February
tick tock tick tock
Breakfast with his parents felt a bit like a recurring nightmare. Except, oddly, closer to a dream. Every day still just as surreal; his parents just as obfuscating, just as disinterested in any substantial conversation as they had been since he'd returned to the manor for his daily routines in January.
On this particular morning, over a hard boiled egg and a dragon fruit Narcissa had specially sourced to add variety and intrigue to their enormous breakfast spreads, Lucius spoke freely, openly, and with only the barest hints of contempt.
"With a close eye on the Asian markets, we can track relevant climate disruptions that may impact imports. With so many rare growing zones for magical herbs and plants, their value amongst experimental portioners, especially, is paramount."
Lucius cut the green top off a strawberry before spearing it with his fork. Draco swallowed and tried to dislodge the awe from his throat. These were the things he'd wanted to know, needed to know, long before he'd been unceremoniously handed—and ultimately, unhanded—an account in the extensive Malfoy portfolios.
"And, have there been—relevant climate disruptions?" he ventured, dragon fruit abandoned in favor of conversation.
Lucius grunted an assenting sort of noise, "Only in Tibet this year. But some prices have surged as a result of the supply shortage."
Draco knew that. He actually knew that. He hadn't predicted the shortage, despite advice from Blaise and several owls to and from Gringotts about exchange rates that he hadn't fully understood. He knew the prices had surged and his holdings had suffered because supply could no longer meet demand.
Draco's fascination with the conversation evaporated, feeling more like damnation than a lesson.
"The greenhouses are blooming beautifully this year, Draco. Have you had a chance to visit them recently?"
"Not recently, Mother. No."
"You should, dear. The winter yield has been exceptionally fruitful. Tilly has done a lovely job managing them. I'm sure there are a number of ingredients you would find useful for your potions."
Topsy placed a new tray on the table, one overflowing with pastries: butter-laden, sugar-crusted, custard-filled, compote-topped, chocolate-dipped, on and on and on. Draco's stomach turned, already brimming with eggs and toast and jam and tea. But the elves kept delivering more food—a buffet before him—and his parents kept acting as if such an illustrious spread was a perfectly normal daily occurrence and not yet another strange new version of their reality.
Draco made a noncommittal noise—the barest acknowledgement that he'd heard his mother's suggestion—as he surveyed the feast. Once upon a time, he'd been desperate for something resembling normal conversation with his parents. Now, he didn't know if any of this was better, just different.
"And how are your experimental potions coming, darling?" Narcissa asked, spoon just barely tinkling against the edges of her teacup as she stirred. "You have such a bright, vibrant mind. I'm sure you've made tremendous progress in whatever you've decided to set your sights on."
Draco's diaphragm seized. His mother looked like she truly meant the compliment, fierce pride undeniable behind her eyes. It stole Draco's breath, having earned her pride in some small way.
"I haven't been doing much experimenting recently," he said, casting a small spell to peel the shell from his hard boiled egg. "I've been—rather distracted, recently."
That was his moment, his opportunity, one of many, to introduce Hermione into the conversation. It was an opening for the questions that needed to be asked and answered. Why had he been distracted? Well, Hermione had moved in with him and they'd begun navigating a life that integrated the both of theirs.
But instead of inquiry, a deathly kind of silence met Draco's statement. Conversation paused. Lucius cleared his throat. Narcissa sipped her tea.
Draco considered how else he might bring it up, but the air had staled: like pastries left out too long, growing stiff and unpalatable. It was a rare slip, but the strange detente of their breakfast mood had shifted into something unsavory.
Narcissa crawled out of the lingering unease first.
"What about the one you already completed, dear? It worked, did it not?"
She glanced pointedly at Draco's neck.
He resisted the urge to tug at his collar, suddenly constricting, suffocating. Of course she'd noticed. The length of his Sectumsempra scar that once poked out of his collar and inched towards his left ear had vanished. And while he didn't advertise or announce the change to them, Narcissa would surely have noticed such a change in his appearance. She'd been distraught over the scars in the first place, and had there not been several other life or death concerns vying for her attention, Draco imagined she would have fought tirelessly to have Harry Potter expelled for his part.
But considering that The Dark Lord moved into her home that same year, expulsion likely seemed minor in the face of planned murder.
"I—" he started. "Yes, it did work. It worked very well."
He wanted to tell her exactly how well it had worked. Draco wanted to tell both of his parents how Hermione no longer had to wear the letters Aunt Bella had carved into her skin. He was sure they would remember—after all, it had happened in this house, happened while Hermione had screamed and begged and writhed on their drawing room floor, happened not so very long ago, and surely not long enough that any of them had the right to forget.
With a tray of fancy French pastries and a previous failure at steering the conversation towards Hermione between them, Draco struggled to imagine how bringing her up now could possibly fare any better. He temporarily tabled the topic, with all the other ridiculous delicacies presented before them. He could build up to it.
"Have you thought about selling it?" Narcissa asked.
"My potion?"
She nodded.
Well, he could hardly avoid Hermione as a topic now. Perhaps this was the build, how he got there.
"It was a gift," he said, eyes glued to the peeled egg he'd yet to take a single bite out of.
In his periphery, Draco saw his mother's posture stiffen. Lucius picked up his paper.
Narcissa drew a deep breath through her nose before speaking. "The recipe as well? Could you not submit it for publication or sell it to St. Mungo's?"
The muscles in Draco's cheeks twitched; he'd never considered it.
That didn't feel right. He'd never intended to profit from it. It had always been, and only ever intended to be, a gift. For Hermione. No one else.
Fresh guilt heated his bones.
Because surely there were others? How many people had cursed scars they wished to be free of?
He'd been quiet for too long; Narcissa cleared her throat. He didn't have an answer for her, so he said nothing. He sliced his hard boiled egg, helped himself to a chocolate croissant, and ultimately left breakfast with a tight brow, tired from furrowing as tension took up residence in the lines on his face.
—
"Could you come sit with me?"
Draco looked up from his spot on the sofa where he'd finally managed to convince the angry orange ball of fluff who'd become his reluctant roommate to occupy the same piece of furniture as him. He glanced to where Hermione sat at their kitchen table: planner, books, and parchments spread out around her. He arched a brow but did not move. He had no intention of ceding the ground he'd gained with Crookshanks unless he absolutely had to.
"We need to talk."
Ground ceded.
A small surge of chilly anxiety fluttered behind his lungs as he stood, arched brow slipping into worry as he approached the table.
"What about?" he asked as neutrally as he could manage. The chair scraped against wood floors as he pulled it out and took a seat. He wondered if she could see his heart thudding inside his chest from her vantage point. Surely she could, judging by how loud it beat inside his skull, how painful each beat felt against his ribs. Her words—her tone, they rang so ominously, rattling against lovely vaulted ceilings.
"Oh, please don't look at me like that," she said with a fond sort of annoyance in her voice. She rolled her eyes before continuing, "I've just moved in with you. I'm hardly about to announce this isn't working for me."
It made a good deal of sense when she put it like that.
"You're cruel, you realize that, don't you? You had to have known what that phrasing would sound like."
"It sounds like a business meeting."
"In that case, I'm not convinced you've ever been in a business meeting."
"Oh, and you have? And who here is actively employed?"
"Touche, my brutal witch."
She lobbed an unamused look in his direction while fighting off the smile pulling at the corners of her mouth.
"We need to stop working together."
Deja vu struck strangely.
"We—already have? We've had this conversation before. Haven't we?"
She sighed, maintaining her unamused expression. Draco leaned back in his chair, finally relaxing now that he felt assured he wasn't about to have his heart broken. He stretched an arm across the back of the chair next to him and crossed an ankle over his knee, fully prepared for whatever it was Hermione needed to overthink with him.
"So, have you told your parents you aren't supervising me anymore? Also, I don't—well, I don't want Topsy to have to do it, either. It's not fair to her."
"I need someone to keep any eye on you in case something hurts you again."
The twitching smile at the edges of her lips vanished, sinking into something genuinely displeased.
"She shouldn't be ordered to look after me. I'm expected to do my job alone, anyway."
Draco scoffed, arm falling from the nearby chair as he leaned forward, propping his elbows on the table to control an impulse towards wild gesticulation in order to make his point.
"And what if you'd been alone that day in the guest hall, with the blood curse?"
Just thinking about it made his nostrils flare and jaw clench. She could have died.
"I would have used a Patronus to get help, or something. Found the Floo."
"Hermione."
"I wouldn't have gotten hurt in the first place if you weren't there, because I wouldn't have been so distracted by"—a vague gesture across the table at him—"you doing all your you things."
"Are you—are you blaming me for the blood curse?"
"No. I'm not. I just—please don't order Topsy to watch me."
"She's not ordered. She's asked very nicely."
"And she's inclined to say yes. You know that."
"Well, I can't help that part, Hermione."
"You could if you simply didn't ask her."
Draco thought about saying something else, but instead clicked his jaw shut, teeth coming together with an almost-painful force. His confidence that he wasn't about to have his heart broken wavered. Did she have to be so fucking stubborn all the time? Didn't she get it? Danger stalked her every moment she spent inside that manor. If he wasn't allowed to be there to protect her, or at least facilitate her protecting herself, he'd be damned if he didn't at least have one other set of eyes there to make sure nothing catastrophic happened.
Just the idea of it, the spine-collapsing fear that she might one day encounter something that caught her off guard just enough—just in the right way—for something terrible to happen, curdled the milk in his stomach from that morning's tea.
"Have you told your parents you aren't supervising me anymore?" she asked again, more directly. Damn her.
"Not yet." He tried to hold the grimace at bay. "Meals have been—strange. I'm not really sure what's happening. But they've been oddly agreeable. I think I can ease them into it."
"Into what, the idea that I don't need supervision?" She'd started tapping the cover of her planner in annoyance.
Draco forced himself to take a deep breath before he responded. Things were spiraling, opposing viewpoints brushing past each other instead of coming head to head. They couldn't hash it out if they couldn't see the problem. And he certainly didn't see the problem with being concerned for her wellbeing, or trying not to blow up his parents' already precarious opinion of her by making a wrong turn in a maze of complicated conversations.
"No. Just you. Generally. I'd like to warm them up to the idea of you."
Her expression caught, straddling affection and frustration. Draco felt much the same way, trying so hard not to be annoyed with her unending stubbornness, wishing she'd appreciate what he was doing. She held too much optimism for the outcome of these conversations she expected him to have. Too much faith that it would all somehow work out.
She blinked. She took a breath. Draco relaxed his posture.
"We have to be at Harry and Ginny's soon," she said.
"We do."
He slid out his chair, only to halt when Hermione spoke again.
"I also wanted to talk about something else."
What else could she possibly want to layer into this tragedy of a conversation?
He blew out a breath, brow arched, as much of an encouragement to continue as he was willing to give. He watched a muscle flex in her jaw.
"I was thinking," she said. "Since you already own this place and aren't paying rent, I can't exactly split that expense with you—"
"—As if I'd allow that—"
"—Don't you dare. That's very unbecoming. I'm planning on paying for all the groceries, at the very least."
"Planning on it? We're not going to discuss it?"
"We're discussing it now."
"Hermione, I don't pay for groceries. Topsy stocks the kitchen from the manor."
The muscle in her jaw flexed again.
"That's ridiculous."
"This conversation is ridiculous. There's nothing for you to pay for. I invited you to live with me, not pay me."
He finished pushing his chair out, standing and ignoring the yowl of protest from Crookshanks, who he hadn't even noticed had been loitering near his feet.
He glanced at the clock in the living room. "We need to leave."
Calmly, Hermione gathered her parchments, folded them, and slid them in between her planner's pages. She didn't look at him, eyes fixed on the table. She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth and rolled her shoulders backwards.
His chest ached watching her frustration, both at being the cause of it and knowing she'd caused the same for him. He carded a hand through his hair; the urge to have her look at him overtook every other desire he might have had.
When she did, some of the frustration melted. He watched the same happen in her eyes, tightness loosening at the corners.
She stood. "We'll talk about it more tomorrow."
"Looking forward to it."
She rolled her eyes, fighting a smile. As she stepped around the table, he offered her his arm. She took it. They travelled through the Floo together, disagreement under a stasis charm.
—
It was just that, a disagreement, not a fight. They didn't fight; that wasn't who they were. They occasionally disagreed. They bantered and sniped at each other for sport, but they didn't fight. Not in earnest. Not since the fight they'd had when Hermione told him they weren't even in a relationship to begin with. And that hadn't been a fight so much as it had been a public execution, an evisceration he'd somehow managed to survive.
As they stepped through the Floo and into Grimmauld Place, arm in arm, they could ignore the little things that weren't all that important in favor of an evening with Hermione's friends.
"We're here," Hermione called.
She squeezed his arm as they stood in Potter's living room, awaiting a greeting.
"Are you nervous?" she asked. "You're a little tense." She squeezed his forearm again for emphasis.
"Nervous? For an intimate dinner with your two childhood best friends? Both of whom were once my mortal enemies? And one of whom has seen you naked? Not at all."
She let her head shift to the side, tilted enough that her temple rested against his upper arm.
"That seems a touch dramatic. Does that mean I was your mortal enemy, too?"
"Oh, certainly. Perhaps more so." She looked up at him, bright eyes asking him to elaborate. "I'm not nervous to spend time with them. I've just not done it in such an intimate setting before. The risk of an allergic reaction is high."
"Ginny and Lavender are here, too." She smirked up at him, a beat, before a smile broke through.
The Weaslette entered the living room with Potter trailing close behind. Hermione engaged in enthusiastic hugs, whereas Draco offered a handshake to Potter and an insult to Ginny about freckle density, which she returned with a similarly acerbic comment about the color of his hair.
He handed off a bottle of firewhisky to Potter, who accepted it with a thanks hardly appropriate for the rarity of the batch. But what did he really expect from Potter, after all?
With a sigh, he followed Hermione and her friends down to the kitchen, lamenting the days he could use Occlumency to avoid this type of socializing. But if Draco wished to stay firmly in not fighting territory, Occlumency as a social buffer remained solidly off his list of appropriate coping mechanisms. Hermione hated it. If he admitted it to himself, he hated it, too.
He'd rather suffer through a lucid meal with the likes of Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley if it meant avoiding a massive headache and Hermione's wrath. He only liked her wrath in small doses, and when it led to a shedding of clothes.
It took all of fifteen minutes for Draco to reconsider that assessment—right around when Weasley brought up the Chudley Cannons's pre-season starting lineup for the third time, before Draco had even taken a bite of the surprisingly tasteful appetizers the Weaslette provided.
Draco started keeping tally of the Cannons mentions, making eye contact with Ginny halfway through the meal and catching her rolling her eyes as well.
"Do you have a divergent opinion, Weaslette?"
"My brother has no loyalty," she said in a low voice, picking up her water and taking a huge gulp. Draco felt Hermione still on his right, hovering between engaging with Ron and Lavender at one end of the table and listening in on Draco's conversation, one he'd just voluntarily engaged in. Potter chuckled across from him.
"Just because you play for the Harpies doesn't mean he's required to root for them," Potter said, flinching almost as soon as the words left his mouth. Draco had the distinct impression the Weaslette had kicked him beneath the table, or sent a stinging hex at him. Either way, Draco failed to contain his snigger as Potter winced.
"That's exactly what it means, and he has no loyalty."
Draco reached for his wine with his left hand, letting his right snake under the table to rest on Hermione's thigh. She still pretended, valiantly, like she had any interest in Ron's excited ramblings about his subpar choice in Quidditch teams. But when her hand found his and squeezed, Draco knew who really held her attention.
—
Draco accepted a cup of tea from Hermione with a smile bordering on a grimace, jaw tight as he forced the expression through. Hermione didn't seem to notice, or at least, didn't comment on it as she settled onto the sofa next to him. He glanced down at his cup and wondered how such a bright, beautiful, exquisite example of a witch and a woman could have survived twenty-four years of life and yet make such a horrendous cup of tea. He knew she understood what a tea strainer was. He'd pointed several of them out to her in their kitchen on a number of occasions.
I thought I'd move the tea strainers here, closer to the mugs.
I bought a new strainer today, I've added it with the others.
Could you hand me a tea strainer, love?
And yet: leaves swirled and swam in his cup. It reminded him of drinking turkish coffee in Sarajevo, a bit sludgy, too much texture; he wanted his liquids liquid. Evidently, Hermione didn't have the time or inclination for something as simple as straining her tea.
"You look a little tense again," she said as she leaned into his side, taking a sip of her own tea with no complaints. "I thought dinner went well. You and Ginny seemed to have a nice conversation about Quidditch." Her statement had the subtle lilt of a question at the end. He stretched an arm around her shoulder, silently watching as Lavender took a seat in the armchair next to him, with Weasley perching like an unmannered heathen on the coffee table across from her.
He glanced down at Hermione, warm and soft, tucked against his side in perhaps the coziest, most intimate display of affection they'd intentionally allowed in the presence of others. He smirked at her, an effort to offer some comfort.
"The Weaslette has tolerable opinions about Quidditch teams. And a decent skill set in menu setting; the meal was passable."
Hermione smiled, beaming at him as if he'd just doled out effusive praise and not a moderate expression of tolerance.
Weasley laughed at something Lavender said, leaning back on the table, still sitting so nonchalantly—right in the middle of the room—on a coffee table.
"I don't think I care for the idea that he's seen you naked," Draco whispered as the thought struck him.
Hermione shook from the force of her laughter as she tried to bury the sound against his shoulder. Across the room, Potter arched a brow from behind his stupid spectacles. When Hermione's giggles abated, she let a hand rest on his thigh, always just a touch too high, a touch too close to the inside of his legs.
"I thought you said you weren't jealous of him." She leaned closer, voice quiet as she looked up at him with what he assumed was meant to be an innocent, faultless expression.
She knew exactly what she was doing, fingers flexing against his trousers.
"I'm not. Though by my former logic, I can't say I've fucked you over that table he's sitting on, which I find irritating." Her grip on his thigh tightened. She pressed her lips together, scowling as a ruddy bloom erupted across her chest, peeking out of her shirt's neckline. "I think I rather dislike the idea that I'm not the only man in this room who knows how distractingly beautiful you look naked."
"I think you're conflating jealousy with possessiveness. I'm not sure I find either to be particularly attractive qualities."
"No?" he asked, dropping his eyes to her grip on his leg. The conversation in the room around them could have stopped and he wasn't sure either of them would have noticed. He realized quite suddenly that his entire focus had narrowed to the feeling of her pressed up against his torso, hand fisting against his trousers.
"No."
"You're sure? You look like you might. You're flushing a lovely shade of pink."
She inhaled a deep breath. "Stop making me blush."
Draco smiled. He'd had his fun. He kissed her temple, intent on relaxing further into the sofa, dutifully sipping his textured tea, and adamantly ignoring any further commentary on the Chudley Cannons. Hermione surprised him when she leaned close to his ear.
"Rationally, no. I think it's very unbecoming to feel possessive or jealous of a person. But irrationally"—her breath coasted hot across his jaw and to his ear—"I think I'm going to head to the loo. Upstairs. And you should follow me in two minutes."
Draco's mouth dropped open as several errant, yet entirely welcome, thoughts barreled through his brain, ultimately landing on the most important: he fucking loved this witch.
Harry Potter ruined everything.
Potter cleared his throat. For a wild moment, Draco wondered if they'd been caught being a bit too handsy. But rather, Potter and Weaslette had risen from their sofa across the room and shared a sheepish, nervous sort of look before he cleared his throat again, as if he didn't already have everyone's attention.
"We wanted to have you all over for a specific reason, tonight. It was important to us that we tell you in person—" He broke off, hand massaging the back of his neck as his mouth opened and closed soundlessly several times. Weaslette leaned into him with a rather nauseating sort of smile.
In the intervening seconds between Potter's failure to express himself properly and his wife ultimately taking over, a nervous warmth crept up Draco's spine: climbing the ladder rungs of his vertebrae towards his head and into his ears to call him an intruder. He had the distinct sense that he was about to bear witness to something personal, something special—just not to him. Oddly, it flooded him with something that felt a lot like embarrassment.
"I'm pregnant," Ginny said.
Silence dropped in the blink it took Draco to recognize that he'd been right; he was an intruder on an intimate moment between all these friends. And then the silence exploded with a shriek as Hermione launched herself off the sofa, sloshing her lukewarm tea all over both of them.
And all Draco could say—tone outraged as his eyes locked with Potter's—was, "You let me insult your pregnant wife?"
—
With the tea spillage quickly evanesco'd, and Hermione crying quiet tears of sympathetic joy as she engaged in semi-regular hugging every time she or Potter or Weaslette or Weasley went more than thirty or so seconds without touching, Draco found himself with Lavender Brown as his only company.
He couldn't reliably remember if he'd ever had a one-on-one conversation with her before. He felt a strange kinship as they both witnessed the intimacy in front of them. Lavender seemed happy enough; Draco felt mostly indifferent. They were both outsiders accidentally present for a staggeringly important moment in someone else's lives.
"It must be nice to have friends like that," Lavender said, initiating the conversation Draco sensed he wouldn't be avoiding. Far be it for them to simply sit in silence, adjacent to each other. Conversation needn't be a requirement.
Draco shrugged. He supposed.
He imagined Theo and Blaise were like that for him, though he couldn't fathom bursting into tears if either of them decided to burden the world with their progeny. He set his drained cup of tea on the small end table between his sofa and Lavender's armchair.
She followed the motion, glancing at his cup, then back up at him. She blinked and looked at the tea again. Another blink. Back up to Draco, eyes wider than they'd been before.
"That's interesting," she said, reaching for it.
Oh gods.
Divination. He knew this about her; Hermione had complained on a number of occasions about her distaste for the discipline and her struggles having to listen to Lavender and Pavarti drone on and on about it in school.
Draco had two options: engage in a conversation about divination, which admittedly wasn't his favorite subject, either, or continue watching as the golden trio plus one (now two, he supposed) participated in an excessive amount of hugging.
He drummed his fingers against the armrest and took a stabilizing breath.
"What's interesting?"
"There's a lot happening in the leaves."
Lavender squinted, holding the cup comically close to her face as she rotated it round and round.
"There'd be a lot less going on if Hermione knew how to use a tea infuser. She makes an uncivilized cup of tea."
Lavender smiled, still staring into the dregs at the bottom of his cup. "It's kind of nice to know she's not perfect at everything, I suppose."
Draco snorted.
"Well. That's about the only thing she can't do, so we have to take our victories when we find them."
Lavender's teeth flashed for a moment as her grin spread wider. "She's not so great at hair smoothing charms, either."
Draco glanced at Hermione, feeling a fond smile break across his face at the sight of the enormous, haphazard bun she'd forced her hair into that day. She didn't often wear it up; she complained it tangled too much and ended up as more hassle than it was worth. And while he generally loved the wild, untamed quality her quagmire of curls presented, he didn't mind the opportunity to admire the line of her neck.
"It's twisty," Lavender said, pulling him back to his mostly-involuntary conversation about divination. "So many paths—but loopy. Shapes that might mean one thing become something else entirely if I turn the cup just so. It's as if things are changing. Or will change. Have changed? Isn't the future fascinating?"
Draco's throat had gone dry, desperate for something to quench his thirst.
"Titillating," he allowed, as any potential further conversation died in his lungs.