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.
Snow in June by lucilla_pauie
Chapter Endnotes: Same drill! Thank you and tell me what you think. :)