July
tock
Granger had clearly fought and lost a war with her hair before arriving at the manor. She stepped through the Floo with a frustrated huff, sounding frazzled as her hair fluffed out at odd, uncooperative angles. Worse, she kept reaching for it, smoothing it, twisting it, dragging her fingers through it, and making disappointed sounds every time she came in contact with another errant curl or egregious tangle.
Her electric, frantic energy calmed Draco in a strange way; it provided him with a pleasant reminder of normalcy. He'd grown too accustomed to whatever unwelcome feelings of fondness—and occasionally something else—had taken up residence in the places inside his brain formerly reserved for insults and irritation.
"Mane not cooperating today?" he asked in lieu of his usual greeting. He leaned against the frame to the parlor door, watching her process with open fascination.
She leveled an unamused stare in his direction as she attempted to twist her hair into a bun.
"You know, Granger. If you let it grow past your shoulders, the sheer weight of it would pull some of that frizz down."
He resisted the urge to wince. He realized too late that such a statement suggested at least a tangential investment in her hair. Investment landed far too close to fondness for his liking.
She gaped at him, hands paused at the back of her head, mid-scuffle with a tangle of curls. He couldn't stand her stare, or the confusion dancing with curiosity across her face. He drew his wand.
"Shall I conjure another ribbon and save us all?" he asked. He tried to ignore the ridiculousness prickling beneath his skin; he'd apparently doubled-down on whatever ill-advised stake he had in her hair and the potential relief its cooperativeness provided.
"Malfoy, I have so much hair. I couldn't possibly let it get any longer."
So she had heard him. He'd started to wonder, growing concerned at her excellent impression of a carp.
He gave a shrug, pocketing his wand again and folding his arms across his chest. "More hair but less hassle, would be my guess. This isn't uncommon knowledge, Granger."
She frowned, evidently settling on the haphazard bun she'd managed.
"Seems like an odd thing for you to know, what with that bone straight, blinding white coif you parade around with."
"My hair isn't straight—" he needed Theo's time turner. He needed to reverse those words, erase them from existence.
He groaned at the glee that erupted on her face as she advanced on him, helping herself to his personal space, staring up at him from barely a foot away.
"We all know about the smoothing potions and the sticking charms, but straightening, too, Malfoy?" She smiled through her teasing. For a moment, he almost thought she would reach out and touch his hair. He almost—almost—hoped she would. "You're essentially a caricature of yourself, you're so vain. You know that right? How curly is it?"
Carefully, Draco brought his hands to rest on either of her shoulders and, slowly, he pushed her away, forcing space from her invasion. Her amusement only grew as he steered her back.
"Slightly wavy, at most. And I know these things because rather riotous curls run the Black family. I've listened to my mother drone on the subject extensively."
Thankfully, that answer seemed to satisfy. He was glad she'd decided to put her hair up; it saved him from picturing how it might look longer, what it might feel like, how he might like to touch it. He blinked, recognizing the error of that thought. He froze it out, flaked it away, packed up. It meant nothing.
Ultimately, these thoughts were Ronald Weasley's fault. If that red-headed idiot had been able to keep Granger interested, Draco's reluctant fascination would still be held at bay out of begrudging respect for boundaries. On top of that, Theo had to coerce Granger into participating in his birthday festivities. Who would have guessed that she could be so much fun?
Well, Draco had an idea before then. But seeing proof—with a side of drunken giggles and lectures on Queen Elizabeth I that Theo found endlessly quotable—had been something unexpected.
"Where's the sofa?" Granger asked, surveying the room with suspicion, craning her neck as if a better view of the large, open space might suddenly reveal a tufted velvet monstrosity hidden in plain sight.
He hadn't necessarily expected it to slip her notice, but he didn't expect her to sound so—concerned?
"I—uh, I took it with me." He rubbed at the muscles on the back of his neck, probably looking woefully self-conscious.
She blinked, processing.
"Took it with you where?"
"My flat. I—got my own place."
"Oh."
"I didn't want, well—I couldn't, really. Live here anymore."
Draco wanted to rip his own tongue from his mouth and light it on fire. He'd been reduced to an inarticulate idiot under Granger's inspection. And over what? A sofa that had become a strange third party in their day to day?
"Well, that's a shame," she said. That bewildered him. Briefly, he thought she might mean it was a shame he didn't want to live in the manor anymore, as if anyone in their right mind could. But then she continued, "I was rather fond of that sofa."
She gave him a smirk, brushing past him on her way out the door, beginning their usual path to the library.
"Perhaps we should consider a custody arrangement," she added.
Evidently her frustration over her hair had transformed into a kind of playfulness about the sofa. Draco hadn't been prepared for that. On the handful of occasions where their conversations skewed this way—a little fun, a little playful—he found himself stunned each time at how easy it could be, not acting in total opposition to Hermione Granger. It was dangerous, shaky ground at the edge of a cliff; he ought not tread too far.
"I don't know if that's necessary, Granger. I do use it significantly more than you."
"That's hardly my fault. I'm working during the day and don't have access on weekends."
They stepped into the library and he almost said something else, felt the traitorous words lingering in the back of his throat, a breath from jumping off a cliff from which there would be no return. Instead, he said nothing. Neither did she.
In the awkward end of their banter, the air in the room thickened, tensed: simmering. Maybe he didn't give Granger enough credit. Maybe she could hear his unspoken invitation dying to be spoken into existence: you can come over whenever you'd like. Or maybe she couldn't. He had no fucking clue.
"Do you like it?" she asked.
"Like what?"
"Your new place."
"Oh. Yes, it's fine."
"Were your parents—alright with you leaving?"
Draco laughed, taking his usual place at the large reading table in the center of the room. Instead of heading straight to work, Granger walked with him. She leaned against the table—close enough to cause distraction—intent on getting her answer.
"I didn't tell them," he said, crossing an ankle over his knee and leaning back against the chair. He folded his arms and lifted a brow, waiting for it—
"What do you mean you didn't tell them? Surely they've noticed—"
"I take meals with them, I'm here most of the day. But instead of retiring to my wing in the evenings, I leave. And I'm paying out of my trust, which I've controlled since I came of age. They have no reason to know."
She looked suspicious, tapping her short nails against the table as she thought. He hadn't convinced her with his attempt at a casual explanation.
"So they just—don't notice you're gone all night?"
"We hardly have midnight meetings to discuss our nightmares, plentiful as they may be."
She softened; the one hand that had been on her hip, demanding answers through posture, slipped to her side instead.
"Well—I'm happy for you."
He tore his gaze from the way her fingers twisted at the edge of her blouse, wrapping the fabric around her index finger in a way that, with a bit more movement, would probably reveal a peek of the skin beneath.
Draco mentally shook himself. He'd once been so obsessed with her being better than him, smarter than him, less worthy of the success he thought should come to him instead, that he'd never noticed anything else about her. And now, he'd done a poor job of preventing a new reality wherein he not only wanted to invite Granger to see his new flat, but wherein he wanted to invite her to do great many other things, on the sofa or otherwise. With enough control, he could pretend those thoughts didn't exist. And yet they kept seeping in, dampness through cracks he couldn't fully cover.
Draco couldn't think any of those things about Granger, couldn't even consider thinking them for a slew of reasons. First and foremost, because thinking them made him a creep, and lecher, and leer, and whatever other names existed for men bound by betrothal agreements who suddenly found themselves fascinated by their former childhood adversaries currently working well over forty hours a week in their home.
In reality, he knew there was probably just one single name for such a specific set of circumstances: Draco Lucius Malfoy.
—
Sweat rolled down Draco's back. Annoyed and uncomfortable, he considered launching a cauldron out the nearest window in frustration. He'd long since discarded the outer robes he'd worn to brunch with Astoria, and if not for the blackened brand seared into his left arm he would have rolled up his sleeves, too.
Six active cauldrons was too many to manage at once. Five too many, he imagined most would say. At least three too many, for him. But the more cauldrons he ran at once, the more variance he could test in a single brewing session, and the faster he could identify which ingredients would perform how he wanted them to in order to remove dark magic from cursed scars.
He also desperately needed to move his brewing set up to his new flat. But he hadn't figured out how he could explain away the absence of the lab he'd thrown together in the manor despite his father's sneering about menial labor and how Malfoys need not work.
One of the cauldrons overflowed, its formerly vibrant turquoise color evolving into a putrid green that splattered as thick, viscous bubbles popped, spilling over the rim and onto the table.
Draco evanesco'd the mess before it could damage the worktop or spread any further. He grumbled a string of exceptionally colorful curses; he'd had high hopes for that particular brew. Cauldron cleared, he wiped the sweat from his forehead and shoved his hair back, furious about his failing hair charms on top of everything else.
"What a lovely and creative use of language, my darling."
Draco looked up. His mother stood by the door, one hand pressed against the frame as if holding her in place: keeping her from intruding any further, but preventing her retreat.
Despite his preexisting flush from the heat of various potions fumes, Draco felt embarrassment creep in, likely deepening whatever redness had taken up residence beneath his normally pale skin.
"Mother," he said. "I apologize—"
"You did not know I was here. It's alright, Draco." She dropped her hand from the door frame. "May I join you? I've seen so little of you lately."
"Of course, yes"—he transfigured an empty crate from the greenhouses into a stool—"please, sit."
She approached but remained standing, focused instead on the magic he'd just done, and the wand he'd used to do it.
"Is that your Hawthorn wand?" she asked. She reached out like she might want to examine it. Draco quickly cast several stasis charms on his potions, ridding the air of fumes, and conjured himself a stool as well. Narcissa dropped her hand. Draco didn't much like the idea of someone else taking his wand, even her.
"Granger got it for me—from Potter."
He watched Narcissa's lip curl, then freeze, at the mention of each name: displeasure in conflict against burgeoning respect. Draco doubted he could ever understand how his mother felt towards Harry Potter. It seemed everyone had to have some complicated fucking relationship with the-boy-who-would-not-die, his mother included.
"That was"—she took her stool, hands folded neatly in her lap—"thoughtful of the girl."
The girl was certainly better than mudblood. At least Narcissa had the good graces to avoid such inelegances in casual conversation.
"I asked for it back."
A tension across the line of her shoulders sank, relieved, and Draco couldn't imagine a reason why. She smiled at him and then let her gaze wander, examining his potions lab. Her smile curled into a sneer—Draco only saw it because he'd been watching—before she corrected, expression smoothing back to a smile.
"Draco darling, why have you been spending so much time in here? Your father and I are thrilled you've pursued a mastery—but these things are meant to be hobbies, dear, nothing more."
Her assessment of the six cauldrons he'd been working with clearly indicated she knew he'd moved beyond hobby level. And she wasn't wrong. This was neither hobby nor profession. This was obsession and Draco knew it.
It was all he could think about.
He preferred to imagine that his mother didn't outright disapprove of his work; she simply didn't understand it. The valley between the things she didn't understand about him and his willingness to teach her had stretched too wide to travel; he'd grown weary.
She must have taken his silence as an opportunity to elaborate.
"You don't need to do things, darling. These kinds of practical skills—of course, your education is respectable—but you needn't use your hands to do work. That sort of labor is undignified; you're a Malfoy."
Draco made a point of setting his wand on the countertop, unclenching his hands, and doing everything else in his power to remain level-headed, reasonable. Because as weary a traveler as he was, the taunts from the valley, unintentional or not, still slipped beneath his skin and stung of his failure to cross.
"Mother, I'd like for my hands to do something productive. Something good."
He could do this. He could have this conversation with his mother. She was not Lucius. She knew the taste of compassion even if she did not partake of it often. And she loved him, Draco knew that. Whereas most days Draco tended to believe his father loved the idea of him, more than who he'd actually grown to be.
The sad smile she gave him twisted Draco's stomach. She reached out to rest her hand atop his. Even though he knew, intellectually, that he'd put all his potions under a stasis charm, he could have sworn he smelled something sour, something rot.
"You could do so much more if you considered working with the family interests."
"I can't say I share many of those."
He'd said it before he even realized he'd thought it. He was an idiot; he should have occluded the moment she walked in the door.
But instead of twisting into a sneer, Narcissa's smile dropped into a frown. She squeezed his hand.
"We are family," she said, as if that could answer anything, everything.
Draco loved her. He really did. And she loved him. But they had no idea how to navigate this, on opposite sides of a valley neither could—or would—cross.
He pulled away from her touch.
"What is it you're working on?" she asked, folding her hands back in her lap as if nothing had happened.
A potion, a snide part of him wanted to say.
"I'm experimenting."
"On what?"
"A healing potion." He hesitated, unsure how much he was willing to give. "I'd like to be able to remove cursed scars."
He saw the moment her eyes darted to his chest, lingering on the lines she knew hid beneath his shirt, on the trail of one poking out from his collar and crawling up his neck. It made him sick, realizing she thought he meant for himself, for his own scars.
He hadn't even considered it. None of this had ever been about himself.
Correcting her would have been too much hassle, so he let her think it of him.
—
Draco should not have tested his potions on his own scars. That much became evident the second time he gave himself burns so severe he had to brew a skin regeneration potion for a patch on his lower stomach so grotesquely sizzled that he didn't have enough skin left to heal.
Each morning, Draco winced as he buttoned his shirt, taking care to hold the fabric away from his torso, where whole stretches of his sectumsempra scars had turned a painful array of colors. Some pink and irritated, others purpling and mottled, one near his hip had turned a nasty green color and throbbed every time he breathed too deeply. Tucking his shirt into his trousers became an exercise in withholding a pained hiss even though no one would have heard if he relented.
He glanced at the clock, one of many objects Granger had cleansed of dark magic in the Floo parlor. He'd only gotten four hours of sleep that night—with almost no nightmares to speak of—but he'd stayed up too late brewing, sneaking away from the manor somewhere around half two in the morning.
Breakfast service started at eight sharp, and Astoria would be present this morning: a casual opportunity to discuss fabric swatches or seating arrangements or some other wedding planning topic that made his head spin. Did they have a date? It occurred to him that this was something he should probably know, and yet—he found he'd rather delay that inevitability as long as possible.
Early morning at the manor had a distinct sound to it. Condensation that clung to the stone walls, even many of the interior ones, muffled the way sound normally echoed in an eery, surreal sort of way. Morning light had a different color to it too: crisp, bright, almost hopeful.
He preferred the manor in the mornings. It meant he'd survived the night.
That hadn't always been a given.
He greeted his mother, father, and betrothed out in the gardens where, in a whimsical break from their painfully consistent routines, they'd agreed to share breakfast amongst the flowers as they discussed the wedding. The ones doing the agreeing had been, of course, Astoria and Narcissa. Lucius already had a copy of the Daily Prophet open in front of him where he sat at one end of the small table, clearly intent on excusing himself from participation. Draco, however, had no choice in the matter.
He kissed both his mother and Astoria on the cheek, hardly ignorant to why that fact might stick out to him.
"Darling you're looking tired, you mustn't spend so much time with those experiments of yours."
Astoria's eyes found him, a Ravenclaw curiosity sparkling in her irises.
"Experiments?" she asked.
Lucius folded his paper down, drawing Draco's attention. He didn't speak, but his disappointed glare said enough.
Draco wanted to roll his eyes, shake his head at the predictability of it. Sometimes in the morning, when he remembered how pleased he was to have survived the night, Draco found his father's general distastes almost amusing. How tiring it must be, hating so much, appreciating so little?
He resisted his disrespectful impulses and turned back to Astoria.
"With potions. A hobby."
She smiled, taking a small sip of her tea.
"Sounds interesting," she said.
"Frustrating, more so. My failure rates far outnumber my successes."
Astoria parted her lips, nearly forming another question. It looked like they might actually engage in a relatively easy conversation about something that didn't make Draco want to slip into unconsciousness.
His mother interrupted. She wore a serene smile and smooth features, but Draco saw the desire to change topics to something more palatable in the unsettling way her brows didn't move, not even a millimeter, as she spoke.
"Let's not get distracted. This is a working breakfast, after all."
Astoria tittered a polite laugh, setting her tea down with those fine, delicate hands of hers. Birds chirped in the distance, reminding him of cages and claws. Whatever small interest he might have had in her dissipated at the sound of that laugh. The socialite laugh, the polite laugh that wasn't even a laugh. It was a social language crafted by women, for women, to communicate any variety of things Draco didn't have the first inclination how to understand. He only knew he'd heard his mother and all her friends engage in it, ad nauseam, at nearly every social event he'd been forced to attend throughout his life.
"—the guest list."
His mother's voice brought Draco out of his descent into annoyance. There'd been very little about planning his wedding that piqued his interest; the guest list did.
"You received the owl with my list, yes?" Astoria asked.
His mother made a demure sort of sound in acknowledgment, "Thank you, dear. And it wasn't too long at all. We're fully intending to engage in a little grandeur. We anticipate your wedding will be the most magnificent social event of the year."
Year. Which year? Not this year, surely. She must have meant next year.
"Draco, it's been decided that Pansy Parkinson will be receiving an invitation," his mother said.
No, sprang to life inside his head. It would be uncomfortable, awkward. If he could voice those two letters, this conversation could be so much simpler.
"Mother, I've barely spoken to her since Hogwarts."
"Which I don't understand, darling. She was once a very close friend." His mother did not look at Astoria when she spoke.
For a moment, Draco's chest tensed, sorry for the girl sitting here with them and the implication that it once might have been someone else. Because that's what Narcissa meant. There had been talks, casual ones, but talks nonetheless between the Parkinsons and the Malfoys.
"My social life didn't exactly thrive under house arrest." He ignored the appalled look his mother gave him. Apparently she forbade talk of probation at the breakfast table. "We're not really friends anymore."
"She's still close with my sister," Astoria said, and Draco heard several other statements buried beneath it as she looked at him with her pretty blue eyes, so similar to his mother's.
"We dated," he told her, tired of all the things they weren't really saying.
His mother's teacup came down a fraction too hard against her saucer, clinking with a telltale force of disappointment. She'd likely admonish him for being rude, uncouth in front of his intended the next time they were alone.
"The Malfoys have been close with the Parkinson family for generations. We even stood by Simeon during that scandal over his foreign wife."
"Pansy's mother is from Japan, not the moon."
Narcissa's lip curled, completely at odds with her words: "And Sakura is a lovely pureblood witch."
Draco could hear Pansy's voice in the back of his head, hissing the correct pronunciation of her mother's name, a favorite pastime at social events.
"I don't mind that you dated," Astoria offered with a sweet smile. Kind Astoria, trying hard enough for the both of them.
She didn't want a loveless life, he could see that in these small gestures, in every attempt she made to connect. Draco didn't want that, either. But that didn't mean he wanted it with her. Gods, and it gutted him. This could be so much easier if he actually felt something, anything, for her. Even irritation would do, annoyance. But all he felt was blandness: porridge and cream biscuits and under-steeped tea.
He reached for her hand across the table, brimming with objections: he hadn't seen Pansy in so long, a wedding wasn't the place for those kinds of reintroductions, his annoyance at Astoria's own sister for suggesting Pansy distance herself from him, and how he didn't know how to be her friend anymore.
With the benefit of hindsight, he might have acknowledged how much of his own history was tied up with Pansy's, and how horrified the idea of confronting all that made him.
"I trust you ladies to make these decisions," he said in lieu of the truth.
Astoria smiled, but Narcissa raised a brow.
"You don't want any input in your own wedding?" she asked.
Lucius made a sound from behind his paper but didn't contribute anything else. Draco didn't miss the sharp look Narcissa sent in his direction, despite the fact that Lucius couldn't even see it from behind a headline about Potter's exploits in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.
"I trust your opinion," he told her, taking a sip of his own tea to drown what he would have rather said.
Specifically, he would rather have told her that he very much wanted input on his own wedding. Lots and lots of input. Particularly over his choice of bride. But without that, where was the point in the rest of it?
—
"You're in a foul mood," Granger said—casually, simply, far too easily—as she set a stack of books on the table.
Draco counted as he exhaled, staring at the word anticlockwise in the book in front of him, before he looked up at her. Of course he was in a foul mood; he'd had to discuss his impending nuptials over breakfast. Furthermore, several scars across his torso wouldn't stop burning.
"And?" he asked, seriously considering Occlumency. It could be worth the unsettled stomach and the foggy head.
"Just an observation," she said with a shrug.
"I doubt that. You're hardly subtle."
He tried to return to his book, the word anticlockwise sticking in his brain, he couldn't seem to get past it every time he tried. She wanted to interrupt again; he could feel it crackling in the silence around them.
"Can I borrow these?" she asked.
Draco lifted a brow and glanced over his book.
"Sure, Granger."
She didn't return to her work, still standing across from him, probably staring at his failed attempts at reading, if he had to guess. With a heavy sigh, he conceded and closed his book.
"Yes?"
"I'm done."
"Done?"
"With the library."
Draco's brow furrowed. He let his eyes sweep the enormous space. It didn't seem possible.
"Are you certain?" he asked.
She propped her hands on her hips, indignation shooting to the surface of her features.
"Of course I am. I've been working on this one room for almost three months."
His brows lifted, no longer suspicious, but confused.
"Has it been that long?"
"It has."
He hummed a noncommittal noise.
"You're not occluding are you?" she asked, pressing her hands on the tabletop and leaning over it. Far too similar an action to when she'd nearly crawled on top of it, whispering about riding dragons.
"What are you doing?"
"Trying to get a closer look at your eyes. That's where I can see it best."
Draco blinked. Rapidly. A feeling of exposure, of being scraped raw: fresh skin, bleeding gums, and exposed gray matter.
"I'm not occluding." He looked towards the window, ignoring her huff at his uncooperativeness.
"Then what is it with you today?"
"I'm reading."
"You're silent. You haven't made fun of my hair once. And I tripped earlier; you didn't make a single comment about my lack of grace. I thought we'd—I don't know. Exited the Cold War already."
"Granger, what on earth makes a war cold?"
She shook her head, "that's not what I meant—"
"And this isn't a social call," he said, interrupting her. "You're here to work. I'm here to supervise." And if he repeated that enough, maybe it could start looking like the truth.
She was kind of pretty when he made her mad. And he shouldn't notice things like that.
She propped her hands on her hips again. She'd reeled like he'd said something horrible. He'd only meant for it to be the truth.
"Well, I'm done working in here. The library is finished."
"I suppose you can go, then." He pushed, needing distance. She was too close.
"It's only three in the afternoon—"
He pushed harder. "Take the rest of the day."
He didn't even bother offering a reason or an excuse. He tried to make it sound like an order from an employer to an employee, which wasn't technically the nature of their relationship, but it was the only thing he could think of.
Her lips pressed together, rolling between her teeth as she repressed whatever it was she wanted to say.
He prepared to push again, too fascinated with her mouth in that moment. He'd spent the morning planning his fucking wedding. He couldn't be distracted by Hermione Granger's mouth.
She pushed instead.
"Fine." She forced the words out through a clenched jaw. And when she left, she forgot the books she'd wanted to borrow.