February
tick tock
Being on kissing terms with Hermione Granger involved far less kissing than Draco preferred. Mostly, it involved watching her work while wanting to kiss her and being told that no, there would be no kissing because she was being paid by the Ministry to perform a task.
So bloody responsible all the time.
It had started driving him mad.
He parted from her after Potter's wedding more drunk on the memory of her mouth than the champagne he'd consumed. Days later, when she walked through the Floo to resume her work on the manor, that comfortable warmth chilled in their awkward reintroduction.
"We shouldn't—be friendly. While I'm working," she'd said, avoiding eye contact as she stood by the fireplace.
He smirked, taking a cautious step forward. He could be forgiven for one tiny breach of professional sensibilities, couldn't he? Once he stepped close enough, into her orbit, it was like an accio drew him the rest of the way. He trailed his fingers up her arm, across her shoulder, along her neck, before winding them into her hair. It felt familiar, natural, like he'd done it a thousand times and not just the once. He dropped his head, voice low, still smirking as he savored what sounded like a very reluctant hitch in her breath.
"Friendly? You snog many of your friends?"
"You know what I mean," she said, her arms winding around his torso. He hadn't exactly planned on trying to seduce her in the parlor on her first day back, but the idea suddenly held a tremendous amount of merit. "You're being intentionally distracting," she continued.
She ducked, slipping beneath his arm and stepping around him.
"I need to work when I'm here," she said. "None of that." She waved vaguely in his direction.
"None of what?"
Annoyed as he was by the distance she'd put between them, he preened at the unspoken compliment.
She tapped her foot several times before answering, either uncertain if she should or not knowing how.
"All of it," she finally said. "Just—all of it."
And that moratorium on all of it, which he discovered upon subsequent admonishments, included: maintaining eye contact too long, lingering too close, smiling too wide, and thinking too loudly about how he wanted to bend her over the nearest horizontal surface and fuck her senseless, endured day in and day out.
He'd been right about his suspicions that she planned her life to its far edges. She planned time for him to kiss and hold and otherwise woo her into a schedule packed with productivity, and a small circle of social engagements. His time with her mostly boiled down to Saturdays, as she had Sundays reserved for her parents or Gryffindor friends, depending on the week. He could occasionally steal a weekday kiss, in the evenings after her work was done, his body pressed flush to hers against the fireplace, or the paneled parlor door, or whatever other vertical surface was nearest to them. But always in the parlor and behind closed doors.
"Your parents don't know about this, do they?" she asked in early February. He'd been toying with the idea of slipping his hand beneath the hem of her shirt as he kissed her. Those dreams evaporated at the thought of his parents.
He pulled away, cradling her face and dropping kisses along her jaw. He tried to drag himself out of the haze that enveloped his brain whenever his mouth neared her skin.
"No," he began, already fearing the direction this line of questions could travel. "They don't."
"That's good, I think," she said, shifting her body against his, breasts pushed against his chest in a way that made a conversation involving his parents painfully inconvenient.
His brows furrowed, trying to divine meaning from her look. Was it actually good? It felt suspiciously like a trap, like the sort of lure Lucius would sometimes leave with the intent of coaxing an opinion out of Draco that he ought not possess.
She lifted her hand, running it through his hair. The woman had a vendetta against his smoothing charms. Nevertheless, he leaned into the touch.
"I don't imagine they'd be pleased—with me."
He watched her with curiosity. She sounded so clinical, so divorced from emotion. He might have believed her if he couldn't feel the way her heart beat against his own chest.
"I—no, I don't think they would," he said. He saw no point in a lie.
"It's probably best that—you don't have to deal with that," she said. "Especially after your betrothal, don't you think?"
She kissed him; it felt like an apology. And when she pulled away, lips lingering close to his, he didn't know if he should speak. He didn't know what response she wanted from him and he had no interest in being incorrect.
"That's"—a pause as he stumbled to find neutrality—"very logical."
"I'm very logical."
On the surface, that answer sounded correct. It didn't feel right.
"I'm not ashamed of you," he added, chest tightening in discomfort, of feeling laid bare and left on display.
She sighed.
"Would you like to go tell them, then?"
His fingers flexed against her hip, other hand brushing against her cheek.
He hesitated too long. He closed his eyes, forehead pressed against hers, a slip of a kiss away from her mouth. Any moment now, she would pull away from him, separate their limbs and lips and lingering affections, disgust and disappointment evident on her face. He'd failed the test, sprung the snare.
"I didn't think so," she said. "I don't find I especially want to, either. I don't expect you to blow up your life for me."
He didn't open his eyes, stuck in the darkness behind his closed lids, wondering how on earth he could ever possibly deserve someone willing to give him that level of understanding. She should be mad. She should be furious. He was upset on her behalf that he didn't have the will to march up to his parents and tell them that he spent most of his supervisory duties fantasizing about what Granger might look like underneath her frustratingly professional workwear.
In short: he definitely did not deserve her.
Eyes still closed, he dove for another kiss. He was selfish; he might not deserve her, but that did nothing to dampen his want.
—
The guest wing looked different this time around. Six months ago, it looked like an indistinct threat, reasonably menacing, and an inconvenience Draco didn't want to deal with.
Now, it looked like acute danger, a film of concern for Hermione's well-being overriding every other opinion he might have about it. But she insisted it was time, that she'd avoided it for far too long and that her job required she be thorough: every hall, every room, every crevice, every cranny. No matter that the first room she'd stepped into last time left her with a blood curse and trip to St. Mungo's.
And an accidental date with him, but Draco wasn't allowed to be pleased about that bit.
Or was he?
"Hermione?"
She stood next to him, staring down the hallway with more wariness than when she'd first tried to tackle it, but still significantly less concern for his liking.
She looked up at him, a soft smile on her face. He still expected suspicion sometimes, forgetting the trust that came with his newfound familiarity with the sounds she could make if he nibbled on her neck just so.
"I'd like to help," he said.
She turned more fully, facing him.
"Help?
"With this hall. I—well, I wouldn't mind having a part in dismantling whatever terrible shit still lives here and"—she would think him ridiculous—"I'd like for you to have the help, from me. I don't know if I can just sit around expecting something to hurt you again. I think I'll go mad."
He braced for indignation. For annoyance.
But her smile softened even more.
"You aren't trained in—"
"I'm familiar with it, though," he rushed to say. "From my family and from association. And you taught me the diagnostics. I'll listen to you, I won't—be a bother. Please, Hermione—"
He turned to face her, too, finally tearing his eyes away from the door she'd entered once before, perfectly unharmed, and exited with a blood curse. He lifted a hand, tucking a curl behind her ear, knowing it was a futile act and that the curl would spiral, exploding free at the first shift in Hermione's center of gravity. He did it for no other reason than the opportunity to wind it around his knuckle, sliding the soft strands against his finger before he finally tucked it behind her ear, finger trailing down her neck.
"Hermione," he said, leaning closer, voice low, already pushing his luck by engaging in so much obvious touch. Regardless of the mandates that Lucius and Narcissa stay away from her work, it still felt so visible, like they might be seen at any moment. "You'd get to boss me around. Doesn't that sound like fun?"
She pursed her lips, trying to smother her growing smile. Of course it sounded like fun. Hermione Granger, at her core, liked telling people what to do when she knew better. Honestly, she should be asking him for the honor of having his assistance.
He pressed the pad of his thumb to the center of her bottom lip, trying to free her repressed smile. She narrowed her eyes, parting her mouth slightly, tongue grazing his thumb. Her mouth softened, but didn't shift into a smile. Instead, it dropped further open, warm breath heating his thumb. Her tongue hovering a fraction too far. If he pushed his thumb forward, past her pretty little lips, he wondered what she'd do. Would she let her tongue graze him again? Would she close her lips around it? Warm and wet and—
He let his hand drop, trying to ignore the throb of his pulse beneath his skin and the tiny almost-noise of disappointment she made at the loss of contact. For as much as she protested that they must maintain professional boundaries, moments like this, few and far between as they were, told him of a willingness to throw caution to the wind with the right incentive.
"Is that a yes, then? I promise to be very helpful."
She closed her mouth, muscles at the side of her jaw flexing.
"Fine," she relented. "But you have to do whatever I say."
—
No wonder she'd been cursed. The first of nine rooms in the guest hall was a veritable nightmare that bore far too much of a resemblance to the room of hidden things for his liking. Debris littered the dark space, curtains pulled tight over the windows. What might tentatively be labeled as furniture remains lay in shards and shambles all over the floor. It looked like the room had once been occupied by a bedroom set, judging by the bits of mattress he saw poking out of what essentially amounted to a pile of trash. The whole room had the distinct air of a reducto, or several. It had been wrecked, utterly so. By whom, he had no idea. But there was barely space to stand beyond the threshold without encountering a splinter of broken wood, or what looked like the gears from a clock, or the upended remnants of a chess table.
"You remember the incantation?" she asked, conjuring her diagnostics. The dark, disassembled space glowed suddenly with more red than Draco had ever seen the runes display.
Hermione let out a small sigh.
"I do," he said, conjuring his own. "I used it quite a bit, trying to break it apart for the potion."
"Just—observe for today, okay? I'll walk you through what I'm doing, but please be careful."
"I'm the one who's worried about you, remember?"
"Well, the feeling is mutual."
"Is it?" he asked, unable to help himself, voice dropping low.
She glanced up at him, face glowing bright red from the warning runes.
She swallowed before she spoke. "Very much so."
If not for the fact that they stood in a ransacked room that could potentially kill them in several different ways, he might have kissed her then, schedule be damned.
She took a step towards a collapsed bookcase and a pile of books because of course that's where she would start.
He grabbed her arm.
"Wait, Hermione—you can't just—" he gestured towards the floor, at the splinters and glass and gears scattered everywhere. "Be careful where you step."
"I can't properly evaluate the bookcase from here, Draco."
"Shouldn't we reassemble the room first? Get the debris off the floor. What if something curses you again?"
"If I reassemble the room, I run the risk of increasing the power of some of the curses. They're easier to dismantle in their constituent parts."
"But—"
"You're supposed to do what I say, remember?"
"Well, start with the stuff on the floor, then."
"My runes would tell me if they were a problem."
He growled in frustration. She sounded so casual, so flippant. She'd been cursed in this room once before.
"First, how can you tell? Mine aren't—I don't know. They aren't telling me anything at all. And second, they aren't perfect, right? You got hurt last time."
She shifted her weight out of the half step she'd taken, moving towards him again. Lifting her wand, she cancelled his runes. He made a noise to protest but stopped at the sight of her raised brow and unamused stare.
"First," she mimicked. "I've told you there's intuitive magic involved. It takes time to learn. And second, no, it's not perfect. But part of this job is accepting risk. I've done probably a third of the manor now, haven't I? Barely any incidents."
"Barely any incidents is a poor method of self-preservation. Oh, just barely any death. It only takes one, Granger."
"Sometimes the best self-preservation is none at all. Sometimes you just have to dive in, be bold."
"Be a Gryffindor, you mean. Honestly, it's astonishing any of you live into adulthood if that's your philosophy on life."
"Draco," her voice had a sharp quality to it, cutting through the first syllable in his name, but her eyes remained soft, almost pleading. "I know how to do my job."
"I know."
"So let me."
"It sounds a lot like you're hoping luck will work in your favor, Hermione. And that's so contrary to your logical"—he waved his hand at her—"everything. It doesn't make sense."
"People don't always make sense."
He snorted.
"Well that's obvious. You make no sense."
She tilted her head, looking up at him.
"As if you're so easy to figure out, Draco Malfoy."
He might have asked her what that meant if the door behind them hadn't slammed shut, drowning them in darkness.
—
"Oh," was all she said in the dark. Her runes had vanished.
He tried conjuring his own; they glowed weak and dim. In the faint red light around them he saw Granger draw her wand and cancel his spells again.
"What are you—"
"Don't use your magic," she said, voice calm and controlled but very, very serious.
He didn't say anything; he didn't use any more magic. He simply waited for her to elaborate, finally following her instructions without question.
"It's likely a security curse. Not especially common. It measures the amount of magic used and starts dampening it if the correct security measures aren't followed." He heard her sigh in the darkness. "I would have found it if—"
"I hadn't been conjuring my own runes and distracting you?"
"Yes."
"Well, don't soften the blow for me."
"You're a big boy, Malfoy; you can handle it. Speaking of handles, don't touch the door. It'll have fresh wards."
Draco shifted in place, a sense of shrinking descending upon him, like he couldn't move in any direction for fear of danger.
"What—what do we do now?" he asked.
She sighed again.
"I was able to disarm the other two I've come across—"
"There have been more of these curses here?" Draco asked, dying to reach out and touch her. But in the darkness, which he realized now had an unnatural pervasiveness, an artificiality to it, he'd lost track of exactly how far she stood from him.
"It would make sense that the same person cast them. Do you know who stayed in this room?"
"No—I tried not to come here. Only high ranking Death Eaters stayed at our estate though. This wasn't Aunt Bella's room, that's on the next floor. Not his, either."
He wondered if he ought not to have brought up his deranged aunt while a cursed, pitch-black room held them captive.
"Theo has access to the manor's wards, right?"
"Yes, why—"
"I'm going to send him a Patronus. Ask him to find Harry. He knows how to handle this type of security trap. I actually did a lot of curse breaking training with the auror division."
"If the room is dampening magic—will a Patronus work?"
Hermione considered her response longer than he would have liked.
"I certainly hope so. It's my only idea."
Draco waited, unsure if he should try offering encouragement or simply let her do her job as she'd requested of him since the beginning.
When she finally cast the spell, a bright, silvery otter burst from the tip of her wand. He couldn't help but marvel as she gave it directions. It danced around the room before leaving, swimming around his shoulders. In the shifting white light it radiated, he could see Hermione smiling up at him. And then it vanished, popped straight through the closed door, dousing them in darkness again.
It had provided enough light that he knew where she stood, knew the exact distance. He reached blindly and found her, pulling her into his arms.
—
Draco might have enjoyed himself, holding Hermione flush against his body in the dark, if not for the looming threat of cursed objects surrounding them.
In the dark, her hair smelled more strongly of vanilla, and of other, more subtle things, too: amber, orchids, bourbon. Warm, comforting scents, sharply reminiscent of the short span of days when summer croaked and groaned, becoming autumn.
He could hear her tiny huffs of breath against his chest: in and out, every few seconds, a rhythm of frustration punctuating the darkness.
"You breathe rather loudly," he said, mostly for something to say before the silence and the darkness fully swallowed them up. His desire to cast a lumos battered at his wand hand: an instinct to cast light where there was dark.
"Sorry," she said. "I'm a little anxious. I've never actually triggered one of these before."
"I thought we agreed that was my doing?"
He tightened his arms around her. He felt her head tilt upwards against him, probably trying to see something, anything, in the unnatural darkness.
"I have told you before you're very distracting."
She had no idea. If she found him distracting, then there simply wasn't a word for what she did to him. He'd had to resort to Occlumency for the vast majority of a year just to manage the unbelievable distraction she caused him.
Her fingers shifted, skating along his sides in a wandering exploration.
"You know, you probably didn't even need to request Theo bring Potter—Theo could break through these wards on his own."
Her fingers paused, more pressure against his side. He felt her chest expand against his, followed by the sound of a breath.
"I realize Theo is—industrious. But ward breaking is a part of Harry's job—"
"And it could probably be Theo's job, too, if the Ministry would hire anyone with Death Eater connections."
She sank into him, resignation weighed against his ribs.
Draco continued, "He's been dismantling ancient Nott wards in his spare time for over four years, trying to break into his family vault. He—invents things, all kinds of things. And he's been rejected by just about every department at the Ministry."
She'd gone still; even her breathing had quieted.
"I didn't know that."
"I think it bothers me more than him. He's brilliant in his own—Theo kind of way. And he has way too much free time. He wasn't even marked, and he still can't get a job—"
"Well at least he doesn't need one, though?"
Draco stiffened.
"That's not—the point."
"I know, it's just. Well, I suppose it could be worse, is what I mean. At least he doesn't need the money."
Draco's brow twitched, a rebellion against the tension so tightly drawn across it. Perhaps she felt it, because her breathing paused altogether.
"It could be better, too," he said. "Much better. He'd work for free if they let him. It's not about money, Hermione."
She puffed a tiny laugh, nervous against his chest. It did nothing to settle the disquiet creeping through his veins.
"That's something only someone with far too much money could even consider," she said.
"He can't exactly help what he was born into."
For the first time, touching her felt foreign, uneasy, like he wasn't sure if he should lean into it or pull away. Hermione might be brilliant, but it became clear that this was something she did not understand. He considered his father's annual case dispute and wondered if she would even bat an eye at the blatant disrespect given to his family by the Ministry.
"Are we still talking about Theo," she asked, a pause. "Or are we talking about you?"
He leaned down, pressing his cheek into the curls at the top of her head. He took a deep breath, lost in her vanilla shampoo.
"I didn't go all the way to Sarajevo for my mastery because I really wanted to see the Balkans."
"It was the only place you could find a mentor," she said, knowing.
In the dark, her voice, flush against his chest, sounded like a siren, calling him to sea. It felt dangerous, suddenly, knowing that he'd follow, trust her not to drown him.
He jumped, almost toppling and taking her with him when a bright silvery-white stag bounded through the door. Draco had to close his eyes, then squint against the sudden intrusion of light into the darkness he'd grown accustomed to, uncomfortable and unnatural as it may be.
Harry Potter's voice spoke from the stag's mouth.
"Working on getting you out now," Potter said through the Patronus. "Shouldn't be long."
Draco felt Hermione loosen against him, a soft and almost inaudible, "good" breathed against his chest. It was a marvelous thing, a privilege, really, to witness Gryffindor bravery up close. It wasn't as infallible as he'd assumed. He'd always thought of it as the absence of fear, of a strange disregard for personal safety or consequence. But it wasn't that at all; Hermione had been afraid when she dealt with the blood curse, and she'd been anxious for the last thirty minutes, standing quietly against him in this room. The fear was present, but her bravery was in not letting it consume her.
"That's a handy trick," he said. "Being able to send messages with a Patronus."
He could almost hear her smile.
"I could teach you, if you wanted to learn."
He wondered if she could hear his frown.
"Hermione," he started. Would she really make him say it? "I was a Death Eater. I can't—"
"But you were never—"
"Don't," he said, tone solid and heavy and final. "That's not true. It wasn't never, Granger. I was a Death Eater. And right up until the moment I was branded, I believed in all of it. I hated, just like the rest of them." He dropped his hands. He couldn't touch her, not with the reminder.
She gave him too much credit, always had.
"You've changed," she said. She hadn't let go. If anything, her grip around his torso tightened, pressing herself closer against his chest.
That didn't seem like enough.
"Draco, I don't want to do this," she said. "Whatever you're thinking about—whatever parts of your past you think preclude you from living in the present—they don't, okay? If it wasn't never, fine. But it's not now."
Gods, what a witch.
"How do you know?"
He'd meant to ask it in his head, a question to himself. But it ricocheted in the blackness around them, fracturing into a deluge of other potential inquiries as the sound bounced off cursed objects and impassive stone walls.
"I can see it. And I'll teach you how to cast a Patronus. Then you'll know, too."
"I don't think it's quite that simple."
"It could be, if you let it."
Light spilled in from the door, setting them free.
—
"You didn't say anything about Malfoy being in there with you," Potter said by way of greeting as Draco followed Hermione into the corridor. He squinted against the light, feeling slightly off-balance.
Theo leaned against the wall nearby, brow arched, smile spread across his face.
"Draco was helping," Hermione said with a distinct edge of defensiveness coloring her tone. He could hear her indignation simmering at the implication that she might not have been acting in a professional manner. "Thank you," she added, giving Potter a hug.
"Might have had you out of there sooner if Potter let me try my hand at the wards," Theo said from his place against the wall.
Draco watched Potter shake his head, releasing a heavily annoyed breath. With a smirk, Draco couldn't help but wonder what had transpired in the corridor as Potter worked to release them whilst Theo observed. In the right mood, Theo could chip away at even the calmest composures with hardly any effort.
Draco knew because he'd seen Theo subtly needle his way beneath Lucius's skin on more than one occasion.
"For the last time, Nott, you are a civilian whose only role here was to escort me through the Malfoy wards, not to assist in curse breaking."
Theo made a grumbling noise of disappointment, waving a dismissive hand as he pushed off the wall.
"So, what were the two of you up to in there?" he asked, peering around them and into the dark room. "Looked a lot like cuddling. Cozy, was it?"
It was Potter's turn to make a noise, something strangled and annoyed.
Hermione surprised Draco by responding before barely a beat had passed.
"Theo, if you want to learn more about airplanes, you won't follow that train of thought any further."
Theo lifted a brow, a slow smirk spreading. He raised his hands in defense, "Low blow, Granger."
He turned to Draco.
"Have you heard about these giant metal contraptions that muggles get inside of and then they fly?"
"Don't be ridiculous, Theo."
Hermione giggled.
Even Potter looked amused before he spoke.
"It's amazing your house is so big that I can be in it, and your parents have no idea, do they? Or that you two are"—he made a gesture between Draco and Hermione—"doing whatever you're doing."
Theo clapped a hand on Draco's shoulder, answering for him.
"Manor life. Lends itself to privacy and lingering childhood trauma."
Draco tried not to roll his eyes.
"They have no idea. And you needn't worry, I won't tell them," Draco said.
He only realized later how unclear he'd been. Potter or Granger: which one was the secret he'd committed to keeping?
thanks so much for reading! i hope you enjoyed!