Duet 02 -- elektra30 and worksofstone
Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling and Warner Bros. All fics posted at this community were written entirely for fun, not for profit, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Title: A Shadowed Land
Author:
worksofstone
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3,305
Summary: After impulsively proposing to Hermione, Draco finds himself threatened with being disowned. He comes to Hermione with a compromise, asking her to agree to postpone their engagement until his parents come around. Hurt and frustrated by his continued refusal to choose her over his parents, she leaves him. Over the next few months, Draco is left with plenty of time to contemplate his actions.
Warnings: Mild profanity.
Author's Note(s): Betaing was artfully performed by Riptey, who is made of magic as well as thematic and structural insight. Britpicking was provided by Ningloreth, the Dramione Duet's mod and an all-around Britpicking champ. Adele's Rolling In The Deep could be considered this story's unofficial theme song. This fic was written in response to the following prompt: "You don’t love a woman because she’s beautiful, She is beautiful because you love her." - Anonymous
Things were not going as planned.
“I thought you'd understand,” he said.
“You thought I'd understand? That you could just propose to me, and then-not even a week later-change your mind?” Her eyes were red-rimmed from crying and Draco's heart sank.
“Hermione, be reasonable,” he pleaded. “My parents threw a fit. Threatened to disown me, if you'll believe it. They'll come round. It'll just take time.”
“Your parents.” There was scorn in her voice. “You know, that's what makes it worse. If it was you, I could live with it. Perhaps you felt it was too soon, perhaps you felt that marriage wasn't quite right for you, perhaps you'd decided that we just don't work. But, no, it's your parents. Yet again. Your parents, who have been trying to drive us apart for the last three years, who've felt like the invisible third party in our entire so-called relationship,” she said. Her words rang with bitterness.
She started crying again, silently. He wanted to reach out to her and bring this entire disaster to a halt. He didn't, because he was sure that if he tried to touch her, she'd hex him into next week.
When she spoke, her voice was rough and scratchy, but the words were clear enough. “I could wait for a long time, if it was for you. But it isn't. This is about your parents and how I don't think you'll ever find the courage to do what you want. About how I'll always come second, to them.” She wiped away her tears with the back of her hand and swiped underneath her nose. Her eyes were puffy and red, her nose was running, and she was hiccuping, but she stood like a queen leading her country to war. “I can't even blame them, because it's you who's done it, in the end. I'm sorry, Draco, but I can't be in this relationship any more. We're over.”
“Hermione, please-”
Her hands were shaking, something that only happened when she was stricken and upset; she didn't Apparate. Instead, she turned and walked away. It gave him a good long time to watch her go. She didn't look back.
He waited for her to owl, to fire-call. To ask him to take her back, to say that she'd made a mistake, to say she still loved him and she was willing to wait.
She didn't.
Three months after Hermione left, his mother sent a sparsely worded summons. Since he and she had parted ways, his parents had been both smothering and cold. He found his mother in the Manor's library, standing under one of the tall windows. Next to her was a table filled with gleaming fire, the sunlight illuminating both ancient jewellery and pieces of more recent origin.
“I've had a few items brought out for your perusal,” his mother said. Which was odd, because he wasn't due to inherit anything else until his wedding day-
He looked down at the table and realised her intent. Spread on velvet were generations of Malfoy wedding gifts, whose worth was meant to reflect the winning of a far rarer and purer prize. Unspoken was the expectation that these gifts would soon pave the way for contracts, engagement balls, and the morning after his wedding night. Twenty-nine was old for a pure-blood to be unwed, by his parents' standards. Not so by his own. Most of his year at school had only recently married, and Hermione had never complained about-
He wasn't prepared for how much it hurt to think of her while looking at gifts for his future wife. His mother watched him wordlessly, and he picked up a silver bracelet, careful to show no expression. The metal was old and tarnished, the moonstones chipped and worn, but Draco could still read the ancient runes that ran along the inside of the band. Protection. Cold. Winter's touch of frost and fire. There was nothing here that was not powerful or valuable, and most often it was both.
“Certain items require refurbishing and repair. I thought it would be best to consult with you, if there were certain pieces you would prefer,” she said.
It took three to six months to restore most types of magical jewellery, and up to nine months if a piece was dangerous or ancient. Which meant that his parents were giving him nine months, at the most, to pick a bride. Draco said nothing, and his mother's mouth tightened in displeasure. With a flick of her wand, she summoned scrolls and writing implements.
“If you need time, you have the afternoon to do this at your leisure. Draw up a list and leave it on the table,” she said, and walked out of the library.
A simple glance told him that most of what lay before him was unsuitable. Many older pieces required vows that came close to the Unbreakable Vow between the giver and wearer. There was a torc made of rich, shining gold and pattered in Celtic knotwork; it was charmed to bring both protection and clarity of sight on the battlefield. A set of silver bracelets, engraved with trees and vines, brought luck in woodlands and always pointed one to true North. A diamond pendant held wounds tightly closed, a ring rimmed in sapphires purified water, a medieval circlet illuminated scrolls and books only to the wearer's sight, and a set of ruby and pearl earrings warded the senses from beguilement. For all their promises of peril, they were undeniably alluring, radiating depths of power as intangible and undeniable as the sun's brilliant light.
None of which was appropriate for the kind of wife which his parents were sure to require. He turned his attention to the other, more mundane works. Most of it was fabulously beautiful, worked from the rarest gems and metals. There was a priceless set of pearls from the eighteenth century, and an ornate diamond tiara which was sure to spark envy in its wake, but both were otherwise bland and inoffensive, and of little magical worth. A large carved brooch trimmed in opal and emerald was surrounded by similar beautiful pieces. Most of it was imbued with preservation and self-cleaning charms, and occasionally a minor ward. Their power was thin but constant, like wavering moonlight.
Through these pieces, he could already see the outline of his future wife: she would agree to be lovely, faithful, and have her life's ambitions whittled down to being Draco Malfoy's wife. The contract they sign will say that, should they separate and she not return his gifts, he can sue for breach of contract. His will be a marriage defined by feet of parchment and cost of legal contracts, and he will buy his bride with Malfoy gold.
He found his eyes stealing back towards the other, unsuitable pieces. The torc was compelling, speaking of gifts in battle. Someone who was no stranger to the wilderness would have appreciated the bracelets and the sapphire ring. The diamond pendant would be the expression of one's love for another, as it would have sealed his wife's wounds at the cost of his own magic. Hermione would have loved the circlet-
Draco found his vision wavering, and he blinked back tears that threatened to fall. He bent to his task, writing with a hasty scrawl that was sure to draw his mother's sharp rebuke.
He wrote out orders for the pearls and the diamond tiara to be prepared.
When he'd proposed to Hermione, he'd just got a pancake-making spell horribly wrong. They were caught in the explosion, and she was laughing while brushing flour from his eyes. Sunlight had turned the flour-filled air into golden dust, and he'd taken her hand and asked her to marry him. He'd offered to Transfigure one of her spoons into a ring, to show her the sincerity of his intentions. She'd smiled and said that his promises were enough.
When she'd left, she'd owned nothing that he could use as leverage, with which to demand that she return.
The labs were always chilly, but these days Draco welcomed the cold. It was a distraction from other, less pleasant personal obsessions. There had been a time when he hadn't been working sixty-hour weeks, when on Friday at five o'clock, he'd be going up a Ministry lift, ready to pry someone else out of her office-
-but those days were over. Although, one would have thought that spending more time at work would have resulted in an improvement in his work, not a decline. His division head had discretely inquired if he needed time away from work. The idea was tempting, but what he wanted was time away from her.
It was a sick twist of fate that the only thing that could keep him distracted required spending ample time in the same building where she worked, but distance was of little matter when trying to escape someone who was only a presence in his mind. He hadn't drastically altered his routines, but she no longer walked down to the potions lab to chat about his work, stopped by her favourite break-rooms, cleared her mind by pacing through old, familiar corridors, or even went to her favourite lunch-time cafés, as if she was trying to do her best to make sure that they never met again-
-and Draco decided that tonight was a fine night to try creating one of the more volatile potions that was suggested by his latest research. It took until midnight to prepare most of the ingredients, or otherwise cull them from the Ministry's well-stocked stores; his request logs were sure to raise his supervisor's eyebrows, asking for so many restricted ingredients at once, but such things were necessary in research. It was one in the morning by the time that he tipped the last of the wormwood into his cauldron. As he watched, the bubbling contents turned to deep violet, just as he'd theorized, but then bled into a worrying green. As he leaned closer for inspection, the cauldron's contents hissed and exploded.
When he came to, the lab was on fire. Animals made of emerald flame chased each other around cabinets and corners, leaving ash in their wake. It wasn't quite Fiendfyre, but it was enough to kill him all the same. Draco choked on the fumes, coughing while wordlessly casting shield spells and the Bubble-Head Charm, which allowed him to breathe and clear the smoke from his eyes. He was cut off from the door, disoriented by the flames. There was no obvious way out, and the Ministry was warded to prevent Apparition-so he was pretty sure he was about to die, because he could see Ashwinders.
He found himself crouched behind a stone counter, barely shielded from the heat. Bubble-Head Charm or not, there wasn't enough air left to breathe, and he was beginning to feel light-headed. The creatures nipped at his shields, and he could feel them bend. Whatever he'd accidentally unleashed was beyond the capabilities of the Ministry's night-shift disaster team, or someone would have rescued him by now. If they even knew he was here at all.
Draco shielded his eyes from the green flicker of the flames and wondered which of the fiery creatures would be the means of his death. There were many, many things that he wished he'd done or left undone, but right now he was preoccupied by a more recent regret-
“Draco. Draco!”
Something brushed against the edges of his shields, and then the fire burst away. Hermione stood before him, and he wasn't sure if he was glad or terrified to see her. Her face was smudged with soot, and ashes flickered behind her. Her wand was raised, keeping the flames at bay.
“Get up,” she said. She yanked on his arm and he tried to rise. Then he slipped into unconsciousness.
When he woke up in St. Mungo's, his parents were there. His mother looked worried and relieved, and even his father unbent enough to look concerned. There was no sign of Hermione. When he demanded to know where she was, his parents looked at each other in surprise. After a moment, his mother said that they were not aware that Miss Granger had been there at all. Anxiety threatened to eat him alive until a summoned nurse told him that Hermione had been brought in, but was discharged in the middle of the night.
He spent his recovery time reading The Daily Prophet, combing between the lines for news of Hermione, and composing letters that he never sent. One week into his recovery, there was an article about the accident, accompanied by a picture of Shacklebolt talking while Hermione stood behind him. She looked away from the camera constantly, and there were dark circles under her eyes, but it was tangible proof that she was alive. He carefully tore the photograph out of the paper and tucked it away in the book that he was reading.
It kept company with the letters, which all started with 'Dear Hermione' and ended in various ways that even he recognized as depressing.
Astoria Greengrass's dress was the colour of the sea at midnight, a masterpiece crafted in shimmering silk. It was so perfectly set off by the creams of the table linens and the jewel tones of the flower arrangements, that Draco suspected he was looking at the handiwork of at least two interfering mothers.
Two mothers who seemed to have neglected to inform both Astoria and himself about their plans, judging by the way that the post-dinner conversation went. They stood together by the verandah's marble balustrade, corralled and abandoned by interfering parents. From their vantage point, they could see faerie lights glitter above the twilight-shrouded garden party, as various members of pure-blood families and their attendant children mingled on the lawn. He and Astoria talked about inconsequential events and their lives since school, ignoring the fact that both of them knew what matrimonial game was supposed to be going on.
Astoria was very polite and very pretty, but the conversation was stilted and dull. Draco was tempted to chalk it up to her, but he heard his own wooden remarks. He watched her fingers whiten as they wrapped around the marble balustrade, a gesture that mirrored his numb grip on his wineglass. Whatever was going on inside Astoria's mind was a mystery to him, but one thing was certain: neither of them wanted to be there at all.
Later, he went back to his flat, pulled out a small brass-bound box, and placed it on his desk. There were only two people who could open this box and one of them-the other person who could open this box didn't visit him any more. Draco flipped back the lid with shaking hands, spilling out the box's contents and spreading them across his desk. His study was shadowed, lit only by flickering firelight.
He looked at Hermione's gifts until the fire burned down to glowing coal.
He spotted her in a Ministry break-room long after hours. As he suspected, he was not the only one who had developed a bad habit of working late. Through the window, he watched her fighting with a newfangled mechanical tea-maker, one which was notorious for brewing over-steeped rubbish, and wrested her prize from its magic-infused mechanical grip. She took a sip and made a face, dousing it with milk. The motion was so familiar that his heart ached.
She retreated back to the table and sat down, not bothering to turn her chair so that she could face her work. She sipped her tea and stared at the wall. Her papers were scattered over the top of the battered table, which was scarred and stained from the passage of a thousand of teacups and soggy sandwiches. Her hair was a haystack and there were dark circles under her eyes. She looked half-dead, and he wanted to sit down at her table and ask her what was wrong. Once, she would have told him. He wanted to hear her talk and coax her to lean on his shoulder, where she would fall asleep and he'd have to be careful not to wake her. The image was so sharp, sweet and strong, that he pushed open the door to the room without even thinking about the consequences. Only when she started in surprise and stared at him did he realize what he'd done.
They stared at each other like prey startled by a dragon's flight. He stepped forward and sat down, even as she put down her cup. He had a speech planned out, about how much he loved her, about how wrong he was to think that she was the one who needed to apologize, about how he would do anything at all to bring her back. He should talk, he should say something, but there was too much between them. Three feet multiplied by six months and a broken engagement, and the span of the table might as well have been the distance to end of the world.
If his words couldn't cross it, at least he could. He pushed back his chair, the sound echoing in the tiny room. He crossed that terrifying distance and knelt in front of her. She stared at him with wide eyes, as he fleetingly wondered what he looked like, a desperate man who had cornered her at near midnight.
“I don't care, all right,” he whispered. His hands were gripping his robes and crumpling the heavy cloth, fighting the urge to reach out. “I don't care about all of it any more, just say that you'll come back.” The words were mangled and broken, and he had no idea if she understood. He'd always been shit with words when it mattered. He gave up and gave into his need to touch. He raised one hand and cupped the curve of her jaw, as he leaned forward to kiss her, and tried to put all of his love and need into a single gesture. Her lips were warm beneath his, but unresponsive. Despair rose in him, bitter and dark, and he closed his eyes and whispered a single word: “Please.”
For a moment which seemed to stretch out to forever, she did nothing. And then she gave. When she kissed him, her mouth was warm and pliant, and her hands rose to cradle his face. She tasted of bitter, over-steeped tea, but Draco didn't care, because this was the sweetest kiss he'd ever received. It was water after a drought, it was warmth in the depth of winter.
THE END
Title: A Shadowed Land
Author:
worksofstone
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3,305
Summary: After impulsively proposing to Hermione, Draco finds himself threatened with being disowned. He comes to Hermione with a compromise, asking her to agree to postpone their engagement until his parents come around. Hurt and frustrated by his continued refusal to choose her over his parents, she leaves him. Over the next few months, Draco is left with plenty of time to contemplate his actions.
Warnings: Mild profanity.
Author's Note(s): Betaing was artfully performed by Riptey, who is made of magic as well as thematic and structural insight. Britpicking was provided by Ningloreth, the Dramione Duet's mod and an all-around Britpicking champ. Adele's Rolling In The Deep could be considered this story's unofficial theme song. This fic was written in response to the following prompt: "You don’t love a woman because she’s beautiful, She is beautiful because you love her." - Anonymous
Things were not going as planned.
“I thought you'd understand,” he said.
“You thought I'd understand? That you could just propose to me, and then-not even a week later-change your mind?” Her eyes were red-rimmed from crying and Draco's heart sank.
“Hermione, be reasonable,” he pleaded. “My parents threw a fit. Threatened to disown me, if you'll believe it. They'll come round. It'll just take time.”
“Your parents.” There was scorn in her voice. “You know, that's what makes it worse. If it was you, I could live with it. Perhaps you felt it was too soon, perhaps you felt that marriage wasn't quite right for you, perhaps you'd decided that we just don't work. But, no, it's your parents. Yet again. Your parents, who have been trying to drive us apart for the last three years, who've felt like the invisible third party in our entire so-called relationship,” she said. Her words rang with bitterness.
She started crying again, silently. He wanted to reach out to her and bring this entire disaster to a halt. He didn't, because he was sure that if he tried to touch her, she'd hex him into next week.
When she spoke, her voice was rough and scratchy, but the words were clear enough. “I could wait for a long time, if it was for you. But it isn't. This is about your parents and how I don't think you'll ever find the courage to do what you want. About how I'll always come second, to them.” She wiped away her tears with the back of her hand and swiped underneath her nose. Her eyes were puffy and red, her nose was running, and she was hiccuping, but she stood like a queen leading her country to war. “I can't even blame them, because it's you who's done it, in the end. I'm sorry, Draco, but I can't be in this relationship any more. We're over.”
“Hermione, please-”
Her hands were shaking, something that only happened when she was stricken and upset; she didn't Apparate. Instead, she turned and walked away. It gave him a good long time to watch her go. She didn't look back.
He waited for her to owl, to fire-call. To ask him to take her back, to say that she'd made a mistake, to say she still loved him and she was willing to wait.
She didn't.
Three months after Hermione left, his mother sent a sparsely worded summons. Since he and she had parted ways, his parents had been both smothering and cold. He found his mother in the Manor's library, standing under one of the tall windows. Next to her was a table filled with gleaming fire, the sunlight illuminating both ancient jewellery and pieces of more recent origin.
“I've had a few items brought out for your perusal,” his mother said. Which was odd, because he wasn't due to inherit anything else until his wedding day-
He looked down at the table and realised her intent. Spread on velvet were generations of Malfoy wedding gifts, whose worth was meant to reflect the winning of a far rarer and purer prize. Unspoken was the expectation that these gifts would soon pave the way for contracts, engagement balls, and the morning after his wedding night. Twenty-nine was old for a pure-blood to be unwed, by his parents' standards. Not so by his own. Most of his year at school had only recently married, and Hermione had never complained about-
He wasn't prepared for how much it hurt to think of her while looking at gifts for his future wife. His mother watched him wordlessly, and he picked up a silver bracelet, careful to show no expression. The metal was old and tarnished, the moonstones chipped and worn, but Draco could still read the ancient runes that ran along the inside of the band. Protection. Cold. Winter's touch of frost and fire. There was nothing here that was not powerful or valuable, and most often it was both.
“Certain items require refurbishing and repair. I thought it would be best to consult with you, if there were certain pieces you would prefer,” she said.
It took three to six months to restore most types of magical jewellery, and up to nine months if a piece was dangerous or ancient. Which meant that his parents were giving him nine months, at the most, to pick a bride. Draco said nothing, and his mother's mouth tightened in displeasure. With a flick of her wand, she summoned scrolls and writing implements.
“If you need time, you have the afternoon to do this at your leisure. Draw up a list and leave it on the table,” she said, and walked out of the library.
A simple glance told him that most of what lay before him was unsuitable. Many older pieces required vows that came close to the Unbreakable Vow between the giver and wearer. There was a torc made of rich, shining gold and pattered in Celtic knotwork; it was charmed to bring both protection and clarity of sight on the battlefield. A set of silver bracelets, engraved with trees and vines, brought luck in woodlands and always pointed one to true North. A diamond pendant held wounds tightly closed, a ring rimmed in sapphires purified water, a medieval circlet illuminated scrolls and books only to the wearer's sight, and a set of ruby and pearl earrings warded the senses from beguilement. For all their promises of peril, they were undeniably alluring, radiating depths of power as intangible and undeniable as the sun's brilliant light.
None of which was appropriate for the kind of wife which his parents were sure to require. He turned his attention to the other, more mundane works. Most of it was fabulously beautiful, worked from the rarest gems and metals. There was a priceless set of pearls from the eighteenth century, and an ornate diamond tiara which was sure to spark envy in its wake, but both were otherwise bland and inoffensive, and of little magical worth. A large carved brooch trimmed in opal and emerald was surrounded by similar beautiful pieces. Most of it was imbued with preservation and self-cleaning charms, and occasionally a minor ward. Their power was thin but constant, like wavering moonlight.
Through these pieces, he could already see the outline of his future wife: she would agree to be lovely, faithful, and have her life's ambitions whittled down to being Draco Malfoy's wife. The contract they sign will say that, should they separate and she not return his gifts, he can sue for breach of contract. His will be a marriage defined by feet of parchment and cost of legal contracts, and he will buy his bride with Malfoy gold.
He found his eyes stealing back towards the other, unsuitable pieces. The torc was compelling, speaking of gifts in battle. Someone who was no stranger to the wilderness would have appreciated the bracelets and the sapphire ring. The diamond pendant would be the expression of one's love for another, as it would have sealed his wife's wounds at the cost of his own magic. Hermione would have loved the circlet-
Draco found his vision wavering, and he blinked back tears that threatened to fall. He bent to his task, writing with a hasty scrawl that was sure to draw his mother's sharp rebuke.
He wrote out orders for the pearls and the diamond tiara to be prepared.
When he'd proposed to Hermione, he'd just got a pancake-making spell horribly wrong. They were caught in the explosion, and she was laughing while brushing flour from his eyes. Sunlight had turned the flour-filled air into golden dust, and he'd taken her hand and asked her to marry him. He'd offered to Transfigure one of her spoons into a ring, to show her the sincerity of his intentions. She'd smiled and said that his promises were enough.
When she'd left, she'd owned nothing that he could use as leverage, with which to demand that she return.
The labs were always chilly, but these days Draco welcomed the cold. It was a distraction from other, less pleasant personal obsessions. There had been a time when he hadn't been working sixty-hour weeks, when on Friday at five o'clock, he'd be going up a Ministry lift, ready to pry someone else out of her office-
-but those days were over. Although, one would have thought that spending more time at work would have resulted in an improvement in his work, not a decline. His division head had discretely inquired if he needed time away from work. The idea was tempting, but what he wanted was time away from her.
It was a sick twist of fate that the only thing that could keep him distracted required spending ample time in the same building where she worked, but distance was of little matter when trying to escape someone who was only a presence in his mind. He hadn't drastically altered his routines, but she no longer walked down to the potions lab to chat about his work, stopped by her favourite break-rooms, cleared her mind by pacing through old, familiar corridors, or even went to her favourite lunch-time cafés, as if she was trying to do her best to make sure that they never met again-
-and Draco decided that tonight was a fine night to try creating one of the more volatile potions that was suggested by his latest research. It took until midnight to prepare most of the ingredients, or otherwise cull them from the Ministry's well-stocked stores; his request logs were sure to raise his supervisor's eyebrows, asking for so many restricted ingredients at once, but such things were necessary in research. It was one in the morning by the time that he tipped the last of the wormwood into his cauldron. As he watched, the bubbling contents turned to deep violet, just as he'd theorized, but then bled into a worrying green. As he leaned closer for inspection, the cauldron's contents hissed and exploded.
When he came to, the lab was on fire. Animals made of emerald flame chased each other around cabinets and corners, leaving ash in their wake. It wasn't quite Fiendfyre, but it was enough to kill him all the same. Draco choked on the fumes, coughing while wordlessly casting shield spells and the Bubble-Head Charm, which allowed him to breathe and clear the smoke from his eyes. He was cut off from the door, disoriented by the flames. There was no obvious way out, and the Ministry was warded to prevent Apparition-so he was pretty sure he was about to die, because he could see Ashwinders.
He found himself crouched behind a stone counter, barely shielded from the heat. Bubble-Head Charm or not, there wasn't enough air left to breathe, and he was beginning to feel light-headed. The creatures nipped at his shields, and he could feel them bend. Whatever he'd accidentally unleashed was beyond the capabilities of the Ministry's night-shift disaster team, or someone would have rescued him by now. If they even knew he was here at all.
Draco shielded his eyes from the green flicker of the flames and wondered which of the fiery creatures would be the means of his death. There were many, many things that he wished he'd done or left undone, but right now he was preoccupied by a more recent regret-
“Draco. Draco!”
Something brushed against the edges of his shields, and then the fire burst away. Hermione stood before him, and he wasn't sure if he was glad or terrified to see her. Her face was smudged with soot, and ashes flickered behind her. Her wand was raised, keeping the flames at bay.
“Get up,” she said. She yanked on his arm and he tried to rise. Then he slipped into unconsciousness.
When he woke up in St. Mungo's, his parents were there. His mother looked worried and relieved, and even his father unbent enough to look concerned. There was no sign of Hermione. When he demanded to know where she was, his parents looked at each other in surprise. After a moment, his mother said that they were not aware that Miss Granger had been there at all. Anxiety threatened to eat him alive until a summoned nurse told him that Hermione had been brought in, but was discharged in the middle of the night.
He spent his recovery time reading The Daily Prophet, combing between the lines for news of Hermione, and composing letters that he never sent. One week into his recovery, there was an article about the accident, accompanied by a picture of Shacklebolt talking while Hermione stood behind him. She looked away from the camera constantly, and there were dark circles under her eyes, but it was tangible proof that she was alive. He carefully tore the photograph out of the paper and tucked it away in the book that he was reading.
It kept company with the letters, which all started with 'Dear Hermione' and ended in various ways that even he recognized as depressing.
Astoria Greengrass's dress was the colour of the sea at midnight, a masterpiece crafted in shimmering silk. It was so perfectly set off by the creams of the table linens and the jewel tones of the flower arrangements, that Draco suspected he was looking at the handiwork of at least two interfering mothers.
Two mothers who seemed to have neglected to inform both Astoria and himself about their plans, judging by the way that the post-dinner conversation went. They stood together by the verandah's marble balustrade, corralled and abandoned by interfering parents. From their vantage point, they could see faerie lights glitter above the twilight-shrouded garden party, as various members of pure-blood families and their attendant children mingled on the lawn. He and Astoria talked about inconsequential events and their lives since school, ignoring the fact that both of them knew what matrimonial game was supposed to be going on.
Astoria was very polite and very pretty, but the conversation was stilted and dull. Draco was tempted to chalk it up to her, but he heard his own wooden remarks. He watched her fingers whiten as they wrapped around the marble balustrade, a gesture that mirrored his numb grip on his wineglass. Whatever was going on inside Astoria's mind was a mystery to him, but one thing was certain: neither of them wanted to be there at all.
Later, he went back to his flat, pulled out a small brass-bound box, and placed it on his desk. There were only two people who could open this box and one of them-the other person who could open this box didn't visit him any more. Draco flipped back the lid with shaking hands, spilling out the box's contents and spreading them across his desk. His study was shadowed, lit only by flickering firelight.
He looked at Hermione's gifts until the fire burned down to glowing coal.
He spotted her in a Ministry break-room long after hours. As he suspected, he was not the only one who had developed a bad habit of working late. Through the window, he watched her fighting with a newfangled mechanical tea-maker, one which was notorious for brewing over-steeped rubbish, and wrested her prize from its magic-infused mechanical grip. She took a sip and made a face, dousing it with milk. The motion was so familiar that his heart ached.
She retreated back to the table and sat down, not bothering to turn her chair so that she could face her work. She sipped her tea and stared at the wall. Her papers were scattered over the top of the battered table, which was scarred and stained from the passage of a thousand of teacups and soggy sandwiches. Her hair was a haystack and there were dark circles under her eyes. She looked half-dead, and he wanted to sit down at her table and ask her what was wrong. Once, she would have told him. He wanted to hear her talk and coax her to lean on his shoulder, where she would fall asleep and he'd have to be careful not to wake her. The image was so sharp, sweet and strong, that he pushed open the door to the room without even thinking about the consequences. Only when she started in surprise and stared at him did he realize what he'd done.
They stared at each other like prey startled by a dragon's flight. He stepped forward and sat down, even as she put down her cup. He had a speech planned out, about how much he loved her, about how wrong he was to think that she was the one who needed to apologize, about how he would do anything at all to bring her back. He should talk, he should say something, but there was too much between them. Three feet multiplied by six months and a broken engagement, and the span of the table might as well have been the distance to end of the world.
If his words couldn't cross it, at least he could. He pushed back his chair, the sound echoing in the tiny room. He crossed that terrifying distance and knelt in front of her. She stared at him with wide eyes, as he fleetingly wondered what he looked like, a desperate man who had cornered her at near midnight.
“I don't care, all right,” he whispered. His hands were gripping his robes and crumpling the heavy cloth, fighting the urge to reach out. “I don't care about all of it any more, just say that you'll come back.” The words were mangled and broken, and he had no idea if she understood. He'd always been shit with words when it mattered. He gave up and gave into his need to touch. He raised one hand and cupped the curve of her jaw, as he leaned forward to kiss her, and tried to put all of his love and need into a single gesture. Her lips were warm beneath his, but unresponsive. Despair rose in him, bitter and dark, and he closed his eyes and whispered a single word: “Please.”
For a moment which seemed to stretch out to forever, she did nothing. And then she gave. When she kissed him, her mouth was warm and pliant, and her hands rose to cradle his face. She tasted of bitter, over-steeped tea, but Draco didn't care, because this was the sweetest kiss he'd ever received. It was water after a drought, it was warmth in the depth of winter.
THE END