FIC: Aresto Momentum (1/3) (Draco Malfoy/Hermione Granger)
Title: Aresto Momentum (1/3)
Author: captainraychill
Characters: Draco Malfoy/Hermione Granger
Prompt Number: # 85
Word Count: ~24,750
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Alternate universe after mid-Book 6/EWE, angst, darker than prompt implies, explicit sexual situations, unabashed romance, infrequent but extreme profanity, alcohol consumption, reference to rape and murder.
Summary: Hermione fills her shopping cart with a jar of honey, a book and a bushel of apples. Why do these things remind her of a certain ferret? Aresto Momentum: a spell which slows down or stops the movement of an object… that which gives you pause and makes you reconsider your path.
Disclaimer: In its use of intellectual property and characters belonging to JK Rowling, Warner Bros, Bloomsbury Publishing, etc., this work of art is intended to be transformative commentary on the original. No profit is being made from this work.
Author’s Notes: Thank you to my Beta, you know who you are, for your wonderful input. BF Draco is for you! Thanks also to the Interhouse Mods for your quick answers and generous extensions. And to SnuggleLove54 for the fun and “random” prompt. I think I took it in an odd direction. Hope you like it.
Aresto Momentum (1/3)
PROLOGUE
THE BLOOD INSIDE
Draco Malfoy sent flowers to Hermione Granger on her third day in isolation at St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries.
Exquisite flowers of the most delicate, iridescent pink.
Neville went on and on about some rare genus from South America, a mountaintop, sunrise and how each blossom had exactly 157 petals and a gorgeous scent used as a top note in perfume.
“What does music have to do with it?” Ron asked.
“One hundred fifty-seven exactly? Not likely,” Ginny said. She drew a flower out of the crystal vase and began plucking it petals off, one by one.
“Oi, those aren’t yours,” said Ron.
“Five… six… Hermione would want me to prove it… seven… eight…”
Harry stood alone, on the other side of the room, watching Hermione.
She lay on a white bed, divided from him and everyone else by a faintly glittering shield. He wasn’t sure who the protection was meant to keep safe, her or them. The best healers in Britain had examined her. Experts on dark magic, obscure curses and poisons had been consulted or come forward to volunteer their knowledge. No one could explain why she’d simply collapsed three days ago onto a carpet of bright autumn leaves at the Wimbleton Farmers’ Market.
Her shopping cart, its contents, every stall in the market - everything down to the last apple had been inspected and deemed harmless.
Since falling unconscious, Hermione had been in a delirious trance. Her eyes twitched inside her closed lids like someone in deep dreams. Her fingers twitched, too, beneath her leather-bound wrists. The orderlies had strapped her down because she flailed when she screamed. In still moments, like now, she looked almost like her old self. Her eyes shut tight, her mouth moving quickly and silently, a notch between her eyebrows. She was just Hermione, running through complex number charts in her head, being brilliant.
Then she sobbed and tossed her head to one side, and Harry felt a tightness grip his chest.
He thought of his father and mother, of Sirius, of Dumbledore, Moody, Dobby, Snape, Tonks. Every one of them had died in battle, in time of war.
Hermione Granger couldn’t survive the Second Wizarding War and then die for nothing, of nothing, in a hospital bed. She couldn’t die because she was only twenty-two and his best friend. She just couldn’t…
“Remember,” she whispered.
That was the only word she’d spoken since her collapse.
Remember what?
“One hundred fifty-seven exactly,” said Ginny. “Amazing.”
Harry turned, allowing himself to be distracted by Malfoy’s amazing Peruvian Roaring flower or whatever Neville had called it. People were like this. When everyday life was cut open like skin, to reveal the blood inside, when they were powerless to heal the wound, they turned their eyes from it and concentrated on the most unimportant things. The alternative was to go mad.
“I’m going to count one more, to be sure,” Ginny said, pulling another flower out of the vase.
CHAPTER ONE
SUNRISE
Carina Keystone, more commonly known as Kiki, had been the head house elf of Malfoy Manor for 41 years. She had served the Great Family of Malfoy for 73 years. And in that time, she had seen some crazy shite, but she had never seen anything quite like this.
Master Draco was in love with a Muggle-born girl named Hermione Granger, whether he knew it or not. This had become obvious to Carina since last Sunday, when Miss Granger had fallen gravely ill, and the boy had lost his mind.
Carina had first heard the name Hermione Granger in the summer after Draco’s First Year, when Master Lucius had taunted the boy about scoring second in his class behind a Mudblood (she hated that word but never substituted it with softer words when she thought of those who used it). This taunting happened every summer for the following three years, until Master Lucius had been incarcerated in Azkaban Prison, bested himself by Miss Granger, among others.
Carina had also learned about the girl from Dobby, rest his soul. She had deigned to reestablish contact with the so-called “free” elf after Master Draco’s noble defection from You-Know-Who’s service in the winter of his Sixth Year. From Dobby, she knew Miss Granger, in addition to being highly intelligent, was a Gryffindor, brave, pretty, a bit of a radical, the best friend of Harry Potter and that she liked to knit.
And Harry Potter… Carina knew the most about him. Who didn’t? He had saved the world from You-Know-Who twice. You had to respect that, even though he had probably only succeeded on pure luck. That had to be the case if the boy was an orphan, poor, ugly, scarred, no good at spells or potions, such a poor flyer he constantly fell off his broom and cross-eyed. Oh, and walked like a girl.
In the kitchen, Carina smiled. She put one of the pink flowers delivered by Special Owl in the bud vase on Master Draco’s breakfast tray. The sky outside the open window was still dark.
The master loathed Harry Potter with a powerful enthusiasm. Or at least he had until Sixth Year. Maybe Seventh, which hadn’t actually been a school year at all, but a year in which Draco did Who-Knows-What for something called the “Order” while Carina had cared for Mistress Narcissa. The world had thought Mistress was dead, but she had really been confined to a safe house, a lovely cottage covered with seashells by the sea.
Draco must have grown closer to Harry Potter and Hermione Granger then. They had worked together for almost a year after the Ministry fell. They had defeated You-Know-Who together. But after victory at the Battle of Hogwarts, Master Draco had never spoken of either of them as he would a friend. They had never been invited to the manor like Mr. Zabini and Miss Parkinson. Perhaps because Mistress had walked the halls like a white ghost, consumed with grief over the death of her husband. She had only started traveling with friends again last year and was now in Paris, for one more week, with Fleur Weasley.
And so life went on quite normally, day to day, with tea trays and butcher bills and owls to the baker, until the Sunday edition of The Daily Prophet was delivered to announce “WAR HERIONE DYING OF MYSTERY ILLNESS” and Master Draco had gone nutters.
Sunday had been mad. Owls flying and people Flooing in and out of the house all day. Carina had ushered those summoned into the library, where Draco had sat at his large desk like a king. He had met with Ministry officials, healers, a goblin from Gringott’s, a pair of nondescript men in black and one truly frightening woman with an eye patch and a head full of long, gray braids. When that one had stepped out of green fire in the massive fireplace of the dining room, Carina had thought the manor was being invaded by Gorgon pirates.
And when everyone was gone and the manor was silent, Master drank a bottle of Firewhiskey and passed out. Carina put him to bed, took the paper which had been near his hand all day, and studied the picture of Hermione Granger on the front page. She was pretty, her curly hair rather wild and blowing in a wind. Her dark eyes stared directly at the viewer with an intent focus that would have left Carina feeling slightly scolded, if she were not so self-possessed.
The elf had known right then that Draco Malfoy was in love.
On Monday, he was up early to read another grim headline and receive updates from various visitors. But by midday, there seemed to be no progress, nothing more to report, and the drinking began again.
Tuesday was the same as Monday, with the exception of the arrival of those magnificent flowers. Carina thought they smelled soft and heavenly. She liked the way the pearlescent pink shifted in the light, like the inside of a seashell. When she had asked Master Draco if he wanted to write a message on his card, she found him asleep by the fire with a tumbled book at his feet. Hogwarts: A History. There was shattered glass on the hearth.
On Wednesday, The Prophet’s headline read “CANDLELIGHT VIGIL DID NO GOOD”. Draco cursed viciously, marched straight into the Chamber of Memories and didn’t come out until after midnight. That worried Carina more than anything he’d done so far. Unless someone called on official business, which was rare these days, Draco only used that room once a month. Always on the first day of the month. And Wednesday had been the 18th.
Today was Thursday, Herimone Granger’s twenty-third birthday.
Against the deep sapphire sky, Carina saw the black silhouette of the little owl that delivered The Daily Prophet.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Draco Malfoy lay in his bed, staring out the window.
The fire was low, and the room was dark except for the glow of dawn through the diamond-shaped panes. The pink-gold light faintly illuminated his sharp profile and the curve of his bare shoulder. He wanted to turn away.
Before this week, he hadn’t watched a sunrise since the day that Voldemort had been killed. This was his fourth in a row, and with each one, he lost a little hope. Feared a little more what might have happened during the night, in another bed, miles away.
His power, his wealth, his Slytherin cunning - they were all useless. What did they matter if they couldn’t save her? At last report, Hermione Granger lay unconscious and raving, strapped to a bed in St. Mungo’s.
Unless she had died in the night.
He should have gone to see her yesterday.
The choice had been before him. Hospital or Pensieve. And he had chosen the coward’s path with alacrity. He realized now, in the pure clarity of morning, he’d acted like an addict. Sifting through the little, glowing bottles. Breathing in the haze of luminous smoke. Consuming memories, like drugs, to avoid reality.
He had always been so disciplined with personal use of the Pensieve. One memory, once a month. It was almost ceremonial. But in truth, despite the restraint he’d exercised until yesterday, it was still an addiction. He could never give it up.
And if he had gone to the hospital, everyone would have known.
Draco, like all Malfoys, had perfected the haughty gaze, the arrogant sneer, the icy perfection that was his armor against the world. Disdain hid many undesirable emotions - fear, doubt, jealousy. But he knew if he saw Granger, weak and helpless, he wouldn’t be able to hide the undesirable emotion he felt for her. He would wear it on his face like a fool. And everyone would know, including Potter and Weasley. He refused to be vulnerable in front of them.
It seemed unbelievable he had fought at their side just over five years ago. He had never been part of the innermost circle, the Three, but he had saved their lives and been saved by them. They had all been soldiers for the Order, covered in blood and grit. He had even found and destroyed a Horcrux.
His acceptance was slow but sure from Potter and Weasley, but Granger never seemed to fully trust him. Even after he produced his first Patronus, a feat that earned him a slap on the back from the ever-vigilant Mad Eye Moody, she kept a wary distance. Always sitting on the opposite side of the fire, on the other end of the table, across the room. Their former animosity lapsed into a long, uncomfortable silence, so unnatural it was eerie.
In the seconds after Voldemort’s defeat, as the jubilant crowd rushed Potter, Draco stood against the wall and watched, alone. He was unable to see Granger in the very center of the crush.
Turning away, he’d walked straight to an empty corner of the Great Hall, to the dead body of his father. Lucius Malfoy lay amongst rubble, his pale hair and skin glowing in the newly risen sun. He had died a Death Eater, thinking his wife was dead, and his son, a traitor.
Without another glance at the cheering crowd, he fell to one knee, pointed his wand at a loose stone on the floor and whispered, ”Portus”. A moment later, he was kneeling at the border of the ocean and the shore, his hand still gripping his father’s limp arm.
For the rest of his life, the smell of the ocean, or tears, would take him instantly back to this moment. His mother screaming from the cottage door. The wild, worshipful look she’d spared Draco before crumpling over her husband’s body, weeping. Their long, pale hair intertwined in the sand. He had watched the sun rise out of the sea, tears running down his face, and couldn’t tell where the water ended and the sky began.
A week later he had learned the truth from Potter, when they’d met by chance at the Ministry.
“I’m alive and Voldemort’s dead because of your father,” Harry said.
“What?”
“When Voldemort killed me in the forest, I came back because of the Deathly Hallows. He sent your father over to confirm my death. When he leaned over me, I whispered, Your wife is alive, and Draco knows where she is. That was enough. He told everyone I was dead so he could enter Hogwarts and find you and then your mother.”
“Who killed him?”
“Lupin. I couldn’t prevent it. I had to protect Hermione. Bellatrix nearly got her with an Avada.”
“Of course,” Draco said without hesitation.
Harry gave him a curious look and then invited him The Burrow for dinner that Saturday. Draco had accepted and then later sent his regrets by owl. She wouldn’t want to see him. She would be glad the war was over so she wouldn’t have to avoid him every day. He wasn’t about to torture himself by becoming a lingering shadow.
He had reached out to Blaise and Pansy and his other old friends instead. And life became a more civil and adult version of Hogwarts for him, divided by Houses. He was Slytherin. They were Gryffindor. He still helped the Order, and there were accidental meetings and the occasional ceremony. But they weren’t friends despite everything they had been through together.
Except for her picture in the paper, he hadn’t seen Hermione Granger in six months. Now, he might never see her again outside of a picture or a casket.
He turned in his bed, away from the dazzling sunlight breaking over the horizon. The Daily Prophet would be here by now.
Knowing couldn’t be any worse than fearing.
“Kiki,” he said.
With a soft pop, the house elf appeared at the side of his bed, holding a breakfast tray. The paper was folded neatly between a tall glass of orange juice and a single Peruvian Aurora flower. He looked over the bloom and saw Kiki smiling, her bulbous blue eyes shining.
“GRANGER LIVES - MIRACULOUS MIDNIGHT RECOVERY,” she quoted.
She was alive.
A shock of relief and elation ran through Draco, so powerful he couldn’t breathe. He lunged for the paper and snapped it open, seeing Hermione’s face. It was the public’s favorite image of her, a close-up taken on V-V Day. She stared over the left shoulder of the photographer, the wreckage of the Great Hall behind her, blood along her hairline and the sunlight gleaming on her skin. She was a warrior, weary and strong and beautiful, but with a strange expression in her eyes, wonder and longing combined. He’d always wondered what she’d been thinking at that moment. Everyone did.
Suddenly, a picture wasn’t enough. He had to see her. No matter what kind of reception he received.
“I’m going to St. Mungo’s,” he said decisively.
Before Kiki could answer, an iron screech ripped through the air.
“Impossible,” Kiki whispered. “The wards have never been penetrated.”
A long moment later, a great boom resonated through the manor. Crackling energy rippled in the air, rattling windows and raising the hair on Draco’s arms.
As he grabbed his wand, he heard the shout.
“Malfoy!”
It was a woman’s voice - powerful, angry and just a bit shrill.
“MALFOY!!”
Amplified by a Sonorus spell, the voice now roared through the house. The crystals of two dozen chandeliers shivered against each other. His name echoed five times. Draco smiled.
She was here.
She wanted to see him. His desire to see her had allowed her to break the Malfoy wards. And if volume was any indication, she was fully recovered and ready for a fight.
He hadn’t felt this happy in years.
“Who is that?” Kiki asked.
“Granger,” Draco said with a smirk.
CHAPTER TWO
DINING AT THE MANOR
Just over a minute later, Carina watched the two of them find each other, each framed in shadowed archways on opposite sides of the formal dining room. The long ebony table stretched between them like a stage.
It’s like a play, the elf thought with a little thrill of delight.
She’d read folios of wonderful plays in the library and had always yearned to see one performed in a theatre. With a snap of her fingers, the low fire in the massive fireplace behind the table blazed high, and hundreds of candles in two ornate chandeliers flickered to life.
Master Draco leaned against his archway on one upraised arm, looking every centimeter the handsome and dissolute aristocrat. His pale hair was only out of place in the way he wished it to be, falling over his forehead and glowing white in the shadows. His white dress shirt was untucked and halfway unbuttoned but crisp, the cuffs and collar pressed to razor precision, as were the pleats in his black trousers. His feet were bare. He hadn’t had time to Accio a pair of shoes.
He owned the look, however, his confidence and arrogance making his dishevelment seem perfect. He held his wand loosely in one hand, as if he didn’t need it, and stared at Miss Granger with bored indulgence. His gray eyes were sharp and mocking.
Miss Hermione Granger, however … There was absolutely no pretense there. She wore cargo pants that were too long and a jumper that was too loose, men’s clothes. But Carina wouldn’t remember these details until later, because she was too riveted by the strength of the magic and fury radiating off the young witch. Miss Granger glared at Draco, her dark eyes feral. Her hair was a wild mass of brown curls. She looked like she was in battle, her wand gripped with white knuckles.
Because she was a house elf, Carina also noticed the white canvas shopping bag Miss Granger had dropped on the floor.
“There are more pleasurable ways to wake me up at dawn, Granger,” Draco drawled lazily.
Good line, thought Carina. She was completely engrossed - and unprepared.
With a slash of her wand and no words, Miss Granger sent the dining room table and its twenty-two chairs flying through the air toward a wall of glass and stone. Toward Carina. Draco moved a fraction of a second later, silently commanding everything to sail neatly back to its proper place with only the softest creak of ancient wood.
“I know you probably eat over the kitchen sink,” he said. “But try to have some respect for the antiques.”
Miss Granger wasn’t listening. She marched toward Draco, toward the table that blocked her path, with a burning purpose in her eyes. Without breaking her stride, she stepped onto Mistress Narcissa’s chair and leaped up onto the table. Her muddy boots landed on the polished surface with a resounding thud.
Draco lifted a pale eyebrow and followed suit, stepping on his chair to vault up onto the table. He used a silent, subtle touch of Aresto Momentum to land silently on his bare feet. He gripped his wand a little tighter.
The dining table had become a dueling strip.
Carina’s senses sharpened, her elfish instincts slicing her daydreams to ribbons. It didn’t matter that Miss Granger had been ill. She had power and rage. She had somehow defeated undefeatable wards. Master Draco was in danger. Flushed with shame, Carina took a step forward. On her authority, eleven other house elves did the same, ranged strategically around the room.
Draco noticed the movement and without taking his eyes off the woman in front of him, he said, “Kiki, I forbid you or any other elf in my service to defend me against Miss Granger.”
“Master,” she acknowledged quietly.
Miss Granger’s gaze flickered almost imperceptibly to Carina before returning to Draco.
“Haven’t you been sick, Granger? Sure you want to do this,” he gestured with his wand to the table, “for no apparent reason?”
“I have my reasons,” she said softly.
Carina didn’t see Miss Granger move until a blast of red lightning was racing from her wand toward Master Draco. Stupefy or perhaps Expelliarmus. He blocked it, at the last instant, with a Shield Charm, sending sparks hissing across the table. And then the air was sizzling with her hexes. Draco did nothing but block them, holding his ground as she slowly advanced under a storm of flashing light.
Carina felt the heat from across the room. A strange sensation, more pressure than pain, filled her little body as if her ribcage were expanding very slowly. She was compelled defend Master Draco. She was equally compelled to obey his order not to defend him. Trapped, she looked at him helplessly - and noticed the look of pure exhilaration on his face. He was grinning.
Miss Granger saw it, too, and grew incensed. With a savage growl, she whipped another curse at him, which he parried with particularly good form. She stepped forward, relentless, to attack again, and her boot caught on the cuff of her pants. She toppled forward onto her knees, her hair falling over her face.
“Hermione!” Draco cried out. He lowered his guard.
“Expelliarmus!” she shouted.
In one fluid, circular motion of her arm, she swept her hair out of her eyes and pointed her wand emphatically at Draco. His wand flew out of his hand, high into the air.
“Silencio! Incarcerous!” she shouted.
Through a blaze of white sparks, rope shot out of her wand and wrapped tightly around Draco’s arms and torso. She scribbled in the air, and the rope twisted into a complex knot. When she lowered her arm, slowly and deliberately, Draco was pressed down onto his knees. She stood as he kneeled.
Only then, in the silence, did his wand clatter onto the stone floor.
Master Draco’s smile was gone now. He couldn’t speak. His face was hard and furious, his silver eyes promising violence, like a blade. Carina wondered if she could break through the bonds of his last command if he gave her a look. She waited, her muscles tense, but he never turned his eyes from Miss Granger.
The witch walked forward and stopped a few feet away from Draco, looking down at him. Under the light of the chandelier, her brown hair turned dark gold. She lifted one arm, and Draco’s wand flew into her hand. She slipped it into a deep pocket of her cargo pants, which she zipped shut.
“If you could speak now,” she said, “I imagine you would say, What the fuck do you want, Granger?”
His look said exactly that.
“What is so important to make me get out of my hospital bed in the dark, put on Harry’s spare clothes because there’s no time to go home and come here as fast as I could?”
Lifting her arm again, she summoned the white canvas shopping bag into her hand and held it out before her.
“Let’s just say, I came here for something I forgot.”
She reached into the bag and pulled out a glossy, red apple. Even though Draco was bound, she held it out to him.
“Tempting, but no,” he said.
Her eyes widened, surprised her Silencing spell had already faded. Carina could see a quick series of calculations flickering through Miss Granger’s dark eyes.
“I have your wand, Malfoy” she said. “Don’t make me take out your elves. I wouldn’t want to hurt them.”
“I know that.”
“Will you behave?”
“Let’s just say, I’m curious,” Draco said.
Miss Granger nodded and released the apple. It gently floated down onto the table between them.
She reached into the bag again and pulled out a jar of honey. It glowed like amber in the firelight. Something flashed in Draco’s eyes, but he remained silent.
“No? Not ringing any bells?” she said as the honey also drifted down onto the table. “Well, I’ll give you one more hint.”
Miss Granger reached into the bag yet again. Carina held her breath, waiting to see what great secret would be revealed. The elf tapped her bare feet in anticipation.
It was a book.
Not even a very nice one. It was an old paperback book with yellowed pages and tatty corners.
Miss Granger gazed at it for a moment and then held the front cover out to Master Draco. As pale as he was, he grew even paler. He looked over the top of the book into her eyes.
“You remember,” he whispered.
“I do,” Miss Granger said. She threw the book down onto the table before him. “Despite your great talent for Obliviation.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It was a lie.
In truth, Hermione only remembered brief flashes of the stolen memory, but there was no reason to share that with a Slytherin.
She knew liars avoided eye contact, so she didn’t break Malfoy’s gaze and hoped he couldn’t read her without his wand. He was a master Occlumens, but also a great Legilimens.
It had taken Hermione years to admit she had no aptitude for either skill. She hated not excelling at everything.
Flying was one thing. Boys and girls zooming around on sticks, throwing balls and getting all bruised up and bloody. What was so fantastic about that? She had learned to deal with not being good on a broom (even though, in deeply secret fantasies, she imagined shocking them all one day when no one but her could fill in for Viktor at the World Cup, and she kicked total arse, capturing a glorious win for Bulgaria).
It still also stung, just a little, that she hadn’t earned an Outstanding O.W.L. in Defense, like Harry. She knew this thought was petty and selfish. Harry had a preternatural ability to defend himself against the Dark Arts, and thank Merlin he did, for all of their sakes. She would never wish otherwise.
But the fact that she had no talent for Occlumency or Legilimency was different. It had always made her feel stupid. These magics explored the intricate labyrinth of the mind. They should have been her specialty. She was bright, and she had always been fascinated by the workings of the mind, by subconscious, memory, dream and nightmare, perception, intuition. Premonition.
“How much do you remember?” Draco asked with startling insight.
She suddenly felt nauseous. The flashes of feeling returned with shocking force. Silky pillows sliding beneath her, a man’s warm weight pressing her down, an intense bloom of pleasure, the taste of apples. And the pain. Pain that sickened her, needles and burning. The terror of a rope tightening over her eyes.
She knew it was him. The man above her. Knew it with a certainty she didn’t question.
Draco Malfoy had done something to her and then taken the evidence away. That was why she’d always felt so wrong when she was near him, ever since he’d defected in the middle of Sixth Year. It wasn’t anything as banal as suspicion. She wasn’t paranoid or crazy. It was real. It was extrasensory, her lost memory warning her of danger, waiting just beneath her skin like a chill
The dreams had started then, too, the dreams of the cave by the sea. Before Harry and Dumbledore had ever gone there for the locket.
She looked down at the apple and the honey and the book.
Somehow, it was all connected.
She had been so delighted to see a bookseller at the farmers’ market. Her finger had trailed the row of spines, scanning titles. Romance novels in candy colors with gold and silver lettering. Thrillers in red and black, hinting at blood and shadow. And then she had seen it and smiled. Her old copy at home had practically disintegrated.
She’d bought it and placed in her little cart, between a bushel of red apples and a jar of honey. And then she’d felt a wave of nausea, an awful feeling like a nest of snakes crawling inside her belly. Her head had split apart in searing pain, and everything had gone black until just a few hours ago.
“Granger?” Malfoy said softly.
Hermione realized she had let her mind drift. What had her expression revealed? Cursing, she stalked to the other end of the dining table and only turned back when there was distance between them.
Draco’s silver eyes narrowed as he studied her. Even in ropes, on his knees, he looked strong and so damned handsome she wanted to slice her wand along his sharp cheekbones and watch him bleed. He should hurt. He should be punished, even if she didn’t know exactly what for yet. There was always his deceit.
But the truth was she needed him. Only he could draw the memory out of his head. And she couldn’t force him to do it by threatening pain or death. Slytherin through and through, he would call her bluff. They were each who they were. She took a deep breath and summoned her Gryffindor courage instead.
“I only remember… certain sensations,” she admitted, hot with mortification. “But I know it’s bad. I can feel it. I need to see it.”
She unzipped the pocket of her pants and pulled out his wand and a small glass phial.
“I want you to give me the memory,” she said.
Malfoy stood up and closed his eyes, muttering an incantation she couldn’t hear. The ropes binding him burned up in a smoldering fire and fell to black ash at his bare feet in less than a second. Wandless, and his shirt not even singed. For perhaps the first time in her life, Hermione didn’t think to ask about an unfamiliar spell as Draco walked toward her. Her heart was racing.
He stopped so close to her she could smell the faintest hint of his cologne. She held her breath as he took his wand from her but not the phial.
“Of course you can have the memory, Granger,” he said. “Since you asked so nicely.”
CHAPTER THREE
THE CHAMBER OF MEMORIES
Granger hadn’t accepted his hand to step down from the dining room table, but at least she wasn’t blasting hexes at his head anymore. That was progress.
“Scourgify,” he murmured, pointing his wand at her muddy boots.
“Oh, please, you have twelve house elves.”
“Thirteen. You haven’t seen the one shackled in the dungeon for peeling one of my grapes counterclockwise.”
Hermione didn’t rise to his taunt, so they walked in silence down the corridor and through a large, oak door. As they entered the room, he heard her gasp, and he smiled. His library was impressive, and Granger loved books. The room held tens of thousands of them in shelves rising two stories high. Some of his best fantasies began with her asking to study the scrolls from the Great Library of Alexandria and proceeded to them entwined on a soft leather sofa or snogging in a chair by the fire or sweeping all the papers off his desk.
“Malfoy,” Hermione said. “The Chamber.”
Snapping out of his daze, Draco walked to a large fireplace and twisted a latch hidden in a carving of a snake. The low fire flared high and then burned black with tendrils of deepest green. The stone wall behind the fire shifted and became like a gray veil. A passageway was barely visible through it.
“You have to take my hand to enter,” Draco said and was surprised when Granger didn’t hesitate. A shock of pleasure ran through his body at her touch. He hid it, of course. They stepped forward together, through the black fire, which had the pleasant warmth of a summer day, and into a small room with no doorways or windows. She immediately dropped his hand.
For the next five minutes, he lifted Disillusionment Charms, revealing doorways and staircases, in a path growing every more serpentine, until, finally, a pair of ornate, silver doors shimmered out of the darkness. The locks were clearly goblin-made.
“Nice protections,” Hermione said quietly.
“Memories are important.”
She didn’t reply, but Draco saw her jaw tighten.
After one more incantation and a twist of his wand, the tangle of complex locks slithered apart, and the doors opened outward. A beam of blinding light shone on Draco, turning his hair purest white. He stepped aside and watched Hermione as she entered the Chamber of Memories for the first time.
Professor Dumbledore’s Pensieve sat on a marble pedestal in the center of the circular room.
The bowl of the stone basin was filled with a swirling substance, not liquid nor mist but some strange, hypnotic combination of both. It moved slowly, as if stirred by wind. Draco watched Hermione reach out slowly it. Her slim fingers looked like feathers against the brilliant light. The substance whirled at her touch.
Dumbledore had made only three bequests to Hogwarts’ students in his will. Weasley received the Deluminator; Granger, the book; and Potter, the Golden Snitch that contained the Resurrection Stone.
No one knew until later that Dumbledore had left something else to a fourth student, in care of Professor McGonagall. He had left Draco Malfoy his Pensieve.
McGonagall had told Draco this news a month after Voldemort’s defeat, when the Pensieve and Dumbledore’s collection of memories were no longer needed at the school. She had also proposed the Order’s idea of the Chamber of Memories to him, and he had gladly accepted the task, needing distraction from his mother’s grief and the strange feeling of alienation he couldn’t shake since the war ended.
The chamber was small, no greater in circumference than the clock at Hogwarts, but it was high. The walls seemed made of light. The result of over forty thousand memories glowing faintly in delicate phials, stored in glass cabinets so tall they disappeared from sight, up into darkness.
Thousands of people had contributed memories of the war, in order to never forget. Draco had seen them all.
The Pensieve had shown him the whole story, all the secret connections. The prophecy, the Horcruxes, the Hallows. The quick succession of mastery of the Elder Wand from Dumbledore to Vincent Crabbe to Harry Potter on the night of the Headmaster’s death. The role played by Severus Snape, how he loved Lilly Potter and had served Dumbledore since her murder. A weight had lifted from Draco when he’d watched that memory and learned that his defection and Snape’s Unbreakable Vow had not been the reason for the Headmaster’s death.
Draco had also archived memories of Teddy Lupin’s first steps, Potter’s wedding, Christmas at the Burrow. The things worth fighting for, according to the Order. Babies and puppies and rainbows, that kind of shite (all of which actually applied in the unique case of his cousin, Teddy).
Or, as Dumbledore would say, love.
Draco had come to believe the Headmaster had given him the Pensieve to make him feel empathy and prevent him from reverting to his wicked ways.
Now, as he glanced sidelong at Hermione and saw her face glowing in the light, he wondered if the old man hadn’t given it to him for this very moment.
Hermione held the empty phial out to him again, and he ignored it again.
“Draco Malfoy - December 23, 1996,” he said, and a brilliant point of light glittered on a low shelf to their right.
“You’ve already harvested it?” she asked, astonished. She took a step back from him, anger in her expression. And a sharp edge of fear. That wasn’t like her. “Do you… view it often?”
“No,” he lied flawlessly.
“Has anyone else seen it?”
“No. Licentia Recludo.”
A large ring crowded with ornate keys appeared in the air, one of them gleaming white. Draco grabbed it, unlocked the cabinet and took out the glowing memory. Against every instinct of self-protection he possessed, he gave it to Hermione.
She took it, careful not to touch him. He noticed beads of sweat on her forehead. She was pale and short of breath.
“Out,” she said weakly.
“Hermione.” He reached out his hand.
“Don’t touch me!” she screamed, pointing her wand at his throat. Her hand trembled.
Draco obeyed. He took slow steps backwards until he stood before the narrow panel of black between the open doors.
I only remember certain sensations. But I know it’s bad. I can feel it.
She was terrified of him. Some deep part of her remembered how it felt. In the Pensieve, she would see what he had done to her. She would remember everything and never forgive him.
“Call for Kiki when you need help,” he whispered.
Stepping back into darkness, he closed the iron doors and left her in the chamber, alone.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The second he was gone, Hermione collapsed to her knees on the stone floor. Even as she doubled over, trying to contain the nausea that churned through her, she cradled the fragile phial in both hands.
“Breath,” she whispered. “Breath.”
It was worse with her eyes closed. The sickness surged, invisible, inside her head. She opened her eyes and stared at the floor, noticing the shallow grooves carved there, like the concentric rings inside a tree.
She had left the hospital too early. She knew that. Harry had begged her to wait.
“Hermione, you’ll splinch yourself.”
“I would never splinch myself,” she’d snapped and then Apparated to Stonehenge, which was twelve kilometres from Malfoy Manor and the closest she’d ever been to it. She’d run across the plain by wandlight, broken through the wards somehow and subdued Malfoy - all on the strength of her rage. The moment after she’d shown him the book, all the adrenaline had drained out of her, leaving her almost too weary to stand.
The things her fragmented memory made her feel - they intensified as she weakened. Pleasure and pain twined so tightly together that she felt repelled and seduced by both and so confused.
When she’d taken Malfoy’s hand to walk through the black fire, she had smelled salt and felt rope sliding around her waist. And then a soft, phantom touch stroking the nape of her neck. When he’d handed her the memory, she’d felt a breathtaking pulse of ecstasy between her legs. And then pain, like a nail shoved through the pinch of her ankle.
The sensations were growing stronger. The nausea wasn’t passing even though he was gone.
Knowing couldn’t be any worse than fearing.
Hermione pushed up from the floor, the edges of her vision black. The walls shifted in a circle around her. She couldn’t faint. She wouldn’t. She stumbled toward brightness and felt the marble pedestal slam against her hipbone. With all her concentration, she opened the glass phial and poured its beam of liquid light into the Pensieve. The silvery mist rippled away and became transparent, revealing the Divination Stairwell at Hogwarts. Hermione barely saw it as she closed her eyes, pitched forward and fell into a cold, whirling blackness.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
She landed at the top of the stairs, blinded by white stone and winter light. With a sweep of relief, she realized she was no longer nauseous or in pain. She felt normal, no sensation on her skin at all, not even the chill that pervaded Hogwarts’ halls in December. Below her, the staircase spiraled like the inside of a seashell.
Draco Malfoy was walking up the stairs, alone and dressed in black.
December 23, 1996… it was Christmas break, Sixth Year. He was sixteen.
This had been the year he’d come back to school looking less like a boy and more like the man he would become. Tall, broad-shouldered, his face more chiseled than pointy. His voice had deepened to a pitch that seemed to resonate down her spine. She’d picked fights with him just to hear it and felt a traitorous, little flutter in her stomach when they’d sparred. Sometimes, she’d wished he wasn’t Slytherin… And she’d wondered how things would have been different if they’d both been sorted into Ravenclaw.
This was also the year she’d watched him decline, week by week. As the days had grown colder and shorter, he’d become thinner and even paler. Quiet. Solemn. Now, of course, she knew why.
Hermione had also spent this Christmas break at Hogwarts, too, since her parents had vacationed in New York City. She’d agreed to Floo to the Burrow on Christmas Day, but otherwise, welcomed the solitude of the quiet castle. With Sybil Trelawney away, she’d claimed the cozy Divination classroom as her private reading nook.
She didn’t, however, remember Malfoy ever interrupting her there, but his hand was on the doorknob. Hermione reached for her wand, even though she knew she was intangible in the Pensieve.
She moved closer and saw Draco’s face. There was no malice in it. There was doubt and apprehension. He leaned his forehead against the door and closed his eyes and stood so still for so long that she was startled when he moved. With quick decision, he opened the door. She followed him inside the classroom.
It was exactly as she remembered it and more. Amazing, that the mind could recall so much detail from casual glances. She could see every embroidered swirl on every pillow on the floor, each chip in the teacups stacked like little ruins on the tower’s circular shelves. The red curtains were pulled back, letting bright afternoon light into the normally stuffy room. Water simmered in the copper kettle in the fireplace instead of incense.
Behind a red velvet chair, Hermione saw a pair of small feet wearing hand-knitted socks. She walked forward and gazed down at her younger self with almost sisterly affection.
The girl (it seemed strange to think of her as Hermione) was on the floor, sliding somewhere between sitting and reclining on a pile of silky pillows. She wore jeans and a jumper and the pearl stud earrings her mother had given her on her twelfth birthday. Her hair was in a loose braid. She had shoved a stack of tarot cards off the low table beside her and replaced them with a couple of red apples and a steaming cup of tea - for drinking, not divination. A little jar of Hogsmeade honey with a sticky spoon in it sat upon the Eight of Cups card. She was reading her old paperback copy of To Kill a Mockingbird.
By this time, at seventeen, she was a veteran of the Battle of the Department of Mysteries. She had barely survived Dolohov’s curse. But she still looked soft, her cheeks round and pink. She was as yet untouched by the hard, angular look that would trim her face during Seventh Year. This was before Dumbledore died, before the world cracked apart, when the structure of her day was still determined by something as childish as a class schedule.
Hermione stepped back, invisible, like a ghost watching the interactions of the living with fascination.
And then something changed.
Sip of tea, she thought. Shadow, glance up… This room is occupied, Malfoy. Out.
“This room is occupied, Malfoy,” the girl said, putting down her cup of tea. “Out.”
Hermione’s skin felt strange, as if sunlight had emerged from behind a cloud and warmed it. She wasn’t just watching this memory, as Harry has described his experiences in the Pensieve. She was remembering it as she watched it, living it again. She knew everything she would see and hear and feel and think the instant before the scene played out. In a moment, she would look away from Draco, exasperated, and try hard to ignore him by reading the same passage in her book at least three times.
In ones and twos, men got out of the cars. Shadows became substance as lights revealed solid shapes moving toward the jail door. Atticus remained where he was.
Malfoy remained where he was. Soon, he would smile at her…
Part Two
Author: captainraychill
Characters: Draco Malfoy/Hermione Granger
Prompt Number: # 85
Word Count: ~24,750
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Alternate universe after mid-Book 6/EWE, angst, darker than prompt implies, explicit sexual situations, unabashed romance, infrequent but extreme profanity, alcohol consumption, reference to rape and murder.
Summary: Hermione fills her shopping cart with a jar of honey, a book and a bushel of apples. Why do these things remind her of a certain ferret? Aresto Momentum: a spell which slows down or stops the movement of an object… that which gives you pause and makes you reconsider your path.
Disclaimer: In its use of intellectual property and characters belonging to JK Rowling, Warner Bros, Bloomsbury Publishing, etc., this work of art is intended to be transformative commentary on the original. No profit is being made from this work.
Author’s Notes: Thank you to my Beta, you know who you are, for your wonderful input. BF Draco is for you! Thanks also to the Interhouse Mods for your quick answers and generous extensions. And to SnuggleLove54 for the fun and “random” prompt. I think I took it in an odd direction. Hope you like it.
Aresto Momentum (1/3)
PROLOGUE
THE BLOOD INSIDE
Draco Malfoy sent flowers to Hermione Granger on her third day in isolation at St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries.
Exquisite flowers of the most delicate, iridescent pink.
Neville went on and on about some rare genus from South America, a mountaintop, sunrise and how each blossom had exactly 157 petals and a gorgeous scent used as a top note in perfume.
“What does music have to do with it?” Ron asked.
“One hundred fifty-seven exactly? Not likely,” Ginny said. She drew a flower out of the crystal vase and began plucking it petals off, one by one.
“Oi, those aren’t yours,” said Ron.
“Five… six… Hermione would want me to prove it… seven… eight…”
Harry stood alone, on the other side of the room, watching Hermione.
She lay on a white bed, divided from him and everyone else by a faintly glittering shield. He wasn’t sure who the protection was meant to keep safe, her or them. The best healers in Britain had examined her. Experts on dark magic, obscure curses and poisons had been consulted or come forward to volunteer their knowledge. No one could explain why she’d simply collapsed three days ago onto a carpet of bright autumn leaves at the Wimbleton Farmers’ Market.
Her shopping cart, its contents, every stall in the market - everything down to the last apple had been inspected and deemed harmless.
Since falling unconscious, Hermione had been in a delirious trance. Her eyes twitched inside her closed lids like someone in deep dreams. Her fingers twitched, too, beneath her leather-bound wrists. The orderlies had strapped her down because she flailed when she screamed. In still moments, like now, she looked almost like her old self. Her eyes shut tight, her mouth moving quickly and silently, a notch between her eyebrows. She was just Hermione, running through complex number charts in her head, being brilliant.
Then she sobbed and tossed her head to one side, and Harry felt a tightness grip his chest.
He thought of his father and mother, of Sirius, of Dumbledore, Moody, Dobby, Snape, Tonks. Every one of them had died in battle, in time of war.
Hermione Granger couldn’t survive the Second Wizarding War and then die for nothing, of nothing, in a hospital bed. She couldn’t die because she was only twenty-two and his best friend. She just couldn’t…
“Remember,” she whispered.
That was the only word she’d spoken since her collapse.
Remember what?
“One hundred fifty-seven exactly,” said Ginny. “Amazing.”
Harry turned, allowing himself to be distracted by Malfoy’s amazing Peruvian Roaring flower or whatever Neville had called it. People were like this. When everyday life was cut open like skin, to reveal the blood inside, when they were powerless to heal the wound, they turned their eyes from it and concentrated on the most unimportant things. The alternative was to go mad.
“I’m going to count one more, to be sure,” Ginny said, pulling another flower out of the vase.
CHAPTER ONE
SUNRISE
Carina Keystone, more commonly known as Kiki, had been the head house elf of Malfoy Manor for 41 years. She had served the Great Family of Malfoy for 73 years. And in that time, she had seen some crazy shite, but she had never seen anything quite like this.
Master Draco was in love with a Muggle-born girl named Hermione Granger, whether he knew it or not. This had become obvious to Carina since last Sunday, when Miss Granger had fallen gravely ill, and the boy had lost his mind.
Carina had first heard the name Hermione Granger in the summer after Draco’s First Year, when Master Lucius had taunted the boy about scoring second in his class behind a Mudblood (she hated that word but never substituted it with softer words when she thought of those who used it). This taunting happened every summer for the following three years, until Master Lucius had been incarcerated in Azkaban Prison, bested himself by Miss Granger, among others.
Carina had also learned about the girl from Dobby, rest his soul. She had deigned to reestablish contact with the so-called “free” elf after Master Draco’s noble defection from You-Know-Who’s service in the winter of his Sixth Year. From Dobby, she knew Miss Granger, in addition to being highly intelligent, was a Gryffindor, brave, pretty, a bit of a radical, the best friend of Harry Potter and that she liked to knit.
And Harry Potter… Carina knew the most about him. Who didn’t? He had saved the world from You-Know-Who twice. You had to respect that, even though he had probably only succeeded on pure luck. That had to be the case if the boy was an orphan, poor, ugly, scarred, no good at spells or potions, such a poor flyer he constantly fell off his broom and cross-eyed. Oh, and walked like a girl.
In the kitchen, Carina smiled. She put one of the pink flowers delivered by Special Owl in the bud vase on Master Draco’s breakfast tray. The sky outside the open window was still dark.
The master loathed Harry Potter with a powerful enthusiasm. Or at least he had until Sixth Year. Maybe Seventh, which hadn’t actually been a school year at all, but a year in which Draco did Who-Knows-What for something called the “Order” while Carina had cared for Mistress Narcissa. The world had thought Mistress was dead, but she had really been confined to a safe house, a lovely cottage covered with seashells by the sea.
Draco must have grown closer to Harry Potter and Hermione Granger then. They had worked together for almost a year after the Ministry fell. They had defeated You-Know-Who together. But after victory at the Battle of Hogwarts, Master Draco had never spoken of either of them as he would a friend. They had never been invited to the manor like Mr. Zabini and Miss Parkinson. Perhaps because Mistress had walked the halls like a white ghost, consumed with grief over the death of her husband. She had only started traveling with friends again last year and was now in Paris, for one more week, with Fleur Weasley.
And so life went on quite normally, day to day, with tea trays and butcher bills and owls to the baker, until the Sunday edition of The Daily Prophet was delivered to announce “WAR HERIONE DYING OF MYSTERY ILLNESS” and Master Draco had gone nutters.
Sunday had been mad. Owls flying and people Flooing in and out of the house all day. Carina had ushered those summoned into the library, where Draco had sat at his large desk like a king. He had met with Ministry officials, healers, a goblin from Gringott’s, a pair of nondescript men in black and one truly frightening woman with an eye patch and a head full of long, gray braids. When that one had stepped out of green fire in the massive fireplace of the dining room, Carina had thought the manor was being invaded by Gorgon pirates.
And when everyone was gone and the manor was silent, Master drank a bottle of Firewhiskey and passed out. Carina put him to bed, took the paper which had been near his hand all day, and studied the picture of Hermione Granger on the front page. She was pretty, her curly hair rather wild and blowing in a wind. Her dark eyes stared directly at the viewer with an intent focus that would have left Carina feeling slightly scolded, if she were not so self-possessed.
The elf had known right then that Draco Malfoy was in love.
On Monday, he was up early to read another grim headline and receive updates from various visitors. But by midday, there seemed to be no progress, nothing more to report, and the drinking began again.
Tuesday was the same as Monday, with the exception of the arrival of those magnificent flowers. Carina thought they smelled soft and heavenly. She liked the way the pearlescent pink shifted in the light, like the inside of a seashell. When she had asked Master Draco if he wanted to write a message on his card, she found him asleep by the fire with a tumbled book at his feet. Hogwarts: A History. There was shattered glass on the hearth.
On Wednesday, The Prophet’s headline read “CANDLELIGHT VIGIL DID NO GOOD”. Draco cursed viciously, marched straight into the Chamber of Memories and didn’t come out until after midnight. That worried Carina more than anything he’d done so far. Unless someone called on official business, which was rare these days, Draco only used that room once a month. Always on the first day of the month. And Wednesday had been the 18th.
Today was Thursday, Herimone Granger’s twenty-third birthday.
Against the deep sapphire sky, Carina saw the black silhouette of the little owl that delivered The Daily Prophet.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Draco Malfoy lay in his bed, staring out the window.
The fire was low, and the room was dark except for the glow of dawn through the diamond-shaped panes. The pink-gold light faintly illuminated his sharp profile and the curve of his bare shoulder. He wanted to turn away.
Before this week, he hadn’t watched a sunrise since the day that Voldemort had been killed. This was his fourth in a row, and with each one, he lost a little hope. Feared a little more what might have happened during the night, in another bed, miles away.
His power, his wealth, his Slytherin cunning - they were all useless. What did they matter if they couldn’t save her? At last report, Hermione Granger lay unconscious and raving, strapped to a bed in St. Mungo’s.
Unless she had died in the night.
He should have gone to see her yesterday.
The choice had been before him. Hospital or Pensieve. And he had chosen the coward’s path with alacrity. He realized now, in the pure clarity of morning, he’d acted like an addict. Sifting through the little, glowing bottles. Breathing in the haze of luminous smoke. Consuming memories, like drugs, to avoid reality.
He had always been so disciplined with personal use of the Pensieve. One memory, once a month. It was almost ceremonial. But in truth, despite the restraint he’d exercised until yesterday, it was still an addiction. He could never give it up.
And if he had gone to the hospital, everyone would have known.
Draco, like all Malfoys, had perfected the haughty gaze, the arrogant sneer, the icy perfection that was his armor against the world. Disdain hid many undesirable emotions - fear, doubt, jealousy. But he knew if he saw Granger, weak and helpless, he wouldn’t be able to hide the undesirable emotion he felt for her. He would wear it on his face like a fool. And everyone would know, including Potter and Weasley. He refused to be vulnerable in front of them.
It seemed unbelievable he had fought at their side just over five years ago. He had never been part of the innermost circle, the Three, but he had saved their lives and been saved by them. They had all been soldiers for the Order, covered in blood and grit. He had even found and destroyed a Horcrux.
His acceptance was slow but sure from Potter and Weasley, but Granger never seemed to fully trust him. Even after he produced his first Patronus, a feat that earned him a slap on the back from the ever-vigilant Mad Eye Moody, she kept a wary distance. Always sitting on the opposite side of the fire, on the other end of the table, across the room. Their former animosity lapsed into a long, uncomfortable silence, so unnatural it was eerie.
In the seconds after Voldemort’s defeat, as the jubilant crowd rushed Potter, Draco stood against the wall and watched, alone. He was unable to see Granger in the very center of the crush.
Turning away, he’d walked straight to an empty corner of the Great Hall, to the dead body of his father. Lucius Malfoy lay amongst rubble, his pale hair and skin glowing in the newly risen sun. He had died a Death Eater, thinking his wife was dead, and his son, a traitor.
Without another glance at the cheering crowd, he fell to one knee, pointed his wand at a loose stone on the floor and whispered, ”Portus”. A moment later, he was kneeling at the border of the ocean and the shore, his hand still gripping his father’s limp arm.
For the rest of his life, the smell of the ocean, or tears, would take him instantly back to this moment. His mother screaming from the cottage door. The wild, worshipful look she’d spared Draco before crumpling over her husband’s body, weeping. Their long, pale hair intertwined in the sand. He had watched the sun rise out of the sea, tears running down his face, and couldn’t tell where the water ended and the sky began.
A week later he had learned the truth from Potter, when they’d met by chance at the Ministry.
“I’m alive and Voldemort’s dead because of your father,” Harry said.
“What?”
“When Voldemort killed me in the forest, I came back because of the Deathly Hallows. He sent your father over to confirm my death. When he leaned over me, I whispered, Your wife is alive, and Draco knows where she is. That was enough. He told everyone I was dead so he could enter Hogwarts and find you and then your mother.”
“Who killed him?”
“Lupin. I couldn’t prevent it. I had to protect Hermione. Bellatrix nearly got her with an Avada.”
“Of course,” Draco said without hesitation.
Harry gave him a curious look and then invited him The Burrow for dinner that Saturday. Draco had accepted and then later sent his regrets by owl. She wouldn’t want to see him. She would be glad the war was over so she wouldn’t have to avoid him every day. He wasn’t about to torture himself by becoming a lingering shadow.
He had reached out to Blaise and Pansy and his other old friends instead. And life became a more civil and adult version of Hogwarts for him, divided by Houses. He was Slytherin. They were Gryffindor. He still helped the Order, and there were accidental meetings and the occasional ceremony. But they weren’t friends despite everything they had been through together.
Except for her picture in the paper, he hadn’t seen Hermione Granger in six months. Now, he might never see her again outside of a picture or a casket.
He turned in his bed, away from the dazzling sunlight breaking over the horizon. The Daily Prophet would be here by now.
Knowing couldn’t be any worse than fearing.
“Kiki,” he said.
With a soft pop, the house elf appeared at the side of his bed, holding a breakfast tray. The paper was folded neatly between a tall glass of orange juice and a single Peruvian Aurora flower. He looked over the bloom and saw Kiki smiling, her bulbous blue eyes shining.
“GRANGER LIVES - MIRACULOUS MIDNIGHT RECOVERY,” she quoted.
She was alive.
A shock of relief and elation ran through Draco, so powerful he couldn’t breathe. He lunged for the paper and snapped it open, seeing Hermione’s face. It was the public’s favorite image of her, a close-up taken on V-V Day. She stared over the left shoulder of the photographer, the wreckage of the Great Hall behind her, blood along her hairline and the sunlight gleaming on her skin. She was a warrior, weary and strong and beautiful, but with a strange expression in her eyes, wonder and longing combined. He’d always wondered what she’d been thinking at that moment. Everyone did.
Suddenly, a picture wasn’t enough. He had to see her. No matter what kind of reception he received.
“I’m going to St. Mungo’s,” he said decisively.
Before Kiki could answer, an iron screech ripped through the air.
“Impossible,” Kiki whispered. “The wards have never been penetrated.”
A long moment later, a great boom resonated through the manor. Crackling energy rippled in the air, rattling windows and raising the hair on Draco’s arms.
As he grabbed his wand, he heard the shout.
“Malfoy!”
It was a woman’s voice - powerful, angry and just a bit shrill.
“MALFOY!!”
Amplified by a Sonorus spell, the voice now roared through the house. The crystals of two dozen chandeliers shivered against each other. His name echoed five times. Draco smiled.
She was here.
She wanted to see him. His desire to see her had allowed her to break the Malfoy wards. And if volume was any indication, she was fully recovered and ready for a fight.
He hadn’t felt this happy in years.
“Who is that?” Kiki asked.
“Granger,” Draco said with a smirk.
CHAPTER TWO
DINING AT THE MANOR
Just over a minute later, Carina watched the two of them find each other, each framed in shadowed archways on opposite sides of the formal dining room. The long ebony table stretched between them like a stage.
It’s like a play, the elf thought with a little thrill of delight.
She’d read folios of wonderful plays in the library and had always yearned to see one performed in a theatre. With a snap of her fingers, the low fire in the massive fireplace behind the table blazed high, and hundreds of candles in two ornate chandeliers flickered to life.
Master Draco leaned against his archway on one upraised arm, looking every centimeter the handsome and dissolute aristocrat. His pale hair was only out of place in the way he wished it to be, falling over his forehead and glowing white in the shadows. His white dress shirt was untucked and halfway unbuttoned but crisp, the cuffs and collar pressed to razor precision, as were the pleats in his black trousers. His feet were bare. He hadn’t had time to Accio a pair of shoes.
He owned the look, however, his confidence and arrogance making his dishevelment seem perfect. He held his wand loosely in one hand, as if he didn’t need it, and stared at Miss Granger with bored indulgence. His gray eyes were sharp and mocking.
Miss Hermione Granger, however … There was absolutely no pretense there. She wore cargo pants that were too long and a jumper that was too loose, men’s clothes. But Carina wouldn’t remember these details until later, because she was too riveted by the strength of the magic and fury radiating off the young witch. Miss Granger glared at Draco, her dark eyes feral. Her hair was a wild mass of brown curls. She looked like she was in battle, her wand gripped with white knuckles.
Because she was a house elf, Carina also noticed the white canvas shopping bag Miss Granger had dropped on the floor.
“There are more pleasurable ways to wake me up at dawn, Granger,” Draco drawled lazily.
Good line, thought Carina. She was completely engrossed - and unprepared.
With a slash of her wand and no words, Miss Granger sent the dining room table and its twenty-two chairs flying through the air toward a wall of glass and stone. Toward Carina. Draco moved a fraction of a second later, silently commanding everything to sail neatly back to its proper place with only the softest creak of ancient wood.
“I know you probably eat over the kitchen sink,” he said. “But try to have some respect for the antiques.”
Miss Granger wasn’t listening. She marched toward Draco, toward the table that blocked her path, with a burning purpose in her eyes. Without breaking her stride, she stepped onto Mistress Narcissa’s chair and leaped up onto the table. Her muddy boots landed on the polished surface with a resounding thud.
Draco lifted a pale eyebrow and followed suit, stepping on his chair to vault up onto the table. He used a silent, subtle touch of Aresto Momentum to land silently on his bare feet. He gripped his wand a little tighter.
The dining table had become a dueling strip.
Carina’s senses sharpened, her elfish instincts slicing her daydreams to ribbons. It didn’t matter that Miss Granger had been ill. She had power and rage. She had somehow defeated undefeatable wards. Master Draco was in danger. Flushed with shame, Carina took a step forward. On her authority, eleven other house elves did the same, ranged strategically around the room.
Draco noticed the movement and without taking his eyes off the woman in front of him, he said, “Kiki, I forbid you or any other elf in my service to defend me against Miss Granger.”
“Master,” she acknowledged quietly.
Miss Granger’s gaze flickered almost imperceptibly to Carina before returning to Draco.
“Haven’t you been sick, Granger? Sure you want to do this,” he gestured with his wand to the table, “for no apparent reason?”
“I have my reasons,” she said softly.
Carina didn’t see Miss Granger move until a blast of red lightning was racing from her wand toward Master Draco. Stupefy or perhaps Expelliarmus. He blocked it, at the last instant, with a Shield Charm, sending sparks hissing across the table. And then the air was sizzling with her hexes. Draco did nothing but block them, holding his ground as she slowly advanced under a storm of flashing light.
Carina felt the heat from across the room. A strange sensation, more pressure than pain, filled her little body as if her ribcage were expanding very slowly. She was compelled defend Master Draco. She was equally compelled to obey his order not to defend him. Trapped, she looked at him helplessly - and noticed the look of pure exhilaration on his face. He was grinning.
Miss Granger saw it, too, and grew incensed. With a savage growl, she whipped another curse at him, which he parried with particularly good form. She stepped forward, relentless, to attack again, and her boot caught on the cuff of her pants. She toppled forward onto her knees, her hair falling over her face.
“Hermione!” Draco cried out. He lowered his guard.
“Expelliarmus!” she shouted.
In one fluid, circular motion of her arm, she swept her hair out of her eyes and pointed her wand emphatically at Draco. His wand flew out of his hand, high into the air.
“Silencio! Incarcerous!” she shouted.
Through a blaze of white sparks, rope shot out of her wand and wrapped tightly around Draco’s arms and torso. She scribbled in the air, and the rope twisted into a complex knot. When she lowered her arm, slowly and deliberately, Draco was pressed down onto his knees. She stood as he kneeled.
Only then, in the silence, did his wand clatter onto the stone floor.
Master Draco’s smile was gone now. He couldn’t speak. His face was hard and furious, his silver eyes promising violence, like a blade. Carina wondered if she could break through the bonds of his last command if he gave her a look. She waited, her muscles tense, but he never turned his eyes from Miss Granger.
The witch walked forward and stopped a few feet away from Draco, looking down at him. Under the light of the chandelier, her brown hair turned dark gold. She lifted one arm, and Draco’s wand flew into her hand. She slipped it into a deep pocket of her cargo pants, which she zipped shut.
“If you could speak now,” she said, “I imagine you would say, What the fuck do you want, Granger?”
His look said exactly that.
“What is so important to make me get out of my hospital bed in the dark, put on Harry’s spare clothes because there’s no time to go home and come here as fast as I could?”
Lifting her arm again, she summoned the white canvas shopping bag into her hand and held it out before her.
“Let’s just say, I came here for something I forgot.”
She reached into the bag and pulled out a glossy, red apple. Even though Draco was bound, she held it out to him.
“Tempting, but no,” he said.
Her eyes widened, surprised her Silencing spell had already faded. Carina could see a quick series of calculations flickering through Miss Granger’s dark eyes.
“I have your wand, Malfoy” she said. “Don’t make me take out your elves. I wouldn’t want to hurt them.”
“I know that.”
“Will you behave?”
“Let’s just say, I’m curious,” Draco said.
Miss Granger nodded and released the apple. It gently floated down onto the table between them.
She reached into the bag again and pulled out a jar of honey. It glowed like amber in the firelight. Something flashed in Draco’s eyes, but he remained silent.
“No? Not ringing any bells?” she said as the honey also drifted down onto the table. “Well, I’ll give you one more hint.”
Miss Granger reached into the bag yet again. Carina held her breath, waiting to see what great secret would be revealed. The elf tapped her bare feet in anticipation.
It was a book.
Not even a very nice one. It was an old paperback book with yellowed pages and tatty corners.
Miss Granger gazed at it for a moment and then held the front cover out to Master Draco. As pale as he was, he grew even paler. He looked over the top of the book into her eyes.
“You remember,” he whispered.
“I do,” Miss Granger said. She threw the book down onto the table before him. “Despite your great talent for Obliviation.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It was a lie.
In truth, Hermione only remembered brief flashes of the stolen memory, but there was no reason to share that with a Slytherin.
She knew liars avoided eye contact, so she didn’t break Malfoy’s gaze and hoped he couldn’t read her without his wand. He was a master Occlumens, but also a great Legilimens.
It had taken Hermione years to admit she had no aptitude for either skill. She hated not excelling at everything.
Flying was one thing. Boys and girls zooming around on sticks, throwing balls and getting all bruised up and bloody. What was so fantastic about that? She had learned to deal with not being good on a broom (even though, in deeply secret fantasies, she imagined shocking them all one day when no one but her could fill in for Viktor at the World Cup, and she kicked total arse, capturing a glorious win for Bulgaria).
It still also stung, just a little, that she hadn’t earned an Outstanding O.W.L. in Defense, like Harry. She knew this thought was petty and selfish. Harry had a preternatural ability to defend himself against the Dark Arts, and thank Merlin he did, for all of their sakes. She would never wish otherwise.
But the fact that she had no talent for Occlumency or Legilimency was different. It had always made her feel stupid. These magics explored the intricate labyrinth of the mind. They should have been her specialty. She was bright, and she had always been fascinated by the workings of the mind, by subconscious, memory, dream and nightmare, perception, intuition. Premonition.
“How much do you remember?” Draco asked with startling insight.
She suddenly felt nauseous. The flashes of feeling returned with shocking force. Silky pillows sliding beneath her, a man’s warm weight pressing her down, an intense bloom of pleasure, the taste of apples. And the pain. Pain that sickened her, needles and burning. The terror of a rope tightening over her eyes.
She knew it was him. The man above her. Knew it with a certainty she didn’t question.
Draco Malfoy had done something to her and then taken the evidence away. That was why she’d always felt so wrong when she was near him, ever since he’d defected in the middle of Sixth Year. It wasn’t anything as banal as suspicion. She wasn’t paranoid or crazy. It was real. It was extrasensory, her lost memory warning her of danger, waiting just beneath her skin like a chill
The dreams had started then, too, the dreams of the cave by the sea. Before Harry and Dumbledore had ever gone there for the locket.
She looked down at the apple and the honey and the book.
Somehow, it was all connected.
She had been so delighted to see a bookseller at the farmers’ market. Her finger had trailed the row of spines, scanning titles. Romance novels in candy colors with gold and silver lettering. Thrillers in red and black, hinting at blood and shadow. And then she had seen it and smiled. Her old copy at home had practically disintegrated.
She’d bought it and placed in her little cart, between a bushel of red apples and a jar of honey. And then she’d felt a wave of nausea, an awful feeling like a nest of snakes crawling inside her belly. Her head had split apart in searing pain, and everything had gone black until just a few hours ago.
“Granger?” Malfoy said softly.
Hermione realized she had let her mind drift. What had her expression revealed? Cursing, she stalked to the other end of the dining table and only turned back when there was distance between them.
Draco’s silver eyes narrowed as he studied her. Even in ropes, on his knees, he looked strong and so damned handsome she wanted to slice her wand along his sharp cheekbones and watch him bleed. He should hurt. He should be punished, even if she didn’t know exactly what for yet. There was always his deceit.
But the truth was she needed him. Only he could draw the memory out of his head. And she couldn’t force him to do it by threatening pain or death. Slytherin through and through, he would call her bluff. They were each who they were. She took a deep breath and summoned her Gryffindor courage instead.
“I only remember… certain sensations,” she admitted, hot with mortification. “But I know it’s bad. I can feel it. I need to see it.”
She unzipped the pocket of her pants and pulled out his wand and a small glass phial.
“I want you to give me the memory,” she said.
Malfoy stood up and closed his eyes, muttering an incantation she couldn’t hear. The ropes binding him burned up in a smoldering fire and fell to black ash at his bare feet in less than a second. Wandless, and his shirt not even singed. For perhaps the first time in her life, Hermione didn’t think to ask about an unfamiliar spell as Draco walked toward her. Her heart was racing.
He stopped so close to her she could smell the faintest hint of his cologne. She held her breath as he took his wand from her but not the phial.
“Of course you can have the memory, Granger,” he said. “Since you asked so nicely.”
CHAPTER THREE
THE CHAMBER OF MEMORIES
Granger hadn’t accepted his hand to step down from the dining room table, but at least she wasn’t blasting hexes at his head anymore. That was progress.
“Scourgify,” he murmured, pointing his wand at her muddy boots.
“Oh, please, you have twelve house elves.”
“Thirteen. You haven’t seen the one shackled in the dungeon for peeling one of my grapes counterclockwise.”
Hermione didn’t rise to his taunt, so they walked in silence down the corridor and through a large, oak door. As they entered the room, he heard her gasp, and he smiled. His library was impressive, and Granger loved books. The room held tens of thousands of them in shelves rising two stories high. Some of his best fantasies began with her asking to study the scrolls from the Great Library of Alexandria and proceeded to them entwined on a soft leather sofa or snogging in a chair by the fire or sweeping all the papers off his desk.
“Malfoy,” Hermione said. “The Chamber.”
Snapping out of his daze, Draco walked to a large fireplace and twisted a latch hidden in a carving of a snake. The low fire flared high and then burned black with tendrils of deepest green. The stone wall behind the fire shifted and became like a gray veil. A passageway was barely visible through it.
“You have to take my hand to enter,” Draco said and was surprised when Granger didn’t hesitate. A shock of pleasure ran through his body at her touch. He hid it, of course. They stepped forward together, through the black fire, which had the pleasant warmth of a summer day, and into a small room with no doorways or windows. She immediately dropped his hand.
For the next five minutes, he lifted Disillusionment Charms, revealing doorways and staircases, in a path growing every more serpentine, until, finally, a pair of ornate, silver doors shimmered out of the darkness. The locks were clearly goblin-made.
“Nice protections,” Hermione said quietly.
“Memories are important.”
She didn’t reply, but Draco saw her jaw tighten.
After one more incantation and a twist of his wand, the tangle of complex locks slithered apart, and the doors opened outward. A beam of blinding light shone on Draco, turning his hair purest white. He stepped aside and watched Hermione as she entered the Chamber of Memories for the first time.
Professor Dumbledore’s Pensieve sat on a marble pedestal in the center of the circular room.
The bowl of the stone basin was filled with a swirling substance, not liquid nor mist but some strange, hypnotic combination of both. It moved slowly, as if stirred by wind. Draco watched Hermione reach out slowly it. Her slim fingers looked like feathers against the brilliant light. The substance whirled at her touch.
Dumbledore had made only three bequests to Hogwarts’ students in his will. Weasley received the Deluminator; Granger, the book; and Potter, the Golden Snitch that contained the Resurrection Stone.
No one knew until later that Dumbledore had left something else to a fourth student, in care of Professor McGonagall. He had left Draco Malfoy his Pensieve.
McGonagall had told Draco this news a month after Voldemort’s defeat, when the Pensieve and Dumbledore’s collection of memories were no longer needed at the school. She had also proposed the Order’s idea of the Chamber of Memories to him, and he had gladly accepted the task, needing distraction from his mother’s grief and the strange feeling of alienation he couldn’t shake since the war ended.
The chamber was small, no greater in circumference than the clock at Hogwarts, but it was high. The walls seemed made of light. The result of over forty thousand memories glowing faintly in delicate phials, stored in glass cabinets so tall they disappeared from sight, up into darkness.
Thousands of people had contributed memories of the war, in order to never forget. Draco had seen them all.
The Pensieve had shown him the whole story, all the secret connections. The prophecy, the Horcruxes, the Hallows. The quick succession of mastery of the Elder Wand from Dumbledore to Vincent Crabbe to Harry Potter on the night of the Headmaster’s death. The role played by Severus Snape, how he loved Lilly Potter and had served Dumbledore since her murder. A weight had lifted from Draco when he’d watched that memory and learned that his defection and Snape’s Unbreakable Vow had not been the reason for the Headmaster’s death.
Draco had also archived memories of Teddy Lupin’s first steps, Potter’s wedding, Christmas at the Burrow. The things worth fighting for, according to the Order. Babies and puppies and rainbows, that kind of shite (all of which actually applied in the unique case of his cousin, Teddy).
Or, as Dumbledore would say, love.
Draco had come to believe the Headmaster had given him the Pensieve to make him feel empathy and prevent him from reverting to his wicked ways.
Now, as he glanced sidelong at Hermione and saw her face glowing in the light, he wondered if the old man hadn’t given it to him for this very moment.
Hermione held the empty phial out to him again, and he ignored it again.
“Draco Malfoy - December 23, 1996,” he said, and a brilliant point of light glittered on a low shelf to their right.
“You’ve already harvested it?” she asked, astonished. She took a step back from him, anger in her expression. And a sharp edge of fear. That wasn’t like her. “Do you… view it often?”
“No,” he lied flawlessly.
“Has anyone else seen it?”
“No. Licentia Recludo.”
A large ring crowded with ornate keys appeared in the air, one of them gleaming white. Draco grabbed it, unlocked the cabinet and took out the glowing memory. Against every instinct of self-protection he possessed, he gave it to Hermione.
She took it, careful not to touch him. He noticed beads of sweat on her forehead. She was pale and short of breath.
“Out,” she said weakly.
“Hermione.” He reached out his hand.
“Don’t touch me!” she screamed, pointing her wand at his throat. Her hand trembled.
Draco obeyed. He took slow steps backwards until he stood before the narrow panel of black between the open doors.
I only remember certain sensations. But I know it’s bad. I can feel it.
She was terrified of him. Some deep part of her remembered how it felt. In the Pensieve, she would see what he had done to her. She would remember everything and never forgive him.
“Call for Kiki when you need help,” he whispered.
Stepping back into darkness, he closed the iron doors and left her in the chamber, alone.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The second he was gone, Hermione collapsed to her knees on the stone floor. Even as she doubled over, trying to contain the nausea that churned through her, she cradled the fragile phial in both hands.
“Breath,” she whispered. “Breath.”
It was worse with her eyes closed. The sickness surged, invisible, inside her head. She opened her eyes and stared at the floor, noticing the shallow grooves carved there, like the concentric rings inside a tree.
She had left the hospital too early. She knew that. Harry had begged her to wait.
“Hermione, you’ll splinch yourself.”
“I would never splinch myself,” she’d snapped and then Apparated to Stonehenge, which was twelve kilometres from Malfoy Manor and the closest she’d ever been to it. She’d run across the plain by wandlight, broken through the wards somehow and subdued Malfoy - all on the strength of her rage. The moment after she’d shown him the book, all the adrenaline had drained out of her, leaving her almost too weary to stand.
The things her fragmented memory made her feel - they intensified as she weakened. Pleasure and pain twined so tightly together that she felt repelled and seduced by both and so confused.
When she’d taken Malfoy’s hand to walk through the black fire, she had smelled salt and felt rope sliding around her waist. And then a soft, phantom touch stroking the nape of her neck. When he’d handed her the memory, she’d felt a breathtaking pulse of ecstasy between her legs. And then pain, like a nail shoved through the pinch of her ankle.
The sensations were growing stronger. The nausea wasn’t passing even though he was gone.
Knowing couldn’t be any worse than fearing.
Hermione pushed up from the floor, the edges of her vision black. The walls shifted in a circle around her. She couldn’t faint. She wouldn’t. She stumbled toward brightness and felt the marble pedestal slam against her hipbone. With all her concentration, she opened the glass phial and poured its beam of liquid light into the Pensieve. The silvery mist rippled away and became transparent, revealing the Divination Stairwell at Hogwarts. Hermione barely saw it as she closed her eyes, pitched forward and fell into a cold, whirling blackness.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
She landed at the top of the stairs, blinded by white stone and winter light. With a sweep of relief, she realized she was no longer nauseous or in pain. She felt normal, no sensation on her skin at all, not even the chill that pervaded Hogwarts’ halls in December. Below her, the staircase spiraled like the inside of a seashell.
Draco Malfoy was walking up the stairs, alone and dressed in black.
December 23, 1996… it was Christmas break, Sixth Year. He was sixteen.
This had been the year he’d come back to school looking less like a boy and more like the man he would become. Tall, broad-shouldered, his face more chiseled than pointy. His voice had deepened to a pitch that seemed to resonate down her spine. She’d picked fights with him just to hear it and felt a traitorous, little flutter in her stomach when they’d sparred. Sometimes, she’d wished he wasn’t Slytherin… And she’d wondered how things would have been different if they’d both been sorted into Ravenclaw.
This was also the year she’d watched him decline, week by week. As the days had grown colder and shorter, he’d become thinner and even paler. Quiet. Solemn. Now, of course, she knew why.
Hermione had also spent this Christmas break at Hogwarts, too, since her parents had vacationed in New York City. She’d agreed to Floo to the Burrow on Christmas Day, but otherwise, welcomed the solitude of the quiet castle. With Sybil Trelawney away, she’d claimed the cozy Divination classroom as her private reading nook.
She didn’t, however, remember Malfoy ever interrupting her there, but his hand was on the doorknob. Hermione reached for her wand, even though she knew she was intangible in the Pensieve.
She moved closer and saw Draco’s face. There was no malice in it. There was doubt and apprehension. He leaned his forehead against the door and closed his eyes and stood so still for so long that she was startled when he moved. With quick decision, he opened the door. She followed him inside the classroom.
It was exactly as she remembered it and more. Amazing, that the mind could recall so much detail from casual glances. She could see every embroidered swirl on every pillow on the floor, each chip in the teacups stacked like little ruins on the tower’s circular shelves. The red curtains were pulled back, letting bright afternoon light into the normally stuffy room. Water simmered in the copper kettle in the fireplace instead of incense.
Behind a red velvet chair, Hermione saw a pair of small feet wearing hand-knitted socks. She walked forward and gazed down at her younger self with almost sisterly affection.
The girl (it seemed strange to think of her as Hermione) was on the floor, sliding somewhere between sitting and reclining on a pile of silky pillows. She wore jeans and a jumper and the pearl stud earrings her mother had given her on her twelfth birthday. Her hair was in a loose braid. She had shoved a stack of tarot cards off the low table beside her and replaced them with a couple of red apples and a steaming cup of tea - for drinking, not divination. A little jar of Hogsmeade honey with a sticky spoon in it sat upon the Eight of Cups card. She was reading her old paperback copy of To Kill a Mockingbird.
By this time, at seventeen, she was a veteran of the Battle of the Department of Mysteries. She had barely survived Dolohov’s curse. But she still looked soft, her cheeks round and pink. She was as yet untouched by the hard, angular look that would trim her face during Seventh Year. This was before Dumbledore died, before the world cracked apart, when the structure of her day was still determined by something as childish as a class schedule.
Hermione stepped back, invisible, like a ghost watching the interactions of the living with fascination.
And then something changed.
Sip of tea, she thought. Shadow, glance up… This room is occupied, Malfoy. Out.
“This room is occupied, Malfoy,” the girl said, putting down her cup of tea. “Out.”
Hermione’s skin felt strange, as if sunlight had emerged from behind a cloud and warmed it. She wasn’t just watching this memory, as Harry has described his experiences in the Pensieve. She was remembering it as she watched it, living it again. She knew everything she would see and hear and feel and think the instant before the scene played out. In a moment, she would look away from Draco, exasperated, and try hard to ignore him by reading the same passage in her book at least three times.
In ones and twos, men got out of the cars. Shadows became substance as lights revealed solid shapes moving toward the jail door. Atticus remained where he was.
Malfoy remained where he was. Soon, he would smile at her…
Part Two