Disclaimer: The characters in this story belong not to me but to J.K. Rowling, to whom I apologise profusely.
Author's Note: I never meant to write this story; it just happened. It's not a pairing I really read or 'believe in', so it came as a bit of a shock to me. If you want an approximate fixing on the time, the protagonists are probably about twenty-five or –six. It was inspired, at least in part, by a discussion I had with my housemate on Valentine's Day about the colours of roses. I don't know if you'd call this fluff, but it's probably as close as I'm ever going to get. Enjoy, and please review!
Edited 20th February 2014 for formatting consistency and a few minor word alterations.
Frost Blue
It's Valentine's Day, and we spend the morning talking about roses. What the colours mean. Red for passion, white for purity, pink for affection, black for a love to last until death. I tell him that a blue rose means devotion, and he smiles, and says:
"I've never seen a blue rose." His smile becomes a smirk. "But then, I've never seen devotion, either." No; never seen it and never felt it. I never imagined he'd been devoted to his Master. Fear isn't devotion. Fear is grey-black, more destructive than pain, because at least pain is real and can be suffered. Fear is crippling. It's better to be in agony than to be afraid.
"I have." Seen it and felt it, too. I was so devoted to Harry, during the war. We all were. Because devotion is love and faithfulness, and we only ever followed him because we loved him. They say that was why he won, in the end; because he could rule people's hearts, and Voldemort could only rule their minds. Harry commanded love, and the Dark Lord only fear.
"Hm." He doesn't argue. He must know what I mean. "D'you think it'd be the same if I used a spell to make a rose blue?" He looks at me and I can see that he is half-serious. Always looking for the short-cut. Still imagining that his money and talent can make up for what he is, for his personality.
"Of course not." Don't be stupid. "You can't fake devotion." But after all – maybe you can. There's a shade of blue that speaks of falseness and faithlessness. A pale frost-blue, the colour of the sky in the winter. It's not really blue, but it pretends to be.
"I suppose you can't." He says it amiably enough; he doesn't mind me contradicting him, not any more. He has his life and limbs. What more can he ask? "But then, they wouldn't know." It was stupid of me to imagine that he would ever stop dealing in deception. He, who spent those wartime years cloaked in lies. But... it feels like sacrilege, almost. It's not that I'm outraged that he thinks he can simulate emotions, or that he's planning to lie to some poor girl – or man – out there. How to explain it? It isn't that blue is the colour of Ravenclaw, where I always belonged, where I would have gone if not for my stubbornness. It isn't that his eyes, so grey at first sight, are tainted with blue. Not really. It's a colour I always loved, ever since I was a bookish tomboy at primary school. What sort of a person am I, to whom the past means more than the future, and colours more than people?
"Who are you thinking of?" Not because it matters to me. He's had many lovers over the years, his shady past and the fact that he lives with me never seeming to put anyone off. They come and go, and I've long since stopped noticing or caring about them. Men and women – though I don't know if he's bisexual or just too sex-crazed to give a damn. I'm always at least a little jealous, although I don't know if I'm jealous of him – it's so easy for him, even though he isn't really good-looking at all – or if I'm jealous of them.
He shrugs. "No one in particular." He's lying, and that means that he doesn't want me to know. Maybe he's afraid I'll disapprove, although I never have before. I don't think I care enough to disapprove… or maybe that's not true. Maybe I care too much about him, who he really is, to be bothered by what his playboy mask does or does not do.
I wouldn't disapprove if he was courting the Minister for Magic himself, but I don't want to be shut out. "Liar."
"I was born a liar," he says, easily. "It's pathological." And so it is, though he doesn't often admit it so readily. "Does it matter? You know that you're the only person in the world I actually care anything at all for." It might be true – it might not. I'm not arrogant, but it probably is, because he always comes back. And I'm glad of that, sad though it might seem. He is my only friend now, this man who once would have rather spat on me than speak to me.
"You don't normally lie to me." Despite those eyes, in some lights grey, in others frost-blue, faithless and false. Despite his history, his hatred of what I am, his condescending manner, the reminders that he thinks he's worth more than me. If everyone else I ever cared about hadn't died, I wouldn't be living with him. I never imagined this when I was planning my future. I thought once that Ron, Harry and I might live together some day, the eternal trio, never to be parted. But now... they are dead and gone, and I am stuck with the arrogant affliction of Draco Malfoy.
He smiles. "Who says I'm lying now?" God, he's being pedantic, and I hate him when he's like this. "You just said I was a liar. And it's true. I wouldn't be alive if I couldn't lie in thought, word and action." Then he lowers his voice and says with an earnestness that surprises me and makes me tremble, "I don't lie to you. You're..." He hesitates, as if the words don't come easily to him, or as if he doesn't know, really, what he wants to say. "You're just an exception, Hermione Granger. An exception to every rule I've ever made myself." The words might have sounded romantic, said by anyone else, but when he says them, they're just words. They mean what they mean.
I raise an eyebrow. "I suppose... you always kept your promises, except the ones you made to yourself."
"If I had kept all of my promises, you'd be dead and I'd be a lieutenant of evil," he says, gravely. I suppose it's true. He made promises to those others in his life, the Dark ones who wanted to destroy us all. False promises to gain their trust. Were those promises, or were they lies? Are promises ever anything other than lies?
Or you'd be a dead villain," I return with equanimity.
He inclines his head in acknowledgement. "Or that." He's been lounging on the sofa all this time, and now he stands up, brushing wrinkles out of his robes. He's never worn Muggle clothes in all the time I've known him, except when it's been absolutely necessary as a disguise.
"Going somewhere?" It's Sunday. If it were any other day, I'd be at work. He only works when it suits him, normally about three days a week. I don't know how they put up with it. I wouldn't put up with it. But they have to, I suppose, because they can't do without him and he knows it. Where else would they find someone with his talents, his experience? It's so arrogant, so like him to expect the world to wrap itself around him. The fact that it actually does makes it so much worse. He's insufferable, but he's all they've got. All I've got.
"Yes." Damn him for never saying more than he has to, never sharing anything with anyone, save those things he cannot hide. He must read my expression, or something, because he says, "Shopping. Be back soon." And then he's gone, one moment there, the next vanished into space. Gone. And I'm alone again, not that I mind it, not that I don't spend more time alone than is probably healthy.
I don't miss him when he goes. I don't care what he does when he's not with me. I don't care who he sees or where he goes. I don't mind that people whisper about us in The Leaky Cauldron, or on street corners, or wherever magical people meet. I don't wish that the rumours were true. It's all an arrangement of convenience, because he doesn't feel anything for me, and I don't feel anything for him.
But if that's so, why am I crying?
Crying for the world, the past, the future, the people I had known and loved who never got to have a future. Or maybe not. Maybe it's all selfish. Maybe it's because I'm lonely, living with a man I used to hate. Maybe I'm crying because my life is so bleak, sod the world, sod the sacrifices made by greater heroes than me – I'm not happy.
He comes back, a couple of hours later. I hear him appear in the lounge, but I don't go out to greet him. Why should I? I know it's him – I can feel him – but I've got no reason to go and see him. We live together because there's no one else. That's all. I often wish the rest of my life would be like that – simple, set down in black-and-white, no emotions involved.
When I do go out, half an hour later, it's to get a cup of coffee to help with my work. He's lying on the sofa on his back, pale hair fanning out over the cushions, twirling a flower between his fingers. I look at it. It's a blue rose. I smile, faintly; it's so much like him to go out and find one. I'm almost surprised he didn't come bursting into my room to show it off. He's irritatingly and endearingly childlike in some ways.
He hears me and looks up. "I found one," he says. "It's not very good, though." And it isn't, really; it's too pale, too sickly, anaemic and half-dead – like him. It's not very blue, either. It's pale blue, like the highlights in his eyes, like the sky in November. If this rose symbolises devotion, it's a weak sort of devotion. A ghost of the true emotion. It might mean attachment, maybe – but not dedication, not fidelity, not commitment.
He stands up and hands the rose to me. "For you," he says – and I'm surprised, partly at the gift, and partly because he doesn't normally use unnecessary words. He converses as if he were once told he'd be billed or beaten for every superfluous word. Maybe he was.
I take it. "Thank you." I look at him, critically. "What's the occasion?"
His eyes are on fire. "I just wanted you to have it." He looks torn, now. "I mean what it says." I wonder if he even knows what it says, if he has any idea what devotion is or what it means. I wonder if he knows that this pale blue means nothing, really; that it is a mere shadow of the substance of love – that it is strangely appropriate.
"Is it real, or did you spell it?" There are other questions, but I can't cope with asking them, or hearing the answers.
He laughs. "I'd like to think I could make a better blue rose than that." Probably he could. Probably, when he is with his lovers, he creates a pretty semblance of a love that cannot exist. At least with me he is honest. What we have might not be much, but it is what it is.
"I suppose." Now I dare to ask a question. "Do you really mean what it says, Draco? Do you even know what it says?" And if you do, why? Why now?
He looks at me, seriously. "I never lie to you," he says, simply, as if that explains everything. "And I do know what it means. It reminds me of us." He casts a disdainful look at the flower. "I don't know if that's a good thing. But it's a thing, nevertheless." And he's right, of course. There is something between us. If that something is better than nothing... I'm not sure.
"You're just lonely."
That suggestion makes him snort. "Really? I could go out and find someone, if I wanted to." I know it's true; he's done it often enough, after all. "So could you. On Valentine's, all you need to do is trawl the bars until you find someone not attached to someone else's face." There's a sort of superiority in his tone, as there always is, but I think that this time it's deserved. He is better than me. At least he's moved on with his life. All I ever seem to do is work and wallow in my self-pity.
"So... why, then?" I don't know what I want to hear. I don't know whether, if he does ask me what I think he will, I want to say yes. It's not as if I've ever wanted him like that. But then I remember what my mother used to say to me, when I was ten years old and the boys at school were mean to me: 'One day, Hermione, you'll find someone who's like you in spirit. Then it won't matter what you look like, or what he looks like.' She never promised me perfection. She never promised me that I'd get a prince or a knight in shining armour. Just comfort. Just compatibility. Just love. Love, like a blue rose.
Grey eyes smile at me. "Well, because..." He hesitates. He can't explain. "I don't know," he admits, eventually. "It just seems right. Like..." He stops and starts again. "This morning, when you were talking about the roses… it just clicked. That there's a difference between passion and love. That it's better to be with someone who feels comfortable, like a friend, someone you don't mind seeing you at your worst. That that's what's real, not beauty or wit or blind, short-term passion. That I like living with you." A sigh escapes his lips. "And because the rose was pretty." So like him, that throw-away comment, cheapening the seriousness of his declaration.
"Pretty, huh?" I look at it, and I realise it is pretty. Maybe a bit battered, a bit faded, but pretty nonetheless. Like us. Then I look up at him and smile. He returns the smile, and I realise that I need him. We aren't soul mates, or anything so stupidly sappy and New Age, but we're definitely something more than friends, though we haven't ever kissed and barely ever touch. No wonder there are all those rumours. Sometimes outsiders are better at seeing what's there than the people involved.
"Yes." And he doesn't say like you because he doesn't lie to me, and we both know I am not pretty. But then, neither is he. He laughs. "Valentine's Day," he scoffs, his voice full of amazement and disgust. "I didn't think I was so soft. This is your fault." He makes it a mock-accusation. "You've ruined me."
He flops back down onto the sofa, and I sit beside him. We've done this so many times before, filled many a spare moment with seemingly pointless conversations. It isn't any different, really, but it feels different. He sprawls as he normally does, taking up more than his fair share, and I curl my legs around his. But there's something else there too, as if everything is just a little bit more in focus than it normally is. I twirl the rose around in my fingers.
"So." His voice is perfectly level, as if he's discussing a business transaction. Only his eyes, pale and tinged with blue, tell me that this is something more important to him than any job could be. "Do you want me to tell you?"
I don't say tell me what because I know what he means. And I'm not ready to hear it. Certainly not ready to say it back. Because I don't lie, and I don't know yet whether it's true. "I thought you didn't lie to me," I say, partly to see if he's really serious, and partly to see if I can annoy him.
He snorts and strokes my hair. "It wouldn't be a lie," he says, and I wonder where the Draco Malfoy I used to hate has gone. Did the war do this to him, or was he always like this, underneath? "But I'll keep it to myself, for now, if that's what you want." He doesn't look upset about it. Because he knows that my acceptance of the rose was my acceptance of him. Because he feels comfortable with me, as I do with him. Because there's no hurry; we've got as long as we want. We've got forever.
"I don't need the words," I say, lying back across him and staring at the rose as it turns in my hands. Its weak blue petals catch the light. "We've never needed words."' He smiles. I think that the rose says everything – the good and the bad – that needs to be said. And then I think that maybe this is why I've always loved blue. Blue, the colour of tranquillity. The colour always seemed to hold a promise for me, and now, looking into Draco's smiling eyes, I think that maybe that promise is about to be fulfilled.