July
tick tock
With five of nine rooms in the guest hall decommissioned—the entirety of the main level—July began with a trip underground, to the small lower level that contained the guest wine cellars. When Draco originally recounted to Hermione the number of rooms in the hall, he'd included the cellar as a single entity. As his shoes clacked and echoed off the stone stairs when he stepped onto the landing, it became apparent that he might have undersold the size of the space.
He could feel Hermione's frustration in the annoyed breath she released, peering through the glass walls encasing the front of the cellar. Narcissa had been so proud of the lovely, modernizing renovation they'd done. Now, it felt out of place: clear glass, empty wine racks, and no indication as to whether or not anything nefarious lurked inside.
At least Draco would be able to see Hermione while she worked.
They hadn't quite reached a place where he participated again, but that didn't stop the worry for her safety from swallowing him whole now that he'd admitted that he was in love with the witch.
Loving her was an inconvenient thing.
To use Hermione's terminology, they'd slipped back into something of a Cold War: neither of them sure how to proceed without setting off an unmanageable chain reaction. She tried explaining something called mutually assured destruction the other day, but Draco lost his focus, thinking instead of how soft her curls were and how badly he wanted to touch them again.
But he could wait, would wait, until she sorted through whatever it was that had her so scared of trying anything with him. He presented her with tiny offerings instead.
"I'll tell them, if you want me to," he said as she began dismantling the wards that kept the cellar door sealed shut.
She paused, but didn't turn.
"Tell who, what?"
He chuckled, watching as her grip tightened on her wand, tension traveling from her wrist, up her arm, and into her shoulders.
"As if you haven't already considered every possible iteration of what I meant," he said. "I'm just letting you know. If that's the price, to put you at ease that this is worth something to me. I'll tell my parents we're in a relationship."
He could see the faint image of her outline reflected in the glass cellar door. He watched her face, uncertain if she realized the reflection exposed her.
"You would do that?"
"Not now, of course. Since we're not in a relationship, presently. But if we ever were..." He kept his tone light, as unaccusatory as he could. He meant to bring levity.
She spun, eyes wide as she looked at him. Perhaps she'd been expecting anger, or sadness, or for him to look at her the way he had all throughout June, when all he could think about was how much she'd hurt him. When she didn't find that—because he'd really, truly only meant it as a passing technicality, perhaps a subtle reminder of what he'd like for them to be—she softened.
"And I'm sorry," he added, knowing he had to say it. If he meant it, he had to say it, especially to her. "Which may or may not be enough, but I am. I shouldn't have shut you out, shouldn't have lashed out. It has occurred to me that my perception of you being entirely unaffected might have simply been your eternal professionalism in the workplace."
She considered him. "Thank you," she said, watching for a moment longer before turning back to her work.
"You may want to practice your Patronus some more," she added, tone matching his in lightness. It almost felt playful, like banter he knew. "I suspect this room might take a while."
He smirked, purposefully catching her eye in the glass this time, enjoying this moment of ease. Gods, he'd missed this.
"Would you like me to call Theo to assist?"
She didn't look especially amused, but she laughed all the same.
—
Draco hated Patronuses. He hated seeing them. He hated trying to cast them. He hated every gods forsaken happy thought he was meant to think in making one. He hated that apparently he wasn't allowed to hang his happiness on Hermione and use that to fuel his magic, whatever the fuck that meant.
He generally hated how his days were shaping up. Day after day of failing to produce a Patronus while watching from behind the glass cellar walls as Hermione worked, floating runes leading her from shelf to shelf as she siphoned dark magic from the room.
He'd run through damn near every memory he had, every feeling he could think of, and none of them came anywhere close to the pathetic flashes of light he'd managed when thinking about her skin and her lips and her hair and her eyes.
He groaned. Their Cold War might be warming again—or wait, wasn't that bad? He had trouble keeping track, it honestly made no sense—but the divide between them remained.
He reached for another memory: Quidditch at Hogwarts. He honed in on how it felt to fly, wind whipping through his hair, stinging his cheeks, chapping his lips. Control and precision and freedom in the sky. The jolt, the utter thrill, in a glint of fluttering gold: his heart beating as fast as the snitch's wings in his pursuit.
And his father, in the stands. Watching him. Judging him. Expecting success, and then, of course, Draco failed.
He felt his magic withering. The warm tendrils that had surged from his center recoiled, desiccating in the sour, ashen memory of loss and disappointment. He didn't even bother with the incantation, it would not work.
Every time, that was the problem. Most of his memories—most of his life—had been spent in pursuit of being a good son in his father's eyes, of achieving whatever barely-achievable task his father set before him and doing everything in his power to reach it.
The good memories, the ones where he came the closest to casting something that could generously be called a Patronus Charm, always stopped too soon: second in class behind Hermione Granger, second best Seeker behind Harry Potter, would-be assassin to Albus Dumbledore—dubious honor usurped by Severus Snape.
A purple glow pulled his attention. Through the glass between them, he saw Hermione emerge from the small humidor room attached to the cellar, runes happy and purple. A faint smile pulled a curve at her lips; how she could find enjoyment in forcibly cleansing dark magic from the estate eluded him.
She glanced up, catching his look. Her lips quirked higher, a silent hello in the shape of a smile. He couldn't decide if he liked this sudden realization that he was in love with her. It all seemed awfully difficult a situation to be in. But in little moments like this, where a tiny pull at the corners of her mouth could tense every muscle inside his chest, cause his heart to hammer, he couldn't deny the thrill—not unlike flying.
She looked away, returning—as always—to her work.
He needed a different memory. Something else. Not one of her, and not one that could find its way back to his father, or the manor, or the war, or the general sense of inadequacy he couldn't shake. Existential crises did not make for stable Patronuses.
There wasn't much in his life that didn't involve those things, though, and therein lay his assertion, from day one, that he would never cast a successful Patronus.
Then it hit him. He realized he did have a memory, a year of them, that had nothing to do with Hermione or his family or his past. He thought of his mastery, of Sarajevo, of feeling like he could be more, be better.
He felt his magic swelling, warm and calm. It radiated from his chest, seeking an exit in his extremities.
"Expecto Patronum."
He spoke clearly, carefully, and with a precise wand movement that would have impressed even the great Hermione Granger.
Yet, when he opened his eyes, all he saw was a faint glow at the tip of his wand, white light already fading out.
The cellar door opened.
"Draco, that was amazing—the first light I've seen from you since—" she broke off. They both knew how long it had been and why. It didn't bother him though, not with the look of true joy crinkling the corners of her eyes as she beamed.
"Don't worry, I wasn't thinking of you."
A muscle in her cheek twitched, smile taking on a strained quality.
"That's good," she said, and he wasn't sure why he'd even mentioned it at all.
He'd wanted her to know he'd listened, he'd heard her. He wasn't hanging all his happiness on her. But she seemed disappointed by that idea, and that didn't make sense.
She still held the handle to the cellar door, which hinged slightly open. It would make for a quick retreat if he told her to go. He wondered if she expected him to.
"What were you—I mean, sorry, no that's so intrusive of me to ask." She pulled the door fully open again.
"A muggle."
Her fingers slipped from the handle, glass pane closing.
"What?"
Hermione looked confused, truly and genuinely baffled, with her brows pulled tight together, mouth dropped open, eyes wide and searching him. A confused Hermione Granger, most of the time, looked barely befuddled. She usually had some idea, or several ideas, about the thing that confused her, solutions winding their way across her face. But this look, she had no ideas to unravel it.
"I was thinking about my mastery, in Sarajevo. It was the first time I realized I wasn't pretending."
"Pretending at what?" she asked, voice barely a whisper.
Something about what he planned to say felt insidious, disallowed in this place. The cool, damp stone walls seemed to reach out to him, slicking him with unease. For some reason, it made him want to say it all the more.
"That blood supremacy didn't mean anything to me. It's not like I hadn't already had my entire belief system shattered in the war. But one doesn't just"—he struggled to articulate—"change overnight." He paused. Every word felt cheap, unsatisfactory, a knut when a galleon was the price. "Or even in the two years I spent isolated in this manor, rethinking those ideas."
Hermione swallowed; he watched the line of her throat. Why hadn't he told her this before? It seemed so important, suddenly, that she know how he came to where he stood now. He'd even apologized three months earlier, pathetic as it had been, but he gave her no context, no reason to believe him even though she insisted his actions meant more than his words.
"By the time I left for my mastery, I told myself I could pretend. While I was away, I could wear a different skin, be someone else, someone who didn't care or know anything about the Sacred Twenty Eight, who had nothing to do with the war."
"And you were pretending," she said. "But then you weren't?"
"I realized I wasn't exactly pretending when I had my hand up some muggle girl's skirt in a pub toilet—"
"A muggle?"
"Yes, Hermione. A muggle." Draco drew in a sharp breath. Right. This was why he hadn't told her. It felt so real, so big, so important somehow, telling her like it meant something.
But it hadn't meant anything. He'd been drunk. He got her off in a filthy fucking bathroom that for some reason had stalls with no doors and no toilets, just holes in the ground. By the time she'd given him a lazy-arsed hand job in return, the line of people waiting to piss had started blending with the crowd around the bar trying to order their drinks.
It had been an all around unsatisfactory experience that had nothing to do with her blood status, the lack of magic in her veins. The general aroma of piss had rather put him off. But he'd been horny and drunk and snogging a pretty girl who had no idea who the fuck he was, and that had been the best rush he'd felt in years.
He released an uncomfortable breath when Hermione gave him a soft smile, returning to her work without further question. He'd almost forgotten how good she could be at that, knowing when to push and when to give him space. He'd counted it once as a reason why they could be friends, when really, it was a reason they could be so much more.
—
Hermione invited him to spend an afternoon at the muggle bookstore with her. On a Saturday. It felt so much like success, like progress, that it took a substantial amount of self-control not to burst into a satisfied smirk as she posed the question.
"Do you have any plans tomorrow, Draco?" she'd asked at the end of an uneventful week clearing the cellar.
Her question stopped him mid-Patronus attempt, wand motions suddenly aborted, words on his tongue swallowed back. The happiness he'd curated, gathering in his bones, remained.
She looked nervous, not quite meeting his eye as she stepped through the cellar door and into the landing. She had a small package wrapped under her arm, and an unflattering smear of dirt or ash streaking across her forehead. But only her question bore any significance to him.
"Not as of yet, no," he said. He spoke carefully, simply, afraid he might scare her off with too much enthusiasm. She had a skittish look about her sometimes, like a wary animal in the wild.
"I was thinking of stopping by the bookstore—the one in muggle London. If you wanted to come."
He forced himself to count his breaths—he managed three whole inhales—before he answered, lest he spew his excitement before she even finished her question.
"Yes," he said. "I'd love to."
She blinked, drawing her lip between her front teeth before immediately releasing it, as if she thought better of that action. Did she know how often she did it? How he liked to watch? He rather hoped not; his fascination with her lips likely bordered on obsession, and it wasn't as if she'd responded to his declaration of love in an especially favorable manner.
And by that, he meant that she had barely any reaction at all, and still didn't. They didn't bring it up; he didn't mention it, and neither did she. They simply worked through their Cold War. Each day, conversation a little less forced, eye contact maintained a fraction longer, lingering hurt evaporating into the ether.
"What's the package?" he asked, shifting the conversation as she rocked awkwardly on the balls of her feet.
"Oh, just something to turn into the Ministry."
"Turn into the—what?"
"A cursed object," she said, blinking up at him with the most matter-of-fact tone in her voice. "I can't decontaminate it, so I'm turning it over."
"You're taking something from the manor?" Merlin—fuck, had Lucius Malfoy actually been onto something?
"I—yes? Why are you surprised by this?"
She stepped around him and shrunk the object with an easy incantation, sliding it into her satchel's outside pocket.
He tried to remain calm, unaffected. But confusion battered at the inside of his skull, seeking understanding. She didn't seem concerned; she seemed casual, flippant even.
"Have you—" he started, tamping down the accusatory tone that scratched at his throat. "Have you done this—before?"
Her head tilted, recognition flared in the way her eyes, just for a moment, widened.
"A few times," she said. "I'm sorry; I didn't realize you were unaware." Their roles had reversed, she now spoke with a careful, measured tone. He felt like the skittish animal that might bolt at too sudden a movement.
She continued, "There is a small category of illegal objects, in addition to a clause about those that are irreparably damaged, that require removal. I turn them over to the Ministry. So long as the traceable magical history in the objects falls during or before the war, and they aren't a Class A infraction; they have no impact on your father's existing sentencing. I haven't found anything that would extend his—"
"You think that's what I'm worried about?"
"I don't know what you're worried about. You're not really saying anything."
He didn't know what to say. He didn't know if he should feel offended on behalf of his father, on behalf of his family estate, that the Ministry still saw fit to unilaterally decide what of their property the Malfoys were allowed to keep. Nor did he know if he should feel offended that she hadn't told him about it—that she assumed he simply knew but never mentioned when she took something, turned it over, as she said.
"I didn't realize you were taking things from the Manor. Don't you think that falls under defiling the estate?" He wasn't sure if he meant it as a joke.
In the quiet, almost-silence following his words, she tilted her head, evidently also unsure if he meant it in jest.
"It's really only been a few things. This estate received the most attention from the Auror Division immediately after the war; they already found a good deal of it with their cursory sweeps." She glanced down at her satchel, resting on the stone floor. "Would you prefer that I return the poisoned bottle of wine I found to the cellar?"
He couldn't tell if she meant that as a joke, either. He felt like he'd entered a strange loop, lobbing words and measuring how they landed while he waited for her to return her own responses for evaluation. Both of them hoping they got the meaning right.
He wondered if they were even talking about what they were talking about anymore.
The surprise wore off. The sharp stab of new, unexpected information had found its place amongst his understanding of her job, of their dynamic. And without that shock, he could see clearly. She wouldn't defile the estate. She wouldn't abuse her power. She was incorruptible and he could trust her.
"I'll put it back," she said, brows drawing together. "If it matters that much to—you. It's just poisoned wine. It's not an enormous threat. Don't drink it, obviously."
"Would you get in trouble for that?" Perhaps she was less incorruptible than he thought. But he supposed it was easy to forget that she'd broken into Gringotts and ridden a fucking dragon during her days as a war heroine. Such a contradiction, this woman.
One corner of her mouth pulled up, bunching her cheek. He saw her biting at the inside of her lip, trying to staunch the smirk.
"Only if they find out." A pause, a breath, a declaration. "I trust you not to say anything."
He really missed kissing her.
"I trust you not to defile the estate. If you need to take it, take it."
She allowed herself the smile then, breaking across her face with the force of sunlight spilling over the horizon, lighting up his darkness.
He really, really missed kissing her.
"Tomorrow?" she asked. "The bookstore?"
"I wouldn't miss it for the world, Granger."
That feeling, the warmth inside his chest at the idea that she wanted to spend time with him, on a Saturday, outside of the manor, carried him through the estate as he bid her farewell in the Floo parlor. Then, out of curiosity, he tried casting a Patronus, giving himself permission to think of her again, just once, instead of clinging to the scant other memories that qualified for the spell's emotional needs.
The light he conjured, stronger than any he'd ever managed before, looked a little bit like hope, and a lot like his undoing.
—
Hermione made a frustrated, growling sound from the back of her throat as she stood on her tiptoes, reaching for a new book.
"Who even is Gertrude Ederle, and why is my shop suddenly stocking so many new biographies? I'm never going to get to—"
She whipped around, facing Draco. Honestly, it surprised him how long she took to put those pieces together. He could only assume that the disquiet between them had diverted her mission towards TS Eliot and distracted her enough that she didn't notice the sudden abundance of biographies on public figures whose surnames began with the letter 'E.'
"What did you do?" she asked, pointing at him with the biography in question.
"Ensured that my ancestral, antique furniture stays in my possession."
The smirk was necessary, absolutely essential, in that moment. Though it did not appear to help.
She released a frustrated huff, gestured towards him with the book again, and then spun back to the shelves.
He heard her murmuring something, talking to herself in annoyance, and all he wanted to do was kiss that frustration away, pin her against these shelves, like he'd done not so long ago, but long enough that he ached for it again.
"Thirteen?" she said, louder now, actually intelligible. She turned back on him, taking two displeased stomps closer. "Thirteen books before I get to Eliot—how?"
He shrugged, casual, unaffected. Gods, he'd missed riling her. And she'd stepped so close to him; he wondered if he had enough gravity to pull her in the rest of the way.
"How I do most things: money."
She smacked him square in the chest with the book. He recoiled, rubbing at his sternum, a broad smile on his face.
"Your inclinations towards physical violence are a tad alarming, Granger. Do you not have a more productive way to channel your anger?"
She sucked in a huge breath, eyes narrowed as she looked down at the book. He wasn't sure if that focus meant she wanted to purchase it or to use it as a weapon again.
"You," she said.
"Me?"
"You are so annoying."
"Yes, and your hair is doing an excellent impression of a pygmy puff."
That, of all things, seemed to cool her ire. Her eyes relaxed. He stretched his luck.
"Annoying you has always been, and will always continue to be, some of the most fun I've ever had," he said, closer to raw honesty than he'd intended, but the words were gone now, slipped past his teeth and towards her brain.
"Even when—well, now that we're not exactly—" she failed to finish her sentence, words broken off as she stumbled through her acknowledgement of their strange, in-between situation.
He'd once spent the better half of a year ignoring the impulse to kiss her when it struck him. He'd held back enough.
So when the thought crossed his mind; he gave in.
He let her gravity pull him towards her, closing the gap between them. He barely brushed her cheek with his lips, relishing the way her hands immediately grappled at his shirt, fisting the fabric.
He placed a tiny kiss against her cheek, then hovered in her space.
"Are we not?" he asked, letting his breath coast across her neck. He wound an arm around her when she shivered, lining her body up with his. He could hardly contain the flood of want, of recognition over how much he'd missed touching her, holding her.
He kissed just beneath her ear, his own knees unsteady as one of her hands snaked up his chest, running along his neck to the base of his skull. Gods, he'd missed her touch: tiny incendios in her fingertips.
He brushed his tongue along the shell of her ear, savoring her whimper that may well have been the incantation for fiendfyre from the way it erupted a firestorm in his chest.
"Because," he started, abandoning his torture of her ear and neck. He rested his forehead against hers, eyes closed as he enjoyed the sheer power of proximity. "It feels like we might be."
"It was unfair of me to bring up your parents after telling you I didn't want them to know, either," she said, whispers against his lips, barely spoken. He'd sometimes wondered, in moments like this, if they'd invented a new kind of magic, where closeness made terrible conversations easier, comforted by touch. "You were right about that and I'm sorry. I see most things as pass or fail. I don't do failure very well."
He opened his eyes, watched her face.
"And you decided we would fail?"
"It felt inevitable. Especially when I didn't know exactly where we stood."
He sighed. "I think I'm so used to you knowing everything I assumed you knew how I felt, that you knew what I was thinking."
She laughed, the motion pulling her away. He clung to her, keeping her close, pressed flush against him. He intended to trade as many secrets and whispered confessions against her lips as she would let him.
"I've told you before that you're difficult to figure out," she said.
A pause. She swallowed. He watched her wet her lips with the tip of her tongue.
She spoke again. "And how do you feel? What you said before."
"Inconveniently in love with you."
"Inconveniently," she repeated.
"You're hardly making it easy on me."
She made a lovely, whining noise as she pulled his mouth to hers. It was just as magnificent, just as orbit shifting, as he remembered. Instead of caging her in, against a wall or shelf as he so often liked to do, she pushed this time, awkwardly forcing him backwards until he came into contact with the shelf behind him.
He committed himself to memorizing the shape of her mouth. His catalogue had grown foggy, a blur obscuring detail in the absence of constant stimulus and reaffirmation. She still blinked her eyes open to meet his whenever he captured her bottom lip between his teeth. She still melted closer, grip on him tightening, when he trailed his fingers down her throat, tongue brushing hers as he deepened their kiss. She still tasted so sweet, so soft.
She relearned him, too. Forcing a rumble from his chest when she dragged her nails down the back of his neck. He cursed the fact that they were in the middle of muggle London. He wanted—needed—to apparate them away right then and there, straight to his flat and, ideally, his bedroom.
A quiet but pointed throat clearing wrenched Draco from the kiss.
He looked up.
Hermione had pushed them directly into the shopkeeper's line of sight. She sprang back, flattening herself against the shelf opposite him, conveniently hidden from the nonverbal admonishment Draco received via one very disappointed look.
He arched a brow at the shopkeeper. He'd paid heftily to stock a number of books that would never have sold otherwise; Draco felt he could be allowed a liberty or two.
Hermione had flushed pink, a hand pressed to her mouth, likely suppressing an embarrassed sound.
Draco smirked at the shopkeeper. He spoke loudly, clearly, and with intent to be heard by both Hermione and their unintentional voyeur.
"Thirteen books, you said? Let's go ahead and grab them, then. I'm sure the shop will restock with even more options by next week."