Glass House [PG-13] for atalanta84
Title: Glass House
Author/Artist: jenjou
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: harry potter is not mine and I’m not making any money off this.
Warnings: none
Summary: This is the story of Snow White, complete with omniscient mirrors, a very charming prince, and a whole lot of evil.
Notes: for atalanta84: pretty much every part of your request was something I didn’t know how to write, so I took it as a challenge, but let’s just say … think I’ll stick to angst in the future…
This is the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Well, the seven dwarfs don’t actually feature in this version. The old one was kind of sexist. They expected Snow White to stay home and clean the house and raise the children while they were out working, as their mother had always done. It didn’t happen like that. Snow White was not that kind of girl. Besides, they were Weasleys. Nobody wants to hear a story about Weasleys. They’re poor.
There isn’t exactly an evil stepmother either. Since Voldemort was killed, the Ministry has really taken a hard line on Dark Magic and there’s no way you could carry around a basket of poison apples without registering it with the Department of Magical Law Enforcement first.
The characters that actually matter are there though: Snow White, whose purpose seems largely to be walking recklessly into danger, despite frequent warnings to keep the door shut and not talk to strangers, which is exactly what makes the prince so important. He’s a hero - which is a massive over-simplification of things. Where the hell did he come from? And why did he rescue her? Sure, she wasn’t unattractive, but he’d had prettier girlfriends (and none of them were working as maids in a miner’s house). Didn’t he wonder what his parents would think if he brought a girl like her home? After all, he was a prince. He had a name to uphold.
He had to uphold the Malfoy name.
***
princess
“Oof.”
Draco Malfoy lay flat on his back, staring up at the stars, panting and wincing at the small tremors that passed through his body. There was a brick digging into the small of his back, and the path was uncomfortably cold-damp, but he didn’t feel very much like moving. Ever again.
“Fuck,” he added belatedly, for good measure, and then abruptly turned over and vomited.
He thought of going indoors. It was October, after all, but then, the fire was keeping him warm enough and his muscles were already seizing painfully. He doubted he could walk. And it wasn’t as if there were anybody inside, apart from a bunch of impertinent paintings and a mirror, and what use had they ever been?
This was what it was going to be like, he thought idly, rolling onto his back. This was what it was going to be like after tomorrow, after Granger came for the last time.
Somewhere a glass pane exploded and the orange glow of the burning glass house swelled. A high pitched, drawn out screech shrivelled into a whine, and then died. Smoke began to pour out of the hole, obscuring the stars.
This, Draco thought, is what ever after is like.
*
Draco was in the greenhouse, humming an old Weird Sisters tune he couldn’t remember the words to, thinking of nothing in particular. Dull September afternoon sunlight shone wearily onto the table where he was planting Pygmy Perimagi seeds in trays, while around him the plants shifted and chirruped sleepily. Even the dangerous plants, the ones he thought of as Greenhouse Seven plants, didn’t need much watching today. It was a boring day. An ordinary day.
He had just finished watering the newly planted seeds when Odo, the house elf, popped into the room and squeaked, “The official is being here, Master.”
“He’s early.” Draco pulled off his gloves slowly, watching the Venomous Tentacula creeping up behind his elf with narrowed eyes. The elf’s ears drooped self-consciously and Draco sighed irritably. “Bring him some tea in the parlour and tell him I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
“Yes, Master!”
The Tentacula’s vine closed over air as the elf disappeared with a crack and the plant wilted in disappointment. Draco smirked.
“Sorry, but I need that. Good help is so hard to find these days. But maybe I’ll feed you a Ministry official if you’re good though.”
Once indoors, Draco stopped in front of the mirror in the front hall to wipe a smudge of dirt from his cheek. His reflection looked back at him critically, but he couldn’t find any fault with his appearance.
“Looking good, handsome,” the mirror purred.
“Show me our guest.”
The reflection shifted smoothly from Draco’s own to that of the huge mirror in the parlour, placed there specially for the purpose of spying on guests before one had to go and welcome them. It was always handy for preventing nasty surprises - and Draco could think of no better way to describe the person unwittingly fixing their hair in the glass.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Draco muttered, disgusted, wheeling away to storm into the parlour.
Hermione Granger turned towards him with a start, then held out a polite, rather reluctant little hand and said business-like, “Malfoy. Good afternoon.”
“What are you doing here?” he demanded coldly, ignoring the hand.
“I’ve been sent by the Ministry to take register of all the Dark objects in your house, as you agreed in the terms of your sentence. We sent an owl to notify you last week.”
“I meant, why you? Surely they could have found someone less …” Draco gestured vaguely at her, trying to think of the best word.
“Mudblooded?” Granger guessed sharply, dropping the polite act like a hot potato. “Trust me, Malfoy, this is the last place I want to be. But at least I have the option of leaving, unlike certain racist purebloods, so I don’t really see how you’re in a position to think you’re better than me.”
“Granger,” Draco drawled, “I make more money living under house-arrest and doing nothing every day than you do in a year. That does make me better than you.”
“There are more important things than money, you know,” she retorted hotly.
“Yes, there’s blood purity - oh, but you don’t have that either, do you?”
“You know, maybe if you changed your attitude the Wizengamot might shorten your sentence. They’ve already let Goyle out.”
That was because Goyle didn’t have a single thought in his head - let alone an original one. He’d believe anything you told him. He must be lost without his leader, Draco thought wistfully. But he had no intention of insulting his fellow Slytherin, so aloud he sneered, “What are you going to do? Tell on me?”
“I don’t need to,” she sniffed. Snotty little bitch. “Your behaviour speaks for itself.”
Oh, Merlin, and don’t forget self-righteous, Draco added mentally, rolling his eyes. “My point, Granger, is that I don’t see what experience a Muggleborn like you has with wizarding houses. If I have to allow this, then I want somebody who knows what they’re doing, not someone who’ll get eaten by the first doorway they walk through.”
“Thanks for the concern, Malfoy, but-”
“Don’t misunderstand me. The only thing I’m concerned about is my carpets. Bloodstains are always such a pain to remove.”
“-But the Ministry chose me,” Granger resumed tightly, “And this may come as a surprise, but they actually know what they’re doing-”
“Yes, that does come as a surprise.”
“-And they aren’t going to change their minds just because you’re a racist prat. But if you have a problem with it, go ahead and complain. I’m sure it’ll look great on your record for the review board.”
So she played dirty.
He liked that.
No. Wait. This was Granger. He did not like it. He did not like anything about her and she was in his house. And there wasn nothing he could do about it. Urgh.
“Fine,” he gritted out eventually. “Just … don’t try and liberate my house elf, or anything.”
“I’m glad you understand me, then,” she replied coolly, just a tinge of triumph in her voice.
“And now you understand me,” Draco returned sharply, recovering himself. As much as he wanted Granger out of the Manor, he’d prefer it if it weren’t in a coffin: the Malfoys really didn’t need that kind of publicity right now. “I’m telling you this for your own good, so you better listen. Never use the west-wing staircase between the first and second floor when it’s dark out, knock three times before you open any door, and stay out of the library.”
It did not come as even slightly a surprise when Granger immediately argued, “I’m authorised to go into any room I want.”
“Actually, you’re not,” Draco answered coolly. “My grandfather had the library fully licensed twenty years ago, so the Ministry couldn’t touch it if I told you we kept books that suck Muggle blood.” Which they did, incidentally. One had almost bitten Tracey Davis’s fingers off when he’d invited everybody over for a week in the summer between Second and Third year. For the first time in his life, Draco had honestly thought his father was going to cane him for allowing his friends into the library, and he hadn’t been allowed to extend an invitation to Davis the next year. “So while I’m sure the thought of so many books in one place makes you wet, you can get off to the idea in your own home.”
“You’re disgusting,” Granger said, pulling a face.
“I care.”
*
“It’s scandalous.”
“Disgusting.”
With his socked feet up on the desk and lounging back in his armchair, Draco stared determinedly at his book, his jaw clenched. Of all the hundred and four rooms in the Manor, he didn’t know why the paintings had chosen his father’s office to congregate in. Well. It was Draco’s office now, he supposed, since his parents had decided to spend their five years of house-arrest in the family villa in Nice. Four years down the line, he couldn’t really imagine them ever returning.
“In my day a Mudblood wouldn’t dream of entering the noble house of the Malfoys.”
“In my day no Malfoy would have allowed it.”
“It’s not like I have a choice,” Draco burst out, slamming Flibbertigibbet the Foul Fiend shut. “She’s a Ministry official - and I’m pretty much a criminal. Nobody cares what I want.”
“You know what they say: a fool loses his estate before he finds his folly,” haughty Evangeline Malfoy commented archly.
“Absolutely true,” her cousin Dilys agreed.
“What are you saying?” Draco asked, annoyed.
“They don’t know anything about our culture, Draco,” his grandfather Abraxas, who was visiting from the library, pressed, “And then they come in here, changing things-”
“-stealing things! Did you know she’s been here five minutes and she’s had the claymore set removed. They’ve been in the family for three hundred years!”
“Well, they did try and chop up anybody who walked past them without singing the Scottish anthem,” Draco pointed testily.
“-and soon, you’ll find you have nothing left but the wooden pole tied to your back and the fire under your feet. They will watch you burn and they will enjoy it! They don’t feel things the way we do. They’re monsters. They’re just animals, Draco.”
Draco slammed his fist down on the table and the portraits shut up as the ink jars rattled. “I’m not six years old! You don’t need to tell me these things. I don’t want her here either, but there’s nothing I can do.”
“In my day we’d just take the undesireable for a walk down the second floor staircase in the west wing,” Silvius suggested discreetly.
“Ooh, and a spot of poison in the tea never goes out of fashion, either,” Dilys piped up enthusiastically.
“I’m not going to kill her,” Draco said exasperatedly, rolling his eyes. Honestly, at times these paintings were positively medieval.
Their arguments were cut off abruptly when Parsimonious came dashing through the frames, his ruff all aquiver and wailed in anguish, “The Mudblood has taken the [torture devices]!”
“Fine!” Draco shouted over the ensuing babble, pushing himself to his feet. He couldn’t believe he was allowing himself to be bullied by a house. His father had never had to endure insubordination like this. “Fine, I’ll go and see what I can salvage.”
*
“Granger, I thought you were supposed to be making a list, not stealing all my stuff.”
She was in the Yellow Room, a guest room on the second floor that had been converted into a storeroom, standing by the light of the window consulting her parchment. At the sound of his voice she looked up from the long roll at him, her eyes lingering on his feet. Draco followed her gaze to his socks, which were embroidered with snitches. Fuck. He’d forgotten to put his boots back on.
“That’s a bit of an exaggeration, Malfoy,” she said, turning back to her list. “All I confiscated was a torture device and a set of swords that tried to cut me up when I walked past them.”
“Oh, did I not warn you about those?” Draco inquired with a sneer. “Must have slipped my mind.”
“Yes. Well.” She frowned. “They were in clear violation of the Domestic Safety Act.”
“Those things are worth thousands of galleons!”
“I’m sure you’ll survive,” Granger returned evenly, glancing pointedly out the window at the giant marble fountain below, which was glittering with sea nymphs specially imported from Greece.
“I need them!”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Granger said mockingly. “I didn’t realise you desperately needed to disembowel someone. I’ll have them sent right back!”
“I’m sure I could find a use for them,” Draco muttered darkly, as she turned her back on him to wave her wand over a suspiciously coffin-shaped chest that was growling at her. Suppressing a sigh - he hated a losing argument - Draco watched Granger critically. She had her hair tied out of her face into a godawful ponytail that exploded out of the back of her head like an electrocuted puffskein. She was wearing the usual black Ministry attire, with the sleeves pushed back so that she could work, exposing thin, brown wrists. He wondered where she’d got the tan. She should have looked like a house-witch, but she didn’t, and he couldn’t figure out why.
“Honestly, I don’t understand how somebody could think to raise children in a house like this,” Granger remarked critically, interrupting his reverie. “It’s downright dangerous!”
“Survival of the fittest, Granger,” Draco drawled, leaning against the doorway. He could get used to this … conversation thing … again. This was the problem with being locked up alone for four years. It made him fit to talk to the likes of Granger. “Why do you think I don’t have any siblings?”
In truth, although the Ministry had frequently sent officials to nose out their Dark Arts stash, there hadn’t really always been all that much to hide. Most of the Dark items packed into the empty guestrooms now had been carted in by various Death Eaters and the Dark Lord himself during his occupation of the Manor in the last few years before his fall. Aunt Bella, in particular, had had a penchant for squirreling away things that made people bleed. Old Borgin had loved her.
Granger glanced up at him as she took a step back from the chest, which was now snapping its lid at her, and quirked a smile. On either side of her, the yellow curtains twitched and Draco barely had the chance to warn her “Watch out!” before the drapes were wrapped around her neck, choking her. Her eyes popped and her hands flew up - and then before Draco could even draw his wand the curtains exploded into a fine golden dust, that drifted peacefully to the ground in the ensuing silence.
“Those were antiques!” Draco sputtered, too taken aback to be properly annoyed.
“I’m sorry,” she gasped guiltily, rubbing her neck. “I just - it was instinct.”
“Your first instinct is instantaneous combustion?” Draco asked incredulously. “You - homocidal maniac! I’ll ask you to curb your violent tendencies while you’re in my house, thank you very much!”
“Oh, I’m sorry, this coming from a person whose curtains just tried to kill me.”
“Well, what do you expect?” Draco sneered, brushing curtain dust off the front of his robes. It was just too easy. “They’re charmed to kill doxies and rodents. They must have gotten confused by the giant rats’ nest that you call hair.”
“Actually,” Granger said sniffily, consulting a long golden tube covered in dials and gauges, “According to the thaumometer, there’s a high level of decayed magic in here. I’m getting a reading of seven point four. The charm on your curtains was probably warped by all the Dark magic in the room.”
Draco stared at her until she looked up, and started to grow uncomfortable and cross.
“What-?”
“The words you speak hurt my brain,” Draco interrupted flatly. “Your entire existence is redundant and I hope something Dark and evil eats you until you are dead. And then, when you’re dead, your nearest of kin will get the bill for the destruction of my property by owl.”
She raised her eyebrows and opened her mouth to reply, but Draco was already stomping down the hallway. A few of the portraits called out to him as he passed, “Have you done it?”
“Is she leaving?”
“No,” Draco replied shortly. “I find her too annoying to talk to her long enough to tell her to go away.”
*
“You’re up early.”
It was shortly after eleven, a few days later, when Draco swiped away the steam on his bathroom mirror, blinking rather blearily at himself, despite the hot shower. He combed his hair back out of his face with his fingers and reached for his razor, replying sleepily, “Mm, yeah, but … got to keep an eye on Granger, you know.”
“That Muggle girl? Haven’t you been complaining how much you hate the very sight of her?”
“Yeah, well, once you’ve got the vaccination she’s not so bad, really. And somebody has to make sure she doesn’t strip the house bare.”
“She has a certain je ne sais quoi about her,” the mirror decided. “… I think it’s the hair.”
“I find her tolerably amusing,” Draco allowed grudgingly. “In an ‘I’m-laughing-at-you’ kind of way, not ‘with you’. When she isn’t being excessively Gryffindorish, I mean.”
“Very soulful brown eyes.”
“Oh, please,” Draco scoffed, but the mirror continued, undeterred.
“Good cheekbones. A very reflectable smile. And, let’s be honest, a nicer nose than the last girlfriend.”
“She’s not my-” Draco cut off abruptly, his razor halting, and frowned. “Wait, you’re not siding with the rest of the house? What about her being a Mudblood?”
He could practically hear the shrug in the mirror’s voice as it replied. “Blood? What is blood? I don’t see any difference, personally.”
Draco stared at his reflection and then watched his eyebrows settle as he recovered himself. He tapped his razor against the glass and said in a business-like voice, “Yes, well, you’d fawn over a Veela too, until it whipped out the beak and fireballs on your arse and then what would you have to say?”
“Yes, well, she’s no Veela,” the mirror tittered scornfully.
“Absolutely not.”
mirror(mirror)
You can’t see yourself. You can’t know yourself. Not completely. Not without looking into your own eyes, without seeing the shape of the shell of your ear, without observing the subtle shift of your own expressions. Even though your lips, your eyes, your eyebrows, your ears, are there all along. The evil stepmother never would have realised that Snow White was more beautiful than she was if the mirror hadn’t shown it to her. Even though she sat across from her at the dining table for every meal.
For the last couple of weeks, Draco had been amusing himself by following Granger around and annoying her. She was so earnest, so easy to tease. It was childish, he conceded to himself as he climbed the narrow, winding staircase up to the attic, but it wasn’t as if he had anything better to do. It helped that the paintings tended to ignore him when he was with her.
It took him a moment to spot Granger amongst the centuries of clutter, but he found her at last at the far end of the room behind a hat stand stacked with dusty old bonnets and a green feather boa, and a heavy chest of drawers. She was standing in front of an ornately carved mirror so large it almost reached the rafters, and her reflection showed him a frozen, half-awed expression. She didn’t see him standing behind her. It wasn’t that kind of mirror.
“Enjoying yourself?”
Granger started violently, and had to make a flailing leap for the hat stand as she knocked it over wheeling around. Draco smirked, amused the reaction he had caused, as an old sunhat flopped onto her head in a puff of dust. She lifted it back onto the stand, red in the face and coughing, and stammered out, “Malfoy. I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Evidently. I see you found our Mirror of Erised.”
“Your-? That’s not the Mirror of Erised, Malfoy. It definitely did not show me my heart’s desire,” she stated emphatically. “I don’t want that at all!”
“Think of it as the evil twin of the mirror you know,” Draco said, studying her carefully. She couldn’t seem to meet his eyes. He wondered what she could have seen. “It shows your deepest, darkest desire. The thing you want, but don’t want to want.”
Her little Gryffindor soul must be mortified at discovering it wanted something ignoble.
“Like, say, in the traditional mirror, an alcoholic might see himself sober and happy,” Draco elaborated, drawing closer to try on an ancient sailor’s cap from the stand, “But in this-”
He hadn’t meant to look. He’d had a long term resentment for this mirror. But when he caught a glimpse of himself out of the corner of his eye, he forgot everything else. As he watched, his reflection threw his head back, lips parted in a silent groan, the scar on his chest stretched with a gleam of silver between his parted robes. In front of him Granger was kneeling, with his hands fisted tightly in her hair, jerking her head forwards.
“Fuck,” Draco breathed, glancing at the girl standing beside him. A thrill of illicit heat shivered through him, because she had no idea.
“-he’d see himself with more alcohol? … Malfoy?”
“Ah.” Draco blinked, and suddenly remembered the body on this side of the mirror. He stumbled back a couple of steps, out from in front of the mirror, feeling like he’d been given a strong dose of Pepper-Up Potion. What the fuck was wrong with him? Clearing his throat, he said coolly, “I should go and water the garden. Try not to expode any curtains.”
It was only once he was standing motionless in the greenhouse that he realised he was still wearing the stupid sailor’s cap.
*
The first time he’d ever looked into the mirror he’d been twelve, hoping to catch a glimpse of Potter being mauled by Slytherin’s monster. Instead, what he had seen was himself, on the train to Hogwarts for the first time, and Potter shaking his hand. He had never looked again. He’d felt too bitter and betrayed, by both himself and the mirror. Later, he’d been too afraid to look, afraid he would see Lord Voldemort up on the Astronomy Tower and this time not having any hesitation to cast the Killing Curse. Because he’d known that if he saw that, the Dark Lord would read it out of his mind like the front page of the newspaper. Because once you saw a thing, it was impossible to ignore it.
“It shows the future,” his father had once told him, unable to tear his eyes from whatever it was he had seen. If there was ever a man who was unafraid to acknowledge his darker desires, it was Lucius Malfoy. But Draco had been unimpressed by the hunger in his father’s voice as he stood sullenly beside him, scuffing the toe of his boot against the stone floor, because who in their right mind wanted to be friends with Potter anyway?
So he had done his utmost to make sure it never happened. The problem came in when, once you had seen a thing, you conceded that you wanted it, because then you would do anything to make it come true. Draco didn’t want to think what it meant that he had come back, in the dead of the night, creeping through his own house past the sleeping paintings.
It was only because he couldn’t sleep, he reassured himself, as he stepped in front of the mirror.
It was different this time. More. Everything. Her shoulderblades and her behind pressed into the glass while her spine arched away towards his mouth. Her hands were in his hair, pushing him into her breast, while his hands ran over her sides, her stomach, her breasts, her thighs. Draco could feel their every rhythmic movement shudder through him, could feel the touch of hands uncoordinated with heat against his soul.
Slowly, he reached out a hand through the dark attic between them to touch the sweat clinging to the curve of her back and hit cold, hard glass. He let his fingers slide across the flat surface and fall to his side, itching to touch, to smooth away the burning in his body. This wasn’t a mirror. It didn’t feel like a mirror. It was a window. A glass door. It was so, so close.
Draco stepped back, letting out a shuddering breath, his hands brushing restlessly over his robes. It was too fucked up to be turned on by this. He wasn’t going to get off on it.
But he wanted it. He’d admit that. He wanted it badly. He wanted to be able to hear her, to feel her, not this perverted peepshow through a wall of glass and into his own head.
“It shows the future,” he murmured, his voice hoarse and loud in the dark. “… That’s what being Slytherin means.”
*
“So what’s the story with the west wing staircase?”
“What?” Draco blinked, trying to focus. It had become increasingly difficult, over the last few days. All he could think about was what he had seen in the mirror, but he didn’t know how to approach her. Ideally, he mused, what he needed was to get locked in a broom cupboard with her, or to save her from a rogue cursed item. Unfortunately, the Dark objects in his house tended to be the type that cut of heads first and asked questions later.
“Why am I not allowed on the west wing staircase between the first and second floor?” Granger asked patiently, as they climbed the stairs on the opposite side of the Manor.
“Oh. That. Well, my grandfather’s great uncle, Parsimonius Malfoy, was really paranoid about thieves, so he set up all these traps around the Manor. But then one night he thought he heard someone sneaking around so he went out in the dark to see. Turns out it was just the house elf cleaning, but anyway, Parsimonius fell down the stairs and died, and since then the curse he set won’t come off. Anybody who walks down those stairs just vanishes.”
“Vanishes? Where do they go?”
“No one knows,” Draco replied indifferently. “Parsimonius refuses to say. My guess is the bottom of the nearest dam.”
“That’s awful!”
Draco shrugged. “It’s mostly just annoying. I mean, you have to walk all the way around to the east wing.” Not to mention that they had lost a couple of house elves that way. But he thought it would be best not to mention that.
After a silence Granger said, “I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know that tomorrow will be the last day I’m coming in.”
Draco halted and Granger stopped a few feet further down the corridor when she realised he was no longer walking with her.
“I just need to do a final check of everything. I, um, wanted to thank you for being so accomodating,” she said, a little stiffly. “So. Um. Thanks.”
She turned rather self-consciously to keep walking and Draco jumped to catch her arm.
“Granger, wait.”
It wasn’t the perfect moment. It wasn’t romantic at all. There was no atmosphere in that yellow, brightly light corridor, but if he was going to wait until the perfect moment arose between the two of them, he’d be waiting until they were dead. It was the only moment he had. And Draco had always been a go-getter.
“Is it okay if I just …” Draco murmured, trailing off as he drew too close to remember which words came next.
She stood motionless, watching him with huge brown eyes, her lips slightly parted in surprise, but at least not in outright shock and he thought he might actually have a chance to -
“BLOOD TRAITOR!”
The corner of a painting’s golden frame crashed into Draco’s head and for one wild moment he thought it had attacked him before he realised that he’d jolted back into it himself. The skewed painting was shrieking into his ear, too loud, too close for him to be able to hear it through the haze of pain throbbing through his skull.
“Shit.”
He clutched the back of his head, squinting at Granger through watering eyes, but he was unable to make out her expression.
“I don’t know, Malfoy,” she said inscrutably, “You tell me.”
Draco blinked to clear his vision and, realising he was still ducking down away from the painting, straightened his shoulders.
“Tell you what?” he asked dumbly, amidst the screams of what seemed like every painting in the corridor, even the one of the dancing cherubs.
“Have you forgotten who you are? What she is? She’ll taint your blood! You’re betraying your forefathers-”
“Tell me if it’s okay to kiss a Muggleborn,” Granger snapped.
“I …” His mind felt blank - like he was only just realising that it had been turned off for days. “I shouldn’t have …”
“You’re a disgrace to the Malfoy name! Is this how you repay your family after everything they’ve given you?”
“I knew it,” Granger spat. “What, Malfoy, did you forget for a second that I’m a Mudblood?”
“It’s not like that,” Draco protested, growing angry. Merlin fuck a goat, his head hurt. “Your blood doesn’t have anything to do with how I feel about you, but that doesn’t mean it’s not important. You don’t get it. Saying I’m pureblooded isn’t just saying I’m better than you. It’s a way of life. I mean, for fuck’s sake, Granger, my house hates you. Doesn’t that tell you anything?”
“They’re just a bunch of paintings!” Granger yelled, waving her arm at the offending audience, who had quieted down now that it no longer seemed as if Draco would betray them. “They’re not people! They’re just caricatures frozen in the time they were painted. They can’t change! But you can! So grow up and accept the fact that times are changing. If you want to live in this world then you have to as well.”
“You don’t get it,” Draco repeated in a shout. “This is who I am! I can’t just become a whole other person.”
“If that’s true,” Granger said, her voice lowered, “Then maybe you should think about why you wanted to kiss me.”
“You know what? Shut the fuck up! Don’t act like you know me better than I do, you condescending little bitch. I’m not a fucking house elf. Don’t think you can turn me into one of your little projects to make the world a better place.”
“Fine. Fine! You’re right. You can’t change. You’re as arrogant and horrible as ever. I don’t know what I was thinking, letting you-” She cut off abruptly, red in the face and huffing with rage, and stormed away.
Draco stood his ground, grinding his teeth. Irmentrude Malfoy coughed discreetly in her frame, and Draco spun towards her to spit, “Thanks. You just saved me from making the biggest mistake of my life.”
Why had he wanted to kiss her?
“I know I did,” Irmentrude replied loftily. “Now straighten my frame, if you please.”
*
Hermione stormed down the stairs and through the corridors, fuming. She should have known. Malfoy had been so - well, not nice, never that, but at least not his usual awful self. She had actually found him rather charming and - urgh! How could she have allowed herself to be taken in by it?
She passed a set of massive double doors and then halted. So far she had walked obediently by them every day, but why should she listen to Malfoy? Had she not proven that she could take care of herself? Granted, there had been that curtain incident and she had almost qualified for the Headless Hunt on the first day when those swords had jumped out of nowhere at her, but had she not managed to survive - and moreover without the help of Draco sodding Malfoy?
It was just selfishness that made him ban her from the library, she decided, as she entered, miraculously without dropping dead at the second step. And maybe death would be worth it, she thought, awed by the size of the room. It was like Hogwarts’s Restricted Section multiplied by a hundred.
It was, after all, one of the largest collections of Dark Magic texts in Britian, she reminded herself dreamily, as she browsed the shelves lining the walls. She kept her hands behind her back, well aware that there were probably some very nasty hexes on a few of these, until a certain title caught her eye.
“That’s odd,” she murmured, reached out for a thick tome and hefting it open.
There was a white flash of light and then the book dropped to the carpet, its spine cracking as it landed. Over above, a satisfied chuckle filled the library, and then there was silence.
*
Meanwhile, Draco was in the greenhouse, hacking the heads off his flowers with his wand. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this angry. Couldn’t remember being angry at all, before she came - school days were so faded, just moving photographs with the bland taste of nostalgia. It had been years. Years coated in sticky boredom and despair. And then she’d come and she’d been so annoying, and he’d been annoyed, and it had felt amazing. He had felt. She had made him feel.
She was bright colours. Obvious: she didn’t do subtlety - she thought it was underhanded. Nobody could be so blatant, make him feel so much. It had to be her.
Draco covered his face with his hands and breathed deeply, slowly through his nose, focussing on the sound of the air sighing through his throat. Okay. Okay. He just had to forget. He’d been so bitter, these last four years, that the best years of his life were passing him by - the best years of sex and parties and drugs, his own personal corruption that he’d been sliding into with relish at the end of his seventh year. That teenage self-mutilation, self-hate, that he and his friends had hoarded and goaded each other with. He hadn’t realised that he was mouldering with it here, shut up in the Manor with its curses and poisons and its bad faith: its double reflections and its painted immorality.
But life was okay. He’d built up some nice walls around himself here in his greenhouse. It was his personal little haven. It was enough.
Granger was -
He was aware of the vicious jerk of gravity before he felt the coils tighten around his ankles and slither lightning fast up his legs. The edge of the clay trays struck him across the back of his shoulders and the black earth and bundles of uprooted Pygmy Perimagi seedlings tumbled over him, squealing in alarm, as he hit the ground elbows first.
It was only then that he registered the Venomous Tentacula straining towards him, its loose vines flailing delightedly as it wrapped around him, dragging him in. And then, Merlin, how could he be aware of anything else when its spines were flexing, piercing through his thick robes, through his dragonhide boots, through his skin. He let out a deep cry as its poison seeped into his blood and he twisted, landing on his stomach, swearing, “Shit! You fucking cunt plant. I swear, I’m gonna - fuck!”
His hands scrabbled through the strewn dirt, searching for his wand, but he had no idea where it was. The Pygmies hopped joyfully over his fingers and Draco urged himself, think, and he could feel the poison like it was corroding away his body from the inside.
Think. Pygmies were attracted to magic. They would be drawn to his wand. He twisted, grabbing hold of the table leg with one hand as the Tentacula started to drag him in and frantically scanned the floor. The Pygmies were all over the Tentacula and on his hands and - there.
Draco lunged for his wand, almost hidden by the scattered earth, straining and kicking uselessly against the pull of the Tentacula. Accio, he thought desperately, and the wand rolled gently a few inches closer, into his fingers. Flipping onto his back, Draco turned his wand onto the plant and the magic burst out before he could even think.
The heart of the Tentacula exploded into flames and its vines loosened and shrivelled as it emmitted a high-pitched shriek that would have made Draco shudder if he hadn’t been burning with vicious elation. He kicked himself free and threw himself to his feet, feeling woozy with poison. For a moment he hesitated in the spreading blaze then, loath to let his Pygmies burn, but they were bounding joyfully into the heart of the fire, so he tumbled out of the greenhouse, kicking the door shut behind him as he collapsed on the brick path.
“Oof.”
He lay flat on his back, staring up at the stars, panting and wincing at the small tremors that passed through his body. There was a brick digging into the small of his back, and the path was uncomfortably cold-damp, but he didn’t feel very much like moving. Ever again.
“Fuck,” he added belatedly, for good measure, and then abruptly turned over and vomited.
*
Draco woke to a huge pair of yellow eyes and bat ears. Stifling a groan, he shut his eyes again with a weak determination that lasted only until he became aware that he was soaked through with dew and that this oh-so-lovely morning stank of vomit. Merlin. It was probably just about dawn.
“Master,” Odo ventured nervously. “Master is needing to get up now.”
“Fuck off,” Draco moaned and threw an arm over his face as the elf backed away, exposing his raw eyes to the burning sunlight.
“Master, there is Aurors waiting in the portal.”
“The fire’s out,” Draco mumbled. “Tell them thanks for nothing.”
“Master, ‘tis Harry Potter, sir. He is saying Master is taking his Herminny.”
Draco slid his arm to his forehead and opened one eye crossly. “I haven’t taken her anywhere. She’s probably up in the attics or something, checking her lists.”
Odo’s ears flapped over his face as he shook his head vehemently. “No, sir. I is looking.”
“Well, then tell Potter she hasn’t come in today!” Draco snapped. “It’s not that hard! She’s got nothing to do with me anymore.”
“But Miss Granger is not leaving last night!” the elf expelled, wringing his hands in anguish.
“What?”
Draco sat up suddenly, into a thick fog of nausea that had him twisting sideways and not feeling any better after he’d retched up all the spit and bile in his stomach. Fucking sissy plant. Why couldn’t it just have killed him and gotten it over with? he thought, as he spat onto the bricks, trying to get the vile, sour taste out of his mouth.
“Is Master okay? I is bringing medicine!”
“Shut up!” Draco ordered. He glanced at the blackened shell of his glass house. The only antidote for Tentacula venom had burnt along with everything else. “What do you mean, Granger didn’t leave last night?”
“I is waiting to close the Floo, but she is not coming,” Odo explained, trembling and upset. “Master Abraxas is saying she is staying with you and I is not to bother you.”
“That bastard,” Draco breathed. He couldn’t believe it. He’d actually done it. Thinking fast, he said more clearly, “Send Potter and his Aurors up to the attic to look for her. Don’t act like anything is wrong. Odo, I order you to stop fucking wringing your hands! Once you’ve got rid of him, meet me in the library.”
*
He didn’t even have to consult with the painting. There she was: lying spreadeagled on the blood red rug with a book fallen open beside her, face-down a few inches from her outstretched hand. Draco sank to his knees beside her, fingers trembling, almost too afraid to touch. She was as cold and white as marble. And as still. He felt like he might throw up again.
He had told her to stay out of the library!
What book had she picked up? On the elaborately gilded cover a man with a crown on his head sat on a white horse, looking down at a castle in the distance. The spine of the book had cracked in the fall, splitting the title in two, but the large block letters were still legible. Grimm’s Fairytales.
What did that mean? He reached for the book and a voice shouted, “Don’t touch that!”
“Abraxas,” Draco hissed, glaring up at his grandfather’s painting. “Why didn’t you tell me she was here?”
“Of what importance is she, Draco?” Abraxas sighed dismissively, with just a trace of steel in his voice.
“Mind your own fucking business!” Draco yelled. “You had your turn and you’re dead now, so stop thinking you can interfere! This is my life! My world!”
“It’s my world that made you!” Abraxas spat. “Without your heritage you are nothing.”
“I’m still a Malfoy,” Draco said coldly. “All this is mine now, so you can’t take away anything from me.”
At the moment Odo appeared with a crack and Draco commanded, “Fetch me a mirror!”
The elf was back in an instant.
“Where’s Potter?” Draco asked, taking a small hand mirror from him.
“He is stomping through the Manor, Master,” Odo replied, looking distinctly put out by the fact. “Acting as if he is owning it, he is. His Aurors is everywhere.”
Shit. Draco glanced at Granger. He couldn’t afford for her to be found like this. “Take Granger to the greenhouse. She’ll be safe there.”
“Draco, Draco,” Abraxas said wheedlingly, changing his tact, as soon as Odo was gone. “Look at yourself. I admit, you are looking rather like a leprechaun today, but that face of yours is the product of hundreds of years of good breeding.”
Draco turned the hand mirror over and stared at his reflection for a moment. Underneath the soil and soot, his skin was pea soup green. Blearily he pulled his bottom lid away from his eye with one finger, to see - yes, the veins in his eyeballs were in fact luminous green. It was as if he’d been injected with food colourant and then shaken vigorously.
“Oh, dear,” was the mirror’s first, vaguely horrified, comment. “I hope you aren’t planning on winning over your lady love looking like that. She’ll mistake you for a goblin.”
“Fuck off!” Draco replied, highly offended. “It’s not like I’m deformed, or anything. At least my hair’s all right.”
“That hair,” Abraxas interrupted, “Is the product of careful breeding. You know, your father originally had his eye on Bellatrix Black - now there is a woman with frizz control problems. Fortunately I managed to talk him out of it, but just think of it! Think of the children! Do you really want to condemn them to growing a small bush out of the tops of their heads?”
“That’s it?” Draco asked incredulously. “You’re telling me to stay away from Granger because of her hair?”
“Well. It’s a metaphor for the larger concerns. Namely, her being a Mudblood, and having no class whatsoever. But, yes, the hair is rather unsightly.”
“It’s not that bad,” Draco muttered. “Honestly.”
Ignoring Abraxas’s incredulous coughing fit, Draco turned back to his reflection. He couldn’t do this himself without getting cursed and Granger would slay him if he used the house elf, but the mirror would work just as well. “I need you to read me this book.”
It was not what he expected.
“It’s … a Muggle story?” Draco puzzled, when the mirror had finished. How … bizarre. But if that was what it was going to take … he supposed he should go brush his teeth.
*
You know how it ends. The prince found Snow White out in the woods, in her glass coffin, and was overcome with admiration for her beauty. She was equally charmed with him, of course, when she was awoken from her slumber. Which is not to say she did not not comment on his peculiar discolouration.
“I know,” he replied with heroic stoicism, and did not whine about how ill he felt at all. “Now kiss me. Before I start to get self-conscious about it.”
“You? Self-conscious? Never,” she snorted, but kissed him anyway. But when Draco climbed up next to her on the table, she pushed him away and said, “Wait, wait. What does this mean?”
“I guess it means this is okay,” Draco murmured.
“Well - yes, that too, but I meant - why are you green?”
“Oh.” Draco grimaced. “Tentacula poison.”
“Oh. That explains why I woke up when you kissed me. Tentacula venom is the key ingredient to the antidote for Dreamless Sleep.”
It was Draco’s turn to withdraw. “The book said something about true lo- I mean. It said something about a kiss.”
“It’s just a Muggle fairytale, Malfoy. Muggles don’t know anything about magic.”
“So you’re telling me that you woke up because I got my poisoned spit inside your mouth?” Draco asked incredulously.
“Well-”
“It’s not like I just gobbed all over you, you know! I know how to kiss a girl!”
Granger bit her lip and said, embarrassed by her own daring, “Why don’t you show me, then?”
And they lived happily ever after. More or less.
/.;
Request
Song, Poem, or Quote (title/original creator) (optional): “Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.” - Friedrich Nietzsche
Describe your ideal gift in as few words/keywords as possible (plus rating): Draco’s POV, humor, sarcasm, banter, sexual tension, and a happy ending. Any rating.
Dealbreakers (absolute no-no's): Non-con, character death, Ron-bashing
ferretbush_post is the account the mods use to post gifts, it has not authored or created any of the gifts.
Author/Artist: jenjou
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: harry potter is not mine and I’m not making any money off this.
Warnings: none
Summary: This is the story of Snow White, complete with omniscient mirrors, a very charming prince, and a whole lot of evil.
Notes: for atalanta84: pretty much every part of your request was something I didn’t know how to write, so I took it as a challenge, but let’s just say … think I’ll stick to angst in the future…
This is the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Well, the seven dwarfs don’t actually feature in this version. The old one was kind of sexist. They expected Snow White to stay home and clean the house and raise the children while they were out working, as their mother had always done. It didn’t happen like that. Snow White was not that kind of girl. Besides, they were Weasleys. Nobody wants to hear a story about Weasleys. They’re poor.
There isn’t exactly an evil stepmother either. Since Voldemort was killed, the Ministry has really taken a hard line on Dark Magic and there’s no way you could carry around a basket of poison apples without registering it with the Department of Magical Law Enforcement first.
The characters that actually matter are there though: Snow White, whose purpose seems largely to be walking recklessly into danger, despite frequent warnings to keep the door shut and not talk to strangers, which is exactly what makes the prince so important. He’s a hero - which is a massive over-simplification of things. Where the hell did he come from? And why did he rescue her? Sure, she wasn’t unattractive, but he’d had prettier girlfriends (and none of them were working as maids in a miner’s house). Didn’t he wonder what his parents would think if he brought a girl like her home? After all, he was a prince. He had a name to uphold.
He had to uphold the Malfoy name.
***
princess
“Oof.”
Draco Malfoy lay flat on his back, staring up at the stars, panting and wincing at the small tremors that passed through his body. There was a brick digging into the small of his back, and the path was uncomfortably cold-damp, but he didn’t feel very much like moving. Ever again.
“Fuck,” he added belatedly, for good measure, and then abruptly turned over and vomited.
He thought of going indoors. It was October, after all, but then, the fire was keeping him warm enough and his muscles were already seizing painfully. He doubted he could walk. And it wasn’t as if there were anybody inside, apart from a bunch of impertinent paintings and a mirror, and what use had they ever been?
This was what it was going to be like, he thought idly, rolling onto his back. This was what it was going to be like after tomorrow, after Granger came for the last time.
Somewhere a glass pane exploded and the orange glow of the burning glass house swelled. A high pitched, drawn out screech shrivelled into a whine, and then died. Smoke began to pour out of the hole, obscuring the stars.
This, Draco thought, is what ever after is like.
*
Draco was in the greenhouse, humming an old Weird Sisters tune he couldn’t remember the words to, thinking of nothing in particular. Dull September afternoon sunlight shone wearily onto the table where he was planting Pygmy Perimagi seeds in trays, while around him the plants shifted and chirruped sleepily. Even the dangerous plants, the ones he thought of as Greenhouse Seven plants, didn’t need much watching today. It was a boring day. An ordinary day.
He had just finished watering the newly planted seeds when Odo, the house elf, popped into the room and squeaked, “The official is being here, Master.”
“He’s early.” Draco pulled off his gloves slowly, watching the Venomous Tentacula creeping up behind his elf with narrowed eyes. The elf’s ears drooped self-consciously and Draco sighed irritably. “Bring him some tea in the parlour and tell him I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
“Yes, Master!”
The Tentacula’s vine closed over air as the elf disappeared with a crack and the plant wilted in disappointment. Draco smirked.
“Sorry, but I need that. Good help is so hard to find these days. But maybe I’ll feed you a Ministry official if you’re good though.”
Once indoors, Draco stopped in front of the mirror in the front hall to wipe a smudge of dirt from his cheek. His reflection looked back at him critically, but he couldn’t find any fault with his appearance.
“Looking good, handsome,” the mirror purred.
“Show me our guest.”
The reflection shifted smoothly from Draco’s own to that of the huge mirror in the parlour, placed there specially for the purpose of spying on guests before one had to go and welcome them. It was always handy for preventing nasty surprises - and Draco could think of no better way to describe the person unwittingly fixing their hair in the glass.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Draco muttered, disgusted, wheeling away to storm into the parlour.
Hermione Granger turned towards him with a start, then held out a polite, rather reluctant little hand and said business-like, “Malfoy. Good afternoon.”
“What are you doing here?” he demanded coldly, ignoring the hand.
“I’ve been sent by the Ministry to take register of all the Dark objects in your house, as you agreed in the terms of your sentence. We sent an owl to notify you last week.”
“I meant, why you? Surely they could have found someone less …” Draco gestured vaguely at her, trying to think of the best word.
“Mudblooded?” Granger guessed sharply, dropping the polite act like a hot potato. “Trust me, Malfoy, this is the last place I want to be. But at least I have the option of leaving, unlike certain racist purebloods, so I don’t really see how you’re in a position to think you’re better than me.”
“Granger,” Draco drawled, “I make more money living under house-arrest and doing nothing every day than you do in a year. That does make me better than you.”
“There are more important things than money, you know,” she retorted hotly.
“Yes, there’s blood purity - oh, but you don’t have that either, do you?”
“You know, maybe if you changed your attitude the Wizengamot might shorten your sentence. They’ve already let Goyle out.”
That was because Goyle didn’t have a single thought in his head - let alone an original one. He’d believe anything you told him. He must be lost without his leader, Draco thought wistfully. But he had no intention of insulting his fellow Slytherin, so aloud he sneered, “What are you going to do? Tell on me?”
“I don’t need to,” she sniffed. Snotty little bitch. “Your behaviour speaks for itself.”
Oh, Merlin, and don’t forget self-righteous, Draco added mentally, rolling his eyes. “My point, Granger, is that I don’t see what experience a Muggleborn like you has with wizarding houses. If I have to allow this, then I want somebody who knows what they’re doing, not someone who’ll get eaten by the first doorway they walk through.”
“Thanks for the concern, Malfoy, but-”
“Don’t misunderstand me. The only thing I’m concerned about is my carpets. Bloodstains are always such a pain to remove.”
“-But the Ministry chose me,” Granger resumed tightly, “And this may come as a surprise, but they actually know what they’re doing-”
“Yes, that does come as a surprise.”
“-And they aren’t going to change their minds just because you’re a racist prat. But if you have a problem with it, go ahead and complain. I’m sure it’ll look great on your record for the review board.”
So she played dirty.
He liked that.
No. Wait. This was Granger. He did not like it. He did not like anything about her and she was in his house. And there wasn nothing he could do about it. Urgh.
“Fine,” he gritted out eventually. “Just … don’t try and liberate my house elf, or anything.”
“I’m glad you understand me, then,” she replied coolly, just a tinge of triumph in her voice.
“And now you understand me,” Draco returned sharply, recovering himself. As much as he wanted Granger out of the Manor, he’d prefer it if it weren’t in a coffin: the Malfoys really didn’t need that kind of publicity right now. “I’m telling you this for your own good, so you better listen. Never use the west-wing staircase between the first and second floor when it’s dark out, knock three times before you open any door, and stay out of the library.”
It did not come as even slightly a surprise when Granger immediately argued, “I’m authorised to go into any room I want.”
“Actually, you’re not,” Draco answered coolly. “My grandfather had the library fully licensed twenty years ago, so the Ministry couldn’t touch it if I told you we kept books that suck Muggle blood.” Which they did, incidentally. One had almost bitten Tracey Davis’s fingers off when he’d invited everybody over for a week in the summer between Second and Third year. For the first time in his life, Draco had honestly thought his father was going to cane him for allowing his friends into the library, and he hadn’t been allowed to extend an invitation to Davis the next year. “So while I’m sure the thought of so many books in one place makes you wet, you can get off to the idea in your own home.”
“You’re disgusting,” Granger said, pulling a face.
“I care.”
*
“It’s scandalous.”
“Disgusting.”
With his socked feet up on the desk and lounging back in his armchair, Draco stared determinedly at his book, his jaw clenched. Of all the hundred and four rooms in the Manor, he didn’t know why the paintings had chosen his father’s office to congregate in. Well. It was Draco’s office now, he supposed, since his parents had decided to spend their five years of house-arrest in the family villa in Nice. Four years down the line, he couldn’t really imagine them ever returning.
“In my day a Mudblood wouldn’t dream of entering the noble house of the Malfoys.”
“In my day no Malfoy would have allowed it.”
“It’s not like I have a choice,” Draco burst out, slamming Flibbertigibbet the Foul Fiend shut. “She’s a Ministry official - and I’m pretty much a criminal. Nobody cares what I want.”
“You know what they say: a fool loses his estate before he finds his folly,” haughty Evangeline Malfoy commented archly.
“Absolutely true,” her cousin Dilys agreed.
“What are you saying?” Draco asked, annoyed.
“They don’t know anything about our culture, Draco,” his grandfather Abraxas, who was visiting from the library, pressed, “And then they come in here, changing things-”
“-stealing things! Did you know she’s been here five minutes and she’s had the claymore set removed. They’ve been in the family for three hundred years!”
“Well, they did try and chop up anybody who walked past them without singing the Scottish anthem,” Draco pointed testily.
“-and soon, you’ll find you have nothing left but the wooden pole tied to your back and the fire under your feet. They will watch you burn and they will enjoy it! They don’t feel things the way we do. They’re monsters. They’re just animals, Draco.”
Draco slammed his fist down on the table and the portraits shut up as the ink jars rattled. “I’m not six years old! You don’t need to tell me these things. I don’t want her here either, but there’s nothing I can do.”
“In my day we’d just take the undesireable for a walk down the second floor staircase in the west wing,” Silvius suggested discreetly.
“Ooh, and a spot of poison in the tea never goes out of fashion, either,” Dilys piped up enthusiastically.
“I’m not going to kill her,” Draco said exasperatedly, rolling his eyes. Honestly, at times these paintings were positively medieval.
Their arguments were cut off abruptly when Parsimonious came dashing through the frames, his ruff all aquiver and wailed in anguish, “The Mudblood has taken the [torture devices]!”
“Fine!” Draco shouted over the ensuing babble, pushing himself to his feet. He couldn’t believe he was allowing himself to be bullied by a house. His father had never had to endure insubordination like this. “Fine, I’ll go and see what I can salvage.”
*
“Granger, I thought you were supposed to be making a list, not stealing all my stuff.”
She was in the Yellow Room, a guest room on the second floor that had been converted into a storeroom, standing by the light of the window consulting her parchment. At the sound of his voice she looked up from the long roll at him, her eyes lingering on his feet. Draco followed her gaze to his socks, which were embroidered with snitches. Fuck. He’d forgotten to put his boots back on.
“That’s a bit of an exaggeration, Malfoy,” she said, turning back to her list. “All I confiscated was a torture device and a set of swords that tried to cut me up when I walked past them.”
“Oh, did I not warn you about those?” Draco inquired with a sneer. “Must have slipped my mind.”
“Yes. Well.” She frowned. “They were in clear violation of the Domestic Safety Act.”
“Those things are worth thousands of galleons!”
“I’m sure you’ll survive,” Granger returned evenly, glancing pointedly out the window at the giant marble fountain below, which was glittering with sea nymphs specially imported from Greece.
“I need them!”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Granger said mockingly. “I didn’t realise you desperately needed to disembowel someone. I’ll have them sent right back!”
“I’m sure I could find a use for them,” Draco muttered darkly, as she turned her back on him to wave her wand over a suspiciously coffin-shaped chest that was growling at her. Suppressing a sigh - he hated a losing argument - Draco watched Granger critically. She had her hair tied out of her face into a godawful ponytail that exploded out of the back of her head like an electrocuted puffskein. She was wearing the usual black Ministry attire, with the sleeves pushed back so that she could work, exposing thin, brown wrists. He wondered where she’d got the tan. She should have looked like a house-witch, but she didn’t, and he couldn’t figure out why.
“Honestly, I don’t understand how somebody could think to raise children in a house like this,” Granger remarked critically, interrupting his reverie. “It’s downright dangerous!”
“Survival of the fittest, Granger,” Draco drawled, leaning against the doorway. He could get used to this … conversation thing … again. This was the problem with being locked up alone for four years. It made him fit to talk to the likes of Granger. “Why do you think I don’t have any siblings?”
In truth, although the Ministry had frequently sent officials to nose out their Dark Arts stash, there hadn’t really always been all that much to hide. Most of the Dark items packed into the empty guestrooms now had been carted in by various Death Eaters and the Dark Lord himself during his occupation of the Manor in the last few years before his fall. Aunt Bella, in particular, had had a penchant for squirreling away things that made people bleed. Old Borgin had loved her.
Granger glanced up at him as she took a step back from the chest, which was now snapping its lid at her, and quirked a smile. On either side of her, the yellow curtains twitched and Draco barely had the chance to warn her “Watch out!” before the drapes were wrapped around her neck, choking her. Her eyes popped and her hands flew up - and then before Draco could even draw his wand the curtains exploded into a fine golden dust, that drifted peacefully to the ground in the ensuing silence.
“Those were antiques!” Draco sputtered, too taken aback to be properly annoyed.
“I’m sorry,” she gasped guiltily, rubbing her neck. “I just - it was instinct.”
“Your first instinct is instantaneous combustion?” Draco asked incredulously. “You - homocidal maniac! I’ll ask you to curb your violent tendencies while you’re in my house, thank you very much!”
“Oh, I’m sorry, this coming from a person whose curtains just tried to kill me.”
“Well, what do you expect?” Draco sneered, brushing curtain dust off the front of his robes. It was just too easy. “They’re charmed to kill doxies and rodents. They must have gotten confused by the giant rats’ nest that you call hair.”
“Actually,” Granger said sniffily, consulting a long golden tube covered in dials and gauges, “According to the thaumometer, there’s a high level of decayed magic in here. I’m getting a reading of seven point four. The charm on your curtains was probably warped by all the Dark magic in the room.”
Draco stared at her until she looked up, and started to grow uncomfortable and cross.
“What-?”
“The words you speak hurt my brain,” Draco interrupted flatly. “Your entire existence is redundant and I hope something Dark and evil eats you until you are dead. And then, when you’re dead, your nearest of kin will get the bill for the destruction of my property by owl.”
She raised her eyebrows and opened her mouth to reply, but Draco was already stomping down the hallway. A few of the portraits called out to him as he passed, “Have you done it?”
“Is she leaving?”
“No,” Draco replied shortly. “I find her too annoying to talk to her long enough to tell her to go away.”
*
“You’re up early.”
It was shortly after eleven, a few days later, when Draco swiped away the steam on his bathroom mirror, blinking rather blearily at himself, despite the hot shower. He combed his hair back out of his face with his fingers and reached for his razor, replying sleepily, “Mm, yeah, but … got to keep an eye on Granger, you know.”
“That Muggle girl? Haven’t you been complaining how much you hate the very sight of her?”
“Yeah, well, once you’ve got the vaccination she’s not so bad, really. And somebody has to make sure she doesn’t strip the house bare.”
“She has a certain je ne sais quoi about her,” the mirror decided. “… I think it’s the hair.”
“I find her tolerably amusing,” Draco allowed grudgingly. “In an ‘I’m-laughing-at-you’ kind of way, not ‘with you’. When she isn’t being excessively Gryffindorish, I mean.”
“Very soulful brown eyes.”
“Oh, please,” Draco scoffed, but the mirror continued, undeterred.
“Good cheekbones. A very reflectable smile. And, let’s be honest, a nicer nose than the last girlfriend.”
“She’s not my-” Draco cut off abruptly, his razor halting, and frowned. “Wait, you’re not siding with the rest of the house? What about her being a Mudblood?”
He could practically hear the shrug in the mirror’s voice as it replied. “Blood? What is blood? I don’t see any difference, personally.”
Draco stared at his reflection and then watched his eyebrows settle as he recovered himself. He tapped his razor against the glass and said in a business-like voice, “Yes, well, you’d fawn over a Veela too, until it whipped out the beak and fireballs on your arse and then what would you have to say?”
“Yes, well, she’s no Veela,” the mirror tittered scornfully.
“Absolutely not.”
mirror(mirror)
You can’t see yourself. You can’t know yourself. Not completely. Not without looking into your own eyes, without seeing the shape of the shell of your ear, without observing the subtle shift of your own expressions. Even though your lips, your eyes, your eyebrows, your ears, are there all along. The evil stepmother never would have realised that Snow White was more beautiful than she was if the mirror hadn’t shown it to her. Even though she sat across from her at the dining table for every meal.
For the last couple of weeks, Draco had been amusing himself by following Granger around and annoying her. She was so earnest, so easy to tease. It was childish, he conceded to himself as he climbed the narrow, winding staircase up to the attic, but it wasn’t as if he had anything better to do. It helped that the paintings tended to ignore him when he was with her.
It took him a moment to spot Granger amongst the centuries of clutter, but he found her at last at the far end of the room behind a hat stand stacked with dusty old bonnets and a green feather boa, and a heavy chest of drawers. She was standing in front of an ornately carved mirror so large it almost reached the rafters, and her reflection showed him a frozen, half-awed expression. She didn’t see him standing behind her. It wasn’t that kind of mirror.
“Enjoying yourself?”
Granger started violently, and had to make a flailing leap for the hat stand as she knocked it over wheeling around. Draco smirked, amused the reaction he had caused, as an old sunhat flopped onto her head in a puff of dust. She lifted it back onto the stand, red in the face and coughing, and stammered out, “Malfoy. I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Evidently. I see you found our Mirror of Erised.”
“Your-? That’s not the Mirror of Erised, Malfoy. It definitely did not show me my heart’s desire,” she stated emphatically. “I don’t want that at all!”
“Think of it as the evil twin of the mirror you know,” Draco said, studying her carefully. She couldn’t seem to meet his eyes. He wondered what she could have seen. “It shows your deepest, darkest desire. The thing you want, but don’t want to want.”
Her little Gryffindor soul must be mortified at discovering it wanted something ignoble.
“Like, say, in the traditional mirror, an alcoholic might see himself sober and happy,” Draco elaborated, drawing closer to try on an ancient sailor’s cap from the stand, “But in this-”
He hadn’t meant to look. He’d had a long term resentment for this mirror. But when he caught a glimpse of himself out of the corner of his eye, he forgot everything else. As he watched, his reflection threw his head back, lips parted in a silent groan, the scar on his chest stretched with a gleam of silver between his parted robes. In front of him Granger was kneeling, with his hands fisted tightly in her hair, jerking her head forwards.
“Fuck,” Draco breathed, glancing at the girl standing beside him. A thrill of illicit heat shivered through him, because she had no idea.
“-he’d see himself with more alcohol? … Malfoy?”
“Ah.” Draco blinked, and suddenly remembered the body on this side of the mirror. He stumbled back a couple of steps, out from in front of the mirror, feeling like he’d been given a strong dose of Pepper-Up Potion. What the fuck was wrong with him? Clearing his throat, he said coolly, “I should go and water the garden. Try not to expode any curtains.”
It was only once he was standing motionless in the greenhouse that he realised he was still wearing the stupid sailor’s cap.
*
The first time he’d ever looked into the mirror he’d been twelve, hoping to catch a glimpse of Potter being mauled by Slytherin’s monster. Instead, what he had seen was himself, on the train to Hogwarts for the first time, and Potter shaking his hand. He had never looked again. He’d felt too bitter and betrayed, by both himself and the mirror. Later, he’d been too afraid to look, afraid he would see Lord Voldemort up on the Astronomy Tower and this time not having any hesitation to cast the Killing Curse. Because he’d known that if he saw that, the Dark Lord would read it out of his mind like the front page of the newspaper. Because once you saw a thing, it was impossible to ignore it.
“It shows the future,” his father had once told him, unable to tear his eyes from whatever it was he had seen. If there was ever a man who was unafraid to acknowledge his darker desires, it was Lucius Malfoy. But Draco had been unimpressed by the hunger in his father’s voice as he stood sullenly beside him, scuffing the toe of his boot against the stone floor, because who in their right mind wanted to be friends with Potter anyway?
So he had done his utmost to make sure it never happened. The problem came in when, once you had seen a thing, you conceded that you wanted it, because then you would do anything to make it come true. Draco didn’t want to think what it meant that he had come back, in the dead of the night, creeping through his own house past the sleeping paintings.
It was only because he couldn’t sleep, he reassured himself, as he stepped in front of the mirror.
It was different this time. More. Everything. Her shoulderblades and her behind pressed into the glass while her spine arched away towards his mouth. Her hands were in his hair, pushing him into her breast, while his hands ran over her sides, her stomach, her breasts, her thighs. Draco could feel their every rhythmic movement shudder through him, could feel the touch of hands uncoordinated with heat against his soul.
Slowly, he reached out a hand through the dark attic between them to touch the sweat clinging to the curve of her back and hit cold, hard glass. He let his fingers slide across the flat surface and fall to his side, itching to touch, to smooth away the burning in his body. This wasn’t a mirror. It didn’t feel like a mirror. It was a window. A glass door. It was so, so close.
Draco stepped back, letting out a shuddering breath, his hands brushing restlessly over his robes. It was too fucked up to be turned on by this. He wasn’t going to get off on it.
But he wanted it. He’d admit that. He wanted it badly. He wanted to be able to hear her, to feel her, not this perverted peepshow through a wall of glass and into his own head.
“It shows the future,” he murmured, his voice hoarse and loud in the dark. “… That’s what being Slytherin means.”
*
“So what’s the story with the west wing staircase?”
“What?” Draco blinked, trying to focus. It had become increasingly difficult, over the last few days. All he could think about was what he had seen in the mirror, but he didn’t know how to approach her. Ideally, he mused, what he needed was to get locked in a broom cupboard with her, or to save her from a rogue cursed item. Unfortunately, the Dark objects in his house tended to be the type that cut of heads first and asked questions later.
“Why am I not allowed on the west wing staircase between the first and second floor?” Granger asked patiently, as they climbed the stairs on the opposite side of the Manor.
“Oh. That. Well, my grandfather’s great uncle, Parsimonius Malfoy, was really paranoid about thieves, so he set up all these traps around the Manor. But then one night he thought he heard someone sneaking around so he went out in the dark to see. Turns out it was just the house elf cleaning, but anyway, Parsimonius fell down the stairs and died, and since then the curse he set won’t come off. Anybody who walks down those stairs just vanishes.”
“Vanishes? Where do they go?”
“No one knows,” Draco replied indifferently. “Parsimonius refuses to say. My guess is the bottom of the nearest dam.”
“That’s awful!”
Draco shrugged. “It’s mostly just annoying. I mean, you have to walk all the way around to the east wing.” Not to mention that they had lost a couple of house elves that way. But he thought it would be best not to mention that.
After a silence Granger said, “I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know that tomorrow will be the last day I’m coming in.”
Draco halted and Granger stopped a few feet further down the corridor when she realised he was no longer walking with her.
“I just need to do a final check of everything. I, um, wanted to thank you for being so accomodating,” she said, a little stiffly. “So. Um. Thanks.”
She turned rather self-consciously to keep walking and Draco jumped to catch her arm.
“Granger, wait.”
It wasn’t the perfect moment. It wasn’t romantic at all. There was no atmosphere in that yellow, brightly light corridor, but if he was going to wait until the perfect moment arose between the two of them, he’d be waiting until they were dead. It was the only moment he had. And Draco had always been a go-getter.
“Is it okay if I just …” Draco murmured, trailing off as he drew too close to remember which words came next.
She stood motionless, watching him with huge brown eyes, her lips slightly parted in surprise, but at least not in outright shock and he thought he might actually have a chance to -
“BLOOD TRAITOR!”
The corner of a painting’s golden frame crashed into Draco’s head and for one wild moment he thought it had attacked him before he realised that he’d jolted back into it himself. The skewed painting was shrieking into his ear, too loud, too close for him to be able to hear it through the haze of pain throbbing through his skull.
“Shit.”
He clutched the back of his head, squinting at Granger through watering eyes, but he was unable to make out her expression.
“I don’t know, Malfoy,” she said inscrutably, “You tell me.”
Draco blinked to clear his vision and, realising he was still ducking down away from the painting, straightened his shoulders.
“Tell you what?” he asked dumbly, amidst the screams of what seemed like every painting in the corridor, even the one of the dancing cherubs.
“Have you forgotten who you are? What she is? She’ll taint your blood! You’re betraying your forefathers-”
“Tell me if it’s okay to kiss a Muggleborn,” Granger snapped.
“I …” His mind felt blank - like he was only just realising that it had been turned off for days. “I shouldn’t have …”
“You’re a disgrace to the Malfoy name! Is this how you repay your family after everything they’ve given you?”
“I knew it,” Granger spat. “What, Malfoy, did you forget for a second that I’m a Mudblood?”
“It’s not like that,” Draco protested, growing angry. Merlin fuck a goat, his head hurt. “Your blood doesn’t have anything to do with how I feel about you, but that doesn’t mean it’s not important. You don’t get it. Saying I’m pureblooded isn’t just saying I’m better than you. It’s a way of life. I mean, for fuck’s sake, Granger, my house hates you. Doesn’t that tell you anything?”
“They’re just a bunch of paintings!” Granger yelled, waving her arm at the offending audience, who had quieted down now that it no longer seemed as if Draco would betray them. “They’re not people! They’re just caricatures frozen in the time they were painted. They can’t change! But you can! So grow up and accept the fact that times are changing. If you want to live in this world then you have to as well.”
“You don’t get it,” Draco repeated in a shout. “This is who I am! I can’t just become a whole other person.”
“If that’s true,” Granger said, her voice lowered, “Then maybe you should think about why you wanted to kiss me.”
“You know what? Shut the fuck up! Don’t act like you know me better than I do, you condescending little bitch. I’m not a fucking house elf. Don’t think you can turn me into one of your little projects to make the world a better place.”
“Fine. Fine! You’re right. You can’t change. You’re as arrogant and horrible as ever. I don’t know what I was thinking, letting you-” She cut off abruptly, red in the face and huffing with rage, and stormed away.
Draco stood his ground, grinding his teeth. Irmentrude Malfoy coughed discreetly in her frame, and Draco spun towards her to spit, “Thanks. You just saved me from making the biggest mistake of my life.”
Why had he wanted to kiss her?
“I know I did,” Irmentrude replied loftily. “Now straighten my frame, if you please.”
*
Hermione stormed down the stairs and through the corridors, fuming. She should have known. Malfoy had been so - well, not nice, never that, but at least not his usual awful self. She had actually found him rather charming and - urgh! How could she have allowed herself to be taken in by it?
She passed a set of massive double doors and then halted. So far she had walked obediently by them every day, but why should she listen to Malfoy? Had she not proven that she could take care of herself? Granted, there had been that curtain incident and she had almost qualified for the Headless Hunt on the first day when those swords had jumped out of nowhere at her, but had she not managed to survive - and moreover without the help of Draco sodding Malfoy?
It was just selfishness that made him ban her from the library, she decided, as she entered, miraculously without dropping dead at the second step. And maybe death would be worth it, she thought, awed by the size of the room. It was like Hogwarts’s Restricted Section multiplied by a hundred.
It was, after all, one of the largest collections of Dark Magic texts in Britian, she reminded herself dreamily, as she browsed the shelves lining the walls. She kept her hands behind her back, well aware that there were probably some very nasty hexes on a few of these, until a certain title caught her eye.
“That’s odd,” she murmured, reached out for a thick tome and hefting it open.
There was a white flash of light and then the book dropped to the carpet, its spine cracking as it landed. Over above, a satisfied chuckle filled the library, and then there was silence.
*
Meanwhile, Draco was in the greenhouse, hacking the heads off his flowers with his wand. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this angry. Couldn’t remember being angry at all, before she came - school days were so faded, just moving photographs with the bland taste of nostalgia. It had been years. Years coated in sticky boredom and despair. And then she’d come and she’d been so annoying, and he’d been annoyed, and it had felt amazing. He had felt. She had made him feel.
She was bright colours. Obvious: she didn’t do subtlety - she thought it was underhanded. Nobody could be so blatant, make him feel so much. It had to be her.
Draco covered his face with his hands and breathed deeply, slowly through his nose, focussing on the sound of the air sighing through his throat. Okay. Okay. He just had to forget. He’d been so bitter, these last four years, that the best years of his life were passing him by - the best years of sex and parties and drugs, his own personal corruption that he’d been sliding into with relish at the end of his seventh year. That teenage self-mutilation, self-hate, that he and his friends had hoarded and goaded each other with. He hadn’t realised that he was mouldering with it here, shut up in the Manor with its curses and poisons and its bad faith: its double reflections and its painted immorality.
But life was okay. He’d built up some nice walls around himself here in his greenhouse. It was his personal little haven. It was enough.
Granger was -
He was aware of the vicious jerk of gravity before he felt the coils tighten around his ankles and slither lightning fast up his legs. The edge of the clay trays struck him across the back of his shoulders and the black earth and bundles of uprooted Pygmy Perimagi seedlings tumbled over him, squealing in alarm, as he hit the ground elbows first.
It was only then that he registered the Venomous Tentacula straining towards him, its loose vines flailing delightedly as it wrapped around him, dragging him in. And then, Merlin, how could he be aware of anything else when its spines were flexing, piercing through his thick robes, through his dragonhide boots, through his skin. He let out a deep cry as its poison seeped into his blood and he twisted, landing on his stomach, swearing, “Shit! You fucking cunt plant. I swear, I’m gonna - fuck!”
His hands scrabbled through the strewn dirt, searching for his wand, but he had no idea where it was. The Pygmies hopped joyfully over his fingers and Draco urged himself, think, and he could feel the poison like it was corroding away his body from the inside.
Think. Pygmies were attracted to magic. They would be drawn to his wand. He twisted, grabbing hold of the table leg with one hand as the Tentacula started to drag him in and frantically scanned the floor. The Pygmies were all over the Tentacula and on his hands and - there.
Draco lunged for his wand, almost hidden by the scattered earth, straining and kicking uselessly against the pull of the Tentacula. Accio, he thought desperately, and the wand rolled gently a few inches closer, into his fingers. Flipping onto his back, Draco turned his wand onto the plant and the magic burst out before he could even think.
The heart of the Tentacula exploded into flames and its vines loosened and shrivelled as it emmitted a high-pitched shriek that would have made Draco shudder if he hadn’t been burning with vicious elation. He kicked himself free and threw himself to his feet, feeling woozy with poison. For a moment he hesitated in the spreading blaze then, loath to let his Pygmies burn, but they were bounding joyfully into the heart of the fire, so he tumbled out of the greenhouse, kicking the door shut behind him as he collapsed on the brick path.
“Oof.”
He lay flat on his back, staring up at the stars, panting and wincing at the small tremors that passed through his body. There was a brick digging into the small of his back, and the path was uncomfortably cold-damp, but he didn’t feel very much like moving. Ever again.
“Fuck,” he added belatedly, for good measure, and then abruptly turned over and vomited.
*
Draco woke to a huge pair of yellow eyes and bat ears. Stifling a groan, he shut his eyes again with a weak determination that lasted only until he became aware that he was soaked through with dew and that this oh-so-lovely morning stank of vomit. Merlin. It was probably just about dawn.
“Master,” Odo ventured nervously. “Master is needing to get up now.”
“Fuck off,” Draco moaned and threw an arm over his face as the elf backed away, exposing his raw eyes to the burning sunlight.
“Master, there is Aurors waiting in the portal.”
“The fire’s out,” Draco mumbled. “Tell them thanks for nothing.”
“Master, ‘tis Harry Potter, sir. He is saying Master is taking his Herminny.”
Draco slid his arm to his forehead and opened one eye crossly. “I haven’t taken her anywhere. She’s probably up in the attics or something, checking her lists.”
Odo’s ears flapped over his face as he shook his head vehemently. “No, sir. I is looking.”
“Well, then tell Potter she hasn’t come in today!” Draco snapped. “It’s not that hard! She’s got nothing to do with me anymore.”
“But Miss Granger is not leaving last night!” the elf expelled, wringing his hands in anguish.
“What?”
Draco sat up suddenly, into a thick fog of nausea that had him twisting sideways and not feeling any better after he’d retched up all the spit and bile in his stomach. Fucking sissy plant. Why couldn’t it just have killed him and gotten it over with? he thought, as he spat onto the bricks, trying to get the vile, sour taste out of his mouth.
“Is Master okay? I is bringing medicine!”
“Shut up!” Draco ordered. He glanced at the blackened shell of his glass house. The only antidote for Tentacula venom had burnt along with everything else. “What do you mean, Granger didn’t leave last night?”
“I is waiting to close the Floo, but she is not coming,” Odo explained, trembling and upset. “Master Abraxas is saying she is staying with you and I is not to bother you.”
“That bastard,” Draco breathed. He couldn’t believe it. He’d actually done it. Thinking fast, he said more clearly, “Send Potter and his Aurors up to the attic to look for her. Don’t act like anything is wrong. Odo, I order you to stop fucking wringing your hands! Once you’ve got rid of him, meet me in the library.”
*
He didn’t even have to consult with the painting. There she was: lying spreadeagled on the blood red rug with a book fallen open beside her, face-down a few inches from her outstretched hand. Draco sank to his knees beside her, fingers trembling, almost too afraid to touch. She was as cold and white as marble. And as still. He felt like he might throw up again.
He had told her to stay out of the library!
What book had she picked up? On the elaborately gilded cover a man with a crown on his head sat on a white horse, looking down at a castle in the distance. The spine of the book had cracked in the fall, splitting the title in two, but the large block letters were still legible. Grimm’s Fairytales.
What did that mean? He reached for the book and a voice shouted, “Don’t touch that!”
“Abraxas,” Draco hissed, glaring up at his grandfather’s painting. “Why didn’t you tell me she was here?”
“Of what importance is she, Draco?” Abraxas sighed dismissively, with just a trace of steel in his voice.
“Mind your own fucking business!” Draco yelled. “You had your turn and you’re dead now, so stop thinking you can interfere! This is my life! My world!”
“It’s my world that made you!” Abraxas spat. “Without your heritage you are nothing.”
“I’m still a Malfoy,” Draco said coldly. “All this is mine now, so you can’t take away anything from me.”
At the moment Odo appeared with a crack and Draco commanded, “Fetch me a mirror!”
The elf was back in an instant.
“Where’s Potter?” Draco asked, taking a small hand mirror from him.
“He is stomping through the Manor, Master,” Odo replied, looking distinctly put out by the fact. “Acting as if he is owning it, he is. His Aurors is everywhere.”
Shit. Draco glanced at Granger. He couldn’t afford for her to be found like this. “Take Granger to the greenhouse. She’ll be safe there.”
“Draco, Draco,” Abraxas said wheedlingly, changing his tact, as soon as Odo was gone. “Look at yourself. I admit, you are looking rather like a leprechaun today, but that face of yours is the product of hundreds of years of good breeding.”
Draco turned the hand mirror over and stared at his reflection for a moment. Underneath the soil and soot, his skin was pea soup green. Blearily he pulled his bottom lid away from his eye with one finger, to see - yes, the veins in his eyeballs were in fact luminous green. It was as if he’d been injected with food colourant and then shaken vigorously.
“Oh, dear,” was the mirror’s first, vaguely horrified, comment. “I hope you aren’t planning on winning over your lady love looking like that. She’ll mistake you for a goblin.”
“Fuck off!” Draco replied, highly offended. “It’s not like I’m deformed, or anything. At least my hair’s all right.”
“That hair,” Abraxas interrupted, “Is the product of careful breeding. You know, your father originally had his eye on Bellatrix Black - now there is a woman with frizz control problems. Fortunately I managed to talk him out of it, but just think of it! Think of the children! Do you really want to condemn them to growing a small bush out of the tops of their heads?”
“That’s it?” Draco asked incredulously. “You’re telling me to stay away from Granger because of her hair?”
“Well. It’s a metaphor for the larger concerns. Namely, her being a Mudblood, and having no class whatsoever. But, yes, the hair is rather unsightly.”
“It’s not that bad,” Draco muttered. “Honestly.”
Ignoring Abraxas’s incredulous coughing fit, Draco turned back to his reflection. He couldn’t do this himself without getting cursed and Granger would slay him if he used the house elf, but the mirror would work just as well. “I need you to read me this book.”
It was not what he expected.
“It’s … a Muggle story?” Draco puzzled, when the mirror had finished. How … bizarre. But if that was what it was going to take … he supposed he should go brush his teeth.
*
You know how it ends. The prince found Snow White out in the woods, in her glass coffin, and was overcome with admiration for her beauty. She was equally charmed with him, of course, when she was awoken from her slumber. Which is not to say she did not not comment on his peculiar discolouration.
“I know,” he replied with heroic stoicism, and did not whine about how ill he felt at all. “Now kiss me. Before I start to get self-conscious about it.”
“You? Self-conscious? Never,” she snorted, but kissed him anyway. But when Draco climbed up next to her on the table, she pushed him away and said, “Wait, wait. What does this mean?”
“I guess it means this is okay,” Draco murmured.
“Well - yes, that too, but I meant - why are you green?”
“Oh.” Draco grimaced. “Tentacula poison.”
“Oh. That explains why I woke up when you kissed me. Tentacula venom is the key ingredient to the antidote for Dreamless Sleep.”
It was Draco’s turn to withdraw. “The book said something about true lo- I mean. It said something about a kiss.”
“It’s just a Muggle fairytale, Malfoy. Muggles don’t know anything about magic.”
“So you’re telling me that you woke up because I got my poisoned spit inside your mouth?” Draco asked incredulously.
“Well-”
“It’s not like I just gobbed all over you, you know! I know how to kiss a girl!”
Granger bit her lip and said, embarrassed by her own daring, “Why don’t you show me, then?”
And they lived happily ever after. More or less.
/.;
Request
Song, Poem, or Quote (title/original creator) (optional): “Ah, women. They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent.” - Friedrich Nietzsche
Describe your ideal gift in as few words/keywords as possible (plus rating): Draco’s POV, humor, sarcasm, banter, sexual tension, and a happy ending. Any rating.
Dealbreakers (absolute no-no's): Non-con, character death, Ron-bashing
ferretbush_post is the account the mods use to post gifts, it has not authored or created any of the gifts.