Chapter Text
Draco Malfoy had never known when to stop.
Hermione knew this better than most. She remembered him at eleven: sharp-tongued and arrogant, calling Harry’s name in the corridor like a challenge, blowing spitballs into her hair. By thirteen he had perfected the art of mockery, and if he couldn’t best you in skill, he would grind you down via words (one, in particular: mudblood) . She had hated him for that, hated the way his laughter filled every room, hated more the way she heard it when she was alone, replaying their scuffles in her head until her own retorts curdled on her tongue.
And then the war. That cursed afternoon in her childhood home. They had been thrown together like bits of kindling; she’d felt the relentless spark in him, his barbed words hiding the strange heat underneath. He’d hovered incorrigibly at the edges of her life, pretending he wasn’t watching her, finding reasons to touch her, to follow her. Even when he hated her—especially then—he still couldn’t stop reaching her way.
Now, watching him laugh at Voldemort’s so-called victory with his aristocratic chin lifted in disdain, Hermione couldn’t help but mourn the fact that Draco Malfoy had never learned the art of yielding. And now, it was far too late.
Hermione watched him from Ron’s iron grip, as he lifted Godric Gryffindor’s sword, as Voldemort’s wand rose with green flame gathering at its tip. She screamed his name, her voice clawing through the silencing charm that bound them. Ron’s arm locked around her ribs, holding her the way one might restrain someone from running into a burning building. She had once thought the worst pain of her life had been under Bellatrix’s wand, when her nerves lit up like struck copper, her body jerking and retching in the snow while her screams filled the clearing. But she’d been wrong. Through the thin cord of magic soldered between them, she felt the strength of his memories. The litany of her, tumbling through his mind like beads slipping from a string.
Oh, she’d been so wrong. The worst pain of her life was here, watching the man she loved think of her in his final moments. Helpless to do anything to save him.
A darkness had been building in her, ever since that night at Tonks House. Bellatrix’s Cruciatus had torn through her magic, a hairline fracture that never healed. Proximity was poison, Hermione knew that. Carrying Bellatrix’s wickedly curved wand, using the Killing Curse on the cup, and then the Imperius on Goyle…each act left a residue, ash in her veins. The more you used dark magic, the more it made room for itself inside of you, and she could feel the instability crackling in her bones, a wildness growing harder to contain with every spell.
When Draco’s face was lit in a brief flash of green— pale throat gleaming, mercurial eyes closed— any containment she may have managed imploded. The bond between them yawned wide and she poured everything through it, a power so sharp it swept her off her feet. Ron stumbled back as she dropped to the ground, levied by the intensity— even the courtyard shook with it, stones splitting under the masses.
Draco lay crumpled where he fell. Hermione felt the curse gather on her tongue as she pointed the curved wand. Voldemort turned his head toward her, and for a moment she thought she saw cold recognition, the understanding of what she was about to attempt. But then, everything seemed to tilt, recalibrate around the sight of Harry’s chest rising once more, his impossibly green eyes. For one dizzy, disbelieving instant, Hermione thought she had hallucinated him into being, conjuring him from a sheer refusal to accept the alternative. Harry Potter, back from the dead. Again.
Voldemort looked over his shoulder, serpentine face contorted in fury. She saw Harry’s lips, moving around a spell, and then, she felt the air split: twin jets of light tearing into the night. The beams locked. Red and green, a seam stitched into the dark.
The curse rebounded. Voldemort’s body hit the cobblestones with a light thud. The curse that held the spectators at bay broke fully.
Pandemonium reigned.
The formation of Death Eaters broke like startled cattle, fleeing in streaks of black and silver, as the Hogwarts defenders reared forward in pursuit. The air was thick once more with curses and screams, a final cacophony of a fight that refused to end neatly. Hermione did not think: there was no room for her usual careful logic, no weighing of outcomes. Her orderly mind was now stripped to its brutal fundamentals: observe, calculate, act. A hex at her back. Duck. Stunner, silent. Shield. Drop low, strike the ankles, fell them like trees. Again. Again. Bellatrix’s wand vibrated in her hand as she moved; her whole body, a metronome of violence. She was not fighting for victory now. She was fighting her way to where Draco lay, collapsed and still. Too still. Her lungs seized; she cast something wicked and searing, flame burning a path to him through the melee. She cut through the fire, reached the place he lay prone, only to find someone else had gotten there first.
Amidst the chaos, she saw Lucius Malfoy. Crouched low, clutching Draco’s shoulders as though he might drag his son back into the world of the living. His pale hair hung in snarled ropes around a face that had once exuded hauteur; now it was a ruin, every line etched with exhaustion and fury.
Lucius Malfoy, who had allowed his child to be branded.
Lucius Malfoy, who had offered up his family like bargaining chips in the Dark Lord’s endless game.
Lucius Malfoy, whose neglect had left Draco brittle and cold, terrified of acting out of mercy.
Lucius Malfoy had walked free, once before. If he lived tonight, he could slip the noose again. Men like him always did. And Draco — if Draco survived this, he would never be free of him. He, who had already borne so much: the curses, the vows, the suffocating weight of that family name. He shouldn’t have to add patricide to his ledger of survival. He shouldn’t have to live with that stain.
The elder Malfoy looked up when Hermione came near, face twisted with grief. “This is your doing, mudblood,” he spat, shaking his son’s form. “You dragged him down with you, you ruined him! My boy, my heir—”
She did not see Lucius Malfoy lift his wand in her direction. This was something she would lie about, under oath, many months later, claiming that she had cast under duress. But in that moment, all she she saw was Draco as a child holding an injured bird, desperate and brittle under the weight of this man’s scorn. She saw him at sixteen, gaunt with terror, bearing the Dark Mark because of Lucius’s failures. She saw him now, bloodied and broken, under the shadow of his father once more. She thought of Bellatrix’s wand carving through her until she wished for death. She thought of Narcissa’s blue fire, her self-immolation to save her son. She thought of the children buried in rubble, of Lavender’s screams, the look on Ernie MacMillan’s face as he slumped against the castle wall. Theodore Nott, bleeding out in the tunnels. The ruin, the waste of precious life. All of it had been done by men like Lucius Malfoy, men who mistook cruelty for power and obedience for love.
She cast her verdict. There was no triumph in it.
“Avada Kedavra.”
The green light hit him squarely and by surprise. Lucius Malfoy folded sideways, graceless as a felled tree, collapsing into the churned mud beside his son. His grey eyes frozen open, fixed distantly on the storm-dark sky.
She did not justify it as defense. She did not soften it into necessity. It was punishment, prevention. An act of brutal mercy.
With the echo of green light still burning behind her eyes, she sank to her knees beside Draco, her hands trembling as they searched, desperate for the faint rhythm that meant he was—
Alive.
*
Alive. He was alive.
The first thing that returned to Draco, upon having this realization, was the light. A thin, clinical strip of it, pale against the backs of his eyelids. He blinked, and the ceiling above him swam into focus: plaster, a little cracked, painted sterile white. The air smelled faintly of antiseptic potions. Somewhere, a monitoring charm was beeping. It didn’t make a lick of sense. The last thing he remembered was the Dark Lord’s wand, the jet of green. Potter’s bright green eyes, beckoning him into the afterlife—
How the bloody hell was he alive?
Draco attempted to sit up and failed spectacularly. His body felt like it had been dismantled and reassembled by someone very careless with instructions (Weasley, perhaps?). Every breath tugged against his ribs, muscles trembling when he so much as tried to flex a finger. His mind was blunted with pain potions. Strong ones, too. They made his thoughts wooly and unmoored.
He turned his head—gingerly, as though even that small motion might undo him—and something inside his chest gave way as he saw Hermione Granger, folded awkwardly into a chair at his bedside. Her hair was a wild halo of dirty curls, her clothes creased and stained in ways that spoke of days spent without reprieve. She was slumped forward, cheek pillowed against the mattress, her hand locked in his. Even in sleep, her grip was iron.
The haze that enveloped him at the sight of her was warm, syrup-thick. Golden, like the sensation that pulled in his chest when he reached inward with his magic for their—
Nothing.
It was gone.
Not muted, like it had been in the Parkinson cellar, strained by distance or magical suppression. The bond that had connected them was simply, horribly gone.
His throat constricted, panic sluicing through him even through the layers of pain potions. He tried to sit up again, a doomed effort; pain flared hot across his ribs, and the world tilted violently.
“Granger,” he rasped, voice raw with disuse.
Hermione startled awake in the chair, curls spilling around her face. Her eyes—bloodshot and panicked—found his.
Above him, a diagnostic charm flared, casting him in an orange glow. The beeping increased in pace and tenor, tinny and metallic, summoning footsteps at once. The door banged open. Robes swished. Wands drawn.
“Stabilize him—”
“There we go. Easy does it—”
A sharp sting entered his veins, its invasive coolness spreading outward like frost.
“Draco. Look at me.” Her voice cut through the blur of healers and alarms. “You’re alright. I’m right here.”
His gaze latched onto hers, the only fixed point as the potions surged and the room slipped sideways. He wanted to ask her: Why can’t I feel you anymore? Where did you go? Please don’t go —
*
Draco dreamt he was in an orchard.
There were endless rows of trees and shrubs, heavy with fruit, the air syrup-thick with their scent. Sunlight filtered through branches like melted gold. He could hear her voice, low and teasing, see her figure darting ahead of him between the rows. Bare feet slapping against the moss, skirts gathered in her fists. The sound of her laughter was wild and breathless: she didn’t look back, but he knew she wanted him to follow.
The orchard adored her. Branches bowed low as she passed, brushing reverently against her skin, showering her curls with dustings of petals. He watched, transfixed, as she turned her head to look back at him, flushed and mischievous. Her dress clung damp with heat, gauzy material gone nearly translucent against the curve of her spine, the swell of her breasts. Her thighs flashed bare as she ran, skirts pulling higher with each step. Every movement, a provocation. The glisten of sweat at her collarbone, the curve of her hip under the thin fabric, the ripple of muscle in her calves as she slipped through the foliage—it was unbearable.
Draco ran.
He caught her in a blur of movement, pressing her body into the bark of a specimen heavy with fruit. He reached up and tore a pomegranate from the branch, splitting it open in his fist. The juice ran dark down his wrist as he pressed the red seeds against her lips. She sucked his fingers into her mouth, her tongue darting out to catch the sweetness. He kissed her before she’d finished swallowing, juice staining both their chins.
“Greedy,” he murmured, smearing a line of red down her throat, following it with his tongue. She arched against him, her nails dragging lines down his back through his shirt. The orchard hummed around them: bees anointing the blossoms, cicadas screaming in the heat.
They tumbled to the mossy ground. He yanked her skirt up around her waist, hands impatient, to find her cunt, bare and ripe. She was wet already, slick against his fruit stained fingers as he slipped them inside her. She grabbed at his wrist, dragging him deeper, gasping his name as she rode his hand, undulating against him, curls falling into her face. Her open mouth, stained and obscene.
With a growl, he rolled her beneath him and freed himself from his trousers, cock already hard and straining. Pressed her hands above her head, wrists caught in one palm, holding her in place as his other hand dragged down the line of her body—breast, rib, the lush curve of her hip— until he was lifting her thigh high around his waist. He pushed inside her in one rough thrust, and she cried out, the sound ringing through the orchard like a hymn.
Her dress had come loose in the tumble, thin material spooling around her waist. Her breasts spilled free, flushed and perfect, nipples peaked in the cool orchard air. His mouth closed over one, tongue circling the tight bud, sucking until she gasped and arched beneath him, thighs spreading wider as if to offer herself up. He fisted the fabric of her flimsy gown, using it to keep her spread for him as he fucked her deeper.
When she broke, it was cataclysmic. A cry ripped from her throat and echoed through the orchard as her cunt spasmed around him, her nails raking his back bloody. He spilled inside her with a ragged curse, cock jerking, pulsing thick streams of come into her spasming cunt. She took it all, legs locking around his hips. The orchard itself seemed to collapse with them: branches cracking overhead, fruit bursting open in wet ruin, red juice dripping down in rivulets that streaked their entwined bodies, painting her breasts, his chest, their mouths. He bent to lick the sticky sweetness from the hollow of her collarbone; he was thrusting more intentionally now, slower and deeper, so every drop stayed inside her, keeping her full of him.
When he pulled back, his spend slipped from her swollen cunt to slick her thighs. He groaned low at the sight, pressed his fingers into the mess, free of any inhibition.
“Look,” he murmured, bringing it to her lips. She opened for him without hesitation, eyes glazed, moaning around the taste. He dragged his hand lower, smearing the rest of it back into her, pushing it inside her as if to claim her twice over.
The orchard grew even stranger around them, tilting into delirium. Bees swarmed low, drunk on spilled nectar. The air was thick with the blossoms and the sweet rot of fallen pomegranates. Somewhere, a flock of birds burst into warped chatter. He reached for her face, but her outline blurred at the edges. Her curls slid through his fingers like water.
“No,” he whispered. “Stay.”
He clung to her shoulders, her hips, anything solid, but she was already dissolving. Pomegranate juice turned to blood between his fingers, the orchard tilting and spinning until he could no longer tell if he was standing or falling.
*
The second time he woke, it was quieter. The beeping, the birdsong. It had all ceased.
He blinked through the haze of potions, lids dragging like lead. His throat was dry, his body sore in a thousand small ways that told him he was, absurdly, still alive.
“’Bout time, Malfoy.” Tonks sat in the chair that Hermione had previous occupied beside his bedside, her knees drawn up. Hair cropped short again, the color a muted pink he’d never seen her wear, almost pastel. Relief softened the lines around her mouth. "Back through the Veil, eh?"
Memory slotted itself back into place: late nights at Tonks House, the kitchen table strewn with dueling manuals, her barking laugh when he failed a shield charm, the way she’d clapped his shoulder after he managed to best her in a spar. He remembered, too, the sight of her body crumpling at the sight of Lupin catching a curse in the back.
“You had us all thinking you were going to go down swinging”
He blinked at her, trying to gather his thoughts. His voice cracked. “Didn’t I?”
“Sort of.” She grinned lopsidedly. “Made quite an impression, your act of heroism.”
“Where’s Hermione? Is she—”
“Your witch is upstairs, checking up on Lavender Brown— word is, she’s been touch-and-go, but she’s stabilizing, slowly.” Tonks sighed. “She’s hardly left your bedside; I had to drag her from this bloody hospital for a shower and a nap, the stubborn little thing.”
“What about…” His head hurt. There were so many loose ends, so many uncertainties. “What happened?”
Tonks leaned back in the chair, exhaling slowly. “Well, you’ve been under about ten days, give or take,” she said, watching his eyes widen, gauging his reaction. “They had to put you into a coma, to stabilize your magic— apparently, you shouldn’t even be alive. The last time someone took a Killing curse at that range and survived it was—”
“Potter.”
Tonks mistook the look on his face. “Don’t go all grim on me, Malfoy. We won. Voldemort’s gone. Dead, properly this time. Potter’s alive too, so you have company in the ‘should have kicked it, but miraculously didn't’ club.” She looked away for a moment, voice dipping lower. “We lost too many innocents. Lots of Death Eaters, the ones who tried to take a final stand after Voldemort fell. Bodies are still being cleared from the castle, so we don't even have a final count yet.” She hesitated, and then, rested a hand on his arm. “Your father was one of the ones we found on the grounds.”
Draco closed his eyes, jaw tightening. It should have been simple. A monster slain. The architect of his misery, the man who had raised him on cruelty and cowardice, who’d bartered his family for what? Status? Ideology? A man Draco had hated and feared and pitied in equal measure. There was no clean relief in it, only a great hollow space opening inside his ribs, a vacuum where his father’s expectations had always been.He had lived his whole life as Lucius Malfoy’s son. How was he supposed to stop now?
"He's dead," Draco said, as if testing the words.
"Yes." Tonks squeezed his wrist, grounding him. “But you—you lived. And so did Hermione. She fought like hell for you, you know. Almost blew us all up, when you went down. She’d make a damn good Auror if you ask me.” His cousin shook her head, admiringly. “You aren’t too shabby with that wand yourself, you know? Your mother would be proud.”
The memory rose, unbidden, as Draco lay back against the stiff white pillows.
He was back at Shell Cottage, where the sea gnawed endlessly at the rocks. Bill Weasley had found him sitting on the porch steps, collar turned up against the wind. The horizon was a bruised grey, indistinguishable from the sea.
“Malfoy.” Bill crouched in front of him, boots creaking against the old wood. “Tonks asked me to get something to you.”
From the pocket of his worn dragonhide coat, Bill withdrew a small brown-paper parcel and a folded letter, sealed in a hurried scrawl of wax. The package was particular enough in size, for Draco to know, even before the paper tore, what lay inside.
A wand. He ran a hand down the familiar whorls in the handle, the warm maple wood. His mother’s wand.
He opened the letter.
Draco,
Found this in the rubble while looking for salvage back at the house. We don’t get to choose the legacies our parents leave us, but sometimes we can decide which pieces of them we carry forward.
Give ‘em hell,
Nymphadora
In the fluorescent hospital light, Draco stared at his cousin. His voice scraped. “Ten days?”
“Ten days,” Tonks agreed, a sad little smile playing across her lips. “But on the bright side, well. Now, you have the rest of your life.”
*
Tonks had gone by the time Hermione returned, citing a need to check on her mother. Although she’d been markedly fragile since her husband’s death, Andromeda was still at Muriel’s, taking care of two-dozen young magical children who’d been smuggled under the Death Eaters’ noses, all of them orphans. It had given her a necessary sense of purpose, in the face of unspeakable loss.
Draco turned his head at the sound of the door jamb, just in time to see her slip inside the room. Her hair was bound back in a long braid and she wore a fresh set of clothing: a loose, gauzy cotton tunic and denims. Her sleeves were rolled up, arms clutching a pile of what looked like Muggle celebrity gossip magazines. The look of her—still drawn, dark circles under her eyes, yet moving with quick, restless purpose—made something seize in his chest.
She stopped when she saw him awake, nearly dropping the stack of magazines.
His voice was rough, but steady enough. “Are those for me?”
“What?” Her throat worked visibly before she spoke.
“Titanic Crush,” he read one of the covers dryly. “Leo Makes Our Hearts Sail?”
“Oh,” she replied, setting the stack aside. “No, these are just— I’ve been bringing them to Lavender. She usually likes Sugar and Mizz, but all I could find today was Teen Beat.”
Hermione lingered, uncertainly, at his bedside and he caught a hint of her shampoo— something jeweled and sweet and mouthwateringly tart. For the first time since he had first met her—eleven years old, all sharp elbows and an even sharper tongue—she didn’t immediately fill the silence.
"How is Brown?" He prompted.
“They’ve moved her to the infectious disease ward. The extent of her injuries…” She exhaled hard. “It was too much to treat. The only way she could have survived was to induce a full transformation.”
Draco shut his eyes briefly. He remembered the witch’s screams on the battlefield, the terrible tearing sound of the werewolf dragging her down. He remembered the blood, how bright it had been against stone.
Hermione went on, though her tone was bleak. “It’s not ideal, of course, especially with the social stigma against lycanthropes, but this way she at least has a future.”
Draco winced. He’d seen the fight one’s body endured against lycanthropy up close, and had brewed the foul-smelling Wolfsbane himself. He knew what “a future” could look like.
He asked the question he’d been too scared to broach with Tonks.
“Theo? Pansy?”
"Pansy's fine. She's been pestering the Mungo’s staff about you, keeps threatening to hex the night nurse." Hermione smoothed her tunic across her knees as though the act might steady her. “Theo’s alive,” she said at last. For a moment Draco thought he’d misheard her, potion-haze distorting sense. “That’s who— that’s how they were able to get a hold of werewolf venom in time to stabilize Lavender. It just so happened that a semi-conscious werewolf donor was being patched up downstairs.”
“He’s alright?”
“Apparently, he reached some sort of meditative state that allowed his body to shut down just enough to keep him alive. The healers said that if he hadn’t, he would have almost certainly bled out, lycanthropic regeneration or not.”
Draco blinked, slow, the words clawing their way through the fog of his thoughts. The boat. The North Sea. Theo Nott was also alive. He let out a breath he had not realized he’d been holding.
Hermione must have seen the realization cross his face, because her voice softened. “Whatever you did…it gave him enough time.”
“You said he was here.” Draco cleared his throat. He wished she would touch him. Why wasn’t she touching him? “Where is he now?”
“He’s being held at the Ministry, until he’s called up for his trial.” Her face darkened. “The Wizengamot’s been busy.”
“The Ministry? Actually doing something?”
“I’m as shocked as you are,” she said, dryly. “They couldn’t rouse themselves to fight, but they’re happy to condemn it all from the benches now that the tides have changed.”
He studied her face. She looked so different from the girl who had stood shaking in the snow under his aunt’s wand, the girl who had burned her parents’ house to the ground. Something in the way she carried herself now, taut and brittle as a bowstring.
“Hermione,” he said softly. “What happened?”
For a long moment she didn’t say anything at all. Sat there, fidgeting with the loose end of her braid, eyes fixed on some point just beyond him.
“There’s—” She took a deep breath, and met his eyes. Cedar against storm clouds. “There’s something you should know.”
“The bond.” He swallowed, the dryness in his throat suddenly unbearable. “It’s gone.”
“When Voldemort cast the Killing Curse—when it struck you— I didn’t think, I just reacted. What with the horcrux and the battle, I'd been using so much Dark Magic…I wasn’t stable.” She looked at him, beseechingly. “I have no idea why it worked. If it was the strain on my magic, or because of the ritual—” She exhaled hard, cheeks flushed— “Or if it was just… me.”
He stared at her. “You’re saying you stopped the Killing Curse? Isn’t that how Potter got himself into this mess in the first place?” Something occurred to him. “And how the fuck did Potter reincarnate, again?”
“Apparently, Snape had a hand in it. He told Voldemort that Harry was dead after the first attempt backfired, lied right to his face,” she answered. “As for the Killing Curse, there’s no way to technically stop it, but maybe…maybe I diverted it. Maybe the bond gave me a way to force my magic into you, like—” She hesitated, searching for language. “Like slipping something between you and the curse. Like a bulletproof vest. It’s a muggle invention; it doesn’t stop the bullet, but it changes the way it enters the body. It slows it, blunts it. There's still damage, and it hurts like hell, but wearing one can be the difference between life and death.”
“A vest,” he repeated, disbelieving.
“It’s not a perfect metaphor,” she admitted. “I poured everything into the bond to stop the curse and...” She looked down at their intertwined fingers. “It burnt out. That’s why you can’t feel me anymore.”
For a ghastly moment he thought she was about to apologize. The look on her face—eyes wide with something perilously close to guilt—was the same expression she’d worn after Tonks House, when she’d blamed herself for the loss of his mother. It was unbearable.
“Granger,” he rasped, voice thin as parchment. “You do realize I stood up to Voldemort fully expecting to die?”
She flinched, but he pressed on. “I wasn’t buying time. I wasn’t clinging to the faint hope of some third act deus-ex-machina. I’d already tallied the sum and come up short. And yet—” He gave a humorless little shrug that made his shoulder twinge— “Here I am. Breathing. Which is frankly absurd.”
Her eyes shone with unshed tears, the stubborn kind she refused to let fall.
“I thought of you,” he said, softer now. “When I was staring down his wand. It was all I wanted to carry with me.” The thought lodged in his chest, unspooling faster than he could censor. “And now, that’s the only thing that matters to me, Granger. We’re not on the run from a genocidal maniac, or faking our deaths and fighting our way out of traps anymore. It’s over.”
“It’s not over,” she said darkly. “The castle is in ruins. The Ministry is in chaos. Hundreds dead, maybe thousands displaced. Children without parents, families without homes. Azkaban is overflowing with suspected Death Eaters —everyone’s crying Imperius, of course— and wrongly imprisoned people like Xenophillius Lovegood, political hostages leftover from Runcorn’s sham government. The Wizengamot’s out for blood, no doubt overcompensating for their violent complacency. The survivors are traumatized; the wounded will need decades of medical intervention; the Intensive Care unit is hundreds over capacity—”
“You do know that they don't give out extra credit for saving the world, right? You've already gotten your O, let the bureaucrats do what they do best— obstruct!”
She went on, as though she hadn’t heard him. “There are laws to rewrite, institutions to rebuild. The very corrupt press is already looking to gain the public’s loyalty back. Zero talk of reparations in sight, much less systemic change. There’s no way to ensure anyone will get a proper trial— much less a qualified examiner so I can sit my N.E.W.T.s—”
“Hermione,” he interrupted, straining to sit up straight. “Listen to me when I say this— my stab at espionage? The bank heist and the dragon? My deeply misguided sacrificial beheading of that great bloody snake? Those were isolated events. A blip in my existence, and now, my brief career in public histrionics is over. I’m not to be connected to any heroics nor redemptive measures henceforth.”
“Hate to break it to you, Draco,” she said wryly. “But you have a reputation to uphold. They’re calling you The Blade of Slytherin.”
“What?”
“The Viper Slayer.” She ticked monikers off on her fingers. “The False Serpent. The Silver Lion. The Pale Knight—”
“The Pale Knight!?”
“That snake was a rather overt symbol of Voldemort’s reign of terror. And you killed it. Which means to the rest of the wizarding world, you’re not just Draco Malfoy anymore. You’re—”
He groaned. “Don’t say it.”
“—a war hero.”
“If that means I’m going to be expected to do something for the rest of my sorry existence," he said, disgusted. “I’ll pass. I'm going back to my life of aristocracy, thank you very much. Breakfast in bed, monogrammed linens, and a cheeky cordial at noon. You should try it, Granger. You’ve already done more for this war than most members of our parliament. Take a break.”
His thumb stroked idly along her knuckles where their hands were joined. He hadn’t noticed he was doing it.
“As soon as I’m better, I’ll take you to France and we can stay at the chateau. Visit some quaint little vineyard. I’ll correct your pronunciation and fuss over the wine. You’ll lay in the sun in some unreasonably revealing Muggle swimwear. Or Greece, and substitute ruins and olive groves. We can visit the Temple at Delphi, query the Oracle for dramatic irony’s sake.” He softened, voice edged with something perilously close to hope. “I know acts of selfishness are not part of your repertoire, but they’re rather a specialty of mine. Let me be the one to ask nothing of you but the pleasure of your company.”
She sat beside him, not wide-eyed but intent, weighing him the way she always did—like she was measuring his words against the world and finding them wanting. And still, Draco Malfoy felt the treacherous pull in his chest, the need for her to believe him anyway. Believe not just in the sheer absurdity of their survival, but in the even more ludicrous future he was reckless enough to imagine with her by his side.
“You want to…run away to France?” She said a little hesitantly, rolling the idea around in her mind.
The sterile glow of the hospital charms did her no justice, but even under their flat, clinical light, her skin held a quiet radiance of its own. A dusting of freckles on her cheekbones. He thought of tracing them, one by one, with the tip of his finger until he learned her like a map. The thought startled him with its simple intimacy.
“Or Greece. Or Spain. Or Egypt, I’ve always wanted to see—”
She leaned down and pressed her lips to his. A soft, lingering kiss.
“— the Pyramids,” he finished belatedly, a little dazed. He blamed the pain potions. “Just a week.” She smiled against his mouth. “Two at most.”
“Budge up, then,” she whispered, moving to join him.
Ignoring the pull in his ribs, Draco shifted, opening his arms. Hermione’s braid brushed his jaw as she settled closer. He breathed in the sweet scent of her shampoo, marveling at how he’d gotten there, awash in the wonderous, ordinary feel of her body against his in a cramped hospital bed.
End of Part II