Year: 1992

Grade: End of First Year, going into Second Year

Location: Malfoy Manor

Inspired by: Seven, By Taylor Swift

Rusted springs ground and cringed against each other as he pushed off the uneven forest floor again. Although Draco was accustomed to the manors manicured lawn a couple acres away, he did not find the unkept side of nature as revolting as his father did. The looming trees provided much-appreciated cover from the blazing summer sun.

The unpredictability and self-sustainability were rather intriguing to him after seeing potted plants and landscaped flower arrangements all of his life.

There was a sharp creek every time Draco pedaled his feet in the air. He always prided himself on being a fast learner, it only took him a day or two to figure out how to use the contraption the Mudblood called a 'Swing set'.

Forgive him, if his curiosity had been peaked after listening to her blather on and on about it like an overstimulated toddler.

He had been sitting in his favorite window seat, the one partially covered by a tapestry. He could remain hidden behind the dusty sage cloth and still see who was coming. It made for the perfect hiding spot on days when people (including but not limited to: Crabbe, Goyle, Pansy), were more unbearable than usual.

He was content to spend the entire day there alone, covered up in his green blanket to fight the frost layering the glass, with a silver tin of sugar quills and Cauldron cakes, writing a twelve-inch Potions essay.

He had initially ignored the soft footsteps, chalking it up to the occasional wanderer. His hallway was remote and off the usual paths, there was rarely if ever an invasion of his space.

But then he heard the sound of robes rustling as someone sat down, and then he heard her voice start prattling on to the wall portraits.

Draco was glad he arrived at Hogwarts with friends, Merlin smite him where he sat if he had to turn to literal paintings for company.

Then again, he would have always been able to make friends, Hermione Granger was a special case of antisocial.

Before he'd realized she was a Mudblood —and really it should have been obvious but Draco was inexperienced with identifying them— he tried to ask about the giant book she heaved with her while walking down the hall.

Usually, he didn't take interest in his peers unless they were of importance to him (meaning his father told him to associate with him). But she was making a spectacle of herself: out of breath, face red and arms visibly struggling to carry the book.

She ignored him, thrice. He had to grab her robes to get her attention, it was horribly embarrassing and he wouldn't have asked if he knew she was so deprived of social grace. Then, when she realized he was talking to her —yes her, not the knight and shining armor to her right— she talked his ear off. He earned himself a ten-minute lecture on the social impact of Werewolves in the middle ages.

And when the Gryffindor finally released him because she had to go to class, she looked up at him for the first time. Her eyes were conflicted, she bit the inside of her cheek before reluctantly handing him the ancient book like she was giving him her most prized possession. It weighed about twenty thousand tons and he had to lean his weight against the wall so she wouldn't notice him struggling.

"Here," she said, wide eyes flickering, "you would probably enjoy this more than me since you were so interested in Werewolves. I… I can just wait until you're done," she gave the book one more longing glance.

He didn't even want the book but something made him hesitate and by the time he could verbalize his rejection, she had walked into her class.

It took him a week to read it cover to cover. His arms ached from carrying it to the breakfast table, the library, his window seat, his bed, over and over again. At the end of the week, he swung it like a barrel of hay from it's resting place next to a plate of half-eaten bacon when he saw her leave the Great Hall. He made to follow the bushy-haired girl when Pansy grabbed his arm.

"What are you doing?"

"What?"

"You weren't going to follow Granger, were you?" Pansy spluttered like Draco had handed her a Flesh-Eating Slug instead of the strawberry and cream danishes.

Unsettled and suddenly unsure, he snarled, "No," like he couldn't believe she would suggest a thing. "Good," she scowled right back at him before stabbing her mushroom omelet.

A few moments passed, the Gryffindor was walking farther and farther away, he had meant to catch her before class today and didn't want to miss her. Draco had decided wanted to wait until he finished the book before talking to her again, so he would know what to say this time when she started ranting.

Draco fiddled with his wand and tried to look nonchalant, "Out of curiosity," he started, "what's wrong with her?"

"What's wrong with her!" Pansy laughed, it was sharp, Draco's neck and ears went hot. "What's wrong with the Mudblood?!"

"Oh."

He had watched the Gryffindor Mudblood after that, wondering how he had been fooled. She was remarkably adept at antagonizing those around her, highly intelligent but completely oblivious to social cues until it was too late. Even her own house hated her, especially the Weasel. Draco had always thought the enemy of his enemy was his friend. But he kept his distance (as he should) and she never approached him.

She never approached him, even after he read the bloody book cover to cover. And it was no The Tales of Beedle the Bard; it had been like reading a dictionary for fun.

So it was no Earth shattering discovery that she was talking to portraits instead of her human housemates, she had no sense of social survival. It was insulting, though, that she would turn to portraits before—

He spent thirty more minutes sitting there. If he got up, it would have revealed his hiding spot/favorite window seat, she might steal it or tell someone about it. Draco couldn't even use that time to finish his potions essay, their conversation was too loud and irritating.

He peeked out the small gap between the tapestry and the stone wall, she was seated on a bench, clutching another book with a unicorn on its hardcover. The portrait nearest to her, a golden framed painting of a graying man smoking a pipe on a sailboat, looked down at her.

Their conversation shifted from her classes, her books, and then to her friends, the Gryffindor became visibly uncomfortable and shifty, fiddling with the corner of her book.

"Well, how'd you make them at your muggle school?" A renaissance style painting of a woman asked, her three white poodles howling at the end of her question.

"I didn't make them," she muttered back, looking at the ground.

"Did you talk to the paintings there too then?" One of the men in a portrait of a gambling den asked, setting down his hand of cards.

"No!" she laughed, he found himself shifting closer to the gap of the tapestry. "Muggle paintings don't talk back!" she chided like that was obvious to a magic painting. "Usually, I read at recess, or I played on the swings."

"Swings?" The poodle lady asked and Draco reluctantly found himself wondering the same thing.

"A swing set? You don't have those here?" the paintings shook their heads and asked her to explain.

"A swing is two pieces of rope tied to a bar with a seat tied to it, it hangs off the ground. You sit on it and pedal your feet so you swing back and forth in the air like a pocket watch.

"The one my school had was old and rusty, but the seats were high up so when you swung, it felt like you might fly so fast and wrap around the bar. It was really fun," she was talking fast again, the way she had when she explained the social impact of werewolves in the middle ages to Draco, "actually it's kind of like the Muggle version of flying a broom."

Many months later, when his mother wrote him asking what he wanted for his birthday, he couldn't resist.

It was a risk, he wasn't sure she wouldn't tell his father. She didn't write back and he cursed himself for being so impulsive.

When he stepped off the Hogwarts express, the imposing form of his father made his stomach drop and his shoulders cave. Lucius Malfoy was angry, his white knuckles clenched tightly around his cane, but not for the reason Draco thought.

For the first time ever, he breathed a sigh of relief when his father started in on him, it wasn't about the Muggle swing set. His all-powerful, all-seeing father didn't know about his interest in the Gryffindor.

The Malfoy patriarch was in a state of rage, inconsolable even to his wife because Draco had been second in his class to a Mudblood girl.

Draco couldn't even feel shame as his father screamed at him in his study, he was too relieved.

His mother, used to comforting him after these episodes, masked her surprise when he emerged from the double doors without the usual wet cheeks and swollen eyes. Even if she had a lunch or shopping trip scheduled, she always waited outside for him by the marble bust of his grandfather to make sure he was okay every time.

This time, instead of walking him to his room and giving him a stiff and quick embrace, she led him outside. She didn't say it, but he knew she was trying to be discreet when they walked through the kitchen exit instead of taking a more convenient way outside.

His confusion multiplied when she pulled him through the house-elves' herb garden, past his Quidditch pitch, around the gazebo, and into the forest.

Every time he would try and ask why she was making him walk through mud and tree branches, she would hush him and look around like his father was looming behind an oak tree.

He was swatting away a far-reaching wild rose bush when he spotted it. The berry red paint was striking even though it was chipping, against the browns and greens of the forest. The swing set looked exactly as he pictured Granger's.

His mother gave him a timid smile and a small squeeze to his arm before walking back. He was left alone.

His father appointed him several tutors. Each was more boring than the last, his mornings were dull and long.

But his afternoons, he liked those much more.

They were lonely, his father banned him from inviting any friends over for the entire summer until he, "Started utilizing more two of his brain cells", and "lived up to his family name". But he loved the swing set. He quartered his time between his lessons, climbing trees, swinging and reading in the kitchen.

Weeks passed like this and his mind began to wander. There were two seats on the swing set, one always empty and collecting dust. One day, it was Hermione Granger next to him, racing him through the air, trying to pedal her feet faster than him (and failing because he was very fast). Nestled amongst the caving oak trees, his father's ever-present accusing glare failed to reprimand him.

She would tell him against his will (and interest) about the aquatic microorganisms and life forms in the tiny creek to their left.

She would join him for his new favorite drink in the kitchen: sweet tea. He had only ever been allowed to drink traditional English brewing of tea, usually in a porcelain teacup and saucer. But his father was busier than usual this summer, and his control over the occupants of the manor slipped as a result. None of the House-elves would volunteer this information to Lucius Malfoy, and he wouldn't think to ask.

She would climb the tallest oak trees with him, warning him not to climb too high and then yelling at him to come back down when he did. So he wouldn't hurt himself.

And when he sat huddled in one of the guest room closets, shaking and pointing his wand at the closed door, she would hand him a book that was a "pretty good read", about how pirates caused the Spanish Armada and —therefore the greatest humiliation of the Spanish navy and— therefore the decline of the empire.

As his father stomped through the hallway a floor above his closet, screaming his name, Draco would understand and appreciate her gift this time. Because for Hermione Granger, a book was a diamond or a ruby. Alternatively, a book was to Hermione Granger what the absence of Lucius Malfoy was to Draco.

Then, she would tell him the shadows in their closet were creepy, arguably even haunting, and that he should go look for his mother when it was safe.

He went so far as to daydream that Hermione Granger would invite him to her house for the rest of the summer. With her muggle family, muggle neighbors, and muggle things. Draco wouldn't even ask his mother, he would just grab a few things from his room, wrap them in a sweater —no time for a suitcase— and leave with her.

That was the last time his thoughts wandered to Hermione Granger. When he returned to the swing set the next afternoon, his father stood beside it with his silver-tipped cane in both hands. He didn't even have to draw his wand, the structure lit up in flames as he stared at Draco with a frightening, staged indifference.

The chipping strawberry paint melted, cracked, curled, and blackened before his eyes. He didn't dare leave until only ashes remained, his father's challenging stare warned him of the additional consequences of doing so.

When Draco's bruises and bones healed, he only tried to enter the forest once. He couldn't even step one foot over an invisible line bordering the oak trees. His father had warded him out.

Once again, Draco was relieved the Malfoy patriarch had only discovered the shallowest of his shortcomings. His failure as a student and therefore a Malfoy shielded his interest in the swing set.

The interest in the swing set now shielded thoughts of bushy hair and social aloofness.

And so Draco, after sacrificing every other shield, hid away those intrusive and meddlesome thoughts behind a dusty sage tapestry in the darkest alcoves of his mind.