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Now

The groom, honouring tradition, formally courted: symbolic gifts; chaperoned outings; strict chastity (which beggared belief) until the magically sealed engagement.

"Did you know they had a traditional courtship?" the groomswoman asks.

Sharing a glass of champagne on a balcony overlooking the sea, the best man consciously comprises half of a matched set: her in carmine velvet and him in cuffed sleeves, lightly unravelled after dispatching their nuptial duties and floating on a tide of good wine.

When she asks, they’re still friends. As a friend, he hooks a finger under the shoulder of her sagging sleeve and rehangs it where it belongs. 

“I knew.”

"Really?"

“He doesn’t have family," he explains. "He needed my help.”

“That's what surprises me. There was no mandate, and Harry wouldn't have expected it. Why would he feel the need?"

He slips the glass from her hand and drinks, pouring the chill of it over the perpetual conflagration inside him.

“What, exactly,” she asks, “does such a courtship entail?”

“Archaic rubbish. It’s irrelevant.”

“To whom?” Her tongue clicks maternally. “Come here, you look like no one owns you."

He lifts his chin, and her clever fingers, nails glossy red as holly berries, neaten his collar points.

“There’s almost nothing about elite Pureblood courting in the available literature,” she says.

"This is an academic interest of yours?”

“Of course. I know it's centred on gifts. The first is a token of … attraction? Intrigue?"

“Regard.” He pries his bowtie apart with the disgust of a cat kicking out of a novelty jumper and pops his top button open, deranging his collar beyond help. "It’s supposed to connote attentiveness, and the beginning of intimacy, ideally with chivalric overtones—gods, why am I telling you this?"

“The last is supposed to be quite dear, a massive gem or something, but I have no idea what it’s meant to—”

"Aren't you freezing?" he asks. "I'd call that neckline feeble."

She studies her bodice, plunging to what she’d once referred to out loud as her xiphoid process. "You don't think it's sexy?"

Only an absolute bellend douses a fire with alcohol.

He washes down further comment with the last of the champagne.

“It’s silk velvet,” she explains, helpfully sliding a hand along her hip. "Everyone likes a sexy Christmas wedding."

"How much of that '63 Laphroaig did you drink?"

"No idea. Theo kept topping me off. And stop it. I asked about courting traditions. If we're calling things feeble, know that your diversionary tactics never work on—"

After, he thinks.

Just let him have now: the soft intake of breath; sugared apple and champagne; velvet under his hand and the welcoming wet warmth of her parted lips.

He'll burn now, and worry about what's left of him after.

Five Years Ago

Pansy’s gift sits ignored on the kitchenette worktop in the 8th Year common room, the scene of its sorrowful unwrapping.

"Chin up, Pans." Theo, brazenly monopolising the sofa, yawns into a novel. "Seal up your engagement and you can give Montague your flower."

Pansy pouts in the window seat, scraping her thumbnail through the fern frost coating the pane. "Get fucked."

"You have a flower?" Neville stops swabbing the ink splotch on his Arithmancy scroll. "What kind?"

Sat beside the fire, a titanic volume propped on her thighs, Hermione snorts. "Species Patriarchia excrementa."

"Her blossom, Longbottom," says Theo. "The bee snuggles inside to sip her nectar—come on, man."

Neville catches up to the metaphor with a blush.

"It’s the intellectual rigour for me." Theo gestures at the jewel-encrusted gold unicorn abandoned on the worktop. "Montague heard you were obsessed with unicorns when you were eight and ran with it."

In the kitchenette, Draco warms his hands on the self-renewing teapot and watches Pansy etch an ornate P in the frost. She won't do better than Graham Montague. Their combined vaults will make the Malfoy fortune look like fun money.

And she knows the rules.

At thirteen, as though he didn’t, Draco’s mother explained.

You have a jewel. Clear. Untarnished. Of infinite value.

Do you understand?

At fifteen, his father elaborated.

Get the Parkinson girl in trouble, and I'm selling the lake house in Lucerne.

Do you understand?

After the war, Draco found the approved candidate list in his father’s desk, and the key to the inner vault safeguarding treasures earmarked to buy a wife.

He owled the list to Azkaban with every name struck through, and never received an answer.

He threw the key into the lake, and Theo said, “I understand.”

At eighteen, he’ll be lucky to betroth himself to the teapot.

He pours a cup and appraises it. It’s quite fit: attractive glaze, fetching curves, the alluring quality of producing hot tea on demand. It also never looks at him like he's been tracked in on someone's boot after Care of Magical Creatures, which is more than he can say for anyone else.

“Montague's courting you?” Neville asks Pansy.

There’s a weird, combative quality to Longbottom’s voice. As Pansy’s silence stretches out, Draco wonders whether he understands anything at all.

Hermione slams her tome shut.

With a satisfying ploink, Draco drops a sugar lump into his cup and awaits a world-class dressing down.

“Naturally”—she’s just warming up—“one wouldn’t want to compromise one’s purity.”

Pink-faced; exceptionally priggish. A strong opening.

“My parents,” she continues, “stressed the importance of supporting myself financially, and, if I choose, finding an equitable partner whose presence embellishes my independent happiness.”

Extraordinary. Ploink goes another lump, and the floor's back to Granger.

“Flowers,” she forges on, “are a puerile analogy for an invasive and obsolete patriarchal construct. I was simply advised to delay intercourse until I was mature enough to practise it responsibly with a trusted partner.”

“Good intercourse does take a lot of practise,” says Theo.

“Your sacred traditions,” Hermione concludes, “amount to nothing more than a system of preventing you from urinating away your fortunes on Muggleborns and peasants.”

Pansy grimaces. “That’s so much worse than just saying ‘piss.’”

“Under no circumstances urinate on peasants,” says Theo.

Hermione stands. “Whenever I think I’ve plumbed the depths of your Pureblood horseshit, you proudly shovel out more.”

Draco watches her storm off, a book the size of her torso shunted under one arm.

“What sort of flower is it, Pans?” Theo asks. “A poinsettia would be festive.”

Pansy’s temper blooms. “It’s a fucking orchid, isn’t it?”

They all go on holiday, as far as Draco's aware, unpollinated.

Weighing his alternatives (frigid and terrifying Manor; liver damage at Theo’s; a wilting Pansy) he stays.

For days, he camps over cauldrons, crashing into bed when his eyes won’t stop streaming. He wears thick woollen jumpers, and doesn’t bother about his hair. He reads, and reads some more; drinks gallons of tea; pisses accordingly; scratches words like piss in neat formal lettering amongst the ice flowers on the windows, melts them with his breath, and watches the crystals reform.

He relishes being utterly alone.

If he hears slithering along the flagstones, or the sickly sweet spectre of fresh blood gathers in his nostrils, he breathes the steam from his cup, and listens to the regular sweep of Granger’s pages from her chair beside the fire.

He chisels utterly into the window frost. Breathes it away. The crystals form again. He writes mostly.

He relishes being mostly alone.

Early on Christmas Eve, he catches her crying at her own reflection in the darkened library windows—the unaesthetic sort, all mucus overflows and liquid splotches, everything blanched and crimson and too intimate—and wonders whether the Weasel trod on her flower.

Before he can leave, she turns.

A watery sheen of sorrow hangs between them like an ill-wrung bedsheet dripping on a Muggle laundry line.

“Are you—”

She’s not alright, gobshite.

“It’s snowing.” Her voice is congested with misery. “Come and see.”

She’s unilaterally superseding utterly with mostly, but he joins her on the bench below the window all the same. The cold glass nips his skin as he shields his eyes and looks into the black beyond.

Fat white gobbets of snow stream past, blustering into irregular chaotic swirls like a panicked crowd, so dense he can’t keep ahold of the negative space—whether it’s white, or if it’s black.

“We had a tradition,” she says.

Eyes on the dizzying snow, he listens.

“On Christmas Eve, my parents let me open one gift early. It was—”

He draws a monogrammed handkerchief from his pocket and passes it sideways.

After a while, she manages, “It was always a book.” 

She’d done something overly clever to her parents’ memories. Pansy told him. Made them forget about her, if not utterly, or even mostly, then partly because of him.

He’s never had a gem to give to anyone.

He has nothing but jagged black rocks inside him.

“My father would read it aloud,” she says. “He did voices, you know? Mole and Rat and everyone.” She laughs, probably, though it’s indistinguishable from sobbing. “God, you have no idea what I’m talking about.”

He doesn’t. Not about moles or rats or fathers or voices.

“You’ll excuse me.” He declines the damp handkerchief. “Please, keep it.”

Here are things people with rocks inside them can do: cast a charm against the snow; fly a broom to Hogsmeade; take the Floo to Diagon Alley; ride the Tube.

After dinner, nestled on the sofa with a cocoa, she angles away from the package he holds out.

“What’s this?”

“It’s not cursed. I won’t be offended if you check.”

The clerk wrapped it in plodding Muggle style. To Draco’s taste there’s nowhere near enough gilt and velvet, only sellotape and red paper tied with a grass green ribbon.

She unwinds the wrapping methodically. For a long time, hand over mouth, she says nothing.

Draco sits at the sofa’s far end. “Give it here.”

“No! It’s mine!” Her expression crumples.

What a pathetic soggy face she has.

How heartsick and ordinary.

How inexplicably beautiful.

A mewling klaxon fills the gap between his ears.

“What am I going to give you?” she asks.

“I’ll hang up a sock and you can throw a lump of coal at it.”

“I’ve never believed in that.”

“We learnt it in Muggle Studies,” he says. “Ergo, it’s a fact: there are children even Father Christmas doesn’t like.”

“There’s no such thing as a bad child. Only children who need help.”

It’s a lightning spear lancing a fissure he can never seal up. In the dark crush of rubble inside him, something catches.

“Give it here,” he repeats. “I promise you’ll get it back.”

It’s a lovely kelly green hardcover with gold lettering and full-colour illustrations. He turns to the beginning.

“Chapter One.” He’s not sure what voices are, exactly, but hopes his most formal and sonorous tone suffices. “The River Bank.”

The clerk knew straight away, with only mole and rat for clues. Astonishing.

“The Mole,” he continues, “had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home.”

Intermittently, through the long hours he reads to her, Hermione cries.

Three Years Ago

Against all opposition, the lovers let a flat.

“Towels?” Hermione strokes a downy bath sheet. “Too practical?”

“They’re wizards. Towels optional.”

“Who doesn’t like a good rubbing off?”

“Blanket?” Draco quickly suggests.

“That’s cashmere, and ... £600. Can you pretend you're normal for thirty minutes, or are you going to sneak off and buy yourself another Patek Phillipe?”

“You invite me to a glittering palace of Muggle commerce, then complain when I treat myself. That’s on you. And she's allergic to cheap textiles, I told you that.”

“Nothing short of £600 goat hair, understood.” She rolls her eyes like she’s getting marks for artistry. “I need an appropriate, affordable gift.”

“Do you want a chocolate coffee?”

Hermione's laugh is toothy and unreserved. Her mouth, he rather likes. It's a bit glorious. Heart-shaped and petulant, top and bottom lip in generous ratio, today painted the most mercenary, hopeless red.

“I’m throwing this throw at your head. You're a disaster.” Her plush red mouth says these things due to being secretly wicked. “Do your Potions mates at Cambridge know you’re like this, or do you save it for best?”

“What did I—? Dammit, mocha. Violence will get you arrested, and I won’t intervene.”

“But they’ll boot me from university."

“Worse than that, they’ll take away your library card.” He pries the throw from her and secures it under his arm. “Now, puppies.”

“No.”

“What do you mean, no? They're just upstairs—fourth floor.”

“Malfoy, their flat is so small.”

“I know.” He pats the throw. “Hence the practical blanket.”

A spring enters his step. Muggle escalators and puppies await.

“You'll be raked over the coals for this,” she says.

“For what?"

"What you're doing."

He's doing nothing.

In any case, he’s long been resigned to burning.

Swaddled in a £600 cashmere throw, the warm potato body of the French bulldog puppy rests in the crook of Neville’s arm like a human infant.

“Look at your ears,” Neville coos. “Look at your tiny hands!”

The dog sneezes so hard it farts, and Longbottom beams like it’s solved an impenetrable Arithmancy theorem.

Pansy manoeuvres around Ronald Weaselby’s knees and joins Neville on the floor. “I want to bite him.”

"That's normal," says Neville. "I asked Hagrid once."

She presses her nose to the dog’s head. “Draco, he smells like Acqua Di Parma."

At the makeshift bar, Draco slips a lemon wheel over the rim of a Tom Collins. “Men of our calibre maintain ourselves to a certain standard. And he’s windy.”

“Malfoy fed him whipped cream,” Hermione tattles from the kitchen.

“Place looks fantastic, Nev,” says the Weasel.

It's a gross understatement. Pansy stitched together a sanctuary on the budget of an Assistant Herbology Professor and a disinherited shopgirl. Dressed for the holidays, Diagon Alley glows beyond the windows.

Draco passes the drink to Roonil Wazlib, chatting up Daphne Greengrass and her long blonde hair on the sofa.

"You're an Auror." Daphne leans in like he's interesting. "That surprises me."

"Does it?" Rooblib Wuzzlecronks laughs. “Why?”

“I suppose—” She pauses in thought. “You've always seemed gifted in strategy and spatial organisation. Did you ever consider architecture?”

Draco sulks into the kitchen, where Hermione's spooning chèvre onto tiny toasts.

"I'm concerned Daphne's been Imperiused," he says. "She's flirting with Rubble Wizzlips on purpose."

"Oh! That's unexpected.” Her hair's bound in a Gordian knot at her nape, for culinary purposes. “Although—they're both personable; passionate; intelligent. She's gorgeous, and he's handsome. There you have it."

Draco stares. "Is he?"

"All the Weasley men are.”

"You can't just go around saying that. People will think you need to be hospitalised."

He likes her hair like this. It’s impossible to fully contain, and when she shakes her head—amused; annoyed; ideally both–the irascible curls at her temple and nape quiver like tiny bells on a string.

“No hospital required, but”—she holds up an empty jar—”they're out of fig jam. Fancy a walk?”

Hermione cradles the jam jar in gloves matched to the scarf snaking around her shoulders and head. Her colours are edible things: burnt toast; overripe berry; Spanish olive. Beside them, her eyes are fickle, frustrating chameleons.

“Pansy truly doesn’t care about the money, does she?”

“You've seen how she looks at him," says Draco.

“But her parents—” Her curls quiver again. “I could never lock my own child out of my life. Not on purpose. It’s unspeakably cruel.”

“Life is cruel, Granger. Love’s only one side of the coin. It’s pain on the other. Thankfully, there are puppies.” He pauses before the lighted windows of Flourish and Blotts. “Shall we? Just for a moment?”

She’s resistant to many digressions, but this isn’t one of them.

While she thumbs through new releases by the door, he locates the clerk mournfully mopping beside the volumes on water magic.

On the return walk, jam in his pocket, he indicates the stack in her arms.

“Show me what you bought.”

“Gods, this is bad form.” She secrets them one by one into the bottomless depths of her handbag. “Some are gifts.”

Draco withdraws a parcel from his overcoat. “Throw this in there.”

He leaves another in his pocket for later: a novelette about a blond prince who lives alone on an asteroid, which is relatable. Granger’s French is coming along. He greatly looks forward to reading it to her.

She frowns at the parcel. "It's three days until Christmas Eve."

"Just open it."

Below a street light, Hermione hands him her gloves and performs a surgical unwrapping. Brown overwrap; white satin ribbon; silver paper with glittering snowflakes, and inside—

“What is this?” She reads the title, turns it over, stares at the back, turns it over, and reads it once more.

“It’s the extant writings of Empedocles on the pseudo-amnesia epidemic among wizards in Akragas between 468-466 BCE. They treated it quite successfully.”

Her face is pale. She turns the book over again. “You … compiled this?”

“Yes. The Greek manuscripts are lost, but a volume in the Manor library implied they once existed in Arabic translation. The magical university in Alexandria has a beautiful collection, and the translator was lovely to work with. Terrifyingly intelligent witch.” He shifts from one foot to the other. “Say something. Or don’t. Anyway, I’m pleased with the typeset. I thought the Healers consulting on your parents’ case might be able to use it.”

In the lamppost glow, her irises are like stained glass, luminous brown in a matrix of leading. For a bewildering moment, he stands alone in a darkened room, looking out towards the light inside her.

“If you need money as well,” he says, “I have a lot.”

“Why did you—”

Water fills her eyes. He jams his hands in his pockets to keep from opening his arms.

“Was this the wrong thing to do?” he asks. 

Burning is pain. Pain is a coin.

Her mouth forms a soundless no.

“You need your parents, Hermione.” He takes the book from her frozen hands, and gives her back her gloves. “You know I can’t do voices.”

One Year Ago

In the librarian's book-littered quarters, the professor inspects himself in the mantelpiece mirror.

Black suit. Black tie. Black cufflinks. Every pale hair in obedience. Fully prepared for—

The librarian steps out of her bedchamber.

“Alright?”

To the flames of perdition and the fire inside, oxygen makes no difference. Bully for them, because when Hermione turns in front of the fire, Draco neglects to breathe.

The whole of her back is so naked to him that she must have made a mistake. Her bare smooth arms and sweet bare neck are naked, too, but her curves are cradled in champagne chiffon, accentuated with diabolical subtlety by geometric patterns and lines in sequin. Delineating the dimensions of her private self, they glow in the firelight like emergency illumination strips directing him to locate his nearest exit door to hell.

“Lovely,” he says, and he means: bury me with this image resting on my heart and it will be a man at peace that crosses the river and joins the world on the other side.

“Thanks.” A turn of her head to evaluate her mirror image, and—let him die—what has she done with her hair? It’s up on one side and down on the other, which he didn’t know was allowed. She looks at him sidelong. “You know you're devastating. Shall we go?”

The Greengrass place isn't haunted by the Christmas spirit; it's possessed.

“Enquiry, Professor.” Theo sniffs a shrimp, and rehangs it on the dish. ”How are our Hogwarts youth meant to survive a hot librarian?”

Draco wants to protest: she’s misplaced her wand in her own hair twice this month, can be derailed from tasks by questioning the literary value of comic books, and her penalties for beverage stains are austere, but if there’s a point, he’s lost it.

“I’ve confiscated one or two unsavoury drawings. Gods. It’s Potter. Look sharp.”

With his long hair gathered in a messy bun and beard framing his jaw, the Boy Who Lived is Sirius Black all over.

“How’s the castle holding up?” he asks.

“New ventilation system in the dungeons,” says Draco. “Longbottom ate my personal sandwich by accident and I'll never forgive him. Hufflepuff Seeker’s especially quick.”

“Brilliant," says Potter.

“Felicitations to Weasley.” Theo nods towards Runchunks Wafflebuds and Daphne, running a Weasley-Greengrass greeting gauntlet hand in hand and glowing with mutual admiration. "An auspicious engagement."

"I’m thrilled for them," says Potter, "even if it means rattling around Grimmauld by myself."

"You're in Islington?" says Theo. "Hermione and I are seeing Streetcar at the Almeida. You ought to come."

Draco’s stomach goes arse over teakettle down four flights of stairs and lands at the bottom head first.

"Robards saw it last week,” says Harry. “Said it's excellent."

For a man who keeps vampire hours, Theo pulls a great deal, but generally keeps his conquests to himself.

"You're doing Muggle things?" Draco asks. “With Granger?”

Theo flicks invisible lint from his tuxedo lapel. "She's not your fit librarian. She's everyone's."

"If Pince had been fit," says Harry, "I might have studied."

Theo laughs. "Does that follow? I blame the fact that I'm shite at defence on Lupin’s tragic beauty."

Harry secures a loose lock behind his ear. "Never too late to learn."

In the Greengrass library, sat beside a golden candlelit tree thronged with gilded butterflies, Hermione gleams.

"This is the only thing I've envied your families." She sighs like a lover over the volume in her hands. "Centuries' worth of books."

"Not the wedding on the Aegean coast?"

"Did you see Arthur and Daphne's father?" She sends the book drifting back to its shelf. "They're more enamoured than the couple, it's adorable. What have you been doing to your hair?"

"Nothing." He rakes a hand through it reflexively. "They're about to start the toasts."

"Alright."

In the candlelight, her eyes are the colour of Galleons lost at sea. 

"You're unhappy."

She shrugs. A butterfly, mistaking her for part of its habitat, lands on the shoulder of her dress.

"Your father would have never loved my father," she says. "Not in a hundred parties."

It would have been a catastrophic blow if his heart was a priceless thing. Thankfully it's a smoking ruin.

"Not in a thousand." He offers his arm. “The question is, would your father have loved me?”

Draco stumbles through Hermione's Floo, and Hermione comes tumbling after.

Bundled in his suit jacket, she collapses on the sofa. “I’m not sorry he’s marrying somebody else. I know everyone thinks it.”

Draco presses a water glass into her hand.

“We fought constantly. And the sex was–" She blows a decadent raspberry.

"Drink.”

She drinks.

He hands her a vial. “For headache.”

She gulps it down, then lays back, arm draped over her eyes.

“Do you want sleep,” he asks, “or your gift?"

“Four more sleeps to Christmas Eve.”

“The other gift.”

"Is it sex?"

He shuts his eyes. "No."

"I'm prepared to earn perfect marks, Professor. I've practised."

“With Theo?”

She raises her arm and makes a phenomenal sound, like a camel blowing out the candles on a birthday cake. “You’re joking.”

“Obviously. Gift or sleep?”

“Gift.”

He fetches one gift from his quarters and leaves the other: a festively wrapped leather-bound edition of the lady author's romance novel that Hermione watches on television. He’s attempted the hero’s voice, and believes he'll do it justice.

She unwraps with uncharacteristic violence. “What is it?”

“Just open it, you wretched thing.”

Her efforts reveal two stylish 1960s pocket guides: Your Guide to Melbourne and Let’s Go, London!

“These are charming, Malfoy. Thank you.”

“May I?”

She hands them over.

“They’re different from Portkeys,” he explains. “In either guide, you’ll find the photo of the cricket ground: MCG in Melbourne, Lord’s in London. Make firm contact with your thumb”—he demonstrates without touching—”and say, ‘Going, going, gone!’ They’re both two-passenger, bidirectional, and unlimited. It’ll drop you just outside their door; they’ll arrive in Hogsmeade. You can change that any time.”

She strokes the Melbourne pitch. “The permitting alone … Malfoy, these are impossible objects.”

“You’re an impossible person, Granger. Dammit, you’re crying again.”

“There’s a lot of trust to rebuild.”

“I know.”

“It’ll be so much easier like this.”

“I hope so.”

“I’m really drunk.”

“Let’s get you to bed.”

“My father’s mad for cricket.”

“I’ve heard.”

A tear drips from her chin. “How could he possibly not love you?”

Eleven Months Ago

“Gods, I want to court him,” Theo moans from the bottom of the Ogden's bottle. “He’s like sexy Jesus.”

Draco scowls up at Theo’s chandelier. “They never should have let you take Muggle Studies.”

“Well, I had to take it, and now I fancy Jesus. Help me.”

“Help you what?”

“Court him.”

“Oh, fuck right off.”

“You fuck off!”

“No, you fuck off! This is weird. Get Pansy to help you.”

“She’s too haunted by her own mistakes. Anyway, I need someone who’s actually done it.”

“Done what?”

“Courted, you drunk twat.”

“I’ve never courted!”

Theo laughs, and laughs, and laughs.

Now

Figuratively, his jewel was a joke.

Volatile. Contaminated. Of infinite toxicity.

Literally, over 300 carats of Russian diamonds sit in his vault, and the key in the bottom of a lake.

Her sweet cherry mouth says preposterous things, like, “I thought this would never happen,” and “Can we please go upstairs?”

Here are things people with fires inside them can burn: clean amends and their own best intentions; carmine silk over a velvet breast; black rocks that will never be diamonds; hot breath in a warm red mouth.

Wait. They need to— "Wait. This is—” Too far too fast too much too soon, but please, believe— “I’m sorry.”

"No, don't be," she murmurs. "Are you alright?”

“Yes. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s alright." Her hand smooths through his hair where his head rests on her knee. "It’s okay if this isn’t what you want.”

She is everything he’ll ever want, just—

“Not like this.”

Eleven Months Ago

“It’s like being on fire, only inside, where nobody sees.” String by string, Draco tidies the fringe bordering Theo’s carpet. “But it’s slow, and steady, and you’re not actually burning up. It just keeps going. And eventually, you realise there’s nothing you can ever do to put it out. It’s going to smoulder there, inside you, forever.”

Theo squirms across the carpet.

“Draco, it’s nearly 3 a.m.”

“Fuck.”

He lays his hand on Draco’s heart.

“I love you.”

"False."

“And you, my puir wee lamb”—he silently convulses—”have just analogised enduring romantic love to a coal-seam fire.”

Draco digs around for his wand.

In Scots brogue and a steady choral tenor, Theo sings.

“O my lo-o-ove …”

“Where are my shoes? I'm going back to Hogwarts.”

“... is like a coal-seam fi-i-ire …”

“I hope your children hate you.”

“ … that’s bu-u-urning underground.”

Now

“If we can wait ...”

Slowly, she traces his brow. “We don’t have to do it at all.”

“Gods, I’ve done this all wrong. Absolutely pointless.”

“What’s pointless?”

“Nothing. It doesn’t matter.”

Hermione’s gaze lingers like heat.

“Why did Theo want to court Harry?”

Heavy bass vibrates through Theo's guest room floor from the wedding reception below.

“Pureblood traditions are corrupted to shit.”

“And before they were corrupted?”

Draco finds Perseus in the field of stars outside the window. “Old magic. Ancient. Practically fairy stuff.”

“What does it do?”

“Long life.” Perseus looks like a fucking dancing clown. “Long love.”

“And?”

Flip a coin once, and the odds are even.

Now flip it for a lifetime; the fairies love a game.  

“Less of the pain.”

“What do the gifts mean?”

“I told you—regard.”

“And?”

“Diligence. Generosity.”

“And the last one?”

“Hermione, I need to emphasise that I am desperate to do this."

"And yet."

"You're not a whim. Leave it there." He draws her knees apart. "Let me embellish your independent happiness."

“Tell me about the last one.”

“To satisfy your academic interest?” He mouths the tender swell of her thigh with rueful appetite. “I’ll just give it to you.”

Hermione takes in their mutual state of half dress. “Right now?”

“You’ve always opened it early.”

They move through his house like furtive lovers in the listening dark. 

Before an enormous set of double doors, Draco dusts Floo powder from his hands, draws his wand, and dissolves a net of wards.

“Granger.” There’s no relief for him. She needs to understand. “This isn’t an intellectual exercise.”

“I should hope not.”

“It involves—”

“An engagement.” Her eyes are liquid and sincere. “Will it matter that I’m not a virgin?”

Does she think he is?

“That’s property inheritance noise. Nothing to do with the original intent.” He speaks slowly. “Do you comprehend I mean engagement as in intended marriage?

“If it’s alright, I’d like to seal it sooner rather than later. I’m conceptually familiar with sex magic, but anxious to experience—”

He stops her ludicrous immaculate mouth with his.

“Are you busy on Christmas Eve?" he asks. "I’m afraid I’m in love with you.”

“I’ll be reading. I could make time.” She glances at the door. “Are we going in?”

“You have to open it.”

“Open the door?”

“You have to open the gift.”

“What’s in there?”

“The library. Go ahead. I can’t open it.”

“Why not?”

“Several volumes explain in detail. Which will be yours, if you’d simply”—he looks meaningly at the door—”open it.”

Her lips part.

“You were right,” he says. “It’s meant to be quite dear.”

“Malfoy, there are books in there that haven’t been seen outside your family in hundreds of years.”

“Loads. You’ll need to do some weeding at Hogwarts if you want to put them in circulation.”

“Draco, this is—”

What gods and stories have always asked from lovers: that they give. And they wait. And they burn.

“It’s devotion, Granger. If you want it."

She opens the door and steps in.