April

tick

Annoying Granger was fun. Well, fun insofar as it provided an outlet for Draco's frustrations that wasn't outright nasty. It let him lower his Occlumency. It let him practice having relatively civil conversations during the endless hours they spent together, day after day, week after week, month after month.

She arrived in a flash of green, nine in the morning exactly, always perfectly on time. He nodded a greeting. She wore a cardigan, sleeves down. He didn't occlude.

"Granger."

"Malfoy."

"I was wondering if I could request you work on a specific room today."

Granger paused mid-incantation, diagnostic runes delayed by his request. She froze, looking at him with obvious confusion.

"But—I'm almost done with everything your father had sent here. I'd like to be systematic and complete this room before I begin—"

"Granger," he said, taking a small step forward. He halted; he had no idea why he'd done that. It wasn't as if he could walk right up to her and shake her from her chattering. "I know. We'll go room by room for everything else. I just—I have a small office I'd like to ensure is fully decommissioned."

Granger looked at her wand, still poised to begin her diagnostics in the parlor. She let her wand arm fall.

"Why?" She wore that expression she often did, the one where she looked like she couldn't quite figure him out, like she didn't trust him not to be a complete arse.

"I'm hoping to put it to use soon."

Her mouth quirked, then paused mid-action, like she couldn't commit to the smile.

"Finally decided to get a job, Malfoy?"

"Might have had one a while ago if many places were interested in hiring ex-Death Eaters," he said. He could feel the hard edge in his tone, the distaste. "Tell me, is your Ministry doing any hiring of highly educated—"

"There are anti-discrimination measures in place to prevent—"

He laughed, dragging a hand through his hair. He shifted his weight, looking around the room as if the very space might provide agreement that Granger was really being that naive.

"Yeah. Right," he said. "Tried that. I'm far more qualified than a fair number of the people I've seen join their payroll."

Hermione crossed her arms, frowning.

"And what makes you think you're more qualified?"

His brows shot up. Oh. This would be fun. She didn't know.

"How many masteries do you have, Granger?"

Her mouth dropped open, just a bit. But he saw the surprise there.

"Well, I started with the Ministry right after my NEWTs—"

"So none, then."

She scowled at him and he loved it, chuckling as a tiny thrill shot through his chest. Annoying Granger was really fun.

"How many do you have?" She shifted, arm pulled tighter across her chest. He could see her fighting against the frown on her face and it was fucking adorable—which was not a thought he allowed himself to have about Granger lightly. But gods, to get to tell her he was more educated than her, he ought to mark the date on his calendar, celebrate it every year.

"Just one."

"In what? And how? When?"

Draco laughed again, and it could have been mean, it could have been cruel, if he'd decided to laugh at her. But instead, he just laughed, enjoying the moment for himself. Her shoulders dropped, arms unfolding.

He motioned for her to follow, opening the parlor door for her, literally the first time they'd left the parlor in the three months she'd been working in his home. He turned when he realized she hadn't followed. She had her bottom lip trapped between her teeth, expression somewhere between concern and annoyance: over what, Draco could only guess.

So he did.

"We won't go anywhere near—that room."

She'd been staring down the corridor, gaze snapping to him when he spoke. She released her lip. The concern on her face vanished, replaced with determination: jaw set, brows level. She marched to meet him and kept pace as they walked to his wing in the manor.

"Potions," he said to fill the silence. "I started prepping for a mastery while I studied to sit for my NEWTs."

Her step faltered, a pause of surprise, before she corrected herself.

"You studied for your NEWTs and a potions mastery at the same time?"

Draco couldn't bring himself to look at her. He knew if he saw her eyes wide with disbelief or amazement he'd be forced to gloat, or be nasty about how she doubted him. Was she not aware that he'd been second to her in nearly every subject, and regularly bested her in potions?

"I wasn't allowed to leave these grounds, Granger. I had time. I was under house arrest for two years. Studied the whole time." He shrugged, turning them down a hallway to where he'd set up a small office he might start a mail order potions business out of. "Last year I apprenticed. I only got back from Sarajevo in January."

"Oh." It was a quiet acknowledgement. They stopped at the door to the office. "I hear Sarajevo is quite pretty."

"It is." He opened the door and held out an arm, ushering her inside. He was pleased when she didn't hesitate. "I'm surprised you didn't get a mastery, to be honest."

It occurred to him as Granger cast her diagnostic spell and he settled in a large armchair in the corner of the room that they were presently engaged in normal, civil conversation. And they had been for several minutes. He'd annoyed her and it was fun, but they'd also just talked.

He watched her study the orange and yellow symbols. He was pleased to see no red in the office. He was fairly certain nothing nefarious had happened in this room recently, or that any of the furniture had a proclivity towards biting people, but he could hardly account for whole century's worth of history.

"I think I'd like a mastery," she said, poking at one of the orange symbols with her wand. She dragged it to the desk where she let it settle into the wood. "But I started working right after my NEWTs. I do enjoy Arithmancy and Ancient Runes; it's nice getting to use them in this job. But now that I'm working I don't know if I could just stop to get a mastery—"

Draco scoffed.

Whatever comfort they'd managed to nurture cracked when Granger's posture went rigid.

"You think that's funny?" she asked. "Some of us don't get to work for fun. We can't all have mountains of galleons—"

"That's not what I meant, Granger," he said. Even through his efforts at civility, the words came out tight in response to her sudden frustration. "The only funny thing here is that you seem to think you couldn't do both at once."

She dropped her spell, wand hand coming to rest at her side as she turned to look at him.

Draco sank further into his chair. He leaned against his arm and tried to look and feel as casual and disinterested as possible. He was fairly certain he'd just complimented her. Accidentally and adjacently. But, still: something of a compliment.

She had a bit of pink spreading across her cheeks and she looked nearly as uncomfortable about his slip up as he felt.

Surprisingly, she snorted a soft laugh.

"Thanks for trying, Malfoy."

Annoying Granger was fun: forgetting that they weren't friends and didn't get to have normal conversations with accidental compliments, wasn't.

—

If not for the fact that Draco had only been released from his own house arrest a little over a year ago, and for the fact that he'd never been able to successfully cast a killing curse, he would absolutely consider murder in this moment.

He leaned against the wall near the door to his father's study, arms crossed as he watched his father's parole representative from the Ministry review his case in preparation for the anniversary of his arrest. Every May, Lucius engaged in his annual right to dispute the terms of his sentencing. Every year, it seemed the Ministry paid less and less attention to the Malfoy name.

Narcissa observed from her seat in a nearby chair, hands in her lap. She wore a mask of perfect nonchalance, just barely betrayed by the pink and white flushes in her fingers as she wrung her hands together, watching in silence.

Lucius, who Draco knew very well had successfully cast a killing curse in his life, looked near enough to doing it again.

"You're wasting Ministry resources, Mr. Malfoy. Your sentencing will not change."

"And yet, it is my right to dispute it," Lucius said. "I have no intention of being housebound for another five years."

The Ministry representative, who'd arrived in the middle of breakfast and thusly derailed everyone's morning, looked like he could have done with a spot of tea and toast himself. Pale and unpleasant looking, beads of sweat gathering along his hairline, he'd probably overheated from the synthetic fabrics in his robes—hardly breathable—that were offensively atrocious to look at.

Draco stepped beside his mother's chair. If looks could kill, she'd be the murderer this morning, boring holes into the parole officer's skull. Draco let his hand rest on the top of the chair, almost like placing it on her shoulder, or holding her hand. It was an approximation of comfort, the closest they could come.

It wasn't that he didn't want to offer her support, nor was it that he couldn't. But proximity brought memories, vivid ones that had yet to dull, burning like bright light behind his eyelids, branded and dancing across his vision with every blink. He'd tried to avoid political or philosophical conversations with his parents during his two years under house arrest, both spent with his mother, just one spent with his father after he served a year in Azkaban. But they couldn't always be avoided.

He had no desire to discuss the war with his parents because he couldn't bear to know whether or not they'd evolved, changed their way of thinking. He would have rather lived with not knowing, than risk confirmation that they still believed in the kind of blood purity that had nearly broken them.

And that's how his mother had phrased it, one evening during an especially uncomfortable dinner on the anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts. Lucius and Draco had been engaged in an unofficial competition to see who could be the drunkest at the dinner table. Draco was fairly certain he'd won, which was how he failed to corral the conversation away from forbidden topics.

It was how he failed to hold his tongue, questions he'd shoved down, regurgitated in an inelegant, brutish way.

"You still think they're dirty?" he'd half asked, half accused, his father. "Think we should kill all the mudbloods?"

His mother answered instead, leaving Lucius to grow reddened under his anger, more volatile with drink.

"The—extreme methods of The Dark Lord were never the point, Draco, you know that. But he was—willing to support our beliefs when others weren't." She reached out to him from across the table, resting her hand atop his. His mother's touch had always been a source of comfort, shelter against a storm, but as she continued speaking, her touch grew unfamiliar, foreign.

"Our values have not changed," she said. "We are proud of who we are. We, and many other respected families, have been brought low by the thinking of the new administration, but we have not been broken. You should be proud we persist, not ashamed that we've temporarily lost."

Temporarily lost.

Disgust churned with bile in Draco's stomach. He felt like he might vomit, and not as a result of the liquor he'd consumed. He pulled his hand from hers and risked a glance at his father, who looked furious and drunk and like a shadow of the man around whom Draco's entire sense of self once revolved.

How could they not see it? The Dark Lord had been a half blood himself. Hermione Granger was the brightest witch of her age and her blood ought to flow like sludge, muddy and vile. Yet he'd seen it, red as her Gryffindor bravery. Even the Malfoy family tree—if traced far enough back, before the Statutes for Secrecy—included several muggle unions. How could they not see it? How imaginary it all was, how made up? And it had made him. Unmade him, too. He wasn't brought low; he was broken. His mother was very, very wrong.

The Ministry representative pulled several stacks' worth of parchment from his briefcase and dropped them on Lucius's desk, toppling an inkwell and two exorbitantly expensive eagle owl quills in the process.

"Your case," the man said.

Draco dropped his hand from the chair, curling it into a fist and anchoring himself in the pain of his nails biting into his palms. He might disagree with his family about many—most—things, but this level of disrespect stank of corruption and unprofessionalism. Draco briefly wondered how much money it might take to make him change his mind.

"I'm telling you now, Malfoy, stop wasting our time. Your case isn't even reviewed—straight in the bin every year. No one wants filth like you back out in the public."

Draco's jaw ached from clenching it shut, teeth groaning under the strain. The crooked fucking Ministry was all about equality until it came to the families they disliked. Theo had similar problems with his parole officer, and he hadn't even been a Death Eater. Still they'd kept him in Azkaban for a month and under house arrest for a year. His name alone had been enough to damn him.

Lucius stood, nearly a full foot taller than the man across from him. An intimidating tower was most of what little Lucius had left to lob.

"If I had my wand," Lucius began. Draco could see his hand tightening around the head of his cane.

The Ministry representative laughed, taking a step back, seemingly unconcerned with the palpable sense of fury emanating from Lucius.

"If I had my way, you'd never get it back. Keep you all as close to squibs as possible." He closed his briefcase and looked back at Lucius, laughing something nasty again.

Draco wondered if his father had ever thrown a punch. Now seemed like an excellent opportunity to try.

"I don't want to see a dispute of sentencing filed next month, Mr. Malfoy. If I do, I'm burning it on sight."

The man turned and let himself out, clearly ignorant to social practices of being escorted from a visiting home. Draco only unclenched his fist when the sound of footsteps faded enough that he could no longer count them, imagining them as blows landed at the same pace.

His mother let out a small, low breath beside him.

"Less and less respectful every year. Growing bolder, too," she said.

"Is this normal?" Draco asked. He'd avoided these meetings in the past purely by making himself scarce, but the breakfast interruption had volunteered him for the family duty of enduring his father's circumstances.

Lucius sneered and sat back in his seat. Narcissa angled her head to look at Draco.

"You needn't worry about it, dear," she said. "The Ministry is run by brutes these days."

"Imbeciles," Lucius added.

"Shouldn't you—file a complaint, or something? He'd just said he won't take your case seriously."

The silence that followed his question was worse than disbelieving laughter, worse than a reprimand. His parents watched him, pointed stares that said, surely no son of ours is that naive. And it was like hearing Granger insist he could get a job with the right qualifications.

The silence broke when Lucius shifted the pile of parchment from his desk to the wastebasket. Draco pulled out his pocket watch and cursed, ignoring the protest about his language from his mother.

Half past nine in the morning. Granger would have been here for nearly half an hour and he'd been so distracted he hadn't even realized it.

He excused himself, leaving his parents, and the distaste that was their legal circumstances, behind.

—

Draco didn't find Hermione in the parlor, but the open door told him she'd been there. He'd left it closed the day before and neither his parents nor the elves had any reason to enter. His parents hadn't even visited this wing since the decommissioning process began. Rather, his father had taken an approach of pretending it simply wasn't happening during the day and then requesting exceedingly detailed progress reports in his office after dinner. Progress reports that were exceptionally boring for Draco because they did not change from day to day; she found dark magic on an object, she removed it. Or, she found a cursed object, it tried to bite her, or sting her, or burn her, and she fixed it.

There was almost no deviation to speak of outside of the one day he'd ask her to work in his own office. Which had been more of the same, but in a different room in a different wing. And now today. Draco reeled at the wild and surreal image of Granger wandering the manor by herself.

Why? Why wouldn't she just stay and work? There were still several objects needing her attention in the parlor; she had no reason to wander, and even less of a reason to try and find him. Draco's presence was unnecessary, a formality imposed by his father that meant nothing to her actual work.

Draco dragged a hand through his hair and winced. Already dishevelled and the day had barely begun. He turned away from the parlor, looking down the hall. He was at a loss. He supposed she could have left, but that didn't seem like Granger at all. Why would she leave her work?

Then again, why would she wander his home instead of doing her work?

With a disgruntled growl in the back of his throat, Draco decided he'd just look for her.

"Topsy," he called.

Crack.

"Master Draco has need of Topsy?"

"You haven't seen Miss Granger this morning, have you, Topsy?"

They elf smiled, bouncing as she clapped her hands together.

"Oh yes, Master Malfoy, sir. Miss Granger is so kind to Topsy when I bring more trinkets for her to play with."

"This morning? You brought her more work this morning?"

Draco knelt to speak easier with the elf, craning to converse with a barely two foot tall magical creature made conversation in any sort of extended manner extremely uncomfortable.

"Yes, Master Draco. Miss Granger asked for directions to the west hall drawing room so Topsy showed her."

Draco staggered, tilting from his already unsteady crouch on the balls of his feet. He had to brace himself with a hand against the cold stone floors, a hot, vibrating kind of panic erupted in his chest, shooting to his extremities.

Topsy, sweet Topsy, noticed his reaction.

"Topsy told Miss Granger the room is locked and she would not be able to visit, but she insisted. Did Topsy do wrong? Should Topsy punish—"

"No, Topsy. No punishment—just, go. You are dismissed."

Crack.

Draco sank to his knees, head bowed. He must have looked absurd, forehead practically against the floor as he focused on his breathing, as he forced ice into his brain, his veins. Why the fuck? Why the fuck would she go there?

Draco struggled to swallow, throat tight. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to focus on the freezing Occlumency, isolating and flaking away every unwelcome shard in his mind: panic, fear, guilt, confusion, regret, hate, guilt, guilt, guilt. He tried swallowing again, forcing the motion through the painful lump obstructing his breathing, seizing and strangling his vocal cords. Cold enough, frozen enough, he found numbness.

He stood, spello-taped together by freezing magic, and walked, purposely, quickly, agonizingly—isolate, flake—to the drawing room.

He nearly doubled over again when he saw it, saw the sheer audacity of it. Granger was insane; it was the only excuse.

One of the doors to the drawing room lay on the floor, ripped from its hinges. The other had been shattered and splintered, still closed but buckled from the force of whatever absolutely astonishing magic had been used to break through it.

She'd just—had she really? Draco swallowed against the tightness at the back of his throat. His lungs felt like they'd shriveled and died in his chest, decayed, desiccated things trying to perform the duties of something living.

He'd stopped walking far enough away that he couldn't see inside the room yet. He didn't want to. Not even a little bit. But if this was his reaction to it, what could hers possibly be? He dragged another hand through his hair, this time completely disinterested in how wild or unmanaged it made him look. He hardly cared about that, not anymore. He couldn't just leave her in there, not again.

He took several cautious steps, sinking deeper into his Occlumency with each one: frozen and freezing and functionally blank. He gripped the door frame with his left hand. He flinched; he could see the faint shadow of the brand on his forearm through the sleeve of his white shirt. He took a single additional step forward, bringing the interior of the drawing room into full view.

His Occlumency collapsed. It brought him to his knees in the space of a breath, lungs seizing, ice-flooded-veins surging into motion, scalding hot as molten rock, shards of self reassembling into the jagged mess that lived inside his head.

He almost vomited up his breakfast, stomach churning and turning and roiling in the sudden heat that brought it to a boil. He'd only ever lost control of his Occlumency one other time in his life, and it had been in that room, not an hour after Granger had been tortured in it, and his family tortured in turn for her escape.

Draco heaved, hating himself. How fucking pathetic, reduced to a withering mess at the threshold to a room in his own home. He squeezed his eyes shut, screwed up his face, and forced a facsimile of normal breathing: in and out, push and pull. He latched onto the sound of a nearby clock, tick tick ticking a rhythm he could follow, that he could cling to in order to time his breaths.

Reluctantly, fingers still clinging to the door frame, Draco forced himself to stand. His knuckles had turned white as he gripped it, clutching for support, for grounding.

He willed himself to look again.

Granger stood in the middle of the room, just next to the shattered carcass of the chandelier that once hung from the ceiling. She stared at the floor. Draco couldn't help himself—it happened entirely within his subconscious, seeking out her left arm. She had her sleeves shoved up: showing it off. Showing it off in this place.

His stomach turned again. She had her right hand just barely grazing the letters in her skin. He could see her fingertips drumming lightly, skating up and down her arm as she stared at the carpets beneath her, at the blood that wasn't exclusively hers. Many people had bled on those carpets that day, but hers was among it, and utterly indistinguishable from the rest.

Why was she just standing there, staring at the floor? Draco decided he should stop her, escort her elsewhere. Save her? No. With a surge of shame through his chest, Draco knew she didn't need any saving, not by anyone, and certainly not by him. Not now, anyway. That opportunity had long since passed.

But still, he should stop this. This couldn't be good, for either of them.

He tried to cross the threshold into the drawing room—really, he did. But his legs would not move, no matter how much effort he put into engaging the muscles in his thigh, his calves, bending his knees, lifting his feet. It was like a total body bind had gripped him, robbing him of control over his limbs.

He couldn't go in.

No, he wouldn't go in.

No, he'd been right the first time. He couldn't go in.

He almost wanted to stomp his foot from the frustration, from the guilt, from the utterly incomprehensible sight of watching Hermione Granger stand in the spot where she'd been tortured with barely more than a curious look on her face.

He watched her shoulders rise and fall: a deep breath. She let go of her left arm, lifting her hand to her face and dragging a finger under her eye. If she'd been crying, it hadn't been much. She stood barely ten feet from him; he would have been able to see it.

Her shoulders lifted and fell again: another breath. And then she looked up, straight at him. She walked towards him, then past him, into the hallway and away from the drawing room as if he hadn't been there at all, or as if she hadn't cared.

It took him too long, several moments of confusion and grief, still staring at the carpets where she'd been standing, before the body bind that had seized his nervous system released him and allowed him to move his legs. He stepped away from the drawing room and everything that happened there.

He walked quickly, the click of his shoes on stone floors not unlike the ticking of the clock he'd used to measure his breaths. He increased his pace, eyes focused on the riot of brown curls he sought to reach.

His voice died in his throat, a crackle of intention eviscerated by vocal cords shredded in grief. He tried again.

"Granger," he said from several feet behind her.

She kept walking: confident, quick. Then she made a wrong turn, headed towards his father's wing, not the parlor.

"Granger, stop," he tried again, voice stronger that time, more solid, devoid of the soundless gaps that let breath blow right through his vocal cords.

She stopped but she did not turn around. He stopped, too, still several feet away.

"The parlor is the other way."

She took another breath. Watching her shoulders rise and fall had a sort of calming effect on Draco, a physical reminder of the thing she did, the thing he sometimes struggled to do.

She turned suddenly, hair moving in a delay around her, whipping with the force of her momentum. She began walking again, towards him, past him. Again and again.

He reached out this time, catching her by the arm, fingers wrapping around her upper arm, sinking into her soft cardigan. They both froze, side by side, facing different directions. He didn't look directly at her, but at a particularly independent curl trying to break free from the rest at the back of her head. He would have bet a substantial number of galleons that she didn't look directly at him either.

He kept holding her arm, somehow incapable of letting go, not now that he'd found an anchor, stilling the churning sea in his stomach. She didn't try to break away either.

"What was that, Granger?" he asked the wild curl under his focus. A ray of sunlight peeked through a nearby window, hinting at a few golden strands hidden in a deep brown landscape.

This time, he could feel her breath in the way her arm lifted, just a touch, as she invited air into her lungs. It felt like breathing on his own, too.

"I wasn't letting her win."

A flush of heat dropped in his chest, a bombarda against his ribs—weaponized guilt—and somehow, he knew she hadn't meant it that way. At least, he hoped she didn't. Not that he wouldn't deserve it if she did.

Because he'd certainly let her win. Her being Bellatrix, the winning being everything else: the game they'd been pawns in, the battle in which they'd been but cannon fodder. He let her arm go, feeling vile for having had the audacity to touch her in the first place.

She didn't move when he released her. In his peripheral vision, he saw her head turn, looking more directly at him. He couldn't bring himself to do the same.

"Let's get back to work," she said, as if he had any real part in it.

But it helped to freeze out the molten mush inside his head, reminding him of his normal. His Occlumency was weak, magic cautious and hesitant after such blatant abuse, but it was enough to cool the fire that nearly melted his marrow.

He nodded, a single lift and dip of his jaw, curt and short and all he could manage.

He could see her nodding, too, perhaps in agreement that yes, this was a miserable way to start one's day. But she started walking a moment later. He followed, several paces behind, utterly floored by whatever it was he'd just been witness to.

He watched her work the rest of the day, not even pretending to read or occupy himself in another way. He just watched as she summoned diagnostic spells, manipulated them around objects steeped in dark magic, in a home steeped in dark magic, sorting through curses and counter curses as if her mind held an entire curse breaking guidebook open in front of her eyes. Which it probably did, knowing what he knew of Granger's fondness—dare he call it obsession—with books.

As he watched he realized how absolutely miraculous it was that she could even bring herself to step onto this property to begin with. If Draco had the choice he never would have come back, and already he planned to leave it again, find a flat of his own. But she'd come back and faced the people who'd hurt her here: in physical form as Lucius Malfoy, or in echo as Bellatrix Lestrange.

And then she managed complex magic on top of it? Day in and day out, ridding his home of the type of magic they all probably deserved to drown in.

It felt good, honestly, to finally admit it. Not to hide behind the jealousy or the shame, but to simply acknowledge her for what she was without any comparison to himself.

Hermione Granger was fucking impressive. And he'd finally let himself admit it.

—

He didn't even try sleeping that night. Draco knew it would have been a laughable failure and he didn't much fancy the idea of seeing his dear Aunt Bella again, even within the confines of his own mind. Instead, he paced, fixating on what he'd watched Granger do that morning, standing and staring at the place she'd experienced so much pain.

He couldn't make sense of it. Couldn't wrap his head around how that would help, could help, staring it down in such a way.

He gave up pacing shortly after midnight. He hadn't even changed out of his day clothes, echoes of his footfalls providing a comfortable clicking to manage his breathing. He threw open the doors to his room and headed straight for his makeshift potions lab.

He was obsessed; he knew he was. He'd known it for a while. He couldn't stop seeking out that scar. It was a destructive obsession, masochistic, seeking another hit of pain and guilt every time he laid eyes on it. And somehow it didn't seem to affect her at all. Granger didn't glamor it, didn't keep her sleeves down like he did with his; she just lived her life despite it. And then she'd stood in the spot where it happened like it was the easiest thing in the world: staring one's demons in the eyes.

Draco evanesco'd several cauldrons and summoned a smattering of various potions ingredients. He didn't understand why it didn't bother her, why she didn't seem to want to hide or remove it. But he had to give her the choice. He wanted—no, needed—her to have the choice. And not just so he didn't have to see it, but because she'd earned it. She'd accepted it—something horrible and hateful—and she deserved to be free of it.

—

thank you for reading! i live primarily on tumblr and ao3 under the name 'mightbewriting' (no i). i have a regular update schedule (mondays and fridays) for this story on ao3 and update here when i get the chance. if you're interested in a regular schedule and reading chapters as soon as they're out, follow this story on ao3!