Chapter Text
“Happy early birthday, you old sod.” Pansy hugged her so fiercely she thought she heard her ribs crack.
“I’m 22, not dead!” Hermione laughed as Pansy pulled back to look her over like a mother hen. Her hands tilted her head to and fro, checking for wounds that had long since healed, and she circled her like a hawk.
“I’ve seen you wear this twice already. I’ll send a new batch your way – something end-of-summer. A couple more linen button downs, maybe some long skirts,” Pansy frowned, “You’ll need an entirely new wardrobe for autumn.”
“Hey!” Ginny cried from the couch, “You hardly ever make me clothes!”
“Yes, well, you hardly ever ask, and neither does Blaise. Besides,” she added with an appraising look at Hermione’s figure, “Draco enjoys playing dress-up with her.”
Ginny muttered something that sounded a bit like ‘ew, gross,’ but Hermione just ignored her. They’d been busy the last week and a half, poking around the nursery and lazing about the house. It was still balmy here, the perfect temperature to lay out by the pool all day or to watch Ginny and Blaise pass a volleyball back and forth in the court he’d recently installed past the patio. Lydia was able to convince him – finally – that Ginny could do with a bit of exercise to boost her mood, all without hurting Vincenzo in any way. They’d taken to tossing the ball back and forth every night between dinner and dessert while Hermione read the books she requested Draco send from the Manor.
She was… growing restless. And, apparently, it was obvious.
“Are you ready for tomorrow?” She and Pansy leisurely wandered toward the couch Ginny favored, “Theo said you two are off to Lake Como. How romantic.”
Hermioned beamed with excitement, “It’s just for the day, but I asked for a change of scenery, and Draco’s taken care of everything with Blaise and the Ministry here.”
“At least Paolo’s good for something,” Ginny leaned forward to accept Pansy’s kiss on the cheek, “Merlin knows he can hardly manage the political corruption.”
“That’s probably Draco’s fault, Gin,” Hermione shook her head, but her anger didn’t have any of its usual bite. There were bigger things to worry about than Draco’s hand in destabilizing Magical Europe – namely ensuring human rights and genocidal pogroms stopped plaguing Britain – and she knew he would eventually rectify the situation, “He wouldn’t let me leave any other way.”
Pansy’s eyes lit up, “He managed to have Bellagio shut down for the day? Good gods, the Malfoy name really does make anything possible.”
“Shut down? What’d he do – kick everyone out?” Ginny and Pansy were talking overtop her now, and she just let it happen. There was far too much energy bouncing around the space for her liking, and she needed a breather anyhow.
Ginny decided that she wanted to see a real volleyball match earlier in the day – or at least as good of one as she could manage without playing it herself. That meant forcing Hermione to take her place while Blaise pelted her with spike after spike. Ginny appeared to relish the chance to shout directions at the two of them, but Hermione thought the whole thing was unfair.
She hated feeling like her arms and legs were wet noodles.
“Relax,” she eventually snapped, “It’s a wizarding town and the Ministry’s worked out something with the locals. There won’t be any other tourists, and everyone’s agreed to a vow of secrecy already.”
“They’re not going to obliviate everyone? That’d save a hell of a lot of time and manpower.” Pansy said.
“I asked him not to.” Hermione swallowed bitterly at the thought of asking so many people for parts of their mind just so she could have a bit of freedom. So she could go on a date for her birthday.
Ginny squeezed her hand once, and Pansy let the topic drop.
“Well, birthday girl, I prepared something special for you,” A smirk pulled at the corners of Pansy’s carefully contoured cheeks, “It’s been so long since we talked about it, but a little birdie told me you’re back to canoodling, so…”
With a flick of her wand, the small package she’d been holding grew in size until it was about the length of her forearm. She recognized the dark satin covering its lid, like so many of the boxes she stuffed to the brim with Pansy’s creations, but the fine white paper that fluttered as she lifted one fold gave her pause.
Hermione looked at Pansy with wide eyes. The Slytherin merely rubbed her hands together like a cartoonish villain, excitement barely contained, “Go on – open it!” She squealed.
The paper fell away from her shaking fingertips.
“Holy fuck, Minny,” Gin gasped, “You’re gonna kill him.”
~
Dinner was a raucous affair with Pansy and Theo added to the mix. Draco was still dealing with something Theo refused to talk about, but Hermione felt grateful that he’d let her have his – their – friends for her pre-birthday dinner while he saved face in front of Bellatrix. It hurt not having him here, like someone dangling a pumpkin pastie just out of reach, but that would all change tomorrow.
Tonight. When he came back after a long day, hopefully bloodless, and let him cuddle into her like she was a teddy bear while he fell asleep.
Tomorrow, Hermione was going to wake as early as he could bear so they could spend all day in the wizarding village of Bellagio and the night at a little house on the lake his mother bequeathed him for his birthday a few years ago. They would be all alone, not a house elf in sight, and no shrieking Weasley to complain about the state she hoped Draco would leave her in when he returned her to Blaise and Ginny the morning after.
Until then… she was going to get drunk. Good and proper – a full bottle just for her, aged so delicately that Blaise refused to tell her the price.
“Have you given any more thought to your choice in godparents, Ginevra?” Theo whined when Quince and another elf vanished their final course, “Draco doesn’t deserve him!”
“And you do?” Ginny scoffed, “I’m giving him to Hermione. Draco just… happens to be there!”
“That’s my point exactly! Godparents don’t have to be bloody couples or anything! Give him to Granger and I, and I swear to you –”
Pansy rounded on him, “Excuse me? What am I, chopped dungbeetles?”
“N-no, my love,” Theo cowered in his seat after she hit the back of his head, “I just… it’s nothing.”
Hermione laughed at the exchange, “You and Pansy can have our firstborn if it’s so important to you, Theo.”
“You and that git talking about babies already? My, my, my he’s going to love giving you your birthday gift.” Theo waggled his eyebrows, already recovered from his fiance’s beating, while the rest of the table erupted.
“What if he walked in and heard you!”
“You promised to keep your mouth shut this time!”
“Bloody hell, you fucking dumbarse!”
“Watch your gods-damn language around my baby!”
They were all far too drunk for this – Blaise included, which was a sight in and of itself – and barely managed to make it outside where her gifts were waiting. Giftboxes wrapped in red in gold from Ginny in the hopes they might offset the green and silver Pansy and Theo brought sat on a low table by the pool.
She tore through the wrapping paper, wine glass in hand, and felt that now was as good a time as any to cry tears of joy. To be loved is to be known, after all.
Blaise’s gift wasn’t tangible, but a signed promise that he would teach her how to make her own wine and help her start her own cellar at the Manor once she returned home.
Ginny gave her a picture album filled with snapshots of their Hogwarts years – just the two of them – that she’d kept in her dorm room at Hogwarts. There were pictures of them in Hogsmeade playing in the snow, at the Burrow de-gnoming the garden, and her favorite, one of them tangled in a hug on the shores of the Black Lake when they’d snuck out during her fifth year. The last time she’d seen any of these, she was at the Burrow for Bill and Fleur’s wedding four years ago. Four.
“Blaise was good enough to grab my trunk before the kidnapping,” she joked while Blaise rolled his eyes, “I charmed it to never run out of pages, so we can add to it forever.”
Pansy had already given her her real gift, but she also offered her a little box of clothing made of the most gorgeous Gryffindor red. She winked conspiratorially, “What Draco doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”
And to top it all off, Theo had given her four books on South American runic systems, a fifth about Wizarding philosophy, and a sixth about the history of symbiotic coexistence between magical and Muggle Mayans – a subject she had absolutely zero knowledge of.
He’d given her books about everything she’d used to wipe the floor with him during their first ever argument… conversation… like it’d just happened yesterday instead of three months ago.
Hermione only ever felt this understood with him, and now… she had them. She had a band of snakes and the lioness that she’d loved and grieved and loved some more here for her on her birthday.
The tears started welling up not long after, “I love celebrating birthdays. Did – did anyone know that?”
“I know, Minny. I’ve missed getting woken up early to blow out candles before breakfast,” Ginny brushed a hand along the side of her face, “We have four birthdays to make up for, you know. We can start after your little holiday.”
She curled into Ginny before it got any worse, entire years worth of frustration and anxiety washing over her, “I didn’t even think about it the last two years. Luna was… she was the only one who remembered. And – and Molly and Arthur. Oh gods, I –”
She cut herself off with a sob, flashes of spiky black hair and bright green eyes, splotchy red skin and flaming red locks flashing behind her eyelids. One image after the next, like a film reel running double frames per minute. They just wouldn’t stop coming
“Hermione,” Pansy’s hands started rubbing her back in soothing circles, “Do you want to talk about it? The boys can leave.”
“N-no, it’s fine,” she took a few deep breaths to settle herself, wedged between Ginny and Pansy while she tried to find the words, “I’ve never told anyone before.”
She looked at Ginny for a moment, less wary than she thought she ought to be, but hyper-aware that she’d be talking about her brother in front of people who’d grown up bullying them. Hermione waited for her to say something, maybe ask her to tell her in private first. Anything.
Ginny smiled faintly and nodded, and the dam broke.
“It started after the Battle of Hogwarts, once we’d destroyed all the Horcruxes and no one knew exactly what we were supposed to be doing,” she laughed bitterly, remembering the silence and smoke that hovered between Harry and Voldemort. The shock between them when they realized that some magic, far more ancient than even Dumbledore could’ve predicted, prevented them from killing each other, “I think what really did it was when Harry tried to cast the Avada and it just… did nothing.”
Ginny sucked in a breath, “He cast the killing curse? Harry?”
“I didn’t believe it at first either, but he just kept going. And the way Voldemort looked at him… he looked happy. I’ve never seen something so awful, so disgusting. He let Harry cast it five times before he tried it himself,” Hermione shivered at the memory of hearing the incantation in her best friend’s lips, and the feral look in his eyes while he said it, “When it didn’t work, he got too caught up in anger and killed a Fourth Year.”
“Voldemort?” Ginny frowned, clearly unsurprised.
Blaise, Theo, and Pansy were quiet, fully aware of what had really happened that day.
“No.”
“Harry?”
Hermione swallowed the bile she successfully forced down every day afterwards, every night until they’d decided they’d had enough rose in her throat. She hadn’t thought about it in so long, what with Draco occupying her time and all. Out of sight, out of mind. Hermione hadn’t let herself think about that day or the ones that followed.
She tried to talk to them, tried to understand. And then she rationalized when they exploded at her for being weak. A 14 year old was dead and she was weak for wanting to talk about it.
“Ron,” She squeezed her eyes shut, “I’m so sorry, Ginny.”
Her friend stilled, and, just like all the other times when she’d scared Ginny within an inch of her life telling her things she didn’t need to hear, Hermione thought about the baby.
“Is that why you haven’t talked about him? Either of them?” Ginny’s voice was surprisingly strong, and she hadn’t let go, “I want to know, Hermione.”
“He – Ron – told us back at Grimmauld that he wanted to try. If Harry couldn’t, maybe he could, you know? That was rational. It was smart. If I thought of it first, I would’ve tried, too. He just – just didn’t land the spell right. Ron was never good with his aim, and he killed Dennis Creevy instead. It all happened so fast. The professors and your parents were pulling us out of there before anything else happened and they left him. It was my fault they blew up on me.”
“There’s nothing you could’ve done to –”
“I went back for his body that night. McGonagall tried to get to him before we apparated but Kingsley stopped her, and Luna wanted to but she was hit with something and couldn’t walk for days after, and I just couldn’t handle the thought of him being there. Being dead at the feet of someone like Dolohov or Bellatrix.”
“The grounds were crawling with Death Eaters for weeks after. How the hell did you manage that same day?” Theo asked.
“Harry has one of the Deathly Hallows, his invisibility cloak. I snuck back in through Hogsmeade and found him exactly where he fell. No one even cared. The fact that Greyback hadn’t got to him… I don’t regret it.”
The Slytherins looked at her, rightfully confused. There was nothing wrong. To people whose entire moral code centered on the belief that any action, any crime was alright so long as their own – their families, friends, and loved ones – were kept safe, there wasn’t anything wrong.
“He thought you betrayed him,” Ginny huffed, already imagining what her brother’s temper would’ve unleashed on someone who had left him to bring back the only thing that would remind him of his mistakes, “And Harry let him hurt you.”
Hermione’s throat closed for a moment.
“It was a lot of yelling, for sure. But,” Hermione sighed, “I don’t actually know what made everyone else take a step back. It started with Dennis, but it became more than that. I don’t think Ron ever really came to terms with what he did. I wanted to help him – oh, I don’t know – let it out and mourn, but he refused to be anything other than stoic about it. He and Harry stopped bringing me with them on scouting missions, Kingsley didn’t tell me about Order meetings, and I was always the last one to leave every safehouse.” She sounded spiteful now, but it was all coming together.
“You know – I fucking tried to be around, to help them like I always did. But they replaced me with Anthony Goldstein. Sometimes Harry would come with me when Kingsely sent me out to forage for our potions stores, but even that stopped by Halloween last year. Even after all the Chosen One bullshit was over, everyone looked to Harry like he was the second coming of Jesus Christ. Like he was a god. He could’ve told everyone I’d gone batty like Bellatrix, and they probably would’ve believed him. Gods, but the worst was one of the nights Luna was out with Flitwick searching for a new safehouse to keep the younger Muggleborns, and Ron came in and –”
It was freezing in her room, warming charms long worn off. Her blanket was threadbare as it was, so there was no reason for it to be pooled at her feet. Hermione never kicked her blankets off, even when she was sweating through the mattress.
The hand caressing the back of her left calf must’ve done it. His breath smelled like Firewhiskey and vomit, and she knew that this wasn’t right. Why would she dream of something like this? A nameless man – a ginger. He sounded like –
“Come on, Mione. It’s me.”
“ – it wasn’t anything serious. He was so drunk that he’d fallen asleep by the time I pushed him off me.” She shrugged, suddenly uncomfortable with the tightness around her. Ginny’s arms, the flat line of her lips that made her look like she was cut from stone. Blaise and Theo sat rigidly across from them, and Pansy was… staring off somewhere behind her with a grim face.
Hermione turned around and saw Draco standing at the open patio doors, still as a statue and white-knuckled grip on a glass of freshly-poured scotch. Not a drop of blood on his pristine white button down and navy slacks.
She glanced at him nervously, waiting for his eyes to flatten like they always did when he was about to lash out. The veins in his neck were popping in anger, rippling with each breath he took. Maybe he would yell. At her. At Ron. At someone.
Instead, his eyes softened, and he strolled to the couch she sat at, “Did he ever try that again, baby?”
Hermione shook her head, suddenly self-conscious about her splotchy face and the box from Pansy she could just make out behind him on a table inside.
“Happy birthday, Minny,” she jolted at the sound of Ginny’s voice, “I – we can talk about this again if you want. He’s dead to me, you know. They both are. Okay?”
She hugged everyone goodnight, the name Ronald Weasley already a memory. She felt lighter, but just barely. These days, she always felt like she could fly. Ron and Harry weren’t her concern right now. Or ever again.
“Draco,” she let him wipe at the last of the tears clinging to her lashes, “I’m sorry I never told you. I forgot – don’t think about it, honestly.”
“I know.” He said simply, and she couldn’t help but worry at how calm he looked, how easily his hands slid across her waist as he tucked an arm under her knees, “Are you still up for going out tomorrow?”
“Yes, Draco. You promised.”
He helped her with her bath that night, extra bubbles and a new lotion that made the wearer smell like her lover’s amortentia. Draco pressed his nose against the hollow of her throat that night while they laid in bed, muttering about the oranges from her childhood shampoo, the cinnamon she liked to add atop her coffee and black tea, the air in the rose garden, and the special ink she’d taken to using at the Manor.
She wasn’t sure she’d ever been at a loss for words like this.
Tomorrow couldn’t come soon enough.
~
“You look gorgeous in this one, pet.” Draco tied the dress’s straps into a bow at the base of her neck, smiling as she smoothed her hands excitedly over the peach-colored fabric.
“That’s what you said about the last three,” she watched him in the mirror, only slightly flustered at the sight of the two shop attendants whispering about them outside the changing area, “Which one is your favorite? Be honest.”
Draco cocked his head, “What does it matter? We’re buying all of them anyway.”
“All of them – Draco! This is only the first shop!” She fingered the tagless dress. Tagless. No plastic sticking through the fabric, not even through a loop of string sewn into the dress, leaving her with no way to tell the price. No brand. Just buttery soft fabric and racks upon racks of clothes that positively screamed of a tax bracket far above what she was used to.
“Thinking about the other shops you want to spend my money in, already?” Draco teased, “How Malfoy of you, baby.”
“I’m just thinking of the books you promised me. What if I buy something old and rare and it costs you thousands of galleons? I feel bad seeing you spend so much on me in a single day.” Hermione started pulling at the ends of her hair, eyes darting to the pile of dresses she had yet to try on.
Draco didn’t say anything to her, just sighed and waved the attendants over, “Questi tre e quello che indossa. Fai modificare il resto in base alle sue misure e spediscilo a casa.”
The girls giggled and nodded, whisking the piles off to the back. One of them, a gorgeous, modelesque girl with teeth far too white to be natural, fluttered her eyelashes Draco’s way and replied in Italian after her friend turned the corner. Hermione swallowed nervously as she stood between them, shorter and noticeably out of her depth in the space. The woman carried herself (almost) as well as Pansy, and managed to make her black slacks and sleeveless top look like a couture statement piece straight off the runway.
Draco cut her off mid-sentence, and her eyes cut toward Draco’s hands where they sat on her waist once before she gulped and scurried off. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that whatever he said was a threat.
“What?” Draco shrugged, “Unless I’m mistaken, her vision was decent enough to notice us together. Together together. It’s her fault she thought it would be smart to say something to a man who’s so obviously in love.” He brushed their lips together as he spoke, voice low and warm against her skin.
Hermione let him press close against her, ignoring his hand creeping up her ribcage until the unprofessional attendant cleared her throat. She refused to look either of them in the eye for longer than a few seconds, and spoke exclusively in English as she ushered them out of the dressing room and toward the front where a pile of boxes stacked neatly in a bag embossed with the boutique’s logo.
Draco led her outside with a hand firmly on her waist before she could ask any more questions, and she decided to let the matter drop.
For the most part.
“I don’t need that shawl, Draco,” she said when they walked past the next storefront.
“Irrelevant,” he waved her off as the shop keeper ran about inside to search for the appropriate packaging, “You looked at it far too long to convince me otherwise.”
The next street was even worse, “There are plenty of eagle-feather quills at the Manor. You don’t have to buy a hand-carved set just for me.”
“Quite right, pet. I’ll buy a matching one for myself while we’re here.”
She was at her wit’s end by the time they sat down for a late lunch, but he was completely unfazed – content, even.. Draco had spent what could only amount to at least a thousand galleons worth of clothing and another thousand worth of knick knacks for the Manor, perfume, and a ridiculously tall pair of black stilettos she tried on as a joke after she caught him staring at them intently.
She only realized her mistake when she popped her foot in the mirror to see red bottoms and Draco’s hungry face staring back at her.
“Hermione, darling,” Draco cleared his throat after the waiter set a vintage bottle between them, “May I ask why you’re so worried about money?”
She blinked, unsure how to answer such a straightforward question, “It’s considered gauche to talk so flippantly about financial matters.”
“Between friends with different types of vaults at Gringotts, perhaps, but not when you and I are talking about my money,” he slid his hand up her arm across the table, eyes boring into hers with so much heat it felt obscene, “Seeing you try to convince me not to spend it only make me want to do it more.”
“But I already have so many clothes, Draco, and everything I could ever want is already at home. Being with you today is all I wanted for my birthday. I don’t want you to feel like you need to impress me with something as trivial as your galleons. You… you know that, right?” She smiled tightly, trying not to let everyone seated at the surrounding tables clearly listening in get to her.
She wasn’t a gold digger – hell, she never even had a chance to become one – and she didn’t think for a second that Draco thought she was either, but she couldn’t help but feel guilty. They could’ve spent all day sitting at a cafe, watching the locals get into spats or drinking their way through carafes of coffee before moving on to stronger stuff, and she wouldn’t have had any less fun being with him. Splashing out on a birthday shopping spree wasn’t something she needed to know she was loved.
He was all she wanted. Free from his duties, sitting with her in public during the day instead of clinging to her at night in a darkened room while she felt the stress in his shoulders and smelled the shadow of blood.
She met his eyes again, and this time the soft smile on his lips made her breath hitch, “If I thought you were the kind of girl to care about money, I probably wouldn’t have given you a second look when we were kids.”
“Oh?”
“You used to turn your nose up at me,” Draco cleared his throat, “I liked it. It… was a new feeling – not being deferred to. My interest turned intense before I could even put a name to the way my heart sped up whenever I heard someone say your name.”
“Even at 11 years old you thought about putting me in my place?” She teased him, and felt her stomach flip at the wide-eyed, anxious look he gave her.
“No! Baby, I would never –”
“Shh, I know. Not like that,” Hermione’s voice dropped to a whisper as she leaned across the table, “But you know I don’t mind when you do, daddy.”
She lifted her cocktail straw to her lips and sucked at it suggestively, shivering as the cold, sugary drink hit her tongue. Draco hid his reaction well, but his hand flexing against the tabletop told her that he wasn’t all too pleased with her, “Careful, pet,” he raised an eyebrow and motioned for the waiter, “Being a brat all of a sudden?”
Memories of her on her back, clenching around his fingers while she begged for forgiveness flashed to the front of her mind. Hermione quite liked the consequences of her behavior when she played naughty. She’d always responded well to discipline, even more so when it was accompanied by a lesson to really reinforce whatever correction she was given.
It was why she hoped pushing Draco today, little by little, would give her the results she wanted.
“You said I could do anything I wanted today.” She pouted, bottom lip pushed out like a toddler refusing their time-out.
He looked at her with an amused expression “And you decided to be brat. I suppose I ought to feel honored.”
“Don’t you like it when I’m like this?”
“I like you.”
“I know – we’ve been over that a couple hundred times already,” She giggled as he pulled the drink from her hand and pulled her out onto the busy street, “But don’t you like when I –”
“Make my life difficult, ignore everything I say, push all my buttons, and make me so frustrated I could scream?” He rolled his eyes even as he fought a grin that threatened to ruin the stoic persona he’d cultivated for the whispering Italians all day, “Honestly… I fear I quite enjoy seeing you act out.”
“Hmph. Good,” she steeled herself against the growing cacophony of street vendors and children preparing for a festival Draco’s strong arming with the Italian government had undoubtedly derailed. His thumb rubbed the back of their intertwined hands as she reached up to brush his silvery-white hair off his forehead, “I-I’m glad.”
“Hermione?” He asked, no doubt wary of her sudden seriousness.
“Remember the promise you made about my birthday? The one where you said we would stay in town for the whole day, even if one of us got super tired or we drank too much?”
“Of course, pet. We’re making the most of your birthday. We’ll relax at home after dinner, but if you want to stay out later we can –”
“No.”
“... No?”
“No,” the refusal was firm, “I don’t want to relax after dinner.”
Draco’s mouth fell to a straight line as she floundered awkwardly on the busy street.
“I’ve been thinking about it for a while now, but there never seemed to be a good time. You told me that when I knew for sure – beyond a shadow of a doubt – that I should tell you, and only – only if I knew I was ready to be yours completely.”
“Hermione.”
She pressed herself against the hard panes of his chest and craned her neck to look up at him. His eyes were blazing, and she couldn’t help but feel like she was about to ruin his day. Making him wait like this was… well…
He would give it to her like the brat she was later, and only more so now that she was intentionally denying him.
“I don’t know when it started, and it doesn’t make any sense, but I can’t imagine living without you. You complete me, Draco Malfoy. I didn’t know anything about truly living until you showed me what it meant to be loved. To be cherished and needed like I’m your reason for living.”
Time seemed to slow around them – girls in bright dresses running past slowed to a blur of color and laughter fading from her ears until only the most pleasant ringing remained. He looked at her with a rawness that took her breath away.
“I know I’m not exactly what you planned for,” he started, “and what I feel for you isn’t – it’s not natural. You are the sun in my universe, Hermione. I can’t exist without you.”
“So you’ve said,” she let out a laugh at the way his arms tightened around her suddenly, “My own Mr. Darcy and Gilbert Blythe. I wouldn’t change you for the entire world, you know – even if you don’t know who either of those men are.”
They looked at each other for what could’ve been a moment in or the entire span of time itself. Of all the regrets in her life, allowing Draco to bring them together without making any meaningful attempt to stop him wasn’t one of them.
“I love you.”