Chapter Text
Grimmauld Place breathes the way old houses do, slow, labored, resentful, as though every creak is a sigh of disappointment. Draco hates it.
He hates it almost as much as he hates the fact that he’s here again, arriving before the rest, obeying Granger’s summons as if she were the Minister herself. He’s early. He never means to be early. It feels like surrender, and Malfoys do not surrender. Not to dusty wallpaper. Not to Gryffindors. And certainly not to moth-eaten furniture.
The tapestry room waits in its dim, threadbare grandeur. Gold and silver embroidery coils across the far wall, a sprawling family tree in arrogant stitches. Names gleam where the thread hasn’t dulled, others blasted into ash, scars stitched over scars. The whole thing hums faintly with enchantments so old they feel bone-deep, like the house itself is still muttering about its tragic lot.
She’s already there, of course.
Hermione Granger stands before the wall with notebook open, quill at the ready, hair pinned and already half escaping. There’s dust on her hands, ink across her wrist. She turns when she hears him, eyebrows rising.
“You’re early.”
It throws him off more than it should. He’s braced for You’re late, the usual sermon. Not this. Not you’re early.
He recovers fast, dry as parchment. “Woman, you’re impossible to please.”
She scoffs, color rushing faintly into her cheeks. “No, I’m not.”
He should leave it there. Truly. He even tries to. But the curse drags honesty like a hook, and his voice comes out quieter than intended. “Thank you.”
Her head tilts. “For what?”
“For all of this.” He gestures at the notes, the parchment, the tapestry itself, as though it’s self-evident. “You didn’t have to. It isn’t your curse. It isn’t your burden. And yet you’re the one keeping this alive, making it possible. Not Potter. Not Weasley. You. Always you.”
Hermione blinks, lips parting. She looks caught, like she hadn’t expected gratitude, like the idea itself is suspicious. “Is the curse making you say that?”
“No.” The word slips out sharp and certain, surprising even him. He almost wants to demand a recount.
Her eyes search his face for a long moment. She doesn’t glare, doesn’t argue. Just looks. Then she breathes out, softer than he’s ever heard her, and lets the smallest nod slip free. “You’re welcome.”
It feels raw. She’s not used to thanks, only expectation. The acceptance costs her something. And he knows, with a jolt, that he isn’t used to being grateful either. Stupid symmetry.
The silence is brittle, alive. He turns back to the tapestry because staring at Granger when she’s vulnerable feels illegal.
The door opens.
Harry and Ron arrive together, as they always do, their footsteps unconsciously matched. Harry scans corners like the room owes him a duel, shoulders set with the vigilance of someone who has never been safe. Ron is steadier, grounding him, one hand brushing his wand holster out of habit. They lean into each other like planets caught in the same orbit, tired but familiar. Draco pretends not to notice.
Bill comes next, tall and taut, all curse-breaker precision. Charlie follows, looser but no less tense, jaw tight, shoulders set. Something passes between the brothers in a look, worry unspoken, carried like blood.
And then Theo, of course Theo, who wasn’t invited but arrives anyway, sweeping in with a grin that dares anyone to say otherwise.
“Hermione,” Charlie greets, warm but distracted.
“Harry. Ron.” Bill nods, clipped.
Theo flourishes a bow at no one in particular. “My presence improves the room.”
Hermione smiles at them all in turn, voice softening for each name. They greet her back. And then, to Draco’s faint surprise, they greet him too. Not warmly, not like family, but with recognition. Ron’s grunt. Harry’s nod. Bill’s “Malfoy.” Even Charlie throws him a brief, acknowledging look.
It’s small. It’s enormous. Four months ago, they’d have sooner hexed him. Progress is strange, uncomfortable, and vaguely insulting.
Hermione clears her throat, pulling them back to purpose. “We’re here to look for traces of Bellatrix in the family’s own record. This tapestry spans centuries. If she left anything behind, patterns, symbols, lineage curses, it will be here.”
“And Ginny?” Ron asks.
Hermione shakes her head. “With the children tonight. She’s tired.”
Ron nods. Harry leans a little closer without thinking. The habit is almost sweet. Almost.
The group scatters instinctively. Bill examines ward-lines stitched into the fabric, muttering like he’s telling off an errant curse. Charlie prowls the perimeter, wand loose, shoulders sharp when the threads twitch. Harry and Ron take opposite sides, covering exits like old soldiers. Theo drapes himself into a chair like a decorative nuisance.
Draco steps closer to the tapestry. Names sprawl, overlapping, looping back. Cousins marrying cousins. Aunts and uncles tangled where they shouldn’t be. He laughs, sharp and bitter, because the alternative is weeping.
“Nothing says legacy like marrying your cousin twice removed.”
Hermione bites her lip, fighting it. But then, against her will, a laugh escapes. Quick, startled, honest. She shakes her head. “That’s… quite fucking funny, actually.”
Draco glances at her, smug despite himself. If he can still make her laugh in a mausoleum like this, perhaps he’s not entirely beyond salvage.
They move along the tapestry, eyes drawn inexorably to the end of a scorched branch. Two names remain: Sirius Black and Regulus Black.
Draco’s voice is quieter than he expects. “What do you know about Regulus?”
Hermione studies the stitched letters, voice gentling. “He was the youngest Death Eater of his time. But he died a brave man, with the hope that someone braver than him could defeat the Dark Lord.”
The curse claws at Draco, forces the thought free. “He was brave. Bravery was diluted somewhere in the line. It didn’t get to me.”
Hermione turns, sharp-eyed. “You wouldn’t be here if you were a coward. You could have run.”
The words sting. Not pity. Not absolution. Something harder, truer. Recognition.
He looks back at Regulus’ name. The youngest Death Eater. Loyal until he wasn’t. Brave too late. Draco sees himself there, a reflection warped but familiar.
Hermione’s gaze drifts to the other name. “What do you know about Sirius?”
“Nothing.” Honesty tastes like rust.
So she tells him.
About the boy who broke tradition and chose Gryffindor. About James Potter’s best friend, reckless and brilliant and loyal to a fault. About the man who lost everything to Azkaban and still fought when freedom came. About the godfather who died with a smile, fighting for what he believed.
Draco listens, the curse binding him to silence. He sees the shape of it, the contrast between brothers. Regulus, swallowed by obedience, trying too late to break free. Sirius, defiant from the start, consumed anyway.
Two sides of the same thread. Both doomed.
And Draco thinks, with the bleak dramatics of someone who has had far too much practice: Maybe I was meant to burn too.
Hermione looks at him then, really looks, and something passes between them. Not forgiveness. Not yet. But connection. Something hot and unresolved, humming under the skin.
The room hums too, Bill’s mutterings, Ron and Harry leaning against each other, Charlie’s steady prowling, Theo’s amused quiet, but Draco and Hermione stand before the tapestry as though it’s only the two of them.
Neither speaks. Neither moves.
The tapestry waits, silent witness to another generation trying to survive its curse.
The tapestry stretches like a map of mistakes, inked in blood and fire. Draco stands in front of it long after Hermione has crossed the room at Harry’s call. His eyes trace the stitched branches that coil and tangle, cousins marrying cousins, names scorched black like rot spreading through a tree.
He laughs under his breath. Of course they’d embroidered it. Make the inbreeding decorative, immortalized in gilt thread, like something to be proud of. He almost expects to find a note beneath one of the unions: Best kept in the family.
Hermione had laughed earlier too. She tried to bite it back, but it slipped. He caught it. He catalogues these slips now, as if each one were a rare mineral he might polish later.
His eyes drag to the edge, to the last two names still visible, not yet obliterated by fire: Sirius Orion Black and Regulus Arcturus Black. Two brothers staring at each other across the cloth like they’d been preserved for his scrutiny.
Regulus. The family whispered his name with reluctant respect , the youngest Death Eater, the clever boy, dead too young. They never knew he’d turned traitor until Kreacher told Harry bloody Potter of all people. Draco feels the irony coil in his chest like smoke. Regulus had gambled bravery where it counted. Draco had only survived.
And Sirius. He doesn’t know enough yet. Only that his portrait has been scrubbed from Grimmauld walls with the same ferocity they once used to curse his name.
He’s still staring when voices drift across the room.
“…Ginny’s pregnant,” Potter says. His tone is soft, almost sheepish, as if happiness itself is a fragile secret.
For a heartbeat, silence. Then Weasley’s bark of laughter, loud enough to echo. “Merlin, Harry, you’ve got terrible timing for this sort of news.”
Terrible timing.
Draco scoffs aloud before he can stop himself. A sharp, private noise. Tell me about it. He was born with bad timing, had announced as much in this very house, weeks ago, when the world felt like it had teeth. Apparently the condition was contagious.
What surprises him most is the absence of that sharp twist in his gut. Once, news like that, Potter’s domestic bliss multiplying like rabbits, would have hollowed him. But there’s nothing. No pang, no envy. Just a flicker of surprise, and then the faintest warmth at the thought that Potter looks lighter than he has in years.
He closes his eyes briefly. The Black brothers stare at him still, stitched and silent. He wonders which of them he’s meant to measure himself against.
Hermione returns. Her face is flushed, not from anger for once, but from the news still buzzing across the room. She joins him at the tapestry without a word.
“Sirius,” Draco says, nodding at the name. “What do you know?”
Her gaze softens in a way that makes him uneasy. “He was brilliant. Reckless. Infuriating. He could light up a room and scorch it in the same breath. He was James Potter’s best friend, and he lived as if rules were made to be mocked.”
Draco arches a brow. “A Gryffindor, then.”
“The first Black to wear scarlet and gold,” she confirms. “Your family never forgave him. He was everything they despised and everything they feared they could never smother.”
She steps closer to the woven name, voice low. “He was terrible sometimes. Cruel when he was young. He almost got Severus killed once. But he chose. He chose to fight. He chose to stand with Harry, even when it cost him everything.”
Her hand drifts up, almost touching the fabric, then falling back. “And he died with a smile on his face. Fighting for what he believed.”
The air between them changes. Thicker. Charged. Draco’s shoulder brushes hers as he leans to study Sirius’s stitched name, and she doesn’t move away. He notices the faint smell of parchment and dust clinging to her jumper, the warmth radiating off her arm. Their bodies align without meaning to, the kind of nearness that sets every nerve awake.
She clears her throat, deliberately steady. “Do you know about the Marauder’s Map?”
He frowns. “What map?”
Her mouth curves, not quite a smile. “The Marauders: James, Sirius, Remus, Peter, they made a map of Hogwarts. Every passageway, every secret door. Even every person walking the halls, in real time.”
Draco blinks. “Potter had a map of Hogwarts?” Disbelief coils sharp in his voice. “Of course he did. That’s how you got away with all your mischief.”
At the word mischief, she laughs. A real laugh, bubbling out before she can stop it, startled by the echo.
“One day,” she says, catching her breath, “maybe we’ll show you.”
The promise hangs between them, dangerous and shimmering. He turns his head, and for one long moment their faces are too close. He can see the faint freckle near her jaw, the way her lashes catch the low light. The band under his skin thrums, and every part of him knows how easy it would be to tilt forward, close the space.
He doesn’t. Neither does she. But neither of them steps back, either.
The tension hums like a held breath.
The others are clustered across the room now, orbiting Harry’s news. Bill and Charlie exchange glances, older-brother worry etched in the lines of their mouths. Bill, always assessing risk. Charlie, restless even in celebration, as if measuring how to guard joy against the world’s teeth.
Harry and Ron lean into each other the way only war-forged brothers can, tired but standing, laughter softening their exhaustion. The kind of bond that needs no translation. Draco turns away, because watching it feels like trespassing.
Hermione lingers by the tapestry a little longer, but her shoulders slope, heavy. Charlie notices. He crosses the space and stops beside her, saying nothing at first. Then, simply, “You’re in too deep.”
She exhales, but he continues before she can protest. “I know you’re worried. I know you’re tired. And I know you won’t say it, so I will.”
Her lips part. He cuts her off again, gentle but firm. “You think you’ve got to carry this alone. But you don’t. Not this time.”
Hermione doesn’t argue. She just lets him say it, lets the words wash over her like something she can’t block. Their understanding is easy, old, carved in battles that didn’t leave scars on skin but on marrow.
Draco watches. And for the first time, there’s no jealousy burning in his gut. He understands now. They’re twin flames that never blazed together, but burned in the same direction. Not lovers. Something older, stranger, maybe stronger.
Hermione lifts her gaze finally, meeting Charlie’s eyes. She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t need to.
Draco looks away. His own reflection stares back from the tapestry’s woven surface, pale and blurred. Two brothers, two ends of a thread, stitched in defiance or silence.
Then something catches his eye.
A seam, faint but wrong. A stitch that doesn’t match the others. At the edge of Sirius’s branch, almost hidden in the dark threads, the embroidery ripples like a secret waiting to be pulled.
His breath hitches. “Granger,” he says, voice low.
She turns back, following his gaze. Her eyes widen.
The tapestry moves.