Apologies for the delay! Our life has been a bit frantic this past month, but we're back on track now. We hope the chapter will be worth the wait :)

CW: death of a loved one in the past

Dinner (reprise)

10th of December, 2006. Somewhere in the Dolomites.

It was almost eight in the evening when there was a knock on her door. Hermione turned reluctantly, her mind still caught in the scene she was writing. She looked at the blonde head peeping in her room, her eyebrows raised questioningly.

Malfoy pointed his thumb behind him. "Dinner's ready." Her eyebrows knitted together. Malfoy crossed his arms and leaned on the doorframe. "If you want to join me."

"Why?"

He blinked at her for a few seconds. When he realised she was actually waiting for an answer, he said, "Um… to be nice? I guess?"

Hermione's confusion didn't dissipate. "Why would you want to be nice to me?"

"Merlin, Granger," he replied exasperatedly, opening his arms in resignation, "because we've been living together for ten days and I thought, well, let's try and do a civil thing. Sorry if I offended your feelings—"

"Why would you want to do a civil thing and have dinner with me given everything…" she trailed off, her throat closing up when she tried to say what, exactly, had gone down between the two of them.

The kiss had been haunting her for the past 48 hours. If there was a way to get it out of her mind, Hermione couldn't find it; the logical consequence was to start obsessing over it. Every time her focus shifted to some undefined void, she replayed the moment in her head—and it happened time and again.

She vividly remembered how his lips felt against hers; she could hear the small intake of a surprised breath Malfoy barely had the chance to catch before she closed the distance; she could recite what the characters on the TV show were saying by heart. She could still hear the wind howling outside, and she could still smell the aftertaste of her sandwich on her tongue, just like she could still taste him in her mouth. Cigarettes and everything.

The night before, she'd caught herself licking her lips, subconsciously looking for the distinct sensation that memory brought with it. When she saw him rub his hands on his face in the morning, she'd felt some distant longing for the way he'd touched her face when he kissed her back.

"You haven't spoken to me in two days. I thought it would have gone on forever," Hermione said to take her mind off her dangerous train of thoughts.

Malfoy tilted his head to one side, sighing. "Granger, if I stopped talking to everyone who ever slapped me, you and I wouldn't be speaking since third year."

Right. The slap. Not the kiss. That wasn't the important point.

Hermione crossed her arms. "It was a punch."

"Then punched, my most sincere apologies for the mistake," Malfoy scoffed, almost bowing his head. He didn't see Hermione's mildly irritated reaction because he turned back to glance towards the kitchen. "So, dinner?"

There was no real reason why Hermione decided to stand up and follow him. Curiosity, maybe. Some kind of twisted, morbid curiosity that she would never get rid of and that, right now, was begging for her to find the reason why Malfoy—Malfoy, of all people—was behaving like a decent person. He'd managed to surprise her effortlessly; maybe he deserved a chance.

"This is… impressive," she said as she sat at her usual spot. The large wooden table was right in the middle of the room; Hermione always occupied the seat closest to the sink. The last time they'd dined together, Malfoy had sat opposite of her. This time, he took the head of the table. Not that it made much difference to Hermione. He was just closer.

In front of her was already a plate of risotto, with something sprinkled on top that she was almost sure was…

"Is this truffle?"

"It sure is," Malfoy simply replied as he went to grab the grater from the counter near the stove. "Want some more?"

"Do you know how much that costs or is money just an abstract concept for you?" Malfoy only shrugged as he added some more flakes of truffle on top of her serving as well. "Thank you," she mumbled with a frown, trying to ignore the way her digestive system was doing exciting somersaults at the delicious and refined smell.

Malfoy sat down and opened a bottle of wine. Hermione kept watching with her hands in her lap as he poured two glasses in a perfect imitation of an exclusive restaurant's waiter. Not even the shadow of a drop touched the white tablecloth.

"Cheers," he said then, tilting his glass towards her.

Hermione looked at him sideways, humming back and downing a large mouthful of wine. She knew right away that it wasn't one of her bottles: she might not be a sommelier, but she could tell bad wine, good wine and exceptional wine apart. And this one definitely fell in the latter category. As she was internally debating between stroking Malfoy's ego and biting back her pleasant surprise by feigning disinterest, he spoke.

"So, funny thing," he said as he spread his risotto wider on his plate. "I was talking to Pansy earlier and it might have slipped me that…"

"Oh my God, she knows I'm here." Hermione panicked immediately: if Pansy Parkinson knew, then it was only a matter of minutes before the entire wizarding world knew, too. Which meant that it was already in the public domain. There was probably a special edition of Witch Weekly going into printing right now, with an editorial signed by the Slytherin princess herself about the unbelievable accident that was going to be the sensation of the winter.

Pages and pages outlining Malfoy's life and character, as many about Hermione, too, about their clashes and their history, and then, right in the middle of the magazine, along with pictures and drawings, there would be some awfully romanticised story about how they were brought together by destiny, two abandoned souls who were always meant to end up together, no matter everything that had gone down between them, because, at the end of the day, love conquers all… Or some equally saccharine bullshit.

"No, Granger, she doesn't know you're here." Malfoy pulled her back to the present with an overdramatic eye-roll. "But," he went on before Hermione's cheeks could return to their natural colour, "I might have said something about the Potters' pregnancy."

Hermione blinked at him for a couple of seconds before groaning. "Oh, fuck you. This is why you cooked dinner! Trying to sweeten me with expensive food."

Malfoy chuckled, glancing at her. His navy pullover made the colour of his eyes stand out. It wasn't Hermione's case: if anything, her hand-knitted Christmas jumper emphasised her impossible-to-cut attachment to the Weasley family.

"To be fair, I was in the middle of cooking when she called."

"You actually cooked this?" He hummed with a nod. "Oh. It's…" Well, fuck the ego-stroking paranoia; he deserved it. "It's delicious."

"Glad to hear that," he smiled before giving her an almost sheepish look. "But Pansy still knows. I did threaten her to keep the secret, but I fear she's become immune to my threats…"

Hermione scoffed despite herself, and then sighed. "Well, it was bound to get out, sooner or later. I'm actually impressed they managed to keep the secret this long."

"This long? What do you mean?"

"Ginny's three months gone. Baby's due in…" She moved her fingers quickly while doing the math. "June."

"Oh, really?" Malfoy's mouth quivered with a smile.

"Uh, yes, you know how pregnancies work…"

"No, I mean—it's funny because I was born in June," he explained with a wave of his hand. "It's just a funny coincidence."

Hermione vaguely remembered some celebrations at the Slytherin table happening at the end of the school year. She'd never paid much attention to them, mostly due to the fact that the end of the year usually coincided with some ambush on Harry's life and thus, consequently, on hers. But as she tried—although not easily—to put the few pieces together, she did actually remember something about cakes and calls for exclusive parties in the dungeons.

"It's the… I want to say the first week, right?"

"The 5th, yes," Malfoy nodded. "Maybe you should alert Potter, so they'll be able to work around that date." She snorted, shaking her head. If the great James Sirius Potter was to be born on the 5th of June like Draco Malfoy, Harry would have to be brought to the hospital for seizures.

"Did you also tell her how you found out?"

"You see, Granger," he smirked, "I'm actually very good at keeping secrets. It just slipped this one time."

The kitchen was better lit than the last time they had dinner together, but the soft light still complimented Malfoy's facial structure particularly well. He had a ruffled fringe now. The hair on his forehead shadowed his eyes just slightly.

"Anyway," he went on, oblivious to the way Hermione's eyes were scrutinising his every movement, "darling Pansy went on a stroll down memory lane and started blabbering about our ex-classmates—which I will spare you..."

"How kind."

"But she did mention rumours of a possible Weasley wedding in the near future," he concluded, looking at her with no trace of humour in his eyes. Her grip on the fork trembled for a second. "She, um. She mentioned your name. And I obviously didn't say anything," he rushed to add when Hermione's flaming gaze cut to him, "but… well. I thought you should know."

Hermione took several deep breaths, all the while playing with the food on her plate. She could hear her mother's chastising voice in her head, food is not a toy, but her mind was somewhere else.

"Ron and I have been broken up for two years now," she said eventually, her voice hard and fragile at the same time. "How can there still be rumours about me?"

"You know as well as I do that people make all kinds of assumptions."

"People have always made assumptions about me." And Hermione was tired. How dare they, after everything? And why did they even care? Hadn't they had enough of talking about the Golden Girl? "I hate it so much."

"You shouldn't spare them a thought," Malfoy shrugged. Hermione's stomach had tied into knots, though, and she knew they weren't going away anytime soon.

"Oh, thank you, that's very helpful," she hissed. "You're the one who told me in the first place."

He turned to look at her with wide, innocent eyes. "I thought you should know, not that you should let it affect your night."

Hermione chuckled mirthlessly. "You have no idea how it is, Malfoy." What did he even know. He was the master of assumptions, the king of prejudice, the emperor of bias. "My very best friends had made stupid assumptions about me before actually taking the chance to know to me."

"Well, if you were looking for symptoms of intelligence in Potter and Weasley—"

"Shut up. Just shut up," Hermione cut him off, then pushed her plate towards the centre of the table. Rubbing her hands on her face, she felt weariness claiming her body and mind. All she wanted to do was lock herself in her bedroom, no matter how rude that would be after Malfoy's oddly generous gesture. "I cannot believe I can't escape this even when I'm a thousand miles away, isolated in a cabin in the middle of nowhere in the Italian Alps."

After a long moment, she heard the noise of the fireplace crackling with life. Then, the glugging of wine being poured. She peeked at Malfoy through her fingers: he was still sitting, holding his wand. The bottle was tilting into her glass, by itself.

Those beautiful domestic charms.

"Let's play a game." He smiled when Hermione looked at him as though he'd gone crazy. "Tell me a big assumption people make about you that's completely wrong."

"Just one?" she snorted, for lack of a better answer. In fact, what she wanted to say was, "Why? Why are you asking me? What's in it for you? Where's the catch? Why are you trying to make conversation with me? You? With me?" But as it usually happened when her thoughts lingered on her story with Ron, something awful and heavy and devastatingly sad crashed onto her in endless waves, and Hermione felt so overwhelmed that she just went with the flow.

Malfoy's smile was dimmer now, but somehow softer. "The biggest one. By measurement of importance."

Hermione stared at him as she pulled her legs on the chair and wrapped her arms around them. A therapist she hadn't yet gone to would have surely analysed that recurring behaviour as her way to brace herself for impact. (They wouldn't have been wrong.)

She tore her eyes away from Malfoy's grey ones and reached for her wine, drinking it as though it were Felix Felicis. Those silvery pools looked like an approaching storm. Unsettling. And maybe it was the eyes, or maybe it was the wine, or maybe it was some subconscious pull inside of her—that everlasting curiosity of hers that just wanted to see where that man, who looked so much like someone she used to know but acted like a complete stranger, wanted to get at. Whatever the reason, Hermione found herself answering with utmost sincerity.

"Ron was the one who called off the engagement," she exhaled. And once it was out, the rest followed easily. "People think it was me: the nasty bitch who can't keep a niceman. And, well… It was my fault, generally speaking." She swirled the wine in her glass, looking at the deep ruby waves. "But when it came down to it, it was Ron who actually had the guts to call it quits." Lifting her head, she found Malfoy already looking at her, laid back on his chair with a serious gaze. "That good ol' Gryffindor courage."

He scoffed lightly before sipping some more of his wine. When Hermione turned back to analyse her problem-solver drink without saying another word, Malfoy called back to her quietly: "You can go on."

Hermione stared at him pointedly, tilting her head just so. Could she? Or should she be worried about what could happen if she opened up to Malfoy? Another question snaked its way to the front of her mind: could she open up? Wasn't that the very root of all her issues?

But then again, the storm outside was starting to calm down. The wind had been less incessant. Some villages nearby had started to lift their lockdowns. She and Malfoy were intersecting lines: after this common point in time they shared, where they crossed paths, they weren't going to speak to each other ever again.

All of that, it wasn't real. What mattered what she told him?

As with every good story, Hermione started from the beginning.

"Harry wanted to marry Ginny the day after the Battle of Hogwarts. But obviously, the funerals were… exhausting. Soul-wrenching. Then there were the trials. And, of course, he was immediately sucked into the post-war reformations that the Ministry hurried to make. And there was Hogwarts, too… and Teddy." Her face lit up at the mention of the kid. "Merlin, I think Teddy was the only one who truly kept Harry grounded through it all, without even knowing it.

"Eventually, Ginny decided that the time was right three years ago. Teddy was five, and he was the ring bearer. George actually dressed him up as a Teddy-bear." She looked at Malfoy making a funny face. He shook his head, failing to hide a laugh. "He was so excited that his hair kept switching between scarlet and gold the whole day. It was a wonderful ceremony," she went on, her eyes again lost in the emptiness in front of her. "They were so happy… so happy, I've rarely seen people as happy as they were—and they still are. Molly, of course, was jumping around with joy, and even though we kept it family-only, there were loads of people. I even met Harry's uncle and aunt." She didn't know why she was dwelling on details; maybe it was the glint of interest that she caught in Malfoy's eyes when she glanced at him. Or more likely, it was simply to delay the inevitable.

"That must have been a charming experience," Malfoy commented when Hermione kept tracing the rim of her glass in silence. She smiled, eyeing him. His voice was inexplicably soothing.

"You didn't do something weird with my food, did you?" she asked, narrowing her eyes.

He didn't exactly laugh. It was more of a smirking exhale from his nostrils. "Maybe the truffle wasn't that good."

She averted her gaze before resuming speaking. "People assumed then, too. Harry and Ginny were getting married, after all, and it was only natural that everyone in the family asked Ron how much longer he would have made them wait. This isn't to say that the whole thing was somehow forced upon us; it's just how it happened, it's how the idea was once and for all planted into our minds.

"We were in Ireland when he proposed. We'd gone over there for a job, something about a new pack forming near Dublin. Bill was with us and Fleur had tagged along, too. The whole thing took us less time than expected, so the two of them rented a car and went driving around for the remaining days, while Ron and I stayed in Dublin for sightseeing. We were walking aimlessly around the city one night, and I remember I was telling him about how when I was a kid I wanted to study at Trinity College because it had been my mum's dream before dental school. When we finally got there, he first took some pictures of me, and then… one moment he was handing me my phone back and the next one he was down on one knee."

If she closed her eyes, Hermione could still see him on the grass under a streetlight, red hair in bad need of a haircut pointing everywhere. Her stomach had dropped to her feet, and she had refused to think it was due to anything else but surprised elation.

"And I said yes," she shrugged, then looked at Malfoy, who was reaching for his wand to pour more wine. "Because of course I said yes. I've known Ron for longer than I can remember, I know him better than his own sister does. There's something that happens when you spend years and years together with a person that I can't quite describe, but… It made sense at the time. It was logical, even." She chuckled grimly. "He looked so cute there, all flushed in the face, mortified because maybe he'd chosen the wrong moment or the wrong place, and there I was, delaying my answer not out of shock, but because I didn't know how to tell him no."

"Pause," Malfoy said, leaning over the table and towards Hermione, his hand stretching out across the surface. "Did you say yes just because he looked mortified at the thought of you rejecting him?"

"What?!" She felt almost offended at the insinuation. "Godric, no! I said yes because I loved him. Because I wanted it."

"Okay," Malfoy drawled, retracting his hand. "But you're not married."

Hermione lowered her head, resting her forehead on her knees. "But we're not married."

She turned her head, cheek on her knees so she could see him. He was sitting comfortably, legs loosely open and forearms on the table. The same therapist Hermione was yet to go to would have appreciated the openness of Malfoy's body language. When had he become an adult?

"I started planning the wedding, and it was coming on so nicely. Everything was falling right into place: my mum and dad were happy, Molly and Arthur were happy, Ron was happy, and I…" She trailed off, unsure how to describe her feelings. "I don't want to say I wasn't happy, because that would be a lie, but I just wasn't… I felt disconnected." A crease appeared between Malfoy's brows. "No, wait," she hurried to explain herself, "I just didn't feel… I didn't feel like brides-to-be were supposed to feel. I had seen that emotion in Ginny's eyes, and it simply wasn't there in mine."

Malfoy took a sip of wine.

"But, you know, I didn't give it much thought. With all the wedding planning thrown in the middle of my already chaotic life, I just thought it was some additional stress that was simply manifesting itself in some nasty way." The worst thing was that she never felt like she could talk to Ron about it, mostly because she never managed to make real sense of it, of that feeling—but she didn't tell Malfoy that. After all, it had always been just a fleeting thought she never paid too much attention to; maybe she hadn't even completely understood it herself yet.

"One day, it was a Saturday, I woke up late and Ron had made breakfast," Hermione continued. "And he was just so charming about it—I would have neverguessed what he was about to say." She put the glass down and her arms tightened around her legs. "He told me I had a nightmare the night before. Which wasn't new, we both had tons of nightmares; I still have them sometimes." She didn't dare look at Malfoy: she didn't want to see that kind of understanding in his eyes.

"He said I was shaking and whining in my sleep, that he woke up and tried to wake me up but I didn't. So he tried to soothe me as best as he could, and he tried to pull me towards him to comfort me somehow. But… instead of letting him do that, I curled myself at the edge of the bed and folded over my own body." Hermione could still see Ron's crestfallen blue eyes as he spoke to her that morning. His cheeks were hollower than they had been when she'd met him on the Hogwarts Express many years before, but the triumph of freckles was still beautifully present all over his face.

"He just asked me if everything was okay. If there was something he could do, if there was anything I needed." Tears were clogging up in her throat, but Hermione swallowed them down. "And I dismissed it—I told him everything was fine, that it was just some accumulated stress, that I didn't even remember the nightmare so who knew what was really going on in my head. He told me that he wouldn't have been mad if I'd decided to call off the wedding."

We've waited for so long, what difference will a year or two make? Even then, Hermione hadn't been able to make sense of what it was that made her feel so unsteady on her feet.

"I didn't do it, I didn't call off the wedding—on the contrary, I started planning even harder. When two months later we realised we had everything ready but the date…" Again she rested her cheek on her knees, her gaze on Malfoy. "You'll never believe me, but Ron was just… perfect about it. I don't even know how he did it, and, honestly, knowing him, I would have never expected him to handle it so well, but… People can surprise you." The man looking back at her with unwavering grey eyes was proof of that. "He said he didn't want us to end up hating each other. He hugged me, and I cried a fair bit, and he cried too—don't make that face—and then we called the whole thing off and that was it.

"No one outside our families and close friends knew what really happened, so everyone just assumed that I'd dumped him because he—and I quote most whispers and papers—'wasn't enough'." Hermione straightened herself. "That wasn't it. It absolutely wasn't it—couldn't be further from the truth, really. Ron told me he loved what we had, and I told him I loved what we had, too, but then he said that he could see that it wasn't right for me. Being enough had nothing to do with it. I love Ron, so much, I swear, in every stupid sense of the word, and every woman who's lucky enough to be discussing marriage with him right now will end up as the happiest one on this godforsaken planet, because he's enough, he's more than enough, it just—" She inhaled sharply.

She loved Ron, and she was positive she had never stopped loving him and probably never will. Did it matter what kind of love it was? Hermione had thought it didn't. Truth was, smart as she was, Hermione had realised that the moment she told him yes, she'd doomed herself to a life without the kind of love children and hopeless romantics dream of—but every time she thought about that, every time she recognised the word 'doomed' in her own thoughts, she hated herself for being such a cruel, despicable witch.

Ron had loved her. He really had, and Hermione had strong doubts she would ever find anyone else capable of loving her like he had. Not because it was the kind of love poets write about, but because it had been born in spite of everything wrong she felt in herself. Maybe Ron hadn't been the type of man who 'loved her imperfections'—actually, he certainly hadn't, but he'd been the one who put up with her. Just like she had put up with him.

Loving Ron had been easy because she'd always done it; it was tiring and disheartening at times, but she'd been used to it.

But.

The rest of her life, spent like that...

"Just wasn't right," she mumbled, reaching for her wine and finishing it in a large sip. She stared at the red drops lingering on the glass surface.

When Hermione turned to him, Malfoy was looking at her with pensive eyes. Vaguely, she wondered whether he was a Legilimens or not; she hoped not. She, herself, was terrified of how much sadness some of her thoughts carried with them. She didn't want anyone else to know.

As Hermione cleared her throat, looking for a joke to downplay the seriousness of the conversation and get out of the insidious situation she'd stuck herself in, he stood up abruptly and stormed out of the kitchen.

She stared at his back with her mouth just a bit parted. Maybe he was a Legilimens, after all.

"That is the exact reaction one would hope for after sharing something like this," she called after him, bristled, annoyed, more-than-slightly pissed. Stupid girl. Stupid, stupid, silly girl. "Thank you so much for your compassion, Malfoy!"

The press of angry tears was already stinging the corner of her eyes when Malfoy came back to the kitchen, a wallet in one hand and a photograph in the other. He pocketed the former, sliding the latter under her nose, all of it without uttering a word.

Hermione frowned at him, half standing and half seated. Malfoy wiggled his eyebrows eloquently, tapping on the photograph to direct her attention there. She fell back on the chair as her eyes focused on the moving picture.

A man and a woman. He was holding her firmly with a hand on her waist, his black suit jacket vanishing in the white fabric of her wedding gown. She was squeezing herself against his chest, her left ringed hand resting on his heart. In the couple of seconds the magical camera captured on paper, the man moved to lift the woman's legs, picking her up like a princess. Her surprised and ecstatic shriek was so contagious that Hermione, too, huffed the beginning of a laugh at the pretty scene.

And then her smile turned into something she couldn't really define—a mixture of feelings that lodged on her heart, that blew too much air into her lungs, that curled somewhere secluded in her stomach—the moment she took in the easy, even childish joy in the man's eyes and realised that the face transfigured by happiness was the one of Draco Malfoy.

Hermione snatched the picture from under Malfoy's finger and brought it closer to her face. Her head darted from the man on paper to the man in the flesh sitting next to her and vice versa. He was taking his signet ring off his left ring finger, and Hermione noticed only then that the large band wasn't actually large at all, but two rings combined: the family one he'd worn almost all his life, with the capital M delicately carved on the surface; and another one, slimmer, gold-ish in the kitchen's light. When Hermione took it from his offering hand, she saw a name and a date engraved inside: Astoria Greengrass — September 7th, 2002.

After endless seconds of astonished silence, all Hermione came up with when she looked up at Malfoy was a simple, straightforward, "Wh—How… What?"

Malfoy smirked, taking the ring back. He put it back and started playing with it, making it spin slowly around his finger. The first thing Hermione felt was all-encompassing embarrassment, given the kind of thoughts she'd spared that finger—all those images flashing in her mind and she'd never realised there were two rings there, one of which bonded him to another woman.

She hadn't even opened her mouth to start shooting every single question bouncing around in her head that Malfoy's gaze flitted to her and he asked, "Do you remember the Greengrass sisters?"

Hermione took another look at the smiling woman in the picture. Her dark hair was neatly styled in soft waves, cascading down her back. It contrasted with his blond-white hair. "Vaguely."

"After the trials, our families disintegrated," Malfoy started as he stood to grab a second bottle of wine. He didn't even bother uncorking it: his wand did everything for him. "We were all left to our own devices, which—you know, I'm not complaining. We were expecting it. It's just how it was. So, those of us who were left, we kind of… teamed up." He knitted his fingers together, like a tight net. "I, for one, had no one else, what with Father's life sentence and Mother's five years. To be completely honest, when I wasn't sent to Azkaban it felt odd. I was so sure I was going to spend at least some time in there, that the idea of having to stay in a world that didn't want me was… bloody scary."

Hermione bit her tongue. It didn't look like the right moment to give him a piece of her mind. She took a sip of wine instead.

"And I wasn't the only one who felt like that," Malfoy went on, grabbing his glass. "I mean, Crabb and Goyle were imprisoned with almost no questions asked, but Nott, Zabini, Pansy… not only their involvement in the war had been different, but the family name, too, played a big role in the Wizengamot's decision process." When he saw that Hermione's eyebrows had raised so much that they were now almost touching her hairline, he chuckled. "You know I'm right."

"Mh-mh," she hummed, lips pursed. She filed the discussion topic away for another time.

"Anyway," Malfoy went on, rubbing the back of his head, "we all decided we should check in with one another to have something solid and stable throughout the chaos. That was how we realised that Astoria," his chin pointed at the picture in Hermione's hands, "was starting to show symptoms of an illness that ran in her family and affected almost all the women on her mother's side. Her grandmother was still alive at the time—I remember because I talked to her—and she did the same thing Astoria did when she told me about it." He shrugged. "She just shrugged."

He paused for a moment, eyes fixed on the balcony window in the living room that he could see from his seat. Under the crackle of the fireplace, there was the wind whistling outside, singing a gloomy tune between the snow-clad bare trees.

"There was nothing that could be done," he continued matter-of-factly. "They said it was a blood curse that had been affecting the lineage for ages, and both sisters had already made peace with the fact that they could have died from it at a young age, so Astoria didn't really pay much attention to it at the beginning. Except that, as everyone around her started to make plans for the future—Pansy wanted to regain her place in society, Nott and Zabini were working on merging their inherited businesses, even fucking Montague was somehow finding a way to be employed by the Ministry—Astoria started getting restless. She was barely twenty at the time, so the perspective of simply rotting away while everyone else was trying to find their place in the post-war world was haunting, to say the least. That's where I came in." He pointed at himself with exaggerated triumph on his face. "With a lot of free time and a lot of useless money to spare."

Hermione felt the corner of her lips pull up. "What about war compensations? I know for a fact you had to give tons of money away."

Malfoy snorted. "Right. Yes. How much money do you think I have?" He didn't give her the time to come up with a number: "Multiply that by at least ten. Then, you might have reached half of the actual figure." She shook her head, that half-smile still playing on her lips.

"My point is, I didn't have much to do, so I decided to occupy my time by helping Astoria. We started looking for Curse Breakers, for Potion Masters, for renowned Healers, anyone who could have found a solution. We all got our clearances with the Ministry for travelling—way easier when it's due to a matter of health—and we started touring around the world. Canada, Singapore, Egypt… many different places. I was always with her.

"We didn't have much luck, though. We found out what exactly it was only when… uh…" He gave Hermione a hesitant look. "When she eventually convinced me to speak to some Muggle doctors."

The witch snorted. "What a sacrifice."

Malfoy smiled, but it was only the shadow of a laugh. "As it turned out, the curse wasn't actually a curse, rather a rare genetic disease that passed from mother to daughter and that could manifest itself—as it was happening with Astoria—or could stay dormant and let the woman live a long and happy life—as it is the case with her sister. Actually, if there is a silver lining to all this, is that after finding out she was a healthy carrier, Daphne is now helping with the research, which is incredibly scarce on the topic."

He sighed as his hand went to his glass again. He didn't drink. Just looked at the swirling liquid, shoulders a bit hunched.

"When it was unquestionably clear that there was nothing that could be done for her, Astoria made a bucket list. She could have lived for another thirty years or another thirty days—no one could say for certain. So, she decided she wanted to live the remaining time to the fullest. We'd started to enjoy travelling, despite the endless offices and the countless hospital wards, so we kept doing that. And with the Ministry-imposed restrictions, the stretches of time between approvals and all that, we took long holidays. Sometimes some of our friends would tag along, but it was mostly just the two of us.

"That is how I became good at domestic charms," he winked. A small, genuine laugh escaped Hermione. "They're part of the…" he gesticulated around, looking for the right words with a grimace, "pureblood female upbringing, so Astoria was an absolute master at them, and she taught me bit by bit in all the places we stayed at."

Was.

"Then, one day, I got news that Mother was getting an early release. Which wasn't a surprise per se, but we still wanted to celebrate. And that was when Astoria told me she wanted to get married." He clicked his ring against the glass in his hand. "And, well, with Mother coming home, it was the perfect occasion, because she would have gotten the chance to see me getting married—and I'm pretty sure she had lost all hope."

"You let Astoria ask you?" Hermione teased him. Something in her was growing desperate to find out if she could witness in real life that happiness Malfoy had splayed all over his face in the photograph.

"No, hold on," he said, chuckling lightly. "She said she wanted to, but I did everything that was required of me to do, thank you very much, Granger. I took her to Paris for her birthday, and then I proposed in front of the Sacré Cœur at sunset—"

"Shouldn't it have been the Tour Eiffel?"

"Sod off, okay? She hated the Tour Eiffel." He smiled, and Hermione smiled back. "There was a photographer there, and I flew our friends in to celebrate afterwards." He averted his eyes and they got lost somewhere Hermione couldn't have reached. "She always says she'd told me her dream because she had chosen me, but I'm not really sure what that meant. It just made sense that it was me… Even though I did have to fight Nott off, at some point. The insufferable prat. And I always thought it was just the obvious choice—what with the money, and the free time, and all that—but she kept insisting that she wouldn't have done it with anybody else." He glanced at the photograph between him and Hermione. "And I'm glad I did it. I really am."

Hermione felt the absurd urge to draw him close and lay his head on her chest. To hold him tightly, and gently stroking his hair. To wrap the two of them under a heavy blanket and stare at the outside storm while he kept telling her about this one, pure and selfless act of love.

"We got married three weeks after Mother got released," he continued after clearing his throat. Suddenly, and for the first time, Hermione realised his voice had changed, and that the one she anticipated in her head had nothing to do with his lower, deeper one. "It was in Australia—in the North, where it's always summer, because Astoria loves the summer."

Loves.

"I think it was the same day Hogwarts fully reopened. I remember because Pansy had already acquired the Witch Weekly and she'd made sure the whole thing disappeared among the news cycle. It was…" His eyes got lost before focusing again. "A beautiful day," he said quietly. "And Astoria looked absolutely stunning, the ceremony was perfect, and even Mother cried because she'd just assumed," he winked at her, and Hermione gave him an eye-roll, "it really would have never happened. We went to Argentina for our honeymoon. And for the following years we kept checking things off her bucket list."

Draco drew in a sharp breath then, catching his lip between his teeth for a second before continuing.

"She…" His Adam's apple bobbed in his throat. "Astoria died in August." Hermione could see the redness in his eyes before he tried to blink it away. "Which was a pity, because Astoria really loved the summer. But she said she was happier this way, because at least she'd managed to enjoy a last one. We were in Greece, on this tiny and crowded island, because she'd found out that she loved being around people, and getting to know their stories, and expanding her horizons as best as she could." His voice broke on the last words, and Hermione suddenly remembered that, throughout their childhood, she'd seen Malfoy cry more times than she'd seen her own friends.

"She really is the best of us," he said with his tearful eyes fixed on his wine glass. Then, belatedly, "Was," he corrected himself, pushing his hair away from his eyes. "She could see that little grain of… I don't want to say goodness. More like… authenticity. In everyone. And she did everything in her power to bring it out to the best extent. Out of all of us, she'd always been the one who was the most critical of our parents' views, even as a teenager. And not because she thought everyone was fundamentally good—she once explained this to me, but I don't have her way with words. She said that every human is incredibly flawed, and that living a nice life basically means to be able to deal with those flaws. Your own, and those of the people you care about. Until one day, they stop being flaws and they're just another detail of the kaleidoscope of emotions you're built of."

Hermione stared at him as he rubbed his grief-shadowed eyes. In the sad curve of his mouth, she saw her own devastation of years before, when in front of the castle that had become her home she'd heard Voldemort announce Harry was dead: a soul-shattering feeling that no amount of words would be enough to describe.

She was familiar with death. But the trick with it was that it always caught her by surprise. Every time she recovered from the shock of a new loss, she thought that would make her stronger, better equipped to handle the next one.

It didn't.

It never made her stronger. If anything, it made her more vulnerable, because it carried all the past pain with it.

She wondered what kinds of deaths Draco had dealt with before Astoria's. Had he been prepared? Had it been painful? How was she—his wife—in the end? Judging from the way his fingers were fiddling with his ring, from the way his eyes clouded and his jaw clenched, the only thing Hermione could be certain of was that, if pain and love are proportional, Draco had loved Astoria immensely.

And maybe she knew. She definitely knew, Hermione thought. That's why she had chosen him.

"I'd be proud if I managed to become half the man she thought I was," Draco said, pulling her from her thoughts as he put his signet ring back, next to the wedding band.

Hermione looked at the photograph again. Ten days before, Draco Malfoy didn't even exist in her mind. Now, she was looking at his wedding photograph and had a billion different feelings about it that were making her heart beat like a caged bird in her chest.

She put two fingers on the picture, sliding it back towards him.

"Have you?"

His eyes snapped to hers. If Hermione focused enough, she could smell the lingering scent of smoke on his clothes. A beat, and then he lowered his gaze on the photograph again and placed his hand on it, just resting there. He didn't pull it towards him. He didn't touch her. She didn't touch him.

"You know, she was the one who booked this place," he said, his fingers brushing the film absentmindedly. "Months ago. After everything happened, I didn't want to come, but Nott insisted we should spend Christmas here together and he offered to handle the papers, but… well, he made a mess, as you're aware of."

An explanation of sorts. But Hermione's head wasn't really focused on that, at the moment. She left a minute pass before speaking.

"Why are you telling me this?" A less emotional version of herself might have felt annoyed at the fact that he'd spun the situation around and made it about himself. Or, perhaps, that was just what she wanted to tell herself.

Draco shrugged. "I don't know. People. Assumptions. Relationships. This life isn't easy; there's always something asked of us." He paused for a moment. "We learn to live with the pain."

Had she been a better writer, Hermione would have locked those words in the back of her mind for later use. But she wasn't a better writer, she was just a writer, and all that her mind seemed to be able to focus on was finding the right expression to describe the feeling radiating from the man sitting next to her. The right adjective. The right metaphor.

Draco Malfoy never stops looking at you while you talk to him, but then averts his eyes when it's his turn. He should be an adult who was asked to grow up very early, too early, but everything in his features screams to the world that he still sees a long-lost kid when he looks in the mirror.

"Granger?" It was a whisper over the cracking noises coming from the fireplace. Hermione hummed, still lost in her thoughts. "Will you slap me again if I try to kiss you now?"

Ah, yes. The kiss.

So he'd thought about that, too.

His lips were curved into a grin when she glanced at him. Inviting. Open. Sad.

Hermione chuckled softly, a bit nervously. "Yeah, that was…" Why was he mentioning it now? Right after everything he'd just said?

His hand stopped hers when she started drawing it back. Hermione shivered at the contact, surprised at the warmth of his palm.

"I didn't slap you."

"No, I know."

Outside, the snow kept falling soundlessly. Again, Hermione's gaze went to the picture under their hands. What kind of man was Draco Malfoy? Had the one ready to marry his friend just to make her happy always been there or did he come out of a chrysalis of pain and destruction?

She didn't have to think, to decide to lean into the mood change; not consciously, at least. After all, the imaginary therapist would have also said that it wasn't Hermione's place nor job to deal with Malfoy's trauma, just like it wasn't his job to deal with hers. Besides, even if she wanted to, she didn't have the strength to do it; Draco's hand was so…

"This isn't real." She didn't know whether she said it to herself, to Malfoy, or even to Astoria—maybe to all three at the same time. "Is it?"

"What isn't?" His thumb brushed hers.

"This," she repeated, moving her eyes around, unable to find the courage to explain what she really meant. "You and me. This isn't real."

Draco reached over to her face, tucking a rebellious curl that had escaped the hairpin behind her ear. His eyes scanned hers for doubts, or questions, or answers—piercing grey eyes staring into her soul.

He had a light, two-days old stubble, she noticed. Something rough framing the softness of his lips.

"It's starting to get real, Granger."

He lifted her chin, and when he closed the distance between them, Hermione's lips parted effortlessly under his.