November

tick tock

Draco decided to do a foolish thing over dinner. Foolish: brave by some definitions, idiotic by his own. He hadn't planned it, which was worse. It simply burst out after festering and spreading beneath his skin for so long. One sideways glance from his father irritated a wound Draco had tried to avoid. Not even the hearty leek soup his mother raved so disingenuously about in an attempt to control pleasantries could distract him from scratching at the scab.

"I'm not interested in a betrothal," he said, blood rushing to his ears.

His mother finished her spoon of soup, setting it down gently against the china.

Draco shook his head—to himself, at himself—and dared to forge onward.

"I just wanted to be clear. After the conversation we had a couple of months ago. There—is a girl. And I'm not going to drop her for the sake of a political agreement."

In Draco's periphery, he could see his father's posture stiffen, an imposing force at the head of the table. Across from Draco, his mother leaned in, cautious curiosity taking hold.

"Who is she, darling?" she asked, pointedly folding her cloth napkin and placing it atop the table, signalling the end of her meal.

Draco's jaw flexed. His mother pressed.

"We do have a legacy to uphold. Any fine lady would understand that. I'm sure whoever she is, she has a legacy of her own to consider."

Draco laughed, bursting from a place of irony. Hermione's legacy would be bigger and better than any of theirs; it already was.

"If only you knew," he said, risking a casual glance at his father. "I'm not going to tell you who she is so you can try to pay her off, or whatever plan you already have in mind." Draco didn't know if he meant to address his mother or his father with those words, or perhaps both in some strange tandem. For all their faults, they worked well as a unit, reacted to problems in similar, efficient ways.

"Evidently I was not clear, Draco."

His heart dropped at his father's words. Calm and cold, they cut straight through him with a brutal efficiency that said I made you, I know how to unmake you. And he did. His father might not know so much about Draco anymore, but he knew the parts that mattered, the parts he'd helped build.

Draco clenched a fist beneath the table, spine stiff as he made eye contact with his mother.

"You do not have a choice here," Lucius continued. "If the Greengrasses had not terminated our contract, you would still be marrying that girl, regardless of the mess you'd made. Your duties to this household are not optional."

Draco used to enjoy mealtimes with his family, a family routine of breakfasts and dinners that bound them together: twice a day, every day.

That was all he could think as his father laid out, with excruciating clarity, just what was expected of Draco. He used to look forward to dinners with his parents, when he could tell them about his day, perhaps boast about a new trick he'd executed on a broom. His mother would ask him questions, dote on him. Lucius would imply pride, or pride-adjacency, if Draco had the right news to share, perhaps his potions scores. And his parents would talk to each other, about more than their house arrests, more than their distaste for the Ministry. More than the state of a world that had left them behind.

He missed that the most: seeing his father with some measure of kindness, of fondness in his expression, even if it wasn't directed at Draco. But he didn't even have that anymore. If his parents still showed affection to each other, it happened behind closed doors, perhaps in their wing of the Manor where Draco no longer visited. He could hardly remember a time now when he didn't look at his father and feel a chill, finding only coldness, never warmth.

He didn't know how to respond.

Perhaps no response was the worst response. Disappointment flashed across Lucius's face when Draco finally dared to look at him. His lip curled: a sneer

"I am sorry to have disappointed you, Father."

The words were stiff; they tasted like parchment. They dried him out, choked his throat, sounded as insincere as they felt.

"Should you wish to excuse yourself for your duties to this household, then you may also excuse yourself from this family and all of the protections and privilege that come with—"

"Lucius!"

Narcissa turned abruptly in her seat, sharp enough that the feet of her chair scraped against the tile floors. The sound echoed with a shriek nearly as loud as her voice.

His father barely blinked, either immune or disinterested in Narcissa's ire. For his part, Draco couldn't seem to tear his eyes from Lucius. The thing neither of them had been willing to say for over a year, now: laid bare between them, served on their dinner table with the aplomb of a rotted meal.

"What your father means, Draco, is that there is value in family lines. In producing heirs to carry on the right kind of legacy. You are our only son. Our only legacy."

His mother's words did nothing to cover the stench of an ultimatum that lay in decay on their antique dining table. Her platitudes were nothing but a pretty garnish, added to obscure or perhaps finish with a fresh meat of what had already been said still remained.

She didn't say the words pureblood or mudblood; she didn't say anything about blood at all. But Draco knew what she meant, what hid behind the word legacy, behind the inherent blood involved in an heir. She meant, by way of prettier, softer words, exactly the same thing his father did.

He wanted to say no, to reiterate his point—his demand—really. He wouldn't do it. If they tried to rope him into another marriage contract, he would not agree.

He'd said no before. But saying it again, saying it now, something stalled the word in his throat; it should have been an easy, simple syllable to speak. But this no, saying it here would lead to something more, something bigger, that stared at him from somewhere in the middle distance between where he and his father sat on opposite ends of a table too large for just three people.

Draco couldn't bring himself to say it. He couldn't cross that line, not yet. It was too deep, too far. His mother had been appalled with Lucius's threat. There was enough hope that, with time, perhaps, they could change. Or, at the very least, learn to accept when they couldn't.

—

"It's soon. I promise," Theo said as he retrieved his wand, having recently thrown against the wall in a fit of frustration. He had called Draco and Blaise over, insisting he was so close to cracking the last ward guarding his family vault that they were required to be present. As such, Draco had been sitting in a corridor for the last two hours, smoking a cigar and drinking scotch whilst waiting for Blaise to arrive via the last minute international portkey they'd had to set up from Italy. All the while, Theo groused and grumbled about how he would just start making his own international portkeys if they took this long to procure.

Draco could imagine several worse ways to spend his afternoon—and it had been a while since he'd had the pleasure of watching Theo try to break through wards while shouting about his paranoid ancestors—but he could also think of several better ways, and each of those involved Hermione.

However, as the traditional workday had only just reached a natural end, she was likely still fiddling around in the Manor's north wing, decommissioning safe, easy, simple rooms and objects that hardly gave Draco a second's worth of concern. He could breathe so much easier, so much lighter, knowing they'd finished that guest hall and never had to set foot there again.

Theo vanished back into the tiny passageway revealed by the door and the painting he'd already broken through. Draco wanted to believe, after five years of work, that Theo might finally get into his family's most secret, most precious vault. But there had been false alarms in the past, always another door to open, another ward to crack. Five years or fifty, and it still wouldn't scratch the number of generations that went into building those security measures.

Theo was good, brilliant even, but some things—

"Draco!" A shout followed by a flushed, panting Theo racing back into the hall. "It's open. I did it. It's—I can walk right in. The last door doesn't have anything on it."

Theo looked torn between screaming and crying, eyes wide as he breathed heavily, in and out and in and out.

"And fucking Blaise still isn't here," he said, bending over and bracing himself on his knees.

Draco stood, dropping the cigar in his tumbler. He walked to Theo and gave him a solid thump on the shoulders, pulling Theo's attention from the labored breathing he'd been doing between his knees.

"I did it," Theo said again, either as proof or a prayer.

Draco leaned, peering around the corner and into the narrow stone passageway.

"Well?" he asked, arching a brow at Theo. "What now?"

It felt like that moment they'd shared with a time turner, so long ago, staring a potentially reckless, stupid decision in the face and asking the question: do we dare?

Theo, evidently, shared a very similar thought. He shrugged.

"We fucked with time once," he said. "How bad could my family's ancient, warded, secret vaults be?"

"You did say there were skin-melting wards."

"Point taken. But still."

"Still."

Theo rose to his full height again. There had never really been a question, not really.

"Can you imagine? What kinds of Nott treasures have been kept in there? Kept from me." Theo turned, chest expanding as he took a bracing breath before entering the passageway. Cautiously, Draco followed.

"They're all dead, Draco." Theo sounded too pleased about that fact. "They can't pretend I'm not the rightful heir to this monstrosity if they aren't here to—"

Theo broke off and glanced behind him. A lucky thing, as Draco could not breathe.

His chest had seized, and no measure of force trying to push or pull air in or out of his lungs could seem to start them again. Pressure gathered in his face, first. Draco tried to claw at his throat, beat his chest, pry his jaw open, but he'd frozen: every muscle, every bone, every drop of blood.

The pressure in his face descended, spreading like flames contained in too small a space, gobbling up all his air and then raging in its absence, simply doubling and tripling in size and space as it consumed his throat, then his lungs, then the entirety of his chest.

"Shit—shit," Theo said, barreling into Draco's torso and throwing the two of them out of the passageway and back into the corridor where they tumbled to the ground: a hard landing on solid stone floors.

Oxygen flooded Draco's lungs the moment he passed the threshold: pressure released, fire extinguished. It had been all of thirty seconds.

It had been agony.

Draco rolled, steadying himself on his hands as he heaved, sucking in air, ears popping as the pressure in his body recalibrated. For a moment, it felt like all his magic had been pulled to the surface of his skin, ready to burst, before spiraling back inward, seeking safety once more.

"Blood wards. I'd dismantled blood wards. I should have known—fuck—are you alright?"

Theo kneeled, clearly panicking, somewhere around Draco's head.

Draco breathed again, pulling air all the way to the bottom of his lungs, holding it, savoring it.

"I'm fine," he said on the exhale, words whooshing with a gust of breath. "It was—like a body bind. But it did something to my lungs, too."

"There were blood wards. It didn't even occur to me—it's spelled to Nott blood. I'd have to do, well, a lot more ward breaking to get you in, too."

Draco sat up and pushed his back against the wall. He already felt mostly normal again, aside from the lingering pulse of his magic, unsettled from whatever curse had filled him up and stolen all the space he needed for everything else.

"Just go, Theo. You've been waiting five years."

Theo leapt to his feet, as if waiting for permission to do something selfish had been the only thing tethering his concern in place.

"Okay," he said. "Right, yes. Okay."

He continued talking to himself, quiet reassurances as he gave Draco a final assessing look. He disappeared into the passageway again. Draco waited, ears prickling as he expected to hear whoops and hollers at any moment, exclamations of excitement and success.

Instead, silence.

It carried on longer than Draco would have liked, forcing a niggling sensation of unease. He twisted, craning around the corner to try and catch a glimpse of the promised intrigue beyond the narrow stone passage.

Then the screaming started.

Crashes.

A flash of light and a bang.

Draco scrambled to his feet, poised in a panic at a threshold he could not cross.

"Theo!" he shouted, his own voice mocking him as it echoed, fading into nothing. For all the breathing he'd lacked mere minutes before, it suddenly became all Draco could manage: quick shallow breaths as he struggled to think of something, anything to do.

Another scream: definitely Theo's voice. Draco's knees nearly buckled, thrown back in time.

Theo. Under his father's own wand. A crucio. Theo never explained why, what it had been punishment for. Draco had only heard because he'd Floo'd to Nott Manor unannounced, escaping a new influx of Death Eaters at his own home. When it was over, they'd Floo'd to Blaise's instead, and got drunk on Italian wines.

Draco needed to get help. He needed another curse breaker: Hermione, fucking Potter if he could manage it. Anyone.

Theo screamed again, closer to a shout, closer to Draco, too.

He needed to cast a Patronus; how else could he get help, and get help quickly?

Draco grasped for happiness, shoving away the panic, banishing the fear, trying so fucking hard to just breathe.

He closed his eyes, lifted his wand, and nearly fell backwards when Theo crashed into him. It took several seconds of panic tangling with relief for Draco to realize he was being hugged, unannounced.

Further, Theo's shoulders shook as he made a terrible gasping noise.

"Theo?" Draco asked, trying to get a good look at him. "Are you—are you hurt, did something happen? What—"

"It's fucking empty," Theo said through a heavy, panting breath, tearing himself away. He shot a reducto at the painting, achieving absolutely nothing. His eyes were wild, wide and red-rimmed, furious and panicked and pained in a way Draco hadn't seen since they were teenagers.

"It's alright, Theo. It'll be okay, at least it wasn't—"

"No"—he shot another reducto, followed by a bombarda: at the door this time—"it's not fucking alright." He spun, whirling back towards Draco. "What would you know?" The words cracked, caught in a tight throat Draco could hear, nearly feel, sympathy choking his own.

"You still have your family legacy. You have an account to manage that you don't even care about. If Blaise wasn't helping, you'd probably have run it into the ground already. You still have your history." Theo looked like he might pass out, breath coming in pants, face red as he blew out the window across the corridor, glass shattering around them.

Draco didn't move. Didn't say anything.

Theo threw his wand down the hall, where it clattered and rolled across the stones, catching on shards of glass. He gripped his short hair, dragging his hands through it with force that could very well rip it from its roots.

"Five years," he said, quieter now, but if possible, even more furious. "Five fucking years and what do I have? I have a fucking manor and some vaults at Gringotts filled with more gold than I know what to do with. This—this was supposed to be"—he swallowed, sliding down the wall until he sat on the floor, head cradled in his hands—"this was my family's history. Where the fuck is it? What did he do with it?"

Draco vanished the glass surrounding them and walked to Theo. With a sigh, Draco sat next to him. Theo didn't look up, knees bent, elbows propped, head dropped in his hands. They sat for several minutes, saying nothing, doing nothing, as their respective disappointments settled around them.

"That legacy of mine? It's not all it's cracked up to be," Draco said, staring dead ahead, straight through a blown out window. "I think I hate it."

Theo expelled a breath, a noise like a choked laugh. He lifted his head, resting it against the wall, gaze straight ahead, the same as Draco's.

"I thought you were hurt and I didn't know how to get help," Draco said. "Hermione has been trying to teach me to cast a Patronus."

"Doesn't she know that's impossible for people like us?" The anger in Theo's voice slipped, flat and toneless, a kind of resignation.

"She's painfully optimistic. I clearly can't find—or don't have—the right kind of memory to make one. Been trying it with the moment when I realized blood purity meant nothing to me, most recently. It's done nothing."

"Why aren't you thinking about Granger?"

Draco saw Theo's head tilt towards him, more actively engaged in conversation. Draco puffed a hollow laugh from his lungs.

"She told me I shouldn't. I can't—and I quote—hang my happiness on her."

Theo's brows drew together, thoughtful.

"She might not be wrong," he said. "At face value, I suppose. And I don't know much about it, you don't see me casting any Patronuses. But"—he knocked the toe of his shoe against Draco's—"I imagine it would be hard to find a witch or wizard who's not thinking of a loved one when they cast that spell. It's based on happiness, isn't it?"

"Based on your happiest memories, yes."

Theo simply arched a brow, a fine-tuned language they'd crafted over years of silent looks and facial expressions. He could read full sentences, paragraphs worth of information in any look Theo decided to lob his way. And that look: it wasn't just a statement, it was a demand.

Draco relented, standing.

He liked Theo's version of that logic better. Draco liked the idea of being able to think of Hermione, especially now that she'd so fully wound her way through all his cracks and crevices, slipping little kindnesses—novelties of loving someone—in places where Draco did not know such things were possible.

He let that feeling fill him up: the hope he found in loving her, in a legacy he might not hate, that he might find pride in.

His magic swelled. He knew this feeling: warm and comforting as its tendrils spread, spiraling from his chest and towards his extremities, channeled by his wand. He focused on loving, on being loved.

It wasn't enough, he could already feel it: a wealth of happiness but not quite enough, not yet complete.

Draco tried to relax his jaw, softening his stance, closing his eyes. He leaned into his magic. He found relief, concern for Theo, happiness that he hadn't been hurt: a different love, that for his friends, filling up the spaces he couldn't quite reach before. He thought of his mother, of the parts of her he knew struggled against her own expectations. He thought of the birthday toffees she bought him every year. He thought of his father, of better, different times, when he'd been gifted an heirloom pocket watch, passed from father to son, an emblem of pride. Pieces of love that didn't have to be perfect to be happy.

And he still thought of Hermione, at the center of it all.

"Expecto Patronum."

He gasped as he said it, a burst of unfamiliar, powerful magic exploding from his wand.

Theo laughed.

Draco kept his eyes closed.

"Oh gods. It's perfect, mate."

Draco cracked an eye open, carefully at first, fighting against the urge to hide from finally knowing. His whole body unwound, other eye opening. His shoulders fell, countenance caught between a laugh and a groan.

Theo did nothing to suppress his laughter, mutterings of so fucking perfect escaping between gasps for air.

"It's a—" Draco stared at the silvery, glowing beast illuminating the hall around them.

"Chimaera is the word you're looking for. You'd know if you took Care of Magical Creatures past OWLs."

"I know what a bloody Chimaera is, Theo. It's got—"

"A lion's head. Fucking Granger. And a dragon's tail"—another laugh—"Draco, dragon, gods. So fucking perfect."

"And the goat legs? Where do those fit in?"

Theo shrugged, still snickering from his place on the ground.

"A Chimaera is a beast cobbled together from different things, seems perfect for you." He cracked a smile, lifting his brows. "Maybe I'm the goat; I'm kind of springy. I eat a lot. Skinny legs."

Theo's relief, bound to his laughter, broke through the cloud of disappointment choking out the rest of the air in the corridor. "You should go show her," Theo said with an uncanny, genuine awe in his voice. Deeper, a touch of jealousy flashed in Theo's tone.

The silver beast took a step, eye to eye with Draco.

"Find Hermione Granger," he told the Patronus—his Patronus. "Tell her I'll be visiting her shortly."

It gave a short roar, a grumbling sound, before it galloped through the wall and out of sight. It didn't quite hit Draco until that moment, watching it leave.

He'd just cast a Patronus.

"Did you know Chimaera eggs are extremely illegal?" Theo asked from the floor, his whole demeanor had shifted from the broken, disappointed version he'd been just minutes before. "Maybe I should get some."

"Did I just see a Patronus? Was that a Chimaera?" Blaise asked, entering the hall and sending Theo into another fit of laughter.

—

Draco apparated to Hermione's doorstep as soon as Blaise took over managing Theo's disappointed grief: five years of work that yielded literally the worst possible outcome.

Her door swung open almost as soon as his lungs decompressed from apparation.

She stared at him, eyes wide and glassy.

He smiled, completely against his will, expression breaking across his face as he saw her.

She smiled, too.

"Do it again," she whispered, stepping aside so he could enter, lest he cast a Patronus directly on her doorstep.

He pulled out his wand.

He thought of her. He thought of family. He thought of Theo, of Blaise, of Pansy, when he had her in his life. He found the good. He didn't let the bad taint it. And he said the incantation.

"Expecto Patronum."

Hermione gasped. The Chimaera circled them, several laps as they both watched it, entirely entranced.

When it dissipated, she asked, "What did you think about?"

She didn't shy away from the question this time, from her curiosity, like she did the last time she'd asked what he used to power his magic.

"You." He pulled her against him, burying his face in her hair. "And my friends. My family. But mostly you. And I don't care that you said I shouldn't."

Love could literally make magic; what a marvelous and unexpected thing. Sentimental, too. He'd been accused of that once.

Her hands clutched at the shirt fabric against his back; her cheek pressed to his chest. He ran a hand through her curls, trying not to lose himself in such an easy contentedness. He didn't mind that Hermione hadn't yet verbalized whether or not she loved him, too. He could still love enough for the both of them, even now.

He pulled away, stepping back. He found the jar of cat treats on her counter, grabbed one, and crouched in an attempt to endear himself to her monster of a pet.

He made eye contact with Crookshanks as he slinked out from behind Hermione's sofa, drawn by the promise of a snack.

"I need you to know," he said, still watching the cat. "How real this is for me. How really, very, truly real it is."

He waited, practically begging the cat with a look to accept his offering, to accept him.

"Come to Christmas dinner with my parents," Hermione said, kneeling next to him, equally fixed on the cat. "It's real for me, too." She placed her hand on his knee. "I regret ever saying it couldn't be."

Crookshanks took a step towards them. Draco's fingers twitched around the treat, arm growing heavy. He refused to waver.

"Christmas dinner?" he asked as Crookshanks blinked his big yellow eyes.

"I want you to meet them. Things are—well, more normal. Better this year. And I think—I think they could meet my wizard boyfriend."

Draco's brows knitted together, barely breathing as Crookshanks took another step closer. Hermione's hand flexed against his knee.

"Even if I fought on the wrong side of a war that affected them so much?"

He had to ask the question, but he didn't want to know the answer.

"Yes," she said, after only the briefest hesitation. "And we won't—we won't tell them all that. It's—we don't talk about the war, so they don't need to know."

Crookshanks took another step, followed by three more, then took the treat from Draco's hand. He placed his head beneath Draco's palm in a barely-realized show of acceptance before he retreated to perch on the windowsill: not hiding, but not participating, either.

Hermione tilted her head, letting it rest on Draco's shoulder.

"I'll come," he said. "I already told my parents I have a girlfriend. I'll just have to tell them I plan on spending Christmas with her, too."

"They'll be okay with that?"

"No."

Draco stood, offering her his hand.

"Theo got into his family vault," he said, watching Hermione's face shift from slight melancholy to wide-eyed wonder. Her excitement dimmed as she saw his expression. "It was empty. He's—he could use his friends right now. Blaise is with him at the moment."

Hermione nodded, squeezing his forearm before she stepped into her tiny kitchen. She bent, opening a cabinet, and pulled out a bottle of wine with a ribbon tied around the neck. She held it up, looking unsure of herself.

"I got him this to celebrate whenever he got in," she said, cheeks coloring. Draco's chest tightened: such a lovely, thoughtful, beautiful witch. "Do you think he'd be upset if I brought it over? I still think it's worth celebrating. All that work. Even if there was nothing there." She shrugged, letting the bottle rest on the countertop. "He's brilliant—to be able to do that? And self-taught?"

Draco walked to her, two measly steps required to cover the scant space. One hand found her jaw, the other, her curls. He bent to kiss her, to convince her of the way he felt. Her fingers danced across his chest, finding a home at his shoulders as he drew her in.

He let his forehead rest against hers, forcing himself to focus, lest he sink into the beguiling quicksand that kissing her could easily become.

"Would you like to come with me to Theo's?" he asked, voice low as he twisted a curl around his knuckle, distracting himself from her mouth.

She smiled, "I can't think of anywhere I'd rather be on a Friday night."