Archive of Our Own

The window reflects the dimly lit dining room, the hearth’s flames dancing in the glass. Draco seizes the opportunity to study his reflection one last time, adjusting his black bow tie for the fifth time. He is no longer used to dressing up. It feels like something from a different life, a different time. One during which he cared about those silly things.

But tonight is different.

Tonight, he wants her to look at him and feel proud that he was hers. Even if it’s only the illusion of a better version of himself. Someone braver, easier to love.

He steps back to take in the table as an ensemble, making sure that everything is in place.

The large vase overflowing with lilac dahlias dominates the center of the table, sticking out awkwardly. Draco, still upset about their colour, has tried to change them to yellow, but they always revert to their original hue. 

Plus, they’re glaringly in the way. That’s not good. Not good at all. 

They might be her favourite flowers, they will obscure his view of her across the table, leaving him with nothing but petals where her pretty face should be. Besides…he wants to gorge himself on the sight of her one final time before darkness consumes everything else. One last dinner where he gets to belong in a world with a future still waiting for them.

Shit. Shit.

Why did he choose this setting and place her so far from him? They’re not royalty, forced to sit at opposite ends for strained conversations. The table is much too long, they’ll practically have to yell to each other. Not the intimate mood he was going for.

He scrambles for his wand, hastily levitating the offending chair and drawing it closer to his side of the table.

There. Better.    

Although… now the table looks absurdly disproportional, overtly too long for just two persons. Which is still an improvement over when Draco is the only one sitting here. A bleak and recurring theme for the past years.

Perhaps the table is the problem. He remembers that even when they were only three of them, sitting down to every meal felt ridiculously too grand for their small family.

Now, the table is hardly at risk of accommodating a large number of guests any time soon.

For starters, his father hanged himself in his Azkaban cell three years ago. Using strips of fabric like any desperate Muggle might. For a man who had spent his life despising them, he certainly had no problem to die like one of them. Without magic. No curse. No spell.

To think Lucius Malfoy had once berated him for merely suggesting anything remotely connected to Muggles. Young Draco had learned quickly enough. That “bad” habit had been beaten out of him at the formative age of four years old.

It had been one of those rare outings that his father had taken him to Muggle London, the way one might take a child to the Magizoo. Lucius would pause ever so often and then gesture at something particularly offensive and explain just how moronic and primitive Muggles lived.  

For all his father’s efforts, Draco failed to see exactly what he was meant to learn that day.  

Those “barbaric” people around them did not look particularly different from him, save for their curious clothes. They talked like him and walked like him, their gestures just as familiar.

A child not much younger than him laughed openly as he was pushed back and forth on a rubber seat, his hands gripping the chains as his father set the rhythm. Nearby, another knelt in the sand, carefully building something that might have been a sandcastle, while his mother watched with loving attention, offering the occasional helpful suggestion.

Nothing about it struck him as odd. Besides feeling unfamiliar.

His parents never played with him.

A group of older children also played a game that looked nothing like Quidditch, though for the ball they kicked bore a passing resemblance to a Quaffle except it was white and black instead of red. A small crowd watched from the sidelines, cheering and clapping, and when a blonde boy sent the ball inside a net, they screamed even louder.

That, at least, felt familiar. Theo and Blaise often played Quidditch with him at the Manor, the three of them racing across the field in glee.

But no one watched.

No one cheered.

On the rare occasions Lucius appeared, it was brief, and never for that. Always to sneer an insult or two at how they played. Which was terrible, according to him. At four years old, Draco had wondered why playing well mattered more than having fun.

On that day in London, he’d also been mesmerized by the colourful wheeled metallic boxes—cars, he’d later learned—moving on their own. It didn’t quite make sense to him since Muggles were not meant to know magic.

And yet, they had all sorts of machinery that could not be explained other than by magic.

The most spectacular was certainly the giant, skeletal contraption that picked heavy things into the air, without any visible spell. His father had stepped away, if only briefly, and Draco had taken the opportunity to cross the street to see it more closely.

It was only when he reached the metal fence that he noticed the patch of earth carved open, with people in bright orange suits and funny plastic hats moving through it, shouting over the noise.

One of them, a broad man with flushed cheeks, was driving pieces of wood into the ground with a metal tool. He paused when he spotted him. Then, with a beaming smile, waved at him to come closer.

Entranced, Draco’s feet moved before he could think, his curiosity overriding every warning his father had given about Muggles. The man laughed as he placed the helmet on Draco’s head, far too large, then pressed the tool into his small hands. A hammer, he had called it and showed him the motion.

Draco struck the wood once, then again, and again, the helmet wobbling on his head.

He would remember it, later, as the best part of the day.

But that was before Lucius caught him.

A hand closed around the back of his collar to wrench him away with a pull that knocked the helmet off his head. The man said something, Draco never caught what, and the hammer was taken from his hands before he could hold on to it.

Lucis dragged him into a narrow strip of shadow between two shops, and they reappeared back at the Manor.

He did not know why his dad was angry, all he knew he was in trouble.

Hauling him by the wrist so tightly his feet barely touched the ground, Lucius dragged him into the dinner room and forced him on a chair. Terrified and barely holding back his tears, he tried to scramble back down, but an invisible force held him there, pressing him into the seat.  

He could no longer move.

Unable to leave the chair.

Unable to yank his hand back when his father seized it and slammed it flat against the table.

Draco could only watch, breath caught somewhere in his throat, as Lucius transfigured a teaspoon into something long and slender, metal narrowing into a pointed tip.

A nail he would later learn.

Then, from his robes, Lucius pulled out the hammer that Draco, not five minutes ago, had been playing with. That he had thought, naively, had been allowed to use.  

What a fool he was.

As though his parents had ever played with him.

Still pinned to the chair, Draco could do nothing but scream when the nail tore through the flesh of his hand, clean through, the tip biting into the wood beneath.

He was left like that.

That was his punishment. For what? He wasn’t entirely sure. Only that he was to remain there, nailed to the table, until dinner was served.

In two hours.

He begged. He cried. He yelled. Apologies spilled between sobs, though he didn’t know for what he was apologizing for, only that he had to, until his voice turned unnaturally hoarse for a four-year-old.

But his father never came back.

And when the doors finally opened again, his father entered as though everything was normal, his mother beside him, composed, her gaze passing over Draco’s hand nailed to the table without pause. Maybe a trace of disgust curled her pursed lips.

He turned to her then, his lower lip trembling despite himself, a small pout he could not quite suppress, as though something in him still expected to be saved. To be comforted.

He cried, begged, yelled…but it was useless. She had heard him already. For two hours, she had heard him, and she had not come.  

They took their seats. Roast beef was served by the elves.

They were the only ones who looked at him with something akin to sadness. It was one them, Kepsy, who was eventually permitted to approach, who removed the nail with careful hands and healed what remained.

As he waits for Hermione, Draco’s fingers intuitively drift to the spot, brushing over the wood where it remains faintly chipped. Magic could have fixed it easily, but he suspects his father wanted to torment him with the painful reminder every meal.

He considers burning the offensive table. But there is little point when he may not be here for much longer.

And if he were to start with the table, he might as well burn the whole place down, every corner carrying its own version of the same failure, every nook an aching testimony of what he had not managed to become.

He tried.

Merlin, he tried.

But his parents never told him what he was meant to be, just fault him for what he was.

It took the Death Mark, carved by force on his forearm, for him to realize that there had never been anything wrong with him.

It was them. They never wanted a child. They did, just out of obligation to the Malfoy and Black names. Pureblood society demanded an heir. It didn’t come with the stipulation they love him.  

It was the only logical explanation.

Otherwise, what parents would willingly sacrifice their child to an ideology?

What father would beat his son throughout his adolescence, and accept the possibility of his death should he fail an impossible task atop the Astronomy Tower?

What mother would watch it all unfold without intervening, without wiping his tears and gathering him into her arms to soothe him?

What mother can still expect him to write her back, now secluded in France?

Draco had never been enough for her.

Not as son, never as a replacement for the man she loved.

She made that painfully clear the moment her husband hanged himself. As soon as the funeral was over, Narcissa left, without so much as a goodbye. A month later, he received an owl, explaining that the Manor had become unbearable, every corner a reminder of the man who was no longer there. She would see him everywhere.

The only man she had ever loved.

Draco had crumpled the parchment, his heart shattering. Was he not a man? Not one a mother would love, apparently.

After all, he had not been enough to make her stay.

She wrote occasionally after that, for appearances, Draco assumed. She invited him to visit, the Malfoy name not so tarnished overseas. As though distance erased their past. But he never went. And she stopped writing.

For three years, Draco had lived by himself, with more space than he knew what to do with.

When the Manor turned into a prison as part of his sentence, he tried to hold on to what remained of his friendships. There were only three, it wasn’t supposed to be hard.

In the end, they all got tired of him. They never told him outright, but he knew his morose attitude was the culprit. The mood he’d set, the silences, the effort it required to be around him.

Some friendships are not built to withstand weight, and Draco had become exactly that. A burden that was too much to bear. When he was no longer pleasant to be around, or at his best when he was with them, they just…fade out. Nothing dramatic. There wasn’t any clean break. Their friendships just…thin out. Concern turning into vague distance, until there was nothing left to cultivate.

In the end, he spared them the trouble and let go first.

Pansy Parkinson was the quickest to leave. Adoring the spotlight, whether in a club or the latest trendy restaurant on Diagon Alley, an evening spent drinking in Draco’s living room with Blaise and Theo rapidly lost its appeal. The last time she visited him, he had only served six months of his sentence.

Blaise Zabini, on the other hand, had no issue spending his Friday nights at the Manor, a bit of a hermit himself. However, Daphnée Greengrass had far less interest in her newly engaged fiancé spending time with the only one of their generation convicted after the war. The Greengrass family had managed to stay well away from the conflict when it all exploded, opting to leave for Switzerland.

Where Blaise eventually followed, settling into a comfortable married life with her. Draco had not been able to attend their wedding, having still one year left to serve. Not for a lack of effort. Blaise was one of his closest mates, and that had been reason enough. But the DMLE did not see it that way, and his request for a temporary escorted temporary absence was refused. 

After Daphnee fell pregnant, the friendship withered, and Draco only became an afterthought after that.

Theo Nott had stayed the longest. To this day, he still checks on Draco now and then, perhaps out of a misplaced sense of loyalty. When Theo was the only one left, he became the only reason Draco would ever step outside once his sentence was over.  

Draco would always say yes. Always.

Even when it rose into him a kind of anxiety that’d leave him sick the day before, drained by the mere thought of having to act like a human being for a few hours.   

He wished he could say no. Wither in his four-poster bed, and let the days pass.

And yet, he accepted, unwilling to lose the last friend he had. He doubts Theo even noticed it. Once they’re at the Leaky Cauldron, three Firewhiskies in, he always managed to mask his despair well enough, hiding behind a few jokes and the occasional smile.

At times, he might even have passed for eager, these outings his last remaining link to the outer world, and not one he dared to let go of.

Even when back at the Manor, he felt like a shell of what he had been. Or never been. An empty carcass, drained of aspirations or yearning. No sense that anything better was meant to follow.

After all, his parents had never told him what he was supposed to be.   

He was perpetually at war with himself, inner conflicts simmering. Terrified, yet exhausted at the same time. Wanting friends, but hating the effort it took to go out. Wanting to be left alone, yet resenting the loneliness that followed. Feeling too much, yet never quite whole.

Irremediably empty.

Until, eventually, even that became too much.

He began to say no and withdrew instead, letting himself sink back into the Manor, the same place that had never quite stopped hurting him.  

When his mother had left, that was when the ideas began. Not fully formed. But soothing, nevertheless.

Once, Draco had been stupid enough to mention it to Theo. He did not know what he had expected. Help, perhaps, seeing how it’s often described as a cry for help although Draco never cried anymore.

An all-paid expense to the Janus Thickey Ward for the risk he posed to himself? A listening ear? A pat on the shoulder?

Those would all have been better than what he got in the end. A very Theo-like reaction, consisting of thunderous laughter. Maybe he shouldn’t have said it while being drunk. Perhaps then he might have been taken seriously.

So he did not confide again. He just let the ideas brew into something else.

Plans.

The first attempt had been poorly executed and failed.

In the end, Theo found him at his desk, bleeding out. That might have been the moment to confide. Again. Maybe the message would have sink in, just like his blood into the dark wood.  

But Draco had been too ashamed of the reality of it. So he lied, mumbling something about a cursed dagger he had found in a drawer, which had launched at him and driven itself through his forearm.

Theo believed him.

To this day, Draco is not entirely sure which of them was the biggest fool. 

And yet, he does not regret it.

Because that lie brought him her.

Hermione Granger, notorious curse-breaker.

Following Theo’s complaint about the alleged cursed dagger, the Ministry quickly sent Draco a letter denying any liability while agreeing to send a curse breaker and acknowledging (albeit indirectly) that Voldemort’s former official residence might likely contain dark artifacts that needed to be dealt with.

A wise choice, given that Granger is still far from completing the project after one year of working here. Aside from the items Voldemort hoarded during his three years at the Manor, Lucius and his associates had their fair share of sinister possessions.  

When the name of the curse-breaker appointed by the Ministry shifted on the parchment and rearranged into something more coherent and familiar, a spike of anger went through him.

Draco had no desire to share his space with anyone—even if only during the weekdays—and least of all with the one girl he had spent years tormenting.

Hermione Granger

He did not need another reason to hate himself. He had already been reduced to this two-dimensional creature, barely there, existing more on crumpled paper than in reality, and he could only imagine what her presence would do to that. Her hatred alone, although justified, might be enough to set him alight.

But—

Perhaps that was the point.

Another person able to hate him as much as he hated himself, possibly more.

And yet, all of it came to dust the moment he set eyes on her.

Posture firm, feet set wide, shoulders squared…he had been waiting for her in the guest entrance hall. Ready for any confrontation. Ready for her hatred, her anger, her insults…

Anything.

Except this.

This undefinable pull that hooked somewhere in his chest the moment she stepped out of the Floo, the green flames smothering behind her.

He had not seen her in five years, not since she had testified for him.

She had always been a beautiful witch, despite what his younger self might have said, but now…she was a woman.

Jealousy stirred…Why had time been so unkind to him, and unfairly generous to her?

As contrasts went, they could not have been starker. 

She had this radiant glow, tan skin as though she had bathed in a pool of melted bronze. Plump cheeks, full, rosy lips, and her once unruly hair now bounced in lustrous curls.

And beside her, he felt—

Like a cadaver. Or planning to be one someday. Hopefully sooner than later.

He gaped at her for an unreasonable amount of time, and instead of insulting him for daring to have laid eyes on her, she walked straight past him, inviting herself into his home without so much as asking.

He scrambled after her, as though he were the guest.

Despite the Manor’s plan unrolling in her hands, he found himself mumbling a few details about the layout before they descended the poorly lit stairs leading to the dungeons, trying to regain a sense of control or usefulness.

It was the first time since the war he had set foot there. He tried to ignore the prickle of unease under his skin.  

But Granger—

She might as well have been strolling through an amusement park, judging by the stars dancing in her eyes. By the time they reached the storage area, she had already dropped her rucksack and announced that she’d start there.

He had every intention of staying out of her way, presuming she did not need him hovering her work. Over the next weeks, he retreated to his rooms, continuing his quest to fill his days with nothing, giving her all the space she might require.  

And yet, she sought him out.

Often.

To question him about whatever new artifact she had found. Whether he had ever seen it, whether he knew anything about it. Even when he had no answer, she would sit cross-legged on the floor, and talk endlessly about her theories, about the spells she intended to use to destroy whatever darkness clung to it.

Sometimes it was jewelry, other times common household items.

Sometimes, he had no name for what she brought him and could only curse his father. Of the things he had left behind, and the danger he put his family through for them.

After two months spent in the dungeons, she made her way upstairs. By then, she no longer had to seek him out. Draco was always there, lingering somewhere nearby, finding flimsy excuses to remain in her company. At some point, the entirety of his days was devoted to her.

He craved her presence the way a sunflower folds toward sunlight. Her passion for her work was magnetic, refreshing, and—

Foreign.

Draco realized that he had never felt that way about anything. He never had a passion, or something in which he was remotely interested. Except her.

He cared very little for the art of curse-breaking, yet in her mouth, even the dullest theory became fascinating. He only knew he never wanted her to stop talking.  

Every word, every breath—he found himself craving for her next.

At last, he surprised himself by wanting to wake up.

Nothing anything as ambitious as wanting to live. More of a desire to delay what awaited him at the end of it all.

Just one more day to hear whatever thesis she had come up with overnight regarding the suspicious tea set they had found.

One more day to learn a new thing about her.

To discover what Muggle outfit she had decided to grace him with.

Would it be the pair of blue jeans that hugged her figure in the most distracting way?

Or the white halter tank top that had since become the subject of his wildest fantasies? It had been one of these afternoons in the conservatory, all windows and no mercy. She had peeled off her jumper with complete indifference, as though revealing her bare shoulders and the graceful line of her neck was the most normal thing she could have done.

It was not.

Not for him, whose pulse stumbled stupidly in his throat as his gaze caught on every newly exposed inch of skin.

The need to know what else she had been hiding from him became unbearable. If the mere glimpse of her flesh could leave him this frantic, then he did not know what would become of him should she ever allow him more.  

He longed for her. Yearned for her.

Eventually, she became the sole reason he wanted to live.

Panic would settle into him each time the dreadful five o’clock approached. The moment her Tempus charm rang, he would trail after her toward the Floo with the pathetic hope that she might stay longer.

Yet, he never dared to ask. Courage had never been his asset.

Instead, once she was gone, he counted the hours until morning. Waiting for her became the only thing that made sense.  

And pathetic as he knew himself to be, she never made him feel that way. On more than one occasion, she tried to lure him beyond the Floo, away from the Manor’s walls. She invited him for coffee, for strolls through London, sometimes even to the pub with her friends. Clearly, she wasn’t ashamed of him, and that kindled something unexpected within him.  

As much as he wanted to follow her, if only to bask in her presence for a few more hours, he always refused, saying he didn’t want to impose.

A lie.

Truthfully, the last time he had stepped outside had been months ago, before she had re-entered his life.

He had been having drinks with Theo at the Leaky—the only outing he still allowed himself at this point—when a raspy female voice barked behind him.

Mrs. Brown.

Drunk, she staggered toward their table, shouting about her late daughter Lavender, about how she had not deserved to die so young. How it was all Draco’s fault. How it should have been him that night at Hogwarts. How he should have died instead.

They were in agreement on that point.

Draco had listened to her drunken grief without protest, not one to contradict a mourning mother, unlike  Theo, who attempted to reason with her. Shoulders slumped and defeated, Draco opted instead to fix the wooden floor, daring it split open beneath him and spare him the humiliation of being watch by the entire pub.

Because everyone had agreed with her. He heard it in the murmurs. Saw it in the curled lips and the evocative sneers.

And he had tried to grant them their wish. Salazar, he tried. One less Death Eater roaming free. He could understand why.

That had been the same evening he dragged a blade across his forearm and bled over his desk, hoping—

It had also been the last time Theo suggested going out, opting to visit Draco at the Manor, every now and then, usually with a bottle stolen from Lucius’s cellar.

The Manor had a way of swallowing time, until the outside world turned foreign to him. The longer he remained inside, the harder it became to imagine leaving.

Until he no longer had a choice.

Despite the risks tied to curse-breaking, Hermione worked with meticulous caution, much to Draco’s relief. Still, he could never quite stop himself from lunging toward her anytime an object behaved erratically in her delicate hands.

Up until one finally burst open, unleashing a dark curse they were both too slow to counter.

That had been the first time he felt the warmth of her skin against his, as he caught her limp body before she could hit the floor. 

Then, everything blurred, his heart beating wildly in his ears.

Without a second thought, he apparated straight out of the Manor and into Saint-Mungo’s. Draco barely registered the rush of sounds, the stream of mint green robes or the harsh white lights burning against his eyes.

All that mattered was Hermione.

Hermione being torn from his arms and rushed through another set of doors before they swung shut in his face.

No.

She could not—

He was supposed to be the one to leave this vile world. Him. Not her. Never her.

How cruel could his life be to place the only person for whom he wanted to live, only to rip it away?

His back slid slowly down the wall. Seated on the dull beige tiles, head buried between his knees, Draco waited and bargained with whatever invisible force might be listening.

Not her. Take me. Me. Please.

And when, some time later, a mediwitch informed him that Hermione would recover just fine, Draco apparated away before anyone could witness the humiliating sob that tore out of him.

To his utter shock, she returned two days later, alive and perfectly healthy.

Draco had just finished drafting a letter thanking her for her services, enclosing a considerable amount of Galleons to compensate for the injuries she had suffered. The mere thought of never seeing her again had left a raw, hollow ache beneath his ribs, and he had been moments away from adding a final line—something restrained, something casual—informing her she would always be welcome to visit the Manor should she ever wish to.

Then she had burst into his study as though nothing had happened, already prepared to resume work.

Complete relief was soon replaced by apprehension. Hiding the humiliating twitch in his hands by clenching them hard against his lap, Draco informed her—with what he hoped was casual flair—that she did not have to continue such dangerous work.

He had not expected her to laugh.

She then “reassured” him that the curse had been far from the worst injury she had suffered, then proceeded, with alarming enthusiasm, to recount all the other occasions she had nearly died.

As though she was listing accomplishments.

As though she was not calmly describing the contents of Draco’s most recent nightmare.

Her. Dying. On repeat.

He felt the colour drain from his face, as though he needed to be any paler. He must have swayed, because she caught him by his elbow, flashing him the most dazzling smile.

“But I’ll be more careful, if it makes you happy.”

Her touch lingered against his skin for weeks afterward, and he found himself wondering about what it might feel like to have her hands roam elsewhere, soothing every fractured part of him she had unknowingly brought back to life.  

Until Hermione, Draco had never believed a person capable of healing something as ruined as his soul through touch alone, yet if anyone possessed such power, it would be her.  

For her, he would try to be a better version of himself.

A better man.

He would put an end, once and for all, to this pathetic fear of stepping beyond the Manor’s wall, and ask her on a proper date.

For her, Draco would face the world if it meant she’d be beside him.

If only he were not such a coward.

Because after an entire month, he still had not worked up the courage to tell her how he felt.

As a result, he had only himself to blame when her words struck him with all the force of an Avada.  

“I have a date.”

Why had he ever thought he stood a chance? Perhaps his mind truly was beyond repair if he had somehow convinced himself that Hermione Granger—the Golden Girl herself, undoubtedly pursued by half the wizarding world and then some—would ever look twice at him.

Salazar—

For all he knew, she might even have had someone during the months she spent at the Manor. Someone waiting for her at home each evening while Draco made a complete fool of himself, trailing after her like a lovesick puppy.

Perhaps that Weasel found the courage Draco never possessed.

He would not know.

He never asked. Never wanted to know.

Not that it mattered. Whether recently single or not, someone else would now be lucky enough to take her out to dinner. Someone else would make her laugh. Someone else would bask in the warmth Draco had grown addicted to.

Just not him.  

“Okay,” he said, instead of doing something humiliating, like dropping to his knees and begging her to choose him.  

She looked at him intently, trying to decipher everything he refused to say aloud. She had always been disturbingly good at reading the silences between his words. He wasn’t the most vocal wizard after all.  

This time, he could not bear it. He lowered his gaze to the book resting on his lap, hoping she wouldn’t notice the uncalled-for jealousy twisting his insides. He knew he had no right to feel this way. 

Then, suddenly, the book was snatched from his hands, and Hermione leaned over his desk with a knowing smile tugging at her lips. As though she knew something he didn’t. 

“Are you upset?” she asked, inching closer and circling the desk. She entered his space until there was barely any space left for him to think.

Upset? He felt something wrong, but he didn’t believe he was upset. It was more like a fist slowly clenching around his heart. He couldn't identify this feeling yet, calling it upset felt too mild. 

“What if I am?” His throat tightened.

Her thumb pressed lightly beneath his jaw, causing him to look up immediately.

“Then you say it.”

“I’m not upset,” he rasped, speaking before she could misunderstand. “More like…terrified.”

She opened her mouth and closed it, visibly caught off guard by the confession. Perhaps it was the sudden bluntness of it all, even to himself, that finally pushed him past the point of hesitation.

Before he could rethink it, Draco stood and gripped her by the thighs, lifting her onto his desk. An adorable squeal escaped her, soft enough to make him want to swallow it.  

 “Tell him you can’t.”

“Who?”

“The wizard who dared to ask you out before I could do so.”

“There’s no one else,” she blinked rapidly, her eyes darting between his. “I lied. I only wanted to get a reaction from you.”

The tension left him so abruptly he nearly swayed. Like air slipping from a balloon.

There was no one else.

No one waiting for her. No one about to take her from him.

A smile touched his lips, and the relief far outweighed any complaint he might have about her manipulative little scheme. How very Slytherin of her. He couldn’t fault her for it and even admired her for it.

And now—

Now was his chance.

Ask her out, you complete swine. 

He opened his mouth, ready at last to say the words that had stuck in his throat so many times over the past month, but they died once more when her lips crashed onto his.

His mind emptied.

A soft sigh escaped him as he kissed her back, every carefully rehearsed sentence he had prepared to ask her out disappearing the moment she parted her lips for him. 

Merlin, she tasted like something he wasn’t allowed to have. But damn him for wanting to possess every part of her he could get. Greedy thing he was, Draco immediately wanted more.

He wanted her closer, impossibly closer, wanted to crush her to him until no space remained between their bodies. Wanted to melt into her, to pour every bruised chip of his broken soul into her and let her decide what to do with it.

He desired her with a sudden urgency that contrasted with the meticulous plans he may have once imagined.

If she would ever let him—

He would have scooped her up into his arms and led her gently to his bedroom. A hundred candles would then have flared to life, the faint scent of roses lingering in the air. He would have made love to her slowly and tenderly on his bed, learning every inch of her skin before he could ever dream of sinking into her.

But months of longing from afar shattered his resolve the moment she reached for his belt.  Any thought of tenderness, of restraint, vanished beneath an overpowering need: to keep her here.  

That afternoon, he took her hard and desperately against his desk, his frantic thrusts revealing his fear that she might change her mind at any moment.

But she didn’t, instead keening into him and responding to him with sounds of breathless approval until they both reached their euphoric ending.

And yet, it was only the beginning for them.

Over the following months, they settled into a pattern in which her work was no longer the sole reason he could see her. After five o’clock, Draco finally got to keep her and have her. 

He never wasted a second to do so.

During the day, he struggled to keep his hands off her exquisite body, but at night, she let him worship her as he should have on their first time. Draco had never understood Muggle religion, but he understood the impulse to fall to his knees for her.

Each night brought a new discovery.

A three-dot mole, perfectly centred between two back dimples, resembling a constellation waiting to be slowly explored with the tip of his tongue.

The softest strip of skin just below her navel. The one spot his hand would instinctively reach for in the mornings, gently waking her as she pressed back, requesting five more minutes of sleep. He always gave them to her.

Or the fact that she was intensely ticklish, especially when he caught her just above the knees, seizing her by the thighs. The giggle he triggered from her was addictive, particularly when it was followed by a choked sound as she mewled while he plunged into her, his hold firm around her thighs.  

She was something he could spend his entire life studying and still never reach the end of.

So for the first time in years, Draco found himself hoping for a tomorrow. One he could spend with her.

Dying no longer felt like a sane option. In fact, he couldn’t think of something worse if it meant losing what she offered him each day.

But Draco had struggled for so many years with the idea, that all it took was a spark to set it ablaze once more.

Which happened this morning.

He always wanted to take her on a proper date outside the Manor, but his fear held him back. As intuitive as she was, Hermione understood he preferred staying in and never pressed his limits after the one time she had suggested they spend the evening at her flat instead. 

He didn't refuse outright, but the involuntary tremor coursing through his spine might have clued her in. Or maybe it was the way his eyes darted around the entrance hall, looking for an escape from this conversation that didn’t require him to use the Floo right in front of them. 

She never asked him again, and he has felt undeserving ever since.

So when she slipped out of his grasp this morning, as she always did on Saturdays for brunch at the Burrow, he finally decided—

Enough.

No more glowering and lying awake in cold sheets after she left, wishing she had stayed. Hermione was meant for the light; he had always known she couldn’t remain hidden away in the shadows with him forever.  

He had loved having her by his side for so long, feeling truly happy. Now was the moment to become the man she would be proud to have on her side. Worthy of her. 

After pacing around the Manor for what felt like hours and changing his outfit three times, he finally stepped through the Floo into Diagon Alley.

He had one goal: to head directly to the most romantic restaurant and book a table for tonight. The issue was... Draco had no clue where to go. In the past, he limited himself to the Leaky Cauldron, ignoring the surrounding shops and eateries. And that had been months ago.

Now, the whole alley felt unfamiliar, almost hostile in its liveliness. Too loud. Much too crowded.  

He was bout to retreat back to the Manor and owl Theo for a recommendation, when a small shop with a bright yellow façade caught his eye.

Hermione’s favourite colour.

That had been the first mistake. The spark.

He should have turned around right then and owled Theo instead of walking into the flower shop and ask the florist which restaurant in Diagon Alley was considered the most romantic. After all, who better to ask than someone whose job revolved around helping people express love through flowers?

Which, he realised, was exactly what he should do.

Send Hermione flowers. A bouquet with the invitation for tonight tucked neatly inside. Brilliant plan. 

Draco was carefully selecting the prettiest bouquet of soft butter-yellow Dahlias from the crate when a familiar voice grunted behind him.

“Flowers won’t make up for the pathetic excuse for a wizard you turned into, ferret.”

He veered around to see Weasley standing in the middle of the path, his face contorted with pure disgust.

Years ago, he likely would have hexed him on sight for less. Or praised him for forming a sentence longer than three words. Better yet, he might have casually mentioned how much he was enjoying his time with the witch Weasley had apparently been destined to marry, if gossip were to be believed.

But he no longer carried that biting, effortless arrogance, which had never been much more than a mask. A mask that, since then, had cracked beyond repair under doubt and endless insecurities.

Weasley’s words landed harder than Draco cared to admit. What was even more unsettling was the fact that Weasley—someone he hadn’t seen in years—seemed to have some sort of insight on his personal life, but he wasn’t going to stand out here, at his mercy, and discover why.

Instead, he ignored him and moved to step around him, but Weasley blocked him.

“Hermione prefers peonies.”

“No, she doesn’t,” Draco corrected immediately before reality caught up with him. His jaw tensed. “Wait…you know about us?”

She must have told him at brunch. His chest swelled at the thought that she had not hidden him away.

“She told us months ago,” Draco almost beamed at the unexpectedly hopeful piece of information, but sobered just as quickly when Weasley scoffed.

“We all thought it was a joke at first, honestly. Which would’ve been a bloody terrible joke, by the way. Hermione’s many things, but funny isn’t usually one of them.”

Draco nearly objected. Hermione was the funniest witch he had ever met, if only because she was the only person who had managed to make him laugh in years. Instead, he clutched the poor flowers harder.

“We tried talking sense into her,” Weasley continued, folding his arms. “Even asked her to drag you to the Burrow. Figured if she’d lost all common sense, maybe you still had some left. But apparently His Highness doesn’t leave his Manor much these days.”

A vicious sneer curled his mouth.

“What is it? Scared you’ll run into people whose lives you ruined? Mums or sisters of people you killed—”

“I never killed anybo—”

“I don’t care,” he seethes. “All you deserved was to rot in Azkaban. Just for what you put Hermione through at Hogwarts. Don’t you remember? What exactly makes you think you deserve her?”

Draco’s eyes fell to the oak floor, unable to meet the accusation in Weasley’s gaze, because the hardest part—truly unbearable—was that he agreed.

The flowers in his hands suddenly felt ridiculous. Pathetic, even.

This morning, he had stepped out of the Manor believing, for one fleeting and delusional moment, that perhaps he could become someone worthy of her. That if he tried hard enough, if he forced himself beyond the walls he had hidden behind for years, he might someday deserve to stand beside Hermione Granger. That was all he wished for. 

But Weasley was unfortunately right.

What kind of man looked at someone as bright as her and thought he should be allowed to keep her?

He had spent years rotting in that Manor, overwhelmed by guilt, self-pity, and cowardice, while Hermione had continued moving forward, fighting darkness one cursed artifact at a time, and spreading light wherever she went.

And him?

He was still the same frightened boy who had once made her life miserable at Hogwarts, only now stripped of the vanity that had once made him bearable to himself.

Loving her had never been the same thing as deserving her.

If he didn’t get to keep her, he thought, there was no reason to go on. Simple as that.

As his thoughts kept looping toward an inevitable conclusion, he failed to react in time when Weasley ripped the bouquet from his iron grip and hurled it to the floor. 

With a sense of helpless failure, he simply stared as the flowers turned to flames, then to blackened ash. His chest sank at the realization that they had been the last yellow dahlias in the shop.  

Weasley strode toward the cashier, shoulder-checking Draco hard as he passed, hissing under his breath, “Stay the fuck away from her.”

Then, he picked out a bouquet of pale lemon peonies on his way to the florist. 

Draco wondered miserably whether they were for Hermione.

In the end, he settled for lilac dahlias instead. Feeling guilty for subjecting the florist to Weasley’s display of pyromania in her shop, he took an extra bouquet and offered to pay for the one that burned. 

Weasley already had.

Which, somehow, was the most shocking part of their entire encounter.

He wasn’t sure how long he had spent curled up on his bedroom floor, trembling, nor how he ended up there after leaving the flower shop. 

He might have run, hurriedly making his way to the closest Apparition point with his heart in his throat, one goal in mind: getting back home.

That sounded like something he would do.

Golden light flooded the room as the sun dipped beneath the horizon. Draco eventually rolled from his fetal position just to watch it, knowing it would be the last sunset he would ever see.

Today was the spring equinox, and days would start getting longer. But not for him. They would simply... cease. 

Only then did he notice he still held both bouquets in his hands and suddenly realized he had forgotten to ask the florist for a restaurant recommendation.

Not that it mattered.

By now, every decent place in Diagon Alley was likely fully booked on a Saturday night.

In any case, he could not bring himself to return there. Just thinking about it made his stomach clench into a tight ball. 

Still—

He wanted to see her.

For one last time.

To make her see how she made his world better, just by being in it, until the very last day.

He owled the first bouquet to Hermione, inviting her over for dinner here, and carried the second himself to the dining room, placing it carefully at the centre of the table.

He changed the flowers to yellow, but as he laid the table, they slowly bled back into lilac. 

Once. Twice. Thrice.

After the fourth try, Draco surrendered, letting the dahlias be what they truly were. 

And the moment he stopped trying to alter them, a sudden sense of relief washed over him.

Soon, he would finally, finally, get to rest.

Soon, he would no longer have to pretend to be someone he had never been.

***

“I’m so proud of you,” Hermione says, her hand hovering briefly over the petals before cupping his cheek in pure admiration. 

His eyes flutter shut as he leans into her touch before he can stop himself, aching for everything she gives him in a way that feels almost humiliating.

That's what it is—completely humiliating. He appreciates that she noticed the effort it took him to step foot into Diagon Alley, but enduring her awe over something so small only reminds him how little he has to offer.

She deserves much more.

But if tonight is all they have left, Draco intends to give her everything until he has nothing left. Come tomorrow, he will be nothing more than a memory to her. 

So he makes certain she has plenty to remember.

He asks Kepsy to prepare Hermione’s favourite meal. He prefers hearing her pleased little sighs as she chews another bite of cottage pie to eating his own favourite meal, even if it’s his last. 

He showers her with affection and love, even if he never says the words. He hopes she knows regardless.

They talk, they laugh, and he thinks he’s never been this happy. As though the weight of the last few years had lifted, and he could finally breathe. Hermione notices it too, observant as ever, asking him why he’s uncharacteristically cheerful tonight.

He doesn’t tell her the reason. Not yet.

Not before he takes her upstairs and gives her the last shards of his shattered self. 

With searing kisses pressed against her skin.

With whispered confessions murmured against her neck.

With promises he already knows he will never keep.  

He makes love to her in a way he has never before. With a kind of desperate tenderness that borders on grief. He savours every inch of her skin, as if the memory could stay with him beyond the Veil. He swallows her very moan, every gasp, taking them into his metaphorical suitcase.

Afterward, when they lie silently, their breaths slowly falling into rhythm, Draco sits up and gently guides her against the headboard.

From his bedside table, he pulls out a velvet box and presses it into her palms.

She gasps softly when she opens it, a hand flying to her mouth.

Inside rests a delicate gold bracelet adorned with three pale honey-coloured gemstones that reflect the colour of her own eyes. It once belonged to his grandmother, and the stones—Mellite, commonly known as honeystone—are said to have powerful magical properties.

Draco has never cared enough to ask what they are, but he finds comfort in knowing that his witch will wear something of his after he’s gone. 

Something to remember him by.

Before sleep claims her, he wraps her in his old Quidditch shirt, saying she looks exquisite in it and insists that she keep it.

Another piece of him he wants her to have.

And once her breathing deepens and evens beside him, he retrieves the parchment he has written hours earlier and places it carefully atop his pillow.   

His final gift to her.

When he bends to press one last featherlight kiss against her forehead, careful not to wake her, he finally whispers the words he has denied himself for months.

I love you.

He hopes she hears them somewhere inside her dreams. 

He swallows the lump in his throat, standing in the doorway for a long moment as he memorizes her moonlit silhouette before quietly stepping out of the room.

His heart beats like a wild beast inside his ribcage.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

He has imagined this moment countless times over the years, and every version of it ends inside the Manor. But he can’t do it here, not with Hermione sleeping only rooms away. He refuses to leave that horror for her to discover.

Instead, acting on this addictive surge of energy, the same that has fuelled him ever since he made his decision, he chooses to face the outside world.

His first and final act of bravery.  

He goes to the place where it should have ended all those years ago. Poetic justice, and all that.

He takes the Floo to King’s Cross and then boards the night train to Hogwarts.

It’s still early when he arrives at the castle, with no students or professors in sight. Only the sound of his footsteps accompanying him as he climbs the winding staircase toward the Astronomy tower.

Pausing behind the guardrail, he glances at the thick blanket of grey clouds obscuring the sky. Just a dull, colourless world waiting for him to leave it.

At least, he had the foresight to watch the sunset yesterday.

There will be no more sunlight for him now.  

He swings one leg over the bannister, then the other, gripping the rail for balance.

For a brief, surreal moment, he just sits there, observing the pointed roofs of the castle towers, the tranquil waters of the Black Lake and the distant outline of the Forbidden Forest.

He spent seven years here. Seven years roaming these grounds, desperate for kindness, to belong somewhere. And now he leaves it exactly as he entered it years ago.

Alone.

But finally at peace. 

Finally.

He thinks of the letter waiting for her on his pillow.

Of Hermione waking up alone.

Of the pain she will experience upon realization, though it's only temporary. He doesn’t believe he had the same influence on her world as she did on his. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers into the empty air.

Then, before instinct can force him to cling to life again—

Before his fingers can curl too tightly around the railing behind him—

Before hope can bloom inside him—

Draco lets go.

And smiles into the fall.

***

**

*

Hermione,

I wish we had met in another lifetime.

One where I was enough.

One where I came to you whole.

One where I would not have asked you to fill every hollow part of me.

But all we were given was this life.

And in this one, I wish I had been braver. Brave enough to stay.

But that was always you, little lioness. Brave and strong.

Never me.

Whether in this lifetime or in any other, imaginary or not, please know that I will love you in every one of them.

Always yours,

Draco

***

**

*

Hermione knows the signs.

Draco had scattered them like a trail of breadcrumbs leading to a lethal treasure.

The dinner.

His unusual lightness all evening.

The way he looked at her for too long.

The bracelet, the Quiddich shirt…parts of himself, serving as a symbolic farewell she now realizes.

Maybe it started long before that.

With his aversion to going out. The glaring abuse he suffered through his childhood. Or perhaps when they reconnected, instead of viewing it as a warning sign, she was pleasantly surprised and charmed by his more composed personality.

Those had all been signs of his suffering, culminating in the unthinkable.

Yet she had seen none. The brightest witch of her age, and she had seen none of those glaring signs.

Even now, as she reads the last clue—his letter, scrawled in his neat handwriting—the words barely make sense.

Even when she stands on shaky legs, parchment crumpled in her hand, she cannot bring herself to believe he could—

Hermione tears through his house.

Every room she enters carries the same foolish certainty that he will be there, safe and sound.

In the kitchen, preparing her a cup of tea, as he’s been doing over the past months.

In the conservatory, sun hitting his hair just right.

In the gardens, cutting her one of the pink roses he insists are almost as pretty as she is.

In his office, a rope around his neck—

No.

She won’t see that. She can’t see that…

She doesn’t see that.

Her knees buckle, and she collapses into the swivel chair as the office’s walls close in on her.

The tick of the clock echoes unpleasantly in her ears, each passing second fueling her anxious thoughts about where he could be and whether she can be fast enough to reach him in time.

Her Patronus bursts from her wand, its silver light brightening the room.

“Find him,” she pleads. “Please. Bring him home. Tell him it’s not too late.”

The otter leaps out the window, and she waits, hoping…

The clock keeps ticking, each hour a painful reminder that Draco can’t be found, because…

He is no longer somewhere her otter can reach.

A familiar cinnamon-feathered owl lands softly on the windowsill before her Patronus returns, a small roll of parchment tied to its leg.

Hermione,

I recognized your patronus.

Please come to Hogwarts’s infirmary as soon as you can.

It’s about Draco Malfoy.

- Neville

Hermione dashes through the corridors of Hogwarts, her pulse roaring in her ears. Just as she rounds the corner leading to the infirmary, she crashes into a young student.

“Oh—sorry!” Hermione gasps before taking off again, barely registering the blond girl staring after her with wide eyes.

“Neville!” she shouts the moment she reaches the infirmary entrance.

“Hermione,” he says, giving her a tense, uncertain smile.

“Is he here?” she asks dumbly, knowing very well that Draco’s here, because why else would Neville have summoned her? The real question is far worse, and not one she can bring herself to ask before seeing Draco.

She makes her way through the rows of empty beds with Neville close behind, but the moment she reaches the last one, her legs suddenly turn to lead.

Her hands clamp over her mouth to stifle the scream clawing its way up her throat.

Draco.

“He jumped from the Astronomy Tower early this morning,” Neville explains softly, though she barely hears him over the relentless drumbeat drowning out his words.

All she can focus on is Draco. Lying there.

Still.

Too still.

His face is ashen beneath the crude infirmary lights, but strangely peaceful. Almost serene.

As if, despite the horror, he had embraced death with a smile.

As if—

At last, the world finally stopped hurting.

The thought tears something inside her, and she can’t find any relief in that knowledge.

“…barely alive when she brought him in. But Madam Pomfrey managed to mend most of the damage and placed him under a stasis charm so the potions could do their work. Now we just have to wait and—”

“What?” Her head snaps to Neville so abruptly that he blinks in surprise, realizing she has not absorbed a single word he has said.

“Just before Malfoy hit the ground, a student walking by cast a levitation charm on him,” Neville explains more carefully. “Brilliant, truly. Not exactly a spell designed for anything other than an object, though, especially from a first-year still practising on feathers, but…it slowed him enough to spare him the brunt of the impact.”

Hermione stares at him.

“So he’ll survive?” she exhales shakily, her gaze dripping to Draco’s chest. Sure enough, she can now notice the faint rise and fall beneath the blanket.

“Yes.”

The buzzing in her head finally quiets to a hush. She wavers slightly before falling onto the bed, immediately grabbing Draco’s hand with both of hers, fingers pressing frantically against his wrist until—

A faint yet steady pulse responds to her touch. 

A broken sound escapes her.

He’s alive.

Draco’s alive.

He’s been saved.

“What’s her name?” she blurts, her fingers still digging into his wrist. “The student.”

“Clara, I think. I only teach Herbology to second-years and above, so I could be wrong. But I’m fairly sure that’s what she told Pomfrey.”

“I want to thank her,” she whispers. “Personally.”

Neville’s expression softens. “Alright, I’ll speak with her Head of House.”

“Thank you.”

Squeezing Hermione’s shoulder lightly, Neville leaves the infirmary after telling her she’s welcome to stay by Draco’s side for as long as it takes.

Then she’s alone, her focus fixed on all the signs of life he shows her.

The little puffs of air coming out of his nose.

His heart beating steadily against her ear when she rests her head on his chest.

His pulse increasingly strong inside her palm.

“H-Hermione?”

A hoarse voice wakes her from sleep. She hadn’t noticed she had dozed off. Her eyes blink rapidly to clear her mental fog, and she realizes it’s nighttime. The infirmary is now fully dark, with only the moon’s glow offering light.  

Right.

Someone just spoke.

Realization slapping her face, she violently uncoils from her curled position, her gaze darting around the room before snapping to the owner of the voice.  

“I never believed I deserved mercy in the afterlife, or even that it existed,” Draco murmurs, his eyes widening in disbelief. “Yet here you are.”

His hand lingers near her face, hesitant to touch her, as if the illusion might vanish if he does. When his fingers graze her jaw and human-like warmth meets his skin, his expression crumbles with confusion. Then, with dismay. She confirms his suspicions.

“You’re alive, Draco.”

His palm spasms against her cheek before he jerks away from her touch as if burned. His gaze darts wildly as he takes in his surroundings. Hermione reaches for him, but panic sends him scrambling backward across the mattress until his shoulders hit the headboard.

“I didn’t—You’re…real? I fail—why, how—" 

His breath comes in uneven gasps, his lungs struggling to draw in air with each inhale.

“Shhh,” Hermione catches his trembling hand between both of hers. “I’m here now. It’s okay.”

His previously steady pulse now hammers erratically against her fingers.

“Breathe with me.”

His frantic gaze, scanning the infirmary, finally meets hers, his pupils blown wide with fear.

“One breath in.”

“I—I’m a failure.”

“One breath—”

“I—I couldn’t even manage to—”

“Out.”

Hoping that grounding him physically with pressure might help, she rises to her knees and carefully straddles his lap, letting her weight settle over him like a heavy cloak.  

“Draco, breathe,” she urges, gripping his face to force him to meet her gaze. It seems to help.

Slowly, after several shaky breaths, his panic subsides, though the hunted look in his eyes remains.  

“You’re not a failure. You’re only human.”

His mouth opens, about to argue, but she won’t let him.

“You don’t have to fight alone. Let me in.”

Something inside him seems to snap in half at that moment.

Spent, Draco lets his forehead fall against her chest, and she wraps her arms around him.

“I’m not sure I know how.”

His voice is small and unsure. Young. Like a boy who’s been carrying his pain on his own for far too long.

Hermione keeps tracing soft circles on his back, trying to find the right words. Truthfully, she does not entirely know what she’s doing either. One wrong word, and she might make it worse.

“Small steps,” she whispers. “One day at time, and then—"

“My decision is already made.”

Despite the certainty of his words, she can hear the stubbornness in them, as if he’s been telling himself the same thing on a loop. But there’s a faint crack in his resolve, and Hermione intends to wedge herself inside it with everything she has.

“Okay. Then, put a pin on it.”

He goes still against her.

“Today is the first day of spring. Give me one more season. Give us more time. Just you and me, and enough time for me to—"

“I’m tired, Hermione.”

She knows he’s not talking about sleep. He never confided in her outright about his childhood, but she knows enough.

She remembers the few times his father came to Hogwarts and, thinking that no one was watching, struck Draco with his cane. Still, Draco continued to praise him relentlessly.  

Or when Hermione was tortured by his aunt and, to punish his son for refusing to watch her suffer, Lucius threw him beside her and ordered Bellatrix to Crucio them both. What was somehow worse was Narcissa standing there, silent and almost indifferent, making no attempt to stop it.  

There was also the final battle, when Hermione overheard Draco standing up to his father after Lucius cornered him and demanded that he come with him. Draco kept insisting he would rather die tonight than continue serving him.

Lucius answered by grabbing the largest rock he could find and whacking it against Draco’s face.

Draco followed him afterward, shoulders slumped, his face smashed nearly beyond recognition.

And that was only during Hogwarts. Hermione discovered plenty of clues throughout her time at the Manor proving Draco’s suffering began long before that.

The worst of all was the deep stone well hidden in a secluded corner of the gardens, a rope ladder coilded beside it.

Draco merely shrugged when he explained that his father used to throw him inside when he started to manifest accidental magic as a child. She doesn’t think he even realized the horror of what he was describing because, despite everything, he still defended Lucius. Said his magic (“Salazar knows why”) always seemed to target his father, and that Lucius had simply been protecting himself.

Only there was nothing normal about lowering a four-year-old into a dark well for hours at a time. Faint rusty streaks still marked the cobblestone, silent evidence that a frightened child had tried to climb out, his tiny hands slipping every time.

So when Draco says he’s tired, she knows he means the kind of exhaustion that roots so deeply that a person begins to mistake death for rest.  

“Just one season, Draco.” She pleads, voice starting to shake. “Three months where you don’t think about it. And if by the last day of spring, it’s still something you want—”

The words nearly tear her throat, but she forces them out.

“Then I’ll stay beside you through it. I’ll hold your hand the entire time.”

Draco slowly lifts his head from her chest and looks at her with an aching sort of trust.

“You promise to let me go?”

“I do.”

And with spring at their door, flowers ready to bloom, and hope stubbornly alive inside her chest, Hermione truly believes she can convince him to stay. That she can change his mind.

Naïve girl.

Some decisions sink roots too deep to pull free.

3 months later 

Indigo.

This colour is new, Hermione notes as she peeks at the Mellite bracelet he gave her. She discreetly observes Draco, who walks with purpose, eager to reach the restaurant swiftly without lingering too much in Diagon Alley. His neck is tense, and the way he holds her hand tightly reflects his strained state. 

Indigo.

Perhaps it means anxiety? Panic? Fear?

When Hermione found out the bracelet was made of Mellite, she knew what she had to do. The properties of this gemstone are still not widely understood and remain somewhat mysterious to many. 

But not for curse-breakers.

When cast with the right spell, Mellite can transform into any magical object the caster desires. After discovering a Mellite ring during a raid, some colleagues experimented extensively. To this day, they've successfully turned it into Floo powder and even crafted a functional wand from it. She heard they were now trying to transform it into a broom, of all things.

So when Hermione brought Draco home after he was dismissed by Madame Pomfrey, she knew which magical object she needed.

A mood bracelet—not those tacky Muggle trinkets teenagers buy, convinced of their psychic energy rather than the simple fact that they are merely reacting to sweaty skin.

Not those ones. A real and magical mood bracelet.

The spell proved somewhat tricky because she wanted Draco’s mood to be reflected in it, despite her being the one wearing it. After several failed attempts, she finally succeeded. It turned out, however, that preassigning a specific colour to every mood was impossible.

It didn’t matter. There was only one mood she truly cared about tracking, so she poured all her efforts into that instead.

Black. If he ever feels the temptation to end his life.  

Initially, she believed the spell had failed entirely, and she had permanently altered it to onyx stones. 

Until the day she insisted Draco move out of the Manor.

Hermione can’t prove it, but she remains convinced that the residual dark magic saturating that cursed house was slowly poisoning him.

He panicked at first, which was understandable. But once they apparated into the grounds behind her cottage and he wandered across the small arched bridge overlooking the pond, the bracelet briefly flickered yellow.

She later learned that yellow meant happiness. 

Hermione secretly thanked her godmother for choosing a life of celibacy. Otherwise, Hermione would never have become the sole heiress to this sizeable estate or to this little slice of paradise, as she preferred to call it. 

Over the weeks, a rainbow of colours danced and swirled around her wrist, but yellow remained her favourite.

Yellow, when she serves him lasagna after a day spent working at the Manor.

Despite convincing him to move in with her, he continued to join her, claiming that observing her break curses was the highlight of his day. A lie if she ever heard one, given that the bracelet stayed mostly purple all day. Hermione quickly figured out that one.

Worry.  

However, once they returned and the aroma of lasagna filled the air, the colour would shift to yellow. 

Just as it flickered yellow whenever she caught him reading on the bench by the pond.

Or when they walked hand in hand along the winding path circling the forest.

Or when, after succeeding in lighting the fireplace without magic, he would sit watching her read with her feet tucked beneath his thighs, both of them sipping wine in comfortable silence.  

Hermione loves seeing yellow.

Indigo? Not so much, especially without knowing what it means.

The bracelet remains stubbornly indigo as the waiter guides them to a quiet corner before leaving them with the menus, and Hermione reaches across the table to tell Draco how proud she is of him.

Because she is. Two months have passed since the Astronomy Tower, and he had agreed to postpone his decision. Each week, he pushes himself through another small challenge, but tonight is the most significant one yet. 

A dinner date in Diagon Alley.

He mentioned Theo helped him arrange everything and secure a reservation at one of the most romantic restaurants in the alley. Little did he know she would have been just as proud if he had taken her to a shady hamburger stand.

When she squeezes his hand and softly tells him how far he has come, indigo melts into pearl. 

She knows this one and suspects that, had she owned this bracelet during Hogwarts, pearl would have been a recurrent theme.  

Smugness.

She discovered its meaning gradually, through little things. Whenever she complimented his fires after he’d been chopping logs the Muggle way. The pleased look on his face when she admitted he was right, after yet another intellectual debate on Merlin knows what. Or when he had spent what felt like hours between her thighs, the bracelet turned so pale it almost looked transparent when she praised how good he made her feel. 

Draco had looked devastatingly pleased with himself.

June becomes such a colourful whirlwind that Hermione almost forgets the one colour the bracelet had truly been made for.

Almost.

Until solstice, when she wakes to cold, empty sheets.

Panic stabs her with a rush of air as her gaze lands on the colour she has feared for so long.

The darkest shade she has ever seen. For one horrible second, she cannot breathe. She cannot move.

She genuinely believed he was getting better.  

Hermione bolts from the bedroom, heart clogged in her throat, fearing, thinking—

Please.

Please don’t let me be too late.

They had an agreement. He was supposed to wait for her. He couldn’t have—No. Not possible.

He promised he would not leave without her.

The moment she peeks out the kitchen window and catches a shock of pale hair near the pond, she almost crumbles onto the ceramic floor in relief. 

“You made a promise, Draco,” she says breathlessly as she hurries toward him, each careful step betraying the fear still choking her.

True to habit, she finds him seated on his favourite bench with a cup of tea resting between his hands, watching the ducks glide across the pond.

To anyone else, it would look like an ordinary morning. But the onyx bracelet says otherwise. 

“And I’m honouring it. I was waiting for you.” He motions for her to sit beside him.

His smile is there, but vacant. A mere façade masking the emptiness beneath it.

His eyes are distant and dull, like someone already halfway gone.

“What did you choose?” she asks, her voice shockingly steady despite the tears threatening to choke her.

“My decision has never changed, Granger.”

And just like that, the world loses all colour and meaning. Only shades of black, darker or paler black.

Black.

Black.

Black.

“Why?” she snaps, harsher than she intends. Draco flinches, and she regrets the accusation in her tone. “I thought—I mean…” her voice fractures. “You were happy. You are.”

He was. She has the indisputable proof around her wrist. Had. But not anymore. All she has is black as evidence.

“And I was. My choice doesn’t erase any of that." He turns toward her fully now, his expression softer. It feels less like staring into a deep abyss.  

“I did what you asked. I stopped thinking about it. Until... today.” His gaze drifts toward the sun. “The last day of spring."

Understanding dawns on her, and her previous anger—mostly directed at herself—melts into despair. When did she convince herself that all those precious moments meant he was healing?

Her lips start to tremble, strained by the weight of grief for something that has yet to happen. She releases a plaintive cry.

His arm slowly slips around her waist, drawing her against him. Hermione hides her face beneath his chin, trying and failing to conceal the tears spilling down her cheeks.

“Am I not enough?” Her voice cracks.

Draco jerks.

“Of course you are.” 

“Then why can’t I be enough to make you stay?”

“You are the reason I’m still here at all. You gave me the happiest months of my life. Don’t you get it?”

She does not.

“Then why end it?” Her voice quivers against his soaked shirt. She pulls away, fists twisting desperately into the fabric. “I love you. Why can’t that be enough?”

Draco freezes beneath her hands. His breath hitches.

“What?” He asks dazedly, as if he didn’t hear her right.

“If the past months were so great, then why stop? I can give you so much more than this, Draco, I can—”

“No,” he waves a hand between them. “The other part.”

She stares at him, confused.

“That I love you?”

He jolts again, as if struck by an unexpected revelation. But Hermione can’t understand why he’s so surprised. Surely, she already said those words? 

“You love me?”

Evidently not.

She lets out a shaky laugh before wiping at her wet cheeks. Loving him had become so natural, so painfully certain, that she couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment it began. At some point, it had simply settled into the fabric of her existence, unquestioned. After all, people rarely announce things that feel constant. No one steps outside and proclaims the sky is blue or that rain is wet.

They assume it is understood.

And somewhere along the way, Hermione made the terrible mistake of believing Draco simply knew he was loved.

But for Draco, who hasn’t grown up with love, she can now see where she failed.   

“I should have been clearer. I’ve been in love with you for quite a while now.” She whispers.

Draco looks at her as if she has just invented a new word meant just for him. And perhaps she did in his dictionary.

“No one’s ever told me they loved me before.”

Her heart breaks at the confession, spoken with such raw reverence. No one should wait until his twenties to hear such simple words.

Her hand rises instinctively to his cheek, cradling it gently as her thumb strokes beneath his eye. His eyes flutter shut with heartbreaking trust as he melts into her touch.  

That’s when she notices that the bracelet is no longer black and is shining in the most sparkling shade of gold.

A colour she has never seen before.  

Hope surges through her so violently that she jerks forward, not wasting a minute of it.

“I do love you, Draco. And I can remind you every day for the rest of our lives.”

His eyes fly open, flickering between her own.

“So tell me,” she whispers. “Will that be enough?”

The silence stretches, and his struggle becomes more certain.

She can see them now.

The same cracks she had seen back in the infirmary three months ago, fracturing through the resolve he has spent years repeating to himself. And just as then, she intends to slip right through them.

“Draco, stay.” She pleads urgently.

His breathing turns uneven.

“Let’s make another deal.”

“Granger—"

“One more year,” she rushes out. “Give me one more year. Same agreement. And if by next summer solstice, it’s still what you want…then I won’t fight you this time.”

The words nearly kill her.

“I will let you go. For real, this time.”

Draco studies her for a long moment, but she knows she won.

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

Six years later

“Mummy, mummy, look!”

Her daughter squeals with delight as she transforms dry blades of grass into white lilies. While some children often manifest their first magic through shattered glass or explosive situations, others turn landscaping into art.

Hermione’s garden has become the living proof ever since her four-year-old discovered she could turn any patch of grass into a flower bed. The pond is now encircled by a rainbow of tulips, orchids, peonies, and roses.

Lilies, however, are new.

Hermione’s chest tightens painfully as she stares at the flowers swaying beneath the warm breeze.

It feels like a cruel coincidence that fate would have her daughter conjure the very flower associated with death directly underneath the slate headstone nestled beneath the willow tree.  

Draco Lucius Malfoy

(5^th June, 1980— 21^st June, 2007)

Beloved son, father and better half

His ashes now lie beneath the headstone she placed before their favourite bench. That same bench where, five solstices ago, she let him go, his hand in hers.

Just like she promised.

When his breathing stopped, and his head fell limp in her lap, he looked peaceful at last. Hermione kept smoothing his hair for hours, unable to close his eyelids.

“Mummy sad?”

Clara’s worried little voice breaks through the fog as she clambers onto the bench beside her, a deep furrow forming between her pale brows. 

“Yes,” Hermione lifts her into her lap before kissing the crown of her curls. “I wish your father had the chance to meet you, sweet pea.”

“Daddy didn’t want to see me?”

Clara’s face crumples, her small fingers clutching the lily she picked from his grave more tightly.

Hermione’s heart caves inward.

“Oh, sweetie.” She brushes the hair from Clara’s face. “He didn’t know about you. If he had…” her voice falters. “If he had, I think he would have stayed. Just for you.”

But as tragedy would have it, Hermione found out she was pregnant three days after his death, leaving her haunted by an endless chain of what-ifs.

Would he have chosen differently if he had known?

Would love, a different kind, have finally been enough?

During her pregnancy, she kept asking herself these painful questions, but she forced herself to stop entertaining these lines of thought after she gave birth. It serves no purpose except to hurt her. 

Draco had spent his final year loving her so deeply that she foolishly believed he’d give her a hundred more. The bracelet—ever the traitor—changed into a sea of vibrant colours, but never black.  

Until the last week before the summer solstice. So fast that Hermione thought it was a trick of the light when she woke to it. One pulse of black, only to revert to yellow when Draco buried sleepy kisses against her throat and smiled at her as if he hadn’t just woken with the darkest thought of all.

She thought she had imagined it. Wanted to ignore it.

But when he took her on a trip along the eastern coast, claiming he wanted to see the sea with her for the first time, she knew what he truly meant was one last time. For him.

And on the last morning of spring, when she woke and found him waiting faithfully on his bench under the willow tree, she knew this was the end for him.

She did not need to consult the bracelet.

They say the worst goodbyes are the ones that are never said. Hermione would argue that the worst are the ones you know are coming, and there’s not a single thing you can do to stop them. 

Or is there?

Her eyes drift to her wrist, where the gemstones resolutely hold their natural honey colour, just as they have for five years. But the stones never lost their magic after his death, did they?

Her gaze lowers toward Clara as the child wriggles free from her lap and wanders toward another patch of grass, already searching for her next floral arrangement.

Then, Hermione’s attention snaps back to the bracelet as her own words spiral into a dizzying carousel, with clarity teasing her, just beyond reach. 

He didn’t know about you, sweetie. If he had, I think he would have stayed. Just for you.

She rises so abruptly the bench creaks beneath her. Her heart pounds intensely when she crouches next to her child.

“Clara?”

Her large, expressive silver eyes blink up at her with curiosity.

“Did you know I named you after the girl who saved your father once? Maybe your name is our good luck charm. Think it can save him twice?”

Clara tilts her head to the side, her curls bouncing with innocent confusion before losing interest in her mother’s ramblings. She returns her attention to the ground and when she presses her pudgy little hand against the grass, three flowers bloom slowly.  

Lilac dahlias.

Hermione’s favourites ever since Draco found the courage to venture out and bring her the first flowers that had not been cut from the Manor gardens.

“Don’t cry, Mummy.”

Hermione hurriedly wipes her dampened cheeks before gratefully accepting one of the dahlias from Clara’s outstretched hand. The little girl beams, showing a wide, toothy grin from ear to ear. 

Her contagious joy seals Hermione’s resolve to see whether Mellite can truly be transformed into any magical object.

After weeks of experimentation, she discovers that it can.

Hermione can choose to land in a million moments to change Draco’s fate. Yet as she watches her daughter sleeping peacefully, she realizes there’s one compromise she’s unwilling to make.

The risk of living a future without their daughter in it.  

Her wet lashes brush against the soft skin of her child as she kneels beside the bed, and presses a long, lasting kiss against Clara’s warm forehead.

“This is not goodbye, my sweet pea,” Hermione whispers brokenly. “We will meet again very soon.”

She casts one final look at her sleeping daughter before spinning the small golden object that used to rest around her wrist.

***

“Daddy, daddy look!”

His daughter squeals with delight as she transforms another patch of grass into a floral masterpiece.

“Lilies?” Draco exclaims in astonishment as he scoops Clara into his arms, peppering her rosy cheeks with kisses. “My prodigy of a child. Isn’t she simply the most talented little witch?”

He glances toward Hermione, seated on the bench, staring at the white lilies with what can only be described as a haunted expression. Confused, he carefully sets his daughter back on the ground before whispering something in her ear. The little girl beams, showing a wide, toothy grin from ear to ear, before bolting toward the cottage.

“Granger? What’s wrong?”

Draco sits next to her, pulling her hand on his lap as his thumb traces soothing circles against her palm.

“I don’t like what this flower represents.”

His eyes drift back to the lilies beneath the willow tree.

“Actually, it’s a widespread misconception,” he says after a moment. “They’re more or less symbols of new beginnings, which some interpreted as death. I choose to believe otherwise.”

She stares at him, unblinking, as though trying to decide whether to believe him. Then, seeming to reach a conclusion, she offers him one of her small, adorable smile.  

“I think I do too.”

She softly leans her head on his shoulder, and he tugs her closer, leaving no gap between them. 

“Are you happy, Draco?”

She has been asking him the same question for the past five years, her fingers always lingering unconsciously over the bare skin of her wrist where her bracelet used to be, as if seeking answers that no longer exist.

He noticed it was gone one summer afternoon while she absentmindedly caressed her swollen belly. When he asked about it, her muddled pregnancy mind could not recall the last time she had seen it.

That bracelet had always remained a mystery to him. He noticed it changing colours several times a day, which Hermione said was because of Mellite's unique ability to refract light in a way no other gemstone can. 

He knew there was more to it, but he never pressed.

“I am.”

And he is happy, as he’s been telling her for years, even if he didn’t mean it at first.

But the moment Hermione placed the bundle of blankets into his arms and asked him the same question while Clara yawned sleepily against his chest, he genuinely meant it. 

“Let’s make a promise, Granger,” Draco says when he notices Clara running back toward them with a secret tucked in her small hands. 

He realizes he made the wrong choice of words when Hermione’s body grows tense to the point of shaking.

But it’s not what she thinks.

Not that kind of promise. Not the ones where she begged him to stay a little longer while he kept one foot dangling over the edge.

He will always remember the day their final promise ended—when he had given her one more year, as she asked. It had also been the day she revealed she was pregnant.

Hermione had burst out of the cottage breathless and wild-eyed, scanning the grounds in panic until she spotted him sitting by the pond. She stared in a catatonic stupor for what felt like an eternity before rushing to him.

Her trembling body crashed into him hard enough to nearly knock him backward, her arms winding tightly around his neck as though she hadn’t seen him in years. 

Then, she hurriedly cast a charm over her stomach.

Their sweet little Clara.

It was the first name that fell out of Hermione’s lips when she showed him the glowing orb hovering above her belly. Draco wasn’t sure how she knew it’d be a girl, but he found the name suited her perfectly.

Before he could fully gather his thoughts, she asked him with red-rimmed eyes whether this was enough to make him stay.  

He instinctively said yes.

She had collapsed onto her knees, clutching her middle as relieved sobs wracked her body.  

“I knew you’d save him, sweet pea.” She whispered to the life blooming inside her.

Hermione had always believed she wasn’t enough to make him stay, but their daughter was.  

She was wrong.

It had never been about Hermione not being enough.

He simply believed that everyone, especially Hermione, would eventually recover from his absence. She survived war. She shines. She adapts. She would heal after grieving him.

Hermione did not need him.

But Clara? For the first time in his life, Draco is no longer a side character in someone else’s story. A tiny person would enter the world already tied to him before she can even know her own name. She would not see a failure, a Death Eater or a hollow shell.

She would see a loving father.

Because Draco could not bear becoming for Clara what his own parents became for him:

The first wound. One he still struggles to heal to this day.    

So throughout Hermione’s pregnancy, Draco stays out of duty. He won’t leave Hermione alone to raise her all by herself. Plus, no child should grow up fatherless.

But the first time his eyes fell upon Clara, any sense of misplaced responsibility morphed into a love like none other. One that only a parent can know.

The kind of love where you would die if it meant saving them. Except, in Draco’s case, he chose to live.

For her.

For them, the two most important women in his life.

He still has dark thoughts sometimes.

Still feels hollow at times.

Those will never go fully away, he thinks.

But now, there are mornings where a tiny voice shouts “Daddy!” while bouncing across their bed between him and Hermione, and those thoughts vanish like shadows chased away by sunlight.

So when Draco lowers himself onto one knee after his daughter eagerly hands him the small velvet box she has been hiding with absolutely no subtlety, he turns toward Hermione with the intention of making a far more ordinary promise. One that ordinary couples do and which isn’t tied to death.

A promise to the woman who has always been more than enough. Who is everything he never thought he’d deserve.

Her hand flies to her mouth when he presents her with a honey-coloured ring carved from the same stone as her lost bracelet, part of the same set. A necklace also exists, though he intends to save it for a future anniversary. One where they will be old and grey.   

“I’ll never stop choosing you and our family,” he says, his voice wobbling slightly. “Let’s make this last forever, shall we?”

Tears begin to spill over her smile and before she can answer, Clara clambers onto the bench beside her first and impatiently whines at her mother.

“Mummy! You have to say yes, say yes!”

They both laugh as Hermione hurriedly wipes her dampened cheeks.

“And how long is your forever?” she asks him, the same old fear still shadowing her expression for a fleeting second.

He can’t blame her for doubting him.

But it ends today.

Draco stretches his arm behind him and plucks out a lily. Then, as they have done for every new type of flower Clara has conjured over the last year, he summons the glass bell preserving them all together.

Clara’s first yellow tulip.

A towering high orchid.

A pink peony.

A dark rose.

Carefully, he adds the white lily among them before sealing the glass once more with a preserving charm meant to last—

Well…forever.

“Until the last flower wilts.”

At last, the haze of fear that has clung to Hermione for years lifts.

And for the first time, she truly believes him.

***

Hermione hoped she was wrong, but as their daughter grew older, the resemblance became impossible to ignore once Clara turned eleven.

It had lasted only seconds, yet the image of the blond girl she had once crashed into in a dark Hogwarts corridor had never truly left her.

Wide and bright silver eyes. Long and blonde curls bouncing with surprise when Hermione muttered an apology and sprinted toward the infirmary.

Her name had been Clara.

Soon, Hermione will have to place the Time-Turner into her daughter’s hands, the same object she locked away years ago, never believing it would need to be used twice.  

Soon, she will have to fracture Clara’s childish innocence by explaining how this magical objec—once a bracelet—saved her daddy once only because his daughter saved him first.  

She will tell her to wake before dawn on the spring equinox and make her way beneath the Astronomy Tower. Then, when the moment comes, she must spin the hourglass fourteen times.

And when all is said and done, she must spin it back the same number of times and return to the present, unlike her mother, who had relived years twice to rewrite a better future.

But there’s still time before Hogwarts.

Still time to teach her everything about levitation charms.

And when she casually asks her husband if he could help teach their daughter, seeing how he’ll be the one eventually on the receiving end of it, Draco finally understands what Hermione has kept hidden from him all these years.

That in another lifetime, Draco Malfoy did die.

But she willingly broke their promise.

Because Hermione simply refused to let that be the ending of their story.