March
tock
Draco sat on the tufted green velvet sofa in the Floo parlor, recently removed of its lingering dark magic stains, and nearly occluded himself into unconsciousness.
Granger worked on the other side of the room, letting out occasional huffs of frustration that would have annoyed him if he hadn't whittled his emotional range down to nothing more than an eerie placidity. She'd been stuck working on the piano for nearly three weeks. Every day, she arrived—slur carved in her arm on full display—and worked non-stop until she left. Draco sat and read, or lounged and read, or pretended not to nap while he read, as he supervised her efforts to avoid being bitten by piano ivories.
He felt a little sick, stomach unsettled from the fog in his brain, a cross between willing confundus and an exceptionally strong Calming Draught. It was a strange thing, he'd realized, not being annoyed by Granger, not feeling anything towards her at all. She'd been such a source of irritation for so long that he could never have imagined being able to sit in the same room with her for multiple weeks without wanting to throw insults or pick a fight. Instead, he spent a great deal of time staring at the back of her head, marveling at her hair's ability to simply exist in the state it did, and occasionally experimenting with pulling back on his Occlumency to see how instantaneously his anger surged.
That feeling of nothingness towards her could only exist when he'd frozen out every other emotion. But Occlumency exhausted him, literally and figuratively. He tried pulling back on his shields again, releasing some of his hold, letting the freeze thaw, just a bit.
Granger's frustrated sigh tore through him, rippling through his veins. He couldn't even see the mudblood scar, but he knew it was there, in the room with them, taunting him. At least she'd worn long sleeves today and hadn't pushed them up; the barrier helped.
They'd barely spoken a word in the weeks they'd spent in this parlor. Between Draco's occlusion and her general reluctance to even look at him, conversation topics were scant.
He let out a sigh of his own and fell back against the arm of the sofa, propping his legs up and committing to a true lounge as he relished in the tiny relief that letting go of some of his Occlumency gave him.
"You know," he said, testing the waters. Boredom had leached normal impulse control from his brain. Predictably, her shoulders tensed at the sound of his voice. She didn't turn towards him, just kept staring at the angry red and orange diagnostic runes floating around her while she massaged what must have been sore fingers from the piano. "If you can ever get that piano to stop biting you, there's another drawer in the bureau desk that won't even let me open it."
Granger's shoulders, which had risen when she tensed, fell. She didn't turn around, but she surprised him by speaking.
"I'm sure I'll get to it eventually, Malfoy."
"It's just," he started, and nearly smirked at the small puff of annoyance that slipped from her mouth. He stared at her back and the halo of hair surrounding her. He let his Occlumency melt a little further. "I'm fairly certain something of sentimental value ended up in there, years ago. I wouldn't mind having it back."
She finally turned to look at him. He'd been wrong; she had pushed her sleeves up, just enough that blood peeked out from her sleeve. Draco took a breath, his throat tightening. He willed the ice back into his veins, sealing up the openings he'd made for attempted conversation.
"What is it?" she asked.
"None of your business."
"Well I'm going to see it anyway if I have to break it out of a bureau."
"That doesn't make you entitled to anything here, Granger."
He'd wanted his words to have more bite, to sound as annoyed as he felt at the sight of that fucking scar she kept flaunting. But instead they fell flat, disinterested under the weight of Occlumency. She narrowed her eyes; he did the same.
"You don't have to be here if you can't stand me, you know," she said.
"Would you like to revisit that with my father? He doesn't trust the Ministry not to rob us of everything we have left on a good day. He doesn't trust you on any day."
Granger flinched as one of the keys clamped down on her forefinger. She winced, sticking the tip of it between her lips, sucking as she made tiny mollifying sounds to herself.
Draco's gaze lingered on the action, too long—he knew it was too long—but he couldn't seem to pull himself away. Annoyed, he chipped away at that shard of frustration, that unwelcome bubble of intrusive lust, sinking into an even more heavily occluded state.
She pulled her finger from her mouth.
"This is my job, Malfoy. I'm sorry your father doesn't like it. I'm not especially pleased to be here, either."
"And I'm not pleased I have to babysit you," he said, but he could hear the lack of punch, dulled by slow senses and frozen veins.
She let out a strangled, disbelieving sort of sound he might hesitantly label a laugh. She covered her mouth with her hand almost immediately. He tried again. Boredom might be preferable to anger, but verbal sparring was better than boredom.
"How did this become your job anyway? I thought you were destined to liberate house elves and tame werewolves, or some other bleeding savior rot like that." He'd hoped there was an insult in there, somewhere, laced inside his tone or woven within his words. But it still sounded flat to his ear, almost polite under his occlusion.
She sighed, canceling the diagnostic runes glowing angrily around her face. She waved her hand through the air where they'd been, as if dispeling any residual magic. It struck him as an odd motion, and slightly ridiculous; it made her seem so painfully muggleborn, and she probably had no idea.
"I needed a change," she said.
Draco had to search his brain, remind himself what he'd even asked through his occlusive fog. Her job.
He pulled back on his occlusion in an effort to sound more like himself, but the moment he did his eyes wandered towards her arm, almost obsessively seeking his stressor.
"Weasel too boring at home? Need a little more excitement in your life and opted for the professional?"
That sounded better. She frowned; he must be on the right track. Lost in his own head, he wondered why he'd even wanted to annoy her to begin with.
"Nice, Malfoy. Very classy. I thought you were meant to have pureblood manners. Isn't that what your father accused me of lacking?"
"I do have manners. Excellent ones."
"Just not with a mudblood?" she waved her forearm like a weapon, and he slammed his eyes shut as a sudden rush of hot, unwelcome discomfort melted his control. He froze it out—harder, deeper—until he couldn't feel a thing.
He lifted his head from the arm of the sofa, no longer feeling the slightest bit relaxed. He sat, staring at her, holding her gaze as he wondered why it had to go wrong. What test he'd failed that he couldn't fake a civil conversation, even if it was with Hermione Granger. He should be able to do it. His mother would expect those manners of him. His father probably wouldn't care. But Draco, he didn't know what he wanted or expected of himself.
"I'm not—" he started, failing. "I don't—" he gave up.
His voice carried flat, syllables sour, so lifeless, and this time he wasn't sure the Occlumency had anything to do with it. His skin crawled; he felt exposed, raw. He wanted to leap to his feet and capture his fractured attempt at speaking before it could reach her.
She dropped her arm, no longer brandishing it.
"I know," she said, quiet, as if she understood exactly what he meant. "I did testify for you, after all."
This was where he thanked her for that. He never had. But his jaw sealed shut, a sticking charm between his teeth, clenching them together.
The day was almost over, she could manage another hour by herself.
He stood, limbs feeling foreign, drowsy.
He left without another word.
—
He dreamed of Granger that night. And not in a pleasant, dreaming of a pretty witch and waking with the urge to fist his cock, close his eyes again, and remember whatever intimate scenario his unconscious mind had supplied him with, sort of way. But more in a way that reminded him that the closest thing to intimacy he had with Granger was an uncomfortable familiarity with the sound of her agony, screams scraping her throat and lungs to shreds.
He couldn't occlude in his dreams, which is where it all caught up to him.
Draco gave up on trying to sleep after waking from his second nightmare, flushed and burning hot, mouth pulled open in a silent scream he couldn't seem to vocalize. He sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed and dropping his head into his hands. He massaged his temples, ran his hands through his hair, shook his head. He hated waking like that, feeling like he'd barely escaped a trap in his own head.
Draco straightened, isolating the heat still prickling beneath his skin. He tried to ignore his dry, tight throat. He willed his magic to freeze it out and pack it up. Draco rose, careful not to occlude himself too deep. He felt some of the fear subside, some of the heat waver under his will.
Barefoot, and ignoring the searing chill from the cold stone floors, Draco let his feet carry him through his family home in the dark.
The darkness didn't scare him—many worse things had lived inside these walls than a little darkness—but it didn't soothe him, either. The prickling under his skin returned as he walked by the drawing room, unaware he'd even headed in that direction. He couldn't bring himself to stop there, not again.
He finally paused outside the parlor door, the room he'd spent the past three weeks occupying for most of his day. He cracked the door and slipped inside, settling on the sofa with inexplicable ease.
He felt like he could breathe again, like some unseen magic had thinned the suffocating weight in the air around him, leaving only the voluntary fog of his mental wards. He let them fall, incrementally, warming himself and bracing for a potential rush of panic, but none came.
This room felt different. Loathe as he was to even entertain the thought, he had to admit that perhaps the Ministry was onto something, effectively scourgifying his home of the dark magic that soiled it.
He couldn't live at Malfoy Manor anymore. Something about the manor felt sick, fetid, sour in his stomach. Spending a year in a different place had desensitized him to the creeping sensation of unease that lived inside these walls. That thought barreled through him at the same time he noticed an object sitting atop the bureau.
He stood from the sofa and approached it. He groaned, picking up the pocket watch he found there.
Granger had gotten into the bureau drawer. He'd only been partially serious, certainly not expecting her to manage it so quickly, so easily. The watch had belonged to his grandfather, Abraxas. It had been gifted to him for this thirteenth birthday and later shattered under his Aunt Bella's heel in a fit of rage over his inability to successfully cast a killing curse, even on a peacock. She'd tossed the broken pieces in the bureau drawer and flung several layers of curses on top of it, isolating him from sentiment, as she'd called it.
But the pocket watch in his hand ticked quietly, the subtle whirr of gears pulsing through the metal against his skin. He sank back onto the sofa, staring at the object in his hand.
She'd found it, and she'd fixed it, and he'd been—disagreeable, as Theo would say—an arse, was probably more accurate, seeking to insult purely out of reflex, out of the comfort of familiar contempt.
He brushed his fingers across the initials engraved in the metal, memories of his father's father: another blood zealot, another follower of lost causes. Another twist in Draco's stomach, incapable of sorting feelings of kinship from feelings of disgust.
He slipped the watch in his pocket and sat back on the sofa, leaning his head against the curved arm. He sought sleep without nightmares, without the sound of screams he knew as well as his own.
—
Draco did everything in his power not to look at Granger, speak to Granger, or otherwise acknowledge Granger the next day. She stepped through the Floo at nine in the morning as she always did, but instead of waiting nearby, nodding a greeting, and then sitting on the velvet sofa as he always did, Draco had already sat down, opened a book, and occluded out of his mind.
He held his breath in the bottom of his lungs, ice cold from Occlumency, and resisted the urge to peek over the top of his potions book. He wanted to know if she even noticed his shift in behavior; if it mattered to her. Did that make him selfish? Self-obsessed? A narcissist desperate to know if the lack of his usual greeting had registered?
A warm, orange glow illuminated the room. Draco glanced down at the floor where streaks of light told him that Granger had cast her diagnostic charms, already set to work.
He read the same chapter in his book six times before finally giving up, setting it aside and pointedly not looking in Granger's direction. Instead, he pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to stave off a headache from all his occluding and wishing he hadn't slept through breakfast that morning. He'd barely woken with time to shower, change, and be present and disinterested for Granger's arrival. He shifted his fingers to his temples, eyes closed, rubbing slow circles against his skull.
"Do you have a headache?"
His eyes popped open, drawn to her voice despite his attempts at avoidance.
"I usually have a headache." Dull voice. Dull emotions. Something dull inside his chest.
She raised her brows as if to challenge his statement.
"Do you get enough sleep?" she asked, waving a hand through her diagnostic runes as she cancelled them.
"You're here to figure out what's wrong with the manor, not with me." Draco ran a hand down his face, trying to lower his Occlumency enough to unclench his stomach and relieve the pressure in his head without also having to face the fact that he might have just admitted he's not, generally speaking, alright.
"Fixing you is definitely outside my job description. I just—I have trouble sleeping sometimes, and it often leads to a headache."
Without his mental wards keeping him carefully contained, Draco might have shouted at her, made her hear how his lack of sleep, as of late, was directly related to that slur she kept needling him with, always on display. Sure, there were the old classics: any time he had to see The Dark Lord face to face, the astronomy tower, the blazing heat of Fiendfyre, the entirety of his seventh year. But more often than not, since Granger had shown up and forced him to relive one of the very worst moments in his life, his nightmares had a habit of returning to that drawing room.
Instead of shouting, instead of feeling any of that emotion, he let his Occlumency calm him, cool him, freeze what might have been fire in his veins.
She'd tried to be nice, he knew that. He managed a nod, giving her the acknowledgement he'd avoided earlier.
His head throbbed; his stomach churned. He didn't want to occlude this much. But even when she attempted civility, he felt like he wanted to snap. He picked up his book, eyes and head aching as he tried to focus on the words; his seventh attempt at this same chapter.
He counted his breaths in lieu of retaining a single word in front of him. When he got to three hundred, he paused.
"Thanks for trying, Granger," he said from behind his book, refusing to look up until after she'd stepped through the Floo at the end of the day.
—
A week later, Granger declared the parlor fully free of dark magic and curses. Rather than allowing her to move to another room, Lucius had a veritable museum's worth of objects delivered to them via house elves, which of course Granger couldn't stop eyeing with a pitiful mixture of sympathy and distaste.
Draco had to hold in his sniggering; the scene was so unwillingly comical, he let his Occlumency drop. He watched as Granger's eyes practically twitched at each crack of house elf magic dropping off more and more objects from the Malfoy family past: cursed, warded, jinxed, and hexed, a full tea service of nasty trinkets.
By the time the last elf vanished—after dropping off a truly hideous jewelry box once owned by Draco's great, great someone or another—Granger let her arms fall to her sides, eyes closed as she drew a deep breath.
Her eyes snapped open at the laugh he failed to contain. She'd been effectively encircled by all variety of potentially dangerous knick knacks.
She narrowed her eyes at him, which only amused him further.
"How I wish I could stay to witness you work your way out of this," he said.
Her eyes widened, head tilting.
"Am I finally being trusted not to defile this prestigious estate?" She crossed her arms in front of her, making no attempt to escape the ring of cursed objects.
Draco snorted indelicately, standing, "Hardly. But Astoria wasn't available for dinner this evening, so we rescheduled for lunch."
She seemed to soften, loosening the grip on her crossed arms. Without the cloud of Occlumency fogging him, Draco could really see her, look at her. It wasn't often that she fully faced him, intentionally looked at him.
The hair might have remained the same all these years later, but the rest of her hadn't.
He remembered her eyes being boring, plain, muddy as the blood his family insisted ran through her veins. But it was richer than that: a deep chocolate like his favorite type of truffles, almost offensively expressive as they regarded him with open curiosity.
He remembered her mouth only by way of her teeth. He knew, somewhere in the recesses of his memory, that she had them fixed after an incident at school that he might have been responsible for. If asked to conjure an image of Granger in his mind, in present day, the buck teeth would be there. But her mouth now, just slightly parted as she watched him, looked perfectly normal—objectively attractive, even.
He remembered her face making him feel angry, annoyed, inferior, but that had never felt right. He'd had no reason to feel inferior to her.
The curiosity on her face slipped into suspicion. He'd been caught staring, but to be fair, she'd been staring, too.
"Astoria is your girlfriend?" she asked. A casual, simple question, perhaps the first personal one they'd ever shared.
He tried not to roll his eyes, or—even worse—outright laugh.
"Astoria is my intended."
She had to know what that meant, he hadn't used an obscure pureblood term, but her face wrinkled regardless.
"Intended?"
"Betrothed. Affianced. Intended by way of a marriage agreement forged between our two families." The spike of irritation shooting from his chest should have concerned him. Instead, it was almost pleasant to feel something outside of his Occlumency that didn't taste of anger or disgust.
"Oh."
"So yes, you'll be working alone for a couple of hours. As long as my father abides by the Ministry's orders and leaves you alone, he'll never know that I've been away." Despite the grandfather clock in the corner of the room, he pulled out his pocket watch, only belatedly remembering he hadn't said anything to her about it. Not a thank you, not even an acknowledgment that he'd found it. He cleared his throat.
"He doesn't know?"
"He doesn't know, Granger," he smirked. The expression felt easy and welcome. "So if I have your promise not to defile my family home, or carry out any other nefarious plans you're storing in that hair of yours, I'm needed at Florean Fortescue's in four minutes."
She didn't look offended. Merlin, she nearly looked amused. He could work with an amused Granger. If amused Granger just kept that fucking shirt sleeve down, maybe he wouldn't have to occlude every minute of every day. Perhaps they could even try their hand at conversation or a dash of civility.
"Oh. Well, have fun," she said, dropping her gaze to the collection of objects surrounding her.
Draco pulled a handful of Floo powder and dropped it in the fireplace, but her voice caught him before he stepped in.
"They have a new flavor, apple caramel. You should try it if you get a chance. It's really quite good."
He didn't know what to do with that, what to think of it. His head tilted. So did hers.
He disappeared in a flash.
—
He met with Astoria outside Florean Fortescue's. She looked lovely, per her usual. Every ounce the aristocratic breeding he expected. Her dark hair shined, astonishingly smooth and reflective despite its dark shade. It was honestly a laughable comparison to the nest he'd just been facing on Granger's head. Astoria smiled when she saw him and it was nice. It was pleasant.
She was very pleasant.
He took the hand she offered, bringing it to his lips. The formality of it felt so misplaced, so out of step with the real world that he almost wanted to laugh. Should he have kissed her cheek instead? Offered her a hug? He had no idea; everything between them felt backwards, antiquated, out-of-order.
She blushed and it was pretty. This could work; it had to work. Words he repeated to himself every time he saw her. It wasn't as if he had any other choice.
And yet, as they enjoyed their ice cream—Granger was right, apple caramel was delicious—Draco had trouble recalling a single thing they'd discussed in the last hour.
"Your mother has several opinions about the floral arrangements. I worry mine might hex her soon if they can't agree on something."
Draco offered her a tight smile over a spoonful of his ice cream. The whole scene—being in Fortescue's, on a date with Astoria Greengrass, amidst the bustle of Diagon Alley—it all felt so surreal, even with the surreptitious stares aimed in his direction.
"I'm sure whatever they choose will be lovely," he said, careful with his words, with his tone, with his everything.
Astoria pulled her spoon from her mouth, delicate fingers looking like they barely had a grip on the thing. Her brows fell. Draco took that to mean she wanted him to say something else.
"But," he tried, "I'm sure if you had an opinion on it they would be willing to listen?" He hadn't meant for it to sound like a question; he'd wanted to sound sure of himself and whatever authority he got to parade around as his own.
She set her spoon in her bowl, resting in the soupy remains of the vanilla ice cream she'd ordered.
"I don't—care about the flowers."
"The—color palette, then?" In truth, Draco had tuned out almost every conversation about wedding planning he'd been subject to.
"Could we try something?" she asked instead. She pursed her lips, watching him.
"What would you like to try?"
"Would you kiss me?"
Draco didn't let his face flicker. He fought against the urge to stiffen. It wasn't that he didn't want to kiss a pretty witch. In fact, he was practically starved for such touch. But something about the idea of kissing this witch. He just knew, even without having done it yet, that it wouldn't go well. That felt ominous, damning, like an inevitability he had to delay.
"Do you want me to kiss you?"
She ran a hand over the smooth hair at her temple, soothing flyaways that didn't exist.
"At some point, yes. I think that would make sense."
He reached for her hand, "I'd like—" he started, finding himself dangerously close to honesty. "I'd like to try and make it special—if I can."
That seemed to be an acceptable answer. Her eyes softened. And for the rest of their date, they engaged in conversation he might have called interesting. Interesting, that is, if he hadn't spent the entire morning watching Granger resist the urge to forcibly liberate his family elves.
—
It was only as he stepped back through the Floo that Draco realized what he'd done. He'd bid Astoria farewell, a perfunctory kiss to her cheek before he doubled back to Fortescue's, tapping his fingers against the pocket watch in his trousers.
Granger had lined all the artifacts and antiques along the far wall of the parlor in cascading size order. An honestly impressive amount of organization considering Draco hadn't even been gone for two full hours. She didn't glance back at him as he stepped through the Floo; she just kept staring at the glowing red rune in front of her face.
Draco took a step towards her. The click of his shoes on the stone floor must have caught her attention because she jolted, just enough to give away her surprise.
He held out the takeaway apple caramel ice cream he'd brought her.
"You fixed my grandfather's pocket watch."
She blinked, then cautiously reached to take the bowl, chilled by a stasis charm to prevent melting.
"And so you've"—she glanced down at the bowl of ice cream in her hands—"brought me the ice cream I said I liked?"
Well, it sounded downright idiotic when she said it like that. He glanced at her left arm, thankfully covered by a sleeve today. He had to stop looking for it, as if he expected to have any other reaction than abject horror at the sight of it.
Instead, with his molars practically ground to dust in the back of his mouth, he nodded, mouth flat and tight.
She cancelled her diagnostic spell and walked to the sofa—his sofa—that he sat on literally every single day while he pretended Hermione Granger needed supervision. As if her compulsive tendencies towards righteousness would allow her to do anything unsavory to the estate.
Draco stood in the middle of the room, hands in his pockets, before he opted to sit in the armchair opposite her.
Granger took a bite of the ice cream and made a happy sound Draco knew he probably shouldn't find so interesting. Then she started to laugh.
"It's better than I remembered," she said through a giggle. Draco didn't see how that was funny.
"You're probably hungry. You never stop to eat."
She swallowed a laugh, frown taking over her face for a moment. She tapped her spoon against the edge of her bowl.
"So is this—some kind of Slytherin quid pro quo ice cream, or something?"
"Excuse me?"
"Fixing the watch. You're—paying me in ice cream?"
Draco had had the distinct displeasure of watching Granger's brain at work for years in school. Her thoughts tended to volley in an almost physical display on her face as her brain jumped through whatever series of Quidditch hoops were required to come to a point.
She looked downright debilitated by the force of her thinking as she watched him, ice cream in hand.
"If you want to call it that," Draco said. "Just about anything is a quid pro quo situation."
Hermione laughed through what sounded distressingly like a hiccup, or a snort, or something equally inelegant.
"You can't quid pro quo acts of kindness, Malfoy."
A challenge, then? Draco smirked.
"Of course I can."
Granger rolled her eyes and tucked her feet beneath her as she settled in to finish her ice cream.
"I should probably eat lunches."
Draco raised a brow at her, belatedly realizing he'd barely had to use his Occlumency all day.
—
thank you so much for reading! i live mostly on tumblr and ao3 under the name 'mightbewriting' (no i!), so you can find me in those places under that name. see y'all monday!