Summary: Sometimes the snow comes down in June, sometimes the sun goes ‘round the moon. Sometimes love happens like the pop of a balloon. And sometimes you learn to live with it before you learn you’re also nose-deep in it.
Categories: Hermione/Draco Characters: None
Warnings: Epilogue? What Epilogue?, Mild Profanity
Challenges: Series: None
Chapters: 7
Completed: Yes
Word count: 29903
Read: 21153
Published: 03/23/11
Updated: 04/08/11
Story Notes:
An entry to Hawthorn and Vine's Reverse Challenge Phase 2, where we had to write a fic based on art.
1. Chapter 1 by lucilla_pauie
2. Chapter 2 by lucilla_pauie
3. Chapter 3 by lucilla_pauie
4. Chapter 4 by lucilla_pauie
5. Chapter 5 by lucilla_pauie
6. Chapter 6 by lucilla_pauie
7. Epilogue by lucilla_pauie
Chapter 1 by lucilla_pauie
Snow in June
Chapter One
Rita Skeeter had made a field day of it, entitling the feature ‘Snow in June’. It had dominated the society pages of the Sunday Daily Prophet. Hermione had been sorely tempted to cage the old vermin again, and still cringed now even though the whole mad business had happened a year ago. Or perhaps, she was cringing because it was a year ago. The anniversary was coming.
As if Rita Skeeter was tuned in to Hermione’s thoughts, the subscription owl chose that moment to arrive and tap at one of the panes of the kitchen oriel. Hermione cringed again and made to leave the breakfast nook, but was prevented by her mother smilingly sliding in next her, and her stepfather, who, as was the usual case lately, chose to sit on Hermione’s other side, blocking the other exit.
“Good morning, Hermione,” he said, raising an eyebrow but not voicing a comment about her atypical reaction to the Daily Prophet. He let the owl in and took the delivery. It was the first time he was able to touch the wizarding paper firsthand. Hermione usually wanted it all to herself fresh from the press, not disarranged yet by anyone.
“ ‘Morning,” she replied companionably enough. It had been a year. You could get used to anything in that time. Reining in shudders, in particular. “You, too, Mum. Um, no,” she added to her stepfather when he slid the Daily Prophet to her. “You get on with it. I don’t want to see it just yet.” Not at breakfast. Not ever. Just in case.
“Any particular reason, darling?” her mother asked after serving tea and buttering croissants for her husband.
“Did you perhaps know this, sweeting?”
Hermione, who had wandlessly and non-verbally conjured a novel in her hand under the table to show as an excuse to not wanting the newspaper, was startled and flabbergasted to find that her stepfather had addressed her.
Sweeting? She resisted the urge to put a finger in her ear-- both ears-- and shake.
“Did I perhaps know what?”
“This.” He scooted closer to her and opened the paper wider. She only stopped herself from scoffing at the action and at the fact that he read the Social section first.
The small headline read, ‘Following Father’s Footsteps?’
The bloody author was Skeeter. And the bloody rubbish she spouted this time, with bloody alliterations galore, was about Hermione’s stepbloodybrother being seen in Muggle London with a bloody tart.
Well, the word used wasn’t really tart, but Hermione knew better. Her stepbrother’s intellect and taste were concentrated on apparel and art and sometimes, Potions, and stopped there. On companions, he showed no brain function, only pride and superficiality. What an idiot. And why was she suddenly immensely affected by his idiocy anyway?
“I thought she’d be writing something about our upcoming anniversary, bless that hag.”
It was uncanny and scary how her stepfather voiced her thoughts oftener than not. If she told Harry and Ron, they’d disown her. She wanted the paper back now.
Her mother leaned into Hermione’s other side and speed-read the article. “A girl. Will he take her, do you think? Should we alter the reservations?”
“Taken care of, love. I asked for a table for six. I figured, if our children aren’t taking dates, we can invite Edrina and Michael.”
Our children. Ye gods, Hermione wanted to spoon treacle into her ears. And she wanted to squeeze syrup on her eyes, or perhaps the pepper mill would work better.
And yet, a small but significant part of Hermione did rejoice too at the tender and happy look on her mother’s face as she wordlessly reached for her husband’s hand and squeezed it.
“Well, Hermione?” her mother said next. The couple was really working hard at the parents-not-newlyweds thing.
“Pardon?”
“Are you taking someone to our dinner?”
“Oh. No, I don’t think so.”
“Can’t you take Pot- Harry?” This came from her stepfather, and Hermione wanted to laugh. ‘Harry’ was strange coming from his lips. “Or Ron?”
“Not Ron.” Her mother sent a scolding look to her stepfather, and he winced and nodded his head in the classic mea culpa expression. Hermione and Ron had just officially ended things where they hadn’t officially begun things, and the road back to friendship was bumpy at the moment.
“Harry’s married. Friends don’t really join intimate family occasions such as you’re planning, you know,” Hermione said. “I mean, we don’t care, but it would look... and I’m certain particular vermin will be looking.” She nodded at the Daily Prophet.
“It’s been some months since Ron, hasn’t it?”
Hermione goggled at her mango nectar (and hoped no one noticed) and nodded to her stepfather’s words as if comments like that from him was the norm.
“Are you being a snob, Hermione?”
Hermione choked and sputtered and tasted mango on the far reaches of her nasal cavity. “Excuse me?” she asked”no, squeaked”while fending off her mother’s attempts to wipe her. A snob? Her? From the king of snobbery himself?
“Well, you’re a beautiful and admirable young lady. If you’re about to be alone at our dinner, it must be that you are simply not entertaining swains. I can’t imagine there being none. And stop shaking your fingers in your ears, for Merlin’s sake.”
Hermione stopped shaking her fingers in her ears but continued gaping at her stepfather.
“I know what’s going through your sharp, many-faceted mind. ‘Did Lucius just compliment me?’ Yes, he did. You are my stepdaughter. You are entitled to compliments every now and then.” He smirked, reached with one long finger and nudged her mouth closed.
Hermione rubbed the back of her hand at the spot where he’d touched her, just to be insolent. “Actually,” she mumbled. “I was wondering who still uses the word ‘swain’ in this century.”
“Not so early in the morning, now. You do tease her so,” her mother intoned sternly to her husband, as if she hadn’t just put away the digital camera after taking a photo of Hermione gaping with juice dribbling from one nostril, the traitor.
“I just couldn’t resist, love.”
They laughed.
Using her knees, Hermione unceremoniously climbed over Lucius’s lap, injuring vital appendages and ignoring his yelps, and stomped away from the breakfast nook. She would have stomped all the way out the kitchen and back to her bedroom if it weren’t for another annoyance sprouting from nowhere and blocking her path.
She let the pent-up snarl loose; her mother’s antique copper pots and pans rattled in their hooks. When she finished, she said, “Do not Apparate in my mother’s house! Knock! Haven’t I told you enough times?”
He backtracked and knocked at the kitchen archway. There were suspicious coughs behind Hermione.
“It’s also my father’s house, Hermione. And mine. And yours. Ours. I can come and go, Helen said so. Right, Helen?”
“Right, Draco.”
Well, her mother had always wished for a son. Hermione sighed, sidestepped her stepbloodybrother without inhaling to prevent catching his disgusting scent, and went upstairs. She fully intended to stay there and make them drag her out.
If only she wasn’t always failing at her intentions lately. In particular, the intention of staying away from her stepbloodybrother.
____________________
Draco laughed to himself”he hadn’t done anything yet and he’d already riled Hermione”as he settled at the breakfast nook.
That was what his stepmother called it. The breakfast nook. A bow window with plump yellow cushions for seats and a semi-circular red table painted and carved like the half of an apple.
He and his father had never had a breakfast nook before. They were familiar with breakfast rooms, sunrooms, morning rooms. They’d never had tables like apples either. Nor such thick, bright crockery in lieu of delicate bone china.
His father seemed to revel in them now. In everything, really, that had to do with Helen and their new home. The manor was already in Draco’s name. Lucius hated that house soon after he returned to it from a two-year sojourn in Azkaban.
Draco, having been a minor during his botched murder attempts, and complicity to the Death Eater invasion at Hogwarts, had been let off with a heavy fine, and even his use of one of the Unforgivables had been forgiven (Madam Rosmerta had accepted the monetary reparations and decreed no Malfoy shall ever step inside her pub again).
Lucius got the small sentence of two years because they couldn’t accuse him of anything beyond complicity as well, aside from planting that damnable diary in Ginny Weasley’s cauldron and breaking and entering the Ministry of Magic. Add to this the incontestable testimony of Harry Potter regarding Narcissa’s aid of him in the battle and the Ministry could only grit their teeth and sign Lifetime Probation. Lucius was imprisoned rather than Kissed. Two years, that was all. But Narcissa still died of heartache in the master suite. She wasted away the moment Lucius was incarcerated, convinced they would never be united again, completely forgetting the son whose safety and innocence she had fought for.
Draco casually observed Helen as she gave him a large helping of eggs. She didn’t seem to be the type to waste away if bereft of a husband. But probably lonely, all the same. If she wasn’t, she wouldn’t have remarried. He doubted his father was that lovable.
Of course, he all but choked on that thought when Helen got up to make another pot of tea and bent clear across the apple-table to kiss Lucius in passing.
Right on the mouth.
He’d heard Hermione was here with Helen, and he had only visited at the prospect of annoying his stepsister, but now Draco was having second thoughts. However much he liked Helen, his stomach roiled at seeing his father snogged like that at the most random moments.
“My apologies, son. We forget sometimes. Rather, Helen forgets sometimes. Because you’re not Hermione, I think.”
“Excuse me!” Helen called rather shrilly from the stove. “You goosed me while we were at the grocer’s! And Hermione was right beside me!”
“Spare me,” Draco moaned melodramatically. “And I thought you were above goosing.”
“You’re only above goosing when you’re dead,” his father quipped.
“What’s her name again, dear?” Helen said, unconvincingly glaring at his father and coming back with the fresh pot. She had these disconcerting objects in the kitchen that performed like magic. He didn’t doubt for a second that the tea was piping hot despite the quickness.
“Whose name?”
“This girl you’re taking to our dinner, son,” said his father.
“I’m taking someone?”
Helen shook open the Prophet. “She has shoulder-length waves. Wild. Dark. Not sure what precise color. Your paper is in grayscale”oh, she’s a redhead! Goodness, your paper is sentient. Well?”
“Oh, her. Julia, I think.”
“You think?” His father raised one eyebrow. Draco hated it when Lucius did that.
“Don’t play with your father and me, dear. It says here you’ve been seen together with this young woman for several months now.”
“That’s just Skeeter being her lying, sensationalizing self, Mum.”
Draco didn’t realize his airways had been malfunctioning until they unclogged just then. He shot a grateful look at Hermione. She didn’t change her disdainful expression as she stood beside the tall black food box and poured herself a tall glass of juice. Wait, no, that wasn’t a glass. It had a top, which Hermione was now turning into place.
“I’m going for a walk,” she said to no one in particular, already heading to the back door. “I’ll be back for lunch.”
Though he pretended to be busy again with his breakfast, Draco didn’t miss the slight pout Helen gave to his father, who in turn, gave a half-hug to his wife, and murmured, “She said she’ll be back for lunch.”
Lucius caught him watching. Draco frowned in curiosity, but Lucius only said, “Draco, you’re nearly twenty-eight.”
“Eh?” Uncouth, yes, but his mouth was full and his mind couldn’t connect the connection, if there was one.
“Hermione is twenty-eight,” Helen said with a sigh.
“When I was that age, you were already toddling,” said his father.
“When I was that age, Hermione was already eight,” said Helen.
His father nodded away to Helen’s additions and said, “These two should settle down.”
Draco swallowed his eggs, wiped his chin, laughed”not in that order. “You want me and Hermione to marry?”
“Yes!” said Helen.
“Not each other, not necessarily, no,” said his father, smirking at the improbability.
“We’re dying for grandchildren,” said Helen.
His father winced. “I’m not dying for anything. I just want you settled down, Draco, do you hear me? Find a good girl and settle down. I want you to be happy. This... this is different, son.”
Meaning, that this was not a selfish fatherly command that would benefit no one and nothing but the mania of a third party they refuse to even recall now. Draco nodded. “I think I’ll go for a walk, too.”
He hastily left them. Once he was out the back door, he rolled his eyes. And it wasn’t because he disdained settling down and happiness. No. It was because he was trying to find a good girl, even though he did it in a lackadaisical way. The problem was, the ‘good girls’ he’d found so far had eyed his looks and manner and had presumed he wanted nothing more than romance. That was all they could and would give.
And he was also rolling his eyes at the audacity of it all. He was trying to find a good girl other than the only good girl he knew, because his father had to go and marry the girl’s mother and the girl had been his stepbloodysister for nearly a year now, which constituted a year of keeping away, visiting, being smitten, and keeping bloody away again.
It was exhausting.
He’d heard she’d broken it off with Weasley, though. Hmm.
____________
She ended up sitting down rather than walking. Her mother and stepfather had bought this old ruined estate in Dover and spent most of their engagement period restoring it. Half the number of rooms was still uninhabitable, upcoming projects. They’d added that bow window around back and built a kitchen around it. They rebuilt the walls and roofs that had been unlucky during the German bombing. A scattered parade of oaks had miraculously been unscathed, and they shaded the extensive grounds and the path to the front door. Her mother had had the false entry torn down and an antique set of double doors placed almost right under the domed skylight over the landing of the staircase so that ushering guests in on a sunny day brought them into sunshine rather than from. Hermione remembered catching her breath when her mother pulled her inside for the first time. The light after the shade had been startling. Pleasant.
Not that there was light just now. Spring had been early this year, only to waltz back and forth with winter and become this unsettled cold-warm-cold cruelty. It was June, for goodness’ sake. Hermione glared up at the leaden sky. As if in response, it lightened and burned her eyes a little. That was more like it.
Hermione was sitting down in her favorite part in the entire estate, on a well. An old artesian well. It was uncovered. She perched at its rim. The darkness that led to its bottom was open to the sky.
The well was in the middle of a walled garden. The garden looked down at the house. From where she sat, Hermione could count all the windows from the fixed and updated east wing to the dusty and moldy west wing. That was, she counted in between pants. It had been quite a climb for someone whose only exercise was to lug books from library to flat or from flat to library.
The walled garden was one of the upcoming projects. Still one of the upcoming projects. If it wasn’t for her discomfort at being here, she would have attacked this place long ago with her father’s tools. Logan Granger had had a love affair with seeds and compost and the like. She suspected it was their garden that made their old house sell so fast.
It would be easier and quicker to use her wand on this one, but what was the point of having a garden if you hadn’t cultivated and sweated over its beauty? And what was the point of cultivating and sweating over this garden’s beauty when she preferred being in her own flat?
The garden was wild and bald in all the wrong places and the wooden door she had opened awhile ago had shrieked bloody murder. She’d always thought it would fall down, but there it was, still standing and shrieking away at the slight wind that buffeted it at the hinges.
Probably because the very devil was approaching.
He noticed her watching and raised an eyebrow, the picture of arrogance. That would have been good for her. But no, he just had to smile. It was merely a curve at the right corner of his lips, a slight rounding of his cheeks and crinkling of his eyes. And yet, where had all the oxygen gone? Dammit.
“What are you doing here, Mal-Draco?”
“You still slip?”
Hermione sighed in exasperation. Calling him ‘Malfoy’ was ugly now because it had become her mother’s name as well. She had gritted her teeth and called him and his father by their names simply for this reason. In the beginning, it had disconcerted Draco, and then it took him only a short while to disconcert her back and call her Hermione.
“Why do you insist on sitting here, next to certain death and in the middle of depressing desolation?”
“I’m only next to certain death and in the middle of depressing desolation now that you’re here.”
“That’s harsh, Hermione dearest.”
“I do my best, Draco darling.”
“You certainly do. Thank you for back there,” he said.
“What back there?” she said. “The Julia thing? Rescuing you from being pitied by your father and stepmother?”
“For the Julia thing and for rescuing me from being pitied by my father and stepmother,” he parroted with mock sniveling.
“I just don’t want my mother wasting thought and sentiment on inconsequential lobby lice.”
He laughed. “Lobby lice? Who still uses that euphemism? And none of them were lobby lice, you ignoramus.”
“Ignoramus, my arse.” She had to pause here as he roared with mirth at that, coughing something about being a bad influence on her in between sniggers. She ignored him. “If you want to call me that, don’t go crying to me whenever the lobby lice withdraw their pincers on you. Margaret, Eleanora, Julia. All lobby lice. If they weren’t, there’d be a junior Mrs Malfoy by now.”
“Crying, my arse.” He folded his long legs and lowered himself gingerly beside her. “Have you noticed all of them are bookish types? You’d have gotten on capitally.” He sniggered again at her snort. He’d been laughing a lot, hadn’t he? “I figured they’d be the commitment types, that they’re the ones with standards, like you do. Well, no you don’t. Weasley doesn’t really cut the--”
She dug her elbow into his side.
As he opened his mouth to grouse about the abuse, she said, “At least, you don’t mope. That’s your redeeming quality.”
“I don’t depend on people or people’s attention to me to be happy.”
She gave him a look.
“Well, not any more,” he said, relenting and rolling his eyes.
“Or maybe you just never really loved them.”
“The same way you never really loved Weasley?”
“Don’t be absurd. Of course I loved him. I love him.”
“I told you every time I broke up with a girl, and you never told me that you broke up with Weasley. I had to hear it from Pansy.”
“Well, excuse me for not being inclined to air out my troubles to everyone, stepbrother dear.”
He shrugged. “Maybe you never really loved him, that’s why breaking up with him was like having a hangnail removed, no fuss and bother, no need to tell your stepbrother.”
Despite herself, she laughed. He could be the most ridiculous creature at times. She wondered whether this had mounted and mounted, pent up inside him all those years when he had to be the prissy pureblood to his cronies. Or maybe he’d been funny then; how could she tell? She hadn’t been close to him. They hadn’t been given a chance.
“Why are you making me repeat this? I love Ron.”
“A platonic love, apparently. I did not and do not see you moping. I think you moped back in third year. Wait, no, you were moping for your cat, not for Weasley.”
She gaped at him.
“You went to Paris. You went to the Balkans to meet some diplomat or other about trolls! Or did you meet a troll along with meeting diplomats?” He was amused at his own dumb joke.
“Oh, shut up.”
“You organized fund-raising balls and galas, and you never wore the same dress robes twice.”
“I said shut your gob, and are you criticizing my necessary outfits? You? You probably turned the Malfoy Manor’s library into a wardrobe!”
He went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “You’re very chipper going to work. You’re zooming up the Ministry and people want you to be their boss. Yep, you’re not moping.”
“Why should I? I never really lost Ron. We’ll be friends again once he gets off his high horse.”
“You never really loved him.”
“I told you--”
“When will you introduce me to Krum?” he suddenly said with an injured air, making her laugh again.
“When he’s not busy with much more important things, like signing fan mail. That’s much more important than meeting you.”
“So you’re no longer sighing after the thought of Weasley as a father to your children?”
Really, his conversation thread looped and swooped like mad, didn’t it? “Will you stop it?”
“You’re shuddering. In disgust?” He sniggered. She ignored him.
“Hey, I heard Potter and his wife are expecting. Is this the start of the Potter Kingdom at Hogwarts?”
“Don’t be absurd. And better a Potter Kingdom than a Malfoy Kingdom, I’d say.”
“Really? That’s too bad. Potter will have to work hard to top me. I plan to have at least ten.”
“How nice. Marry a hag. She won’t protest or suffer too much from your plans.”
“Is there a bone to pick between you and Helen?”
Hermione had expected another of Draco’s meandering nonsense, but this... This was a galumphing nonsense. She closed her mouth-- she had gaped for a second-- then said with a superior smile, “My mother and I are great. And even if we’re not, it’s none of your business.”
Of course, that wasn’t true. They were family. Merlin, Morgana, Circe and O Ye Goddess of the Shudders.
Draco went over to a weed-choked bush as if he’d seen gold there. A blatant brush-off.
Discomfited, Hermione turned her attention to the garden again. The ash tree by the wall to her right had been painstakingly trained to spread its branches over half of the garden. Probably for plants that preferred shade. And for lovely picnics. The longest branch arched over Hermione’s head. She casually reached up to touch its tip.
It was like the proverbial doomed spindle. Her bum lost purchase on the rim of the well. Her feet left the ground. Gravity did what it always did and began to pull.
She didn’t even have time to draw in breath for a scream.
Her hand automatically reached out for something, anything, and his hand was right there, grabbing and pulling, until she was breathing him in, her cheek pressed to his chest, his heartbeat racing in her ears, right along with hers.
His musk was revolting, his chest was a disgusting wall of mossy bricks and she couldn’t wait to get off him. Merlin curse him. And did he have to peer down at her with his ugly, ugly eyes?
She only grew aware of how tight he was holding her when blood flowed again everywhere as he withdrew his arms, only to grab her by the shoulders. He shook her and got in her face. “You could have died, you daft bint!”
“I’m sorry!” she blurted breathlessly. In the next second, she wanted to take it back and slap him. How dare he manhandle her and yell at her?
This time, she succeeded gulping air in to tell him off. But as soon as she opened her mouth, he sealed it with his.
End Notes:
Thank you for reading! Please tell me what you think!
Chapter 2 by lucilla_pauie
Snow in June
Chapter Two
Ten or more years ago, if you’d told him he would take to Muggle culture and blaspheme at seeing Hermione Granger about to fall into an old well, that he’d tell her his fiascos, that he’d like her mother, that he’d be picking at pizza with her, that he’d be bespelled by just one kiss, Draco would have looked over his shoulder to check if you were talking to someone behind him, sneered at you, perhaps cursed you”not in that order.
But those were all reality now. He did blaspheme earlier (and had wanted to slap her for her idiocy seconds before the joyful relief at her safety overtook him), she’d been surprisingly easy and pleasant to talk to (never insulting Margaret, Eleanor and Julia until afterward when they were history), Helen was irresistible (she didn’t coddle, didn’t nag, didn’t pry except occasionally and seemed incapable of making culinary flops) and he was currently at lunch, picking at pizza with Hermione Granger. Picking at pizza with Hermione Granger while his father stopped his new wife from making them “eat the whole bloody thing and stop being so picky!”
It was Helen’s fault anyway, making pizza”she was addicted to making the dough and sauce”and insisting on loading it with a score of species of mushrooms, which Draco hated, and a score of species of capsicum, which Hermione hated. Draco liked capsicum and Hermione liked mushrooms. They picked and dropped toppings on each other’s slices and plates.
“We pick with our fingers and eat with the same fingers. You realize we’re basically exchanging spit, don’t you?”
Yes, he was bespelled after that one kiss. He was trying not to dwell on it, to dwell instead on the pizza rather than the taste and feel and warmth and scent of her and her freedom from a certain red-headed oaf, and his synapses short-circuited in consequence. If he’d been in his right mind, he wouldn’t have dared tease her like this. Not so soon after she’d speed-walked away from him after their kiss. This was Britain’s most powerful witch after all. He inwardly braced himself before being blasted into smithereens. He was wishing he would be blasted into smithereens, not lose certain bodily parts.
But she just gave him another from her plethora of gazes, not taking the bait, not even blushing, only looking up from her plate, and at him, seemingly completely unaware of the piece of anchovy stuck like a comma at the corner of her lips. She was beautiful and ridiculous. He bit his cheeks and dug a fingernail on his thumb cuticle, to keep from laughing and bridging the small distance between them and kissing that silly tiny fish off her face.
Maybe he had to chop his hands off altogether just to keep them off her.
“Do you have germs?” she said.
He had to laugh. Wasn’t it a bit late to be concerned about that? “Heaps and sundry.”
She nodded casually, having another bite of lunch. “Me, too. Let’s hope they get along all right.”
“Well, no doubt they will. Helen’s and mine seem to get along splendidly.”
He thought she saw Hermione blush then, but perhaps that was because the pizza was threatening to come down the wrong hatch at the image of their parents’ germs mingling. “Please don’t make me puke, Lucius,” she said.
They continued exchanging toppings.
“Why don’t you try personalizing portions, Mum? Just make mine free of these disgusting things that stick to the roof of your mouth.”
“You sure about that?” Draco said before Helen could answer. “You might salivate after finishing your portion. This way, no one notices you stuffing yourself with three quarters of one pizza.”
Hermione flicked a piece of orange bell pepper at him. It landed right on his eye. She obviously tried to stop it, but the giggle still burst out of her. The piece of anchovy sunk into the corner of her lips as it dimpled in her laughter.
More to stop himself from indulging than to retaliate, he snatched the linen napkin from her lap and mashed it on her face, hopefully wiping away the tempting piece of anchovy. She emerged from the napkin sans anchovy, sans giggles, but still smirking. He had to gulp down his juice. He bit the rim of his tall glass.
“I won’t be personalizing portions,” said Helen. “This is better.”
________________
“Never would have thought this in a million years. Granger is now my sister.”
“Stepsister.”
“ ‘S’the same thing.”
She shudders and draws her organza shawl closer around her shoulders. “It’s not. It would be perfectly all right for you and me to refuse to see each other, for instance. If I had a brother, I’d love him. He’d love me. We’d be best friends. Whereas you and I...” she waves the rest to the chill sea breeze.
“I like‘r mother.”
She scowls at his slurred speech. “Of course you do.” There is no one who doesn’t like Helen Granger. That thought makes Hermione sigh. She will have to make the best of this, do her best. Even if her best includes... “You know, Draco, before that awfu”I mean, before that dinner when my mother and your father, you know, told us, it’s been a nearly a decade since we last saw each other. Since we were last enemies, so to speak. It’s been nearly a decade. That’s enough time, right?”
He’s been squinting at the sunset-dappled surf, but now he turns to her. No need to squint. And she is taken aback by his eyes. She’s never been that close to his gaze before. His eyelashes are dark, short but curled. She is so intent and lost in the novelty of his eyes that she jumps a little when she feels his palm on her cheek.
“Yes, it’s been enough time.” He’s stopped slurring. And then he begins to pat her cheek. Not too gently either. “What’s your name again?”
She growls and slaps away his hand. He disconcerts her again by grabbing her hand instead and squeezing it fondly. “We’ve already proven we can get along. You kissed me right here”” he tapped his cheek” “during that dinner, remember?”
“You kissed my cheek, you drunken idiot.”
“See, I love you already. Hermione. Stepsister. Friends?”
She tugs at her hand; he holds on. She gives up and, thinking to torment him in turn, snuggles to his side and puts her head on his shoulder. “Oh, the best of friends, stepbloodybrother dearest!”
She waits for him to squirm and push her away.
She waits in vain.
________
The moment was captured on film, framed and displayed in the drawing room of a certain restored estate in Dover.
Hermione gazed at the photo, remembering. She didn’t know someone had snapped a photo of them. It wasn’t the photographer because Hermione had hired him and she had seen all his shots. Whoever did take the photograph had a lucky shutter. Hermione looked nice; well, her back looked nice. Draco’s too. You wouldn’t imagine he was the ugliest git on earth looking at this photo.
Except that he wasn’t, of course. And in the first place, she was looking at photos she’d already seen before to forget just how ugly he wasn’t and just how ugly his kiss hadn’t been. She tore her eyes away from that sunset photo and looked at the rest. It was like reliving her mother’s second wedding backwards, except now she was trying not to shiver from certain recent memories and not at the thought of much older associations.
That bizarre exchange between her and Draco had happened at the end of the party. Only the closest friends still remained (that meant Hermione’s friends and Helen’s friends”Draco’s and Lucius’s had barely stayed through the ceremony). She remembered leaving Ron to his sour mood and indifferently sitting down on the first rock she found on the beach, with no regard for the delicate number she was wearing. Draco had come lumbering over a few seconds later. She’d thought she was in for another bout of exasperation, but”here, she looked back at the photo”it had been nice.
She had to tear her gaze away again.
Next on the wall was one of the dances. This was one of the photographer’s shots. In this particular dance, everyone was off the sand and on the smooth marble of the roofless pavilion. She and Ron were even caught in their cheerful beginning, laughing. Hermione wondered where the photographer had perched to get this elevated angle. Everyone was beginning to turn brown in the sun, and it looked especially good and noticeable because they were all wearing white.
It was probably what inspired Skeeter’s trite title. Her mother had said she had worn white before, so in her second wedding, she made the guests wear white instead, while she stood out in an aquamarine silk shift, which was more for her modesty than for hiding anything, because Helen had kept and maintained her figure. She looked like a willowy Greek goddess in the photo, mingling with the bland souls of mortals. Lucius was wearing white as well, not dress robes but a short-sleeved shirt and pair of trousers, both garments loose and flowing, moving at the least wind the way Helen’s gown did. He had a necklace of exotic blue orchids. Hermione didn’t know exactly what they were. The flowers had been dried and flattened and strung together to form a garland. It was the same garland she”and Draco, it turned out”had capitulated to wear.
Next were candids as the couple mingled with their guests, always arm in arm and with the lovely setting in the background. They had met in Autun, and after falling in love with the as-yet nameless estate in Dover, they’d chosen to have their wedding just across the channel from home, in Deauville. Tables were set on the sand and decorated like those found in Parisian cafes. The musicians were situated under a striped aquamarine and brown awning attached to a glass wall etched in script with ‘Lucius and Helen’s’. The glass wall was only propped from behind with clever workmanship.
And then there was the ceremony itself. An Anglican ceremony that must have disconcerted Lucius, though it didn’t show. The photographer had been nowhere near at this time. Must have used a telephoto lens. In one frame, Helen and Lucius were facing each other, a bower of white lilacs and delphiniums above their heads, cornflowers and periwinkles littering their feet. In the next frame, they were shown in close profile, staring into each other’s eyes.
She loves him. And its mutual.
“My goodness, look at you. Staring holes into that. Aren’t we convincing enough?”
Hermione smiled at her mother as if she hadn’t just jumped out of her wedges. “Just looking, Mum.”
Helen passed her by. Hermione thought she was already leaving, only to find her mother perched on the piano bench, patting the space beside her. Hermione obeyed and sat beside Helen.
“Sweetheart, I want to thank you for taking the time to stay with your mum””
“It’s nothing, Mum. You don’t have to thank””
“”and yet, even with you here, you seem oceans away from me.”
Hermione stiffened. “I’m sorry you feel that way. What can I do to””
Her mother frowned. “I don’t want you to feel you have to be doing things. You don’t have to. This isn’t work. Just... I miss you.”
“I’m here, Mum.”
“That’s it, love, why do I still miss you? Am I simply being old, or are you” what’s bothering you?”
“You’re not old.”
“I asked you a question, Hermione.”
“Nothing’s bothering me. Or maybe I’m just being normal. It’s normal to be out of sorts when you’re in the same house with someone you used to be so sure would kill you without a second thought.”
“Not this again.”
“You asked.”
“Is this really it?”
“What else would it be?”
“It’s not like you. It’s dim. Lucius has changed. He’s no longer your Death Eater, he’s my husband. You were present when he broke his wand in two. He’s learned how to drive. He’s taking anthropology and sociology classes by correspondence. Some days, he’s completely at my mercy. And he’s taken great pains to forsake centuries’ worth of his upbringing and culture. His penance, he says. You’re not the Hermione I raised if you still persist with prejudice in the face of all that. And before you shrug there, I know you don’t believe your own nonsense. You’re even friends with Draco. So tell me, Hermione. Tell old Mum.”
Hermione sighed. “I’m not friends with Draco. And there’s nothing to tell.” She pretended not to see her mother’s hurt expression and began playing Londonderry Air. When she looked up from the keys, she was alone.
_____________
“Splendid vista. The ladies will like it, do you suppose?”
Draco nods obediently, deciding to ignore the fact that his father has said ‘ladies’. His fiancee, Helen, and her daughter. Bloody wonders never cease. Draco knows Hermione already has a house of her own. Probably a flat, but she is independent. No need to consider her. However, Lucius does and always will. Now.
“Do you know what she did when we first met?” says Lucius, squinting at Dover Castle and at Draco by turns. The sun seems determined to hold the already long day hostage. It gilds the old fortress. Draco suspects Lucius knows he’s staying where he stands, right in front of the sunset, just so Lucius has to rumple his face to look at him. Draco adopts an innocent mien, pretending absorption to the sea. Lucius snorts.
“You already told us at the dinner.” The dinner is the dinner at a Muggle restaurant, where, for the first time, he has sat with Hermione Granger and for the first time, he’s been affected by a woman outside the color of her eyes, the cape of her hair and the cream of her skin.
“No, no, we told you we got to talking at the Museé Rolin. We didn’t tell you how and why we got to talking. You’ll never guess what she did.”
“Ignored you?” Draco says.
“I said ‘met’. That implies introductions, idiot boy, not an exchange of gazes or idle remarks. Courtesy dictates we ask the lady’s name first before presuming to give them ours, so no, she didn’t ignore me. She game me her name. Well, as soon as I gave her mine, she stepped back from Eve. I thought she was moving on to another display. But no, she only moved back so she can swing her arm without damaging anything. She swung it and hit me right on this cheek.” Lucius pats his left cheek twice with his long index finger.
“I hope it hurt.”
Lucius snorts again. “I’m sorry to gladden you, but yes, it did. Made an impression in the literal sense as well as the figurative.”
____________
Draco squinted at the old castle. Glared at it. That summer afternoon a couple of years ago returned to him as he stood there on the exact same spot where he and Lucius had stood after finding the estate. He recalled a sting on his own cheek, the first and only physical assault he’d gotten in his life that did not come from a wand. He recalled his father’s words and wanted to respond, “To me, too.”
“I know the view is beautiful but shouldn’t you be getting ready for the dinner?”
Draco nearly hurled his fool self off the cliff in surprise. He turned his glare to the soft-footed cow who’d arrived beside him. “Shouldn’t you be getting ready? Making yourself presentable must take chiliads. Run along.”
That she gasped and went pink gave him immense satisfaction. He let his lip curl upwards.
“Too bad they don’t have a cure for your condition,” she said with a slight tremor in her voice which he pretended not to hear. “Comes and goes. Worse than malaria. More disgusting than spattergroit. Excuse me. I have to go disinfect myself.”
She marched off. And fell over tripping on a stray rock. His breathing stopped and he almost ran to help her up. But he stood his ground at the last second and sneered. They weren’t friends, were they? She said so herself. That’s right, get up, Granger. I wash my hands of you.
He turned his back to her and glared at the clouds gently swallowing the sun.
____________
Hermione blinked her eyes furiously. Her chest heaved as she went back to the house. And she couldn’t even convince her own mind that it was from the half-jog she was doing or from the stinging scrape on her stupid knee. Why didn’t she leave it well enough alone? She’d done well earlier, accepting his kiss and then moving on as if the kiss was only due her. Oh no, she just had to join him on the cliffside, hadn’t she? Pulled in by the way the afternoon sun turned him into something gold and pure and beautiful. Well, the sun had gone now.
Look what she got. He was always like that, constantly shifting from gold to mercury. Hot and cold. He would give her wine one moment, and poison the next. And she never learned. Time after time, he always did this. And she never learned.
End Notes:
Same drill! Thank you and tell me what you think. :)
Chapter 3 by lucilla_pauie
Snow in June
Chapter Three
She and her parents are great believers in having song in the kitchen. Her father has refused to sell the piano he inherited from his parents, but none of them plays. It’s the small stereo “which the Doctors Granger has won in their club’s raffle”that only had rest when the dentists and their daughter aren’t home.
Hermione stares at the stereo in surprise. The fridge is new”her mother must have had absolute fun buying stuff right and left after remarrying”but it is the same stereo, sitting on its old mat on the counter beside the fridge. Hermione opens the drawer beneath it, and stashed in it are the same cassette tapes, in the same insane order, in the same rows. Andrew Lloyd Webber. Elizabeth Lutyens. The Beatles. David Bowie. Pink Floyd. Led Zeppelin. Elton John. Celine Dion. Madonna. The Rolling Stones. Spice Girls. The American band her mother loved, Bread. Even her father’s collection of the Classics and Hit Charts compilations are there.
Her heart twinges at the sight of her father’s tapes. She jerks her hand away from Bach and slides up to Spice Girls instead. This group has just had a reunion. Or is it two or three years ago? She’s heard about it, but hasn’t paid attention. They’ve been a shared favorite of hers and her mother’s. For baking. The slow songs for kneading or cookie-cutting, the fast ones for cleaning and washing up the utensils.
Before the thick of the Wizarding war, that is.
Something in her wants to stash the cassette tape back where it’s come from, but Hermione turns the stereo on. The time displayed is 6: 07 a.m. It will be an hour before her mother and stepfather gets up. She checks the fridge and gathers ingredients for oatmeal. Without even looking at the case jacket, she presses a button on the stereo. Her head bobs and her hips bop immediately.
She cuts up bananas, berries and melon while the oatmeal boiled. And then she hit repeat on the stereo and still danced away to Stop as she stirred the pot. Merlin, she hasn’t realized she missed this.
Of course, she also doesn’t realize she’s being watched and laughed at. When she turns around and sees her audience, the pot she is about to place on the table dives to the floor. But her stepbloodybrother wandlessly Impediments it just before it could crash and coat her feet with oatmeal.
“Didn’t know you also have a talent for hip-swinging.” He sniggers as he directs the pot to the table himself.
“Where did you come from?”
“Oh, about. Where did you come from?”
“Every now and then, she makes us breakfast and then disappears. Probably researching what it feels like to be a house-elf.”
That’s from her stepfather. He gives her a smile, which she ignores. He takes the pot from the coffeemaker, gets two mugs from the cupboard, and retreats back upstairs.
“Are you?” Draco asks.
“Not too much of Malfoy-ness yet please. It’s too early.”
“...Free your mind of doubt and danger, be for real, don’t be a stranger...”
“I like that song.” And he begins to swing his hips in imitation of her movements earlier, though much slower because the song isn’t fast. Despite herself, Hermione laughs.
“Dance with me, stepsister!”
“...I need some love like I’ve never needed love before... (gonna make love to ya, baby)...”
“What’s that crap you’re listening to, Granger?” he exclaims in between sniggers.
“I thought you like it? If you hate it, why are you still gyrating?” She giggles. “I wish I have a video camera right now.”
To keep him from stopping his hilariously idiotic dancing, she sways herself while leaning on the counter, although she can hardly keep herself upright from laughing so much.
”...Be a little bit wiser, baby, put it on, put it on...”
At that, he stops and stares at the stereo as if he can’t believe what it was spewing. Hermione bends at the middle and howls to her knees.
And then she feels something hit her hair. Before she can find out what it is, however, Draco’s there, snatching the hand she has raised to check what has landed on her head, and he whirls her away from the counter and sways them together across the kitchen. The next song plays. Wanna Be. Draco sniggers at all the W’s in the intro. His laughter is contagious. Her belly begins to cramp.
“You look quite passable when you laugh.” He picks something from her hair. A piece of melon. He pops it into his mouth. “Is that why Weasley is such an amusing oaf? To make you look pretty?”
She thumps his chest.
”...If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends. Friendship lasts forever, friendship never ends!”
“If that’s how it is, I’ll pass, thanks.” He wrinkles his nose.
“You look like an adorable ferret when you do that.”
“A compliment?” he says, looking down at her, face still scrunched.
She grins up at him. His breath is on her face, the skin on his nose has six funny wrinkles because of the silly face he’s making and there’s a slight chappiness near one corner of his lips. She can smell the musk of his cologne. She feels close to him, even fond of him. Oh, this is still the Draco Malfoy of her schooldays, she has no trouble remembering that, but sometimes, she no longer chooses to remember. That he’s declared he likes her mother and has done nothing to give her mother grief is enough to endear him to Hermione. And as though in answer to her thoughts, he sways her again and twirls her.
It’s as if he’s saying, ‘I’ve decided to make friends, get used to the idea.’
So it is inexplicable to her that he doesn’t show up at her birthday. Her mother is the one who’s insisted on having the small do, but Hermione has invited Draco herself. Has actually bordered on begging him to be present. “Your affectionate stepsister asks you to please come Sunday next. My friends et al are still adjusting to the Malfoy-Granger union. You might actually be the only person who can salvage the party. Make them forget my mum and beloved stepdad. Please come and annoy us. Only kidding. Please come, simply.”
He doesn’t. Doesn’t send an excuse either. And the following month, he brings a Margaret to brunch and ignores Hermione.
________________
Before she went off to Hogwarts, Hermione is used to coming home from day school to find a man or woman bent over or under the piano. She has no way of checking, of course, but she is certain her mother has gone back to keeping the piano maintained after it has sat untouched for almost a year.
She shies away from thinking of that year. But here she is, stroking the black and white keys without pressing them, brushing her stockinged foot on the pedals.
“Do you play?”
Hermione stuffs her foot back to her shoe. Stepbrother dearest is back and seems to be in his friendly alter ego. Still, she’ll rather not be charmed and snubbed again.
But he puts a hand on each of her shoulders and pushes her gently back down on the bench. He sits down beside her and gives her a nudge, hip to hip. “Well?”
After budging until there is a breadth of space between them and she can topple off if she moved another inch, she says, “I’ve never learned, and they didn’t force me away from my””
“Books?”
She huffs. “From my uncle’s stables, actually. I rode. Horses are so much better than broomsticks.”
“Because they bounce?” He waggles his eyebrows.
Her involuntary blush at his innuendo annoys her more than his innuendo. She wants to slap her cheeks and settles on slapping his arm. “Because they’re alive and has sense, you great pillock, and will not likely gallop off a cliff or to a wall. And you can always jump off it or even fall off without crushing your skull.”
He laughs, rubbing his arm. “Yeah, but you might break your spine or neck, since you won’t have time to do a Cushioning Charm at all.”
She can’t contradict that and he doesn’t give her pause to do so. He plays a succession of notes. Lovely. Her fingers suddenly itch. It doesn’t seem difficult. She observes the movement of his hands closely.
“Margaret went to the Continent.”
That makes her look up. “Where?”
“Florence. She and her student got a research grant for Hypnerofuckya Crappyphili.”
“Hypnerotomachia Poliphili?”
“Yeah, that.”
“So you’re going there as well?”
“Of course not, woman, we broke it off.”
“Oh.”
“Oh is right. I’ve become tired of her books anyway. And don’t glare at me like that. You think you’re obsessed with reading, but Margaret’s whole universe revolves around her books. I’m surprised she even knows my name.”
She pretends to be disinterested, nods casually. “When you met, you talked about books?”
“Yeah. At first, I was fascinated and impressed. She’s the youngest in her field. She’s a genius.”
“Ha. I’m so sure. I thought she looked like a bleeding vampire. Didn’t you ever take her out in the sun? Or does she just invite you to her library and you talk about... books?”
“Pretty much. I thought her passion applies to most other things as well. I thought wrong. What do you and Weasley talk about? Mince pies?”
“Ron and I are lovely, thank you.”
“Lovely isn’t the word I’d use.”
“Because you’re an ass.”
His laughter surprises her. “This air I’m playing? It’s called The Donkey’s Jounce.”
“How fitting.”
Without stopping the melody, he lifts one hand and pulls her by the arm until she is perched properly on the bench again. “You have good hands. Try.”
“How could I? It’s too fast!”
He immediately decreases his tempo.
“Can you read notes?”
“Of course I can. What do you take me for”” She trails off and peers at the sheet music he has conjured. “This is too complex for a beginner.”
“Is it? You don’t take easily to music then, as you do to magic?”
“Sorry to disappoint you, maestro. I’m not perfect.”
“Oh, I think you are,” he murmurs, pointing his wand at the sheet music. The notes rearrange themselves on the bars and ‘The Donkey’s Jounce’ turns into ‘Londonderry Air’.
Hermione plays it, and is captivated fast. “Now this is easy. I love it.”
“You were touching the piano as though you’re quite attached to it. A shame you don’t play it.”
“I’m playing now.”
“Helen said this belonged to your father.”
Hermione drops her fingers on the keys. Both of them wince at the bong. “What else did my mum tell you?”
“Don’t you snap at your music teacher. That was all Helen said. What’s got your knickers in a””
“You have no business alluding to my knickers.” She turned her eyes back to the sheet music as he laughed again. “Yes, this belonged to my father. My paternal grandparents were quite the musicians. My uncle’s family got the harp, the saxophone, the oboe, the cello and the Stradivarius because my cousins got the musical genes. They’re gifted. My dad got the piano.”
“You didn’t fight for the Stradivarius?”
“What do you mean, fight for it? They’re my uncle and cousins.” She grins. “Grangers are not Malfoys.”
He mocks a martyred expression. “Believe me, I know that by now.”
“It’s just a violin.” Her grin fades. “I don’t care about Stradivari.”
“Who made this piano? You care about him?”
His trivialities amuse her. “You twit. My father loved this piano. It’s my only connection to him now.”
“You’re visiting it more than you’re visiting your mother.”
She just rolls her eyes at that rubbish.
“Thank Merlin I didn’t arse about while tuning it, then.”
“You tuned it?” It’s a small thing, but Morgana, when will he stop being a bag of surprises?
“You can stop looking like a crup who’s been given dragon meat. I did it for a certain fee. You should probably buy their groceries for this month.”
She pushes him off too hard. He lands on the carpet and retaliates by tipping the bench until she slid off the other end with a thud.
She masters Londonderry Air and The Donkey’s Jounce. And then the very day after she plays them for him, he goes off to Italy. They all think he’s going after Margaret. But two months later, he sends Helen and Lucius a postcard. A photo, really, of him and a local girl. Eleanora with her black, black hair and blue eyes. She’s a nurse. He’s written that on the back. Not a word of regard to his stepsister. Just the Dover address, Helen’s and Lucius’s names, and ‘This is Eleanora. A right saint. Works in a hospice changing old people’s nappies, cheering them up, making them sleep tight noon and night, not in that order.’
Since she hasn’t been mentioned, Hermione only sees the postcard when she’s called on her mother, and by that time, almost a month has passed since the photo arrived. Draco might have been married by then for all she knows.
She doesn’t even know why this hurts her. Out of sight, out of mind probably applies to her in Draco’s consciousness. She must be surprised that he’s more than civil when he’s present, instead of feeling snubbed when he ignores her. If someone asks, she won’t hesitate saying she will rather he has remained being the rude and arrogant sod he used to be. But she’ll be lying then. He’s like a grimy painting restored. Who wants grime over a lovely picture?
__________________
She’s only dropped by to leave her mother a bouquet. Hermione has seen the dried larkspurs, everlastings and ageratums decorating a stall in Diagon Alley and bought them on impulse. Her mother loves posies and prefers those you can find on a random hillock to the ones that cost money to grow in hothouses. Seeing that the gardens can’t be called gardens yet, and the couple seems content to let art splash color to the house, Hermione is sure Helen will be happy with her daughter’s early present. Christmas is in a few days.
No one is at home, just like she wanted. She places the flowers on an empty fruit basket on the kitchen island, only to pick it up again after realizing that her mother might not see them soon if she and Lucius dines out instead.
Right, I’ll put them in the drawing room.
She stops dead at the archway.
They sit there having tea, companionably silent. They grow aware of her and all three of them pause with their forks inside their mouths. And then they remove the forks, dab at their lips and smile at her.
“Hermione.” Pansy Parkinson says her name in greeting with panache. “It’s been a long time.”
“Won’t you join us, please?” And Blaise Zabini pats the place beside him on the loveseat. “Your mother’s cakes are divine. Reminds me of Hogwarts.”
“If there’s a hidden icing of an insult in that, regarding my mother and house-elves, I hope you choke, Zabini.”
His eyebrows shoot up. Hermione realizes the bigotry in the room is emanating from her. She feels the blood rush to her cheeks.
“I’m sorry. Forgive me. I””
“I completely understand. You weren’t expecting us, didn’t have the chance to fold away old clothes you used to wear when with us.” Zabi”Blaise pats the seat next to him again, and this time, Hermione graciously joins him.
“Well, you’re right. I’ve gotten better with Draco, but the rest of you... well, it’s nice to see you again.” She extends her smile to Park”Pansy. “But, you know, you were lousy guests at the wedding.”
“What did you expect us to be?” says Pansy. “We felt like... like those pink things you put in boxes for your fragile things? That. We might as well have been pillows propped up in the groom’s side of the witnesses. You were probably too busy guarding your mother from nonexistent harm to notice, but we’ve been so rudely treated by Draco’s father. You’d wonder why he bothered inviting us. We haven’t been acknowledged until that last minute, haven’t been introduced properly to the bride, haven’t been assured by Lucius Malfoy that he had not acquired his new Muggle wife and Muggle life for some dastardly design to--”
“Do you marry with dastardly designs in mind that often?” says Hermione, amused and amazed by Pansy’s rant. The woman has a point.
Draco and Blaise laughs. Pansy glares at them but returns Hermione’s grin.
Hermione has just opened her mouth to bid them goodbye when Pansy says, “Blaise and I bumped into each other at Diagon Alley and decided to drop by and have a visit with your mother. Of course, we’ve been unlucky, it seems. No one was here except this toad. Draco had just declared me a stupid cow when you came in. You are so lucky. I wager no one’s ever called you that before. I get that epithet regularly, and from my own friends!”
“Stop being a stupid cow then, if being called that bothers you at all.”
Pansy gestures her hand toward Blaise, raising her eyebrows at Hermione in the classic silent, ‘See?’
Pansy is pretty, Hermione thinks now. Perhaps it’s owing to the lack of animosity in her face, but her turned-up nose and full lips, once described in Hermione’s circles as pug-face, becomes Pansy quite a lot now. Her black bob is a perfect frame and contrast to her creamy skin tone, and she has acquired this deceptively modest and shy manner of talking, in which she tilts her head slightly downward and speaks to you with her eyes turned up. Maybe she’s only hiding her nostrils, but it’s cute and charming. Hermione wants to pinch her cheeks.
She returns Pansy’s silent gesture, this time meaning inquiry.
“Well, I’m planning to take Raoul to our Cannes estate to somehow inveigle him into proposing to me there. What is so wrong with that, I ask you? What better place for someone to get engaged than in””
“You stupid cow”OW!”
Cake and crockery flies to the floor and smears and shatters.
Blaise is suddenly sporting a huge red glove in his right hand. Judging by his watering eyes and murderous expression directed at Pansy, it is his right hand.
Blaise is too indignant to even sputter, much less talk. Hermione laughs” she can’t help herself; Blaise is mottled-purple with rage”as Draco undoes the curse and forces Blaise back into his seat. Pansy comes back to hers as well. She has scurried toward the hall at the height of Blaise’s foot-stomping fury.
“I won’t have you calling me that again, do you hear me?” she says, unrepentant, and prissily sipping from her undisturbed teacup.
Blaise just glares, picks up his repaired plate and serves himself another slice of cake. He chews as if he wants to mutilate the carrot cake as much as possible before swallowing it. Hermione is impressed he seems to be letting out the profanities at the tip of his tongue that way. Pansy winks at her.
“Pansy, you stupid cow, don’t curse Blaise’s hand. He needs that for his manly needs.”
“Fuck you, Draco. Sorry, ladies.”
“I’d rather you don’t, Blaise. Why don’t you get a move on, anyway, you great pillock?”
Blaise just shakes his head, narrowing his eyes at Draco. This piques Hermione’s interest.
“As I was saying, Pansy, you stupid cow, it’s not a question of a better place, but a better man. You shouldn’t have to inveigle him into anything. You shouldn’t be the one taking him places. You shouldn’t be the one always hankering to spend time with him. You should stop running after men, simply. Let one do the work, for Merlin’s sake.”
“I have been letting them do the work! And look at me now. I’m almost thirty! This is what I become for letting poncey men do the work. An old maid!” Pansy punctuates that by firing a curse at Draco, who ducks casually. Pansy growls.
“Who’s Raoul?” Hermione asks, pulling Pansy’s arm in feigned enthusiasm, to stop the witch from using her wand again. The first curse has harmlessly seeped through the couch, but the next one will be unpredictable if Draco ducks again.
“Oh, you won’t know him,” replies Pansy. “I’ve noticed Muggle society isn’t as tightly knit as ours where you nearly always know who’s who. He’s a tennis player.”
“You don’t sound too enamored with this man you want to inveigle into proposing,” Hermione says.
“I’m getting tired of that word now, why are you lot parroting it back at me again and again?”
Hermione laughs. “Pansy, I’m also almost thirty, and I’m not an old maid, I don’t think.”
“You probably won’t be an old maid at fifty. You’re useful to the world at large. I can only be useful by being a wife and a mother. Did you and Weasley break up, then?”
Is it a Slytherin trait, this wearying, wildly gyrating thought process? “Why on earth would you assume that?”
“You said you’re not an old maid. You only say that if someone else can call you an old maid. People can only call you an old maid if you’re unattached. And you and your Ronald had a huge, public row last week, I hear.”
“I’m just certain you did.”
“What’s so attractive about him?”
Pansy sounds curious rather than callous. It gives Hermione pause. She’s been so accustomed to telling Draco off for his insults.
“I want the answer to that myself,” says Blaise. “I mean, no offense meant, Hermione, but honestly, I suppose he’s brave and a good friend and all that, but none of us really thought you’d go for him. We thought you’d want someone more...” Blaise waves his fork, fishing for words. “More your equal.”
Hermione is sidetracked from frantically gathering and enumerating Ron’s virtues in her mind. “My equal? He’d be an arrogant tosser then, wouldn’t he?”
“Oh, you want to be the arrogant one in the relationship,” says Draco. “Of course.”
Hermione pins her stepbloodybrother with a gimlet gaze and waits until he squirms a little before turning back to Pansy and Blaise. “Ron makes me laugh. He’s kind. Yes, he is brave, and he comes from a background of love. He’ll be a good father, I think, even if he isn’t a good boyfriend all the time. He has a temper, and he can be very pigheaded about things, but he realizes he’s in the wrong soon enough and he makes it up to me.”
“Spare me.” Draco drops his head back and pretends to be in extreme anguish and disgust.
“How can he be a good father if he has a temper and can be very pigheaded about things?” says Pansy.
“You’ve just proven you’re not a stupid cow after all, Pansy,” says Draco. And he ducks again. The curse lands on the carpet and is absorbed once again.
“And as you said yourself,” Draco continues, “you’ve been letting the poncey men do the work. Poncey men, Pansy. They’re all poncey men. You’ve been surrounded by poncey men””
“And what do you want me to””
“”because Blaise has been holed up in Milan with his dying and demanding mother.”
“Goddammit, Draco,” Blaise hisses to his teacup. He looks impressive when angry or embarrassed. Instead of turning red, he pales, resembling a stone. His very dark eyebrows move to meet and twitch, but that’s all. The rest of his face goes still. Hermione doesn’t know Blaise’s mother, but she’s impressed with the former Mrs. Zabini’s taste and intuition in picking with whom to conceive a child.
“Hey, you also learned Muggle epithets! Have a ring to it, don’t they? I declare this call over. Rise, go forth and produce the next generation of purebloods, Blaise and Pansy.”
To Hermione’s surprise, Pansy and Blaise do rise and go forth on Draco’s command, barely acknowledging her with a goodbye, too busy avoiding each other’s eyes and space. It’s comical.
“Those two had always had a puppy love,” says Draco as soon as twin cracks of Disapparition sounded. “From back when we were uppity little brats. Can’t remember anymore when Pansy first thought she wants me instead, but probably when we were eleven, when our parents revealed our planned union. Blaise won’t be beaten, so he also decided he wanted Daphne. By Circe. Astoria, I can stand. You can only stand Daphne if she’s dead.”
“Blaise’s mother is dying?”
“Dead now. Thank Merlin. You were sitting next to the wealthiest wizard in Britain, did you know that?”
“I was?”
“If my father hadn’t been affianced already to the Black family, Antonina would have gone for him. As it was, she went to Italy instead and found the wealthiest wizard there. And then when she was done with him, she continued moving around Europe and marrying the wealthiest, or as close to the wealthiest as she can finagle. She makes sure she inherits before her current husband dies. Her sole heir is Blaise. Go figure.”
They are alone for the first time since their pseudo-piano lesson. Since the postcard. Suddenly, Hermione is annoyed. How dare he chat with her as if”as if he hasn’t hurt her. But no, he hasn’t. Of course he hasn’t. He can go to the devil’s wife for all she cares.
“What’s with the flowers?”
Hermione matches his nonchalance. “For my mother. She likes these.”
“You’re planning to hug them until Helen returns?”
She looks down. “Oh, fuck.” She claps a hand to her mouth, in dismay at the excessive profanity and at the crumbled petals clinging to her dress.
Draco laughs. And she is helpless to join in. She has probably looked ridiculous squeezing those flowers to herself while talking to him and his friends. She forgets his... she forgets him, and just laughs with him, loving the sound of his amusement, too. She gets up and puts the flowers in the nearest vase. And then she takes them back out, intending to widen the mouth of the vase so the flowers won’t be cramped and crushed, but she knocks the vase over with her wand.
“Crap.”
The vase rolls first to the right, and then to the left. Her hand slaps at the end table as she tries to catch it before it rolls off.
Draco has choked on a new snigger at the word ‘crap’, but now he is laughing his lungs off.
She finally grabs the vase, rights it, modifies it, and places the flowers in it. While she is doing all this, Draco watches her and laughs.
“Are you done? You’re turning blue. So stop. Or don’t stop. That will suit me just as well.”
He coughs, sighs and wipes a hand to his face. “It’s bloody good to see you again, stepsister.”
Hermione crosses her arms casually, shielding what needs to be shielded. “Same here to you, stepbrother darling.”
“Gotten better with me, have you?”
“I’d say. I mean, there’s the evidence.” She indicates his languorous form on the armchair.
“Uh, what evidence?”
“You’re whole and well.”
“Oh, that evidence.”
“Are there others?”
“I can name a few.”
She waits, but he doesn’t elaborate. They sit in silence for a time, much the same way he and his friends have done earlier just when she joined them. Hermione wants to leave, to quit while she is ahead, so to speak, but we are all fools when our hearts have been slighted, and she remains there convinced she has to convince him he has done nothing to her. She Scourgifies Pansy’s plate and fork, and dishes herself a sliver of cake. One bite and her eyes close. She has almost forgotten this, her mother’s talent not only in treating teeth but in crafting temptations to rot them. Helen never sacrifices flavor for her profession’s dogmas.
“You looked like you were having an orgasm.”
Hermione comes down from her little heaven and chokes on her spoonful of ambrosia.
“A tiny orgasm, that is. You know, the one self-induced. A mind-blowing orgasm, now, that is one for closed and Silenced doors, and can never be mimicked even by products of Helen’s culinary prowess.”
Hermione turns her eyes ceiling-ward and ignores her stepbloodybrother’s scandalous comments. She goes on eating her cake as if he hasn’t talked. For some reason, he finds this hilarious. She ignores his sniggering, too.
“You never get tired of your rows with Weasley?”
“No.”
“You want perjury lessons, I can recommend a host of experts.”
“You’re probably Head Liar in that club.”
“Something’s terribly wrong with either one of you if after spending more than a decade together, you still fight. I mean, shouldn’t you know each other’s buttons by now? Or do you intentionally push those buttons?”
This gives her pause. Sometimes, she does get the feeling Ron picks fights, is being intentionally obtuse or plain mulish. Still... “It’s our foreplay, I reckon.”
That Draco loses his smirk pleases her as much as the fragrant jasmine tea she sips. Turnabout is fair play, Draco dearest.
He shrugs and dusts imaginary lint off his trousers. “Kinky. I suppose you have whips and manacles, too? Never pegged you for one to””
“Okay, that’s disturbing. You can stop the wisecracks now, Draco.”
He grins.
“Did Blaise meet your Eleanora?”
“Who?”
“I see.”
He shrugs. “This is probably comeuppance for all the silly hearts I broke at Hogwarts, but Eleanora’s much worse than I was. At least, I’ve been nothing but myself whereas Eleanora’s a phony, two-faced slag. She only works at that hospice because she wants to be a favorite as a candidate to marry a certain royal in a country I won’t name.”
“Wow. So she has blue blood herself?”
“That’s another thing. Were we like that about our lineage? No, don’t answer that. Ugh.”
It’s Hermione’s turn to laugh.
“That’s probably you like Weasley so much, yeah? Because he has no pride at all about his blood?”
“Oh, he has pride, believe me, but not over his heritage, and this pride of his grates on me at times.”
“Yeah. Must suck being the least talented in the Heroic Trio.”
Hermione waves off that comment like the irksome fly it is. “If he was the one who’s been with your Margaret or your Eleanor, he would have stuck with her, because he’d be too proud to admit to anyone about being mistaken with them.”
“Could it be that’s why he’s still with you? Because he’s too proud to admit””
“If you say he’s mistaken with me, I won’t miss like Pansy!”
He laughs. “I was going to say, ‘because he’s too proud to admit you’re far, far above him?’”
“I’m not. And wow, you’ve really come so far, if you don’t mind me remarking. There was a time when you thought me lower than anyone’s boot treads.”
“I’ll smash the remainder of this cake on your face if you continue down that memory lane.”
“How very much like a brother and sister you sound,” Helen says, entering the drawing room and kissing the top of Draco’s head as she passes him on the way to embracing and kissing Hermione. Lucius looks exhausted and lies down on the sofa. Hermione exchanges a smirk with Draco. Lucius seems to have come from another Muggle lesson. Christmas shopping, apparently. At least, this is what Hermione thought. Draco turns out to have a different reason for his smirk.
“A brother and sister won’t discuss orgasms, will they?”
“Save those worthy dialogues for dinner, won’t you please?” Lucius says sardonically.
It’s Lucius and Helen’s first Christmas as a married couple, and they spend it in some tropical island where the sun’s heat is capable of roasting them alive. Lucius has probably arranged for a Portkey for their return, however, because they are to have a Christmas lunch with Draco and Hermione.
Not that Draco arrives.
Hermione learns about the safety charms Lucius has had placed on all furniture of the house and about his spot of trouble with the Ministry when he asked for Muggle-Worthy Identity and Life Documents so he could enroll in the open university. Lucius prattles outright, distracting himself from his sunburn and the absence of his son.
Her mother and Lucius’s joint presents are souvenirs from Palawan. A conch paperweight etched with her name, a piña hat she will have to wait until summer to wear, and a gleaming wooden jewelry box carved with crocodiles. Inside it they’ve placed a choker of pearls.
The gifts make her feel mean and inadequate in her affection, because she’s only gotten Lucius a set of The Complete Idiot’s Guide books, and for her mother, she’s had a magical, Grease-Resistant, Stain-Resistant, Always-Cool apron custom-made. But they are both delighted enough to forget Hermione still has to open Draco’s present for her.
It’s a navy rectangle with a pink, purple and yellow striped ribbon which unravels into a length of silk the instant she touches it. She lifts one corner of the box lid and sees and smells delicious leather beneath the flimsy blue tissue.
Hermione suddenly wants to be alone. Her heart is thudding like something possessed and she doesn’t want her mother or Lucius to see a hint of that, to see her marvel at Draco’s present. She doesn’t even know exactly what the leather is. She just knows it’s something perfect.
She excuses herself.
In her bedroom, she places the box on top of her bed, climbs in beside it, and lifts the lid completely and reverently away. The tissue folds back by itself, revealing the leather in all its understated elegance and beauty.
It isn’t a book, as she’s expected, but a briefcase in claret dragonskin. And it lies in the box under a pair of matching, round-toed and modestly-heeled shoes, which Hermione laughs at and instantly loves; and a smaller long box, which contains a watch, also matching, gold and deep red.
It’s the thoughtfulness behind these presents that makes her feel worse when Draco doesn’t attend their New Year’s Eve bash. She feels so irritated, in fact, that she has no patience for Ron’s volatility that night. He storms off without saying goodbye to his host and hostess. If it hasn’t been for Pansy and Blaise announcing their engagement, Hermione might have hexed something, or preferably someone.
But she doesn’t know where that someone was.
In February, when she and the radiant prospective Mrs Zabini bump into each other at Madam Stefania’s, she hears of his third Muggle girlfriend, Julia.
___________________
And now that he’d bloody kissed her, he’d probably not stop at being damnably rude to her, he’d probably come to the dinner later escorting a she-goat, whom he’d introduce as his wife, just to be precise about informing her where she stood with him. That was what he was doing all along, all those times before, wasn’t it? Showing her she was his stepsister and all that, but she was still... still a Mudblood, that’s what, unworthy of Draco Malfoy. At least the Muggle lobby lice he’d chosen and the charming Muggle woman his father had married hadn’t presumed to be witches.
This didn’t ring right or plausible, and she sounded silly and juvenile even to her own mind, but she couldn’t come up with anything else! Let him marry the goat! She’d even throw the bloody bride a shower!
And goddammit straight to the pits, what was she doing imagining quartering Draco Malfoy just because he’d likely choose a goat over her? Let him choose a goat for all she cared!
Hermione growled to her pillow.
End Notes:
Loved it? Hated it? Tell! :)
Chapter 4 by lucilla_pauie
Snow in June
Chapter Four
Helen came down in a sky blue skirt suit, the blazer slung over her arm. She really was beautiful. Her peach sleeveless blouse and her skirt hugged her body, and Draco had to admit he couldn’t blame his father for marrying this woman.
“You look very smart in that shirt, dear, but don’t forget a jacket. We’re going to Le Gavroche.”
Draco grimaced inwardly. “That place again?”
Helen laughed. “Why? It has two Michelin stars. Used to have three! The food and service are excellent. And that’s where we told you and Hermione about” oh, there you are, darling. Let’s go.”
“How on earth do you always dress so quick?” Lucius said, scowling but thoroughly invalidating his grouse by kissing his wife.
“We’re going? What about Hermione?” Draco asked casually as he preceded them into the garage.
“She got an owl and left. She said she’ll meet us there, and that’s all she said. Didn’t even tell me where she was running off to,” Helen said, pouting again. His father shook his head at her and murmured in her ear, probably reassurances. Draco complacently summoned a jacket from his room. Hermione wouldn’t stand her own mother up, however much she currently hated one in the company.
“Oh, it’s convenient Hermione isn’t riding with us. Four can’t fit in the back seat.”
Draco, who was already lounging in the mentioned back seat, raised his head in slight alarm. “Four? Who else are we”? Not Edrina and Michael?”
Helen laughed. “They like you, dear.”
His father wasn’t laughing, and Draco smirked. Edrina and Michael liked him, but not Lucius. This was new to his father, non-obsequious in-laws.
Michael and Edrina Aston lived in Canterbury. It turned out that Hermione could trace her ancestry if she wanted, at least on Helen’s side, because both Helen’s parents were direct descendants of winners of something the Muggles called (and spelled) ‘the Nobel’. Draco had forgotten who won what or which, but no doubt the two Astons would enlighten Lucius about it again. They seemed to have sensed Lucius’s former obsession with ancestry. With everyone else, the Astons were fairly normal and modest Muggles.
They arrived in Canterbury in seemingly no time. There were kerfuffle, greetings and embarrassing cheek-pinching while the elders made Lucius wait in the car. Michael and Edrina had finally climbed in and Draco was about to join them when someone spoke behind him.
“Drake? Is that you?”
What was it with these women insisting on calling him a male duck? He turned around and lifted one corner of his lip infinitesimally in acknowledgment. “Julia.”
Helen was suddenly back beside Draco as though she’d Apparated. “Julia?”
“Helen, this is Julia Lynde. Julia, my stepmother, Helen.”
Julia dropped her reticule in reaching out to take Helen’s proffered hand. Draco rolled his eyes and acted as if he didn’t see it. His father, still seated in the car but with his door open, kicked the back of Draco’s knee. Draco stumbled and nearly landed beside the frigging reticule. He got the message and picked it up.
“My friends and I are holidaying here,” Julia was saying to Helen. “They’re showing American cousins around.”
“Well, I don’t see your friends and their American cousins.” Merlin, Helen wasn’t being irresistible right now. Draco wanted to grab her and stuff her back in the car before she did what he thought she was about to do. “Are you free? Would you like to join us? We’re having dinner at Le Gavroche. It’s our wedding anniversary.”
Draco groaned soundlessly.
“Oh my, congratulations. And thank you, but I don’t want to intrude.” Really? Why haven’t you so much as taken one step away by now, you damnable bint? Why did you call my name at all in the first place?
“Don’t worry about that, we’re having plenty of privacy later. We’re going to France. But tonight, we want to celebrate with our children and their friends. Come along, won’t you?”
“Well, if you insist, ma’am. Thank you again.”
“Thank you! Come on.” Helen halted when she faced her car again and remembered how small it was and how beefy her father was. Draco wanted to grin.
And then Helen was suddenly holding her arm aloft. A cab halted behind the car.
“There. Draco, take Julia in that, won’t you please, darling?”
Draco nodded glumly, but didn’t bother ushering Julia before him like a gentleman. He made the bint follow him. And follow him she did. She just couldn’t take a hint.
“Your stepmother is so lovely. You should have introduced us long ago.”
“What, like networking of acquaintances? I don’t do that sort of thing.”
This time, Julia understood the barb; she huffed and fell silent.
“How dare you tag along. How shameless are you?”
“Drake””
“Oh, I don’t care. Just keep to yourself so I can pretend you’re not there.”
Despite this blunt cut, Julia made several more futile attempts at conversation along the way. Until they reached Mayfair and got out at Upper Brook Street, Draco ignored her and wouldn’t even have saved the bint from falling on her face when she tripped on the steps if Helen and Lucius hadn’t been looking.
The Astons, astute as they were, quickly sensed that Draco was no longer connected to, and was outright disgusted with, the woman, and were unbelievably and entertainingly rude to Julia in consequence. They pretended to be too busy bickering when they were introduced to Julia, and led the way to the restaurant’s door taking Draco with them. Julia was left to tail their party like a lost mouse.
Draco recognized the maître d’s from his last dinner in Le Gavroche. The two women were twins.
They were led to the bar. Draco ensconced himself between Edrina and Michael in a booth, not bothering to seat Julia first and ignoring his father’s raised eyebrow. Once they were settled, Helen had a whispered conversation with her husband, and Lucius excused himself and went back to the reception desk.
Helen leaned back on her chair. “I wonder when Hermione will arrive.” She caught Draco’s eyes and grinned. “Doesn’t this bring back memories?”
“What memories?” said Draco, mocking bewilderment. Helen just laughed.
After some minutes in which Michael interrogated the sommelier while Edrina fussed over Draco and Helen and ignored Julia, his father came back. He had company.
“If you keep doing this, you will have to hire the whole blithering dining room, Father.”
“Taken care of. Will you stop sounding like you have something up your arse?” Lucius added the last in a disguised hiss, smiling as one of the maître d’s, the one wearing a pin on her lapel, had a server move chairs and a table to their party.
“Hello to you, too, Draco,” said Pansy.
“Introduce us, you rude git,” said Blaise.
“What are you doing here?” said Draco.
“We were about to have dinner here, what else? There’re slim pickings in our part of the world if you don’t want to be imposed on by nosy berks. We went here, ran into Lucius and he invited us to join you. A good evening to you all. I’m Blaise Zabini and this is my fiancée, Pansy Parkinson. We’re old friends of Draco’s. Though we wonder why.”
Helen introduced her parents, but left it to Draco to introduce Julia. Draco, however, was at that time absorbed in watching an approaching server. And then Helen gasped in her chair, making Draco crick his neck as he turned to her.
“Ron?” she called out.
‘Ron’ turned his bleeding streetlight of a head and missed a step as he and his companion entered the bar. Sod it all, what next? Or, more appropriately, who next? My Aunt Bella and the Dark Lord?
“Hi, Mrs Gr”I mean, Mrs Malfoy. How are you?” said Weasley, sounding like a goddamned teenager. At least, he was fodder for amusement. Draco exchanged a smirk with Blaise.
“I thought this was a Muggle establishment,” said Lucius over steepled fingers, smiling wide and managing to look as if he’d just been told his assets had multiplied.
“Well, it’s very well known! Ron, join us!” Helen sounded shrill when she was thrilled. “Who is your charming friend, then?”
“Erm, Luna. Luna Lovegood. Luna, this is Mrs Gr”Mrs Malfoy. You know, Hermione’s mum. You know the Malfoys. And oh, er, there’s Hermione’s grandparents, Mr and Mrs Aston. Hey, er, Blaise. Pansy.”
Pansy motioned for Lovegood to sit by her, and the blonde happily and too enthusiastically did so, sending her skirt frills flying. Weasley followed her and sat opposite Blaise, who raised an eyebrow and then laughed when Weasley’s ears reddened.
“Is anybody else coming, do you think?” said Lucius to Helen. “Where is your daughter? If she doesn’t arrive soon, she’ll come upon a Hogwarts reunion.”
“A what reunion?” said Julia. Everyone turned to her as if they had all forgotten she was there. Draco sniggered to his serviette.
“Are there wrackspurts in this restaurant or is she a Muggle?” said Lovegood to Pansy in a very audible murmur. Merlin, the oddball was priceless!
Edrina snapped this up and replied in a theatrical whisper, “That she is, I think.” She smiled warmly at Julia as though she’d just given the girl a compliment.
“Is she Mr Malfoy’s dinner then?” said Lovegood.
Weasley made a sound between a cough and a gurgle. It was like a switch. Draco, Blaise, Pansy and the Astons roared with laughter. Weasley belatedly joined in. Lucius rolled his eyes to Helen, who was amused by their rowdiness. Only Julia looked pained. The outsider.
And then Draco cut his eyes from the annoying bint and saw red. Literally. Not the walls of Le Gavroche’s bar. A red, svelte figure. Topped with untidily pulled-up, shiny brown hair. She wore pearls. And the dragonskin on her wrist and on her feet was very familiar.
“Did you lot get in before the temperature dropped?” she was saying to Helen. “We could see our breath out there!”
What was she talking about? The temperature dropped? Preposterous. If anything, the bar was suddenly stifling. Draco wanted to flap his shirt or pour ice on his head.
Draco was so busy staring at her, not missing a single movement (though missing everything that was being said) as she greeted everyone and sat down, that he didn’t notice someone had been standing behind her chair.
“I remember you. It is nice to see you again. Are you doing vell?”
Draco must have responded to this query, because conversation didn’t falter. But he was now seeing red. The figurative kind. What was the matter with him? And where was his drink? He downed a goblet of water.
“... a queue outside,” she was saying. “They seem angry. The manager is turning everyone away, saying the place is booked. But these people must have made reservations as well, or they wouldn’t turn up at all.”
People replied to that. Draco didn’t hear them. And then they were getting to their feet. The Bulgarian troll pulled her chair out and steered her toward the stairs, his hand on her back.
Something snapped in Draco. He stood up briskly and snatched Julia’s hand, putting it on the crook of his arm. Julia smiled at him. He bared his teeth at her likewise.
It was to be an interesting evening.
_________________
Draco picks up the teaspoon and studies the picture engraved on it. It’s probably what Weasley looked like when he was younger. He smirks at his errant thought. He returns the spoon to his saucer and looks at his watch. He’s early. But then, he has good reason for that. You simply do not arrive late when you are meeting Lucius Malfoy. Although, these days, his father is so changed Draco has been tempted to test the said changes by being late. But old habits and all that, and here he is in this Muggle restaurant, sipping cafe au lait, waiting.
The proportions of the place are not cramped but still tiny to his taste. The food has better be good. He’s already sampled the service, and he can’t complain. Le Gavroche. Judging by the boy engraved on his spoon, the place is named after that urchin in Les Miserables.
It’s curious that just at the precise moment he is thinking of a book, Hermione Granger is ushered in. At first, he blinks and thinks he is mistaken, this pretty brunette in the cashmere shirtwaister can be anyone after all, but when she spots him and jumps in her suede boots, well, it must be her. He raises a hand in greeting, just to astonish her more. She turns her head, looking behind her. This makes him laugh out loud. And this makes her join him, smiling and holding out her hand. Ever the diplomat, she is, isn’t she?
“Hello, Malfoy. It’s been some time. I hope you’re well?”
He takes her hand and for good measure, brings it to her lips. “Miss Granger. Lovely to see you.”
She uses the hold he still has on her hand to pull him to her in a hug. He gets the feeling they are trying to top each other in some graciousness meter. She presses her cheek to his. As if they are the best of friends, by Circe. Not to be outdone, he kisses that cheek.
“Okay, that’s enough.” She pulls away her cheek and her hand. Her face is pink. Draco is inordinately pleased with that. “Goodness, Malfoy. You can go to the lavatory now and spit.”
“Please, Granger. That’s old. Sit down, won’t you?”
She takes the booth and scoots until she’s right in the middle of it. And then she rests her folded hands on top of the table like some prim and proper grandmother. Draco holds in a snigger. Maybe she only does that when she’s disconcerted, the same way his foot is bobbing now on top of his other ankle because he is a little disconcerted.
Is her hair darker or has she been staying out of the sun too much?
Her eyes rove around the bar, appraising it and wondering at it at the same time. He has tried not to notice all those years ago at Hogwarts, but if someone wants to list Draco Malfoy’s failures, not noticing Hermione Granger will be at the very top, and he thinks now that she hasn’t changed, she’s still looking at the world the same way, taking things in and taking them apart, putting them back together and searing the image in her brain. As she sits there before him, her head swiveling gently right and left, he also discovers why he so easily recognized her. It’s her carriage. She holds her head up in such a way that spoke of her curiosity and confidence. Too high up for someone of her inferior birth, he has used to think.
Outdated and overturned codswallop aside, the manner she displays her slender neck is rather easy on the eyes.
She has two gold rings on her right troth finger. One an understated band engraved lightly with designs, the other with tiny rubies set in the center.
“Who did you marry, then, Granger?”
“Pardon?”
He nods to her rings. “Say it isn’t Weasley. You could have done so much better.”
She smiles but chastises him. “You’ve no right to say that about Ron. And I’m not married. This was my father’s wedding ring and this,” she says, pointing first to the gold band and then to the one with the ruby setting, “is a birthday present. My grandma’s worn it since she was sixteen until she married. It’s my turn to wear it, she says.”
“Is it your birthday today?” Is that why she’s dining out? But then, though her shirtwaister is worthy of his mother’s tastes, it doesn’t look like one she’ll wear for a special occasion such as her birthday.
“No. My mother asked to meet me here. She says I have to meet someone. I think she has a boyfriend.”
She says that without pause or doubt. It’s okay that her parent has a boyfriend, of course. What isn’t okay? So he also becomes okay with it.
“Fancy that. My father also invited me here. He says I have to meet someone. I think he’s gotten himself a bird.”
They grin at each other across the table.
“Really,” she says. And then her smile falters. “Oh, I heard when your mother died. I was sorry about it. It seemed such a waste. Just when your father’s served his term.”
Draco nods. But it’s old bones, old bones. “And your father? Where is he?”
“He died.”
“Fuck. I mean, forgive my mouth. But”Granger, I didn’t think” I just thought your parents are divorced.”
“That’s all right. Of course, anyone would assume divorce. He was too young.”
“You’re too young.” Me, too. Is anyone ever old enough to be orphaned? Draco swallows and leans forward in his chair. “Should I be apologizing? And not for swearing or in the condoling sense?”
She stares at him and then shakes her head, but more as if to dislodge things in her mind than to negate what he said. “He died in Australia. Heart failure.”
This is when the years sit with them, years of merely nodding at each other when they meet in the stacks of Obscurus and the shelves of the Apothecary, along with the years of... Hogwarts. Cold companions, those years. The silence is loud, and suddenly, Draco feels himself belatedly becoming mortified at having kissed her hand and cheek. He doesn’t know this woman though he does know her and even want to know her more, if truth be told.
“Hey, ferret, what happened to you since your name was last printed in the paper?”
At the word ‘ferret’, his embarrassment evaporates and it’s as if the far greater horrors after the ferret incident never happened. He turns his grin into a smirk. “Wouldn’t you like to know, Granger? Is this ferret’s life more interesting than yours?”
She kicks his shin under the table.
“Is it true you’ve been shunted from the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement?”
She laughs, immediately understanding his jocose effort to congratulate her under cover of an insult. What he’s heard is that the Ministry departments are frigging fighting over her. “Yes. Is it true you’re being deported from every country you visit?”
“Yes. Did you miss me while I’m being ‘deported’ from Britain to Italy and from there to the rest of Europe and Asia?”
Her eyes gleam with interest at that. He had travelled extensively. She taps a finger on her chin in mock thoughtfulness. He thinks she’s going to drop their game and ask him questions, but she only says, “No. Is it true you’ve given license for several non-Ministry organizations to rob your families’ vaults?”
This wrong-foots him and the riposte at the tip of his tongue dangles and falls off. He leans back, wary. How does she know that?
And then she befuddles him further by gasping. “It’s true?” she says, her eyes wide, a hand going to her mouth. “I was bluffing. But there you are, I’ve caught you.”
“What are you talking of, Granger?” He casually picks up his spoon again and drags it around in his coffee cup.
She leans forward and for all the world looks like she’s about to wring out of him every Knut’s worth he’s donated, but he is saved by his father’s arrival. Lucius has placed a hand on Draco’s shoulder. Granger looks up at Lucius and says, “Mum?”
How can his father be ‘Mum’? Draco looks up and around.
“Sweet Mary, they’re sitting together. This is better than we expected.”
There is a woman beside his father. Strawberry-blonde hair and brown eyes. Brown eyes. He swivels back around and stares at Granger’s eyes. They are the same as the woman’s. The woman standing beside his father. Standing beside his father and holding his father’s hand.
He grabs the Gavroche spoon again. Merlin, Merlin, Merlin, no.
His father ushers the woman to the chair on Draco’s left. She catches his eye as she sits down and smiles. “I’m Helen Granger, Draco. I’m so glad to meet you at last. I have heard about you long before your father and I crossed paths, of course.”
Draco nods, but he and Granger”Hermione Granger, that is” are gazing at each other mirroring hardly-disguised dread and shock.
“Erm, Hermione. Of course, you know me.” This is from his father. He looks as pale as his hair, the bleeding idiot. He bloody well should be. Hermione can curse his bollocks off in a second.
Draco wishes she would. But Hermione only just nods like Draco has done.
“Wait, no, you don’t know him, love,” says Helen Granger. “This is not the same man from your childhood. Trust me, I bludgeoned the crap out of that man. This man is an entirely different person, or else I won’t be here with him.”
“Mumiseethewanoowantedmetomeetaryumarringhim?”
Draco twigs what that Gobbledegook meant in a heartbeat, and so, it seems, does Helen. Lucius frowns in confusion and then in comprehension when Helen reaches out to her daughter with her left hand. Her ringed left hand.
“Darling, we’re not getting married yet. I’m not about to take that step and exclude you in it. We’re not even engaged. These are still my old rings, look, rings your father have given me. I love your father, but he’s gone, no matter how much we wish otherwise. It’s because of his love and the happiness it steeped me in that I’m able to love someone again. And here is that someone.”
“All right,” Hermione says to her lap.
“All right?” says Helen.
“Aren’t we eating? Let’s go.” Hermione stands up, goes to Draco’s side and pulls him up. And then she turns to Helen and his father and smiles like she’s delighted with the whole universe. “You can tell us how you met. Come on. I’m starving.”
She leads the way. All the while, her hand trembles violently in the crook of his arm. But her smile never falters, nor does the temerity in her spine. She even looks up at him and gives him a nod of encouragement, as if it’s him who’s about to make friends with a man who’s had her tortured in his house.
All those stories he’s heard even while still at school aren’t unfounded. And what he’s suspected right from the minute she slapped him for slandering her friend is confirmed. Hermione Granger is an astonishing woman. Draco pulls her hand further around his arm and squeezes it.
____________________
Julia’s grip on his arm was repulsive, reminiscent of a Tentacula’s. He immediately regretted his impulsive act, wanted to shake her off, but he’d have witnesses to this strange behavior to his ‘date’. There Weasley was. He had paused on the landing, talking to Lovegood.
“...drunk. I can tell. Don’t you see the skargles trailing her?”
“What in Merlin’s pristine white pants are skargles?”
“They’re cousins to nargles, except instead of inducing intoxication-like effects, they just follow drunk people around.”
“Who’s drunk?” Draco said, in between sniggers at the look on Weasley’s face. Draco liked Luna Lovegood.
“Hermione.”
“Oh.” So there was a reason for Weasley’s half-exasperated, half-entertained look. Draco nodded and continued downstairs. To his non-existent surprise, the bint on his arm tripped immediately. If the essence of her butterfingers and fishlegs could be bottled or canned, it would be a bomb to be dreaded more than those supposedly made in North Korea.
There’s a commotion lower down, and to his extreme surprise, it was Hermione. She’d tripped as well and had knocked into Blaise, who had knocked into Michael, who would have fallen down and knocked down his daughter if Edrina didn’t have a powerful grip.
“Are you all right up there, pet? Or did you mean to do that as a...?”
“No, Grandma. I’m sorry!”
Hermione didn’t sound drunk. She sounded properly mortified.
“Krum, hold on to her, why don’t you?” grumbled Ron behind them. “Is she wearing those ridiculous and fatal-looking heels?”
“I can hear you, Ron, thank you for concern, Viktor is holding on to me and I don’t have a ridiculous or fatal-looking anything!”
They reached the dining room at last. You forgot it was the basement, forgot any wishes for windows. Still tiny to Draco’s taste, but elegantly fitted up was Le Gavroche’s dining room. Where the bar had been red, here green was the dominant color. It was empty of patrons, of course, so it looked roomier as well.
They were seated at a large circular table, subtly provided with menus, and were left alone for the moment.
They all looked at each other. Well, except Draco and Hermione. The two of them never caught each other’s eyes.
“It’s cozy, not cramped, darling.”
“Lovely to have you here, Ron, I’ll say it again.”
“Are we having the duck, dearest?”
“I am hearing you vill soon be an uncle?”
“I’d love to see my breath in June.”
“I’ll be an uncle again, yeah.”
“Love”Luna, you absolutely must be one of my bridesmaids.”
“Miss Lynde, do you live hereabouts?”
A water goblet slumped and spilled on the table cloth.
“You can’t have tarts, Michael, haven’t I told you enough times? Will somebody pound sense into this stubborn old git?”
“Erm, what’s wrong with him having tarts, Edrina? Is he allergic to an ingredient or something?”
“Allergic, my foot. He can’t have tarts because he’s married, Lucius Malfoy.”
Draco kicked Blaise under the table, grinning. Blaise kicked him back. It seemed Edrina was warming up to Lucius.
Chatter quieted a little as they ordered. Draco was too busy watching Hermione (for drunkenness, he asserted in his own mind) to pay attention to much else. Julia tried to consult him about the hors d’oeuvre, but stopped talking to him altogether when he leaned to her ear lovingly, only to say, “Each item has descriptions. In English.”
As it was, he didn’t know exactly what happened to cause Hermione to get soused. She wasn’t jealous. Merlin, that was only wishful thinking on his part, and petty, and she knew better about how things stood between him and Julia. But Hermione was> pissed off. Of course, she was angry with him, but that was hours and hours ago. A reaction this late was ridiculous.
When did it happen? Between the Souffle Souissesse and their various main courses, she’d only ever talked to her Viktor”except when she’d softly asked her mother if they were expecting more people. Helen had said no.
“Then why did you hire the whole restaurant? And how did you cancel all those people’s bookings?”
Helen had looked apologetic and murmured, “I asked Lucius to do some you-know-what. Something to do with making the management think we booked double our earlier reservation. Only, well, Lucius doesn’t have a you-know-what, does he, so he overshot it, and instead of a table for twelve, we had the whole dining room. We only found out when you told us about the queue outside. The other patrons should be arriving soon if they want to take the free dessert course the management is offering as reparation for the mix-up. Don’t worry, we’ll pay for it.”
Hermione had seemed inordinately confounded by that. But Krum had whispered something toward her at that time, so the Bulgarian troll might be the reason instead. It was from that point forward that Hermione’s wine glass had to be constantly topped.
He sat beside his father, who sat beside Helen, on whose other side sat Hermione, so Draco wasn’t near enough to his stepbloodysmashedsister to ask her what the matter was, but not far enough to miss the pink tinge on her face. She was quiet and still herself, however, so that the others went on eating and chinwagging. And bickering, in the case of Edrina and Michael and Lucius.
“If people say, for instance, that they like my hair, I wouldn’t go about getting it cut and then flaunting it to their faces.”
“I didn’t know you liked my hair, Edrina. I had to have it cut because my skin had an adverse reaction to Muggle shamp””
“Who said I was talking about you, you vain peacock? Michael, was I talking about him? You tell him.”
“If you let it be, your hair would have reached your posterior soon enough. And then she’ll still call you a vain peacock.”
“I said I wasn’t talking about him, you great babboon.”
By the time they were waiting for their dessert, the rest of the dining room had been occupied. Hermione was noticeably pinker in the face, and in the lull of conversation while they all leaned back in contentment, Krum, bless his heart, took the opportunity to inform the rest of them about Hermione. He was subtle about it, too.
“She’s had enov vine. We’ff already had drink before ve vent here. That voz her limit. One glass. Please tell her, somebody, to stop drinking now.”
“What’s driven you bats tonight, Hermione?” Weasley said, grinning. Draco wanted to slug him. What was bloody funny?
Hermione was grinning back. “I’m not drunk. Viktor, you sweet plonker, don’t worry so. Everyone carry on. Where’s our dessert? I need chocolate something bad.”
She was almost convincing.
“I haven’t talked to Julia yet. What do you do, darling?”
That ‘darling’ clued everyone in. Even Lovegood was startled enough to stare. Hermione wasn’t the type to use endearments. She turned your name into an endearment instead. Meanwhile, Julia fumbled with her fork and knocked over her water glass again. It was the first time someone had remembered she was there.
“I’m in fashion retail.”
“Has that affected you then?”
“I’m sorry?”
“That’s all right, I’m sure people are kind to you. If they’re not, they should be. You can’t help being monumentally graceless.”
Edrina was a tiny woman from whom Helen got the strawberry tinge in her hair. When she was picking on Lucius, she reminded Draco of a murderous red hen. She looked like a murderous red hen again just then. “Hermione Jean Granger! Where’s your grace, I want to know?”
It was a mark of how lost Hermione was that she didn’t cower. “Grandma, you have a piece of rabbit on your chin and Granddad and Mum doesn’t tell you so they can laugh at you later.”
Edrina got over her ire. Julia did not. After five minutes of stewing, she got up and left with barely a nod to Helen and his father. Draco was relieved. Too relieved, in fact, that he didn’t recoil in time to avoid Julia’s kiss. It landed where she’d aimed, for once in her miserable life. Draco barely waited for her to turn her back before wiping his lips.
When he looked up from his serviette, Hermione was dismembering him with her eyes.
__________________
“So that was Julia?” Pansy said. Under the coat Blaise had just draped on her, she shot her dress with a spell, and the streak of syrup on it disappeared, a streak courtesy of Julia accidentally letting fly with a piece of her dinner. “Is she always like that or is it only when she’s with you?”
“Can we talk of far more important people? My stepsister, for instance. She can barely walk straight, for Merlin’s sake. Look.”
“She’s important, is she?” said Blaise, nodding sagely. Draco ignored him.
“She’s walking fine. Viktor is a strong man.”
Both Draco and Blaise sneered at Pansy.
“Erm, who takes Hermione home?” said Weasley, joining them. Luna reached out and petted Pansy’s cloak. “I heard she’s staying with her mother, or is she back at her f””
“I’ll be taking her home, Weasley,” said Draco. If Krum objected, well, they’d see how strong the Bulgarian was, wouldn’t they? There was no way Draco was letting Hermione alone with any man while she was in that state.
“Er, right. Bye, then.”
“Bye,” said Lovegood, including Pansy’s mink in her smile and wave.
Weasley dragged the blonde to the rest of their party outside to say goodbye. Draco, Blaise and Pansy followed.
“Circe, it is cold,” said Pansy. “I’m glad I always bring my mink. Let’s be quick, Blaise.” They waved at Lucius and Helen and after ascertaining that no one was in the street because of the cold, Disapparated.
“...you fery much for the dinner.” Krum was extricating himself with difficulty from Hermione, who seemed to think her date was a post and was hugging it like a drowning cat. “Happy anniversary. I’ll send a givt. I haff to go, Hermione. I vill write.”
Michael stepped in and disentangled his granddaughter from Krum, beating Draco to the chase. Edrina met Draco’s approach instead and kissed his cheek. “Bye now, dear. Can you do what your friends just did, disappearing like that?”
“Sure. I’ll show you some time.”
“I’ve already seen it! You and Hermione should let me experience it!”
“Okay.”
Edrina grinned up at him, patting his arm. “You’re too nice. I’d rather you married into my family than your father.”
“I heard that, Edrina dearest,” said Lucius.
“Hah!” said Edrina. “Michael’s freezing off what’s left of his bollocks. Take us home! Michael, put that drunken ladette in a cab with Draco.”
And that was how Draco ended up being mauled.
___________________
Hermione had a violent dream. Or she was violent in her dream. Either way, being her proxy bed was a nightmare. She punched and kneed and pulled and nailed particularly delicate body parts. Draco wanted to shoot her with the Full Body Bind, but the cabby was very nosy and very sympathetic, scolding and coaxing Hermione by turns. They only realized Hermione had been asleep all along during her madness when she suddenly slumped on Draco’s chest, sniffled and then snored.
That happened for all of five minutes and Draco was ready for extensive healing at St. Mungo’s.
The cabby smiled and winked at Draco and went back to driving, thankfully wise to the fact that Draco was in no mood or state to discuss the crappy weather.
“What’s gotten into you?” Draco whispered to Hermione. He stroked her back and frowned when it relaxed at his touch, as if she’d been tensed for battle all evening and was only letting her guard down now. She was furious with him, no doubt, but what else? She could so easily pummel him, and she had, even if she was unconscious of doing so.
What else? Why was she whining softly in her sleep like an injured puppy?
As they entered Kent, Helen’s car met them. They’d already dropped off the Astons. Lucius must have used wandless magic again to speed things up. Draco was grateful. They could make Helen’s car nice and toasty.
Hermione didn’t wake up when Draco moved from one car to another with her in his arms. He steeled himself when they got settled, ready with the Full Body Bind in case her fit returns, but she just blinked her eyes open, realized she was snuggling up to his neck, and moved away.
She leaned her head on the other window and didn’t go back to sleep. Draco could see her eyes reflected on the glass when they passed unlit sections of Canterbury. He wanted to pull her back beside him, but her aura was forbidding.
“Had a nice time, you two? Your friends were there! It was much better than what we planned.”
Draco nodded affably. Hermione remained stone-faced.
Even Helen seemed too scared to pry.
Chapter 5 by lucilla_pauie
Snow in June
Chapter Five
She woke up in her bedroom in her mother’s house, in her nightdress and in a miniature hell whose tortures seemed encased inside her skull.
And then her mind grew aware past the ache in her head and the dryness in her mouth and Hermione wished she was back asleep again.
She summoned a glass of water, gulped it down, and ended up muttering Aquamenti into her glass ten times. She thought to summon a vial of headache potion as well, but her pounding head was a blessing in disguise. It distracted her from... goddammit, there went her distraction.
Suddenly, she couldn’t spend one more second in that house, not even to change her clothes. She fumbled like a blind woman for her dressing gown, fumbled to her feet, fumbled donning her dressing gown, and fumbled knotting it. When they were good and tight, she spun in place, no longer fumbling, despite the alcohol. She had always been confident with her magic. Magic was the one thing that never let her down.
Well, except once. And it had been all her fault, hadn’t it? All her grievous fault.
It squeezed her breathless, her guilt.
It felt like dying. Dying by knives.
She gasped and retched and didn’t have time to check which limbs had been chopped off. She heard and felt a splatter, a wetness, before her vision went black for several hair-raising eternities. And then her sight returned, revealing the kitchen. Of her mother’s house. She was still in her mother’s house.
What on earth?
“Are you trying to kill yourself, you stupid cow?”
Hermione lashed out with her arm toward that voice. Her sight and equilibrium might be dysfunctional right then, but her temper hadn’t slowed or diminished an iota. She was irritated and she was furious.
She’d have satisfied her irritation and fury better if her stomach wasn’t in sync with her pique. It roiled and pitched its own fit as soon as she decided to move her arm. Ugh.
“That’s Le Degustacion Chocolat, I think. With your many glasses of burgundy. Keep on and we might wear your Legumes Rotis next.”
“Let go of me and leave me alone.”
“You don’t want to be sitting on the floor just now, trust me. I can’t feel my arse cheeks any more.”
She was so enraged she forgot the miniature hell she was hosting and headbutted Draco’s chin. They both howled in pain.
“Bloody hell, will you settle down, you insane cow? If you can get up at all you could have done so ages ago! But as it is, stop maiming me so I can at least get us off the bleeding floor.”
Hermione settled down, but not before pounding Draco’s chest.
“I’m going to be black and blue tomorrow, you ungrateful cow.”
“Stop me calling me a cow.”
Either he’d decided to ignore the threat in her voice or he was suicidal. Her wand was right there in her hand. Still, he snaked his arms around her back and around her knees more securely. He got up. Merlin, he was going to kill her by making her puke every single inch of her intestines out. She thumped him again. “The minute I down a potion for this is the minute you die, Draco Sodding Malfoy.”
“Stop growling. I can barely understand you and you sound hilarious.” He sat down on a stool beside the island.
“Put me down.”
He only pulled her deeper into his lap, closer to his chest, squashing the sick on their clothes between them. She tried not to think about it so that she wouldn’t add another layer to it. He didn’t seem to notice or mind at all, didn’t even think of Scourgifying it, the idiotic disgusting clod. “I told you, you don’t want the floor. It’s cold.”
“I’d prefer the floor to your person, thank you very much.”
He met her glare head on. It was like killing fire with fire. She frowned down at her stupid dressing gown and discovered one knot insufficient.
He extended the hand he had around her waist and held her fingers still. With his other hand, he turned her face up to him. His palm lingered on her cheek, warm and soft. “What’s gotten into you?” he said softly.
“What’s gotten into me?” She batted his hand away. She wanted to bat him away, only she wasn’t keen on tumbling and end up landing on her own puddle of puke. “Did you do this? Lucius detailed the house’s modifications to me. Anti-Disapparition Charms were not in that list. Not in my bedroom. Not for me. I could have splinched myself. You better be out of the country before I so much as sniff a Hellaway Potion. I swear you’ll””
His hand came back, this time encircling one side of her neck and cupping her jaw, silencing her. He was also so very close. She had to remind herself to blink, she had to remind herself not to count his eyelashes, not to drink him in, not to listen to whatever he was about to say.
“Do you have no shame at all? Blowing essence of bile all over my face?”
Of course, being drunk, she had trouble listening to her own mantra. She heard that and snarled all over his face next. He laughed.
“That’s the second time you did that today. Don’t get into the habit, dearest. It’s undignified. Here, drink this.” A glass of water appeared in his hand. She glared at him. Because he’d conjured a tall glass, her eyes might have crossed for several seconds while glaring and tipping the last drop of water to her mouth.
”I have. Every right. To snarl at you. Draco Malfoy. And you. Don’t know. How lucky. You are. I’m boneless. Just now.” For each declaratory clause, she thumped the side of the glass to his damnably smooth cheek. She could swear he was bald all over except the crown of his head.
He took the glass from her and Vanished it. What was he staring at? He was staring.
“Hasn’t Weasley ever set you drunk before? If he has, I think you’d have been married by now. Shotgun wedding. You look incredibly... When you’re drunk, you look like a goddess, did you know that? Maybe because you’ve been pummeling me. Does Helen have a shotgun?”
With that, he closed the small distance between them and kissed her.
Well, only at the first second did he kiss her. A kiss was a gentle touch of the lips. Not nibbling and suckling and licking, which was what he began doing, was still doing... And she was nibbling, suckling and licking him back. Because that was what you did in paradise’s banquet. You didn’t sit there and look. You tasted and devoured and touched and clung.
And then the frenzy slowed, and you realized and remembered things, and you pushed away from the banquet.
Hermione wrenched herself from Draco’s arms and nearly toppled off his lap. He caught her in time and pulled her back in, despite her thrashing.
“All right, what now? Get it over with!” she gritted out.
“Sorry?”
His calm infuriated her more. “Oh, right, I forgot. You’ll wait until I’m all mollified and beguiled first before kicking me off like a despised boot.”
“Are you even talking to me? Or is the alcohol making you see another person just now?”
“Nice. Clever. So now you’re insinuating I’m a slut, kissing men right and left that I’ll mistake some””
His slid his hands up to her shoulders and shook her gently. “What are you ranting about, woman?”
“She’s indisposed, Draco. Hadn’t we better get you to bed, Hermione?”
At that familiar drawl from the doorway, they both looked up sharply”and ignored the crack their foreheads made banging together at their simultaneous movement. A twitch made an appearance on both Lucius’s and Helen’s lips. They held on to their impassive expressions, however.
“Come on, then, darling,” Helen said, moving toward Hermione, only to stop cold when Hermione, who felt all the air being vacuumed away from her, cried out, “Don’t come near me! I want to go home.”
Hermione was worrying the nap of her dressing gown so she only heard Helen’s gasp and hastily stifled sob, rather than saw how the three people in the room took her words, her panic. She could feel Draco’s gaze, however, a burning wandtip pointed at her. “What are you talking about?” he murmured. “You’re home.”
“Oh, yes I am,” she whispered back through gritted teeth. She gulped in air. “I’m in”I’m in a remand home. I’ve done something terrible and I’ve officially been forgiven for it. Only officially, though. Not for real. So this is it instead. A limbo of pseudo-love and punishment.”
The hurt and pain she had always compressed in a tiny vein throbbed and ruptured. She was in so much misery it took her some time to be aware of Helen suddenly being in front of her and shaking her right there in Draco’s lap.
“What did you say, Hermione?”
“If you heard it, what are you asking for?”
“How dare you. I raised you better than this! I don’t even know what you’re talking about! How dare you! Pseudo-love? What have I ever done to you?”
There were no stoppers or walls now. The proverbial dam was gone as if it had never been there. Hermione felt about four years old. She even found herself looking around frantically for something plush and soft to curl into. But there was only Draco. She grabbed the lapels of his dressing gown and buried her face in his chest. “You’re still doing it! You’re punishing me!”
“Punishing you?” said Helen, still in that bewildered tone.
“You married the man who owned the house where I was tortured!”
“You never even told me that.”
“Now you know, don’t you?”
“Lucius is the one who told me.”
“I’m glad you’re happy with him.”
“Hermione Jean Granger, I am this close to hitting you for the first time since I gave birth to you. I am not even following any of this. In the first place, what am I supposed to be punishing you for?”
“I killed Daddy!”
No one spoke after that pitiful moan. Who could? Even Hermione had to gasp and release pent-up sobs first. She was crying to Draco’s shirt, still hadn’t looked up at her mother. She couldn’t bear to.
“Oh. Hermione.”
“I killed Daddy, I did. And I know you hate me for it. I’m sorry. I can’t bear it. You have every right to hate me. But please. Please stop throwing it in my face.”
She wanted to curl into a ball and just sleep. She was exhausted. So she didn’t know where she got the energy to get off Draco and spin in place.
There was a loud burst of profanity behind her and then she couldn’t breathe and couldn’t see again.
________________
“Excuse him, dearest," said Lucius, "but your daughter is almost certainly injured somewhere right now. It’s probably healthy if you join Draco in his profanity chant.”
Draco stopped his furious litany and stopped pounding the counter. Ow. Next time, perhaps he should vent his ire on much more pliable surfaces. Like pizza dough. He turned to his father and stepmother. Helen’s face was red and wet. He’d never seen her look like that before. She looked like his mother during her bad fits of depression. Draco wanted to wring Hermione’s neck.
Where was she? And was she even in one place, all parts of her? Draco dragged his hand over his face and nodded to his father as Lucius steered his wife out of the kitchen, mouthing to his son that they’d be in the library.
Draco had placed an Anti-Disapparition Jinx on the house because he didn’t want Hermione running away. He’d intended to question her, to meddle as he’d never done before, to find out just what was eating her. This was something beyond their earlier spat. And he’d been right, hadn’t he? Merlin.
When she’d literally dropped into the kitchen and started covering them both with projectile vomit, he’d wanted to flay her alive. He had never considered she’d dare Apparate drunk. Anyone sober would have noticed a wand’s warning vibration and heeded it. Anti-Disapparation Jinxes warned people, and did not splinch people. People only splinched themselves when they were idiots.
The second he saw she hadn’t been harmed much by her idiocy, his anger had gone and he’d thought they would settle things between them, but what happened was a bloody hurricane instead, and then there was Hermione’s bewildering tempest. He couldn’t even begin to grasp it. He’d suspected and felt there was this wall between mother and daughter, but he hadn’t expected it to be one-sided and going back years and years ago. Helen’s first husband was past ten years dead now.
He jumped when a bright silver thing streaked through the oriel window and flew to him. He ducked and then was irritated with himself. It was only a Patronus. So distinct. A dragon. It even spoke, by Circe. “Garden. Garden. Quick. I’m bleeding.”
What garden? He could only think of one, and his heart went still as he remembered the well. No, she wasn’t down there. He was going to kill her when he found her. Please let me find that daft bint.
As he tore through the kitchen door, the dragon followed him and then slowly dissipated into silver smoke, blending into the fog hanging low on the ground and the puffs of breath coming from Draco’s mouth and nose. It was freezing. Without stopping his stride, Draco transfigured his dressing gown into a thick woolen cloak. He lit all the lamps dotting the grounds and saw something on his cloak. He’d forgotten the vomit. He grimaced. Bits of it clung to the wool.
“Scourgify.”
He climbed pell-mell up to the walled garden and blasted the door off its hinges in his hurry.
“Lumos!”
There she was at the foot of the ash tree, between the tree’s trunk and the garden’s wall. Draco jumped over bushes and cracked his shin on urns and statuettes in his mad dash to Hermione. By the time he reached her, he was as furious as a starved troll. But one look at her and his anger melted and was swamped with fear.
“Look what you did to yourself, you stupid cow,” he hissed. She was bleeding. It looked like she’d been stabbed in the stomach. He reached for the knot of her robe to untie it and his hand was immediately wet with blood. He grimaced and winced and gritted his teeth. His hands were trembling as he carefully peeled off her dressing gown and then lifted a section of her nightdress and cut it with a spell from his wand. He ripped the fabric across her stomach.
It wasn’t as horrible as he’d dreaded. About an inch’s diameter of skin to the right of her navel had been splinched. He stopped the bleeding with a spell and then cleaned the wound with another. He transfigured a torn strip from her nightdress into a length of gauze and patched her up. Healing would have to wait. Those spells made things worse if not done right.
“Where else? Did you hurt your head or your back falling?” he asked, because she was crying softly as if in pain, even after he’d added a numbing spell to the others he’d placed on her stomach.
She shook her head and tried to stifle her sobs. It was some minutes before she succeeded. By this time, Draco had contrived to get her away from the wall and into his arms. He leaned against the tree and held her while she calmed down. He cleaned, repaired and transfigured her dressing gown into a thick blanket. He cocooned them both under and over it, but not before fixing her nightdress and noticing it”silk”and the skin it covered”silk, too.
As she quieted, the garden began to chirp and hum and croak around them. It was cold, but apparently, here in the garden, the critters were secure and went on with their business. He made a fire and it added its merry crackle to the chorus.
“Even in this state, you’re a showoff,” he whispered, amused that she was surreptitiously using his sleeve to wipe her face. As if he wouldn’t feel it.
“What do you mean?” She seemed content to just lie there half on him and half on the blanket. If she fell asleep, he’d slap her awake. She may be tired, but she had questions to answer first, not to mention a mother to whom she should apologise.
“Your Patronus nearly scared the crap out of me.”
She snorted. “I’m so sorry for frightening your delicate sensibilities, darling. But we don’t choose our Patronuses. Did you expect a fuzzy rabbit or a kitten?”
He tugged her hair for her insolence. “Try being charged by a Patronus that big.”
“My Patronus is an otter. It’s not that big.”
“Otter, my arse. You sicced an Antipodean Opaleye on me. Very flashy.”
She sat up thoughtlessly and suddenly enough to make herself cry out, the idiot. They both looked down and only resumed breathing when no fresh blood stained her nightdress. She gingerly leaned back beside him, facing him now. “An Antipodean Opaleye?”
“You know, the Swiss dragon. Mother-of-pearl scales. Pupil-less eyes and””
“I know what it is! My Patronus is an otter, not a dragon!”
“Well, somebody with a dragon Patronus sent for me then. ‘Garden, garden. Quick. I’m bleeding!’” He imitated her frantic voice. “Wasn’t that you? Is someone else in a garden somewhere bleeding?” She only frowned at him, bewildered.
She fumbled under the blanket and brought out her wand. She raised it, probably about to conjure her Patronus again, but he lowered her wand arm and tucked it back under the blanket. “Don’t think you’ll distract me. What happened back there? You made Helen cry.”
He saw her face flush and crumple before she turned away from him and scooted lower on his side until she was liable to speak to his waist. He carefully pulled her and nestled her on his chest instead. She felt soft and warm and bloody wonderful even though she was a baffling mess just then.
“I want to go home. Help me back to the house and I’ll use the Floo””
“Why do you think you killed your father?”
She hesitated a long while, only answering just as he was about to repeat his question. “I don’t think I killed him. I killed him.”
“What, you stabbed him? Clobbered him? Poisoned him? Hit him with the Av””
“Stop it!”
She was crying again. She sniffled and wiped with the blanket this time.
Draco found himself talking instead. “My mother had been ill and hadn’t made it to my father’s trial. His last words to me before he was dragged off to Azkaban had been, ‘Do not tell your mother.’ I thought that was stupid. I wasn’t about to lie to my mother and make her think my father’s just off on some jaunt and would return any day or that we can pack our bags and join him somewhere. So I told her we wouldn’t see my father for at least two years. That was the last time she was lucid.” He sighed. And roughly two years later, she died. Talk about killing your parent.
Hermione, intelligent creature that she was, heard his unspoken words, and slid her arm over his waist and squeezed. He tightened his arms around her shoulders. “Was that what you did, too? Told your father about the War perhaps? Defied him when he told you to not return to the wizarding world?”
She took a deep breath and expelled it in a puff. “The opposite. I didn’t tell them. And you can call it defiance, can’t you, if you dabble with nature and erase your parents’ memories of you? Their love for you?”
“Merlin, Hermione.” Draco was dumbfounded. “You Obliviated them? Why didn’t I think of that?”
She punched his chest lightly. “It’s no joking matter. I made them think they didn’t have a daughter, that they were Wendell and Monica Wilkins, jetsetters eager to experience the outback, so they’d be safe. Safe from being pursued and questioned. Safe from grieving if something happened to me. I was so afraid, you know. I myself would prefer blissful ignorance than memories.”
He hesitated a couple of moments before saying, “That’s twisted, but I’m not sure I don’t agree with it.”
Imagine living now, not having the memory of being branded and tainted, of only being saved from becoming a murderer by his victims’ sheer luck, of leaving a friend behind in a fire... Yule would also be so much more bearable without memories of his mother’s mad obsession with presents and decorations...
“What happened to your father? You restored their memories and he was furious with you?”
“Oh, I wish!” Hermione sobbed. “No, he d-died not knowing me. He died just two days before I arrived in Australia to take him and Mum back. H-he had a” a heart attack. Do you know, I arrived at the viewing, and my mum was all alone there except for the minister and his wife. The neighbors had retired for the night. Monica Wilkins thought she and her husband didn’t have family, so she was alone and didn’t question it. She was so surprised with me. Didn’t have an idea who I was. Wondered how distant I was related to her husband.” She gave short mirthless chuckle.
“How was your father’s heart attack your fault? I recall Helen saying he died fishing.”
She shuddered, or was she holding back another fit of sobs?
“I made them forget, didn’t I? They forgot Daddy had to be careful. He shouldn’t have dared going on his boat alone, shouldn’t have dared sport fishing in the Pacific.” The blanket tented as she gestured with her hand toward the fire. “And this damnable weather isn’t helping. It was June and it was exactly this cold when I found them again”well, found Mum again and found Daddy was dead.”
The pea soup that was her past cleared a little. And Merlin, he could see why she’d broken down on his shirtfront earlier. It was his turn to give her a squeeze. “I hope he was found quickly? That was winter over there.”
She was startled with this tangency, but seemed grateful. Good. He’d wanted to distract her from the misery of believing she had killed her father, but a far less subtle changing of the subject would have been coarse. “Oh. Yes. He was alone in his boat but there were others who also wanted to exploit the recent storm. Apparently, that’s when fish become frantic looking for food. Before or after the water is disturbed like that.”
“They probably upchuck their food during all the commotion, don’t they?”
“Can you not mention ‘upchucking’ for at least a decade starting now?”
He chuckled, and then kissed her forehead. “I grew up with phony relations, Hermione. Trust me, I’ll know if your mother hates you. She doesn’t. It’s her who’s been rather insecure about you. If you so much as leave the room, she all but whines like an injured puppy to my father.”
That startled her. “I”I didn’t think she’d notice. I don’t mean to hurt her. I’ve been staying away because I don’t want to intrude on her happiness. That sounds trite, but there it is. I’m a tattered pair of nylons awkward with her new shoes. Like our old house. She’s sold it. I went there one day and it was locked and empty and””
“You’re the one who’s angst-ridden, not Helen.”
She gaped at him, shaking her head.
“Come now, really,” said Draco. If she wanted their old house, she need only say so. But there was another time and place for releasing that particular snidget. He doubted it would go over well just now, that he’d bought the house only because Helen had been offering to give it to him. She’d said she and Hermione couldn’t bear the house. It seemed he was the dump of unwanted houses. He bought the house, but hadn’t planned to possess it. Someone meddlesome”namely, the estate agent” had changed the locks and probably stashed all the furniture in the attic. “And I’m sure Helen meant nothing by making Lucius modify the Le Gavroche staff’s memories. She’s a little excitable when there’s company, isn’t she?”
A strange sound that was half-sob and half-laughter burst from her. She was still shaking her head. “You’re probably right. But it was too much. The cold. In June. And then””
“So that’s what made you guzzle down wine? The cold? Wanted to warm your insides, did you?”
She pretended to buy his pretend thickness. “Oh yes. Too bad they didn’t have firewhisky. I had to settle for red wine.”
“I thought you were just so depressed with your date.”
“Viktor wasn’t my date. He was in town and wanted to see me and tell me his news. He’s engaged. I’m to come to the wedding.”
He’d expected her to be defensive, to champion her darling Krum, but that was stupid of him. She had never been predictable in their dialogues, which was why he liked their banter so much. He suddenly felt himself grinning widely. He really liked their banter so much. What she just said had nothing to do with it, absolutely nothing.
“We met Julia in Canterbury. Well, she called out to us, the insufferable bint. Helen invited her.”
She looked up and peered at his face in the firelight. What did he say? Her eyes were still staring into his but they were now shuttered and”uh-oh, hostile. Right. He’d forgotten their standoff.
“My mother invited her? You didn’t bring her in some stupid campaign to hurt me again?” There was no resentment in her voice, only curiosity, and it pricked him all the more. Hurt her again? Was this her evening of recalling ancient sorrows and gripes?
“What are you on about? I’m sorry about my insult earlier, but you really didn’t take that to heart, did you? It was juvenile. You know you’re beautiful, you daft cow.”
She left his side, sitting up and away from under the blanket in her shiny, shimmery, splendid silk nightdress. If she caught cold, he’d strangle her. But for now, he only stared and swallowed. He suddenly wanted to kiss the daft cow.
“I fell down and instead of helping me up, you just stood there and looked at me like you wanted to rub my face in the dirt.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I won’t rub your face anywhere, except perhaps on my person.”
“Are you being funny?”
He smirked because she’d blushed. “Apparently not.”
She hissed like a cat. It made him laugh and haul her back beside him and under the blanket. She wasn’t able to fight him so she sat rigid to show her protest and shook his arm off when he draped it around her shoulders. He snaked it around her waist next, pulling her closer. She pinched his hand but he didn’t let go, only brought his other arm to fully encircle her. She gave up. And if she kept breathing hard like that, sending her chest rising and falling underneath her damnable blue silk, hang it all!
“What are you doing?” she said coolly. “Are you going to throw me into that fire after this?”
He didn’t understand that, so he ignored it. “I heard”from a very reliable source, mind”that you told your mother you aren’t friends with me. What poppycock, right? But because I couldn’t doubt my source, I let it be true. But afterwards, I decided I’d ignore my reliable source’s rubbish. Coincidence that you fell down just when I was being not friends with you, though.”
She tilted her face up, meeting his eyes. When she spoke, her breath joined his. “Are we? Friends, I mean? I suppose it’s coincidence that every time you’re nice to me, the next thing you do is leave, and ignore me and humiliate me and disappoint me and””
Godric and Salazar. She couldn’t be getting at what he thought she was getting at, could she?
“And?” he prompted when she didn’t continue.
“Nothing,” she answered, looking down and speaking to his clothes again. “That’s probably your way, isn’t it? You can’t go around giving me the notion that””
“That what? That I’m fond of you?”
She laughed. She actually laughed while he was all but swallowing his tongue. “Sheesh. Sweet Cerridwen, don’t make me laugh. It hurts. That you’re nice, warm and dependable is what I was going to say, you idiot. How do you explain yourself, Draco dearest?”
She was peering at her middle and checking if she was bleeding again. As he stared at her disheveled and foliage-littered hair, he suddenly realized he was done with games. He turned her face to him and slid his fingers from her chin to her neck.
“You were with Weasley, you daft bint. What was I supposed to do?”
She blinked at him and visibly shook. He felt it in his hands, too. “What are you talking about?”
He rolled his eyes. “For Merlin’s sake. For someone widely purported to be the brightest witch of Britain, you can be quite dim.”
“You can say that again, Draco.”
Draco could only gasp and cough his amusement at how fast and fierce Hermione scrambled and clawed to get out of his arms. Helen had arrived. She no longer looked woebegone, only furious. She wasn’t even clinging to his father. If anything, Lucius looked like he’d tried to drag his wife back and failed. Draco’s estimation of his stepmother went up another notch.
“So here you are. Were you planning to go back to the house at all? There I was rending leather off my good couch out of fret and fuss and you were just here quite cozy. Good thing I checked here before going off to the rest of Dover. Can you leave me with my daughter please, Draco? Lucius, stop hovering, I won’t faint or fall or whatever nonsense you think I’m in danger of doing!”
His father looked abashed. Draco couldn’t believe his eyes and ears. Because he and his father failed to move, Helen added crisply, “Didn’t you hear me? I asked you to leave us.”
Wow. Draco grinned. His father glared at him and followed him to the garden doorway. Quite the spitfire, Helen. Draco could have kissed her just for putting his father in his place, if only she hadn’t so appallingly interrupted. As he stepped over the garden door he’d blasted into pieces on the ground, he looked back. Hermione quickly turned her eyes from him to Helen.
“Gods, Draco, what a pair you and I have become,” his father said flippantly. “I married a Muggle, you’re going to marry your stepsister... What would your children do? Marry Weasleys?”
“Bite your tongue, Father.” Draco cursed the cold; the blood that rushed to his cheeks burned worse because of it. “And why do you think I’m going to marry my””
“The only ones clueless have been you and your object of affections. Edrina only vents her tetchiness on me so she wouldn’t harangue you and her precious granddaughter instead, did you know that? I’ll thank you to end our pooled miseries.”
Chapter 6 by lucilla_pauie
Snow in June
Chapter Six
“What is it? Why are you holding yourself like that? Where are you hurt? Let me see.”
Hermione let her mother see, and Helen huffed, none too gently tugging Hermione’s nightdress back in place. “Serves you right, if you ask my opinion.”
Hermione felt tears rush to her eyes and nose. When angry, Helen never failed to make Hermione feel small. Edrina had the same effect on Helen. Perhaps it was only natural. Hermione wanted to hide in her mother’s bosom, to say sorry, to be petted. She realized she missed her mother. She’d been so preoccupied with her guilt and shame that she hadn’t really been with her mother all these years.
“What right do you have to look at me like that, like a lost kitten?” said her mother, stoking the fire with a long piece of wood that looked like it had once been part of a familiar door. “I’m the one who was hurt here, Hermione. I’ve been hurting for quite some time, as a matter of fact. And then tonight, you” Were you only drunk? Was any of that rubbish you said back in the house even true?”
Hermione nodded timidly, plucking at the blanket.
“So that’s the reason why you’ve been distant, is it? All those presents, all those visits, but you were hardly ever really there. I felt like you were begrudging me my new”if you didn’t want me to remarry, you need only have said so. It would be unfair for me and very selfish of you, but I would have heeded you and not said a word. Do you know that?”
Hermione sobbed into her hands. “No, Mum, it’s not that I didn’t want you to remar””
Helen cut her off and made the same sound she uttered when there was a hint of vermin in her kitchen. “You really think you killed your father? You never once told me. And why should you? I’d have laughed at you! Who blames you aside from your own stupid self, I want to know?”
Hermione’s tears had waited long and hard. They seemed determined to take what was due them. Hermione let them wring sobs from her, only impatiently swiping them away. She spoke past the giant lump in her throat. “You did, Mummy!”
She hadn’t called her mother that since she was eight. And her mother hadn’t looked that horrified since Hermione was eight, too, when Hermione had fallen off her horse on a jump.
“Hermione, I never””
“Right after I returned your memories and explained, you said I killed Daddy.”
“Darling.” Helen was shaking her head, first reaching out with an arm across the fire, and then moving to place herself beside Hermione. With a soft whine, Hermione curled into her mum’s side. Helen rocked her gently, mindful of Hermione’s wound.
“Did I really say that? I was grieving, honey, and angry. I was furious with you for using your magic on your parents for what you deemed was the greater good”for using your magic on your parents, period. We’re all beasts when grieving and furious, Hermione. We say things we don’t mean. Just as we do things other people might not approve of when anxious and fearful. I’ve forgiven you almost instantly. After I’d had my rant, that is.” Helen peered down at Hermione. “Why couldn’t you have forgiven me those words I don’t even remember saying? I suspect I was drunk then. The minister kept plying me with sherry. Whatever did I say that’s made you suffer all these years?”
Her mother was drunk? Hermione wanted to slap herself. “You said something about a bypass surgery, Mum, and two heart attacks and””
“Shite! I mean”goodness, Hermione.” Her mother forgot her wound and squeezed her frantically. Hermione winced but loved the squeeze. It put out the conflagration consuming her insides. “I’m so sorry. Oh darling. I’m going to strangle that minister if I see him again. I blamed you because we ‘forgot’ about the surgery and the two heart attacks we didn’t even tell you about? That is what I did, isn't it?”
Hermione nodded, though she could so easily have said no, now that her mother was cancelling those words more convincingly than the cold was warning of snow.
“Isn’t that just insane?” said her mother, stroking Hermione’s hair now. “Because the reason I forgave you” aside from you being my only darling child and I love you to bits even when you’re being intractable”is that what you did had been ultimately good for us.”
Helen hesitated. Hermione looked up to find her mother wiping her eyes. “We were being caged by our fear, Hermione. We were at that stage when we haven’t accepted and become philosophical yet about what may come any day. Sure, we were being nice and careful, but that’s just it. We didn’t want to be. What a lovely time we had in Australia. And you made that possible. Look, I get gooseflesh just remembering the things we did, which we didn’t know had been big risks while we were doing them. Your father ran around with the guide in one safari, for goodness’ sake. And we went sky diving and rock climbing!”
Hermione cringed. She had never inherited her parents’ love for adrenaline. “Merlin, Mum.”
Her mother chuckled. “You should have been with us. But you were having your own adrenaline fix, weren’t you? Did I ever tell you your father and I were proud of you, a big contributor to your beloved wizarding world?”
“Oh, Mum.” Hermione sighed into her mother’s coat.
“My little punkin. So you see, your father had the greatest fun, and he wouldn’t have had it if it wasn’t for your doggone meddling with our heads. You’ve been beating yourself up for nothing. All these years. Really, Hermione.”
Yes, really. Hermione buried her face in her mother’s side and breathed her in some more, tightening her arms around her mother’s waist. It felt so good. Almost as good as”
“You and Draco looked so sweet earlier. If I hadn’t been so irate with you, I’d have giggled.”
Hermione felt her cheeks tingling and grumbled, “You’re giggling now.”
Helen laughed more.
Hermione listened to it and let it sluice over her like perfume, washing away the scent of her guilt, resentment, and puke. She sighed contentedly. Things would be so much better now. After her dose of Hellaway Potion”and after this ridiculous cold spell leaves”life would be just about perfect.
_________________
Draco sneered at the bush. In the end, he had won over the stubborn bugger. Now, on to the next. He brandished his clippers and flexed his hands. The dragon-hide gloves had been a wise decision. The shrubs looked like dead and shrunken biddies, but how they clawed with indignation at Draco’s campaign to restore their dignity, the ingrates.
It didn’t help that he’d already been a little winded from baking. Helen made it seem so easy. Draco hadn’t thought cinnamon rolls and pizza were that complicated and profanity-inducing.
“Need some help?”
The clipper blades clanged together on empty air; Draco’s knuckles were far less resonant but hurt like the devil. “Merlin’s balls. Sneak up on me one more time and I swear I’ll hurl you arse first down that well.”
She had the nerve to laugh. “It’s not my fault that you’ve done away with that squeaky sentinel over there. You didn’t have to blast down that poor door. It had character. My mother used one of its splinters last night as a poker. Now we can’t put it back together.”
“Are you rhyming on purpose to annoy me?”
She laughed again, plucking a twig from his hair-- how did it bloody get there? Right, now he was rhyming.
“I ate everything in the warming oven except the plates. I hope you’ve already eaten?”
“I have.” He turned back to the Australian tea shrub and hacked away. He’d see how long he can last before looking at Hermione again. She had on a red jacket that looked like he could wear it with only a little struggle and strain at the shoulders. Too big for her, shrouding the curves that another far more flattering red thing had displayed last night. There he went. He looked.
“Where’s my mother and your father?” she said, kicking at the foliage and twigs around their feet.
“Gone. Trip to Autun, remember? They hope it’s warmer across the channel. So that you won’t have another foolish notion of your mother not loving you, she left you food.”
She raised her eyebrows. He squirmed under his cashmere. “Yes, I saw the note. It says, ‘I love you, you stupid cow.’ Maybe she got sick of endearments after her long cuddle with me last night.” Something in her tone made Draco chop off a branch he hadn’t meant to cut at all. The bordering shrubbery he’d been working on all morning now had a dimple. “Look what you did.”
“I was getting annoyed with this eyesore.”
“You know about gardening?” She eyed the dimple doubtfully.
“I know a thing or two. I didn’t spend my summers stuffing myself and playing Quidditch, unlike some people I think I can correctly name.”
She ignored his first Potty-Weasel barb for the day. “Can you put the clippers down for a minute? I want to talk to you and I don’t want you stabbing either of us accidentally on purpose.”
He rolled his eyes. His stomach rolled, too. He slowly and carefully put the clippers down. He had the funny foreboding that if he didn’t keep his eyes on his hands while doing that action, he’d dismember himself.
When he’d straightened again at last, her face was contorted from holding in laughter. If she kept that up, he’d grab her and smear dirt on her face and kiss her.
She made to go to the well, but he was not having that. Since there was no place else to sit, what with the grass wet and cold, they’d just have to remain standing. He wouldn’t let her sit at that old well again. “What did you want to talk about? How’s your head and stomach?”
“All healed, thanks to Hellaway and dittany.”
“And me.”
“Yes. And you, Draco.”
She’d smiled at him loads of times before. But he never got used to the jolt it gave him. It even made him fly miles away and stay there for months at a time, didn’t it? Now that he had no reason to flee any more, it just made him stupid. He bent and picked up the clippers again and clacked it an inch in front of her nose.
“You said something about helping?”
“You said something about me being dim?”
Oh. Last night. Draco took a deep breath and pocketed his hands. He jumped and cursed when the clippers-- which were still in his hand-- ripped the bottom of his pocket and slithered down his leg.
“What on earth! Are you all right? Did you cut yourself?”
Hermione was on her haunches in an instant, removing the bedamned clippers and lifting his right trouser leg.
“I’m fine. Come back up here.” He didn’t want to be crude, but his lower regions were crude by nature, exacerbated by Hermione being near them. “It was just cold, that’s all.” That’s right. Think of the cold. When she was standing again beside him, he sighed in relief and said, “Where were we?”
Her cheeks went slightly pink and she waved her hand in nonchalance. “I wanted to thank you for last night, Draco.”
“What last night? For being your bed, your sink, your tissue and for making you realize you’ve been monumentally stupid?”
She grinned, leaning into his side and gently digging her elbow there before sliding her arm around his waist. “For being my bed, my sink, my tissue and for making me realize I’ve been monumentally stupid.” She looked up at him curiously. “You’ve been my bed?”
He put her arm around her shoulders and returned her squeeze. He loved this about her. She wasn’t the type to hold back affection when she felt it. Did she feel it when she’d given him her cheek at Le Gavroche that first dinner ages ago? Bewildering. “In the taxi before we met Helen and Lucius toward Canterbury, you twit. Do you always pound and mutilate your bed in your sleep?”
She grimaced and withdrew her arm to hug herself around the middle. “I guess I was having my bad dream. And it probably knew it was saying goodbye so it really went nasty as a last hurrah.”
He frowned down at her as he pulled her in closer beside him. She was probably having a guilt nightmare, something he’d been also familiar about, triggered by Helen’s flighty request for a memory-modification. Well, he was glad she wouldn’t have those nightmares any longer. She’d said so herself. And he could see the evidence of her good sleep. She smiled up at him and he returned it.
“I can’t stand it,” she suddenly said.
“Pardon?”
“You’ve sort of conditioned me to it. Tell me once and for all, are you leaving again tomorrow or maybe next week after Mum and Lucius gets back?”
Draco smirked to himself, masked it with a somber expression, and turned her to face him. “Why would I leave?”
“You always do. After being nice and dancing with me, you left. After tuning Daddy’s piano and giving me something to play, you left. After having a nice tea with me and your friends and giving me those wonderful presents which I’ve used and worn ever since, you left. What do you do now after you’ve kissed me and comforted me better than Harry and Ron have ever done?”
“You tell me.”
“What?”
She looked so woebegone and wary he had to laugh. So this was what she’d been ranting about last night. He hadn’t dreamed she even noticed him leaving. Merlin. He tugged her none too gently to him and finally did what he’d wanted to do the second he’d gotten over his annoyance at her sneakiness. She tasted heavenly. She’d lied. She’d skipped the pizza and went only for the cinnamon rolls.
That she looked disorientated when they parted for breath pleased him immensely. He pecked her lips again and whispered, “You stupid, stupid cow. You know why I left. I told you last night. You were with Weasley and gave every impression that you were determined to be with him until you were wrinkled and grey.”
Her eyebrows twitched together. “I don’t””
He rolled his eyes again. “You want me to spell it out for you? All right. Maybe I loved you the moment you gave me your cheek at Le Gavroche. But I didn’t notice it until I saw you dancing. I don’t know. I saw you dancing at the wedding, but that dancing you did while alone in the kitchen was different. It stirred me. But you were with Weasley. So I left and snapped up Margaret, who was every bit your clone, brown hair and bookishness and all, but she doesn’t dance, doesn’t even know music. And then I saw you looking and touching that piano like it was your best friend, and I noticed again, but you were still with Weasley, weren’t you, and you even said you two were lovely, for Merlin’s sake. Eleanora knew music and she did good things, like you did, but it was all for show, she only looked or touched anything or anyone at all if it served her a purpose.”
Her eyes were sparkling now, though she still looked bemused and confounded. For goodness’ sake, couldn’t she accept that someone who hadn’t been receiving homework help from her for years could adore her? “And Julia?”
Draco shrugged, turning away to hide the fact that his cheeks were heating up. “That one’s embarrassing. Let’s not talk of her.”
“Oh, yes, let’s.” She sidestepped so she could see his face again. She was grinning. She slid both arms around her waist. “Come on, tell me.”
Well, she was being persuasive, damn her. “She was a clumsy bint, wasn’t she? You saw that.”
“I’m not clumsy! I thought you””
“Merlin, I only asked her out because she reminded me of you when you upended that vase that one time when I finally managed to get Blaise and Pansy together. There. Yes, idiotic of me. Happy now?”
“You were abominably rude to that poor girl.”
“In contrast to your being lovingly rude to her? And my being lovingly rude to you?”
“Ew, Malfoy.” She laughed. So she probably was happy. Hang it all if he wasn’t ecstatic, too. But he had to ask something first.
“You’re acting like you’re dismissing all those times I left. I don’t mean you shouldn’t. But what’s behind this complacency, Hermione dearest? You’re willing to risk it with me? I wasn’t your best friend, you know, nor am I a blundering Bulgarian with no””
“I don’t know, Draco darling.” She transferred her arms from his waist to his neck and pulled herself up, whispering to him now the same way he did to her earlier. “I think I might love you, too. It doesn’t have to be because you dance, play the piano, or upend vases. And you weren’t my best friend. You are. Wonders never cease, do they?”
It sure didn’t. He crossed the small distance between them so they could taste wonder some more rather than talk about it, but she leaned back.
“For instance, for the first time, my mother’s cinnamon rolls were a bit on the chewy side. And also for the first time, she wrote instead of typing or using magnabets. She’d always been ridiculously ashamed of her doctor’s scrawl, you know. But even that seemed to have been replaced with spiky script. Or maybe Lucius was the one who wanted me to know he loves me?”
He smirked. “Has he ever called you a stupid cow before?”
She laughed. And as she finally kissed him, snow fell.
Epilogue by lucilla_pauie
Snow in June
Epilogue~
They wake up in her bedroom, in her dear old home, in rumpled nightclothes, and in a miniature heaven whose lyre notes seem encased in their minds. Outside, the clouds are nothing but cotton puffs, and June looks like June.
Not that they notice.
Maybe that’s why the skies decide to darken again.
~ * ~
“Maybe this was why I saw the skargles.”
“Eh?”
Ron and Luna were currently helping dismantle the tables set in the garden. It was Sunday brunch at the Burrow. But the weather had suddenly decided to be a killjoy. Ron was carrying a stack of plates in his arms. Luna, instead of continuing to put the plates from the table to this stack, had snatched a piece of the Daily Prophet from Tori, who had been cutting it up happily. Ron had thought Luna had swooped down for the scissors. He’d thought wrong. She was now immersed in whatever was in there, while Tori bawled at their feet and flailed dangerously.
“Recent findings have been published, you know, that skargles sometimes mistake love for drunkenness, so they also trail people in love.”
Ron rolled his eyes and placed the stack of plates on the table so he could mollify Tori before Fleur or Ginny hexed his balls for ignoring the kid or for letting the kid slice herself. “Who did they trail? Hush now, Tori, we’re just looking at the pretty pictures you did! Wow, look! Amazing” fuck! I mean, Puck, Robin Goodfellow!”
Tori giggled. Ron set her down and sat down himself. He slapped a hand on his forehead. He should get a grip.
“Hermione,” answered Luna, still poring over the article as though nothing had happened. “That dinner a year ago, that night you tripped on the doorstep and kissed my chin and broke my nose, remember?”
Ron recovered from his slight shock, and then it was his turn to snatch the paper away.
~ * ~
“Is that pern you’re so intent at behind the Prophet?”
Blaise jumped in his La-Z-Boy (a his-and-her wedding gift from Hermione) and looked up at his wife. And then he burst into laughter. “Pern? What’s pern?”
“Don’t act innocent! Luna said you and Ron and even Harry look at those things. They’re not even real! They’re disgusting. How do Muggle women stand to put those cone things inside them?”
Now Blaise was slapping his thighs. “Cone things inside them?”
“Cones inside their breasts, idiot! What exactly are you braying at?”
“Oh, Pansy. You stup”I mean, it’s silicone, love. Not cones. I think men will notice cones.” He laughed again. “And it’s not porn I’m so intent at, not that I’m admitting to that rubbish you heard from Loony. Here. Look.” He got up from his armchair, ushered Pansy into it, and showed her the paper.
Pansy went still. “Is that really them? You couldn’t tell. That could be impersonators.”
“Oh for Merlin’s sake, you’re not fooling me. Go ahead and squeal.”
Pansy squealed. Blaise rolled his eyes and covered his ears.
When she was done, Pansy said a little breathlessly, “You owe me five hundred galleons, darling.”
“Now, wait just one second. This is all speculation and sensation only. Actually, don’t wait just one second. Wait until we have the wedding invitation.”
~ * ~
It was different this year.
Last year, they’d almost cancelled their trip because her daughter had been visited with insanity. This time, they didn’t even know what hit them until they were on the boat to France because his son had booked the tickets. Couldn’t get rid of them fast enough.
Last year, June had been cold. This year, June was sweltering. They were glad to be off. It was cooler in Autun.
Lucius leaned back on his garden chair, sipped from his demitasse, opened the Daily Prophet, and expelled his coffee all over it. He couldn’t believe it. He thought he’d never do that revolting thing. Where was his dignity?
Helen looked at him from across the table over the rim of her sunglasses. Wordlessly, she flicked a cloth napkin at him. Also wordlessly, he handed over the paper. She hesitated taking it. “It’s not about us, is it?”
“Not precisely.”
~ * ~
“Edrina, I think this owl’s got business with us.”
“Oh, get along with you,” Edrina snapped, covering her flowers with bags. This was the second time in two years running that June had betrayed her. “I won’t be taking in an owl. You made me take in possums, for God’s sake! If you want to watch gutting and clawing, go to the telly.”
“Edrina! The owl’s got a... a paper!”
“What paper? Toilet paper? What interest do I”oh! Finally!” Edrina opened the greenhouse’s window and the owl fluttered in, depositing the paper on Edrina’s eager hands and taking off with an indignant glare at Michael. Edrina laughed.
“Well, I’ll be!” Michael said, staring after the owl, looking hurt. And then he turned back to his wife. “What’s that?”
Edrina slapped his hands away. “Let me see it first, Michael.”
“Are those photos moving?”
“Yes. Lovely, aren’t they? This is the wizarding paper. Draco and Hermione bought us a gift subscription. I do love those children.”
“Whatever for? You’re not a witch, though you look and act like one.”
Without looking up from the pages, Edrina said, “Michael Aston, I’ll make an alopecia potion tonight to put it in your dinner.”
Michael’s hand flew to his thick hair. He opened his mouth to retort, but the contented look on Edrina’s face silenced him and made him smile instead. He turned back to their tomatoes.
Only when he had picked everything in the whole blithering greenhouse did Edrina emerge from the Daily Prophet. She was grinning widely. “I think I’m going to write this Rita Skeeter. I like her.”
~ * ~
Snow in June, Again?
Temperatures have shot up and dive-bombed like malfunctioning Nimbuses, but we might have snow in June again in another respect.
My gentle readers will recall a similar phenomenon two years ago, when Lucius Malfoy, ex-Death Eater and former Azkaban resident, married Helen Granger, whose Muggle-hood is eclipsed by her motherhood to none other than our darling Miss Sunshine, Miss Hermione Granger. Stepfather and stepdaughter seem to have gotten along like a crup and a pureblood. And now there is proof of just how close the Granger and Malfoy families have entwined.
Draco Malfoy has been seen several times with Muggle women in the past after the cancellation of his engagement to pureblood princesses. If my discerning readers have wondered where our Casanova has been in the past year, it seems we have an answer.
Hermione Granger continues to shake, rattle and roll things at the Ministry. We admire her and wish her a future career as Minister. But sources from those slightly unspeakable offices say there’s been a noticeable decline in Miss Granger’s bustle. It seems we have a hypothesis to that.
A hypothesis hereby investigated and presented with a conclusion.
This photograph has been taken with great pains from the street outside Miss Granger’s”or should I say Mr Draco Malfoy’s”home in 7 Primbrook Lane, London. They are strolling in the most charming pocket garden this author has ever set eyes on.
Sources at the Bureau of Immovable Property and Possessions have revealed that the house has formerly belonged to Logan and Helen Granger. It’s been sold to Draco Malfoy. Whatever the reason, Miss Granger does not look irate about it. And if our camera can be trusted as all wizarding lenses can be, the house might be Miss Granger’s already as well.
If the photograph is a little artfully smudged, consider the wards around 7 Primbrook Lane. The very same wards are also responsible for the photograph’s imperviousness to the animation inducements of our various patented photograph developer potions.
What is Miss Granger holding? A four-leaf shamrock, perchance? A trinket of some sort, perchance? A ring of certain carats, perchance?
We shall soon know.
It will snow.
~ * ~
“Miss Sunshine. Hermione will laugh at that. What’s a crup?”
“A dog.”
“So she called my daughter ‘darling Miss Sunshine’ to perhaps distract me from discovering that she called my daughter a dog? The nerve of this woman. What are you wincing about?”
“This isn’t bringing family togetherness to extremes, is it?”
“Oh tush! For someone who came from a family that married its first cousins, you do take on so.”
“I’m just... I said something once. I should have bitten my tongue. I’m now deathly afraid our grandchildren will marry Weasleys.”
End Notes:
7 Primbrook Lane *grins* Borrowed that one from The Parent Trap 1998. Thanks for reading. And reviewing! :)
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.