulled back into a tense line, and the set of her jaw hinted at grinding teeth. A painful and expensive tic, as Draco knew all too well, to both his and his Healer's dismay.
Their eyes met again. Or did they? Her eyes certainly lifted to his face, and while she looked near his eyes, her focus was somewhere beyond, at a point in the space above his left ear.
"Pansy said you had a garden."
No greeting or insincere attempt at civility. Her honesty was refreshing after years of being fed little but lies. Draco had been steeped in pure-blood manners for so long that the brew had turned bitter. The delicate insults and backhanded niceties of high society were rules of a game he was no longer interested in playing. Not that he moved in those crowds often anymore: social isolation was not without its benefits. Only Pansy's infrequent visits reminded him of the world he'd left. He wasn't sure he missed it.
Draco moved from the doorframe and gestured her in.
Hermione shifted her weight. Her eyes, still staring into the middle distance, drifted further left, away from him. There was little to see behind him: just the dimly lit foyer of his childhood home, a part of the manor she had never—and likely would never—see. Yet her eyes narrowed a fraction. The skin around them tightened, revealing creases caused by prolonged, recurrent stress.
It was a tell, though subtle. Perhaps only someone who had been trained since childhood to identify such character weaknesses would be able to spot it. Did her friends know she was still hurting? Could she even admit it to herself?
"I assume it's outside."
Draco reversed course, stepping onto the front terrace and closing the door behind him.
He wasn't within three paces of her before she turned and started walking. Hermione broke from the stone path, heading west and flattening the manor's perfectly manicured grass.
"Granger." She paused and looked back at him, catching the smirk that Draco was too slow to hide. "Wrong way."
Her jaw clenched. Frustration, aimed at him. Like he should've known to direct her. Perhaps he should have done: he didn't know Hermione well, but patience was not a virtue he associated with her. Or Gryffindors in general.
A few curls had escaped her bun, and they bounced as she retraced her steps, flashing auburn in the sunshine. She crunched across the gravel, stalked past him, and headed east around the manor.
He followed.
Hermione cut an efficient path across his property, the clearest sign—apart from her clipped tone and standoffish air, which she'd taken no great pains to disguise—that she didn't want to be here. He didn't blame her, though he did wonder why she, and not Pansy, had been delegated this task.
But for all her brusque impatience, Hermione was not immune to the garden's charms. The sight struck her into stillness. Draco stole a sideways glance and felt his stomach drop an inch. Her lips had softened, parted enough for a gasp, and her eyes shone with wonder, their shade more cinnamon than chocolate in the sunshine.
Narcissa's gardens were famous in pure-blood circles. Started upon her marriage to Lucius over two decades ago and tended to daily, what had started as a small plot on the property's eastern edge had expanded into a well-designed acreage that put the Royal Botanics to shame. It had hosted gossipy tea parties, intimate dinners, and—if his mother's wine-inspired muttering was to be believed—Draco's own conception.
Late springtime brought a riot of blooms in every imaginable color, bursting from green spikes and woody branches, trained with twine and crawling up iron trellises. The trickle of distant fountains could be heard over the breeze rustling through leaves and the steady drone of honeybees from an apiary near the garden's rear.
Draco hesitated to break the spell of wonder the garden had woven around her. Hermione looked properly relaxed for the first time since her arrival, like she'd found the escape she hadn't known she needed. He considered leaving her alone. Allowing her five minutes of uninterrupted peace in his mother's garden felt like a gift worth giving her, a kindness well within his grasp.
She inclined her chin to him before he could offer. "This is it, then?"
He suppressed a smile. "Yes. This is it. What do you have in mind?"
"I don't know."
The garden path began below a wisteria arch, the thick trunks painstakingly twisted over the decades until they met and intertwined, supporting each other under the weight of their blooms. Flowers dripped from the branches, a familiar periwinkle blue that Draco couldn't place. Hermione brushed a cluster aside as she passed beneath the arch. Another tug of memory, something about the color of the blooms against her skin and the feeling of breathlessness.
They wandered in silence, Hermione stopping now and again to jot a note or take a cutting, storing the flowers in a collection of indestructible bell jars pulled from her bag. King George hydrangea. A smattering of fragrant roses—Blush Noisette, Heritage, Monsieur Tillier, Leverkusen. Dark purple lupine. Tricolor zinnia.
She stopped next to a peony thicket and reached out for a bud. Draco recoiled and grabbed her wrist before she could touch them.
"Don't."
Her eyes seared into his, just as hot as the flesh beneath his fingers. He let go as if burned.
"The ants," he said, by way of explanation.
They crawled over the buds in an erratic, patternless swarm, their chitinous bodies reflecting the sunlight as they moved. His repulsion had been immediate and instinctive, and it did not lessen the longer he looked.
"You're disgusted by them?"
It was more a challenge than a question. The answer was obvious, so he lobbed a query of his own. "You aren't?"
Eyes hard, Hermione reached back toward the bud. Draco had to stop himself from flinching as she set a finger against the plant and lifted away an ant. She turned toward him and held her hands out, cycling them as the insect scuttled in a frantic search for food. Over the ridges of her knuckles and the wand-use callous on her middle finger. Across her short-cropped nails and torn cuticles. Practical hands, tough and unpampered, even post-war.
"You've been told that they're disgusting, and that you should be disgusted by them. You accepted those views as truth without trying to understand. Do you want to know the ants' actual purpose? Or don't you care?"
She met his eyes this time, fearless, and he was deeply aware that they were discussing more than just insects on a flower.
"I care."
A silent moment passed. Draco had the distinct feeling that she was weighing his words, gauging the sincerity behind them against her metric for lost causes. She released a slow breath; he had passed. She released the ant back onto the bud.
"Mutualism. The peony secretes a sweet sap that feeds the ants, and the ants protect the buds from pests. They can survive on their own—they don't need each other—but they do better together."
She reached over the buds to a bloomed flower, snipping it neatly from the plant with a sharp pair of shears. With a delicate, too-soft movement for her hardened, battle-scarred hands, she set the flower in the palm of her left hand and offered it to him. He took it, careful not to touch her skin, and held the flower up to the light. It had just started to unfurl, revealing veins of pink beneath the creamy white outer petals.
"Once it's bloomed, the ants move on, but the flower wouldn't be as perfect without them."
He brought the bloom to his nose, inhaling the scent of sweet spring and last night's rain. It smelled like a fresh start.
"Why did you come here?" he asked.
"You offered." She clipped another bloom and stored it in one of her jars. "Do you regret it?"
"No. But I'm sure Sprout offered, too."
"She did, and Neville was more than happy to host me."
"But you chose me instead."
She shrugged, dodging his eyes and his question. "The committee voted."
"Granger." Draco's tone snapped the garden into a hush. Even the fountain had gone silent, its water caught in midair, like gravity itself had been paused.
An arched brow was Hermione's only reaction, a quiet scold for his lack of control.
"Please," he said, a more measured attempt to temper his impatience. He wasn't used to her silence. At Hogwarts, she had lectured people into understanding; now, she seemed content to let people—or at least let him—figure things out independently. But he didn't have an answer for this. "Why me?"
Noise returned to the garden, and the fountain started up again, appeased by his effort.
Hermione looked at the peony plants, running her finger along the frills of a flower near the end of its lifespan. A few white petals drifted onto the crushed stone path.
"It's about ants and peonies, I suppose." Quiet at first, almost to herself. "Wizarding society tried division already—blood purity as an indicator of worth. And for the last year, we've done the same thing from the opposite end, ostracizing almost everyone who previously held status. We've survived by demonizing each other for decades, but are we better for it?"
She paused and hit him with a steady look. "I think there's a different way."
Draco felt a weight lift from him, his breathing easier than it had been in months. The idea that things could change, that their society didn't have to cycle between generational oppressors and life-ending conflict, was a possibility he'd never seriously considered. It was a pretty thought, an idealist's dream, but Hermione—the set of her shoulders, the jut of her chin, the way she looked at him…
She was serious.
He couldn't see the full picture, but her standing beside him was the obvious start. New growth through burnt earth. He didn't know how she planned to get there or what winding path her reforms would follow, but he had a feeling she would succeed. She had at Hogwarts, defying every stereotype and expectation, disproving every lie Draco had allowed himself to believe. There was no reason to think she'd break the pattern now. Not when their world was in the midst of change and steady pressure could yield sustained results.
Pollen drifted around them, the sun-touched, golden motes blurring into a shimmering haze as his eyes unfocused. For a wild moment, he imagined standing by her side. A symbol of reform, a chance to prove that he could build and create, instead of simply comply and destroy. His focused energy fortified by setbacks and successes; his relentless drive to prove that he was more than his past.
The cleansing relief when he finally accomplished that goal.
Impossible.
And yet, she was here now, wasn't she?
Hermione's voice lifted him back into reality.
"Thanks for the flowers." She placed the shears and the peony bell jar into her bag. "The committee will be in touch when we finalize our decisions."
She brushed past him, heading back toward the wisteria arch.
"Will I see you again?"
An over-the-shoulder glance. "Do you want to?"
A thick swallow. "Yes."
The admission hung between them, heavy as a boulder until Hermione picked it up with no more than a nod.
"The Gala is next Saturday. Black robe only."
"I thought it was too late." Pansy had been whinging about finalizing the seating chart for two months.
"I have a plus-one available." The blood drained from his face. Hermione's expression, carefully neutral, flickered with indignation. "Is that a problem?"
"No." Draco's voice cracked as he tried to recompose himself. He hadn't been expecting to attend as her guest. The cynical part of him wondered at an ulterior motive—why him, why now—but he shoved those thoughts aside. There would be time to overanalyze later. He cleared his throat. "I'd be honored."
"Meet me at the Hog's Head at half past seven. We'll walk to Hogwarts together. You're aware that a donation is required?"
"Yes." Draco had planned to donate; he made a mental note to triple the amount he'd been considering.
"Good. See you then."
"Granger?"
She turned again, the charm of his frequent interruptions wearing her patience thin. "What?"
"Allow me to walk you out?" He smiled at her, and it felt real. He wanted to walk her out. To spend even another two minutes next to her, talking, like he was just a man and she was just a woman and they both had something to look forward to. A golden opportunity after a lifetime of careless dismissals.
He heard the hitch of her breath, saw her eyes widen and a flush creep over her cheeks. For the first time, maybe ever, he'd surprised her.
And, as they left the garden side-by-side, he caught himself hoping that it wouldn't be the last.
The End