It had been two weeks, and Draco had not heard from Hermione Granger.
He was not entirely sure when hearing from her had begun to matter, nor was he sure when he had started calling her Hermione Granger inside his own head. It was Granger. It had always been Granger.
Hermione Granger.
He drank.
After three weeks, the familiar sadness crept back in, unmitigated. He had once had her voice in the back of his head—but it was fading now. Not forgotten, no; but he could no longer quite catch the particular lilt of it, the way she sharpened certain consonants, the insufferable certainty in her tone. It came out wrong when he tried. The result, he supposed, of going too long without seeing her.
He drank.
After four weeks, Draco Apparated to Diagon Alley and arrived directly outside Elixir. He pushed open the door, and the little bell above it chimed.
"—Why, Hermione, why?!"
"Because—"
"Give me one good reason!"
"He—"
"One!"
No one had heard him come in.
"Narcissa saved Harry!" Granger's voice rang out. "Saved us—saved me!"
"You'd be dead if their side had won, and you know it."
"Ronald—"
"Don't Ronald me. You are not helping him. The end."
"You don't get to make that decision! This is my business, and yes, I am going to help him. Him, and his mother."
"I don't know you anymore, 'Mione," Weasley said, quiet and hard.
Enough. "Hello," Draco announced. "You have a customer."
Granger clapped a hand over her mouth. Weasley simply stared, eyes narrow. "Malfoy," he said, and drew his wand.
Draco was well acquainted with that reflex. He kept his own wand in his pocket and raised both hands. "I'm here purely for business."
"Sure," Weasley muttered.
"Can we talk later?" Granger asked him, her eyes red-rimmed, as though she had already been crying before this.
The sight of it made Draco angry, and he was not entirely sure why.
Weasley's expression twisted briefly before he leaned in and pressed a kiss to Granger's temple. "Later," he said, holding her gaze.
"Later," she agreed.
He looked at Draco on his way out. "I will kill you," he said, quite pleasantly.
"You don't have what it takes, Weasley."
Weasley laughed—short, cold. "You would know, wouldn't you, Malfoy?" He didn't elaborate. He didn't need to. Draco looked away, and heard the bell chime as the door closed.
"Granger—" he started.
"Don't."
"Your boyfriend sucks."
"He does not," she said firmly.
"Then why have you been crying?"
"I haven't. I had a stubborn cat hair in my eye."
"Right," he murmured.
She rubbed at her eyes once more before looking at him properly. "Why are you here, Malfoy?"
He opened his mouth. Closed it. He had not thought to prepare a reason. "I hadn't heard from you in weeks. I wanted to know if you'd made any progress regarding my mother." It came out colder than he intended, and he didn't miss the flinch.
"I have, actually," she said quietly. "I've been testing a few approaches I didn't see in your research, and I've been consulting with some Muggle doctors about dementia treatment."
"I'd like to be kept informed on all aspects of my mother's care," he said. "Given what I'm paying you—"
"You haven't paid me anything," Granger said.
"A serious lapse in judgement on your part. I would have asked for it upfront. You're lucky I'm an honest man."
Granger snorted, then crossed her arms and studied him with that particular look—the one that suggested she was solving him. "Why are you really here?"
A fair question. He still wasn't sure of the answer. So instead: "Does he always shout at you like that?"
Her arms tightened across her chest, as though she were holding herself together. "He wasn't shouting—we were having a disagreement. Couples do that."
"Sounded like shouting to me."
She smirked at him—a different look altogether, almost fond—and uncrossed her arms, as if she had arrived at some conclusion. "You wanted to see me," she said quietly.
"Certainly not."
"You did." Her smile widened. "You had no real reason to come. You Apparated outside so as not to break my furniture. You think my boyfriend is dreadful."
He should have known Granger was far too clever for deflection. "He is," he said.
She laughed. "Draco Malfoy, if I didn't know any better, I'd say you have a little bit of a crush on me."
A crush. So that was what this was. "You must be joking, Granger. I'm here for my mother."
She gave him a knowing look. "Certainly."
"I didn't want to break any more of your furniture," he said lamely.
"I appreciate that."
A beat passed. "So he really does object to you helping me."
"Yes," she said.
"I take it that wasn't the first row over it."
"One of many," she confirmed.
"I'm sorry." He meant it—more than she knew. Not just for Weasley's rows, but for all of it. The slurs, the cruelty at school, the flinches he had caused then and was causing still. For the position he had put her in by walking through her door at all.
"Where did you go just then?" she asked softly.
He blinked. "What?"
"You apologised and then went somewhere else entirely. Your eyes went far away. Were you Occluding?"
"I can't Occlude anymore."
Interest sparked in her voice. "Really?"
"Really. And I very much wish I could," he said.
"Why not?"
"I don't know, Granger," he said, hearing the sharpness in his own voice. "It simply stopped working after the War."
"I'm sorry," she said, stepping back. "I didn't mean to pry—I just can't—"
"You can't help yourself," he finished. "I know."
A silence stretched between them. "Are you all right?" she asked, almost too quietly to hear.
"Fine."
"Are you? I've been reading about the Draught of Inanis." She paused. "It's no small thing, Malfoy."
"I know what it is."
She took a step toward him. "Between the cuts on your arm, and now this—I can't help but wonder."
"I'm fine," he repeated, harder.
"Let me see your arm."
"No."
"Malfoy—"
"No!"
She flinched at his tone. He turned to leave, but her hand shot out and caught his wrist, pulling him back with a firmness that surprised him. He let her. There was something about her—the certainty of her, the steadiness—that stopped him in a way little else did. His sleeve was rolled back before he had quite decided to allow it, and the Dark Mark lay exposed between them.
He wanted to pull away. But her fingertips were already moving across his skin—across the Mark itself—and the gentleness of it made him shiver.
"I haven't," he said quietly. "I've wanted to, but I haven't."
"Good." She did not stop moving her fingers across his arm. "I have one too, you know."
"It's not the same."
"It still hurts," she said.
"Do you ever want to cut yours off?"
"No."
"Then it's not the same," Draco said.
"Malfoy."
"What?"
"Don't try to cut it off again."
"Why?" His voice came out rougher than he intended.
"Because it is not all that you are, Draco."
He was not sure he had ever heard his given name from her lips before. It was a startling sound—too soft for the moment, too careful. "You mean for yourself. For me, this is it—"
"It's just a mark."
"It's a symbol of everything I did wrong."
"You don't seem to be that person anymore."
"You don't know me."
"I'm starting to." She met his eyes steadily. "And so far, you don't seem all that hateful."
"I'm getting there—it's next on the list."
"You like me."
"Not even slightly."
"You smiled just now when I said your name."
He pulled his arm back. "I did not."
"Yes, Draco, you did—there, you did it again."
"Is there a point to this conversation?"
She tilted her head. "I like knowing things. I like knowing when I'm right. I want to be right about you."
"You're not."
"I am."
"Things going well with Weasley, then?"
Her smirk dropped. She took several careful steps backward, her expression resetting into something prim and composed, as though the last ten minutes had not occurred. "Yes, fine. Why do you ask?"
She likes you too.
He pushed the thought away because it was entirely irrelevant. He smirked at her. "No reason."
"I need potions?" came a small, tentative voice to their left. A slightly built man hovered in the doorway, shifting his weight nervously from foot to foot.
Draco stepped back from Granger—though he suspected the man had witnessed the whole exchange. It had been quite some time—years, in fact—but he was reasonably certain that he and Hermione had just been flirting. Granger, he corrected himself.
"My apologies," she murmured to her customer, before turning back to Draco.
"I know my way out," he said with a nod.
"Malfoy, wait—"
"You have a customer, Granger. I'll speak to you later." He Disapparated before he could hear her reply, arriving in his bedroom with a faint crack. He reached for the half-empty bottle of Firewhisky on the nightstand and took a long pull.
Several things had happened that required processing. First, he had wanted to see Hermione. Granger. Second, he had gone to Hermione. Granger. Third, they had flirted—hadn't they? And fourth—she liked him too. Too? No. He didn't like her. He couldn't. He didn't.
Did he?
He took another swallow of Firewhisky. He thought about Granger—the weight of her curly hair down her back, the intensity of her dark eyes and the way they bored straight through him, as though she could see the parts of himself he'd spent years burying. The way she was so much smaller than him and yet never, not once, seemed remotely afraid. She had pulled his arm back and looked at the Mark without disgust or horror or pity—just those careful, curious fingers.
So maybe he liked her a little. She was beautiful, obviously. But it was more than that. Her brilliance—her hunger for knowledge—was unlike anything he had encountered. She had said it herself: she liked the puzzle, starting at the bottom and working upward. Was he just another puzzle to her?
He didn't want to be another puzzle to her.
The thought stilled him. He drank again. All right, so he liked her more than a little.
"Fuck," he whispered.
So Draco did what he did best. He drank.
——
"I honestly didn't think I'd hear from you again," Astoria said, turning a crystal tumbler of Firewhisky in her fingers.
They were in the solarium—Narcissa had not been alerted to Astoria's arrival—and all social formality had been set aside in favour of a simple spread of cheese and crackers and the contents of Astoria's silver flask, decanted into Malfoy crystal.
"I overreacted the last time," Draco offered.
"Yes," Astoria agreed, without judgment.
"I apologise."
She tipped her tumbler back with a smile. "No need, Draco. I get it. It's hard. Everything is hard."
"Yes," he agreed.
"So. What am I doing here?"
He swirled his drink. "I don't have many friends—"
"You don't have any friends," she corrected pleasantly.
"You are blunt," he murmured.
"I call it as I see it."
"I have no friends," he amended. "I thought perhaps I could use one."
Astoria's mouth curved. "You could. As could I, if I'm honest."
"You were right to leave when you did. It's hard here."
"We take ourselves wherever we go, Draco. You'd be no different in France. No different in Argentina." She tilted her head. "Who's the witch?"
He blinked. "What?"
"I know that look. I invented that look. Who is she?"
"I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about."
Astoria reached over and pressed the back of her hand lightly against his cheek. "Your eyes are glassy, you're flushed, and you keep licking your lips. You're thinking about someone." She tilted her head. "Also, you haven't looked at my chest once."
"Astoria—"
"Not my type anyway," she said comfortably, patting his jaw. "Wrong parts and all."
He laughed despite himself. "I have also been drinking."
"True. But I'd wager a fair number of Galleons on a girl."
"You're gay?" he asked.
She stiffened fractionally. "Is that a problem?"
"No. Just curious." He raised his tumbler. "You are not at all what I expected, Ms. Greengrass. Cheers."
"Cheers." She clinked her glass against his. "And what did you expect?"
"The Astoria," he began, with a precise echo of the way she had drawled her own name the last time they met, "who is the jewel of high society."
Astoria drained her tumbler and set it down with a firm thud. "I cannot stand that Astoria."
"Society really is the worst, isn't it?" he agreed, finishing his own.
"Yes!" She pulled out her flask to refill both glasses. "Now—who is she?"
Draco let out a long breath. "It doesn't matter."
"It clearly does. In the spirit of being genuine friends—who is she?"
"There is no she. I may or may not be developing feelings for someone. That's all."
"If you're clarifying the 'may or may not,' then you like her," Astoria said simply.
"It doesn't matter regardless—she has a boyfriend."
Astoria scoffed. "If she's not married, she's not off limits."
Draco grimaced. "She's not a prize to be won, Astoria. She's a person."
Astoria's grin sharpened. "You really do like her."
"I am sincerely regretting owling you."
"You needed someone to talk to. I can do that." She reached for a cracker. "Well? Out with it."
He sighed. "Hermione Granger," he said quietly.
Astoria nearly choked. "What?" She lurched forward, both hands on her knees. "The Hermione Granger?"
"One and the same. Look, I shouldn't have said—"
"Draco, that is extraordinary. Have you asked her out?"
"Of course I haven't. She has a boyfriend. And besides—"
"Don't you dare tell me you don't actually like her," she interrupted, loading a cracker with cheese and biting into it. "You wouldn't have mentioned her name otherwise."
Draco leaned back in his chair. "I'm dreadful company, Astoria."
Astoria chewed slowly, seeming to genuinely consider this. Then she swallowed. "That's horseshite. You were a right bastard at Hogwarts, yes—but it always seemed like a performance, if I'm honest. You're different now."
"How would you know?"
"I used to watch you, at school. Before I worked out that I liked girls, I was fairly certain we'd end up married."
Draco laughed. "Why on earth would you think that?"
Astoria raised an eyebrow. "Because we were betrothed."
He stopped laughing. "What?"
"We were betrothed. Since before I was born." She frowned. "Did you genuinely not know?"
"I had no idea."
"Yes, well. We were—until my father disowned me after he found me with Pansy."
"Parkinson?" He stared at her.
"I'm the reason she broke it off with you," Astoria said, with a perfectly composed smirk.
"You little—" He broke into a grin. "It really was her, not me."
"It really was."
A comfortable silence fell. Then a soft tapping at the solarium window—a white barn owl, clicking its talons politely against the glass. Draco rose unsteadily and crossed to let it in, removed the note it offered, gave it a treat from the dish on the sideboard, and sent it on its way.
"What's that?" Astoria asked.
"Nosy," he said. He unrolled the parchment and recognised the hasty, cramped handwriting immediately—so rushed that even the usual purple E wax seal had been foregone.
Malfoy—I need to see you immediately. My office.
"From the girl in question," he said.
"Oh?" Astoria's eyebrows rose. "What does it say?"
He read it aloud.
"Intriguing," she said, reaching for another cracker.
"I've got to go."
"Don't mind me." She waved him off. "I'll see myself out."
Draco rolled his eyes and Disapparated from the solarium directly into Hermione's office. She was at her desk, fingers pressed flat against its surface, shoulders rigid. "Malfoy, what the—" she started as he dropped into his usual chair.
"What?" he asked innocently.
"What is this potion you sent me?"
"You can name it yourself once you've created it," he replied.
"Not that one." She brought a heavy volume down onto the desk in front of him with a thud, already open to The Draught of Inanis. "This one."
"Am I in trouble?"
Granger's voice shook slightly with the effort of keeping her temper. "Did you bother to read past the first page before you sent it to me?"
"I read the Latin passage and sent it on. What's the matter, Granger?"
"People die while taking that potion, Malfoy," she said, her voice dropping low and controlled. "They kill other people while taking it."
"What?" He frowned and pulled the book toward him.
"Read it," she ordered.
The Draught of Inanis, long since having fallen out of favour due to its unpredictable, and often volatile, side-effects, is a potion that was widely used in the 16th and 17th centuries for mental disturbances in both men and women of upper-class, wealthy families. The history of the potion is not well documented, though it is theorised that it was created for Quintus Caecilius Metellus Numidicus following his exile from Rome. Very little evidence exists to support this theory. It is known, however, that this potion is intended to numb the user entirely, to the point where little or no emotion is felt. While effective, some users have reacted violently to the potion. In 1632, Ferrucio Palerma brutally murdered his wife and sons while under the influence, later claiming no awareness of the act. In 1739, Sacha Delafose died by suicide, seemingly accidentally, while under its influence…
Draco pushed the book away. She was watching him steadily, waiting. "What do you want me to say, Granger? The passage I read didn't include any of those accounts."
"What exactly are you asking me to brew, Malfoy?" she said quietly.
"You've read the entry. You know what it does. Don't ask questions you already have the answer to."
"Numbness," she said carefully.
"Complete and total," he confirmed.
"Ferrucio Palerma killed his whole family while taking it—"
"I read that part too."
"I can't help you with this," she said. "I can't."
"Understood," he said quickly. "I went back and forth about including it at all. So let's put it aside—forget I asked."
She studied him for a long moment. "The Depression Draught—you tried it on yourself as well?"
"Yes."
She nodded once and looked down at her hands. "I'll see if I can't develop something of my own. Something less volatile—something I can actually adjust and control. To give you some relief without the risk."
"Granger." He kept his voice even. "Forget it. Focus on my mother."
"But—"
"Please."
She was watching him, eyes moving slowly across his face. Her hands, still flat on the desk, gradually uncurled—her fingers reaching forward, almost imperceptibly. Then she seemed to catch herself, and drew them back. "That's exactly why I got my Mastery," she said after a moment. "To try new things, find new solutions. So that's what I'll do."
"Is that all?" he asked, rising.
She looked up at him, and her expression undid him slightly—open, certain, full of a kindness he had absolutely no idea what to do with. "Yes," she said softly.
"You make me uncomfortable." The words came out before he could stop them. He felt heat crawl up his neck.
Her hands curled back further. "I'm sorry," she whispered.
He knew exactly what she thought he meant. "Because you're kind to me," he clarified.
"Not because I'm a—" She stopped herself.
"Don't say it," he said immediately.
"You said it plenty of times."
"I know. I'm dreadful. You know that."
"I don't know that," she said, tilting her head. "Not anymore."
Draco swallowed. "Granger, I am genuinely awful. And you are—you are the opposite of that. I can't even say the word anymore. I don't want to say it. Because it's rubbish—it's all rubbish—I figured that out right around the time they burned this into my arm." He gestured to his left forearm, always covered, always hidden.
"You didn't choose that—" she started.
"Didn't I?" he cut in.
"You would have died," she said quietly.
"That's still a choice, Granger. I chose to live, and other people suffered for it. I could have chosen differently."
"Life or death—that's not a difficult choice."
"Isn't it? Because it doesn't feel like the easy one to me."
She held his gaze. "So you chose wrong," she said, with a small, deliberate shrug. "You should have chosen death."
He looked at her sharply.
"I just wanted you to follow your own logic," she said calmly. "Choose death: you die, your mother dies, your father dies. Choose life: yes, someone else suffers—not necessarily at your hand, but the chain holds. That's how it goes."
"Does their life matter less because they meant nothing to me?" he asked.
"Of course not. But that's not the point."
"Then what is?"
"You made the choice that protected the people you loved. That is a completely natural response, and it would be irrational to expect otherwise. You cannot hold yourself to the standard of sacrificing the people closest to you for strangers—not in the moment you were in."
"I find your logic deeply irritating," he said.
"No," she replied, smiling. "You like me."
He met her eyes, and for a moment he let himself admit it—just inwardly, just quietly. Yes. I do. Out loud, he scoffed. "Please, Granger."
Her smile did not waver. If anything, it sharpened—the same expression she had worn at school when answering a teacher's question with total certainty, the same look she got when she knew she was right. She had worked something out about him, and she knew that she knew it. "Draco," she said simply.
He shivered very slightly at the sound of it. "This conversation is pointless," he said. "Goodbye, Granger."
He Disapparated before she could say another word, arriving in his kitchen with a crack. He opened the cupboard and reached for the Firewhisky.
He needed it immediately.