Archive of Our Own

Magic cannot turn a man’s heart

Not even to stone

***

December 4th, 2005

It invokes melancholy; of that she is certain. Whether to record such a particular emotion into her official ledger is another notion entirely.

Normally, she wouldn’t dream of recording her own personal sentiments in official ministry files. Her reactions to a particular cursed object or trace of dark magic are no one’s business. At times, she would deny if she needed to self-analyse them with any type of cognisance beyond her action plan to clear the item.

Yet she circles the statue again – flummoxed.

Positive, that, for the first time in months, she is utterly unsure of how to proceed.

***

Three days earlier

“So you’re going back there?” Padma leans in to dip a samosa into Hermione’s tamarind chutney.

“Take it,” she insists, pushing the tiny take-away container down the kitchen island. “And it’s my job to go,” Hermione concedes, filling her mouth with more dal makhana before she’s forced to extrapolate on her actual feelings.

“Can’t Justin be assigned?” Susan shrugs, holding up a bottle of Syrah against a reserve Cabernet.

“The Cab,” Ginny suggests, levitating glasses from Hermione's cupboard.

“No, Justin is assigned to a cursed book in the Mysteries Archive at the moment.”

“Tell them you won’t do it.” Padma is fiercely protective of her, which Hermione normally feels grateful for. It’s only been in the seven years following the war that she’s felt any kind of camaraderie with her girlfriends.

“I have an impeccable record,” she counters.

“And impeccable gets you elected Minister.” The mantra sounds off in a choral response by at least three of them.

“I suppose I’ve mentioned that once or twice.”

“I suppose,” Ginny imitates.

“Give me that,” Hermione blushes, grabbing the glass of Cab from her grip. “I’m the one who needs this the most.”

“I lost a match,” Ginny frowns.

“My reason is superior.”

“To surviving Malfoy Manor a second time around.” Susan lifts her wine glass, allowing them a moment to follow suit.

“Merlin help me,” Hermione sighs, before drinking the contents of the glass in one luxurious gulp until she hits the dregs.

“With any luck, the Lady of the manor will stay out of your hair.” Ginny refills Hermione’s glass with confidence, the liquid getting dangerously close to the rim. A Ginny Pour, then. So coined because it was unique in its sheer volume.

“And no heir to interrupt either,” Padma agrees.

“Right,” Hermione admits solemnly. “No heir.”

***

Snow falls, collecting on her curls and lashes as Lady Narcissa Malfoy greets her at the front entrance of the large estate. Hermione half expects an uppity elf, keen on regalling her with her free status. So proud the Purebloods are to tout an idea Hermione has been championing for over a decade.

Warm air passes through her robes and mixes with her charms. The floor seems to absorb the excess water that pools from her cloak and boots.

The years dissolve and threaten to push at the part of her brain she’s locked away. A deep breath draws the attention of the room and Narcissa Malfoy's composure shifts enough to let Hermione know that even a small gesture is enough to make an impact in her careful façade.

“Étoile will show you to the gallery.”

The name alone must invoke the call, because Hermione is pulled to the sound of a soft apparition to her right. A stout, finely-clothed elf awaits with an extended hand.

“Should you need anything, Ms. Granger, Étoile is at your disposal.”

Hermione crouches down to make the elf’s acquaintance.

“Étoile would be delighted to bring Miss anything,” the elf echoes.

“I’d like to see the dark magic site first, please.” Hermione speaks to both of them equally. “If I am unable to clear the site today, I shall provide a written account of my work and next steps.”

“I must still have access to the gallery for planning.”

“Normally, I would say no.” Hermione watches her face twist in confusion. Narcissa Malfoy is a woman who must be unpractised in the phrase.

“The Lady has the gala to prepare for, Miss.”

Ah, yes. The Annual Malfoy Solstice Gala. Hermione may have heard of it once or twice. She’s been politely invited for years, and she has declined an equal number of times.

“Of course,” Hermione concedes, hoping to ease her transition into the space. “Étoile, would you please alert me before Lady Malfoy needs access? I see no reason we can’t coexist. As long as safety protocols are in place.”

“Yes, Miss.”

“Call me Hermione, please.” She takes a step, stuttering slightly, before meeting the matriarch's discerning gaze. “Now, the briefing mentioned the art and antiquities gallery, but I may require access to additional locations.”

“There is nothing out of bounds to you, Ms. Granger.”

“Hermione,” she insists.

Narcissa dips her head in acknowledgement. “My home is entirely open to you.”

Hermione feels an odd kind of foreboding at the notion, but she brushes it away. She worked on this possibility at her healer’s office last week, directly after receiving the owl with her assignment.

Things in this house should fear me, she reminds herself.

***

Hermione has toured the British Museum. She’s been in the presence of the obscene amount of portraiture that adorned the halls of Hogwarts. Nothing could have prepared her for this.

Natural light pours in from windows beside and above her, allowing the beams and shadows to dance against elegant stone walls. Sculptures of various sizes line the avenues telling a story of the magical and mundane. She sees mythology and muggle alike. A hall for no one, she laments, remembering it’s only Lady Malfoy who resides here.

“Remarkable,” she blurts, turning in place while her feet seem temporarily frozen in place.

“The art is gifts from his lordship,” Étoile says reverently.

“He’s in Azkaban.” Hermione’s incredulity is evident.

“He is always wanting to do more, Miss Hermione.”

She stops, coming to terms with the fact that she holds a modicum of sympathy for Lucius Malfoy. A vile, prejudiced git, but he loved his family. Of that Hermione is certain. It is certainly unfortunate that he couldn’t appreciate that love without a regime of cruel bigotry.

“I suppose he has much to atone for.”

She knows the family has spent the equivalent of a small country’s GDP on reparations. She headed the committees of many of the funds that were happy to take those Galleons off their hands.

Hermione summons a notepad and quill from her bag and begins to catalog.

Acquired over years no doubt. When did the activity begin? Centralised or dispersed?

“I can feel the dark signatures,” she confirms. “Of course, in a gallery this size I’ll need to clear every object individually.”

“The Lady did say it would be a hard job, Miss.”

“She was correct.” Hermione laughs. The recordkeepers in the DMLE Archives will salivate over this.

“Étoile, thank you.”

The soft pop barely registers as the elf disappears.

Hermione is left to her own thoughts.

She spends at least two hours on the Malfoy and Black family portraiture. If she’s seen one well-defined jaw-line, she’s seen them all. And such prominent noses. It must have been a desired family trait because they seemed to have done nothing to try and diminish the striking feature from their progeny.

One by one, she runs her standard set of runes on the portraits, immobilising them as she goes. She doesn’t require any commentary. In fact, once an entire wall is cleared, she charms a settee pillow into a weighted velvet curtain, and delights in covering the entire wall.

“That’s better,” she sighs.

The spellwork on the portraits alone took half the morning. Not that she minded entirely. Her mind has been more occupied than she expected.

“Where to next?” she wonders aloud. The room lends itself to hearing one’s own voice. Her words echo and reverberate off the statues in a pleasing way.

Wand stowed in a side holster, she takes to wandering for pleasure. Nothing feels foreboding per se, but there is a whisper of dark magic, of that she is certain.

She stumbles on him slowly, and then, of course, she’s drawn in like an intractable beam. One step in front of the other as she crosses the room.

How odd, to be afforded the ability to look upon him in this way. She spins, and ponders, and is left in awe that turns to wonder that turns to melancholy.

Utterly and foolishly transfixed by him.

Flanked on either side by friezes of wizarding battles past and witches of lore dressed to resemble the ancient caryatids. Enough marble to rival Elgin, and still she can’t look away from the pristine likeness of Draco Malfoy.

Her eyes roam up the illusionary fabric of the statue’s robes. What she imagines to be cold, hard stone appears almost supple. It cascades across his chest like it’s in motion. The high neck of a tunic is ornately decorated with florets that dip down to expose the expanse of his throat. The outer ruffles of his wizarding robes create such a stir in her mind that she’s left pondering how the translucency is achieved.

He is somehow made of light, while being made of stone. She had thought the two mutually exclusive.

Her eyes travel up to the smooth lines of his face, which is in direct contrast to the rough texture of his hair. Longer strands are pushed off his face in wisps that appear to have the ungoverned ability to fall into his face at any moment. The light shifts, and she can see all the shadows in the tiny crevices.

There’s that patrician nose your ancestors were so fond of, she thinks. He had certainly grown into his angular features.

“How tragically beautiful you are, Malfoy,” she whispers. No one is there to respond anyway, so what does it hurt when the words escape without her consent?

Has it really been years since she’s seen his face? She can’t be sure how many times she may have conjured his likeness in her thoughts. Her dreams, certainly.

The sun rises beyond a copse of trees in the Malfoy gardens. Light shifts through the skylights and onto the layers of marble. She can barely find the words to describe the effect properly.

It’s fleeting, and yet it returns in a new place, catching her eyes, and attention.

Time slips, and Hermione isn’t positive how long she’s been remarking at the likeness. She blinks back her own astonishment that she’s been so thoroughly captivated, finally pulling her gaze from his face.

She jumps at the sound of Étoile’s apparition.

“Étoile is frightening the Miss Hermione. Étoile only wanted to bring lunch.”

“Thank you,” Hermione says, finding the small tray placed on the nearby settee.

“Is this Miss knowing the young Lord?”

“Only a little,” she laments. “We were at Hogwarts together.”

“He is very handsome. I is always saying how handsome he is.”

“Yes, he is.” She had thought it true for years. Thought it against her better judgement. She had noticed his smooth skin, and took to worrying when it hollowed in his cheeks. When purple coloured under his eyes. When his pain, guilt, and fear marred his face. “Cruel, though. He was always very cruel back then.”

“Oh yes, the young Lord could be very cruel. In his youth. Master Draco is always telling Étoile this.”

“Right.”

“He is naming Étoile so she could be a star.”

“That’s certainly something,” Hermione agrees, before biting into a perfectly petit cucumber sandwich.

***

That night, Hermione has her first dream about Draco Malfoy. From what she recalls, it plays out like a memory, only this time, it’s like viewing it through a Pensieve. She is both there, in the dream, and experiencing it as a voyeuse.

She places them instantly; they’re outside the Room of Requirement.

Hermione watches as Malfoy tugs at Goyle’s unconscious body. His face twists in disgust as the doors slam against the lapping flames of Fiendfyre, trapping Crabbe inside.

He looks like he’s about to flee, but he doesn’t. The memory surprises her for a second time.

“You should have killed the bloody snake, Potter,” he spits.

“What?” Hermione asks incredulously.

“That’s what Snape told me to do,” Malfoy mumbles. “He was sure she’d been mad over the snake. It needed to be hidden, Bella said.” He crumples next to Goyle, attempting to pull him up.

Harry pushes past Hermione, stepping into his path. “What are you on about, Malfoy?”

He passes a worried glance to Hermione, and she returns it. How could he know? How could Snape?

Goyle’s consciousness struggles against the spells Malfoy employs to revive him.

“I know you’re trying to kill the Dark Lord.”

“And?” Harry challenged.

“My family is dead anyway.”

“What were you saying about Nagini, Malfoy?”

“I wasn’t talking to you, Granger.”

Harry’s wand is pointed at Malfoy's throat. “Tell us what you know.”

“You have to–I need your word.” Hermione can see him shaking now. “Protect my mother.”

“If she’s loyal–”

“Protect my mother,” he seethes.

“You have our word,” Hermione cuts in.

“Whatever he’s using to protect himself,” Malfoy looks to both of them now, “Nagini is one.”

“Harry,” Hermione warns.

“I felt it,” Harry confirms. “The snake is the last one.”

The dream shifts and Hermione is swept up in the fear of fleeing down the Hogwarts steps. Ron looks back in terror as they both hurl hex after hex at the snake. Undeterred, it pursues them in the chaos.

A barrage of colourful spells bounce off the rubble and balustrade of the staircase. There is a war happening around them but Hermione zeroes in on a stark flash of white hair. She knows the words Ron is saying by heart, but this time she doesn’t hear them. All she sees are the flashes of green missing their intended target. The spells leaving Narcissa Malfoy's wand. The spells aimed not at her and Ron, but at Nagini. The spells inexplicably cast by Draco Malfoy.

She wakes up in a shock. Sweat collects at the small of her back and mats into the curls across her forehead.

Draco Malfoy tried to help them.

***

Cloud cover provides a different atmosphere for the gallery. It’s grey, but the lustre of his marble is unmistakable. Hermione approaches the statue without preamble, the shock of the previous day worn thin.

“I know you were only trying to save your own arse, Draco Malfoy. Protect your family,” she huffs.

She’s pacing before she can stop herself. Worn leather boots, her mother’s before hers, echo off the polished flooring.

“Any number of Death Eaters could have seen you.”

She accios her notebook, orienting herself to where she left off yesterday before dinner.

“Of course, Voldemort welcomed you back into his fold.” She shakes her head. “We all saw it. How angry I was at you.”

She casts a series of runes in crimson and jade.

“Why did you let us go when we were here? Voldemort would have given you anything.” She knows the answer wouldn’t be simple, even if he had the power to give it. Still, she’s always been torn by his actions that day. A small part of her had anticipated his defection that spring. A month passed; it never came.

“Stop looking at me like that, Malfoy.” She was foolish to hope then. Even more so now, wasting her breath on an effigy.

Lady Malfoy drops in for a report on her findings mid-afternoon. Hermione accepts the tea that appears with the unexpected visit.

“I warned the Minister this would not be easy.”

“He never shared that fact,” she says.

“Milk?”

“Please.”

“To know the magic inside of this ancient manor is to know magic itself.” Narcissa stirs in a near hypnotic fashion, the rhythm not unlike the careful modulation of her words. “You can only know it by being welcomed in by it.”

“Will it welcome me?” Hermione accepts the cup, careful in her desires.

“Stranger things have happened.” Her face looks brighter than it did the previous day. Hermione doesn’t know if it's her company, or her preparations for the gala that incite such a change, but it’s pleasant to witness.

“I hope I’m not overstepping, but I couldn’t help but notice this is the first time you’ve held the gala in–”

“Two years,” she interrupts. She looks chagrined in her actions, and sets her cup down, before adjusting the dishes at her setting in a neat row. “We had some unfortunate and unwelcomed guests. Too close to the war perhaps. Emotions were high. I felt it best to pause, but your arrival here has felt most auspicious.”

“You give me too much credit.” Hermione looks away.

“Dark magic flees in your presence, Hermione. I can’t help but admire that about you.”

There is a warmth in that sentiment that she carries back to the gallery with her, newly invigorated to persist.

That afternoon, she clears another row of glass-incased artifacts, including a talisman she believes was once owned by Merlin himself.

She can't even fathom growing up in a home that boasted these artifacts.

It’s not just the gallery. It’s the library. It’s the gardens. There’s a peacock sanctuary, for Godric’s sake.

She walks past him on the way to the Floo.

“You probably wasted having all of this, didn’t you?” She can accept that. She would hate it even more if he hadn’t.

***

Exhausted as she is, sleep comes easily. Of course, so do the dreams of him.

This time she’s sitting beside him in the Wizengamot trial. She’s also sitting across the chamber. She doesn’t need to pull her gaze to know she was looking at him then, too.

He’s wandless and defiant. Arrogant, sneering git. She could smack him again.

Even then, he would not admit to how much he helped the Order’s cause.

Narcissa had no such qualms. She was rotten with self-preservation. It was too late to help her husband, but she would save her son as many times as needed.

She watches Harry chronicle their accounts with the Malfoy family. His testimony on Narcissa is sharp. There are grumbles, but no interruptions. When he moves onto Draco, Harry doesn’t disclose the magic. He does, in great detail, describe how Lord Voldemort manipulated his soul for the purposes of immortality. Suspected by Snape, known by Dumbledore, and finally, confirmed by Draco Malfoy.

Hermione wrote every word of it.

Draco looks up for the first time. He knows it too.

She gasps for breath and wakes up.

***

Snow covers the grounds and blankets the manor in enough gleaming white that Hermione feels chagrined by its beauty.

Inside the walls, the magic is elusive, and that frustrates her beyond belief. Ten has been ten days too long to work on an assignment.

A rune explodes against the faded marble bust of a Malfoy ancestor in an ermine collar.

She sneers up at his likeness as if he’s the instigating factor. “What I need is a bloody list.”

A pop registers behind her.

“You is calling Étoile, Miss?”

“No!” She takes a breath. “No, Étoile, I may need to consult with Narcissa.”

She’d insisted on being called Narcissa some time during tea the fourth day, and Hermione obliged. It scares her how easy it is to like the Malfoy matriarch.

The green sitting room is closest to the patte d'oie of the garden. Three different possibilities, and she lets her eyes scan each one. Flakes collect on the boxwoods and shrubbery, yet she can still see the paths clearly.

“Narcissa, if you could just provide provenance for the pieces–”

“Do you often dream?”

“I’m sorry?” She understands the question, of course. “I suppose I struggled with nightmares for a time.”

“And now?”

She couldn’t possibly know, but her eyes ask enough to make Hermione pause.

“Before I was betrothed, I would dream of Lucius every night.” A smile slips. “I grew sick of it. Begged and prayed to the gods for it to stop.”

“Why?” Hermione doesn’t hide her confusion. She had always imagined the Malfoys to have a love match. Their devotion was legend.

“My brain felt like it was not my own. I was overwrought.”

Hermione refills their cups, her eyes never leaving Narcissa’s.

“Eventually, I learned to admire what the magic demanded, and the dreams stopped.”

The delicate china rattles in its saucer.

“Every day I’m here I feel pulled further into a maelstrom.”

Her pulse becomes a palpitation.

“Do you feel like you’re any closer to finding an answer?”

A spoon clanks, and Hermione snaps from a daze. Where is Draco? It’s on the tip of her tongue. She can’t bring herself to ask.

“For the dark magic?”

“Of course, dear.”

***

“I have an immaculate record,” she mutters to the statute. Her bag is propped up on one knee as she shuffles for the duffel coat she stashed there earlier. “I usually make it through a house in a day, maybe two tops.”

She huffs an errant curl from her face.

“I know I was bored.”

In the distance, an antique clock chimes, and she reasons with her desire to stay and do more.

“I certainly feel challenged,” she sighs. “I won’t own to how much I’m enjoying it.”

She makes it halfway through the gallery before doubling back.

“And I suppose telling a statue doesn’t count.”

***

She fights a war in her dreams now. Tonight is no different. He’s always there.

Draco Malfoy stands at the doorway of her cottage. She opens it in a huff. Her hair was shorter two years ago. An experiment encouraged by Padma. She’s fond of it in retrospect.

She remembers this day now. It was the last time she saw him. By this time, the Wizarding World could speak of little else but his rapid redemption. Editorials, fêtes, the occasional board meeting. Galleons and time spent indiscriminately in the name of restitution. Hermione would often encounter him across rooms and wonder.

He’s never this close, and Hermione remembers what that did to her.

It doesn’t help matters that he's gorgeous. Hair and robes are immaculate, like he’s just stepped from the pages of Witch Weekly. It occurs to her in that moment, that he’s either very late for an occasion, or has just come from one.

“It’s Solstice,” he blurts.

“It is,” she says, feeling wholly inadequate in a Weasley jumper she pilfered from Charlie.

“I should be at my mother’s gala,” he says, as if that’s the most important unknown in their impending conversation.

“Right,” she rushes out. “Right, well, would you like to come in?”

“I can’t,” he pauses, looking away, and Hermione notices a small wince in his cheek. She supposes she’d be uncomfortable if she was in his position.

She imagined this happening before, but never here. Never with him standing at her door looking like he’s in pain to be there.

“I’ll be brief, or I fear I’ll never have the chance to say it.”

She admires his look of discomfort.

“I’ve kept my distance. It was the sensible thing.”

He’s anguish, and affliction, and she allows herself to take a modicum of delight in it.

“Malfoy, spit it out.”

He looks like he may reach for her hand in desperation, but he catches the desire before he can fulfill it.

“I don’t think I can truly forgive myself if I don’t have your forgiveness first, Granger. I have been too much of a coward to seek it.”

“So, seek it.” Her courage only increases in his presence. She can fall apart when she is alone.

She sways closer to danger. The dream blurs and Hermione watches in anguish, painfully aware of the fact that she doesn't know why he wouldn’t just come inside. Would the course of the last two years have changed at that very moment?

“I thought if I could make it here, I would know the words to say. I promise you I have rehearsed them many times. I have done what I thought I needed to. I have atoned, but there is one person’s forgiveness who could wipe my soul clean. If you would give it.

“Hermione, I am truly sorry.

“Please say that one day you can stop seeing the petulant, foolish child I was, and see the man I am trying to become.”

“Dra–,” she attempts to cut in, but he appears rushed.

“Please, just say you will. Say you forgive me, and I’ll leave.”

She doesn't want him to leave, but she can’t deny him a response, and the intimacy of the words that come next shake her to her very core.

“I do, Draco.”

The sigh that escapes his chest buries itself in hers.

“Thank you, Hermione.”

With a final glance he disapparates. She closes the door, collapsing against it in a fit of tears. She hadn’t known how much she needed that, how she was waiting for it.

He’d become a different man, and his nearness felt like a figment she couldn’t hold onto.

She picked up the Daily Prophet the next day to find a shocking headline.

Missing In Dress Robes: Malfoy Heir Disappears From Mother’s Annual Soiree

She wakes up this time with wet cheeks and a heavy heart.

She’d been right. He’d disappeared, and no one in the Wizarding World had answers as to where or why he had gone.

Hermione shucks her covers, rescuing her worn slippers from under the bed, and shuffles down the hall to Padma’s room.

“Another one?” Padma whispers, pushing a pillow to Hermione’s side of the bed.

“Watching the past this way is rude.”

“There has to be a reason for it, Hermione.”

Padma moves to the left, opening a reservoir of heat that Hermione cuddles into.

“What if the reality scares me more than the dreams?”

“What does your intuition tell you?”

“The memories are ruthless, but they have a purpose. The dreams started the night I stepped back into that manor.”

“It can’t be a coincidence,” Padma agrees, her voice carrying off with a yawn.

“What am I going to do?”

What she's going to do, what she should do, is stop chasing a figment. She can’t blame Padma for knowing it too.

“Didn’t Roger Davies ask you out recently?”

“Yes,” she replies, muffled into the pillow. “I didn’t think I was interested.”

“Hermione,” Padma’s voice takes on a forceful tone. “He’s an Auror, he’s got a good clearance rate, which I know gets you all hot. Let yourself be fucked into the mattress,” she chides. “Please, for all of our sake.”

“I could.”

“You could,” she turns over. “Force your mind to revolve around something outside of Malfoy Manor for a night.” With that Padma drifts back to sleep.

Hermione nods into the pillow. Her dream life has lost the plot, but she knows Padma isn’t wrong.

***

The passing days see the manor reclaimed by nature, at least for the purposes of Narcissa’s gala.

White and violet hellebores form a herbaceous border on the outskirts of the gallery. Red twig dogwood creates the illusion of leaves being set ablaze under the winter sun. Lush plaits of juniper are woven around the perimeters and down the columns.

“It looks lovely in here, Narcissa,” she remarks over her shoulder, as she holds a particularly tricky set of runes in place over a triptych of the Goblin Rebellion of 1752.

“Oh, you’re a nasty piece of work, aren’t you,” she bristles, as the triptych launches out a stinging jinx from the crevice near its base. “I guess the Aurors missed this one.”

Of course, they did, she thinks. This whole house is a mess with dark magic the Ministry either missed the first time, or didn’t care to check on later.

Narcisaa weighs in with a knowing look.

“I assume Lucius acquired this through less than savoury means?”

“It’s not polite to ask.” Narcissa rubs the already crisp sleeve of her robes.

“Is there a reason you haven’t provided me with the provenances?”

Narcissa narrows her gaze and Hermione nods.

“And some of these pieces were not confiscated when the Aurors originally swept the manor in the autumn of 1998?”

“Some of the pieces weren’t here, dear. Correct me if I’m wrong, but your job is to clear the space. Please do not catalogue it.”

She’s not sure why she feels inclined to agree. This space is sacred to her now. There may be a record of what she’s seen here, but it will not be used in any official capacity beyond a memento for her own enjoyment.

“Since you remarked on it, are you planning to attend our little event next week?”

Little, she scoffs, her wand tip scrapes against the stone in her own amusement.

“Oh,” she says, leveling a spell until it turns green and clears. “I should have let you know sooner.”

“Please don’t dream of declining this year.”

“You’re not worried?” She rolls out her neck, kinked from being forced into one position for hours. “Whatever is in this room hasn’t subsided. I can still feel it, I just can’t quite place it. It’s highly unusual.”

“This room will not be open during the gala, for obvious reasons.”

“But the decor? The flowers?” Hermione eyes the excessive trappings in mild confusion.

For a moment, she’d let her mind wander to a waltz, her partner in a charcoal-coloured tunic, florets leading down the sinful slope of his neck.

“It’s late, Hermione.”

She’s approaching the time when Roger may think she stood him up.

“They’ll all be waiting here tomorrow,” Narcissa calls from the atrium, as Hermione slumps onto her knees.

Fine, she’ll go.

***

She should have gone right home. Unmitigated romantic disasters require a soak and a bottle of Syrah.

Still, something Roger said rattles in her brain like an earworm tune from the Hogwarts band. It has no business being that persistent.

The woosh from the Floo pushes her deeper into the gallery, lights dim now in the hours close to midnight. Torches flicker atop ornate sconces on either side of her. The fire dances on the stone surfaces in chaotic rhythms and patterns.

There he is, waiting for a story to begin in media res. She doesn’t have all the pieces to begin anywhere but in the middle. She doesn’t know why this is the only place he appears.

“Catastrophe,” she mumbles. “He actually had the audacity to put his hand up my skirt after a painful, forced, disaster of a dinner.”

The statue of Draco Malfoy gloats at her.

“You’d do it all differently, I suppose?”

A quiet café. They’d read all the same books. A kiss asks and answers all their doubts.

She shakes her head, dragging the settee across the smooth floor in a show of uniquely human exertion. Her heart rate deserves to spike a little tonight.

You probably can’t even get yourself off properly.

That’s what he’d said. Vile bastard. It was working too. She was forgetting about a missing person, and indulging in the bravado of his shameless flirting. She may have even gone home with him.

She slumps down on the settee and really looks at Malfoy.

He has no business being immortalised like this. It’s unfair. Of course, her eyes wander to the portraits she’s banished behind a velvet curtain and thinks it’s better that he’s here and not there.

She can’t imagine what he would say to her as she tried to work.

Lecturing would lead to bickering, which would lead to hexing, and then what would she be left with?

Hermione swallows the frustration. She needed Roger to say all the right things tonight. She’s a powder keg: desperate, and out of time.

A hint of desire takes shape into a fully formed deviant thought.

“I’ll show Roger Davies,” she huffs. The dutifully charged toy in her bedside table would do wonders, but she’s not completely unskilled with the machinations of her own fingers.

One leg perched on the settee, she lets the stem of her heel dig into the velvet as she runs her fingers up the inside of her thigh. A fleeting pause to measure the gravity of such a risk, but the elves have been dismissed, and the lady of the house is well turned in.

It’s not Malfoy who uttered the inciting cut, but what if it was? What if he taunted her with it? What if it was the precursor to begging? To giving in?

Hermione has been made to deal with only echoes of the past and no fantasies, and she needs to change that.

Languid circles around her thighs beget images of long, deft fingers.

Her eyes flutter closed as her mind produces all manner of images. She begins to envisage herself a fixture here. During the day, his pedantry and snark are a distraction to be sure, but at night, he lures her away from the statues with more persuasive methods.

Her head falls back as her fingers climb higher.

Everything about him infuriates her, which of course turns her on.

Quarrelling with him is better than agreeing with anyone else.

“Oh, Gods,” she whispers, as she imagines him perched above her. Her fingers are his.

Granger, it’s a good thing they can’t see what a mess you’ll make of a family heirloom.

She wonders how this is so convincing whilst moaning into her shoulder.

He may as well be a spectre. It’s like she can feel him there with her. Eyes that were so effectively clenched in pleasure now flutter open.

The statue is unchanged, unmoving, but she angles her open legs toward it defiantly. A jolt of arousal shoots through her as she pulses her fingers in and out.

Hermione has never done anything this reckless that didn’t directly benefit someone else. This act is for her. It may have started as proof that she wasn't a complete prude, that she didn’t care what some prat like Davies thought of her, but it’s more than that now.

She looks breathlessly at the stone. Her mind is haze and lust, and a single-minded wish that her magic worked in a very different way. Maybe it’s because she hasn’t been touched by someone else in months, but it’s almost too easy to pretend it’s him.

Moans escape and ripple to opposite sides of the gallery.

Fantasy Malfoy hasn’t stopped his seducing.

I knew you’d be insatiable. Nothing by half with you.

With a lift of her hips, she’s essentially on the precipice of ruin.

It’s like she can feel him pouting.

Don’t you dare close your eyes, Granger. Look at me.

He’s so good. It’s so good. She’d be a rambling, incoherent mess if she could talk back to him.

Hermione.

“Oh, oh my, Draco.” She gives in to new heights before flopping against the upholstery with a sigh.

Embarrassment knocks on her now fully conscious mind. The best and most sensible solution is to ignore the flush, and gasps, and orgasm–but she simply refuses to.

She’s very likely had one of her best sexual experiences, and it was with a fantasy. Reconciling that will take most of her weekend.

She won’t feel ashamed of it.

Determined to cap it all properly, Hermione collects a bit of her arousal and steps up to the white marble. This has all been wildly rebellious, so why stop now? She dabbles it right onto his lower lip, fighting the urge to kiss the stone.

“Well,” she laughs, letting the consequences of her actions file into varying degrees of severity in her thoughts.

Maybe she should pretend this was a dream too. The thing is, she doesn’t want to. The more time she spends in this room, the more utterly insane she feels, and it’s freeing.

She sits for tea with Narcissa Malfoy on a daily basis. She’s thoroughly stumped by an elusive bit of dark magic, and she can’t seem to care. For the first time in years she’s dreaming again, and it’s about Draco bloody Malfoy.

She touches his bottom lip again.

“If you come back it could be real.”

She’s too tired to make it to the Floo, but the settee has already proven itself a willing accomplice.

“Goodnight, Malfoy.”

***

The light she finds charming at midday is offensive at seven.

Drool accumulates at the side of her mouth. It takes her a moment to fully remember where she is. She wipes the remnants of her unplanned slumber, and quickly devises a plan to sneak away. She can be back in fresh clothes before the peacocks are awake.

Her dreams linger just on the outskirts of consciousness. She can usually grasp them. This is the first time she’s awoken to ephemeral thoughts of him. No longer memories she’s forced to recount, these images were something entirely different.

A kiss on the nape of her neck, blonde strands falling into his eyes as she pushes them off his face. Whispered desires of adoration in a warm greenhouse, snow collecting on the panes of the fogged over windows. A moonlit waltz, one to make up for the many they’ve missed.

His presence lingers long after the dreams fade.

She sits up abruptly, now completely aware of the fact that she’s wrapped in a hand-sewn cashmere throw, her heels stacked neatly beside her.

***

“Yes, I came back again,” she sighs, dumping her end of the week takeaway onto the settee, before fidgeting with sweet and sour packets.

She cancelled the Friday dinner with Ginny and Padma. She tells herself it’s to avoid the questions she knows will come with loose lips. Logic and facts she could sermonise over all night, but they’ll ask about her feelings. She has feelings, and those are things she can never adequately defend.

“I have friends,” she says defensively. “Good friends. Great, even.’

She licks the orange sauce from her thumb. “They’d probably even like you.”

***

If Narcissa knows about her late nights in the gallery, she doesn't remark on them.

She keeps her mind from turning over that thought by thoroughly examining an entire row of folkloric art from the 16th century. The gallery’s far wing is ripe with inflammatory pieces. For such a censorious family, the Malfoys certainly preserved a great number of works through numerous wars and their immediate aftermaths.

She crouches and stretches from her casting position, scrubbing each piece of residual magic before stepping away from the engravings.

Cracking her neck, she produces a stasis charm on the runes for the final composition of three masked figures. They’re not Death Eaters, but they give her the feeling that they’re not far off from them. The men seem to be looking right through the piece, and directly at her; it’s unsettling. The etchings are not meant to move, but she can’t shake the feeling that something is watching her.

She welcomes Étoile’s reminder for tea, and Hermione formally accepts Narcissa’s gala invitation by mid-afternoon.

She is surprised when Narcissa broaches the subject of her parents, but she is not entirely unwilling to discuss the complications in their relationship.

Hermione sees a change in Narcissa. The strain around her eyes has softened, and there’s a lightness to her that makes Hermione feel like she’s gently pulling at all her secrets thread by thread until they threaten to unravel onto the polished floors.

“I have enjoyed our talks, Hermione. I should hate to think of them ending when your objective is complete.”

It isn’t until she drops a hand atop her own that Hermione feels the sentiment completely mutual.

She passes statue after statue as she chastises herself. She is here to do a job, not be taken in by ostensibly empathetic ears and handsome disappeared faces.

It stops her in her tracks. Resting on the plush cushion of the settee is a leather-bound tome. She knows what it is. She inquired about it at the Ministry Archives and the Restricted Section of the Hogwarts library.

She had since been unsuccessful in acquiring it. Until now.

“And I suppose this was just lying around?” She isn’t facing Draco, but she’s aware she doesn’t really need to be. “Bataille’s Practical Application of Sacral and Sacrificial Magiques.” She flips to the first page. “Of course it’s a First Edition.”

She waits a beat. “I bet you’re dying to tell me how many you have.”

Hermione produces a charm allowing the book to float in front of her.

“Do you even know the depths of what’s been cast in this space? No wonder Narcissa has changed nearly everything about it apart from façade and foundation.”

She’s tripped up momentarily at a particular passage detailing the power in self-sacrificial magic. That ancient protection that saved Harry, and protected his friends. She would have implored it herself, had the situation called for it.

She attempts to decipher a handwritten note which is squished into the margin of a page next to a much older, crossed out notation.

*Should a force seek to cause harm within the manor,

extra protections will go into effect.

*The protective spell went into effect December 2003

She reads it again. What could that mean? What protective spell? She hasn’t come across any protective wards, and Narcissa hasn’t mentioned anything. She considers summoning Étoile, when the elf appears.

“Étoile, what pieces were added to the gallery in 2003?”

“Oh, Étoile isn’t knowing that, Miss.” She fidgets with the bottom of a tiny blazer. “Is that the Lady calling? Coming, Mistress.”

Hermione collapses on top of the book, exhausted.

***

It’s nearing Christmas, and Hermione takes the morning off to go wassailing with Teddy Lupin. Harry, Ron, Ginny, and Andromeda are decked in holiday jumpers courtesy of Molly. She quite likes the oatmeal coloured wool with burgundy thread. An H is stitched prominently across her chest with a sprig of holly and berries at its top corner.

Her cheeks are still flush from the wintery air when she enters the gallery. They burn with the heat of the midday sun streaming in through the windows.

More violet hellebores have been added to the space.

“I do wonder what Naricssa hopes to accomplish with these?” She holds a plucked blossom up to his cheek. Such a stark contrast of bone white and deep purple. “They are quite poisonous.” She runs her finger across the smooth petals. “Of course, if we are to believe the myths, it is what saved Hercules from madness.”

She tucks the bloom into her curls.

“It’s a shame there is no such myth about returning a man from stone.” She tugs on her jumper sleeves, bringing them back around her wrists. “You wouldn’t be the type to be persuaded by a flower anyway, would you, Malfoy?”

A blush creeps up her throat when she thinks about the lascivious dream she had featuring a very willing Draco under a canopy of wintery jasmine. Her hair was littered with small yellow blossoms.

There is a catalogue of Draco Malfoy that she has developed. Only at night. Pages of stories she could fill a book with. She would suffer the pain of returning it to the shelf, forever encased in a work of fiction.

The very real book in her lap seems to burn under her finger tips for attention.

Right, she thinks. The tedium of reminding herself that she wasn’t some tragic figure locked in a fairy tale. A mythological heroine punished for her hubris. She was a ministry official sent with a task at hand, and she was failing miserably.

She picks up the book, and opens to a random incantation.

“I’ve been attempting to read this, and I must say each new annotation I come across is more curious than the last.”

She rifles through the pages, but then, of course, there is mention of more familial sacrificial magic and that reminds her of other stories. Some she knows by heart. What depths wouldn’t you go to save someone you love?

She slams the book.

“I’ve been dreaming of you,” she blurts. “Quite incessantly. At first, they were just memories, but now, it’s like my mind can’t stop inserting you.

“It’s like you’re haunting me. I wish you would just appear and do the job properly. I would feel much saner speaking to a moving, talking apparition than being left here babbling at stone.

“I think about you so much more than I ought to.

“Your mother has been badgering me to attend this gala tomorrow night. I have a gown, of course. Part of my very professional, very put-together witch persona. I wear tailored slacks, and pencil skirts, and I attend galas. I dance, and covert, and I put on a performance.”

It’s easier to stand, to remark at him as if he can hear every single bit of her tirades. More than that, it’s impossible to stand in the room and not be drawn in. Every bit of her body feels pulled to him.

“I talk about you with my friends. They’re probably sick of it.” She can’t bring herself to tell him why. She just needs to speak him into existence or she’s afraid the Wizarding World will forget. She’s terrified they’ll only memorialize the selfish, intolerant boy he was, and not the reconstruction of a man she has taken to remembering.

Hermione glides her fingers against his. “I regret not attending two years ago. I think I would have enjoyed dancing with you. I assume you would have asked me.”

She pushes up on the balls of her feet, elevating her face that much closer to his.

“Our eyes usually met trying to look away from each other. I’m not blind,” she says.

Her lips ache to say his name. To close the distance.

“Where are you, Draco Malfoy?” she whispers.

It’s a nervous desire, but she’s so close.

She jumps back at the sound of a pop.

“Étoile is asking the Miss Hermione to leave now. The Mistress is needing the whole space for her preparations.”

The disappointment settles in her gut, and she laughs to herself.

Get a grip, Hermione.

“That’s fine, Étoile. I should wrap up for the night anyway,” she concedes, walking backward until she can scoop up the book.

The elf scurries to the far corner to charm some misbehaving ivy, and Hermione squeezes the statue's fingers again.

“I’ve gone completely mad. Maybe that's what the manor requires?” She laughs to herself once more, hiding her face behind the leather tome. “My sacrifice will clearly be my sanity.”

The hellebore inches closer to the base of his feet and Hermione smiles.

“I’ll save you a dance tomorrow.”

Winter Solstice

“Those Purebloods will lose their minds when they see you in this gown, Hermione.”

She’s inclined to agree in one regard; the gown is a statement.

Ten layers of midnight coloured tulle billow out from her waist in a bell shape. Wrapped up and twisted in the back, the fabric contours around her stomach and chest in a low v that leaves little to the imagination.

“Not your grandmother's dress robes,” Ginny agrees. “Bloody hell, Mione.”

Moons, suns, and constellations are woven through the bodice with golden thread. She’s noticed if they catch the light just right, they give the illusion of twinkling.

A simple bit of magic that happens all on its own.

“You crafty little minx,” Padma laughs, fluffing out the small train in the back. “I see what you did here.”

“I did nothing,” Hermione insists, tugging the fabric from her hands.

Padma has the decency to get her heels, adding a sturdy cushioning charm before placing them down.

“What exactly do you imagine will happen tonight?” Ginny asks.

“I will dance, I will mingle, and I will come home.”

She ignores Ginny’s look of mild concern.

“Padma told me you say Malfoy’s name in your sleep.”

“I told you that in confidence,” Hermione accuses, and Padma rushes back over, grabbing Hermione’s hand. “You do, though. You have been.”

“They’re just dreams,” Hermione says, slipping her feet into the heels and charming them to strap.

“We know,” Ginny says, taking her other hand. Both women squeeze them gently.

“I’ve not gone entirely certifiable,” Hermione shrugs.

“We know.”

“I just don’t know why I can't stop them. Narcissa said she used to have them as well. She really is horrifyingly lovely.”

“We know.” The ‘you’ve told us’ she generously leaves silent is appreciated.

“And even if I could stop them,” she pauses, hesitant to unravel it all.

There’s a recurring image she’s yet to share. She searches for a pile of bones she can’t find. She scours the grounds for clues that won’t reveal themselves. In the end, she’s always left with an altar of marble.

The truth?

She loves seeing Draco Malfoy in her dreams every night.

“We know,” Padma asserts, nearly pushing her toward the Floo. “Time for the little cinder girl to be the belle of the ball. No turning back at midnight.”

***

Under the charmed sky of the Malfoy grand ballroom, Hermione twirls in the arms of various Purebloods.

The flora that crept into the gallery was but a small taste of what the full affair featured. There is barely a surface that isn’t draped with winter vegetation.

The room gives her the vision of Persephone given safe passage back to earth for one night. Her mother’s grief struck out with resplendent blooms.

She’s in awe of the spellwork, but the intrinsic beauty of the sights and scents are astounding. A bitter-sweet blackcurrant mixes with the spicy, citrus of witch hazel. The cream blooms of clematis invoke plum. The white bell-shapes of the snowdrops provide a perfume most addictive.

The Slytherins, once hostile classmates, now expedient colleagues, fill her dance card until she’s out of breath.

Champagne loosens her lips, and she is well into her second dance with Blaise Zabini when she gets up the courage.

“You all seem close with the lady of the house,” she muses, taking a moment to adjust from a spin.

“Draco and I are like brothers,” he says, a hint of solemnity hanging in the air.

It feels like he’s begging her to ask him, but maybe she doesn't really want to know. That is her biggest secret. Maybe she’s afraid to know what became of him.

He spins her around until the mauves, and yellows, and whites dull into a lavender haze. He deposits her at the base of a statue. A place she had no illusions about ending up in front at some point tonight.

The torches flicker dimmer than she’s seen, but light still streams from his face.

Blaise pats her on the hand, releasing his grip from her waist.

“Pansy looked sufficiently jealous. That’s my cue to get back.”

“You plan to leave me here?” she asks, trying not to betray too much of her desires. She has the audacity to look nervous, but she can’t be brave all the time.

“Thanks for telling me about your work, Granger. Seems fascinating. I always wondered what old Luci was up to in here.”

“I can’t seem to figure it out myself.”

“Have you run your runes on Draco yet?”

“No, why would I?”

“Exactly. Why would you?”

She is inclined to think the most sensible thing is to follow Blaise Zabini right back into that ballroom, but she will simply die if she does that. She has a fervour for a dream, and she can’t give it up just yet.

Blaise is near the exit when he stops.

“Always told him you’d make the first move.”

“Blaise, wait.”

“Can’t. The fairytale ends a certain way, and I’d just be in the way.”

Reason should have taken over. Logic, surely. Really any number of years of practical behaviours to govern what should come next.

It’s nonsensical. Rationality says that this statue is just a statue, but what if?

What if?

She theorises until she is dizzy, and she’s left with only one maddening conclusion.

It may be the Champagne, or the fragrant blooms, but she can’t help but lift up on balls of her feet.

What harm is a kiss, she thinks, as she presses her lips to his.

The stone is soft, and pliant. Slowly, then all at once, she is no longer the only one in the gallery.

She can’t bear to look, but she smiles against a willing mouth.

“Is this a dream?” she wonders aloud.

“If it is, it’s mine.”

“Because I’ve dreamt of this very thing on more than one occasion.”

He answers with a hand in her hair. The weight of his warm palm against the small of her back.

“I’ll need an explanation,” she pleads, kissing him again.

Arms twist into the tulle around her back as he pulls her even closer. She’s spun in a haste of blackcurrant and plum before she meets the smooth velvet of the settee.

“You know.” He kisses into her clavicle. “My brilliant girl. You’ve worked it out, I assure you.”

The numerous pieces of art she’s so carefully catalogued fall away. Nothing fills the room like the sound of his voice. Of all the sensory experiences the solstice has to offer, the Earth truly tilts when she hears it. It’s so matter-of-fact she could smack him, but she’d like to kiss him this time instead.

“You were always here,” she sighs, toes pushing into the fabric.

“I was waiting,” he pulls back to gaze at her. “I was waiting until you figured it out.”

Each kiss is marked with a fact, a previous assumption she delights in making true.

“The men. The tableau.” She can’t tell which part turns her on more, being right, or being rewarded for the efforts by his mouth.

“Is it just for one night?” she laments, pulling him closer as he explores the expanse of her neck. “I don't care if it is.”

He shakes his head, returning his particular attention to her pulse point, and causing her to squirm under the delicious weight of him. The tunic she envisioned, the one from two years ago, feels smooth under her fingers.

“Explain it to me,” she begs.

“Abridged, for now,” he insists, and her heart flutters. “I really must insist on that.”

Draco pulls her up, until the lower half of her effectively drapes across his lap. Tulle ensconces them so effectively she nearly forgets the hundreds of people revelling down the hall.

How tragically beautiful you are, she thinks. She doesn’t know what she’ll do if she isn’t presented with this very view every day after this.

His thumb finds her bottom lip in a maddening touch, holding the swollen flesh down until it recoils back. It tells her more than words. He heard it all. More than that, he felt, and saw.

“To be remembered in your dreams was going to be enough for me,” he laughs, “But then you did that. Gods, Hermione. Do you even know what that did to me? Not to be able to touch you after? To hold you? To tell you how perfect you are?”

She smiles against the warmth of his palm.

“I would’ve spent a lifetime listening to you ramble. We would have invented ways to get you back to this room.”

“It was cruel.” Her eyes flutter closed. “You stood there, refined in stone, and judged every misstep. Every one of my failures. You were so cruel like that. So much crueler than in life.”

A tear escapes her cheek, and he pushes it away with a willing thumb.

“I wanted you to come back, and every day you didn’t, made me want you that much more.”

“I know,” he whispers. “I’m here now.”

“How?” she asks softly. “How can I know you won’t go back?”

“The manor has a magic Mother and I are still discovering,” he offers, pulling her legs higher onto his lap. “Your first day I only had an awareness of you. When you touched me, I had more acuity than I’d experienced in years. The manor’s protections were only meant to safeguard me until something else could.”

“Someone else?” She pulls his hand to her cheek again, chasing the same protection he’s referencing.

“Yes, Hermione. That someone being you. I never had any doubt of that.”

“Your mother knew?”

“She had hoped we may have come to an understanding before a danger presented itself.”

“Those men?”

“Will remain in stone.”

“And you?”

“Will remain endlessly in awe of you, my precious witch.”

***

What might a headline in tomorrow’s Daily Prophet read? If she actually cared, she would have owled the news to Rita herself.

They dance in the gallery until Hermione can barely stand, and when she makes that fact known, he picks her up and carries her through the Floo to her snow-covered cottage.

"Shouldn't you tell your mother?” She pauses, pushing gently against his chest.

“One day won’t hurt her. Besides, a change of scenery might be nice,” he laughs, tucking his face into her neck. His nose tickles as it rubs against the notch above her sternum.

“She likes me a great deal, I think.”

“Who could have predicted?”

***

She isn’t sure what it will take to solidify the manor’s belief in her abilities, but she’s willing to explore every inch of him in a thorough declaration of her intentions.

She experiments with what a manor’s ancestral magic may require her to be in possession of.

“I can catalogue every statute in that gallery,” she offers, pretending not to feel as the warmth from the fire hit her bare skin.

“I’m not going to quiz you.”

“I should have known the dark magic was stemming from you.”

His hand slips so effectively under her knickers she barely has a chance to elaborate.

“Yes,” he sighs, looking at her as if she’s been the puzzle that’s eluded him. “You should have.”

Hermione admires a pile of tulle as he tastes her. He finds his own subject for classification.

“That gown was quite pretty,” she laments, thinking of how easily he extracted her from it.

“I’ll buy you twenty,” Draco says, kissing up her naked thigh.

His reverence is painful. She supposes he has waited years for this.

***

She’s not comparing, but in the morning he fucks her slow, and languid, like he’s making the declaration he’s still there. No magic has forcibly turned him back into a pumpkin–or a statue–as it were.

“I wouldn’t have let them forget you,” she says, her stubbornness on full display as she wraps her limbs around him in a challenge. She dares the magic to try and take him back.

“I’ll keep you safe, too, Hermione. Merlin knows you don’t need it, but I can prove it. I swear I can prove it. For you, I would prove it endlessly.”

***

She wakes again, and he’s still there. It invokes a dizzy sense of disbelief. Of that she is certain. Whether to record such a particular emotion out loud is another notion entirely.

She holds his palm to her check again – flummoxed.

“I plan on keeping you,” she sighs. It’s a declaration, and a promise. She hopes it’s enough to satisfy the magic she finds endlessly fascinating.

Positive, that for the first time in months, she doesn’t need to know how to proceed.