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Below Zero

Summary:

It’s been an astoundingly shitty 36 hours. Granger decided to cap off their first kiss by telling him that she’d found a fucking loophole. Which meant that Draco got to top her by admitting that he’d knowingly subjected her to a core bond. Not to be outdone, Granger decided to get even by fooling around with some random Muggle bloke. Now, all they’re left with is a blank slate. And not in a good way.

A Ten out of Ten interlude set in the late morning of Day 10, after Nilly visits Hermione’s room and before Gemma calls. And most importantly, before Draco's through-the-door-apology.

Notes:

Hi again! Please enjoy another little installment in my two year 10/10-iversary celebration!

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

Even the outdoors was different around Muggles. 

Draco used to spend hours lounging about in the various landscapes of the Manor grounds. Listening to the spray of the fountain in the formal garden, the rustle of the leaves in the woods, the susurrus of the tall grasses in the meadow.

He would be surrounded by the noises of insects and birds. Even the occasional squirrel. But that was it. There was never a single sound from any outsiders.

Here, laying in the thick grass at the edge of the tree by the playset, it felt like Draco could hear the entire city bustling around him. Dogs barked, bells chimed, children screamed. There was a whole host of motorised sounds that he couldn’t even begin to parse, and the friendly voices of the neighbors chatting or calling for their kids filtered through them. All of it was suffused with an undercurrent of vibrancy, of human life and connection. 

For the most part, he hadn’t felt lonely as a child. His school friends had visited plenty in the summers, and he’d always had Nilly. But now, thinking of himself alone in all that open space—all that empty space—compared to this postage stamp parcel, maybe he hadn’t recognised the loneliness for what it was. He could throw a stone from any part of the yard and hit ten different dwellings; all of them filled with people living lives as interesting and complicated as his own.

Draco’s eyes squeezed shut. Well, for their sakes', he hoped none of their lives were quite as complicated as his at the moment. He supposed Muggles didn’t need to worry about unbreakable bonds, at least. He knew they married, of course, but most of them probably weren’t forced into it. Not these days, anyway. Which meant they wouldn’t have had to weigh the decision of saving someone from one prison by placing them in another. Especially not when they knew the person couldn’t be trusted not to be stubborn enough to throw their life away instead of considering for even a second that things could still be okay—

He thumped his head back against the soft ground. Concealing the truth from one’s wife for self-serving purposes? Surely that experience was universal.

A new sound from the outside permeated his musing; the scraping of the latch on the garden gate. It swished quietly over the grass as it was pushed open, followed by the sound of approaching feet. The steps came quick at first, then slower.

A little face appeared upside down above him, framed by a curtain of auburn hair.

“Hi, Draco.”

“Hi, Gemma.”

“What’re you doing?”

He sighed. “Just… laying.”

“Oh.” She laid down next to him.

“Were you looking at the clouds?” she asked after a moment.

“Mhm,” he hummed.

“Any good ones?”

A smile tugged at his lips. “I saw one that looked like a hippogriff.”

“What’s that?” she asked, her hair scraping against the grass as her head turned to look at him.

“It’s a beast with the front half of an eagle and the back half of a horse.”

“Oh, weird!” she said and looked back to the sky. “Are they ugly?”

“Very. And mean.”

“Cool.”

“Not really.”

They watched the clouds in silence for a minute or two. Gemma crossed her legs at the ankle. Then uncrossed them. Then she began plucking at the grass with her fingers. When she finally spotted a cloud worth mentioning, she nearly knocked her head into Draco’s pointing at it.

“There!” she said. He followed the line of her finger to a puffy, squarish cloud with two horizontal wispy bits coming off the front. “That one looks like a T-Rex!” She tucked her arms to her chest to demonstrate.

Draco breathed a small laugh. “Yeah, it really does.”

Gemma rolled onto her side to face him. “Is T-Rex your favourite dinosaur?”

“I’m partial to Velociraptors, myself,” he said.

“I like Triceratops the best.”

“So, you think they’re tops?”

“That’s a dumb joke,” Gemma said flatly.

“Sorry,” said Draco.

“Hermione likes Pterodactyls.”

“Oh?” he said mildly. “And why is that?”

“Because they like to fly.”

Draco closed his eyes. He hadn’t thought of it in years, but everyone in their year had known that Granger was afraid to fly. He’d been too preoccupied with tormenting Potter during their first flying lesson to notice, but in the subsequent ones, it was painfully obvious. She’d left more than one in tears that first year. Draco had thought it hilarious; proof that she wasn’t a proper witch. Everyone else had simply enjoyed that she wasn’t the best at something for once.

But now, he wondered where that fear came from. If something had happened to cause it. Maybe that would have been one of the many things she’d have shared with him eventually if he hadn’t fucked this whole thing up.

Flying was, hands down, the best part about being magical, and it felt like a knife in the heart to think that she couldn’t enjoy it, especially if she wished she could.

“Where is Hermione?” Gemma asked. She’d grown bored with the clouds and was building a grass hut on the back of Draco’s hand where it lay on his stomach.

“In her room, I expect.”

Gemma paused with a freshly torn blade in her hand and turned to look at the house behind her. “Do you think she’d want to look at the clouds?”

Draco swallowed. “I’m sure she would, but, erm, I don’t think she’d enjoy looking at them… with me. At the moment.”

His eyes were still fixed on the sky, but he could feel Gemma’s gaze boring a hole in his head.

“Why not?” she asked quietly.

He took in a deep breath and held it for a moment before responding. “I’m afraid she’s rather cross with me just now.” The blank chalkboard in the kitchen made that feel like the understatement of the century.

“Did you forget to come home one night?”

Draco turned his head sharply to look at Gemma, his brows creasing at her near-whisper. She was wearing a miserable expression somewhere between grief and fear, and it made Draco’s chest crack open.

“No,” he whispered back. “It wasn’t that.”

“But she still made you stay in another room?”

Fucking hell. He’d forgotten how inconveniently perceptive children could be. There was obviously no suitable explanation for why they didn’t share a room, and this whole line of questioning was probably entirely inappropriate, but Gemma looked so crushed that he answered against his better judgment.

“Yeah,” he said. “For now.”

She nodded solemnly. Then, “Did you try telling her you’re sorry?”

Draco blinked. “Well, I–I haven’t exactly—there wasn’t much of a chance—”

Gemma sat up straight with shock. Then almost as quickly, deflated with relief. “You have to tell her you’re sorry,” she said as though that was the problem sorted.

“But—”

“You are sorry, aren’t you?” she put her hands on her hips.

“Yes.”

She raised her brows and wiggled her head as if to say well then?

“She doesn’t want to talk to me,” he argued.

“Because you haven’t. Told her. You’re sorry.” Gemma spoke slowly, enunciating each word as though he was particularly dim-witted.

And maybe he was, because it kind of made sense.

Gemma sighed, adopting a softer tone once more. “Draco,” she said sagely. “If you say it good, she’ll forgive you.”

She sounded so certain that he couldn’t stop himself from asking, “How do you know?”

“Because she loves you,” Gemma said with a shrug.

Draco wished the ground would open up and swallow him whole. Straight down to hell. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.

When he didn’t speak, she prodded. “Right?”

He felt sick. He’d always known that he would have an arranged marriage; it was just how things were done. If you spent enough time with someone—and had half a heart—then, eventually, feelings would develop. Fondness and care, at least, if not outright love. Even Draco wasn’t arrogant enough to think that Granger would get anywhere near to that in only ten days, but then, seeing as she had approximately three times the usual amount of heart, perhaps he’d underestimated.

The way she’d kissed him—

“Right?” Gemma prompted, her voice shaking slightly.

“Right,” he said finally. He knew Granger felt something for him. He knew because it had made his betrayal all the worse. And even if it wasn’t love, he was determined to get it back. Even if that meant starting at zero again.

He looked past Gemma’s head to the curtains drawn resolutely over Granger’s window and felt an icy chill despite the sunlight warming his legs. Yeah, realistically, he was a few degrees below zero right now. But he would apologise, and then he would be back at zero.

“I’ll talk to her,” he said, bolstered with new resolve. “Thanks, Gemma.”

She laid back down beside him. “Don’t forget to say sorry.”

“I won’t,” he promised.

“And you should give her something.”

“Like a gift?” He could not see that going over well.

“It can be anything,” Gemma said. “As long as it’s special.”

Silence fell again as he contemplated that. Then, “Look!” Gemma pointed to a fluffy little cloud right in the center of the sky. It had two rounded parts on the top and was slightly pointed on the bottom. “It looks like a heart!”

Draco smiled. “Yeah,” he said, tracing over the familiar shape with his eyes. “It does.”

Notes:

Not Draco being visited by the ghost of the little chalk heart 😭 sorry not sorry for being a gigantic fucking sap.

I hope you enjoyed this little interlude. It’s one of the scenes I most looked forward to writing in Draco’s POV since both Draco and Gemma make reference to the conversation having happened in the original fic. Sometimes the best path forward is the most obvious one, and sometimes you still need an eight year old to point it out to you. I think Gemma would be very proud of the apology Draco delivers later in the day :)

And for anyone who didn't recognize it, the phrase "Do not pass Go, Do not collect $200" is printed on the Monopoly card that sends players straight to jail.

Thank you for reading, and as always, I'd love to hear what you think!

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