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He was dead.
Hmm.
No.
Not dead.
A pity. He hadn't been trying to die, as such, but when he should have been running for his life he had simply walked away from his limp mother through squealing volleys of chromatic curses. And his wand had been held loosely at his side rather than overhand and aloft like Lucius had shown him when he was three. He'd thought about dropping the hawthorn alongside his argent mask to be crushed under fleeing feet, but some last shred of his stubborn self wouldn't open his fist.
The inevitable light that had taken him down was the brilliant peach of a September sunrise. It dazzled him, and seared through his lungs like the first cigarette he'd ever smoked as a middle finger to his father. Like the inescapable feeling of all the time in the world being transfigured into time’s up. The source of it, friend or foe, or faux-friend was impossible to know. Aimed at him or not, it felled him regardless.
Then, silence.
Then, smoke.
Crows called out rusty questions, a murder overseeing all that murder.
Whilst it appeared he wasn’t dead, it was very hard to breathe. Something was constricting the rise and fall of his ribcage, and he wanted to see what it was but his eyes wouldn’t cooperate. At some point the incongruent sun of the day had become blackest night.
His hands searched his chest to ascertain what sat on top of the scaled leather plating of his doublet.
It was soft, and warm. For a moment he imagined a merciful witch there, with her ear pressed to his heart. But no, he had earned no such compassion.
All at once, it—whatever it was—started to vibrate. It was the rumble of distant thunder at first, but as his fingers wound through plush tufts of it the thunder broke and boomed.
A cat.
It was a fucking cat. He was lying there half-dead on a fucking battlefield and there was a fucking cat on his fucking chest purring loud enough to wake the broken corpses littered around him.
It felt like it meant something, but then again nothing meant anything at all.
There was only one thing for it—he was going to open his eyes. Any minute now he was going to open his eyes, and he was going to look at the mangy stray trying to suffocate him and then presumably eat him afterwards. He’d definitely heard stories of feline familiars eating their owners. Fair enough. Survival instincts weren’t personal.
Overhead, constellations started to fade into view, diamonds pressed into a velvet blanket. The darkness had been an enchantment. His eyes were open, and so were the wide citrine eyes of an overtly fluffy, flat-faced ginger cat, who was staring at him as if he’d thought better of eating Draco Malfoy’s face, and was about to get started on devouring his soul.
✶
Every night, Draco’s life hung in the balance.
The nightmares were one thing—omnipresent and washed in viscous crimson—he was helpless as he was forced to watch a nightly reprise of all the mistakes he’d ever made. Beneath the abundant terror, it was deeply boring. But it wasn’t only the dreams plaguing him. For over a year now, someone had been trying to assassinate Draco.
This someone was creative in his approach. He was silent, impervious to wards and beholden to no cajoling or pocket lining. He would take extravagant bribes, and make a new attempt on Draco’s life only hours later. His aspirant murderer’s favoured modus operandi was of course the silent art of smothering. How many would-be Kings and Prophets never woke up from their slumber, their breath stolen by pillows and wands alike?
The familiar feeling of panic crawled over Draco when he woke and tried to draw a breath that would not come. His mouth was filled with softness, and that sound—that harbinger’s hum would be the last thing he ever heard.
This was the end.
Goodbye, cruel world.
“Shoo, you hideous creature!” A woman’s voice scolded sharply. “Shoo!”
Breath—beautiful, horrendous breath—filled Draco’s lungs as the weight left his face. He shot up in bed and coughed violently, feeling the invasion of spiky hairs throughout his mouth.
“Do let me know if you’re about to cough up a hairball so I can leave immediately,” Pansy said dryly from beside him in bed, tits out, cigarette lit. His unlikely, and unenthusiastic saviour.
The cat, whom Draco still referred to only as ‘Cat’ and occasionally ‘The Beast’, leapt lightly off the bed, and sauntered across the room to occupy the finest chair, next to the embers in his bedroom hearth.
“Good morning,” Draco said to Pansy, pulling down the blanket to run suggestive fingers down her bare thigh.
“Don’t start,” she groused. “I have to meet my mother in twenty minutes.”
“This time tomorrow I might be locked up in Azkaban,” he wheedled. “Alone and sexless.”
“With that piss poor attitude, you might deserve it,” she snapped, but he must’ve hit the right nerve because she passed him the cigarette and wrenched the covers back. Pansy could be brisk, but she was very generous with her sharp tongue and her sharper nails. His cock gained an immediate interest in the light scratches she trailed over his hip bone, and he placed one hand behind his head on the pillow. These days he didn’t really smoke, since his father was too dead to be pissed off about it, but he might be put into prison for the rest of his life today, so…
Draco took a long, luxurious drag from the cigarette and focused on the warmth of Pansy’s mouth rather than the creeping sense of existential dread. The ribbon of smoke he effused extended towards the ceiling, along with his neck. Soon he was rolling his hips and curling his toes. Honey brown eyes ensnared his and Pansy let a generous droplet of spit roll and stretch off her pink tongue, onto the throbbing head of his cock.
Ah, Pansy. She was a faithful friend.
He was getting closer, and was thinking about asking if she’d let him finish on her face just this once—because he might be in prison by tomorrow, and all—but Pansy wasn’t looking at him, and her hand had stalled its ministrations right before the firework finale.
She made a noise somewhere between frustration and disgust. “Draco, that fucking perverted, inbred cushion is watching me again.”
“Ignore him,” Draco sighed, tilting his hips towards Pansy’s scowl. Just a little closer…
“Put him out.”
Doors didn’t really work on him. The moment was rapidly slipping away from him, and Draco tried to playfully pinch Pansy’s nipple to win her attention back. It was far too late. Pansy was locked in an unwinnable staring contest with The Beast and Draco’s cock had started to wilt.
“You know wards can’t keep him away,” he pointed out. He tried to look irresistible and stuck out his bottom lip. “Please Pansy, I’m ever so nervous about appearing in front of the Wizengamot again.”
“Sorry, but no. I can’t with that thing watching me.” Pansy stood and was immaculately dressed in a wand flick and a blink. As usual, she looked like a shard of obsidian. She gave him a sisterly kiss on the cheek. “Finish yourself off. See you at the Ministry.”
“You would send me to a life sentence with blue balls?” Draco called after her.
She wiggled her long nails over her shoulder in a wave. “I’ll sort you out proper tonight at your victory party. No drinking until then, okay?”
Pansy was gone in a rush of green flame.
Not one to waste a quarter of a blow job, Draco took himself in hand and glanced across the room at the huge, unblinking yellow eyes that watched him unabashedly.
“You really are a pervert,” he snorted.
✶
To spite Pansy, probably, Draco spent his morning drinking heavily. By the time Theo arrived to take him to the Ministry he was completely cabbaged and trying his best to pretend that he wasn’t.
“Draco, why are you lying on the floor?” Theo’s tidy face and untidy curls loomed over him.
“Contemplating my many misdeeds before I go to prison.”
“Oh, you’re drunk. Classy.”
“Slander,” Draco waved an extravagant hand. “I’m as sober as the entire Wizengamot.”
“That’s not as comforting as it should be,” Theo deadpanned.
“I need to live it up! I don’t think they serve negronis in prison.”
“You’re not going to prison.”
“I deserve to go to prison,” Draco argued.
“I’d prefer that you didn’t,” Theo said, brandishing his pale wand. “Tempus—shit we have to go. Up you get.”
But Draco found himself weighed down by a very furry anchor.
“Goodbye forever Cat,” he said solemnly. He carefully unhooked four sets of claws—twice—and placed The Beast on the Aubusson rug and got unsteadily to his feet.
“Theo Theo Theo, you are my best friend, d'you know that?” Draco leaned his head on Theo’s shoulder, mainly because he couldn’t stand up straight.
“Gods Draco, you’re a very undignified drunk. Usually I would relish this, but I think you might be in genuine turmoil.”
“If I don’t come back, promise me you’ll look after my cat. He only eats freshly hunted rabbit, and lightly seared trout. No bones!”
“I will but… don’t you think if that happened we should give him back to—”
Draco cut across whatever tosh Theo was about to suggest. “—I don’t mind at all that you like wizards, you know. If I liked wizards I would be lucky to have you. Any wizard would be lucky to have you.” He pointed an unsteady finger into Theo’s face. Or eye. It wasn’t important. “Or lots of wizards maybe, if that’s what you're into. Never forget it.”
“Okay, that’s it. You cannot go to your sentencing like this. Where’s your sober-up?”
When Theo raised his wand Draco pushed it down with one hand. “Shh, no time. Let’s go.”
He threw rather too much floo powder into the fire which exploded into verdant life. “Whoops. Ministry of Magic!”
✶
As far as Draco recalled, his sentencing hearing had been very short. For some reason his memory consisted mostly of bright lights and lots of old people talking. It was almost as though he had apparated from one hazy tableau to the next. This might have had something to do with the flask he had hidden in his inner pocket, which he had drained dry while Theo’s back was turned. But probably not. Time moved strangely in the bowels of the Ministry of Magic. Mysteries should look into it.
Flanked by his finely dressed friends, he had kept his head down. He only looked up when Harry bloody Potter stood up, and said something very noble and earnest and Potter-like in Draco’s defense. Disgusting. How could one boyman-who-couldn’t-die be so bloody earnest? The world was saved, this was overkill.
Someone in the crowd had yelled out that Draco was a murderer, and a Death Eater who got on his knees to suck Voldemort’s snake dick. Well, whoever it was had been one third correct, though Draco wasn’t entirely sure Voldemort had a dick. He shuddered at the thought and resisted the overwhelming urge to scratch at the blank space where his mark had been. Once again pale and smooth, he still felt its phantom, like the chill of ice held too long in one’s fingers.
Someone else had spoken and for a moment Draco had imagined the glowing ball of hair and light was Hermione Granger, but that couldn’t be right. There were words in the air like suffered enough… bloodletting is not justice and…
The quality of mercy is not strained.
Someone had quoted Shakespeare to the Wizengamot. Well well well, perhaps it was Granger after all.
Someone had held his hand. He’d assumed it was Theo of course, since Pansy and Blaise wouldn’t be caught dead holding his hand in public. Yet when he’d looked down he’d seen long dark fingers in his.
Oh. Blaise.
Gods, he was going to prison. He was definitely going to prison. A grey eternity unravelled before his eyes, made up of gruel, wandless brawling, and seagull shit.
Wait.
What?
“Five years home detention.”
Oh.
Right then.
Where was he now?
There was music. A glass in his hand? His tie was very loose around his neck. There was a warm, comforting weight in his lap. He absently caressed soft ears.
Had that all… happened?
Someone was speaking to him. He concentrated hard until his surroundings sharpened and he located himself in the grand ballroom at Malfoy Manor sitting on a sofa that belonged in the second parlour, with his feet propped up on a table from the conservatory. If she had seen such anarchic disregard for the rules of décor, his mother would have died. Again.
“Pardon?” Draco stared up at the very tall girl, with preposterously broad shoulders, honestly, who’d just sat down opposite him.
“Since when do you have a cat?” Millicent asked him from her armchair.
“Not entirely sure he’s a cat. Been scouring the library to try and establish whether I’ve accidentally summoned a demon somewhere along the way.”
Millicent was peering at Cat in his lap. Too closely. Draco didn’t like it. If witches were to be staring so intently at his lap, he only wanted it to precede them telling him that he had an uncommonly beautiful penis (he did).
“Isn't that Granger's—”
“No.”
“I could’ve sworn—”
“You’re mistaken,” he said coldly.
Theo slumped down on the sofa beside Draco, martini in hand. “Oh Milly, didn't you hear? Our Draco’s a cat person now."
“I’ve told you a hundred times, it’s not a cat!”
✶
The sun was rising when his ‘Got Scot Off, For Free!’ (the syntax on the large banner had been adjusted at some point during the festivities) party finally ended. Draco decided to sleep in the ballroom, and sent Pansy home, quite sure that by this point there was no magic on earth that could combat his firewhiskey-dick.
With dazzling shafts of morning light crawling across the ballroom floor, stained lavender by the glass in the tall windows, he had a hungover (read: still drunk) epiphany.
He would write a letter!
He summoned parchment and his best self-inking quill.
Dear Granger,
Well, it was a start.
Hmm.
And an ending, apparently.
✶
Malfoy Manor, it must be said, was quite enormous. Boasting an unparalleled library, a regulation-sized quidditch pitch, a forest, a heated lake (he couldn’t even begin to unravel the profligate ancestral magic that was behind that one), and a lot of grand, empty rooms to get drunk in. Draco knew he should be counting himself lucky that these were the pretty bars he was imprisoned behind.
Yet Draco, it had been occasionally noted, did not excel at recognising his own privilege.
Every corner of the Manor and its grounds reminded Draco of his doting, doomed parents, and the Dark Lord, and death and pain, and the fact that he was obviously little more than a very boring, very sad villain. He himself had been tortured to the point of insanity, and he’d tortured people to insanity, and still he complained loudly to his visitors, “this is torture. I want to go to Paris. I want to shag a veela. I want to go to the Falcons’ season opener.”
A year passed.
Pansy broke up with him. To be fair, they weren’t really together and he was mostly a terrible person, so it was entirely understandable on her part. That she had started dating Seamus Finnigan semi-seriously was a blow to the ego though. The loss of regular access to very good sex was another major setback. He really wanted to throw a sex tantrum over the whole thing, but managed to keep his head by reminding himself Pansy’s friendship was a treasure with or without orgasms attached. Besides, with few other demands on his time he could wank as much as he desired (and did so). Pansy’s nails were much too long for the kind of arseplay he preferred, anyway. Still, meeting other witches for a bit of the old slap and tickle was very difficult within the confines of the Manor, unless one was attracted to portraits of their bigoted relatives.
Two years passed.
Slytherins were very misunderstood creatures. Gryffindors thought they had cornered the market on loyalty, but snakes practised devotion like a pagan religion; with flowers and blood and the occasional animal sacrifice (Blaise really knew how to treat a piece of wagyu). His friends were far, far more than he deserved, but they had full lives that went on outside of his wearisome Wiltshire walls, and he wouldn’t begrudge them their freedoms.
He did though—he begrudged the fuck out of them.
The Beast and books were the only two true constants in Draco’s life. He read a lot of Shakespeare, for no particular reason, and then decided that the philosophers might have some wisdom to offer him in his darkest days (well, not darkest, but he wasn’t exactly up to reading Thomas Aquinas when he was maltreating prisoners, never sleeping, and trying to murder Albus Dumbledore).
Nietzsche, famous amongst wizards and muggles alike even though he was inarguably a wizard (unfortunately no one was around to argue with Draco on this point), depressed Draco to the point of drinking even more heavily than he usually did for a week or two because God Is Dead and everything really was repetitive and meaningless. Nihilism had merits, certainly, but he was far more partial to hedonism. He moved onto Heraclitus.
The cat leapt into his lap and started scratching his whiskers and teeth? on the corner of the extraordinarily rare book he was engrossed in.
“This text is so rare as to be thought not to exist,” Draco told him. “And you are dribbling on it.”
The Beast blinked apathetically at him and started kneading Draco’s thigh with his claws unsheathed. Only an inch or two to the left and he would be summarily castrated.
“Very well, I shall read to you. Eyes and ears are bad witnesses to men if they have souls that understand nothing. Shall we discuss the sentiment?”
The cat let out an extremely drawn out meow. He had been known to hold a note for eight or nine seconds. If he could hold a tune or speak human language, he would be the prize member of any choir.
“Yes, I agree, where does that leave one who does not possess a soul? What else… ah, a man’s character is his fate. I’m fucked then.”
Draco set down the book and scratched the cat underneath his fluffy chin, mildly disgusted when a strand of dribble broke off and coated his fingers, but not disgusted enough to cease the scratching.
“Do you miss her?” He would only ask such a question in private. “Have I given you a good life? I never liked caviar and my mother always said I had a troll’s palate, but you obviously don’t suffer from the same affliction. I forgave you for pissing all through Lucius’ wardrobe, only because if I’d thought of it I might have done the same thing, even though I miss him very occasionally.”
For some reason looking into that ridiculous mashed face was knotting something in Draco’s chest.
“You know, I think something stopped me from naming you properly.” He knew what it was that gave him pause, and it was a name that rattled around in his head sometimes. A name he didn’t know when he’d memorised or why. A stupid, awful name that he wouldn’t dignify or legitimise by wrapping his tongue around it. “You need a name, I think. Something strong. Masculine.”
Draco’s gaze settled on the cover of the book he’d been reading.
“Heraclitus.”
The Beast opened his eyes and crooned a single, gravelly note, which Draco took to mean ‘yes’.
✶
On Draco’s twenty-first birthday, Blaise, Theo and Pansy (who’d charitably detached her naughty bits from Finnigan's for the day) arrived, and they shared a champagne picnic in the unseasonably chilly grounds under an azure sky. He told them about The Beast’s new moniker.
Blaise summed up the doubtful expressions they all wore, “That’s the worst name I have ever heard.”
I can think of worse, Draco thought privately.
Champagne-drunk and feeling oddly melancholy after his friends departed, he found himself in a letter writing mood. Over the months he’d written rather a lot of letters, and they were all safely tucked into his father’s desk drawer. Letters, on the whole, weren’t technically letters unless they were sent. These pages were therefore more akin to the autobiographical ramblings of a sozzled, spoiled recluse who was also a thief, and they just happened to be addressed to the same witch who he was sure had absolutely no interest in receiving them. Not that he was going to send them. Probably.
Maybe this one.
Granger,
I stole your cat, and I’m not fucking giving him back.
Fuck you,
D.M.
Then again, maybe not.
✶
On his twenty-second birthday he tried to write another letter to Hermione Granger. Some rational, reasonable part of him had somehow prevailed and taken the reins for ten minutes or so.
Granger,
I’m sure you did not expect to receive this letter, and moreover that you probably have no desire to hear from me on any matter. Before you burn this, I need to let you know that I have something of yours, and I would like to reunite you with it, if that is possible.
Draco Malfoy
If he was going to send her a letter, this was exactly the kind of letter he should send. It was brief, just the right amount of contrite without being pathetic, and unemotional.
With his wand, Draco opened the study window. He transfigured the letter into a little white sparrow and watched it flutter into the evening.
After a moment, he made a jabbing motion and the sparrow was burnt to ashes in a flurry of violet flame.
✶
In a crisis of conscience and cognac the next day, Draco tore a piece out of a very very rare book and wrapped it around a ring that he’d pulled from his mother’s jewellery box.
Because it is so unbelievable, the truth often escapes being known, said the piece of paper.
The ornate ring was almost certainly not cursed, and was set in the middle with a diamond almost the exact shade of The Beast’s fur.
It was an apology, he realised, as he watched his eagle owl disappear over the oak trees, and he was only able to offer it because it was unsigned and he hadn’t actually apologised at all. She would never know he thought about her nearly every day because her stupid cat made his stupid life almost worth living.
✶
His crisis of conscience was short-lived.
HERACLITUS IS A MUCH BETTER NAME THAN CROOKSHANKS.
At least this one he didn’t send.
✶
It had been four years and seven months since the day Draco was sentenced to house arrest. A letter arrived as he was reading the morning Prophet in his mother’s rose garden that had the audacity to thrive without her careful attentions.
He scanned the page and screwed up his face in distaste.
…transitional mind healer sessions…
The word mandatory leapt out at him. This was perhaps because it was written in red and enchanted to jump up and down on the page. A day and time for his first session with Healer Maris was also included. And a floo address. In London.
London.
London wasn’t in fucking Wiltshire.
Maybe he’d only be allowed in the office, but still!
Overall, Draco was not overly enthusiastic about spilling his guts to a stranger. He’d spent four years working hard on drinking his feelings away, and therapy was quite likely to spoil all of that. Despite being mildly and morbidly curious about what they’d do to him if he didn’t show up, he would probably show up. After all, when he tested what would happen if he tried to abscond from his house arrest it hadn’t gone well for him. Long story short, it had involved a lot of vomiting and a rash (concentrated mostly on the buttocks) that got worse and worse the further he got out of the gate.
✶
Healer Maris had curly grey hair, ostentatious spectacles and three strings of very chunky beads around her neck. She looked exactly like he expected her to look, which was oddly gratifying, and sat in her beige on beige on beige London office (with a charming view of a brick wall), waiting for him to speak. It was immediately obvious that she was extremely comfortable in the kind of silences that made him feel like he was coming down with an absconding rash.
Oh Gods, when would it end?
He wished Heraclitus was there on his lap, just so his hands had something to do.
Cats. That was a safe topic, wasn’t it? Certainly safer than his parents’ violent deaths, or his own propensity towards violence and cruelty. Or indeed the vexatious fact that he was supposed to be a leader, but he was almost certainly a follower, and therefore spent his days desperately lost.
“Do you have a familiar?” Draco asked her to perforate the intolerable quiet. Hm. That was the first time he’d used that word.
“I once had a toad, many years ago,” Healer Maris replied. “Why do you ask?”
Ugh, a toad. This witch could not be trusted.
The question fell out. “Do you think two people can share the same familiar?”
“I’m not sure I understand. It sounds like there is a context to your question… if you’d like to provide it?” she prompted.
He would not, but words kept streaming out of his traitorous mouth. “If a familiar is the recognition of one’s soul in another living being, but that happened twice to the same beast… What would that mean? I mean, ‘the soul is dyed with the colour of its thoughts’ and my soul is black, obviously, as is his—he shat in my shoes two days ago. But I can’t imagine that her soul is so black. So the question I really want to ask is why I should have to be plagued by thoughts of returning my familiar someone so deserving and therefore utterly undeserving of him? I doubt she can afford caviar. He only eats caviar these days, you know.”
Healer Maris did a lot of ominous scribbling in a little blue notebook.
“It sounds like you are very fond of your…” She looked down at her notes. “I’m assuming cat, but perhaps it’s a small dragon? In such a case, if you are harbouring a class XXXXX creature I would remind you that I am required to report any criminal activity to the DMLE.”
“He definitely takes the form of a cat, but my money’s still on some sort of demon.” Merlin, would he never stop talking?
“Okay, and your cat it seems… once belonged to someone else?”
“Yes.” Confessing felt good. But also not good.
“Did you steal this cat?”
Draco shifted in his too-soft seat. Would she have to report aggravated feline robbery if he admitted to it? It might be fitting, if the thing that put him in Azkaban once and for all was Heraclitus.
“Not exactly,” he said.
“But you are entertaining thoughts of returning this cat to… the one who once owned him?”
“Unwillingly.”
Healer Maris pushed her silly glasses up her nose. “When our conscience speaks, Mr. Malfoy, it is vital that we take the time to listen.”
Cursing his mandatory Healer would almost certainly land him in Azkaban. Even a little curse, probably.
“If you like, we could discuss the possible reasons for and against returning…”
“Heraclitus,” he supplied.
Draco sensed Healer Maris’ poker face was momentarily tested, because she had no taste in naming felines, clearly. Her Toad was probably called something decidedly pedestrian, like Mr. Hops. Or Toad. “—no, I think I’d like to sit in silence,” he said. He took the high road, and looked out the window at the bricks.
✶
He could do this. He could outlast her. What was silence except the absence of noise?
He could do this.
He could do this.
“I’ve written a lot of letters to Heraclitus’ old owner, but I never sent them.” Blast it.
“So she’s someone you were once close to?” Healer Maris asked.
“What? No. Aren’t you listening at all? She is my mortal enemy. Well, no, that’s Potter, but we exchange awkward letters every so often because I think Theodore is trying to boff him and I’ll probably have to put up with that soon so I’m getting a head start. And this after the Pansy Finnigan debacle? Merlin, tell me is the new fashion to relentlessly pursue Gryffindors? How degrading.”
“These letters—” she was not easy to distract.
“Oh yes, that.” He waved an unbothered hand. “Well, do you think I should send her one? I sent her a ring once, but in my defense it was hideous and I was as legless as a flobberworm. Who do your notes go to?”
“No one, Mr. Malfoy. Your confidentiality is assured.”
“Then why am I here?”
“It is intended to be for your benefit. Though I daresay you may question that.”
“I’m sure you are very well-qualified, but I am beyond help.”
“Is that so?” she asked, quirking a grey eyebrow.
“Yes. I am fine, and I would like to sit in silence again.”
“As you wish, but please allow me to point out to you that you just now said you are both beyond help, and fine. Which is it?”
He did not like her. “Both.”
“I see.”
And then she was scribbling again.
Hag.
✶
“I’m going to do it—” he announced. Then, “Honestly, why have a window facing bricks? It’s depressing. Are any of your clients depressed? Have you asked whether it’s because of the bricks?”
“What are you going to do?”
Draco rolled his eyes. “Keep up. I’m going to write to her.”
✶
Dear Hermione,
It feels very strange to write your name, but somehow through him, I feel like I know you a little. I know how that must sound, and every time I write to you, I imagine you burning the parchment and I can’t say I blame you if that is your instinct.
I don’t know how it happened, but I’m glad it did, and I’m sorry but also not very sorry at all.
I’d like to see you. At least, I’m drunk enough to think that I would like to, and to be writing this letter.
Fuck, I sound like a stalker.
Fuck.
I probably won’t send this,
I tried,
Draco
On the chair on the other side of his shadowy office, Draco watched Heraclitus narrow his eyes at him, as if he knew exactly what was written on the parchment and was disappointed in the coward who shoved the Right Thing To Do in a drawer to rot in favour of draining another glass of tawny port.
To really hammer his disappointment home, Heraclitus subjected Draco to a meticulously choreographed revue of him carefully tongue-washing his arsehole.
✶
Everything flows, said the real Heraclitus, allegedly, and in Greek. He was almost definitely a wizard. Things kept flowing and a sense of panic settled in Draco’s stomach, abrading his nerves and curdling his blood.
“This is our last session,” Healer Maris told Draco when he sat down on the squashy armchair and pulled the fluffy cushion into his lap that had appeared at some point, probably for his benefit. Salazar’s sack, these touchy feely types were relentless, weren’t they? Her beads were enormous today.
“Is it?” He was as breezy as a breeze. He had no opinion on the matter. He was almost free.
“It doesn’t have to be. I am available to see you privately, if you decide to pursue further treatment.”
Draco scoffed. “Oh you’d like that wouldn’t you?”
“I have no strong preference either way, but if I can be of assistance to you Mr. Malfoy, I would be happy to continue our sessions.”
“—Draco.”
“Draco, then.”
Was she proud of him? He hoped so.
Yuck. She was ruining him with her reflective listening and her gentle questions.
“How much does one pay to be blinked at and sit in uncomfortable silence these days?” he asked.
“I work on a sliding scale,” she responded calmly. “For the richest wizard in Britain I will slide it right up to the top.”
Despite himself, Draco smiled softly.
✶
On his first day of freedom, Draco did not leave the Manor.
In his first week of freedom, Draco did not leave the Manor.
Theo showed up to try to drag him to a fifteen-course degustation in London, but he resisted, thus, the party was brought to him. He supplied the table, and the liquor, and the ambience (surly, acerbic).
Pansy brought Seamus Finnigan as a plus one, after Draco had specified that there would be absolutely no plus ones. Draco hadn’t had many dealings with the man, but he was markedly more handsome and funny than he recalled (to be fair he recalled that he was neither), and Pansy looked at him like he was the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.
Thank the Gods Theo didn’t bring Potter. Theo was still pretending he was training to be an auror because he was rich and bored and eccentric. He was also pretending he liked quidditch because he was rich and bored and eccentric. He had asked Draco to give him flying lessons so he might try out for the Ministry league. Draco flatly refused unless he admitted it was because Potter happened to be the team captain. Theo brushed this off and explained again that he was simply rich, bored, and eccentric.
“What are you gonna do with your freedom?” Seamus asked Draco. Pansy was half on his lap. Seamus was trying, probably for Pansy’s sake. Draco wished he wouldn’t. Why couldn’t they sit in contemptuous silence? It seemed to be a dying art these days.
Freedom.
He hated the question so much.
“I suppose I shall try my hand at being rich and bored and eccentric across continental Europe,” he replied at length.
“Right you are,” Seamus grinned. Ugh.
Draco flicked his wand and refilled everyone’s wine. A soft ‘mrow?’ from next to him drew his gaze, and he pushed back his chair without thinking to allow Heraclitus to traverse his leg (jumping being a much too efficient and painless manner of ascent) and settle in his lap.
Draco summoned the dish of caviar and offered Heraclitus a spoonful of the Caspian Sea’s finest.
It was then that he noticed Seamus staring at him. His lap more specifically. Draco didn’t usually like wizards staring at his lap, even to compliment his penis.
“Is that—” Seamus began.
Oh no. Oh no no no.
“—Jesus Mary and Joseph, is that there Crookshanks?”
Before he had any idea what he was doing, Draco had raised his wand and was angling it towards Seamus. Terrible curses ran through his head, but just one—just one would do. Memory charms were very dangerous without study, and Draco had never looked into the theory but he had to make Seamus forget.
“Oblivi—”
“Collido!” Pansy shrieked. Draco was hit so hard in the face he felt his nose shatter and he stumbled backwards off his chair. Heraclitus leapt lightly onto the table and, unbothered by the commotion, started to clean his paws.
“Draco what in the actual fuck?”
Pansy’s wand was still raised. Seamus looked bewildered. Theo looked unsure whether to laugh or draw his wand too, and Blaise continued to eat his dinner.
“Er—” An explanation was not forthcoming. Was there any acceptable explanation for trying to illegally and rashly obliviate her boyfriend? He got to his feet, brushing caviar off his suit. His nose throbbed terribly and blood oozed over and into his mouth, but no one seemed like they were going to toss him a friendly episkey. Ah well—he did it himself.
“I’m a bit confused now, but am I right in thinkin’ Malfoy stole Hermione’s cat?” Seamus asked.
“No,” said Draco, at the same time as Theo and Pansy said, “yes.”
Everyone looked at Blaise.
Blaise let out a put upon sigh. “I don’t believe it was intentional initially, but over time—” He shrugged and sipped his wine. Traitor.
“Right,” said Seamus.
“Does she… miss him?” Draco found himself asking.
Seamus looked uncomfortable. He scratched the auburn stubble on his jaw, and Pansy still hadn’t lowered her wand.
“Ah see, we—she lost a lot, in the war. Pets were a comfort, for some I spose, but Hermione… she just gets on with it, d’you know what I mean?”
It was rhetorical and rather Irish, but Draco knew what he meant, and what he meant was that Draco was the worst person who had ever lived in this Manor, and on balance these four walls had housed some real rotters.
“Look, Finnigan, don’t tell her alright? I’ll write to her,” he sighed. “Just let me do it.”
Seamus looked at Pansy, who raised a sharp black brow, but finally lowered her wand.
“Yeah, alright. I never did peg you for a cat person, but Pans did warn me you were kind of nuts about him.”
In the centre of the table, Heraclitus extended a lackadaisical paw and knocked over Seamus’ wine.
✶
There was an odd beauty in a forced hand.
His forced hand wrote fluidly across a scrap of parchment with a tawny quill.
Dear Hermione Granger Hermione Granger,
I have written a thousand letters to you in my head, and dozens with quill and ink that I imagined you burning as soon as you realised the identity of the sender. To save you the trouble, I never sent them.
You have a right to disregard this letter in the manner of your choosing, and to ignore every word I ever say or write. I can only ask that you read once, until the end, and let me tell you about my cat.
He came to me in the aftermath of a battle where many people, including my parents, died, and where I should have died, but I didn’t. I know you lost people too, and if you lay blame at my door for whatever grief you are left with, I understand. If that helps in even the smallest of ways to lessen it, let me lessen it.
I have been confined to the walls of my childhood home for the past five years, as I’m sure you know. You spoke at my sentencing and I never thanked you, probably because I am still quite certain Azkaban was my deserved fate. But everything flows, as Heraclitus once said. Over these five years, I have had the constant companionship of a cantankerous, murderous, arsehole-licking, shoe-pissing, ginger beast. He has been my confidant, my anchor, and my familiar.
You knew him as Crookshanks, and I know him as Heraclitus.
I never intended to take him from you. As much as his companionship has meant to me, I know I robbed the same from you and that you are far more deserving of such a thing. I don’t know how I will right this wrong, or many others where you are concerned, but perhaps you will meet with me to allow me to try.
Yours in anticipation,
Draco Malfoy
The hideous feeling in his stomach would not relent. He was sure he would vomit all over the letter filled with more sentiment than he had ever expressed in his entire life. He wanted to blame liquor, but he was more sober than he’d been in a long time and it was fucking terrible.
He read his own words over and over again.
No.
No, he couldn’t do it.
But his time was up.
The door was closed, but that had never worried him. Heraclitus strolled into the room and jumped onto his desk to chew on his potted flutterby bush. For just a second, Draco contemplated the messy fur, and the flattened face.
“I love you, cat,” he said, because he did, and The Beast had always been able to understand him better than anyone else.
With yellow eyes scrutinising him closely, Draco pulled another piece of parchment towards himself.
Granger,
I owe you a thank you, an apology, and an explanation. If you agree to meet with me, I would like to offer you all three.
Draco Malfoy
After five years, two weeks, and six days of thinking about it, Draco Malfoy finally managed to send a letter to Hermione Granger.
✶
Five years was an awfully long time to contemplate all the things that he had been denied and to plan elaborate debaucheries in his head. The debaucheries were so elaborate that Draco had planned to take his father’s long distance broomstick, fly to Berlin, visit the experimental potions lab in Friedrichshain, and then stay awake for three days exclusively underground listening to only the loudest and weirdest genres of music. He was definitely going to fuck at least four witches, at once if he could wangle it, and if the mood struck him he was going to let a vampire feed on him and also wear leather trousers.
After five years, three weeks and one day, Draco went for a walk down to the muggle village that bordered the Manor (although they knew it as a particularly repellant abandoned lunatic asylum). He ordered a pint at the local pub, The Red Lion—the long, self-righteous shadow of Gryffindor was nigh inescapable—and said sorry to all the muggles scattered around the sticky tables in his head. Berlin, it was not.
He was early. Extremely early. And he was so nervous that his palms were sweating. The desire to pickle his clammy self in cheap muggle whiskey until he couldn’t see straight was nearly overwhelming. He straightened his dark charcoal (read: black) jumper, and bounced his knee relentlessly up and down underneath the tall table.
The door to the pub opened, letting in watery sunlight and a woman with wild hair and a cream coat belted tight around her waist.
She was early too. How dare she?
If he vomited he would simply have to turn his wand on himself and cast avada kedavra. He’d never managed it before, because he didn’t really mean it, but he’d mean it this time. Self-avadaing (avadaing was almost definitely not a word) wasn’t supposed to be possible, but he could be very determined when he wanted to be. Soft soft soft brown eyes met his, and she bloody well smiled. How dare she? Didn’t she know he was awful?
She nodded to the bar to indicate she was getting a drink, and he had an existential crisis wondering how she would react if he wandered over there to insist on paying for said drink.
By the time she arrived at the table with a glass of house white and a new pint for him that she set down next to his empty, Draco still hadn’t solved this moral quandary of the intricacies of benevolent sexism. And classism, probably.
“Hi,” Hermione Granger said to him, benevolently. It was curious magic. She liquified him with only a word. A mere syllable, really.
“Good—” He paused, not knowing if it had reached noon yet. “Morning?”
And now he had to talk to her. This had been a terrible, terrible idea. It was just fortunate that months with Healer Maris had taught him how to be comfortable in silence.
Or so he thought.
Oh Gods, she was stripping off her coat and looking at him expectantly and he was looking at her body which had snuck up on him which was very rude of it—had she always had tits? Well, probably not always, but there they were. Oh Gods, this was terrible. Not the tits, they were the polar opposite of terrible.
It had been a million years since she said hi. She was very beautiful, and he had never thought that before but there it was like the freckles on her nose and her stupid bee stung lips.
“Hi,” he said. Oh Gods, they’d already done greetings. What were the chances there was a time turner in this muggle pub? Under the bar maybe, next to the lemons.
To his surprise and general horror, she laughed lightly.
“Don’t worry, I’m nervous too.”
How dare she?
“I’m not nervous,” he said flatly. To illustrate his point, his bouncing knee hit the table and he whacked himself in the teeth with his pint glass when trying to take a nonchalant sip.
“My mistake, I’m nervous, and you are the very picture of dignity and composure.” She took a perfect nonchalant sip from her wineglass.
“Kind of you to notice.”
He hadn’t expected her to smile so much. It was a wide kind of smile, that showed all her teeth and took away a lot of her dignity whilst radiating a kind of untouchable goodness that didn’t have a name, except it probably did and it was just her name. Hermione.
“How are you?” she asked him.
There were no words for how he was. Or perhaps there were too many words. Either way, what he came up with was, “I’m a complete and utter arsehole.”
The smile on her face faltered, and she sat back on her stool. “Um, right. That’s… no good to hear.”
“It’s true and you know it.”
“Is this you trying to apologise?”
“Yes, give me a moment I’m working my way up to it.”
The smile was back, he basked in its rays, like a cat.
A cat.
Fuck.
“No apology I could ever offer you is enough to make up for the things I have said and done, but I apologise all the same. I don’t want to ask for forgiveness in return, only for you to hear that from my mouth, while I am largely and painfully sober.”
The vomit feeling was back, especially as she blinked rapidly. There was a shine in her eyes that indicated she might be about to cry, and suddenly Draco, who hadn’t cried since the day his parents died, was sure that if Hermione cried, he would also cry in a village pub surrounded by men wearing wellington boots who smelled like hay with names like Terry and Norman.
“Please don’t cry,” he begged her.
“Sorry, I—I forgave you a long time ago, you know,” she sniffled. “Probably even before you sent me that hideous ring.”
New horror washed over him. “What ring?” he demanded.
“The orange one?” She looked puzzled. “I’ll admit the philosophy was a bit obtuse, but the ring was engraved with the name Malfoy and—” She blushed a little. “I don’t know any other Malfoys.”
“Engraved?” he repeated weakly. He swore off alcohol forever while drinking a large mouthful of his lager.
“Yes. At first I thought it might be cursed—sorry—but I checked and it wasn’t.”
“And that’s… the only thing you’ve ever received from me in the post?” If he’d drunkenly sent even one of those other letters he would shave his head, change his name to Gavin and move to Tasmania.
“Well, except for the letter that brought us here. Why? Are there matching earrings?”
There was, and a truly heinous tiara too but that wasn’t the point.
“No reason.” It took him a moment to comprehend that she was here, and she’d forgiven him and she was so incredibly fit he had regressed to feeling like a thirteen-year-old who popped a stiffy every time a witch so much as looked his way.
It had been a very long time since Pansy abandoned their perfectly adequate friends with benefits situation to be all in love with an Irish twat. If it wasn’t for that Irish twat, he wouldn’t have to be here facing the music that he had so thoroughly avoided for so long. Then again, there was alcohol here, and it wasn’t the Manor and Hermione smelled like warm sugar, so maybe the Irishman could lay claim to some charms, after all.
“So, Heraclitus?”
He jolted. “What?” Who told her?
“The passage you sent me… ‘because it is so unbelievable, the truth often escapes being known’. I mean, not a bad sentiment… but I’m probably more partial to Aristotle if we’re talking classical philosophy.”
Draco had spent so long having one-way discussions about politics and ethics with a cat, that he’d forgotten how to do it with another person.
“What about Nietzsche?”
“Very depressing,” she said gravely. “Someone tried to tell me he was a wizard, isn’t that typical? Wizards are always trying to claim notable muggles for their own. Who’s next? Shakespeare?”
In lieu of telling Hermione that he owned original copies of several of the Bard’s works, with moving illustrations that had flowed from his own enchanted quill, Draco bought them another round.
✶
Three hours passed by in the little pub. Outside the murky sky released its promised deluge, and thunder rumbled in the distance. They talked as if they were old friends. As if they were alone in the pub, even as mates and colleagues and lovers came and went. He learned about her: she was a newly qualified solicitor, working privately because the Ministry of Magic “is staffed entirely by bigoted, moldy old troglodytes”. She lived alone in an upstairs flat in York, and still saw a lot of Harry and Ron, “and rather a lot of your friend Theo, if I’m honest”. The wine scattered deep colour over Hermione’s bronze cheeks, and she’d touched his arm three times (he had absolutely counted). When she did it for a miraculous fourth time, he scheduled himself an immediate wank when he got home; for he was getting altogether far too excited about frightfully chaste arm touching. He was beginning to worry that if he saw so much as a flash of her bare ankle he might disgrace himself entirely. Already he’d watched as she walked to the bathroom and glimpsed the jeans that she must have painted onto her legs. They were indecent. He would be writing a scandalised (and grateful) letter to this Levi fellow post haste.
She returned with a basket of hot chips and a bottle of malt vinegar, and another smile for him.
He watched her eat a chip and wished he was that greasy yellow piece of potato. She licked the salt off her fingers and he let out what might have been a little groan. Mortifying.
“Are you alright?” she asked.
He hurriedly shoved an extremely hot chip into his mouth. His eyes watered. “Yep. Just hungry."
She accepted this with good grace, but shamelessly licked her finger again. All this licking was surely an elaborate revenge plot. If so, he would probably accept his fate, even if it ended with him stark bollocks naked and tied to the Chudley Cannons centre hoop just in time for morning drills.
“So,” she said. “We’ve been here a while now. I was promised an apology, and you did beautifully, well done. But I believe there was also suggestion of a thank you.”
“Thank you,” Draco said without hesitation.
“You’re welcome.” She beamed. “For what?”
Everything.
“For speaking at my sentencing. You quoted Portia.”
The flush on her cheeks deepened. Drinking in good company was quite the novelty. The snakes didn’t count, they were good company but they were not good company. Their love language was insults and two-hundred year old grudges.
“I did.”
“Why did you… do that?”
She looked down into her glass and swirled her wine around. “You lost your parents… that day. It was enough.”
He looked away. It had all been for nothing, and she said it was enough. Everything flows.
Silence fell between them, and he sat in the eye of it, not needing to fill it, and hoping she wouldn’t. Somehow she knew exactly what he needed then, and in his wildest dreams he wouldn’t have asked for it or even known how to.
On the table, surrounded by their empty glasses and rapidly cooling chips, Hermione gently took Draco’s hand.
✶
Another hour had passed.
Hermione had caught sight of the glowing planets on the face of the silver watch around her wrist and gasped. “Oh gosh, I have to be in London in five minutes.”
Draco’s heart, which had been put through a very strange and intense workout over the course of the afternoon, sunk.
Then she had said, “I don’t want to go.”
And then he had said, “Wherever you’re going, I’ll come too.” It was a bold call, she might have a secret life wrestling bears and he might be called upon to grapple a grizzly. Or worse, he might have been asking to be a third wheel on a date. He had subtly ascertained she was single by asking if she was single, but that did not mean she wasn’t entertaining suitors. He imagined a Lothario in a top hat—gah, he was so underdressed.
“Really?” Her eyes had lit, the snakes writhing inside him had formed a merry chorus line. “You can, yes, I’d love that. Only, I’m having dinner with my parents.”
Abort! Abort!
No. He would have gone with her even if she was going to her ‘walking through fire’ night class. He was not letting her out of his sight until he was absolutely forced to do so. Now that he had really looked at her, he had every intention of continuing his perusal.
“I’ll come,” he had confirmed. “If you’ll have me.”
And that was how it came to be that Draco sat next to Hermione in a cramped little Italian restaurant, across from her bespectacled, serious-faced father, Edward Granger. Hermione’s mother had been called away to perform emergency tooth healing of some form. Draco didn’t know if it was better or worse to be faced with Hermione’s father alone. He hoped his teeth were up to snuff.
Why the fuck was he here?
He scrutinised the drinks menu and jolted when he felt a hand on his knee.
He looked up at Hermione, and her smile and realised exactly why he was here.
“So Draco,” Edward Granger began with an undercurrent of amusement married with suspicion. “Hermione has never mentioned you before. What do you do for a living?”
Well gosh Mr. Granger, she probably hasn’t mentioned me because she was tortured in my house by my deranged Aunt, I was an intolerable bully to her until pretty much today when I realised she is the single most wonderful and sexually attractive person on this terrible planet. Oh, and I’m an unemployed criminal.
“I’m heir to Britain’s largest wizarding fortune, and I have plans to continue my late mother’s philanthropic work and to begin study towards a potions mastery. There is a school in Marseille I am interested in.”
Draco jolted again when Hermione’s hand that had remained on his knee slid ever so slightly up. It was only an inch or so, but for its effect on him (in front of her muggle father, no less, who appeared to be both intelligent and formidable), she may as well have grabbed his cock.
Gods, he hoped she grabbed his cock.
Maybe not in front of her father.
But then again—
✶
He was dead.
Hmm.
No.
Not dead.
He only assumed he was dead, because only in the afterlife would he be carrying Hermione Granger up the stairs—his stairs—Draco Lucius Malfoy’s stairs—toward his—Draco Lucius Malfoy’s bedroom. She, for her part, was holding onto him like some sort of sexy koala, and yes—he did think those words and in his defense he couldn’t really think while he was trying to walk up stairs, carry her, and snog her senseless all at the same time. In reality, she was the one snogging him senseless. In fact, he no longer knew what sense was because his every sense belonged to her.
Taste: wine and garlic on her tongue, the most delicious thing he’d ever sucked on.
Smell: upon closer olfactory scrutiny, she smelled like warm sugar, and cloves, and roses. If it was available for purchase, he would buy whatever scent she wore and fill his bathtub with it. Then probably (definitely) submerge himself in it and have a wank.
Hearing: every so often she breathed a tiny high-pitched moan into his mouth. If he hadn’t known its source, he would’ve thought it was the squeak of some small, fluffy creature. No matter—it was utterly adorable and incapacitatingly arousing.
Touch: her arse was in his hands and it was the most luscious, precious, squishy thing he’d ever held. How dare she?
Through some magic he hadn’t known he possessed, Draco located his bedroom, and even more miraculously, his bed. Reluctantly detaching from her, he placed her gently down on the cool grey linens.
Well, in his excitement it was more accurate to say he tossed her bodily onto his bed like a quaffle.
She squeaked again, and all was right with the world.
From the foot of the bed, he admired the view.
Sight: her hair was everywhere, a mess. Her lips were swollen from his enthusiasm. He’d thrown her jumper… somewhere, on the way, and her camisole was rather askew. She was gorgeous. And she was on his—Draco’s Lucius Malfoy’s, that is—bed.
He decided to tell her.
“You are so beautiful.” He was taking off his shoes. He hoped it wasn’t too forward. If it wasn’t, the fact that he had started taking off her shoes next might have been.
But she took off her own trousers.
And then the camisole.
Her lingerie was the dark red of only the richest, most leggy French wine and covered appallingly little. Under lace he could see nipples, and the concealed continuation of her curls disappearing between her clenching thighs.
On second thought, maybe he was dead. The only thing that made no sense is how a devil like him had gatecrashed heaven.
“Are we doing this?” he asked, even though he was already taking off his trousers.
“I’d like to,” she replied. Her voice was all kinds of breathy, and she was looking at his cock. His cock was rather too excited to have an audience again. “Would you like to?”
“I’m either already dead, or I’ll die if we don’t. Sorry, no pressure.”
“Take off your jumper.”
He didn’t need telling twice.
“Nice,” she said to his abdominals.
Nice wasn’t the most overt of compliments, but at this stage if Hermione had nodded and said ‘adequate’ he might have fallen down on his knees to thank her for it.
“Come here,” she said, crooking a finger. Oh, fuck.
He obediently crawled onto the bed, between her open legs.
“Is this what you had in mind when you wrote me the letter?” she wondered.
Truly, it wasn’t. Not in his wildest, weirdest dreams. She hooked her legs around him, heels digging into his arsecheeks and forced contact between the hardness of his cock, and the sodden swell of her cunt.
The strangled noise that escaped him was not quite as manly and alluring as he might have hoped.
“Was it what you had in mind, when you answered?”
“No, but when I saw you in that pub all sad and blond—” She hauled his mouth to hers, and rolled herself down the fabric-covered ridge of his cock.
“Merlin fucking fuck,” he swore. “I am so sad, and so blond.”
The strange dirty talk was overlaid in his head by a necessary chorus of don’t come, don’t come, don’t come. Gods, he hoped she wasn’t a legilimens.
“Tell me what you want,” he said into her neck.
“Bite me.”
He did.
“Harder.”
He did.
“Touch my breasts.”
He did, gladly.
“Harder.”
Under his palms, under lace, her nipples pebbled and he plucked and rolled and pulled until he found the exact pressure that made her writhe.
“What do you want?”
He didn’t really have the words to tell her that suddenly all he wanted in the world was to know he’d pleased her. “I want to make you feel good.” It was a start. One of his hands remained at her breast, while the other found its way down the slope of her belly. “I want to know I’ve made you feel good.”
Their mouths slotted together again, messy this time. It had been a long while, and he knew he should take his time with Hermione—Hermione fucking Granger—but he suddenly needed where before he had only wanted. Needed like water, air and daily bread.
He made room for his middle finger to run a path over the nub of her clit and down her slit. It was all-too easy to push his way in and to feel that she was more than wet, so fucking wet.
“That’s good,” she whispers. “Maybe you’d like to be called a good boy?”
Hmm. Maybe. “Try it,” he dared her. He made a hook and curled his finger inside her.
“Good boy,” she whined. “Such a good boy.”
Something shivered along his spine. Like power. Like magic. Like something new that had only been theoretical until it solidified into real into this into now.
“Hmm.” He slid a second finger into her—fuck, she felt good. “Merits further experimentation.”
She laughed and lifted herself a little to let him lick the amusement off her lips. Meanwhile her hands became claws on his skin, urgent as they pulled down his pants.
“I want—” Their kissing had become frantic. “I want—cock.”
“Has anyone ever told you that you are uncommonly eloquent?” he grinned. He hadn’t known he was capable of such a thing. It hurt his cheeks, honestly.
Done with teasing, for now, Draco made short work of the last of their clothes by throwing them off the bed as if they had done him a personal affront. He wanted to eat her pussy until she cried and dripped down his chin, but she asked for cock and by the Gods, he would give her anything she desired.
He wanted to tease her and himself with long slides up her slit, but she lost patience and grabbed his cock, pushing it at once into her cunt. He reared back at the shock of the feeling, and then his patience evaporated too and he shoved inside her with a pop.
“Oh.” They said together, in philosophical revelation, as he sunk in and she tilted up. Without a word he scooped up her bum and shoved a velvet pillow underneath it, lasciviously hoping that she would soon come all over it so he could sleep with it next to his face.
Once more, he hoped she wasn’t able to mine his thoughts for the filth that was now sure to plague him forever.
“Is it good?” he asked, pushing in another inch.
“So good,” she moaned. “Please—”
He assumed her meaning and bottomed out, enjoying the ragged new cadence of her breath now that he had her speared. She was perfectly tight as she held him safe and warm, and he looked into her eyes and found her smiling again.
Oh fuck, he’d spent one day with her and he loved her. Or was he just really, really horny?
Hmm.
No.
It was love.
Oh fuck fuck fuckity fuck, this was an unmitigated disaster. Man made, natural, supernatural. Force majeure. Total shitstorm.
Too much.
Draco pushed long fingers into her wet mouth to wipe that too-intimate, somehow veritaserum-infused look off her face, and pumped them in at the same rate as he fucked her. Long. Hard at the last inch. Her breasts bounced with his thrusts and he was going to come, that was for certain, but he wanted her to come too.
He tilted her further, slowed the roll of his hips and grazed his thumb over her clit. Watching in fascination as his cock glistened with her slick, he pinched her nub once and then resumed the motions that he could tell were bringing her closer and closer.
In all the excitement, he’d forgotten something very, very important. He’d forgotten that locked doors meant absolutely nothing to Crookshanks-Heraclitus Granger-Malfoy. He’d forgotten that The Beast had become accustomed to eating caviar (and lobster, of late) three times a day, and he’d only been fed a paltry once today.
The demanding yowl was louder and more chilling than a Banshee’s scream. In amongst the moans and the slapping and the other various very nice sex noises, it might have been possible to ignore it, but Draco froze and Hermione most definitely noticed. She looked over his shoulder at source of the sound (Judas!), and let out a gasp that he knew had nothing whatsoever to do with the cock still sheathed inside of her.
“Crookshanks?” she whispered in disbelief.
If everything wasn’t so terrible, Draco would have yelled something about Crookshanks being the worst name in the entire world, nay, Solar System. As it was, he left his cock inside Hermione and covered his face with his hands, like the classy, well-born wizard he was.
“Malfoy, why is Crookshanks in your bedroom?” Her tone was growing dangerous. In another context, it could be very, very sexy. It wasn't. Well... no. No. It wasn't.
Everything was crashing down around him. “I suppose it’s not a good time to ask you to call me Draco.”
“Can you… get out of me please?”
He obliged at once, and wrenched a sheet over his legs and his agonised cock, wet with her almost-climax.
The beast jumped onto the bed and made everything so much worse by blatantly walking across Hermione and attempting to plonk himself down on Draco’s lap and thereby on his tenacious erection.
Draco pushed him pointedly towards Hermione. He received a less-than-friendly chomp for his troubles.
If an outsider were to walk into his bedroom at that exact moment, they would have seen two shell-shocked, naked people and an odd, orange cat on an enormous four-poster bed. The wild-haired witch had started silently crying as the cat butted its flat, ugly yet dreadfully endearing face into her outstretched, trembling hand. The (sad, blond) wizard was looking determinedly anywhere that wasn’t the witch’s face, while apparently not noticing or ignoring the blood streaming from the puncture wounds in his hand.
“‘A thank you, an apology and an explanation’,” Hermione recited in a hollow voice. “I think it might be time for the explanation.”
He let a horrible, not at all comfortable silence reign across the room while he gathered the debris of his thoughts and tried to cobble it all together into something usable.
“...I think I lied to myself when I imagined I could explain any of this.”
“You knew who he was. You knew he was mine.”
She said these things in a way that told him that she already knew the answer. Still he pressed back into his pillows and nodded. Next, he braved one look into her devastated face, and felt tears spring into his own eyes. He turned away sharply.
“I should go, then.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t plan any of this—I don’t think I even know how to make plans.” Everything flows.
He put his hands back over his face so he didn’t have to watch her dress, or watch her flow away, through his floo, with her arms braced tight around his familiar.
✶
“I’ve ruined my life.” Draco flopped sideways onto Healer Maris' fainting sofa. He only just resisted indulging in a full swoon.
“That’s rather premature to conclude, when you’re likely to live another century—give or take,” she said patiently.
“Yes well, I had a whole new life for about six hours, and it was the best life, and then I spoiled it.”
“Would you like to share your experience with me today, or would you like to sit in silence?”
They sat in brick-contemplating silence for eleven minutes, and then Draco finally spilled his guts.
✶
Freedom was awful. The only thing freedom was good for was adding a new excruciating specimen of guilt to his already impressive collection. Draco should be fucking veelas and wearing leather trousers and making the front page of the Prophet with headlines like Look Out Puddlemere! Malfoy Heir Adopts Seven Orphans and Forms Quidditch Team!
The only thing he was fucking was his own hand, and it was a miserable affair each time because once Hermione had taken over his senses, she'd claimed ownership of them and suddenly his every fantasy was just her sitting on his face and telling him he was a good boy, and furthermore that she loved him. His trousers were cotton, not leather. In fact they were perilously close to joggers. Even in the darkest days of Voldemort being his housemate, or when he was awaiting his trial, he hadn't stooped to casualwear. And the Prophet had forgotten he existed. This one was for the best, but one or two headlines declaring him an eligible bachelor (pathetic or not, he was still very rich and quite handsome when he bothered to shower), surely wouldn’t hurt.
Draco was barely leaving his room, let alone his house, let alone the grounds.
Overall, things were bleak.
He missed Heraclitus fiercely. So fiercely that one day he broke down and ate a spoonful of caviar and then sobbed on the floor of the kitchen. It was one thing to miss his cat, it was another to miss Hermione too. He had no right to miss her, even after he'd glimpsed what he could've had with her. He'd taken a running leap and dived into the shallow end of an empty pool.
Liquor could not fill the empty spaces, for they were filled with holes.
Draco sadly wanked himself into a sad sleep, and dreamed sad dreams of a room filled with forgotten things.
He couldn't breathe. His mouth was filled with choking, clinging softness. This was it. His end. Everything flows until it doesn't.
Last of his name.
His assassin shifted, rolling his warm weight off Draco’s lumpy, bone filled face and onto the marshmallowy comfort of a feather pillow.
The chirp echoed through him and his lashes fluttered open to behold gigantic yellow, feline eyes, less than an inch from his face, staring into his black soul.
“Heraclitus.”
The beast flicked his tail across Draco’s face in admonition.
“...Crookshanks?”
He started to purr.
“How are you here? It's a long way to York. Can't blame you though, York’s a bore and I bet she's got you on tinned jellymeat like some kind of pauper.”
The hum of contentment got louder, indicating agreement. Something tight in Draco seemed to settle with Heraclitus next to him, like he himself might be inclined to start purring.
“I've missed you, old boy. Does she know you're here?”
Dear Granger,
Hera Crook the cat arrived to murder me this morning. I had no prior knowledge of his plans, perhaps you sent him. It would have been a perfect crime, but unfortunately he let me live (this time).
I don't know how he got here. Can he use the floo? If so, I am terrified. He will undoubtedly only use this power for evil. I wonder why we never thought to defeat the Dark Lord using the cat? Might have saved Potter some headaches.
I didn't kidnap him in case you're wondering. I swear it on my grandfather's grave. Fittingly Abraxas felt that the only people that should have cats as familiars were spinsters and half-bloods (don't ask me, I don't know).
I would be happy to deliver him to you, or for you to visit the Manor and collect him at your nearest convenience.
Yours, if you want me to be,
You may think there's no point in crossing things out when you can clearly still discern what was written, and to that I say
Draco
✶
Only the promise of her face allowed Draco to leave the Manor with Herashanks? Crookclitus? safely and unhappily caged.
Hermione's flat wasn't connected to the floo network, and apparating with animals was not considered safe or wise, so Draco was to floo to the local floo office in York and from there walk five and half minutes down twisting, narrow streets to Hermione's flat above a muggle shoe repairers.
He did all that under a fine mist of rain, surrounded on all sides by the everwatchful bricks. He rang the doorbell on a buttercup yellow door adorned with a golden number 5, and heard an angry sounding buzz as he was admitted into the sanctum.
At the top of the carpeted stairs, she stood in another doorway waiting for him. She wasn't smiling and her arms were folded tight across her chest. She was a goddess and he was a soggy tea towel.
Was there any possibility that she was going to let him into her flat? He just knew it was softly-lit and cosy, like her, and suddenly he needed to be in there so badly he might risk pushing past her and giving himself a high speed tour until she inevitably hexed him. It would probably be a very creative, thoughtful hex and he was almost looking forward to that too.
He stopped a few steps down, the cat yowled and silence descended.
No, silence at the beginning of an encounter was not good silence. Good silence would be comfortable, sated silence after he'd given her six or seven orgasms and she'd told him she had been ruined (good ruined) by his excellent penis.
Words. Words. Words.
“I woke up after the final battle and your cat was on my chest, and I knew he was yours but I took him home and he and my very patient friends were the only things that stopped me from offing myself. If I told you how many times this cat shat in my shoes—directly into them, mind—or how much hair I've eaten over the last five years… well, I won't tell you but in both cases it was a lot. Hermione, I love this awful creature. He is me, I think, strange and generally unfriendly to all except a select few, though still liable to bite the hand that feeds him to keep things interesting.”
She didn't speak, so he kept going. This impassioned speech was moving perilously close to a ramble and he was thinking about how he could see her nipples through her t-shirt and if he wasn't careful they were going to feature in his second stanza, alongside the fact that he had loved her, somehow forever, even though that made no sense at all.
“But everything he gave me was something I stole from you. And I wanted to make it right, but I reasoned with myself that you must've learned to live without him and I didn't know how to do that. I don’t know if I do now, either. Not to mention, I'd probably have to see you and be confronted by the absolute antithesis to all that I am. You are a beautiful mirror and I am a twisted black thing oozing on your stairs. I want to say I finally grew a conscience when I met you in the Red Lion that day, but I didn't really, Finnigan saw Heraclitus at dinner and forced my hand—”
“Heraclitus?” she interrupted him. How dare she? He was prepared to talk for at least ten more minutes.
“That's—” his name. “What I call him.”
“What kind of name is Heraclitus?”
Don't say it.
“I will not take criticism from the witch who named him Crookshanks.”
“I was thirteen!" she protested. "And it's a good name.”
Unless Draco was very much mistaken there was an upwards twitch at the corner of her lips. The hope blooming in his chest almost knocked him down the stairs he was still on.
“Would you two have your barney someplace else?” An irate voice roared through the wall. Ah yes, some people of lesser means were forced to share walls. What a nightmare.
Hermione looked torn.
He lowered his voice, it was hard, with all the passion and such. “I owe you a new thank you, and a new apology. I am so sorry, Hermione. And thank you… for him.”
Silence. Awful, lovely silence.
Then, “Tea?”
“Pardon?”
“Tea, do you drink tea?”
No. “Yes. Inside?”
She rolled her eyes. “No, I thought I would serve it to you here on the stairs, pour it into a rolled up newspaper you know.”
He would take it and drink every drop. He would curl up and sleep on her doorstep for seven days and seven nights if it transpired she liked elaborate apology rituals.
“For God’s sake, come in,” she sighed.
He followed her (!) over the threshold (!!), into her living room (!!!). It was low lit, and filled with books and plants and interesting things. And it was fucking cosy.
Draco bent to release the The-Cat-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named from his prison. He streaked out on his bandy legs, and hissed at Draco for daring to ensnare him. There was a promise in the air that within days he would be back in Wiltshire with a vengeance, to piss in Draco's shampoo.
While Hermione prepared tea, Draco casually snooped and The Beast licked the spot where his balls must've once been.
“Whatever else you hear about me, old friend, I never would have castrated you.”
“What was that?” Hermione re-entered the room with new wisps falling out the pile on her head and a tea tray floating before her.
“Nothing. Admiring your ficus.”
The tray descended elegantly onto a low table and then they were sitting down drinking tea and it was awfully civil and dignified, which was a boon, but also Draco felt that it wouldn’t hurt if the tea drinking became slightly more feral and depraved.
“My parents took him to Australia,” Hermione said out of the blue. He'd just been preparing to ask her about work, reminding himself he should probably see about the whole… gainful employment thing.
“Come again?”
“I don't know how much you know… about me.” Her in-breath shuddered through her. “In 1997, I sent my parents away because there were credible threats against them—”
He was pond scum. He was shit on her shoe.
“—and they took Crookshanks with them. When they eventually started talking to me again they s-said he’d r-run away.”
Damned witch, why was she so bloody tearful?
Fuck it, he was doing it.
Draco moved from armchair to sofa, and put his arms around her in order to provide her with some comfort, or an easier target for hexing if she was so inclined.
“Do you think he used a portkey?” Amongst it all, this was horrifying news.
But she was sobbing into his chest and a tear was on his cheek and it wasn't really about the cat, but it was about him, and souls and rivers. You cannot step twice into the same river because everything was ever-changing, and the wizard who stepped into the river was changed from who he was one day, or week, or five years before. The river too had shifted course, deposited new stones and fertilised new earth.
“I’m so sorry,” he said into her hair. He hadn’t been raised to apologise, but he would do it until she told him to stop.
Rather a lot of her had melted into his lap, and she was looking up at him all shiny and blotchy.
“I’m really cross with you.”
“I deserve your righteous fury, nothing so adorable as crossness.”
“Don’t make fun of me.”
He wouldn’t, but he had a strong feeling he might enjoy teasing her in every which way. It was too much to hope for anything, but his cock and heart had formed an accord and were fervently hoping for everything.
She buried her face into his chest again—good, she fit so well there it obviously was made for her—and laughed.
“We had sex,” she said, disbelieving. He couldn’t quite parse whether the sentiment was ‘oh my stars, how terribly droll, we shan’t be repeating such frivolity’ or ‘I didn’t wear a bra because I wanted less fabric between my lovely tits and your exemplary cock’.
“We did…” he said slowly.
“I hadn’t seen you in four years, and the last time I did you were as drunk as a sea captain in front of the Wizengamot, and I saw your face and heard your voice and… we… I…”
This was very promising, but her ellipses were stopping her from getting to the point.
He extracted her from her spot between his pectorals, and looked at her face. Should he ask to kiss her, or just do it?
“More sex please,” he managed.
Gods, he would jump out the window. It didn’t look big enough for defenestration, but he would make it work.
“Why?” she asked. What kind of question was that? Wasn’t she supposed to be some kind of genius? But how did one answer such a question?
“Er—um, you see.” Off to a good start there, old boy. “Sex is good, but I have a feeling that sex between yourself and myself… as it were, might be more than good. It might be spectacular, actually. It might be symbolic too, and lead to more sex and other things, the things that might damn a wizard if he wasn’t careful. Can you say something so I stop saying things that make me want to curse my own tongue off?”
Hermione didn’t say something, unless leaning back and pulling her t-shirt over her head was something. If it was, he wholeheartedly agreed with the sentiment.
He blinked at her nipples. “Is that an invitation, or are you just showing off? Do you need a compliment?”
“It wouldn’t hurt.”
“You have the world’s best tits. I’ve not seen all of the world’s tits mind, but I am confident in my conclusion,” he declared. “Can I touch you?”
Her little nod was all he needed. With an overenthusiastic half tackle, he had her tits in his hands, his hips on her hips and his mouth on her jaw. Undeserving he might be, but lucky he was too—Hermione dragged his jumper off him like it had offended her, and opened her legs to make way for some rampant frottage.
“Are you still cross?” he murmured, claiming her lips so she had to attempt to answer around the movements of his tongue.
“I’m so cross.”
“I’m so sorry. I’m a hopeless case.”
“I’m all about a worthy cause,” she giggled.
“A lost cause.”
The noise she made suggested that maybe her commitment to causes ran rather deeper than a passion and all the way to something rather more akin to a kink. This boded well. As Theo and Pansy so delighted in telling him, he had a tendency towards being maudlin and lugubrious. Lugubrious—what a stupid word.
“Tell me what to do Granger, I’m wretched. Wandering alone in the fog.”
“I want you to fuck me with your tongue.”
“Wow, warn a wizard before you say such filth. Also—Gods, yes. Please. I bet you taste like caramel.”
Overenthusiasm abounding, Draco half tore, half hexed off Hermione’s trousers. Her knickers were miniscule.
“I refuse to believe you wore these to simply go about your day.” He plucked at an innocent feminine bow at the front that could not make up for the sheer indecency.
“I wore them for you,” she admitted.
Fuck. Yes. “Pity I have to kill them.”
He didn’t precisely mean to set them on fire, but it happened anyway. They weren’t on her body anyway, and no one was harmed in the viking funeral of her very small pants.
His head was between her legs. He was looking at absolutely every softly lit, glistening inch of her cunt, and she was acting shy. How dare she? Didn’t she realise how delicious it looked?
“You burnt my knickers?”
“Hush.” He pushed his trusty middle finger inside her and watched her jolt upwards. He made a delighted, but hopefully manly noise. “To use a very apt and favourite dirty cliché: you’re so, fucking, wet.”
He swiped his thumb over her engorged clit and started up a rhythm. Mesmerised, he watched his finger disappear, and her face scrunch up, and filed both away into the part of his mind where his most permanent, cherished memories were stored. The sounds were obscene, and beautiful. The only possible response to the way she flexed her hips into his hand was to add another finger.
“Ohh.”
“Do you like that?”
“Yeah,” she bit her lip.
He pulled his fingers out to open her wide, ravenous by this stage, and bent his head to taste her. It had been too long since he’d gathered up drops, and utilised the full length of his tongue, so he made the most of it, moaning in tandem with her. In all honestly, he was probably enjoying this more than she was. It wasn’t a competition, but he’d definitely won. Or lost. It didn’t matter, because it was awesome. Her feet were everywhere… wrapped around him, pushing against his shoulders, rubbing against his cock—he was fairly certain he could come from the taste of her alone. That would be embarrassing, but it was a very real concern, so he told himself he’d better put in an Outstanding performance.
When he drew away for breath, and sanity and a look at her flushed face, a trail of spit and slick stretched between his mouth and her cunt, catching the light.
He broke it when he breached her again, with three fingers this time.
“Fuck!”
“Alright?” he asked.
“Gods yes,” she panted. Her legs squeezed around his face when he sucked her clit and wriggled and crooked his fingers, drawing out promising sounds from her mouth and her depths. Wet, squelching almost. She was trying to hide her face under a tassled pillow. He wished she wouldn’t but he couldn’t breathe really, let alone chide her. If this was the end, he’d had a good run, there was something very poetic about Hermione Granger drowning him in her cunt.
A lot of things happened, all at once. Hermione started groaning throatily, in a totally changed tone that might imply she was about to die or to come, or perhaps that she was haunted by some kind of wanton spirit and in dire need of exorcism. If she hadn’t updated her soundproofing enchantments, her friendly downstairs neighbour would most definitely be able to hear her. Good, Draco hoped so. Soon, all the squelching became slapping and then she had kicked him in the forehead, which would have been absolutely bewildering that wasn’t followed by a breathy cry and a gush—
A violently shaking Hermione came thoroughly, and unequivocally all over his face.
“Good gracious,” he exclaimed, in awe. Everything flows, indeed. “Wow.”
After a moment of shock where a heavenly chorus seemed to sing, he licked his glossy lips. Drops of her ran down his chest.
“That was—” Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to tell her that that was the single most impressive and erotic thing he’d ever borne witness to, because he’d forgotten all about The Beast and The Beast would not under any circumstances allow himself to be forgotten.
FKA Crookshanks leapt from the top of the tallest bookshelf where he had been practicing his gargoyle impression, all the way down onto Draco’s naked, unguarded back. Claws first.
“FUCK!”
✶
Draco did not stay after the incident(s) on Hermione’s sofa. She had to prepare a long, boring opinion for a morning deadline, and he had a fully booked day of navel gazing and panicking to attend to. After he dressed, he firmly told Hermione that if she tried to tergeo him, he would duel her. Her nose wrinkled in distaste when he tried to kiss her, but she seemed pleased enough by his perversion.
He would never wash again. Well. Probably after a wank or two while his hair was still damp with her.
“That was good,” she said at the top of the stairs.
“How good?”
“Very good.”
“My face is available for a repeat of tonight’s proceedings.”
She both blushed and beamed at him. She was perfect. “We’ll see.”
Hmm, not as enthusiastic as he might have hoped, but she was smiling at least. “Sorry. And thank you,” he reiterated. He would say it again and again. Better yet, he would show her his sorrow, and his gratitude—every day, if she’d let him.
“I’m still cross, but… I think—I think I might be glad too.”
✶
Her letter arrived at two a.m. the next morning. Draco was awake because his rock hard cock had told him it was time to rise and shine and wank. All his thoughts were of her.
The little brown owl looked at him like he knew exactly what he had been doing. For years, Draco had had to wank with a cat watching no matter how hard he tried to evade him, so he paid the owl’s judgement no mind. He took the letter and gave it some caviar for its troubles.
Dear Draco,
I know you’re reading this part, so let me just begin by saying I think I’d like to have a lot of sex with you without delay
I have been considering it, and I would like to propose a joint custody arrangement for care of Crookshanks. I believe it is in his best interests, and we should get together to discuss terms immediately.
Feel free to visit at your earliest convenience.
Yours, if you keep eating me out like you did this evening,
Hermione Granger
In his haste to apparate to York, Draco forgot that he was quite naked. The cold rain and a shout of, “Oi mate no one wants to see your meat and two veg this hour!” reminded him forthwith.
He returned to Wiltshire, dressed in a three piece suit for some reason, took a deep breath, apparated again (behind a nice private bush so as not to break the law this time, landing in Azkaban at this point would be a proper drag), and rang the bell next to a buttercup yellow door.
At the top of the stairs, radiant, lovely Hermione was smiling at him. On the ground at her feet, a very smug orange cat wound his way around her ankles, as if he’d planned the whole thing.