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He wanted to get her a ring. He knew she understood that rings weren’t the done thing in the fucked-up society he’d grown up in, but he wanted to get her one anyway. He just didn’t have any idea how to go about it.
He could ask Potter, of course, but then he’d have to tell him he was proposing, and he didn’t want to do that until he could ask for his permission. He remembered that was also part of the Muggle traditions she was forever saying he could buck, but that he knew she really loved and wished for. Hermione didn’t have her father anymore, so her brother/best friend/protector/pain-in-his-arse would have to be the next best thing.
He could ask the Weaslette—yes, he still called her that in his head, no he wasn’t going to stop, damn it—but that would mean getting an endless lecture on what Hermione liked to wear, and wondering how much it would cost, and…and…and…it would be horrific. Terrible.
Someone would have to carve out his eyeballs before he asked Blaise or Theo for any help. They would either tell him to buy the most ostentatious thing he could find, or they’d tell him to just get her an heirloom fucking bracelet like every other witch and sod the whole ring business.
But he wanted to honor her Muggle heritage. She’d done so much for him. To become “suitable” to his family, no matter what he told her about how sexy he found it when she ranted about Elves or caused Narcissa to look down her nose at her. She went to charity fundraisers in the bloody manor house where she’d been tortured to make his father happy. She even wore green for him, on occasion, just to make him smile.
So. He had to figure this out. No if’s, ands, or buts about it. He was going to get his girl a ring before he proposed to her. He just didn’t know how.
She’d taken him to Bond Street and Saville Row once to show him how, “His half lives in the Muggle world.” He figured it wasn’t a terrible place to start. He just had to remember how to get there. Hail a cab? The…fuck…the Underworld? Underhill? Underground! That was it.
He wandered around the street across from Diagon Alley until he recognized the circle with the “u” in it that meant the train. Now he just had to pluck up the courage to ask a Muggle for help. He could do this.
He walked down the stairs to the station and stopped at the Muggle behind the glass. He tapped on the glass, eliciting a “What the hell do you want?” and politely, if curtly, asked the way to Bond Street. The teller rattled off a list of stops and train changes that frankly baffled him. He must have looked like a fish out of water enough that he earned a bit of her sympathy. She directed him to a pay phone a street over and told him to, “Call a bloody cab, ya rich ponce.”
This was not going to work out well.
He needed help. He’d tried wandering about in London to no avail. He just wanted a bloody ring. Why was that so hard?
Did he dare ask his mother about where she’d had her jewelry made in the past? He didn’t want her to suspect he was planning on proposing, even though the courtship he’d had with Hermione had been disgracefully long by her standards. He wanted this to be about them. Not his family or the expectations of their world or anything but how much he loved her. He wanted to marry her.
Why was it so. Damn. Hard.
He gave in. He asked Potter for help. After he got the whole, “Hermione’s an independent woman I don’t know why you’re asking me for her hand in marriage, but fine you great git,” speech from Potter, he begrudgingly asked if he knew where it might be a good place to buy her a ring.
“You’re asking me for advice? Oh, this is bloody rich. It’s amazing. I’m going to languish in this feeling for days,” Harry laughed.
“Potter. I don’t know anything about this shit. We don’t buy jewelry for people in my family. Heirlooms are it. If there’s any jewelry buying it’s done by the women. We don’t…I don’t know what I’m doing.” He ran his hands jerkily through his hair and over his face. “I just want to get this right.”
Harry’s face softened. “I don’t really know where to buy one either, but I have a feeling I can find out. Let me nose around and I’ll floo you in a couple of days, okay?” Harry placed a supportive hand on his shoulder. “She loves you, even if I don’t have the slightest idea how you managed it, and she’ll love whatever you give her.”
Harry had done better than all right, and Draco knew it as soon as they walked into the shop. It felt like he was in Diagon Alley, even though it was a Muggle shop, and he breathed a heavy sigh of relief. Rosenberg’s, the store was called. The sign’s paint was peeling a bit, but the displays looked promising.
Harry, being the outgoing Gryffindor that he was, greeted the shopkeeper and told her that his friend was looking for a unique engagement ring for his unlucky lady. The woman gushed and dragged Draco over to their engagement case. He was…impressed. The pieces weren’t at all garish or ostentatious. They were elegant. Simple. Refined. Just what, he hoped, the future Mrs Malfoy would want on her hand forever.
Suddenly he couldn’t breathe. Forever. He was planning on asking Hermione to marry him. To become not only the future Mrs Draco Malfoy, but the future Lady Malfoy, the matriarch of a dynasty. What the hell was he doing?
Surprisingly, Harry grasped his arm, bringing him out of his panic. “It’s going to be okay, mate,” he whispered. “She knows what she’s getting into. Let’s just look and see what they’ve got that might work.”
He looked at all the rings, and nothing was jumping out at him. He asked if they had anything else he could look at. The shopkeeper wrung her hands, saying Mr. Rosenberg wouldn’t like it, but that there were some…exclusive pieces he often saved for special clients. He grinned, turning up the charm. “You wouldn’t be willing to just let me look? Just for a minute.” She caved.
She went to the back of the shop and brought out a large wooden jewelry box. She opened it and in it, on a velvet cushion, sat three of the most exquisite pieces of jewelry Draco had ever seen. Harry gasped, causing Draco to narrow his eyes at the bold man. He scrutinized the three rings carefully and pointed at the one in the middle. “That one,” he said definitively. “It’s exactly what she would wear. And it will look beautiful with the family pieces.” The shopkeeper’s eyes widened.
“Mr…uh…sir, I hope you know, when I say these pieces are exclusive, I mean the price is…uhm. Well, it’s not generally acceptable to most people.”
Harry cackled. “Money is the only part of this whole venture that isn’t a problem.”
“Potter,” Draco sneered. “Don’t be gauche.”
“Fine, fine,” Harry said, putting his hands up. “But really, Miss, it’s not going to be an issue. Do you take checks?”
“Yes, gentlemen, we do.”
The actual proposal plan was not going well. He didn’t want to just blurt it out somewhere—or, gods forbid, during sex—but he didn’t want it to be too planned out. She loved when he did spontaneous things. Called it him being a hopeless romantic. But weren’t proposals different? Supposed to be planned out?
If he’d followed the plan, he would have had a bracelet from the family vault presented to him, his parents would have arranged a betrothal contract ceremony, and he would have presented the witch in question with a bracelet at the end of the ceremony to seal the betrothal. Done. Sorted. Normal. But he had to go and fall in love. With Hermione Granger, bloody Golden Girl, Muggle-born, perfect gods-be-damned witch. And he wanted it to mean something to her, not just to him.
When they’d talked about getting married the first time, it had been in a hypothetical, “someday this is what it could be like” sort of way. He explained the inane traditions of his family, she had told him about rings and getting down on one knee, and they’d tabled the discussion for another day.
The second time was after his mother started dropping hints about his legacy and his duty to the family. Hermione had told him that she wasn’t ready for all of it yet, but that maybe it was time to start taking tea with his mother more regularly. He nearly choked on his firewhiskey. “I’m sorry?” he’d said, still reeling from the revelation. But she’d stood firm, telling him that if someday it would be a reality, she should probably start learning what it meant to be his wife.
The third time they’d talked about marriage was when she casually said, “When we get married, I don’t want to do it at the Manor. I’m fine with the whole pureblood rigmarole of the contracts and the bracelets and everything else. But I don’t want to get married there. Anywhere else.” He was floored. She said when. Not if. Not someday. Not hypothetically. She said when. And that’s when he knew it was time to find a ring.
He’d bollocksed it up. He knew it. He’d taken her to Paris where they’d had their first date—that’s what they did in those movies, wasn’t it? —and got down on one knee and said some stupid speech in front of Notre Dame (her favorite place in Paris) and she was crying.
He stood up, closed the box, turned around, and started stuttering, “I don’t…it doesn’t have to be now…I mean…I love you. I…”
“Draco,” Hermione said when she finally got her breath back. “Yes.”
“What?” he said, confused.
“Yes,” she said, smiling through the tears. “My answer is yes, I’ll marry you.”
He nearly threw the ring on the ground when he picked her up and swung her around, kissing her so deeply that even the French looked away.
“I didn’t even look at the ring, you know,” Hermione said to him in their library. They’d purchased a brownstone in Chelsea after their wedding to have a place that was theirs and not just his family’s.
“What?” Draco said, looking up from his book.
“I didn’t look at the ring when you proposed. It’s perfect, of course, but I just couldn’t get over that you were proposing to me in Paris. Of all places. It was like something out of a movie and I was so overwhelmed.”
“You…you didn’t look at the ring?” He was confused. He thought all witches looked.
“No. It could have been a blade of grass for all I cared. I was getting you. That’s all I wanted. The ring was a beautiful bonus,” she said, smiling down at her left hand. “You always listen, you know? You listen to me in a way no one else does. You knew I wanted a piece of my Muggle heritage to be a part of our story, even if I didn’t say it out loud. You knew. And I love you for it.”
“I don’t…Gods, I love you Mrs Malfoy.”
“And I you.”