Someone gave me this prompt and I RAN with it. I love the vibes.
Notes: this is written as a muggleAU, but with the Hogwarts background for everyone - so they all went to Hogwarts together for school, and grew up as friends.
House: Slytherin, Class: Charms, Category: Standard, Prompts: Draco Malfoy, Hogwarts Library, WC: 1194
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T'was a cold night in January, and the clocks were striking seven in the evening. Torrential rain slashed against the chilled windows of the Hogwarts Library and a group of people were sitting down to dinner. Hermione shifted on her seat and glanced to her left. Ron smiled grimly back at her. Tonight was the night they would tell everyone that they were splitting up. She looked back down at her plate with a sense of dread. It was too much to look at him right now; the wounds were not exactly fresh, but they were still wounds.
When you start dating in your teen years, everyone expects you to be together forever. But she and Ron had grown apart; they had goals that didn't align, and she had been getting the feeling that he wasn't as invested anymore as he used to be.
And yet, as servers spilled out from the doors behind them, he squeezed her hand under the table. She wasn't sure whether it was supposed to be reassuring or encouraging, but there was a certain comfort to it.
"I'm really glad we did this," Harry said from across the table. "The library is an unusual place to hold a dinner party though."
Angelina grinned. "Well, I thought it would be fun. Atmosphere and all that," she replied, gesturing to the rain-slashed windows and lamp-lit shelves. "I think they are refurbishing the great hall over the winter, and I saw an idea about this on the television.
"I saw that!" Hermione said, letting go of Ron's hand and speaking animatedly across the table. "The interior design show. I think it's wonderful to be surrounded by books."
"I was almost amazed McGonagall let me host here," Angelina continued. "But the library is closed to the students for one night only."
"Spooky," Ginny said, grinning.
"Dumbledore's Army, back together," Luna whispered delightedly. Hermione watched the other girl from across the table. She looked more skittish than usual, her hair frizzed in amongst the curls, her eyes purpled and tired.
Just then, the doors to the library clattered open and a figure stumbled in, caught in the dim lighting. Their face was turned yellow and gold in the candlelight. Hermione gasped, staring at them – she could almost recognise his shape, the lean lines and smart poise. A burst of lightning coursed through the air, illuminating them for a brief moment of time.
"Sorry to burst in like this," he drawled, and recognition dawned on her. Draco Malfoy.
Malfoy had been at school with the rest of them, but he had been a bully and a brute, using his high class and daddy's money to elevate his own status. Although most of them had spoken to each other in the last few years since school had ended, he had disappeared from their lives. Not that they were ever friends, anyway.
But now, standing in the library in a long jacket and soaked linen shirt, hair dripping from the inclement weather outside, Malfoy looked like the perfect balance between hero and drowned rat. He carried an odd air about him. Perhaps it was the fact that he used to be the school villain, but there was something sinister and powerful in his stance.
A chair scraped against the floor as Ron moved quickly to stand up.
"What the bloody hell are you doing here?"
Malfoy laughed sharply. "Sorry to interrupt this little party, but I got wind of a murderer in these parts and came to inform you that you may all very well be in danger."
Ron sneered. "You mean yourself?"
"I'm a detective, Weasley."
Malfoy walked further into the room, and his face lit up with the lamps in the room. For a moment, Hermione was convinced he'd light up a cigarette, or do something horrifically sensual, but he just smiled, as if taking it all in. "Nice to see you all, I suppose, even if I am here for uncertain reasons. It's been a while."
Angelina stood up. "Come and sit, please. There is room, and extra food."
"Of course," Malfoy said. It sounded almost as if he knew this would be the case. He moved to sit on the other side of Angelina, opposite Hermione. He glanced at her for a moment, then looked away again swiftly.
In the time between Malfoy sitting down, and more food spilling out through the front doors, he spoke heavily on any subject the curious crowd asked him – how he became an officer of the law, and moving up through detective at an almost alarming rate, and how he came to know about the murder that might happen.
"There was a note in my mailbox," he said in quiet tones, sipping at a whiskey he was served moments ago. "I do not know who from, as the writing was scrawled in every different font possible. But it was most certainly a warning."
A hush fell over the group, a sense of the ominous pervaded the room.
Luna broke the silence. "So, what's new with everyone?"
Harry cleared his throat. "Ginny and I are engaged."
"Hermione and I are splitting up."
Hermione whipped her head around to him and hissed, "Ron!"
She felt Draco watching her closely, clearly looking for signs of heartbreak, of reason to break character and to murder the man she loved – rather, the man she used to love.
She didn't dare look back at him. She knew what she was feeling now – when he had first walked into the room. She felt exposed. She felt as though, if she looked at him for too long, he would know absolutely everything about her.
A splinter of lightning, and whoosh. The lights went out.
Ron moved again, his chair squeaking. The loud crack of a gun fired off into the room.
No one breathed, waiting with bated breath. Was this the murder that Malfoy had talked of? From what she could feel, Hermione was still alive, and so was Ron, so there was a piece of relief in that. But who had taken the fall of the gunfire?
"Nobody moves," Malfoy muttered, his voice uncommonly gentle. With a coarse sound, Malfoy lights a match. He wanders over to the fire in the room, pours his whiskey over it, and throws the match into it, igniting the wood there. "Granger, help me put on the lamps."
She moved swiftly around the room as instructed. And then, at the last lamp, there was evidence of a crime.
It was not a gunshot wound. It was barely even noticeable that something had happened, except for the blood trickling out of Angelina Johnson's mouth. Her eyes stared back, as if both terrified and vigilant. It was clear that she was dead.
Hermione fell to the floor beside the body, the match tumbling from her fingertips.
"Oh god…"
Malfoy crept closer, watching her movements, watching the lamp light dance against the cold brick walls behind her. Watching her twitching hands. No, she was not the killer here. But someone else was. His head whipped around again at the sound of footsteps.
A door slammed shut, and the killer was gone.
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Thanks for reading! I think I would like to come back to this story later... But no promises!
