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The sky was a bit gloomy and the wind outside howled restlessly causing stray leaves to smack and stick against the large french window. Draco Lucius Malfoy, heir to the two most ancient and noble houses sat agitatedly in his private study, his mood reflecting that of the tempest outside. He sighed and opened the right hand drawer of his Mahogany desk, whispering an unlocking charm and twisting the gold key that kept the drawer locked all year round. He opened it only once a year, on the nineteenth of September, when Draco began his yearly ritual of reading all the letters he had written that were left unsent.
September 19th, 1999
Granger,
This is the 20th..25th? letter, Merlin knows that I’m writing to you and yet I haven't heard anything back. I tried to send the first two letters, you know? But they came back to me, unopened, both of them. So I stopped trying. And now I just write, cause really, it is the only way to talk to you. The only way to keep you alive in this house, in my life, in my memories where the sound of your voice seems to be fading.
It is the silence that is the hardest thing to describe in these letters. Not the silence of the house, but the silence that takes up the space where your voice should be. Like a fundamental lack of something missing from the universe. Like a severed limb of which I can still feel the phantom pain.
You know, I look at the ring sometimes, but lately I forbade myself from opening the drawer. While it is painful to stare at the remnants of you, I mainly keep it locked in hopes that it will preserve the scent of your memories, even the strongest stasis charm wont be able to preserve the scent of you forever, or so that is the excuse I keep telling myself, so I don't have to look in the drawer and the remains of my heart that lay within it.
I told myself I wont open the drawer today but I am a selfish bastard and I opened it anyways and found the ring staring back at me. It looks lost, stuck in a dark drawer while it’s rightful place belongs on your finger. I should throw it into the lake. It enrages me, truly. I think I might've inherited the Black family gene for madness.
Happy Birthday
D
PS: If I ever lose your scent, I will just have to resort to brewing ungodly amounts of ammortentia for it has always smelled like you. Like clean sheets, caramel and sugar quills.
He didn’t remember writing the part of throwing her ring in the lake. He had not thrown the ring into the lake. The thought of actually doing that and his anger in the moment he had written it, made his throat tighten. He had given it to her before the battle, in the promise that they would find each other on the other side of the war. The emerald, a Malfoy family heirloom, was part of a set to a courting bracelet that sat lonely in the Malfoy vault away from its pair, just like him. Now the ring sat abandoned in the drawer, beside the letters.
He stared intently at the date on top of the parchment. Four years of his words, pain, of remembrance, of rage and longing poured into the brittle parchment that crinkled weakly with years of being handled and read only by him. Four years of buying books for a woman that the entire Wizarding world mourned as lost. Four years of pretending to live while writing desperate letters to the dead.
He pulled out another letter that was overly folded and opened it, dried tears blurring the date that stated September 19th, 2002
Hermione,
I am to be married.
The contract was signed this morning. I really don't want to do this Hermione. I wait and wait with anguish in my heart and rage in my soul as I stare at the barren sky waiting for an owl to fly back, holding a scrap of word from you but I know it won't ever come. So I sit here and write away. My heart at this point is a small shriveled thing that hasn't felt the flutter of life which usually followed right after I heard your voice. So, I will continue to sit here and write these letters that won't ever see your eyes, till my chest bleeds out onto them.
Her name is Astoria. She’s… pleasant. The younger sister to Daphne Greengrass who was in our year. I highly doubt you remember her. She doesn’t look at me like I’m a monster, which is more than I deserve, but it is what is required of me. A marriage of alliance to stabilize the name, to produce an heir.
But it feels wrong, like treason.
Against you. Against myself. Against Us.
She was here today to finalize the contract and I showed her the gardens. We didn't talk much but she particularly liked the different flora, but that was it. It felt empty and I don't know if it makes me an arse but I kept comparing everything she spoke about to what you would've said. Every time she commented on the Hydrangeas my mind would wander off to how you would pester me and prattle on and on about their soil pH based on the colour, or explained in excruciating detail the magical variants used in potions, something that your swotty mind probably memorised after reading about it once. But really, it’s not her fault that she isn't you. It’s mine. I am marrying someone else that isn't you, when I am still haunted by a version of you that is forever etched into my soul.
But I will do my duty. I will be faithful and I will try to be kind. But this… drawer, that holds all of our memories, of a future that I won't ever have with you and all these words meant only for you - this will still remain mine.
Happy Birthday.
I miss you.
D
He signed it, as always, with just his initials. A fragment of a name for a fragment of a life, led by a fragment of a man.
He put back the letters and with a steadying breath that did nothing but make his hands tremble, he plucked a fresh sheet, his gaze stuck on the Malfoy court of arms permanently inked on the top of the parchment. The sound of running water pulled him out of his thoughts, the scent of black cherry enveloping the room from the burning candle that was precariously placed over the pile of parchments. His wife was in the ensuite, the shower had just turned off. The sharp, gourmand fragrance of her hair potion was beginning to seep under the door, mingling with the older smell of dust and ink.
He hastily grabbed a quill and dipped it in the pot of black ink that was also being used as a paperweight that held the invite for the St. Mungo’s Annual Charity Gala which was about to take place in an hour. He had to be quick. He took in a deep sigh and started the letter the same way he did every year.
September 19th, 2003
My Dearest,
It’s autumn again. That time of the year where the gardens are a brilliant shade of red and gold that I know you’d find beautiful. I know I do, for it reminds me of you, the amber of your eyes can be seen in the way the sun shines through the leaves, and the world is a perpetual shade of caramel and honey that feels like being wrapped in your embrace. I still buy a book for you every year. This one’s on advanced Arithmancy theory, which I believe you complained about not having as part of your larger Arithmancy collection. I say this with love, my swotty know-it-all. It sits on the shelf beside your others, waiting for you.
I am married. Did I ever write that? She is kind. And I think she knows about the drawer. and thinks it’s a harmless eccentricity, like a poet’s morbid hobby. But deep down I think she knows that it’s my heart, pickled in ink and kept in the dark.
He wrote faster, the loopy script of his handwriting bleeding into one another. He paused suddenly, the quill hovering. This was the shortest letter he had ever written to her. He knew he had to move on eventually. So he would try to live again and be happy, for he knows that’s what she would want. He did not write anything more about his marriage, for this space, this yearly ritual that consisted of a letter he penned once and that always remained unsent was for something else. For the colour of leaves. For the memory of her jumper. For the ghost of a laugh in a silent library. It was the only place where he did not have to be Draco Malfoy, the redeemed Death Eater, the dutiful husband. Here, he could still be the boy who mourned the beloved witch who took his cloak and his heart and then vanished from this earth.
Happy Birthday, Hermione.
Yours,
Draco
He stared at the letter, at what might be his last one to her, the last one to join all the others, locked away in a drawer with the memories of the past 4 years of living without her.
He blew on the ink, folded the parchment with practiced, solemn care, almost in a ritualistic manner like he had done all this time and opened the right-hand drawer.
Inside lay his curated museum of loss. The stack of letters, growing taller every year. The red Gryffindor tie, stolen from her bag after they’d fallen asleep in the Library, the scent of her vanilla shampoo still faint on it, the Flameheart blossom that bloomed on the night he wept over her loss.
The photographs from her silly Muggle camera were there. Their edges were slightly curled, the colour faded to a warm sepia by time and absence. The one on top showed them frozen in time, under a candle lit ceiling that no longer existed.
Halloween, 1998.
Hidden within the alcove on the seventh floor, a temporary hiding place from the noise of the crowd below, She was dressed as Eve, nearly nude, with fake fig leaves barely covering her, holding a crisp, green apple in one hand and an emerald green snake wrapped around her neck, its tiny scaled head wobbling and looking up at him appraisingly while Draco spoke to her, "It's pretty obvious it's a Slytherin symbol," he had murmured, adjusting his own devil’s horn, the sharp pointed tips almost drawing blood as he hissed in pain “Should I be offended or flattered?” he murmured, bopping the snake on the head.
“Be quiet, and his name is Scarfy, excuse you” he scoffed at the name and she’d laughed, swatting his arm. “Also you’re the devil in this scenario. You don’t get to critique the symbolism.” They argued about the couple outfits they had seen around the castle when a soft click made them freeze.
Luna Lovegood stood there, her large, moony eyes blinking at them, a Muggle camera held steadily in her hands. And then she just smiled, in a dreamy, detached way and softly whispered almost to herself, "The Rotfang Conspiracy causes people to do odd things for comfort, but this looks normal...it looks good."
Their secret was frozen forever in the photo. Hermione's was captured during her escape, her head was turned toward the camera in shock, with a half-smile on her face. Draco's head was tilted toward hers, his devil horns conflicted with the peaceful, open expression in his eyes, which were covered by shades as he gazed at Hermione, as if she were both a forbidden fruit and paradise all at once.
Theirs wasn't what one would consider a traditional couples costume, for there really wasn't anything traditional about them, a pureblood devil and a Muggle-born Eve, documented by the one witch who noticed everything and judged nothing. Luna had given them the photo a week later, sliding it into Hermione’s Transfiguration text without a word. A tiny, tangible piece of a secret that felt, for a moment, real.
Now, the photograph lay in the drawer, holding within it, the memory of a night when they weren’t defined by the outcome of a war.
Forever young. Forever hidden. Forever lost.
He placed the new letter on top of all the others. The last one to join the pile. Or maybe the last one for a long time, until one day he feels the ache of losing her and he comes crawling back to talk to the void, and to spit words into the abyss in hopes that it will reach her somehow. The weight of it was immense.
For where did you send a letter when the only address was a memory?
“Draco? The clock is literally ticking. Are you even dressed?”
The voice startled him, making him jump a little. It was laced with urgency and came from the doorway behind him.
His heart gave a sudden painful contraction, like a somatic memory of grief that had latched onto him and had carved a canyon in his soul. Almost as if doing it for the last time, he shut the drawer softly and straightened his cuffs, running a hand through his pale hair. He was Draco Malfoy, respectable husband, upstanding citizen, so he would act like one.
“Draco, seriously. We’ll be late.”
He turned, now a small smile on his face, ready to greet his wife, to offer her his arm.
And there she stood, leaning against the doorframe with her arms crossed, one eyebrow arched. She wore robes of deep, emerald green that made her skin glow under the candle lit chandeliers of the manor. Her hair was as always a wild, beautiful cascade, like melted caramel that he loved so much he’d threaded his fingers through them just that morning. Her expression was a familiar mix of affection and impatience.
A smile, the only true one he ever seemed to wear around her and only for her, broke across his face. “Just finishing, my love.”
Then he suddenly crossed the room in three big sweeping strides, took her small face in his hands, and kissed her deeply, cutting off whatever she was going to say next. He poured every unsent word, every anguished line, every silent year of longing into that kiss.
When he pulled back, she was breathless, her chest heaving and her eyes soft. “What was that for?”
“It’s your birthday,” he said, his voice slightly rough. “And you are here.”
She hummed, touching his jaw. “And you are not dressed. Your tie is coming undone, darling.”
“You,” she said, her voice warm and laced with knowing amusement, “are a sentimental fool. And you are going to make us very late.”
His wife.
The smile that was on his face widened, taking her in as if she was the sun that had risen after a decade of winter. “I was just… tidying up.”
“Tidying up your annual descent into melodrama, more like,” she teased and glanced back at the desk, her gaze softening as it fell upon the closed drawer. She knew what was inside. She’d always known. She reached out and took his hand, her thumb stroking over his knuckles. “It’s just a birthday, Draco. I’m right here.”
He pulled her to him, burying his face in her hair, inhaling the real, present scent of her, not memory, but her. “I know,” he whispered, the words coming out a bit choked. “It’s a habit. A stupid, old habit.”
After his trial and being confined to the Manor, he had written to her but he never got a response back. At first he thought she was in Australia, maybe helping her parents regain their memories, but when even Potter’s search had turned up nothing, and the world had begun to whisper she’d been killed, that’s when the dread had set in that something might’ve happened to her. He’d written those first two letters in a frenzy of grief and had sent them out to her, in hopes that it would find her wherever she was. But when they returned back unread and untouched, with no recipient to receive them, it had broken something in him. So he’d stopped sending. But he’d never stopped writing. For it had become his penance, his private vigil for the woman that held his heart and that he thought was lost to the world forever.
Until the day, a year ago, when she’d simply walked back into the Ministry. Her explanation being that she was sent on a top-secret, long-term assignment to dismantle a rogue faction of blood purists in Europe before it evolved into another war. It was so deep undercover that apparently not even Potter knew about it. And she’d chosen to protect them all, to finish what the war had started, to prevent another one from starting. And she’d come home to him.
He dissolved his marriage contract to Astoria Greengrass, the same month it was signed and he married Hermione the following spring, in a quite intimate ceremony in the Manor gardens, the emerald ring and the bracelet once again reunited on its rightful owner.
But he still wrote the letters because he couldn’t seem to stop. But now, he didn’t have to write them anymore. He would learn to live with her again, without the fear of losing her and his last letter, the shortest one yet, was written not in grief but with love that had, against all odds, survived.
She took his limp hand, and pressed the cool silver cufflinks into his palm. “The leaves are beautiful this year,” she said quietly, a knowing look in her eyes. She had never asked him to stop writing. “The maple is especially fierce.”
He pulled her to him, crushing her against his still-shirted chest, breathing her in, ink, caramel, and life. “Happy Birthday,” he murmured into her hair.
She smiled against his shoulder. “Thank you for the book. Now put it on. We’re late.”
He dressed quickly, his movements sure for the first time all evening. As he fastened the cufflinks she’d chosen.
He let her lead him from their room and Draco glanced back once more to the mahogany desk that stood silent in the dark. The right-hand drawer sealed shut.
Inside, the letters waited.
Unsent and unread, for she was back in his arms.