Excerpt from Francoise Mélier's notes, ca. 1544
The first half of the ritual, the bonding process, consists of four stages.
The first initiation ritual may only be achieved by certain individuals. Any one person may be rejected, the reasons of which are unknown. However, if one manages to complete the first stage, the person bonding with the Obscurial will therefore be known as the transient.
1.1A wizard's magic is highly influenced by the sway of their emotions. First magic usually shows itself coupled with strong sensations; anger, sadness, happiness, fear. One's magic is located near the heart, where those feelings are felt the most clearly by both Muggles and Wizards; therefore, the heart is imperative for the bonding of two magics.
1.2 In addition to the verbal expression of the spell itself, the couple must be positioned sitting on the floor facing each other with a copper bowl containing a linen bag with hair of each participant placed between them.
1.3 The first step of the initiation ritual is to set the linen bag alight. Then, the participants must each place a hand on the other's chest, right above their heart. This physical contact will be the direct current between the two magics as they bond.
1.4 After the linen bag is on fire, the spell must be repeated three times. The first time will simply initiate the bonding process and physically fuse the hands where they are placed. The second repetition will fully converge the two magics. Inability to tear oneself from this state will result in the soul's indefinite remaining in a limbo between magic and non-magic. This will be completed by the third repetition, which will close off their fully combined magics and return their consciousness.
Perspective, Draco thought, was one of the most detrimental aspects of life. His life, in particular. It could skew anyone into believing, thinking, doing, anything. To give someone a chosen set of facts and send them out into the world, telling them to act on what they knew, and impart judgement on the world as they saw fit, was a special kind of damage.
Perspective tainted his life from the moment he was born to that wretched name.
Malfoy.
How he hated to hear it. How he reveled in the silence of the French woods surrounding his cabin, where he would sit on the small meadow behind his house and drink and smoke until his body was numb and the sky was a starry night.
How it sounded all the more venomous on her lips now. So innocuous. A small needle stab, infecting him a bit more each time she said it.
"Can I pinch one?"
She joined him on the small bench around the back of Theo's house. Two hours had passed since they'd watched from the window as Quentins left their house, a black blur moving through the snow and then Disapparating. They'd wait one more hour before Granger would go down to check for any surveillance spells needing removal.
He listened to the glint of her wand igniting the cigarette and her deep inhale. He'd been needing a smoke desperately since yesterday morning. His leg still hadn't stopped bouncing.
"What did Potter say?"
She shifted slightly, stretching her legs out. An envelope flopped into his lap.
"Read it. I don't mind."
It was a lot of empty worries, Draco soon determined. 'Are you sure you're okay 'Mione?' and 'What about the promotion?' galore. A suitably pathetic attempt at a heroic rescue, nothing he wouldn't expect from Britain's favourite saviour.
And he'd finally figured out that her mysterious partner was the most infamous ex Death Eater himself. A whole paragraph of presumptions and open panic for how many slurs he'd called her already, if he had cursed her in her sleep, if he had Imperio'd her into leaving her job.
"Merlin. It's almost like you're a grown adult capable of making your own decisions."
He handed back the letter, almost tipping some ash from his cigarette onto it. He finally glanced at her then, and there was a scornful curve in her tight lips, her eyes darkened by her drawn eyebrows as she regarded the letter in her hand.
"If he were so worried about my wellbeing, he should have cared while I was still there. Not when I decided to finally do something about it."
She whispered an incantation, and they watched as her wand set the corner of the letter aflame. The parchment soon laid in the snow, soot and black ash. Draco still stared at it when she threw away her cigarette and disappeared inside.
They had, in truth, been slightly worried about how to actually make Anette participate in the actual bonding ritual. It was not just simple spell work to be performed; the ritual originated from a time and place where wands were not yet household items.
So far, they had only brushed the surface of who Anette actually was.
They were sat on her bedroom floor. Granger was busy downstairs, installing their new TV, and he was sorting all of her new toys and books into makeshift shelves and boxes.
Anette was laying on her stomach, feet pointing up into the air and jamming colourful pencils into a blank mandala. She'd been quiet all morning, reading one of her books and even asking Theo to do a puzzle with her. He wondered if yesterday's events had been too much for her; all they'd told her was that they were having a sleepover at Theo's. She seemed to choose when to ask questions very carefully.
They'd hidden their magic from her so far, performing spells out of the sleeves of their jackets; rather pointless, since she barely ever paid any attention to what they were doing, anyway. They'd known to save this conversation for later.
How does one explain to a child that they were not only magical, but also housed a poisonous dark force that could, and already had, killed someone?
He'd asked Granger earlier, before she made the trek down to their house to check if it was safe. Of all adults present, she was the only one who didn't grow up with the knowledge of her inherent magic. She should know how to break the news.
"I found out through my Hogwarts acceptance letter. I spent the next months studying all of the books for our First Year."
Absolutely no help, as expected.
They'd decided to sit her down together later and explain everything before the ritual. Draco pondered the coming conversation as he waved his wand, mumbling incantations to build together a large wooden frame that would inhabit an empty corner of her room.
"What's that stick?" she piped up then, and Draco found her staring at his wand. His mind raced. A perfect opportunity, was it not?
But Granger…
Fuck it.
"It's a wand. I can use it to do magic."
Her face lit up then. Like the sun pulling her up, she was on her knees in seconds, watching his wand with wonder. And then reached out to grab it. Draco yanked it away.
"No! I mean, no, don't – you're too young for wands. Every wand is very personal to its owner, you know? Everyone's is different," he stammered, grappling for words. Her face fell slightly.
"Can everyone do magic with a wand?" she asked, and Draco hesitated. Listening if maybe, Granger was going to come up the stairs and help him. But of course, he only heard faint swear words from the living room.
"No, not everyone. People who can't do magic are called Muggles-"
"Am I a Muggle?" she interrupted, her lower lip growing swell with the possibility of it. Draco slid his wand back into his sleeve, sure to keep it as far away from her as possible. Even if it wasn't tailored for her, an instrument to channel her magic – all of it, even the bad parts – was like giving her a grenade and telling her not to pull the ring.
"No, you're not, you're… You said that bad things happen around you a lot. The one we're giving you medicine for, remember?"
"Is that magic? All the bad?" she squeaked glassy eyed, brought out by the thick quiver in her voice. Draco waved his hands in panic.
"No! No, that's not – it kind of is. The bad things, they're a part of your magic. But I know how to take that bad part away, that's what I adopted you for. We can take it away, okay?" he said, words tumbling fast, and the stricken feeling in his chest loosened only slightly when the obvious upset in her face simmered down.
There was something odd about talking to Anette. Draco had worked toward this for years; to be here, finally, in front of her, seemed like a dream of the clouds. But it also was not anything like what he'd expected.
He'd been so sure of this, everything he'd researched in France. He still was. It resurfaced every time he talked to Granger; when he demanded answers for any possible hole in her plan. When he sat on the couch studying, but really just watched her move around the kitchen. Seeing nothing but the conundrum she presented; a clear hurdle in his path to victory, to exposing the Ministry, but an undeniable help all the same.
He felt that cockiness in every fiber of his being when he looked at Granger. That knowledge. She was only here because he showed her the truth. She would have been a mindless drone without him still.
Maybe she still was.
But when he looked at Anette, innocence, dangling legs and curious eyes, everything else crumbled away. Stammering and stuttering for words. And he found himself reaching out, desperate to feel it again.
That ignorant, innocent trust. That no one but a child could ever offer him.
"You're sure? It'll be gone?"
"Yes, I promise you."
She smiled then, shakily, and Draco could not help but huff in relief, laughing back. He lifted his hand up, the tip of his wand snug against his palm.
"And when it's gone, you'll get your own wand as well. Sound like a good plan?"
Her hair flew with a vigorous nod and a bright grin, and before he knew it, she had thrown her arms around his neck tight, and he held her close as they hugged. She shook slightly underneath his hand on her shoulder.
"I always believed that I was just bad," she mumbled, almost like an afterthought, and Draco's heart cracked a little.
Feeling the dark pulse of the Obscurus pressed against him in tandem with her heartbeat. Moving and breathing, twisting and curling, reaching out but not quite grasping his own magic.
Lodging itself around the base of his neck, with a faint pressure on each side. Choking him, not quite, but hinting at it. Reminding him that it was there.
That it could kill him at any moment.
"Sidaes, Duomoltued Wabaosorae Yumiek Yumyie–"
"Yumiekre, Malfoy, it's -re –"
"Oh I'm sorry, were you there when they invented the spell three thousand years ago?"
"Clearly not, but I'd like to think that it's imperative to pronounce every single letter, we have no idea what language this is! If you mispronounce anything it could go completely haywire!"
"How do you know the -re isn't silent?"
"Stop being ridiculous –"
"Yumiekre, Yumyie Ventultigor Tentilfae Firtuohh Roniucso," Anette repeated in between their quarreling, and they fell silent at her utter lack of hesitance. How the words crossed her lips with slick ease, a buzz of magic tilting the air. It was strong and profound, impossible not to notice the waver of ancient, crackling force that crossed the space between the three.
They stared at her with utter bewilderment.
"How do you know how to say all that?" Granger broke the silence with a high squeak. Anette shrugged, glancing back down at the piece of paper they'd given her with the spell written out in large letters. Thumbing the sides of the parchment as her eyes ran back and forth across the complicated words like they'd been practicing for the past few minutes, making sure they said it correctly in unison.
"It just feels right, no?"
Draco and Granger shared a glance. There was a hesitance in the wide open brown of her eyes, looking at him for answers he didn't have. Not even Granger could make sense of this.
Maybe, Draco thought, she would simply be an incredibly gifted witch one day.
Either way, it made their job easier.
"Alright then, practice some more," she nodded at him after a few more seconds, and Draco sneered. The words were difficult to say, how could a nine-year-old outshine him? Fucking ridiculous.
"Sidaes Duomoltued Wabaosorae, YUMIEKRE," he lingered on the word and gave Granger a blank stare that made her sniff, "Yumyie Ventultigor Tentilfae Firtuohh, Roniucso."
"Congratulations."
"Sod off," he grumbled. He squirmed where he sat on the floor with crossed legs, across from Anette in much the same position with a copper bowl between them. Traditionally, the ritual was only performed between two people – mostly a marriage couple but also between siblings, parents and children, any other close relation. It only became defunct thousands of years ago, mostly because ancient wizard communities found better, easier to perform rituals with the same significance. Many of which had developed into today's Muggle wedding traditions as well as Wizarding customs.
Granger was mostly just here to make sure nothing happened.
"Anette, I need a hair of yours," Granger spoke after a few more minutes of practice, picking up the small linen hex bag inside the bowl. They were some of the oldest forms of magic, entirely forgotten by modern witches and wizards. Draco had been surprised to find that they had actually been used at some point in history; hex bags seemed more like Muggle fabrications of what they thought real magic supposedly looked like.
Draco plucked a few strands of his own hair and dropped them into the bag as Granger held it out to him. She neatly folded it up on her knee and then placed it into the bowl, slowly sitting back.
Draco had read these instructions close to thousands of times. Reality was razor sharp in focus; it zeroed in on Anette's blank stare that went past his shoulder, the blonde halo around her face glowing almost heavenly. Her small hands pawed against her pajama pants and the folded linen bag almost appeared to hover in dark contrast to the brownish red copper it lay inside.
He recalled the writings of Mélier, hundreds of years old, retranslated from the original bonding ritual.
The first initiation process may only be achieved by certain individuals. Any one person may be rejected, the reasons of which are unknown. However, if one manages to complete the first stage, the person bonding with the Obscurial will therefore be known as the transient.
What if, after all these years, he would be rejected? What if this was all for nothing?
"Do we start now?" Anette asked, her voice interrupting Draco's thoughts, and the swaying reality around him steadied. He looked up from the copper bowl. Granger had backed away, pressed against the far wall of the living room.
"Yes. Here."
He leaned forward, angling towards her and placed his hand underneath her right collarbone, pressing his palm firmly into her clothed skin until he felt the faint pulse of her heart prodding against it. She looked up at him with large eyes, and for the first time now, glassy with tremor.
"It's okay. I'm here. Nothing will go wrong," he whispered, holding her eyes with his best attempt at a reassuring tone. It worked, miraculously, and she gingerly placed her own hand above his heart.
He lifted his free hand towards the bowl and pointed the tip of his wand toward the linen bag.
"Incendio."
A glint ignited the corner.
He looked back at her again, and the growing fear and confusion in her face, her short nails scratching over his shirt, the shaking conviction in her expression fading with every passing second.
"Together, okay?" he murmured reassuringly, and found her free hand hanging limply over her knee, rubbing soothing circles into her palm. Her breath hilted. Lips pursing and her gaze refocused.
He tilted his head in question, and she nodded. The glint in the bowl grew, eating away black at the edges of the bag.
"Sidaes Duomoltued Wabaosorae Yumiekre Yumyie Ventultigor Tentilfae Firtuohh Roniucso," they spoke slowly, the united words mingling awkwardly, and that air of ancient magic returned as it had before. But it was stronger now; not quite like a wind ready to knock you off your feet, but a force emanating from deep within the earth.
He felt it bloom behind his chest. A split right in his heart, in the cavities and veins being peeled apart, where her flat palm and spread fingers held on firmly.
The inevitable concussion tainting his magic. He felt it crack and sicker out, hot and thick. Opening up and blooming like a flower, vulnerable and bare for anything, any wonder, any danger, his skull stood strong against the pounding in his head. A blinding headache, pushing in at every corner, putting pressure on his weak bones.
Anette stared at him with the largest eyes he'd ever seen.
She felt it too.
He nodded again, every movement straining his muscles and tendons. Every fiber of his body was screaming and thrashing and convulsing with the slow black seeping in.
Anette nodded back, lips parted in low gasps.
"Sidaes Duomoltued Wabaosorae Yumiekre Yumyie Ventultigor Tentilfae Firtuohh Roniucso," they repeated, and this time, the copper bowl began to glow as they spoke.
It was a hot red lighting rod in between them, and spurts of fire sputtered up into the air, tearing the linen bag apart.
The living room collapsed into emptiness.
And the world fell away.
If there was a sensation to describe how it felt to have your bones crack but not quite, the earth open up under the rug but not quite, the life and air squeezed out of him but not quite, Draco would describe it as a most existential sort of destitution. Nothing could ever come close to describing how this felt; his very being, his soul and magic being split apart clean at the rifts and run out along the cracks like an egg. To gasp with every single muscle in his body, but no air could be prevailed to enter him.
He felt it. In his head; a crack of his skull. In his chest, around his pounding heart; ribs bending away from their cage. His face, turned towards the sky; his eyes, rolled back into his skull, all vision lost.
That dark magic that inhabited her; the parasite, it invaded him. It crept along the edges of his shattered self and slipped through the fissures. It was ecstasy, terror, a free fall into nothing.
It slithered along the edges of all he felt and knew, and he soaked it up like a sponge. One second it was a threat, a curse, ready to kill him with a quick snap of his neck.
The next it was simply him.
The world had faded around them. Left them in a blurry sea of perfect black. Draco only barely noticed that he was swaying back and forth, his body battered and bruised, beaten and thrown with the dark magic spreading from the tips of her fingers. Mangling his body, his muscles and flesh, nerves and bones, everything that made him human.
And he saw the glowing red of the copper bowl, the orange flame that snapped the air between them, and the golden locks of her hair. And just then, through lowered lids and delirious twitches between reality and nothing, he caught quick sight of Anette's face.
She was slack-jawed, her eyes rolled back into her head, her face tilted upwards as if to soak in a sun that had long ceased to exist. And just underneath, he could barely see the pure white glow on her chest, spreading from his fingertips into thick, branching veins.
He wondered, for a short moment, if he were to look down to her hand on his chest, if he would see a black glow.
His mind was swiped clean. Nothing but the burning prongs of the Obscurus shooting from the crevices, knotting and tangling into a tight web. Ingraining itself into the marrow of his bones, the strings of his DNA, the friction ridges of his fingerprint.
And then, from the world he left behind, a reminder, the words he had etched into his eyelids for years.
Many participants have never been able to tear themselves out of this stage.
Was it his hand, or someone else's? He could not tell. He only knew it squeezed Anettes, and he just barely recognized the fluttering of her eyelashes. She looked at him but not really; recognition was there, a concept of a world left behind, but too far away to reach them.
Her hand finally squeezed back. His head tumbled as he nodded.
"Sidaes Duomoltued Wabaosorae –"
Like thread and needle, his flesh and bones, soul and heart, knitted back together tightly. Smoothed out at the seams and done up like new. Air filled back into the vacuum of his lungs; a tingle of his limbs returned.
"- Yumiekre Yumyie Ventultigor -"
A breath of earthly life fanned across his face. He felt his entire body again; how sore it was. Not only his muscles, but every single cell of his being, he thought; like every plane of his existence had been wrung out and hung up to dry.
A universe of black shaped back into the living room again. His weight pushed his body down into the scratchy rug underneath; there was the couch, pushed against the wall, and the far flickering light in the kitchen just barely visible now.
A last needle stab in his chest, under the pad of Anette's thumb, and the thread pulled tight.
"- Tentilfae Firtuohh Roniucso."
The flame extinguished with a pathetic flicker. The glowing copper had returned to its original brown reddish shine.
The white glow from his hand swooped back in, leaving nothing to see. His head and neck screamed when he looked down at hers on his chest, but he just caught a glance of dark matter.
Every molecule in his body had reassembled. It was screaming for a nap that should, at least, last a millennium.
And his eyes finally found Anette's. And they seemed infinitely lighter. He wondered, with how he felt right then, how she could be still conscious. Until he remembered the black and white glow; how she had infused him with a lethal parasite, she had only gotten his untainted, pure magic.
If anything, she should feel better.
How do you feel? he wanted to ask, but the words fell back down his parched throat. He gulped, and just then, he remembered Granger by the small noise to his left.
She stood pressed against the wall with her palms flattened to it, round-eyed and chest heaving mutely. She coughed them up.
"You – you began to glow, and the entire living room began to shift–" she stammered, no words suitable enough to describe what Draco had felt. Yet he knew exactly what she was attempting to say.
He looked back at Anette with a glowing smile on her lips.
"I feel even better than when I woke up this morning!" she announced. Draco's shoulders sagged with relief.
If she felt any exhaustion akin to his, he'd be worried about the Obscurial imploding. But she appeared just fine.
"Water," he croaked to no one as attempted to straighten his cracking knees, to stand up, but immediately flopped back down, courtesy of the utter numbness in his legs. If he looked down at himself and found his legs gone, he would not have been surprised. Granger scurried to the kitchen in his stead and returned with a glass of water within seconds. Draco took it from her with both hands, tipping his head back and gulping it down.
The soothing liquid dispersed the sand desert in the back of his throat, and his voice returned.
"Fuck."
"How do you feel?" Granger asked. She was rubbing Anette's shoulder, glancing between them.
"Like hell."
Rattled bones and shaking limbs began to pull themselves together again. Draco leaned backwards, kicking the bowl aside and his legs out, laying across the living room carpet, breathing deeply.
He felt it clearly. The Obscurus flowing in his veins; dark matter accompanying his own magic, a thin current, breathing and moving. Like squirming in his arms, right along his veins, moving underneath his skin. At first, it felt like a dooming panic attack.
When the world would close down around him, the floor fell away, and that impending, inescapable doom encompassed him with its might. Reminding him of his pointless little life, his worthless existence, his lack of consequence.
But it never flowed over. It knew the threshold. It would never explode.
Merely blubber beneath the surface.
"Anette, how do you feel?" he spoke, eyes closed and unmoving.
"I want ice cream. Can I have ice cream?"
Laughter bubbled out of his chest, a weak puff of air fighting to the surface.
"Sure, you can have ice cream."
"Malfoy –"
"Just let her have the ice cream," he interrupted her, eyes closed still, and she sighed. He wondered if he'd fall asleep like this soon; and if he'd ever wake up.
"Come on, dear. You did well, you deserve it."
They shuffled towards the kitchen together and cupboards opened and closed, cutlery and bowls clinked, and the freezer door gave a loud sucking noise.
"Do you want some too?" Granger called, and Draco opened his eyes at the spotted, ugly ceiling.
"Sure."
He was still melted into the floor when she came back, sitting down beside him with a spooned bowl placed beside his legs. Anette sat back down in front of the copper bowl, inhaling the ice cream.
"How do you feel?" Granger asked, leaning into his limited view, and his eyes focused on hers. Searching for words to describe it, words that didn't exist.
"Remember when Lockhart removed all of Potter's bones from his arm in Second year?"
She nodded, curls bobbing.
"My entire body feels the way his arm looked."
She grimaced at this description, and it enticed another weak laugh from him.
"Can you sit up?" she asked, placing a hand on his shoulder as he nodded, raising him from the dead into a sunken sitting position. His limbs were tingling now, arms hanging uselessly at his side. Feeling began to creep up from his fingertips.
"Who's Lockhart? And Potter?" Anette asked with a loud burp. Her spoon clattered into the empty bowl, scraped clean of all remaining ice cream.
"Lockhart was an old teacher of ours. Harry, Potter, he's a friend of mine," Granger replied. Draco stared at his own bowl beside his leg, and the aspect of sweet cold cream melting in his mouth seemed absolutely fucking fabulous right now. Maybe Anette was onto something.
"You went to school together? Is that how you met?" Anette continued, perking up. Draco almost felt stupid with how perfectly fine she seemed. He could barely move his hands yet.
He shared a glance with Granger. She was biting her lip tentatively, as if diving into their past and their pretense of friendship could sway Anette's opinion of them.
"Yes, we went to a Wizarding school. It's called Hogwarts. We were classmates there," she finished hesitantly. Draco finally managed to reach for the ice cream, gathering it close in his lap, not trusting himself to hold it up. Glancing at her with no intention to help, rather interested in how she would choose to describe their relationship at school.
She never accepted his apology.
"Were you always friends?" Anette asked innocently, and Draco cringed slightly, eyes falling away from Granger's. It may have been the exhaustion, his battered body giving way to something he'd never allowed before, but for the first time in a long time, he felt sticky warm shame creeping down his spine, oozing like goo.
In the end, he'd always believed that hating Muggleborns was a most ugly side effect, a symptom of the disease he grew up with.
The idea of being a Malfoy. How that despair fell away and faded when he realized that no one cared about him, his name, and what his family stood for – when it turned into an inconsequential backlash with faceless victims. When he stopped giving a shit about people's blood status and simply despised them for despising him first.
His bigotry had faded into oblivion since Sixth year. The word, that word, it felt like bile in his throat just to think about. He'd seldom thought of it since, too preoccupied with reacting to how people, everyone, treated him since the war.
Like a parasite. A disease. A laughing stock. Anonymous letters starting sometime in Eighth year, and when he thought to try and trace back the handwriting, he realized that they all had different ones. It was not one single person intent on making their dislike for his family, his name, his choices, known. It was a symptom, a mindset, a current running through the world and the people surrounding him. When they laughed and sneered at him openly; either that, or plainly ignored him. At Hogwarts, at the ministry, everywhere he went. The anger, the rejection, the hate, it festered, until that day at the Ministry, six months into his desk job; when his co-worker Balthazar asked him to join his coworker's Friday night drinks out.
He'd never been invited before. He was hesitant, but too enticed by the possibility of people actually wanting him around, that they would give him a chance for once, to deny it.
Just to overhear his coworkers in the bathroom hours into the evening.
"You're not wrong, actually. 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."
It purged him of all his silly and childish hopes of love and friendships. It hurled him towards France.
Where the Ministry's lies soon kept him up at night.
To now, sitting in a boneless heap on the floor, unable to feed himself ice cream, after a most suicidal ritual; at his side, the target of his old bigotry still echoing faintly in his mind.
"We weren't really friends in school. Not until later, when we met up again after graduating. Isn't that right?" she spoke, tearing Draco from his wallowing thoughts.
Bloody idiot. Self-pity won't bring you anywhere.
She looked at him, hesitance loud and clear in her expression. Draco went along with the lie.
"Yes, we started working together."
He didn't know what else to add. He lifted the spoon with swirling, melted ice cream to his lips and slurped loudly.
The cold dessert was honey to his soul, soothing his sore bones and tensed muscles, and he tipped his head back with a groan.
"I'll get more water," Granger quipped and grabbed the empty glass, disappearing into the kitchen.
"Are you sure you feel okay?" Draco asked Anette, and she nodded vigorously. "Can I have more ice cream?"
Granger returned with the water, picking up Anette's empty bowl and looking down at it with pursed lips, a thoughtful expression crunching her eyebrows together.
Draco shoveled more ice cream into his mouth, watching her constipated expression. He could almost hear the gears turn.
"If you think any harder, your head will break," Draco jested, and Anette giggled. Granger frowned at him.
"I was just thinking that, maybe… since Anette took it so well, maybe I could try too."
The bowl dipped back into his lap. "Try what?"
"The ritual."
The spoon slipped from his grasp and clanked into the bowl, splattering specks of liquid ice cream onto his shirt.
"You want to be a transient?"
Expecting his reaction, she dropped down with a sigh again, righting the copper bowl and removing the ash inside with a wordless spell.
"Yes. It could only be beneficial to have both of us, in case… one goes wrong."
Draco gaped. She couldn't actually be serious, could she?
Stealing a car, kidnapping Anette, hiding from the Ministry was all one thing – a reflex of her belated life shattering in front of her – but to try the same as him?
"You know how… dangerous it is," he spoke, catching his words as he glanced at Anette. Granger turned her body to face him, chin pushed high, decision and confidence curved strong in the tight set of her lips. Draco raised his eyebrows in disbelief.
"I know. I want to try anyway."
He grabbed the spoon again, absent-minded, lifting ice cream soup to his lips. Turning the thought over and over again.
There was truly nothing to hold her back. Based on historical accounts and Mélier's studies, two transients were entirely possible. Anette was clearly nowhere near as exhausted as he was by the ritual.
"When?" he asked after moments of contemplation. Granger pulled at a seam in the knee of her washed out trousers.
"Right now."
"Okay, hold on–"
"Don't talk me out of this, Malfoy. You said it yourself earlier. I can make my own decisions." Her stern eyes did not allow for any discussion. Draco rolled his eyes. Bloody stubborn–
"It's your fune- I mean, cemetery event," he interrupted himself with a glance towards Anette.
"Are we gonna do it again? Again?" Anette quipped then, and Granger turned towards her with a tentative smile.
"Is that okay for you? You think you can go again?"
Anette shrugged nonchalantly. "Sure."
Draco laid back down with a groan, ice cream soup bowl resting on his stomach.
"You're making me feel so old," he lamented with a poorly veiled whine, and Anette giggled gleefully.
"But you are old!"
Even Granger laughed at his demise then.