August 24, 1998
Hermione crossed her arms, half-turned from the counter to properly scrutinize Draco Malfoy. This was the second time she had seen him in her favorite coffee shop, and she had no idea what he thought he was doing there. He almost looked at ease in the far corner, his back to the wall, and the room circled out in front of him. There was no sign of the wizarding world on his person, dressed in a button down shirt and plain, black trousers, and even the paper he was reading was Muggle.
It looked very wrong.
Maybe he had been banished to the Muggle world after the war. Did they still banish people? Maybe he was just trying to lay low after his father's sentencing. She would probably want to escape an entire world that hated her, too. She wasn't so bitter towards him that she would stoop to his level of telling people where they belonged, but after everything, it didn't make much sense to see him here. In the Muggle world. In this coffee shop. Surrounded by Muggles while he read the newspaper like he was actually interested.
Hermione grabbed her coffee and slid the money across the counter, winding her way around tables filled with dull morning conversations. Malfoy didn't even look up when she stopped in front of his table, despite her glare being hard enough to strain her eyes.
"What are you doing here, Malfoy?"
His eyebrows raised, and he finished reading something before glancing up at her, flipping to another page. "Getting coffee."
Hermione bristled. "Obviously. I mean what are you doing here, in my coffee shop?"
"I hadn't been aware you owned the coffee shop, Granger."
"I've been coming here for three months, and I only saw you here a few days ago. Being that I was here first, it's more mine than it is yours." She leaned forward. "Or, technically, I've been here for nearly twenty years, and it's very much mine. I thought you hated that."
He didn't look too bothered by her narrowed, accusing eyes. "I hate a lot of things. The Muggle world doesn't happen to be one of them."
"Oh, did they sway you with coffee after a lifetime of unjustified, murderous hatred?"
"Wrong again," he muttered, looking up at her. "It was never murderous, was it? It appears that for someone who so often prefers being right, it would be best for you to keep your mouth shut."
She glared at him, and she saw his shoulders move in a silent sigh. "Why are you here?"
"I already told you-"
"There's about a million coffee shops in places you're more comfortable to be in, so it can't just be-"
"Their coffee is fantastic."
Her lips moved around words that weren't really fit for a public audience, and then she pressed her lips together. She made a sound close to a growl as he continued reading the paper, and then pivoted on her heel, marching out of the shop.
September 29, 1998
"I don't know if we can escape our destinies."
"If you believe in destiny."
"You don't?"
Hermione shrugged, swallowing her gulp of coffee. "What is destiny? Is it a path that was predetermined and set out for us at birth?"
"No. It's a path forged by our choices."
"Then can't we escape it? Or, should I say, can't we change it? We make different choices. We make a choice we never would before. Then everything could change. You're no longer set up to become the head of some department in the Ministry, and instead you're traveling the world."
"But what happens after you've finished traveling the world? Do you come back and make choices that lead you back to the Ministry?"
"If you choose to. The point is that we create our own destiny. Our own future. We define ourselves."
Malfoy rolled his coffee cup along the edges, swirling the contents. "A lot of things define us. We like to believe our choices define us, and so we define ourselves, but it's everything. It's the people you were born to, it's the choices of others that surround you. We have little power in who we become."
"But enough power to change ourselves from what people want us to be. Or what their choices try and force us to be." She gave him a look that might have been too significant. "We do have the power to become better people. What we define as better."
"Yet any good self we try to achieve will be hindered or marked with the wrongness of outside influences. No one rises from the dark things as a source of light."
"Don't they? Perhaps not as bright as other people, who were given better choices to make and people around them. But if they're light at all in dark places, then they're light." Hermione glanced up as the bell above the coffee shop door rang, and then looked back at Malfoy. "Maybe we don't have the power to fully shape ourselves, but we can become better people."
"Then destiny, which is open to the same outside influences, cannot be shaped by us either. Everything we do sets into motion something which we can't control."
"We're like giant snowballs," she said. "We start off as flakes in the wind, and we gather, and gather. Then we're rolling down a hill, and all these things are attaching to us as the wind blows us this way and that. We have no control over what sticks to us and what stays as something that had been in our path. But eventually we hit the bottom, and we're made of things we touched on the way there. Then the wind starts to blow things away, and they're usually the parts we don't want there."
"Some things. You can't dig into the center of a snowball, pull out a piece inside, and expect the whole thing not to crumble."
She held up a finger. "But if you need to, you can. Then you're scattered and no longer whole, but it's life. There's billions of more hills to go flying down. You can choose the hill. You just can't choose what happens or what attaches on the way down. So, destiny...changeable."
"But it's a hill you can't stop on. So the destiny is inevitable. No matter what you collect, or the way you roll, or how the wind blows, you'll eventually hit something you were meant to hit - the bottom, in this case. So no matter what you do or change, you always reach the same place."
"The bottom is death, though. That's inevitable for all people. Everything else in our destiny is changeable. Just not death. Unless it's an accidental death or something, in which case..." She looked up at the ceiling. "I don't know, a time machine."
He grinned at her in a way she might have found disturbing not too long ago. Maybe she still should have. "Even then - out of all the different rolls and paths of the snowball, how do you know which bit of it was the one that sent you to an early bottom?" Something twisted his expression for a second, and she had a feeling he thought himself ridiculous when using her metaphor.
"Maybe you can't know. Like you said, everything sets something into motion. It could be the tiniest thing that set into motion this, which set into motion that."
"And you can't change it without knowing the first source, or it's all going to happen all over again."
"In that case, you'd have to find the first thing, but that could be dangerous. Messing with time. Like the path of our destiny itself, the tiniest change can eventually change everything. Maybe it would be better to blow the snowball off the hill. Like a hurricane."
"That would certainly change everything, even if it did stop the inevitable."
"Stop the inevitable for now. I guess it all depends. Maybe it would be better to hit the inevitable and not lose everything."
Malfoy frowned, his thumb sliding back and forth over the side of his cup. "If the inevitable is accidental death, you would lose everything anyway."
"You still had all the other parts of yourself you gained before that. All the memories, all the hills, all the people, the paths. Changing everything would make you lose that. But even if you died after keeping it, you still kept it."
He looked at her for a long moment. "Isn't it better to have kept it, and changed the inevitable?"
"Yes." She nodded. "If it's possible. But time..." Something clicked in her mind, and she narrowed her eyes as she wondered if this was a normal conversation. "Time is a very dangerous thing to play with, Malfoy. You just don't change your destiny. All destinies are entwined. Sometimes with the destinies of people you have never met. We set into motion things that change our lives, and so the people's around us, and so the people around them."
"I know."
Her breath paused as she looked for answers in the dull coloring of her coffee. "The war ended the way it was supposed to. People were lost that should have remained alive. But trying to change that could be devastating, and even more lives could be lost."
"I'm not trying to change the war, Granger," he said quietly, and his eyes were on hers when she looked up. "As unfortunate as some things were, there's too much to lose if one were to risk altering it. I'm talking about the things worth sacrificing for the overall worth of something or someone else. It's all about the risk, sacrifice, and gain."
"Risk, sacrifice, and gain?"
"Yes. If you..."
October 23, 1998
Hermione scrunched her face, waving two fingers between her plate of food and drink as she swallowed. "That combination does not work well."
Malfoy smirked like he'd been telling her that all along, and this just proved how brilliant he was. "You ordered a sweet drink."
"I hadn't known it was sweet. It wasn't like I could look at it and know the sugar content. Though I think that would be a fantastic ability to have."
"Seeing the sugar content?"
"The everything content. Just to look and have some...thought bubble pop up in your mind that said what each thing contained that you looked at." She spread her hands into the air. "The ability to see the contents of boxes, bags, closed rooms? And maybe with that huh-chrr, and everything goes red, so you can seek out heat sources in the dark."
"How much time do you spend needing to find heat sources in the dark?"
"A lot. The food content bit would be the best, though. Next to seeing behind closed things, though I imagine I'd see..." Her eyes widened as she shook her head. "Maybe I'll just stick to the food contents. Then again, I'm not sure how often I would eat if that happened. Potions? Horrible."
"Most food has the contents listed on the packaging in supermarkets."
"But hardly anyone really looks at those..." She pointed a finger at him. "You know what a supermarket is?"
His scowl disappeared in his cup when he took a sip from it. "Why are you smiling like that?"
"I'm just trying to imagine you in a food market of any sort. Have you ever been in one, or have you always sent off the help? God, you must take hours."
"I am very efficient."
"Exactly. You're probably one of those people who spend fifteen minutes in front of the tomatoes. Weighing each one in your hand, feeling all around them like there's a secret compartment that will open with the right touch and grant you a wish."
"You do realize that you inspected the muffins yesterday morning for twenty minutes, before finally deciding on the best looking one to mash between your teeth."
"No, I was looking for the one that seemed like it had the most of what I wanted. I like them very soft, and the top moist, and a lot of the little flakes inside with-"
"I know. You only described the perfect muffin about three dozen times, and now I've become the holder of worthless knowledge about you."
"It's not worthless." She sniffed. "What if one day there's a giant explosion on my street, and I'm trapped in my flat until they put the fire out. Then I have to owl you and say, Malfoy, find me the perfect muffin before my arrival. Then you get to the coffee shop and see that there's only five left, and there are...giant, muffin-devouring creatures who are highly trained in karate-"
"This all sounds very likely."
"It is very likely. Very likely. This can happen tomorrow. And now you will be prepared to block chops and high kicks, while spotting and acquiring the best muffin possible for me."
"Yes. I feel that I'll be willing to risk life and limb by fighting giant creatures bent on muffin-devouring-"
"Karate-trained giant-"
"-to secure you a bloody muffin."
"The muffin." She raised her hand with her palm up, fingers clutching air. "The perfect muffin. This may well be your responsibility one day, Malfoy. A great, honorable responsibility. I only seek to prepare you for such a task."
"I do feel well prepared for the mental instability ward, which is where I'm sure they'll be sending me after too much time with you."
She reached over to pat his hand, and didn't think about it until the feel of his skin was still tingling against her palm after she had pulled away. "I'll visit you." She grinned widely. "And I'll bring muffins!"
November 14, 2008
This wasn't a date, was it? She was near certain that it wasn't, that it couldn't be a date, but it felt like one. He had been the one to owl her about meeting up at the restaurant he had found, which was the first time he ever had. And the first time they had ever...admittedly planned to meet up with one another. They had coffee almost every morning together for months, and lunch at least once a week, but that was all accidental. Well, as accidental as knowing the person would be there could be. Not so much accidental as oh, what a surprise to find you here, sitting at my table, and now talking to me, how did this happen sort of accidental. Maybe more this is a bit strange if I stop to think about it, though I think about it a lot more than I pro accidental.
She had taken too long to do her hair and pick out her clothes. She should have come directly from work, in her work clothes, and with her tired work face. Instead, she had redone her hair to wear it down, and changed to casual clothes. Which wasn't anything fancy, but it was a change, and one she had stopped to think about for five minutes...or twenty plus five, but either way.
And now he was suspiciously quiet. Or maybe not so suspiciously, since Malfoy wasn't a big talker until she got him going on something, but it seemed suspicious right now. Which was probably because she kept wondering if this was supposed to be a date.
But that was impossible.
He also somehow knew she didn't like green beans, because he took the side bowl from her without asking, and she didn't think he was the sort who was raised to do things like that without good reasoning.
Hermione cleared her throat, and Malfoy looked up from his plate. "How did you get that scar on your jaw?"
The corners of his mouth turned up a little for two breaths, and he might have been smiling privately, or just doing something inside his mouth that twisted them that way. "An experimental potion released a lot of pressure, blowing up the cauldron and every jar and vial on the table. Something cut my jaw. The woman who blew the cauldron up felt so guilty and nervous that she didn't heal it properly, and left a scar. Though I still believe she did it purposely to mark me."
Hermione raised her eyebrow and smiled. "She liked you, or you just assumed she must have?"
Malfoy didn't look amused, and his fork hovered over a piece of pork as if he'd forgotten he was in the middle of stabbing it. "She loved me."
"Oh." Hermione took a sip of her drink to make time for finding something to say. "You two are still together?"
He hesitated, and she almost backtracked out of the personal territory. "No." She nodded, cutting into her chicken. "Did you cut your hair?"
"I did."
"I like it."
He gave a weird look to his plate. "No more fringe in my eyes?"
"Exactly! Er, not that it didn't look fine before, but sometimes..."
"It made it more difficult to read me, and I somehow always looked like I was plotting?"
Hermione chewed slowly, tilting her head. "Did I tell you that?"
"No, I just took a wild guess and somehow landed on accuracy."
"Wow. That doesn't happen often for you, does it?"
"No, it doesn't. I don't usually need the wild guessing bit when I'm right all the time."
She snorted, rolling her eyes. "If you're right all the time, I'm actually a Centaur who shrunk herself after killing Hermione Granger, and put on her skin like footed pajamas." She pointed at the look he gave her. "Exactly. Obviously untrue and ridiculous."
"I was just trying to determine where you sealed the skin around you. I knew you-"
"This is my look when I'm contemplating how you'll look with mashed potatoes in your eyes."
"This is my look when I've been threatened with the equivalency of a fluffy rabbit trying to hit me with its ears."
"You can underestimate the power of mashed potatoes all you want. It's only going to make the shock that much sweeter to see." She mirrored the eyebrow he raised over the rim of his cup. "What is that necklace, by the way? You always have it under your shirt."
He swallowed and then grinned, ducking his head forward. "Why are you inspecting me so closely tonight?"
She blushed, her eyes darting away from their attempt to memorize his expression. "I was just curious," she muttered.
December 10, 1998
"You know, they probably won't notice if we escape into that shop over there."
"You're the one who had to declare the song you wanted to hear while in front of them."
"I hadn't known they would start singing and playing it." Hermione's hand pushed along his shoulder. "Or that you would take it as a signal to dance."
"Other people were dancing, and they were all staring. I would have looked like an arse if I hadn't asked you."
He gave her an annoyed look before she even spoke, lifting her face to the falling snowflakes. "And how would that be different from how you look all the time?"
"You're hilarious, Granger," he told her, and pulled her closer when her foot slipped over ice on the pavement.
"Feel free to borrow some of my jokes. It might help you build some humor." His shoulder felt rather nice under her hand, strong and steady. She could only feel the clutch of his hand through her mitten, but it was just the right amount of pressure.
"Perhaps if lightening strikes my brain cells dead, and I'm mindlessly desperate for something anyone might find humorous." He rocked them in a slow circle, both their feet slipping on patches of snow, and red and green lights sparked across their skin.
"At least I would find you funny - though I thought you were already mindlessly desperate," she said, sticking her tongue out to catch a large snowflake that was winding down.
It hit her cheek instead, and she frowned at the specks of white swirling in the air before looking back at Malfoy. Her inhale caught against some emotion his look had lodged in her throat, and his hand slipped to the small of her back, pulling her close enough for her chest to brush against his.
"Not for that."
Her breath came in a little faster, and she thought he must have been able to feel it when he pushed into her to turn them right. "Then what are you mindlessly desperate for?"
He didn't answer as his fingers spanned out against her back, and she was caught in a different storm entirely.
January 2, 1999
Hermione rested her heels against the metal bars beneath her seat, and pulled her coffee cup to her chest. Draco's feet were to either side of where hers would be if she put them down, his one hand wrapped around his coffee, and the other propping the crossword puzzle against the edge of the table. The day was bitterly cold, but all that was left of the snow was slush at the sides of the road.
"It feels like a new year, doesn't it?"
"No," he muttered, pushing the newspaper onto the table to scribble something in the tiny boxes.
Well, wasn't he a shining beacon of optimism. Her eyes drifted from the date he had circled on the newspaper - as he always did, every morning without fail - and down to his hand. "Where did you get that ring?"
The band was silver with odd markings around it, and the gem was amber with flecks of red, bright gold, and brown in it. She usually wavered between finding it ugly or strangely attractive, but it was always interesting.
"An island."
She raised her eyebrows, but he wasn't more forthcoming. "An island...?" "It's a magical gem. To help me remember."
"Remember what?"
"Everything."
Hermione studied the gem, and then the expression on his face that gave nothing away. "If I were to ask you the exact words from our conversation...three months ago- Oh, when we watched people running out of the haunted house. You could recite that back to me word-for-word?"
"Probably not."
Her forehead wrinkled, her left eye narrowing more than the right. "Then what use is it?"
He licked his lips, and the pen she had given him earlier began to spin between his fingers. "Do you know that elephants remember everything? They might not remember something so small as another elephant that bumped into them once, but they remember the important things."
"So it helps you to remember the important things. You can't remember that without magic?"
"No." His gaze dragged down the rectangle of newspaper. "Elephants will travel across great distances since the time they are born. Their entire life is a journey, and they're always searching for something. Safer, better land, more things to sustain themselves, the things they need."
"You're searching for something?"
He glanced up at her. "Everyone is searching for something. Sometimes they forget what it is. Where they've gone, the things they've done-"
"But elephants can remember everything. Every moment and path they take. If they walk through a forest they traveled through twenty years before, they'll remember the way through it, and where water is, and..."
"They remember what hurts them, and what has saved them."
"Which helps to save them completely." Hermione tapped her fingers against her cup. "So the gem makes you remember all the paths you traveled. The things you've collected along the way. Who you were and what you became. Or what you want to become, and where you want to go. Even if it doesn't help you remember every single thing in exact detail."
"Something like that," he muttered, writing another word down in the puzzle.
She wanted to know if it was actually something that kept memories fresh in his mind, it held memories itself, or helped to trigger them. Or maybe it was just a gem from some place, at some time, that made him keep things in mind.
"Because remembering changes the paths you take," she said softly, watching his left cheek indent as he thought over something. "Which leads you to better places. You know, elephants always find their way home, too. No matter what that home becomes, or what they realize it to be. Or when they left, or how far they've wandered from it. No matter the path they have to walk to get back, they find their way there."
"I know." He looked up at her and tossed the newspaper onto the table, the crossword still blank in a few boxes.
"In a way, everyone is like elephants with how we take a journey. Our entire life is a journey as well. We all try to remember. We all try to find a way home, to some better place. Except we forget."
"Which makes the journey pointless."
"Eh." She shook her head. "We still reach the place we want to be." His eyebrows shot up. "Do we?"
She opened her mouth, paused, and then shrugged. "Some people."
"Even the few who do - there's not much point to the journey if we don't remember it. You can't even be fully happy with the place you've arrived at if you don't have the memories of other places that make you realize how great the last one is. Or maybe it's not even the best place you could have gone to, but you can't remember why it isn't, because you have little recollection of the things you require for your total happiness."
"Or you turn the wrong way and forget the way back. Or end the journey too soon, forget the way home. Maybe people get too distracted in looking for the end they think they want, that they don't find it when they arrive at it. Or they lose their way, and can't get back on the path because all they kept seeing was...how much they hated green trees, or thick roots, or dirty water."
"The negative."
"Right. And, you know, most the negative looks the same. It's the positive that makes it different." She waved a hand around them. "I've been to dozens of coffee shops I don't remember the name or location of, and only recall them having terrible coffee, or service, or muffins. But I remember this one because of the great coffee, service, muffins, and...other things. And I remember the coffee shop by my parents' house, and two more in London."
"You're saying that elephants remember because they find certain trees that make them happy... It's all green and trees to them."
"It can't be, or they'd never remember the difference. It's the memories they make in each place, on each part of their journey. It's some sort of happiness something brought them. That's how they remember. They don't like the tigers anywhere, so that hardly matters. But they really love a...stream where..."
"You believe the end doesn't matter as much as the positive things you find within the journey."
"I guess not." She put her coffee down and moved her feet to the floor, her legs sliding against his. "You don't?"
"It's equal parts. The journey defines you, your life, and the end. But the journey means little without the end you learn to want-"
"As long as you didn't already miss out on the place you should be because you were concentrating on something else, and ignored or forgot the things that would really make you happy."
"Either way, a bad end taints the journey in the negative. People grow bitter towards their lives when they've reached the end and it's not as good as the journey. When they aren't happy anymore."
"But can't the journey be worth it? Even if you reach a bad end instead of a good one? Because you've still collected the memories."
"Why can't you have both?" He leaned forward. "No one reaches the end and tells themselves the journey was all that really mattered, when they aren't just trying to comfort themselves for settling into a life they hate."
"Of course you want both."
"Everyone wants both. The purpose of the journey is to reach the end you most need and desire. If it's not it, then the journey isn't finished yet. Even if you have to travel back to reach it, or start again."
"And if you don't know the way back? Should we all just hope to travel like elephants?" She glared at his amusement, and snatched the newspaper to finish the puzzle, pointing a finger at him. "Not. A. Word."
February 1, 1999
Something took over control of her arm and hand as she reached up to brush back the strands of hair sticking to the sweat on his forehead. He was over an hour late, but she couldn't find it in herself to complain when he looked like he had run several miles to get there - especially since the weather was cold. He was also wearing the same clothes he had been wearing yesterday, and it worried her more than it would have if he was anyone else.
He looked exhausted, and maybe that was the reason he was swaying into her and his head was dipping down. Or maybe it was for a completely different reason, but that possibility was making her freeze up with tension, and...have uncontrollable hands.
Hermione dropped her hand from his forehead, and felt his sweat dampening her fingertips. The chill of the wind dried them in a second, and her hair whipped in front of her face before she shoved it back. He reached out after a pause of silence between them, and gripped the edges of her hat. He hunched to get a better look at something, and pulled the knitted cotton halfway down her ears. His fingers skated her temple, and his thumbs pressed like ice to her cheeks as he tucked her hair into the cap and behind her ears.
His eyes dropped to hers, the weak sunlight catching sparks of blue and lines of lighter grey. His left hand fell more slowly than the right, skimming down the side of her face before leaving at her jaw. Hermione had to curl her hands to stop from reaching out again.
"Why are you looking at me like that?" she whispered.
"I like watching you fall in love with me again."
She snorted loudly, and her cheeks flamed. "Not only do you think I could possibly - and it's not possible - be falling in love with you, but again? Though you were awfully cute as a ferret. And don't smirk at me like that." Her eyes stayed a bit too long on his mouth. "Honestly, you're the most arrogant man I've ever met."
She took a step back, just in case his chest touched hers again, and he could somehow feel the hammering of her heart. She avoided his eyes, since he was giving her that intense look that made her feel he was reading her thoughts, and smoothed her hands down her coat. Really, flirting with her was one thing. Making wild assumptions that were completely false was pushing it. Which was why she was blushing and her heart was going like mad, even if he was just joking. It made her flustered, really. Wild assumptions.
"I saw you in the paper," she said, and looked up when he went rigid. "It was just about you living in France. The picture must have been old, though. Your hair was longer, and you looked a little younger. Not that you look old now. Just...older."
"Being around you can do that to a man. It's the stress." He didn't look pained by the smack of her hand into his chest.
"You live in France?"
"Something like that."
"Is that why you always look tired when you show up late? The cross-country Apparition."
He paused, and she swore she saw his lips curve, but it was gone when she blinked. "Traveling wears me out, yes. Are we going to this book sale, or do you intend for us to become ice sculptures in front of a display of female undergarments?"
She opened her mouth, and it curved into a grin before she could speak, and then all that came out was laughter. She only laughed harder at his scowl, her head dropping back as he clutched her elbow and pulled her to the street.
"Sorry, I just keep seeing you as-"
"I'm aware of what you're picturing in your-" "-hot pink, with-"
"I was picturing you in red." He seemed smug when her laughter stopped, and
she turned her head to look at the side of his face as he led them across the street.
"The same shade your skin flushes with when I-when you're, what was it? Flustered." He glanced at her, smiling faintly as his gaze drifted down her face. "Are you feeling flu
"Yes. I have bad anxiety."
"Anxiety."
"That's right. Have you ever been to a book sale like this? Old women turn into rabid animals, children are used as guards, people will form unwanted book barricades to ward against you finding the good ones. These are dangerous events."
"Deadly, I'm sure."
"Of course. There are heavy books and desperate people. I've been pushed off a ladder! I saw a man get hit right in the face with War and Peace. This is not a biscuit sale, Draco. This is a battle."
She didn't fully realize that her hand had crept into the nook of his arm until the wind blew into the warmth when they stepped out of the street. He brought it back against his side, and waited for her to lean in the right direction.
"Should I ready my wand?"
"No, we would never want to do anything to an unsuspecting Muggle." She sniffed as she sent a look at the people around them, and lowered her voice. "But feet and elbows sometimes get in the way by accident, if you know what I mean."
"I'm appalled. I thought Gryffindors were supposed to be good, honorable, and fair."
"We're also represented by a lion. All I'm saying is - have you seen what they do to their prey?"
"Your prey is actually the books. Do you plan on ripping them apart with your teeth? Because I'd like to know before I'm seen in public with you like that."
"I plan on doing that to every last one of them. Will you be leaving now?"
"...No. If only because I don't want to be the last person to have been with Hermione Granger before she started eating books."
February 26, 1999
"What?"
Draco was looking around her flat like it was the first time he'd been there, or like the place was a disaster area - neither were true. In fact, she'd scrubbed her flat so clean that everything was shining, and she had to force herself to put down the cleaning supplies before she rubbed off coatings.
"Nothing. How did it go today?"
"Same as last time. I do think I got a hint at where they are now, though. Or at least where they went after that. So that's something."
He nodded, looking at the pictures she had on her shelf. "They must still be in Australia."
"Yeah, somewhere." She put the wine bottle on the table, then opened a large bag to pull out their takeaway containers. "What did you do today?" She hoped that sounded more nonchalant to him than it did to her.
"I read most the day."
"Nothing exciting?" Did her voice raise a little too high at the end? She schooled her expression into blankness, sure he was looking at her now.
"No, not really." Liar.
"Oh."
She couldn't keep the frown off her face. It had been bothering her since the afternoon edition of the Prophet arrived. She'd been thinking about it more than she had the date of her next trip to Australia, and strange thoughts were remembering things that felt crazy. He must have detected that something was off, but she didn't have the determination that he must have to not bring it up again.
"It's just that I read an article today about you appearing in England this morning. The paper said you went to visit your mother." Heavy, heavy silence. "Not that I'm checking up on you or anything, it was just there, and I read the paper every day. And I don't want to intrude on your personal matters, but I have told you things that maybe crossed a personal line I didn't know was there. So I mean that you can talk to me about these sort of things if you want to. I...know your mother helped Harry. In the end. So I don't-"
"It's not an exciting event, no matter how the papers make it out. Potter getting new glasses is mentioned in the paper for weeks, and no one can really give a toss about it. I visited my mother, yes,"-something cold fell to the bottom of her stomach-"but I do that often enough for it not to matter."
"I see." Her voice sounded too tight, and her eyes flashed to the folded newspaper on the table.
His gaze followed her own, and then snapped back to her. There was a pause that might have lasted a second or half a minute, and there were too many things dancing across his features for her to understand them. Then he sprung, a full two seconds before her jumbled body would cooperate, but the paper was closer to her, and she got there first.
Her heart couldn't decide if it wanted to escape up her throat or through her chest, alternating its pounds with jumps. It felt important that he not see the paper, that he not find out that she had found out...something. Something where his hair was longer in a picture taken that same morning, and he wasn't wearing the necklace or ring she always saw him with, and he wasn't visiting his mother. His father, actually.
Why would he refuse to admit it? Why would he go with her lie about his mother, when he must have known that the paper would have printed the story about his father. He was looking right into the camera in the picture, and Draco was not a stupid man, even when his choices sometimes looked like it.
And why was he trying so hard to look at the paper now, like he knew something he said had been wrong, but like he couldn't know what it was? Maybe she shouldn't have lied to see if he would know it was one. There had been too many things that bothered her, though. Little things. Like reports that he never left France, or him telling her he hadn't seen his father in years, and...and knowing things about her that he couldn't know, that no one could, and Jesus, she sounded mad.
The paper wrinkled more beneath their grips as she tried to shimmy it out of his hand, but his face was set in a determination that she only ever glanced on him before. She grabbed the paper with both hands, yanking, and it ripped in half. She flung an arm back and squeezed her eyes shut in preparation of her head meeting the edge of the counter, but an arm hooked around her waist first.
She opened her eyes, meeting hard grey, and her breath shuddered out. There was a shimmer of tears that she blinked away, and her mind was the battleground between the need for confirmation or denial. Draco looked like she had just purposely set the kitchen on fire, and he wasn't sure if he should shake her, leave, or have her committed.
"The article..." She forced down a swallow. "The article was very rude. I didn't want you to read something like that."
He looked like he wanted to believe her. He looked like he desperately wanted to believe her. And he must have been better at living lies than she was, because he pressed his forehead to hers with a groan, and then he kissed her without reserve. His mouth was hot and demanding as something inside of her shook and burst free, and when she fell against him, he only held her tighter.
March 15, 1999
Her thighs trembled under the push of his palm, his fingertips edging into the crease, over her pelvis, hip, and spanning across her stomach. She reached down, her fingers touching skin before finding the hem of his shirt. She caught it between her thumb and index, and pushed her hands up his sides as she pulled his shirt with it.
He ducked to kiss the top of her left breast before she tugged the shirt over his head. His face emerged from the fabric, and then the mess of his hair as he moved to help pull the shirt off one arm. He pushed his hand into the bed when it cleared, and lifted the other, flinging his shirt to the side. His necklace swept up the valley between her breasts, setting off a wave of goosebumps.
She reached for it, and pulled it closer in the darkened bedroom. "What is it?" "Pieces of things," he whispered back.
"Like what?"
"Don't," he said harshly when she went to push her finger against a brown-speckled half-moon. "They'll move. They're...they're pieces of things from different objects in my life."
"From-"
"One piece is from a wall in Hogwarts. Another is from a watch I was given in my seventh year. There's a pebble from the shore of Azkaban." His breath moved across the hollow of her throat, and then it was his mouth.
"What are the others from?"
"Later."
How much later, exactly? She pushed her head back, closing her eyes when he sucked on a patch of skin. "So they mark moments in your life from Hogwarts to now?"
He smiled. "That's right."
"So it's like your elephant walk. The journey you took to collect them. Or representing it."
"Part of it," he said, his voice muffled against her skin.
"Which one is your favorite?"
He raised his head, swallowing as he looked down at her. "The red one." "Which one is that-"
He kissed her, and tugged the necklace from her grip, pushing it around to his back. She pressed her hand to his chest, feeling his heartbeat pound hard and even against her palm. His tongue dipped into her mouth, and she swirled hers around the tip before rubbing against it. Her mouth felt more sensitive than it ever did normally, and she felt the vibration of the sound he made when she tilted her hips.
His hand drifted down, and he worked his fingers inside of her, plunging them in, and slowly pulling them back. She inadvertently bit his lip when she went to suppress the moan, and he only kissed her harder. Her hips jerked up, and he rocked back in response, her fingers winding down to his nipples. She wanted to kiss him like he had her, and this little bit of space between their chests was not enough when she needed to touch him more fully.
"Draco," she murmured, but he only sucked her bottom lip into his possession, pulling his head back until her lip escaped the drag, and then he immediately dived back to her mouth.
Hermione squeezed his shoulders, then shoved them sideways as she bucked and twisted her hips, pushing her feet into the mattress for more strength. Draco flipped, and she followed by will, helped with the arm he had around her waist. She pushed herself up with a hand on his chest, straddling his hips, but his surprise was lost in the face of her own as she blushed. His smile grew slowly, until he was grinning at her rather indulgently, stretching himself out on the mattress. He slid a hand into her hair, and then kissed her again.
She returned it for a moment, and then moved to his throat, over the bump of cartilage, and licked the hollow at the base. His fingertips rubbed circles on her scalp, and she shut her eyes at the way it sent tingles along her skin. She pressed open-mouth kisses along his neck, and sucked twice at the places that made him moan. She sucked hard enough at the edge of his jaw to leave a dark red mark, and she moved to his shoulder with a smile, oddly pleased with herself.
He moved a hand to trace her shoulder blades, her spine, and the curve at the small of her back. His chest moved faster beneath her lips as she kissed around one of his nipples, and ran her thumb over the other. She copied the movements he had done to her what felt like hours ago to her impatience, and his hips raised sharply at the drag of her teeth. He whispered something she couldn't hear, that turned into a huff when she sucked.
She kissed her way across his chest, and moved her body so the rigid heat of him slid against where she had wanted him to be for far longer than she thought he knew. He grabbed her hips, and pushed her down as he arched up, grinding until they both moaned.
She rubbed her hands up from his pelvis to his ribs as she pushed back, lowering her head to kiss the top of his stomach. It caved in under her lips, and his hands were strong when they pressed to her shoulders. He slid them to the top of her arms, and halted her from moving lower.
"No," he rasped out, pulling her back up. "Not now."
He pressed an elbow back to sit up as she did, and he curved an arm around her waist to pull her higher in his lap. She rested her forehead against his as he slid the tip of himself against her, and then barely pushed in. Hermione huffed and cupped his neck, spreading her knees out wider, and then sunk down.
She paused a moment, wanting to stay for just a minute like that, until ten years could pass and she would still be able to draw up the feel of it perfectly. Draco had no intention of staying still, though, and his arm tightened around her to guide her back up. She rose slowly, dropped faster, rocked, and rose slowly again. She went to speed up, but his grip kept her steady, and he rolled his hips when she hit bottom again.
They moved together, and she opened her eyes, meeting hooded grey. Her heart was pounding in her throat, her stomach was fluttering, and she felt like she couldn't catch her breath with the way he was looking at her.
"You're going to be the death of me."
"I'll wait until this over," she promised, then shut her eyes for a second as she shook her head. "That-" She gasped as he slammed upwards. "Th-at was a terrible thing to say."
He breathed a laugh, then moaned with her when she came down harder, moving to kiss her throat. He sucked hard at the beginning of her shoulder as she buried a smile into his hair, and she was filled from the marrow to the skin with something that made her want to wrap around him forever.
April 1, 1999
Hermione held a Sickle up over the path of his sight to her right eye. "Do you know what this is?"
He raised an eyebrow. "Have you gone blind and mistaken me for a pauper? If you expect me to do a trick for it, it won't be something you enjoy."
She glared at him, and lowered the coin when she realized obscuring one eye was ruining the mighty intensity. "It's a wish, Draco." She turned her face to the side and looked at him from the corner of her eye, shaking her head when realization didn't dawn on him. "A wish. A fountain. A coin."
"I'm fully aware of what you meant. I'm just waiting for you to reveal the joke, since I'm sure you're not actually intending for me to act like a five-year-old."
She narrowed her eyes, pushing a fist into her hip. "This is not for children. This is a serious matter. Have you ever heard about being careful of what you wish for? The wording has to be perfect."
"Fine. I wish-"
"Eh, eh! You can't tell me, or you might as well just not make a wish at all. And you have to make the wish as the coin is flying through the air. For best results."
His lips twitched. "Practice this a lot, have you? Fully tested it?"
"Tsk. You don't look like you believe. You have to believe in it. That something is listening, or some sort of universal magic is released when the coin hits the water. If you don't believe, it won't come true."
"You make things happen for yourself. You go for what you want, and you obtain it. Wishes aren't granted with a common coin and rain water."
"And when you think of going after these things you want, do you believe that you will get it?"
"Of course."
"Then!"
He looked up to the left, then the right. "No. Your argument was not somehow won with little reason followed by one exclaimed word." He looked back at her, tilting his head, and the squint of his eyes was more amusement than curiosity. "You didn't wish for it, did you?"
She wagged her finger at him. "It's the same thing, and you know it. You believe you'll obtain what you want, though you have no proof that you will. It's the same for making a wish-"
"Except one is faith in myself, and the other is faith in nothing."
"It's something. There's power behind wishes, Draco. You can even throw it, make the wish, and believe it will come true because you'll make it so. And then the great powers of the universe will just help you along the way."
"So when it comes true, you can claim it was the great powers of the universe that made it so?"
"Yes." She grinned.
"And if it doesn't, then it's obviously because I didn't believe enough, and not because there are no great powers of the universe beyond the ones we create ourselves?"
"Oh, yes." She rolled her eyes up and spun her hands. "You're a great power of the universe, and you-"
"At least I make wishes come true."
"Do you want me to throw the coin at you then?"
"It depends on what your wish is."
"Psh. There cannot be conditions to wishes. You're supposed to wish for anything in the world that you want."
She held the coin out to him, and waved it in the air when he didn't take it. He sighed, as if it were some great burden, and took the Sickle from her. "And what is it that you wish for? Or can't you tell me?"
She smiled, and ushered for him to go when he just stood there and stared at her. "And remember to believe that it will come true. And word it carefully! And-"
"Yes, while in the air."
She watched him scowl at the two inches of rain water in the fountain, the coin revolving between his thumb and middle finger. At least he was taking his time to think about it. His arm brushed against hers as he tossed the coin into the fountain, and they both watched it fly through the air before plunking under water.
"You wished?"
"Yes."
"Good. Now it's my turn."
She closed her eyes, the Sickle hot against her palm. She swore she could feel Draco staring at her as she tried to clear her mind.
"What are you doing, attempting a trance sta-"
"Sh. I have to concentrate."
She took a deep breath, clutching the coin tighter. She opened her eyes, and flung the coin at the fountain as she quickly made her wish. Water sloshed up from the impact of her foot into the puddle in front of them, and she felt Draco jump back as the Sickle settled onto the bottom of the fountain.
"I didn't know we were attacking the great power of the universe with wishes."
"I'll have you know there is a fine art to wish making, and that-"
"You've soaked half my trousers with your stomping."
She turned her head to look at the fabric sticking to his calf, and she sniffed as she lifted her eyes to his. "I would say I'm sorry, except that I'm not."
His eyebrow raised slowly, and she yelled when he lunged at her, darting away from him. He cursed as their feet splashed water all over their legs, and she laughed, running faster when his hand ghosted her ribs. He'd catch her eventually, and she didn't much mind, but she'd make sure he was sopping wet first.
April 16, 1999
Draco pushed the two vials closer to her on the table, and her heart picked up speed with how seriously he was looking at her. She couldn't even do more than glance at the purple liquid, because he looked like the world was ending somewhere outside her front door, and they only had a little bit of time before it reached them.
"A friend of mine had his memories altered with the same spell during the war, by his parents in an effort to protect him. They went over a year before changing it back. At first, he seemed to remember, though there was a lot of confusion. Then he started forgetting. Eventually, he needed a trigger to recall any memories with them. Then he couldn't remember them at all."
"What-"
"And I mean at all. His mind was incapable of conjuring memories of them, or creating new ones. The trauma to their minds after forgetting, remembering, forgetting... He started developing problems in other areas of his memory, until eventually, he could hold no memories longer than a few days."
Hermione had to grip her chair to keep upright, as fears she had tried to shove into the depths of her and bury were floating into the air in a strained drawl.
"They tried to find a cure, but the only thing they could create was this potion. It only works when it's given directly before the counter-spell is performed. Only then." He looked down at the vials. "The only known side-effect is a severe headache. It's been tested before."
"You want me to give this to my parents?"
"Yes," he said, and it came out in a breathy hiss. "I need you to. You have to trust me, Hermione." If he could shove trust through her irises and into her chest, it would have been there whether she wanted it to be or not. "You have to give that to them. Before the spell. Right before. And they have to drink all of it. I don't care if you have to bind them to do it."
She reached out to run a finger over the vials, rolling them closer to her. He was so intensely serious that it was frightening her, and she didn't understand why he cared this much about it. Part of her was wondering things she hadn't allowed herself to wonder for awhile, and it was causing a tremble in her chest.
She hadn't found any reports of the counter-spell being performed after a year, but all bad results only occurred when the spell was done incorrectly. Maybe the parents got it wrong. Or maybe Draco was right, and her fears weren't unjustified, and it was worth being sure.
"What's in them? ...You're not going to tell me?"
"You don't want to know."
"Yes, I do."
His tongue pushed against the inside of his cheek as he watched her pick up the vials. "If you're found with them, it would be best that you didn't know."
Hermione's lips pinched. "Why is it illegal?"
"Because the ingredients were acquired illegally - the potion itself isn't deadly."
"How did you acquire them?"
He didn't answer, and the way he was staring at her told her that he had no intention to. Maybe it was best that she didn't know. For now.
She dropped the vials in the pocket of her coat, and then picked her wand up from the table. She tapped it against her thigh four times, and then looked to find him closer than he had been before.
"Thank you."
"You're going to give it to them?"
Her hands slid along his ribs, but he cupped her face before she reached him, and he never blinked. "Yes."
His shoulders sagged for a second, and she kissed him before he could speak.