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.
Snow in June by lucilla_pauie
Story Notes:
An entry to Hawthorn and Vine's Reverse Challenge Phase 2, where we had to write a fic based on art.
Chapter Endnotes: Thank you for reading! Please tell me what you think!