A/E: Been working on this story and gave the first few chapters a bit of a makeover! I think this is going to be really fun. Oh yessss… get ready for some angst.
Bound
Chapter 5
000
Draco's hair fell forward around his forehead, softening the harsh lines of his aristocrat's face, making him seem younger and more vulnerable.
"I brought you this," he told her, and slowly opened his hand.
0
She stared down at the coiled lock of white blond hair in his palm. He had calluses on his fingers, she noted absently.
His hand had opened and her anger had left her with her breath. It was so shocking, so flattering, so beyond anything that she would have imagined him capable of. Hermione knew only a tenth of the history involved, but even that was enough.
"What is the meaning of this?" she tried to make her voice harsh, to keep her anger, but it was like trying to hold water in cupped hands.
He flushed, if possible, even more deeply. "I assume you're familiar with the history of the tradition," he said tightly.
She nodded.
He began to close his fingers, curling them inward once more. "I misjudged," he started, but her fingers reached out and touched his. The softest of brushes, a butterfly wing kiss, her fingertips grazing his, and he was as motionless as if she had cursed him.
"Wait," she said. He felt hope curl in his stomach, unexpected and unwanted, mixing with the guilt and shame, but unrelenting. He held his breath.
Her hand had paused above his, hovering, and he slowly opened his fingers once more. Fingers trembling, she picked up the small lock of hair with her thumb and forefinger, and then brought it into her own palm.
"As I understand it," she remarked, closing her hand around the hair – his hair, "I am obligated to, ah, inform you if I decide to," she hesitated again, looking down at her hand, and didn't finish the sentence.
He nodded. The small, almost nonexistent part of him noted with joy and triumph and hope that her fingers had closed around the lock of his hair, holding it within her fist.
She took a breath and tried again. "As I understand it, there are certain formalities to be observed, should I decide to return it, or," she paused, shuddered, swallowed, and his heart pounded in his chest, every beat seeming to churn ice into his arteries, "and should I decide, to do in fact the opposite of returning it?"
It wasn't a question but he nodded again and cleared his throat. "Yes, there are."
She gave him a long, considering look. "Why?"
It wasn't a question regarding the long-forgotten history of wizard courting, and he knew it. "I don't know," he told her honestly. "I just… couldn't stop myself."
He was not a talker; not much for words or giving speeches, but suddenly the agony of the past few days poured out of him and he found himself helpless against the flood.
"The way you looked at me when you handed me that glass. Like you thought I despised you, like you already knew what I would do, like you thought I would rather eat mud than drink from your same glass. I wanted – I want – to show you, to be able to, well, to speak to you without you constantly wondering if I'm making up insults in my mind for our entire conversation."
"And you thought that this would be the exact, perfect way to achieve that goal?" she asked dryly.
"It came to mind," he said stiffly.
Suddenly, she smiled very slightly, the first genuine smile he'd ever seen from her, to him. It was a treasure to be hoarded. It went a long way to melting something within his stomach that he hadn't realized was there. It was like sunshine peeking out from behind the clouds after a week of wind and rain.
"Well, I suppose it did at that," she said.
0000
She lay in her bed later that night and stared at the ceiling. She, Hermione. She lay there, fingers twining idly in her hair; those long curls that had been the target of so many hateful childhood bullies. That bushy mass she had despised for so long, that had been a part of her she had wished was smaller or somehow less. But just like her intellect, it continued to burst through whatever pitiful barriers she erected.
Hermione had spent so long trying to be small. As a muggle she had tried to be small and quiet, as if by going unnoticed she could somehow conceal the fact that she was fundamentally different from the other children. It hadn't worked, and so by the time she arrived at Hogwarts she had begun the long and challenging process of being herself, consequences be damned. Imagine her shock, then, when she eventually made friends after all. Despite being herself. In spite of being herself. A smile touched her lips. Because, she whispered, mouth forming the words as she stared at the white, white paint on her ceiling. Because she was being herself.
Because she was Hermione Granger, she thought, a warmth in her stomach that was still unfamiliar, even after all those years. She had friends, she had found friends, she had a place in the world, and she had a position of importance and relevance to her community. She was making a difference. She was Hermione God-Damned Granger, and Merlin could go to hell.
She basked in the lightness that memories of Hogwarts always brought, allowing her brain another moment of rambling recollections, before returning to the present cause of her reverie.
Granger, he'd called her, a droll Draco Malfoy indeed, stopping her in hallways with his vampiric outfits, drawling her name like he'd just drank a cup of tea and found the milk sour (but still finished it, because a true Englishman never wasted tea). He'd never really grown out of that pinched look he'd had in his youth, but his appearance was no longer shocking in its assertiveness. His paleness and pointedness did not accost the viewer; he merely was, just like everyone else. Oh, perhaps it did lend him some vague ethereal aristocracy from days past, but who really had time to notice such things. Hermione wondered if part of the reason she was no longer so affronted by his appearance was if he, too, had discovered that long-held secret: that if you owned yourself, even liked yourself, that others would too. She had come to believe, after a fashion, that the people who were the biggest blights upon this earth were those that despised themselves most of all. Could it be possible that Malfoy had left their ranks?
Had he known, she wondered, when he had given her that lock of hair – had he known what it would do to her? Because now, of course, she had to lie here, twined around her bedsheets, hair splayed out like spilt molasses, and agonize over what had just occurred.
He – Draco Malfoy, that is – he fancied her. There was no other way around it. Well, perhaps it was all part of some dire plot to utterly humiliate her, that was certainly possible, she supposed, but unlikely. Hermione knew somehow in the depths of her bones that even to humiliate her deeply and thoroughly, Malfoy would never sacrifice his own pride. He would cling to it like the last iceberg and would die of thirst rather than open himself to her. And he had opened himself to her, practically flayed himself bare. Frankly Hermione couldn't imagine him being more candid if he had charmed himself translucent, his chest clearing to reveal a heart beating beneath his ribs.
He must, she assumed, have a heart, despite what the data suggested.
"Oh Merlin," Hermione groaned, running a hand through her curls that got stuck about halfway down. She carefully extracted it, leaving the knot alone. "Merlin save me, but what am I supposed to do?"
Did he like her? How could she even question it, after what had just occurred? But these things always felt so tenuous, so uncertain. He hadn't truly said he fancied her, just that he'd wanted her to know that he was changing. He could have, could have, presumably, possibly, meant it as an overture of – what? Friendship? She nearly snorted aloud. But… could he?
But – he had kissed her. She reminded herself of that. He had kissed her – or, they had kissed. She wasn't sure. She hadn't been drunk but the night was a blur, even so. Surely, if he kissed her and then given her his token, surely the implications in that gesture were clear.
And, if he had intended them to be opaque? What could the man possibly want from her? Infuriating man! He had to know, of course, that after his big display she would be left to pick up the pieces of her shattered world view and put them back together. He had to know that now, the emotional labor of their heretofore connection would fall to her, Hermione. How very like a man, to perpetually place the onus of emotional labor on the woman.
So, maybe he fancied her, maybe he didn't. She closed her eyes, blocking out all the noise for a moment, all the questions and concerns, the bright white of the ceiling, the dim sullen glow of her bedside lamp. No, she supposed, she wasn't truly asking the right questions. After all, she could hardly control his emotions. It wasn't really about him, not anymore.
Did she fancy him? Malfoy, Draco Malfoy. The words filled her with an instinctive curdle of fear or revulsion, she wasn't sure which, and she let it roll through her, tightening her stomach into a hard, cold knot, before pushing the thought forward.
Not the boy, Draco Malfoy – no, certainly not him. But this new thing, this Draco Malfoy, this tight-lipped cabalistic enigma who claimed to be a man. What about him?
What indeed, she thought, did she think about him.
0
It was Luna she decided to speak to. Luna who frequently irritated her, but probably had some secret depth of wisdom regarding these things. They met for ice cream at Florean Fortescues shop and sat in the sunlight beneath the multicolored umbrellas while Luna steadily ate her bowl of maraschino cherries.
"Luna," Hermione said hesitantly, once her friend had finished describing the anti-Leprechaun properties of cherries, "I think Draco Malfoy tried to ask me out."
Luna showed no sign of interest, picking up another cherry by the stem and placing it delicately on her tongue.
Hermione tried again. "You know, well, not on a date specifically, but I think that was his intent."
"What makes you think that?" Luna wanted to know, and Hermione blinked.
"Well, he kissed me a while ago," she said. "And then, he, uh, he sort of hounded me down at the Ministry and he seemed rather out of sorts."
"I suppose," Luna spoke slowly, almost drawling, as she separated a cherry and its stem with a pop, "that there is more to the story."
It wasn't a question, and Hermione sighed. "He, well, he was cross with me for not properly saying hello to him in the hall after we, uh, kissed. And we had a bit of a row about it, and then he did something surprising."
Luna raised her eyebrows, beginning to look intrigued. She reached for another cherry, and Hermione continued, suppressing the primal horror that rose in her gut as she considered what the sugar on the cherries was doing to Luna's enamel.
"He gave me a lock of his hair," Hermione she said rather lamely. "I've been researching it, and it's an old wizarding gesture, quite ancient, really."
The blonde witch nodded calmly. "That does sound a bit like asking you out," she agreed. Her tone was airy and simultaneously a bit gravelly, but the words weren't her usual teasing.
"Do you think?"
"Everyone always calls you clever, you know," Luna replied in a seeming non-sequitur, her dreamy eyes only half open. Hermione was used to her conversational patterns by now, though, so she merely waited. "Sometimes, Hermione, you don't act very clever at all."
Hermione flushed in a mixture of embarrassment and anger. "I'm not stupid Luna, but I didn't want to presume that someone fancied me is all. I think that seems a bit rude, maybe even arrogant. I'm not Lavender Brown, strutting around with my head the size of a hot air balloon, assuming every bloke I pass fancies me."
"I think you can't decide whether or not you're pleased that he fancies you," Luna shot back, and Hermione's mouth slammed shut.
Luna's large blue eyes opened to their normal penetrating gaze, and a slight smile tugged at one corner of her mouth.
"Aye, there's the rub," she commented, the idle Shakespearean speech sliding fluently off her wizard's tongue. "It's not about whether Malfoy fancies you, Hermione, that's quite clear even to me. It's about whether or not you fancy him too."
"And I do not," Hermione interjected hotly, but Luna just smiled, and took another cherry. She started to hum something to herself under her breath that sounded like So long, my dentist, wherever you are set to the tune of an old Weird Sister's song.
"Luna," Hermione snapped. "I do not fancy Draco Malfoy. All I was saying, really, is that, well – Merlin, it sounds so idiotic," Luna still wasn't looking at her, so Hermione choked out the words, "well, it's sort of, erm, nice, to think that he might fancy, well – you know, me."
At that, Luna did smile, very widely, a smile that showed all her glossy, perfectly white teeth. "It is nice," she agreed. "Quite nice indeed. You should intend to let it go to your head."
000
What was he doing? What was she doing? The very angst of it all roiled in Draco's stomach and he found himself filled with a single world: intolerable. It was intolerable, is what is was. How did anyone ever survive this? This emotional upheaval, this up and down broom ride of emotion. It was utterly intolerable, and he would go mad if he had to bear it for another second.
He snarled at the placid expression of his companion, nearly kicking the small tea table out from beneath his feet. Limpid dark eyes flickered up to him from beneath absurdly long black lashes, and their owner did nothing to suppress the amusement that suffused the crinkles at the sides.
"Zabini," Draco growled, I'm about to strangle you on the spot. Get out of my flat," he barked, and the last words came out as more of a strangled scream.
Blaise Zabini, owner of those magnificent eyes and enviable lashes, recipient of many a sigh and even a few swoons in his day, stood up with considerable swagger and walked over to the couch Draco was lying on.
"My, my, my," he drawled laconically, perching on the Italian leather arm. "What's gotten your knickers all in a twist?"
Draco threw an arm over his face so that the elbow joint fitted over his nose, his forearm covering one eye, the bicep covering the other. He knew the pose was terribly melodramatic, but he simply couldn't help himself.
Blaise snickered. "Must be a witch, I suppose, if you're assuming a damsel in distress posture."
Draco peeked one eye out from under his forearm to shoot the darker man a glare. Blaise's eyes were pitiless with mirth, his high cheekbones quivering with the effort to keep his mouth in a straight line. Draco picked up a book and flung it directly at that heartbreakingly straight nose. Blaise hit it dead on with a banishing spell and it clocked Draco directly on the elbow.
"Damn you man, that's my funny bone," he cried, bolting upright, and Blaise dissolved into throes of giggles.
"Your what?" he choked out between chuckles.
Draco cleared his throat self-consciously. "It's a muggle phrase, you illiterate Philistine. It's where your ulnar nerve wraps around your lateral epicondyle but I wouldn't expect a troll like you to know that."
"You know, I do suspect my mother married a troll at some point," Blaise replied musingly, and bright teeth flashed against dark skin, briefly predatory.
"It would explain a lot," Draco snapped.
"Look man, if you're just going to growl all day, then why don't you try and see her, or do something, or go – well, anywhere really, I suppose."
Draco sighed, still sitting up. So he owled her, a quick note, and asked her for coffee, and she responded, accepting, for coffee after work the following week. He realized that seemed more like a drink, or a date, or something along those lines, than he would have expected.
Blaise remained at his flat for a while longer, and they traded insults and discussed the hopeless chances for England's Quidditch team to ever make a world cup. The sun was setting by the time Draco convinced himself to broach the subject, and even then he did it delicately.
"Do you ever wonder," he asked Blaise slowly, oh, so slowly, so cautiously, like a wounded, limping animal, "do you ever wonder if people can change?"
Blaise looked up from his firewhisky and tonic and blinked at him for one long, slow, fluttering moment. "No," he said, "I don't wonder."
Draco's heart stopped, filling his abdomen with a cold, dead dread, but then Blaise continued.
"I know that they can," he said. His lips twitched. "And I know why you're asking, Draco."
Draco felt his eyebrows flit toward one another in a hint of a frown, and he reached a finger up to stroke them back to smoothness. "Oh really?"
"Anyways," Blaise yawned, "it's hardly my opinion that really matters now, is it? Obviously, what you really want to know is hers."
"I don't think she's made up her mind yet," Draco replied – and there it was.
"Well," the other man shrugged, "perhaps she hasn't ever witnessed anyone change. It's not like that many people really do. I just don't think it's impossible."
"I think the fact that we're even having this conversation is evidence enough," Draco growled, suddenly disgusted with himself, with Blaise, with all of it.
Blaise tipped back his head and laughed, heartfelt and throaty. "Draco, Draco, Draco," he purred, "I forget what a joy you are."
"And you?" Draco arched a pale eyebrow at him. "Can you change?"
Blaise placed a hand over his heart. "I've always been the same, for those who cared to look."
"Zabini," Draco snorted, "you were mean as an adder in school."
"Exactly," Blaise rejoined. "My black little heart has always known itself."
"You were so mean that you and I weren't even friends."
Blaise smiled. "We weren't friends because you were so stupid, you couldn't even see who was worth spending time with."
Draco nodded his head, conceding the point on that one. They were silent for a few moments, and Draco realized again how little he knew about the years Blaise had spent at Hogwarts, and how separate their lives there had been. How had they grown so close since graduation? In more ways than one, their conversations were evidence of his own changing perspectives, of his own personal growth.
"So change is possible, if not probable, or even believable," Draco said finally, breaking the silence. There was another word that hovered on the tip of his tongue, a word that was dangerous, a word that burned with a strangely deep, agonizing flame.
"What about redemption," he asked hoarsely. "What do you think about that?"
And Blaise turned those large dark eyes on him, so huge they seemed to take up half his face, and Draco saw that they were full of pity.
0
The day of the coffee experiment hadn't yet arrived when he walked past her at the Ministry and summoned the majority of his courage to nod to her and whisper "Granger," as though he'd just recovered from a terrible head cold.
She ignored him. Completely.
As completely, a small voice whispered in the back of his head—that sibilant, cunning voice, the voice that had probably been left there by You-Know-Who, she ignored him as completely as he had ignored her, the last time.
He shrugged it off. That had been a mistake; they had resolved it. He had apologized for it, that damn apology, for all it was worth, he had apologized and damned his eternal soul in the face of everything that had once mattered to him (blood purity, ancient Wizarding castes, and the like), but it had been an apology and it had been real and then she had the gall to stick up her nose at him as if they'd never met before.
Had this been what she had felt, then, when he had passed her that other day? Was this some sort of sick – retribution? After all, what had he been hoping for, with all his utter foolishness?
Redemption? He almost laughed aloud in the Ministry, almost choked on his own saliva, almost vomited on the marble tiles. Redemption. As if that sort of thing were possible for a —for a — for a — his mind couldn't finish the sentence. It stuttered and sputtered and went out.
For someone like you.
As if redemption could even be possible, for someone like you.
0
The words were rolling off his tongue before he could clench his jaws shut to keep them inside.
"I'm so angry at you," he said, and they burned a track of hard, cold fire as they left his lips.
Hermione eyed him coolly, ever in control, seemingly never distressed or disturbed, her features smooth and at ease. Only her eyes gave her away, hard as agates, unflinching. He looked into those eyes and found that he was wanting.
"Are you really?" she replied, calm in contrast to his frustration.
"I'm unaccustomed to being so forthright," he snarled, "but yes, I am. I'm angry at you, Granger, for behaving like a child."
"And how, exactly, am I behaving like a child?" she asked him.
They were outside the coffee stand at the Ministry of Magic, after work on a Wednesday. He had no idea why she'd suggested the Ministry, why he'd agreed. They could have gone anywhere else and it would have been different but instead they were waiting in line at the same place where she likely got her coffee every morning, and then – Merlin knew where they would go after that.
"Fine," he snapped, watching the wizard in front of them in line and careful to keep his voice low even as it crackled with emotion, "if you want me to spell it out for you, I will. Why did you reply to my owl and then ignore me in the hallway?"
She raised her eyebrows and practically snorted at him. "Honestly," she said, derision in every syllable, "what did you expect? We're not exactly friends, Malfoy."
"Yet you'll meet me here, where anyone could see us."
Hermione shrugged. "It could be a business meeting."
"It's not."
She shrugged again, still unflustered. "It could be."
"It's a date," he told her, and at that she looked up.
"No," she replied quietly. "It's definitely not that."
"So what," he growled, at a loss. "So you'll speak to me in secret, but not openly? What's the point of all this subterfuge, Granger?"
"Malfoy," she said, and for just a moment, one heartrending flicker of time, her mouth dragged out the sound of his name, and something curled deep within his abdomen. "I don't know. I – your owl – well, I don't know. Maybe I shouldn't have responded at all, but I just, I just did," she said. "I just wanted to. But I am not your friend, and while you suddenly claim to have spent the last few years quietly reversing all your opinions and views, I haven't been privy to that little jubilee."
"So, what," he drawled, "you're saying I have to earn your respect?"
She quirked a corner of her mouth. "Yes, I think I may be saying just that."
"Sounds difficult," he said, borrowing from Zabini's laconic turn of a phrase.
"I'm sure you'll manage," she said dryly, as they stepped forward in the line. "But no more of these hissy fits and murderous glares in the meantime, are we clear?"
Draco sucked in a breath of outrage. "Hissy fits?" he squeaked out. "Hissy fits?"
Hermione regarded him with a very interesting expression and stepped forward to order and pay for her own coffee before he could recover and butt in.
After they had collected their drinks they moved slightly away from the coffee stand and he decided that there was nothing for it. With deliberate casualness, he knocked a shoulder lightly against hers and prayed to every wizarding deity for one pure second of easy charm.
"Since you can't be seen with me, where would you like to go drink these?" he asked, trying to pour every dripping, swaggering ounce of Blaise Zabini into the movement and subsequent question.
Hermione turned huge, rather startled eyes on him, and froze. "Um, let's, um, let's walk around the fountain," she stammered, and he felt something rather like satisfaction at finally succeeding in flustering her.
"So you say we're not friends," he mused, as they began to stroll, his long legs lazily eating up the ground. Her shoes clicked on the marble beside him.
"We're not friends," she confirmed.
"And yet, here we are. We've corresponded, you reply to my owls, we've… well, I hardly need to detail it all."
Was that a blush creeping up from beneath the hem of her blouse? He couldn't be certain. "I don't know how many friends you've had, Malfoy," she retorted, "but there's significantly more to the enterprise than those few things you've just listed."
"So, illuminate me, then."
She shook her head. "I imagine it would take rather more time and patience than I have at my disposal."
"Ah, I see," he said around a sip. "Let's put something on the books then, shall we? Another arrangement between – well, I've been told we're not friends, so – between," he raised a wicked eyebrow at her, his smirk climbing toward a smile, "between…?"
Hermione was staring at him in shock. "What's gotten into you lately, Malfoy?"
"Back to this, then," he sighed, and faced her. "All this philosophical musing gets rather tiresome, wouldn't you agree?" When she didn't respond, he continued snappishly, "I've told you Granger, I haven't got a bloody clue. What's your excuse?"
"But I—" she seemed taken aback, "but you — then we — and I, and this is not my problem Malfoy, and don't try and turn it on my like that."
He shrugged. "Worth a try, anyways. Like I said Granger, haven't a clue. Wish I could explain it in some grand speech, but," his lashes flickered briefly, "I think I've already made any and all of the grand gestures I possess."
She was silent for a moment, watching him. His steps faltered, and he shot her a gaze from the corner of his eye, finding her looking at him with intent curiosity.
"Seriously," she repeated. "What do you want from me?"
"What do you want from me?" he countered.
"You contacted me," she reminded him.
"So," he shot back, "what made you reply? No one forced your hand, Granger. You weren't locked in a tower with no one for company but evil old me. You replied to my invite. Why?"
"I told you already, I don't know."
They had stopped walking, in the middle of the vast chamber containing the fountain, and were standing a little apart from each other, staring at one another. She was so much more petite than him, and her dark hair was an inky blot against her face.
"You don't know why," he said, a little hoarsely. "Come on Granger, I thought Gryffindors were supposed to be brave."
Her eyes glittered, but she did take a breath in. "I replied to you," she said tightly, "because I want to know what exactly is going on here."
"That's all?" he asked.
"That's all."
He could see her pulse bobbing in her throat, and watched how her chest rose with every inspiration. Good, he thought, at least she was fucking losing her mind too, at least he wasn't the only one here feeling like his stomach was about to rip him to shreds from the inside. Good, he thought again, she's nervous, too.
What he said was, "wrong answer, Granger," and it was everything he could have asked for, all sultry tones and silken shades of smooth.
"You dare," she said, her voice quavering with what he guessed was anger, "you dare to accuse me of cowardice and then dishonesty? You, Draco Malfoy? Isn't that a bit rich, even for a Slytherin? Oh yes, Malfoy, I know about all your crimes against humanity, and don't you think for one instance that you have been forgiven."
The words echoed in the silence of his skull for a moment before he could process them. Forgiveness. What would it even mean, to be forgiven? He wasn't sure he knew. Redemption. That word that filled him with an unbearable longing, that word he ached for with a hollowness that ran so deep it was almost like anger.
He found that his face was heating, that her words had struck something inside him, something near that deep, hollow space, something that he hated and despised, something unexpected.
She was breathing heavily, hair in her face, cheeks flushed with anger, and he took a step forward and grabbed her hands in his and glared back down at her, as furious as she.
"I will dare to say as I please. You came here tonight because, though you'll never admit it, that kiss was mutual, and if you gainsay me I'll know you forever to be a liar and a coward on par with myself."
He flung the words at her, brutal, angry, bare, and found his own confusion reflected in her eyes.