Chapter Text
Draco observed Hermione sat across the room on the settee, a book spread across her lap. He noticed she had not turned a page in nearly ten minutes, but her fingers remained fixed on the edges as though she feared dropping her guard if she relaxed even slightly. Every gesture told him she was bracing, even when no one else was near enough to touch her.
He recognized his own hand in the vastness of her distance. He had tried to be her shield, and in doing so, had become another scar upon her. He realized if he wanted to present her with the book and the plan, and gain her love, he’d have to build up slowly to it, make sure the timing was right. He knew that she was a sympathetic individual and she loved a good cause. Draco knew he’d have to first be vulnerable, to do so, he would have to give up pieces of himself he’d long ago buried.
“Did you know,” his voice left him before he planned it, rough with a truth tamped down too long, “that I saw you before you ever knew my name.”
The book did not move, she did not look at him, but she tilted her head slightly in his direction. He pressed forward anyway.
“On the train, in first year. You were asking about a toad.” He leaned against the cool window frame, anchoring himself there, because if he stepped too close too soon she would only draw further away. “Your hair was frizzed from static and you looked every stranger in the eye as if they were obliged to answer you, as if you already knew the world owed you fairness. I thought you were different, I wanted to sit beside you.”
Her fingers tightened around the book’s spine. He watched the smallest shiver move across her knuckles before she stilled herself again. The lack of outright dismissal was all the permission he needed.
“I wanted to be your friend.” His mouth curved with bitterness at the memory. “I knew I couldn’t, my name wouldn’t let me. But I watched you anyway. You never lowered your eyes, not even when the boys mocked you, when I mocked you. Do you know what that did to me, watching you stand so straight when I bent in every direction I was told?”
A shift of fabric drew his attention. She had adjusted her seat, ever so slightly, the book now resting in her lap rather than clutched to her chest. He inhaled carefully.
“I never told anyone that, not even Mother. I thought if I said it aloud, it would shatter the only thing in me that belonged solely to myself.”
Her eyes flicked up briefly before sliding back to the book. It was the first acknowledgement she had granted him in days.
“I play piano.” The words kept tumbling free as if dragged by a tide he could not resist. “And I sing. Mother taught me when I was small. I still play when the house is empty enough to permit it. It is the only place I know my hands are not used for ruin.”
The book lowered to her lap. She stared at him openly now, brows drawn in quiet thought. He had her attention. Good, that was enough. Now, he just needed to put the icing on the cake to get her thinking.
“In another life,” Draco continued, softer now, “I would have studied potions, I think. The intricacy always appealed to me. I would have pursued a mastery. I used to imagine that if I had, perhaps I would have worked beside you. Perhaps, eventually, we could have been something else entirely.”
He sat across from her, deliberately placing the small table between them, his posture rigid with restraint. His palms lay flat on his knees as if he were a schoolboy again, awaiting judgment. Her voice broke, worn and tired.
“Why are you telling me this now?”
Draco licked his lips.
“Because if I only show you the mask I wear, you will never know the man beneath it. And even if you hate me, I would rather it be for what is true, not what was forced upon me.”
The book slipped from her lap, forgotten against the cushions. She studied him with eyes that carried equal parts wariness and something else he dared not name. Her arms folded across her body as though to guard against him, yet her face did not turn away. Draco leaned back, weary yet unflinching. For the first time since that night, since the dinner, she did not leave the room when he entered.
She did not ask him to get out or demand Tinky to take her away. She only sat there, her fingers digging faint crescents into her arms, staring at him as though weighing whether the words he spoke could ever matter against the pain he had caused. Draco lowered his gaze to the floorboards, the confession spent, his chest raw with the ache of exposure but the mischevious smirk on his face was unmistakable as he muttered.
“I would have chosen you, Granger, if choice had ever been mine to make.”
They slipped into a tentative silence after that, but not entirely hopeless. Draco hoped with all his might that she might one day come to love him, Draco, and not hate the mask, Malphas. His plan simply had to work, it had too.
Theo and Luna’s visit would mark the first time Hermione was allowed extended company beyond himself within their wing. She had not known of the arrangement until the guests had arrived, and, Draco allowed himself the pleasure of surprising her. He crossed the room, the faintest upturn of amusement tugging at him as he pulled the door wide to reveal Theodore Nott and his peculiar wife.
Draco watched Luna step forward first, her pale hair loose, her eyes alight with something both dreamlike and knowing as she smiled softly at Hermione. Theo followed at a measured pace, his posture elegant but his attention heightened in a way that reminded Draco of the boy he had grown up with, the one who had survived by watching the angles no one else bothered to notice.
“Luna,” Hermione whispered, and the sound of her friend’s name carried a rawness that twisted Draco’s chest in ways he refused to examine.
She moved forward despite herself, her suspicion of Draco momentarily forgotten, and Luna gathered her into a quiet embrace. Draco caught Theo’s smirk over their shoulders, the kind of knowing look that passed between men who had weathered too much together. Draco did not return it, but his stance eased as he gestured them inside. Within minutes, the women were ensconced in Hermione’s private lab, voices weaving together in conversation that rose and fell like a melody.
Draco lingered long enough to be certain that Hermione had not attempted to use Luna as a shield for escape, but when she sank onto the divan beside her friend, her features softening with relief, he let himself step away. Theo followed him into the adjoining corridor, both of them moving toward the smaller study where Draco preferred his more private conversations.
The door closed behind them with a quiet thud, muffling the sound of Hermione’s laughter, a rare sound, and one Draco stored away to relive later. He turned toward Theo, who was already pouring two measures of Firewhiskey from the decanter by the fireplace.
“You look like a man about to gnaw through his own restraint,” Theo remarked dryly, handing him a glass.
Draco accepted it, the amber catching faint light as he tilted it once before sipping.
“Mind yourself, Nott.”
“Only an observation,” Theo replied easily, dropping into the armchair with the kind of casual grace only he could manage. He swirled his drink, then lifted his gaze, intent now. “Something’s happened since we last spoke. A new acquisition, if you can call it that.”
Draco arched a brow.
“Who?”
Theo leaned forward, lowering his voice, ensured they could not be overheard.
“Ginny Weasley. Blaise claimed her at the most recent revel.”
Draco stiffened before he could school himself, his hand tightening around the glass.
“The she-Weasley? That makes no sense. Blaise is married.”
“To Pansy, yes,” Theo said, his tone tinged with irony. “The same Pansy who parades Longbottom on her leash like a prize pony. The same Pansy Blaise has loved with a kind of madness since we were boys. And yet now he arrives with Weasley at his side, collared, trained. Tell me that does not reek of something beyond choice?”
Draco’s mind worked quickly, sifting through possibilities. Blaise was no fool, no reckless man acting on whim. Everything he did served some deeper game. But why Weasley? Why now?
“Does she resist him?” Draco asked quietly, his voice more thoughtful than curious.
Theo’s mouth tightened.
“It’s hard to tell. I only saw them together once.”
Draco’s jaw set. Hermione’s laughter carried faintly through the hall, soft and distant, and it pierced him in strange contrast to the conversation at hand.
“What do you make of it?”
Draco sipped his whiskey, letting the burn anchor him.
“Blaise plays at something bigger. He’s always only looked out for himself.”
Theo’s smirk was humorless.
“I don’t have a good feeling about it.”
“Blaise has always coveted control, not chaos. He would not take her unless he intended to use her for something that mattered.”
Theo regarded him in silence for a moment, then tipped his glass in a lazy salute.
“Then we agree. This is not what it seems, we should be careful.”
Draco inclined his head, though his thoughts were already drifting. Draco heard the study door opened some time later, and Tinky entered, her expression serene as always.
“They are still talking, Master Draco.” she said, her voice lilting. “I thought I should fetch more tea before they empty the pot.”
Draco rose immediately, though he forced his pace to remain measured as he followed her back toward the lab. Theo’s footsteps fell in behind him, steady as ever. When they entered, Hermione and Luna were seated close together, books spread open, vials arranged in careful rows across the table. Hermione’s cheeks carried color, her eyes bright in a way Draco had not seen in weeks. She looked so alive, so happy.
Draco stood in the doorway, letting the sight sear into him. Hermione glanced up, catching him, and her expression faltered, guardedness sliding back into place. Still, he had seen it, and the memory of her softened gaze was enough to carry him through a dozen more lashings at the Dark Lord’s hand. Theo stepped past him, moving to Luna’s side, his hand brushing hers as he murmured something that made her laugh. Draco remained where he was, his pale eyes fixed on Hermione, his voice quiet when he finally spoke.
“Enjoy yourself, Granger?”
Her chin lifted, defiance snapping back into place.
“Immensely. Thank you for staying away long enough to allow it.”
His mouth tugged faintly, though the sound that escaped was not quite laughter. At least this time she acknowledged him.
He stepped from the shower and wrapped a towel low on his hips, water beading along collarbone and rolling down to the waistband that cut a clean line across his pelvis, drops clinging before surrendering to gravity and disappearing into the cotton. He dragged the towel over his hair and shook out the last of the spray, pale strands clinging in damp streaks, piercings winking at ear and brow, a constellation of silver he rarely allowed the world to study.
The mirror fogged and cleared in the rhythm of his movement, offering brief flashes of a face that belonged to Malphas outside these rooms and to someone far more dangerous within them, someone whose ruin had been sealed on a train platform many lives ago.
He left the bath with water still tracing trails along his skin, towel exchanged for soft grey pants that rode indecently low on his hips, the fabric a concession to comfort he indulged only when he didn’t have a summons the next morning. The bedroom waited, quiet and spare, linens pulled smooth, chair angled toward the bed where he kept vigil most nights, the space arranged to shelter without pretense, every line drawn with Hermione’s habits in mind.
He rolled his neck until it clicked and crossed to the dresser where a black shirt lay folded, fingers brushing the cotton, and he let the moment linger because he sensed her through the door, the familiar imprint of her magic announcing approach before the handle turned.
Hermione stepped in from the lab with the scent of potions clinging to her sleeves, a notebook tucked under one arm, and a loose strand of hair caught against the corner of her mouth until she brushed it away with an impatient flick. She halted in the doorway when she saw him, eyes tracking without permission across the wet sweep of his chest to the cut of muscle over abdomen, lingering at the dip where the waistband sat scandalously low, a slow unguarded survey that thrilled him with its honesty.
Her gaze lifted in the next heartbeat, face schooling itself into disdain as if she could erase what it had revealed, and he let his shoulder rest against the dresser with casual indolence, the pose offering the dragon across his back when he turned slightly to reach for the shirt and then denying it again when he faced her, an invitation and a refusal braided together.
“You chose a good hour to play Potions Master,” Draco murmured, voice sanded by heat and softened by the private luxury of being half dressed in her presence, “I was beginning to think you had locked yourself in there just to deprive me of your company.”
“I have better uses of my time than enduring your ego.”
He allowed a lazy half smile to touch his mouth as he watched her fight the urge to look down again, eyes flicking despite her will to the line of muscle that arrowed into soft cotton, the concrete proof that his discipline did not live only in the might of his spells. Of course he’d allowed his body to remain in top shape as well. He had to be the very best for his Hermione.
“Do you,” he mused, tone turned velvet-smooth without the word itself, “then perhaps you can explain why your eyes keep returning to the same place?”
Color rose along her throat and gathered at the tops of her cheeks, a wash of heat she could not command away, fingers tightening on the notebook as if paper could shield her from how thoroughly he had seen.
“You are dripping on the floor,” she muttered, which was not an answer.
He lifted the black shirt by two fingers and did not put it on, the fabric hanging from his hand as if still undecided, gaze never leaving her face.
“If it offends you, Granger, I can cover up,” he offered softly, the words innocent on the surface and filthy underneath, “or you can keep looking and admit that you like what you see.”
Her mouth parted to deliver a scathing retort, the kind that usually sliced clean and left him eager for the next, although nothing arrived, which said more than anything she might have chosen. Her eyes betrayed her again and cut downward for the span of a heartbeat, and when they returned to his face they carried a storm he could not name, need threaded with loathing, curiosity laced with dread, admiration laced with rage at herself for feeling it.
He crossed the room without haste, the shirt still loose in his hand. He stopped with the bedpost at his hip and the foot of the mattress between them, not closing distance completely, not caging, granting her all the space while filling it with the kind of attention that made lesser men look away.
“Say the word,” he murmured, voice dropping into a register he saved for her alone, “and I will pull this shirt on and stand across the room like a statue.”
He leaned against the bed frame, arms crossed, purposely flexing every muscle as he did so, enjoying the way his abs rippled.
“Or say another word and I will get on my knees for you and let you decide what you want. My body is yours, Granger. Use me.”
Her breath stuttered and steadied, the notebook lowering fractionally as though its function as shield had been compromised, eyes sweeping his torso again before she dragged them back where he wanted them.
“You disgusting peacock,” she muttered, color deepening in a way that made triumph coil low inside him, “you think you can parade yourself and I will fall at your feet? I’m not one of your admirers, Malfoy.”
“You are not one of them,” he answered, tone stripped of mockery, “you are more than them, the only one who matters.”
She swallowed hard, prying her eyes away from every corded muscle of his bicep.
“You mistake me, Malfoy,” she managed, voice gathering edge again, “I am not impressed by muscles and scars.”
He lifted the shirt again and drew it over one shoulder without haste, pausing with it hanging open so the dragon along his back remained visible, head angled toward the nape of his neck where her mouth might grace him one day.
“If you continue looking at me like that,” he added, voice turning rough, “I will take it as invitation to take you right here, up against the wall with those pretty legs wrapped around my waist.”
Draco relished as color flared up her throat again and rushed across her cheeks in a wave, eyes darting toward the doorway as if escape could spare her the humiliation of being caught admiring the man who had hurt her and guarded her in equal measure. He did not move to block, did not trap, merely lifted his free hand and let fingers ghost an inch above the mattress, palm open, offering a perch rather than a shackle.
“Come here and put me where you want me,” he invited in a near whisper.
He watched as her lashes lowered and lifted, a slow blink that betrayed deliberation, and for a breath he thought she might reach, a hand extended to rest in his open palm, a single step closing the impossible distance. She drew herself up instead, dignity settling as she hugged the notebook to her chest and aimed for disdain with mixed success.
“You are disgusting,” she muttered, and he noticed her red face as she turned away toward the vanity where she kept hairpins and small vials, trying and failing to quell the heat in the room.
He lifted the hem of the shirt at last and drew it over his head, having teased her enough.
“If you require an escort to the lab, I am at your service,” he added with courtly gravity, the kind he used to tease Theo, “and if you prefer solitude, I will sit in my chair and think incredibly pure thoughts while I count the tiles on the ceiling.”
That earned him a sound he had not heard in weeks, a quick breath that might have been the ghost of a laugh had she allowed it to finish, and she shook her head as though he had offered her a poorly brewed draught.
“Pure thoughts do not belong to you,” she said, fighting another smile with diminishing success, “I would not recognize you if you had one.”
Draco let his eyes rest on the curve of her neck where a strand of hair had escaped, and he smiled to himself because her eyes had lingered, because she had colored when he invited her to use him. He could be patient with a patience that frightened other men, he could be relentless with a tenderness that defied the mask he wore, and he could be Malphas to the world and still come home to be whatever Hermione Granger required, and tonight, at least, she had required him to be quiet and beautiful and near. He could make a life out of that, he thought.
The moonlight bathed the balcony in a silvery hue, Draco’s footsteps were soft, muffled by the plush rug beneath him. The cool night wrapped itself around him, but it was nothing compared to the lingering horrors in his mind.
Hermione sat there, her back turned to him, perched on the edge of the balcony, her eyes staring out into the vast expanse. Her profile was illuminated, a faint outline against the dark sky, and for a moment, Draco simply watched her. Her hair, untamed, fell in soft waves down her back, and he couldn’t help but admire the quiet strength.
He approached slowly, careful not to startle her, as though she were some fragile creature in the moonlight. Gently, he placed a thick, soft blanket over her shoulders. The cold was biting, and the warmth of the fabric seemed to relax her. He watched Hermione turn her head slightly towards him, her gaze flicking to him, though she didn’t move.
“Can’t sleep?” he asked, his voice low, almost hesitant.
She shook her head, the motion barely perceptible. Her voice, when it came, was soft, almost too quiet for the night air.
“No. I was woken up…by you.”
Draco sighed. He felt a flash of shame for being so weak, for letting his horrors through.
“I apologize, Granger.” he murmured, his voice threading through the night.
Hermione gave a small, almost imperceptible shake of her head.
“You don’t need to apologize.” Her voice was honest. “What was it? A bad dream? What happened?”
He thought about telling her, about finally letting her into the deepest parts of himself. But he knew now wasn’t the right time, not yet. She could see it,though, couldn’t she? That part of him that was shattered, the jagged pieces buried deep within him behind walls built so high that not even he could climb them without a cost.
“You don’t want to know,” he replied softly, though his voice betrayed himself.
She looked away then, her eyes returning to the dark horizon as she folded her arms tighter across her chest. Draco could feel it, that subtle change.
“Why do you keep saying that?” Hermione asked.
Draco’s pulse quickened.
“I-” He stopped, shaking his head as though the words themselves were too detrimental to speak. “Some things are better left unsaid.”
Draco watched as Hermione pursed her lips, clearly disappointed, but nodded nonetheless.
“Granger,” he whispered, his voice raw with a longing he rarely showed openly. “You’re the only thing that’s ever kept me sane.”
The words were a confession. Hermione softened her position next to him, staring at the darkened Manor grounds, and Draco realized the walls he had spent so long building around himself were beginning to crumble.