Caelum Ignis Ch58: Epilogue: "A Few Years"
A Dramione fan fiction
DRACO: YEAR SEVEN
“Touch her like that again, and I’ll fucking kill you,” he snapped coldly. He grabbed the thick neck of the more densely-muscled boy… Man, not boy, his mind muttered in annoyance. Which he’s been since we were in fourth-fucking-year… and glared down at the dark eyes to make sure the handsy bugger heard him.
“Vat ees your mental demage?” the Bulgarian asked, his eyes incredulous. “I did not touch ‘er. You crazy as Rasputin… compleetly nutter.”
“Rasputin?” Draco fought with the slight slur over his tongue. “I’m the nutter?” He looked at Hermione who had a strange expression on her face, one he finally realized came from her trying desperately not to burst out in a laugh. “That’s my Godric-damned wife, that’s my ‘meental demage.’ Did she really not tell you that?”
“Of course I told him,” she assured him.
She walked directly to him and wrapped her bare arms around his waist.
He struggled not to stare at her in the dark green and midnight black, extremely form-fitting and nearly backless gown, which wasn’t in any way appropriate for a school dance, his slightly-inebriated mind abruptly decided, even with both of them well over eighteen.
He knew he was being irrational. He knew it.
Hermione could take care of herself––
“Hey,” she murmured. “Calm down. It’s all right.”
She was rubbing his chest then, and he closed his eyes, longer than a blink.
The powers that be had decided a little inter-school unity was called for that year, now that Voldemort and his followers had finally been defeated, and Voldemort himself was really and truly dead. They’d pulled together all three European magical schools for a second time in three years, this time for a Yule Ball that had no reason to exist other than to bolster international unity and hopefully to aid friendly relations among the students.
Like the first time, Hogwarts offered to play host to the winter ball.
The Durmstrang ship was once more anchored in the center of the Black Lake, the Beauxbatons carriage parked in the field near Hagrid’s hut.
Instead of the Triwizarding School Champions, each school’s top two students were honored as part of the multi-school dance, which included Draco and Hermione as Head Boy and Girl, the top two Beauxbaton students, only one of whom Draco even recognized, and Viktor Krum along with fucking Cormac McClaggen, of all people––which had already turned Draco’s mood more than a little murderous.
The two Beauxbatons students each walked out on the arm of one of the two Durmstrang students, and the six of them had begun the opening dance.
“Nutter,” Krum repeated, his thick jaw clenched. “I only eees saying hello.”
“They why the hell did it look like you were about to kiss her?” Draco growled.
Krum smirked at him, and Draco blinked.
He glared down at his wife. “Is he fucking with me?”
Krum grunted a snorting laugh, as if he’d been holding it back.
Hermione snorted out a slightly drunken giggle.
“Maybe a little,” she admitted, her smile creeping a touch wider. “I told him not to, but he didn’t entirely believe me when I said we were married. I said he’d find out in a hurry if he did anything to piss you off. Viktor’s got a weird sense of humor.” She leaned her head against Draco’s shoulder, and held up her thumb and forefinger up so that it showed a bare sliver of light between them. “Just a teensy, eensy, tiny bit of fucking with you, husband.”
“It’s not funny,” he said flatly.
Krum and Hermione burst out in another spate of giggles.
“It’s not funny,” he repeated sharply.
She rubbed his chest again, and he growled at her.
“You are not trustworthy with alcohol,” he accused next. “Is this what I have to look forward to, whenever you get drunk? A few hundred more years of you pawing at your exes to get a rise out of me?”
“A few hundred?” she asked, indignant. “Pawing?”
“Malfoys are long-lived,” he retorted, ignoring the second thing.
“That doesn’t mean I’m living to be two hundred and whatever,” she shot back.
“The hell it doesn’t––”
“Ees only a leetle joke,” Krum assured him, now smiling more warmly as he watched them argue, a bemused look on his face. “I do not really try to kiss Mrs. Hermy-ion-nee. I am married too,” he said proudly. “Want to meet her? My wife?”
“No,” Draco retorted.
Hermione burst out in another laugh, as if it exploded from her chest.
Viktor chuckled, too, but Draco barely looked at him now.
“You’re a bad wife,” he informed her.
“I’m sorry.” She waved her hand in front of her, still giggling. “It probably is my fault. You were just staring at us so suspiciously… and Viktor was telling me all about his wife and how happy they were and you were simply glaring at us… and then Viktor said he didn’t believe I was married, too, not after everything I told him about you, and it was all just too much. So I told Victor he’d find out quick we were married, if he pretended to make a pass at me. Our faces were like four inches apart, Draco… it only looked closer because of the angle…”
“A. Bad. Wife,” he emphasized.
“I could have actually kissed him,” she mocked. “Given you a real reason to be annoyed.”
“You’d be sleeping on the couch,” he said shortly. “Without the cat. Crooks would be with me… the non-traitor… and I’d feed him treats and brush him while I let him sleep on your pillow all night. You’d be spitting cat hair and smelling cat farts for weeks.”
“You are ridiculous,” she told him fondly.
“And I’m clearly not doing enough to convince you what an unstable nutter I truly am,” he said, glaring at her. “…Or you’d never have concocted such a vicious plan.”
His eyes found Cormac then, purely by chance.
The other wizard blanched and scuttled away to a different part of the Great Hall, a significantly more distant part of the Great Hall, and one more bathed in shadows. His face turned bright red, but his eyes never left Draco’s as he fled under his stare. He looked like a great big rat darting for its hole, to Draco’s eyes.
At least that wanker had a healthy sense of self-preservation.
She rubbed his chest, and his eyes closed again.
“You’re really quite cute when you’re annoyed with me,” she murmured.
He growled at her a second time, in the back of his throat.
It didn’t occur to him until later that she’d probably found that funny, too.
HERMIONE: YEAR SEVEN, TWO MONTHS LATER
“We’ve become the crash pad for every horny Gryffindor and Slytherin in Hogwarts,” he complained, coming to stand next to her on the upper landing. She glanced up from where she’d been staring down at Ginny and Harry curled around one another on their couch in front of the fireplace.
She’d been trying to decide if she could take a shower without waking them.
Draco scowled. “It’s not enough that Neville and Nott are here every single night… now we’ve got these perverts soiling our couch, too.”
She snorted, and looked up at him, an eyebrow quirked. “I don’t think you have much call to accuse other people of being perverts,” she pointed out. “And soiling? Really? Are we back in the 1800s now?”
“This is our place,” he groused, ignoring her jab. “It was ours before we were given it back as Head Boy and Girl, and it’s doubly ours now. We’ve earned it, and not only through subterfuge, or me being a freak of nature, or even our superior intellects. I nearly died here. I lost my virginity in that room where Nott is currently defiling Longbottom… and we should get to be perverts in here wherever and whenever we damned well want. Instead I’ve got to worry about getting Potter’s…” His nose scrunched. “…Spunk on my trousers if I decide to sit on my own sofa and have a cuppa with my wife.”
She snorted again, and rolled her eyes. “Charming.”
“Me?” he protested. “I’m not the one leaving disgusting… fluids… on other people’s furniture. I’m merely making the observation that our house has been invaded by randy freeloaders and shameless ransackers and you’ve done nothing at all to expel them, wife.”
He looked down his nose at her accusingly.
“Really, you’ve encouraged them,” he added.
She looked up at him, half in exasperation, but ended up staring at his face instead. The morning light from the window behind them and the firelight in front did strange things to the angles of his face. Both lights somehow made his silvery eyes stand out more.
Godric, how did he look so shockingly beautiful to her still? She reacted to him even more ridiculously now than she had before they’d spent the entire summer together in their house in London, and it only seemed to be getting worse.
He wrapped his arm around her and squeezed her tightly to his side.
“Stop distracting me, wife,” he murmured. “I want to be annoyed.”
“No one’s stopping you from being annoyed,” she huffed.
“Your sex kitten ways are distracting me from my annoyance. I find that… annoying,” he said, squeezing her tighter.
She rolled her eyes, but her face flushed.
“I have no idea what you mean,” she scoffed.
His arm coiled like an iron band around her waist and lower back.
“You are more gorgeous to me every day, too,” he said into her ear. “And your distraction is working, by the way.”
“I thought I was supposed to stop distracting you,” she said.
“Don’t bother. It won’t work.” He bit her neck lightly, then turned it into a kiss.
“Hypocrite,” she scolded, softer when she saw Harry stir on the couch below.
“Slut,” he murmured into her ear, drawing out the word and making her shiver.
“We have class,” she reminded him. “And N.E.W.T.s in less than two months––”
“All the more reason to make an extra effort to improve one another’s morale,” he said, the smirk in his voice more pronounced. “And you are absolutely outstanding at morale improvement, Mrs. Malfoy. Although it never hurts to practice.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but instead burst out in an involuntary laugh.
Absolutely ridiculous, she told herself. He is a ridiculous man.
He’d won, though.
Worse, he knew he’d won, which is maybe why she didn’t argue when he began steering her back towards their shared bedroom.
HERMIONE: YEAR SEVEN, ONE MONTH LATER
“Hey.” She made her voice low, calm, deliberately lulling. “Can I talk to you right now? Privately?” When he didn’t look at her, she wrapped her arms around him, and felt the tension in his muscles worsen.
He wasn’t doing okay. He wasn’t.
She could see it. More than that, she could feel it.
She felt it through her fingertips, the energy sparking over her hands, through her skin, over her throat and chest. She felt some part of her instinctively pulling it from him, cooling him down, helping him balance it out somehow inside that storm-like vortex of writhing fire.
“You want to come back inside with me?” she asked, her voice lower. “I want some tea. And maybe we can get Dobby to bring us––”
“HERMIONE!” a different voice bellowed.
The other voice felt like a physical slap, and it made Draco tense all over again. She hadn’t noticed him relax until it was gone. Now she gripped her husband’s arms tightly in her hands, and turned her back to the person who’d just shouted her name. She felt her magic swim over Draco like a protective shield, although she hadn’t spoken any spells to create one the usual way. She tugged lightly on him, trying to pull his attention back to her.
“Hey,” she said, softer. “Ignore him, okay? I was never in any danger, Draco. I was and am totally fine, despite how it looked, and despite how it must have felt to you. He wasn’t doing anything to me. He wasn’t going to do anything to me. He’s just being a wanker…”
She could feel her words weren’t really getting through to him yet.
“He’s not a bloody Death Eater,” she said, voice low. She aimed her contempt not at him, but at the other person standing behind her, in the courtyard. At the same time she spoke so quietly, only Draco would hear.
“He can’t hurt me,” she assured him. “He doesn’t pose that kind of threat to either of us, Draco… and he’s not worth getting a detention from Moody. You might as well hit a pygmy puff with a diffindo… or a flobberworm with a sectumsempra…”
Draco expelled a half snort of a breath, one he’d obviously been holding in.
She felt some of the tension leave his arms, but not enough.
Everything coming off him still screamed of threat, of fear, of a near panic that she wasn’t safe, that someone was trying to hurt her or or take her or kill both of them.
It did terrifying things to his magic. She could feel the power there.
For the same reason, she tightened the protective shield around both of them.
She knew how delicate these next few seconds might be.
“We’re okay,” she reminded him, softer. “We’re both okay, honey. I’m okay.” She stroked his face with a hand, and he finally looked at her.
That time, his silver eyes seemed to see her.
They swam back into focus and he swallowed.
Briefly, embarrassment skated across his eyes, but he never really took his attention off the other person in the courtyard.
He never stopped waiting for the attack.
“You’re having a trauma reaction, Draco,” she said, speaking the words even lower now, a barely audible murmur she used with him whenever something like this happened, and someone else might hear. “It’s just a memory. Remember what the healer told you? It’s not real. That fear you’re feeling is for the past, not the present. It already happened, but it’s not happening now. Follow each breath. Use your logic. Your father’s dead. Voldemort is dead. I’m not in danger. You’re safe––”
“HERMIONE!” the other voice snapped, louder. “I was talking to you! Can’t you pull yourself away from you psychotic, nutter of a husband for two bloody––”
She didn’t think.
She turned on him, her hair whipping around her wildly in the cold spring wind. Her voice came out in a snarl so vicious he stepped back.
“Get the fuck out of here, Ronald… now…” She glared at him coldly. “And if you ever put your hands on me like that again… in front of him, especially… I’ll curse you myself. I won’t feel the slightest bit bad about it, either!”
His blue eyes grew round with shock.
His freckled face flushed a darker red.
But something in her face must have convinced him.
He closed his mouth. He glared at her even harder, but after a long-feeling pause where she thought she might actually have to curse him, Ron turned and stomped away.
As soon as he’d left the small courtyard, the same one where Dumbledore’s decapitated and dead body had been dropped, almost a year ago now, the tension left Draco’s body entirely. It left all at once, like a cord being yanked out of the socket.
He sagged into her and she wrapped her arms tightly around his waist and back as he started to breathe for real.
For a long-feeling few minutes, they just stood there.
She continued to rub his back as his magic slowly de-charged, and his body along with it. His breath went from harsh and short, nearly panting, to slow, deep, and deliberate. His arms wrapped more tightly around her, one hand burying itself in her hair.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured against her neck.
His cheek was hot, but he sounded like himself again.
He sounded calm, if embarrassed.
She bit her lip, trying not to cry.
She knew he hated it when she cried.
She felt responsible though. She’d lied to Ron just then. Draco hadn’t seen Ron grab her. It had been worse than that; Draco had felt her panic and he’d come running.
His mind had obviously snapped to the worst possible scenario, the scenario she knew he still dreamed about some nights. A part of him still didn’t fully believe his father was dead. He didn’t fully believe Voldemort was dead, or Greyback, or his aunt.
She showed him every article in the Daily Prophet that had another Death Eater caught and put in an Azkaban cell, but it never fully convinced that less-conscious part of him.
“Don’t say you’re sorry,” she scolded softly. She wiped her face with her knuckles and wrapped her arms around him tighter. “Never be sorry for that, Draco. Never. I’m so sorry I scared you. I shouldn’t have reacted like that… he just caught me off guard, that’s all.”
He hesitated only a few heart beats before he nodded.
His breath began to slow more.
He was stroking her hair now, sliding his fingers through the curls and untangling them carefully as he pulled them gently away from her face. The class bell rang, but she made no effort to leave him, not yet.
“He didn’t hurt you?” he asked, still sounding embarrassed.
“No. He didn’t hurt me.”
Draco looked at her face, skeptical, then down at her arms. She could feel some part of him that wanted to examine her all over, to look for bruises.
“He is a bloody wanker,” he muttered, a few seconds later.
She laughed, and wiped her eyes again, sniffling.
“Yes, he bloody well is,” she retorted. “But I can handle him. I promise.”
She gripped him tighter, and he sighed.
“I’m making you late,” he said.
“I don’t care.”
She practically felt his skepticism, but he let it go.
“He needs to get laid,” Draco grumbled next. “He’s never going to let it go until he does. He’s going to turn into one of those bitter pricks who hates witches and blames them for all his problems unless we find just one witch with poor enough taste to let him into her knickers.” He gave her a sideways look. “Can’t Ginny do anything about that?”
Hermione choked on a laugh. “I think Ginny would be more likely to set him up with a blast-ended skrewt, and not a particularly nice one,” Hermione observed wryly. “The idea of Ron getting into anyone’s knickers might be enough to traumatize her, frankly.”
“What about Fred? George?”
She lifted an eyebrow. “Have you met Fred or George?”
“Well someone has to do it,” he grumbled.
She snorted another laugh, then patted him on the arm.
“Well, you best get right on that then, Draco Malfoy,” she said. “That’s not a project I’m about to tackle, not for any amount of galleons. And don’t even think about asking Harry… he’d be even more traumatized than Ginny.”
“Maybe I will do it,” he muttered, annoyed. “Or maybe I’ll put Nott on it. Longbottom can be surprisingly devious. I’m sure the two of them could concoct something.”
He stared up at the lone tree in the courtyard, his expression thoughtful.
She snorted again, her cheek pressed to his chest, but didn’t answer.
She couldn’t even tell for sure if he was joking.
Frankly, she was so relieved to hear him sounding like himself again, she didn’t even care if he wasn’t.
HERMIONE: SUMMER AFTER SEVENTH YEAR
“What’ve you got on for today?” she asked casually, lifting her mug of coffee and taking a luxurious sip. “Are you busy at all?”
He glanced over from the stove, one eyebrow quirked. “Why?”
She watched as he finished arranging an egg and cheese on toasted crumpet, and then another on a second crumpet on a second plate.
He dropped the pan in the sink once he’d finished both, and brought both plates over to the table, plunking down one in front of her, and the second in front of a different chair. He returned to the sink while her eyes continued to follow him. Now he was picking up the steaming kettle, and pouring hot water into a cat-shaped mug.
“Ginny and Harry invited me to go to Diagon with Neville and Nott,” she explained. “I thought you might want to come, seeing as how you were grumbling about not having enough plants in your garden yet, and Neville would be there…”
She trailed when she saw the faint smirk ghosting his lips.
“What?” she asked, flushing. “You don’t want to go?”
“No,” he snorted. “It’s you… pretending you don’t know or somehow totally forgot the owls with our N.E.W.T.s results are supposed to come today. I don’t believe for a second you’re going anywhere until you have those results in your grubby little hands.”
“My hands are not grubby,” she scoffed, setting down her mug.
“They are very cute hands,” he admitted, looking at her fingers pointedly from where he was dumping sugar in his tea. “I particularly liked what you were doing with them this morning, dearest, especially with that one finger…”
Her face flushed, but she didn’t back down. “Do you want to come today, or not? I could pick out plants for you, if you’d like. You’d have to give me a list…”
“And miss you pretending not to brag about all the Outstandings you’ve undoubtedly managed in every single subject you sat for?” he scoffed back. “I wouldn’t dream of it, Granger. Anyway, I won’t have you shopping without me. I won’t have it… and I’d be bored as fuck waiting for you to get back.”
“Fine,” she said primly. “Then you’re buying me ice cream. And a book. And possibly a new quill.”
He walked over to her only then.
He strolled really, and sat languidly on the chair nearest to hers, on the same end of the antique, black walnut table she’d found that fit perfectly in her favorite kitchen nook. It was the bigger of the two nooks, the one with all the windows on the second floor of their house that overlooked the small park at the front of their house.
The chairs they’d found in a different store, and she almost loved them more.
High-backed, multi-colored, with plush velvet-upholstery and wide-winged backs, they reminded her of something from Alice in Wonderland. She currently sat in the lavender one, and Draco in the one that was sky blue. They also had one in fuchsia, and another in lime green.
The chairs and everything about them were utterly ridiculous in every way, but shockingly comfortable, and the wood on them matched the black walnut table perfectly. They made sitting in the kitchen both ludicrous and decadent all at the same time.
Draco loved them, maybe in part because his father would have absolutely despised them. As for Hermione, she laughed for a full twenty minutes when he first enlarged them inside the house and asked her if they could keep them; he’d then insisted she sit in at least one before she made her final decision.
They’d only grown on her in the time since.
She now wanted to buy something equally ridiculous and comfortable for their sitting room, but they hadn’t yet found anything they both loved quite enough to drag into that part of the house. She found it funny they were both being incredibly picky while also being increasingly eccentric in their furnishing choices.
They’d converted an entire floor of their house into a full library already, filled with pillows and comfy chairs and tea and coffee stations and nooks for reading and for entertaining by the fire. They needed at least three more sofas for that level, too, and she wanted a good-sized work table for research projects and the like, but the sitting room needed addressing first.
Maybe today would be a good day to find a couch for in there, rather than the transfigured armchair they’d been using. If they didn’t find anything in Diagon Alley, she could maybe drag him to a few muggle stores, either to look for antiques they could refurbish, or even to check out a few posh stores downtown, depending on how much time they had.
They’d barely furnished half the house over the second half of the previous summer, and then there’d been school, and returning to their shared dormitory.
Now they really had no excuse but to make the entire space theirs.
There would be no returning to Hogwarts next year––in itself, a strange thought––and neither of them had any desire to live anywhere else. She supposed Draco’s apprenticeship with Snape for his potions mastery would take him back and forth to Hogwarts a fair bit, but only by floo and likely not for full days, much less overnight.
He would still live here, so they should have a fully furnished house by the end of the summer for him to return to, stocked with enough potion ingredients that he could do all the work Snape assigned him without having to return to the castle.
“I will buy you one ice cream for every Outstanding you receive,” he promised, stroking the inside of her wrist on the table with his fingers while she ate the egg, cheese, and crumpet he’d made her. “But expect me to ask for a very different set of presents for every Outstanding I receive… perverted, dirty, little presents involving these clever hands of yours, and possibly some means of restraining them.”
She snorted and swallowed her mouthful of egg.
Even so, she felt herself flush under his stare.
She was about to tease him again, maybe poke him with her fork, but he’d already leaned in for a kiss. She curled her arms around his neck as she kissed him back.
Some time later, after she’d lost herself in the kiss and in him entirely, had forgot all about her breakfast and coffee and N.E.W.T.s and Outstandings and trips to Diagon with their friends, after her mind and breath stuttered and she stopped forming coherent thoughts… a sharp series of taps at the nearest window made them both jump.
When she turned and saw what had done it, she let out a little squeal.
When she glanced at Draco, mildly embarrassed, he smirked.
Two owls perched there, blinking at them with baleful, yellow eyes.
They watched her and Draco pull apart from their embrace, comically curious expressions on their faces as they observed the flushed and breathless humans. One was a large barn owl, the other a Great Horned; both gripped decidedly official-looking and nearly identical envelopes in their beaks.
Draco and Hermione glanced at one another.
Then Draco grinned and reached for the iron handle to jerk open the window.
DRACO: FIVE YEARS LATER
His head lolled back on the scratchy, horrifically flowered, deeply uncomfortable fabric covering the sofa where he sat. In honor of the occasion, he tried, admittedly briefly, to restrain himself from making a rude remark about the pattern and its general lack of comfort to Potter.
He and Hermione had their own brand of kitsch they enjoyed. Potter and the Weaselette seemed to prefer collecting disjointed furniture pieces with no conceivable connection to one another, perhaps by raiding the worst second-hand shops in muggle London with their eyes closed and without sitting on or sampling a single object prior to purchase.
They certainly didn’t have Hermione’s eye for chaotic artistry.
Nor did they have Draco’s sense of whimsy.
This couch, in particular, had been a point of contention between him and Potter for over a year now. Maybe for the same reason, he didn’t manage to remain silent for long.
“Where did you get this hunk of offensive, foul-smelling, uncomfortable garbage?” he blurted to Potter finally. “I can’t help but think there must be a reason you allowed it in your house. And an even more salacious reason why you won’t tell me what that is.”
Harry rolled his eyes. He ignored Draco’s question long enough to shove a cheese-covered cracker in his mouth. He chewed, swallowed, then glared at Draco pointedly.
“Can’t we just, for once––”
“No,” Draco cut in. “Emphatically no. How long have you known me?”
“Too bloody long.”
“Then you should know I won’t stop asking until you answer.”
Harry shoved his glasses up his nose with a knuckle. “For fuck’s sakes… we’re not here for ourselves right now, are we?” Harry plunked another cracker in his mouth and chewed vigorously, his eyes now darting towards the kitchen, as if looking for rescue. “We’re here to be supportive. It’s not supposed to be about––”
“All the more reason,” Draco retorted, quite reasonably, he thought. “Just tell me where you got the fucking couch, Potter, and why it’s such a bloody secret, and then we can move on to something else I can torture you with. And do it before they get here, so this chapter of our lives can finally be behind us––”
“I already know what you’re going to say.”
“But you’d still deprive me of the joy of saying it?” Draco’s lips twitched. “Rude.”
Harry glared at Draco in a way that made it difficult not to smile.
“We were given it,” he admitted sourly.
“Well, that should be a relief to say,” Draco remarked. “At least it shows you didn’t pick the disgusting thing out for yourselves.” He waited a few beats, pleasantly, he thought, then cleared his throat. “By whom?” he queried next.
“None of your bloody business, Malfoy,” Harry spat.
“Come, come, Potter,” Draco cajoled. “Don’t you think you’ll feel better if you just got it all off your chest?”
“No,” Harry snapped, and Draco felt his lips twitch again.
“Just say it,” he coaxed. “Saaay it––”
“You sound just like your father sometimes, you know?” Harry said, a little venom seeping into his voice.
Draco winced, but kept his expression serene.
“Low blow, Potter. Even for you.”
Harry didn’t look contrite, exactly, but he might have winced a little, too. “Queenie,” he said, sounding defeated. “Queenie gave it to us. Okay?” At the delighted look that was surely coming to Draco’s eyes, Harry scowled. “Go ahead, laugh it up…”
“No, no, it makes perfect sense,” Draco drawled. “After all, she did agree to marry Weaselbee. There’s no possible way she could share a bed that gormless twat and have even mediocre taste in any other area of her life.” He glanced over at the rucked fabric with its thick weave, then smirked back at Potter. “Anyway, it must be a comfort to have such a vivid, tactile reminder of your very best mate. It strikes me as his taste exactly.”
“I didn’t say Ron. I said his wife––”
“Do you really think she didn’t ask him what he thought, Potter?” Draco scoffed. “I’m reasonably sure Queenie doesn’t put on socks, take a sip of tea, or use the loo without consulting her precious husband’s opinion first…”
Harry snorted a bit at that, like he couldn’t help himself. He glanced in the direction of the kitchen, then gave Draco a vicious look.
“One word, Malfoy. One stinking word, and I mean it… I’ll hex you so badly that it’ll burn every time you take a piss. You won’t stop whining about it for weeks––”
“I wouldn’t dream of maligning your sister-in-law, Potter,” Draco assured him. He gave him a haughty look. “Although, if you think it’s your pathetic threats that will silence me––”
“Threats?” A new voice echoed loudly over the sitting room.
Draco looked up as Arthur Weasley bustled in, carrying a tray of small cakes with a strange, lumpy pink thing at the top of each, which Draco realized in some horror was meant to be a baby.
“Who’s making threats?” he asked, his eyes darting between Harry and Draco warily.
“Draco––” Harry said, annoyed.
“––Potter, of course,” Draco said, simultaneously.
A laugh burst from a fourth person now standing in the same doorway.
Draco looked over to see Hermione grinning at him, her face smudged with flour. She spoke to Harry, but never took her eyes off Draco.
“Don’t listen to him, Harry,” she said loftily. “He’s just jealous.”
“Jealous?” Draco scoffed. “Do I even want to know what it is I’m supposed to be jealous of, wife?”
“Probably not,” she smirked back.
Harry snorted at that, too, but his eyes relaxed visibly at Hermione’s appearance.
“He’s jealous of not being a prat,” Harry muttered.
“Well, if I was, I certainly wouldn’t aim that at you,” Draco retorted.
“Oh, do tell, Granger,” Theo quipped, as he joined them on the other side of the sofa. He’d appeared from the direction of the staircase, so likely just came from the loo. “We’re all on pins and needles now… waiting with bated breath. Is Draco jealous of this couch?” he asked, patting the ratty end of it. “Because I don’t seem to remember anything at all like it inside the hallowed halls of the Malfoy and Granger estate.”
“Because we have taste,” Draco informed him.
The floo flared to life across from them.
In quick succession, Neville, followed closely by Blaise and Luna, and then Pansy and a tall, handsome wizard with a dark beard, entered the room, each of them sprinkled with soot and holding something in their hands. Luna held a large, lumpy thing on a plate that jiggled and looked like it might be made of muggle gelatin. Something dark crouched in the center of the mould that Draco didn’t want to know about. Pansy held a bottle of aged firewhiskey in each hand, and her husband, Count Rigel, who was a decent sort of chap, if a bit lacking in a sense of humor, held a large present wrapped in green and silver wrapping.
Blaise gripped the handle of a second shiny present bag with a bow on top.
Neville held a plate of hors d’oeuvres that looked like bacon-wrapped asparagus.
They all called out greetings and got herded into the dining room and kitchen by Arthur Weasley. Draco wondered just how many Weasleys they’d packed into that kitchen already. He knew Molly and Ginny were in there, along with Arthur and at least one of the twins.
Nott winked salaciously at Neville as he passed, who smiled happily back.
Theo then turned haughtily to Draco and scoffed at him, picking up their conversation as if the interruption hadn’t occurred.
“Please. I’ve seen your house, Dray. Shall we talk about the giant wooden fish? The rugs with the bizarre patterns on them? The paintings covered in dots and spirals? The giant metal dragons? Or those bizarre tapestries you brought back from… where was it, again, Granger?”
“Nepal,” Hermione said primly. “And the fish are Mexican, and I happen to love them. The dragons are Thai. And the paintings you insist on making fun of every single visit are aboriginal, from our last camping trip in Australia. Those ‘bizarre patterns’ were hand-woven in the American Southwest. I’ve told you all of this, Theo. You’re just being a snob.”
“Your house is like a muggle’s acid trip,” Nott sniffed. “All those books and staircases and art on every blank surface, not to mention your bizarre taste in furniture––”
“It’s a good acid trip,” Hermione argued.
“I suppose I’ll have to take your word for that.” Nott patted the couch bemusedly with his free hand. “At least this is a solid product of English… well, something or other,” he muttered. “It is English, isn’t it Potter? It’s not from some very sad and long-suffering Eastern European nation, is it? Bulgaria, perhaps?” he asked innocently, his eyes twinkling at Draco. “Did Krum give you this couch, Potter? Did he?”
Harry rolled his eyes. “Godric. Shut up about the couch, already! They’re going to be here any minute, and I’ll never hear the end of it…”
Draco burst out in a low chuckle, unable to help himself.
When he glanced at Theo, and now Neville, who’d just joined them, they were both snickering, too.
Hermione set down the tray of biscuits she’d been holding, half frosted with gold and red, the other half frosted with silver and green. She straightened from the low table in her short skirt and brushed off her hands. When little dots of white flour left her skin and scattered across the table, Draco silently scourgified them, then the smudge on his wife’s face.
“Ah, my wife’s baking skills will no doubt astound, as always,” Draco mused. “Shall I chance it first, Potter, as I’m vaguely responsible for this minx? Or are you feeling adventurous?”
Hermione swatted his shoulder and he grinned at her.
“I only had a very small hand in making them,” she said. “If that reassures you at all. It was mostly Ginny,” she added to Harry over her shoulder.
“You really should beat me only in private you know, wife,” Draco told her, glancing down the form-fitting, ruched dress she wore, a new-to-him, dark blue, gauzy swath of fabric with sequins that clung to her figure and sparkled with constellations. He did his best not to stare at the dip in her neckline, but mostly failed. “…It’s no fun for me, otherwise.”
Harry snorted loudly, then got up to return to the small bar, and refill his glass.
Hermione walked over on perilously high heels to perch on Draco’s lap, wrapping her arms lightly around his neck. “Would you like me to become a baker, husband?” She lifted an eyebrow mockingly. “You could be the breadwinner for a while, and I could stay at home, baking, cooking, darning your socks, and––”
“Absolutely not,” he said without hesitation. “I far prefer you as a professional rabble-rouser and all-around thorn in the Ministry’s side. If we really must have a baker in the family, let it be me. Salazar knows how I manage to fill all the hours in a given day with you gone, anyway. Baking and sock-darning might keep me out of trouble. It would at least make it less likely I’d blow up our potions lab out of boredom.”
Hermione rolled her eyes at him and slid off his lap.
“You are such a liar,” she scoffed. “As if I don’t know exactly what you’ve been spending your days doing… and exactly who you’ve been doing it with.”
He gave her a faintly warning look, but not before Harry looked over from where he was returning from the bar, an undisguised sharpness in his eyes.
“What are you working on these days, Malfoy?” he asked.
Draco lifted a shoulder as if bored. “Nothing that would interest you, Potter.”
Harry scoffed as loudly as Hermione.
“Right,” he said.
“He’s been hired to work on deciphering the device Grindelwald left in––”
“Hermione!” Draco stared at his wife for real, his mocking tone falling away. “For crying out loud, witch… you can’t just tell them about that! I wasn’t even supposed to tell you.”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, like anyone believes you wouldn’t tell me. Honestly, Draco.”
“You don’t have to shout it from the rooftops, you saucy, incorrigible little trollop!”
“Hey, now,” Arthur sank into the opposite armchair, smiling a little. “No bizarre, possibly muggle insults?” He gave Draco a bemused but hopeful look, and smiled at Draco’s perceptible nod. “Remember why we’re here. We can’t all be seen arguing when they get here.”
Harry plopped himself back down on the chair he’d vacated to get his drink, then snorted in Draco’s general direction.
“Don’t blame her. I knew you were working for the Department of Mysteries already, Malfoy,” he stated flatly. He pointed at his own chest with the hand gripping his drink. “Special projects unit for the D.M.L.E., remember? They inform us of things like that, if they think you might be a resource.” He tilted his glass towards Theo. “You’re working with Nott, right?”
“Not with Theo, no.” Draco’s voice came out faintly incredulous that time, too. He stared at Potter, not hiding his disbelief. “I mean, we’re both working there, but not on the same thing…” He trailed, and glanced around at the now halfway-full room. Pansy had come back in and sat on a dark red loveseat that had been transfigured from something or other, and the Count sat next to her. “…and I can’t talk about any of that,” he said, his real voice bleeding through. “I honestly can’t. I can’t believe someone brought this particular subject up at all…” he added, giving his wife a pointed look.
“I didn’t actually say anything, you know,” she reminded him. “You did.”
“I didn’t,” he said, indignant. “And you did say something, witch. I’ll repeat your own words back to you, if you like. On second thought, I won’t, since I don’t need even more people hearing them and making it even more likely I’ll be arrested.”
“You’re only confirming it now,” Hermione said with maddening reasonableness. “You could have sat there, sphinx-like, and then you’d have plausible deniability, at least. If you get arrested now, it’ll be entirely your fault.”
“Spoken like a muggle solicitor,” he retorted.
“Yet true,” she countered.
Swotty, self-assured, always-right, know-it-all witch.
“Harlot,” he sniped.
“Reprobate,” she retorted back.
“When are you two having kids?” Neville asked, causing everyone in the room to turn and look at him. “Didn’t you say the topic was ‘under negotiation’ about a year ago?”
Every eye in the room shifted back to stare at Draco and Hermione
“You did say that,” Luna confirmed dreamily. “I remember those words quite clearly. We were at the Three Broomsticks, weren’t we? You said ‘under negotiation’ and something about ‘possibly three years.’”
“I heard it too, mate,” Blaise thirded. “And it’s been more than three years now, hasn’t it?”
Hermione snorted, then looked at Neville.
“Really, Nev?” she accused.
“Subtle, Longbottom,” Draco added. “Brimming with tact and discretion.”
“Well?” Theo asked, smirking from behind his glass. “When are you? Or are you still ‘negotiating’? And if so, who is winning?”
Blaise and Pansy exchanged knowing looks.
Draco looked at Hermione, and she looked back at him. She shook her head, just the tiniest bit, and he knew exactly what she was telling him. She didn’t want him to say anything. Not now. Not today. He smirked back at her, and then looked right at Potter.
“I won, actually,” he said haughtily. “We expect the little beastie in around six months. Assuming all goes well.” He leaned back on the sofa, threw an arm behind Hermione’s shoulders, and waited.
She smacked him on the chest, hard, right before her face turned bright red.
There was a silence.
Then Nott burst out in a very high, very Nott-like laugh.
Before Draco could decide if he’d gone too far, if maybe Hermione really was mad at him for spilling the beans that night, the floo flared up green again.
Ron and his American wife, Queenie, stumbled through the fire, one looking annoyed and slightly disheveled in a rumpled brown suit, the other wearing a bright pink dress and beaming at everyone before she’d finished brushing off a thin layer of soot.
Bill and Fleur followed close behind, then Fred and a tall blond. Lupin arrived a few seconds later with Tonks. Tonks had a baby wrapped in her arms, and another child gripping her leg, but she beamed at all of them and her hair was bright pink.
The four of them had barely time to step out of the way, when the floo flashed green again.
Snape walked imperiously through the opening that time, already casting his eyes around the room and looking ready to fight anyone who said a wrong word.
“Ah, the guest of honor at last!” Draco called out, and Hermione smacked him again, that time on the leg. “Where is the little niblet, Severus? Don’t tell me you forgot him at St. Mungo’s?”
But Charity had already stepped out from behind him, holding the baby wrapped in a dark green blanket, a huge smile on her face.
Everyone called out that they’d arrived, and Molly Weasley came in from the kitchen then. Her and just about everyone else, even Neville, Pansy, Blaise, Luna, Queenie, and Ron, crowded around the mother and baby, some of them holding stuffed animals that blinked and waved, and a few others holding balloons or tiny sparklers. George and Fred were murmuring to one another in the background by the presents table, nudging the gift Fred had brought to the center of the table; the present itself looked like it had grown small furry paws and was in the midst of trying to walk away from the other gifts.
Harry, Hermione, Draco, and Nott hung back for a few minutes.
“That poor kid kid is fucked,” Theo leaned over to whisper in Draco’s ear.
“Shush,” Hermione scolded, now smacking Theo. “He is not ‘fucked.’ Snape will be an excellent father… once he gets his bearings.”
“Right,” Theo scoffed. “Would you want Snape as a father? He’ll probably drill that kid in defensive spells and intermediate potions when he’s two years old. And Snape’s old as fuck, isn’t he? I’m amazed his little swimmers managed to create this unfortunate soul at all––”
“Hush!” Hermione said, but hid a giggle behind her hand. “Don’t be such an insufferable prat, Theo. If you say any of this to him, I’ll be really cross.”
“He’ll be a better father than either of ours ever were,” Draco pointed out. “I don’t think you or I have room to talk about ‘unfortunate’ parents, Nott, or a lack of decent role models. Snape will protect that kid with his life. And he won’t try to turn him into a muggle-hating psychopath, either.”
“Touché.” Theo leaned back in his seat, chastened. “There is that.”
The four of them sat there, and watched Snape look highly uncomfortable even as he seemed to be having to control himself to keep from snatching the baby away from their cooing and touching and bending their faces and stuffed animals over the wrapped blanket.
Luckily, his wife didn’t seem to mind either thing.
She kept looking over her shoulder fondly at Snape, as if oblivious to his agitation and paranoia. She also smiled warmly and invitingly at the wizards and witches who’d crowded around to get their first look at their son.
“Does he have a name yet?” Arthur asked then.
Draco’s ears pricked at that, in spite of himself.
Hermione grew quiet, too.
It wasn’t Charity who answered, though; it was Snape himself.
“Evan,” he answered coolly. “Evan Faustus Snape.”
Harry flinched, then looked directly at Draco.
Draco gave him a faint warning look, but not without sympathy.
Harry had told him a few things in the intervening years.
One of those related to Snape’s long and somewhat fraught relationship with Harry’s muggle-born mother, and, as a result, his significantly more acrimonious and even more tumultuous relationship with Harry’s father.
Draco also happened to know that mother’s maiden name.
She had been Lily J. Evans before she married James Potter.
Evans.
He wondered if Charity knew.
HERMIONE: ELEVEN YEARS AFTER THAT
“Detention?” Draco’s eyebrows rose as he looked at her over the Daily Prophet he had opened between his elbows propped on the table. “What on earth for this time?”
Hermione sighed, and sat down across from him at the table. She handed over the letter she’d just taken from an owl that tapped at the window of their master bedroom.
“Do you need to ask?” she sighed.
“Evan?” he frowned.
Hermione nodded with another small sigh.
“Severus called,” she explained. “Right after I read the letter, so he must have gotten one at the same time. He said Evan got into a fight with an older boy. A Sixth Year.”
“And Lyra broke it up?” Draco sounded almost impressed.
“Well, you know how the two of them are,” Hermione sighed, fingering hair out of her eyes. “They’ve been inseparable for forever… it’s only gotten worse in school, and it didn’t help, her being sorted into Slytherin. McGonagall warned us they’re intensely protective of one another. Severus admitted that Evan’s gotten in at least three fights I didn’t even know about defending her from other students… and this time, apparently, she defended him. With her wand. And her fists. Not to mention at least one well-aimed knee.”
The last she said a little reprovingly, although she tried not to.
Draco only snorted.
Truthfully, she was glad Draco had taught Lyra how to defend herself.
She maybe worried just the tiniest bit that Lyra––who was already incredibly alike to her father, and not only because of her silver-colored eyes and platinum blond hair––had taken to those particular lessons a little more eagerly and with more skill than strictly necessary simply to keep herself safe. That was particularly true given her demonstrated talents with magic even before she got her hands on her first wand.
“Alike to me,” Draco scoffed, clearly hearing her thoughts. “Hardly. Look in the mirror, wife. Apart from her coloring, she could be your twin. And I don’t just mean her adorable little face, either, love.”
Hermione didn’t bother to respond to that.
Draco sighed, and folded up the paper.
“Do they want us to go there? To meet with McGonagall and the Snapes?”
Hermione’s eyes fell to the image of her own face on the front of the paper, the flashes from cameras reflected in the moving image over the headline about her recent elevation to the Wizengamot, despite her refusal to back McLaggen in his bid for Minister.
“Harry better run,” she muttered under her breath.
Draco glanced down at the paper, then up at her. He scoffed.
“You should run,” he said, not for the first time.
“I’m not sure I even want it,” she admitted. “I mean, I like our life. Even just all the press coverage from the Wizengamot appointment has been an incredible bother. I sometimes think I should go back to my job as liaison with the muggle Minister. I liked how much quieter it was. And it’s not as if we need the money.”
He smirked at her knowingly, but didn’t bother to argue.
Before he could say anything more about that, she fingered another long, curled piece of hair that had fallen down by her face out of her eyes.
“And no,” she said. “McGonagall said she doesn’t really need to see us for this. She strongly hinted she’d like for us and the Snapes to talk with the children over Christmas break, though, and maybe knock their heads together a little. I think she’s worried they’re going to get themselves in real trouble one of these days. They’ve already been caught sneaking through the secret passageways to Honeydukes and the Shrieking Shack.”
“Blame George for that,” Draco commented mildly. “You know he gave her one of those infernal maps, not long after they figured out how to replicate the original.”
Hermione nodded absently. “I know.”
There was a silence where they both looked at McGonagall’s letter.
“You’re not really upset with her, are you?” Draco asked then, softer.
Hermione felt her lips twitch. “With Lyra? No,” she admitted. “Not at all, honestly. It just makes me miss her. And worry we’ll never see her again except for holidays.”
“You’re worried she’ll end up marrying Evan?” he asked perceptively.
She tensed a little, then made herself shrug. “She might not even like boys. Or he might not like girls––”
“You don’t believe that.” Draco smirked. “You can’t be that blind, wife.” He softened his voice again. “Or that much in denial.”
“She’s barely twelve,” Hermione pointed out, exasperated. “He’s only thirteen.”
Draco shrugged, but didn’t answer.
She knew it was a pointless argument, and not an argument at all, really, but couldn’t help the feeling that they did know, that they’d maybe known something was different with the two of them when they first introduced them as toddlers. Their bond was… unusual.
It would have been unusual even if they were twins.
“It’s odd, isn’t it?” Hermione mused. “The way their magic is with one another? It was like that even when they were babies, wasn’t it?”
“Not that odd,” Draco smirked. “Not wholly unprecedented, at least.”
Hermione rolled her eyes. “Well, they’re too young for us to make any assumptions at all about what it means, Draco. I hope to Godric you’d never say anything to Lyra, or––”
He burst out in a laugh. “You’re joking, right?”
She bit her lip, and his eyes softened. He opened up his arms.
“Come here, pet.”
She walked over and curled herself into his lap, more relieved than she could think about that he’d offered, and that it was Saturday, and she didn’t have to go into work.
“Would it really be so terrible?” he asked softly into her ear. “I would have given anything to have been able to run around Hogwarts and London with you at that age, to sneak into Honeydukes, and get into fights, and ride hippogriffs and swim in the Black Lake and go on Christmas hols together.”
She thought about that, and the tight feeling in her chest eased.
“Me, too,” she admitted.
“Ha,” he scoffed. “You detested me.”
“I wouldn’t have detested you,” she argued back. “Not if you’d been yourself. Not if you hadn’t been actively trying to make me detest you in any way that your sinister little mind could think up. Not if you’d been able to be nice to me for five minutes, even in the slightest.”
He conceded that with a grunt, and squeezed her tighter to his chest.
“Wanna go upstairs and fuck?” he asked.
She burst out in a laugh. “I take it your allotted time of concern for your only child has been used up?”
He huffed at that. “I’m not worried about Lyra. I was never remotely concerned about her, not about this.” He squeezed Hermione more tightly to his chest. “I like Evan. I’ve always liked him. And I think they’re good for one another, despite how often they seem to get into trouble. Besides, like you said, given how their magic is together, I don’t think we get a vote, wife. So I might as well acclimatize myself to the idea that he’s going to be in our lives, one way or another… in whichever way she decides she wants him there.”
Hermione grunted, but couldn’t exactly disagree.
“Besides, why would I be worried?” he murmured, stroking her throat with his fingers. “She’s getting exactly the life I would have wanted for myself… the life I would have killed for, frankly, and actually got to my unending amazement. It’s a life I’d still do absolutely anything to keep. Including getting into loads of trouble, if it seemed warranted.” He studied her eyes. “And it hasn’t been so bad for you, either, has it, wife?”
She smiled at him, at the probing look in his mercury-colored eyes.
The last of her anxiety melted.
“No,” she said softly, her fingers tracing his face. “No, it hasn’t been so bad for me, husband. Not even a little bit.”