eleven (i)
Sometimes it feels like everything of significance that happens in Hermione's life, all eleven years of it so far, happens to her at Malfoy Manor.
Draco is whining at her. What else is new?
"Come on, Hermione," he says. He's lying on his back on the floor of his bedroom, cushioned by thick carpet from the hard wood beneath, tossing a Snitch into the air and catching it again one-handed. "You're being boring. Why won't you do anything with me?"
She spares him a glance from where she's sitting on his bed. At ten years old, he's still rather smaller than many boys his age, but what he lacks in physicality he makes up for in presence: his eyes already are as cold as his father's, and he has perfected the icy sneer she's seen him turn on so many others, like that annoying Parkinson girl who tried to drag him away to play-act a wedding at his last birthday party.
It doesn't work on her, though. He's tried, of course, but one doesn't stay Draco Malfoy's best friend for four years without developing at least some immunity to him.
"I just don't feel like it," she says, indifferent to his exasperation. The truth is she started her first period a few days ago, and her body still feels odd - like it's not really hers anymore, with twinges in strange places. She isn't in the mood for the kinds of games Draco will want to play. He'll want to drag her outside, riding broomsticks or playing magical It or enlisting the long-suffering Dobby for a bout of Hide-and-Seek in the extensive Malfoy grounds. But all she wants to do on this fine May afternoon is sit inside and read. As usual.
He rolls to his feet and bounds over to her, lithe as a cat. Knowing from long experience what he wants, Hermione tries to use her greater height to hold the book out of his reach, but he's always been faster than her; he twitches it out of her hands and eyes the title with disfavour.
"Wuthering Heights? What in Merlin's name is that? I haven't heard of it."
"It's a Muggle book," Hermione says curtly. "Give it back, Draco."
"A Muggle book?" he repeats in disgust. "Why are you reading that rubbish?"
He's standing in front of her, but she drops her gaze so she doesn't have to look at him, at his raised eyebrows and face pulled into a glare. Lately, she has been reading more and more Muggle books, familiarising herself with the culture of those creatures who inhabit the same general space as her but might as well be on a different planet, for all the exposure she's had to them. Not that the Dagworth-Grangers have anything against Muggles, exactly. She's never heard her parents say anything like the kind of stuff she knows Draco parrots off his father, a tall, strikingly blond man who makes Hermione nervous even though he's been nothing but nice to her. It's just that she's never seen him smile at anyone but his wife or son.
Sometimes she argues with Draco when he talks about how Muggles are stupid and dirty, but sometimes she stays silent, her chest tightening. She isn't a Muggle, of course. But. She'll be twelve in September, and neither she nor her parents have once brought up the issue of what she will be doing then, when it would have been time for her to officially go to school for the first time in her life. Hermione never thought of herself as a coward, but she must be, because she hasn't dared to ask them what'll happen to her. Wizarding children are reared by their parents for the first eleven years of their life, until their owl arrives to announce their enrolment at Hogwarts; it's something Draco used to talk about a lot, how much he looks forward to being Sorted into Slytherin like his parents and his godfather Uncle Severus. Lately he hasn't brought it up, though. At least not around her. Now that she thinks about it, he hasn't brought up the topic of magic around her much lately, either.
She's almost accepted it by now. She's never been a good liar, least of all to herself. A child of wizarding ancestry who shows no signs of magical ability - that is, a child like her - is a -
There's sudden screeching sound. Both children look up, startled, and the bottom drops out of Hermione's stomach. Hovering outside Draco's bedroom window is a powerfully muscled barn owl, flapping its wings to stay aloft, staring them impatiently through great amber eyes. Clutched in its talons is a sand-coloured envelope sealed with bright green wax.
Draco seems to be frozen. He's staring at the owl, not moving.
"Go on!" Hermione hisses. When he does nothing but blink, she stands up herself and crosses across to open the window. It swoops in, drops the envelope on his pillow and swoops out again.
Hermione's insides are cramping and she thinks she might throw up. This is it: the last, greatest, truest confirmation of what she is. No owl for her. They're all sent out at the same time, so there will never be an owl for her. Part of her, deep inside, had hoped - secretly - that notwithstanding her failure to demonstrate any latent magic, she would still one day somehow get the letter, the same letter lying next to her now addressed to:
Draco Malfoy
Largest Bedroom
Second Floor
Malfoy Manor
Wiltshire
The last of her dreams flickers and fades. Her fingers tighten on the Muggle book.
"Well?" she says to Draco, voice a little too shrill. "Aren't you going to open it?"
He seems to shake himself. "Yes - yes, of course…"
She's surprised to see that he doesn't look as ecstatic as she thought he would. There's a frown creasing his forehead, and his movements are strangely slow, almost reluctant, as he reaches out to pick up the envelope and tear it open. He keeps darting glances at her and then looking away just as fast.
Finally he pulls out the actual letter. He scans it quickly, then says, "You - you haven't got a letter."
Pain explodes in her chest. "No," she says faintly. Even though he has been a good friend to her - he's funny, and plays with her, and he was mean to that horrible Parkinson girl when she made fun of Hermione's oversized front teeth - nobody has ever described Draco Malfoy as tactful. She's slightly horrified to find that tears are welling up in her eyes.
"Hermione!" he says urgently. "Don't cry - look, listen, how about… I do magic for you?"
She's so surprised that the incipient sob rising up her throat subsides. "What?"
"I'll do the magic for you," he says. He's talking faster now, voice low and intense. "We can fake you another letter - there must be a copying spell in one of the books in the library, I can use Mother's wand when she's not looking. We'll tell them you're coming to Hogwarts too, and then when we're in lessons I'll do the magic bits for you, so nobody will know - "
"It wouldn't work," she says, though she's touched by his passion. "Hogwarts is seven years, Draco, we'd never get away with it - what if we weren't even in the same house? We'll just have to accept it." She pauses and swallows, says the word she's never said before, not even in her own heard. "Draco, I'm a Squib."
"Don't you dare call yourself that ever again," he barks instantly. The grey of his eyes is alight with anger, pale and magnetic.
"But it's true," she says. "I can't go to Hogwarts with you. And… I can't be your best friend anymore."
"For somebody who reads so much, you are so stupid sometimes! We've known for years you might not have magic, I had plenty of time to stop being your best friend if I wanted to be, didn't I?" he snaps. "And you aren't allowed not to be mine, either. Theo and Pansy are even more annoying than you, and I don't think Vincent and Gregory can walk and talk at the same time, let alone read, so you'd better not think you can get away from me now."
"Oh, Draco!" Impulsively she throws her arms around him, hugging him, feeling how surprisingly warm he is against her. "I… well, I guess it would be kind of late for me to have to train a whole new best friend now. Especially one with a library as good as yours." She blinks the wetness away from her eyes.
He wriggles out of her grasp, but he's smiling at her - the smile she rarely sees, not a smirk or his usual amused curl of the mouth, but genuine happiness. It almost transforms the arrogant lines of his face into something softer.
"Well, let's go and tell your mother," Hermione says bossily. Later she'll cry properly, and sit down with her parents and discuss her future, which stretches away in front of her like a shadowed path with nothing good at the end of it. But for now she has to be happy for Draco's sake.
"Wait, one more thing," he says. "Promise me you'll come and see me off to school. At the train station, on the first of September."
She looks away from him, but can feel his gaze boring into the side of her head. "See you off?" she mutters. "Well - I don't know -"
"That's what best friends do," he says insistently. There's a warning in his tone. "We won't see each other again for ages, Hermione, I won't be back until Christmas. You have to come and say goodbye."
She hasn't fully processed that fact yet, that her only friend - someone she's seen at least once a week for the last six years - will no longer be a short Floo journey away. She really should go so she can see him off. But it'll be horrible being there, surrounded by all the happy children on their way to learn magic for the first time…
"Please?" he says lowly.
Sh could count on one hand the number of times she's heard him say please, in all the years they've known each other.
"Oh, fine," she capitulates with poor grace. "I'll come."
Triumph flares in his eyes, and she belatedly, dimly, recognises the manipulation. She scowls, but it's too late to take back her agreement.
She follows him downstairs as they go to inform his mother, dragging her feet until he's far ahead of her. The only saving grace is that her own mother isn't there - she dropped off Hermione to play with Draco and then left to run some errands. She hears Mrs Malfoy's voice rise in excitement, and then a low rumble that's Draco's father. Her stomach clenches. He must have come home at some point while they were upstairs.
Reluctantly, she enters the living room. It's a large, airy room wallpapered green, filled with elegantly spidery furniture and currently golden with sunlight. Mr Malfoy is standing before the empty fireplace, lips curled up in a faint smile directed at his son. He's not a powerfully built man, but he doesn't need to be in order to command every space he's in: with a black cloak wrapped around his tall frame even in the midsummer heat, and a long fall of white-blond hair that frames high cheekbones and arrestingly pale eyes, it would be impossible to overlook him.
"Excellent, Draco, excellent," he's saying when she comes in. "Well, what would you like to commemorate the occasion - a new broomstick? You can't be on your house Quidditch team until you're in second year, but naturally you'll want to practise. Or -"
Mrs Malfoy has Draco clutched to her and is talking at the same time. "We'll have to feed you up so much before then, I've never much liked the food at that place… oh, darling, you'll be gone for so long!"
"I'd love a new broomstick, Father. And Mother, it'll be fine," Draco says, rolling his eyes as he extricates himself from her with a long-suffering expression on his face. "You know I'll be back every holiday." He darts a look at Hermione when he says this, and his parents abruptly realise her entrance.
"Ah, Hermione," says Mr Malfoy. She greets him politely. He doesn't smile at her, but he does incline his head in a nod. Is it just her, or is the room getting kind of airless? Nobody is speaking, and she doesn't know where to look.
"Mrs Malfoy, I'd like to go home now," she says, at the same time as Draco abruptly bursts out with, "Mother, Father, Hermione's agreed to come and see me off when I go to Hogwarts!"
"Has she now," his father says. It isn't a question. He studies her.
Mrs Malfoy is looking between her and Draco, with an odd expression on her face that Hermione can't recognise. Shame is prickling at her cheeks. Of course, she's sure they suspected the truth about her a long time ago - maybe they've even discussed it with her parents, when she can't hear them. Though they've never said anything to her, she knows from Draco's careless repetition of their beliefs that they consider Muggles little better than field beasts due to their lack of magic. A lack she shares. She might not be a Muggle, but surely it's even worse to be a pureblood and not be able to perform a single spell.
She's not, ultimately, that surprised Draco still wants to be her friend: he has always been possessive of his things, and he's invested far too much time in her over the years not to see her as yet another of his things, albeit one with the power to argue with him and even occasionally exert her own will over him. (If she's honest with herself, she knows she can be possessive of her things, too. Like how she hates it when he speaks casually of playing with other children, a jarring reminder that though he's her only friend, she certainly isn't his).
His parents are a different story, though. She does like Mrs Malfoy, who enjoys fussing over her and buying her things like frilly girly robes she can't buy her own son. And it's not as though she has any reason to dislike Mr Malfoy. He's just… intimidating. Particularly so in moments like this, when she's forcing herself to hold his penetrating grey gaze without blinking.
"Ah - of course, Hermione," Mrs Malfoy says. With relief, Hermione seizes the opportunity to look away. Mrs Malfoy is lighting the fireplace with a tap of her wand and taking down the crystal bowl of Floo powder from its position on the mantelpiece.
"Goodbye," she mutters to Draco as she takes a handful of powder.
She steps in, saying her address aloud. In the instant before the the emerald flames whisk her away, she catches one last glimpse of the Malfoys, grouped together in the living room, Mr Malfoy crossing over to his wife. He's saying something she doesn't quite hear -
"- in your plans for them, Cissy - "
- but in the next moment, she's gone, spinning away, three heads burnished gold by the afternoon sunlight imprinted on her eyelids.
AN: Please do review if you're enjoying - it gives me so much motivation to write!
I'll try and upload the next chapter tomorrow; if not, it'll be next week as I'm visiting Singapore this weekend. As you can tell, this is a slow-burn story, but we will get there eventually.