"OBSCURUS BLOWS UP ORPHANAGE IN SOUTH FRANCE; FIRST OF ITS KIND IN MORE THAN 200 YEARS!
By Rita Skeeter
Published on June 24th, 2000
Last night, at approximately 23:10 o'clock, in the commune of Pierrefeu-du-Var, an orphanage housing 24 children and 3 adults at the time blew up and killed every single living person inside. French Wizarding authorities suspect this to be the first case of an Obscurus in over 2 centuries. As many people don't know, Obscurials are the result of a witch or wizard suppressing their natural magic through violent means which produces the dark energy that has taken 27 people's lives. Reports of local wizards describe an aura of hostile, dark magic surrounding the smouldering carcass of what was once the orphanage. An expert from Egypt has described this incident as 'the best of all worst case scenarios," continuing, "many more could have died and the threat is gone."Continuing, he says: "There is no feasible explanation for a witch or wizard developing an Obscurial in modern times. Something is wrong." Something is terribly wrong, indeed. More on page 2…
Like many things in Hermione's life for the past few years, her stumped senses took a while to pick up on something most crucial about their new life with Anette. Dulled awareness cursed her; she knew that too well now, a fact that had bothered her more and more the past week. Seeing the ritual work with Anette was another reminder of her years of non-work, of abandonment of the real issue, her own uselessness, and the inadequacy that she'd allowed to take ahold of her. She had to push these feelings down constantly, because if they burst and swam to the surface, they would paralyse her.
She could not allow that to happen.
However, it took her only around 36 hours after the ritual almost killed her, when her aching muscles had finally healed and she'd come to terms with her inability to be a transient, to notice something most peculiar in the atmosphere in their house.
Malfoy was avoiding Anette.
It had started small. A barest hint of shifting glances, hands pulling away, turning his back and pointedly directing his attention elsewhere whenever she approached him about something, anything at all.
Hermione finally noticed it on the second noon after the ritual, some hours after lunch, while she was sat at the kitchen table, looking through an old book on symbols and their meaning, overhearing an exchange from the living room.
"Nikolai, will you do this puzzle with me?" Anette spoke, and Hermione looked up, observing the exchange through the gap between the counter and the cupboards above. Malfoy was stretched out on the couch writing into a diary, something he'd started a day or two ago. Anette had been jamming pencils into blank paper sitting on the floor beside him, listening to the quiet TV with half an ear. Hermione had successfully installed the TV the day before, and it had been a source of wonder for Malfoy, and nonstop entertainment for Anette, since.
Malfoy did not even look away from his book as he spoke.
"Later, okay? I'm busy now."
Hermione squinted. She'd heard these words before.
Precisely, at least three times yesterday, and twice more this afternoon. Always the same reply. Innocent enough in the moment, but not anymore if there was never any payoff.
And as Hermione watched the exchange happen, she saw that Anette knew it too. That it was just empty words instead of a straight-out no. She read it in her slumped shoulders and her rejected stare to the floor, traipsing away from the couch and dropping down in front of the puzzle box she'd done with Hermione just mere days before in Theo's house.
Hermione went back to reading with a scowl.
The day had stretched by, and Hermione watched Malfoy's behaviour with utter bepuzzlement. Only three days ago he'd been wrapped around Anette's finger; yes, of course we will , to every one of her wishes. Now his smile fell the second she turned away, his eyes never lighting up to begin with. He barely even looked at her now, pointedly staying focused on whatever else was occupying his attention, even as she tugged at his sleeves and whined for attention.
She watched him, trying to fit the puzzle pieces in her head. To understand what happened. He should be happy; he had been, two nights ago after the ritual when they smoked and talked on the steps at one in the morning. All his edges had melted soft then, even when he looked at her, the steel in his eyes molten warm. She couldn't fully understand why until she laid in bed later, the symbol burned into her inner eyelids; the ache, the residue of dark magic still stiffening her joints.
Too preoccupied with solving the next issue, she had almost forgotten her attempt to become a transient. And still, in hindsight, it simply seemed like the most natural choice.
Harry's empty flowery phrases had made her feel more isolated than ever before. He would never understand; he had not for years. So who cared if she tried to be a transient? At least she would have gone down doing something real for once. An attempt at good.
Malfoy had not expected her. Which made him even more confusing. What on earth was spoiling his mood?
The moments added up in her head, but could not form a coherent image. But frustration was the paintbrush, and it filled in the picture more and more as the day went on.
She had sacrificed a bloody lot for this. She would not let his teenage angst or whatever else was at work here, spoil his relationship with Anette. He was exhausted by the bond, she knew that, but this was something else.
Hermione would simply not allow it.
Anette even began to ask for Theo, who quickly replied to Hermione's message that he had hurt himself working on a potion and would be out of order for a day or two. Upon her offer to come up and help cure him, he denied her.
Bloody men and their fragile egos.
By the time bed time rolled around after a day full of reading, watching TV, a bit of homeschooling and playing with all her new toys – rather exhausting for Hermione, especially since Anette kept staring at Malfoy existing elsewhere in the room in utter ignorance, as if to pray that he would notice her, while she was doing her best to keep the girl occupied – Anette had drawn several mandalas with bright colours, and was showing them to Hermione while she tucked her into bed. Malfoy leaned in the door as they spoke, all crossed arms and a scowl drawing his eyebrows tight.
"Nikolai, look at these, I used all the colour pencils I have to make this one—" Anette began talking straight past Hermione, waving her most colourful mandala and threw back her duvet to charge towards him, but he interrupted her.
"I can see them from here. They look nice."
The joyous glint in Anette's eyes dimmed, her smile drooping as she watched her uncle turn away and disappear into the hallway. Hermione bit her lip tight at the sound of his receding footsteps, and quickly laid a hand on Anette's shoulder.
"Tell me, what colours did you use?" she asked, and Anette's expression lightened at the newfound attention, immediately blabbering away about reds and purples.
Fifteen minutes later, Anette was on the verge of sleep, curled into a ball in her bed and Hermione watched the rise and fall of her steady breaths for a few moments before she closed the door. She cast a strong Muffliato.
And then she stomped down the stairs.
The kitchen and living room were empty, but she did not need to search for long. The front door was slightly ajar, and she ripped it open within seconds.
"What in Godric's name is your fucking issue?!" she spat as soon as his white blonde head came into view. He was sat on the stone steps, his back to her, and he didn't even flinch.
"Sod off."
"Oh, shut up! Stop giving me that! Tell me what your bloody problem is!"
Just then, she saw the whiskey bottle beside him, no cap to find. She picked it up swiftly.
"Seriously? You'd rather get drunk than, I don't know, actually do something about whatever is bothering you?"
He did not reply right away. Rather took an exceptionally slow drag from his cigarette, turning his head to the side, and she saw how twisted and tortured his expression was, lips curling with disgust, smoke billowing from his scrunched nose.
"I said , sod off."
She could have kicked his head in.
"Seriously? Nothing? I thought this was a fair fucking partnership. Do you know how bloody difficult it is to work with you if you won't even talk? You are sabotaging your bond with Anette! You're supposed to be her uncle, not a bloody stranger!"
"I'm not her fucking uncle!"
He hissed the words, spat them out as if they were venom, and the words on her tongue died as he continued: His voice and countenance shook, and he snapped the words as if they had been winding up inside him for a while.
"She thinks I am, but it means nothing! I'm nothing to her, do you understand?!"
He hissed like a snake that probably adorned his arm, spitting fury that split the air between them. He'd stood up swiftly, stalking a few steps away into the crunching snow.
"What does it matter who you are?! To her, you're her uncle, she bloody looks up to you, you can't just push her away like–"
" What does it matter who I am?! Are you really as fucking daft as I thought? You of all people should know that's fucking bullshit! All we are, is what people think of us!"
He paced back towards her and lunged at her, ripping the bottle from her hand suddenly, setting it to his lips and taking a swift gulp. Hermione strode forward, anger roaring from deep within her chest. It was hot and cold and the most alive she had felt since she stole that car. She wanted to push at him, she wanted to kick him into the snow, tear that ugliness from his hands.
"What are you even talking about?! You're getting caught up in technicalities, this is not about what others think of you–"
"IT'S ALWAYS ABOUT WHAT OTHERS THINK OF ME!" he shouted loud and sudden, and the treetops around the backyard rustled with birds lifting into the sky. Hermione froze at his outburst, staring at him as he heaved white breaths, cheeks tinged pink.
The look in his red-rimmed eyes was one of a man going mad.
Her hands dropped to her side.
"This is about something else."
He pulled back in a single instant. His jaw clicked. His eyes avoided her, his shoulder's stiffened, he grew away, one step at a time, and he lifted the bottle to his lips again.
"This is about why you really want to heal an Obscurial. You never told me–"
"I fucking told you about the cure, what else do you want?" he spat, but Hermione continued unfazed, raising her voice.
"–why exactly you want to do this. People don't just wake up one morning and decide to risk getting killed trying the impossible."
She'd stepped forwards, a finger raised at him. His eyes followed her as she got closer, spitting fury and sparks, jaw tightening and shifting. On the verge of another outbreak, daring her to pull the trigger.
"I told you everything about me. I sat on these fucking steps and cried to you. You could have left me alone, but you listened to me, and heard me out. That's why I'm here. You know why I'm here. I deserve to know the same about you."
Her voice was stern. Demanding an answer, allowing no excuses.
There was no explosion. But a venomous fizzle in the air as he spoke, looking right down straight into her soul, with low lids and a distasteful curl crinkling his nose.
"I never asked for your pathetic sob story."
A blow to her head would have been less brutal. All the air left her lungs with a single punch. She stepped back, suddenly light-headed, suddenly sick to her stomach.
His expression did not change. Cold stone, hard and unforgiving eyes. He did not care.
She was nothing to him.
She had fooled herself into thinking that Draco Malfoy could be anything but the expected.
The words left her hot head, spoken with a heavy tongue. She willed her jaw to stop trembling.
"I can't do this anymore."
His eyes narrowed. Before he could say another horrid thing, she continued quickly, breath spilling out.
"I'm leaving tomorrow. Go fuck yourself."
And with that, she turned on her heels and slammed the door shut behind her.
Hermione Granger did not cry anymore. As she stared at the ceiling for the next few hours, there was only numbness spreading in her gut, to the cavities of her chest, to the extremities of her limbs and her cotton head.
It was her own fault. She had gotten too close to the fire, made herself believe it wouldn't burn her. That whoever Draco Malfoy was, it was worth sticking it out for some good.
Her heart ached only for the little girl on the other side of her bedroom wall. With an infectious laugh and curious eyes, a victim to circumstances she had no control over.
You can't leave them alone. Malfoy can't do this on his own. If he messes up, Anette will die, and so will he, probably. You can't just leave.
There is nothing left for you here. He doesn't want your help. He never wanted it. He'll never respect you.
Her conscience fought with her pride. She was torn between the ravaging man spoiling his own plans, lashing out at anyone who tried to help, and the child caught up in his storm, unable to help herself. She pinched the bridge of her nose with a low sigh.
She was so fucked. She'd lost herself in something she never had a chance of understanding.
As long as Malfoy didn't tell her the truth, the whole of it, she could never stay here. He would continue to push her away, and take himself and Anette down as he did.
Wasn't that exactly why she was obligated to stay? To keep Malfoy from self-sabotaging, Anette from getting hurt?
Hermione's mind roared. The answer was hidden behind layers of smoke and fog, and no matter how hard she looked and stared straight into it, it would not reveal itself.
If it weren't for the hurt, the squirming near her heart.
"I never asked for your pathetic sob story."
The only person to ever care enough. The only person to hear her out. He'd taken that trust and stomped it to dust right before her eyes. The betrayal hurt, but not as much as her self-scolding.
What had she expected, trusting Draco Malfoy not to use her inner turmoil against her? He was still that boy in the courtyard ten years ago, too disgusted to fully look at her as he threw that word at her head, the first person to ever use her blood status against her. His edges had sharpened over the years and he had cloaked his bigotry, but he'd never lost that disdain. She knew that now.
The night ate away at her sanity. She said she'd leave in the morning, but she was not sure she really could.
With a groan, Hermione threw back her covers and left her bedroom. The house was dark except for the warm glow of light coming from Malfoy's room down the hall, where his door had been left ajar. She approached slowly, listening for any movement from inside. She found it empty, except for his suitcase laying in the middle of the floor, the top lifted, emanating the cozy light in golden rays that painted the walls and floor.
He never left his suitcase open like this. He'd been pedantic about always keeping it closed and far away from Hermione's reach. This was certainly… out of order.
An invitation, maybe.
Hermione stared at the open suitcase with crossed arms, foot tapping, thinking about it. Considering whether to accept.
And decided that she needed some water first.
The kitchen was silent and dark, and Hermione stared out the kitchen window as the water ran down the back of her throat and through her chest like cold clarity. It was one in the morning, and the kitchen was as silent as the night.
A flutter disturbed the stillness. A small note, folded clean like an airplane, had landed on the counter next to her hands.
Hermione looked up, behind her shoulder, but the living room was empty and dark. She unfolded the note, and Malfoy's neat handwriting greeted her.
I'll explain everything.
She bit her lip, reading the words over and over. Squeezed her eyes shut and mouthed them again and again.
Draco Malfoy did not deserve a last chance, but there was no one else for Hermione to give one to. Hermione balled the note up in her fist, jammed it into the pocket of her pajama bottoms, and sent a pointless prayer to a god she did not believe in.
The suitcase still stood in his room, open and inviting as ever, and Hermione rounded it slowly. The top only offered her a squared view of a carpeted floor that the ladder stood on, and shelves on either side.
Her feet sunk deep in the carpet as she descended the last step. She turned slowly, taking in Malfoy's sanctuary.
It was a small library, tastefully equipped with dark wood shelves and low, orange lights overhead that dipped everything in the room in a cozy glow. Boxes and books and folders lined the walls to the ceiling. But there were only shelves, Malfoy nowhere to be seen. Until she caught the gap in the wall to her right, and she approached it to find it led two steps up into the real office.
The room was slightly larger, a fireplace on the left, more shelves and books and research, the ceiling charmed to resemble the night sky, and an imposing, mahogany desk stood proud in the middle.
The tall leather chair swiveled slowly at the sounds of her entrance, and Malfoy revealed himself, smoke lifting from a cigarette between his fingers as he took a slow drag, watching her with a cold expression.
Hermione almost wondered if he had copied this most dramatic moment from some kind of Muggle movie with moustache twirling villains and head spinning plot twists, but found that he was just naturally dramatic enough to do this without inspiration.
"You're smoking inside? Is this the Twenties?"
She spoke before she thought, and scolded herself for the light greeting. She was supposed to be mad at him.
And yet, something about his intensity always disarmed her defenses. He made it easy to be something she was not, simply because he never expected the trademark "Hermione Granger" perfection. He would always dislike her either way. How hard she tried, or not at all.
He didn't reply, but nipped at the cigarette again, not breaking eye contact, and waved his wand to transform a small ottoman in front of the desk into a comfortable looking armchair. She moved her weight from one leg to the other, approaching with hesitance, as if one false move could spoil the air.
"It's going to damage the books."
The pack of his cigarettes slid along the clean space of the desk towards her, but she ignored it. As she sat down, she suddenly felt self-conscious of her pajama clad self – the outfit seemed too casual for an office as fancy as this.
But as she looked up, she found that he was only dressed in one of his loose sleep shirts as well. They both looked out of place.
"I put protective spells on the shelves. I'm insulted you'd suggest any otherwise."
Hermione crossed her arms at his easy words. Her tongue was caught between her lips, keeping herself from retorting with another snarky remark, continuing the banter. She was here for explanations. For an apology.
"Explain yourself. Now."
His light eyes flickered away for a moment then, and the chair swiveled to the right slowly. He looked at the shelves, the floor, his lap. Squeezed them shut, mouthed something only he knew, and Hermione held her breath.
Pity almost took ahold of her at the sight of him struggling with himself. But those vile words were burned into her mind.
"I don't know where to begin."
"The beginning is a good starting point."
He rolled his eyes. Then he lifted his wand with a muttered spell, and there was shifting and rustling coming from the small entry room.
A well-used shoebox with nipped corners and discoloured panes levitated through the air. It landed softly on Hermione's lap, and she looked up at Malfoy, but he was averting her, eyes fixed onto something on the floor.
The box inhabited bundles of parchment, letters, folded up neat, all different kinds of paper, bits of writing peeking out here and there. She pulled out a random one with careful fingers.
Draco Malfoy,
You are everything that's wrong with our world. You walking free is proof that our society is not ready to expel your disgusting kind from ours. You're the symptom that got my husband killed. You are the scum of the earth. You are loathsome. They say you were too young, you had no choice, but you knew bloody well what you were doing, and I know too. Everyone knows.
I hope you die a wretched death. You deserve it.
The words on the parchment seemed to burn her fingers. She looked up again, but he was staring at his lap, moving his arms slightly, what she knew was from him pulling at his fingers. She picked up another one.
Malfoy,
If Salazar is just, he will kill your gormless father. I will drink a pint to his death, and another one when you kick the bucket. It's the least you owe my father. He was killed at your Manor, at the hands of You-Know-Who, and I know you watched him die.
Another one.
You should rot in Azkaban. Your entire family has gone to the bloody dogs. No one gives a shite about your kind anymore.
Another one.
Every night before bed I pray you don't wake up the next morning.
She could not read further. There were dozens more, all collected and stored neatly. The words spit hate and fury and something she did not know the people around her had been capable of. Most of the others did not cloak their intentions as flowery as the first ones she'd read; as she flipped through them, variations of "die", "kill yourself", "I wish I could kill you myself" and many more like it blurred in her vision.
Her throat had dried like the desert.
"Who…"
"They're from everyone, Granger. It doesn't matter the name of who wrote the words. It's what everyone thinks."
He'd been waiting for her to speak, and his tight words tumbled fast. He waved his wand again, still not looking, and the letters all folded themselves back up and the lid flew onto the box, and it hovered back into the entrance.
"When did you get these?"
He didn't answer right away. His eyes climbed up the shelf in front of him, sticking to an open box at the top.
"After the war. They only stopped towards the end of Eighth year. I began to work for the Auror's office after we graduated. I hoped people would let go of their… presumptions of me. I just wanted to move on. Distract myself."
Hermione held her breath, fearing that an exhale would interrupt him. His fragile words seemed so brittle, as though the smallest hitch could break them apart, and him with them. He took another drag from his cigarette, and it shook slightly between his fingers. His eyes stared right through it.
"They didn't want me either. So I quit and went to France. To one of my family's old estates."
She knew part of this story. He found Mélier's diary and research there, but, she felt, there was much more to come.
"A woman named Manon Lestrange had lived in the house for years. She was the daughter of my great great-aunt. She'd left the family because they rejected her squib-born sister, Josette, and they sent letters back and forth for a decade. I read them all.
"Josette lived a comfortable life in Muggle society, with a husband and two children, and Manon refused to bow to her mother's demands for a pureblooded husband to continue the bloodline. The letters stopped sometime in the 70s, after Manon had complained about weakness and illness to her sister for a while.
"I don't think Josette ever came back to the cottage. She just lived her life with her husband and kids. But all the letters, they gave me an idea."
He lifted his wand again, drawing names and lines and relations into the air above the desk. Hermione followed as each family member appeared next to each other.
Josette, Manon and their brother Corvus, who had his own family apart from the sister's troubles. Manon was, as predicted, one end of the bloodline.
"Josette was desperate to fit back into a society that would never accept her. I felt… I needed to find out what happened to her. So I went to find records."
Josette got married to a man named Reynard Gage, and they had two boys, Mathis and Louis. Hermione read the names, and slow, horrid, vile recognition seeped into her as she read that last name.
Gage.
On the other side were the Black sisters, great-nieces to Minette Lestrange. Narcissa and Lucius Malfoy with one single child at the very bottom; Draco Malfoy.
"I found him. I found one last piece of that family."
Mathis Gage married, and had one single child.
The name hovered clear next to Malfoy's. Third cousin. A faint blood relation, but to a man who'd been rejected by his world and forced to live in foreign woods, a single, desperate straw.
Gérard Gage was the boy's name.
"Is this –"
"Yes."
The silence was stunned and heavy. Hermione read the line of relations over and over, trying to make sense of it, of everything, how nobody could have known that the first Obscurial in modern times was Draco Malfoy's cousin. But it was impossible for anyone to know; if Josette, Gérard's grandmother, had been disowned by her magical family, they would have erased all connections to the Squib in their family.
She knew how this story ended. She knew how it began. But she did not know what happened in between.
"Did you… know him?"
He chuckled darkly, rubbing his face, and the glowing family tree disappeared.
"Yes. Fuck yes, I knew him. His parents died young. I visited him in his orphanage, and the way he looked at me –"
He looked at her for a moment, and Hermione's chest grew desperately, her heart, it cracked in terror, when their eyes met. The pain was vicious, it spoke loud and clear. It was dark grey, ruptured thunder, war and grief and agony and misery, and everything horrible about their world. He looked at her like a man who had everything he ever loved taken away from him, and he relived that loss every single day.
"When he looked at me, he didn't see an ex-Death Eater. He didn't see Draco Malfoy, scum of the earth. He just saw his cousin. He loved me. He loved me."
His voice was thick and heavy, ready to burst with torment and grief.
"I was going to adopt him. He was the first person to make me feel like anything but that. He made me feel like… I was worth the air I breathed."
A choke stuck in Hermione's chest. She knew how this ended. She knew.
His voice climbed, higher and higher, pushed upwards by the sheer intensity of feelings.
"I should have noticed his magic. I should have. I didn't. And one morning, when I was going to… The newspaper arrived. His fucking orphanage blew up. He was gone. I could have stopped it."
"Malfoy, you couldn't have known–"
"STOP SAYING THAT NAME!"
He had jumped up with a cry, pacing out from the space behind his desk, walking back and forth while he tore at his hair.
"I should have fucking known! I should have fucking stopped it! I should have fucking helped! But that wasn't even the worst fucking part!"
He whipped around, thrusting his wand at the box he'd been looking at earlier and it toppled over with the outburst of his magic, one newspaper flying right at Hermione. The headline was one she knew all too well.
"OBSCURUS BLOWS UP ORPHANAGE IN SOUTH OF FRANCE; FIRST OF ITS KIND IN MORE THAN 200 YEARS!"
It was the first daily prophet article on Obscurials. It was the beginning of a pandemic, and a sickness taking hold of their world.
"I though the world would be fucking devastated at his death!"
His voice roared deep like breaking thunder, it broke, it would not stop breaking.
"He was just a boy ! He was fucking eight! And they treated him like a criminal! "
Hermione did not need to read the article to know what it said. His shredded cries told her all she didn't know before. Her gaze stayed on Malfoy as he stood with his back to her, shoulders shaking and still tearing at his hair. He was anguished, breathless with pain, beaten down with grief.
"You want to avenge him," she spoke quietly. He turned his head to the side. He breathed heavily, gulping air like he could take his outburst back in.
"It's the least I owe him. He died because I was too fucking stupid to see the signs. And then the Ministry, you – you came and made him out to be a fucking monster. Like he was an uncontrollable beast. Like he deserved to die. Like he deserved it."
His voice wavered again, broken down to bits and pieces. Hermione felt an urge to stand up, go to him, put a hand on his shoulder to soak up the way they shook, the torment painting the tense lines of his body, but she was frozen in her seat.
Everything made sense now. His unwavering obsession with healing an Obscurial. Why he was willing to die for it.
He had nothing else to live for, if not to honour the true memory of a boy the world had forgotten.
"He liked to play chess. He would talk about car races for hours. He always asked his caretakers to play Edith Piaf in the common room."
He turned to face her and his lips were pressed into a tight line, his narrowed eyes meeting hers.
"The newspapers never said that. That he was just a boy, a child, who dreamed of getting a race car. Someone with a future. Not just the beast inside of him."
"And Anette?" Hermione spoke quickly, before she could forget what the real problem was, too caught up in the whirlwind that was Draco Malfoy. His hands curled into fists, jaw twitching.
"I'm not – I can't–"
"If you don't get your shit together, she will get hurt too."
Hermione spoke it loud and plain, knowing fully well the weight it held. She expected a look nasty enough to burn holes through her skull, but he only squeezed his eyes shut, head hung low.
"I thought – The bond, it makes me–"
He took a shuddering breath.
"I feel so close to her. I can feel her Obscurus' heartbeat every second of the day. Looking at her is not what it used to be. It's…"
He could not find the words, but Hermione picked them up.
"You're scared she'll replace him."
His expression did not change, but he lowered himself to the ground, sitting with his elbows perched on his knees, holding the sides of his head. His fingers scratched at his scalp, his underarms pressed tightly against his cheeks. And Hermione noticed, that for the first time since they'd started living together, he was wearing a short-sleeved shirt.
The Dark Mark was faded on his pale skin.
He had let down all his guards. He was completely uninhibited. A shaking mess on the floor, torn between the memory of a boy no one but him knew, and the present of a girl that could not ever take his place.
Hermione got up then, walking over to where he sat, and sunk to the floor next to him, mirroring his position, arms wrapped around her knees. She tilted her head to catch his eyes, but he was stubbornly staring at the carpet. She looked away, clearing her throat.
The words came slow but trickled steady.
"After the war, I'd lost so many loved ones, that everyone just said we had to move on. There was no way to grieve everyone individually, because there were too many. And I realised, that people expected me to set an example of how to move forward."
She pulled at a thread in the carpet.
"Harry, Ron, McGonagall, everyone – they treated me like I was a cure-all. Like me moving on was going to show everyone how to grieve correctly. It felt like, if I didn't get the good grades and act perfect, then no one else would do it. No one else would show them how to. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't study. I couldn't do anything. Except pretend."
Hermione had never known this about herself, until it festered and thrived in her mind for the past week, after her bender with Draco, when her world crumbled around her.
She realized the things as she said them, and it felt like breathing fresh air and choking on her own truth at the same time.
"I was too numb to really feel anything anymore. I kept thinking, once Hogwarts is over, they'll stop looking at me. They would stop expecting me to be… me. But they never stopped. And people told me to move on and set an example, so that's what I did. I got this idea in my mind, that if I just… perform this perfect image, it'll feel the way everyone said it will, one day. And I stopped caring. I was just… doing stuff. But not really doing anything.
"Every one of my moves was watched. I was always going to be an example of how to grieve. But how – could I grieve properly? How could my losses measure up to anyone else's, when everyone had lost loved ones? How could I demand more time and space than everyone else? How could my pain be worse than that of Ron, who lost Fred, or Harry, who lost literally everyone, or George, or Molly, or Neville, or Teddy, or anyone else? How could I be so selfish?"
Tears welled in her eyes, blurring her view, and she blinked them away with a sniff. They fell, and she could see from the corner of her eyes that Draco was watching her now, but she could not tear her eyes from a nonexistent point in the floor, too far away to reach. She wiped her face with the back of her hand.
"I started to believe that the only way to honour their deaths was to do what everyone expected. Help everyone move on and grieve. I could never just stop and cry for one person at a time, and feel their absence."
Revelations finally left her to gasp for breath then, and she allowed her words to hang in the air for a few moments.
Her throat was almost entirely shut with the tears choking her. She could barely breathe, wetness prickled at her eyes, and she was too overcome to actually use her voice and say the words that came to her mind. They were clear as day, black and white, a haunting truth behind the lies she'd been telling herself for years.
She had never stopped grieving any of them.
Then finally, with glassy eyes, she looked back towards him.
"I envy you, you know."
There was no judgement in calm eyes, no coldness in their steel gray. He was merely watching her, eyebrows drawing together just a smidge at her words, but intense nonetheless. He could have stared a hole right through her, and she felt seen; truly seen, for the first time she could remember.
"You could grieve him without anyone watching. With no one expecting you to do it a certain way. With no other dozens of deaths, impossible to grieve all the same. No one else was there to take away the importance of his loss."
He met her with silence. Only that profound stare to burn her insides.
"But he won't matter less just because of Anette. Loving more than one person is not stealing from whoever came first. Love is just a single strand in a thread with everyone else."
"But I need to make him matter. I need his death to be worth something," he whispered, and Hermione's hand fluttered with the urge to put it on his arm, to soothe him, to share their grief.
"He'll always matter. But Anette can matter just as much as him. As long as you don't forget him, loving her will only remind you of how much he truly meant to you."
Hesitance led his eyes from her face downwards, mouth pursing while he gnawed at the inside of his cheek. She was close enough to see every small twitch of his eyebrows, the corner of his mouth, how her words tugged at his grief and how he waned in the face of how else to handle it anymore.
Wiping away the vulnerability in his expression, he raised his wand and the pack of cigarettes whirred through the air into his hand. The moment she hadn't noticed, was over.
He lit one, offering her the pack, and then laid back, taking a first drag. Hermione fumbled out her own, feeling the need for it clearly in her shaking arms.
"I didn't mean it. What I said earlier."
Hermione looked up from the tip of her cigarette shielded behind a cupped hand, her wand burning through the end. He had tipped his head to the side to look at her, and for a moment, she felt breathless. Her hands sunk into her lap.
"Are you at least sorry you said it?"
Her words were not as hesitant as she expected them, and he took them easily. Breath still did not grace her as he stared at her, considering his response.
"Yes. I am. I'm sorry."
He raised the cigarette to his mouth, and white smoke wafted from his parted lips. Still watching her.
Hermione looked back down at her cigarette, unable to hold his gaze anymore. Not quite sure why, or where the pit in her stomach came from.
"Good."
She laid back too, spreading her limbs on the soft carpet. They both faced the charmed sky now, breathing comfort into the tense air. The silence was easy again now.
That was one thing Hermione had noticed about living with him. Silences were rarely ever uncomfortable anymore. There was an odd comfort to be found in being able to not talk in someone's presence, not feel the urge to fill the gap between them with empty pleasantries. They could just exist and exist.
It was peculiar, to be able to be silent with Draco Malfoy.
They were far more similar than Hermione could have ever possibly believed. They were both, in their own ways, outcasts – one on the outside looking in, one on the inside looking to get out. Now, both outside for good. Harry and the Ministry might keep searching for her; still believing that she was just on an impromptu solo honeymoon. But she would never return to her old life. She could not.
Hermione had not felt kinship like this in years. Yet when she looked over at Draco right then, she felt less judged, less forced to pretend than she could remember. He hated everything that her friends and coworkers and peers at home wanted her to be. He liberated her.
"You don't believe what those letters say, right?"
He did not look over, eyes gliding across the artificial constellations above them.
"It's not about believing, Granger. It's about the truth."
"Their beliefs don't define yours, or your truth."
He chuckled lowly, as if she'd told a mediocre joke.
"I can't afford to think like that. What I believe of myself won't change how they treat me."
She turned her head, looking back at the sky. Imagining what it'd be like if people's expectations of her were anything but positive. Suffocating, maybe, but handing glory to her on a silver platter.
Or what it'd feel like to believe such horrid words, if they were directed at her. But Draco Malfoy was someone entirely else.
"What changed your mind about me?"
"Is this an interrogation?"
She kicked at his feet.
"Just answer the question."
He was silent for a couple of moments.
"Being a Malfoy is a disease. Hating Muggleborns was just one symptom of many. Realising what it meant to be a Malfoy cured me."
She hummed curiously. She knew his family's name had fallen out of favour within days of the war ending, despite him and his mother getting pardoned on account of Harry's testimony. His letters proved how hated they truly were, but they did not offer her direct insight into his mind still.
The Malfoys used to be at the top of the food chain. How could he possibly have changed his mind so much?
"I don't understand."
He sighed.
"It's not – It doesn't matter. Just know that I don't care about blood anymore."
She looked towards him again, to find his eyes already watching her.
"I really am sorry about Hogwarts, though."
"You mean, when you called me a Mudblood?"
He flinched at the word, a visceral, immediate reaction, and Hermione watched him with glee.
"Why on earth would you–"
"You can never know how that word made me feel. It's rather empowering, don't you think, making you squirm?"
He grimaced, grunting with clear discomfort, but vague assent.
"Sure. Empowerment. Can I break your nose too, for old time's sake?"
She laughed outright then, clear and bright into the night sky.
"I used that memory once to cast a Patronus charm, you know. It's been pretty useful over the years."
"Glad my pain could do some good."
She giggled, and they grew silent again.
It was easy, talking to him. Enough time had passed, enough ivy had grown over their schooltime feuds, enough was known about each other now, that there was no awkwardness anymore, no shifting glances, when they reminisced. And the silence in between anecdotes, it was delicate, it did not demand to be filled, it just let them breathe.
Maybe some rough edges made the picture just a lot more interesting to look at. And Draco Malfoy was a splintered image with deceiving first looks and fascinating interpretations.
And Hermione felt inexplicably relieved that he was not what she'd expected.
"Have you found anything with the symbol yet?" he spoke after a long while of talking and stargazing. Hermione pursed her lips.
She'd spent most of the last two days reading all of the books she had available on the topic, which were not many. She had, after all, not prepared herself for possible rune studies before she left Britain for this case.
"No. But I met an expert on sigil and symbol history in Austria once on a case two years ago. I'll owl him and ask for help."
He hummed.
"I've wondered about Mélier's research, though. How did he get his hands onto that potion? Everything about it, it's… archaic. Such dark magic. Whoever invented it was a talented, but deeply disturbed wizard. It has no other purpose than to torture Muggles with magic."
"None of what I've translated showed me a name for whoever constructed it."
Hermione sat up.
"But have you translated everything? All of his research and his diary?" she kept poking. Draco raised his head to look at her, and it lolled back with a sigh when he saw her expression. She would not let it go now.
"Mélier was fucking paranoid. He literally put dozens of different translation and encryption spells on his works, all centuries old. It took me a year just to figure out the entries about his ritual and how to do it, and the potion itself."
"But then you know how to translate the rest, too."
"Yes, and why would we care about some dark wizard from the sixteenth century now? It's got nothing to do with our current issues," he said, sitting up as well and gesturing towards the ceiling, where Anette was deep asleep above them. Hermione turned the burning cigarette in her hand, looking at it from all sides.
"The ritual's begun now. We don't have much else to do until Anette initiates the second stage. While I contact sigil experts, it'd be worth looking into the rest of Mélier's work, no?"
He frowned. She knew he was right; there was probably little to no worth in putting the time and effort into deciphering everything. But with the ritual initiated, each stage would take at least a week to complete. And for fear of triggering the Obscurus, they had to stay here for the majority of the time.
Three people in one small cottage, with rare visits from Theo, was a master recipe for cabin fever, no matter how much Anette kept them on their feet. They needed to occupy themselves otherwise, even if it seemed pointless.
He knew it too.
"There could be some really dark magic hidden in all of that. Are you sure?"
Hermione perked up curiously. There was molten steel in his eyes again, warm and malleable, and as he looked at her, she almost found herself believing that he genuinely cared about her wellbeing, and her opinion.
But she knew for a fact now, all of his worries only surrounded Gérard and Anette. She did not, could not, ever fit into the picture. She didn't want to be in that image anyway.
"Of course. If that one potion could do so much good today, who knows what else could be in there?"
He nodded slowly, lifting the cigarette to his mouth for a contemplative drag.
"Okay. I'll start tomorrow."
"Good. Glad we agree."
She vanished her cigarette and stood up, clapping bits of ash off her legs.
"It's late. I should go to bed."
She crossed the room and ascended the stairs, but halted when his voice held her back.
"You're not – Are you still leaving tomorrow?"
He was still sat there with his legs crossed, his hands clasped in his lap and fingers pulling. Still manning a smooth mask, blank eyes, but Hermione could read a flicker of doubt now. The words left her mouth without a hitch or doubt in the way, surprising even herself. For some reason, a smile threatened to overtake her, and she bit her lip to keep it down.
"No. I'm staying."
He nodded and got to his feet, and she turned to leave again. She stopped one last time, one foot on the first step of the ladder, leaning back to see him rounding his desk.
"Draco?"
He looked up instantly, all open and bewildered, and the flash of wonder crossing his expression finally made that smile creep up.
"Goodnight."
His lips tightened a bit, but now, she knew it wasn't all too bad.
"Goodnight, Granger."
This chapter was twice as long as usual but it is instrumental to the plot so I really could not cut it anywhere. I really hope you liked it, I'd love to hear any thoughts or comments!