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Draco knew it from the moment she got home that evening.
It was something about the way that she burst through the front door, something about the careful way her bare feet tapped up the stairs to his office, something about the little breath she took before she opened the door, nervous and eager and impatient all at once.
He knew it because she always forgot to use the floo when she was excited, always tiptoed through the flat when she wanted to surprise him, always settled herself with a breath before she shared good news.
And then there was the smile on her face when she finally opened the door, simultaneously bright and bold, teary and wobbling. The way she hurried across the room and jumped on him and wrapped her arms around his neck. The way she laughed and kissed and loved him.
He knew, that after months and months of searching, Hermione had finally found the one.
The one that kept her up at night pouring over childhood journals and wrinkled maps, that she swore to him would come despite endless disappointment. The one she’d dreamed of her entire life. The one he’d begun to doubt existed at all.
She held him and he held her back, a moment shared between two people who no longer needed cliched phrases to express their love, flowery words to express their joy. She breathed and he breathed and they just knew.
This was going to change everything for them.
A house. Their house.
“It’s perfect Draco…” She whispered into his neck over and over again, as if that giant brain of hers had somehow short circuited, leaving her with a vocabulary of that word alone.
Perfect, she’d called it, once she finally got herself together, smoothing down her hair with sweet thoughtful fingers and allowing him brush his thumbs under her eyes.
Perfect, in between kisses interrupted by the sharp pull of toothy smiles.
Perfect , as she stood sandwiched between his chest and the counter later that night, sticking her finger in a half-done pot of pasta sauce.
Perfect , when they sat together in front of the fireplace, sipping from a bottle of red he’d been saving for the occasion.
And it wasn’t until she finished her first full glass that her words seemed to come back. All at once, like the final pin pulled from a damn. She crawled onto his lap, faced him.
I’m just so happy Draco. I looked everywhere. You know that right? I looked everywhere but I just didn’t think to… Well Bill finally had the idea and we went and there it was and I can’t wait for you to see it. We’ll go first thing tomorrow? I know you’re working but maybe you could ––
He could, would . Because she was his wife for fucks sake and she never asked a single thing of him. Because she looked so sweet, so damn happy , and he would do whatever it took to keep that smile on her face one minute longer.
{Redacted: Whatever it took to get them out of the shoebox flat they’d crammed themselves into for the last two years .}
And while she hadn’t managed to give Draco a single hint about what the place looked like or where it was or how exactly it’d remained hidden for so long, he couldn’t be bothered to ask. He was too happy to see her happy.
So he let her ramble on as they finished off the rest of the bottle, as she began to run out of words and wakefulness and returned again to perfect, perfect, perfect .
He carried her off to their room in a haze of vintage Pinot Noir, fingers fumbling like it was their very first time as he traded her button down and skirt for one of his t-shirts instead. And even half asleep she managed to trade their pillows before settling down on her side of the bed.
Because it smells like you , she swore every time he questioned her, digging her face down into it and hiding her smile.
She fell asleep faster than she ever had before, encouraged by the promise of tomorrow, lulled by the landscapes he painted across her back with the tips of his fingers. And he wasn’t an artist, not by any means, but he figured that things like balance and proportion and rhythm and unity could be excused in this sort of art.
Dreamy depictions of their future together in this perfect place.
Getaway, Gouache on Watercolor Paper. A precarious three story perched on a cliffside in Italy, right beside the ocean. Brightly colored houses on either side of their own. A view of the sunset that rivaled all others.
Countryside , Tempera on Canvas. A modest house with pristine landscaping and a cobblestone drive. Her bicycle leaned up against the side wall, his broom against the back. Only a short walk away from a row of family owned shops and restaurants. Candles in the front windows. A front porch swing.
Next Town Over, Ink on Parchment. A refurbished Victorian with a lookout basement and white washed trim. Far enough away from the city for him to catch a peak of the stars on especially dark nights, close enough for her to walk to her favorite coffee shop before work in the mornings. Room for a nursery down the hall from their bedroom. A skylight in the kitchen.
Simplicity, Woodblock Print. A warm-brick Tudor with a sunroom and a garden plot and ivy climbing up the walls. A park across the street with enough benches and pathways and ponds for a hundred afternoon dates. Magnolia trees on either side of the front door. Children in the lawn and on the porch and in his arms.
He filled a gallery with them, all of the hundreds of possibilities he dared to dream. Some made his chest ache with want, others made him smile with contentment. Still more made him long for good fortune, for a family, for a future.
And he never could have known, when the paint ran dry and his fingers ached and his eyes began to close, that reality would be far more bleak than anything he’d imagined.
___________________________________
The next morning, Draco stood in the center of a crumbling stone drive with Hermione by his side, hoping –– praying –– that she had brought them to the wrong place somehow.
She had a habit of doing that when distracted, after all. She brought them to the street-entrance of the Ministry instead of Grimmauld Place after a particularly long day at work. To a muggle hospital outside of London instead of St.Mungo’s when Ginny had gone into labor. To an apothecary in Knockturn instead of their preferred one in Diagon when Draco had fallen ill.
But every one of those times she’d noticed her mistake immediately, grabbing his hand and whipping him into a blur of side-along apparition so nausea inducing that it rivaled Theo’s after a night at the pub.
Now, she stood beside him with no evidence of an error on her face. Her hand held his, sure, but their feet stayed firmly planted on the ground. She’d intended to bring them here. Here .
He wiped his palms on his trousers, ran his tongue across the back of his teeth, asked himself what the fuck he had missed during their conversation the night before.
Because it wasn’t just his ‘uppity narrow minded pureblood privilege’ talking...
(Hermione had coined this phrase, of course, when they’d first started dating as a sort of colloquial term for the bias that tainted his experiences with new things. Public drinking fountains, taxi cabs, rented bowling shoes, and corn dogs, to name a few.)
Objectively, there was absolutely nothing perfect about the dilapidated mess that stood in front of him, tilted to a precarious right angle at the far end of the narrow drive.
And maybe stood was a generous description, based on the way that the roof caved in on itself, the front door missing entirely. Truthfully it was nothing more than a pile of misplaced brick, splintered wood, and dust, with approximately two fewer walls than Draco thought was required to classify something as a ‘house’ at all.
He opened his mouth, closed it again. Because he knew, in that moment, that even his most carefully chosen words would sound an awful lot like uppity and narrow minded and privileged.
So all of his questions about logistics and concerns about her sanity remained unspoken, sealed tightly behind closed lips. And he left them that way, anxiety building and building because he couldn’t lie to her, not if she asked him right then.
He wouldn’t even be able to mumble a strained ‘ It’s lovely’ before the rest of it came tumbling out –– a string of words like horrible and not enough and disappointing that couldn’t ever be taken back.
Thank Merlin, his opinions of the place seemed to be the last thing on her mind as she bounced on her toes, a smile pulling her lip from between her teeth. She squeezed his hand, leaned up on her toes to kiss the corner of his jaw, and ran ahead, leaving him behind in plumes of dust and dirt as she disappeared through the front door.
Only it wasn’t really a door, was it? Given there was only a frame and a few rusty hinges in its place. The doorway , perhaps ? But it really wasn’t that either. The front… hole?
He followed the imprints of her shoes up the drive in a series of mindless steps, breathing with a strange amount of intention and doing his best to remember the little thing Hermione talked him through when his anxiety was at its worst.
One thing you can taste. Bitterness.
Two things you can smell. Mildew. Smoke.
Three things you can hear. Dripping water. A squeaky weathervane. ‘Perfect’ .
Four things you can feel. Humidity. Dust. Broken glass underfoot. Disappointment.
Five things you can see … And fuck this just didn’t work the same without her. He hadn’t thought it possible, but by the time he made it up the narrow path he felt even more anxious, absentmindedly picking at the ends of his nails.
What the hell... He mumbled under his breath, watching as white clouds of dust billowed up with his first step across the threshold, as his makeshift gallery went up in flames.
It was difficult for him to take it all in, the reality of this place. A few partial walls were held up by rotten wood frames and sheer luck. Entryways stood slanted where rooms must have been before. Piles of singed velvet curtains covered the floor beside shattered remains of windows and pools of stagnant water.
And there he was in the center of it all, silent and frozen and watching as Hermione tiptoed from one pile of rubble to the next, mumbling to herself with a smile.
Don’t you dare ruin this for her. He reminded himself, fisting his hands and pressing short nails into his palms. Just because you’re used to that fucking Manor… You got used to the flat, didn’t you? If it makes her happy then that’s enough. That’s enough. Just keep your mouth shut and ––
A rat the size of Crookshanks crawled over the squared toe of his dress shoes, and fuck if that wasn’t the final straw. He shooed the little rodent toward the doorless entryway, the hole , and made his way over to Hermione with great care.
“Love,” Draco wrapped his arms around her shoulders, resting his chin on top of her head. “All of this… are you sure it’s what you want?” It was nearly impossible to scrub the judgement from his tone, but damn he tried.
He’d promised her, after all, that she could have her pick of any place in the world as long as they’d share it together.
To be fair, when he made that promise he’d expected that Hermione would be shopping for someplace with a square footage higher than three digits, something without rats, with a roof and a green lawn and a functional front door.
But, after nearly five years together, he should have known better. His stubborn, compassionate, headstrong little witch. Of course she’d fall in love with a place like this, blind to the fact that it was broken and empty and long since abandoned.
She’d fallen in love with him, hadn’t she? And he had been every one of those things too.
“You don’t like it?” She turned on her heels to face him, her words more of a statement than a question. “You don’t. You don’t like it at all.” There were tears gathered in the corners of her eyes, vulnerability in the way her lips parted, and it killed him.
He could’ve kicked himself then, seeing the disappointment in her eyes, the fear and uncertainty. Hermione wasn’t a witch prone to dramatics, after all. In fact, he could count the number of times he’d seen her cry on one hand. He was determined not to add this day to that list.
“No! It’s not that, I –– I love it.” He cupped her face in his hands and pulled her into his chest, hoping his earnesty bled through in the way that he held her. Because, really, how could he deny her this?
She fisted the front of his shirt, shaking her head.
“You’re a terrible liar, you know?” Her lips moved against his chest, leaving her words muffled.
“I suppose there are worse things to be terrible at.” He kissed the top of her head, resigned to a lifetime of inevitable honesty.
She sighed. “Tell me something true then? Please.”
“I don’t love it, okay? But I want to.” His voice was steadier in it’s honesty. “I’d do anything for you, you know?”
She breathed out a laugh, resting her chin against his chest to look directly up at him. He watched her face turn contemplative, then serious again. “I know it’s not the prettiest place in the world, Draco, but I –– it just feels right to me. This place feels right.”
“Teach me how, then.” He insisted, “How to see it the way that you do.”
And when she pushed up on to her toes to kiss him, it was determination that shone in her eyes instead of disappointment, hope instead of tears. She nodded, “Perfect.”
___________________________________
A week later, the house was theirs. Of course it hadn’t been as simple as that, but nothing ever was.
It had started with a particularly painful afternoon of “ getting things sorted ”, which, in Hermione-speak, meant laying out every single detail of the process in a series of steps for herself, in a simplified checklist for Draco.
First, Contact landlord to terminate current lease agreement.
He could have sworn this went against her philosophy –– tackle the simplest task first –– as it meant he had to use her cellphone, but he kept this observation to himself. Problem was, his fingers were too big (read: too fumbly) to hit the buttons the right way and he always ended up calling the wrong person. Fortunately, she’d dialed the number for him this time, leaving him to handle the worst part –– small talk with Silas, the creepy old fuck who owned their building.
Second, Exchange money at Gringotts.
This task involved a lot of ‘yes, I understand you want to help pay for things’ and ‘no, I’m not trying to be chauvinistic’ and ‘take the funds out of my personal vault please, not Mrs. Granger-Malfoy’s.’ She found out about this, of course, and beat him senseless with a copy of A Room of One’s Own when he suggested she repay him in other ways. He fell asleep with her back turned to him that night and woke up with her legs thrown over his, her hair on his chest and in his mouth and between his fingers.
Third, Get muggle identification in order.
Objectively, this part should have been the easiest. He spent hardly ten seconds pulling the photo ID out of his brown leather wallet, the birth certificate and marriage license out of the cabinets in his office. The time sucker here was the inevitable laughing fit Hermione went into every time she saw the picture he’d chosen for his fake drivers license.
‘ It was a bad haircut, okay?’ He swore every time. ‘Love, It’s the same one you have now.’ She’d respond in between stilted giggles.
Fourth, and finally, Sign paperwork.
This one Hermione had been particularly… involved in. She sat him down at his desk, hovering just over his shoulder with a stack of papers larger than he’d ever seen. ‘I’ve read them all quite thoroughly so there’s no need to worry about what you’re signing.’ She insisted, shoving page after page in front of him and pointing at the little signature lines she’d highlighted in green.
Fact was, he hadn’t been worried at all. Not until she’d gone and said that . He tried to peek at the words on each page as he signed, only to have her hand slapped across the back of his neck. ‘I could always just forge your signature, you know. Posh little swirls and all...’
He planned to ask her about the shady behavior as soon as he finished. She was, like him, a terrible liar. But what she lacked in deception she made up for in perception, catching the question on his lips and smothering it with her own.
In a particularly passionate betrayal of Virginia Woolf, she’d done exactly as he suggested after all, his worries exchanged for her teeth and her tongue and her bare skin against his.
Once in his office chair to shut him up. A second time in bed that night, nervous excitement settling in. And again early the next morning, both of them drowsy and content and hopeful because it was theirs, damnit.
It was a bloody mess, but it was theirs.
She practically dragged him out of bed to exchange the completed paperwork for the deed to the house, then off to the nearest apparition point and up the drive and through the entryway. A grin split her cheeks as they walked from room to room together under the chill of morning mist, dreaming of the way things would be. And his little gallery rebuilt itself, slow and certain.
She told him about the tiny room in the back of the house that would become a nursery, with light blue paint and stars enchanted on the ceiling to change with the seasons. He told her about the walls on either side of the fireplace that he’d cover with dark stained shelves, spanning from floor to ceiling and filled with every last one of her books.
She told him about the garden she’d plant in the side yard. He told her about the vintage Baldwin he’d fit in the corner of the sitting room. A skylight above the kitchen. Candles in the front windows. A guest room for Harry and Ginny and Theo and Blaise. A porch swing. Magnolia trees. Children. Children .
And with every passing moment he loved the place more, finding memories yet to be made amongst the piles of dust and rubble.
He made room for the new image on his gallery wall –– Unconditional, Charcoal on Vellum –– and it wasn’t long before he didn’t have to lie when they stepped through the front door.
Her whispering, I love it so much, Draco . Him answering, Me too.
___________________________________
“No magic.”
Those were the words that she chose to wake him up with on the first morning of renovations, hovering above him bright eyed and smiling and thoroughly caffeinated.
No hello or good morning or i’m so excited or his favorite hands-on greeting. No magic . No fucking magic.
“What are you talking about?” He groaned, pushing her on to her back and burying his face in her neck, half-asleep and fully confused.
She ran her fingers through his hair, down his spine, and he should’ve known then she was only softening the impending blow. He could feel her lips moving against the top of his head.
“To fix up the house. I don’t want to use magic... I want to do it the real way.”
Draco lifted his head suddenly, faced with a rather serious expression rather than the teasing smile he’d been expecting. There was determination in the set of her lips, but her eyes betrayed her nerves, wide and expectant.
“You can’t be serious, Hermione.”
And his doubt only made her appear more resolute, staring up at him as if he had been the one to say something ridiculous, not her.
“I am.” She tilted up her chin. “Dead serious.”
No magic.
Hermione stood in the center of the house a few hours later in a pair of particularly atrocious muggle denims that came up to her chest and crossed in the back and secured over her shoulders, a Gryffindor quidditch shirt underneath with Potter written across the back.
No magic.
She pointed to various piles of trash and debris for him to carry out to some oversized garbage bin, ever the tyrant as she directed him with hands on her hips and an unamused glare and hair curling around her face in the humid summer heat.
No magic .
A bucket of water dumped over his head when she caught him using a silent Evanesco on a particularly large pile of broken stone.
No magic.
Draco waking up with sunburns and bruises and scratches from head to toe. Contemplating the fragility of his existence, the destruction of his previously uncalloused hands, the to-do list that ran a mile long.
No magic.
Which meant more Muggle inventions than Draco had ever seen in his life.
And that had to be the worst part, really –– all of the tools she carried around in her little black box, enchanted and endless inside.
There were things called hammers and screwdrivers and wrenches. Giant blades with serrated edges called saws and guns that shot sharp little nails out of the ends instead of bullets and it was all a bloody nightmare, really.
Some fucked up version of his, now ruined, professor-student fantasy where, instead of Hermione wearing one of his dress shirts and a tie, she wore those damned muggle denims, a different but equally heinous quidditch shirt with Weasley written across the back for fuck’s sake.
Where the lessons were decidedly more practical than sexy, though spoken with just as much swotty snark as he’d imagined.
You’re holding the wrong end Draco, the metal part is what you’re meant to use.
There’s fiberglass in all of that Draco, and it’ll make you itch for days. You’ve got to wear gloves when you lift it.
Too long, Draco. Too short, Draco. Too loud, too hard, too much, too little.
She was relentless and particular and by the end of the first week he feared he’d strangle her if they stayed in that house for a single moment longer.
“We’re done.” He announced with unprecedented finality, dropping his paintbrush on the floor.
Hermione only stared at him, turning back to her work.
“Nope, I mean it this time.” He walked up behind her and snatched the roller from her hand. “We’re done.”
She reached to grab the roller back from him and pouted when he held it just out of her reach.
“We have plans tonight, remember?”
“Plans?” She raised a brow at him, unamused.
“With Potter and Ginny… At the pub…”
Hermione laughed. “Oh you must be really desperate, huh? You’ve never once remembered to meet them. In fact, I distinctly remember sitting with them alone last week. And the week before that, and ––”
He cut her off with a punishing kiss. “I need a drink, alright? Even if it means suffering through a couple hours with Potter.”
___________________________________
“You look like shit, mate.” Harry slapped Draco on the back in greeting, sliding a tumbler of whiskey in front of him.
“Yeah, cheers.” He mumbled, tossing back the contents of the glass all at once. Typically, he’d spout off something clever in response, but at the moment. all of his remaining energy was spent on remaining upright in the wobbly chair he sat on.
Potter slid his own glass over to Draco in exchange for his now-empty one, raising up two chosen-one fingers at the barkeep to request another round.
He hesitated before speaking up again. “For the record, I tried to tell her it was a ridiculous idea.”
Draco scoffed, sipping this second drink more carefully. “Which part? Her no magic rule or buying that mess of a house in the first place?”
And fuck , he knew he sounded bitter from the moment he opened his mouth. Potter only looked at him, confused, making him feel even more guilty.
“Looks better already though, don’t you think?” Ginny piped up from across the table, ever the peacekeeper of the group. He caught her eye in a wordless thank you .
“Oh yeah,” Potter piped up after a disgustingly obvious kick in the shin from his wife. “Yeah. Almost back to how it was before, isn’t it?”
“Before?” Whiskey had Draco’s thoughts playing at full volume, apparently. He looked at Hermione, her face suspiciously neutral, at Potter, his face expectedly flushed.
“You know what it looked like?” He prompted, fighting off the nasty feelings in his chest –– frustration, confusion, exhaustion. “Before all this? ”
He could see from the corner of his eye the look exchanged between Hermione and her best friend, a sort of non verbal communication that he had long since come to accept as normal between the pair of them.
Hermione shook her head almost imperceptibly. Potter narrowed his eyes. Hermione sipped her drink. Potter turned back to him.
“Just pictures, you know? From the internet…” He trailed off, bringing his glass up to his lips.
And that had to have been the reason for their tense exchange. Hermione knew how much Draco despised the Internet and, for the most part, carried on without it.
“You know, Draco…” Hermione followed up quickly, “Harry actually offered to come help us with some of the work next week. Didn’t you?”
Draco caught the confusion on Potter’s face morph into concession. “Uh –– yeah. Yeah, I’ll be there.”
And he might’ve keeled over dead before he admitted it aloud, but after a week of torture Draco was damn glad to hear that Potter would be around.
At least he had some idea what ‘ drywall’ was when Hermione sent them off to the store with little more than a few crumpled muggle bills and a kiss goodbye.
Together, the three of them spent the next seven days cleaning up debris, laying brick, moving electrical wires, and rebuilding the very foundation of the house. And at night, when Hermione finally worked and worried herself to exhaustion, the boys would sneak back with wands in hand to tackle the to do list that never stopped growing.
They used magic to complete all sorts of little tasks that Potter swore Hermione would never notice –– patching holes and grouting tile and sanding down the raw edges of freshly cut trim.
And every night when he snuck back into bed, Draco moved silent and careful and smooth, chuffed with himself and his secret.
Only, it was never really a secret, and if Draco were being honest with himself, he might have come to this conclusion long before Hermione gave herself away. She wasn’t daft, after all, and she wasn’t a heavy sleeper either.
“Draco,” she’d whispered to him one night as he slipped out of bed, abandoning her feigned sleep. “When you go tonight, please don’t paint over the doorframe in the kitchen.”
He bit back a laugh at the way her lips pouted, still half asleep. She had a habit of spouting all sorts of nonsense in her sleep, and over the years he’d found it was best to placate her rather than try to make sense of it all.
“Alright, love.”
Her brow furrowed and she opened her eyes a bit to face him. “Promise?”
“Yeah,” He rubbed a thumb across her cheek, kissing the soft skin below her eyes. “Yeah, I promise.”
And by the time he and Harry had finished up for the night he’d nearly forgotten about her request entirely. The place was coming together, with furniture starting to fill up the empty rooms and a fire burning in the hearth.
“Looks like a brand new place.” Harry mumbled from where he sat before the fire, his feet propped up on one of a hundred cardboard boxes labeled ‘Hermione’s Books’.
“Really does,” Draco nodded in agreement, tipping back what remained of the Muggle beer they’d bought at the store on the corner. “You want another?”
Harry passed off his empty bottle. “Sure. Thanks mate.”
Mate . Draco still wasn’t used to that. He grunted, heading off toward the kitchen.
And he wouldn’t have noticed it at all if it weren't for the wavering light of the candles they’d lit on the counter tops.
On the weathered white doorframe in red and blue and black ink, a dozen tiny marks with dates beside them. He had to squint to make sense of them all.
The first mark, lower than even his knee, was labeled 9/19/81. The last, barely reaching his shoulder, 9/19/95.
And beside each line was the same set of sharply scrawled initials, only visible in the shadow of the candlelight.
HJG.
HJG.
HJG.
He stared. And stared. And stared.
And it wasn’t until Harry appeared in the doorway behind him that he realized.
“Hard to believe she was ever that small, right?”
“What?” He mumbled, mind spinning and spinning and…
“Hermione...” Draco could hear the hesitation in Potter’s voice, the way he scuffed the toe of his shoe on the ground. “You know it was hers, don’t you?”
“Malfoy?” He spoke up again after the silence of Draco’s surprise became increasingly uncomfortable.
“Hers…” Draco echoed mindlessly.
“Uh –– yeah. Sorry mate. I thought you knew… thought she would’ve told you by now…”
He apparated home without so much as a goodbye to Potter, the surprise of his sudden realization landing him in the middle of their flat’s entryway instead of the bedroom as he’d intended.
His heart beat loud in his ears as he took the stairs by twos and kicked off his shoes by the foot of the bed, sliding in between the sheets and turning her to face him.
“Mmm,” She made a sweet little bothered sound, “What are you ––?”
“It was your house.” He whispered, trying desperately to control his breathing. “All this time you knew… It was your house.”
She blinked her sleepy eyes at him and rubbed at them with her fists, taking her time understanding his words. “Yes. It was my house.”
“You’re bloody infuriating you know that?” His momentary frustration was betrayed by the smile on his face, remembering how she’d mourned the loss of her childhood home over the years.
And her furious searching made sense all of a sudden. The journals and maps and sleepless nights. Seeking help from the Weasley curse breaker. The state of the place when she’d finally found it. Her fear when she thought he might hate it. Her joy when he’d told her they would stay.
He stole a kiss, then another, her lips turning up against his. “You could’ve just told me.”
She hummed and buried her head into his neck, her breath warm on his skin. “I know. It’s just –– I didn’t want you to think of it that way, you know? As mine .”
He held her tighter as she curled into him, breaths still heavy with sleep. “How would you like me to think of it, then?”
Hermione gave a sleepy sigh, “I’d just like for it to be ours now.”
And years later, the two of them would treasure that carved up doorway more than any other possession, now covered in a set of new marks and dates in Hermione’s swirling script.
SHG-M
LNG-M
With scribbled drawings on the fridge and a toy broom leaned up against the counter and as many children’s books on the shelves as there were adult ones.
The four of them, a family, in a painting all their own.
Home, Oil on Canvas.