Chapter Text
#1
From the desk of Miss Hermione Jean Granger
(Never to see the light of day)
March 14th, 1856
Upper Mayfair, London
To: Captain Draco L. Malfoy
4th Highland Regiment, Somewhere Heroic and Frozen
My dearest Captain Malfoy,
It is with the deepest insincerity and mild panic that I must inform you—you are now engaged.
To me.
Do not panic. You are, thankfully, fictional. (At least, I very much hope so. If a pale, brooding man with excellent bone structure and a military commission should appear at my door, demanding a wedding date, I may be forced to throw myself into the nearest hedgerow.)
But I am running ahead of myself. First, an introduction.
I am Hermione Jean Granger, the most wretchedly idiotic person to have been born on this side of the continent.
I recently had the pleasure of being proposed to by a man clutching a dead trout. Ronald Weasley, heir to the Viscountcy of Ottery St. Catchpole (and a sworn enemy of subtlety), informed me that my nose reminded him of a hunting spaniel and that I’d “do well in the country.” He then tripped over his own bootlace and fell straight into the river. Naturally, I declined. I still carry the faint scent of algae and regret.
Then there was Lord Diggory—handsome as a portrait, and twice as lifeless. His smile could melt a hundred hearts, yet his mind seemed to have taken an indefinite holiday—perhaps to the moon, where it could be less conspicuous. He was the living proof that one could coast through life on good looks alone, provided one avoided any conversation more taxing than the weather.
The list goes on, and frankly, I’ve lost count. They say a woman without a suitor is doomed. They never say what becomes of a woman with too many of the wrong ones.
Thus, my lie was born, as all respectable catastrophes do, at a wretched tea hosted by Lady Bletchley. Midway through my fourth dry scone and third attempt to escape an unsolicited conversation about embroidery, someone asked why I had yet to marry, despite my extensive line of suitors. The horror.
In my defense, the alternative was to let Ronald Weasley continue explaining why my “strong chin” made me ideal for rural breeding, or to allow Cedric Diggory to bore me to an early grave.
So I invented you. Out of desperation. Out of defiance. Out of the burning need to retain some shred of dignity while the ton stared at me as though I were a biscuit left out in the rain—crumbly, unappealing, and just a little tragic. I am not stupid, nor unkind, nor even ugly (despite what Lady Bletchley muttered about my hair resembling a hedge in the midst of a storm). But I am too much. Too opinionated. Too strange. Too loud when I’m right, and too stubborn to pretend I’m wrong when others wish me to.
You, however, are perfect. A war hero stationed in the wild, remote Highlands. Too far away to attend dinner parties, but not too dead to correspond affectionately. Tragic, certainly. Slightly dangerous. Devoted to the Crown and to your conveniently distant fiancée.
In short, you are precisely what I need.
Your reputation has already stopped one proposal, two matchmaking attempts, and a lecture from Aunt Augusta about the merits of marrying one’s second cousin “if desperate.” (Which, I assure you, I am NOT.)
But I must admit something rather foolish: I have decided to write to you today. Not for show. Not for my wretched cousin Eloise to find and gush over. But for myself.
You don’t interrupt me. You don’t frown when I correct your Latin. You don’t tell me to “try smiling more, darling.” You don’t look at me like I’m some oddity in a glass case—half woman, half encyclopedia.
You’re made-up, and you’re still better company than half the peerage.
And so, I shall continue writing. It is cathartic. It is therapeutic, even. I may very well be the first woman in England to fall hopelessly in love with a product of her own spite.
Yours, with all the warmth of suppressed hysteria,
Miss Hermione J. Granger
P.S. I’ve given you a scar. A high cheekbone, a clean line, from a duel over someone’s honour (mine, I believe). You won, of course. You also write terrible war poetry. Don’t worry, I’ve forgiven you.
P.P.S. Should you become real, do not show up unannounced. There are biscuits involved, and I would prefer to eat them alone.