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Dear Hermione,
I know you must be shocked to hear from me, and for me to address this letter using your first name no less, but considering how much I hope you will read this letter I thought giving you a small part of the respect I’ve owed you the last 10 years by addressing you properly was the best way to start. If you do not read this, please know I understand completely; I do not deserve even that much from you, but I had to try.
In truth, Hermione, this is the (approximately) hundredth draft of this letter, and while it may not be the best one, I am simply done being too much of a coward to actually send it. I am writing, first and foremost, to apologize to you. I owe you more apologies, I think, than any one person or dozen people should ever have need to make in a lifetime, and while I know that words on parchment may not mean much, know that I write this with every sincerity and no agenda of my own beyond it being what is right, what is true, and long, so very long overdue.
To say, ‘I’m sorry’ without context, though, feels inadequate because anyone can say that, can’t they? The words need to have meaning, and for that I believe explaining some things, while they might be painful, is necessary.
Every moment of pain I ever caused you, from a sneer of condescension to the cruel words, the vitriol that I allowed out of my mouth directed at you are genuinely the things I regret most in my life, and your face reflecting that pain haunts me. First, it is important you know that each and every cruel word I uttered toward you was a lie and even at the time, I knew it. You already know this, most likely, but I was born and brought up to believe those lies.
My father taught me from my earliest memories, often and without any room for doubt, that muggles and muggleborns were less than nothing and that purebloods were superior to everyone, Malfoys the most superior of all. I was told through my entire childhood that muggleborns stole their magic, that their blood was literally dirty and that I was to be held to those beliefs or be punished severely. I had never met a muggleborn witch or wizard before we started at Hogwarts, if you can believe that… I honestly look back at my childhood, at the sting of my father’s words and hands, and am baffled and disgusted…
It is no excuse for me to say, ‘I did not know any better’, despite it being true for so long; there is no excuse at all for how I treated you and I will never forgive myself… but I thought perhaps you’d want to know not only how deeply I regret it but that I owe you so, so much, Hermione. It is because of the privilege of knowing you - despite how I treated you I always found every moment with you to be a privilege - that I was able to un-learn the hate instilled in me. You taught me so much just by being you, and instead of appreciating you at the time, it made me furious and made me lash out at you that much more, especially in the early years. That sounds crazy as I read it back, but I will try to explain.
Everything I was taught about the inferiority of muggleborns was blown to pieces by you at every turn… When you first entered the train car our first trip up to Hogwarts first year, you were looking for Longbottom’s toad. You were a witch I didn’t recognize, which should have tipped me off, but it wasn’t until after you’d left the car and my friends were teasing me mercilessly about how I obviously thought you so pretty that someone mentioned you were muggleborn. I had just seen a pretty girl on a train and thought, excitedly, that maybe you’d be sorted into my House and I could know you - according to Blaise I had a ‘dopey-arse look on my pale-arse face’ after you left, you see.
I was furious at myself and embarrassed for the teasing - I wasn’t used to being teased and didn’t take to it well - the irony, I know… It made me angry at you; in my 11 year old logic, you were somehow at fault for ‘making me’ like you and were therefore ‘to blame’ for the fact that I was being teased. Then that feeling just… exploded. I couldn’t beat you in any class, no matter how hard I revised I was always number two and was punished for it at the end of each term by my father - that I, a Malfoy and pureblood, couldn’t beat the (insert that horrid word beginning with M here) made me a disappointment to the family, to him. He would send me back each time telling me to make sure I put you in your place, if you can imagine that. After all, according to what I’d been taught, you were not supposed to be so brilliant, so talented, so naturally gifted in your magic… it was a trick, it was a ‘wrong’ and I was the ‘wronged’ party…
That’s what my brain would be insisting to me every time I was awful to you - that you deserved it. But I knew you never did, and would often find myself casting silencing charms in bed at night so no one would hear me when I cried over my shame for being that person to you. While at first it may have come from a place of confusion - I couldn’t understand how my father, whom I trusted, could be right while someone like you existed in the world - it stopped being that rather quickly. I had such a crush on you the whole damn time, you know, which made it worse…
I was so jealous of Potter and Weasel for getting to be near you, for being on the receiving end of your smiles and laughter and bravery and loyalty… Jealousy of those two made me angry - just the concept of not getting everything I wanted infuriated me at that age, I was such an entitled prat as you know - but them getting what I wanted? That just felt ludicrous, even conceptually; that wanting something I could not have anyway should make me hate those that CAN have it, well… that was yet another bit of idiotic rationalization on my part.
It made me furious that I couldn’t shake off my feelings, knowing that if my father found out I’d be black and blue over it. I was taught that feelings for a girl like you made me wrong and sick and disappointing and a failure… and it made me want to lash out at you that much more, and I am so terribly sorry.
I was furious that you would put yourself in danger for Potter and Weasel, that they took advantage of your brilliant mind, that you had feelings for Weasel, oh that killed me… it killed me nearly as much as seeing you dancing with Krum and him fishing you out of the freezing lake… but I had no right to those feelings and no right to treat you with anything but respect. Every time I hurt you I hated myself a little more and a little more until my misery became all your fault and Hermione… I am so, so, so sorry. For being a bully and a prat and an idiot and… all of it. For failing you.
I know, I am rambling; now you see why I have gone through so many drafts, this is the abridged edition! (I wanted to say ‘condensed version’ but I thought using more of a literary reference might make you laugh… was I right?)
Every time you bested me, every time you proved one of my father’s insane ideas wrong, I questioned everything more and more… I stopped going home for breaks because I couldn’t look at my father without disgust and getting a beating for it; my mother never believed any of it in the first place but felt helpless to mediate; I learned that later. At the time I thought she felt as he did and it was lonely and confusing. The final time I went home voluntarily was after Yule of Fourth year; by then, every time I saw my father he would ask about you, whether you were still beating me and making me an embarrassment to the family. (He was on the Board of Governors so he saw the grade rankings, you see.)
I don’t know if you remember this, but a week before Halloween of that year, you fell on the front steps and scraped your knee pretty badly, and I just stood there, staring at you. You were already upset and hurt but me staring incredulously made you think I was laughing at you somehow, and you cried as you ran off. I wasn’t laughing, Hermione…
I was staring at the blood seeping from your knee and feeling everything my father ever said crumbling into a heap of lying bullshit rubble around me; you bleed the same blood I do, and seeing that fact up close tore my heart out. I wanted to apologize right then but didn’t know how, I was so ashamed. So I never approached you, though I did try to stay away, where I couldn’t hurt you… I went home at Christmas that year, after the Yule Ball, and confronted my father over ALL of it - the lies, the prejudice, how fucking wrong he was and couldn’t he see that?
My mother had to stun and then Obliviate my father mid-beating and told him I’d decided to remain at school after all… otherwise he might have genuinely killed me; as it was I spent a week with Madam Pomfry afterwards. Mother told me something that was more painful than the beating I had just taken, though, by far… she told me I had to keep being awful, pretend I still believed my father’s lies, for your safety of all things. I guess all the times I complained about you in my letters to her were more transparent to a mother than I’d thought and she knew how I felt about you, how I truly felt.
I was shocked and horrified by her instructions but she explained that my father got reports about me from the parents of other Slytherins, Vincent Crabbe Sr. and Claudius Flint and others… The man was having my ideology and behavior monitored, as were all his friends about their own children. If I was kind to you, it would put you in genuine danger.
That was the night I found out my mother saw things as they are, not like my father… and that she thought you rather amazing and admired you very much, so I believed her when she said that if I wanted to keep you safe, I’d stay away from you, no matter how pretty you looked at Yule or how desperately I regretted every word I’d ever said to you, I simply had to be smart about it. She even suggested using a codeword if I wanted to write home about you from then on; I was speechless.
Then… my life fell apart. The Dark Lord’s return was my father’s dream back then, and our house became the headquarters of the worst kind of evil. I honed my Occlumency so that they wouldn’t find you in my head… my feelings were strong and messy and my mother and Uncle Severus were adamant in their insistence I hide you away in my head so deeply that when that evil psychopath tore into my mind - which he did, so many, many times - he wouldn’t find you.
When you were cursed at the Department of Mysteries that night, my father bragged to me, taunted me about it, but thanks to Severus and my mother’s lessons, he found he couldn’t get a reaction about it and began to believe I’d come back ‘into the fold’ despite his supposed failure there… I can feel bile rise in my throat every time I remember him telling me he was proud of me for that, for agreeing with him about witches like you… because I didn’t agree, Hermione, I promise. I hated my father as he was then, and I hated the person he was trying to turn me into… someone with a cold heart and blackened soul and I simply could not do it. I could not hate you…
Hermione, I never, ever hated YOU, especially never you. You have no reason to believe it and I am not asking for anything here, truly… My mind healer assures me this is not selfish, writing all this to you, because it is your choice whether to read it, yet it feels selfish… selfish to inflict myself on you, or try to justify the unjustifiable. Yet you know me… I am selfish, I admit that freely. So… here I sit, hand-cramping and stomach roiling, writing all this. Merlin only knows what draft this is, I’ve lost count… but here goes:
The thing I am most sorry for, more than every insult and slight combined times a thousand, is what happened to you in my home. I’ve often wished, selfishly of course, to show you my memory of that night so you could know what I am about to share with you… I know it looked like I stood there doing nothing, uncaring, as you were tortured on my drawing room floor… and I know you have no reason to believe this, but I am going to tell you anyway.
I’ve always wondered, actually, if you already know this… though I doubt it. I know all too well what the pain of the Cruciatus curse feels like so I can’t imagine you noticed anything else. It is all-encompassing.
I couldn’t outright save you that night because it would have resulted in my mother’s swift torture, rape and perhaps even death as punishment to me… likely followed by own. But I could do something. I had to do something.
The reason I know you use Occlumency too, Hermione, is because while my Aunt was shouting ‘Crucio’ she was also trying to break your mind… my eyes were not focused on you, unblinking, because I somehow felt mesmerized by the sight of you in pain, they were focused on you because I was desperately trying to fortify your Occlumency walls, your beautiful library, to keep her out and keep you whole.
Bellatrix, like my mother and many in our family including me, was an immensely powerful Legilimens, and she was tearing through your books and papers looking for the information she wanted, not caring what destruction she left in her wake… but she couldn’t find anything because every book was blank, I made sure of it. I know it will never make up for anything I did, but I made sure the library she saw was not yours, but a fake, a copy I created and put in her path.
I couldn’t keep you from pain, but I could keep you from the Janus Thickey ward… or I hoped so, I didn’t know if it would work and I didn’t know if she’d realize… I didn’t know. I just… entered your mind without permission - something I would never, ever otherwise do - in an attempt to keep her out of it. Knowing that you didn’t lose the thing most beautiful and special about you, your mind, what makes you YOU, was everything to me and… it was the only way I could ever stand up for you. I understand if you don’t believe me, but I want you to know that I would give anything for that night never to have happened, but that I did try, I didn’t stand by and do nothing. I couldn’t.
I don’t know that this rambling letter will even be opened or, even if you do read it, whether it will make any difference, but I would be remiss in ending it without one last bit of honesty - though it most certainly crosses the line into selfish now. While I am sure you think you have seen the height of my selfishness, I assure you, you have not… telling you the following will exceed it, and yet I must. I just… have to.
Despite acting the exact opposite, I never in my life have admired anyone more than you, Hermione Granger. You probably thought all those fights we had over the right way to do things in Potions or the meaning of Ancient Runes were real fights, were me trying to put you down like I did when we were younger… but they weren’t. They were me being selfish and using the only method I could at the time to enjoy your brilliant mind and your fire… You are indeed brilliant, Hermione, but you are pure fire when you argue and debate and it was like a drug, an addiction for me. Just being near you was an addiction for me.
Sixth year, when I was a ghost of a person who dreamt of killing myself daily due to what the Dark Lord was forcing me to do, threatening me with, the only times I ever felt like myself or felt… happy, were the times you’d engage with me. And I selfishly poked at you all the bloody time, searching for that feeling - where I was just a normal kid, teasing the girl I liked… even if just for a moment, you kept me ME… you are what kept me alive that year, and I wish I could have been honest about that with you at the time. That you were the witch that owned my heart and always would. That the only light in the darkness that was my life back then was whatever time I had with you, even from afar. Truly, I wish I could have told you these things then, when it counted. When it was everything.
While I am here spilling my guts, I might as well also tell you that I think you're terribly funny - though you never caught me laughing at your jokes, I made sure of that… You’re incandescently, stunningly beautiful, too... and I had to pretend I was staring at you out of hatred, not besotted nonsense, because my friends noticed it daily. You’re brave as hell, though I'm sure you know that… and while I do not deserve to say these things to you, I somehow feel compelled to anyway since I never got to when it really mattered. I never got to tell you, or even act as though YOU really mattered, Hermione, and you do… you did, always. More than anything, more than anyone. And I will be sorry forever for being your bully, so so sorry.
I hope you’re happy… I doubt I will ever get to see you again, so… just know how important and loved you truly were and be happy like you deserve. I will always be grateful to you for testifying for me and for Mother, but so much more than that, I am grateful to have been in your orbit at all. You deserved so much better than me, and I hope you find happiness, Hermione Granger.
Yours - as always and likely forever,
Draco Malfoy
Hermione read the letter over and over, mouth open in shock and tears streaming down her face. She didn’t know how the hell the enormous eagle owl had even found her, let alone… how the letter in her hands could be real. The second that the owl had appeared on her window sill, she’d recognized it. Phillipe? Something French… Or no, a Greek God, maybe? Hermes?
That sounded close but not quite right… it was too common for Draco, he’d definitely picked something more… intense. Ugh, why couldn’t she remember! She’d seen the giant bird deliver mail to the Slytherin table hundreds of times over the years, while pretending not to look, of course… Merlin, she’d seen Draco Malfoy baby talk to the damn thing in the owlry! She shoved over her entire breakfast plate for him as she read the letter he’d brought her, the one that had been sealed with shimmering hunter green wax and the Malfoy crest…
No one knew where she was, though… Certainly not specifically, anyway, not at the moment. Four people, a grand total of four bloody people, knew where she’d been… but even that had been a bit of a surprise after she’d come clean about what had actually become of her parents during/after the war. Everyone else of her acquaintance in Wizarding Britain likely assumed she had been and was still in Sydney because she was a lying liar who lied… Ugh, coming clean about all that to Harry and Ginny had been awful and was still just roiling like a icky pool of guilt in her stomach. She’d never even been to Australia! Never sent her parents there, never Obliviated them, she was an awful, terrible person… for the lying. Sooo much lying… years of it… who she was, who they were… The look on Harry’s face when he’d said ‘So… they’re not even dentists?’ would haunt her forever.
But on the plus side, her parents were doing great! Better than great, and after months upon bloody months of her convincing/cajoling/begging, they were actually coming back home to England! With her two new adopted siblings in tow, too… and she was addicted to them, Merlin, they were the cutest…
Between ten months spent in a mud hut in Mali with her parents where they’d been doing charity work the last five years and the last month milling about in France on solo-holiday before returning to work, Hermione had only met up with the two girlfriends who knew her secret once, in Paris, right when she got there to catch them up. Ginny had forgiven her before she’d left for Mali and Pansy hadn’t been friends with her during or before the war so had never really been lied to in the first place, but still, Hermione had a guilty conscience. Three days at an outrageously expensive spa on Hermione’s dime had eased that guilt, been a good time with her friends after too long apart and it had been nice to pamper her body after Africa.
Other than that girly mini-break, though, she’d been an utter recluse from the world, sending postcards only to Kingsley every other month from the village in Mali to ensure he knew she wasn’t dead; he knew the truth too but he was more of a mentor-type friend and her boss… plus, he liaised with the muggle government and was therefore subjected to her grandparents, poor man. Ginny and Pansy were her besties and knew her inside-out but they struggled, so far, to comprehend her other life. Harry was baffled by it… She supposed maybe that was unfair, she’d only really revealed who she was to them after the war and in limited explanations, but… still. It was hard being two people.
After leaving Paris, she hadn’t even planned an itinerary for the last leg of her trip before her eventual return home, she’d found her cottage in the South of France on AirBnB the night before she arrived… that’s why the idea of Draco Malfoy’s enormous eagle owl tracking her down here, in the middle of beautiful muggle nowhere, to deliver an apology/love letter… or any letter at all… was so bloody bizarre!
Why was she focusing on that… the logistics of delivery didn’t matter! What mattered was the letter itself… and how it was the greatest most romantic letter ever written?!
He loved her...?
She couldn't decide if she was more shocked or more furious that he'd never told her or... what.
One thing she did know was that she was suddenly very ready to go home.
Hermione had tried, she had put dedicated effort, into not thinking about Draco Malfoy the last few years.
Obviously, she'd failed most of the time. He was her what if... But she'd never thought, not in a million years, that she was his, too. It was too much. Too fantastical, too insane, too... hopeful to be imagined, almost.
If there was ever a moment for some of that supposed Gryffindor courage, she supposed it was now.
Quickly, she penned a short note and handed it off to the giant, sleepy bird to take home with him whenever he felt rested. “Bring this to Draco? You know… when you’re up to it. Long flight, I know… At least this time you know exactly where to go…”
The owl finished eating her entire breakfast and then nudged her hand for more pets for a bit, sitting serenely with his eyes drooping closed as she massaged his head in the morning sun. He stayed about 45 minutes before taking off with her letter… so surreal. Her morning was so surreal…
Hermione tried to think whether her reply was reckless or a bad idea somehow, but decided… not. She was going to be back in England at the end of the week and… she definitely needed to understand what in the name of Merlin had prompted Draco Malfoy to write to her now, out of nowhere.
And if he really meant all the lovely things he’d said.
She told herself she wouldn't get her hopes up, but... she knew it was a lie. She'd never felt quite like this in her life.
Draco Malfoy never expected to get a reply to the letter he’d taken over three years to write... and that was after months of staring at blank parchment.
He’d also not seen his owl in over a week, which worried him more than slightly. When Perseus returned late on a Sunday, he took the scroll from his foot and sat at his desk, staring at it for ages, too scared to open it. When Perseus then picked it up again and dropped it on him like a seagull with an oyster in the road, he sensed it was in his best interest to man-up if even his owl was calling him out…
…But nothing could have prepared him for what he read.
Dear Draco,
I can’t say I understand it all yet, but I truly want to know more… to know you. There are things about me you don’t know either and perhaps… we can start over. I’ll be back in country on Thursday, though no one else knows that yet… If you want to talk, I’d like that very much. If your owl can find me in rural France where no one knew I was, I am sure he can also find my London flat if you decide to write back. I really hope you do.
Yours in return,
-Hermione
Draco didn’t know what to make of the missive; what did she mean ‘no one knew’ when she’d return, and… he agreed that his owl was rather impressive finding her in another country no one knew she was in… But why did no one know? Her two sycophants, for example! And Merlin, he’d never been more intrigued in his life than by the statement ‘there are things about me you don’t know’… Obviously! He wanted to know everything…
But was he brave enough to actually see her?
She said she wants to know him… to start over!
That felt like insanity…
Yet it was the part that left him not only the most stunned… but with the biggest, goofiest smile he couldn’t seem to get rid of. He smiled until his face ached with it, for days.
and the sign off... could she mean that??
He couldn't imagine it was possible, but... couldn't help but hope, either. Just a little.