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Chapter Text

Chapter Text

The first thing Draco hears is her scream. 

It slices through the quiet like a curse, echoing in a corridor that no longer exists. The air is thick with smoke, and the walls are damp stone - scorched with magic, choked with ash. His feet drag across the Manor floor as if he’s wading through a memory made of tar, one he cannot escape, no matter how fast he runs or how hard he closes his eyes. 

He knows this dream. He hates this dream. 

It always starts with her scream. 

And yet he follows it. 

Always. 

The corridor bends. He knows what’s at the end of it - that drawing room his mother once filled with lilacs and light. It used to smell like bergamot. Now it smells like blood and damp and burning flesh. 

He steps through the door and sees her. Always. 

She’s on the floor, curled around her pain like she can hide from it, as if shrinking small enough will save her. Her shirt is torn, her hair matted, and her hands - bloody, shaking, clawing at the floor. 

Bellatrix looms over her, wand raised, voice coiled in delight. 

“ You filthy little Mudblood. Do you think you can lie to me?”

Hermione screams again, hoarse and raw. Her spine arches and then collapses. 

Draco flinches. 

Every time. 

And every time, he does nothing. 

He watches. Frozen. Helpless. Coward. 

He is sixteen again. Standing just inside the door. Mouth dry. Chest pounding. His wand tucked in his sleeve, unused. His father’s voice hissing in his head. His mother silently weeping behind her mask of indifference. 

But all he sees is her. 

On the floor. 

Bleeding. 

Carved.

Her eyes meet his, once. 

Just once. 

And it’s not hatred she looks at him with. 

It’s betrayal. 

The scene twists. Warps. 

Her body arches in pain again - but this time, it’s not Bellatrix’s voice he hears.

It’s his own. 

“ Mudblood,” he spits. 

Except he never said that. 

Did he?

He can’t remember anymore. 

Her skin splits open under his words. Blood wells up. And he watches as the letters etch themselves across her arm - slow, deliberate, cruel. 

M

U

D

B

L

O

O

D

He tried to scream. 

He doesn’t have a mouth. 

He tries to hold her. 

He doesn’t have hands. 

All he can do is watch as her body trembles on the floor and the letters glow - red-hot and pulsing like rubes seared into her flesh. 

And then, silence. 

Bellatrix laughs. 

Hermione sobs. 

And Draco wakes up choking on the taste of iron. 

He sits bolt upright in bed, chest heaving, sweat-soaked sheets twisted around his limbs like bindings. 

The dormitory is still. Pale moonlight spills through the high windows of the Slytherin boys’ quarters, casting long shadows on the cold stone floor. 

His hands tremble. 

He presses them into his eyes until the stars explode behind his eyelids. 

It’s been nearly a year since that night. 

But the dream never leaves.

He thinks of her more than he should. Not just in his sleep.

In class. In the hallways. In the silence between conversations. 

He notices her hair is shorter now. Her robes sharper. Her spine straighter. Her voice quieter - but only just. She walks like she dares anyone to challenge her. 

She has barely looked at him since returning to Hogwarts. 

He deserves that. 

Draco swings his legs out of bed, jaw tight. His wand rests on the nightstand. The word “ Mudblood” still burns behind his eyes. 

He didn’t carve it into her skin. 

But he watched it happen.

And sometimes, in his dreams, it’s his wand that does it. 

Sometimes, he wonders if that’s worse. 

He walks to the basin and splashes cold water on his face, trying to breathe through the ache lodged in his chest. 

When he closes his eyes, he still sees her. 

Not just the scar. 

Her.

The look in her eyes when she realized he wouldn’t save her. 

The part of him that still craves redemption knows he’ll never be forgiven. 

The rest of him isn’t sure he deserves to be.

And maybe that’s why, when Professor McGonagall assigns the new “Unity Letter Project” the following week - forcing the students to anonymously correspond with someone outside their house - he thinks about dropping out altogether. 

But he doesn’t.

He writes the letter. 

And when the reply comes back - scrawled in perfect, sharp ink with a curl on the G that makes his throat tighten - he doesn’t need to guess who it is. 

He knows that handwriting. 

He’s been dreaming about it for months. 

Chapter Text

The sound was what struck her first. 

It wasn’t the whirr of trolleys, the screech of owls, or the chaotic callouts of reunited friends. It was the absence of it all. The platform at King’s Cross was half-empty and half-hearted, muffled under the weight of grief and cautious hope. The train sat on the track, its familiar red-and-gold frame dulled with soot, and Hermione stood perfectly still just beside it, her hand tightening on the handle of her trunk. 

She had imagined this return many times in the quiet hours after the war. 

In those endless nights at the Burrow, lying wide awake in Ginny’s room while Ron pretended to sleep across the hall. She’d envisioned herself walking proudly through the barrier again, head high, surrounded by the warmth of the people who mattered most. 

But she was alone. 

Her parents were still in Australia, their memories hadn't been restored and Hermione wouldn’t risk their already fractured minds by pushing them further. Ron hadn’t spoken to her since July, still scorned that she chose a life without him. One where she wasn’t expected to stay home and coddle him while he went on with his career hopes and dreams. And Harry - bless him - had written often, but he hadn’t returned for eighth year. Too many ghosts, he said. 

So it was just her. 

Hermione Granger. War heroine. Head Girl. 

Alone. 

She adjusted the strap of her satchel, exhaled slowly through her nose, and walked toward the train, weaving through a quiet crowd of familiar students. Some heads turned. She caught glimpses of recognition, sympathy, fear. She nodded once at a fifth-year who had fought in the final battle and hadn’t come out unscarred. He looked away first. 

Her trunk floated behind her as she climbed aboard. Inside the corridor, it was eerily silent. Compartments that used to burst with chatter were half-empty or shuttered entirely. 

She walked the length of the carriage, her footsteps muffled on the rug. 

And then she paused. 

Across the hall, through the glass, sat Luna and Neville. Luna had a sketchpad open on her lap, drawing something that looked suspiciously like a dirigible plum with wings. Neville caught sight of Hermione’s eye and offered a hesitant smile, listing two fingers in an awkward wave. 

Hermione smiled back. 

She didn’t go in. 

Instead, she chose the next empty compartment. She pulled the door shut behind her, flicked her wand to levitate her trunk into the overhead rack, and collapsed into the seat by the window. 

The view was the same, but the world had changed. 

She watched the steam curl around the platform and settled into the silence. 

It wasn’t until the train gave its first long whistle that she realized someone else had joined her. 

Not in the compartment. 

On the platform. 

She leaned forward, squinting through the windowpane. 

Draco Malfoy stood near the edge of the crowd, a pace or two apart from the other returning Slytherins. His trunk was floating nearly behind him, his own cage balanced on top. He looked… pale. Clean-cut. Thinner, maybe. His robes fit too well, like they’d been tailored to distract from how sharp his shoulders looked now. 

He wasn’t speaking to anyone. Not even Theodore Nott, who stood ten feet away with Blaise Zabini, muttering something and glancing at Malfoy with unreadable eyes. 

Hermione watched him without meaning to. 

He looked up. 

Their eyes met. 

For half a second - maybe less - he held her gaze. 

Then the whistle blew again, and he turned away, stepping into the next carriage without a word. 

Hermione sat back, her spine pressed to the glass. 

She hated that she still reacted to him. That her pulse jumped. That her stomach clenched. That she couldn’t decide if it was fear or fury or something else entirely that coiled in her gut every time she saw him. 

She hated even more that a part of her wished he had looked back. 

The train began to move, wheels shrieking against the tracks, and the world blurred past her window. 

She didn’t open a book. She didn’t write a letter. 

She sat in silence for nearly an hour, alone in her compartment, one hand curled around her wand, the other resting lightly over the inside of her forearm. 

Where the word still lived beneath her skin. 

***

He wasn’t supposed to be here.

Every part of Draco’s body screamed it. 

His robes felt too tight. His wand too heavy. His very presence on Platform 9 ¾ felt like a provocation to the universe - as though daring fate to punish him for stepping back into the world he helped destroy.

The moment he crossed the barrier, the silence was deafening. 

No one jeered. No one threw hexes. Not openly. 

But they watched . 

Eyes flicked toward him from every direction, some curious, others disgusted. A fourth-year whispered to her friend behind her hand. A Hufflepuff mother pulled her daughter closer as he passed, as if dark magic might radiate off his coat like poison. 

Draco kept his chin high. 

He had learned not to flinch. 

Not anymore. 

The Ministry had spared him, technically. Testimonies from Potter and that insufferable Weasley girl had carried weight. So had his mother’s cooperation. But the social sentence remained, etched in every glance and every hushed word: Death Eater. Coward. Traitor.

He didn’t care what they called him. 

He only cared what she remembered. 

And the second he stepped onto the platform and spotted her across the crowd, he knew he wouldn’t be able to breathe for the rest of the term. 

Hermione Granger stood with her spine straight and her hand on her trunk, the same way she had faced every battle he’d ever watched her fight. Her curls framed her face like a halo and shield both, and even from across the distance, he could feel her magic like pressure against his chest. 

He didn’t mean to meet her eyes. 

He never meant to. 

But the second he did, he was lost. 

The expression on her face wasn’t fear. 

It wasn’t even anger. 

It was distance. Cold, deliberate removal. Like she had erased him. 

It gutted him more than if she’d spat at his feet.

He stepped into the nearest carriage to escape the weight of her gaze. 

His legs carried him forward, past students he didn’t want to see, past the compartment where Theo and Blaise sat arguing quietly about nothing, past everything that might hold him still. 

When he reached his own empty compartment, he sank into his seat and dropped his forehead into his hands. 

The word was already there, behind his eyes. 

Etched into the inside of his skull. 

“ Mudblood.”

It didn’t matter that he hadn’t spoken it that day. 

He hadn’t stopped it either. 

And that made all the difference. 

***

The trains long, aching whistle signalled their arrival, but it didn’t stir Hermione from her seat. 

She remained still, her fingers curled where they rested above her left forearm, only shifting when the quiet rustle of movement outside her compartment door reminded her that everyone else had already begun filing out. The corridors filled with careful, muted footsteps, too polite to jostle, too burdened to rush. 

Hermione finally stood, smoothing her robes and fixing her face into something like composure. 

She didn’t look at herself in the window this time. She didn’t want to see what had settled into her eyes during the journey. 

Outside, the late afternoon sun filtered through thin clouds and cast a dull, unforgiving light over the Hogsmeade platform. The wooden beams were still scorched black in some places. The stone arch nearest the station’s edge had a long crack running down its centre like a wound that had never been set properly. Weeds grew up through the gaps in the platform floor. 

And the carriaged waited. 

Silent. 

It was worse, she thought, seeing them with the Thestrals there - creatures once invisible to most of her classmates, now as familiar as broomsticks. Every student on the Platform could see them now. 

Too many had seen death. 

Hermione inhaled slowly. The air tasted different here. Older. Like ash and cold stone. 

Her boots clicked as she stepped down from the train and walked toward the first carriage, her wand loosely in hand, even though she knew there was no danger now. It had become a habit, after the war - be ready - and she hadn’t broken it. 

She passed by a group of third ears huddled together near the station wall, clutching their trunks and whispering about the Thestrals with wide, fascinated eyes. She softened slightly at the sight - young ones, not yet jaded, still awed by the magic rather than what it symbolized. 

And then she heard it - footsteps just behind her. 

Measured. Calm. Too familiar. 

Hermione’s spine tightened. 

She didn’t turn around. 

She didn’t need to. 

Draco Malfoy had come to stand beside her at the front of the carriage line, his jaw taut, his expression unreadable 

Of course he would be in the first group to arrive. 

Of course he would be in her carriage. 

Their eyes met only briefly. It wasn’t a glare. Not exactly. But it wasn’t warm either. 

A cold nod passed between them. 

She climbed into the first carriage. 

He followed. 

They sat on opposite sides, neither spoke. 

Two more students - Ernie Macmillan and Astoria Greengrass - joined them a moment later, and the silence held, suspended between forced civility and old grudges that no one dared to voice. 

The carriage jerked, wheels crunching over gravel. 

Hermione looked out at the landscape as it passed - the trees that had once whispered stories, the path where they used to race on brooms or dare each other to walk blindfolded, the stream where Neville had dropped his wand in second year. 

But everything felt different now. 

The trees looked thinner. The sky was duller. The wind, crueler. 

Even the castle, when it came into view, seemed heavier. 

Hogwarts had always been her sanctuary. Her home. Her haven. 

But now… now it looked like a tomb. 

Her chest ached. 

Somewhere behind her, she felt Malfoy shift. 

She didn’t look at him. 

But for the briefest moment - barely a breath - she thought she heard him exhale. Quietly. Like it hurt. 

***

The Thestral stared at him. 

Large, hollow eyes. Wings too thin to belong to anything that should fly. Its breath steamed softly into the afternoon air like a whisper, as though it knew what he’d seen. What he hadn’t stopped. 

Draco didn’t look away. 

He thought about the first time he’d seen one. It had been weeks after Dumbledore fell from the tower. He;d stood on the edge of the platform that night, alone, trying to breathe through the guilt and the ache in his hands, and when he looked out into the darkness, there it was - watching him. 

They always did. 

Now, everyone saw them. 

Every student stepping off that train had death woven into their gaze. Even the first years - especially the first years. War didn’t spare children. It hadn’t spared him, either. 

And then there was her . 

He told himself that all morning. On the platform. On the train. As the carriages were loaded. That he wasn’t looking for her. That he didn’t care . That they’d both survived and that was the end of it. 

But when she stepped onto the stone beside the carriage, her profile sharp in the golden light, he knew it was a lie. 

He stepped up beside her before he could stop himself. 

She didn’t look at him. 

She didn’t need to. 

Her presence hit him like a curse - clean, burning, alive. She was everything he didn’t deserve to feel near. And still, he sat across from her in the carriage like nothing had ever happened between them. Like they hadn’t stood on opposite sides of a battlefield. Like he hadn’t watched her bleed in his home. 

Their eyes met for the briefest moment. 

No words. 

No accusations. 

Just the frost of distance and the unmistakable pressure of something unsaid. 

He almost wished she’d hexed him. 

Ernie Macmillan entered the carriage next, followed by Astoria, who cast Draco a look filled with lust and want before gracefully folding herself onto the bench beside Hermione. As the carriage lurched into motion, Draco leaned his head back against the wooden panelling and closed his eyes. 

He could feel her. 

Across from him. 

He didn’t need to look. 

Her magic had always been loud. Buzzing. Crackling beneath her skin like wildfire just barely contained. But now, post-war, it was different - quieter, steadier. Deadlier. It reminded him of ancient runes. A magic with memory. The kind that didn’t forget who ir had hurt. 

The silence in the carriage stretched. 

Draco opened his eyes just as the castle came into view. 

And his breath caught. 

The north tower was missing half its top, though it had been neatly charmed with scaffolding and spell-stabilized stone. The walls bore scars - great black scorches where curses had torn through. One of the turrets had collapsed completely. The grounds were too still. The lake was glass. 

Hogwarts was wounded. 

Just like them. 

Draco swallowed hard. 

The last time he’d seen the Great Hall, it had been strewn with the dead. 

And now he was returning… not as a prisoner. Not as a Death Eater. But as a student. As a boy with a second chance he didn’t ask for and probably didn’t deserve. 

Beside him, Hermione shifted. 

He didn’t look at her. 

But he heard her breath catch. Just once. 

And something sharp lodged in her throat. 

When the carriage stopped, Ernie was the first to rise, eager to put distance between himself and his unexpected company. Astoria followed, offering a sultry glance at Draco before slipping through the door. 

He waited. 

So did she. 

They both stood at the same time. 

Their hands brushed for a single breath when reaching for the door. 

Her fingers were cold. 

He jerked his hand back like she burned him. 

Her eyes flicked up. Not startled. Not embarrassed. 

Unbothered.

That was worse. 

He let her go first. 

Not out of chivalry. 

Because if she looked at him one more time with that perfect, expressionless mask, he might actually fall apart. 

***

The Great Hall was smaller than she remembered. 

Not physically - but in presence. The vaulted ceiling arched above them as always, enchanted to reflect the dusk sky. But the candles hovered lower, the banners were less vibrant, and the air carried a stillness that no spell could dispel. 

Hermione sat at the newly arranged Eighth Year table, tucked awkwardly between the Ravenclaws and the Slytherins. She noticed the divide immediately: invisible, but heavy. The houses still sat apart, even in unity. 

She had arrived early. She always did. 

A few students trickled in behind her - Neville gave her a nod and sat near the end, while Luna drifted past in a daze, her wand poking out of her hair like a flower stem. Others kept their eyes down. Most spoke only in murmurs. There were fewer than thirty of them returning from her year. 

Ron and Harry were not among them. Choosing instead to begin their training in the Auror office of the Ministry.

She tried not to let the emptiness beside her feel like a betrayal. 

Her hands were folded neatly in her lap when Professor McGonagall walked slowly to the podium, robes rustling, her expression unreadable. The usual twinkle in her eye - though never as dramatic as Dumbledore’s - had vanished entirely. In its place was something colder. Not harsh. But carved from grief and determination. 

She looked out over the students. 

“Welcome home,” she said, and her voice was strong, though it didn’t carry with magic the way it used to. “To those of you who have returned, we honor your courage. To those who have joined us anew, we welcome your hope. And to those we’ve lost… we remember.”

A long silence followed. 

No one moved. 

Hermione found herself holding her breath. 

McGonagall cleared her throat softly and continued. “This year, Hogwarts reopens not just as a school, but as a sanctuary. A place for rebuilding. Healing. And bridging divides that have, for too long, fractured our world. Eighth Year will not only focus on academic excellence, but on unity and understanding.”

Hermione caught a glance between a Gryffindor and a Slytherin two seats down. It didn’t look hopeful.

“To that end,” McGonagall said, voice rising just slightly, “we will continue with the tradition of student leadership. I am pleased to announce this year’s appointments.”

Hermione straightened. 

She already knew, of course. McGonagall had sent her an owl two weeks prior with the badge enclosed. But hearing it aloud would make it real. 

“Head girl,” the headmistress said, eyes meeting her across the hall, “Miss Hermione Granger.”

The applause was muted, respectful. Some clapped out of duty. Luna’s was the loudest.

Hermione nodded once, calm and composed, as she stood and moved to the front of the hall. She tried not to look for him. 

She failed. 

Because she felt him look at her first. 

Draco Malfoy’s gaze trailed after her as she passed, unreadable, unblinking. His hands were folded over his lap, jaw tight, eyes cold. But there was something behind the cold this time. A flicker. Of confusion?

When she reached the front, she stood to the side, waiting for McGonagall to name the Prefects. 

But the headmistress did not continue immediately. 

Her eyes swept across the room again. 

“And,” she said, voice level, “as Head Boy… Mr. Draco Malfoy.”

The world seemed to stop. 

Hermione blinked. 

So did Draco. 

All heads turned as one. 

His chair scraped softly against the stone floor as he stood, slower than he should have, as though unsure if he’d heard correctly. His face remained neutral, but his eyes betrayed him - just for a moment. Widened. Distant. 

McGonagall’s gaze didn’t falter. 

The room was dead silent as he walked to the front, steps steady, expression carved from marble. 

Hermione’s heart thudded once. Then again. Louder. 

He stood beside her. 

The tension was suffocating. 

She felt every inch of him. The way he kept just far enough from her that their robes wouldn’t brush. The way he didn’t turn his head. The way his breathing had gone shallow. 

McGonagall continued as though nothing had happened, naming Prefects for the other houses. But Hermione couldn’t hear her over the roar in her ears. 

What in Merlin’s name was McGonagall thinking?

Head Boy?

Him?

Her fingers clenched at her side, but her face remained serene.

They would ask her to work with him. To lead with him. To build unity with him . 

He hadn’t said a word. 

He hadn’t even looked at her. 

And that, somehow, made it worse. 

***

His name hit the silence like a dropped blade. 

“ And as Head Boy… Mr. Draco Malfoy.”

For a moment, Draco genuinely thought he misheard. 

Not because he didn’t recognize his name, but because it didn’t make sense. Malfoy didn’t belong on that list. Not anymore. Not with her. Not with them . 

The room didn’t react. 

It didn’t have to. 

The silence was a statement in itself. 

Every eye in the Great Hall had turned toward him. 

He didn’t move. 

He couldn’t.

Something cold and iron-heavy curled around his chest. Not fear. Not even shame. But the sharp, sick twist of exposure. He had spent months learning to be invisible, walking through the world with his shoulders down and his mouth shut, hoping that if he didn’t make noise, people would forget what he’d been. 

But McGonagall had just dragged him into the spotlight and set him beside Hermione fucking Granger.

His hands curled into fists against his thighs. 

For one irrational moment, he considered refusing. 

He could stay in his seat. Let them name someone else. Let the silence stretch until it cracked into laughter. He didn’t want this. He hadn’t asked for it. 

But he was already standing. 

Because he was a Malfoy, and Malfoy’s did not freeze.

Not in public.

He moved slowly, deliberately. His shoes made no sound on the stone floor, but the echo inside his head was deafening. Each step forward felt like walking into a duel he hadn’t trained for. A reckoning long overdue. 

When he reached the front, he stood beside her. 

Close enough to feel the static in the air between them. 

He didn’t look at her. 

He couldn’t. 

Her presence burned at the edge of his vision. Controlled. Perfect. Ice-wrapped steel in human form. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t speak. She didn’t even acknowledge him.

Of course she didn’t. 

He’d stood by and let her be carved open. 

And now he was expected to lead beside her. 

The absurdity of it settled like lead in his gut. Head boy . Was it a punishment? A trap? Or worse - some misguided gesture of forgiveness?

He could feel her breath, slow and even, and it enraged him. Not because she was calm - but because he could tell it was deliberate . She was fighting for it. Fighting not to react. Not to glare. Not to let the room see how much she hated standing beside him. 

He admired her for it. 

He despised himself for noticing. 

When McGonagall’s voice resumed, listing the other Prefect’s Draco’s focus narrowed to the only thing grounding him: the sound of Hermione’s breathing. He counted each inhale. Each pause. She was close enough that he could hear it - barely - and that terrified him more than anything else. 

Because it made her real . 

Not the ghost from his dreams. Not the girl he watched bleed. 

But a person. Whole. Alive. Unforgiving. 

His equal. 

Head Girl and Head Boy. 

Granger and Malfoy. 

The lion and the snake. 

He finally risked a glance sideways. 

She didn’t look at him. 

Her profile was marble. 

But her fingers twitched. 

Barely. 

The smallest motion. 

And Draco’s chest ached. 

Not with longing. Not yet. 

With consequence. 

He didn’t deserve this post. He didn’t deserve the robe, or the badge, or the place at her side. But he was here. Standing beside the girl he had once loathed, now haunted by her silence. 

He would find a way to carry it. 

He had no other choice. 

***

The badge felt heavy on her chest. 

Hermione kept her expression still as McGonagall dismissed the crowd. Conversations buzzed up like startled bees - quick, stinging, and loud with opinions. She didn’t need to listen to know they were about her. About him . About what it meant to name them Head Girl and Head Boy. Together . 

She stood perfectly still until the students began filing out of the Great Hall. 

Then she turned. 

He was already walking. 

Of course he was. 

She matched his pace as they left the staff dais, keeping a careful arm’s length between them as they approached the towering oak doors. The crowd parted without words. She could feel eyes on them - some curious, some furious, some downright baffled. But none of it mattered right now. 

Only him. 

Only this. 

Only the awful, suffocating quiet that wrapped around them as they stepped into the corridor beyond. 

She didn’t look at him. 

She refused. 

But she could feel him beside her. His stride was smooth. Precise. A bit too controlled. Like someone walking along the edge of a cliff, trying not to look down. 

They said as they climbed the first staircase. 

She should have said something. 

She wanted to say something. 

But her mouth was full of old blood and old silence. 

She could still see it, sometimes. The Malfoy drawing room. The wand in Bellatrix’s hand. The wide-eyed boy in the shadows who didn’t speak, didn’t move, didn’t help . 

He didn’t carve the word into her skin. 

But he didn’t stop it either. 

And now they expected her to lead beside him?

Her fingers clenched at her side. 

“Say it,” he said quietly, without turning his head. 

Hermione blinked. 

“Say what?” she replied, tone clipped. 

Whatever he meant. It clearly surprised him. He took a breath. “Whatever you’ve been thinking since McGonagall said my name.”

“I’ve been thinking a lot of things,” she said coolly. 

“I’m sure you have.”

They reached the top of the staircase and turned the corner into a narrower corridor. Torches flickered along the walls. The shadows danced in sharp angles between them. 

She looked at him then. 

He was staring straight ahead. 

“Fine,” she said. “You want honesty? I think it’s a mistake.”

He stopped. 

So did she. 

They faced each other, inches apart now. The corridor was empty. Silent. Cold. 

Hermione lifted her chin. “You didn’t earn this. You didn’t deserve it. You were -”

“Complicit?” he said, voice low. 

She flinched. Just barely. 

He looked tired. Pale. But there was no malice in his expression. Just a weary defiance. “Say it, Granger. Say I’m a coward. Say I should have died with the rest of them.”

Her heart stuttered. 

“Why would you want me to say that?”

“Because it would be easier than this silence,” he snapped. 

His voice echoed down the corridor, too loud in the stillness.

She stepped back. 

He didn’t follow. 

Instead, he leaned back against the stone wall and looked at the ceiling, as if it could somehow swallow him whole. 

“I didn’t ask for this,” he said, softer now. “I didn’t ask to be Head Boy. I didn’t even think they’d let me come back . But I’m here. And apparently, I’m meant to work with you. So go ahead, Granger. Get it out. Tell me what you see when you look at me.”

Hermione stared at him.

She wanted to say coward.

She wanted to say traitor . 

She wanted to say you watched . 

But instead, her mouth opened - and nothing came out. 

Because what she saw when she looked at him wasn’t black and white. It wasn’t clean.

She saw the boy who had lowered his wand on that tower. 

The boy who had stood at the edge of her pain and done nothing . 

The boy who now looked like the act of breathing was penance in itself.

“I see someone I don’t trust,” she said at last. 

His eyes flicked to hers. 

“I see someone I don’t forgive.”

A pause. 

“But I also see someone who didn’t walk away.”

She turned then, leaving him in the corridor with that last line hanging between them like a spell neither of them knew how to cast. 

She didn’t wait for a response. 

And he didn’t give one. 

***

She walked away. 

Of course she did. 

The rustle of her robes faded down the corridor, her heels clicking softly against the stone - deliberate, composed, precise. She didn’t look back. 

She never did. 

Draco stayed slumped against the wall, as if his bones had been replaced with lead. His head tilted back and hit the stone with a soft thunk - once, twice, three times - as if the dull pain could knock loose whatever emotion was pressing against the back of his throat like a flood dam about to burst. 

“I see someone I don’t trust.”

He’d expected that. 

“I see someone I don’t forgive.”

That, too. 

But it was the last line that had ruined him. 

“ But I also see someone who didn’t walk away.”

She said it like an accusation. 

But she was wrong. 

He had walked away. 

Just not from her. 

Not yet. 

Draco stared up at the ceiling until the torched flickered out of focus. His hands were shocked into the pockets of his robes, fists clenched tight enough to bruise his knuckles against his wand hilt. His pulse thrummed against his skin like a curse he couldn’t shake. 

The war had ended months ago. 

But she had never left him. 

Not in sleep. Not in silence. Not even in this moment, with her footsteps gone and her back turned. 

He could still feel her magic. 

It buzzed in the air like the aftermath of a spell - vibrating, alive, distinctively hers . Even when she wasn’t looking at him, she haunted him. 

And now she was Head Girl. 

His partner. 

He let out a slow, trembling breath and shoved off the wall. 

The badge on his chest weighed ten times what it should have. 

He didn’t know what McGonagall was playing at. If it was mercy. Penance. A challenge. Maybe all three. 

He didn’t care. 

All he could think about was the way she’d looked at him. 

Not with hatred. Not anymore. With distance. With caution.

That was worse. 

Hatred, he could have earned. Caution meant she was watching. Measuring. Waiting to see what he’d do. 

And he didn’t know what to do. 

All he knew - what terrified him most - was that she didn’t need to forgive him for him to start needing her. 

She didn’t need to speak kindly for him to crave the sound of her voice. 

She didn’t need to look at him with anything but contempt for his eyes to still find her in every damn room. 

He knew this was dangerous. 

He didn’t care. 

Not yet. 

***

The door shut behind her with a soft click. 

It was a graceful, newly-carved oak, fitted into a part of the castle that hadn’t existed before the war - tucked in a quiet wing on the third floor. Reserved for Eighth Years. The survivors. The damaged. The Slytherins - as expected - chose to stay in their own common room. 

Hermione stood in the small, private dormitory and took her first breath without an audience. 

Then her second. 

Then her third. 

The fourth shuddered. 

She dropped her satchel and let it fall to the stone floor with a thump. Her robes were peeled off next, heavy with dust and tension, until she stood in just her jumper and skirt, arms trembling as she reached for the edge of the mirror on the far wall. 

The glass caught her reflection. 

She didn’t recognize it. 

Her eyes looked too dark. Her skin too pale. Her posture too rigid, as though her body hadn’t realized the war was over. 

Maybe it wasn’t. Not for her. 

Her gaze dropped.

She reached for the sleeve of her jumper. 

And slowly, she rolled it up. 

The scar was still there. 

Raised. Pale. Precise.

“ Mudblood. ”

She hated it. Hated that no amount of salve, no healing charm - no potion, no spell, not even the strange magic of love and forgiveness - had erased it. It was stubborn. Like a curse written in bone. 

She ran her fingers lightly over the jagged curve of the B. It didn’t hurt anymore, not physically. Not unless she pressed down just hard enough. 

But sometimes, when she closed her eyes, she could still feel the heat of the knife. 

Hear the laughter. 

See the boy in the corner who did nothing. 

And yet. 

Yet. 

“ I also see someone who didn’t walk away. ”

She hadn’t meant to say it. 

The words had just come out, sharp and sure. But the second she’d spoken them, something in Malfoy’s face had shifted - almost imperceptibly. Like a mask cracking down the middle. 

She didn’t want to understand him. 

She didn’t want to acknowledge that he’d looked like he’d rather be hexed than stand beside her. 

She didn’t want to notice the tremor in his breath when she passed too close. 

But she did . 

And that made her furious. 

Because she didn’t forgive him. She couldn’t. And she certainly didn’t want to feel anything but disdain. 

But the scar on her arm was not the only thing he’d left behind. 

He lingered. Like smoke in a sealed room.

Like regret. 

She turned from the mirror and sank onto the small bed, tucking her knees to her chest and pressing her forehead to her arms. 

Outside, the castle creaked softly. Footsteps echoed far down the corridor. A clock somewhere struck the hour. 

And in the quiet, her magic pulsed. 

It had been different since the war. Sharper. Wilder. Like something had been peeled back inside her. She’d always been powerful. But now, sometimes her spells sparked too hot. Sometimes candles flared when she was angry. Sometimes she dreamt in colour and woke with her wand in her hand. 

She was changing. 

And she didn’t know what she was becoming. 

She thought of the way Malfoy looked at her - not with pity. Not quite with guilt. Something more tangled. She wasn’t ready to give it a name. 

But she knew this:

She would not let his presence unmake her. 

She had rebuilt herself once. 

She would do it again. 

With or without him watching. 

***

The Slytherin eighth-year quarters were colder than the rest of the castle. 

It wasn’t just the stone or the location - it was the silence. Gone were the boastful voices, the careless laughter. The old hierarchy had crumbled. The ones who returned walked carefully now, measuring words, avoiding stares. Even Blaise Zabini had grown quieter, and Theo Nott had lost the reckless smirk that used to get him detention twice a week. 

They were all survivors. 

Some of them were just better at hiding it. 

Draco closed the door and locked it with a flick of his wand, pressing the latch twice for no reason other than the need to do something. His trunk hovered near the edge of the bed, unopened. He ignored it. 

He stood in the middle of the room and stared at nothing. 

Granger’s words still echoed in his head. 

I also see someone who didn’t walk away.

He’d heard curses that hurt less.

Because it wasn’t forgiveness. Not even close. But it wasn’t hate either. 

And that, somehow, made it worse. 

Hatred was safe. Familiar. It built walls. 

But this?

This was dangerous. 

This was her seeing him - and not flinching . Not screaming. Not letting it go, either but holding it. Naming it. 

He didn’t know what to do with that. 

He sat on the edge of his bed and stared at his hands. Long fingers, pale skin, a faint white scar across his palm from the Sectumsempra incident. The one that had healed clean. The others hadn’t. 

He turned his hand over. 

Reached into the drawer beside his bed. 

Pulled out the parchment that McGonagall had given him earlier that evening - the one with the list of Head Boy responsibilities. Meeting schedules, patrol rosters. Leadership duties.

It still didn’t feel real. 

He hadn’t written anything on it. 

But his eyes lingered on the signature line at the bottom of the parchment, where hers had already been scrawled in perfectly controlled cursive. 

Hermione Jean Granger.

He didn’t touch it. 

Not at first. 

But slowly, as if pulled by something he didn’t understand, he reached out and traced the G with the pad of his thumb. 

It was stupid.

It meant nothing. 

And yet - 

Her handwriting. 

He remembered it. 

Every curve. Every ink mark. Every exacting loop and slash from years of reading her essays, her notes, her name written at the top of every page she turned in - always first, always perfect. 

He remembered the way she held a quill - precise, tight at the base, like she thought control could protect her from chaos. 

He remembered the way she’d roll her eyes when he mocked her margins. And how, secretly, he’d read everything she wrote anyway. 

He dropped the parchment before he could think too long. 

This was insane. 

He’d spent the last two years trying not to look at her. Trying not to think about her. And now he was supposed to spend the year standing beside her? Planning things with her? Leading with her?

He pressed his palms against his eyes and exhaled hard. 

He didn’t know what McGonagall was doing. Maybe it was a political stunt. Maybe it was her way of testing him. Maybe she thought she was giving him a second chance to prove something. 

But Draco wasn’t interested in proving anything to anyone. 

Except maybe her. 

If only to prove that he wasn’t the same boy who watched and did nothing. 

He lay back on the bed, eyes open, hands folded over his chest. 

Above him, the enchanted ceiling of the new Slytherin dorm reflected the lake - a dark ripple of green and grey light. 

The silence pressed down on him like weight. 

He didn’t know how this year would end. 

But he knew one thing already.

Granger would undo him. 

He could feel it in his bones. 

Chapter Text

The Slytherin lounge was too quiet for three former troublemakers sitting in armchairs with firelight flickering across their faces. 

Draco stood with his back to the hearth, arms crossed. Theo sprawled like a bored cat across the green velvet sofa, one leg over the armrest, lazily flipping through a book he had no intention of reading. Blaise perched beside the liquor cabinet - not opened, of course - but close enough to make a point. 

No one had spoken in over a minute. 

That in itself was suspicious. 

Draco narrowed his eyes. “Say it.”

Theo didn’t look up. “Say what?”

Blaise smirked. “He’s waiting for the performance. The lecture. The what the fuck were they thinking monologue.”

Theo turned a page. “Seems premature. We’re still processing.”

Draco glared. “You’re mocking me.”

“Oh, Draco,” Blaise sighed, placing a hand dramatically over his chest. “Why would we mock the most noble of our house - the newly reformed, badge-polishing Head Boy?”

“I will hex you,” Draco said flatly. 

“Not without a detention slip first,” Theo chimed in. “Rules and all.”

Draco dragged a hand through his hair and slumped into the chair opposite them, dropping his head back against the wood. “I didn’t ask for it.”

“You didn’t stop it either,” Blaise said smoothly. 

“What was I supposed to do? Refuse in front of the whole bloody Hall?”

“Would’ve been fun to watch,” Theo murmured, now finally closing his book. “But no. You did the right thing. Took it like a man. Stared down Granger like she hadn’t just swallowed a bezoar whole.”

Draco stilled. 

He didn’t mean to. 

But Blaise noticed. 

Of course he did.

“Oh,” he said, drawing out the word with a grin. “So it is Granger that’s bothering you.”

“She’s not bothering me,” Draco muttered. 

“She’s always bothered you,” Theo said, eyes sharp now, amusement dimming. “Just not in the same way anymore.”

Draco didn’t reply. 

The fire cracked. 

Blaise leaned back, expression amused but alert. “I mean, it’s fine. Normal. Trauma bonding and all that. She was tortured in your house. You’re basically halfway to marriage.”

“Blaise,” Theo warned. 

“What?” Blouse held up both hands, palms out. “I’m just saying, if someone carved a slur into my soulmate, I might also stare at her like she was either a holy relic or a loaded wand.”

Draco shot up from the chair, glaring. “She is not -”

“Not what?” Theo asked, voice suddenly quiet. “Not a symbol? Not a scar? Not someone you owe?”

Draco’s jaw clenched. 

Theo stood, brushing dust from his sleeves, and walked past him toward the hallway.

Before he left, he glanced over his shoulder. 

“When you stop pretending she’s nothing,” he said, “try not to let it destroy you.”

The door clicked shut behind him. 

Draco didn’t move. 

Blaise whistled low. “He’s been moody since July,” he said. “You know, after the trial.”

Draco didn’t answer. 

Instead, he stared into the fire, his hand brushing against the parchment in his pocket - the one with her signature on it. 

He didn’t pull it out. 

Not yet. 

***

The first morning back tasted like ash. 

Hermione sat at the Gryffindor, her spoon suspended over a bowl of untouched porridge. Around her, the Great Hall whispered rather than spoke - students drifting through their new timetables like ghosts rehearsing live they hadn’t yet decided to reclaim. 

The ceiling above still reflected the weather: pale, clouded and stretched thin across the sky like an old wound trying to scar over. 

She hadn’t slept.

Not really. 

She had dozed in fits, sat upright when nightmares dragged her back into Malfoy Manor, then paced her dormitory until the sun bled through the curtains. She had no appetite, no tolerance for the simmering tension among Houses, and no idea how she was supposed to function when her very first class of the year -

-was Potions.

With him.

She glanced at the staff table. 

Professor Slughorn was already there, beaming in his rotund, oblivious way. Cheerful, despite the tension that still clung to the bones of the castle like ash from the final battle. 

Next to him sat Professor McGonagall. Regails. Watchful. Hermione didn’t miss the way the older witches gaze darted briefly toward her… and then toward the Slytherins on the table.

Hermione didn’t look. 

She didn’t need to. 

She could feel him. 

Some part of her - some raw, buzzing edge - had learned to detect Malfoy’s presence long before she ever saw him. It was like a tight string inside her pulling taut, whispering: danger, regret, gravity, grief.

And something else she refused to name.

She straightened her spine, collected her books, and forced down the last of her tea. 

Let him look.

Let him flinch. 

She didn’t care. 

Not today.

Not ever again. 

***

He hadn’t touched his toast.

Draco sat at the far end of the Slytherin table, as far from the chattering Ravenclaws near to them as he could manage, one elbow on the table and one hand curled beneath his chin as he pretended to read the schedule McGonagall had delivered to his seat via enchanted parchment. 

The badge was still in his pocket. 

It burned like guilt.

He could feel the stares. Slytherin’s weren’t known for their subtlety - not anymore. A few first years even pointed. The whispers had started before the ink dried on the appointment scroll:

Malfoy? Really?

Isn’t he a war criminal?

Did you hear his mum switched sides?

Draco had learned to ignore it. 

Mostly.

But then… she walked in. 

He didn’t see her, at first. 

He felt her.

A pull - sharp and unwelcome. Like the air itself tipped toward her. 

He kept his eyes low as she moved through the Hall, her curls barely restrained, her robes neat, her expression unreadable. She was different. Still Hermione Granger - still buttoned nearly, books held tightly, chin lifted like a challenge - but there was something else now. 

A stillness.

A gravity.

Something war-born. 

She took her place at the table without glancing his way. 

That should’ve made it easier. 

It didn’t. 

He shifted his gaze back to the parchment and reread the first line of her name. He didn’t mean to reread it. 

But he couldn’t stop. 

“Head Girl: Hermione J. Granger.”

The letters curved with sharp, deliberate grace - firm pen pressure, unforgiving angles. Her  “G” was unmistakable. The tail looped left before swinging right again, as if it refused to be tamed. 

It made sense. 

Everything about her handwriting always had. 

He remembered the margins of her essays. The fact she used French ink because she said the wizarding kind feathered too easily. The way she dotted her i’s with surgical precision but left her “r’s” open at the bottom like she was always in too much of a hurry. 

It had driven him mad. 

Now… it just lingered. 

Blaise slid onto the bench beside him, drawing him out of his thoughts. 

“You’re staring at her name again,” Blaise said low. 

Draco folded the parchment sharply and stuffed it into his cloak. 

“No, I’m not.”

“You always do, mate.”

“I’m going to hex you.”

Blaise chuckled. “Careful. You’ve got a reputation to rebuild. Can’t be seen threatening your peers.”

“I’m not threatening you. I’m making a promise.”

Blaise shrugged, unconcerned, and stole a bite of Draco’s untouched toast. 

“You know you’re going to be paired with her, right?” he said between chews. “Every class. Every corridor patrol. Every planning session. McGonagall’s not subtle.”

“I’m aware.”

“You should be flattered.”

Draco arched an eyebrow. “Of what, exactly?”

Draco looked back toward the staff table. 

Then toward the end of the table where the Gryffindors sat.

Toward her. 

He swallowed.

“I don’t want her to.”

***

The walk to the dungeons was longer than she remembered. Hermione kept her eyes forward, her footfalls sharp, her grip on her satchel white-knuckled as she descended the curling stone steps. The dungeon corridor was cool, almost damp, and held the faint scent of chalk, burnt fluxweed, and something older - like dust trapped in centuries of stone. 

Other students murmured quietly as they passed. Most were familiar faces. Some weren’t. No one spoke to her directly, though she caught the occasional glance. 

She didn’t blame them. 

It was still strange, being back. 

The door to the Potions classroom was open. 

She stepped in. 

And immediately stepped short. 

He was already there. 

At the far end of the room. 

Head bowed. Sleeves rolled. Hands bare. 

He was unpacking a set of pristine tools from a green velvet roll, organizing them with surgical precision. As if he were preparing for war. 

Her breath caught. 

Only for a second. 

But it was enough. 

He looked up. 

Their eyes locked. 

It was not a long look - barely more than a flicker. 

But her heart stumbled anyway. 

He said nothing. Neither did she. 

Hermione forced her legs to move and took the seat at the centre bench - where her name had been etched in ink on the assigned partner list. 

She glanced to her right. 

And there it was. 

“ Partner: Draco Malfoy. ”

Permanently. 

She stared at the page like it might dissolve. 

It didn’t.

Slughorn bustled in a moment later, rosy-cheeked and humming as if he weren’t about to unleash one of the most traumatic pairings in Hogwarts history. 

“Right then, my seventh - no, eighth - year darlings!” he boomed. “Today we begin advanced Amortentia theory and brewing. Something to warm the term, hmm?”

Hermione heard someone snort behind her. 

She didn’t dare look. 

Malfoy sat beside her now. 

Not across. Not diagonally. Beside.

His knee brushed hers as he adjusted his seat, and her entire leg jolted like a struck bell. 

She pulled away, subtly, but not quick enough. 

He noticed.

Of course he did. 

They didn’t speak. 

Not when he reached for the first ingredient. 

Not when she corrected the base temperature of the cauldron without asking. 

Not even when his arm brushed against hers while reaching for the powdered peppermint root. 

But the tension between them was tangible. Crackling. Like two wands held just a fraction too close together, daring each other to fire first. 

She could feel his gaze, even when she didn’t look at him. 

She could feel his breath when he leaned in slightly to stir. 

She could feel herself losing the thread of the lecture. 

Get a grip, Granger.

She flicked her wand sharply to adjust the stirring direction and whispered the cooling charm under her breath. 

He didn’t comment. 

But his mouth quirked.

The bastard was smirking . 

Her blood boiled. 

And just like that, the rivalry flared to life. 

Hermione had smelled Amortentia before, sixth year, when Slughorn had first joined the Potions class and was going over the basics of advanced potions for N.E.W.Ts . It had smelled like parchment, new ink, crushed lavender, and peppermint soap. 

She was terrified of what it might smell like now. 

Heat rose steadily from the cauldron as the pearl-like steam began to swirl upwards in soft spirals, catching the light like a charm. The scent hit her like a spell to the chest. 

And she panicked. 

Because it wasn’t parchment. 

Not anymore. 

It was - 

Cedar smoke. 

Leather. 

Something rich and dark and spiced - like the inside of a library at midnight with the firelit corners and forbidden books. 

But worse - 

There was a trace of - 

Of him . 

His cologne. That ridiculous, ancient blend he wore like armor. It had always annoyed her in school. So aristocratic. So obviously curated. 

But now - 

It made her stomach turn over. 

And then - 

Soft apples. 

She froze. 

It wasn’t just a memory.

It was Malfoy.

She darted a look toward him. 

But he was already staring at her. 

Their eyes locked across the space between bubbling potion and firelight. 

And for a fraction of a second - so fast she could deny it later - something passed between them. 

Recognition. 

Realisation. 

Panic.

She broke the gaze first, snatching her quill to scribble something on her parchment as though her life depended on it. 

Her hands shook. 

Malfoy said nothing. 

But she could feel his breath catch when he inhaled again. 

***

He knew the moment she smelled it. 

She didn’t speak. Didn’t shift. Didn’t even glance his way. 

But her breath caught. 

And that was all it took. 

Draco turned his head slowly - like he didn’t already know what he’d find - and looked at her. 

Hermione Granger was frozen. 

Perfectly still. 

One hand hovering mid-air, like she’d forgotten how to move. Her eyes flicked toward him, startled and wide, and he knew - he knew - that she smelled him. 

He could tell because he smelled her.

The steam curled around his face like a ghost dragging fingers along his jaw. 

It started faint: honey and cinnamon, freshly turned earth after rain, something that reminded him of old library spines and soft cotton shirts. Something warm. 

Something safe . 

Then - 

Rosewater. 

And lavender. 

Not perfume. Not something worn. 

Something essential . 

He closed his eyes - just for a moment - and the third note hit him. 

The one that nearly made him reel. 

Ink.

Not generic ink. 

Her ink. 

The kind she used when she annotated books with blood-red margins and violet correction spells. He’d mocked her for it once. Third year. She’d hexed his quill to sing opera. 

Now the scent of it haunted him. 

It was stupid. 

He knew it was stupid. 

He hated love potions. They were manipulative, invasive, and dangerously close to what the Dark Lord’s inner circle used to force obedience from unwilling minds. 

But this wasn’t about control. 

This was about exposure. 

The cauldron was boiling over with truths he couldn’t shove down anymore. 

She smelled like everything he wasn’t allowed to want. 

Everything he hadn’t earned.

And still -

His mouth had gone dry. 

He felt it - low and sharp, blooming in his chest and tightening his throat like a noose. A pull. A need . 

Granger. 

He looked at her again. 

She was furiously scribbling notes she didn’t need, her hand was trembling slightly. 

She was unravelling too. 

The realisation should’ve brought some measure of smug satisfaction. 

It didn’t. 

Because he didn’t want to see her like this. Not shaken. Not flinching. Not with her pulse fluttering at the base of her throat like a frightened bird. 

He wanted to ask her what she smelled. 

He wanted to know.

He wanted - 

No.

No, he didn’t.

The cauldron hissed behind them, over-steeped. 

She moved first, vanishing the remnants with a quick flick of her wand, her posture rigid. 

She wouldn’t look at him again. 

Not now. 

Not yet. 

He understood.

If she saw his face, she’d see it. 

The guilt.

The pull. 

The ghost of his name written in her skin.

***

The first rule of surviving post-war Hogwarts as a Slytherin: never draw attention. 

The second?

Know when one of your own is about to snap. 

Theo leaned against the archway just outside the dungeons, arms folded, watching the other eighth-years filter past him toward the courtyard. He caught the familiar flick of Granger’s curls disappearing down the far hallway at speed, her knuckles white around her bag strap. 

And then - two beats later - 

Draco. 

Moving like something chased him. 

Which, knowing Draco, he probably thought something was. 

Theo waited. 

Didn’t speak. 

Not yet. 

They didn’t need dramatics. Just precision. 

So he waited for Draco to walk past him, then casually fell into step beside him. Same pace. Same silence. 

They made it nearly halfway to the Slytherin common room before Draco exhaled like the breath had been strangled out of him the entire time. 

Theo raised a brow. “That bad?”

Draco didn’t answer.

Which, in Draco-speak, meant yes . 

They turned a corner. The walls grew damper with torch light flickering in iron sconces. Their footsteps echoed. 

Still nothing. 

Theo let the silence stretch until it was thick enough to catch on his tongue. 

Then - 

“You smelled her,” he said, voice flat. 

Draco’s head snapped toward him. “What?”

“In the potion.”

“I didn’t -”

Theo gave him a look. The kind of look that cut through years of noble deflection and posturing like it was tissue. 

Draco’s jaw clenched. 

Theo smirked faintly. “Don’t bother lying. Your neck was red and you stirred counterclockwise twice before correcting. That’s  your ‘panic’ tell.”

“I wasn’t panicking.”

“You were spiraling.”

“I wasn’t -”

“Malfoy.”

Draco stopped walking. 

Theo turned to face him fully now, letting the silence work for him again. 

“You smelled her,” Theo said gently, a little more softly this time. “And you’re rattled because it wasn’t some passing curiosity. You’ve been fighting it. Since before the war ended. Probably since sixth year - if memory serves me - maybe even longer.”

Draco didn’t speak. 

Didn’t blink.

Didn’t breathe. 

Theo took that as confirmation. 

He stepped closer, lowering his voice. 

“You don’t get to act shocked that she still affects you,” he said. “We all saw what happened at the Manor. We just never brought it up. Blaise said your hand wouldn’t stop shaking the night you found out she was safe.”

Draco’s throat worked once, but he said nothing. 

Theo leaned in a fraction more. 

“You can hate her all you want, mate. But you don’t get to pretend you don’t feel it.”

Draco’s voice came out strained. “It’s not that simple.”

Theo shrugged. “Of course it isn’t. Nothing worth burning for ever is.”

***

He locked the door with a silent ward. 

Double-layered. 

And cast Muffliato for good measure. 

The Slytherin dormitory was dim, quiet, and colder than usual - the Lake pressed against the windows with an oily shimmer, casting shadows that moved like ghosts across the stone floor. A reminder of where they were. Of who they’d been. 

Draco sat on the edge of his bed, staring down at the Head Boy badge still clutched in his fist. 

He hadn’t even realised he was holding it. 

You smelled her.

Theo’s words echoed in his skull, chasing themselves in circles. 

He tossed the badge onto the bedside table like it burned him. 

His mouth still tasted like ink. 

He scrubbed a hand through his hair and let his head fall forward into his palms. 

Amortentia was supposed to show you what you desired. 

What your soul yearned for. 

He didn’t want her.

He didn’t. He couldn’t. 

Because wanting her meant acknowledging everything that came with her. Everything she had endured. Everything he had stood silently by for. 

The screams. The scent of blood. The word Bellatrix carved into her arm while he stood across the room, shaking and mute and useless . 

Mudblood.

He hadn’t stopped it. 

Hadn’t even spoken. 

He had stood there - watching. 

He wanted to be sick. 

A sharp, painful silence fell across his mind. Cold. Clinical.

He crossed the room in three steps, opened the bottom drawer of his trunk, and pulled out a narrow green notebook - one that didn’t belong to him. 

It was from last year. She’d dropped it during the evacuation. 

He’d kept it. 

Read it. 

Obsessed over it. 

The margins were full of her thoughts - annotations scribbled in her aggressive, looping script. Corrections to textbook instructions. Observations about the war. Diagrams, maps, plans.

There were pages where her ink bled into the paper like she’d pressed too hard. Other pages looked smudged, as if she’d been crying and tried to wipe her tears with the back of her hand. 

He flipped to his favourite page. 

It wasn’t brilliant. 

It wasn’t even neat.

Just two lines at the bottom of an unfinished page:

“ There’s a difference between being alone and being unseen.”

“Sometimes, I think I’d rather be hated honestly, than pitied quietly.”

He didn’t know why it gutted him. 

But it did. 

Every time. 

Because he understood that. 

Because he was that. 

Because maybe she had always been more like him than he wanted to admit. 

He closed the notebook, pressed it to his chest, and let his head fall back against the pillow. 

He didn’t cry. 

Not quite. 

But something inside him cracked - just a little. 

And when he slept, he dreamed of her eyes - not wide with fear, but lit with fire. 

And ink.

And grief. 

And something that might one day burn him alive. 

***

By the time Hermione reached the top of the main staircase, her chest was tight and her throat hurt from how long she’d been holding her breath. 

She didn’t stop until she reached the top of the Astronomy Tower. 

Not the eighth year dorm. Not the library. Not the Gryffindor common room. 

The Tower . 

The first wind that hit her, stole a piece of her panic, peeling it away like dried leaves in October. Cold air. Distant mist. Nothing to do with dungeons or cauldrons of the way he’s looked at her across the Amortentia haze. 

He knew.

She gripped the railing so hard her knuckles ached. 

Draco Malfoy had absolutely known what she smelled. 

And the realisation was absolutely, horrifyingly devastating. 

She smelled him. 

Cedar. Ink. Something masculine and spiced. Apples. The ghost of a memory that lingered behind her teeth. 

She shut her eyes, squeezing them until stars danced in the black. 

“You look like you’re about to vomit stardust,” said a dreamy voice behind her. 

Hermione turned sharply. 

Luna was leaning against the stone doorframe, arms tucked into her shawl, barefoot as usual, her eyes impossibly clear in the morning light. 

“How do you always do that?” Hermione exhaled. “You just appear .”

Luna shrugged. “You were thinking very loudly.”

Hermione offered a dry smile. “Was I?”

“Mhmm. Something about apples and ink and guilt and old notebooks.”

Hermione’s stomach dropped.

“... You smelled it too?”

“Of course. Everyone did. Mine smelled like wild violets and honey and the forest after it rains.” Luna tilted her head. “Yours smelled like Malfoy.”

Hermione flinched. 

“You don’t have to look so offended,” Luna added, softly. “It’s not a crime to long for something unexpected.”

“I don’t long for him,” Hermione snapped. 

“I didn’t say you did,” Luna said gently, walking barefoot to the railing beside her. “But your magic did. That’s the thing about Amortentia. It doesn’t lie. Not even to you.”

Hermione swallowed hard, throat dry. 

“Doesn’t it wear off?” she asked. “The effect?”

“The potion, yes,” Luna said. “But not the truth it reveals. That part tends to linger.”

They stood in silence for a long while. 

Below them, the Black Lake shimmered like glass. 

“You don’t have to understand it yet,” Luna said finally. “But I think he does.”

Hermione turned. “What?”

“I think Malfoy understands what he smelled. And I think it’s been haunting him longer than he’d ever admit.”

Hermione wanted to deny it. 

But her mind returned to his face when their eyes met across the bubbling potion. He hadn’t looked triumphant. Or smug. Or cruel. 

He had looked wrecked.

She exhaled slowly and leaned her head against the stone. 

“It’s going to ruin everything, isn’t it?”

Luna reached up, brushed a loose curl behind her ear. 

“Not everything,” she said. “Just your expectations.”

The corridor leading to the South Wing felt like a tunnel of silence. 

Hermione moved briskly, heels clicking across the stone floor, her patrol schedule clenched in one hand like a weapon. She’d rechecked it three times. Patrolling every Tuesday and Thursday from 9:00 to 11:00 p.m. with her co-appointed Head Boy. 

She’d begged Professor McGonagall to swap partners. 

The answer had been a firm no. 

“Consider it an opportunity for growth, Miss Granger,” the headmistress had said. 

Growth. 

As if she hadn't already grown through battlefields and fire and unrelenting grief. 

Draco Malfoy was leaning against the wall when she arrived, arms crossed, expression unreadable. 

 Of course he was already there. 

  Of course he looked absurdly composed. 

“Granger,” he said coolly. 

“Malfoy.”

They stood for a moment in silence, flanked by flickering torch light and the slow creak of distant staircases adjusting. 

“I’ve mapped out a route,” she said, holding out the clipboard. 

 He took it without touching her hand. Read it. Passed it back. 

“Efficient.”

“I am.”

Another beat passed. 

They began to walk. 

The halls were quieter now than they had ever been during school years. War had stripped them of most things - students, laughter, noise. The castle felt haunted. 

And yet the tension between them felt almost too alive . 

Each footstep echoed like punctuation between what neither of them were saying. 

“I suppose we’re  not going to talk about it,” Hermione said suddenly. 

“Talk about what?” Draco asked, too casually. 

“You know what.”

“Do I?”

She stopped walking. 

He did too, two paces ahead. 

Turned slowly. 

She hated how he always looked like he was three steps ahead. How calm he appeared - like none of it touched him. 

But she had seen his face. 

In the dungeon. 

The moment he smelled what she smelled. 

“You don’t get to pretend it didn’t happen,” she said, quiet but sharp. 

“Pretending,” he echoed. “Isn’t that what we’re best at?”

Her jaw clenched. 

He watched her with a look that was far too tired to be cruel. 

“It’s a potion,” he said after a pause. “It means nothing.”

Hermione swallowed hard. “If it meant nothing, you wouldn’t be this bothered.”

He flinched. 

Only slightly. 

But it was enough. 

“You don’t know anything about what I feel,” he snapped. 

“No,” she said. “But I know what I smelled.”

That shut him up.

They stared at each other - war-torn rivals turned reluctant prefect. Both of them bruised from truths they weren’t ready to speak aloud. 

And then, something shifted. 

A hallway door creaked open behind them. 

A pair of second years froze under the glow of torchlight, looking properly terrified. 

Hermione stepped forward. “You’re not supposed to be out.”

“We - we were just -”

“Back to your dormitory,” Draco cut in, his voice low and smooth and somehow more threatening than hers had been. 

They fled. 

Hermione let out a slow breath. 

“See?” he said. “Still a good team.”

She looked at him. 

And - for the first time - she saw not the boy who had tormented her for years, but the man who had survived them. 

“Yes,” she said. “Unfortunately.”

***

They walked in silence after that. 

Not uncomfortable. 

Not quite. 

But something . 

He watched her out of the corner of his eye - the way she pinched the hem of her sleeve when she was tense, the way she scanned every dark corner like danger might still be hiding there. 

He wondered if she ever relaxed. 

If she even remembered how. 

He meant what he said - about pretending. 

He was better at it than anyone. 

But it was getting harder now. 

Especially when she walked beside him like this, all fire and fragility, and the ghost of Amortentia still clinging to her hair like a secret. 

He hated this patrol. 

He hated her. 

And he hated how little of that was still true. 

Chapter Text

The Slytherin dorm was silent save for the rhythmic tapping of a quill against parchment. 

Blaise lay sprawled across his bed, shirt unbuttoned, sleeves rolled, a half-finished Transfiguration essay discarded beside him. His wand was floating above his palm, lazily spinning like a compass with no true north. 

Draco stood near the window, arms braced against the stone frame, face bathed in the green shimmer of the Black Lake. 

“You ever get the feeling,” he said suddenly, “that your past is going to crawl up your throat and choke you one night?”

Blaise didn’t look up. “Sounds like a personal problem.”

Draco let out a sharp exhale, half a laugh, half a sigh. 

“Do you ever dream about it?” he asked, quieter now. “The war. That house. Her? ”

That got Blaise’s attention. 

“Granger?”

Draco didn’t answer. 

Didn’t need to. 

He was already pacing, jaw tight, fists clenched like he could keep it all in if he just held on tightly enough. 

“It’s not just dreams,” he said, voice low. “It’s memories. All the time. Her scream, that bloody room, that scar -”

He broke off. 

“The one on her arm?” Blaise asked carefully.

Draco nodded once, eyes shadowed. 

“I see it when I close my eyes. I hear her screaming. And then I see me - standing there like a fucking coward.”

Blaise was quiet for a long moment. 

Then: “You didn’t carve the word, Draco.”

“No,” he hissed. “But I let it happen.”

Blaise swung his legs off the bed, planted his elbows on his knees, and studied him. 

“What do you want me to say?” he asked. “That you were young? That you were scared? That we all were?”

Draco didn’t answer. 

Because he didn’t want forgiveness. 

He wanted silence. He wanted penance . 

“It’s worse now,” he muttered, running a hand over his face. “Since we got back.”

“Because of her?”

A nod. 

“I dream about her voice,” he admitted. “I didn’t even realise I knew it so well. But it’s always there. Always her. Arguing. Lecturing. Shouting. And then…”

He trailed off, his throat tight. 

“... then what?”

Draco looked at him, defeated. 

“Then she’s quiet. And I wake up terrified.”

Blaise exhaled slowly.

“And the handwriting?”

Draco blinked. “What?”

“You muttered it last week. In your sleep. Her handwriting .”

Draco said nothing. 

But his jaw tensed. 

Blaise nodded like that was confirmation enough. 

“So what is it?” he asked. “The curls? The way she writes your name? The ink?”

“All of it,” Draco confessed, too tired to lie. “It’s like I’m haunted by the way she thinks .”

He turned back toward the window, voice softer now. 

“She writes like she’s fighting for her life. Every margin. Every note. It’s like she’s trying to outrun the world before it forgets her.”

Blaise didn’t laugh. 

Didn’t mock. 

Just said, “and you keep reading it.”

“Over and over.”

“Because?”

Draco looked at him. 

Because it made him feel less monstrous. 

Because it reminded him that she was real. 

Because it hurt in a way he thought he deserved.

“...Because it’s the only part of her I can have,” he admitted quietly. 

Silence fell like a stone between them. 

Then Blaise stood, walked over, and clapped a hand on Draco’s shoulder. 

“Well,” he said. “We’re well and truly fucked, aren’t we?”

* * *

It was just another Tuesday.

Draco told himself that every day now. If he kept the lie simple, maybe it would stick. 

Classes. Patrols. Obligations. 

Same corridors. Same shadows. Same sounds echoing down the stone halls. 

But today, something was different. 

He noticed it as he was leaving the History of Mafic classroom. Everyone had already filed out - Binns hadn’t even noticed. Draco was the last to rise, quietly folding his parchment and sliding it into his satchel when his eye caught it. 

A single page.

Left on the desk in front of his. 

Crumpled a little at the corner. Slight smudge of ink at the top. A thin, precise line of writing filled the surface. No name. 

But he knew it was hers. 

He would have known it if he were blind. 

Draco reached for it before he could think better of it. 

Just a draft, he told himself. Probably a backup. Probably not even important. 

But his fingers trembled when they closed around it. 

He took it with him. 

He waited until he was alone. 

Back in his dorm, curtains drawn, the gentle pulse of the Lake casting faint, shifting light across the stone floor, he unfolded it with reverence. 

Her handwriting. 

It really was like a spell. 

Hermione Granger didn’t write like anyone else. There was no careless flourish, no wasted motion. Every line was straight-backed, urgent, determined. Her loops were narrow, her capitals strong, her margins full of notes and revisions. He could see where she’d scratched through a sentence and rewritten it - twice. 

“ Revolution is born not of violence, but from the moment a child learns to question the rules meant to contain them.2

His throat closed. 

He wasn’t sure if it was the words or the fact that she had left them behind. 

A mistake. An accident. She would never leave something personal like this if she knew. 

And he… he should return it. 

She’d want it back. Probably needed it. 

But he didn’t move. 

He read it again. And again. 

Half the page was a theory about post-war structural instability in magical government. The other half was personal - veiled but raw, like her thoughts had outpaced her caution. 

And then, in the bottom corner:

We won. But I’m still angry. I don’t know what that says about me.

Draco stared at the sentence for a long time. 

He read it so many times that the words began to blur. 

And then, finally, he folded the page - not neatly - and slid it into the inside pocket of his robe. 

He didn’t think about what it meant. 

Didn’t think about why it comforted him. 

Didn’t think about the fact that her mind - her anger, her brilliance, her grief - was now pressed close to his heart, hidden where no one else could see. 

Where it had begun to belong.

* * *

He heard her before he saw her. 

“I’m just saying,” Hermione said crisply, “if we’re expected to understand the socio-political ramifications of magical law reform, we can’t ignore how many post-war decrees were authored in secrecy.”

Her voice snapped through the classroom like the crack of a whip - confident, unshaken, maddening. 

Draco’s quill froze. 

He didn’t need to look. He knew the exact tilt of her chin when she said things like that. Knew how she bit her lip when she was about to cut someone down with logic. Knew - knew - how her voice dipped ever so slightly when she got righteously angry. 

How do I know that?

His jaw tensed. 

Across the room, Professor Vector gave a polite nod. “Excellent point, Miss. Granger.”

Of course it was. 

It always was. 

The class turned back to their notes, but Draco didn’t move. He stared at his parchment, the half-finished equation blurring under the pressure behind his eyes. 

Shut up, he thought. Just shut up for once.

But her voice came again - less sharp now, musing, thoughtful. 

“I suppose the issue is whether intent matters as much as consequence.”

Of course you’d say that, he thought. Always the bleeding heart. Always needing to understand the why.

And then - without planning it, without even raising his hand - he said aloud:

“Some of us are just trying to get through the lesson, Granger. No need to write a bloody dissertation on the side.”

The silence was immediate. 

Hermione turned slowly, eyes flashing. 

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, icily. “Did I disrupt your nap?”

Laughter ripped. A few other Slytherins snickered - including Theo. 

But Draco didn’t smile. 

Because it didn’t feel satisfying. It didn’t feel like victory. 

It felt hollow.

Hermione held his gaze a second longer than necessary, and then turned back around, spine stiff with fury. 

He stared at the back of her head. 

He didn’t even know why he’d done it. He used to be so good at this - mocking, provoking, lashing out. But now?

Now it just felt like punching through water. 

Why the fuck can’t I stop hearing you?

Her voice looped through his head again. Not the words. Just the sound of it. 

Precise. Sharp. Honest. 

He closed his eyes, fighting the urge to press his fingers against his temples. 

This wasn’t fascination. 

This was madness. 

This was - 

Obsession?  

No. No, he hated her. He always had. She was everything he resented - righteous, clever, unrelenting. 

But she was also something else now. 

A mirror. 

A scar. 

A thread pulling tight through everything he thought he knew. 

And he didn’t know how to cut it. 

* * *

He slammed the bathroom door shut behind him and leaned forward, palms braced against the edge of the porcelain sink, breathing like he’d just sprinted the length of the quidditch pitch. 

Pull it together. 

The mirror above the basin was cracked in the corner - probably some fifth year’s tantrum - but Draco found his reflection all the same. Pale. Perfect. Controlled. 

Mostly. 

He turned the tap on and shoved his hands under the freezing water. It stung. 

Good. 

Steam began to cloud the mirror. He ignored it. 

He stared at the thin ink stains along the side of his fingers - residue from that damn parchment of hers. He’d folded it too many times. Smoothed it out again like it meant something. 

It didn’t.

It didn’t.

It couldn’t. 

He dried his hands too roughly, then stuffed the towel into the corner like it had personally offended him. 

Back to the dorm. Rewrite your Arithmancy notes. Brew that restorative draft for Slughorn. You’ll forget the way she - 

His stomach churned. 

Because he remembered it all . The lilt of her voice, the tension in her shoulders when she turned around, the head behind her eyes. The fact that even when she clapped back, even when she cut him clean, she still looked… alive . 

Not like the rest of them, who walked around like ghosts pretending to be students. 

Not like him.

She made it out. And she stayed whole.

No, that wasn’t true. 

He’d seen the tightness in her mouth when she thought no one was watching. The hollowness beneath the fire. 

He wasn’t the only one haunted. 

And that made it worse. 

Because it meant they might understand each other. 

And that was intolerable . 

He made it to the Slytherin common room, dropped into the chair nearest the fire, and pretended he was fine. 

He opened his textbook. Read the same sentence six times. 

All he could hear was her voice. 

All he could see was the flick of her wand, the scratch of her quill, the curve of her “g”.

All he could feel was unmoored.

Blaise strolled in, tossed a pillow at him, and said, “You look like you got hexed by a banshee.”

“I’m fine,” Draco muttered. 

“You’re not.”

“Mind your business.”

Blaise raised an eyebrow. “Is your business curly-haired and judgemental by any chance?”

Draco didn’t answer. 

Because maybe Blaise was right. 

Maybe he wasn’t unravelling anymore.

Maybe he had already come undone.

***

Her boots echoed against the flagstone floor, each step louder in the silence of the dark corridor. 

She wasn’t sure what made her more irritated: that she’d been assigned patrol with Malfoy again or that she kept anticipating the sound of his footsteps behind her. 

And there they were.

Measured. Calm. a fraction too close. 

He was always like this. Like a shadow stitched to her heel. 

“I don’t need you breathing down my neck,” he said flatly, not turning. 

“Then walk faster.”

Typical.

She stopped, whipped around. “Do you have to be so - so -”

“Snide? Condescending? Charming?”

“Infuriating.”

He tilted his head, that maddening curl of his mouth appearing - less of a smirk, more of a private joke he wasn’t willing to share. 

“You used to say ‘repugnant’. Am I climbing the ranks?” 

She blinked. 

Something about the way he said it - dry, but not cruel - gave her pause. 

He wasn’t sneering. Not really. 

She didn’t trust it. 

“Are you… in a good mood?” she asked suspiciously.

“Terrifying, isn’t it?”

She narrowed her eyes. 

Draco just shrugged and stepped past her. 

“Come on, Granger. Keep up. I promise not to hex any portraits unless provoked.”

***

He didn’t know what possessed him to stop fighting her. 

Maybe it was her voice - still echoing from earlier. Maybe it was the way her hair shimmered gold in the moonlight, pulled half-up tonight like she was trying to appear more professional than she felt. 

Or maybe it was the fact that every time he insulted her lately, she didn’t flinch the way she used to.

It unnerved him. But not in a bad way. 

In a curious way. 

So he didn’t poke at her tonight. He let her walk beside him in silence. 

And when she said nothing, he offered - 

“You smell like parchment.”

She stopped walking. 

“What?”

He kept going, voice low. “That ink. You always smell like it. Fresh parchment. Bit of cinnamon.”

She stared at him like he’d gone mad. 

Maybe he had.

But he was too tired to care. 

“And what do you smell like?” she said after a moment, carefully controlled. 

He glanced at her, something dangerous curling in his chest. 

“Regret,” he said simply. 

Her expression flickered. 

And he saw it - the effect of his honesty . The way it stole the breath from her lungs. The way her shoulder tightened like she didn’t know whether to step closer or bolt. 

He kept walking. 

And this time, she followed in silence.

***

She didn’t know what was more unsettling: that Malfoy had complimented her scent - or that he’d told her, so plainly, that he smelled like regret. 

He didn’t sound sarcastic. 

He sounded… 

Tired. 

Haunted. 

Human . 

And she didn’t know what to do with that. 

So she said nothing. 

Let the silence stretch between them like something sacred. 

He didn’t speak again, but he slowed his steps just enough so that they walked side by side. Not enemies. Not allies. 

Something in between. 

And that was somehow the most dangerous of all. 

***

They walked the rest of the corridor in silence. 

No more jabs. No clever retorts. No fire. 

Just the soft sound of her boots on stone, the way the light caught the tips of her hair, and the faintest trace of parchment and ink and cinnamon whenever she stepped too close. 

Draco didn’t speak again. 

He couldn’t trust his voice.

Not when he’d already said too much. 

Not when she was still replaying it in her head - he could tell by the way she kept stealing glances at him like she didn’t know who he was anymore. 

Neither do I.

At the end of the hall, she paused. 

“Right corridor’s yours,” she said quietly. “We’re done for tonight.”

He gave a nod, sharp, but not unkind. 

And as she turned away, he let himself look. Just once. 

The curve of her spine. The way her wand hand flexed and relaxed as she walked. Her calm, controlled breath. Like she hadn’t just unravelled something in him he’d been trying to keep buried for years . 

When she turned the corner and vanished from sight, he didn’t move. 

Not for a long time. 

Finally, in the stillness, he whispered to the empty corridor: 

“I don’t hate you anymore.”

He didn’t know if it was a confession or a warning. 

But the words felt heavier once they were gone. 

Like the beginning of something he wasn’t sure he could undo. 

Chapter Text

The toast was burnt again. 

Hermione didn’t care. 

She stared down at her plate like it held answers instead of eggs, ignoring the hushed murmur of conversation around her. The Great Hall still felt too big. Too empty. Too… damaged . 

The enchanted ceiling had repaired itself months ago, but the people beneath it hadn't. 

She sipped her tea. Lukewarm. Stale. 

Across the table, Ginny flipped a page in the Prophet and scowled. “They’re still publishing Rita bloody Skeeter. Unbelievable.”

“Mmm.” Hermione didn’t look up. 

“You’re brooding again.”

“I’m reading , Ginny.”

“You’re staring at crumbs like they insulted your ancestors.”

Hermione gave a half-hearted glare and turned her attention to the staff table. McGonagall was rising to her feet. 

Conversation dimmed. Attention shifted. 

“Good morning,” the Headmistress began, voice as brisk as ever but it lacked its usual steel. “I’ll be brief. The war fractured more than buildings and bones. It fractured the community . And if Hogwarts is to become whole again, we must do more than sit beside one another - we must understand one another.”

Hermione straightened. 

McGonagall continued. “As such, a new House Unity initiative will begin this term. Each student will be assigned a pen pal from another house. Anonymous, to begin. A way to connect beyond house bias. You will write weekly, without exception.”

The room rippled with sound - disbelief, amusement, confusion. 

“Aren’t we a bit old for owl post games?” Seamus muttered around a mouthful of eggs. 

“It’s not a game,” Hermione said, lips tight. “It’s -”

But she didn’t finish. Because for once , she didn’t have an answer ready. 

Her stomach twisted. 

McGonagall went on. “Your partners will be assigned today. You may sign your letters or remain anonymous at your discretion. However I encourage honesty, vulnerability, and reflection. You may find more in your partner than you expect.”

Ginny nudged Hermione under the table. “You love this. Don’t lie.”

Hermione wasn’t so sure. 

Something about it felt too… exposed. 

Too dangerous. 

She looked across the hall - and met grey eyes staring back at her . 

Draco Malfoy didn’t look amused. Or annoyed. Or smug. 

He looked wary. 

And for a flicker of a moment, she felt it . That thread again. The one neither of them had cut.

The one pulling tighter. 

***

Draco Malfoy hated breakfast. 

It used to be tolerable. Predictable, even. Coffee. Toast. Blaise’s lazy commentary. Theo’s silent brooding. 

But now?

Now breakfast was a war zone with teacups. 

Too many eyes. Too many ghosts hiding in the folds of black robes and hollow stares. No one laughed the way they used to. No one argued with true heat. It was all… echo. 

He tore a croissant in half and didn’t eat it. 

McGonagall stood, and he immediately regretted dragging himself out of bed at all. 

“As such, a new House Unity initiative will begin this term…”

Draco blinked. What?

“...assigned a pen pal from another House. Anonymous, to begin.”

His brain flatlined.

Theo muttered, “You’ve got to be joking.”

Blaise just smirked. “I bet mine will be a Hufflepuff. I’ll be buried in rainbows and flower drawings by Thursday.”

Draco didn’t speak. 

His gaze had already drifted across the room. 

She was sitting there - spine straight, brows furrowed, watching McGonagall like the answer to every unsolved equation was about to be handed down in plain speech. 

Granger.

Her eyes flitted across the staff table, thoughtful. Calculating. 

Then, as if pulled by some unseen force, her gaze landed on his. 

Direct.

Sharp.

Unflinching.

Draco didn’t look away. 

Couldn’t. 

For just a breath of a moment, neither of them blinked. 

And he felt it again - the thread . That pull. The thing in her voice that lived inside his bones now. The thing he wanted to silence and memorise in the same breath. 

Blaise nudged him. “You’re staring.”

Draco blinked and dragged his eyes back to his plate. 

“I’m glaring,” he said flatly. 

“Right. Is that what we’re calling it now.”

He ignored him. 

Instead, he pictured the pen pal letters. The ink. The parchment. 

The possibility - however small - that someone might write something that unravelled him completely.

Someone like her. 

He scowled, hating the heat curling in his stomach. 

Let it not be her.

Because if it was?

He didn’t know if he’d fight it. 

Or fall.

***

They were stretched out in a forgotten corner of the castle courtyard, enjoying what little sunlight could bleed through the autumn fog. Blaise had transfigured a bench into something resembling a lounge. Theo sat cross-legged on the stone ledge, absently flicking his wand to animate falling leaves into duelling squirrels.

Draco didn’t join in. 

He stood at the railing, arms crossed, staring into the gray sky like it had insulted his bloodline. 

Blaise, as usual, decided he would poke first. 

“So,” He drew the word out, letting it stretch like elastic. “Pen pals. Anonymous secrets. Emotional vulnerability. Hogwarts has truly outdone itself.”

Theo snorted. “Ten Galleons says the first student to snap is that Ravenclaw sixth year with that creepy eye twitch.”

“Nah,” Blaise said, stretching. “It’ll be Cormac McLaggen. I give him two letters before he starts drawing crude sketches of his own ego.”

Draco muttered “disgusting” without turning around. 

Theo tilted his head. “And what about you pen pal, Malfoy? What if it’s someone who’s still pissed about, say… the war? Or your face?”

“I don’t write feelings. I barely write essays.”

“Mm,” Blaise said, eyes gleaming. “But what if hers is eloquent? Beautiful, even. All ink loops and parchment perfume. Maybe she tells him secrets. Things she’d never say aloud.”

Draco’s jaw clenched. 

Theo caught the shift instantly. 

He raised an eyebrow. “Ah. There it is.”

“There what is?”

“That twitch. The one that says you don’t want Hermione Granger spilling her trauma and truth into someone else’s lap.”

“I don’t care what Granger does,” Draco said too quickly. 

Blaise laughed under his breath. “You care. You care in that lovely, repressed, possessive way that makes me think you’re going to read every student’s letter out of sheer paranoia.”

“I am not-”

“She’ll be writing to someone else, mate,” Theo said, quieter now. “Someone who might say the right thing. Someone who doesn’t have a past that makes her flinch.”

The silence turned heavy. 

Draco didn’t answer. 

Didn’t need to. 

Because they both saw it - the tightening of his hands around the stone railing. The set of his shoulders. The muscle ticking in his jaw. 

Blaise leaned back, whistling low. “Well, this should be fun.”

Theo just smirked. “Or catastrophic.”

***

He hadn’t meant to linger. 

Really, he hadn’t. 

He’d only been passing the corridor outside the library. Heading for the charms annex. Maybe. 

But then her voice floated through the half-open door - low, thoughtful, undeniable hers - and he froze like a statue, caught between impulse and shame. 

“...I don’t know,” she was saying. “It feels strange. Writing to someone you don’t know, but maybe that’s the point. Maybe it’s easier , being honest with a stranger.”

Easier?

To be honest?

With someone who isn’t me?

He hated the thought before he’d even finished thinking it. 

Another voice answered - Lovegood, dreamy and gentle. “I think it’s lovely. Like sending your thoughts out into the world in a bottle. The right person will understand, even without a name.”

Hermione gave a soft laugh, the sound biting into Draco’s spine. 

“I doubt Malfoy’s writing anything insightful,” she murmured. “Probably just insults in calligraphy.”

Draco almost smirked. Almost. 

But something in her tone - light, but not cruel - coiled inside him. 

She expected nothing from him. 

Not understanding. Not decency. 

Certainly not depth. 

And it shouldn’t matter. 

He didn’t want her to expect anything. 

He didn’t owe her anything. 

Except… 

Except maybe he did.

The scar on her arm said otherwise. 

And the way she walked, chin lifted, always braced for a fight, said otherwise too. 

He stepped back from the door, cold and burning all at once. 

What would she write in her first letter?

What pieces of herself would she offer to someone else - some anonymous nobody - because she couldn’t possibly imagine him worthy of the truth? 

He didn’t care. 

He didn’t. 

But when he got back to the Slytherin common room that night, he reached for ink and parchment and stared at the blank page for an hour. 

And when Blaise passed by and quipped, “Practicing for your secret admirer?” Draco didn’t look up. 

He just kept staring at that paper. 

And wondered what kind of man she might fall in love with on the page. 

And why, exactly, it wasn’t allowed to be him. 

***

The parchment was thick, creamy, charms-reinforced. 

Hermione turned it over in her hands as if expecting it to whisper secrets. 

Instead, it stared back at her - blank and expectant. 

Her packet arrived at dinner, dropped by a tawny owl with a tiny violet ribbon tied to its foot. It landed next to her pumpkin juice with a silent thud and a folded note bearing McGonagall’s slanted script:

Miss Granger,

Thank you in advance for your thoughtful participation.

Your owl knows where it must go.

- M.M.

Hermione slid the contents into her satchel without a word. Ginny raised an eyebrow, but Hermione just shook her head.

She didn’t feel ready to give pieces of herself to a stranger. 

Not yet. 

Maybe not ever.

She wasn’t scared, not exactly. But the idea of bearing anything real - after everything she’d buried - felt like a step too far. 

Not tonight,. 

She didn’t open the ink. 

She didn’t reach for her quill. 

She just stared at her bag and wondered what someone might say to her - if they were honest. If they knew it was her. 

***

Draco’s was waiting for him on his bed.

No owl. No flourish. 

Just a black box sealed in silver wax, and a note written with brutal simplicity. 

Mr Malfoy,

Your owl is already trained. 

Let it fly. 

- M.M.

Draco sat at the edge of the bed for a long time, fingers drumming against the box. 

He didn’t know what compelled him to open it. Curiosity? Boredom?

Need?

Inside: a thick stack of enchanted parchment, a glass bottle of black ink, and a monogrammed quill with the Hogwarts crest. Elegant. Impersonal.

He turned the first page. 

It resisted him at first - like it was alive. Then softened. 

Welcoming. 

He didn’t think. Just dipped the quill and began. 

No drafts.

No hesitations. 

He wrote like his hand had been waiting for this moment longer than he had. 

The scratch of quill against parchment echoed in the stillness. 

He didn’t sign it. Didn’t need to. 

He folded the page, sealed it, and set it beside the windowsill where his owl already waited. Silent. Watching. 

When he tied the letter to her leg, she blinked once - then vanished into the night without a sound. 

Draco watched until she disappeared. 

And only then did he allow himself to breathe again. 

Chapter Text

The Astronomy Tower was almost always deserted this late. 

Hermione had climbed the winding staircase for silence, not company - her satchel slung over one shoulder, the still - unopened pen pal parchment tucked beneath a stack of Arithmancy notes. Her head hurt. Her heart did too, but she’d never admit that out loud. 

The sky outside the tower was ink-black and clear. 

She didn’t expect to hear sobbing. 

It was soft at first - barely a gasp. A stifled sniffle. The sound of someone trying not to fall apart and failing anyway. 

Hermione froze halfway up the last step. 

She knew that voice. 

No. No bloody way - 

“Parkinson?”

There was a rustle, a hiss of embarrassment, and then a blur of black fabric as Pansy tried to blot her cheeks without letting Hermione see. Too late. 

“Go away, Granger.”

Hermione didn’t. 

Couldn’t.

Pansy sat curled beneath the window ledge, knees hugged to her chest, face red and blotchy in a way that Hermione had never seen before. No sharp eyeliner. No pout. No venom. Just a girl with her mask cracked open. 

“...Are you -” Hermione paused. “Are you all right?”

“Do I look all right?” 

“No,” Hermione said bluntly. “You look like you’ve been crying for a while.”

That earned her a glare. Watery, but genuine. 

“I didn’t think you cared .”

“I don’t. Not really. But I don’t -” Hermione hesitated. “I don’t like seeing anyone like this. Even you.”

Silence settled. Awkward and taut. 

Then Pansy laughed. Sharp and humorless.

“This bloody letter project,” she muttered, voice thick. “All of it. It’s so stupid. Write your feelings. Be honest. Reconnect. Like we’re just going to stitch ourselves back together with ink and pretend we aren’t all ruined.”

Hermione’s chest ached. 

“Why does it bother you so much?” she asked gently. 

Pansy looked away, shoulders hunched. “Because I don’t know what I’d say. Because I spent the last year lying about everything - pretending I wasn’t terrified every single day, praying no one noticed that I wasn’t half as cruel as I pretended to be.”

Hermione sat down beside her, slow and unsure. 

“You were awful to me.”

“I know,” a pause. “I thought if I pushed hard enough, no one would push back.”

They sat like that for a long time. Quiet. Breathing. 

“I hated you,” Hermione said softly

“I hated you, too.”

Another silence. But this one didn’t ache. 

“I think,” Hermione said after a while, “we were both busy surviving.”

Pansy blinked. “Do you… feel guilty all the time?”

“Yes.”

“Even when you know you did the right thing?”

“Especially then.”

They looked at each other. Something passed between them - recognition, maybe. Not forgiveness. Not yet. 

But something . 

When Hermione stood to leave, she hesitated at the stairs. 

“Write your letter,” she said quietly. “Even if it’s messy. Even if it’s angry.”

Pansy gave a shaky nod. “You too.”

* * *

The letter arrived in the library. 

Not at breakfast. Not at her dorm. 

Just landed beside her textbook with an elegant little tap, the owl already gone like it had never been there. 

Hermione blinked. 

Looked around. 

No one saw.

The envelope was plain, the seal generic. No colour, no flourish. Just the heavy, weighted feel of someone trying very hard not to care. 

She turned it over in her hands. Her heart kicked once. 

Then she opened it. 

To whomever thought this was a good idea - 

I admire your blind optimism. I assume you’re the sort of person who believes in soulmates and thinks pumpkin juice is a reasonable beverage choice. I pity you deeply. 

Nevertheless, I’ve agreed to write. Temporarily. If only because this might be the most entertainment I’ve had since a certain third-year Hufflepuff tried to hex his own eyebrows off. 

Feel free to keep things light. No war trauma, no tears, and if you mention ‘finding yourself’ I will personally transfigure this parchment into something indecent.

Regards, (begrudgingly)

- Your Unfortunate Partner. 

Hermione stared at it for a long time. 

Then - unexpectedly - laughed.

Out loud.

I was ridiculous. 

It was snide and snarky and absolutely dripping with condescension. 

And somehow… 

It was funny . 

She read it again, and the corner of her mouth curved before she could stop it. 

This wasn’t what she expected. 

Not softness. Not comfort. 

But this…

This was honest in a way she hadn’t realised she’d been craving. 

Whoever this person was, they clearly had no intention of coddling her. And oddly, she appreciated that. 

She folded the parchment, placed it gently between the pages of her Arithmancy book, and whispered,

“Challenge accepted.”

***

He wasn’t following her. 

Not technically . 

He just happened to be in the library. 

Again.

Leaning against the bookcase with a text on advanced hex countermeasures in one hand, and her in his peripheral vision like a goddamned magnetic force. 

She was reading. 

Surprise, surprise. 

Something thick and incomprehensible. Probably Arithmancy. Her head bent low, curls slipping over her face as she flipped a page. 

He should’ve walked away. 

Should’ve. Didn’t.

Because then - 

Then she did something that made his chest twist in a way he absolutely loathed . 

She smiled. 

It was small. 

Barely there.

But real.

A flash of amusement that curled her lips upward and made her eyes crease faintly at the corners. Soft. Unpolished. Like the kind of smile she didn’t even know she was wearing. 

And it shattered him a little. 

He wasn’t used to that expression on her. Not outside the classrooms and war councils. Not post-war. Not post- him . 

She looked… younger. Less heavy.

Happy.

And he hated the fact he wanted to know what caused it. 

More than that - he hated the suspicion curling low in his gut. 

Because she was holding parchment. Thin, familiar parchment. Folded twice. Tucked carefully between her fingers as she turned back to her textbook with an odd, thoughtful look. 

Draco’s stomach dropped. 

Could it be…?

No.

Couldn’t be.

She didn’t know. No one knew. 

He’d used no name. No handwriting. Even the seal was generic. 

But gods - what if it was?

What if she was smiling at his letter?

He stared a second too long. 

She looked up. 

Their eyes locked. 

Hermione’s brow furrowed instantly, the smile gone. “What?”

Draco sneered before he could stop himself. “Didn’t realise the library allowed giggling now. Should I alert Madam Pince?”

Hermione rolled her eyes. “Run along, Malfoy. Surely there’s a mirror somewhere missing you.”

He scoffed. Mask on. “Charming as always, Granger.”

But his heart was pounding. 

Because if she had read his letter…

If that smile had been for his words - 

Then maybe… 

Maybe he wasn’t entirely wrong about this ridiculous project after all. 

* * *

It was a lazy Sunday in the Slytherin common room. 

Blaise was sprawled sideways across one of the green velvet sofas, flipping through Witch Weekly like it owed him a favor. Theo was polishing his wand while levitating Bertie Bott’s Beans into his mouth, eyes glazed with boredom. 

And Draco?

Draco was pretending to read a history book while staring blindly at the same sentence for a full ten minutes. 

Until the owl came. 

A snowy blur swooped low, dropped a folded letter onto his lap, and vanished out the narrow stone window without a sound. 

Blaise raised an eyebrow, “Secret admirer?”

Draco rolled his eyes. “Obviously.”

Theo snorted. “Maybe it’s the pen pal, come to confess their undying affection.”

Draco didn’t answer.

He was too busy staring at the envelope.

His fingers tingled. 

Slowly, he opened it. 

And then the world tilted. 

Not because of what it said - though that was enough to knock the wind from him. 

But because of the handwriting . 

Slanted. Neat. Fiercely controlled.

With faint indentations from how hard the quill had been pressed. 

Exactly the kind of precision that screamed: I care too much to be careless.

Draco had seen this handwriting before. 

On essays. In margins. In blood. 

On her arm. 

In his nightmares.

Granger . 

He nearly dropped the parchment. 

But he didn’t. 

Instead, he read.

To my Unfortunate Partner,

If you’re going to insult me, please try to be more original. The Hufflepuff eyebrow hex was last semester’s gossip. I expected better from someone so clearly allergic to emotional sincerity. 

As for pumpkin juice, I’ll have you know it’s rich in vitamins. But if you’d prefer to spend your days bitter and dehydrated, far be it from me to stop you. 

I’ve agreed to write as well. Temporarily. Let’s call it an experiment in tolerance. Though if you quote poetry or reference your tragic upbringing, I’ll assume you’re someone from Gryffindor and report you to Pince. 

Sincerely (but not warmly)

- Your Slightly Less Unfortunate Partner. 

Draco blinked. 

Blaise was still watching him. 

“So?” he asked, bored. “Are they deranged or romantic?”

“...Both.”

Theo squinted. “Why do you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Because I have, Draco thought. 

A ghost with wild hair, ink-stained fingers, and a laugh that had no business sounding that lovely in the library. 

“Just surprised,” Draco said smoothly, folding the letter and slipping it into his pocket before they could catch the tremor in his hand. “Didn’t think they’d actually respond.”

But inside?

He was unravelling. 

Because it was her. 

Granger . 

She was his pen pal. 

And she had no idea. 

She had smiled at his letter. 

Worse - her letter was brilliant .

Clever. Cutting. Infuriating. 

And Draco?

Draco didn’t know if he wanted to scream or grin. 

* * *

The dungeons were quiet. 

Dark. Too quiet.

The fire crackled low, shadows dancing against the walls. The scent of old stone and parchment thick in the air. 

Draco sat alone at his desk, elbows braced on the wood, the letter lying flat in front of him. 

Her letter.

He’d already read it six times.

Now he was on the seventh. 

Every line dug its claws deeper. Every word throbbed like a bruise beneath his skin. 

He knew that voice. That bite. That impossible maddening rhythm in the way she strung sarcasm into art. 

Granger.

And somehow, she was writing to him . Trusting this anonymous exercise to offer slivers of herself - even if wrapped in barbs and deflection. And the thought - 

The thought of her writing this to someone else? To some idiot who wouldn’t get it? Who wouldn’t rise to meet her?

Draco’s jaw clenched. 

The possessiveness was irrational. He knew that. But it didn’t stop the rush of heat curling in his chest. 

She’s not writing to some prick that doesn’t deserve her truths.

She’s writing to me . 

That changed everything. 

Draco leaned back, fingers drumming the desk as if his skin could bleed out the tension. 

He should stop. 

He should pull away now, request another match, never send a second letter. 

It would be the right thing to do. The smart thing. 

She’d hate him if she ever found out. 

But - 

Her words were still echoing. 

That wicked little curl at the end. 

“ Let’s call it an experiment of tolerance.”

Draco’s mouth twitched despite himself. 

Experiment, was it?

He reached for a fresh sheet of parchment.

Dipped his quill. 

Hesitated. 

Then began to write.

To my Slightly Less Unfortunate Partner,

You criticise my insult selection and gossip sources, and yet I notice you offered no improved alternatives. Curious. Are you always this smug with nothing to back it up, or am I a special exception?

As for the pumpkin juice slander - I stand by it. There’s something deeply suspicious about any beverage that tastes like regret and cinnamon. 

Still, I must admit I didn’t expect you to respond. Or to match me wit for wit. Congratulations. You’ve ensured I’m not entirely bored. 

Temporarily, of course. 

Let’s see if your second attempt is as tolerable as your first. 

Yours (less begrudgingly)

Your Unfortunate Partner.

Draco sat back and stared at the ink.

This was a mistake. 

A disaster waiting to happen. 

But as the owl tapped impatiently at the window, and he folded the letter with practiced hands - 

He felt something he hadn’t felt in years. 

Anticipation.

***

“You’ve been twitchy,” Theo said, voice mild as he dropped into the armchair opposite Draco’s in the Slytherin common room. 

“I always twitch when you speak.”

“Mm,” Blaise hummed, barely glancing up from his tarot deck, which he’d started using purely to annoy Theo. “Except you haven’t even insulted my shoes today. Which means something is definitely wrong.”

Draco didn’t answer. He just kept his gaze pinned on the fire, his jaw working slightly, fingers curled too tightly around the edge of something half-tucked under the cover of a book. 

Theo clocked it instantly.

A folded letter.

Not school parchment. The good kind. Thick. Personal. Still creased where it had been opened and read. And re-read , if he had to guess.

“Oh,” Theo said slowly. “So that’s why you’ve been acting like a bloody ghost.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re never fine.”

Blaise sat up, suddenly interested. “Who’s the letter from?”

“No one.”

Theo raised a brow. “Draco. Please. That’s literally a letter in your lap.”

“It’s part of the initiative,” Draco muttered. “The pen pal thing.”

“Ah,” Blaise said knowingly. “So she wrote back.”

Draco stiffened. “How do you know it’s a she?”

Theo smirked. “Because you look like you’ve been hexed with a particularly slow-moving confession spell.”

“Shut up, both of you.”

But it was too late.

Theo, with none of his Slytherin self preservation and far too much Gryffindor curiosity, reached across and snatched the letter.

Draco was on him in an instant. 

“Give it back.” His voice was low. Dangerous. And his wand was out . 

Theo smirked and blinked. “Bloody hell, mate. I was just -”

“Now.”

The command in his tone froze the air around them. 

Theo handed the parchment back immediately. 

Blaise, watching from the side, suddenly felt a strange stillness wash over him. 

That level of protectiveness. The way Draco’s hand shook just slightly as he tucked the letter away like it was more than ink and paper. Like it was fragile . Scared. 

He’d only ever seen that once before. 

During the war.

When he found Draco sitting outside the Manor library with blood on his hands and Hermione Granger’s torn scarf clutched to his chest like it would keep him from breaking. 

Blaise stared. 

And understood.

“...It’s her,” he said softly. 

Draco didn’t respond. 

Didn’t have to. 

Blaise leaned back, rubbing his hands together. 

“Oh, gods. It’s actually her.”

Theo blinked, “wait - Granger?”

“She doesn’t know it’s him.” Blaise muttered, already plotting ten levels ahead. “But he knows. And he’s writing back.”

There was a long silence.

Then Theo said, “We are so fucked.”

Draco just closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair, letter safely in his pocket. 

And for the first time in weeks - 

He smiled. 

Chapter Text

To my Allegedly Unfortunate Partner,

Pumpkin juice tastes like autumn and childhood nostalgia. If that makes you uncomfortable, perhaps the problem isn’t the beverage, but your lack of soul. 

Also, I didn’t offer better insults because I assumed you’d rise to the challenge. Clearly, I was too optimistic. But do keep trying - it’s charming watching you pretend not to try. 

Temporarily tolerant, 

Your Slightly Less Unfortunate Partner.

* * *

To the Slightly Smug one, 

Nostalgia is overrated. So is childhood. And you should know better than to use ‘charming’ and my name - albeit anonymous - in the same sentence. Dangerous territory. 

Still, I appreciate your misguided belief in my potential. It’s sweet. Like poison wrapped in sugar. 

I assume you enjoy books with tragic endings and feel personally offended by poorly alphabetized shelves. 

Tell me I’m wrong. I dare you.

- Your Unfortunate (but observant) Partner.

* * *

To the Observant One (Ugh),

You are wrong. I don’t like tragic endings. 

I need them. 

But I am offended by poor organization, so congratulations. You’re not entirely hopeless. 

I suspect you don’t sleep well. Too many thoughts, too many teeth, not enough warmth. 

Tell me I’m wrong. 

Yours (begrudgingly)

Slightly Smug.

* * *

To the One Who Sees Too Much, 

I sleep just fine, thanks. Perfectly. Peacefully. Surrounded by the sound of silence and my own excellence. 

… Alright, no, I don’t sleep. Happy now?

You read too well. It’s inconvenient. And vaguely unfair. 

So here’s a question for balance: what’s the one thing you wish people knew about you?

I’ll answer too. Eventually. 

If you’re brave enough. 

- Yours in insomnia,

Ugh.

* * *

To the Overly Dramatic One, 

Your letter arrived at breakfast. I nearly choked on toast. Which is either romantic or deeply unfortunate. 

Here’s my answer: I hate being seen as strong when I don’t feel it. People expect consistency. I’m not consistent.

Now it’s your turn. Don’t make me regret honesty.

Still watching you,

Slightly Smug.

* * *

To the Honest One,

Fine. Here it is: I’m not who people think I am. Never have been. 

Sometimes I wish I could just vanish. Not forever. Just for long enough to stop pretending. 

You’re the first person I’ve told that. 

Don’t get smug. Or do. You will anyway. 

-Yours (...fuck),

Dramatic and Defensive.

* * *

To the One Who’s Trying, 

I won’t get smug. Not this time. 

Instead, here’s something awful: I used to believe knowledge could save people. Then I watched it fail. I think that broke something in me. 

But I still believe. Not in saving everyone - just in trying. 

You’re trying to. I see it. 

Don’t stop.

-Yours in stubbornness, 

Still Slightly Smug.

* * *

To the One I Hate Less Than I Should,

You’re exhausting. And brilliant. And I hate that I look forward to these. 

There’s something terribly wrong with me. 

You once said this was an experiment in tolerance. I think it’s becoming something else. 

I don’t know what it is yet. But I don’t want it to stop. 

-Yours in confusion, 

Possibly Tolerant. 

* * *

It was stupid. 

He told himself that. Repeated it like a mantra as he sat in the corner of the library, hidden behind a useless volume on Defensive Theory. A perfect sightline to the table near the windows. Her usual spot. 

She was already there. Already opened it. Already - 

Merlin.

She was smiling.

Not a wide one. Not bright or beaming. It was quiet. Small. Just a slow, reluctant pull at the corners of her mouth like she was fighting it and losing - 

-and it destroyed him. 

Draco stared, frozen. His heart kicked once and didn’t stop. She held the letter like it was something precious, something worth rereading. Her eyes lingered, tracing lines he remembered too vividly. 

She tilted her head, lips parting just a little - and then she pressed her fingers to them. 

Soft. Thoughtful. Almost reverent .

His lungs didn’t work right.

He’d written something real. Not clever. Not cruel. Just true . Something raw and dangerous he hadn’t meant to give her, not really. And now she was holding it. 

Worse - feeling it. 

He gripped the edge of his book, fingers white-knuckled.

What the hell was he doing?

This was Granger. 

Granger . 

And yet…

Draco watched her fold the letter neatly. Gently. She tucked it away into the spine of her Transfiguration book like it was sacred. 

Like it meant something.

His throat burned. There was a pressure behind his ribs, sharp and unfamiliar. 

Maybe it was pride. 

Maybe it was guilt. 

Maybe it was the horrifying realization that he was in far too deep already. 

He dropped his head into his hands. 

Gods help him - 

He didn’t want her to stop either. 

***

It wasn’t exactly a friendship. Not yet. 

But it was something. 

Hermione sat beside Pansy Parkinson at the far end of the Slytherin’s table, the two of them sipping tea in a silence that had become oddly comforting. 

They didn’t speak. Not beyond a muttered “ pass the sugar ” or a shared eye roll when Millicent snorted pumpkin juice through her nose across the table. 

But they didn’t have to. 

People were noticing. 

A few first-years whispered as they passed. Astoria Greengrass cast a lingering look. Even Theo Nott, blinked when he walked by, doing a double take as he caught sight of the pair of them - Hermione Granger and Pansy bloody Parkinson - sitting shoulder to shoulder like it was normal . 

But it wasn’t about them.

Hermione didn’t care.

Not today.

She was too focused on the fresh sheet of parchment in front of her, her fingers twitching around the quill. Her pen pal’s last letter sat carefully folded beside her plate, half-tucked beneath a napkin. She’s already read it. Twice. Possibly five times. 

I don’t know what this is yet. But I don’t want it to stop.

The words had burrowed under her skin like warmth in winter. She didn’t even know who he was. She should be more cautious. More skeptical. But gods, it felt like someone finally saw her. Not as a war hero. Not as the clever one. Just as her.

She touched the quill to the page.

And she wrote.

To the One Who Started This (And Can’t Seem To Stop),

Thank you. For not stopping. 

I won’t either.

I don’t know what this is yet, either. But it’s… something. Something real. 

And I don’t get much of that anymore. 

I’ve spent months trying to rebuild myself. Pretending I’m fine. Acting like I don’t see the cracks in everything. In everyone. 

But you wrote something real. And now I want to, too. 

So here it is: I’m scared of who I am when no one’s looking. 

But this - these letters - make me feel like maybe that version of me isn’t so unloveable. 

Don’t disappear. 

-Yours in terrifying honesty,

Still Slightly Smug. 

She folded it carefully. Tied the thread of twine around it with steady hands. 

Beside her, Pansy gave the smallest huff - almost a laugh - and reached over to pour more tea into Hermione’s cup without asking. 

Hermione didn’t thank her. 

She didn’t have to. 

***

The owl landed before breakfast. Silent. Efficient.  Like it knew exactly what it was delivering. 

Draco blinked as the letter dropped into his lap. He didn’t move right away. Just stared at the parchment wrapped in a thin thread of twine like it might burn him. 

It wasn’t her usual handwriting. 

It was still hers. Still hers.

But different. 

Less precise. More human. As if she’d written it in one breath, afraid that if she stopped, she wouldn’t start again. 

He waited until he was alone. 

Pulled the curtains of his bed shut, cast every silencing and privacy charm he knew, and opened it with hands that shook far more than he’d ever admit. 

And then he read it. 

Slowly. 

Twice.

Three times.

Every word.

“So here it is: I’m scared of who I am when no one’s looking.”

“But this - these letters -make me feel like maybe that version of me isn’t so unloveable.”

Draco closed his eyes. His chest caved in like the air had been ripped from it. 

She didn’t know. 

She didn’t know it was him. 

And still… she trusted him with this?

He felt sick. And raw. And wanted , in a way he hadn’t been in years. Not for what he could offer. Not for his name. Just… him . 

The him he didn’t even understand half the time. 

She had no idea. 

No idea what he’s done. 

No idea that he’d seen the scar on her arm more nights than he could count. 

No idea that he woke up some mornings hating himself more than he ever hated her. 

And yet - 

“ Don’t disappear .”

Draco dropped his head against the pillow, breathing hard. He stared at the letter in his hands. Fingers tightening. Protecting it. 

He’d neer let anyone else see this. 

And maybe he didn’t deserve to keep writing back. 

But he would. 

Gods help him - he would.

Chapter Text

To the Girl Who’s Braver Than She Thinks,

I’ve rewritten this three times. The first version was insufferably snide. The second one sounded like a bleeding therapy session. The third… I burned. 

So here’s the fourth. 

I don’t think you’re unlovable.

I don’t know what you see when you look in the mirror, but I’ve read enough of your words to know you still carry things no one should have to. 

You make it sound like you’re pieces taped together. Maybe you are. But I’ve never known anyone who kept moving forward with that much damage and still managed to write like this. 

Your honesty - whatever this thing between us is - it’s terrifying. And kind of addictive. 

I haven’t wanted to stop thinking about someone for years. I do now. Constantly. 

Gods, this is all too earnest. Burn this letter when you’re done. 

Or don’t.

Just don’t stop. 

-The not-quite-reformed.

* * *

To the Most Unexpected Comfort I’ve Found in a Long Time,

I won’t burn it. I read it twice. Three times, actually. I’m not proud. 

Thank you. You have no idea how much I needed your words. 

I still don’t know who you are. And maybe it’s better that way for now. Because I’m telling you things I’ve never said out loud. Things I didn’t realise I needed to say.

I don’t sleep much. When it’s bad, I walk. I go to the Astronomy Tower, mostly. It’s quiet up there. No one looks at me like they expect me to be fine. No ghosts whispering behind the portraits. Just air and sky.

Maybe you have a place like that too. Or maybe you don’t need one.

But if you ever want to feel less alone without saying anything - just know I’m usually up there late. 

Not always. But… often.

-Slightly Less Smug.

*

Draco reread that line three times.

He didn’t know what to make of the sudden ache in his chest. The Astronomy Tower, Of course. That was his spot. He’d been going up there for weeks. Thinking. Brooding. Escaping. 

How had they never run into each other?

How close had they come?

( Theo )

Theo wasn’t nosy by nature. 

He was curious. Observant. Intensely intelligent. 

And right now, he was watching Draco Malfoy - sitting alone in the corner of their common room, lips twitching like he was fighting off an actual smile - and mentally preparing to hex the truth out of him. 

“What,” Theo said flatly, flopping onto the chair opposite, “is that face?”

Draco didn’t look up from the letter he was rereading. 

There was parchment in his hands. Folded and unfolded, worry-creased at the corners, like it had been opened one too many times. Theo narrowed his eyes. 

“Draco,” he repeated, louder now. “Are you - Merlin, smiling? ”

Draco blinked, startled. Immediately schooled his expression into something more palatable - his usual cocktail of disdain and indifference - but it was too late. 

“Oh my god, you are.” Theo leaned forward like he was witnessing a crime scene. “You’re smiling. No, no - grinning . Is that a grin, Malfoy? What’s her name?”

“There is no - shut up.”

Theo practically vibrated with glee. “There is definitely a her. And I’m willing to bet it’s that her.”

“It’s not.”

Draco shoved the letter into the sleeve of his robe with far more force than necessary and stood up, already halfway toward escape. Theo followed like a predator. 

“You’ve been sneaking off lately. Disappearing. Coming back all weird and broody in a soft way, which is honestly nauseating.”

Draco glared. 

Theo grinned wider. “You’re seeing someone, then.”

“I’m not.”

“You’re talking to someone,”

“Still not.”

“Lying to your best friend. Wounded. Hurtful.”

Draco pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed, deeply, like the very air was conspiring against him.

“I’m still writing to her…” he admitted through clenched teeth. “That’s it.”

Theo stopped. Blinked. 

“That’s it?” he sounded horrified. “Words… on parchment? You are this floaty because you’re still writing to her. You haven’t told her yet? That it’s you?”

“Drop it, Nott.”

“Draco Malfoy is writing letters and smiling about it,” Theo threw his hands in the air. “Gods, this is better than I imagined.”

Draco stalked away. 

“You can’t hide forever!” Theo called after him. “One day, Blaise and I will bleed it from you and then you’ll be smothered in affection and forced to process your feelings!” 

A door slammed down the hall. 

Theo sat back in his chair, smug as hell. 

“Oh, this is so about Granger.”

***

The air was sharp with October cold, thin and laced with fog. The kind that caught in your lungs and made everything feel too quiet. 

Draco climbed the last of the winding stairs to the Astronomy Tower, each step echoing in the stone like it was judging him. 

He didn’t know what he was doing. 

Correction - he did know. He was hoping to see her. 

Her.

Not some vague pen pal anymore. Not some anonymous mind spilling half-truths and confessions across parchment. 

Her.

Hermione Granger.

He stopped just before the final archway and let his hand curl around the edge of the stone, forcing himself to breathe slowly. Carefully. 

This was stupid. 

Stupid and reckless and the kind of vulnerability he’d spent years training out of himself. But her last letter had undone something in him. That raw honesty. That tiny truth: I go here when I need to feel like myself again.

He hadn’t known what to do with that. 

Except… come. 

Even if it was just to know what it would feel like to be near her when she wasn’t expecting anything of him. 

He stepped into the tower. 

The world was hushed. Moonlight slanted across the floor in fractured silver beams, and for one horrible moment, he thought she wasn’t there. That maybe this had all been in his head. That she had meant some other tower.

But then - 

She shifted. 

Curled up on the far ledge, half-wrapped in a blanket, her curls haloed by moonlight.

Reading.

Of course she was.

Draco froze.

A thousand things spiraled through him at once. The biting chill of fear. The desperate spike of want . The panic of being known. The agony of almost. 

He could go to her. Say it. Tell her everything. 

But he couldn’t move. 

Because if he did - if he told her - he might lose this. Lose her . And Merlin, he couldn’t risk that. 

Not yet. 

He leaned against the shadowed wall instead, just beyond the archway. Watching. Breathing. Letting his chest ache as he stared at her. 

She smiled at something in the book. Tucked her legs under herself. Looked - lighter than she ever did during the day.

And he couldn’t do it. 

He couldn’t tell her. 

Not tonight. 

So instead, he stayed there, in the dark, just watching her. Just… being near her.

Like a coward. 

Like a boy in love.

* * *

To the Girl Who Feels Like Moonlight and Something I Can’t Name,

I was going to write something clever. You probably expected that. Sarcasm’s always been my shield of choice. 

But the truth is… I haven’t been clever lately. Not about this. 

You wrote that you go up there to feel like yourself again. 

I think I’ve been trying to do the same. 

There’s something strange about it, isn’t there? That much sky above your head. That much quiet. It’s like you can finally hear your own thoughts, even the ones you don’t want to. 

Anyway. This is me… not saying much. And yet, saying too much. 

I hope last night brought you some kind of peace. 

- The Quiet One in the Shadows.

* * *

To the Not-So-Distant Stranger,

Last night was strange. 

I went up to the tower like I usually do. And for the first time, I wasn’t alone. 

I was… but it didn’t feel like it. 

I had this odd sense that someone else was there. Not in a threatening way. Not like I was being watched. More like I was being… accompanied. Silently. Gently. 

It felt… safe.

It sounds mad, doesn’t it?

If you’ve ever been in a room with someone who made the air shift without a word - you’ll know what I mean. 

Maybe it was nothing.

Or maybe…

Well. 

I’m not ready to finish that sentence. 

-The Girl Who’s Probably Losing It.

***

He didn’t mean to grip the letter so tightly, but the words hit too close. 

I wasn’t alone. 

More like I was being… accompanied.

It felt… safe.

Draco exhaled slowly. Pressed the heel of his hand to his eyes. 

She felt him. 

Somehow, even without seeing him. Even without knowing it was him - she knew .

It undid him. 

Not just because she’d sensed him. But because she hadn’t been afraid. She felt safe. 

With him . 

For someone who had spent years convincing himself that he was poison, that he only ever hurt the people closest to him - this felt like mercy. 

Or worse.

Hope.

( Hermione )

The courtyard was unusually still for a morning between classes. The mist hadn’t lifted yet, curling low over the cobblestones like it had secrets to keep. Students filtered in and out, their voices hushed, their steps echoing beneath the archways. 

Hermione sat on the wide stone ledge beneath the sundial, one hand cupped around a warm mug, the other curled in her lap. She wasn’t reading, for once. Just sitting. Thinking. Listening. 

She almost didn’t notice the dark green coat that appeared beside her. 

Pansy Parkinson didn’t ask to sit. She never did. 

She simply did.

Hermione offered her the second cup of tea without a word. 

Pansy took it. Sipped. Swallowed. “Still a bit too sweet.”

“I counted the sugar exactly.”

“You counted it like a Gryffindor.”

Hermione turned to face her, lips twitching. “You’re welcome.”

Pamsy offered a noncommittal hum and crossed her legs elegantly. Her perfectly polished boots tapped a lazy rhythm on the stone bench beneath her. 

A few students nearby slowed their steps. Stared. Whispered. 

Let them. 

Hermione didn’t move away. 

They sat in silence for just a while - just enough to make it obvious. Just long enough for the whispers to build. Then Pansy tilted her head slightly, her voice low. 

“Alright, Granger. Obviously I know your tea by heart now. But what else do you like?”

Hermione blinked. “What?”

“You heard me.” Pansy took another sip. “What do you like? Besides tea. And books. And quoting magical theory like its foreplay.”

Hermione gave a scandalized laugh. “I do not -”

“Oh, relax. I’m asking seriously. You know how I like my tea, you sit next to me in Potions - when we aren’t in those ridiculous pairings - without bursting into flames, and you don’t flinch when I call you out. So.” She turned to face her directly. “What do you like, Hermione?”

It was… disarming. Hearing her name like that. 

Hermione took a slow breath, eyes drifting to the fog beyond the courtyard arch. 

“I like thunderstorms when I don’t have to be anywhere. I like when parchment is still warm from the press. I like sharp quills. I like raspberries with dark chocolate. And… I like being surprised by people.”

Pansy’s eyes sparkled. “That last one was about me.”

“It might’ve been,” Hermione said, quietly.

Pansy let the silence hang, then nodded, once. “I like when people are quiet without needing to fill it. I like lavender. I like old music. And I like being taken seriously.”

Hermione met her gaze. “I do take you seriously.”

“Even when I flirt with danger?”

“Especially then.”

A beat passed.

Neither of them said it - but it was obvious now. Their alliance wasn’t accidental. It was growing roots. 

Someone from across the courtyard stopped walking to stare at them outright. Pansy turned her head, narrowed her eyes, and the poor Ravenclaw fled. 

Hermione smiled into her cup.

“You scare people,” she murmured. 

“I know,” Pansy said. Then, after a moment: “But not you.”

Hermione let that sit for a while. Let herself feel what it meant. 

“Not anymore.”

***

He saw them before he heard them. 

Pansy and Granger - Granger, for Merlin’s sake - sitting side by side in the courtyard like the universe hadn’t just tilted in its bloody axis. 

They weren’t talking. Not exactly. But the body language said enough. Close without tension. Quiet without discomfort. 

It was disarming. 

Draco paused in the corridor shadow just beyond the archway, pretending to be checking his watch. But his eyes didn’t move.

Pansy was smirking about something. Hermione shook her head and passed over a second cup of tea like it was the most natural thing in the world. Her curls caught the light like fire when she leaned closer, laughing at something Draco couldn’t hear. 

It did something strange to his chest. 

“What are we staring at?” Theo’s voice broke into his thoughts, low and amused as he sauntered up beside him. 

Blaise followed half a step behind, chewing something sweet from the breakfast table, entirely uninterested - until his eyes caught sight below. 

Then he stopped mid-bite. 

“Oh,” Blaise said. “Oh that’s new.”

Draco crossed his arms tightly over his chest. “They’ve had a few conversations.”

Theo raised a brow. “ A few conversations is how you describe small talk. That -” he pointed toward the courtyard. “-is practically emotional spooning.”

“She brought her tea,” Blaise added with a flick of his wrist. “Her exact tea. I’ll bet. Chamomile with almond.”

Draco grunted. “So?”

Blaise’s eyes slid sideways. “So that means Granger noticed her preferences. That means she thought about her. That means -”

“Enough,” Draco muttered.

Theo leaned casually against the wall. “Not used to someone else being in her orbit, mate?”

Draco didn’t answer. 

Not because he didn’t have one - but because he didn’t like the one he had. 

It wasn’t about Pansy, really. It was the softness in Hermione’s face. The way she let herself be seen. Open. Vulnerable. 

She didn’t look like someone weighed down by grief and legacy and war. 

She looked like someone he’d written letters to. Someone who still believed in quiet things. Someone who - 

“Don’t,” he muttered to himself. 

“What was that?” Theo asked. 

“Nothing.”

But it wasn’t nothing. 

Because when Hermione turned slightly and he caught the edge of her smile - real and small and warm - Draco felt like the stone beneath his feet had cracked just a little. 

And he wasn’t entirely sure if he wanted to fix it.

Chapter Text

You asked what I see when I look at the sky from the Astronomy Tower. 

The answer is: nothing and everything.

Most nights, it’s just a sky. But sometimes - when it’s too quiet, when I can still taste blood in my dreams - it feels like the only place left that hasn’t judged me. 

And no, I don’t think it’s silly that you bring a book with you. Or that you read the same one more than once. Some stories deserve to be heard again. Especially when the world insists on rewriting ours. 

You said once that your handwriting changes depending on your mood. You should know that I’ve started reading between the lines. 

Sometimes, I can tell when you are angry. Or tired. Or lying. 

This last letter… you were holding something back. 

It’s fine. I won’t ask. 

But I won’t lie either. I don’t want this to stop. Whatever it is. 

Even if I’m the only one who knows who I’m writing to. 

-Yours, 

You know who. 

***

Charms had always been one of her favourite subjects - precise, layered, rhythmic. Usually, it soothed her. 

But today, her mind wandered. Over and over, like tide against the stubborn rock, it dragged her back to one particular seat. One particular boy. 

Draco Malfoy wasn’t himself. 

He hadn’t raised his hand once, which wasn’t exactly shocking - he wasn’t Hermione, after all - but he also wasn’t sneering, or slouching like he was too good for the syllabus, or even glancing across the aisle to lob a dry jab at her quill choices. 

He just… sat. 

His posture was perfect, as always, but there was a tension in his shoulders she recognised. The kind you wore when your mind was somewhere else entirely. 

His jaw was tight. His eyes flicked toward the window more than the board. 

And - most curious of all - when Professor Flitwick paired them for an incantation rotation, Draco had simply nodded and stepped forward. 

No complaint. No biting remark. Just… cooperation. 

Hermione had blinked, wand half-raised, waiting for the other shoe to drop. It never did. 

She cast the first spell. He countered it effortlessly. They worked in silent synchronicity for six uninterrupted minutes. When Flitwick called time, Malfoy inclined his head once and returned to his seat without a word. 

Not even a smirk. 

By the time class ended, Hermione was nearly twitching from the urge to poke him . Not physically - probably - but something about the restraint made her itch. 

As they packed up, she nudged her bag toward Ginny and said a little too loudly,  “Does anyone remember when the next Head Patrol is? Feels like it's been a while.”

It wasn’t subtle. She didn’t care. 

Draco paused mid-ink cap. 

Their eyes met - briefly. His expression flickered. 

Then he replied, cool and even, “Wednesday. After Dinner.”

She nodded slowly. “Right.”

He looked away fast. 

As they filed out of the classroom, Ginny leaned in with a knowing smile. “Was that your version of flirting?”

Hermione scoffed. “I don’t flirt.”

“You do now,” Ginny sang softly. “And I think he just blinked . Which is, you know, equivalent to an emotional earthquake for Malfoy.”

Hermione rolled her eyes and tried very, very hard not to smile. 

* * *

The dormitory was quiet.

For once, the fire in the common room below was little more than an ember’s glow, and her bed curtains remained drawn open - she didn’t want shadows tonight. She needed space to think, and more than that, to feel. 

The letter lay across her knees. Unfolded. Read three times. 

The parchment was crisp but no longer pristine; her fingers had run the edge threadbare without noticing. The ink had faded ever so slightly from where her thumb had pressed too long in one place. 

Even if I’m the only one who knows who I’m writing to. 

The line had hit her like a hex to the chest. 

Did he really mean it? Or was it just clever wordplay - something meant to poke at her, to see if she’d flinch?

She sat back against the pillow, staring at the canopy above. Her thoughts tangled, frayed, spun wild threads into the silence. 

Someone knew her.

Someone had read her letters - raw, honest, vulnerable - and knew it was Hermione Granger writing them. 

And they hadn’t stopped. 

Not only that. They wanted more. 

The idea curled itself into something sharp and sweet inside her. It terrified her. 

It thrilled her. 

And it made her stomach twist with the unease of something undone - because she had no idea who she was writing to. Not a clue. 

They were clever, and biting, and so frustrating. But also - gentle. Oddly patient. Willing to talk about things most people ran from. 

She shared parts of herself in those letters she hadn’t dared say aloud in years. Not to Harry. Not to Ron. Not even to Ginny. 

And someone had seen her. 

All of her. 

Still trembling slightly, she dipped her quill into the ink. 

You say you know who I am. 

Is that a guess, or do you truly know?

I’m not sure how I feel about it. It’s like -

Like being watched from behind glass. And instead of running, the watcher stays. Keeps looking.

I don’t know whether to feel violated or seen. Maybe both. 

But… I haven’t stopped writing. 

So maybe that says more about me than it does about you. 

Part of me wants to demand you tell me who you are. The other part -

The other part doesn’t want to know. Not yet. 

There’s something strangely comforting in writing into the dark and not worrying about your face when I say something awful. Or honest. Or weak. 

You said I held something back last time. You weren’t wrong. 

There are things I haven’t said. Things I don’t know how to say. But the truth is… I don’t regret any of this. Not the honesty. Not the letters. 

Even if you are a total arse.

Maybe especially then. 

She stopped. Tapped the quill against her lip. 

Then added:

And no, my handwriting doesn’t change because I’m lying. 

It changes because I’m still learning who I am when I’m not hiding.

She signed it with her usual flourish - no name, no clue, just the familiar stroke she always used. 

Then she folded it. Sealed it. And pressed it to her lips for half a second before setting it beside the window for the owl who always came. 

Come what may, she thought. 

***

The Slytherin common room had thinned out to only a few students loitering near the fireplace. Theo had claimed the sofa near the far end - feet up, ankles crossed, wand in one hand, a Sugar Quill in the other. 

Draco was late. 

Again. 

Theo rolled his eyes as he heard the telltale scuff of shoes against stone. Dramatic brooding footfalls, too. Predictable. 

Draco slid into the armchair beside him, lips tight, collar slightly rumpled like he’d been dragging a hand through his hair in frustration all evening. 

Theo took one long, thoughtful lick of his Sugar Quill and said, “You look like someone who watched a kitten drown.”

Draco said nothing .

“That bad, huh?” Theo tossed the quill aside. “Don’t tell me - letter didn’t come?”

“It came,”

“Oh?” Theo’s eyes narrowed with something far too gleeful to be legal. “Then why haven’t you read it yet?”

Draco’s scowl deepened. “I’m not in the mood.”

Theo, a master of ignoring personal boundaries, reached casually into Draco’s satchel where the sealed parchment peeked out. He plucked it free like it had been meant for him all along. 

Draco lunged. “Give it back, Nott -”

“ Unopened, too,” Theo murmured, holding it just out of reach. “My my. What could possibly make Draco Malfoy hesitate when it comes to parchment?”

“I swear to -”

“You swear to what?” Theo twirled the letter between two fingers. “Growl at me again? Brood harder?”

He cocked his head and leaned in, voice lowering enough to dig. “She’s getting to you.”

Draco’s jaw flexed.

Theo didn’t smirk. Not quite. “You haven’t shut up about her handwriting in three bloody weeks. You’ve started actually reading essays on the notice board -”

“I have not -”

“You kept that quill in charms because she touched it once -”

“ It was a nice quill -”

“Oh for Merlin’s sake, mate. Just admit it.”

Draco snatched the letter back, crumpling it slightly in his grip. “Admit what, exactly?”

“That you’re in deep,” Theo said simply. “That you like her. That girl. The one you used to hex behind library shelves. The one whose essays you mocked. The one whose bloody hand you’re tracing through parchment like a lunatic.”

Draco looked away. 

Theo, not cruel but never afraid to prod, softened his voice. “You’ve changed, Draco. And maybe that’s not the worst thing.”

Behind them, a rustle near the archway made Theo freeze. 

He glanced over his shoulder and caught the tail end of a dark braid disappearing around the column. 

Pansy . 

Of course she’d been listening. 

He turned back slowly, watching Draco open the letter now with shaking fingers. 

And he didn’t say a word about Pansy’s presence. 

Because the look on Draco’s face as he read - that was answer enough. 

And gods help them all… because she clearly had no idea who she was writing to. 

But Pansy? Pansy did now. 

And that was like a ticking time bomb wrapped in lipstick and secrets.

***

Pansy had never claimed to be a saint. 

But this - this was a moral dilemma wrapped in silk gloves and sharp edges. 

She leaned against the cold stone wall of the corridor just beyond the common room archway, arms folded, lips pursed, the remnants of Draco and Theo’s conversation echoing in her ears. 

It was her.

Granger. 

Of course it was. 

It made far too much sense now. The mood swings. The parchment tucked so carefully into Draco’s robes. The half-smile he didn’t think anyone saw when he slipped away with a letter in hand. The way he’d been… softer. 

Draco Malfoy did not do softness. Not unless it was strategy. 

But this wasn’t strategy. It was madness. Tortured, hopeful madness. And it was Hermione bloody Granger. 

Pansy let her head fall back against the wall, exhaling through her nose. 

She should have been annoyed with him. She’d spent years watching Draco throw up walls no one could climb. If anyone was supposed to unlock him, it should have been her. Should have been Theo or Blaise. 

But…

No. 

Because she’d seen Hermione lately. Seen the tired edges, the grief that lingered just beneath her new war-forged strength. She’d seen the way her eyes lit up when she opened a letter. And how her guard lowered in those rare, silent moments between them. 

Hermione didn’t know who she was writing to. But she trusted it. Trusted him . Even if she didn’t know it was him. 

And Draco?

He was terrified to lose that trust. Which meant - for once in his life - he wasn’t just playing a part. 

Pansy pressed her lips together, straightened her spine, and headed for the courtyard where Hermione usually liked to read between classes. 

She wasn’t going to break the spell. 

But she could… nudge it. 

She found Hermione beneath the autumn-bare beech tree, nose in a book, fingers absently tapping the edges of a folded letter. 

“Afternoon, Granger,” Pansy said breezily, plopping down beside her. 

Hermione looked up, startled, then smiled. “Hey.”

Pansy eyed the letter in her hand. “Still writing to your mystery boy?”

Hermione flushed, “You don’t know it’s a boy.”

Pansy smirked. “You wouldn’t be this pink if it were Luna.”

Hermione rolled her eyes, but she didn’t deny it. 

Pansy took a deep breath. “Can I say something without you hexing me?”

“That depends entirely on what you say,”

“You should… trust it,” Pansy said carefully. “Whatever it is. The penpal thing. You’ve been… brighter. Less tense. Maybe he sees something real in you. Maybe that’s not so bad.”

Hermione blinked. “Are you giving me romantic advice?”

“I’m giving you human advice,” Pansy sniffed. “Don’t make me regret it.”

They sat in silence for a while. 

Finally, Hermione said softly. “He said he knows who I am. But I still don’t know him.”

“Maybe that’s the point,” Pansy said gently. “You’re not hiding behind a name. And he’s not hiding from you , either. Maybe it’s… safer that way. For now.”

Hermione nodded slowly. 

And Pansy let the quiet stretch. She’d done her part. 

Let the rest fall into place.

***

The castle as night had always felt like a different world. Quiet. Ancient. Alive in the silence. 

Hermione’s boots clicked softly against the stone floor as she rounded the third-floor corridor, her wand casting a warm glow ahead. The burnished suits of armor gleamed in the dark, watching her like sentinels. 

She paused at the corner where the hallway forked - right toward the trophy room, left toward the library. 

The sound of familiar footsteps echoed a beat later. 

And there he was.

Draco Malfoy, shoulders still, hair immaculate even at this hour, stalking around the corner like the floor had personally offended him. 

“You’re late,” she said, arms folded. 

“You’re early,” he returned, not quite meeting her eyes. 

They hadn’t spoken much since Charms. Not since she’d noticed him quieter than usual. Watching her when he thought she wasn’t paying attention. 

Not since she wrote that line about the Astronomy Tower. 

Not since she swore she’d sensed someone there. 

“You get the East Wing,” she said, trying for professional. 

“I’ll take the West,” he argued, voice low. 

But neither of them moved. 

Hermione stared at him for a second longer than she meant to. 

“Are you… all right?” she asked finally. 

He blinked. “What?”

“You just seem… tense. More than usual. And that’s saying something.”

His lips twitched. “Touched you were thinking of me.”