Détraquée - Chapter 107 - Hystaracal

Chapter Text

“Is that an actual bassoon?”

“Oui. Unobtrusive enough for you?”

“This feels personal. Did you pay extra for it? Oh, there are so many pretty, floral, lacy, pink bonnets in your future, Malfoy!”

“I could’ve done worse.”

“Right. You could’ve asked for a rusty six-prong pitchfork. A vaulting pole. The bough of a mighty oak. A large-calibre cannon. This is nothing. So small. Positively teensy compared to –”

“My co*ck.”

“Pff! Your… head!!”

“Which hea–”

“No. No. I cannot, in all conscience, allow you to continue.”

L'île d'Émeraude was an apt, if rather unimaginative, name. Save for a rim of rocks and white sand, the whole island was mantled in brilliant green. Cliffs rose along the sides almost like facets and their green bled into the sky: Teal blurring into powder blue. Magic added a gem-like shimmer over everything.

Hermione and Draco followed a long, paved path cutting through flourishing lawns teeming beds of multicoloured flowers. Freesias, Peruvian lilies, carnations, daisies, sunflowers, gerberas, roses, chrysanthemums…
A massive garden indeed, however, as islands went, generally speaking, it actually was rather small. Miniscule, when compared to, say – (my co*ck) – Borneo or Madagascar.

At the end of the path, up a short flight of stairs and beyond a wide portico, the maison de maitre sat square and sturdy; a three-storey stone structure with tall windows and a gently pitched roof. Bougainvillaea vines covered one entire side and the other was dark under the shade of an ash tree.

It was no Malfoy Manor, that was for sure. There was a complete lack of towers and turrets, and she could tell that inside, there would be no giant halls or wings. She supposed it was humble, in that regard.

What? — No. — It was a huge house on a blooming private island.

He was ruining her. She was one step away from giving herself a meaningless title and turning her nose up at ‘the proles’.

Sunlight fell on delicate bougainvillaea petals and made them glow like tiny paper lanterns. Hermione lost her previous thought. The leaves of the ash tree rustled welcomingly. Draco’s boots clipped smartly on the tiled portico…

Polished ebony doors opened slowly. Two elves beamed from the threshold, swaddled in patterned jacquard. They were, as Draco had rightfully described, bloody ancient. They looked like a pair of partially melted candles.

“Monsieur!” they croaked as one.

“Monsieur Malfoy! Bonjour!”

“Salut, Monsieur! Ça me fait plaisir de te voir!”

Words hopped between them, creaking like an old see-saw.

“Yes, all right, hullo,” Draco cut in sharply. “Navet. Quin. This is Hermione Granger.”

“Oo! Oui! Yes, please forgive!” Navet croaked. He was the smaller of the two, with hazel eyes and droopy ears. “Mademoiselle Granger. Welcome to L'île d'Émeraude!”

“Welcome, welcome!” Quin echoed. He had on heavy gold-frame spectacles.

“Hello,” Hermione responded, a bit too squeaky to sound as composed as she wanted. “So lovely to meet you.”

They moved back with a flourish, allowing her and Draco to step into the entrance hall.

As with most magical buildings, it was larger on the inside than expected. Patterned parquet below and tiered chandelier high above. The walls were covered in subtle arabesques that emitted a pearly glow. A cupboard swung open and offered to take their coats. At the far end were two sets of doors and a large marble staircase, and it was to the latter that Quin led them.

As Hermione climbed, she stayed three steps behind Quin and one step in front of Draco. Either the railing was icy cold or her palm was burning hot. Strangers trapped in paintings watched her go by.

They went past the first floor. On the second, Draco broke off and ventured into the corridor. Quin continued to climb. Hermione dithered on the landing.

“C'est par là, Monsieur!”

Draco stopped abruptly and turned around with a frown.

“C’est – genre – Ze master bedroom, Monsieur. Zis way.”

He remained frozen for a moment. Then huffed, “Eh bien,” under his breath and came back.

The master bedroom was the corner room on the third floor and its windows showcased the tangled branches of the ash tree. Shadow leaves littered the floor. They matched the carved wooden leaves on an elaborate bed frame. Its gently sweeping cabriole legs rested on an Aubusson rug.

Two large wardrobes along a wall. A writing desk and tufted chair in front of a black marble fireplace. A small nook with a table and two chairs in one corner, separated from the room by a painted wooden screen.

Hermione went and stood by the windows, overcome with bizarre dizziness. This, she surmised, was the problem with instant travel. There was no feeling of journeying. It was far too abrupt. She needed hours of moving through clouds, and to see where she was landing from high up above to properly absorb the notion of travel. She needed some perspective.
…Time.

Draco plopped down on the bed and, surprisingly, he looked as disoriented as her. Openly disoriented, which was the most surprising part.

She didn’t know what to say to him, other than, “This is a beautiful house. Gardens are beautiful, too. The whole island is, um, beautiful.”

He smoothed his hand over the quilted bedspread and sighed.

“Father didn’t think so. He preferred the chateau in Brittany, which he reckoned was more befitting a Malfoy. This… is too simple.”

“This is simple?!” Hermione sputtered with perhaps a bit too much force. “Really?? This is simple?!”

More surprising still: He didn’t remark on her theatrics at all.

“You’ve met my father,” he said with a rueful twitch of his lips. “Can’t have missed the cane, the rings and chains, the frou-frou robes, the f*cking silk ribbon in his hair. A veritable coxcomb, wasn’t he? This is flat out common to him.”

He was rubbing his hand on the quilt now, almost agitatedly. And as she watched, rubbing gave way to finger tapping. Tap tap tap taptaptaptaptap

“Every time he had a new set of robes made, he ordered an identical set in my size. Same fabric, same design. He handed me a sigil pendant just before I left for Hogwarts, exactly like the one he wore. Carved by a renowned Spanish silversmith, emeralds from Columbia, and Sanctimonia Vincet Semper – a perfect rendering of Armand Malfoy’s oh so graceful penmanship.”

Disorientation melded with a sick feeling in her stomach. She leaned back against the sun-warmed glass. It felt cool to her. She forced some calm into her voice and asked, “When did you stop wearing it?”

– taptaptaptaptap – He scoffed. “I could hardly prance around school wearing jewellery. Not with those brutes Warrington and Bletchley around. I needed them to take me seriously, so it stayed in my pocket. Now, it’s sitting in a box in a corner of my wardrobe.”

The taptaptaptaptap was amping up. He was working towards something.

“Last time they – my parents – came here was immediately after Grandmother died, to… sort things out. I was thirteen, and in a foul mood. Father refused to speak to anyone. Mother was also in a foul mood because nothing ruins one’s summer like one’s blood traitor cousin escaping execution. And she didn’t particularly like Grandmother anyway –”

“Why not?” Hermione blurted, before biting her lip.

“She doesn’t like most people,” Draco shrugged. – taptaptaptaptap – “We were packing away Grandmother’s stuff and there was a box of letters that I didn’t know where to put. Mother said, leave them by the escritoire. And I said, nobody’s listening in, Mother. Just say desk, for Merlin’s sake. She was snippy the rest of the week and refused to return.”

He fell quiet, and in those long moments of silence, his tapping eased and gradually slowed to a stop.
Hermione’s discomfort tightened. There was a pressure building up around her, almost like the house had marked her as a foreign, invasive organism and was trying to push her out.

“There’s a difference between any old desk and an escrit–” She cut herself off at his haunted look.

“Please never say that again.”

He sighed, longer and slower than before, and stood up. He walked towards her with fluidity – but also deliberateness – coming to a stop beside her and peering out the window. Shadow leaves trembled over his profile.

“I hacked up Father’s desk at the Manor, with his treasured enchanted Falcata,” he confessed in a tone as fluid and deliberate as his movements.

There was definitely something curious in the air. It was doing strange things to them both.

“When?” she murmured.

“Sixth year, during Christmas. I shattered all the crystal sh*t, destroyed his furniture… wrecked his study, essentially.”

“He must’ve been furious, if that’s what he got back to after Azkaban.”

Draco smiled thinly at the ash tree. “Mother and Falo set everything right almost at once. Anyway, I doubt he would have noticed when there was a snake coiled around the bannister just outside.”

He turned then, and leant one shoulder against the glass as he looked at her. He kept his expression so carefully bland that she couldn’t help but touch him – a brief brush of her fingertips over his wrist.

He pushed away from the window. “Would you like to see the windmills?”

The door at the far end of the third floor opened to a staircase, narrow and wooden, and it led to the loft. They ascended from a watered down Louis XV aesthetic into a kind of mediaeval fortress made of exposed stone and old lumber. Even the scant furniture looked aged and worn. The beams of the roof curved out from the central ridge, making her feel like she was standing inside a giant rib cage.

“Nobody bothered coming here,” Draco explained, “So it became our hideout – Theo and mine. Mostly to get away from Crabbe and Goyle. They didn’t figure out what to do with closed doors till around fourth year. Push and pull were hard concepts to grasp. With fingers like theirs, door knobs were even harder to grasp.”

An antique brass telescope stood before one of the five windows in the room. Draco waved his wand over and around it, and it creaked as it twitched from side to side, as its various levers adjusted themselves. He peered through the eyepiece, let out an approving hum, and then lowered it slightly to suit her height.

The windmills in Guernsey weren’t. As in, they weren’t anything – certainly not windmills. There wasn’t a leisurely rolling fan in sight. Just some old structures. Stumps. Ruins that reminded her of Pergamon.
She felt the scorch of betrayal. She lifted her head and aimed all her displeasure at Draco, and he met her with shameless glee.

“Not funny,” she muttered resentfully.

“Have another look.”

“Bugger off.”

He snigg*red and swaggered around to stand behind her, turning her back towards the telescope. “Look again, Hermione.”

She looked. Unwillingly. Miserably.

“Restituo,” he whispered.

A ripple and a slight shimmer spread over the lens. When the landscape came back into view, it had changed completely. The terrain was different, the trees were different, the buildings were different, and all the broken ruins were windmills. What had been some kind of memorial monument was now a windmill. A tall building was now a windmill. A crumbly, vine-covered tower had grown sails and was now a windmill.

“How?”

“This is a very old, very magical telescope. It can show you how the world looked the year it was made.”

A matching ripple and a shimmer spread deep in her chest. There was an internal change of view – as startling as it was unnoticeable.

Did he realise what he had shown her, what he had reminded her? It might’ve felt like an epiphany, had it not been such a laughably simple notion —— When you have magic, even a corpse of hope can dance.

He moved away and she stayed till the slowly rotating fans had calmed her pulse and passion.

When she looked up again, she found that he had restored blandness over his features, and he was looking, fixedly, at a thick black leather bound book sitting on a side table with a dented leg.

“What’s that?”

“A photograph album,” he replied gruffly, and blinked like he just remembered its necessity.

“Does it have photos of you?” she asked eagerly.

He turned to her with confusion. “Yeah?”

She grinned and took a side step towards it.

“You – You want to see photographs of me as a child?”

The break in his delivery stung. What he really seemed to be asking was, don’t you want to pretend that I was never him?

“I want to,” she told him, “Rather desperately.”

They settled on a tattered Chesterfield, with the album lying across both their laps.

It was dedicated entirely to Draco. The first picture was from the day he was born, a howling pink little thing in his mother’s arms, and his father’s fingers, quivering with reverence, rested on his perfectly round cheek. As the next ten pictures went on to prove, he had been a beautiful, perfect baby, like a cherub fleshed out by Rubens. He laughed, he cried, he crawled, and observed the world with large and clear grey eyes. He was always in someone’s lap. His grandfather Abraxas was an older version of Lucius. His grandmother was a surprise – she had hazel eyes and reddish-coppery hair.
Years went by. Draco grew. There was a picture of him on a tiny broom, floating a foot off the ground. Lucius jogged after him, beamingly. There was a picture of Narcissa hiding a laugh behind her hand as Draco threw his toys at an elf. There was a picture of Lucius and Draco wearing matching cravats: Draco was clearly not happy about it, pulling at the cloth, while Lucius grinned with all his teeth.

“This was taken on Father’s birthday, before the party. I was… sulking, so he took me to the nearest muggle town and imperiused a group of construction workers. He had them fall, hit their heads, thump each other. Cheered me right up.”

He slammed the album shut, and before she could glance his way, he had shot up and put his back to her. She sat tight, letting him collect himself, letting the heightened rise and fall of his shoulders mellow.

She stood and smiled when he turned, though he didn’t smile back.

A stinging breeze blew in from the open window, making her shiver somewhat violently. Draco took a sharp turn to the right and paced towards a chipped wardrobe. He disappeared behind its open doors and Hermione wondered if he was just trying to hide from her again — but he came out holding a woollen scarf with beaded tassels. It looked expensive and vintage, and felt indescribably soft and toasty warm as she wrapped it around her shoulders.

“Thanks.”

He led her back downstairs,

and across the entire house.

He took her into every room. He paused in front of cracked and darkened oil paintings, telling her what they were and whom they featured – but it was his pentimenti that was showing through, more and more with each passing minute.

On the third floor, he showed her his parents’ rooms and two guest rooms. His room was on the second floor, featuring multiple cupboards brimming with toys and flying paraphernalia and shelves full of children’s books. Right next door was a room that was almost an adjunct to his – much smaller, with a narrower bed, old toys and a slim wardrobe. It was Theo’s room.

Abraxas’ study was a museum. The furniture would be considered art pieces, heirlooms sat behind glass cases. All the books were about Malfoy history and accomplishments.

Next, was a wood-panelled music room. There was a whole assortment of instruments arranged in a decorative scatter, but Draco, of course, went straight to the shiny black upright piano.

“I composed my first piece on this,” he muttered, barely aloud with his eyes downcast.

Hermione smiled. “Untitled number one?”

“No. An Ode to my Dear Grandmother.” He lowered himself on the stool and lifted the lid. “It was stupid. Simple. Childish, obviously. Syrupy and sentimental. Hermione Granger levels of earnestness –”

“Just play it!” she rushed out. “Er, please.”

He played it and it was everything he’d said it was. In fact, it sounded like he had borrowed heavily from Valse Sentimentale. And it was the sweetest thing Hermione had ever heard. Barely two minutes long, it ended abruptly, but without the artful musical serif he usually finished with.

He spun on the stool, Hermione stepped in between his legs, and, because she couldn’t help herself, she ran her knuckles down his jaw.

“Absolutely precious. Did she call you Little Oppin-tot and thank you by letting you eat an entire chocolate cake?”

He narrowed his eyes with no hostility, and flicked his tongue over her fingers. She wrinkled her nose and wiped them on his shirt.

They had lunch in the dining room on the first floor (galettes topped with courgette and tomato, paired with glasses of light Chianti) sitting in one corner of a table meant for eighteen.

Draco told her stories about elaborate dinner parties: An unsavoury crowd sharing savoury food. He told her about the memorable evening when Goyle Snr guffawed as he boasted about trampling over a muggle while he was out horse riding.

He took her back to the entrance hall and through the doors beside the staircase. He showed her the parlour, done up in light wood and pastel hues. He showed her the teal and cream drawing room, where the fireplace was big enough for six people and porcelain vases contained only white flowers. Here, he used to sit on Abraxas’ knee and listen to thrilling tales of Malfoy valour and muggle hunting.
He showed her the conservatory that teemed with exotic plants and offered a breathtaking view of the back gardens. At a doily-covered table, he used to have breakfast with his mother while she gossipped merrily about their tight, incestious little circle.

They ventured into the back gardens;

gardens that would’ve fit right in with the Botanic Gardens in Brisbane.

Flowers galore, arranged in concentric diamond-shaped beds. Japanese yews popped out from between box hedges. There were red-dotted rowan trees, purple-dotted blackthorns, wild cherry trees that were just beginning to turn white with their corymb flowers.

They walked by a small thatched cottage and Hermione asked, “What’s that?”

“A small cottage,” Draco supplied helpfully.

While weaving between a row of towering silver birches, Hermione halted when she noticed some letters carved on the trunk of the tallest, spindliest, droopiest one.

TREE–ODORE it said. She laughed.

“He didn’t come up with that,” Draco put forth at once.

“I know,” she said, still chuckling, “This is the acme of your humour. This is also the point at which it sadly plateaued…”

“I make you laugh, don’t I?” he rejoined with a tinge of outrage. “Anyway you have no business making comments about other people’s humour.”

“I laugh out of pity.”

“Stuff it. You always laugh.”

“It’s always pity.”

In the very next moment, he had her pressed against Tree-odore, his fingers wriggling under her arms as he tickled her – relentlessly tickled her – asking, “Is this pity too, Granger? Huh? Is it? Are you pity-laughing? Tell me, are you?”

She somehow escaped, puffing and blowing, ready to bolt back into the house —

He caught her arm and led her in the opposite direction,

to a charming gazebo draped in wisteria, enwreathed with peonies.

“I caught Wilford Parkinson and Donatienne Zabini having it off in there, once.”

“Good heavens!” Hermione choked, “No privacy spells?”

He grinned rakishly. “You know how it is, kitten. Sometimes, once you get going, it’s impossible to stop.”

She flushed hot and turned away but also stepped closer. Her stomach had all sorts of feelings about that.

“Must’ve been traumatising,” she mumbled, “seeing them like that at such a tender age.”

“I ran to Grandmother and told her it sounded like her dog was getting sick in the gazebo. Everyone loved that dog. They all went to check on him. Quite the scandal, you can imagine. Mrs Parkinson fainted on the spot. Father felt compelled to put on a heroic act because Mother glared at him. He sent a scorching hex straight to Parkinson’s bare arse. The ever-dignified Donatienne bawled and cried.”

“What a mess,” Hermione breathed.

She felt dazed. Draco had to put his hand on her back and force her to move.

“You were such a slimy, unrepentant trouble-maker. What happened next?”

“The Parkinsons stayed together, obviously. Leaving him would have been so much worse for her, and could’ve potentially jeopardised Pansy’s future. Madam Zabini, on the other hand, was shamed. Had to find a rich Spanish baron to marry, to regain her standing. I think that might’ve been the time Blaise began actively disliking me.”

“Bleh. A hideously predictable double standard. Poor woman.”

She was still dazed. But also annoyed. She could hear the rush of water. Were they nearing the beach?

Draco clicked his tongue. “Don't feel bad for her. The Baron died two years later. She married a Scottish Warlock next, who also died soon after. And she’s a raging blood purist. Worst of the lot.”

Hermione eyed him doubtfully. “Worst of that lot? Really?”

“That’s the impression I got. I don’t remember much of what she actually said, honestly. It was hard to pay attention with those quaffle-sized tit* of hers staring me down.”

She smacked his arm in admonishment. Draco looked at her with inflated boredom.

“Oh pardon me,” he droned flatly, “I meant they were too big. Unseemly. Unsightly; like all tit* but yours. Granger-tit* are the best tit*. Granger-tit* are the only tit* –”

“That’s not what I meant!”

He went on, “I was a young boy, you know. She was the inappropriate one. After a while, even Mother noticed and told her to stay away from me. I believe an or else was uttered.”

“What?” Hermione dug her heels into the ground. “You mean… She was actually… God, were you… I mean…”

“No, no. Nothing that drastic.” He put his hand on her back again and pushed. “You know my mother’s protective impulses are a touch misguided.”

He moved at a pace faster than Hermione’s standard. She gripped his elbow and held on tight because she was too muddled to know what to say. She watched their feet — the ground was becoming rocky and uneven, grass was getting scanty…

Before long, they were standing on the shore. There was a clear Line of Magic in the Channel and the sky and it was so much drearier outside. Air looked denser, waves rippled quicker – the opaque, plastic underside of a fake gemstone.

Hermione slid her hand down Draco’s arm, reaching for his hand. He pulled away and stepped closer to the water. He was sombre once again, pensive and slightly stern. She knew that when he said what he was about to say, it was going to come out all soft and delicate again.

He gazed at the horizon and began, “These enchantments are extremely powerful. We pay the French Ministry handsomely for their maintenance and monthly reinforcement. Not once have they failed… but one day, one summer when I was five, the muggle repelling charm seemed to have weakened. A little sailboat travelled dangerously close to the shield. There was a family on it, having a day out, a picnic, a lark, whatever. My father said, let's teach them a lesson, son, and churned up some vicious turbulence. Look at the pathetic muggles, he said, can't even manage a simple stabilising charm. He kept going till the boat capsized. There was… a child. A toddler. The parents were beside themselves, screaming with terror. …Father laughed, so I laughed too.”

“What happened to them?” she whispered quiveringly.

“I don’t know. Father picked me up and carried me off. It was tea time and he’d ordered madeleines and pumpkin jam from Paris. They were my favourite.”

After that, only the wind spoke and the water moved.

Until an oystercatcher landed on a nearby rock, shaking its wet wings.

Draco started back towards the house,

and paused till she was by his side. Together, they retraced their steps.

He deposited her in an unremarkable library and disappeared. She understood, letting him have his space while forcing herself to read about charms for perfect reupholstering.

A couple of hours later, he returned in different clothes, smelling wonderful, and offered her the bathroom next.

She submerged her head in a copper bathtub and held her breath till her chest ached.

Pale pink quatrefoil tiles were warm beneath her bare feet as she dried herself off, and she thought about how she, as a child, had been administered love encapsulated in anger whenever she was horrid. All his life, Draco had been gently hand fed hate wrapped in sugar-dusted pastry and a dollop of sweet pumpkin jam.

He shared more such instances over dinner and a richer, bolder bottle of wine, at the same corner of the dining table. He turned redder and redder while recounting the Malfoy oral lore he had been made to internalise…

…while Hermione felt increasingly, unsettlingly… odd… about not being at home. She probably wouldn’t have felt it so profoundly, had she been anywhere but here.

She plaited her hair just for some sense of familiarity.

Eleven at night, chary and light-footed, she approached the enormous bed where Draco was already tucked in. It was completely dark outside and only a crescent moon was visible, cut in half by an errant ash branch. Embers sizzled in the fireplace turning everything golden and making him look soft, warm and inviting.

She settled on the left side of the bed —

Draco summarily pulled her against him, her back to his front, and threw the quilt over her. She wheezed at the sensation of losing her balance, tried to fidget to loosen his extremely tight hold on her… but then a very subtle tremble passed over his chest.

And another.

There was a slight deviation in this breathing. Something tiny and wet landed right above the collar of her t-shirt.

Those were the only indicators that he was crying. He was so silent and so strangely still, just like that night on her raft-bed. Was that something he had forced himself to learn? Maybe after Harry caught him in the bathroom and almost killed him, or after all the times Lucius told him the walls have ears.

He didn’t let her turn around. Tears began falling more frequently against her nape and she could only rub his arms, squeezing the bunched muscles occasionally, to offer some semblance of comfort.

He held on till his face was pressed against her shoulder, till the embers had burnt out.
Finally, he drew in a full breath. She wondered if he felt like his lung were stretching open like the wings of a swan.

He loosened his hold. He let her see his puffy eyes and blotchy complexion, let her wipe his cheeks with her thumbs, let her push back his hair and kiss him and wind her arms around him. He fell asleep very quickly after that.

She awoke just as dawn was waking, to find him already awake. He was drenched in drowsy purple hues, but when he spoke his voice was clear and free from heaviness.

“It's a beautiful, peaceful sunrise. Please don’t ruin it by speaking.”

She let out a sleepy, embarrassingly puppy-dog-like whimper, and tried to scramble backwards. He, laughing, didn’t let her.

Her head lay on his chest. His hand stole under her shirt, to slide up and down her spine and along the curve of her waist.

They watched the sun rise.

The magical platform at Gare du Nord was flanked by train tracks. One was marked “l'Académie de Magie Beauxbâtons” and on the other side, a dozen or so people were waiting to be taken in the vague direction of “ Toulouse, etc” . The smoky station air, green support pillars, sloping roof and semi-circular windows made Hermione feel wistful in a way that only tourists feel.

Beyond its wide doors lay wizarding Paris.

Unfortunately, their egress was hampered by a station guard. He had an unnaturally large feather on his hat and an unnecessarily disdainful way of speaking, and apparently, he refused to believe that Draco’s floo connection to the station was officially authorised.
Hermione awkwardly toyed with the zip on her jacket while they argued heatedly in French. She followed well enough to understand that papers were being demanded – papers that Draco did not have. More guards clomped over. It became a scene. Ultimately, a functionary from the Ministry had to be floo’d over to clear things up.

As a result of all that, Hermione’s initial experience of the city of love was rather dampened by a furious, endlessly fulminating l’amant.

She tuned him out and focused on the architectural medley of old mediaeval buildings and newer, Haussmann-influenced ones. Draco’s rage had begun to fade once they’d left behind two streets of houses, and he was in prime form to show her around by the time they’d ventured into the shopping area.
It tickled old memories, from back before Grandpa Bruce died, of a day spent roaming through Rue des Martyrs. There were standard shops selling standard magical ware, but also quintessentially french boutiques, carts loaded with fruit and flowers, boulangeries and kiosks and bistros. They sampled wine and Draco bought a little of everything from a fromagerie. There were two acclaimed patisseries in the area, and they had macaroons in one and baba au rhum in the other.

They were walking from a confiserie to a restaurant for lunch, when someone shouted Draco’s name.

A woman who looked like Aunt Muriel was hobbling down the path, feathery robes fanned out behind her like a peaco*ck’s plume. Two men – young and old – followed.

“Ooh, combien il a grandi!” she cried, “J’hallucine! Je n’en reviens pas!”

Draco took hold of Hermione’s waist and stalked off in the opposite direction.

“Draco? Draco?” the woman hollered, and “Draco?” the men echoed.

“Allez-vous-en!” Draco yelled over his shoulder and lengthened his steps. Hermione was forced into a jog.

“Who’re —”

Suddenly, the young man was standing in front of them. They jerked to a stop, with Hermione clutching Draco to keep from toppling.

The young man was flustered and nonplussed, gaping from Draco to Hermione and…

And his demeanour immediately iced over.

“Ahh je vois,” he remarked coldly.

“Casse-toi,” Draco spat through his teeth.

He held her close and walked around the man, not stopping nor speaking till they’d reached the restaurant.

It was only after she’d drunk a glass of water and had a menu open before her that Hermione mustered the strength to ask, “I’m assuming those people were regular guests at dinners your grandparents hosted?”

He surveyed her from above his menu, eyes like a clear sky after rain. “Yeah. Old friends of the family.”

“Hm.” She smiled and raised the menu. “So, what would you recommend?”

Hours later, she was staring into her open bag.

Their return to the island had been closely followed by the arrival of an owl, and the note it delivered bore only two lines: An address and Put on your dancing shoes, we’ll dance away your blues! Bisous!!! – Eddie

Hermione didn’t own dancing shoes. But she wore a stringy little dress to feel good about herself. Because she was a hot young woman about town, a catch by any standard —

A steaming train was rolling into the station from Toulouse, or wherever. A bell was going feral, and, paired with the glowing, ruddy evening sky outside, it begot a vaguely menacing atmosphere.

Draco scowled at the station guard and the station guard scowled at him.

Traipsing through Wizarding Paris was a different adventure in the evening. Lamps blazed and flashing lights flickered around shop windows. Young witches and wizards in fashionable robes moved around as fast as their racing pulses. There was more than magic energising the air.

The club Eddie had directed them to was at the end of a side alley, and disguised under a plain façade. Inside lay a spirited, electrifying imprint of a past era ; very extravagant, very haute bohème. Everything was gilded, there were floral orange murals on the walls and huge mirrors behind the bar. Glitter rained down on a jam-packed dance floor.

“Revolting, isn’t it?” Eddie decried and kissed both her cheeks. “Salut, mon ché-ree! You are even more alluring than I remember!”

He looked at Draco, raised his eyebrows, winked, and tucked Hermione’s hand in the crook of his arm.

Eddie’s friends – Marie Mélusine included – were an exuberant bunch. Glasses of absinthe arrived with little pellets hovering above them; a relashio made them rupture and drizzle sugar water.
Draco, sitting beside Hermione with his arm trailing over the back of her chair, went on to display shockingly good humour. By the time the second round came about, he had established a brilliant rapport with Eddie, bonding over shared opinions on Ravel and Debussy.

The decision to dance was arrived at en masse. Chairs were dragged back and the whole exuberant lot drifted away like a herd.

Hermione placed her elbow on the table and her chin on her fist, and said, “Dance with me.”

Draco leaned in – she held her breath – he dipped his head to kiss the back of her hand, right under her chin, all without breaking eye-contact.

“No.”

Molten-Hermione dribbled onto the floor and moved liquid-like to dance with Eddie instead.

She drank some more and danced more and more, feverish from all the body heat and thunderous music. Everytime she spun in his direction, he was watching her.

Ultimately, she’d had enough. She charged towards him, placed both hands on the table and bent over so he could see down her dress. His nostrils flared.

“Would you have danced with Fiona?”

His eyes shot up. “Huh?”

“Did you ever sleep with her?”

“No.”

“Did you kiss her? Hold her hand?”

“What the f*ck –”

“– loomed over her with your fearful symmetry and smile-parentheses and –”

“Merlin’s f*cking rod.” He took hold of her shoulders and stood up. “Let’s dance, you raving cow.”

She didn’t care about the song or its tempo. They probably weren’t matching the rhythm at all. Draco wasn’t even dancing, he was just digging his fingers into her hips while she swayed and pressed herself to him, and she could feel him hard against her lower stomach. Light flashed over him, glitter shimmered around him. There was fire in his eyes and his lip was curled in a very faint sneer that was unbelievably sexy.
She turned, falling against his chest, and threw back an arm to anchor herself to him. His hand seared her as it moved up her body, pausing for a moment when it wrapped around her neck.
Then he grabbed her chin. He turned her face around, squeezing just enough for her mouth to fall open, and he pushed his tongue inside. Her knees buckled.

They left the club.

They made it halfway down the now-empty alley before he had her up against the wall and was devouring her. When she began rutting relentlessly against his leg he muttered, “f*ck,” and pulled back.

— Running down the alley, running across the locked up shops — a stopover under a lamppost when she grabbed his collar, bit his lower lip, and sucked a bruise at the base of his throat — Running past houses with dark windows and smoking chimneys – their breathless laughter and pounding footsteps sounded so loud – And there was Gare du Nord —

“Wait.”

“Why?” Hermione rasped.

“Shhh.”

Draco whipped out his wand and pointed it at her. She reared back in confusion as the prickle of a disillusionment charm shimmied down her frame.

“Be ready to cast a shield charm and run, all right?” Draco whispered, disillusioning himself next.

“Why?”

“Shh!”

He took her hand and crept past the door.

Only a few gadabouts lingered, waiting for a train that was still hours away from arriving. The guard was at his post with his chair tipped back, legs on the table, smoking and at ease.

There was a rustle and a sizzle — and suddenly his feathered hat was zooming towards them.

The guard squawked. Hermione squeaked. The hat was snatched up by an invisible hand and rammed onto Hermione’s invisible head. It covered her eyes. Oh no, she was blind.

Then she’d been picked up and was being ferried down the platform by a very fast runner.

“Shield charm, shield charm, quick!”

Protego maxima. — Why was she listening to him? Why was she holding onto that stupid hat?

She couldn’t see anything, but she could hear the guard screaming. She could hear him pelting behind them. She could hear Draco panting and she heard him grabbing floo powder. She heard the crash of something falling to the ground or a spell exploding something.

She felt the nausea of floo travel.

She was dumped onto something soft, and she heard Draco hastily blocking the fireplace.

It took around seven seconds for her to regain her senses.

She pulled off the hat and hurled it to the side while jumping to her (unsteady) feet.

“You made me an accessory to the pettiest crime!”

“You made me dance.”

He was standing before the fireplace, backlit. His clothes were completely rumpled, his cheeks were blazing, his lips were swollen.

She was losing her mind.

“Was there really nothing between you and Fiona? Ever?”

He stalked towards her, his aspect so serious that he almost appeared angry. He said, “How could I look at anyone else with you around? Your hair completely blocked my view.”

He kissed her,

on every surface in the drawing room where he was taught to hate and hunt her.

He kissed her against the door and in the entrance hall. He bent her over the balustrade. He lowered her on the marble staircase, and when she broke away to breathe, he slid down a few steps and kissed between her legs.

She fell into a kind of fugue of ecstasy, blinder than when she had the hat on, hotter than when she was dancing.
He was unfaltering – and when she finally looked down, he had his face pressed against her, one hand on her chest, the other down his pants where he was furiously stroking himself.

She thudded down a step as she unravelled. Her arse and elbow had hard landings and pain weaved through the climax, somehow augmenting it.

They crawled up to the first floor. Worked each other into a frenzy on the way to the second floor. Raced up to the third floor and tumbled into bed.

When she came down from the precipice, she was only half-drunk and less than half-herself. She made a trip to the bathroom and Draco started a fire, white marble against black marble. When she returned, he seemed half-asleep.

Her spot on the bed was directly in front of a cheesy rococo sculpture of cupid stringing his bow. He was appraising her, cheeky and judgemental, like ahh je vois.

“Granger?”

Draco had half-risen from his pillow and his eyes were half-open and bleary.

“Would your mother have objected to me if I wasn't a muggleborn?”

“Doesn't matter. You wouldn’t be you.”

That was true. She looked back at cupid. But what did he mean?

Was he saying he wouldn’t love her if she wasn’t exactly her? She couldn’t decide if that warmed her heart or left it cold. Why wouldn’t he love her as a pureblood? She’d still be some version of herself. She’d be one of the good purebloods, like the Weasleys or Longbottoms. He could still have fallen for her, right? Or did he need her to have struggled? Did he need her blood to be the final f*ck you to his dad, like the muggle girl he’d slept with? No, that wasn’t fair at all. What an ugly, cheapening thought. He saw her. He loved her. …Muggleborn her. Which came first? They were inseparable. For heaven’s sake, why couldn’t he have said —— What? What did she want to hear??

“Just stop.”

“Mmh?”

His tone was somewhere between sedate and disgruntled. “Whatever you’ve decided to pointlessly agonise over at three bloody a.m. — stop. It's not worth it. Come here.”

She went and was held against his warm, bare chest. Bare calf slid between hers. The softest pressure on the top of her head.

“There’s nothing else. Just this. Close your eyes.”

She did.

Alcohol was such an unpredictable menace. You never knew what half-dead neurons it might decide to instigate.

Hermione’s feet were bare on the dew-damp grass. Clouds were white daubs scraped onto the sky with a palette knife and flowers were nodding their heads every time a gentle breeze whisked through their beds.
Quin stood by a large rhododendron shrub, sprinkling water on its roots.

“Bonjour! Comment allez-vous?” Hermione called. And immediately winced at how gauche and foreign she sounded.

As she neared, Quin’s smile fought against multiple layers of sagging skin to make an appearance. His spectacles gleamed.

“Bonjour, Mademoiselle Granger. Is you wanting ze breakfast?”

“Not yet, thank you. Draco’s still asleep. I – er.” She pointed at the small cottage across the lawn. “Would you mind telling me what that is?”

“Bien sûr! Zat is Quin and Navet’s ’ome! Would Mademoiselle like to see?”

“Why, yes!” Hermione was not expecting that at all. “I would love to.”

The interior was like Bag End. Hermione felt tall in a way she hadn’t since befriending Ron. At a tiny table she sat, on a tiny wooden bench, before a tiny arched fireplace, in a room where every wall had at least ten clocks each.

“Café?” Quin asked.

“Au lait, s’il vous plaît!”

Ugh.

Just stop, begged the Draco who lived in her head.

Once they had bowl-like cups of coffee between them, Hermione cleared her throat. “I have to ask about all these clocks…”

“Navet is making zem! Navet loves ze clocks, he carves ze wood himself too!”

“They’re marvellous,” Hermione noted, looking around.

“Oui! Mademoiselle Granger, Navet and Quin used to live in a cupboard in ze garde manger. For sixty years, Mademoiselle, in ze cold. After ze war, Monsieur Malfoy comes and he says to Quin, you will be making your new ’ome. Quin asks, is zat an order? Monsieur becomes en colère — very angry. Monsieur went away but Monsieur came back and said, non non, it iz a request. Quin and Navet now understand requests, Mademoiselle. They is orders from polite Monsieurs.”

He went on to describe Draco’s struggles to improve his elves’ quality of life, after he had… how had he put it? …developed a strong aversion to indentured subjugation. It was a tale of Scrooge trying very hard to be generous, but Tiny Tim was not having it.
His endeavour to pay them was still a work in progress. So far, he had given them money for Quin’s glasses, for Navet’s tools, and bought around twenty-seven sets of curtains for his house, so that they could have new apparel.

Sometime later, there was a knock on the door. It was Navet, with a basket full of food, and Draco, utterly unsurprised to find her there.

By ten, the sun was burning bright,

and Hermione smiled, interlocking their fingers as they prepared to apparate.

It was strange for someone who had actually time-travelled, to feel the way she was feeling as she drifted from room to room of Atelier de Cézanne. The colour of the walls reminded her of the colour of her walls and… You really could never guess what’ll end up sticking to your subconscious.
Walls lined with art and eclectic pottery, mounted easels, still life setups, and so many apples. Ladders, letters, baskets, and work clothes on hooks.

Might someone have said, It’s so you, Paul?

Outside the gift shop, Hermione said to Draco, “You go ahead, I’ll wait outside.”

He wanted to know why.

“They sell prints there and I want you to choose. I’ll see it when we get back home.”

She stood firm, proudly owning her sentimentality.

Another apparition and the soil beneath them was terracotta orange. Pines and garrigue crawled and bristled over the landscape, all the way to the grey-blue ridge of Montagne Sainte-Victoire. Hikers and walkers paused here to take in the iconic view. Artists were scattered around, making their own renditions of it.

Draco stepped ahead. With his back to her, fine hair being tossed by the wind and single hand in his pocket, he reminded her of the time he’d stood on Brigit Dunne’s observatory, looking over Wistman’s Wood. She took a quick photograph, deciding on her new series: Rückenfigur Draco.
Her wanderer. Her Starman. He could take her to places she hadn’t been, and she could show him landscapes he hadn’t considered, and together they could map out the whole vast world.

With an hour to go before their portkey whisked them away, they lay on a conjured carpet of grass, under a bubble of Hermione’s creation, demolishing a basket’s worth of bread, cheese, pastries, and fruit.

Draco then lay on his back and she stretched out on her side, propped up on her elbow so she could look at him.

“Do you see why Cézanne kept coming back here? There’s something about this place, isn't there?” She sighed contentedly. “It used to be a lot greener. There was a huge fire ten or so years ago, and the vegetation has yet to recover. Artists still come in droves, though. The colours are spectacular, aren’t they? Aren’t they? Draco?”

“Sure. Colours.”

“Even Picasso bought a château here because he was so inspired by Cézanne. Hmph. You know, they were both great painters but awful men. Such a rotten cliché, isn’t it? Geniuses being unpleasant human beings.”

Draco turned to her with a broad smile and fantastically bright grey-blue eyes.

“What? …Are you… Excuse me! I’m not a genius!”

His broader smile said, shut the f*ck up.

“What do you find unpleasant about me?” she blustered.

He kept smiling.

“What?!”

He winced. “Well, you can be very demanding and extremely shrill. Your colourful mountain might crumble –”

“I’m demanding??? I am??”

He snorted. “Oh, clearly not then.”

“ You are far worse and you don’t even have the excuse of genius!”

“I’m good looking and rich. That comes with personality flaws, too.”

“Are you saying I’m not good looking?”

“You are. And you’re painfully aware of all your attributes. That’s why you’re doubly –”

“Now you’re saying I’m conceited??”

“You are.”

“You are, Mr I’m-Good-Looking-And-Rich-And-I-Have-A-Giant-co*ck—” (He gave out a loud, sudden laugh.) “—So proud of your own wit that you never think twice about a jibe the moment it comes to you –”

“You are also exceedingly temperamental –”

“Ohmygod, don’t even try to suggest that you are the more even-tempered one here! You… You’re a brilliant musician, that’s why you’re worse. Artistic temperaments are the most volatile of all and –”

“I thought I wasn’t a genius.”

“I redact my previous statement. You are a temperamental musical genius and you… you… you… Argh!”

He’d opened his mouth so she placed her hand over it before he could retort. His eyes were laughing as he wrapped an arm around her and rolled them over, and once he was hovering above her, she removed her hand, revealing his grin. He glowed against the backdrop of heavens’ embroidered cloths.

She never wanted to go back. She never wanted to see, or speak to, or be around anyone else, ever again.

“A – A bone? A human bone?”

“Sì. Human adult male femur, more precisely.”

“Jesus. Please tell me it isn’t real.”

“Of course it’s real. I’m just the sort of ferociously bloodthirsty, unconscionably vulgar psychopath who’d kill a man, extract his thigh bone, give it a proper clean and turn it into a portkey, aren’t I?”

“– So unnecessary, so so morbid, so –”

“Shut up and grab on. It's about to activate.”

Hotel La Regina delle Rose was coated in frescoes depicting romanticised fairies and the famous Sfolgorante roses. Its coved ceiling was held up by Solomonic columns.

A man at the reception, with a rose in his breast pocket, greeted, “Buongiorno,” and Draco said it back.
Low. With a slight rumble. Nice.

They chatted for a bit – “ suo prenotazione, signore?” and “mi chiamo Malfoy.”

After that first go, Draco’s delivery was short and stilted. It was gratifying to hear him struggle… Though he was still able to communicate with perfect efficacy. The incompetent diplomat’s competent minion.

The receptionist turned to Hermione and said, “Goood After-nooon.”

“Good afternoon,” she grumbled.

He waved over a porter. “Take our guest to il Duomo, per favore.”

A lift took them to the very top, to the littlest room with no windows and just one door. That door opened and it closed and Hermione and Draco were standing in il Duomo.

It was a giant stained glass cloche; a dome of polished bronze armature, pink and red glass roses, and green stylised glass leaves. Light pulsated through the colours and tinted everything – the furniture, the massive round bed and its silk sheets, the low pile carpet on the floor…
It had the grandeur of a gothic cathedral and the literal rose-tinted idyll of a love nest.

She simply could not imagine Draco willingly choosing to stay in such a place.

Fixed to the spot, she stared at him as he considered a gramophone and rummaged through a collection of records, not seeming remotely impressed. A sweet but melancholy piece played on a sixteen string lyre came out victorious.

He went to a cabinet and pulled out a bottle of wine and two glasses. “It’s made of – surprise, surprise – rose petals,” he said as he poured, expression displeased and tone disdainful.

No, this was not a place Draco would willingly choose to stay. This was entirely for her.

“Must’ve cost,” she began as he approached –

“Don’t start.”

– “An arm and a leg. Is this what the other thigh bone went towards?”

He rolled his eyes.

Hermione knew she was drinking too fast. Sweet floral wine was not meant to be chugged, but she was chugging, following along the curve of the rotunda, studying the stained glass that was trying to make her a part of it.

Sumptuous, alluring blooms. Entirely for her.

She sent her empty glass away and took a photograph of her Wanderer before a wall of glass roses.

Then she sidled up to him, placed her hands on his waist and kissed the back of his neck. He turned. She got rid of his unfinished glass, fisted his shirt and walked backwards towards the bed —

Sweeping strings and the songs of Apollo. The Not-Little Prince and the Rose in a glass globe, undressing each other.

The bed was a cloud. Silk slipped over her skin while he was hot and hard. She knelt between his legs and licked his tip. He groaned for her to stop.

“What’s the matter?” she rasped.

“Turn this way,” he urged, with a whetted gaze.

“What way?”

He lifted his index finger and twirled it.

A solid mass of heat dropped out of nowhere into her stomach. Her breathing escalated, from nerves, from the thrill. She scuffled up, turned and hooked her leg over him.

First it felt like a competition: Whose mouth could perform better, who could make the other lose their rhythm. But soon, they were synchronised, harmonised. A team. Scrabbling up the hillside together, winding each other tighter, going spare and desperate in unison, curling and cresting in tandem.

After a fall and a crash, she opened her eyes and saw his legs, long and splayed, red just above the knees where her increasingly tight grip had been. He drew a gentle spiral on her bum. She shivered from the lingering buzz.

He slid upwards and threw pillows against the tufted headboard to prop himself up. Hermione nudged one of his legs till he folded it, and she sat up just enough to use it as a backrest.

“Summon my trousers, will you?”

She raised a cumbrous arm and did so.

From its pocket, Draco produced his wand and a cigarette case. From the cigarette case, he brought out one of Theo’s infamous, immoderately long spliffs. He lit it with his wand, expertly pulling in the first puff.
Naked, debauched, tousle-haired and flushed, he tipped his head back against the headboard as he blew out a plume of green smoke.

How was he real? He couldn’t be real.

“What?” He looked at her from under hooded eyelids, one brow arched and smirk satiated.

Her heart sputtered. “Nothing.”

He grinned slowly and crookedly like he’d understood anyway.

She touched his stomach with tentative fingers… then boldly spread them out. She traced the faint muscular demarcations. His thumb ran over her kneecap. He stroked her calf.

When he offered her the spliff, she caressed his fingers as she took it.

She tilted her head back and held her breath to let psychoactive particles flow all the way through her. There was a rose at the very centre of the dome.

Dome above, cone above. High ceilings, low ceilings. False skies and chandeliers. Different roofs to toil under.

How many grand, upheaving events can one man experience in his lifetime, after all?

“Draco.”

She held out the spliff. He plucked it from her fingers.

“Draco.”

“Yeah?”

“What if there’s another thing-we-call-war?”

“Gah. Granger, no,” Draco moaned. “Why do you always land up on the most horrendous points of discussion?”

“Just tell me. What’ll you do if there’s another war-thingy?”

A call for patience lengthened his face.

He took a deep deep deep drag before speaking in a soft soft soft voice while smoke billowed around him.

“Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose,” he murmured. “If there’s another war I’ll… do exactly the same thing. Except, I suppose, I’ll be better prepared, have more resources and foreign connections. I’ll open my vaults and island to the Order… or whomever’s running the show. I’ll help get people out, patch up a few injuries. But I…” He glared at his hand. “I wont – I can't. I… I’ve f*cking seen myself in action, haven’t I?”

“Hmm,” Hermione agreed and soothingly smoothed her hand over his chest. “You’d be a liability on the battlefield.”

He tipped his head back again and closed his eyes.

“What if,” she whispered, “What if I want to flee?”

“You won’t.” His voice was croaky. He took another drag, eyes closed, and waited till his lungs were clear before carrying on, eyes still closed. “There’s a potion that I memorised, from a now confiscated book. Old magic; a whole lot of restricted and banned ingredients boiled over black fire to concoct a potentially questionable but comprehensive protective brew. I’d douse you in it everyday. I’d probably still have to f*cking disillusion myself and follow you around with a protego.”

“You won't force me to lie low?”

He frowned over closed eyes. “Force you? Psh. I’m not here to strangle your convictions, Granger.”

And eyes closed, he held out the spliff.

Hermione copied his deep deep deep drag. His double drag.

But. But what if…

Would her convictions lead her back onto the battlefield? In her head, a thousand different voices said of course. But her own voice, nearly drowned out, whimpered, I never wish to duel again.
She hadn’t even lived past the aftermath and she was expected to fight again? How exhausting, how terrifying. She ached from a sudden hollowness inside her.

“But what if… I truly wanted to flee?”

He opened his eyes and they looked blurry and… accusatory?

“Then we’ll go wherever you want to go.”

The stub melted into nothing from between her fingers. She felt a headrush — then a plummet. She wanted to move closer to him, but felt frozen.
Could he say something funny now? Something mordant or silly to veer her off this course…
This course that was leading her to think about…

Sirius.

He had fought, been wrongfully imprisoned, fought again and died. So many of those that had died would fight again if they could and if the need arose. Neville and Luna would fight again. Molly lost her brothers the first time, a son the second time, and she’d still fight. The whole Weasley clan would fight. LUMP would fight… and she was supposed to be Liberty leading the way.
Harry would step up to the plate, like always. He’d look to his right and Ron would be there, and he’d look to his left – to the one who was supposed to have all the answers – and there would be nobody —

Next thing she knew, she was bawling.

“I can’t do it but there’s no escaping it! Of course I’ll have to fight! Of course, I’ll want to!”

“You know there isn’t an actual war happening?”

“God oh god, it’s all so awful –”

“No. It isn’t. Because there’s no actual –”

“I’m meant to be the clever one. I’m supposed to know things and see things nobody else does. I have to understand what everything means. It’s not fair! I hate it. I hate…” She hiccuped and slapped her nose in lieu of rubbing it. “If I’m wrong, everything goes wrong. Wands break, Death Eaters get past wards and everyone gets f*cked. Or… or… I’m standing like a fool before sneering plum pluto–plu– bollocks. I do things – bad things – and I rationalise them, push them out of my mind, because I have a great mind, don’t I? That’s what they keep telling me. But it isn’t that great and I’m not in control and nothing really goes away and I’m so scared because it's always too late – too late when I finally get it. When I realise how stupid I actually am!”

“I’ll be happy to tell you exactly how stupid you’re being at any given moment. For instance, right now, you –”

“I have to rationalise because I’m not inherently rational, am I? Look at me! I’m a slave to my emotions! I’m – I am – I don’t know what I’m doing!” she wailed.

“You know what you’re doing. You don’t know what other people – or f*cking fate – will do in retaliation. That’s normal. Unless you’re Trelawney –”

“I don’t feel clever, Draco! But I feel stupid, I really feel it –”

“Because that’s the anomaly,” he said slowly, like she was stupid.

“But… but!!”

“Are you goading me into calling you clever?”

“NO!”

He had seen her in such a state enough times. He had seen her in nearly every kind of state. Of course he’d figure out that her no was actually a pathetic and petulant yes . More than that, it was, I need you to validate my existence now please.

He jerked his leg out from behind her and she fell onto her back, gasping, more winded than warranted. He loomed over her, eyes slightly red and droopy.

“We are on holiday, you headcase, not preparing for battle. And… Hermione. You might not be inherently rational, but you are not irrational. You are thorough. You are observant, fastidious, and quick off the mark. You are perceptive, shrewd, and discerning. You are clever. All right? Very, very… intensely clever. Unfairly, infernally clever. The peak of cleverness. You are…” He wet his lips. “Mount Cleverest.”

“Uh? Ah–HA!! What?”

“Mount Cleverest,” he repeated firmly. “And you never-rest.”

She broke into vapid giggles. Took a few good seconds before she could say – “Andes terrible puns of yours will be my demise.”

“Oh, Ural–right.”

“You are… Mount… er… Kilime–right now.”

He huffed warm groaning chuckles into her neck. “I’m contacting the ICW to report a severe breach of the International Magical Code of Decorum.”

He tried to kiss her but she wouldn’t stop laughing, forcing him to pull back with a look of amused exasperation.

But he laughed too, and they both laughed on and on and on and on. Mountains of laughter.

Mountains of gelato.

Chocolate gelato, because chocolate always Alps.

They called for it from the hotel restaurant via floo, five scoops for him, three for her. Yet he cleared his bowl much quicker and dozed off. She watched him as she slowly ate, noting and counting and measuring all the pink-red-green-gold flecks strewn over his body.

She woke him by kissing each one till she reached his mouth. A lazy press of lips turned into frantic kissing ——

—— They blew across the room and landed against the glass. Colours bled into streaks in her periphery. Cold, curving armature dug into her back. He took one step back and looked at her for a long time, gaze tracking up and down her body. Then he was pressed against her once more, eyes darting between hers.
And suddenly, she was blown back in time and standing pressed against him in the dark hall of her flat, with him looking at her exactly the same way. Did he love her already, back then?

He kissed her exactly like he had that night too. He lifted her leg and pulled it up to his waist. He touched her; his thumb immediately found just the right spot and she was on fire ——

—— She was burning on the floor, on all fours, with him stroking the fire behind her ——

—— She was on the bed. Half on the bed. Her head and shoulders were hanging off the side. He was pounding into her and her blood didn’t know which way to rush ——

Draco’s wand went zhhh when he used it to light up another spliff.

Green smoke slithered snake-like around her simultaneous magic. She conjured bluebell flames with her hand and encased them in bubbles with her wand.
Magic. She was magic. A being of pure magic, and her lover had come from the stars. The Prince with starlight hair.

Roses glistered with tawny evening light and reflected magic and the impossible rightness of being.

He blew on her stomach, it caved, and smoke puddled there. He kissed up her sternum till he was hovering above her, and he took a deep deep deep drag, sucking hollows beneath his cheekbones. The tip of the spliff flared, flashing in his eyes.

Her lips parted in anticipation, he tilted his head and touched his lips to hers – just barely – and poured smoke into her mouth.

Dappled pink-red-green-gold, she awoke and the bed was co*ckled and empty. She kicked away the blanket, overwarm, bent her knees and arched her spine, stretching thoroughly. There was a low creak from across the room. She collapsed back on the mattress.

Draco stood at the open bathroom door with only a towel ’round his waist. His mouth formed a half-smile as he took her in.
Hermione promptly turned over – flopping onto her stomach and facing the other way. She felt like being coy and silly and she knew he would come to her.

The mattress dipped. One hand planted itself right in front of her face while he held himself above her.

He trailed his fingers from her bum to her back – “So soft,” – brushed her hair aside and left a trail of kisses across her shoulders to her ear – “in the head.”

She surged forward and bit his wrist.

Then she turned over again.

He was warm from the shower, she was warm from the sun. They melted into each other.

It was a cool and bright late morning,

and Hermione walked down the cobbled streets of Bagliore like a perfectly coordinated twenty-year-old woman with her brain intact.

A mountain range of buildings rose and fell along the sides of the path – all coated in earthy tones like beige and honey, warm red, burnt brown and plaster peach. Old wood and intricate ironmongery rested in arched door frames and flowerpots hung beneath shuttered windows.

Draco looked like a bloody film star in a tan leather cloak and sunglasses.

At the village square, there was a fountain with statues of Horace, Cicero, and Pliny the Elder. Carved into its base were the words: What thou seekest is here, it is in Bagliore, unless equanimity is lacking!

Two men in rose-pink robes – one with a mandolin and the other an accordion – were playing a folk tune. An owl fluttered about with a wee cauldron in its talons, collecting tokens from onlookers. Hermione contributed one funny diamond-shaped coin from the sack that she’d got in exchange for galleons at the hotel.

And that was her entire day’s expenditure. Just like in Paris, Draco refused to let her pay for anything.

In a bookshop she was bewitched by a beautifully bound volume of Pliny’s Bella Germaniae. So rare, almost impossible to come by, and Draco bought it for her. He bought the rose-printed scarf that an overzealous merchant threw over her head.
He paid for the lunch they ate on a terrace with grapevines clambering across an overhead trellis and mosaic roses on the floor.

There was a jewellery shop at the end of the main street, before it turned the corner and ventured into a residential area. It was owned by a man whose hairline formed a perfect ‘M’. He wore rings on every finger, and raised all ten in happy greeting when Hermione and Draco stepped into his establishment.
He showed off his ware, which was upmarket and luxurious. Hermione didn’t know why they had wandered in here but she was not going to let Draco buy her anything.

The shopkeeper opened a velvet box and revealed the most beautiful necklace she had ever seen and it scotched every rational thought in her mind. From a gold spiga chain, hung a small circle of gold filigree, and beneath that was a perfectly formed Sfolgorante rose petal: Pink near the tip, deep red around the edges, a flash of gold when light hit it.

The shopkeeper delicately lifted it out. “Once every seven years, the fairies gift three special roses to the village. They bloom forever, the roses. Every seven years, I get one to make jewellery. Sixteen petals, sixteen pieces. I send them to all biggest shops all over the world. But for my shop, I keep the best. You will…?” he offered it up. “Try…?”

Yes. Yes, she’d try. She had to merely hold it around her neck for it to fasten on its own. The shopkeeper conjured a mirror, and...

The petal sat an inch beneath the hollow of her throat and it did something to her complexion. Warmed it, brought out her pinker undertones, or just… something. Something really good. Her eyes darted to the side –

Rationality came back. She spotted the teeny tiny price tag on the box.

“Look at her, Signore!” the shopkeeper tweedled, “See how lovely. Bellissimo!”

With his elbows on the counter, Draco leaned over to peer at her.

She muttered, “It’s preposterously pricey,” out the corner of her mouth.

“Oh, Salazar,” he said loudly, “This again?”

“Stop shouting!” she hissed. “Look, everything’s been… a lot as it is, and –”

“I much prefer your robust, demanding bitchiness over this put-on diffidence,” he went on, projecting for the whole village to hear.

“It’s not put-on! Just because it’s more comforting for your under-developed consciousness to have everyone be as entitled as you –”

She bit her tongue, for it really wouldn’t do to call him entitled at that point.

He grinned happily and looked at the shopkeeper, gesturing with his eyebrows towards Hermione. “Are there earrings to go with that?”

Of course there were. Hermione put them on because… because… what choice did she have?

Oh dear, they were so pretty. She wanted. Desperately.

She didn’t say anything when Draco told the shopkeeper, “Va bene. Li prenderemo.”
She didn’t object when money was handed over. Draco stepped outside while she waited to collect a velvet box and shopping bag.

He was putting his sunglasses back on when she came out.

“Thank you,” she said to the pavement.

She sensed his head turn. She heard his smirk. She tasted his smug amusem*nt.

He put his arm around her shoulders, tugging her against his side and he spoke into her ear, so low it was almost a croon, “My pleasure, rosy.”

Daylight was fading at a poky pace, the temperature was dropping much quicker,

and they sat by the fountain for some time, with coffee and biscotti, listening to music and water.

At seven, when it was nearly completely dark, they reached the outer boundary wall of the village, where they met a witch in front of large iron gates.

“L'autorizzazione?” she posed.

Draco handed her a scroll. In return, they were given a lantern with a pink flame, and allowed past the gates.

“Inside, no magic,” the witch added.

There was only one trail driven through the dense growth – a pebbled track submerged in shadows. Hermione pasted herself to Draco’s side, within the hazy circle of light emitted by their lantern. The sweet scented air was intoxicating. All around them, Sfolgorante roses were phosphorescing dimly – but now and then lighting up with a sudden flash of gold. Some were as small as bunched up fingers. Some were as big as her head.

The trail ended with a pile of boulders. Draco hopped to the top in two leaping steps. He set the lantern down and reached out with both hands to help Hermione up.

There was a ditch on the other side, utterly filled with rose bushes. It was a pit of roses. A pool of roses.
And right at the centre, a dead tree trunk stood: The home of Bagliore’s fairies.

He sat on the ground, leaning back against a rock. She settled between his legs, leaning back against his chest.

Like their counterparts in Gopher wood, these fairies were tinted by their diet and they glowed a startling reddish-pink. They were performing that same synchronised, ritualistic dance – floating in a circle around their tree.

Hermione closed another circle of her own. From Período Azul to Período Rosa.

“An unpotted cactus plant.”

“Da.”

“How are we supposed to touch it?”

“Carefully.”

There’d been no time to explore Lubomir Bachvarov’s massive hotel suite that was swanky but rather blandly international; the man called from the lobby just seconds after Draco and Hermione had set down their bags.

A handshake and a hand kiss, hello and how are you, were all got through quickly because he couldn’t stay. It was Wednesday after all. He introduced them to their guide for the day: A brawny and cheerless fellow named Krastyo, who would give them a whirlwind five-hour-long tour of Sofia.

He was a very unique sort of guide, though. A little off-beat, a little Spectre-of-Time-esque, in the sense that he remained wholly and industriously silent throughout the excursion. It would have driven Hermione up the highest pole if she hadn’t collected a stack of informative pamphlets from the hotel lobby.

No matter, she once again found herself fascinated by the city’s varied architecture and the muggle and magical history it revealed. Traditional Bulgarian structures – zhuzhed up with some Byzantine, some Ottomani flair – a touch of Vienna Secession – tempered with Soviet ubiquity.

Krastyo took them to a series of mediaeval Orthodox churches, a grand cathedral, and a monastery.
He took them to a magical underground coppersmithing forge, where cauldrons, pots, ladles, and vials were infused with all manner of magic. They fashioned wand-holders with a magically enhanced grip, made for duelling. Hermione knew she had to buy a pair for Harry and Ron.

Draco breathed down her neck while she paid.

“Those for Rotter and Beastly?”

“Shut up, Mayfly,” she muttered while carefully counting thick disc-like coins.

Took three seconds for offence to percolate.

“Oh I’m sorry,” he spat sourly. “I meant Scarry and mo-Ron.”

She turned around and stalked off.

Krastyo showed them museums from the outside.

“Hairy Snotter and Prawn Queasy,” said Draco.

He sat silently on a separate table while Hermione and Draco shared a mixed grill plate.

“Barley Water and Yon Measly.”

He side-along-apparated them from one park to another.

“Harry Squatter and Begone Weasley.”

He showed them the main boulevard, a Roman bath, and a theatre.

“Scurry Potter and Ron Please-Leave.”

Finally, he dumped them in a vast outdoor market in the wizarding part of the city, and fled.

Jumbles of things spilt out of makeshift shops under floating cloth covers. Locals milled around in their richly embroidered, fur-lined robes. Vendors beckoned and called out to them.

Hermione paused before a spread of silver baubles, encrusted and bold but minutely detailed. The woman behind the table pounced, and before Hermione knew what was happening, she had clasped a cuff bracelet around her wrist.

“Zmey,” she wheezed, pointing out the dragon-like creature on it. “Protects.”

Draco drew out his money bag. Hermione panicked.

“You don’t have to pay for everything!”

“Do you really think this piddling little trinket is going to drive me into penury?” he droned obnoxiously. “Kolko struva?”

Two shops over, sat an artist, surrounded by loose and lively watercolours of the city. Hermione pointed him out to Draco and turned the other way.

A stall teeming with pottery was her next stop. Brightly painted clayware – patterns on vases, fascinating mandala-like designs on bowls – Hermione reckoned they’d make perfect gifts and picked out a considerable selection.

“Which one do you like?” Draco enquired.

“The yellow one.”

“Seriously?”

He sounded disgusted. She looked into his scrunched up face and said, “Yeah, so?”

With his pain explicitly demonstrated, he picked up the yellow bowl and carried it to the vendor. He paid for it, said, “blagodarya,” and wandered away.

That scenario kept repeating itself throughout their shopping jaunt. Everything that Hermione wanted for herself – from charmed boxes, to potion ingredients, to handloomed Balkan textiles – Draco snatched up. He faded into the background while she purchased things for her friends and family.

(“Blag-go-dar-ya.”

“Vot?”

“THANK YOU.”)

Draco may have blustered and made all sorts of decrees involving Bachvarov,

but they couldn’t actually turn down an invitation to dinner – for both of them – considering all that he had done for them.

Hermione stood before a full-length lacquered mirror in the floral halter dress she had worn for Finnigan’s grand opening, and changed its colour from black to the exact shade of yellow as her new bowl. She combed Selkie’s through her hair, strapped on her stilettos and stepped out of the walk-in wardrobe ready to face Draco’s revulsion.

He only swept his palm over her exposed back.

The blaze in the hotel lobby’s cavernous fireplace fell into Zmey’s crystal eyes hypnotically.
Draco called out the name of an establishment and Hermione followed him into a surprisingly humble pub, especially blindsiding after the characterless glitz they’d left behind.

Oils lamps nailed to brick walls illuminated a space covered in reams of fantastic Bulgarian embroidery – black, white, yellow, green, and tons of red . Animals heads made out of wicker dangled from low rafters. Hermione was delighted.

“I hope, my friends, you had a lovely time witnessing the wonders of Sofia!” came an exclamation for her right.

Hermione turned. “Oh, yes, we –”

Bachvarov was not alone.

“Goodness. Victor!”

The was palpable stiffening from the gent beside her.

She was embraced. For a few moments an enormous and hot hand rested on her bare back. She stepped back quickly.

“For years and years I say, Her-my-on-nee, come to Bulgaria, come to Bulgaria. You do not come. One time Lubomir says come and you hev come!”

He was different, more so than he had been at Bill and Fleur’s wedding. Not as thin; broader and muscular. He held himself confidently, his eyes were steady under those bristling eyebrows, and his beard was trimmed to a point.

“The past few years have been difficult,” she told him.

He mellowed sympathetically, “Yes. I hear it all,” and patted her shoulder.

Hermione took Draco’s arm and pulled him forward. “Victor, this is Draco Malfoy.”

Victor studied him with a very focused and critical air.

“Dis is boy who…” He flapped his hand in front of his mouth.

“Cursed my teeth? Yes.” She sensed Draco seething, so she added, “We’re together now.”

Victor looked at her like she had admitted to having genetal warts.

The pub was almost vacant, yet the waitress still took them to a corner booth partially obscured by a screen.

“Dis is qviet place,” Victor said, “I can eat with peace.”

For three hours they remained at the table and it was soon littered with beer bottles – momentarily with plates and dishes that were cleared away – then beer bottles once again. Victor showered Hermione with a billion questions and had her blabbering constantly. He was teasingly reproachful about her lack of communication. She would have to come back, for longer. There was so much in Bulgaria that he wanted to show her when she had more time and she would stay with his family in the beautiful mountainous village of Dragnevtsi.

Bachvarov kept smiling and didn’t say much. Draco kept scowling and said even less.

On returning from a trip to the bathroom, a slightly woozy Hermione made a beeline for the bar, in desperate need for a glass of ice cold water. She found Victor there, probably requesting another round. He smiled at her, dipping his head in a semi-bow like he always did before speaking.

“More drink, Her-my-on-nee?”

His hand trailed down her arm and wrapped around her fingers.

There was a blur of black and white. A sudden burst of air. Victor stumbled backwards, and Draco’s back was in front of Hermione like a wall.

“Back. Off,” he snarled.

There was some guttural noise of shock from Victor in response to that. Hermione promptly wrapped her arms around Draco, and looked over his shoulder warningly. Whatever else was about to come out of Victor petered away as he took in her stance.

A slow, acrimonious, “my mistake,” was all he said.

Back at the table, Draco situated her on his lap. She ought to have been miffed about all the male bravado and proprietary attitude, but she couldn’t even pretend. Historically, jealousy over her had always been made her problem, and ended with her feeling like sh*t. Draco’s hand settled high on her thigh and he kissed the point of her shoulder, so as far as she was concerned, he could happily carry on staking his claim however he pleased.

…Except he went on to be an idiot.

Victor slammed a bottle of rakia on the table, and he and Bachvarov teamed up and challenged Draco to a drinking competition. Draco sneered and took them on. Of course, Hermione cast a series of surreptitious charms on the bottle to make sure it was unadulterated, but there was nothing she could do about the ‘60% alcohol’ label.

They were both of hardy Slavic stock. Her pale and wan Englishman did not stand a chance.

No surprises, Draco was soon completely bladdered and done in. The other two laughed as he swayed limply and groaned, red on his cheeks and sweat on his forehead.

“All right,” Hermione snapped, jumping to her feet. “We’re leaving.”

“Her-my-on-nee, ve cen call someone to take him to de hotel.” Victor smiled. “You cen stay.”

“No, thank you.”

She was too irritated to even fake geniality. She did, however, force a polite nod towards Bachvarov, since it was his suite they were headed to.

It was a feat navigating through the chair littered pub with a maladroit and intoxicated man,

but she succeeded in getting him through the floo without tripping or falling.

She had to wait for around five minutes in the lobby while he slumped on an armchair to recover.

With an arm firmly around his waist, she drew him into a lift, then began guiding him down the corridor towards their room.Around ten short, unsteady steps in, he regained enough cognisance to grab her bum.She reached around and removed his hand.

“’Scuse me? Why not?” he barked.

She looked at him. He was frowning woundedly.

“Thought ’m allowed to touch you,” he griped, a little too loudly.

Her sigh was a breathy ugh. “Yes, you can touch me whenever you want but –”

He grabbed both her wrists, displaying astonishing coordination. “Whenever I want,” he repeated and backed her against the wall. “I’m sorry that hex hit you. Wasn’t supposed to.”

“I know?”

How was she in this position? Against the wall in a boring art deco hotel corridor, when a moment ago he could scarcely stand —

“Sorry,” he said again.

“It’s all right,” she told him.

(She didn’t tell him she had forgiven him the moment Ron had blushed and stared and noticed her teeth looked different.)

He draped her arms over his shoulders and kissed her. Deeply. The pungent flavour of rakia flooded her mouth… and she found it extremely palatable. Because everything tasted better through him. He pushed his knee between her legs setting a current coursing through her —

“I SAID, AHEM.”

Hermione shoved him back.

The door right beside them had opened, and a very disapproving head was peeping out, glaring murderously.

“We can hear you inside,” the head growled.

The head belonged to an old man. Maybe if she was less out-of-it, she could've pinpointed the origin of his accent.

Hermione’s desperate and mortified apology was completely overwhelmed by Draco’s blared, “Don’t pretend you don’t enjoy the noises. Old codger like you probably only gets –”

“Silencio! We are so so so sorry,” Hermione begged, “We’ll just… go. Sorry. We’ll go.”

She shook her hair forward to cover her flaming face, and dragged Draco down the remainder of the corridor, gentleness and consideration be damned. He continued to noiselessly blab and she was not interested .

“You are not picking fights with strangers, you divvy. You will get hexed into a pulp because you are rubbish at defending yourself at your sober est , and I will be forced to rescue you and we’ll get kicked out of this posh hotel that we have been allowed to stay in for free…”

Upon reaching their door, she dug into her handbag for the key. Sod willed it, so the key refused to fit into its hole.

Draco pinched her arm. She slapped his hand away and unsilenced him —

“Forgotten how a key works, Granger?”

— and immediately wished she hadn’t.

He shifted behind her and grabbed her tit*. “I can show you how to get keyed up,” said the bloke who’d once dramatically objected to her drunken behaviour.

“Bloody hell, just… behave!”

He murmured against her neck: “I am. I’m behaving very appropriately by appreciating your figure in this little dress.”

She shouldered him away and turned to glare –

“No. Don’t even try to use those confundus eyes on me, I’m too sozzled ’n bollocksed to be affected…”

Hermione managed to get the door open. She shoved the bane of her existence inside.

“...f*cking arsehole, bearded gargoyle, thinks he’s all that…”

He tried to take off his jacket. He was unable to take off his jacket. Hermione rolled her eyes and helped him out of it. She also pulled off his belt.

“Well well. Look at who’s misbehaving now — Urgh.”

He pressed a hand against his stomach. She sat him on the bed and squatted to untie his shoes.

“Urgh,” he groaned, “Urghhhh.”

She eased him backwards till he was flat on his back. Minuo, she thought, to dim the tapers.

In softer light and gauzy shadows, there was no keenness in his eyes, only wide pupils and limpid grey. There wasn’t a hint of artifice in his expression. His mouth was soft and slack. He looked guileless. Innocent, even. Utterly pathetic and adorable.

Ridiculous man. Poor chap. Gentleness and consideration returned with double strength. She perched beside him and carded his fringe back.

“If you throw up on the bed, I will kill you,” she said softly, meaning to say… well, the other thing.

“I’ll just aim for your hair, it’ll soak it all up.”

She laughed before she could stop herself.

His hand leapt up to cup her face and nearly took out her eyeball.

“Completely mad, right?” he slurred.

“You? Yes,” she laughed, pushing his index finger away from the corner of her eye.

He shook his head and lost half his words. “...can make it happen. You let me make it happen.”

“Make what happen?”

“This beautiful smile.”

Her smile melted away. The hitch in her breath manifested as a jump of her shoulders.

He stared at her mouth, forehead scrunched with the heaviest frown. Slowly, he looked up into her eyes and held them for a bit… and returned to looking at her mouth. He swallowed. And he said, “Granger, don’t – don’t break my heart, all right?”

Everything inside her seized up. An errant echo at the back of her mind said, tread softly, tread softly…

He was losing consciousness. His hand was slipping off her cheek. His eyes were drooping and fluttering, though still riveted on her lips.

And with his final scrap of wakefulness, he mumbled, “Penitents, behold elated... The redeeming face.”

His hand fell onto her lap. His head rolled to the side as he passed out.

Hermione couldn’t move.

Pale sunlight lay like netting over the rooftops and cupolas of Sofia. Only the purple mound of Mount Vitosha had broken through it.
Hermione had been standing on the balcony with her elbows on the railing and a teacup between her palms since before morning had broken. She’d slept for four hours and it felt like too much.

She showered, tossed on the hotel-provided dressing gown, made herself another cup of tea and sat on the settee in the bedroom. There was an entire carpet between her and Draco’s sleeping form. Thick curtains covered the windows, the tapers had burnt themselves out, and shadows lay like netting over his skin.

She missed him when he was sleeping right in front of her now. Was there really no end to this?

He woke up at eight; three hours before they had to leave.

His face scrunched up before he’d properly sat up, and it looked like even oxygen was in danger of making him ill. He was wrecked, like he’d battled through storms and jungles the night before. Shadow-netting rumpled around him. His eyes were pink rimmed and there were faint pillow creases on one side of his face.

He asked her the time. She told him.

And he blinked hard a few times – rubbed his eyes – and stared at her like she had told him it was four in the afternoon.

“What happened?” he asked in the voice of a ninety-year-old retired miner.

She looked askance. Or, at least, that’s what she thought she did.

“You’re blushing like the virgin that you absolutely are not, so just spit it out. What did… I do?”

“You didn’t do anything,” she said forthwith.

He looked even more ill.

“You were just very complimentary,” she cautiously disclosed. “About my figure and, er, smile.”

He had been so vulnerable lately – consciously and willingly. She couldn’t bring herself to make him feel uncomfortable or have him be weary of letting loose around her.
But she was so bad at putting on a show. He knew something was off.

He stewed over that with an unreadable frown, only to let out another “urgh” and push himself off the side of the bed, setting his feet on the ground. He grunted as though in pain when he finally stood up. His eyes landed on the table in front of Hermione, where a lone teacup sat.

“Couldn’t come up with something on your own?” he asked, disgruntled.

“Nothing that would annoy you as much.” she muttered.

“I can hardly feel annoyed when your dressing gown is gaping open at the chest.” She fisted it closed, and he said, “Cute that you think that makes a difference,” looking at her legs.

He stalked towards her, almost prowling, and his wrecked appearance didn’t matter a hoot when he moved like that. He could’ve made a clown suit look enticing. He tucked her hair behind her ear and pressed a lingering kiss on her cheek.
He swept into the bathroom with an offhand, “Make me a cup of tea.”

Hermione… made him a cup of tea.

She made tea with too little sugar and enough milk to compensate for a lack of self-respect.

Draco re-emerged in joggers slung low on his hips and his shirt entirely unbuttoned. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. His hair was loosely and damply pushed back, like he had run wet fingers through it. He looked insanely, tantalisingly appealing and every single muscle in the lower half of her body contracted.

He didn’t seem to care about the quality of his tea, simply content with a hot tea-flavoured mess. She felt so bad that she made him a second, proper cup and gave him a revive potion.

Following that, in her (potentially awfully skewed) opinion, she managed to convey perfect normalcy fairly adeptly. Just really good normal normalness. Hermione-typical conduct.

Draco sat low enough to rest his head against the back of the settee, pouting at the room service menu.

“What’s boza?”

“Victor said it’s –”

“I don’t give a f*ck about anything that Victor said. If he shows up today –”

“He won’t.”

“– as welcome as a bloody brick flying in through the window –”

“He won’t show up.”

“– drooling over you like a six-legged panda pig in heat. Touching, grabbing –”

“We both made it clear last night that that was not acceptable.”

He looked up from the menu, sniffed, and looked back down.

They called for some kind of cheese-filled pastry thing for breakfast,

and in an attempt to consolidate her normal normalness, Hermione told him about Projective Pensieves.

She explained what a camera obscura was, first with her words, then with a crude diagram, and finally by showing him. She’d made a simple pinhole camera with dad once, for a school project. It was easy to recreate via conjuring. She darkened the room, pulled back the curtains, and made him look at an upside-down image of Sofia’s cityscape.

“The picture can be set right with properly angled mirrors,” she rushed out before he could comment.

“That’s all well and good,” he said while peering into the box. “But how will you channel light from or through a pensieve?”

She had no idea. “The basin doesn’t have to be stone? It can be… transparent?”

Draco put the camera down. Hermione sank till she could rest her head on the settee too.

“The substance in a pensieve only takes the form of memories when perceived. It requires direct interaction. It isn’t going to transfer through light.”

Hermione humphed and keeled to the side till she was resting against his shoulder.

“I will never get over the absurd number of things in the magical world that are woefully under-studied.”

It was half past ten. They needed to get moving.

“There was a book in the Manor library – another rare and controversial one that theorised that the Anemoi were not – as commonly believed – spirits. They were actually the result of a dark spell that created a semi-sentient vapour which was capable of communication and simple magic of its own.”

“I’m going to get those books back from the depository. Or make copies. One way or another.”

He snigg*red. She lifted her head to look at him. He was smirking at the ceiling.

“I will.”

“Of course you will. Kitten.”

Neither Victor nor Bachvarov showed up to see them off,

and there was only mute and mutinous Krastyo.

He’d a car waiting outside the hotel – cherry red, with the Bulgarian Ministry’s logo on all four doors and a small golden sculpture of a veela on the bonnet.

The drive to the Rhodope Mountains was a little over two hours and Krastyo did not speak a word. Hermione had to consult a map to figure out what village they were passing through, or which hill they were crossing, or what that sprawling fortress in the distance was called.
It was a beautiful countryside. Extraordinarily green.

She knew, the second she hopped out of the car and spotted their accommodation, that Draco had chosen it. They were on a mountainside, lush and spectacular, with a kind of timelessness that would make it the backdrop of old folktales that went back as far as human memory did. They were inside a magical enclosure, at the base of a step pyramid. On the highest level, was a small wooden house: Walls painted white, windows and railings made of black iron, roof painted green —

An engine revved. The car sped away. Hermione said, “Bye, Krastyo. Thanks for everything,” to the belt of sparkling purple smoke left behind.

A moving staircase carried them to the top. Around halfway up, a woman waved from the front of the house. Hermione waved back. Draco didn’t. The woman didn’t stop waving, so Hermione didn’t either. They kept waving until they could shake hands.

She wore an apron over her robes – all embroidered – and her smile was wide. She let them in, brought them a tray of soup and stuffed cabbage leaves, and told them that her husband would come around to escort them to the Sanctuary at four.

Every wall of the house was covered with famous pictures of Thracian sorcerers, painted like sacred icons.
There was a small shelf in the sitting room full of books about the history and lore of the region. Only three were in English and Hermione gathered them against her bosom. There were armchairs draped in thick fabric and a narrow box bed piled with chequered woollen blankets, and as tempting as they were, Draco venturing upstairs was even more so.

The bedroom floor creaked and it took up almost the entire floor, but a masonry stove kept it cosy. Lace curtains hung over doors that opened into a balcony. From here, where wicker furniture, a rocking chair, and a blue velvet chaise were desultorily scattered, she could see the craggy Belintash plateau.

Hermione curled up on the rocking chair. Draco stretched out on the chaise.

Sabazios help her, she could not focus on her book. She just wanted to stare at him. Stare and smile. Smile, because that was the face of his redemption. God.
God god god god god.

She was forced to her feet by sheer emotion.

“I’m going to take a short nap. Will you wake me up in half an hour?”

“All right.” He didn’t look up from his book.

She plonked down on the chaise, worming into the space between him and the sloping piece on the side.

“There’s a massive bed right there,” he whined.

“So there is,” she agreed, now comfortably nestled.

He huffed, more like a hiss through his teeth. He inhaled aggravatedly. He raised his wand and cast a spell to set the book hovering in front of his face.

There was no wind in this magical shelter, she realised. The weightless lace curtains were perfectly still. Through the open doors, she could see inside the dark bedroom, and the mirror on the wall was a bright blue square, reflecting the sky.

It was the twenty-third of March, and soon the month would end, putting another year between her and the business end of Bellatrix’s wand. Two years. Imagine that.

Last year, she had stood on a ledge all by herself, making her own stars.
This year, she could spend that evening with Draco. Dinner out somewhere muggle, a late night film, a slow walk and light drinking. They’d stay up all night, under the stars he had made, so there’d be no bad dreams – only the joie de vivre they’d discovered together.

Thereafter…

April, come she will
When streams are ripe and swelled with rain

May she could stay, resting in his arms again, letting all the bad days and tragic anniversaries pass by. Laburnum trees would begin to flower, and they could look down on them while having long and leisurely lunches on Draco’s terrace.

June, for his birthday, she could – she would – find a concert to attend every weekend of the month, in all corners of the world. The portkeys would be bonnets; she had time to figure out how to make it so they had to be put on.

July, they could spend a weekend on his island again, when the water would be warmer and they could swim.

August, her parents would be visiting and she’d tell mum how wonderful he was, and tell dad how brilliantly he played. He needed and deserved parental approval and praise. They'd attend the wedding, and maybe he’d dance with her… actually dance.

September, she would let him do whatever he wanted and accept whatever he gifted her.

In October, she’d like to visit another historical site, a new landscape, with him. If not that, maybe they could go back to Wistsman’s Wood. She had promised she would return, hadn’t she?

By November, they’d have heard from old Crispus of Pergamon. Apart from everything else they had going on… maybe they could research memories and pensieves together.

End December, they could go to Australia for the holidays. Christmas and boxing day were going to fall on a Monday and Tuesday respectively, so they could leave on Friday evening and have a weekend to themselves before they celebrated another Granger Christmas. She could experience her first Australian summer with him. They could lounge on Gold Coast beaches, or sit on the boulders of Byron Bay where she could show him to the lonely, eternally searching lighthouse to give it some hope.

On the last day of the year, she would return with him to Finnigan’s roof and kiss him under those multi-coloured lights.

January, they would skip Sleazy Seamus’ birthday (if he invited them at all) and she would trick him into another date to celebrate an entire year since she had been given permission to kiss him —

“Are you crying?”

“No,” she said quickly, squeezing her eyes shut. All that did was splash more tears onto his shirt.

“Why the hell are you crying?”

“I said I’m not!”

“You are. Granger, I don’t know why you think being discreet is something you can do –”

“Just ignore me –”

“Ignore you? You’re f*cking sobbing into my jumper –”

“I’m happy, okay?”

The subtle up-and-down motion of his chest ceased.

In a tiny little voice, Hermione gabbled, “Happiest I’ve ever been in my life.” He remained still. “I’m not crying,” she attached, a bit louder.

He said, “okay,” with his exhale.

She opened her eyes and watched him pick up a lock of her hair, rub it between two fingers like he was studying the texture. Hair escaped one strand at a time, till the whole lot had fallen back down. He picked it up again and twirled it around his fingers. He twisted it between his fingers, making it spin like a top.

She closed her eyes again.

“Do you even know what that is?”

“Jee haan. I believe it's called a microwave.”

“Where did you – How did you – I give up.”

Being an exclusively magical territory, and entirely self-sufficient, and an island, Panah had managed to stay fairly detached from the modern world. Conversely, it was packed with tourists from all over the modern world, and that miscellany of human exemplars lent it the look of an ancient metropolis situated on an important trade route: A centre where cultures seamlessly melded.

It was hot. Far hotter than – (a salamander’s arsehole) – the cold mountains they’d just left behind. They both stepped out of the local Ministry building and immediately shed their outerwear.

Floo’ing wasn’t part of the culture here, where everything was close enough to walk and/or apparate. So they sauntered down a busy street, buying fruit salad served in palm leaf bowls from a cart.
Some buildings were made of sun-baked bricks and stayed close to the ground, others – the taller ones – were made of sandstone. Each shop was wide and airy, and there were charmed hand fans made of bamboo and knotted grass floating around and flapping rapidly.

When it came to purchasing, the unspoken understanding set in place in Sofia was once again invoked, which wasn’t as bothersome this time because Hermione was mostly buying gifts.

(One notable exception was at a block printing workshop, where fine cotton was dyed brilliant blue with natural indigo. The workers conjured an engraved wooden block of whatever design you pleased, to print all over the fabric. Hermione brought out a notebook from her bag, flipped it open to the last page, and showed them the caricaturised doodle of an owl. Throughout the entire process, while she waited for them to finish up her scarf, Hermione avoided looking at Draco.)

The sun was directly overhead by the time they reached their hotel.

“Safe to say this isn’t the tumbledown doss-house the Ministry put you in?” she remarked needlessly.

It was a sandstone edifice mounted on slightly raised terrain. Almost fortress-like, with parapeted outer walls encircling the main building, which was a four-tiered pile of pointed cinquefoil arches and small domes over every window. They passed under a stone gateway, through a courtyard with hanging gardens and a lotus pond.

Their suite took up one-fourth of the fourth floor. Cooling spells, charmed bamboo fans and a thin sheet of water trickling down one wall kept all the rooms gloriously cool. There were plush rugs, bejewelled cloths, circular balconies, a bed surrounded by arches and gold embroidered curtains — but there was no time to bask in any of it.

They picked up a map, two mysterious palm-sized black pouches,

and set off towards the beach.

An ochre-yellow sand beach. An almost-red sand beach. Ripened sweet by sunshine and the dark blue sea lapped at it greedily. A few metres away, there was a structure that ran past the shore, forming a towering enclosure over a part of the water. That was probably where the poor drugged and immured occamies were kept.

Draco handed her a pair of omnioculars, so she could see the palatial shape of the black dot on the horizon: Their next destination. That’s also when he revealed the mystery of the black pouches. He shook tiny brooms out of them that fit squarely in his palm. After an engorgio, they were full-sized. He tossed one at her.

“Raftaar 6000,” he announced with voracious glee, and stroked the long mahogany handle with a reverence that bordered on obscene. “Just you wait. After my co*ck and face, this will be the third-best thing you’ve ridden.”

Hermione seriously doubted that, didn’t she? Fear became a violent trembling in her solar plexus area.

But it would be fine. She’d flown on a carpet, and on creatures, on invisible creatures.

She ran over the tips and tricks that Ginny had taught her back in fourth year, remembering that she had even let go of both hands, once, while under her tutelage.
The maximum depth of the Arabian sea was under 5,000 metres. She was a decent swimmer.

She’d be fine.

She mounted the bedevilled thing, kicked off, hovered, lurched forward… “Aaah!”… landed back on her feet.

Draco found all that very very very funny.

“Don’t be mean, you prat!”

She sounded so pitiful.

…Not, according to Draco.

“Why are you leaning forward so much?” he chortled. “Straighten your – yeah, exactly like that. And pull back your grip a bit. That’s it. Bend your knees a little more before you kick off and shift your weight back – but only till you’re off the ground.”

That seemed to do the trick. She flew along the shore a few times to remind herself how it was done.

Hermione had never ridden a camel but she was sure this was how it’d feel. She was dreadfully, appallingly, egregiously out of practice, bobbing up and down more than the waves below. She chugged ahead slowly with her knuckles white and her eyes pinned on Draco as he cruised on ahead.

She was fine. 5,000 metres of water below, with infamous low-oxygen dead zones. She was fine.

Her legs were shaking when they touched down on the floating base, and she was so off-beam she couldn’t even see the massive palace in front of her.

And just as she let out a breath, she was swarmed. SWARMED.

People all around her. Cheshire grins. — “Madam, guide?” “Guide, madam?” “Madam? Madam?” “Guide????”

Draco took hold of her arm,

leading her out of the swarm and towards the Mahal.

And she could finally take it all in. An eight feet tall sculpture of the Priest King stood outside a palace of white marble, pink sandstone and floral inlay. Also, a witch from the Panah Ministry greeted them with folded hands and said, “Lovely to see you again, Mr Malfoy. Allow me to show you our Victory Palace.”

It consumed their entire afternoon. There was so much inside. Sculptures, enchanted artefacts, crumbling twelfth century documents, tablets, magical weaponry, old sceptre-wands.

They came out and the King was changing colours. Lapping blue waves were threaded with gold. The guides were sitting on cane chairs to one side, sipping tea from paper cups and chatting good naturedly amongst themselves. It was pleasant. Sea breeze blew in from behind the palace and raced across the sea towards Panah.

Hermione made a dramatic show of putting the black pouch into her bag. Draco looked on perturbedly.

She clasped her hands together and said, “Don’t go too fast.”

He beamed at her. Full-on.

A mile-wide, sparkling with delight, thousand watt beam.

She almost told him he could go as fast as he wanted. She almost told him he could toss her into the sea if it made him happy.

He did go too fast.

He was definitely showing off, swerving and swinging. But she tightened her arms, laid her cheek against his back, and didn’t mind at all. It wasn’t that she’d forgotten she was doing something that was supposed to terrify her; it was the fact that she was sharing in something he loved. The ride was so smooth, he was so sure of himself, so in control, and he was him. How could she be afraid?

After a measure of quick and gentle ups-and-downs and side-to-sides, he half-looked over his shoulder and shouted, “Ready for stage two?”

“What do you mean?”

“Brace yourself.”

He shot forward like an arrow. She gasped and squeezed him tight. For two seconds, her new owl-scarf felt like a noose —

Draco raised his wand arm. On either side of them, water rose like two walls… higher and curving in… they met…

Hermione and Draco were flying through a tunnel of water. It almost looked solid, but it still rippled. It shimmered with stray light and Draco’s magic. What spell was this?

Draco barrel-rolled. The tunnel twisted with them.

He lowered his wand and they shot ahead — the tunnel collapsed cacophonously behind them — OH, he was shooting upwards — she was sure she meant to scream, honestly she did, but what came out was a laugh, louder than crashing waves.

They sliced like a comet, vertically, higher and higher — they nose-dived towards the sea — they tore upwards again —

This was breathing. The dizzying ups and downs of life. The pounding of her heart and the electrical voltage in her brain.

Draco eased up without notice. Just like that, they were drifting. Still too fast, but as breezy as the breeze.

They flew for ages. Toes kissing the waves, sea spray on skin…

And the sky?

Well, the sun was setting. It was a blazing, burning, Fiendfyre orange.

The sand’s red hues were more intensely pronounced when they landed on the beach. The threads in the water were lava. Hermione was momentarily jarred by her stillness, while the sea roared and the people that had come to enjoy the sunset buzzed in the background.

She looked at Draco. He was already watching her with a half-grin – a little wicked, a little ludic. She knew at once that she was going to play along.

She lept ahead, swiping at him. He jumped back with a laugh.

“I told you not to go too fast!”

She swiped again. He jumped back again.

“My apologies, Hermione. Did I alarm you?”

“You bloody… you spiteful —!”

He turned around and hotfooted it. Ah, but sand was her terrain. She chased him and caught him and forced him around, fisting his shirt with insincere reproval.

…They had an audience. A family of six, including three children and a grandparent, holding ice-creams and gawking.
Draco wasted no time in silently appealing to them with an expression of extreme fear.

Hermione pff’ed and let him go.

She began walking along the shore, edging back and forth like a trickling tide, till she’d left most of the visitors behind.

There was a bird singing nearby. A sweet cooing that she’d never heard before,

and the wind was really picking up. She pulled out her shrunken jacket and put it on.

When she looked back at the shoreline, a cackle tore out of her. Draco had conjured a high back armchair, facing the sea with the confidence of a misguided king.

Skipping towards him, she recited, “Canute turned towards the ocean — ‘Back!’ he said, ‘thou foaming brine. ‘From the sacred shore I stand on, I command thee to retreat; Venture not, thou stormy rebel, to approach thy master's seat: Ocean, be thou still! I bid thee come not nearer to my feet!’"

“What.” drawled Draco, unmoved.

“You cannot sit on a throne before the sea!”

“I can do what I want,” he avered, all hoity-toity.

She sat on the sand next to him. “If I vanish your throne, you’ll fall on your arse.”

“And you’ll find yourself in the water. Upside down. With that hair of yours dragging you to the sea floor.”

“Draco. Get down here.”

“No.”

“You look so stupid. Like a complete ponce. Of the mincing variety.”

His look of displeasure, pinched and poisonous, was so reminiscent of boy-Draco… and it made her heart swell with fondness .
He sniffed, sticking out his jaw as he stood up stiffly, vanished the chair, and dropped onto the sand next to her.

Over however many minutes, right before them, the entire sea turned into crashing waves of lava,

and above them, like a blind spot, was the first appearance of night.

Hermione whispered, “Why did you follow us into the Room of Requirement?”

There was no surprise in his response. No anger, no bitterness, no reluctance. Only that even-toned delicacy.

“I’d just begged for mercy from two Death Eaters who’d cornered me. I’d shown them my Dark Mark to prove I’m with them. After that… the choice was between wallowing in self-loathing in the middle of a raging battle, or doing… something. I saw Crabbe and Goyle sneak in after you three… and… even when nothing else was in my control, they always were.”

Unlike his voice, there was so much on his face, and guilt, his ravenous eagle, was most prominent of all. No matter what he said, he couldn’t stop his liver from constantly regrowing, could he? It wasn’t just scars and regrets he was carrying. Regrets… they offered purchase. Guilt just weighed you down.

It was another Draco-and-the-light moment. He was the sunset and the first appearance of the moon. She wanted to make things better for him.

“What haunts you the most, Draco? What eats away at you?”

She saw his movements happen in stop-motion: Blink. Swallow. Soft locks of hair rippling, almost lava-red.

“I have a list, in chronological order, from least harrowing to most. You love lists, don’t you?” He tapped six notes on his knee before carrying on. “Everything that’s happened with Mother and Father. Yes, I know that is’nt my fault, but they f*cking hang over me, don’t they? All the deaths, the gashes and wounds… Dumbledore. Crabbe. Potter and Weasley. Katie Bell. Longbottom. Snape. Lupin, Edward, and Nymphadora. The nameless muggles. Ollivander. Charity Burbage. Madeline Hext. …Every despicable thing I’ve said or thought about you.”

Seven taps, seven notes.

“That night. When you heard the music… When I… I – I didn’t have a choice. I had to be able to get away, to get a chance to inform –”

“I know, Draco.”

“When he tortured me, afterwards… all I heard was your screams. Weasley’s screams over your screams. Madeline’s screams. A symphony of screams. I wish you didn’t know what that feels like.”

She took hold of his wrist and pulled his arm onto her lap, flipping it to reveal the Mark and the Words. She ran her fingers over that thing of darkness.

“You’ve said and thought a rather lot of very nice things since then,” she reminded him.

“Yeah, well, you still feel guilty even though your parents have said they forgive you, and you’ve made up and have a perfectly wonderful relationship again.”

She flinched. She had no counter for that.

“Goyle will never speak to me again because I’m the reason Crabbe’s dead. Bell sent my apology letter right back, with f*ck Off written across it in red. Rosemerta said she accepts my apology and if I ever set foot in The Three Broomsticks again, she’ll set her brothers on me. The rest are dead or dead to me or I’m dead to them.”

Only wind and the water again, for a while.

“What are we supposed to do?” Hermione repined, “Just keep carrying all this?”

He shrugged, frowning at her fingers on his arm. “Guilt should depend on the bigger picture. Everything you did was for good –”

“You know full well it doesn’t work that way. Maybe… you have the right idea. Maybe we need to decide to let go of it. But, well, actually do it. Like my mother decided to forgive me.”

He didn’t say anything.
She traced the A of acknowledge. She laid her thumb over mine.

“Shall we leave it here, Draco? Our guilt… on this beach…”

Without looking at him, she returned his arm and sat up on her knees. She pushed her wand into the sand and dug a deep hole. Water swept in and stopped a few inches short of the edge.

She didn’t think too deeply – she just felt. Felt everything she had felt as a butterfly and a girl, and conjured based on nothing but instinct.

From her wand, an angry tangle of barbed wire emerged. It was full of stuff – licks of fire, butterfly wings, strands of hair, balls of light, scraps of fabric, broken fragments. A hideous teratoma-like thing that she did not look at closely. She let it fall into the pit.

“Your turn,” she prompted hoarsely, staring down.

After five seconds, a massive deep black chest covered with black snakes and black stars and red fire, sealed tight with a huge padlock, plummeted down the pit.

Hermione packed it tight with sand. She smoothened the surface, then roughed it up, so it looked no different from the turf around it.

She pressed her finger into the sand and wrote, our stronger intent defeats our strong guilt.

[Up in the Northern Rivers of New South Wales was a creek called ‘Repentance’, and in the sticky, clayey soil around it, Hermione had once written her name.]

A hand appeared in her periphery.

Draco had risen. She placed her hand in his and he pulled her up. When he let go, her arm swung to her side like it was dead

They stood on their sins and looked at each other. Draco’s hair and eyes had soaked up the orange light terrifically, and he was raw and exposed and…
She knew exactly what this moment meant to him. And the fact that it was her, with him, in this moment.

She whispered, “Draco,” so he’d have a set of notes to remember it by.

Wind blew her hair across her face. He pushed it back with both hands and tucked it behind her ears and then, for the most fleeting of moments, cupped her face.

One arm fell away. The other – the left one – reached down and took hold of her hand.

They walked away and did not once look back.

She knew that within minutes, the sea would begin to wash away the words.

The Sonbagh hotel welcomed them back with strings of golden light,

and twinkling gems of magic nestled in its hanging gardens.

In a steaming pool of warm water, with rose petals and jasmine petals and marigold petals floating on the surface, they washed the sand off their skin and hair.

Sandalwood incense was omnipresent.

Dinner was eaten on the rooftop restaurant, under a muslin canopy, while a woman plucked on a sitar and her companion beat a pair of drums with his hands.

In bed, curtains drawn, they made love slowly. Stretching over hours, it was just hands and mouths, glacial movements, feathery touches.

Hot and sweet and so hedonistic.

He rolled her on top, finally, when they both knew pulling back would be impossible. It was her pace, her movements, her direction. But he had a hand wrapped firmly around the base of her head, to keep her face close to his, to let her hair form another curtain around them, so she saw nothing but him, nothing but pleasure flashing silver as he gasped and stared up at her. His mouth brushed against hers again and again ———

She had spent the past two days showing him, because she understood now, clearly and completely, how he had chosen to operate in the After.
Be it remorse, affinity, goodwill, or love: He piled actions upon each other until they formed a tower of probative evidence, so that, at the end of the day, when words were finally spoken, he could point at it like it was unimpeachable mathematical proof and say Q.E.D.

She traced his browline with one trembling finger and told him – the words spoken in a murmur.

Just as when she’d first told him, a multitude of emotions bloomed on his face. They were more subdued, but she could see, because she was so close. He was thunderstruck… slightly dazed… and a little frightened…

But it all melted away, and he was hers. He murmured the words back.

At the Panah National Museum, she salivated over the largest planoconvex story tablet. There was a whole lot on it, but its focal point was a female deity battling two tigers.
She admired copperplates, wittered on about the Harappan script to Draco, and took photographs of the hundreds of seals depicting now-extinct creatures.

She followed Draco into a narrow alley, into his artist friends’ workshop. She saw his ire flair when all three immediately put on their salesperson front.
But behind all that, they were outstandingly talented and rather lovely and soft-spoken. When it was time to select a painting, she smiled at Draco and politely stepped out.

Out of the blue, Hermione came into some hitherto unknown superpower. How else could she explain having found a hidden treasure of a bookshop on top of the seediest flight of stairs, buried behind little shops that were hidden behind bigger shops?

There were no shelves. Books were simply stacked on top of each other, in all languages of the surrounding regions. The owner was very helpful, thankfully. He chaperoned them through the stacks, found the best translations, and for the books that weren’t translated, he offered dictionaries and guides.

Tensions rose when Hermione asked if Vedic Magic had any insights into house-elf magic and binding spells. There was a very not-to-be-seen-or-heard-or-spoken-about view of elves in those parts. Draco deftly lured him away while Hermione suppressed her primal nature.

She only opened her mouth once after that, when he fished out a long-forgotten treatise by the Classical Sanskrit scholar Kalidas. It was about communication through magical clouds and vapours.

The moment they were back in the sun, they simultaneously realised they’d had enough. They moseyed back into their suite, sweating and swearing not to leave till evening set, when there was to be a concert and dance recital in the courtyard.

However, when she was up to her elbows in parchment, wearing his shirt (barely buttoned) and nothing more, she had the horrifying realisation that the squiggle on the cover of her sanskrit-to-english dictionary was a 1. It ended mid-alphabet.

“The shop won't have vanished,” Draco pointed out calmly over his book about Panah’s trade history. “Go pick up the other one.”

“Could… you?” she cheeped.

“No.” He licked his finger and turned a page.

That led to a long back-and-forth about the weather, about her carelessness and his lack of chivalry, about her naked legs and his bare chest.

“Ple –ease,” she begged, “Please, Draco.”

“You are so unbelievably, despicably irritating,” he thundered.

And he grabbed a shirt and stomped out, muttering darkly.

Hermione tittered giddily to herself. She skipped into the pantry for a bottle of beer, so that he’d have something to cool his temper when he came back.

“Are you completely insane? A whole door??”

“Oui, mon joli chaton.”

“…”

“What? Nothing more to say?”

“……No. Let’s get going.”

Pale pink quatrefoil tiles were cool beneath her bare feet as she dried herself off.

Her clothes were on the bed, ready to be worn, but Draco’s wedgewood blue jumper was hanging over the back of a chair, so, predictably, that’s what she wore.

She glided down the marble stairs, sliding her souls off the edges. It was noisy and it bothered the portraits. They went shhhhh and hmph, her shoes went thwack-thwack-thwack, and together they made a musical intro.

The final portkey was sitting right in the middle of the entrance hall. In such lavish surroundings, it could’ve pretended to be readymade art.

[She’ll say, “That cage is big enough for a large goat,” and he’ll say, “Yes.”]

Tea and quatre-quarts and tarte Tatin were on a doily, waiting under preserving charms in the conservatory… But Draco wasn’t around. She looked through creepers and glass and saw him in the distance, far across the lawn, lounging on a chaise. It was exactly like the one in Bulgaria, except it was made of leather and the backrest was slightly higher.

She stepped out into the garden, where clouds had formed a wheel in the sky.

A gust of wind set all the trees quivering and it swept over the grass making it ripple like the sea. Where it was coming from, she did not know, but when it hit her face (whispering in her ears) it stole one of her secrets to render unintelligible, and whisper into someone else’s ears someday.

She imagined it travelling across the channel and all the way to London, to Starthistle Hill, where it would strike the chimes hanging on her balcony.

There was wind whistling down the open corridors around the Hogwarts’ courtyard, eventually falling into the Black Lake. Wind was tunnelling through the gaps in the hedgerows lining Hampstead, going down streets and knocking a set of swings in a playground. It was ruffling the new grass climbing up the hillock by the Burrow. It was sweeping past the trees in the Forest of Dean. On the other side of the world, where the Coriolis force was turning things in the opposite direction, wind was rolling over the sands of Mentone beach and teasing another set of chimes.

Draco wanted so badly to banish the first eighteen years of his life to hell, but Hermione would let them have their own epoch of nothingness. Years of cold, dark space; a void where purpose, meaning, function, identity, action, reaction, and Time were never really hers to command.

The end of that thing they call war ——

They call it a war because it had been, to them. History will particularise it as nothing more than a short-lived civil war: A nine-month-long coup d'etat enacted by a group of radical extremists. It’ll be a small red spot in the last decade of global events, a short interlude in modern magical history. It’ll be seen as the natural climax of prolonged internal strife, the rapid rise and fall of a hubristic tyrant, the fabled victory of a disordered resistance and untrained child soldiers running on spirit, fear, and faith in the most unassuming but utterly worthy boy saviour.

It was a damp squib, an artless skirmish —

Ah, whatever it was. That smear of time that was too fast and very slow and would never ever define her… That miserable, whimpered end… It was her Big Bang.

And after that…

Slow cosmic expansion.

Grand unification.

There was light.

A precarious move towards equilibrium,

and towards the layered, quotidian dramedy of everyday life.

She looked up and saw everything that it was made of: Hope, both ebullient and duplicitous… determination, both bolstering and misleading… regularity and comfort and ennui… the prickliness of anticipation, and the fear of the unknown, wonder, inspiration, drudgery… they all slotted together like puzzle pieces in the endless expanse of bright blue sky.

In the years ahead, she’ll be called an idealist more and more often. She’ll be called an intractable instigator. Bloody-minded, misguided, vengeful, and a fool. She’ll feel angry, resentful, frustrated, defeated —

There’ll many more tears yet to be shed. Oceans worth of tears.

She’ll carry on through it all

She’s a waterfall

She steps out of her shoes and now again she’s a squirrel scurrying across the lawn,

barefoot because it feels nice. The wind collects in her hair.

She plonks down on the chaise and worms into the space between Draco and the sloping piece on the side.

In six hours she will be home and in fourteen hours she will be back at work, returning to a routine where she bounces between a museum of wishful thinking and a mould that she will never fit in.

– But the heart pounding beneath her ear will take her as she is at any given moment.

There will be days that feel like a Sisyphean toil, days when life’s circles feel more like hell’s circles, and the layers of her aftermath-trifle will be made of concrete and gravel.

– But she has a guide now. A guide who needs her to be his guide, and things are so much easier, so much more wonderful that way, when sometimes you’re leading and sometimes you’re being lead… sometimes being carried —

And when there’ll be tears – oh, there will be tears – there will also be a hand (the hand tracing shapes on her thigh) that will reach up and wipe the tears away before they can become an ocean that will drown her.

She lifts her head and looks at Draco, staring at him as he stares ahead.

He turns to her, eyes bright and dancing . He could pull her closer, or suddenly grin, or threaten to put a pillowcase over her head or

She’ll take him as he is at any given moment.

She strokes her fingertips along the side of his face and his expression falters. Softens.

The kiss she presses onto his lips is the documentation of history.

His reciprocation is immediate …as is the heat in her chest, the melting of her bones, the current sizzling over her skin

she straddles him and pulls back just far enough so his face fills her vision and becomes the only thing in the world. His hair is the sun and his eyes are the sky and she can see the whole jigsaw of life set in grey.

He lifts his head, she dodges his mouth and smiles at his small noise of affront…

The skin of his throat is warm , clean and scented. Soft when she stays in place but just a little abrasive when she drags her lips upwards —

She stops right on his pulse point.

Steady and Ticking – Equanimity and Equilibrium – I love you and I love you —

He sighs into her hair, displacing the wind.

His sigh becomes the wind. It wraps around the world and stills it,

for love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs.

And her sigh…

Her sigh is a long and winding chronicle,

euphonious

Détraquée - Chapter 107 - Hystaracal - Harry Potter (2024)

Chapter Text