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If it is but sleep,
Why, I can sleep with anyone;
But it is you, my love,
Who drifted with me like the seaweed
Of the offing, for whose word I wait.
- anonymous
The surprise of the snow storm is almost offset by the gentleness by which it falls. And falls.
And falls.
It mutes the world outside the tower, numbing every sound. Far below, Hagrid slings an axe to cleave dried wood, but in the muffled silence of snow, it doesn’t reach the highest points of Hogwarts—a mime of an action to its observer. The dullness presses into the castle itself, torpid and deceptively soothing.
Hermione sits above it all, and feels…
Nothing.
The necrosis eats at her will, keeping her locked onto the window sill peering out into a blanketing white world, and it stirs nothing in her bones.
No, that’s not quite true. She feels the ache.
Near the beginning she asked the few who returned for eighth year if they’ve felt it too. Seamus scoffs as he swigs from his not-so-subtle flask. Padma grows still, looking to her left to find her empty chair filled with her private ghost, but says nothing. Neville furrows his brow, concern across his face, before offering up a new herbal concoction that Hermione will always turn down.
So she asks her best friends when they visit. Ron rolls his eyes and says she’s being dramatic. Like usual. Harry, however, meets her eye. He nods. A shiver runs down his spine. Hermione thinks that maybe he understands… Then he turns to Ron and they both laugh about some inside joke from Auror training.
She doesn’t join in.
Nor does she ask anymore.
Instead, she works. Her NEWTS keep her attention. She doubles up her studying practices. She keeps her head down. If anyone wonders why the most talkative of the Golden Trio has grown silent, they don’t bother to ask.
Except one.
There’s no illusion of cordiality at first. There’s just emptiness from him. He gives no apologies or excuses—he gives nothing. His face is blank and hard, gray eyes like steel.
He speaks very little, his head buried in the textbooks, his lips often no more than a thin line.
Draco Malfoy, ex-Death Eater, son and heir of the sullied Malfoy fortune, blood traitor, enemy of the people, victim, perpetrator— scapegoat.
He bares the scorn from all sides as if with ease. But he gives them nothing to cling to. No taunts, no sneers. He keeps his shoulders up and his head down.
At first, she notices that his old friends join him at the table: at least the ones still enrolled. Theo tries to tell jokes; he doesn’t look up from his plate. Pansy tries to touch him; he gets up and moves away. Blaise is the last to attempt to reach out, by merely languishing idly in his presence. Malfoy continues in silence, and even Blaise’s chill indifference can only stand so much.
Eventually, he is alone at the dining table, at the library, in school projects.
Just like she is.
There’s a certain silent connection that holds two lonely people together at a distance. A mutual agreement of detachment.
So when a new group project arises in DADA, and no one claims to partner with Malfoy or Granger, it only makes sense for them to be paired together.
They work remarkably well together, to little surprise, their communication mostly non-verbal, until one day when he snaps.
It’s a slam of the textbooks on the library table that jolts her, that crisp early autumn morning.
She looks up, startled, and sees Malfoy standing before her, his jaw and mouth working for words, but coming up with none. When he finally closes them, the words come as if unbidden, laced with surprising anger.
“What happened to you?”
Her brow snaps together.
“What?”
He suddenly turns, pacing in front of their shared table. A shaking hand runs through his hair.
“Is-is this your idea of revenge? Your punishment upon me?” When she merely stares perplexed at him, he groans, using both hands to grip his hair by the roots. For a moment, he pauses immobile, before leveling a finger at her. “You used to talk. You never used to stop talking. And now, you barely string together a full sentence. Now, when you do, it has to be practically dragged out of you.”
“So did you.” The words are out before she thinks about them. His finger falls slowly before hanging limply at his side.
She looks down at her ink-stained fingers that are lightly shaking. She swallows.
“What is there to talk about?” Her voice is quiet. “I just want to stop the ache. It hurts too much. Talking makes it bigger, makes it hurt worse.”
She stops at the sound of his rings on the wood at the back of his chair. He leans forward as his hands grip the top. His eyes are studying the grain of the table.
“I understand.” Grey eyes tentatively raise to hers.
For a long moment, she studies them. And for the first time in a while, an unbidden, unforced ghost of a smile pulls at her lips.
“I thought you might.” When the same hint of a smile graces his face, she uses the back of her quill to indicate his chair. “Planning on sitting?”
“As you wish, Granger.”
It’s the beginning of a new sort of camaraderie that she finds in his presence. There’s no pressure to speak, no explanation owed to the other.
And thus speech is born.
It’s soft, a far cry from the chatter of Granger-yesteryear or the sharp wit of Malfoy-prior, but it’s new and fledgling. Part of her wonders if this would have been their friendship all along, had blood purity been put to rest long before. If Voldemort had never returned. She shakes off the what ifs and focuses on the now.
The week before Christmas, he sees her in the corridors and calls out to her. She stops and waits for him to catch up.
When he nears, she notices his less-than-Malfoy-composed appearance. Hair disheveled, shirt untucked, jumper slightly askew. There’s pink splotches at his jaw, his nose, his temple, and if she looks closely, she can make out a splatter of red on his collar.
It’s the first time she has seen him so out of sorts. He slumps slightly, a mild limp, and his right hand is pressing hard against his opposing forearm.
Her brows knit together.
“Malfoy, are you alright?”
He waves off her worry with his left hand, but doesn’t remove his right, knuckles clutching tight around his shirt sleeve.
“Can I speak with you for a moment?” His disheveled hair flicks as he gestures to an empty classroom with a jut of his chin.
She nods and turns to follow him in.
As soon as the door closes behind her, she rounds on him. “Malfoy, you’re not alright. What happened?”
“I’m fine.” His voice is light, more akin to their childhood than their present. “Just broke my cufflink— don’t think anyone wants a glimpse underneath still.”
Her eyes narrow. “That’s not it. There’s blood on you—“
She moves forward to help, but he steps back head shaking.
“No, Hermione. Please don’t.”
Her name stops her. Hermione? Not Granger?
The steel is gone from his eyes, from his spine, and he sags.
“That’s— this isn’t why I called after you. I—“
He stops, running a hand through his hair. Recently she’s found it a fond mannerism of his, something far different from the put together nature of years past. But she’s unsettled this time. She keeps her silence in hope that he will explain all of this.
Eyes on the floor, hand at the back of his neck, he speaks. “I’m sorry.” Slowly, his eyes raise to hers. “I’m sorry, Hermione. I’ve never told you that.”
He sags against the desk behind him blindly, and it slides slightly, stumbling him, but he keeps his eyes on hers. “I’m sorry for all the horrible things I’ve said and done, and for all the things I should have done but didn’t.”
Her mouth opens, but no words come. When was the last time she had thought of him as that petulant child and his nasty, hurtful words? How long had it been since she saw him sit quietly but disturbed as her body lit up in agony? She had thought of those things, yes, but when did she stop associating him with them?
Draco continues, unaware of her own epiphanies. “You’ve been the only good thing to come out of this year, Hermione. Your friendship has been a gods-send. But it’s not fair to have this stupidity of mine hanging over it. And if that means our friendship is over, then I understand. But I have to—“
He stops at her raised hand.
“Draco, I think I forgave you before I even realized it.” She sighs, placing her bag on the nearby table and sits heavily in a chair next to where he leans. Hands rubbing together, she stares down at them as if they are foreign.
“I’ve heard so many words, so many promises over the years, that I’ve learned not to listen to them. I’ve learned to look at what people do .” She looks up at him, eyes sad but resolved. “And what you do has said a lot more than anything you could have voiced.”
His mouth is agape, eyes wide. When he finally remembers to exhale, it escapes him like a rattle. She offers up a soft smile.
“Your friendship has meant a lot to me too, Draco. I'd like to keep it, if that’s alright by you?”
He nods silently. Her smile grows slightly. Without another word she collects her things, moving to the door, but pauses with her hand on the knob.
She glances over her shoulder towards him, a mischievous look in her eye. “Next time, though, as my friend, I expect you to tell me if someone decides to take their aggression out on you. You should remember how I treat bullies.”
It happens, from time to time.
His less-than-perfect veneer is displaced by someone who finds his very existence a threat. He still doesn’t tell her who or what, but he does allow her to help patch him up. It’s a step in the right direction.
The winter’s worst chill slips into the castle after the return to classes.
It’s permeating, this creeping thing with its tenacious claws that make her joints feel brittle, the ache in her chest almost visceral.
Draco shivers with it too.
But she finds that when a moment arrives that they share—an inside joke, a reference, an acknowledgment—and their eyes meet across the table, the classroom, the Great Hall, the ache dulls, the sharp claws blunt instead of piercing.
Hermione is certain there’s a name for it, but her head grows heavy with the weight of labels, and she dismisses it. Instead, she basks in this newfound warmth.
So when the ides of March arrives, and the winter chill has begun to retreat to the dark corners of the Forbidden Forest, she greets the warmth with an almost suspicion. It feels fake, forced, a façade.
Hermione’s worries seem to be given life when Draco appears at her shoulder at breakfast. A cloud seems to sit heavy over him.
“I have to go back to the Manor for a little bit.”
She blinks. He didn’t return for the holidays, but now he has to go?
“Everything okay?”
A bitter laugh escapes his lips. “No. But it will be soon. I’ll see you when I get back?”
“When do you leave?”
“Portkey is at 9. So right after this.”
“Oh.” Her stomach drops, and the warm breakfast before her seems as cold as ice. She forces a smile onto her face. “Be careful. I hope it’ll be okay.”
He nods, offering her a half smile, and gets up, but stops at her hand on his forearm.
“If—if you need to talk, you know I’ll listen.”
His smile grows, but is still tainted. “I know. Thanks, Hermione.” He pauses. “I’ll miss you.”
“You, too. Don’t be gone too long.”
With a nod, he’s gone and the chill settles over her bones. She takes one more bite of icy beans into her mouth before shoving the plate away, appetite lost.
It’s been a fortnight when the fluke snow storm hits the school.
There’s been no word. She aches, high in her tower, but she longs for the cold to finally numb her again. She’s grown too accustomed to the warmth.
What happens after school? Has she pinned so much of her on Draco that two weeks away has left her aching and desperate?
She could easily identify the hole his absence had left, often finding herself scanning the crowd at mealtimes for his pale hair in a sea of dark robes. Or turning to her left to offer up a smile at something she knows he would be snickering about.
And then it’s the touch— she had never considered him a very physical person, until he was missing. The casual brush of his fingers across her hands when exuberance manifests itself in the overworking of potion ingredients. The gentle nudge of his shoulder against hers to announce his presence when he sits beside her. Each touch like a flare in her skin, warming her to her bones. It thaws her like a hearth on a snowy day.
But her source of warmth is gone, and the hewn stone of Hogwarts feels as icy as an abandoned and empty fireplace.
Is this what awaits her after school? In Draco’s absence, a word is found to describe him, and she shivers when it comes to her. She can’t. They can’t. There’s nothing to say he views her the same way. Companionship, common ground, familiarity: they are easy. What she names is hard.
So instead, she wraps up in heavier robes, dons her Weasley-made jumper, and sinks into thick blankets. And in the blankets she hopes to bury the thing she refuses to acknowledge, prays that where he has touched her hasn’t scorched her skin with the word. She builds the icy walls with trembling fingers.
In her frigid turret, she gazes down blankly.
The courtyard spreads below her, and she watches the hopeful fourth years preparing for yet another traipse into Hogsmeade. It has long ago lost its appeal save for the occasional drink at Rosmerta’s. Happy faces turn up to the snow fall, but still the sound of their delighted cries is muffled at best, silenced at worst.
None of the younger ones leave the group, though.
A warning was announced that morning. With the sudden snowfall, the merfolk of Black Lake were going into a panic. Despite their usual peace with the inhabitants of Hogwarts, these bonds were nothing against their instinctual drive to feed their families. As such, any one near the water was liable to experience the tempting and alluring call— the siren’s call. Transfigured, desperate, the merfolk would find lost souls to bring to their watery graves.
All Hogwarts students, unless accompanying a group into Hogsmeade, were to stay indoors.
So when she spots a perfectly ruffled head of platinum hair emerge from around a corner of the courtyard, she’s slightly surprised to see him. And when he stops below her tower and looks up, a smile on his face, a note falls wrong, but she ignores it for the warmth that suffuses her bones.
He beckons, and she goes.
The glamour holds, despite the shake in his hands, when he emerges from the Floo into the Headmistress’ office. Professor McGonagall looks up from her desk, passes his appearance over with an astute eye, and places her quill down.
“Welcome back, Mr. Malfoy.”
He nods as smoothly as possible despite the way the muscle jerks in his neck. “Professor.”
“I am sorry for your loss, young man.”
He nods again.
The keen eye of the Headmistress narrows. “If you feel the need or desire to talk about how you are managing, my office—“
“I have friends, Professor.”
A ghost of a smirk pulls at her lips. “So I am aware.” Her smile fades. “But sometimes a friend is not enough to heal all wounds.”
She pauses expectantly, eyes dropping to his shaking hands, and he prays that the glamour charms are still holding. But he says nothing.
She continues. “Some injuries require a healer’s touch.”
He offers a small bow, as formal as he can, before taking his leave.
The Professor’s voice calls out to pause him.
“Please be aware that journeying alone outside right now is prohibited, Mr. Malfoy. The sudden chill has worked the mer-folk into a frenzy.”
He nods and leaves.
The dungeons should have been his heading. Or the Gryffindor tower. But he fears drowning in the green shadows or asphyxiating in the clouds.
So instead, he keeps his feet steady until he emerges into the empty Astronomy Tower’s open stairway. Snow falls around him, muted and gentle, and he tries to let it soothe the sharp tang and burn in and across his flesh.
It doesn’t.
Hermione would. She had before: soft touches, easy laughs, a twinkle in her eye. But the fortnight away reminds him that it’s temporary. That she won’t always be by his side, that he will have to learn to handle the fire and crackle in his chest without her.
So instead, he lets the cufflink fall to the cold stone and roll away, rapidly pulling back his sleeve. Around his left forearm, he presses the slightly browning and crusting bloody cloth against the lines he feels burning in the skin. He longs for the cold steel against his flesh, the temporary release of the burning ache that throbs just under it.
His tentative glamour fades as the first unshed tear slips out of his now-revealed purpling and swollen eye. The charm falls like a blanket past his skin, and he swears he can feel the tingle as it slips away. He catalogues the sensations numbly.
The stinging welts across his back as the wind whip. A deep ache of his bruised and fractured ribs with every deep breath. The jaw that aches as he takes a tremulous breath.
For the first time in two weeks, he lets himself grieve his lost mother in a way his father refused to allow him. It had come to a head the night before, when he tried to pry the grief from his body through the skin of his brand. It had been months since he had indulged in the destructive pleasure of a blade across the mark, trying to exorcise the demons buried in his bones. But the bound grief and ready firewhisky had tempted him into transfiguring the cufflink into a razor.
It would be so easy, a few words or a drag of his wand to open his flesh. But the manual touch of the cool metal, the release of the hot blood underneath…
His father had arrived in time to watch the blade open up a line of red across the empty eye sockets of the skull. He had screamed of indignities, of betrayal— and Draco had merely watched him. The euphoric release of the steel on his skin and the comforting blanket of whisky had detached his mind from his body. His head had lolled on the back of his chair.
The first blow had brought him careening back to earth, and he had been freefalling ever since. The first step of the Astronomy Tower seems as good as any place else to shatter on the rocks.
His tears are nearly silent, but they shudder through his body, head in hands. He hears small steps in the nearby snow, where there should be none. A tendril of fear tries to emerge, but it fizzles in the detachment.
“Go away.” He spits it out quietly but forcefully.
They don’t.
When he looks up, he’s met by a familiar sight: dark curly hair, deep brown eyes, the spattering of freckles across her nose and cheekbones. It’s a comforting image before him as much as it is unsettling. For this Granger is like a muggle portrait: picture perfect, but dull. The spark in her eye is missing. The anxious tapping of her fingers on her thigh is still. The breathless huff of exasperation is steady.
He knows it’s not her, but he finds death cannot take a more pleasant form.
The fire in his chest is consuming.
She holds out her hand silently.
He meets it without hesitation.
Maybe the chill of the Black Lake will finally dampen the blaze in his bones.
Intuitively, he knows he’s not the only lost and lonely soul in Hogwarts. Not the only one who could be pulled by the soothing lullaby of comfort that the mer-folk hum. But it still comes as a shock when he sees her at the edge of the water, hand outstretched to a blurry figure that encourages her deeper.
She’s near but far, a long stretch of shore between them, but close enough that he can catch the slight glisten of frozen tears on her cheeks.
The world is muted as he turns back to spot her facsimile. He finds this spectre a cheap imitation, but now he can’t turn away.
The world is muted, numb, deadened; a necrosis that needs to be cut from him… or maybe it’s the other way around?
The promise of silence in the illusion’s eye is almost hope to him, and he follows her willingly— until he hears the crunch of ice on pebbles.
Not his.
Hermione’s.
Suddenly, the quiet is not empty and void— it’s loud and sharp, and he looks at her, her boots beginning to sink into the crust of ice, frigid water splashing up and into her shoes. She doesn’t even flinch.
Fear washes over his body, cold and clarifying, her name on his lips, as he tugs to escape the siren before him. Claws dig into the already raw and weeping flesh of his arm, and for the first time in almost a year, it feels like pain.
It makes him cry out.
Her steps falter, but her own enchanter shakes her hand and even through the blur, he sees his own smile on another’s face. Rage bubbles forth from him— their camaraderie being used as a weapon, the shared pain—
No. No!
He feels the flesh tear, but he pulls anyway, screaming her name. The piercing screech of the siren behind him promises that he has both broken free and incurred her wrath. He cringes at the sound, but stumbles away towards Hermione. He screams her name again. And again.
Each time, she shakes and stumbles back, but she’s to her knees in the water. The siren behind him screams again and he follows it with her name, and it finally shatters the spell.
She blinks rapidly, and he knows the disillusionment falls as her eyes grow wide and she throws her body back against the hand that tries to hold hers. A cry escapes her lips as he sees red blossom across her palm. But he’s near now, his shredded arm around her waist, his free hand prying at the siren’s digging into her palm.
When she stumbles and he slips slightly in the slick stones of the shoreline, a desperate sob escapes him. He tightens his arm around her waist, wrenching the last sharpened claw out of her hand, and they stumble back together.
He keeps his arm around her waist as they run, and she clutches to his hand now coated in her blood.
They tumble through the closest door into Hogwarts, their grips unyielding, and collapse into the tight hallway.
Together, they tremble from the cold and the adrenaline. When she looks up, his cheeks are as streaked with tears as her own. But they follow uneven lines down his face, tracing valleys in swollen and broken skin across his cheeks. Purple, red and yellow blossoms under his skin like starbursts. His eyes are heavy, head lolled back.
She releases his hand to raise it to his swollen cheek.
“ Merlin .” She breathes out shakily. “Draco, did you fight a swarm of them?”
He shakes his head, but doesn’t speak, his breath coming in pants. A tremulous shake comes from the arm around her waist, and she recognizes the warm stickiness seeping through her shirt onto her skin. When she looks down, she lets out a strangled gasp at the sight of his bloodied arm pressed against her. He tries to move his hand again, and it merely shakes.
Without a word more, she wraps her arms around his waist and Apparates directly into Madam Pomfrey’s ward.
When he wakes, the world is half white, half dark and blurry.
He waits for the panic to set in— don’t go unconscious, sleep with one eye open, never let them see your fear— but is surprised to never feel it come.
Instead, the fire in his chest feels… warm. It doesn’t burn against his skin, it doesn’t melt his joints. Like a fire in a hearth, it’s comforting and soft, and smells like apple blossoms and cinnamon.
He closes his useless eyes for a moment and breathes deeply. Methodically, he takes stock of his own body. There’s a soothing pressure against the side of his chest, a soft brush at the side of his cheek. His arm throbs, but it’s a dull ache. The weight continues down his side, across lightly protesting ribs, and across one of his legs. His head throbs slowly in his skull like a dirge, but it’s a distant sound compared to the gentle beat he feels in his chest. When he moves his arm, he can feel each ligament stretch and contract, but they move with minimal protest.
Finally, he reopens his eyes as he feels the weight on his chest shift. His vision is slightly clearer this time, and he recognizes the soft brush as a brown mass of curls. Before he can move them away, they shift, and he peers down towards the pressure on his chest.
“You’re awake.” Her voice is groggy.
Her voice.
Hermione’s.
He sighs, releasing the final vestiges of fear from his chest.
“I like this way of waking up.” His voice is rough and cracking, but he doesn’t bother covering it.
Her smile makes it worth it.
“Me too.” A warm hand dances against his cheek softly. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I’ve been trampled by erumpents.” He chuckles. “But oddly, the best I’ve felt in years.”
She smiles.
His own falters slightly as he studies her. “Don’t scare me like that again, Granger.”
She drops her chin to his chest, her eyes studying the line of his jaw before nodding. Then she looks up, studying his expression in return.
“What were you doing out there?”
He swallows hard before looking away. He opens his mouth to excuse his appearance, but she reaches for his heavily bandaged arm, delicately wrapping her hand around it.
“It wouldn’t have to do with this, would it?”
He can’t meet her eye, and doesn’t.
Fingertips skim the line of the bandage. Her face crumples.
“I’m not going to force you to tell me, Draco. I just… want you to know that if you want to, I’ll listen. And I want to help.”
She drops her cheek to his chest, and he feels her inhale deeply.
He finds his voice among the tender feelings catching in his throat. “I might, one day.”
She nods.
They sit in silence for a long while, basking in the warmth between them. He is surprised to find himself being the one to break it.
“Is this…” he swallows, “is this going to be the new normal?”
She turns a smile up at him. “If you want it?”
His arms tighten around her. A curtain moves silently behind her back, but he only catches a glimpse of Madam Pomfrey before the curtain swishes closed once more.
He smiles into Hermione’s hair.
She’s the one to break the silence this time.
“Draco?”
He hums.
“Do you remember what I said about that ache? At the beginning of the year?”
“Yes.”
“Do you still feel it?”
He stops for a moment, turning inward. In his chest, the ache is nonexistent, replaced by the subtle warmth of a gentle hearth.
“Not really. Not any more. You?”
She shakes her head. “No, not when I’m here with you.”