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Draco Malfoy had faced many horrors in his life.
He had survived a bloody hippogriff attack. He’d been left bleeding out on the bathroom floor by Potter, lived through a war, endured Voldemort moving into his home like an unwelcome roommate, and even done time in Azkaban-lite—a holding cell at the Department of Magical Law Enforcement with horrid tea and a guard who hummed endlessly through his nose. And somehow, worst of all, he had once survived Hermione Granger’s attempt at cooking black bean “brownies.” How a legume could masquerade as a dessert was a dark magic he refused to understand. But still nothing—and he meant nothing —had prepared him for the suburban terror that was… Granger Family Dentistry .
He had come, stupidly, with the best intentions. Not to ask permission—that was a relic of a world Hermione had hexed out of him long ago—but as a form of Muggle diplomacy. A formal, respectful visit to the Grangers to say: I love your daughter. I intend to ask her to marry me. Also, I brought these tulips. Please don’t Muggle-shoot me. He wanted her parents to know he was planning to propose. He even called the clinic himself, despite the trauma of navigating a Muggle phone tree.
“Do the Grangers have a 1:00 PM slot free?” he’d asked.
“Yes, we can fit you in then!”
What he should have clarified was that he meant lunch . Not a dental appointment .
Draco adjusted the collar of his pressed shirt as he entered the front door, a small velvet box tucked in his pocket.
“Draco!” Mrs. Granger greeted him like a lioness welcoming a deer to dinner. “You’re right on time for your cleaning.”
Draco blinked. “I—pardon?”
She gestured toward the hallway. “Dental cleaning. Hermione said you were curious about how our work compares to…” she lowered her voice and winked, “… magical methods. we’ve been waiting for you to finally pay us a visit.”
No he hadn’t. He had once, once , asked her if plaque was a spell and she had laughed for seventeen minutes. That could hardly be classified as consent.
Before he could protest, he was ushered— gently but forcefully —through a maze of terrifyingly white halls by the dental hygienist named Amanda, past posters that read “Floss Like a Boss” and “Your Mouth Says A Lot About You” . He caught a glimpse of a grinning tooth in a tutu on the wall and nearly bolted.
The fluorescent lights alone were enough to give a man thoughts of obliviation.
He stepped in hesitantly. “I think there’s been a mis—”
Click.
The hygienist, Amanda, had closed the door behind him. “Let’s get you started!”
Then he was in the chair .
He was still holding the tulips and had barely sat down before he was assaulted— there’s no other word —by the reclining dental chair. It tipped him back violently like a traitorous chaise lounge. He let out a surprised “For Merlin’s sake—?!” before a paper bib was snapped around his neck. Pink. With a faint imprint of smiling teeth. He flailed slightly, arms trapped under the dental tray. His feet dangled.
“This is fine,” he told himself, panicking.
“This is fine.”
Draco tried to sit up again, but the tiny woman in pale pink scrubs gently forced him back with unnatural strength and said, “Just relax!”
Relax?
Then came the sunglasses . Huge. Wraparound. They turned everything an ominous green.
“For the overhead light,” Amanda the hygienist said sweetly.
Draco was now blinded, horizontal, bibbed and helpless. Amanda wore goggles, a face shield, and a bright pink headlamp. She looked like an anglerfish. Draco was the bait.
Snap —went her gloves.
He flinched.
“First timer?” she asked with a smirk.
Draco stared up at the ceiling tiles, each of which had been painted with “calming” cloudscapes that only heightened the sense of impending doom. Amanda was bubbly, blonde, and wielding sharp tools with a cheerfulness that felt positively sadistic.
“Oh, and since it’s your first time, we’ll take some X-rays!”
He tried to protest. He was here to speak to his future in-laws , not expose his brain to cursed Muggle rays.
Before he could form a sentence, Amanda shoved a heavy plastic apron on his chest. Then came the bite plates. Cold, unpleasant, vaguely reminiscent of chewing on enchanted shoe soles.
“Hold still. Don’t breathe.”
He didn’t breathe. He prayed to every Muggle deity he could think of.
“Great!” she said, retreating behind a protective wall. Click.
He blinked. Why is she hiding? he thought.
Several blinding flashes and far too much biting down on plastic later, Amanda reappeared beside him, cheerful as ever.
“Open wide!” she chirped.
Draco hesitated, then opened. Amanda immediately began prodding in his mouth with a tiny mirror and something pointy. And through it all, she kept talking .
“So how did you and Hermione meet?”
“MHRRPH.”
“Oh, school sweethearts! That’s so sweet.”
“What do you do for work?”
“NNGH.”
“Oh that sounds very interesting!”
“GHNFFFF.”
“Do you have pets?”
He tried to say “We have a cat,” but it came out “KNEHHH” , and Amanda nodded like she understood.
“And kids someday?”
Draco screamed internally.
Amanda began with something called a scaler , which was just a fancy Muggle word for a tiny metal hook designed to scrape the calcium off one’s very bones.
“Just going to get some plaque buildup off,” she said casually.
Draco lay there, helpless, as the cold instrument scraped against his teeth . His teeth! He could hear it in his skull, like a fork dragging across porcelain.
He whimpered.
She mistook it for conversation. “You’re doing great!”
It went on. She scraped behind his front teeth, his molars, the base of his gums—“lots of tartar back here,” she noted cheerily, as if diagnosing a leprosy outbreak.
Then came something called a rubber dam , which Draco was not prepared for. Amanda placed a small, stretchy latex sheet inside his mouth and isolated one quadrant of his teeth, sealing it around them with little clamps.
“I—what is—” he tried to say, but the dam silenced him. He was drooling down one cheek.
“This keeps the area dry,” she explained, stuffing cotton rolls around his gums. “So we can polish more effectively!”
Polish?
“This is my favorite part!” said Amanda, like a psychopath.
She loaded a gritty, pink paste into a spinning rubber cup and attacked his teeth like a car buffer. The vibration rattled his entire skull. The flavor was some mutant cross between bubblegum and suffering.
“You’re going to feel a little vibration—”
A little ?
Draco’s foot spasmed. A single tear rolled down his cheek. He wanted his mother.
Next came the Waterpik which Draco figured was surely the muggle equivalent of Cruciatus.
“It’s like flossing, but with water!” Amanda announced.
What she meant was: “It’s like being pressure-hosed from the inside out.”
A thin silver wand shot icy streams between each tooth with the force of an angry fire sprite. Draco squirmed. His gums wept. He tasted blood. She handed him a paper cup of “mint rinse” that burned like basilisk venom.
And then she kept going.
“This might feel intense!” she warned.
It was a high-pressure jet of icy water shot directly into his gumline. He spasmed. It ricocheted off a back molar and into his throat. He gagged. He flailed. He choked on his own spit, and Amanda, still chipper, said: “Don’t swallow just yet!”
“WHHHHYYY,” he gargled.
Between the water and the suction and the rubbery wedges in his mouth, Draco was sure he was being waterboarded . There was no other explanation. He caught a glimpse of his reflection in a metal tool and saw a broken man. A damp, minty, broken man.
Amanda turned to her tray of cruel little tools. She picked up a spinning device and flicked it on. A high-pitched whirring shrieked through the room—sharp, metallic, and awful. It sounded like a Mandrake. A Mandrake being juiced .
Then came the paste. Grainy, pink, and suspiciously pepperminty. Amanda buffed his teeth like she was polishing a cauldron bottom. Mint foam sprayed from his mouth like a busted soda can. Despite the bib, spit and toothpaste everywhere . His cheeks. His jaw. His hair . His shirt collar absorbed the run-off like a martyr.
“I think—I think I’m drowning,” he mumbled through the suction wand.
Amanda laughed. “You’re just being dramatic.”
Draco tried to swallow and nearly drowned. Amanda inserted a large, humming suction wand into his mouth and told him to “close around it like a straw.”
He complied. The noise it made was obscene.
She nodded. “You’re a natural!”
He considered dying.
These people were monsters . Not even the worst of the Death Eaters—those deranged, cackling lunatics with a taste for pain—had invented anything quite this cruel. Not even Voldemort, with all his flair for theatrical suffering, had thought to strap someone to a chair, blind them with fluorescent lights, and blast their gums with high-pressure mint water while interrogating them about their romantic future through a mouthful of plastic. No, this was a different breed of evil. Cold. Clinical. Cheery. These sickos had advanced degrees in torture—and probably a rewards punch card system. Good to know he wasn’t the only one in the relationship with parents who were maniacal, torture-loving freaks. At least his had the decency to wear robes and admit it. If he and Granger had children, would that be too much unholy, torture-loving blood concentrated in one lineage? Would their offspring emerge as devilspawn with a fondness for both dental floss and dark magic?
Somewhere in the distance, he could hear Amanda’s voice murmuring to the assistant, but the words were warped, muffled—as if underwater. He blinked slowly. His tongue felt enormous. He was sweating now, despite the frigid air in the room and the ridiculous paper bib clinging to his chest like a death shroud.
Something was wrong.
The bright overhead light— the light again —bore down on him with celestial judgment. His vision started to falter: first just hazy around the edges, then full-on blotted with shadow, like someone had smeared soot across his corneas. His thoughts spun in loose, useless circles. His stomach rolled.
He opened his mouth to speak—to protest, or beg, or hex someone—but no sound came out. The muscles in his arms had liquefied. He wasn’t even sure he could lift a finger, let alone form coherent words. He was upright in the chair, technically, but all he wanted was to lie down . Lie down and pass into the next realm.
Was this… was this what fainting felt like? Was this the end?
He barely registered Amanda’s cheerful voice above him: “Doing okay? You’re looking a little pale—well, paler.”
He tried to respond. What came out was somewhere between a groan and the last gasp of a dying phoenix.
And all the while, a treacherous part of him whispered: You could’ve just written them an owl. You didn’t have to die here. In the chair.
Then the room dimmed. A hush fell.
Draco stared directly into the blazing white glow.
It was so bright. So infinite. The edges of the room blurred.
Oh gods , he thought. This is it. This is death. I never asked Hermione to marry me. We never soul bonded. She’ll never find me in the next life.
He exhaled softly. “Hermione…”
“What was that?” A cheery voice that was definitely not Hermione responded.
He blinked. “What?”
“You said ‘Hermione’ like you were dying.” Amanda laughed. “You’re fine!”
Salazar, it wasn’t a dream. The Granger torture chamber was real—and he had the mint-flavored trauma baked into his molars to prove it.
Amanda continued scraping his teeth with a tiny curved blade and then frowned.
“Hmmm.”
Draco tensed. “What?”
“You’ve got a bit of a sweet tooth, huh?”
“I—I don’t—”
“Oh you do,” she said. “We’ve got a couple spots to monitor for potential cavities.”
He looked betrayed. “That’s slander.”
“Nope. That’s science .”
She began scraping again. “Do you ever floss?”
He frowned. “Is that the string thing?”
“…That’s not a great sign.”
It ended after what felt like forty-five years . Amanda removed the dam, the suction, the wedges, the glasses, and finally the bib.
He sat up. Pale. Glossy-eyed. Saliva glistening on his cheeks and chin. Shirt damp from the bib. Spirit broken.
Amanda peeled off her gloves. “You did amazing ! Just a bit of inflammation— remember to floss regularly.”
Draco stared into the void.
Dr. and Dr. Granger returned just in time to see him remove the bib like it had been clinging to his dignity.
“Oh, there you are!” Mrs Granger said brightly, “Well, now that you’re squeaky clean—what brings you in, Draco?”
Draco looked at them. Blinked. Swallowed the last traces of minty horror in his throat. Then took a shaky breath as he pulled the velvet box from his coat.
“I came,” he said hoarsely, “to tell you I intend to propose to your daughter.”
Both Grangers froze. Mr. Granger blinked, while Mrs. Granger’s hand flew to her mouth. Then their expressions melted into matching smiles—equal parts surprise, approval, and something a little unhinged.
“Oh! How lovely,” said Mrs. Granger.
“And you did it right after a cleaning,” added Mr. Granger. “Very respectful.”
Draco wasn’t sure if he’d just been accepted as a son-in-law or indoctrinated into some cult of dental sadists. But he nodded, stood on shaky legs, and said, “I’m going to go home now and lie down. Possibly forever.”
Dr. Granger handed him a travel-sized floss packet with the logo “Smiles Are Contagious” printed on it in Comic Sans.
Mrs. Granger beamed. “Oh, Draco. Welcome to the family.”
He left the fluorescent chamber of medieval terror with floss in one pocket, trauma in his heart, and the faint, lingering taste of fluoride and failure.