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‘98
“Do you talk to your friends?” asks the therapist.
“Of course,” says Hermione. “They’re my friends.”
“They're supportive? Available?”
Hermione considers Ron and Harry, busy in London, and deflects. “I’m tired of talking, frankly. Of listening. Sometimes even reading, if you can imagine.”
Hermione’s also tired of therapy, which is mostly talking; Christmas; studying; Hogwarts, a lot of the time. Yet in her Eighth Year, on the cusp of winter holidays, she’s once again communing with a Ministry-sponsored mental healthcare professional in a plant-filled room beside the infirmary.
“In the last year,” says the therapist, “you experienced grief. Prolonged stress. Insecurity relative to your most basic needs. Our bodies and minds have their own timeline for healing.”
Hermione deflects again. “You’ve decorated your ficus.”
“We have all sorts of needs.”
“Christmas needs? Ficus needs?”
“A need for traditions, and creative expression. A sense of belonging. Close connections with people who care for and understand us. Our needs are varied. Complex. Interconnected.”
“I’ve settled on Cambridge,” she says.
“My alma mater.” The therapist smiles behind his wiry black beard. “You’ll do wonderfully.”
“But?” Apropos of nothing, Hermione starts crying: yet another perplexing aggravation.
The therapist pushes the tissue box forward. “And,” he says in his kind and patient voice, “I wonder if you’re lonely.”
Next morning, she walks the lakeshore, thickly overlaid with fresh snowfall, and finds Draco Malfoy on the western end, throwing things at the castle. He’s horribly thin in his jumper, which seems logical, as Hermione almost never sees him at meals. Maroon-faced, grunting and gasping, he digs bare-handed through the drifts and emerges with ice-crusted rocks, sticks, once a handful of rotted leaf litter, and hurls them towards the school's outer walls. He’s weak, and everything travels a brief, depressing distance before dunking flaccidly in the lake.
Hermione toes aside the snow, uncovering pine cones, which she gathers by handfuls into the front of her jumper. When she crunches towards Draco through a knee-high snowbank, he gasps in surprise like a frightened child.
“Here.” She holds out a cone.
He grew over the summer—taller than Harry, shorter than Ron—because he's young, and young people change. Hermione feels old and static as a Roman coin while he regards the gift in her hand. He glares like it’s a grenade, then at her, like she’s bitten free its pin. And that's fair, she thinks, because what have they ever offered one another but destruction?
“Fine.” She lobs it at the castle herself, then fires another, and another. Draco observes, doe-eyed with disbelief, then abruptly resumes throwing rocks, sticks, widths of bark; rudely reaches into her armory to steal her ammunition. Their missiles splash down leagues from the target, sending ripples wreathing out across the lake. They exhaust their supplies and shout, flail, and kick up snow until Hermione pulls her shoulder and Draco’s voice cracks.
After long minutes, still panting, she scoops up another pine cone and cups it in her palm. “Gymnosperm.” She fingers its scales—winter-damp, open, seeds nearly all flown—then holds it out to him. It’s no longer a weapon, but a natural artefact of potential mutual interest; a seed cradle; a woody bloom; a peace offering. “They predate flowering plants evolutionarily by millions and millions of years.”
Blue eyes are more light-sensitive than brown—more vulnerable, Hermione thinks. Draco squints against the sun blaring off the snow—squints at her —before his gaunt, tragic face breaks open and he laughs. Throaty peals roll across the lake’s surface, on and on, until he folds under the force of it, elbows on thighs, head between knees, swallowing air as though he could fill out his wasted frame with it.
“You are”—he presses a hand over his eyes—“singular.” He laughs again, now restrained, plaintive, shoulders shaking, trembling hands hiding his face, tears dripping from his chin into the lakeshore snow which is full of rocks beneath the pines.
‘99
In Cambridge, a stone’s throw from the Harrowcourt College of Magical Arts and Sciences, she rooms with a friend of a friend of Terry Boot's cousin.
Harry opens the window latch, closes it, opens it again, draws up the sash, leans out, and scowls at the pavement. “I’d feel more comfortable with a pin lock here as well. There’s no Floo?”
“I’m near campus,” says Hermione. “I don’t need one.”
Ginny sniffs Hermione’s open wardrobe. “How long have you had the dehumidifying spell running?”
“Only an hour.” Hermione hugs her cardigan around her middle. “It’s affordable. Anyway, shut the window, it’s freezing.”
“Your only exits are here”—Harry indicates the open window—“the front door, sitting room windows, and—”
“That’s all anyone needs!” Hermione cries.
“Who’s this fellow?” Ginny strokes a feathery Scots pine seedling rooted in a ceramic pot on the window ledge.
Harry hooks his arms around Hermione from behind and buries his face in her shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re fine.” Hermione strokes his arm, and nods at the seedling. “That’s Stanley. I grew him from a cone I found at Hogwarts. Neville assures me he’s coming along nicely.”
“Grimmauld is always your home,” says Harry. “If this isn’t suitable.”
She grimaces. “Harry, there are five exits.”
Hermione’s flatmate is suitably clean and polite. She also dog-ears her novels and installs toilet paper in the under-hanging position. Hermione could tolerate both if her flatmate was ever home, but she has a girlfriend across town, perhaps in a flat less susceptible to damp. By November’s end—always chilled, nearly always alone—Hermione yearns for warmer shelter.
She spies the notice on a community board, magically camouflaged against Muggle perception, tucked behind a flyer advertising a percussion class for toddlers.
To let: large furnished room in quiet country home. Reliable Floo connection. Please be clean, reputable. Non-flammable pet negotiable.
In the end, she blames inattention and the handknit jumper.
She initials her inquiry letter, then fails to think critically about the monogrammed parchment she receives in return. The provided address directs her to a stone house beside a mill pond, where she knocks, and Draco Malfoy answers. Mirroring his owl-eyed astonishment, she looks straight past him to a cheerful hearth, crowded bookshelves, and a spiral staircase with ornately turned balusters.
“Fuck,” Draco says, then, “Do please come in.”
Hermione lingers on the threshold. “Are you going to insult me?”
“Not intentionally.”
He rakes a hand through his hair, already tousled. He’s pale as ever, though his cheeks are flushed, no doubt over-warm in his heavy gansey. An opaque fog lurks about the hedgerow. Hermione shivers; behaviorally conditioned to orient herself towards crackling fires and thick woolen jumpers, she steps inside.
"Would you like to see the room?" he asks.
She supposes it’s the only thing he can possibly say under the circumstances. Correspondingly, there’s nothing to do but accept.
Upstairs, upon opening the door to the available room, she learns to count clawfoot baths behind painted screens and window seats below dormers among the basic requirements for human survival.
“Mine’s just there.” He indicates the door opposite. “It’s slightly larger, but yours has the better view.”
“Does it have a name? The house, I mean. These places always have names."
"It's called Black Tree Mill."
"Of course it is. Why are you living in it?"
“Don’t you like it?”
She adores it. “That’s beside the point.”
“I’m at university here.”
“And?”
“What do you mean, ‘and?’”
“I’m at university here, too, but if my name was attached to a stately home with five hundred rooms—”
“Two hundred eighteen.”
“—I’d live in one of them.”
“Then you'd be miserable. Would you like to see the kitchen?”
Downstairs, she accepts tea, and, wandering under rough-hewn beams, mentally catalogues his library. She strokes the leather spine of The Compleat Compendium of Brittonic Counter-Hexes.
"I won’t take the room." She shakes her head emphatically. "Living with you is totally out of the question."
"Obviously."
“But if I did—"
His brow furrows. "Would you?"
"No." She lays her cup and saucer on the mantel, and tugs Bubble, Bubble: Temperature Regulation and Microbial Ecology in the Cauldron Context from the shelf. "But if I did, understand that while Crookshanks doesn’t technically breathe fire, it’s a close-run thing.”
"I see. So—you'd bring the demonic cat.”
She considers the book’s unbent pages. “And Stanley.”
“Who’s Stanley?”
“He’s only small. Nothing to do with you.”
The following week, jumpers stored in the cedar and lavender-smelling wardrobe in the room with the superior view, Hermione nests candles in a garland over the hearth.
“That one’s crooked.” Draco reaches around her and adjusts a candle holder.
“Leave it alone.” She waves him away. “You’re doing the cranberry strings.”
“Yes, but if I get too close, your fur-covered murder machine will bite my legs off.”
Beneath the Christmas tree, Crookshanks rolls onto his side, stiffens his legs, then curls into a boneless crescent.
Draco gestures at Hermione's seedling, supported on a handsome new stand beside a south-facing window. “What sort of person is this?”
“Scots pine.”
“Ah.” Draco hesitates before drawing a small, silver-wrapped box from a drawer. “Here.”
“What is it?” Hermione asks.
“Nothing.” He shoves it towards her. “Take it.”
She opens the package, and tips a silver pine cone into her palm. It’s heavy and cool, scales tightly closed.
“I thought since neither of us had ornaments.” He turns away, takes up a cranberry garland and gingerly steps around Crooks. “I understand gymnosperms evolutionarily predate flowering plants by millions of years.”
Hermione threads her fingertip through the cone's hanging loop and swings it in the firelight. “You are,” she murmurs, “singular.”
“Are you warm enough, or—? I could put more wood on.”
“I am.”
‘00
“Granger!” Draco calls from downstairs. “Your demon’s taken an interest in our Stanley! Unsafe behavior!” Footfalls progress up the staircase, and he enters Hermione’s open bedroom door gripping Crookshanks’s middle. “Granger, Gooble whether demons are harmed by ingesting Scots pine.”
Mug cupped beneath her chin, Hermione prods the laptop at the foot of her bed with a toe. “Google it yourself.”
“I’m putting another deterrent spell on it," he declares as he lowers Crookshanks to the bed.
“The cat or the sapling?” She blows into the mug, then sips carefully. “You’ve grown him a cat-safe salad bar down there; he’s not going to eat Stanley.”
“But if he does. ” Draco pushes his sleeves back and glowers at Crookshanks like a peeved patriarch.
“You’re worse than Harry for fussing.”
“I’m better than Harry at fussing,” says Draco. “This is festive.” He touches an illuminated string of gold stars draped from the bed canopy rails, then glances at Hermione and stills. “Is that my old dressing gown?”
She adjusts the butter-soft linen lapels over her bare body, still flushed and damp from a long, deliciously overheated bath with clove and cinnamon oil. “You said you were through with it.”
“I did.” He sits at the foot of her bed and nods at the letters and packages piled on Hermione’s desk. “Busy post today.”
“Christmas things,” she says. “Mostly.”
Draco’s brow rises.
“Harry’s in a bit of a tiswas,” she explains. “You know that werewolf incident near Fen Ditton? The Muggle-born couple?”
“The Prophet frothed over it.”
“Miles from here. DMLE made their arrest. It’s done, but Harry would prefer I spend my hols at Grimmauld.”
“I see.”
“You’ve deployed The Tone. What’s the matter?”
The moment Draco lies back, Crookshanks climbs onto his chest and begins rhythmically kneading his Aran jumper.
“Well, it’s rather insulting, isn’t it? The implication that I can’t, or wouldn't ...” Draco thumbs the white blaze between Crookshanks’s eyes. “Nevermind. You should spend your holidays wherever you like.”
“But?” she prompts.
“You don’t exactly live alone, do you?" Draco massages Crookshanks's cheeks as the cat settles into a rumbling, legless loaf on his chest. "It’s not just Potter that can keep you safe. That will.”
I can keep myself safe, she thinks, hinging forward to scratch Crookshanks’s scruff. Eyes closed, the cat angles his head, showing them where their touch best pleases him. As Hermione’s hand travels, her and Draco’s fingers repeatedly brush.
Draco visits her room frequently, and she subtly encourages him. Maybe it’s because hers is the better view; or he likes her cat, and the cat likes him; or his eyes don’t glaze over when she thinks aloud about atypical ordering in rune arrays; or she once showed him the seed of her belief in his and her and their potential, then watched him cry himself hoarse in the snow.
“We’ll keep each other safe,” she says, then pivots the conversation. “We should host a Christmas party next year.”
Draco stops scratching. Crooks growls, and he resumes. “With who?”
“My friends. Your friends.”
“Your friends hate my friends. I hate most of your friends.”
“That could change.”
“Hm. What are you drinking?”
“Toddy,” says Hermione. “I’ll make you one. I’m going to watch a Christmas film, if you’d like to join me.”
“The Nightmare Before Christmas.”
“We just watched it.”
“I want to watch it again.”
“Alright. Oh!” In her haste to stand, she nearly sloshes toddy over herself. “I have something for you. Do you want it now or later?”
“I’m stunned you would ask me that.”
She fetches a box wrapped in indigo-printed paper, then stands before him, anxiously watching him sit up and peel it open. Pinching its hanging loop with care, he withdraws a carved wooden pine cone, polished to a gleam.
“Pull the—” Hermione indicates a bead at its base.
When he draws the bead down, a cord unspools from inside, and on release, a music box movement plays a melody.
“Where did you find this?” he asks quietly.
“I had it custom-made. Tchaikovsky's sentimental," she rushes out. "Tuneful. He speaks directly to the heart, I think, without barrier or pretense, but if you don’t like it—”
He sets the ornament aside. Gaze locked on Hermione's face, he takes one end of her dressing gown belt in his fingers. “I like it very much.”
“It’s entirely mechanical,” she says. “No magic. You don’t mind that it was made by Muggles?”
“No,” he says. “I don’t mind that it was made by Muggles.”
For a beat, the only sound is Crookshanks purring to himself.
“Can I ask you something?” she says.
“Of course.”
“Why did you let this room?”
“Honestly?”
“If you’re willing.”
“I didn’t like living alone,” he admits.
“And...do you like living not alone?”
Draco tugs on the belt, gently. "Very much.”
Warmth flows up Hermione's spine. She wonders how catastrophic it would be if he began—slowly, she imagines; firmly—to pull.
“I’ll remind Harry that I’m in no peril here," she says. "As long as I don’t eat Stanley.”
“Are you thinking about eating Stanley?”
“He smells nice."
“Demonic behavior.”
The warmth turns fizzing and electric. “It’s the toddy."
"Is it?"
"Mm hm. After one or two, it’s not out of the question that a person would make unsafe choices.”
She’s not widely experienced with men, but also not naive. She’s aware she’s strewn crumbs of invitation before him—a moonlight path he could follow, if he chose, from his perch at the end of her bed to somewhere sweet and dangerous.
He lets the robe’s tie slip through his fingers.
“You really are, you know,” he says softly.
“What?”
“Singular.”
‘ 01
“We’re inviting all our friends,” Hermione explains.
In the kitchen of Grimmauld Place, Ron ponders his gilt-edged cup. “Our friends.” He tastes the words, and his face screws up with bitterness. “You’ve become very sharing, the two of you. I could never have imagined.”
Hermione tugs at the cuffs of the conspicuously over-large jumper swallowing up her hands. “We’re housemates."
"You're friends. You hang out."
"We're worthy adversaries. I thought—he wrote you a very nice letter. Your response was extremely gracious.”
Ron waves a hand. “I’ve made peace with your living arrangements. But a party with—who, Theo Nott? Zabini? Parkinson?”
“Pansy’s”—Hermione chokes on nice —“an acquirable taste. We’re doing the shopping today. I need an accurate headcount, and—honestly, I’ll be disappointed if you don’t come. Harry and Ginny said they would.”
Ron swigs the rest of his tea. “Apparently, so will I.”
That afternoon, leaning on the trolley grip, Draco consults the list hovering over the basket. "We need...three dozen.” He recoils. “That’s so many eggs."
“Ron’s a yes,” Hermione relays. "And you’re the one who wants croquembouche so badly. Grab a bag of crisps for me, please.”
“Christmas is not Christmas”—Draco snags two bags of salt and vinegar crisps and tosses them into the basket—“without croquembouche.”
“Your childhood was not normal in any respect.”
“Stay out of the pastry. You’re doing the cheese...thing.”
“Antipasto cheese ball Christmas tree.”
“Shh.” Draco hovers a hand over her lips. “If you speak its name, you give it power.”
“I will bite you.”
He lowers his arm. “You make these promises, and nothing ever comes of them.”
“You agreed it looked impressive in the magazine.”
“I was responding to the advert for moisturizing shampoo on the opposite page.”
She pushes his hair back from his temple. “You’re perfectly moist.”
Draco shudders.
“What?” Hermione drops her eyelids to a sensual half mast. “Moist?”
“Moist,” he repeats. “Moist. No one wants it. Why not damp?”
“Goodness, Malfoy, your pâte à choux is lovely and damp.”
“Juicy,” Draco offers.
“Claggy.”
“Her claggy centre,” Draco purrs. “I could write one of your pornographic novels.”
“You're categorically disallowed.”
“The warm, soupy heat of her.”
“Her tantalizing folds, origami-crisp,” breathes Hermione.
“Stop turning me on in the supermarket, Granger.” He steers the cart towards a display of Christmas paraphernalia—glass globes with minuscule toy dancers twirling inside, crackers that burst into snow showers, wind up tin Aurors in uniform pointing sparking wands. “Do you think Stanley’s old enough?” he asks hopefully, indicating a selection of miniature tree decorations: fairy lights, glass icicles, and thready tinsel.
“I don’t know,” she hedges. “They grow up too fast already."
Draco sighs.
"Stop making those eyes at me," she says. "Your eyes do nothing.”
“They do everything.” Draco gazes at her morosely. “Look how tragic. How tearful. How lachrymose. How—”
“No.”
“But they’re so moist.”
A week later, unwittingly occupying Draco’s favoured spot on the sofa, Ron considers his fourth pastry puff. “These are a bit of alright.”
At the bar, Champagne bottle in hand, Draco pauses. “A bit of—”
Hermione lays a hand over his mouth. “Shh. He’s being nice.”
“Yes, but I’m being nicer,” Draco complains into her palm.
She drops her hand and meditates on several ranks of empty coupe glasses. "We need another bottle."
Feet smarting in heels, she clicks kitchenward, away from a wondrous tableau: Theo crooning like Ivor Novello at the piano; Neville in a tie, scanning the houseplants for signs of neglect; Pansy sunk into the sofa cushions, glinting and latently sharp as a lost diamond earring, enthusing sincerely about Ginny's party dress.
Draco trails after Hermione, takes the bottles she passes him from the fridge, then reaches over her shoulder for another.
“Two more is plenty,” she scolds.
"One's for us.”
She shuts the fridge and leans against the worktop to watch Draco untwist a muselet. "I think it's gone well, don't you?”
“I do. So we're doing a toast.”
“They're all waiting.”
But the cork pops, and he pulls flutes from their mercilessly organized cupboards and fills them halfway. Hermione accepts a glass, and copying Draco’s example, lifts it.
“To housemates,” he says.
“To worthy adversaries,” Hermione offers.
“To skulking thieves with an insatiable taste for my jumpers.”
“To pâtissiers, and their tender balls.”
He chokes back a laugh. “To friends...”
“Go on,” Hermione prompts.
Cheeks flushed, eyes aglow with wine, he tinks his glass against hers. “With whom we feel less alone.”
They return with chilly bottles, and toast to a happy Christmas and the coming New Year. Hermione chases the tart apple fizz of brut with long swallows of self-candour, privately wondering at the improbability of being Draco Malfoy’s acknowledged friend, and at her restless, relentless, reckless desire to know what it would be like to be more.
“You’ve spangled your baby tree.” Ginny peers at a crystal pine cone magically suspended from Stanley’s stoutest excuse for a branch. “Hermione, this is singular.”
The cone slowly pirouettes inside a private snowfall, its scales chiming in pentatonic accord, splintering the room's candle light into a thousand prismatic scraps.
From across the room, Draco, proud gift-giver, catches Hermione’s eye.
And me? he seems to ask.
Hermione turns away and smiles into her coupe. And you, she thinks. You know, you know, you know: and you.
‘02
"I like the Mrs. Claus look." Ginny holds a red bra trimmed with white marabou to her chest. "Care for some MILF and cookies?"
"If you say Potter's into Father Christmas roleplay, I'm Obliviating myself," says Pansy.
Hermione strokes a sheer green bodysuit. “This one’s beautiful.”
“You should wear that one around the Mill,” Ginny suggests. “Wax the floors in it.”
Peppermint mocha slides down the wrong tube, and Hermione coughs until her eyes stream. “What?”
“Subtle, Weasley,” says Pansy. “This screams Quidditch WAG.” She points at a strappy black bra. “Get it for your university Beater, Granger.”
“Bryan and I split this morning, actually,” says Hermione, casting a swift Scourgify on her scarf. “We’re shopping for Daphne’s bridal shower. This is all off-topic.”
Ginny and Pansy exchange looks.
“Does that throw off seating for your dinner party?” Pansy asks.
Ginny twangs a thong at Pansy’s elbow. “I think Princess Perkybuttons means, are you alright?”
“I’m perfectly fine,” says Hermione. “It was mutual.”
Pansy snorts into her cappuccino.
“It wasn’t serious,” Hermione insists. “No one was ever actually a WAG.”
“He absolutely thought you were his WAG,” says Ginny.
Hermione’s cheeks burn as she holds up a diaphanous pink bra. “What about this?”
“Does Draco know?” Pansy asks.
“We don’t really talk about the people we’re seeing.” Rehanging the bra, Hermione pauses. “Princess Perkybuttons?”
“Parks is doing burlesque,” says Ginny.
“It's Viola La Vie," says Pansy. "Not Princess fucking Perkybuttons. I’m putting all that dance instruction Mother forced on me to good use. Here.” She yanks the green bodysuit off the rack and thwacks it into Hermione’s chest. “Waxing the floors is a scene. You'll want to hand wash, then hang it to dry somewhere Draco will accidentally see it.”
Hermione sputters into her mocha. “What the hell?”
Trailing snow through the Floo that evening, Hermione throws her Diagon packages on her bed. After a blistering hot bath, she slumps downstairs wearing Draco’s old robe over one of his undershirts, hair piled on her head.
Draco’s in the kitchen in a suit and tie, unpacking a paper takeaway bag onto the island.
Hermione leans in the archway. “I thought you were taking Emily to dinner.”
“I brought you greasy garbage. We have haddock, chips, curry sauce, veg spring rolls, and”—he pulls chilled Sauvignon blanc from a second bag—“I thought this looked promising.”
Draco plates the food onto the formal china he insists they use every day. Clutching silverware, plates balanced on his arm, bottle under his elbow, he heads towards the sitting room. “Grab the glasses?”
He lays out place settings side by side on the coffee table, then searches his discarded suit coat and reveals a DVD copy of Amélie. “That French film you like.”
Hermione begins to cry.
“Oh, shit.” Draco tosses the film aside. “Dammit, I’m sorry. We were having drinks, and ran into that Chaser from my tinctures module and Bryan O’Ryan. They were...I just thought you might need...fuck.”
Hermione wipes her cheeks with the back of her wrist. “You don’t have to use his whole name every time.”
“I won’t mention him again. He’s a fucking wanker.”
“He’s not a wanker.”
“I disrespectfully disagree.”
“I broke up with him, not the other way around.”
“You did?”
She presses her palms over her eyes. “You know how you can be with another person—even in bed—and feel so alone?”
The room falls briefly silent.
“I do.”
“God. I’ve messed up the seating chart for the dinner.”
“You haven’t messed anything up. We’ll just shift it down two.”
Blinking, she looks out through a saline haze. “Two?”
During the sorbet course, Pansy pontificates on the topic of the erotic fan dance. “It’s a tease. An artful, cheeky seduction. It’s not: rip off your G-string and toss it over some punter’s face.” She waves her wine glass. “Entirely different performance art.”
“I'd love to watch you,” says Neville, dutifully tracking her entire speech. Every centimetre of him goes pink as a scolded schoolboy. He changes the subject. “Your pine is really robust, Hermione. You’ve been taking very good care of it.”
“Draco’s favoured child,” says Hermione.
“My youngest son,” Draco declares, elegantly in his cups. “Stanley Shancrooks Granger-Malfoy, middle name after my wicked stepson, who will try to eat him.”
Theo leans towards Hermione and mutters, “He’s well shot of that insipid Medievalist—Emma?”
“Emily.”
“A bleak eight months for us all.” He refills his wine. “You make him completely ridiculous, you know.”
“I think he always was, secretly.” Hermione catches Draco’s eye at the table's opposite end. “Absurd man.”
“Hermione.” Theo lays his hand over hers, and speaks slowly, like he’s explaining something complicated to a tiny child. “You make him happy.”
On her hands and knees, Hermione summons a stray utensil from under the sofa. “Your early gift is on the hearth, if you’d like it.”
Draco crosses the room, and she hears him tearing paper.
She sits back on her haunches, valiantly wielding a fish fork. “What do you think?”
He holds up a stunningly elaborate charmed origami pine cone in white rice paper, glowing from inside. Its scales slowly open, and more than a hundred paper seeds drift out in a snowy halo. Each hovers, then vanishes in a tiny white blaze, like an exhausted ember’s last gasp. The scales close, then it pauses, and starts again.
“It’s Japanese Muggle art. The charm's elegant.” Hermione stands up and sends the fork drifting towards the kitchen. “The artist is Muggle-born. I thought you’d like it.”
Draco sets the ornament carefully aside, then leans against the mantel, hands in pockets. “You’re so fucking beautiful.”
Inside, Hermione flares like a furnace. Anxiously, she touches the placket of her white button up blouse. “Pansy confirmed it was a good look. The red lip was her idea. The shirt’s not secretly yours, if you’re wondering.”
“No.” He pushes off the mantel, and meets her in the centre of the room. Taking her wrist in hand, he turns it to look at her cuff links. “Just these.”
“I asked.”
He slides his fingertips under her sleeve and along the inside of her wrist, which she's swept with the woody fragrance he occasionally wears. “And this.”
“I also asked.”
“That’s good.” Draco cups her jaw, and strokes his thumb across her bottom lip. “People should ask before they take things.”
Her lips part at his touch. “I never feel alone when I'm with you.”
“No.”
“Sometimes," she says, "I want to kiss you.”
“Sometimes?”
“All the time."
"I see."
Hermione once found a source of her misery laid open in the snow. She had every reason to leave it there, but out of curiosity, maybe more than compassion, chose to glance at what it held inside. Four winters separate that husk of a boy from the man before her. He grew, because he was young, and young people change.
One by one, he slips her buttons loose. “I have no right to do this.”
She'll grant him the privilege.
“You really shouldn’t let me.” He parts her blouse to either side, and contemplates her body in green lace. “I must admit, I was hoping. Did you hang this to dry in the bath on purpose?”
“That was Pansy’s idea. Ginny suggested I wear it to wax the floors.”
Draco cups her breast. “A vista of possibilities opens before us. Should I kiss you?”
“If you don’t, I’ll die right here.”
In the room with the superior view, Hermione never once, in all the time Draco spends delving between her lips or legs, feels lonely. She’s enthralled by his patience in peeling away her clothes; by his hair, soft against her thighs; by the rhythm of her creaking bed. She wonders at the sight and taste of him—that she could find a man’s weeping arousal beautiful, and crave its imposition at the back of her tongue. She commits to her dissolute performance, no teasing or seduction, only sweat on the pillow and his voice in her ear, his thumb against her tongue inside her open mouth as she opens herself to advertise her need, purposeful and shameless as a flower; as a material tool of the procreant urge; as a bloom that only opens in a fire.
‘03
The therapist smiles behind his wiry black beard. “You know that phrase, ‘radiant happiness’?”
Hermione bites the insides of her cheeks. “Seems overblown.”
“When you talk about your partner, you remind me of the angels Muggles put on top of their Christmas trees. It’s lovely.”
“Is that healthy?” Hermione asks. “Doesn’t it seem—unsustainable? Precarious?”
“This is five years’ worth of growth. You’ve worked hard to be in a place where this is an adjunct to, not a requirement for, your well-being.” The therapist pushes the tissue box forward. “I would like, very much, for you to learn to trust that you deserve it.”
“They’ll start showing up in an hour,” says Hermione.
Draco’s exploring unhurriedly underneath her cashmere jumper—which is his—like he needs more than an hour. Like he needs all night. His hand travels. “Oh.”
“The burning heat of her,” she murmurs.
“Like a blowtorch.”
“Like a Formula 1 engine block.”
“You are”—he breathes in like he’s already satisfied—“singular.”
And you, she thinks. You know, you know, you know: and you. She tilts her mouth to kiss him.