Chapter 6

Rocks and Scales

Dragging herself out of bed the next morning, Hermione had serious regrets about all the alcohol she had drunk the night before.

That was her only regret though as she felt that the night had gone well. She wondered down to the yard to find Draco, Clem and Toby already there.

"Morning," she said.

"Good morning," Draco replied. "We are dropping Clem and Toby off on the way to look at some of the backdrops."

They jumped onto the carriage and made their way around the reserve dropping first Clem, then Toby off at different enclosures.

"We're meeting Pippa at Hetty's enclosure," Draco said, "but we will stop a few times on the way to look at some possible backdrops."

The view as they headed further away from the house became even more beautiful, higher, with a gorgeous view of the lake and mountains in the distance.

"Stop!" Hermione said abruptly and Draco turned to look at her.

"We can't bring the dragon's here – there is no way to contain them."

"I know, but this can be a background – the foreground will be where the dragon is."

Draco stopped the carriage and Hermione jumped off with her sketch pad. She balanced the pad on her knee awkwardly and did a quick sketch of the view.

She did this several times on the way and Draco didn't say much and just let her get on with it. Eventually he stopped the carriage next to a huge rockface with a small river to one side.

"I thought this would work," he said, helping Hermione down from the carriage. "We bring the dragons here sometimes so there are already facilities for them and the rocks are quite dramatic," he stopped speaking mid-sentence and turned to look at Hermione, "sorry, not my area of expertise obviously."

Hermione nodded encouragingly. "It's great," she said. "Perfect in fact – I think Mavis would be best painted here because she would stand out against the rocks." She stepped back and looked up. "It would be great to capture her in flight? I'd only need her to be up there a few minutes, I can work from seeing her on the ground."

Draco raised his eyebrows. "You could? Well, we can easily get her to fly."

They jumped back onto the carriage and just around the corner Draco stopped again. The view this time was entirely different, the valley was below them and they were on a large ridge, quite high up.

"We can manage them here too," he said.

Hermione was sketching away and she nodded without looking up. "Yes, I can work with this. We don't want the view to distract from the dragon but I can blur it a little so it doesn't. Are you okay if we sit for a few minutes so I can draw it out properly?

Draco nodded and took a seat on the large stone next to Hermione. She had almost all of her attention on her sketches but the other small part hadn't failed to notice how compliant he was being.

"Which dragon here do you think?" he asked. "I think we'd struggle with Humphrey as he doesn't like to be out in the open but any of the others would be okay." Draco paused and Hermione looked up at him, sensing another question. She was right. "I don't want to sound like I'm casting doubt," Draco continued, sounding exactly like that was what he was doing, "but will it be possible to capture the background, the trainer and the dragon with so little sitting time?"

Hermione nodded. "Yes, I'll do the trainers and backgrounds separately to the dragons. And the dragon sittings only need to be a few minutes while I sketch. I'm sure the trainers will behave while I paint them properly but I will do the dragon painting in my studio."

Draco nodded in acknowledgement. She could sense he wanted to ask her things but she continued to sketch quickly, glancing up at the view before transferring it to her pad. She'd become quite skilled at sketching a whole scene in a very small amount of time and quite often answering questions from their client at the same time.

"How did you learn to do this?" Draco asked, proving her right about him wanting to ask her things. He leaned over to look at her sketch.

"It's a bit of a long story," Hermione said.

"I'm not in any rush," Draco's said, pointedly. Hermione could tell that he knew that wasn't why she didn't want to tell the story but she continued to sketch, hoping he would drop it. "Hermione?" he prompted her again and she looked up at him.

"It involves me talking about Leo, so are you sure you really want to hear it?" Hermione asked. It was the first time either of them had broached this subject and she watched his reaction with interest.

He only hesitated for a split second before he nodded. "I want to hear it."

She put her quill and pad down beside her on the rock. "Well, I'll try and keep it short. As you probably remember I didn't have any particular artistic talent at school. I'd say my art skills were average at best," Hermione gave a little shrug. "As I'm sure you know Leo was a successful artist," she paused and coughed trying not to sound to sour about it. "He taught me a few things, just as a hobby to be honest. I really enjoyed it, so I practised and practised and got much better but not good enough for it to be anything but a hobby.

Anyway, he injured his wrist badly whilst painting on location and the client healed it for him. Turns out the client did a terrible job and he had to have his wrist re-set." She looked at Draco again. "Are you sure you want to hear all this?"

Draco nodded. "I'm intrigued now!"

"He couldn't finish the commission because he couldn't use his wrist until it had healed a little. But as the client thought he'd saved the day by repairing Leo's wrist, Leo didn't want to tell him. So, he suggested I finish it for him, it was nearly finished and was a quill sketch, not a painting. I wasn't keen at all to be honest, but Leo would have had to sell the commission and as he'd done almost all of it, that didn't seem right. So, he gave me step by step instructions – a line here, shade that bit there," Hermione checked Draco was still listening and he was. "Like a more complicated colour by numbers," she explained.

"Colour by numbers?" Draco's tone and expression told her he had no idea what she was on about.

"Oh! I forgot, it's a muggle thing. Where the picture is already drawn with numbers to indicate what colour to use in each area."

"Sounds weird," Draco commented.

"Anyway, that's how we did it. Tiny piece by tiny piece and somehow, we got away with it! I learnt a lot! I mean a lot! I found I understood so much better how to shade and tone, how to keep everything in proportion. I took on a few projects and eventually took on a commission myself." Hermione finished speaking and waited his response.

"That's quite a story! I always believed you can't be taught to draw, you either can do it or you can't," Draco commented.

Hermione put her head to one side. "Me too," she said. "Guess we were both wrong."

"Granger, you should know I'm never wrong," Draco stood abruptly and Hermione watched him cautiously, unsure if he meant it. He looked down at her and offered her his hand to stand up. "Don't looks so worried, I'm joking," he said with a lopsided grin. "Let's go and introduce you to Hetty."

Pippa was already with Hetty in the enclosure when they arrived. Hetty was a large dragon with a long, elegant neck and very large eyes. She was undoubtedly the most beautiful dragon and Hermione could see why she would be the feature picture. Her scales were iridescent and sparkled as she moved. Hermione was mesmerised watching her move – she looked like a huge swan.

"She's beautiful," she said to Draco who nodded and handed her some gloves.

"Come and see her close up," he said.

"How close up?"

"She's very tame – this breed is well known for it. They only get aggressive when they want food and we keep her well fed," Draco nodded encouragingly, helping Hermione who was struggling with her gloves again.

"Do they all breathe fire?" Hermione asked, letting Draco tie he gloves on and glancing over at the dragon. "Or is that a really stupid question?"

"They all breath fire," Draco confirmed. "But Opaleye's are very placid."

He opened the gate and Hermione followed behind him as he slowly approached Pippa and the dragon. Pippa smiled but didn't shout over to them and Hermione did the same, already learning some basic rules about not making sudden movement or loud noise. They were now really close to the dragon and Hermione was overwhelmed with just how big she was. She was crouched low to the ground, her nostrils almost at head height. Each breath she took made Pippa's hair blow around she was so close.

"How is she?" Draco asked Pippa, speaking quietly.

"All good – I've searched the whole enclosure and found no broken scales," Pippa answered.

"Great but we'll keep giving her the vitamins for now," Draco said. He gently touched Hetty's wing tip. "They look back to normal." He turned to look at Hermione. "Would you like to touch her?"

Hermione thought she very much wouldn't like to touch her but nodded anyway, knowing it would disappoint Draco if she didn't. She cautiously moved over until she was next to Draco who guided her hand to the wing. She had expected the scales to be rough or serrated but they were smooth like bird's feathers. The muscle under the wing felt strong though – scarily so.

They left Pippa at the enclosure and headed back to the carriage.

"Thank you for allowing me such close access to them all," Hermione said and she meant it. It was a privilege and she knew it had taken up a large part of Draco and all his staff's days to show her around.

"Has it helped with ideas of how to paint them?"

"Definitely."

Draco guided the carriage back towards the main house and they travelled in silence for a while. Hermione really wanted to talk to him properly, to broach the subject that they had both avoided until today – the fact that their respective partners had left them to be with each other. Before she came here, she thought it would be the last thing she wanted to talk to him about. She didn't enjoy talking about it to anyone and definitely not to Malfoy! But she realised that he was the only one that would actually know exactly how she felt about it – who had exactly the same experience as she had. She wanted to talk to him about school too, to touch on their past. She wasn't quite sure why she felt the need to drag up the past, especially as it had been so unpleasant at school but if they chose not to talk about it, then it made all their conversations seem superficial. It was like talking about the weather at a funeral because no-one actually wanted to talk about what they were really there for.

Hermione realised that was what she had been missing, why everything felt so sterile and forced – it was like skimming water and not being allowed to dive in. She was pleasantly surprised that they'd managed to be civil to each other so far and she wasn't hoping they would be (or wanting them to be) anything other than client and artist, but doing a portrait of someone was a personal thing and they needed a connection, even if it was just a professional one.

This Draco seemed far removed from his past – he didn't act the same, he didn't speak in the same way, his attitude was different. It was as if he had no past and even in the present, he seemed very one dimensional – something that he could never have been accused of when he was younger. She wondered if he had friends, did he have any social life? She knew he had a family but he hadn't once mentioned them and where were they? Didn't he see them since he had divorced? By default, she presumed his children must be with their mother and that meant they were also with Leo. What sort of world was it when her ex-fiancée was bringing up Draco Malfoy's children? She couldn't imagine Leo bringing up children and unfortunately, she couldn't imagine ever being able to broach any of these subjects with Draco.

"We need to meet?" Draco's voice broke into her thoughts.

"Sorry?"

"You asked for a couple of meetings, to discuss stuff," he sounded vague as if he hadn't been listening when she told him, which she was quite sure was the case.

"That would be really helpful," Hermione answered carefully. What she really wanted to say was 'you didn't seem very keen yesterday, why the change of heart?' but stopped herself.

"After you've had dinner, come over to the annex and you can interrogate me," Draco looked over at with a small smirk.

"Oh, well, if you're sure," Hermione wasn't sure how she felt about an informal meeting but then she remembered how she had hated the initial formality. "That would be good, thank you."