"White Carnation?"
"Innocence and pure luck."
"Yellow rose?"
"Friendship and familiar happiness."
Flower symbolism might be the last conversation Hermione would have ever predicted having with Draco Malfoy, but here they were.
And it was all his fault.
It had been silent for nearly half an hour, except for the sounds of their boots crunching against the snow.
Left with no explanation for his anger, she decided to leave him be. He had the temperament of his namesake, devastatingly explosive and unpredictable.
She didn't think he was mad at her. Hermione suspected he would be much harder to deal with if that was the case (based on past experience).
Hermione's resolve to let him sulk wore thin quickly. She was desperately bored, but she didn't know how to snap him out of it.
If it were Ron, she would surprise him with a chocolate frog. Harry would cheer up with a hug, and Ginny could never resist smiling after a dance party. She had no clue what cheered Malfoy up.
Probably the tears of his enemies.
His fingers graze the petals of a yellow chrysanthemum. The flower looked like a hundred peeling bananas glued together, it bobbled and swayed after he let go.
It'd been twenty minutes of silence, she didn't care if he'd snap at her anymore.
"The yellow chrysanthemum symbolizes slighted love."
He peered at her from the corner of his eye. She tried to keep a nonchalant expression.
A few minutes passed. In her peripheral vision, she saw him hesitantly touch a cluster of yellow carnations as they walked past.
"In the Victorian era, people spoke through flowers when they desired a discreet way of communicating. Usually, the messages were quite scandalous. Giving a gift of a yellow carnation would indicate rejection to a suitor's advances."
It went on like that, him touching a flower they passed, and she would tell him what they meant.
"What about those?" Malfoy pointed to her left.
The first thing Hermione noticed was the vibrant clumps of tiny plum-colored flowers. It was still morning, the sky was cerulean blue and bronze rays lit the forest, but the flowers seemed to glow. She wondered if they were enchanted.
The second thing Hermione noticed was that the flowers surrounded large, oval-shaped stones. They looked ancient, weathered by time and rain. They were clean of sleet and snow, like someone meticulously polished them after each snowfall. The stones stood out against white piles of snow like chocolate chips in a cookie.
"When did those get here?" She pointed at the stones.
"What type of flowers are those?" Malfoy countered with an edgy, demanding quality returning to his voice. She eyed his expensive boots and handcrafted outdoor clothes with distaste. The entitled prat in him really jumped out sometimes.
"Are you not curious as to why a random path just appeared here one day?" Her hands fell to her hips. It would take more than an opal glare for her back down.
"That's always been here," he looked at her like she hit herself over the head with the walkman ten times, "Sometimes I wonder how your brain has so much room for flower symbolism," he gestured his hands dramatically, "and why unicorns hate men, and literally anything said in class or written in a book. But then there's moments like this, where you didn't notice an entire fucking rock path—"
"Oh my god, are you done yet?"
"No."
"Well, I don't want to listen to it. When did you notice this?" She pointed back down to the stone path. They seemed to be near the beginning of it; the flat rocks weaved through the trees and out of sight, the purple flowers clustering around each stone.
At his silence, she turned to look at him. His scowl was back, his eyebrows furrowed in annoyance. She was reminded that not many people dared to talk to him like this.
He swept a hand through his golden hair in exasperation or defeat —she wasn't sure, and said, "I tripped over those bloody boulders during detention first year."
She vaguely remembered Malfoy almost face planting into the mud, he tried to pull her down with him. "Oh. So you weren't grabbing my arm because you were scared?"
"Fuck no. Is that what you thought?"
"I mean, yeah?"
"Why didn't you say anything at the time. You and Potter could've had a good laugh." Sometimes, there was something in Malfoys's manner of speaking that piqued her interest, the way he carefully selected his words but attempted to appear nonchalant and unbothered.
But his eyes...his eyes always betrayed him; she'd come to learn this over their time together. And at this moment they were very much alike to his house mascot's, a cunning look only a Slytherin could manage.
His face was an aristocratic veil, a front of pureblood propriety, but it could never cover his opal grey eyes.
" I didn't feel like it was worth the effort," I didn't want to embarrass you. But she is not ready to share that. The revelation that she didn't always hate him in the explosive, toxic way it escalated over the years.
His inquisitive look seared into her face, and she wondered if he was a legilimens because he looked like he knew something.
"The flowers are heliotropes. They symbolize eternal love and devotion," she added, trying to divert his attention. His searching gaze shattered. He blinked.
"Right," he nodded.
"I think these flowers might glow in the night. Do you see how the ones in the shade have a slight glow?"
He nodded again.
"I want to follow it. Preferably at night to see if the flowers glow," she murmured, more to herself than him.
"Let's go now," he made to follow it. She grabbed his arm.
"We have to get back in time for the train," she said, appalled that he tried to insinuate earlier that she was the idiot of the pair when he forgot about the train.
"Fine," he muttered, not looking at her.
A few moments passed, she swung her basket full of Dandelion Roots and Dittany in one hand. Her right hand was empty.
It is irrelevant if this move was strategic or not.
He always grabbed her hand when they walked back, so the earphones wouldn't fall out a thousand times, he said. But he didn't want to listen to music today, so she didn't think—
Cold fingers snatched up her hand and wound around it. He sighed, not one of petty exasperation, but a caress of sound like hot water pouring over sore muscles.
She tried not to think too much of it, but she inevitably would.
When the looming trees thinned out, and they could see the distant outline of the golden castle, he stopped suddenly.
She turned to look at him. He remained facing forward, his spine rigid.
"I don't want to go home for break," he said through gritted teeth. The words tumbled out of his mouth with the grace of stone grinding against brick.
"Why?" she said because he brought it up. She wasn't being nosy, even though Harry said she had a tendency to be.
"It's… well I can't really…" he was getting agitated again, his words fumbling. "I just don't like going back there…"
"Oh," because what else does one say to that? "Well at least you get to see your mother and father," she tried.
"No, Hermione, you don't understand. I hate it there," he said with the finality of a door slamming shut.
"Why do you hate it there?" It was a fair question. Over the years, she'd seen pictures of Malfoy Manor and she couldn't imagine what it was like to live and breathe wealth. His open honesty surprised her, not because he usually lied or withheld information. But because the most personal thing they had ever discussed was her imposter syndrome in the wizarding community.
She never expected him to meet her in the lethargic blue depths of vulnerability.
It was bold, to be vulnerable with someone you weren't very sure about. She had certainly never ripped bandaids off and shown wounds so gut-wrenching and so far-reaching to Ron and Harry. The expectation of rejection from Malfoy somehow made it easier to bear the fright of sharing.
"My father...he's like toxic radiation, infecting the entire estate. Even if he leaves me alone, I can never just relax." He wouldn't meet her eyes, "I am always on guard."
"What about your mother? Don't you want to see her?"
"I guess…" he kicked at a pebble. "She's fine. Barely around, but I can't say I blame her though. She deals with him year-round. She's got to cope somehow."
"I thought you were so—", proud of your wealth and family, was what she was going to say before she cut herself off. She sensed that might trigger an outburst.
But he knew what she meant, "It was never more than a weapon to wield. You wouldn't know, but it's ruthless in Slytherin. At least with the pureblood families who have been there for generations. And I have to represent the Malfoy line," he spit out his last name like it was acid on his tongue.
Hermione would easily believe him, that all Slytherins were superficial if he told her this last year. Before Theo wished her a happy Birthday with blood staining his robes from a recently broken-then-healed nose. Before Pansy was slapped by Umbridge for disobeying her father.
He must have realized in her silence that she was skeptical, "It's all I've ever known. I know for someone who wasn't raised like I was, it would be hard to see how wealth and unhappiness could coexist. But luxury doesn't cancel out the rest for me."
Hermione couldn't believe all Slytherins (teenagers) were concerned with superficial status when she recently discovered two that didn't seem to care at all. And she couldn't imagine growing bored of the life of a king as Malfoy described.
"You know, a lot of people would kill to have your life," she tried not to sound bitter. But did he really want pity for being rich? Even after years of bragging about it.
"That's not what I was trying to—" he scowled at the ground, "I know that. But for me, you have to understand," his eyes were pleading, "the manor doesn't make up for my father being there. I would rather stay at Hogwarts." He looked at her for the first time, there was something in his expression she couldn't decipher.
Hermione could understand that. She would never tell him, but he sounded a lot like Harry.
"Why don't you stay at Hogwarts? If your mother is gone most of the time anyway?"
"You're not a very intuitive person, are you?"
"What! How am I supposed to know the answer to that!?"
"Put the pieces together Granger. It's not that difficult."
Steam would shoot out of her nose like a dragon if it could.
But a whispering voice in the back of her mind told her he was just deflecting. Her eyes confirmed, they saw the hunch of his shoulders, the nervous fiddling of his hands, and his downcast expression.
She sighed and said, "Well if you won't admit anything, I guess I'll just assume you can't stay at Hogwarts over break because Professor Snape uses the Slytherin common room to shag Professor Trelawney."
And then she walked off.
But she forgot he was holding on to her hand and ending up towing him with her. He choked on shocked laughter, stumbling over his feet.
"No!" his face painted with shocked amusement, "My father won't let me, idiot."
"What did he say when you asked?"
"I didn't ask."
"Oh, well then—"
"It would just make him angry. It's useless, trust me," creases on his forehead appeared as he furrowed his eyebrows, in that moment Hermione thought he looked wise beyond his years. She was reminded of the soldiers in her fathers boring history movies, the scenes where they stared off in the distance like they had been to hell and back.
"Well… I hope you enjoy something over the break. At least you won't have essays to write or be forced to trek miles in the Forbidden Forest," she tried weakly. Hermione never was good at comforting people.
"Yeah, I guess there's that," he said with a trace of undeniable bitterness. "Come on, we're going to miss the train."
He let go of her hand; she was caught off guard, having forgotten he was holding it. Over time it had become such a habit, she only noticed when his cold slender fingers weren't clasping hers.
Hermione had four revelations to ponder on the train ride to King's Cross with her forehead pressed into the window. One, Draco and Lucius Malfoy did not have the ideal father-son relationship they led everyone to believe. Two, Malfoy held her hand because he wanted to. Three, there was a mysterious stone path in the middle of the Forbidden forest that Malfoy had seen in their first year, but somehow she hadn't been able to.
Oh, and four: Malfoy called her Hermione for the first time.
