Chapter Text
For the first time ever, Potter’s celebrity was not annoying for Draco Malfoy. Rather, it was exactly what he needed. It was a Saturday in mid-September, the day of the Gryffindor quidditch tryouts, and everyone was there. The castle itself was nearly empty, making this day the perfect time to move the broken vanishing cabinet on the first floor up to the urgent privacy of the seventh floor.
Draco found the cabinet exactly where a wet and deranged Graham Montague had told him it would be. It was indeed identical to the one in Borgin and Burkes shop. It was draped in a huge sheet of dusty maroon velvet, but beneath it was dark, ornately carved wood and metalwork. He wound the cabinet in a disillusionment charm and levitated it all the way upstairs by slow degrees, staircase by staircase, corridor by corridor, as the afternoon of Chosen One quidditch hoopla played out on the fields below the school.
On the seventh floor, he paced three times in front of the empty wall opposite the troll ballet tapestry, repeating how badly he needed a place to hide and work without being discovered. There it was, its door grinding out of the stonework -- the Room of Hidden Things, exactly what he required.
The Dark Lord had seemed almost angry when Draco first came up with this plan. The point of the original impossible task of assassinating Dumbledore was, after all, for it to be impossible. The Dark Lord had been looking for a death sentence for Draco and his parents when he gave him the task, but he was willing to entertain a workable plan to murder Dumbledore instead. Whatever happened in the end, the Dark Lord would win something.
Draco shuddered. Even thinking about it was dangerous -- dangerous when he thought about doing it, more dangerous when he thought about sabotaging himself and not doing it. In the Room of Hidden Things, he closed his eyes and practiced the occulmency maneuvres the awful people at his house had taught him, shifting and stirring the currents of his mind until his head was a raging whirlpool where no single thought could be recognized.
“And remember, wee Draco,” Aunt Bella had said, “occulmency begins on your mouth. Smile!”
Bellatrix ruined everything. Draco could not smile at all as he leaned into the window of the upper room, rubbing the dust from the pane, looking down into the quidditch pitch where things seemed to be finally breaking up. The crowd was dispersing but the new Gryffindor team was staying behind to run a few plays.
Hermione would be coming back to the castle, alone. Hermione, who was turning seventeen years old today while her best friends were caught up in their game because they were the absolute worst, he thought. He brushed the dust from his black jacket, and slipped between the jumbled heaps of hidden things to go find her.
"They did not forget my birthday," she defended her friends as she walked four steps ahead of Draco toward the shore of the lake, as if they weren’t together. "The day just sneaked up on them this year, since the Gryffindor tryouts were right away and Ron -- well, he needed some emergency pre-tryout practice or we'd’ve be in for an awfully awkward year."
Draco rolled his eyes, his hands in his pockets so he wouldn’t try to hold her hand so close to the rest of the students out strolling on a fine autumn afternoon -- not that anyone who could hear them would have mistaken them for doing anything but arguing. "Emergency practice with the captain himself? Favouritsm: the eternal key to Gryffindor success."
"Stop it,” she said, pushing the long, sweeping tendrils of a golden willow bush aside, stepping into a hidden clearing between the limbs and leaves, a space large enough for two. “I told the boys they didn't need to coddle me today. It's not like they won't assume that I'd just as soon be -- well…"
He had stepped beneath the willow’s drooping canopy with her. As she'd spoken, she'd turned and burrowed inside his jacket, her arms closing around him between the layers of his clothes, her face against his chest.
"Just as soon be doing what?” The lowest notes of his voice rumbling against her face. “Corrupting a sixteen year old boy?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Do you not want to be corrupted? Very well then."
"Stay right here,” he said, holding her closer, a smirk in his voice. “No matter what either of us wants, Potter will reckon you're here on an important reconnaissance mission for him. He'll be hounding you for reports of nefarious behaviour of mine once you get back."
She lifted her chin. "I'll simply tell him what I always do: that all of your behaviours are nefarious."
"That’s my girl."
“At least I’ll be able to stop talking about quidditch tryouts -- with Ron and Harry, that is. When is Slytherin having theirs, anyway?”
He narrowed his eyes and pressed his forehead to hers. “You and quidditch players. What is the fascination? You don’t care at all about the actual game. Couldn’t tell a bludger from a quaffle, could you?”
She shoved him with two fingers against his shoulder. “There is no fascination. I am simply trying to be supportive of your interests.”
He stood up straight. “Then forget about quidditch. I’m not interested in it.”
“How can you not be interested, all of a sudden?”
He shrugged. “Unfortunately, I grew up a lot this summer. Quidditch is a game for children and people who wish they were. Not for me.”
“But,” she stammered. “You can’t just drop it. The first time I took any real notice of you was on a quidditch pitch. That first year flying lesson, when Neville got hurt and carried off by the teacher, and we were left out there forbidden to fly but you were a complete brat and did it anyway. And no one could say you weren’t good at it. That's why the smell of grass, it -- ”
He interrupted her, scoffing. “Yeah, but you could say that my father bribed my way onto the team the very next year.”
She groaned, rising to kiss his cheek. “I am sorry.” She turned to kiss his other cheek. “Sorry.” She kissed his chin. “How many times do I have to apologize? And you had your vulgar revenge in that moment -- your scary little scowl and calling me mudblood for the first time. It’s not like you took it lying down.”
“Lying down?” He grabbed at her, dropping to the ground, rolling on top of her in the grass beneath the bending willow branches. Her eyes closed against the dizziness of their motion, her laugh devoured in his kiss. He took her mouth and her breath and she clung to him, her palms pressed to either side of his face. Their kisses in the library were stolen and scandalous but held by reins of propriety and decorum. The ones away from the castle, in private like this, were dangerous for other reasons. She felt them low in her body, already tipping her spine into an arch beneath him as he crushed his chest against hers. In her ever-thinking mind, she was scrambling to catch herself, bringing her attention back up, to their faces. Beneath her hands, his cheeks were rough. They didn’t stay smooth for days and days, the way they used to. The realization felt something like loneliness.
He pulled away, his torso still pinning hers to the ground as she caught her breath. "No quidditch. Here in our sixth year, I only have room in my schedule for one stress relieving pastime."
"You mean…"
"You, Granger. Of course I mean you." With one hand, he propped himself up. With the other, he took her hand, covering it where she still held it pressed to his cheek.
“I know exactly the kind of time your prefect duties and your school workload demand this year, Malfoy. They’re the same as mine only you’re not taking ancient runes. Why do you think you're going to have so little time?”
He forced a grin. “Because I’m not as smart as you and it will take me longer to learn it all.”
“Rubbish.”
He was sitting up. “Hermione, don’t -- “
“All I’m saying,” she said over him, pushing herself upright on the grass, “is that -- whatever else is demanding your time, you can talk to me about it. I can help, or I can get help -- “
“Stop, please. You don’t get it -- “
“But I want to -- “
“I don’t want you to. So just leave it and take your birthday present.” He took a silky purple pouch from his pocket and crammed it into her hand.
She gasped. “You got me a present? You didn’t last year.”
“Yes, and I’ve had all year to repent of that. Open it.”
Inside the pouch was a piece of deep orange amber, buffed to a gem-like sheen and carved into the shape of a cat. It was set in silver and hanging from a fine silver chain.
He smirked as she examined it, holding it up so the afternoon light set it glowing. “You like it.” It was not a question.
“I love it. Thank you.” He hugged him around his neck. “But I’m not sure if it will work to smooth things over between you and Crookshanks. He still hasn’t visited you?”
“Not even once.” He said as he fastened the chain beneath her hair, his playful tone gone. Draco was genuinely grieved about the loss of his stake in the cat.
She scooted across the grass, shifting herself into his lap. “Figure out why, and fix it. Please, Draco. It’s the only way he’ll come back to you.”
There was no answer he could make. He couldn’t even lift his head to look at her eye to eye. She reached for him anyway, ducking to kiss him, her fingers in his hair, her lips working to part his. He didn’t believe he deserved it, but he didn't resist.
--------------------------------
“So, any repercussions?” It was Pansy Parkinson, appearing outside the boys’ locker room once quidditch was finally over for the day. Ron startled at the sight of her, shaking his wet hair, flicking droplets on her face. She yelled out as she wiped the water away.
“What, you mean did anyone mention that purple smear you left on my neck?” he said.
She shushed him. “Yeah. No one’s said anything to me about it yet. How about you?”
He scoffed. “Well, I had to owl my mum about how to get the stain out of my collar and she bawled me out for being so careless with my grape juice. Other than that -- nothing.”
Pansy was noticeably crestfallen. “I put my mouth on you for nothing?”
“Looks like it.”
She stamped her foot. “It’s your hair, Weasley. It’s too long. You could have the Dark Mark on your neck and no one would be able to tell through that mess.”
He stopped walking and faced her, reaching for her left arm and tugging the cuff of her jumper up to her elbow. Her arm was unmarked but she snatched it away anyway.
“Just had to check,” he said.
She slapped at his arm as he started away again. “You need to cut your hair, Weasley.”
“I will not,” he said. “Just try it again somewhere more obvious, less creepy -- normal. You know, like on my face.”
Pansy turned in a circle, grimacing.
Ron sighed. “Or we can just leave it and wait for a war to start and break them up nice and natural like.”
“Oh, alright,” she said. “We’ll do the face. We’ll do it now, while you’re still clean and I can stand the smell of you.”
She re-applied her lipstick as he wiped away more of the water droplets trickling from his hair. She tucked her lipstick back into her sleeve, clearing her throat and stepping close to him. He bent toward her, offering his white, freckled cheek. She took a deep breath and kissed it, hard and fast.
“There,” she was saying, but as she moved away, he clamped one arm around her waist, holding her in place.
“Don’t act like you can’t stomach the smell of me,” he said. “You said so yourself, Parkinson, the last time, in the library. We have a certain compatibility.”
“Hands off me, Weasley,” she said, wrenching herself free.
He held up both of his hands, stepping backward. “You can have all the space you want,” he said, “and you can insult me all you like too. But you can’t bite me, and you can’t lie to me.”
Pansy crossed her arms, tipped her chin forward, and snarled at him with her small white teeth.
-----------------
It was just before curfew on Saturday night and Draco was supposed to be patrolling with the rest of the Slytherin prefects. Instead, he was standing in the Room of Hidden Things, in front of the vanishing cabinet draped in its long red velvet cover. That morning, Borgins’s owl had arrived with the first phase of instructions for repairing it. He would start tomorrow.
He was still standing, frozen, when something moved in his peripheral vision, like a snitch for him to catch. He spun toward it, barely able to see a flash of something hairy and rusty orange disappearing behind a stack of broken chairs.
“Crookshanks?”
He was on his knees, crawling between the broken and abandoned goods of centuries of Hogwarts mishaps, struggling to chase after what he’d seen without chasing it away.
“Crookshanks, come back here,” he whispered to the room.
Nothing answered -- no sound of objects pushed off tables, no raspy meowing, certainly not a purr. He pushed himself off his knees and sat down on the floor that hadn’t been cleaned for generations. At moments like this, he'd always been able to cry. But not even that would come to him today. He sat long enough and still enough that a tiny creature darted out in front of him. It wasn’t magical, just a red squirrel like the ones who lived in the shrubbery in the courtyard outside. Whether it came to the room by accident or as the fix to someone’s fit of bad judgment, Draco didn’t know.
He waved his wand at the window. “Alohomora.”
The squirrel leaped toward the rush of fresh air through the open window, and scuttled down the rough face of the stone building on it’s tiny claws, free.