Closer Than I Ever Imagined by 3secondfish
Luckily, the next day was a Saturday. It had been a long week. Draco had woken late. Turning on the light in the lavatory, he discovered a squashed ginger face glaring at him from the commode.
“I hope you flushed,” he muttered, as Crookshanks made to jump down from the toilet seat. With a reproachful look at Draco, he pushed down the handle and stalked out. Draco watched Crookshanks’ progress with bemusement. It still felt awfully early, as far as Draco was concerned, too early to concern himself with the eccentricities of Hermione’s cat.
* * *
Finished with the morning’s ablutions, Draco pulled a dressing gown over the shorts and old t-shirt he had worn to bed and walked to the living room. There he found the last thing he expected to see.
Hearing Draco’s footsteps, Hermione looked up, greeting him with a radiant smile. “Good morning, Draco!” she called cheerfully. Saving him the trouble of asking foolish questions, she enthusiastically said, “I’ve just been teaching Triplicity some letters.”
Hermione was stretched out on the floor with Triplicity. With trembling coils, he was carefully clutching a quill which he was applying to a piece of parchment. With her encouragement, the runespoor was clearly copying an alphabet. Triplicity’s left-most head briefly looked up at Draco with narrowed eyes and the barest hint of fang. Then, satisfied that Draco didn’t intend to laugh, the head rejoined its fellows in overseeing his penmanship.
“Why?” frowned Draco muzzily. He had a brief mental image of the runespoor taking dictation at the Ministry.
“Well, isn’t it obvious? Triplicity is plainly very intelligent. I mean, he understands when you’re speaking to him and what you’re saying in his presence. The only trouble is that he simply can’t speak English, and we can’t learn Parseltongue. Or, at least,” she said thoughtfully, “we don’t have someone to teach us. At any rate, Triplicity does understand English, so if he learns to write, then we can communicate,” she finished briskly.
“Ah,” said Draco vaguely. He thought she was making sense but wasn’t sure; perhaps it would make far more sense after he dealt with the idea of breakfast, which was calling much more loudly with the rumbling of his stomach. So thinking, he decided to put off attempting to understand what Granger was going on about until afterwards.
As he shuffled into the kitchen, Hermione called out behind him, “I made waffles. They’re on the counter.” Draco mumbled a thank-you, and took a waffle from the stack. Fishing his wand from his pocket, he tapped it gently so that steam wafted enticingly. He opted to forego syrup in favor of portability; so, munching his dry waffle, he started to walk back to where Hermione and Triplicity were working.
He was distracted by the return of his eagle owl. Seeing he had a note attached to his leg, Draco hurried over to the perch. Holding the waffle in his mouth, he untied the fragment of parchment, scanned it, and stuffed it in the pocket of his dressing gown. Noticing the haughty, reproachful golden glare aimed in his direction, he tore off a small piece of waffle, and fed it to the owl. So far satisfied by the morning’s events, he returned to the rug Hermione was using as an impromptu classroom.
With a careful air of casualness, Draco said, “If you don’t have any other plans, would you mind going to Diagon Alley this afternoon? I need to meet someone at the Leaky Cauldron,”
“OK,” said Hermione, concentrating on Triplicity’s latest efforts. “I think he’d do even better if he didn’t have to dip the quill,” she said, thinking out loud. Smiling up at Draco, she said, “He’s doing really well with this. I should go to Flourish & Blotts to see if they have any self-inking quills, or maybe a muggle felt-tip pen.”
In spite of himself, Draco was impressed. He and Trippy had an understanding, but he had never attempted to go beyond the mutual respect they had shared. Triplicity was, he agreed, an unusual and intelligent creature. He tried to imagine himself in Trippy’s place. Draco realized that, however good the care he tried to provide for him, Triplicity had to be lonely. But Granger, unasked, even after being menaced (though in jest) by the runespoor, had taken it on herself to try to ease the burden of his isolation. He thought that if he were that lonely, he, too, might be tempted to try something as ridiculous as obeying the earnest cajoling of a compassionate young woman.
* * *
Although their bond’s range had originally been something like 50 feet, as their bodies healed from the spell damage it had expanded to a couple hundred yards, plenty of room to shop Diagon Alley. It had become a habit, though, to stay close together.
“Are you sure you don’t mind me wandering off?” asked Hermione.
“Go ahead. Diagon Alley’s not a huge place; just come and get me if you need to move further down,” replied Draco, finding a booth near the back of the Leaky Cauldron and slouching comfortably into the seat.
“Well, all right, then,” said Hermione, a bit reluctantly. Though it was a homey sort of place, there were always a few odd people who frequented the inn. Today, Hermione noted a particularly scruffy-looking one dressed in muggle clothes in the booth next to the one Draco had chosen. Dismissing him with a glance, she gave Draco a bit of a wave, and walked out the back door to the secret entrance to Diagon Alley.
She wasn’t sure why she was dragging her feet about shopping by herself. Damn, she thought, What’s the matter with me? She considered herself an independent witch and was used to thinking of herself as a bit of a pioneer. She had lived on her own as soon as could after she left school, unlike many of her classmates who had gotten flats in great gaggles, just like in the dormitories. While she enjoyed company now and then, Hermione had nonetheless jumped at the opportunity for a bit more privacy when a tiny Hogsmeade flat became available. She wasn’t a schoolgirl anymore, and was relieved to not be interrogated about her evening activities by curious room-mates at every turn.
Hermione noticed she was still walking quite slowly. Maybe it was the threat of making a complete spectacle of herself if she wandered too far. The episode at St. Mungo’s still stood out in stark warning in her mind. Yes, she told herself, that was probably it. Although Malfoy . . . Draco . . . wasn’t that objectionable as company. He was certainly quieter than the girls she used to live with. She liked the library of books that he owned, and that he didn’t seem to need to fill the hours with chatter. Hermione reflected that it seemed a little odd, now that she knew more about him, that he always surrounded himself with . . . with minions. Now that she had a few years of perspective on the situation the people who attended him at school seemed more like hangers-on, rather than friends who liked his company.
Her musings were interrupted as she realized that she had already walked past the doorway of Flourish and Blotts. She shook her head and retraced her steps.
* * *
Returning to his seat, Draco had settled himself to wait, sipping at the bottle he had purchased from the bar. It wasn’t long before Draco heard a long low hiss near his right ear. Without turning, he smirked and said, “Hey, Potter. Come over and have a seat.”