Chapter 4
Draco stared at his bedroom ceiling.
It was a normal ceiling, absent the embellishment adorning most of the manor. No frescoes, no gilding, no chandeliers. Just flat and white, with cobwebs in the corners.
A blank canvas. A fitting stage upon which to play out his life's many tragedies.
An undercurrent of misery had pervaded his last two decades. It had started with his allegiance to Voldemort at age sixteen and persisted with varying degrees of severity ever since. He'd done plenty of wrong to earn the diagnosis of chronic angst. He knew that. And the universe's karmic twists had forced him to atone for all of it.
Draco had been forced to choose between a relationship and a career. In pursuing the career, he had lost not only Hermione, but also snapped the final, brittle bonds between him and his father. Narcissa, unable to heal the rift between her husband and her son, quit England to mourn her family's dissolution in Greece.
With Narcissa gone, Lucius imprisoned, and Hermione incommunicado, Draco was left alone and lonely, isolated from the people he cared about most.
He sought happiness where he could: in the work he'd sacrificed so much to pursue; in pestering Mitchell, the only human with whom he had consistent contact; in tailing Hermione around the globe and inserting himself into her life whenever possible.
But none of it lasted. Those happy moments faded, the comedown both swift and complete. Each crash left him lower than the one before, and he chased the next dose of joy like a Euphoria Elixir addict.
Draco knew that the universe, at its core, sought balance. She'd told him so herself. But when he weighed his misery against his joy, the scales tipped in the former's favour.
It felt cruel.
It felt like overkill.
It felt like data.
If the universe wasn't out to get him, if the debts of old sins had been accounted for and cleared, then some other evil was at work. And if the root cause of Draco's unhappiness wasn't environmental, then it must be internal. And if it was internal, then it could be controlled.
Draco committed himself to the process of introspection.
As the sun rose on the fourth day of his self-imposed convalescence—a sentence interrupted only by meals, trips to the loo, and precisely one shower—Draco wondered if the answer wasn't terribly, embarrassingly simple.
Maybe he was a fool.
Not the naïve, charming sort of fool: the innocent who sets one foot before the other without foreknowledge of the hazards ahead.
Maybe he was the reckless, short-sighted type: the callous actor who journeys without care or consideration for the consequences of his actions.
Hadn't that always been the pattern?
Draco had taken the Dark Mark out of fear for his parents' lives, which he'd understood to be forfeit if he'd refused. He'd been a child by society's standards. It shouldn't have been his responsibility to protect his parents; it was their responsibility to protect him. They hadn't, but neither had he given them the chance. He'd never spoken to them about his fears, never asked questions or confessed the misgivings that had plagued him since a Muggle-born witch had caught his eye at the Yule Ball.
Instead, he'd made the easiest decision for all parties. Pledging his allegiance to Voldemort meant that Draco didn't have to admit to doubting the dogma he'd been spoon-fed since birth, while conveniently saving his parents the trouble of protecting their traitorous son.
The Dark Mark remained on his forearm to this day. Black and hateful, it was a permanent reminder of his worst self.
Regrettable, but all that was water into the cauldron at this point. The outcome couldn't be changed. He'd made peace with the choice, had even drawn a lesson from it.
Taking the Mark had been rash and reckless, and its consequences reached further than he'd ever anticipated.
He would do better next time.
Except that he hadn't.
Because when he applied the same logic to his current predicament, the results were far too similar to be coincidental.
Like before, Draco's intentions had been good. He'd tried to protect Hermione from a hard truth; that he could do so by simply remaining silent was a happy coincidence.
But Hermione's memories had surfaced in her dreams. She'd applied logic to the problem and, instead of deciding that she'd lost the plot, correctly deduced that Draco had been lying to her.
Though he couldn't have predicted the return of her memories, the mistake was the same: Draco had sacrificed the long-term in favour of the short. It was a novice mistake that would have gotten him laughed out of any boardroom.
He should have known better.
Hermione was strong, competent, and intelligent. She had survived worse than physical possession by a righteous deity. She had not, did not, and would likely never need his protection.
Draco was many things: a liar, a coward, and a fool.
Unwitting misogynist made the list next.
As did daft.
He'd cocked up their relationship ages ago and hadn't realised it until now. Anyone who'd been looking—in truth, anyone who'd applied more than a fraction of their brain to the situation—would have pieced the story together far sooner.
Hermione's hesitance and excuses. Her frowns and lingering silences.
Draco's feeling that he'd been chipping away at a granite wall with nothing more than a spoon.
Of course something had been wrong. He'd just been too self-centred to figure out what.
A week of sleepless nights and listless days hadn't yielded an idea better than the one she'd already given him to repair the situation.
Time.
Hermione needed time.
Draco hated waiting, but what else was there?
He couldn't change the past. He couldn't reinvent the Time-Turner and undo the choices he'd made. The only direction they could move was forward. He'd apologised, and she'd said that wasn't enough. When she decided what constituted enough, he would oblige.
Until then, he needed to focus on a problem he could fix.
Today, that problem was Mitchell McVean.
Draco considered his approach during a long, steamy shower and chewed over the ramifications of retaining the man over a breakfast of orange-glazed scones and bitter, unfortunately decaffeinated tea.
He couldn't fire Mitchell. His work was the linchpin to Draco's profitability, especially considering the lacklustre performance of his print media acquisitions. Mitchell's experience—with magical artefacts, the publication and presentation process, and the Malfoy collection specifically—was borderline irreplaceable. But there was still benefit in reminding the American that Draco could, theoretically, change his mind.
If he really sold it, Mitchell might even believe him.
Ever the magnanimous employer, Draco gave Mitchell an incredibly generous holiday allowance. Mitchell rarely took them, seeming to prefer life in the laboratory to life outside of it. So, when Draco scooped a handful of Floo powder from the repaired, refilled urn, he fully expected to find Mitchell in his office, head bent over his most recent project, halfway into his second cup of Monday morning coffee.
Draco stormed from the office hearth with as much dignity as someone covered in soot could, with his chin held high and his expression an approximation of fury.
"You'd better have a damn good explanation for your behaviour last week, McVean!" Draco bellowed. "What the hell were you think…"
The room was empty.
Though it didn't feel empty.
Unoccupied, yes. The office harboured no secret niches or nooks. A crammed bookcase extended along the entire southern wall. Mitchell's cramped desk, stacked with neat parchment pyramids, faced east, leaving barely enough room for a thin, dented door. An expandable stainless steel examination table, currently empty, occupied the central space.
On the office's west end was a small side table and a tottering stack of books. A waist-high, rectangular fixture tightly wrapped in a padded moving blanket leaned against the wall. It partially obscured the office's only window, which nevertheless provided sufficient light to keep the candle sconces unlit.
No one was present.
There was nowhere to hide.
Yet the hairs on the back of Draco's neck stood on end.
He slipped his wand from his forearm holster and held it at his side.
"Homenum Revelio."
Nothing. He had to be alone.
Yet Draco kept his wand drawn as explored the office. He found nothing unusual, until he came to the desk.
An unwrapped peanut butter and banana sandwich sat upon the blotter, less a large bite. Draco grimaced as he espied said bite, half-chewed and compacted, in Mitchell's in-box.
Strange, given Mitchell's fondness for the disgusting spread and his obsessive tidiness.
Maybe he was ill.
Draco returned to the Floo, this time shouting Mitchell's home address. He landed with the usual rainstorm of ash and charred wood then stepped into the flat.
"Mitchell?"
Nothing.
The small studio carried the feeling of an unused space: slightly cold and a little stale, like it hadn't been accessed for several days. Unlike the office, Draco felt no presence here. He was alone.
He made a quick check of Mitchell's living space anyway. As relieved as Draco was not to have found his employee rotting away without having submitted his most recent article, it also unsettled him. Draco took the Floo back to the manor and stood where he landed, feeling helpless.
He couldn't fix his relationship with Hermione.
He couldn't locate his only employee.
He couldn't prevent the interfering thought: could he do anything right?
Draco visited Mitchell's office and flat every day that week. He varied the times of his arrival, hoping to catch him by surprise.
By his second visit, at midnight, Draco wondered if he were losing his mind. He cast some minor trip wards in both locations to prove otherwise. If anyone were to enter either the office or the flat, the wards would let him know.
But by the fourth visit, at three in the morning, Draco embraced his new-found insanity. Because, even though neither trip ward ever actually tripped, he continued the redundant surveillance.
The frequent trips gave him a valid excuse for not sleeping, which he was happy to do. Since his falling out with Hermione, Draco's nightmares had worsened. He dreaded sunset and the inevitability of his exhaustion winning out over his worry. With the wellness checks as an excuse, he could limit his trauma exposure to two-to-three hour chunks instead of suffering through eight uninterrupted hours of terror.
Draco touched nothing on his visits to Mitchell's office or flat. If surveying the man's personal space was considered intrusive, actively interfering with it felt worse. However, in the dark hours of early morning, as Draco returned to Malfoy Manor with dread squeezing him as tightly as the Floo network, he could admit to further justification for keeping the evidence of his presence to a minimum.
The locations might be crime scenes.
Though it meant leaving the wad of sandwich to fester—the spat-out bite had sprouted blue-green fuzz, which Draco hoped wouldn't eat through the papers beneath—the idea that Mitchell might be missing gained traction with every passing hour.
Mitchell was a grown man. Outside of professional responsibility or personal courtesy, he was under no obligation to inform Draco of his whereabouts. He was free to take holiday, or quit, or disappear.
But for Mitchell to actually do any of those things without warning contradicted everything Draco knew about him.
And despite his whinging, Draco liked Mitchell.
Yes, he brushed Mitchell off, but that was nothing new. In fact, it was the defining characteristic of their relationship. Mitchell asked for more funding, more time, more space, or all three, and Draco told him no. Mitchell wheedled, Draco threatened. Mitchell gave up, and Draco would fulfil the abandoned request a few days later.
They had worked in this manner for years, and not once had Mitchell baulked. In fact, Draco suspected that Mitchell liked the challenge of it. The drama of an incorrigible boss. The manufactured suspense of making requests he knew would be filled. The low-stakes stress of wondering not if, but when his next publication would see print.
Mitchell wanted nothing more than to be up to his elbows in rare magical artefacts. He didn't care about fame or whose name was listed first in the publication. He liked the process. The discovery, the mystery, the chance to add to the historical record. Draco wanted nothing more than for someone to do that work for him. His interview with Khumalo hadn't all been lies; he was repatriating many of the artefacts in his family's vault. His and Mitchell's interests were perfectly aligned.
And that's what bothered him most.
Logically, Mitchell had no reason to leave. Nothing in their working relationship had changed. Mitchell was able to do what he loved with a more-than-generous compensation and very few restrictions.
Why, then, had he disappeared?
A personal vendetta?
An emotional epiphany?
Or was there something nefarious at play?
Early Saturday evening, when Mitchell's absence had officially exceeded one week, Draco paced his study, debating these questions and pondering the wisdom of involving Magical Law Enforcement.
He missed a step when Rosie appeared.
Grey bags hung beneath the elf's glassy eyes. Her voice trembled with exhaustion as she whispered, "Miss Hermione to see Master Draco, sir."
Exhilaration shot down Draco's spine. "Finally!"
In addition to making no progress with Mitchell, Draco had heard nothing from Hermione. Her arrival could only mean a release from the week's cursed stasis. Never mind that it felt quick. Hope had been thin lately; Draco would take what he could get and not press his luck.
He ran a hand through his dishevelled hair and tugged at his wrinkled shirt. Arms spread, he turned to Rosie.
"How do I look?"
Rosie's colour improved as she smiled. "Master is very handsome."
"Too right," he agreed with a grin.
Rosie was biassed—she'd practically raised him—but Draco trusted her so implicitly that he didn't even delay to verify her assessment.
He did, however, pause before turning the corner into the foyer. He summoned a hand-held mirror and angled it so that he could see without being seen.
Hermione stood with crossed arms before the Malfoy family tapestry, just as Mitchell had done the week prior. Unlike Mitchell, she wasn't tracing back his lineage, following the bloody branches as if trying to pinpoint where it had all gone wrong. Instead, her eyes remained on a fixed point, her brow drawn.
Not an encouraging sign.
Draco Vanished the pocket mirror and coughed. Hermione used the time well. When he rounded the corner, she stood at the foyer's centre, as if she'd never been studying the tapestry at all.
The closer he came, the less he saw that made sense.
This was not a woman healed. Her skin looked wan, and dark circles rimmed her eyes. She'd gathered her curly hair in a sloppy bun, which sat half-collapsed on her hunched shoulders.
"Are you okay?"
Her set jaw could no longer hide a quivering chin. "No."
Hermione fell into his arms and heaved sobs into his shoulder. It was reflex to hold her and selfish to press a kiss to the top of her head. Otherwise, Draco kept himself steady as she cried, his breathing deep and even.
On those bad nights, in the early days of their relationship when the war's trauma felt days distant instead of years, he remembered the solace he'd found in her heartbeat.
He wanted to provide the same for her.
"What's wrong?" he asked once she'd calmed enough to speak.
She leaned back to look up at him. "She's been coming to me."
His body lit with adrenaline, inspired not by excitement, but alarm. She could only be the deity who inhabited the Sun Disc's joined halves.
"That's not possible," he said.
It couldn't be.
They had hidden the pieces. Draco's half was buried in an Antarctic hole warded in every way he knew. He didn't know where Hermione's was, and the Unbreakable Vow forbade them from ever disclosing their chosen locations.
If the deity had reappeared, that meant the halves had become whole again.
Right?
"She's here, Draco." Hermione tapped her temple hard. Too hard.
Draco caught her hand and brought it to his chest, resting it against his racing heart.
"She speaks to me."
Maybe a piece of her had lingered. After she'd lit Hermione up like a galaxy, after she'd kissed his lips and given him the same treatment, maybe she'd left something of herself behind.
Maybe that was why they couldn't seem to let each other go.
Draco's panic flattened into an eerie, rational calm.
Whether the deity Hermione had seen was real or, as Draco hoped, a hallucination triggered by sleep deprivation, its effect was undeniable. He'd had his share of panic attacks and knew the next step was to bring Hermione down from her spiral.
"She can't get you here."
"I don't know what she wants," Hermione said. "I can't hear her. If I only knew what she wanted…."
Draco pulled her close and held her tight, resting his cheek against the top of her head. The woman with the answer to everything, unable to answer a question she couldn't hear. He shut his eyes against her helpless misery.
"You'll be okay," he said. "We can go to St Mungo's, and—"
"No." She pushed away from him. "I don't need a hospital, I need to understand."
"Okay, okay. No hospital. How about the kitchen?"
Hermione's eyes narrowed. She took half a step back.
He was losing her.
"Rosie will make us some tea. Let's talk this through." He held out a hand for her. "We can brainstorm next steps and try to… Try to understand, just like you said."
Her wary expression softened. Relief washed over him in a flood when she allowed him to lead her through a maze of back passages to the heart of his home.
Malfoy Manor had scores of rooms, but none like the kitchen. Nestled at the structure's exact centre, it was the first room ever constructed, and its magic went deep. Preternaturally warm, the kitchen was cosy without being small. Scrubbed wood countertops shone with cherry hues in the ample candlelight. Modern, stainless steel ovens, ranges, and refrigerators might have looked incongruous among the worn counters and scuffed grey stone if not for the brassy sheen they'd adopted shortly after installation. It had nothing to do with the appliances' age or upkeep. It was instead an artefact of the kitchen's magic, a mark of belonging and service.
Draco settled Hermione at a worn, two-person table set into a niche near the crackling hearth. Rosie was absent from her primary domain. Odd.
"Wait here a moment." Draco patted Hermione's interlaced, white-knuckled hands and walked to the kitchen island. "Rosie? Rosie!" He kept his Summons whispered—the elf would hear him anywhere—but she didn't come.
He glanced back at Hermione. Her hands were pressed together so tightly that Draco could see the lines of her forearm tendons.
He'd have to manage on his own.
At least the kettle was already on the hob.
"What happened?" he asked as he hunted for tea.
"I'm not sleeping." It was a statement of fact, delivered without emotion, its consequence dulled by repetition. "Khumalo sent me home on Tuesday. She told me not to come back until I'd gotten some help, but I don't know where to go. St Mungo's wouldn't understand, and I feel…" Her voice thickened, the truth caught in her throat. "I feel like I'm falling apart."
Draco prodded the hob to life with his wand and stuffed an undefined amount of loose leaf chamomile into a metal tea ball.
"You're not. Accio biscuits." A cupboard banged open. Draco caught the tin just before it struck his nose.
"I'm not so sure," Hermione said with a sad little laugh. She flicked her eyes to him. "I slept here the night of our Vow. Do you remember?"
He did. Fondly, for a time. He'd thought it was the first night of the rest of their lives.
Now, he knew it had been a false start.
"Do you remember your dream from that night?"
"Yes," he answered. "I dreamt about the Ministry."
He didn't elaborate; he didn't need to. They both knew what he meant.
"And it felt like a dream, didn't it? Hazy? Fractured? Like it didn't happen to you? Like it was all in your head?"
He nodded.
"Mine did, too. But every night since then, every night I've spent alone, has felt like a memory. Worse than a memory—like I'm living it again. Feeling all of it, as fresh and vivid as the first time." She looked back up at him, eyes rimmed red. "I need to sleep, Draco. I need one night of peace, and the last time I had anything close to that was here."
He crossed the kitchen in three steps and knelt before her. "Then stay with me."
Even though it was why she'd come to the manor, Hermione shuddered. Draco tried not to take it personally. He had broken her heart, lied to her, and stripped away her agency. He'd rationalised it all under the guise of her well-being, despite having no right to decide what was right and wrong for her. Her disgust was well justified.
But so was his suggestion.
"It doesn't have to be forever," he added. "Just as long as you need. As long as it takes for us to fix things."
Hermione scrubbed the tear tracks from her cheeks and lifted her head, mumbling a weary, "Thanks." She looked calmer, on firmer footing now that the immediate next step had been decided without debate.
The kettle began to scream. Draco prepared the tea tray, then joined her at the table, glad to see her nibble on a honey-lemon biscuit as he poured.
Slowly, the kitchen worked its magic. Stress eased from Hermione's face and shoulders, and her colour improved.
Her fear was gone; fatigue remained.
"I'm sorry about this," she said. "I wanted to just ask you, but then I saw you and everything just… Imploded."
"You don't need to apologise." Draco laid a gentle hand on her forearm. "I'm here. Tell me what you need."
Hermione looked at the porcelain cup cradled between her palms, weighing her words. "I think you were right. The way we've been handling this, dancing around each other, avoiding the topic… It hasn't worked. These last six months have been hard. Harry's been asking questions, which has Ginny worried. Even Ron's noticed a change."
Draco let the opportunity to take a free shot at Weasley pass.
"I thought I could handle it, but the more they ask, the more I'm running out of things to tell them. And when Khumalo sent me home…" Fresh tears welled in her tired eyes. "I don't want to lose my job, Draco. I like my job, if you'll believe it. And while I think you're part of the problem, I'm also starting to wonder if you might be part of the solution."
He sighed a laugh and withdrew his hand. "Of course that's the case," he said ruefully. "Why would the answer ever be simple?"
"Whatever that artefact was, whatever it did… It changed us."
And like a call from beyond the Veil, Draco heard Nott's voice. His mad justifications had echoed around the Death Chamber, genocidal and idealistic. But above the cacophony rose a single line:
Two sides of the universal coin.
At last, Draco understood.
"Do you remember it?" he asked, painfully aware of the Unbreakable Vow's rules and how much he'd hidden from her.
"Yes."
"All of it?"
Hermione cocked her head at him. "Yes. What do you—"
"Your body, how it lit..." Draco's chest tightened; too much detail. "How you looked, and then how I looked. You remember that?"
"Yes, but what…" Her gaze slid into the middle distance as she trailed off. After a moment, her eyes refocused on him. "We were opposites. Light and dark."
Hermione, swirling with the radiance and promise of a thousand newborn galaxies, creation incarnate.
Draco, glittering with the cold sparks of dying comets, light's absolute absence coursing through his veins.
"That's the link. That's what changed. Forget the Vow, the disc connected us."
It felt wrong to speak it, to voice something so cosmically impossible.
But stranger things had happened.
"I think you're right. I did suspect the Unbreakable Vow at first. I thought maybe there were consequences to making it on false pretences." Draco's cheeks flamed at the truth so bluntly stated. "But everything we've felt and dreamt since April are far stronger than what I've been able to find in the literature. It's more logical to attribute these side effects to the artefact itself." She sat back in her chair and shook her head. "It explains everything. I can't believe I didn't see it sooner."
Maybe if they had talked about it sooner…
But instead of restarting an old fight, Draco stared at the table in pointed silence.
"And now that we know the cause, we know the solution." Hermione leaned forward again. "We have to find a way to sever the connection."
Her words landed like a Bludger to the chest.
Bile bit the back of Draco's throat. He coughed and reached for his teacup, which rattled against the saucer. He set it back down. It was safer to press his hands between his knees and breathe back his nausea. Focus on keeping himself composed when all he wanted to do was launch from the table and run.
Because of course that was the answer.
The most untenable idea.
The most complicated path forward.
Of course.
"That's what you want?"
Hermione's eyes widened. "What's the other option? Live like we are now, miserable and unable to sleep?"
No.
They could live together, happy and peaceful in each other's arms.
It was an obvious alternative. But if she couldn't admit to it, that meant she'd already considered and dismissed the possibility. Apparently, living with their connection—living with him—wasn't a future she wanted to entertain.
Mentally and emotionally, the past months had taken a toll, but there were physical effects to consider as well. Biological consequences of sleep deprivation and chronic stress that could mean an early grave. They needed a solution.
That the solution meant separation made him sick.
But Draco couldn't impose his will on the world. He'd tried, and this was the result. The woman he loved had finally come to him, but only out of desperation. She sat across from him and drank his tea and wondered how to break a connection forged by the universe itself.
She did not love him, and it was all his fault.
He couldn't do this.
But he had to.
For her.
"No." Draco forced the words out. "No, you're right, of course. Where do we start?"
Though it meant losing her, Draco nevertheless felt a small measure of peace at seeing the determined light reignite in her eyes. He'd missed this side of her: the problem-solver, the initiator, the resilient.
"I'm not sure," she admitted. "We combed your archives and found nothing on the artefact. I could check the Ministry, maybe talk to the Ancients—"
"No." Draco's tone was so sharp that Hermione flinched. That she would even consider conversing with the tank of brains floating in the Ministry's bowels was unacceptable. "We saw what they did to Nott. We can't risk exposing you." He rubbed at the burn in his chest.
"But I can handle—"
"That's what he thought." On this, Draco would not budge, even in the face of Hermione's frown. "Those things are not an option. We will find another way."
"What if there isn't one?"
"We will find another way. There are libraries, historians, public and private collections, archaeologists—"
"Fine." Hermione lifted her hands in surrender. "Another way. Since Khumalo put me on mandatory leave, there's no reason to delay. Let's make a list of leads we should follow."
A parchment, ink, and quill appeared at her fingertips.
"We should go back to the Cook Islands. If we can retrace Nott's steps or find out where he retrieved the artefact's second half, we might learn something new. And though I hate to think about it, a second visit to Maru-Aten might not hurt. I wonder if the Egyptian Ministry would give us a weekend pass to the Library of Alexandria. When Khumalo lets me return to work, I can go through our archive and make copies of Nott's old notes, too. There might be something useful…"
Hermione theorised through a supper of sandwiches and crisps—a modest meal prepared by Draco, since Rosie was still ignoring his Summons. He spoke when prompted, supported her ideas, and added when cajoled.
But mostly, he listened.
Draco wanted to memorise how her eyes sparkled when a new idea struck. He wanted to remember how she held a quill, how she bit her lip when she reached a temporary dead end, how she tucked that errant curl behind her ear again, and again, and again as it sprang forth to tickle her cheek.
Inevitability brought certainty. A defined end date made every moment they shared more precious. He would take nothing for granted. Would treasure each conversation, look, and touch.
Hermione had filled three, nine-inch scrolls when she set down her quill and rubbed her eyes.
"I think that's enough for tonight," she said. "We can continue tomorrow, and maybe start checking some of these off the list."
"Sounds good," Draco lied.
It sounded like the beginning of the end, and he couldn't do anything to stop it. In a sick way, it was almost funny. He'd lived without her for years; why now did such a task feel impossible?
But if he was destined to lose her, at least he could make their remaining time together the best possible. He could make her happy, treat her like she deserved. Like he should have treated her all along. And when their time together ended—because surely it would end—she would be able to reflect on what they'd accomplished and smile.
Draco led her to the guest room a few doors down from his. Rosie kept it made up in the colours Hermione preferred—soft greens and warm browns, as peaceful as an evergreen forest.
"I'll see you tomorrow," Draco said.
Hermione hesitated, on the brink of a question. Ultimately, she turned into her bedroom and closed the door.
Sometime past midnight, a quiet knocking pulled Draco from an uneasy doze.
"Yeah?"
Hermione cracked his door open. She'd braided her hair and wore her customary oversized t-shirt and athletic shorts.
Backlit from the hallway's flickering candlelight, she looked fragile.
"You okay?"
"I'm fine." Her voice gave away the lie. "Could I… Would you mind if we…"
He pulled the blankets aside. She climbed in beside him.
Without thinking too much about it, Draco curled around her. He didn't care if they had an expiration date; they had tonight first.
Warm and content, he sank into the dark, blessed abyss of dreamless sleep.