June
tick tock
"Do you have any idea how impossible it is to avoid someone you're supposed to be supervising all day?" Draco asked, stepping into Nott Manor well before the end of the workday. He'd completely given up the facade of keeping an eye on Hermione for the afternoon. His simmering frustration had become far too much to handle.
"Well hello, and happy birthday. I take it we're starting festivities early?"
Theo sat on the parlor floor with a book propped open in his lap. Several antique-looking keys sat on the coffee table in front of him, laid out in neat, precise rows. He didn't look up from his work when he spoke.
It had been over a month since the argument Draco still didn't fully understand—apart from the bit where it crushed whatever meager happiness he'd manage to build for himself—and he and Hermione had exchanged barely a handful of words in all the meandering in-between time. The mood between them froze with tension, laden with awkward, uncomfortable glances that prodded at the aching places inside Draco's chest.
Sometimes, he wanted to kiss her so badly it downright startled him: desire careening from an unknown place inside his mind.
Even more than that—more alarming, too—he wanted to talk to her, hear her run through all the things on her schedule that week, hear how her progress towards the Eliot biography was going now that her shop had stocked an extra fifteen books she'd have to read. He wanted to hear about her day. Tell her about his. He wanted to make fun of her hair and then bury his face in it.
He was a fucking pathetic sap.
"She tried to give me a birthday present."
Theo finally lifted his head: focus diverted from his keys and whatever strange experiment he had planned for them.
"How did that go?"
"I just—walked away."
Theo poked at one of the keys with his wand, straightening it.
"I'm going to be honest with you, that doesn't sound like the best way to handle yourself."
"I fucking know, Theo. I can barely look at her. It's like she's not even bothered at all; she just does her work in that gods damned guest hall. I'm furious, all the time. I'm also paranoid she's going to get hurt. But that doesn't mean I want a birthday gift from her."
Theo made a humming noise, one that sounded like it was meant to be an agreement, but had an edge of something else. Draco might not have picked up on it if he hadn't known Theo since they were toddlers. But that hum wasn't just acknowledgement. It was avoidance. It was something else.
"What?" Draco asked, voice tight with annoyance as he helped himself to an armchair. He realized he'd left his birthday toffees in the parlor at the manor. If Granger ate a single one of them he'd have her sacked. He'd find a way. He glanced at the Floo, wondering if it was worth it to try and sneak back for them. But that ran the risk of coming face to face with her as she'd almost certainly tried following him when he'd stormed off mid-gifting.
"What, what?" Theo asked, as if he had no idea what Draco meant by his question.
"What aren't you telling me? Or what do you really want to say? You need to work on your tells."
Theo prodded at another key on the table.
"She's seemed—off, too."
Draco's back tensed against his chair. He regretted picking a seat behind Theo. All he could see was the back of his head, and he needed line of sight on Theo's face. Draco needed to see exactly how much guilt he'd find there.
"And you know because—you've seen her?"
"I've been seeing a guy I met while she and I were boyfriend hunting a couple of months ago. We already had an afternoon planned with her and—well, it seemed like a good opportunity to see how she's doing. She is my friend, too."
"Not your lifelong friend, she's not. And she knows about some guy you're seeing, but I don't?"
Theo whipped around, mouth tight despite the air of nonchalance he seemed desperate to project with his casual lean against the table.
"I'm not saying I'd ever pick her over you if I had to choose. You're my best friend when you aren't in moods like this, so technically I would pick Blaise over you today. But from the way you're handling yourself—I was worried about her, too."
Draco gave into temptation. He could feel the question forming inside his skull, coalescing into something he both did and did not want the answer to, but that he could not rest until he asked, pathetic as it made him.
"Did she—say anything about us? And what happened?"
"No. And trust me, I tried. But she definitely seemed off."
"Don't know why. She wasn't in a relationship, apparently. It's not like she lost anything."
Draco saw a flash of sadness cross Theo's face before he hid it, wrangling the mood in the room into something less depressing, more Theo.
"It's your birthday. Now is not the time for such conversations. What is your drink of choice for the occasion?"
Draco gave a noncommittal shrug, not quite willing to drum up the level of enthusiasm he knew Theo would require of him.
"Milly," Theo said, summoning one of his elves.
Crack.
"How is Milly of service, Master Theo?" the elf asked, nearly at eye level with Theo where he sat.
"A variety of our best liquors, if you will, as well as the requisite accouterments. It's Draco's birthday, so we are willing to splurge"—he winked at the elf, as if they were engaged in some hilarious inside joke about liquor qualities—"Draco, any news from Tilly you'd like to share?"
"Ah, yes Milly—Tilly says hello and sends her regards for the upcoming solstice."
Milly's ears flushed a deep maroon. Her huge, round eyes gathered mist as she effused her thanks and cracked away to retrieve the requested alcohol.
—
The fifth room in the guest wing, and the last on the main level, presented enough of a challenge that Draco's paranoia drove him to linger a little closer than usual. Not hovering, per se, but near enough that if something else attacked Hermione—as this particular hall had already demonstrated a propensity to do—he could assist, even if it meant interacting with her.
Hermione engaged in a great deal of frustrated huffing, loud sighs and heavy footsteps. She was simply very noisy, constantly interrupting Draco's attempts at leisurely reading or making sense of Blaise's investment recommendations.
He snapped his notebook shut. If she planned on leaving the door wide open and making so much noise as she worked, then Draco would do the same.
He stood, wand drawn, and tried to conjure a Patronus.
Except, he couldn't think of a memory to fuel it.
He thought first of Hermione's mouth, how he loved kissing it, touching it, watching it as she thought or spoke. He thought of how her lower lip flushed from white to pink after she released it from between her teeth, constantly chewing on it as she considered something.
He couldn't use those memories.
He thought of her hair next. Absurd, ridiculous, semi-sentient as it was. He loved the delayed movement of her curls, mimicking her motion as momentum swirled them around her whenever she titled or turned her head. They were soft and so easy to wind around his fingers.
But he could hardly use those memories, either.
He dug deeper, tried something different.
He thought of the day he was released from Azkaban after spending three months awaiting his trial. He'd spent his eighteenth birthday there, wondering if he'd spend the rest of them there, too, locked away in the middle of a forgotten ocean. But the Ministry pulled him out, gave him his trial, and sent him to the manor to serve two years of house arrest, calling him wayward, calling him misguided, calling him unfortunate, but never calling him evil.
He'd thought himself evil.
That relief, it filled him, but it didn't feel the same or nearly as powerful as his other attempts at conjuring a Patronus.
"Expecto Patronum."
Nothing happened, not even a flash of light.
He saw Hermione standing in the nearby doorway, watching him.
"I know you can do it," she said, a rare sentiment directed at him and not her work.
He laughed. For the first time, his instinct wasn't to run away from her words. But instead, to throw them back.
"Not likely. You've tainted every last memory I might have used."
She recoiled, perhaps from surprise that he'd actually engaged her or from the physical force of his words, snappish and annoyed. She brought her hand to the door frame, either steadying herself or holding herself in place, he didn't know.
"I—" she started, but stopped, swallowed. "You've been thinking of me?"
That shouldn't have embarrassed him. At least he didn't think it should. But warm shame tickled down the back of his throat.
He realized he still had his wand raised, as if delayed magic might still spill out of it. He let it fall to his side, shoulders dropping with defeat.
"You're supposed to think of your happiest memories, are you not?" he asked, staring at her hand on the door frame. He saw her knuckles tense, fingers flushing white from increased pressure.
"You can't hang all your happiness on me," she said, voice quiet, almost silent.
It felt like a nightmare again, like none of this was real. Or perhaps, like this was the first time any of it was real and everything leading up to this had been a bizarre, whirlwind of a dream. Time slipped strangely through the cracks between words. He couldn't tell if it moved too quickly or nowhere near quick enough. He'd almost forgotten that she spoke.
He laughed again, but with more hollowness this time. His eyes didn't move from her hand, still resting on that door frame, anchoring him in place more than anything else.
"Well—you can't let a man think he's in a relationship with you for nearly half a year. So, I suppose we're both doing things we shouldn't."
In that moment, he wished more than anything that he could produce a Patronus purely powered by spite. He had that in spades, plenty to go around and enough left over to cast some truly powerful magic.
She had a lot of nerve. He wasn't allowed to be in a relationship with her, not a real one anyway. And apparently, even when he thought he was, he shouldn't have been using the happiness it brought him to try and fuel his magic.
What other things was he not allowed? How much more did she want to take from him?
He pocketed his wand, refusing to look at her face. His chest ached. His bones hurt.
He needed a drink.
He needed space.
He needed to wake up from this fucking nightmare.
—
"Theo, I don't care that it's your birthday. I'm going to kill you."
Draco grabbed Theo by the upper arm, yanking him from the booth where they'd been sitting with Blaise, getting solidly drunk for Theo's birthday.
Theo stumbled out of the booth, teetering on wobbly legs as his coordination sagged under the weight of their celebration. He pulled Theo out the Leaky's back door, next to the entrance to Diagon Alley, and resisted the urge to hex a man on his birthday.
"What the fuck is Granger doing here?"
To Theo's credit, he looked shocked, then sufficiently contrite.
"I invited her before—probably two months ago. I didn't know she'd come," Theo said, turning to peer back inside the pub.
"Well, she's here, you utter fuck. You didn't think to rescind the invitation since she—you know." He gestured vaguely to himself, wanting to melt into the brick wall behind him.
"How do you know she's here?" Theo asked, pausing on a hiccup. He swayed. "I don't even see her."
"She's here. I saw her walk in. She's hard to miss."
"For you maybe—oh, yes. There she is."
She stood directly in front of the window Theo had been craning to gaze through.
She pulled the door open and stopped on the threshold, greeting Theo with a small smile playing on the lips Draco had spent so much time trying to erase from his memory.
"Hello, Theo. Happy birthday."
She held out a small package. Theo glanced sideways at Draco, almost as if he needed permission to take it. After a beat, Theo reached out anyway, accepting the gift.
"Thanks, Granger," he said. He leaned in, gave her a quick kiss on the cheek, and then slipped by her, mumbling something about drinks.
He'd abandoned ship before Draco even had the opportunity to consider the depths of his mutiny.
"I just came to give Theo his gift," Hermione said, taking a small step forward, then aborting the move when he tensed. He'd been cornered in a fucking back alley. "I was hoping I'd see you though—outside of work. If we could talk—"
"Merlin—fuck, Granger. No, we can't fucking talk. There's nothing to say."
He spun, wand out, and tapped on the appropriate bricks to open the entry to Diagon Alley. He slid through as soon as the space grew wide enough to let him pass. This late in the evening, the shops would be closed, and he could hopefully slip away to some empty alleyway, rip out his hair, and regain control over his heartbeat in peace.
Behind him, he heard the clack of her shoes against the cobblestone street. She'd followed. Of course she followed. She was tenacious and stubborn and clearly bent on torturing him. Was sadism a Gryffindor trait?
He didn't look back.
"Go away, Granger."
"Stop calling me that. You're being so unreasonable," she called from behind him, slightly breathless. He had long legs; he imagined she had trouble keeping up. He smiled at that.
"It's your name," he threw his words over his shoulder, not really looking at her.
"You stopped calling me that ages ago."
"Not true."
"Fine," she relented, something defeated and annoyed in her tone. "You stopped saying it like that ages ago."
He stopped, sucking in a deep breath as he pinched the bridge of his nose. He spun to face her just as she came to a halt far too close to him.
"Why are you following me, Granger?"
"Can you please be an adult and just talk to me?" she asked, mouth pressed thin as she crossed her arms.
Draco never realized how dark Diagon Alley became after all the shops closed up for the day. There weren't nearly as many street lamps as he assumed there were, and even those were dim and flickering. He'd stopped at the midpoint between two of them, directly in front of Eeylops Owl Emporium. Wide owl eyes blinked at him from a darkened window. He could hear a ruckus coming from another pub around the corner. And yet—he felt very much alone with her. He really, desperately did not want to be alone with her.
All his avoidance, all his deterrence, shifted into anger at her indignation.
"Be an adult? Fuck off, Granger. You don't get to imply I'm not an adult because I don't want to be constantly tortured by you. I have to spend most of my time with you. Is it not enough that I can't fucking escape you?"
He turned, intent on storming away, but halted. He flexed his hands, ground his jaw, nearly growled when he heard her start to rebut with something undoubtedly clever and cruel and uncalled for.
"And you know what else, Granger?" he said, turning back to her. He felt a furious flood seeping from between his ribs, and it was an excellent, vindicating feeling. "You're delusional. You know that? You introduced me to your friends. You took me as your date to one of the most prominent weddings ever."
He advanced on her; she didn't get anonymity by distance. He would see her reaction to the truth she'd clearly tried so hard to forget.
"You let me hold you," he continued. "Touch you, fuck you. Make you come over and over and over again. You spent your spare time with me. Gave me a whole day of the week in your insane schedule. You said I'd done enough to show you I was sorry and that I didn't need to apologize."
He stood too close now, feeling like a predator, like he'd trapped her. Her jaw hardened, brows a furious, straight line projecting annoyance and confidence. But he saw each blow as it landed, chipping away at whatever her version of mental wards was. Not Occlumency, she didn't know that particular brand of magic. But something else, equally as stubborn. And if he had to guess, likely brute-forced by sheer discipline of intent, because that was the Hermione Granger way.
"I blew up my fucking betrothal for you. I don't understand how you can possibly think we weren't in a relationship. You're way too smart for that. So what I don't understand is why you're being such a bitch about the thing you've already ruined. Just let me nurse my broken fucking heart in peace."
He hated himself the moment he said it. Too much, too far, too cold. He'd been far too mean and far too vulnerable all at once. He was mad at her, yes, very much so. And he wanted to hurt her: a little, some. But—gods, now he only felt tired. Exhausted from laying it all out, onto her. He'd raised his voice, too, he could still feel it echoing around them, propelled by angry magic that carried a touch more sadness than he cared to admit.
She clenched her jaw, looking furious. Then it faded, something sadder. "You're being cruel. But—you're not entirely wrong."
He'd just called her a bitch. She wasn't allowed to agree with him.
"I fumbled my words," she said. "I honestly wasn't sure what you wanted—from me, us—because we'd never talked about it and then that jewelry—I didn't handle it well, alright? It scared me, and all I could think about were your parents and how they'd never approve of me, and it all felt so hopeless."
Draco bit his tongue, quite literally, to stop himself from interrupting. She stared at his shirt collar, dim streetlamp turning her normally deep brown eyes a bright copper: glassy as she spoke.
"I was already kind of strung out—the anniversary does that to me. And then I knew I'd hurt you, and I didn't know how to fix it. And you just left; you wouldn't talk to me. So then I got even more upset and—"
She ran a hand through her curls, making a strangled noise of frustration as her fingers got tangled up in it. In about any other situation, Draco would have thought that adorable, would have kissed her annoyance away. But as it stood, he just wanted his chest to stop aching and this conversation to end.
"I've never wanted jewelry before, okay? It's never even crossed my mind as something I might like. And I never accepted or asked for any from Ron. But I was scared because I wasn't entirely opposed to the idea—from you. I was afraid of what that meant—you offering and me accepting. The uncertainty, all the possible outcomes. It's all so overwhelming. My parents have just—a perfect relationship. Even your parents seem like they do. Molly and Arthur, James and Lily Potter, Harry and Ginny, they're all so perfect—"
"Did you do this to Weasley, too?"
The question burst from him as suddenly as he'd thought it. She didn't even seem to register he'd spoken at first, still barreling through her list of perfect relationships, and all the ways that clearly made her wildly insecure. An inkling of understanding trickled through his veins.
"What?" she said, finally recognizing his question. "No, Ron and I weren't really all that compatible—"
"Are you so afraid of failing that you'd rather not try?"
Her eyes widened. Despite that bolt of confirmation, all Draco could feel was the weight of hypocrisy hanging over him. How many conversations with his own loved ones had he avoided because he was afraid of the answer?
The question of blood purity as it related to his parents came to mind.
He knew that kind of coping mechanism. He understood it. He'd hidden behind it for far longer than he ever should have, and he still did with some issues.
It wasn't quite the same as staring at fried zucchini blossoms and feeling his Occlumency crumble, but more like he finally gave himself permission to acknowledge the unspoken thing hovering in his periphery, a shadow just out of sight, a word on the tip of his tongue.
Her rejection hurt him so much because he was in love with Hermione Granger.
In love with her.
He'd never been in love before.
It hurt more than he expected. There was more fear involved, too. But also, a level of certainty, of calm that came with accepting it.
The nightmare shifted, sharply, into a dream again: better, but still unreal and unnervingly repetitious. He'd been here before, done this before. On a different birthday—hers—but the place was the same. In acknowledgement of that sameness, in remembering what had happened last time they stood there, something like peace settled over him, smothering his anger, soothing his hurt.
She still hadn't answered him. He imagined she didn't know how. She was a woman of contradictions, even he could see it. Surely she did, too. With a Gryffindor tendency to jump into something headfirst, but a paralyzing fear of failure that she managed with effort and discipline and a schedule that left no room for error; it was no wonder they'd ended up here.
"Do you remember when you said you could be friends enough for the both of us until I figured myself out?" He'd softened: shoulders, voice, soul. She responded to it, tension unwinding, death grip on her lower lip loosening.
She nodded, evidently too trapped in her own head to speak.
"I suppose I could be in love enough for the both of us until you figure yourself out."
They stood there, in the quiet, until Theo came, stumbling and drunk, to find them. It broke the silent understanding they'd formed.
She'd waited for him.
He could wait for her.