The Library of Alexandria

Appendix B

Draco Malfoy was not moping.

He wasn't.

He was merely shredding the tassels of a parlor cushion and scheming listlessly.

And, possibly, sighing quietly to himself from time to time.

An entirely normal occupation for a former Slytherin slightly prone to dramatics.

He was not moping.

Narcissa Malfoy wafted by and Draco guiltily repaired the cushion tassels he had mangled before she could see.

He was possibly moping a little.

Just a touch.

Perhaps a lot.

Generally speaking he was not one who moped. However his wife had an unprecedented ability to bring out the most embarrassing aspects of his personality.

The reason for his despondency was as followed: Hermione Granger and he had been married for one year and eleven months and thirty days.

While other, lesser, wizards might be in a state of consternation over anniversary gifts involving a creative use of cotton, Draco's dilemma was more severe and worrisome in nature.

Their marriage had been something of an accident, involving an old library, an Opaleye, a dimensional containment ward, and some very pushy sentient magic... all of which to say, Draco's problem was that the marriage bond which had joined them was set to expire on their two year anniversary

Draco had tried broaching the subject in a variety of subtle methods over the course of the last six months. He knew Hermione did not particularly like large weddings, so he had offhandedly mentioned a range of smaller venues, remote locations, and various schemes of elopement.

He had proposed going to Australia and eloping with her obliviated parents as witnesses. He mentioned every library they had yet to visit both Magical and Muggle. And all the libraries she had liked best that they had already been too. He even brought up the option of going to the Vatican Library and confundusing a Cardinal into marrying them.

All proposals which his wife had snorted and dismissed as though he were making terrible jokes. None of which seemed to catch her fancy at all. Recently she had begun to look visibly and increasingly irritated with him whenever he brought up the subject.

The final blow had been the week before when, giving up on libraries altogether, he mentioned at least going on a trip together. Sailing about the Mediterranean in a sailboat (canvas being made of cotton). She had sighed, rolled her eyes, talked about her workload, and reminded him that he was due in Alexandria that weekend to re-ward all his ancestral books.

At that point his heart had dropped past his toes and continued on in the general direction of the earth's molten core where it proceeded to burn to ash.

Right.

Alexandria for re-warding.

He had dropped the subject after that and spent the last week obsessively reliving the last two years of his marriage; trying to place exactly where it had gone wrong.

It wasn't the sex. It remained fantastic if he did say so himself. And Hermione hadn't issued any complaints. She was generally quite uninhibited when it came to informing him of exactly what she wanted in the event he hadn't already managed to reduce her to an incoherent state of arousal. She tended to be very sweet and kittenish afterward, and liked to fall asleep curled around him so tightly he occasionally wondered if she were part starfish.

So it wasn't the sex.

He didn't think it was the talking. Although she was capable of provoking nervous monologues from him to a degree no one else could compare to. He'd once recited the seating arrangements of Theo and Pansy Nott's five hundred wedding guests to her. He had mostly stopped rambling around her. However, on occasion, when he was worried that he'd upset her, he would start going on and on. Lately it had been more of an issue.