Creatures of the Wind

This work does not belong to me, it is the work of every thursday-------------------------------------

His hair is white, yellow, and some color that makes her think of thick clouds over the sun. Then, below, to the storm on the horizon, that wicked stirring of greys and blues that promises the unstoppable, the unrelenting. Further still, to pink kissed by spring, and she's reminded of wet, balmy days in fields, with the mud caked up to her knees.

He stands a head taller than her – just enough for the point of his chin to meet the middle of her skull with ease if she were to step into him. His shoulders are broad, but not wide enough to look unnatural in comparison to the sleekness of his form. Slim and lightly muscled, enough to see the bulge of them when he grunts over manual lifting, wraps his arms around a smaller frame, or moves with rhythm and slick skin. He reminds her of birds in a grey sky, flashing over a moving sea. He reminds her of twilight in winter, with barren branches digging out the moon. He reminds her of moss-won stone under the setting of a golden sun. He reminds her of a lot of things.

"Granger," he drawls, heavy and bored.

She grins at him, wide enough to hurt a little with the strain in her cheeks. She probably looks insane right now, but that's all right. It isn't anything he hasn't come to expect.

Hermione sighed immediately after giving permission for the knocker to enter her office, already knowing who it was. Harry had warned her before she took her lunch, which meant she had spent the last 45 minutes going over it in her head. She wasn't sure what to expect. All she had was the past, and what Harry, Neville, and Seamus had told her of the present.

Draco Malfoy gave her a stiff nod as he stepped inside, closing the door firmly behind him. She had only seen him in passing the past year, and there was a small, illogical part of her brain that assumed he had stolen the Auror robes from someone. It wasn't true, of course. He had been Neville's partner for seven months, and Harry's before he became Head of the Auror Department.

"Draco Malfoy," she greeted, as she had greeted Neville before him, and Waits this morning. It was her job to settle legal issues Aurors got into while on assignment, and Malfoy would be no different. Strictly business. He paused for only a moment before accepting her hand, swallowing it as he pumped three times, and the last image of a kid with slicked back hair disappeared from her present-day view. "Hermione Granger."

She cleared her throat and took a seat, motioning for him to do the same as the heat of his hand sunk into her skin. Malfoy moved around the seat closest to him, taking the one that was slightly further back. Harry had been sitting in the closer one before lunch, and he always pulled the chair up directly in front of her desk, toying with objects whenever they spoke. It used to annoy her, but she had become used to straightening up after him once he left.

"What happened on July fifteenth?"

The chairs in her office were old by three years, the cushions worn and comfortable. Malfoy made them appear brand new again. His shoulders were back, his spine straight, and his chin slightly raised. The clasp of his traveling cloak remained perfectly center between his collarbones, and there wasn't a wrinkle in sight despite it being near the end of the work day. His hands were in loose fists on either thigh, and she distantly wondered how long she could stare at him before she saw him blink.

"Longbottom and I were assigned toinvestigate a Jova ring in German-owned pubs throughout London. W--"

"Yes, take me from the moment you entered the establishment." She already knew about the wizarding world's current drug of choice and how it was beginning to leak into the Muggle side of London, despite the law against it that she had helped pass last year. Malfoy's jaw twitched, but it was the only indication that he was annoyed at her cutting him off. "We sat down at the bar to order drinks. We drank a few rounds, and left the bartender increasingly high tips. We--"

"Would you say that you were intoxicated?" His fists clenched this time, twice, and he gave her a hard look for several seconds. Hermione had stared down much worse. "As I would have explained, we took Sobering Potions before entering. The alcohol had no effect."

"All right." She nodded for him to continue, dipping her quill in the inkwell.

"We had learned from a source--"

"What source?" She waited, eying the drip of ink at the end of the quill.

"You're not cleared for that information," he said evenly.

She nodded again, waiting for him to continue, and looked up when he didn't. He was staring at her, his brow furrowed lightly, and just enough to make his gaze feel more hostile. He knew she had been testing him with that question, and by the looks of things, it angered him. It was part of her job – testing the honor of an Auror, and how much they followed the rules of their profession. She never looked at a case as if the Auror should get off or were innocent simply because of their profession.

"What did you learn from the source?"

She almost thought he wasn't going to answer her at first. "We knew there was a room downstairs that they operated the dealing out of, but we didn't know how to get down there, or the code for when we arrived. We pretended to be drunk and asked the bartender if he knew anyone who could get us a ticket." He paused for a moment, as if expecting her to interrupt.

"They say Jova is like taking a trip to another galaxy, and so they call a vial of it a ticket."

"Yes."

"The bartender shut us down. Approximately ten minutes later, I went to the lavatory. The kitchen was off the hallway. I entered it and pretended to be confused over where the toilet was. House-elves were the only things inside--" Hermione bristled. "So after entering and finding only magical creatures inside, you...?"

He looked entirely unapologetic. His eyes were attached to her hands which had taken to weighing and organizing her quills without her permission. "I saw a small door against the back wall that had been unaccounted for on our blueprint. I summoned the photo Longbottom keeps in the pocket of his robes."

Hermione looked up to find Malfoy's eyes on her, already knowing what photo he was talking about, and surprised that Malfoy knew it as well. Five kids on the edge of adulthood, who by all rights had stopped being children long ago. She had a copy of it framed in her lounge. "I asked the house-elf for the code, which he gave. Longbottom arrived a moment later, and we entered the small room. It had nothing in- side of it but dust, but there was a spot near the center of the room that appeared clean. We asked the house-elf who had supplied the code to Apparate us downstairs, which he did."

"Who asked the house-elf to Apparate you?"

He brushed a palm down his thigh before plucking at something she couldn't see. "I don't see how that's relevant--"

Hermione's spine straightened. She was the one who decided what was relevant – he was the one who answered the questions. "It's completely relevant considering the charges the owners have placed against the two of you. Trespassing, forced use of Veritaserum, and use of Imperius. These--"

"Longbottom asked him. I wouldn't trust an elf not to Splinch me." There was a brief narrowing of his eyes that made her think he had purposely said it to rile her. He wasn't going to distract her from the facts.

"And you're telling me that this house-elf gave you a secret code, likely against orders, because you...?" What, charmed them? She was sure creatures found Malfoy irresistible. Judging from the women she had seen him with in the society pages and Ministry gatherings, it wasn't far from the truth.

"Ask him. He's very forthcoming."

She hummed, scribbling down a note on the parchment in front of her. Something didn't add up. The house-elf wasn't likely to give that information for nothing, but perhaps he had thought Malfoy was supposed to be there. If he had been under Ver--

"Did you accuse Longbottom as well, or am I special in that regard?"

Hermione's head jerked up at the coldness to his tone, his jaw set as he stared holes into her eye sockets. "I'm not accusing you of anything. Asking these questions of all Aurors who come into this office is my job. And don't imply I lack ethics in my work. You haven't been here be- fore, but I'll--"

"Are you not implying the same about--"

"It's been seven years, Malfoy. The war ended seven years ago." She stared at him, his own gaze unwavering, and his mouth shut to a thin line. "That's an awfully long time to be so bitter."

"I agree, Granger. Perhaps you can take that out on your flat full of cats rather than me." Draco Malfoy was still an absolute wanker. She wasn't surprised.

,

Hermione raises an eyebrow as he falls forward, catching himself on the mattress with a knee. He pushes himself back to his feet, his trousers halfway up his bum, and stares at his waistband like he can't figure out how it happened.

"Gravity is difficult, isn't it?"

"Sod off, Granger."

Hermione smirks, a bad habit she surely picked up from him, and sits at the edge of the bed. "I'm off work today. Did you want to do something?" He has to pause to think about it. She'd have to fix that.

He turns his head over his shoulder, his lips curled and an eyebrow raised. It makes her lungs forget how to release air for a moment, and her heart jumps when he turns towards her. "I can think of a few things."

"You can always think of a few things." She stands, reaching out to touch him, and pushes her hands along the expanse of his bare shoulders. She runs her fingertip over a small scar that edges out near his collarbone, barely visible, but obvious in contrast to the smooth- ness of his skin.

His arm wraps around her waist, the other sliding up her back to rest between her shoulder blades. She presses her hands to his cheeks as he bends his head. Grey, white, blue.

He pulls her closer, until she's pressed against his chest, and his thigh moves against hers when she shifts to push her fingers into his hair. She turns her face the moment he goes to kiss her, and his lips touch the corner of her mouth instead. She smiles as he presses a kiss there, and then moves up, his bottom lip bumping her cheek until he kisses her temple. It does something to her heart that makes her chest ache.

"You never told me what you thought of The Hollow Keeper," she whispers. "I've read it seven times now."

He doesn't say anything, but moves to place his chin at the center of her head, and she shuts her eyes.

"--wouldn't have carried him home if it weren't--"

"--no choice in the matter. It wasn't his--"

"But he did have a choice, Malfoy!" Hermione resisted the urge to slam her drink down, and felt the warmth in her face when she noticed Malfoy's. She wasn't sure if it was from the argument or the alcohol, but more likely from some rash she had contracted by sitting this close to him.

He seemed unperturbed by her suspicious look.

"Gallen lost both his legs. Fenlo should have left the wanker there, but he couldn't because--"

"Why couldn't he?"

Malfoy raised an eyebrow, his lips curling in a sneer as he grabbed the two glasses the bartender just filled. "You have a horrible habit of interrupting people with a question they were just about to answer. Do you have any idea how much of a--"

"How much of a what?" She grinned as he glared at her.

"Ha, ha, Granger. You're as humorous as a death wish."

"It depends on whose death wish. And I interrupted you because I knew your reasoning would be lacking. No matter what, Fenlo's life wasn't tied to Gallen's. He could have left him there – he could have. The fact that he didn't says something about what kind of man he was, even – thank you – even with the--"

Neville's face appeared in the space between them, and it wasn't until it did that Hermione noticed how much that space was shrinking. "You both know we're here to celebrate Harry's first year as head of the department, right?"

"Of course," Hermione answered with a sniff. Malfoy muttered something about "bloody idiot" and "arsed", which both Hermione and Neville ignored.

"Well, you're missing toast ninety-seven right now, which happens to be about us," Neville told Malfoy, shrugging as he backed away towards a staring group of men at four of the tables.

Malfoy paused, staring at the floor for a long moment, and then picked up his drink as he stood from the stool. For an odd moment, she wasn't sure if she should follow or look completely too busy with her glass to even notice he was leaving. It wasn't until she caught the nod of Harry's chin that she slid from the barstool, dragging her glass off the bar.

"Can't miss your moment of recognition, Malfoy?" Because she didn't know what else to say, awkward for a reason she couldn't place.

"Weasley."

Her eyebrows drew down as she glanced over at Malfoy. "Ron?"

"It might prove to be the most interesting part of the evening. Will his face turn red, white, green, or that fetching shade of purple that made an appearance at Longbottom's flat last week?"

Hermione shook her head. "Ron--"

"Four Galleons, it's purple."

She looked up at Harry's grin as he finished his drink and reached for another, then over at Ron's stiff back. "Fine. Four Galleons, it's purple." Was he going to shake her hand? She had a feeling her palm had turned into her own personal heater at some point tonight.

He paused for just a second in his step, and if she hadn't been walking beside him, she wouldn't have noticed. "No, I bet that it's purple. See, the way a bet works, Granger, is that--"

"I know how a bet works – and since I want to win, I'm betting it's purple."

He looked over at her, and she glanced long enough to catch a flash of grey and white hair.

"I don't think you understand the concept," he said slowly.

"Hurry up and pick a color, Malfoy, we're al- ready here."

"I already picked a color. You're not stealing purple."

"Stealing? I wasn't aware purple belonged to you--"

"I clearly stated that--"

"Merlin," Neville muttered.

,

Hermione takes a bite out of her muffin, flip- ping to the next page. She glances up as he does the same, seeming to be completely en- grossed in whatever is happening in Quidditch. His hair is sticking up in several different directions, his eyes still sleepy and hooded. It had taken Malfoy almost a year before he allowed her to see his hair like this – running his fingers through the locks used to be the first thing he did every morning. She had smiled the first time she'd seen it, and he had only given a rather rude and pointed look to her own hair before they moved on with their day.

"Divorce rates have gone up this year," Hermione says, skimming the article.

"Good thing we didn't wait to get married."

She gives him a sharp look, flicking her napkin across the table at him. It slows near the edge, but falls over it and onto his lap. He raises his eyes slowly over the newspaper, his eyebrows drawing down as he glares at her. She can tell by the narrowing of his left eye that he's sneering, and she leans back in her seat on instinct.

"Relax, it was only a napkin."

He's silent, the room falling into tenseness as she picks another piece from her breakfast. The newspaper rustles a few seconds later, and the sudden fierceness of his anger proves only temporary. That was strange – she'd have to figure out what really set him off once he woke up more. Malfoy could be the moodiest person in the mornings. Some days he was up and ready to go before she had even started the coffee, and other days she had to resort to tricking, dragging, or enticing him out of the bed. That latter one always seemed to just cause her to join him, and she isn't sure if he's ever forgiven her for yelling fire when they were late for her mother's birthday brunch.

"Malfoy and Granger will never be listed as a statistic. Our names have--"

"Granger-Malfoy," he corrects absently, and she smiles to herself, because it's somehow ridiculous and enough to make her blood rush faster at the same time. "And, no – there's nothing normal about us."

She lets out a huff of air and shrugs, standing from her chair, and turns to pour herself another cup of coffee before one of the manor's house-elves could try to do it for her. "That tends to happen when you're married to Draco Malfoy."

"Exactly that. There's never been anything about me that was average."

She rolls her eyes, opening her mouth to comment as she turns around, when she sees him reaching for the plate of muffins. She darts forward, grabbing it just as his fingers touch down, and yanking it back with her. He looks up at her in surprise, his hand slow to retract.

"They're burnt."

"Right," he says carefully, his eyebrow arching. She licks her lips at the dryness in her throat, and shoves the muffins onto one of the side- boards behind her. "You're shit at sharing, Granger, have I ever told you that?"

"At least once. Though it's completely untrue."

She looks down at her coffee, black and bottomless, and turns to find him still looking at her. "You know, I never once doubted it."

"Doubted what?"

"Saying yes when you proposed. Marrying you. I always knew it was exactly what I wanted. What I'll always want."

"You can't help yourself. I don't blame you."

His eyes flick over the newspaper.

She swallows hard, again, again. "But I never took it off. The ring. Not even when you told me to. And I know you were waiting for that it would mean the end, really. But I could never do it, because I lied. I never regretted you."

There's a desperation in the way she looks at him. A pleading, an apology, something she had tried so hard to bury but that never stopped struggling against that choice. She should have told him this when they made up after that fight, but she never did, she doesn't know why. It hadn't felt like she needed to, but it does now.

"Did you pick a song yet?"

"What? A song?" she asks, shaking her head.

"A wedding song."

She stares at him for a long moment, the fringe across his forehead, the still eyes, and the relaxed mouth. There's a burning in her throat, but she swallows past that. "You told me you already had something in mind?"

He nods. "You'll find out when we get there."

,

Their walk to the Apparition point was comfortable. Silence was still awkward, but speech was now easy. Malfoy liked to mock the way she could move fluidly from one subject to the next, but he was the only person she knew who could keep up. She liked conversing with him, liked getting lost in conversation without him yawning or checking his watch. Maybe she liked it too much, and she thought he sometimes knew that when he would grow quiet, or look too sternly at the dinner plate.

Hermione pulled at a loose thread in her coat as they walked, glancing up from the shine of wet pavement to see him concentrated on the alley they were turning in towards. She was wondering what to say in parting, and the files she had to look over when she got home, and if she was going to see him at work tomorrow. Then she was wondering why he was looking at her so seriously, and reaching out to cup her elbow, and drawing her closer than they ever acknowledged to do on purpose.

The toe of her rubber boot squelched against the side of his shoe, her eyes wide as she looked up at him. She thought she should do something with her arm placement, but her fingers remained stubbornly attached to that thread, with the knuckles of her other hand brushing his thigh. He bent his head enough for her to know he was either about to tell her something very serious, or do something very serious.

Her heart was speeding up, and it took nine pounds of disjointed rhythm for her to know he wasn't speaking. Oh. Okay.

She lifted the dead weight of her arm to press her palm to his waist, and her head was quiet. It was as if her body was too busy throwing itself into erratic overdrive that her brain no longer had the capacity to function thought processes as well. Malfoy was lowering his head, she was closing her eyes, and then he was kissing her.

A brushing softness, barely there, and she was sure they were both waiting for the world to halt, or explode, or bring back logic. It didn't, though, and his hand came up to her other arm as she kissed him back more fully. She felt the need to laugh or cough, something to release all that tenseness in her chest and stomach, but then he was pulling her closer and kissing her harder.

His lips were soft but demanding, the bottom full and the top more firm. She could feel the scratch of his stubble around her mouth, and the heat of his exhale as she turned her head to a new angle. He kissed her for seconds or a minute more before pulling his head back, and she dropped to her heels, both their pulls for breath audible in the silence around them. Her heart felt and sounded as if it were trying to burst out of her ears, and she slowly unclenched her fingers from his shirt, looking at his chin.

He licked his lips, his hands loosening their grip on the top of her arms and skating down to her elbows. She only had a second for nerves to explode around her ribs before he spoke. "Still casual?"

Her eyes flashed up to his, her brain trying to process far too many things at once while still dissecting the past minute. "Wh--" The nerves dropped to the bottom of her gut. "You talked to Harry."

She had told Harry this afternoon that she was having a casual dinner with Malfoy, just as all their...meetings before it had been casual as well. She hadn't thought he would actually go and talk to Malfoy about it.

His lips twitched at the corner, and she really was staring at them far too much. "I thought I'd clarify." His hands dropped away from her as he stepped back, giving her a nod. "I'll see you tomorrow, Granger."

Speech took a moment, and she barely restrained herself from pressing a hand to her chest. "Yeah, tomorrow."

,

She watches him in the blue of morning, motionless under their blanket, twilight tinting his skin. She wants to run the tip of her finger down the weak lines of past stress on his forehead, the straight and narrow line of his nose to the point, and feel his breath on her palm.

She wants him to wake up and say something he's never said before, and to surprise her with some unknown look or gesture. She wants him to be warm, and for his feet to be cold when she slides hers between them. She wants to stand with him on the balcony and feel the dew of morning on his skin, and the laziness of his mouth on hers that tastes like coffee and bananas. She wants to argue books, and fight with him over leaving the toothpaste uncapped, or have him yell at her for what she's done until that vein appears at his temple. She wants him to be exactly who he was meant to be, and feel something, anything at all.

He peels his eye open, unblinking as he looks at her, and she closes her own in response.

"Draco," she whispers, her tone even with hours of wakefulness.

"Hermione," he replies, amused, and she squeezes her eyes tighter.

"There must be something."

"It hardly matters. When would a bloody genie ever pop out of a lamp, and why in the hell would I ever be walking along the beach?"

"You walked with me on the beach just--"

"You insisted on collecting seashells for some unfathomable reason--"

"Hardly unfathomable--"

"--didn't know how to break your wards—"

"--understand because you're an idiot."

"--your flat. Idiot? I wasn't the one collecting seashells."

"Why did it matter if you couldn't get into my flat? You could have--"

"Because not being at your flat would have ruined my plans for later that evening."

"Wha-- Oh."

"Remember those, do you? ...What was that?"

"Three wishes, Malfoy, come on. It's practically one of the top ten questions of all time. Right up there with 'why' and the deserted island--"

"The what?"

"Fine, you're in a shop in some dark, mostly illegal corner of the world--"

"I don't appreciate the assumption. ...Did you just growl at me?"

"Never mind. I don't want to know what your three wishes are any more. In fact--"

"My first would be to shut you up."

"Of course."

"When that failed-- Good to know you still have your sense of humor, Granger. What that failed, I would demand two more wishes on top of the other two. One because the genie failed on the first, and another for getting my hope up. Then I would save all four of them for moments when I truly needed them."

"You annoy me. Greatly."

"Oh, is that why you're naked?"

"I don't even know how that happened."

"It's been two years, Granger. Relatively easily."

"Prat."

,

Hermione takes a sharp turn, her bare feet sliding over the polished marble floor. He isn't in the bedroom, bathroom, their dining room, either office. She has checked over their entire wing, but he ventured off somewhere he is not allowed to be.

Her heart is pounding in her throat, and she can't seem to catch enough breath when she thinks of all the places he could be. She just hopes he isn't having breakfast with Narcissa because-- Music is playing faintly from the ballroom, but it's still loud enough for her to hear two hallways away. Her feet smack harder against the floor, and she throws herself at the vast doors, shoving them open.

He is sitting against the far wall, dressed in formal robes, with his spine stiff against the high-back chair. His hands curve over the end of the arm rests, and she imagines his fingers running over the tiny carvings in the wood like Malfoy was so prone to do. She winces, remembering what she had said to him an hour ago, and closes the doors behind her. She locks them for good measure, turning back around when she hears the tap of his shoes across the floor.

She meets him halfway across the room, pushing a hand into his chest when he bends to kiss her. "What are you doing in here?" she whispers, and the question is almost lost under the strains of piano keys and violins.

"Looking for something."

She clucks her tongue, sliding her hand up to unbutton his robes. She sees dark fabric underneath instead of skin, and drags her fingers to the next button. His hands come up to her waist, and he shifts back and forth as he toes his shoes off.

"You shouldn't be here."

"Where else would I be?"

"I don't think either one of us wants the answer to that."

"I wouldn't have asked had I not wanted the answer."

She ignores the statement, sliding her hands up the simple, blue T-shirt and catching the end of the robes, pushing them off his shoulders.

She loves Malfoy's body – had spent years learning it. He is her kingdom. She owns the lands of his shoulders, back, and hips, the valley of his chest and stomach. She claims the hills of his face, the orchards of his cheeks, ears, and neck when she turned them red. The cliffs of his collarbones, pelvic, and fingers. The woods of his hair, and the path that began below the cave of his bellybutton, the one she would walk her fingers through, down the length and to the domed tip at the root of him. She has conquered the hills below it, the expanse of strong land that made his thighs, the fields of calves, the mounds of his knees and biceps. She owns the darkness at his forearm, the smoothness of his skin, the sky of his eyes, and the blue and green rivers that run from the sunlight halo of his hair and to his toes. And her castle she had built of sinew, ventricles, and love within his chest.

She would press herself against him, touch and feel, circle and take, until he knew it too. Until she had claimed it all as hers, and he had done the same to her, and they could rule together.

His fingers skim the hem of her shirt, but she shakes her head at him, her smile small. He pushes a hand around to the small of her back, pulling her closer, and she shuts her eyes when her chest presses into his. His other hand travels to her shoulder blade, and when he rocks them left at the swoop of music, she follows.

,

Malfoy's legs pressed into layers of fluffy white, his hand skimming the row of buttons at her back. He had broken all but two of them just an hour earlier, but he was very gifted with repairing charms. His chest pushed against hers, and she could feel the slow rise as he breathed her in, his nose skimming up from her neck. Her heart jumped, her hands curling into the fabric of his formal robes.

She turned her head to kiss the corner of his mouth, and he kissed her fully, his arm tightening around her.

"You owe me five Galleons," he whispered against her mouth.

"Ron is fine."

He hummed, turning her beneath his arm before quickly pulling her back to him. She caught a blur of guests, but managed to find the one she knew he had wanted her to see.

"Pansy is distinctly green."

"I say just pale," she argued.

"Are you being a sore loser?"

She shook her head, pushing her hands through the opening of his robes to get a little closer to his skin. "It doesn't matter anyway. My money has been transferred to your – our – vaults the moment I became--"

"My wife." He smirked before narrowing his eyes. "You thought about that before you bet."

She kissed him quickly, and when he went to speak, she did it again, again, until he forget enough to kiss her back. His fingertips edged into her hair, the fingers of his other hand splaying across her ribs.

"When we get home, we're coming up with a new betting system. Something far more beneficial."

"Right when we get home?" She had other plans, and by the feel of things, so did he. He shrugged a shoulder. "Tomorrow. Next week. Next year. Whenever I feel like letting you out of be--"

"Well, we do have a lifetime now. Wizard years...another hundred, at least, Malfoy."

"If we survive," he said. She gave him a look, but was losing the fight to her smile when he grinned crookedly at her. "And you shouldn't be calling me Malfoy any more. People will think we hate each--"

"This from the man who still calls me Granger. We tried the first name thing. It didn't work."

"I know. Not that we didn't put our best effort out there." He grinned at the heat in her cheeks as she remembered what his best effort entailed.

"Prat."

"You married me." Hermione looked up at him with wide eyes, her mouth falling open.

"Oh, God – that's what this is?"

He nodded solemnly. "I know things confuse you easily, but try processing things one at a--" He laughed when she pinched his side, and she dropped her forehead to his chest, smiling to herself.

,

Hermione stares at him as he flips through a book in the small room Malfoy had made her personal library. She cradles her teacup to her chest, resting the arcs of her feet on the edge of the chair. He's sprawled back in his own, legs extended, one arm on the armrest and the other laying with the book in his lap. His hair is pushed back, and she always thought Malfoy devilish when it looked like that. "I wanted to start a family this year."

He doesn't look up, but his eyes have stopped moving along the page.

"We both weren't ready for a child when we first got married, but this year, I was to wrap up the reform laws. I didn't want to quit my job, but I could have handled a lot of it from home. I know you were waiting for me to be ready since last Christmas, when Ginny had her baby. I saw the way you looked at me. I just didn't have it all planned out yet. But I want one, too."

He raises his eyes, and they flick across her face – she doesn't think he even knows what he's looking for.

"Sometimes I imagine what our children would have looked like. Dark hair, blond hair. Boy, girl. Curly or straight. My nose, your eyes. The nursery in that empty room next to our bedroom. Sometimes I think of them in the garden, scaring the birds out of their bath, or laughing in the morning and dragging you out of bed."

"Sleep is the most important part of the day," he says groggily.

Hermione takes a long sip of her tea, feeling it heat the coldness of her insides, and stares down into the cup as she swirls the liquid. "You would have made a great father, Draco. I know you were terrified of that. But I know how well you would have loved them."

She pauses, clenching the cup tighter, and looks up at him. He stares back at her blankly, dimly, without passion, or feeling, or recognition, and the tea must have been too hot, because she's burning up now.

,

The brooms fell over, buckets rolling across the floor as Malfoy's back hit the wall. His tongue slipped across hers as his hands dipped to her bum, pulling Hermione closer with a squeeze and gasp for air. Her hand slipped into his robes and under his shirt, skating across his skin as she felt every rapid intake and exhale of air. Her other hand grasped his shoulder, using it to steady her balance on the tips of her toes.

"Very...unprofessional," she said again, before wrapping an arm around his neck and pushing herself fully into him.

He hummed his agreement against her mouth before drawing her upper lip between his, and grabbed her shirt. With two tugs the hem was released from the confines of her skirt, and his hands were on her a second later. They floated across the small of her back, followed along her spine, caressed her hips and stomach, and pushed under the cups of her bra.

"We shouldn't be doing this," she breathed, attempting to look at the door of the broom closet, but her eyes snapped shut when his mouth found the pulse in her neck.

"I've been on assignment for ten days," he told her roughly, sucking on a patch of skin beneath her jaw. Her lips were tingling, oxygen like fire down her throat, and she couldn't stop trying to touch him everywhere she could reach.

"You're lucky I'm not-- Mm."

She kissed him again, clenching a fistful of his hair, and he wrapped his arms around her as he turned them, a bin of scrubs crashing along the floor.

,

"What are you doing?"

He looks up at her, stilling the broom before it rolls off his knees.

"What does it look like I'm doing?" Her eyes widen when she spots the box on the floor, and she points at it, looking up at him accusingly.

"That's what this is?"

He nods. "I know things confuse you easily, but try--"

"This...that-- You weren't supposed to open that!" She moves towards him but pauses at the look he gives her.

"It's mine, isn't it?"

"It's..." Her lips formed around words she couldn't seem to get out. Of course it's all right that he opened it. It's his, after all. It was meant for him. It just... Hermione has to clench her hands to stop from snatching it away from him. "I ordered it in February. It came in June, for...for your birthday." "I don't particularly care what we do for my birthday--"

"It's... You can't go flying." He raises an eyebrow.

"Why not?"

"It's dangerous," she says weakly.

"A lot of things are dangerous."

"But you can't go. The...the birds are getting ready to migrate, and you might disturb--"

He laughs at her, full and beautiful, and she feels it like chords of song vibrating her bones. God, she has missed that sound. "The birds can sod off."

She tugs the broom from his weak grip. "Just another day, all right?"

"I'm not the most patient of men."

"I know."

,

She liked to watch the birds in the morning, fluttering to and from the feeders attached to overhangs and tree branches, and plucking at the birdbath in the terrace below. She didn't know why she started, but each morning she would have her first cup of coffee on the balcony and wake up with them.

It was the third time after Malfoy spent the night that he first joined her, always making some comment or insult about her or the birds before falling into a comfortable silence or talking groggily about anything. Usually they talked about the birds. Or, really, she talked about them, and he added comments or gave her amused looks that stopped being disparaging a long time ago.

"Watch your hair, Granger. They might be nest- ing."

"I want them to. That way if you get too close, they'll pluck you."

He bunched his cheek for a moment, setting his cup on the banister. "It's certainly a downgrade from getting too close and having you--"

"I used to think you were clever, but now you just go for the cheap and easy."

He looked over at her, opening his mouth, but closed it under the force of her glare. They already knew what he was going to say anyway. He flashed a grin, turning to look at the birds, and wincing when one chirped loudly above them. She smiled to herself as he looked up, leaning to the side to avoid any possible falling debris. It had yet to happen, but the thought of it still amused her.

"I should have brought out my wand. A quick Silencing Charm would have worked wonders."

"They could be in the middle of very important conversations."

The look he gave her proved how much he gave a damn. "It's not a conversation when it's making the same bloody noise for five minutes straight. The others ones are hoping he falls off the tree."

"Well, maybe he's trying to make a valid point about the day they should migrate, but no one is listening to him."

"Birds don't talk about migration, if they talk at all. They leave by instinct."

"Then why do some leave in September, and others of the same won't leave until October?"

He shrugged a shoulder. "Chance. Maybe the weather was slightly different that day in the five kilometers between them. A shortage of food in some area. A colder morning. Whatever chance event. But they don't plan on leaving, it's just natural to have to do so."

"I don't know. They just disappear one day. They leave behind their nests, and their bath, and their feeders, and they just go. It's sort of sad. And if they don't plan it, then why-- What?"

"It's sad? They're leaving for the winter, it's like a holiday. How in the hell is that sad?"

She huffed. "Everything is empty then. There's no sound from them--"

"Thank Merlin."

"--homes are empty, the bath freezes over, the leaves disappear. There's no movement. It's all so still and cold. And all they built, all these things that were theirs, will be destroyed or rebuilt, like they were never there at all. Well, I guess parts of things they used-- Some birds reuse nests, or they take the leaves and twigs from already made nests to build another one, but if they--"

"Of course it'll be like they were there – they come back. And even if they don't, you still remember them by name as having been there. What does it matter anyway? They're only birds."

"Yes, but they're my birds."

He huffed a laugh at her, leaning against the railing. "You're taking it far too personally. It's not like they grew tired of you and decided to leave."

"But what if they wanted to stay?"

He raised an eyebrow, and she stepped up to the railing beside him, feeling the heat of his body sink into her side. "They get to fly when they leave. Perhaps if you let me take you for a proper fly-about, you would get why that's important."

She rolled her eyes up, and then watched a red bird circle the top of a tree. "They fly all the time. It's got to be like--"

"From tree to tree, short distances. It's different when you go up higher, when you go longer. It's like validating freedom. It's like you're completely unbound by anything. Maybe they don't come back – but they're free, wherever they are, and so it should be worth it to see them go."

Hermione hummed, ignoring him when he muttered something about ridiculous and bird obsession. "I want to watch you fly."

He scrutinized her for a moment over the rim of his coffee cup, and she watched his throat bob as he swallowed. "Why – so you can make sure I'm not dangerous before agreeing to go with me?"

She raised her eyebrows and he made an annoyed sound in his throat. He liked to tell her how great he was at flying whenever he got the chance, but Hermione remembered enough from Hogwarts to know he sometimes liked to pretend he was immortal with all those rolls and dives. She wondered if that was because of the freedom he talked about. If it made someone feel like they could live forever. Malfoy reached out to pull loose the knot at the front of her dressing gown, pressing against the front of her before she could complain about her neighbors seeing them. "Fine, Granger. You can watch me fly."

,

Hermione closes her bathrobe tighter as he gives her a dark look, her heart pounding at each inch his eyes roam across.

"Come here," he says roughly, turning his hand palm-up on his knee.

"I can't. My parents."

He groans, running his fingers through his hair, and looks over her again before his head drops back. "Are they coming here?" he asks, searching the ceiling for something, and his Adam's apple bobs as he swallows.

"No, I'm going to meet them for dinner. I haven't been there in a few months, so they're worried and want to spend some parent- daughter time."

He hums, dropping back to his elbows on the bed, and pushes his legs out to their full length in front of him, heels resting on the floor. Hermione smiles at the very Malfoy-like pose – he had fallen into it often while they talked about something and she wandered around the room, or when he was failing to convince her to stay home from work.

She had resisted just fine on several occasions, but she can't stop herself now from putting a knee into the mattress on either side of his lap.

He reaches for her hips, pulling himself up enough to kiss her jaw. She looks down at the top of his head, threading fingers through platinum blond.

"Stay," he mutters, kissing her throat. It had always been dangerous to allow him this much advantage in his attempt to convince her of something, but her parents would be slam- ming down the door if she didn't go – and that possibility is enough to hold firm.

"I can't. But I'll be back. And you'll be here."

"Astute." He kisses her mouth, and her breath shudders out, back in, her fingers clenching into his shoulders. He lifts a hand, burying it into her hair, and flips them over with a jerk of his hips and press of his shoulders, his arm tightening around her.

"You'll always be here," she tells him, kissing him once, twice, before pulling her head back. He looks down at her silently, and she brushes

"You'll always be here," she tells him, kissing him once, twice, before pulling her head back. He looks down at her silently, and she brushes the fringe from his forehead.

,

Hermione looked at Malfoy in his shirt and trousers, as casual as she had seen him beyond his skin and mornings. "Remember, no talk about magic or anything related to it," she reminded him.

His jaw clenched, and he lifted his gaze to glare at the door. They had argued about this twice – had stopped speaking for four days after the first, and he'd watched her from the bed as she went around the bedroom with a Reparo after the second. She knew her parents, though. They were far better now than they had been after the war, but they had to learn to trust Malfoy before they looked at him as a wizard. He was adamantly against it, and she hoped he didn't purposely ignore what she asked of him once her parents were there.

"Malfoy--"

"I got it," he bit out, looking back to her, and her anxiousness must have been carved into her face. "Relax, Granger. If your parents are as jumpy as you, this is going to be an incredibly long evening."

That was the way he played it. When Hermione had met his mother two weeks ago, he was every inch of infuriating calm. She had figured she would have revenge tonight, but he was more relaxed now than he had been talking about work this morning. She narrowed her eyes at him, inspecting his face as he raised an eyebrow. She was waiting for his eye to twitch. She had only recently discovered the possibility of his nervous tick, but she usually had to stare at him--

She jumped with the knock at the door, spinning to face it. She cleared her throat, walking towards it with a heavy breath, and paused with her hand on the knob. She gave a nod to Malfoy, raising her eyebrows in question, and he just shrugged, gesturing for her to open it. Her mum smiled, and her father was already scrutinizing her for signs to prove he shouldn't like her boyfriend. She felt like a teenager caught on the front porch, but lost some of her nerves in the arms of her mum, and the heavy pats her father placed on her back.

She accepted the wine bottle her mum held out, leading them into her flat. "I'm still surprised you're cooking, Hermione. I know your meals are usually takeaway. I don't know how--"

"That was a particularly stressful week for me, Mum. I cook more than I order out, I just--"

Hermione looked between her father and Malfoy, both of them staring evenly at one another, and wrung her hands together.

"I would hope so. It's not good for your health when you're eating so much rubbish. I really wish you would come visit more. I can show you how to-- Oh. Hello, there."

"Mum, Dad, this is Ma-- Draco." The corner of his lips hiked at her slip, giving way to a smile as he shook her mum's hand. Her father intro- duced himself gruffly, and their handshake lasted significantly longer than the one with her mother had.

Silence fell quickly, stiff and awkward. "Well, everyone have a seat. I'm just going to check on the fish and get the wine glasses."

"So, Draco – what do you do?"

Hermione glanced over her shoulder to Malfoy as she entered the kitchen, moving to make some gesture that resembled slicing and choking herself, but he was fully concentrated on her father, his left eye twitching.

Later, after she'd burnt dinner and Malfoy pretended to take a car to pick up takeaway, and her parents had grilled them both with ques- tions, and the silences had lasted longer than the conversations, Hermione was ready to collapse into bed. Her mother had given her a smile as she left, and her father's Well, okay, was really the best they could expect. The only other man she'd introduced them to had been Ron, and her father hadn't said anything at all after that.

Malfoy leaned against the counter – covered in dirty dishes, burnt dinner, and takeaway containers – and smirked at the tired smile she gave him. She wrapped her arms around him, pressing her face to his chest. He smelt like his cologne, complex and masculine, with a hint of peaches that she could never tell was from secretly using her shampoo, or if her scent just wore off on him.

"Not bad," she murmured, his hand sliding along the small of her back.

"Not bad," he repeated.

,

"no need for them to be in here, so do not summon them!"

"It's their job to do the things I tell them to do, Hermione! There's no point in having them if--"

"Then get rid of them! I always wanted to free them, but God forbid if you should--"

"You're acting like they don't get paid," he growled.

"We agreed that they would stay out of our wing, because you're so bloody stubb--"

"I'm so bloody stubborn, and what do I want--"

"--off work so you have time--"

"--have time to clean the entire wing--"

"--wing when the whole point of them--"

"--here is to do it for us!"

He stares at her, his mouth gaping for a moment before he snaps it shut. She has thrown him off now, but she doesn't care. She knows it all by heart.

"And then I ask you how hard is it to make your own coffee, and you repeat yourself, and I call you a lazy arse, and you call me something, and we don't speak until after dinner. I don't care. Just do not try to summon a house-elf again!"

"If I want to--"

Hermione grows in frustration, clasping a hand to her forehead. "I should have left somewhere first. We should have went to some Muggle town somewhere. Started...maybe started all over again. Just left like the birds. Maybe it would have been different."

"You want to go on holiday?" he asks, his fingers moving like he's spinning a wand between them, but his hand is empty.

She releases a breath that slumps her whole body. "We were supposed to go on one. You never told me where. You never told anyone, because you thought they would tell me."

"They would tell you. And you'll know when we arrive. There's another month before we're both off from work." He's grinning at her in a way she thought was evil a very long time ago, but now she's not afraid of the things Malfoy plans.

She stares at him. She tries to make it all fit together in her head, and stretch beyond the limits of her logic. She focuses so hard on him that it's hard to even think of anything else, but his eyes have gone dull and his face is slack, and it's not how he should be. How he was.

Maybe they should go to that Muggle town. Maybe she should Obliviate herself, and experience everything like it's the first time, over and over again, every six years. Malfoy had filled her up too much inside. Had made whole all the airy, empty places before being ripped out through her chest. She wants to reach out and bend him, push, pull, reshape until he fits. Until he's solid and not just a phantom of the man she loves.

"I would have loved it. The holiday. I didn't mean to complain so much about it. It was only because you wouldn't tell me, and you know how I hate not knowing things. Even if we stayed home – I would have loved it."

,

Malfoy's belt buckle was pushing uncomfortably into the bottom of her stomach, but she ignored it, stretching out until every part of her was touching a piece of him. Lines of light narrowed and thinned on the wall next to her bed from the headlights on the street outside, and the rain was tapping her window in a beat her speeding heart was doing its best to catch up with.

"What if I said I loved you?" she asked him in the dark, and saw the glint of his hooded eyes in the next passing of headlights.

"Then I might have to return the sentiment," he told her, lifting his chin to find her lips with his, and she grabbed his shoulders at the heat of his mouth.

He turned them over, pushing up on his arm just long enough to unbuckle his belt, and then pressed down into her again. Her hands explored the lines of his back, taking their time in the journey to his waistband.

She waited until his mouth dragged to her neck before she spoke again. "And what if I said that I didn't?"

"Then I'd call you a liar."

,

Hermione stares out from the balcony, absently reaching for her tea from the small table Malfoy had placed against the railing. Malfoy had done all of it, she knew – though she didn't doubt he had secured some help from the house-elves. He never told her about it, just left her to wander to the balcony herself. She had expected a sprawling lawn, vegetable and flower gardens, a courtyard, and all possible things that could make the Malfoys feel like great rulers as they looked out from their castle.

She had got plenty of that, of course, but she had been far too captivated with the birds, their feeders, and the giant bath set up below the balcony. Malfoy had swaggered out looking quite smug at the grin on her face, but she had allowed him it that time.

Hermione watches a flock of birds sweep through the sky, rising and falling together as they fly to some unknown, safe place. It reminds her of the first time Malfoy took her flying – how she had started to laugh for no apparent reason, and his grin had curved against her cheek. She can still remember the exact warmth of the sun and his breath on her skin. She had finally understood what he meant about that reckless sense of freedom, of being unbound by anything, of feeling like you could live forever in the stretch of the continuing sky. She had never felt bad about the birds leaving again after that; instead, she felt as if she were setting them free.

Hermione turns sharply at the sound of one of the doors opening behind her, his eyes squinted in the weak light of morning as he looks up at the sky to determine the speed of the rain. She steps forward quickly, her hands pushing into the cold firmness that made his chest, and she steps into him until he steps back. He gives her a startled look and she smiles, closing the door behind them.

"We can have it in the bedroom," she tells him, gesturing to her teacup.

He smirks, nodding his chin behind her as his hands close around her hips. "Balcony is sufficient. I--"

"Yes, Malfoy – damn it," she bites, shaking her now tea-coated hand from when she tried to push him back again, "proved that to me."

"You're not blushing." He raises an eyebrow, pulling her hips forward. "Have I finally corrupted you?"

She pulls away from him. "No. I've--"

"What's wrong, Hermione?"

"Nothing, I just don't want to go out on the balcony."

"You always want to go out on the balcony."

"Not today," she snaps.

He groaned, his jaw clenching. "Are you going to accuse me of hiding your book again, or have I--"

"I didn't accuse you-- What book?"

"Do you have any idea how many books we have in this house?"

"Wh--" She shakes her head at him. "I didn't accuse you of hiding a book."

"I didn't touch the fucking book! How many times do I have to repeat myself to you be- fore--"

"Shut up," she whispers. "I'm going to say whatever the hell I want to say. If you don't--"

"You're not making sense. Can't you--"

"I'm making perfect sense, Granger. Rogers isn't going to deal with a bunch of Aurors who are too busy getting pissed to do their jobs. Weasley--"

"Stop!" she shouts, throwing her arms out, and winces when more tea sloshed onto her hand.

"Are you all right?" he asks softly, ducking his head to look at her, his gaze too intense for her to look away.

She shakes her head, sinking into the end of the bed. "No. Not really." He takes the spot next to her, his arm brushing hers, and she feels the seizing start up. The prelude to crying when you can't catch your breath, everything gets very hot, the throat clogs, and the chest gets heavy. Her fingers are shaking as she sets her teacup down.

"What happened?" he asks stiffly, uncomfortable and unsure.

Hermione shakes her head. "I might be losing it. I mean really, honestly losing it. And you are, too. We're both insane. We're both absolutely out of our minds. I can't save you. I couldn't. I'm barely holding on to myself." She looks up, grey, white, pink blurring together, and the world is moving too fast again.

,

She woke with a rubbing motion on her finger, but didn't have to open her eyes to know Malfoy was spinning her wedding ring. She hummed, burrowing deeper into the blankets and against his side, her cheek slipping across his chest.

"You never told me if you liked it. The ring."

His voice was a lot clearer than it normally was upon waking, and she wondered how long he had been up for.

"I told you it was perfect after you proposed."

He was silent for a moment. "Ah, and here I thought you had said I was perfect."

He shifted under her when she started laughing, and she could feel his glare attempting to set her hair on fire. "I see," she managed, trying to hide her smile, but he must have felt it against his skin.

"Mm." He muttered something that sounded like an insult by his tone alone, and his hand crept up her bare back. "I've canceled breakfast with my mother."

"And she was just starting to like me."

"She likes you well enough. It's our only day off for another week – I don't have any intention of spending it outside of this bedroom."

"I'll just pee in the flowerpot then. I hope you brought in toothpaste and--" She laughed when he pinched her hip.

"You'll kill the flowers. At least go in that damnable plant. I swear Potter put spying devices in that thing. It smells wretched."

"I wasn't aware that spying devices had a wretched smell to them. And I'm surprised you didn't move it out into the hall again. You're far too paranoid."

"Have you forgotten his insistence that we alter the wards so he can Apparate into the manor at any time? Then that twitchy-eye thing he got when he handed us a bloody plant for no reason. He--"

"You've been an Auror too long," she said with a laugh, wrapping her arm around him.

"Which is long enough to recognize the signs," he mumbled.

"Harry just worries someone will break in or some such."

"I can protect you myself."

She snorted. "I'll protect myself, thank you. You can stand there and look pretty."

"I always knew you wanted me for my looks."

She laughed at him, watching the light grow brighter through the window. She loved days like these, where the entire world did not exist outside of the one they created within their bedroom. These are the moments she remembered when nothing else made sense.

She closed her eyes, feeling the sway of her body as she drifted towards sleep again, her arm tightening around him. Hermione liked to entertain the idea that she was floating out to sea. Maybe he came to be with her, or drown her, or anchor her to somewhere that they could name, and keep, and call their own. But whatever it was, however they got here, wher- ever they were going, he was hers.

,

Hermione looks at him, folding the note from Narcissa. "I'm going to meet Narcissa for breakfast."

"Since when are you willing to spend time with my mother?"

Hermione shrugs, running a finger over a crease in the note, and watches him rub his jaw. "She needs me."

He looks up from the case file he had found in her things, his eyebrows drawing together. "Weasley will be fine if you wait an hour."

She closes her eyes. "I don't know," she whis- pers.

"Wait – have you just admitted that you don't know something?"

"I don't know."

"I'm not surprised, Granger."

"I don't know." It comes out all breath, like she's been punched in the gut.

"Then figure it out, Hermione!" he yells. She opens her eyes, her blood pounding and making her whole body throb.

"I don't know."

"Neither do I."

"I don't know."

"I'm not surprised, Granger."

She wants to tear it all apart. She wants to grab it with her hands and feel the violence of its destruction.

"I don't know."

"Neither do I."

"I don't know."

"Then figure it out, Hermione!"

"I don't know."

"It's all right."

"I don't know."

"Neither do I."

Hermione takes a deep, shaking breath, and rubs her eyes at the burn behind them. "I'm going to meet your mother."

"Stop worrying, Granger. She won't like you at first, but she'll get used to it."

She stands, her feet feeling numb, and she clenches her hands together. "This isn't what I wanted it to be," she whispers roughly, because the truth never comes smooth when it hurts so badly. It has to grind its way up from your gut and tear up half your heart with it.

"It's not...it's never going to be..." She trails off, and he looks at her, confusion lining his forehead. "It's all that's left," she rasps, and the tears are hot across her cheeks.

He shifts and then stands, moving around the table, and then holds his hand out to her. She shrugs, shaking her head, and the tips of her fingers brush his as she moves to push his hand away. He jerks to grab her hand when she pulls it back, though, and he yanks her towards him until she's crashing into the wall of his chest. He smells only of peaches.

"This is all you left me with, and I can't do this anymore!" she yells, pushing at his chest, trying to smack his arms away, throwing a fist into his shoulder.

He only holds her tighter. The tears are fast and hard now, broken sounds forcing their way up from her throat. He's whispering words into her hair that she can't hear, but that she knows she's heard before, and she wills him to break her open, to set her free, too. She can't see or breathe, and she is sure that she is dying, that she has finally lost all sense of sanity and power, caught up in the sea, and it's taking her alive.

,

Hermione jumped at the movement she caught in her peripheral, her bag thudding to the floor as she spun and pulled her wand. She narrowed her eyes as light flooded the room, and blinked at Malfoy's raised eyebrows and lazy smirk.

"Your Gryffindor impatience is showing. You're supposed to slowly poison me to kill me – that way you get away with it, and you get the estate."

She rolled her eyes, hitting him in the arm. "If I only married you for your estate, you'd have had to be richer than all of Blaise's past stepfathers put together--"

"Perhaps I am." He shrugged a shoulder.

"Love or greed. It's the only way to deal with you."

"I'm touched. Why are we together again? I could have just married my job and suffered the same abuse."

"Because it takes a lifetime to deflate your ego, and I'm the only one up for it," she told him, losing the fight against her smile with his huff of laughter. He opened his mouth to respond, but was cut off with her smack to his arm again. "And what did I say about creeping around in the middle of the night?"

They had been together for over five years now, but it hadn't taken her even a quarter of that to learn the expression that came over him when he was excited about something wicked. It took her a moment, but she knew exactly what he was about to say. "Wasn't it just last month that you told me of a certain fa--"

"I will hit you again."

"Yes," he said, smirking, and reached to pull her towards him when she turned for her bag.

"I believe that was--"

"Very hard," she warned. "And why were you in the dark?" If it had been for that reason, he likely wouldn't have been amused when she pointed her wand at him. He was very adept at staying in character during...those.

"I was going to sleep." He kissed her before she could respond with how tired she was, but he must have noticed her rumpled, worn appearance and figured it out himself. He brought them back two steps towards the bedroom, pulling the bag out of her hand.

"Don't drop it," she warned him, and raised up on her toes to kiss him again when he pulled away.

"I thought you were getting wedding invitations for Lovegood?"

"I did, but we couldn't decide, so I brought home a few options. Luna picked this horrible...glass thing. Don't ask me what owls she would plan on having deliver it."

He muttered something to himself as he placed the bag on the floor, turning off the lights with a flick of his hand. "I'll have to look at them tomorrow."

"They put ours to shame. I'm still not sure why she wanted me for her Maid of Honor."

She couldn't see his face in the dark yet, but she knew that both his eyebrows would be raised, the left slightly higher than the right, and there would be the smallest curl to his mouth. "She probably imagined all the wonderful things she could stuff in your hair to keep her imaginary creatures away." He paused when she snorted. "No? Because I'm fairly sure that's exactly what's going to happen. I'm going to be picking Lovegood creations from your hair for weeks."

She yawned, following him to the bed, and kicked her shoes off. "My...extreme...ability to..."

"There you go, Granger. I'll just"–he tossed a sock towards the laundry hamper and gestured towards The Hollow Keeper on the nightstand– "read the rest of the book between your pauses so I don't fall asleep in the interim."

"Shut up. I'm too tired to think, or else I would have said something so witty that it trumped all witty things ever said."

"Right," he said slowly, and she glared at him over the mountain of blankets. She caught his smile in the dark, and slid a foot between his as he put an arm over her waist.

He kissed her mouth, her cheekbone, and she shut her eyes to sleep, the rhythm of his breath matching hers against her stomach.

,

He fixes the frame that holds a picture from their engagement party, stepping back, forward, and back, to make sure it's absolutely straight. Malfoy fixed it often – it would always slant for no apparent reason, or due to the very apparent reason of their headboard being against the other side of the wall. It was the fourth frame the picture had been in before her finally casted a charm to buffer its fall when it inevitably hit the ground. If she was a superstitious person, she might have taken it to mean something. Maybe she should have.

Hermione crosses her arms, watching him study the picture. She sometimes wonders if Malfoy had an attachment to it, or it was just his need for order that edged obsession. She was never a dirty person, but dust and a pile of laundry happened when you worked most the hours you were awake. Some days she would come home to spotlessness, and knowing he'd have never cleaned it himself, she wondered if he sent a house-elf in without her knowing. He denied it, always, and never broke under her suspicious looks, but she told herself she would catch him one day.

She remembers every moment the night of that party, and the heat of his hand constantly at her back. She remembers the moment her fingers slid between his in a corner of the room, and how she realized right then that he was hers forever. That despite all the world, or for it, or because of it, he was hers.

She doesn't know if he discovered that that night as well, or some time before that, or if he was always waiting for the crash that would end it. That big explosion in the sky that turned the world just a little in another direction, so that it never rotated the same again. And no matter how hard and fast you run towards it to stop it, fix it, dissolve into it, you never caught enough speed to turn it back.

"I miss you every day, you know," she says.

He turns to look at her, glancing over her pajamas. "I was on assignment."

"I know. You were supposed to come back here."

He scratches his jaw, raising an eyebrow. "I'm here now."

"No." She shakes her head, feeling the burning at the back of her eyes. That lump in her throat that grows each time she tries to swallow. "Not really. You're never really here, no matter what I do. I keep trying, and you're always...gone." Her voice breaks on the last word, the lump tightening until her throat is tingling with it. She's going to fall apart any second now. She'll look up at him, and the world will spin faster, and time will march on, and nothing will have changed back again.

"You're not making any sense, Granger. Try stringing a sentence together that actually demonstrates you have mental capabilities."

She rolls her eyes up to ceiling, shimmering underwater. "I really tried, Draco. I tried so hard to make this right again. To make you right again. But it's all wrong. It's not enough because it's not even...it's not you."

"What is enough for you?" he barks. She stares at him hopelessly. Sunken down with the lack of it. "Huh? What's enough for you, Granger?"

"Draco."

"Hermione."

She shakes her head, pushing the heel of her palm into her chest. "It hurts to even look at you. It wasn't supposed to be this way."

"Things change eve--"

"You can't! You. Can. Not. You just..." She coughs over a sob, and backs away from him. She suddenly needs space, and it's tearing her apart, because that is why she's here. To bridge space and time, to turn it all back, to make it right. But this is so wrong, and she's so screwed up, and she knows exactly what he'd say if he could.

"You're just...a shadow in my husband's body, who remembers to say the things he would sometimes. And you haunt me. You leave me no peace. And that's all I wanted. I just wanted yo be happy with Draco again. Or everything, but with him."

He stares at her, a furrow to his forehead, but his eyes are dull. That's one of the hardest parts – the eyes. She couldn't get them right, and when they're lifeless, they just remind her all over again. He reaches up to rub a knuckle into his forehead, and her eyes flash to the runic symbol carved in his wrist. There were more – thirty-four of them, to be exact, and she takes note of each one she can see. Reminds herself that it's not him. That it's a ghost created by the only living things she has left of Draco.

"I'm sorry."

"Are you?"

She nods, swallows, finds a spot on the wall above his shoulder. "You know, George gave me this prototype he has been working on for the past few years. Thought it would distract me, I guess."

"There are a number of ways to distract you, Granger." His voice is lowered, promising, and she closes her eyes at the sound of it. "Perhaps I'll show you."

"It did distract me, though. It's really quite genius. It's this glass ball, etched in runic magic, that holds memories. And when placed under a specific charm, a memory inside the ball is activated by a trigger – a phrase spoken to it that had occurred in the memory. So, say, if a student wishes for a refresher on a certain potion, the memory would be conjured by saying the name of it. But George couldn't figure out how to activate the memory outside of the ball."

His eyes flutter up from her wringing hands to her face, and she slumps against the doorway.

"But I did," she admits. "I figured it out."

,

"Wasn't it just last month that you told me of a certain fantasy--"

"I will hit you again."

"Yes," he said, smirking, and reached to pull her towards him when she turned for her bag.

"I believe that was--"

"Very hard," she warned. "And why were you in the dark?" If it had been for that reason, he likely wouldn't have been amused when she pointed her wand at him. He was very adept at staying in character during...those.

"I was going to sleep." He kissed her before she could respond with how tired she was, but he must have noticed her rumpled, worn ap0earance and figured it out himself. He brought them back three steps towards the bedroom, pulling the bag out of her hand.

"Don't drop it," she warned him, and raised up on her toes to kiss him again when he pulled away.

"I thought you were getting wedding invitations for Lovegood?"

"I was, but we couldn't decide, and Luna suggested this...glass thing. Don't ask me what owls she would get to deliver it."

He muttered something to himself, a lowness, rise, and then fall of his voice as he placed the bag on the floor, turning off the lights with a flick of his hand. "I'll have to look at them tomorrow."

"They put ours to shame. And I'm still unsure about why she chose me for Maid of Honor."

She couldn't see his face in the dark yet, but she knew that both his eyebrows would be raised, the left slightly higher than the right, and there would be the smallest curl to his mouth. "She probably imagined all the wonderful things she'd put in your hair to keep the imaginary creatures away." He paused when she snorted. "No? Because I'm pretty sure that's exactly what's going to happen. I'm going to be getting Lovegood creations out from your hair for weeks."

She yawned, following him to the bed, and kicked her shoes off. "My...extreme...ability to..."

"There you go, Granger. I'll just read the rest"– he gestured towards The Hollow Keeper on the nightstand and tossed a sock towards the laundry hamper–"of the book between your pauses so I don't fall asleep in the interim."

"Shut up. I'm too tired to think, or else I would have said something so witty that it trumped all witty things every said."

"Right," he said slowly, and she glared at him over the mountain of blankets. She caught his smile in the dark, and slid a foot between the coldness of his as he put a heavy, warm arm over her waist.

He kissed her mouth softly, then her temple, and she shut her eyes to sleep, the rhythm of his breath matching hers against her stomach. He sighed, long and slow, and his chin brushed the top of her curls.

,

Hermione tugs him behind her, winding across the garden. She glances behind her, finding his eyes, the right one squinted slightly like it tended to do in the sunshine. She smiles at him and his lips twitch in response, his wrist turning in her grip to grab her arm.

"I'm not a dog," he tells her. "You don't have to lead me around."

"Oh, please – we both know you've always been a bit beastly."

She hears his foot slap down in a puddle, and the soft curse that follows his trousers getting wet. She skirts around the hedges and flowerbeds, memories dancing around the edges of her mind, until they reach the birdbath.

"Felt like the bench today?" She nods, and her hand slips into his as he steps in front of her, leading her around the bath.

"The birds will be leaving soon. I thought it would be nice to be down here before they go."

"They'll be back," he tells her, nodding at her to sit before taking the spot beside her.

"No, not all of them. Remember Denny? He healed and then flew off towards the sun, and we never saw him again."

"But he's free." He leaned back against the bench, watching two birds roll in the bath.

"Yes," she whispers. "He is. I just wish I could have followed him."

He turns his head to look at her, and her smile is trembling as she reaches up to thrift her fingers through the sunshine of his hair.

"I really do," she says. "But he's made me wait, that prat," she laughs, her voice thick, and she sees Malfoy's face through a film of blurry wetness. "He's going to have to really make it up to me one day."

He reaches out, his fingers sliding along her cheek and around, until his palm is pressed against the nape of her neck. "Stop looking at me like that, Granger," he rasps, and she lifts herself to push her forehead against his.

"Like what?"

"Like you're leaving."

"No. Not me."

,

"Very hard," she told him as he pulled her towards him with a hand on her hip, his chest smooth and bare when she pressed a hand against it. "And why were you in the dark?" If it had been for that reason, he likely wouldn't have been amused when she pointed her wand at him. He was very adept at staying in character during...those.

"I was going to sleep." He kissed her before she could respond with how tired she was, but he must have noticed her rumpled, worn appearance and figured it out himself. He brought them back two steps towards the bedroom, his hand skating down her arm before pulling the bag out of her hand.

"Don't drop it," she warned him, and raised up on her toes to kiss him again when he straightened up.

"I thought you were getting wedding invitations for Lovegood?"

"I was, but we couldn't decide, and Luna suggested this...glass thing. Don't ask me what owls she'll get to deliver the thing."

He muttered something to himself, a lowering, rise, and then fall of his voice that must have been something about Luna, or maybe the spectacle that had been them picking out invitations with his mother. He placed the bag on the floor, against the wall, and he squeezed her hip as he turned off the lights with a flick of his other hand. "I'll have a look at them tomorrow."

"They put ours to shame, really. I'm still unsure about why she's chosen me to be her Maid of Honor."

She couldn't see his face in the dark yet, but she knew that both his eyebrows would be raised, the left slightly higher than the right, and there would be the smallest curl to his mouth. He turned for the bedroom, his hand dropping from her, and turned his head to the side in an attempt to crack the pressure. Work must have been stressful – that's the only time she saw him do that.

"She probably imagined all the wonderful things she could stuff in your hair to keep her imaginary creatures at bay." He made a sound of amusement at her snort, walking around the bed. "No? Because I'm fairly sure that's exactly what will happen. I'll be picking Lovegood creations from your hair for weeks."

She yawned, following him to the bed, and kicked her shoes off. He sat down on the edge of the bed on what had become his side, his back facing her, and ran his fingers through his hair. A few strands stuck up, grey in the weak moonlight filtering in from the window. "My... extreme...ability to..."

"There you go, Granger. I'll just read the rest of that book"–he tossed a sock towards the laundry hamper and gestured towards The Hollow Keeper on the nightstand–"between all your pauses so I don't fall asleep in the interim."

"Shut up. I'm too tired to think, or I would have said something so witty that it beat all witty things ever said." She fell into the bed as he slid under the covers, reaching over his head to hit one of the pillows before turning to face her.

"Right," he drawled, and she glared at him over the blankets. She saw his smile in the dark, and slid a foot between his as he put an arm over her waist. She put her hand on his chest, her palm smoothing over his nipple and her fingers stretching towards his heart.

He kissed her mouth, her cheekbone, and she shut her eyes, the rhythm of his breath matching hers against her stomach. He sighed slowly, the tip of his chin brushing her curls, and his arm tensed a little when he shifted. His breathing was steady, strong, and lulled her to sleep.

,

He had kissed her, and then they had fallen asleep. His arm had been thrown over her waist, and her hand had been pressed to his chest. Sometimes, when she thinks very hard, she remembers it beating, strong and steady. There had been hours then that he had held her, touched her. That she had felt him, breathed him in, shared his warmth. Hours where she had been sleeping, unaware, unknowing, unable to ever remember. He might have kissed her before he left, or touched her hair, or gave her one last look as he pulled his cloak on. Then he would have walked to the fireplace, taken the Floo to work. He ate a muffin. He was eating a muffin when he met up with Neville, right before they left, before... Before.

She must have played it in her head a thousand times, trying to remember each detail. Perhaps it shouldn't matter where he'd kissed her, or what parts of him were touching what parts of her, but suddenly they mean everything to her.

"I know you can't help yourself, but your staring is distracting."

She reaches out to trace the lines of Malfoy's face, the dips and curves of his body. He hums, pulling her closer, and she blinks the tears back. Because this is the very last time. Because this is what she must do.

He is a beautiful package of memories, and there are moments where it all fits and she can believe. But he is like an anchor held too long at the bottom, eaten by salt and rusted by time. The thing that holds you to the place you love, where you want so badly to stay, is now the thing contaminating it. She can pull it up to her time-wrecked seaboard and save that place, but doing so will drift her out into the world, until she is so far away that she can't even see it in her past horizon.

Sometimes she is weak and she thinks about forgetting him, if only to ease the ache that has settled at the root of every bone. Then she knows that he is intrinsically a part of her, as much as the loss is now, and Draco lives every day through her breath. Hermione drops her forehead to his chest and closes her eyes, but she knows she won't sleep a moment tonight.

,

She drew her hands to her heart, the stems of flowers crushing under her grip, but she re- fused to lay them down to be lost with the others, to be some ridiculous farewell in the form of petals, stamens, and stems. She raised her eyes to the stone building reflecting white- yellow as the sun set. The wavering liquid in her eyes made her feel underwater, drowning in her own lack of breath. Like she was chained to an anchor at the bottom of a sea, and the key to unlock her had just been buried. Buried under dirt and rocks with some part of her that hollowed out her insides without it. Something touched her shoulder then pulled, and the world blurred into wavering lines, and she swore she'd never see it whole again.

,

Hermione sets the glass ball gently onto the bedside table, and reaches over to pull the clothes from around objects that don't mean anything anymore. There's a distinct lack of magic charging the air around her now, and she feels like she can finally breathe in the stillness now that the enchantments, charms, and runes are broken. She can feel the approach of winter in the wind that prickles her skin when she steps out onto the balcony, and she knows it will be a long time before she'll face the world without bundling herself against it. A gloss of tears coats her eyes, reminding her of the sunlight, hot and blinding, creating blurry waves across the sky.

Malfoy ruled the world around her. She could hear him in the sound of morning chirping, and the crickets at twilight, the howl of the wind, the creak of their bed, and sometimes in a whisper that ghosted her ears on the verge of sleep. She tasted him in coffee, bananas, muffins, minty toothpaste, and good brandy. She felt him in the warmth of noon, in the depths of their blankets, on the balcony, when she walked alone in the garden. She smelt him in rain, in the coolness of night, the wind across the water, lingering in pockets of earth and corners of their room. She saw him behind her eyelids, the gold of morning on the birdbath, the line of wings in flight, autumn trees stretching into the sky, everywhere.

He'd left her to herself within his kingdom, and everything reminded her that he had loved her once, and she would love him always. She uncurls her fingers with a regret that creaks her bones, and watches the autumn wind carry petals into the air, like a hundred, fluttering birds disappearing into the sun.

Fin.

This work does not belong to me, it is the work of every thursday