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3:00 am
The clock on Draco’s nightstand casts a lazy green haze over his room, making it nearly impossible to sleep. 3:00 am changes to 3:01 am, and he hardly suppresses a groan. He can’t get the memory of the shittiest performance of Romeo and Juliet he’s ever seen out of his mind, making him hate the play even more than he already had.
What’s so good about star-crossed lovers and love that’s doomed to die from the beginning? It’s foolish, cliché, and ultimately disappointing. The two of them should have stayed where they belonged, with the people they were supposed to love, and not tried to change the script. Because nothing good ever comes from reaching for something you know you’ll never be able to catch.
He turns onto his back and stares up at the ceiling, refusing to let himself look at the girl sleeping beside him.
Girl. Woman. Fiancé. Whatever .
Stranger might be more fitting if it wouldn’t force Draco to acknowledge that he hardly knew anything about her. He knows the obvious. She’s the daughter of the French Minister for Magic. She’d attended Beauxbatons while he attended Hogwarts. Her mum and Narcissa had known each other in their youth – friends of family friends, or something like that.
Her name is Anna. Anna enjoys spending time with her friends, sipping Parisian coffee, and fawning over their husbands and fiancés. Anna goes to the Opera without complaining about how pompous it is and laughs her way through dinner parties with little effort. Anna never wears anything less than the most expensive tight-fitting dresses, adorned head to toe in jewels that make her shimmer in even the dimmest lighting.
She’s pretty, and quiet, and does everything that’s expected of her. Smiles for the camera whenever a journalist for the French Daily Prophet finds them out on the street and sits beside him with a coy smile when Narcissa forces them into interviews. Stands next to him sweetly when he gives speeches for work and earns him votes on his campaigns. With her by his side, he’ll be the next French Minister for Magic without having to lift a finger or pass a single bill.
Softly, so that he doesn’t wake her up, Draco pulls himself from bed and makes his way into the living room. There’s a small bar beneath a large window overlooking Paris, and he fills his favorite whiskey glass halfway.
Pansy likes Anna a lot. So do Blaise and Theo. They call her elegant and dignified. She fills out the parts of him that lack, like decorum and sensibility. Anna comes from the same place as him – as them . She fits in easily, like adding a missing piece to a thousand-piece puzzle that’s nearly complete.
But, what they don’t notice is that the puzzle piece has auburn hair when it should be chocolate. Is slick and straight where it should be curly. The puzzle piece is vibrant yellow, where it should be rich mahogany. Has a French lilt to its voice where it should have a more Cockney affinity for dropping h sounds from words and turning th sounds into f’s and charming the pants off anyone close enough to listen. And cares more about self-help books it doesn’t read than historical anthologies and magical research journals.
The whiskey doesn’t burn when he knocks it back in one sip. It hasn’t burned since the day it all went wrong – the day he ruined everything with the girl who meant everything.
It’s been two years, and Draco still remembers the way Hermione Granger came into his life abruptly and loudly. Stumbling right out of a lift and into his arms in the British Ministry Atrium like she’d done it on purpose and looking up at him as if he were the last person she wanted to see.
Another glass, another splash of amber liquid that reminds Draco of those fiery eyes. Some nights, like tonight, he misses them with particular fervor. The way she’d sit across from him at dinner, either at a restaurant she hated, or one of his friends’ homes, and judgment would flicker through them at the mention of something she saw as trivial.
“I like those shoes,” Pansy had said once in an effort to be friendly. “Where did you get them?”
“Posh-Witch,” Hermione had answered, setting Pansy up for failure. “Six galleons.”
“Oh, ew,” Pansy had wrinkled her nose, falling into Hermione’s trap. “I’m allergic to cheap.”
Hermione had looked across the table at him then, a smirk playing at the corner of her lips. Can you believe these people? the smirk had said. Allergic to cheap as if that fluffy cardigan actually looks good on her.
Draco sinks down onto his couch and picks at a loose thread on the armrest. He smiles at the memory of Hermione rolling her eyes at one of Blaise’s monologues about some wizard’s new self-help book: How To Win Friends And Influence People . She’d spent their entire walk home raging over how silly the entire premise of the book was.
“The whole point of friends is that you haven’t influenced them,” she scoffed down at the pavement. “Manipulation isn’t how you earn loyalty.”
Her view of the world had been so progressive. Forward-thinking. The opposite of how he saw the world before her. Before Hermione, the world had seemed like a warzone in and of itself. There were rules to follow, people to know and people to distance oneself from, and social faux pas that could mean life or death for someone like him. Hermione saw having to know when to stand and who to defer to in social situations as archaic. Positively Medieval had been her exact words.
After Hermione, the world seems much less like a battleground and more like a game board. Like The Game of Life, or whatever that silly game was, that she enjoyed so much. Having to spin wheels, make decisions, pulling cards at random. There is no strategy, rhyme, or reason. It’s all accidental, and the most one can do is make the best of every situation.
As he sips on his whiskey, he considers that he hadn’t made the best of their situation. Hadn’t been willing to meet her halfway, to see things from her perspective. Had been so caught up in the present that he’d forgotten the past and been unable to see the future.
Above the fireplace, the clock ticks leisurely toward 3:30 am. Leaving her had been easy. Walking Away might as well be Draco’s middle name; he’s been doing it almost his entire life. Running from things that are difficult or require any sort of commitment. Choosing the path of least resistance and choosing another when that path gets rocky.
Hermione had forced him to acknowledge certain things about himself, his family, and his friends. Pushed him to use his seat on the Wizengamot for good. Wanted him to do more than go out drinking with his friends or throw lavish parties with only twenty people invited. Things that he enjoyed, things that made him a Malfoy.
So, he’d walked. One morning, when she’d woken up in his bed as she usually did, he was already awake and planning what he would say. He’d shoved the words out before he could stop himself – “I think I need to take some time away from you to think about what I really want my future to look like. Decide if this is what’s best for me – best for us.” – and she’d left his life as hurriedly as she’d entered it.
A box of his things had shown up a few days later. Shirts neatly folded, memories resting carefully inside bubble wrap, and the necklace she’d always worn back in its teal blue box. There was no note, which had been so unlike her. No last words, no goodbye. Only dusted off moments that he’d stuck in his closet and never opened back up.
A box that still sits in his new closet, in his new home, in a new city, mere feet away from the woman who couldn’t be half as golden as Hermione if she tried.
Perhaps it has something to do with how they were raised. Pureblood Aristocratic circles have status, and hierarchy, and shiny things to distract from the truth. Years of pomp and circumstance and ritual keep others far enough away that they can’t see the tarnished silver beneath.
Anna is little more than another witch, caught up in the glamor of it all. And Draco’s little more than another wizard, too cowardly to acknowledge how foolish and useless it all is. How frivolous it all seems when you’re taken to a small farm on the outskirts of London and introduced to two people who married for love and would do anything for a daughter so vastly different from them.
4:00 am
All that Draco can picture is the look on Hermione’s face when she’d brought him to her childhood home. A small, white little thing with a picket fence and goats chomping lazily in the yard. The whole building had only six rooms in it: two bedrooms, one and a half bathrooms, a kitchen, and a living room. There was a rusted-up truck in the driveway and two rocking chairs on the porch.
Inside, Draco found not a single surface empty. Every shelf had something on it, whether that was a book or a muggle photograph, or some sort of knickknack. There were hundreds of books on dozens of bookshelves and bills on the kitchen table that Mrs. Granger had shoved into a drawer when Draco entered the room.
Mr. and Mrs. Granger had been the picture of working-class love in a London suburb. Draco could picture them dancing in the living room or playing board games in the kitchen. And Hermione’s face had lit up like the night sky above a summertime carnival – shimmering with hope, dreaming of having that kind of love for herself.
“I knew I loved her the first time I saw her,” Mr. Granger had said over dinner that evening, beaming proudly at his wife. “She was wearing this yellow sunflower dress and reading on the bench in front of the Med School Building as if she wasn’t late for class.”
Mrs. Granger had laughed and swatted him playfully on the arm, blush creeping onto her cheeks.
“I knew I loved him on our second date,” she said. “He showed up ten minutes late and out of breath. He tried lying and saying that the florist had been late with my bouquet.”
“They had been!” He interjected. All three Grangers laughed.
“No,” Mrs. Granger pecked him on the cheek. “You forgot what time our date was and bought it on the way to try and have an excuse.”
“It was a good excuse,” he quipped. “I’d do it again if it’d work a second time.”
More whiskey and more memories. More time to sit there in the darkness and remember that the things he’d loved so much about Hermione had been the reasons he’d left.
Love to Hermione was simple – as old as time. If you loved someone, you kept them. No matter the cost, no matter the obstacle. It was easy and carefree and grew stronger when met with a challenge.
Draco knew that love was the definition of conditional. It had to meet certain requirements and pass rigorous tests. Had to look good in ballgowns and on the front pages of newspapers. It had to make sense.
His mother had been polite enough when Hermione came to the Manor for tea. Narcissa had smiled in true Aristocratic fashion, even going so far as to force it to reach her eyes. But, she’d send owls to Draco’s London flat the following day, offering up advice.
She shouldn’t drink her tea so quickly. A blouse like that should never leave the house. What is a promotion at the Ministry when staying home and raising the next heir should be her priority? Snorting while laughing is hardly appropriate at a luncheon, let alone a gala.
Hermione’s penchant for slurping her tea had made him laugh once. He enjoyed her lack of fashion sense because it made her less superficial than his friends. And her career had excited him. Hermione had worked her way up from an administrator for the Wizengamot to Head of Wizengamot Administrative Services with hard work and dedication to helping fund various bills and projects. Her snort when she laughed had a charm he couldn’t easily describe with words.
Falling in love with her had been slow, almost deliberate. Conversations at work consisted of her days spent campaigning for better rights for magical creatures, and he’d been more than happy to raise his hand in favor of all her bills. He’d tell her about the latest Wizengamot drama – how older members were growing restless with the influx of younger members in the wake of the war. How lines between professionalism and debauchery became blurry as more of them paired off in marriages and had affairs.
Their first date had been simple enough: dinner at one of her favorite restaurants, followed by a night around Diagon Alley. They’d gotten ice cream and told jokes until well after midnight. Hermione told him about her childhood, her fondest memories of Hogwarts, and what she’d gone through in the war. And he’d opened himself up to her like a book, answering every question she had without a second thought. When he’d walked her home, he’d kissed her cheek, and promised a proper kiss if she suffered through two more dates with him.
That lasted as long as their next date, a few days later, when he found himself following her up to her flat. They’d marked each other’s souls that night – there was no other way to describe how their bodies fit together, how their wits battled so perfectly. She met him step for step, never once shying away from his newfound forwardness. And he delighted in the way she gave him space to let his guard down and be himself.
It had all been lovely – until it wasn’t anymore.
“Do you think you’d keep your job even after we’re married?” Draco had made the mistake of asking one night while they lay side by side in sweat-soaked sheets.
“Why wouldn’t I?” Hermione’s tone told him she already knew why.
“Malfoy women don’t work,” he’d answered before he could stop himself. “It wouldn’t be appropriate.”
“Wouldn’t be appropriate?” She’d shifted out of his arms then, wrapping the duvet around her chest like he hadn’t explored every inch of her minutes before. “Not appropriate for whom?”
Draco grips the whiskey glass so tightly in his hand that it breaks, shards of glass and whiskey decorating the floor. The cuts on his hand are easy enough to mend; the feeling that he’s fucked everything up is much more difficult to fix.
5:00 am
Vaulted ceilings and floor-to-ceiling windows aside, his flat feels too small. Claustrophobic. Photos of Anna wink and blow kisses from every angle, reminding him of how sick he’d felt in every picture.
A house-elf appears to clean up the mess, and Draco grabs his coat from the closet in the foyer. He doesn’t care that he’s still in his pajamas or that his hair is a mess. Hermione had always said that when one feels the urge to take a walk, they should – it’s their mind telling them it needs space to think.
So, he walks, and he thinks. Draco runs over his most recent campaign meeting when his advisor had told him that some of the public felt he was too old-fashioned and out of touch. He pretends not to remember Anna bringing up his thirtieth birthday in a few months and the celebrations she’s been planning. A dinner followed by dancing and chatting about investments and trade deals. The end of his twenties and the beginning of a life that he isn’t sure he wants to live.
Paris is cold at five in the morning. Spring has only begun to arrive, and frost clings to shrubs and public trash cans. Draco leaves his coat unbuttoned, welcoming the chill. It’s the least of what he deserves after the week he’s had.
On Monday, Anna had made the kind of joke that Hermione would have hated. Tuesday was filled with meetings that Hermione would have loved: arguments over budgeting for the welfare of vampires and the proposal of a bill that would open another Wizarding school near Nantes. Draco had sludged his way through the kind of dinner she would have pursed her lips at on Wednesday. It had been nothing but pompous nobodies pretending they were somebody .
The Weird Sisters had held an impromptu concert Thursday night, and Draco had jumped at the chance to go. He hadn’t seen them in ages – Hermione had called them mainstream and boring. A show of brunette curls and a purple crop top had made his heart skip a beat; he could have sworn it was her. Until the girl turned around. He found green eyes instead of brown, thin lips instead of plump, and a lack of freckles that sent his heart dropping to his stomach.
Despite knowing that he’s safely hidden away on the Continent, and Hermione is asleep somewhere in London, Draco can’t shake the feeling that she should be there. Could be there, if only he’d open his eyes and look around. Open himself back up to her again. No amount of space or time can erase the way she’d made him feel; how she’d inspired him to be the man he wants to be, not the man he should be.
Hermione is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. If he closes his eyes, he can imagine her walking beside him, her hand in his and her laughter filling up the empty street. When he opens them, he sees her on every billboard and every witch that walks past with her coat pulled up to her chin.
His traitorous mind taunts him – Why did you let her go? When did you forget that you loved the way she saw you for you? How did having the witch of your dreams come to mean less than the approval of people you don’t even like?
The idea that he might never be happy again comes to him more often than he’d ever admit even to himself. Food will never taste as good, or satisfy him the way that it should. Music always sounds a little off, and Operas now feel like cheap carnival shows. Sleep eludes him, and his dreams are no longer of curly-haired babies and laughter in the living room. Instead, he has nightmares; dreams of being trapped in rooms that are too small, too crowded, and too full of people he can’t stand to be in the company of.
Draco turns around when he reaches a park he knows Hermione would love. A large fountain stands impressively in the middle, and kids play in its jets on the weekends while witches and wizards set up stalls and sell everything from herbs and crystals to dresses and hats. He hates that park because it reminds him of how they’d once spent Saturday mornings when she’d convinced him he could be whoever he wanted.
On his way back to his flat, he passes a newspaper stall that’s just opened for the morning. He doesn’t know why he stops, just that he does. And the front page of the French Daily Prophet causes his breath to catch, and he nearly trips.
6:00 am
Draco sprints the last few blocks back to his flat and comes to a halt at the base of the five steps that lead up to his front door. Beside the urn with an overgrown boxwood is an unassuming brown box, written on with all too familiar handwriting.
Handwriting that once left notes for him in the kitchen, or on his desk at work. Put there by hands that had once been familiar with every inch of his body – each scar, all four-hundred and seven freckles on his back, and the mole that he had on his left hip.
Written with a quill that had most definitely been tapped to her lips. Lips that he thought of every time he kissed Anna. Lips that he missed ferociously whenever someone else spoke.
Slowly, he approaches, that morning’s newspaper gripped tightly in his hand.
To: Darling
From: Heaven
Seeing their pet names sends him back two years to the last time they’d used them.
“Heaven, please don’t–”
“Fuck you, Malfoy.” Hermione had spit back, gathering her things from the bottom left drawer in his dresser.
“I’m not ending it forever!” He’d tried to reason with her. “I just need–”
“No, I get it, Darling .” Draco found himself wishing she would have used his family name again. “We’re done. It’s over.”
Hesitantly, as if it might explode, Draco approaches the box. It’s not big or heavy – just awkward enough that he knows exactly what is inside. The sun begins to rise over Paris, and people begin leaving their houses, forcing him to bring the box into his foyer. Pansy is standing in his hallway, eyes wild and still in her nightgown. Anna seems tired and confused, hovering in the archway to the living room.
“Oh my gods,” Pansy is saying as Draco sets the box down on the table in the center of the room. How she’d managed to arrange an international Portkey on such short notice, he isn’t sure. He opens the box slowly, terrified of what he’s going to find. “She’s insane.”
When it falls open, he slumps into the armchair by the door and holds his head in his hands.
“What’s going on?” Anna asks, glancing between him and Pansy. Draco groans into his palms.
The lack of a note when she’d returned his things. The radio silence that had followed – letting him quit his job and move to France when she’d once promised that she’d fight for him until her last breath. It all finally made sense.
“She wrote a book about me.”
