Excerpt from 'Protocol for employees of the Division of Obscurial Elimination, 3rd Edition':
Unprepared situations with Obscurials
In rare occurrences, the Obscurial may pass away in their sleep a few days or weeks after the attack. In this case, the host will somewhat implode and leave nothing but their most proximate surroundings charred and destroyed. These occurrences have seldom any other victims but the Obscurial itself.
Obscurial Imploding is recognizable by the quickly accelerated aging of organic materials nearby – like wood rotting – and telltale marks and slashes of grey matter on the walls or grounds surrounding.
In these cases, once the telltale signs are recorded and reported, the employee may return home and the mission is finished.
Later, Draco looked back on last night's dream as though it had been an omen. But in the moment, writhing through the anxiety ridden replays of his worst moments, he merely woke up angry.
Leaving his Auror's job at the Ministry had not just been a decision driven by the cliché need to 'find himself' as he'd told Narcissa. No, there was something else, a moment that burned and hurt, and his mind replayed it over and over, a grotesque manifestation of his own most personal torture. A perfect climax to anonymous letters he'd gotten during Eighth year, making sure he never forgot what a waste of space he was. And last night's darkness, the approaching Norwegian polar night, had wrapped him in snug and lured him in, and then made the memories come back with startling clarity.
"… so weird. Why was he invited, anyway?" A faucet was turned on. The door to the stall next to him opened, closed, and locked.
"Balthazar said it'd be funny to see him squirm. I've got to agree, he was right. Bloody freak looks like he's about to piss his big boy trousers just sitting with us."
Every single word sent ice cold daggers through Draco's body; he was frozen, paralyzed, staring at his shaking hands, hot shame burning through his mind, pounding and rushing. The bathroom stall shrunk around him, into him.
"You're not wrong, actually. Can't make a friend of an ex-Death Eater anyway."
Draco's sight darkened. He saw nothing but his hands: tunnel vision and the familiar short breaths of an impending panic attack rattled through his body with a scary aggression. His hands closed into each other, fingers grappling to feel anything real.
"'S not like we can just forget that he worked for You-Know-Who. No one's ever gonna forget that."
There was nothing left for him at the Ministry, with colleagues like that, so he quit. There was nothing left in England that held him there either, nothing he cared for, so he went to live in one of his family's many properties sprinkled throughout the South of France. Six months before the first Obscurial attack, when the world was exactly as it was supposed to be: Without him in it.
Draco woke up, closed eyes and slow mind, and within seconds, yesterday's events came back to him, his post panic attack exhaustion no longer tainting it all.
And he was seething.
"Granger!" he hollered, throwing back the covers and storming out of his bedroom. The lights were out, and he stumbled down the hallway, hands feeling along the walls to find the last door.
"Granger–"
He pushed it open. And the morning sun shining through the window revealed that it was empty.
The covers were not stripped. She hadn't left.
Draco tore through the entire house, but he was alone. The car was gone, so were all of Granger's belongings – which were little more than her purse, shoes and coat – and he found the note on the living room table just as a new panic attack was swelling in his chest.
I'm continuing the observation trial. Harry hasn't responded yet. I'll be back in the afternoon.
-H.G.
He was almost relieved, both that she was gone, and that she wasn't. The feeling burned in his lungs, and in bitter celebration, he made coffee and sipped it in between cigarette drags on the steps outside. The sun peeked over the far mountains on his right, basking his surroundings in a soft morning glow. The bay was large and wide, as welcoming as it was cold.
The instant anger he'd woken up with had fizzled out slowly into the cold air, nowhere to go, the subject too far away to merit keeping it around. He felt it still, when his hand shook as he raised the cigarette to his mouth, and how he put the mug down onto the step beside him just a bit too strong, making the coffee spill.
His brain was churning.
It chewed through everything he'd said, done, and how he could possibly weasel his way out of this situation. He was still a Slytherin after all. He could manage that.
He could not. Draco had successfully driven himself not up against the wall, but cemented himself into it. There was nothing. No lie, no fabrication.
Everything he touched broke. Even this, after all this time. Even when he was just trying to fix it.
"FUCK!"
Desperation burst out of him, echoing and bouncing across the water; birds lifted out of treetops and flew away in swarms.
He was such a complete and utter failure. Such a fucking idiot. It hurt; the knowledge pushed in between his ribs and twisted, slow and sure, and Draco doubled over in pain. His mind pulsed and battered in his head.
Tearless sobs tore out of his chest, vibrating through the air, and he imagined they made the water ripple. But of course, he had not the power for that; he was just a worthless stain on the world, and people would scrub his remnants away when he was gone, with brush and soap, lost and forgotten.
Can't make a friend of an ex-Death Eater anyway.
'S not like we can just forget that he worked for You-Know-Who.
No one's ever gonna forget that.
All this time, he'd thought the world was unjustified in hating him the way it did, and that hating it back was the only logical solution. He had seldom considered that maybe, he deserved the hate. Because after everything, he was still a foolish, immature child.
He deserved the pain, that rush of agony in his veins, the gaping, steaming wound in his chest. It was not enough; it could never be enough, to make him feel the true anguish of what he deserved, the only thing he was worthy of.
The cigarette was still lit, hanging between his limp fingers.
When he screamed again, not even the birds heard his torment.
Draco had nowhere to go, so he spent the next few hours ripping apart books – repairing them again of course, he was not a primitive – kicking furniture and sitting in his suitcase, on the floor of the small office room and staring up at the shelves and folders filled with years of his life. The gloomy lighting and night sky ceiling still felt imprisoning, and Draco felt that he deserved it. He wished he had alcohol. His last drug had already run out; Granger's downfall turned out to be simply a reflection of his own.
He fell asleep and woke in a puddle of self-pity. His heavy-lidded eyes blinked lazily, not even trying to make sense of his unfamiliar surroundings. All purpose had gone.
Bloody hell, he needed another smoke.
Draco dragged himself up the ladder, removed the locking spells and pushed open the suitcase lid. The first thing he saw was the darkening sky out the window. His body ached. He'd slept the day away, and yet he still felt tired.
Squeezing himself out of the suitcase and locking it behind him, Draco shuffled down the stairs. Was Granger back yet? And more importantly, had Potter replied?
The kitchen and living room were empty, eerily silent, and he sighed. Maybe she got into an accident on the way back and solved all of his problems.
One could only dream, but Draco was not that one; because when he opened the door with jacket in hand, he almost stumbled over Granger sitting on the steps, much the same spot he'd inhabited earlier, and she was…
Smoking.
"Are those my cigarettes?"
She didn't answer, and he felt the urge to kick her square in the back, down the stairs. Instead, he closed the door.
"Wouldn't have pegged you for the type–," he began, but he stopped when she made a noise.
It was so short, just the smallest pitch. It shook her shoulders, through her entire body. The most desperate sound he'd ever heard.
A sob. A single tone. The cacophony of a breakdown.
He could not see her face since she was stubbornly, silently, turned towards the sea. Only tightly drawn shoulders, and a half empty glass bottle beside her, on top of several opened letters.
Slowly, Draco knelt down and lifted the envelopes from the bottle, flying over their contents, while she kept hiccupping.
One was from Potter. An outraged response to her doubts of protocol.
…I have no idea what you're talking about Hermione, honestly none, are you okay? You must be mistaken…
The other was from Roberts, the Ministry's logo adorned on the back.
… I must inform you that if you are feeling doubt concerning the duties of your job, you must report them to me without a second's delay so we can determine if you are capable of handling the task at hand…
The victory felt unimportant then, when another strained sob tore through her, and rippled the air around them. Wrecked her body, shook her shoulders.
Draco could not believe the words coming out of his mouth. They were betrayal of the purest kind. An admission of insight.
"Granger, is this why you're upset?"
It seemed the obvious answer, but also not at all. He could barely believe that this would be enough to turn her into a drunken mental breakdown.
"Get my purse," she whispered, the words stricken with heavy tears, and took another drag. Again, Draco did it, unable to explain to himself why. He simply saw no reason not to. That woman on the steps – she wasn't Granger. No, that was someone he'd never seen before.
It clicked open softly and she directed her wand at its vast interior.
"Accio invitation."
A thick and creamy slip of paper came flying out and it fluttered to the floor in front of his feet. Draco bowed down to read it. The calligraphy was clean, lavish and official. Large loops and neat dots.
"Hermione Jean Granger
and
Ronald Bilius Weasley
Are getting married and would like to invite
To their ceremony on October 16th, 2003
Don't forget your dancing shoes!"
The words bounced around Draco's mind as they formed meaning. Wondering blindly, until he took another look at the date.
Today was October 16th, 2003.
"I think you got the date wrong."
"Oh, shut up! Just shut up, will you!"
Her pained words broke through snot and tears. She heaved over, folding into her knees. Her torso shook violently.
"Fuck you, Malfoy! Fuck you for being here! Fuck you!" she wailed into her legs, long sobs breaking up her voice. The words loved her.
And then Draco did something that surprised him, and probably her too, if she were sober enough to notice it. Against all logic that told him to go back inside, leave her alone and let her wallow in that self-pity, he stepped past her, down the stairs, and found his cigarettes discarded at her feet. He lit one with the tip of his wand, and cast another warming spell to filter out the cold around them.
He sat sideways on the bottom step and smoked in silence, waiting for her sobs to ebb away. Searching for what words to say. He didn't even know how to comfort her. Or if he wanted to.
He shouldn't want to. But he had signed up to work with an all-around perfect image of the Ministry. She'd well cried away the delusion.
It clinked quietly and when Draco looked back at her, her head was tipped back, swallowing down whatever was left in the bottle. He took it out of her hand when she brought it down, burping in between sniffling.
"My, my, Granger, that's some potent alcohol. You do this often?" he murmured quietly, reading the odd, foreign words on the black label. On the bottom, a universal 37%.
"Not at all, that's the point."
Her voice was trembling, like on the verge of another outcry. She had procured another bottle out of her purse and had already flicked off the cap.
"Want some?" she asked and offered it to him with utter certainty in her outstretched arm. Watery eyes asking, innocent in their shine.
"I'm a depressed drunk, Granger." He took another drag, not taking his eyes off of hers. They were red, embellished by dark circles and fatigue.
As if he could ever consider getting drunk with Hermione Granger.
"I don't give a damn what the fuck you are. We're both fucked. Get that? I have… nowhere to go," she slurred, making a large, sweeping motion with her free arm, gesturing at their surroundings. Draco glanced at the sea, the darkness slowly enveloping it. Nowhere to go, she was right.
"Come on."
Draco slowly took the bottle. He had wished for alcohol earlier, hadn't he? What better way to celebrate his worthlessness than with the person who had enticed his crash and burn in the first place?
It was an ill-tasting whiskey, but it burned his throat just right. He inhaled a large swig and handed it back to her. She took it with vigour, liquor lapping down the sides of her face as she drank. Draco almost told her to slow down.
"You know, I was surprised you were still here. When I arrived earlier, I thought you were gone, but your suitcase was still there. Couldn't get into it, so I thought, you're probably inside. I thought about chucking it into the sea, but where's the fun in that?" She began ranting, and Draco listened only barely, head laid back to watch the sky darkening rapidly, a lovely purple hue morphing into a deep black.
"But then I thought, I'm fucked, I'm so so fucked – you know, because you're fucked too – I still don't know what the fuck is going on, what I've been doing all this time–," a hiccup, "– and I realized that it's been nothing, nothing at all. You know, ever since the war, everyone always told me 'You're Hermione Granger, you're the golden girl, the smartest witch of your age, and everyone is looking up to you', so what was I supposed to do? I could barely sleep and never focus on anything because all the dead, they were screaming and crying in my mind – but people said, Hermione, you have to set an example, and I was so fucking dead inside that I could just not figure out what I really wanted, and so I just took what everyone told me and ran with it. And I graduated top of our year because of course I had to, and then Harry told me to get a job at the Ministry and it seemed just fine, you know?"
She interrupted herself by putting the bottle back to her lips and tipping her head back, taking big, large gulps like a child sucking a water bottle dry. Draco took it back from her when she removed it, and he almost dropped it when her cold fingers brushed his. He put it on the step beside him, holding it tight in his grip.
"And everyone seemed so happy with me, so I just kept going, I kept going, Ron proposed, there was no reason to stop – and then I joined the Obscurial Elimination Division and everyone loved it, the newspapers were so wild for my work, and they always reported my cases, but you probably don't even know about that – and everyone kept telling me, if I worked hard enough, I could be head of it within a few years, and it was all I cared about, and then… then…"
Her voice broke as if the words were running away from her and she was trying to hold them back in, heaving breaths and low whimpers.
"And then Ron told me he didn't know me anymore, that he couldn't tell who I was anymore, and he left this ring… this fucking ring…"
Her free hand reached underneath her shirt and yanked at something. Out emerged a thin necklace with a ring dangling on the bottom. She held it, and it shook like a leaf, the ring dancing on the thin chain.
"And I just thought, if I get this promotion, it'll prove to everyone that I'm still the same, that I can still do it, live the perfect life with husband and kids, and then you came along – fuck you, Malfoy, fuck you so much, you came along and fucked it all up and now I don't even know if any of it was worth it, if I can even go back, if any of them even care, if I just wasted three years working a lie, if I even know anything anymore."
She began and ended her tirade with low wails that swallowed up the last words. Tears glistened on her face, red and puffy, streaking her cheeks, and yet she raised a shaking hand to take another drag of the cigarette, cheeks hollowing around the lipstick-stained filter. Draco watched her, fascinated.
She was just as broken as he was. She was lain bare in front of him, pieces of a shell there for him to pick up.
There was no malice and cruelty. Just the pretense of a woman who was reminded of her own blindness, forced to see in the dark.
Draco raised the bottle to his lips again. The night was silent except for the pain that she was hurling up, choking and gasping on the thickness of her own tears.
He hadn't eaten all day. The alcohol took effect quickly. He felt it in the slowness of his thoughts, the way the words rolled off his tongue, onto the swaying earth underneath.
"I get it," he mumbled. Staring at her shoes, pointing inward. Grey stone underneath, streaked by decades of rain. Her sobs ebbed slowly.
"What?" she breathed, hiccupping.
"I get it. That feeling. I just found something to care about."
She was silent then. Her clammy fingers grabbed the bottle from his hands. He went to take a drag from his cigarette again, just to find it gone. He lit another one.
He felt oddly calm now. The alcohol was doing wonders, for sure; but the anguish he'd felt earlier, on these same stairs, it was gone. It was comforting, he supposed, for anyone to know that others were suffering too. If that was cruel, he could not decide.
The nicotine burned in his lungs and throat just perfectly. He held it there for as long as he could. Waiting for someone to say something.
"I should be having my first dance with Ron now," she whispered. Draco grimaced at the mental image.
"Come on Granger, you could do better than the Weasel. There's no need to put yourself down like that."
This elicited a shaky giggle from her, and the sound surprised Draco. It was the first time he'd heard her laugh since they had come here.
The alcohol was at fault for it, he would later convince himself; for such a weak and stupid musing, but right then, he thought, it was a nice sound. Nice enough to want to hear more often.
"I know Ron isn't…" She hiccupped. Every word dragged out.
"He isn't ideal, you know. But he's safe. He knows what he wants. Told me what to do. I always thought I was sure with him. That we both knew what we were getting into. Safety."
"You seem to value safety a lot, despite being on such a clearly deadly job."
Another weak laugh. Draco was proud like a peacock; felt it swelling in his chest.
"What are you going to do now?" Draco asked, his own curiosity surprising him.
Granger took another sip from the bottle and flicked the long dead cigarette into the snow. There was a buzzed glint in her eyes, mischievous, utterly inebriated. A flick of a switch, all sorrow laughed away. She was on her feet quickly, swaying into all directions and stumbling into the house.
"I'm going to do something I've always wanted to do."
Draco clambered up the stairs and tripped across the threshold. Oh fuck, that whiskey was potent. The living room was swirling around him and it all dissolved into one single, sickening blur. A faraway light-source clicked on and he groaned, shielding his eyes from the blinding flash. There were sounds of drawers opening and closing.
"Granger, what are you doing?" he slurred and stumbled towards the source. His side crashed into the kitchen opening where he held on for dear life and his eyes finally regained focus. Granger stood with her back to him, over the sink. He could only hear the sharp sounds of scissors cutting.
"I've always wanted to do this. I hate taking care of all this… it's so superfluous."
Only she could still be talking so stilted even when completely shitfaced, and as he began to formulate a sentence to mock her, his mouth froze when she turned around, lips parted around the first word.
There she stood, one arm stretched out proudly, holding a long lock of hair. She had cut it off roughly from one of the strands surrounding her face. It had fallen back into the rest of her curls, but the ugly cut made it easy to differentiate. It barely touched her shoulders now.
Draco gawked at her.
"Why… why are you…"
"It sucks! Off with it!" she squeaked, high-pitched and excited, and turned back over the sink to drop the hair in, grabbing another strand. The shitty scissors screeched with the effort to cut her thick locks.
"You're insane," Draco said after a while, holding onto the counter. His legs wanted to give in almost as much as he wanted to go back out there and finish the bottle.
"Isn't this the best time to be insane? Also, can you get the bottle? There's more in my purse."
He didn't have to be told twice.