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.
Snow in June by lucilla_pauie
Chapter Endnotes: Loved it? Hated it? Tell! :)