Chapter Text
It was past curfew when the hinges of the old door squeaked, announcing her arrival, despite Hermione’s futile and somewhat exaggerated attempts to be quiet.
“Silencio,” she heard him cast from the depths of the classroom she’d chosen, one particularly disused and dusty and yet mercifully far from the beaten path of the prefects.
“Thanks,” she muttered as she shut the door behind her and left her confidence in the corridor. Despite her insistence on meeting, she’d been pestering him daily with less subtlety as their first week of term had passed, she was suddenly not quite sure where to look before eventually finding a morsel of that Gryffindor courage.
Draco Malfoy was sat, down the stairs, on the desk at the front of the class. The teacher’s desk , she thought to herself before scoffing at her instinctive disapproval. And isn’t it typical? Sure, she was a nervous wreck while he, a vision of nonchalance, had his feet propped on an upturned chair and rolled a galleon across his knuckles idly.
“I got your note,” he told her before levelling her with a trademark Malfoy ‘look’. “That was risky, Granger”.
“Well how else am I supposed to talk to you?” she huffed, before making her way down the stairs. “You ignored all my normal attempts. I was just worried, ok? Harry thinks-”
Draco scoffed, “fucking Potter? Is that what this is about?”
“He heard you talking to Crabbe and Goyle. Heard you bragging , Draco. Have you? Have you taken it?” she asked, her tone leaving no room for interpretation as to what, exactly, ‘it’ was.
“Really?” he laughed, cruelly. “Breaking his nose wasn’t enough…”
“So you’re not even denying it?”
“It’s none of Potter’s damn business,” he told her coolly.
“What about mine?”
“Pardon?”
“You heard me. What about my business, is it any of mine?”
At this he paused, “Granger, I can’t run every little detail of my summer by you-”
“-Malfoy, you know that’s not what I asked-”
Without warning, Draco was on his feet, kicking the chair away in the process. “He’s moved in, you know?”
“What?”
He laughed, sounding manic and hysterical and so unlike the boy she knew who never let his guard drop. “He lives with us now, taken over the whole East Wing-”
“He lives with you?!” she demanded, cringing at how shrill her voice sounded in the echoes of the empty room.
He carried on, as if he hadn’t heard her at all, “and he is not a good house guest, if you were wondering-”
“Draco-”
“He’s moved in, he’s taken over the whole bloody house and we’re all there on edge, waiting to see what kind of mood he’ll be in each day - and it’s never actually a good one, in case you were wondering - what kind of whims we’ll need to meet… The whole manor smells like blood and death, Merlin, that fucking snake…
I’ve lost count of the times I’ve woken in the night to hear some poor fucker screaming . Crying through a Crucio, such a large Manor but the screams travel, Hermione, trust me. You can’t escape them.
And Bella… Aunt Bella’s moved in and she thinks it’s time, now I'm nearly of age, to learn my place in the family. Can you even fathom what that entails?” he asks her, his silver eyes cold.
“Draco,” she whispers softly.
“She likes knives, Hermione. She likes knives and pain and power and if you ever get trapped again,” he shudders at the thought of her adventures in the ministry. “You better fucking pray to every muggle god you’ve ever read about that she doesn’t turn her ministrations to you”.
He closed the distance between them, taking her by the arms and holding them tight - keeping her both close and at a distance. She could see the conflict warring across his face, all his composure had vanished as he tried to will some self-preservation into her insane Gryffindor sensibilities.
“Draco,” she says again, firmer this time. Taking his head between her hands, pushing hair from his eyes with her thumbs.
“Promise me,” he said as he lowered his forehead to hers, before pulling her closer, one battle settled for the evening. “Promise me you’ll run. If you see her, if she sees you , promise me you’ll run.”
“You know I can’t make that promise,” she whispered between them.
“Then lie,” he told her as he brushed his lips against hers. “Lie to me, please. I keep dreaming it’s you… just tell me you’ll run”.
“Ok, Draco,” she sighed. “I’ll run”.
Draco nodded, before capturing her lips between his. He maneuvered them across the room, back to the desk where she’d found him and she perched on the edge with no hesitation.
She lied. They both knew it. But, in that moment, the lie was enough.