Chapter Text
Everything was cold.
The floor, the walls, the air.
“How is this place so fucking cold?”
Silence was all that answered him, but Draco hadn’t expected anything different. Aside from the occasional groan from the cells beside him, silence was the only thing that seemed to exist in Azkaban.
Azkaban.
Some days, he still couldn’t believe he was here. Not that he didn’t think he deserved it, because he knew he did. It was the fact that he was alive at all that was the most shocking to him. He’d never expected to survive the war. From the moment his father had called him into the study that dreadful summer before sixth year and told him that he was to be marked, he’d considered himself a dead man. He’d never really wanted this—to join a cult of blood-obsessed wizards vowing their allegiance to a half-serpent wannabe god. Theo had warned him for years of what was coming. Salazar, even Potter had warned them all. But Draco was naive, and far too proud to admit his family’s shortfalls until it was too late. Now, he paid the price of his fear and inaction. His cell was a constant reminder of the fact that he was weak. Too weak to stand up to his father, too weak to protect his mother, and too weak to do the right thing. Pathetic.
Everything was cold, and Draco deserved every miserable second of it.
“Malfoy.”
The gravely voice of a guard outside his cell nearly sent him careening off of his threadbare mattress.
“Get up and put your hands out in front of you, you’re coming with me.”
Going where?
A pit opened in Draco’s stomach. Was he going to be kissed? He knew, logically, that after the war the dementors were taken away from Azkaban, and that even the most egregious death eaters were sentenced to a life of imprisonment over death itself, but still he shuddered.
“Come on we don’t have all day.”
Draco stood up and shuffled out of his small cell, arms held out in front of him uncertainly. A muttered spell, and then his wrists were encased in handcuffs made of shimmering white light.
“Straight down the hall, down the stairs, third door on the right. No funny business.”
Draco marched forward with the guard behind him, he kept his head down to avoid any curious onlookers in the cells as he passed.
“Why am I out of my cell?”
Draco’s voice sounded tired from misuse. He barely recognized it.
“You have a visitor.”
His feet stopped rapidly, almost causing the guard to run into his back.
“Oi! Keep moving.”
“S-sorry,” Draco cleared his throat. “A visitor?”
The pair had made it to the door, which the guard was now opening with a series of complicated wand movements.
“Yes, that’s what I said. You have one hour, less if the guest decides they’d like to leave before then. Behave yourself.”
The door opened and the guard shoved Malfoy inside before the door locked behind him. He staggered in, noticing the single metal table in the center of an otherwise empty room. Two chairs were seated on each side of the table, one of them already occupied. Draco’s gazed dragged upwards to the face of the other person, and his stomach rose up into his throat. Merlin’s beard.
“Granger?”
“Hello, Malfoy.”
Everything in the room felt wrong. Too bright. Too clean. Too warm compared to the constant, bone-deep freeze of the cells. Draco didn’t sit—not yet. He stood behind the chair across from her, staring as though Granger might vanish if he blinked.
Draco’s heart beat raced. What in Salazar’s name was Hermione Granger doing at Azkaban? More importantly, why was she talking to him? His questions must’ve been painted across his expressions.
“Sit,” Hermione said gently. “I’m not here to hex you.”
He sank down slowly. The cuffs of white light shifted with him, humming like a warning.
“So,” he began, voice scraping out of his throat like gravel, “what are you doing here?”
“I’m here because Theo sent me.”
“Theo….Theo Nott sent you here?”
She nodded, an amused glimmer in her eyes.
“You and Theo Nott do favors for one another now? I didn’t realize you two even knew each other.”
Hermione exhaled a small puff of laughter. “We’re potions partners this year. And we’ve become friends over the past three months.”
Three months?
It’s already been three bloody months since I’ve been in here?
Time in Azkaban wasn’t time at all. With barely any sun, only the faintest hints of daylight seeping through cracks in stone, days bled seamlessly into nights until everything became one long, frozen blur. Three months could’ve been three weeks or three years. He genuinely couldn’t tell.
Three months gone.
Three more ahead.
His six-month sentence stretched in front of him like a tunnel with no visible end.
Hermione watched him, softer now. “I know as part of your sentencing you’re not allowed contact with any known Death Eaters or anyone associated with them. Which meant you were isolated from your mother—”
Draco flinched, remembering his mother who was stuck under house arrest at the manor for the rest of the year.
“—and from your friends,” she continued, “who all fall under that restriction. Theo thought…” She hesitated, choosing her words. “…he thought that if someone didn’t visit you, you’d lose your mind in here.”
A bitter, humorless sound escaped his chest. “Did he? And so he picked the most bleeding-heart Gryffindor he could find and begged you to come rescue me?”
To his surprise, Hermione didn’t bristle. She simply looked at him.
“He did not have to beg. I came of my own accord.”
His heart began to beat faster.
“And why would you ever do that?”
Instead of answering, she reached into her pocket and withdrew a folded bit of parchment.
“Here. From Theo.”
Suspicion prickled down Draco’s spine as he took it, unfolding the creased note.
⸻
Draco,
Don’t be a prick. Especially to her.
Don’t even pretend to act surprised. You weren’t fooling anyone back in fifth year and you aren’t fooling anyone now. This is your second chance, Drake, and I pulled off a hell of a feat to get it for you, so don’t fuck it up.
You’re welcome.
–Theo
⸻
Draco closed his eyes briefly.
Theo Nott was a menace. A menace with entirely too much time on his hands. Meddling, yet again, in places he had absolutely no right to meddle.
And still…
Still, there was a small, shameful part of Draco that was relieved.
Grateful, even.
Not that he deserved it. Not that he deserved anything. Least of all her.
Hermione was watching him carefully, as if waiting for the explosion.
Instead, Draco swallowed hard. He looked down at the table. Then up at her.
“Granger,” he said, quietly but not weakly, “I… I owe you an apology. More than that. For everything I did. Everything I said…” He winced, “I’m not asking you to forgive it. But I am sorry.”
A long breath slipped from her chest. Her expression softened—not with pity, but with something kinder, something that he never thought he’d see in her expression again.
“But I do forgive you, Draco.”
He hadn’t expected those words. Certainly not so simply spoken. It hit somewhere deep, somewhere long locked away.
“Hermione, I—“
“No.”
She shook her head, just once.
“Not yet.”
Draco sucked in a tight breath and held it. Not yet. She hadn’t said never, just not yet. Something that felt dangerously close to longing simmered in his chest. Not yet. He exhaled slowly.
Hermione cleared her throat. “So… tell me. Aside from the horrible living conditions that are surely upsetting your delicate sensibilities, what is something you miss about the outside world?”
He surprised himself with how quickly the answer came.
“Quidditch.”
She groaned and Draco’s lips twitched.
“Still not a quidditch fan, I take it?”
“Honestly, even after the war, I still can’t watch without feeling like someone’s going to fall off a broom and die.”
Draco huffed—something almost pleasant. He hadn’t felt anything pleasant in months, it hurt his lungs.
“It’s not just about the danger or the thrill,” he argued. “It’s a game of strategy. You of all people should appreciate it.”
“Me of all people? What’s that supposed to mean.”
“That you’re brilliant of course. Like calls to like.”
Her breath stuttered and her stare went blank. Dammit. He’d gone too far, too quickly. Not yet. Not yet. Not yet.
“Well,” she said, standing as the door clicked behind her, signaling her impending departure, “when I come back in two weeks…maybe we can talk about quidditch.”
She moved to the door. Paused. Looked back at him.
“Hang in there, Malfoy.”
And then she knocked twice, the guard opened the door, and she was gone.
The room felt emptier without her, but not in the suffocating way his cell usually did. When he was escorted back, when the cold swallowed him again, when he curled up on the thin mattress, something unfamiliar pulsed faintly in his chest.
A glimmer.
Small.
Fragile.
But real.
Something he hadn’t felt since fifth year.