Archive of Our Own ^beta

When Hermione wakes, the flurries have begun their quiet veiling over the pale wash of early morning blue. The window is a scatter of milky white, knitting itself into a thickening blanket. On the nightstand next to her—dark walnut, severe and austere, warmed by candlelight—are crumpled tissues, her teacup from the night before, and a book, laid flat and open-faced on the page she left off.

A delicate little throat clearing sounds from her right. The portrait of Hypatia Malfoy, the one she’d argued with over a Tennyson poem until sleep called her, was bent over, straightening the folds of her painted gown with unnecessary fiddle.

Sometimes a cage is more merciful than the freedoms of the world.

That’s what Hypatia had said last night as the fire crackled, as she smashed her teacup, and as Hermione sipped her own tea in thought—very much used to Malfoy theatrics and as such, unmoved by Hypatia’s shattering porcelain. She’d have to tell Draco his portraits (the ones not silenced) were ornery little things.

Like you, he’d probably reply.

Yes, he would, wouldn’t he?

So, instead she tells Hypatia, “You’re an ornery little thing, you know.”

“Like you,” she replies with a grand sniff.

She shuffles out of the washroom, and with a flourish of wandless magic—as mum said, a little bit of magic outside of Hogwarts is harmless, and besides, if the sodding ministry wants to take it up with her then—

A flame starts bright on the ivory candle, she smooths her thumb over the brass, worn smooth with years and years of passing hands. Her thumbnail catches a bit of wax at the bottom, pooled like frozen milk, she rubs it between her fingers and sniffs—orange peel and clove.

She grabs hold of the tightly woven blanket lying at the end of the bed.

“This might be the thickest wool I’ve ever felt,” Hermione said after Draco draped the heavy material over her shivering shoulders.

“S’not wool, that would be fairy-spun, handwrought from primordial fairy material.”

“Don’t be a fathead, Draco. Primordial fairy material by any other name would still feel like wool.”

Still feels like wool, she thinks. But given that her body is slurred and warmed by sleep, and that she’s too lazy to change out of her nightdress just yet, she drapes it over herself kindly, grateful for the material’s overbearing warmth.

The flickering flame of candlelight guides her through the manor's dimly lit corridors. The place is still sleeping, portraits slumped in their frames, every torch lit, every drape drawn against predawn. Hermione has always loved existing in these in-between spaces. Existing where meaning has yet to arrive. If she is conscious, and moving through such a place where being itself feels suspended, does the self still hold? Draco might feign a snore at such a pondering. Hermione suppresses a snort at the thought that he probably is quite literally snoring at this very moment.

By the time she makes her way to the kitchen, by the time she adds a dollop of whipped cream to her cup of chocolate, she realizes while staring out the window that Draco is not sprawled on his bed in deep slumber.

No, Draco is sprawled on the snow.

Gasp thusly gasped, and blanket thusly tightened, she’s scampering her way toward him.

Chocolate sloshes over the copper of her cup. Draco, still spread like a starfish against stark-white, blinks rapidly upon seeing her, then eyes her cup.

“Chocolate? At this hour?”

“These are the words you choose for your savior?”

“Savior?!”

She chooses not to answer. Instead, a hearty sip of chocolate soothes its way down her throat, both her hands warming against her cup.

Her teeth chatter, her legs do a little back and forth jig, her socks and slippers—as charmed against the elements as they are—insufficient against such temperatures.

A toasty warming charm encompasses her, like air-spun fleece. Draco, clad in pyjamas, a thick coat, and all the cold weather trimmings—is lazily swishing his wand in her vague direction, still inelegantly laid upon the ground. Still acting as if his position is one found by choice.

“Let’s see you get up by yourself, then, Draco.”

“I’m enjoying the view.”

“Your new broom is all the way over there.”

She’s looking toward the several feet ahead of them where his broom lays.

“Oh?” He responds.

“Yes. Funny, that.”

Cricket-song.

“I think you fell.”

The scowl on him.

Her hand, away from the comfort of her warm cup and thrust into the cutting winter air, reaches for his.

The pout of it all.

“You’d think I was the one that pushed you off the broom, and not the wind itself.” She pulls as he leans upward, legs wobbling to a standing position. “Or your over-confidence.” Once he’s fully upright and at full strength, there’s a course-correction, her body falling into his, and from her lips a quiet oomph. “Or your misalignment.”

Her hands brush against his chest, a layer of (real) wool, then over his shoulders, fussing with the snow that made its home there. At the very same time, Draco conjures her blanket into a coat of her own.

As was Draco Malfoy’s general proclivity, he loudly interrupts, “Why is it every time you stay over, you’re up at the arse-crack?”

She pushes her arms through her freshly formed coat.

“I don’t know, why is it every time I’m—hold on now, you’re up too!”

“It’s brooming hours.”

“What in the world? Can’t you say flying, like a normal person?”

“Flying sounds nastily pedestrian.” He hobbles to his sad broom, tragically fallen and powdered with snow. “Flying hours are what I call archery practice, anyhow.”

“Because shooting sounds pedestrian.”

“Ah, now the spirit’s caught you.” He jauntily waggles a gloved finger at her.

His broom is shaken and assessed. Afterward, he nods and turns to her. Then she feels as if she, herself, is being shaken and assessed, soft grey roaming over her face. Without instinct on what one does during such an assessment, she sips at her chocolate, somehow still warm. Warm cashmere encompasses her hands and fingers in the next second. She sends him an appreciative smile.

“I’m awake,” Draco declares.

That he is.

“You’ve never seen the pond frozen over.”

That she has not.

With his broom slung over his shoulder and her own shoulder warmed by his other arm snaking around it, he says, “I think you’ll have plenty to say about it, which means, you’ll like it.”

She stares into her cup, smiling, then lifts it toward him. His look says, Granger you know chocolate before breakfast violates every sacred tenet I claim, and you know that looks tempting as all get out, and how dare you.

His answer to her offering comes in the hover of his broom, obediently at his side as his now-free arm reaches for the cup.

They pass it back and forth as they press their warmth into each other, chattering, wandering down the winding path that leads to the pond.

The area looks different than she remembers. As if the changing of seasons had brought a new face. During the summer it was lush, tall grass, shimmering sapphire, lapping water, soft and pliant earth, reeds swaying in lazy arcs, croaking frogs, curious bees.

And now, pewter-blue glistens underneath a dusting of frost, a reflection of the still-risen moon shines off the icy surface of the pond, glimmers of it’s light creating a soft sheen. The once green reeds are stiff, a brittle silver-brown, the grass whittled down to bare earth. Silence is thick, amassing over layers of naked boughs and frozen ground.

“It’s as if time has forgotten itself,” she says, puffs of white escaping her as she speaks. “Perfect for a day like today, at this hour. I know it’s New Years day, but really, we’re still at the threshold, between this year and that one.”

She thinks her nose and cheeks might be numb, her awareness of their existence at the front of her mind as she beams. She brings her hands to her face, pressing their warmth into it.

“Thought as much,” Draco says next to her, she knows that’s amusement in his voice.

Yes, yes, so Hermione likes her scenery.

She doesn’t know where to hold her gaze. What a perfectly frozen body of water. She thinks—

“Circe.”

“What?” she asks, only meeting Draco’s eyes for a second.

“Remember that time you fell arse-over-tit on the snow and bloodied your nose?”

A noise of offense whooshes out of her throat.

He’s side-eying her, his hair thoroughly rumpled from his earlier escapades, falling artlessly over his brow, there’s a comely shade of pink upon his nose. Adorable. She wants to touch it.

His eyes cross as they lower to the index finger she’s pressed against the tip of said nose. He blinks it away before narrowing them in her direction.

“Don’t you dare start quoting that alien film again,” he tells her. “My point was, I know how the open air stirs the devil within you.”

“The devil?!”

“Demon, perhaps.”

“Look at that ice! Don’t you want to eat it?!”

“Demon, it is,” he murmurs.

“Maybe I want to see you fall on your bum again.”

“Didn’t see it the first time.”

“Then let me see it now,” she says while lowering her chin, a devilish grin aimed his way. “Have you ever gone ice-skating, Draco?”

He wears a look that should be accompanied by a fat question mark hovering above his head.

She won't wait for his protestations. She transfigures her slippers into a pair of sturdy ice skates, then with another impish smile, aims her wand at Draco’s feet, pausing for his approval.

He barks a laugh. She scowls in return.

“You think I'll wear those? What even are they?”

Her lips purse; she sighs, tries to hold back the way her mouth beckons her to shape her next words, curt and needle-like, she fails when she says, “They’re ice skates, and you will put them on, unless you’d like to leave me on my lonesome. Maybe I’ll fall again. Maybe I’ll bloody my nose again.”

She keeps her last maybe in her pocket, a guaranteed win: Maybe if I do end up bloodying my nose, your mother will ask why you didn’t accompany me. You might as well have socked Hermione in the face yourself, Narcissa will say.

Thankfully, she doesn’t need such a maybe.

“Demon,” he replies, “go ahead then.” Then, he digs through his coat and pulls out a handkerchief, holding it toward her, sneering, “For when you need it.”

Draco, clad in his freshly spelled ice skates, gracelessly plods over the snow, snarling and wailing.

When they stand at the edge of the pond, Hermione says, “wait here.”

She doesn’t want to be bogged down by Draco the whole time. And maybe she knows the grace he holds is more natural and easily won than her own, he’ll conquer the ice within the hour, she's sure. So she takes a moment for herself.

She slides onto the surface, cutting across the pond like weaving thread, her skates singing a dulcet tune beneath her.

A hat of yarn is conjured atop her head, snug against her curls, framing her face and dipping low over her ears, with strings that tie into a small bow at her chin…. a knit bonnet. She bites back a smile and glances at Draco—chin, mouth, and nose tucked into his scarf, eyes on her like cut-glass, his wand at his side.

Hermione—small against the sweep of frozen water, yet feeling curiously whole and self-contained—llifts her arms for balance as she glides, letting the weightlessness of such a maneuver carry her. She’s smiling as she inches closer to where Draco stands, metal scraping against ice as she comes to a stop in front of him.

Her hands are outstretched as she breathes, “come.”

There’s a grumble reaching toward her from beneath his yarn.

“What?” she asks him.

His mouth lifts from beneath his scarf, “show-off.”

With a roll of her eyes, she tugs him forward gently after his hands catch hers. His legs waver like a freshly-born fawn. Hermione tilts down with a slant as Draco teeters, nearly losing his balance. They remain like that for a few seconds, hands clasped and bodies canted at an awkward angle.

It’s up to her, so she straightens them.

Her lip catches between her teeth to kill the grin creeping on, and she looks him square in the eye as she drifts backward. Adrift—that is how he’ll leave her should he let go, his grip tightens as if knowing this too, then she’s guiding them in a swirl, a giggle breaking loose in breathless hysterics.

“What?” he asks.

It’s just the way that he’s holding onto her so vice-like. Their synchronicity feels accidental when they should be clumsy, only owed to the fact that his body has softened into their connection, their joining of hands; and his head is bowed, eyes on his feet, flitting to her feet then back again.

“We shared a dance like this yesterday,” her amusement comes out unbridled, blithe and bountiful. What is it about the outdoors that makes her want to howl and bite things? Maybe Draco is right, maybe the devil really is stirring. “Except you were leading, and I was lost.”

“Course I can’t lead. Fop territory, that’s what this is.”

“What?” Hermione asks as a rebellious curl flaps into her mouth.

“Recreational activity meant for a proper nose-in-the-air twat.”

Unkempt laughter peels out as her head falls back.

Below the whisper of her blades, there’s a noise. Hermione thinks she’s mistaken—is sure she’s hearing nothing at all.

But then she thinks she hears it again: a brittle snap, followed by a shuddering undercurrent.

Draco is staring pinch-browed at something behind her.

“Mother?”

It’s the last thing she hears before the ice gives way, spider-veined fractures, hairline splintering to something wide and severe. And before she can be told to stay still, to not panic—she’s falling, hands still tightly interlaced with Draco’s as the world is split, breaking open and swallowing them whole.

To be washed as a babe, Hermione thinks, is a most precious thing; bright pink chub and faint-soap scent, thick suds and the wringing of cloth, the tremor of tender hands both nervous and sure. Provenance for starting anew, a rehearsal for every moment henceforth when life casts the body into mud and calls it back to water. And even in death, we are returned to ritual; washed again, buried in flesh made clean once more, a final gentling into the deepest of sleeps.

So, as the pond opens its dark mouth below, she feels she recognizes the gesture. And while her plunge into these waters first comes with a fit of shock, while the water is cold and merciless, it is strangely tender.

There is soft muted light, and a polite pressure, then Hermione and Draco are no longer underwater… per se. They are gently placed on stone. It is glasslike, celadon striae running through, smooth beneath her feet. Above them is a sky that seems to have an end, like a sheet of ice, a layer of frost threads like filament, spectral light gleaming through.

Around them are clusters of rock, coated with something shiny, like quartz, with winking opaline facets. The area resembles a cavern, where it deepens she can see stalactites bristling from the ceiling, like frozen spears or sharpened teeth.

‘“Hinterlands,” she whispers. Her breath, still puffy white, plumes into fronds and florals.

Draco, as hazed-out as she’s ever seen him, lifts a quivering finger and touches one of those vapor florals, it breaks apart, dissipating. His hair clings to him, soaked through, his coat looks heavy, dripping wet. When the back of her hand reaches up, touching the skin of his cheek, it is warm there. He’s not shivering, and neither is she. She’s comfortably pleasant, temperature wise. Neither warm, nor cold.

A rush of wind swirls around them, drying their clothes, bodies, and hair and sending it aflutter. Hermione pulls her wand out from where it’s tucked into her socks, then transfigures their ice skates back into their original footwear.

Next comes a woman-like creature, or a creature-like woman. She’s lithesome and delicate looking, but with a face set in stone, stern, very cross, she seems. Her eyes are like wet metal, dripping round pools of dark silver. Her skin is as striated as the stone they’re standing on—milky white and nearly translucent, with soft-blue veins marking their path along every surface of flesh.

As other-wordly as she seems, her stance is one of familiarity, hands on hips, foot tapping impatiently.

The woman does not speak by way of vocal chords, instead, the meaning of her words arrive as a soft compression in the transfer of thought.

Humans, again, small echoes that you are. Oh—ah—yes.

Draco, for once in his life, is silent.

“Hi,” is all Hermione can manage, breath fogging in a weak little plume.

You and you. And he and he.

“Er… it seems we’ve fallen.”

A ripple.

Currents brushing.

Here and there.

Here.

You are a spilling, here you gather.

We live in the spillings, in the brushings.

Draco had told her only last summer—

“Water fairies? Naiads?” Hermione asks.

Water fairies.

Naiads.

“Oh! Wonderful.”

“Wonderful?!” he has a voice afterall.

“Draco, I’m sure you don’t want this lovely being to become cross with you,” she grits. “Your home is just lovely. Are we– are we allowed to look around?”

“Around?!”

Presumptuous girl. As now, as ever.

Though bright. Alight. As now, as ever.

“Hermione. Shouldn’t you be catastrophizing right about now?”

“I don’t know. I feel…”

She feels oddly tranquil, suspiciously so—hushed.

The woman raises a brow, tilts her head just a bit, such human-like gestures, she has.

“These feelings aren't natural,” Draco mumbles. “It wants us to be good little pets. Don’t you?” As if remembering himself, his eyes widen, he takes a step back and clears his throat, “but erm, a well-behaved child, is a safe child, is a happy child. That’s what mother says. You know, the pond is truly exemplary, freshest body of water I’ve ever swam in. Permit me to extend, on behalf of the Malfoys, our sincerest gratitude.”

There’s minute tension in Draco’s jaw, a twitch of his upper lip where she knows it has an instinct to curl. Woe is Draco, condemned to a polite exchange with someone he’s quite sure is orchestrating his ruin.

The fairy’s hands run along the arm of Hermione’s coat as she examines it.

A gift, transformed. What magic. For her.

A home of mine can be a home of yours.

“For how long?” Draco nearly barks before averting his eyes.

The way out is the way in.

Draco inhales deeply, biting his bottom lip until it turns a pale pink. He’s holding it in. Yes, he really, really is.

But Hermione finds she likes the way this naiad speaks, almost aqueous in nature—as if she arranges ideas the way water arranges light, refracting it, softening it, turning it inward before offering it up again. It reminds her of devouring books when she was much younger, when meaning felt like something she waded into, rather than solved.

When the first—

The fairy extends her hands in a gesture toward them: the first.

—finds the second—not in body, but in knowing—the current aligns.

“The current as in, the current of the pond? That shouldn’t be too hard, a pond's current is gentle, yes?”

Your current is gentle, yes.

Compared to others, gentle, yes.

“Others?”

You and you and you and you and you and you.

You and you, she says…

Hermione has had the concept of time on her brain, wriggling and seeping and making itself home, a peculiar and kitschy little abode it formed for itself—ever since Flitwick escorted her to Dumbledore’s office only some months ago.

She can parrot time theory of course—follow its rules, recite the time turner model with its fixed loops and harmless certainties. She can do that because it keeps away the pressing curiosities from others aware of the necklace she carries.

Closed-loop determinism: It is tidy. Humans require such tidiness. But she refuses to believe time itself is so well-behaved. The time turner works as it does, not because time is tidy, but because the human brain cannot perceive the infinite wobble beneath the surface.

Otherworldly beings on the other hand.

“There are other Hers and other Hims? Is that what you mean?” Hermione asks.

A thread frays. Always.

Hermione nearly gasps, “have you been visited by other versions of us?”

No, no. Same. Same her, same him.

“Same?” Draco asks, curiosity evidently piqued.

Echo.

The fairy steps forward, holds a hand out horizontally, as if measuring height, it is placed more than a foot above Draco’s head and less so over Hermione’s, when she says:

You are here, and you are here.

“We’re taller?!” Hermione turns to Draco, clutching his forearm, “Older versions of ourselves, Draco!”

Draco is understandably bothered, glancing between the woman and Hermione when he says, “We… traveled back in time? Our older selves?”

The woman smiles indulgently.

Not back, no. Echo. Brushing.

Hermione’s mouth opens to speak but then Draco says, “currents brushing. You don’t process time like we do, do you?”

We do not process. We are.

The woman runs her fingers over the rock next to them.

You move. We do not.

What you call time, for you is stride—stride—stride.

Paths, we do not follow.

Presence.

You have touched our presence.

We are witness.

“Listen, I swim in this pond all the time. This has never happened to me before.”

Two touches. Too close. The water kept both.

“Too close how, if not close in time?”

Hermione hadn’t even noticed they were walking. But they were following the woman like little ducklings, springing questions her way and she was answering them like this was a regular occurrence.

Transitions. Like a tongue.

When your world—the in-between world of the boy and girl—opens its mouth, you may step upon its tongue.

When it closes… you swallow yourselves again.

Hermione looks at Draco, Draco looks at Hermione.

“Erm, is there somewhere we can sit and talk? Just… take a moment for ourselves,” Draco asks.

As soon as the words leave his mouth, the floor tilts lightly beneath them, and they drift—yes, drift—into a small alcove tucked into the cave wall, carpeted in cloudlike, luminescent moss. The woman leaves them with a nod and a:

Nutrition, at once. Will return, yes.

They sit cross-legged in front of each other, knees nearly touching, talking as if plucking notions from the air the same way they gather parchment and ink in draughty Hogwarts nooks. Methodical, a little frantic. Each exchanged thought is treated like a note in the margin here, a citation offered there.

Hermione has that deranged gleam about her eyes, the same sort she wore when she asked him for the charm to tie one’s shoelaces together. Padma’s to be exact, the very same weekend after Padma pilfered the last copy of The Grand Compenium of Ancient Runes.

“When she says currents brushing—” Hermione says.

“Us and us. Our older selves, maybe here at the same time, but they entered the pond in their own spot on the timeline?”

“Right. Transition is the tongue. We’re in a transition phase, and our older selves too. And… it just so happens that when we’re older, we somehow find our way into the water again during this transition, perhaps a leisurely swim?”

“Elemental magic is more prickly than that. She said ‘echo’ more than once. I think echo is very much on the nose. We must have fallen in again. I wouldn’t be surprised if we fell in while the pond was frozen, maybe even on the same day, different year?”

“How in the world would we find ourselves falling in again?!”

Draco scowls, looks at her as if she should know.

“You’re not blaming me?!”

“Naturally.”

She inhales deeply, the sort that precipitates a rant but he’s not in the mood for it.

“Merlin,” he grinds out. “A fairy realm.” His hand clenches the roots of his hair. “Water fairies! They’ll keep us. Or— or by the time we make it out one hundred years will have passed. We’ll be ancient. My mad cousin will never get out of that forest. Mother will be distraught and end up just as mad as he is. She’ll never recover. Theo will try and help her but he’ll have his own grief to deal with. Losing me and you. And at such a young age. The poor boy. Oh, Circe.” His fingers cup and press against his eyes. “He’ll never recover. He’ll let his stink of an uncle marry him off to the fairest pureblood and crank out a few heirs, he’ll be miserable but he’ll always be an oddball. A recluse. Stuck in his dungeons fiddling with time magic. Trying to find a way to bring us back. It’ll consume him, you understand?”

“Draco! Good god! It’ll be fine.”

He leans forward, eyes on fire. Draco has been told time and time again that his eyes are fetching but can be cutting, intense—all by people who had no right to be looking. Well, not only is it Hermione’s right to look but it should be her divine decree—as this Tasmanian devil of a girl that she is, spinning circles, carving holes into ice, she could use a dose of whatever the bloody hell his eyes are doing to her right now.

Not one to cower, as forward-marching as ever, she huffs, crosses her arms and raises her chin.

“Draco, do you not trust me? Trust yourself? Put that ego to use, why don’t you. Now, the fairy said when the first—that’s us—finds the second—older us—the current aligns. And— and I guess that means we get out of here. What do you think?”

“We have to find ourselves? Like a quest? Granger,” her name comes out in an unabashed whine, one that she might consider most exaggerated. It is not exaggerated! Who has time for a bloody quest? He’s only just started shaving the substantial, if he may say so, hairs that make up his moustache, he’s barely started on this blubbering bullshit quest called life and now he’s expected to prance about fairylands on a quest?! Indecent. Cosmic mismanagement.

“Draco you’re looking awfully peaky. Listen to me, orient yourself. Can I rely on you or not? What in the world is wrong with you? You act like you’ve not been born and raised on magical land with bloody fairy-laden ponds on your own family estate!”

What an accusation. Reliable? Reliable. She needed to rely on him?

“You very well know you can rely on me,” he hisses.

Her lips curve upward, eyes crinkling, his stupid lips always follow the same pattern, a mirror. And then the erumpent in his chest settles. She tucks a curl behind her ear, her hair’s all wild and alive from the chaos they’ve endured. He reaches forward, smooths his fingers over the tip of the strands she just touched, tugs at it for good measure as if to say — yes yes, you can rely on me, you terror, delusional demon, you. Her smile widens at the gesture, soft and sleepy, lashes blinking lazily.

She yawns, squeaky and barely covered by her hand. His mouth starts doing that funny smacking thing it sometimes does right before sleep takes him. They sink into the plush moss, coaxed by its cushiony give, and his body is humming with the knowledge that he must rest. They’d woken much too early, and fell asleep far too late for the new year. They’d traversed through realms and the seams of time itself and their bodies refuse—simply refuse—to entertain a moment more of consciousness.

Hermione is already breathing slow and steady out of her softly parted lips. She lies on her back, torso twisted toward him; he turns on his side, facing her, curls his arm around hers, holds it against his chest like a teddy. He lets his face rest against the pillow of her hair, tendrils of violet-cream scent lulling him into the gentle ebb of sleep.

What must be hours later, they wake to a glow of bioluminescent blue, seeping from beneath their mossbed.

The weird little fairy returns with a tray of food and Hermione is delighted, yapping on about generosity and conveying her thanks.

“Birdie, don’t love her so much. She could very well be fattening you up for dinner,” he warns as he reaches a hand toward a chocolate-covered fig, uncaring whether that’s the case or not, food has to be had. His hand is immediately stung by Hermione’s prissy little slap.

“You’re not supposed to eat fairy food! Isn’t that a thing?”

“You were just thanking her!”

”Because that’s what polite people do!”

Fairy food is not for Keeping. Only Returning.

You are returning. Returning here.

Eat, you must.

This confirms to both Draco and Hermione that they are only here because two older, and very much idiotic, versions of themselves are also here. Draco knows old magic, elemental magic. It can be churlish and chaotic but it is not duplicitous. It is reliable, a promise it makes is a promise it keeps. If it says returning, then returning they shall be. He almost wants to ask when. As if the odd fairy will give them a clear answer anyhow. It’s no use.

Draco can piece together how time works here: it doesn’t. The realm only processes the brushings—the fleeting contact points when humans and their timelines collide with its currents. He wonders how much time has passed back home. A minute? An hour? A night?

He worries for mother the most. She’s already lost someone: a cousin, more like a brother, if one wants to be succinct—to the whims and unpredictability of water. What must she have thought, watching him plunge into such cold, dark depths? He shudders.

Hermione is nibbling a chocolate when he says quietly, “Mother saw us fall.”

She inhales sharply, stricken, empathy making a home across her features, “she did, didn’t she? You called out to her.”

“She apparated to the pond right before we fell. Her face—she must be worried sick. She might have awakened your parents by now.” He grimaces.

“My parents will take it in stride.” Hermione assures him.

“They’ll think you’ve drowned.”

“They’ll assume it’s magic. They understand magic is fickle. They drew a parallel, actually— said the idea of your animagus felon-of-a-cousin reminded them of magic itself. Dark and mysterious creature that he is, but… but it has heart, purpose. They believe in that. In its purpose.”’

He– well, he believes her. All that bright hope she carries in her pocket, it has to have been acquired from somewhere, hasn’t it? He knows the Grangers and their mad dash for meaning and purpose. He’d only recently awkwardly accepted a dog-eared and heavily annotated copy of some work by a philosopher named Epictetus from her father — We all must start somewhere or somewhen — One brief skim of the thing and he’d seen her there; Hermione in the margins. Hermione as the Grangers formed her, stitched from the exuberant underlines, her father’s neat, exacting notes. She was sewn into every page.

“You know, Draco. I don’t think there’s a quest to be had, or a mystery to be solved. Being here, I feel like I’m floating, just… here. And I’ll be here until I’m not meant to be. Let’s just explore, imagine going back to Ravenclaw and flaunting in Anthony’s face—how you fell into and escaped a fairyland.” She’s leaning into him, feeding some part of him that’s eager, hungry. Her voice lilts in this knowledge, “he’ll be seething, Draco.”

“So… we just have a lark and in that…”

“I’m sure that delights you.” She rolls her eyes. It was true, he was never one who did well with being handed tasks. Barf. But a lark? “We’ll find whatever we need, find our other selves. Not in body, but in knowing, as the fairy said. It’ll come together on its own, I just know it.”

So, Hermione and Draco have a lark:

They trot through the fairy cavern until it opens to a great tangle of woven roots, fat and resplendent, forming a natural bridge. On the other side of that bridge is a wide hollow littered with bobbing paper lanterns, ground covered with more lush moss. The sky is the same as it was in the cave, a glistening shield, winking notes of lights refracted from ice.

A lantern floats down, bopping Hermione lightly on the head, static catching some of her strands as they cling to the paper material. It repeats the motion and while Draco considers grabbing hold of it and stomping it with his boots, Hermione suggests they follow it.

Follow, they do. The moss beneath them is spongy and jumpy. Hermione springs up and down, higher and higher, beckoning Draco to join her.

“So we can fall through and into some lantern-land? How many layers of hell will you drag me through, Birdie?”

He relishes the way the nickname curls around his tongue. Lately, he’s not used it often enough, almost leaving it behind as a childhood folly. Folly, she is not. He decides at that very moment that it is still his, will always be his.

And now they are roaming. Draco did not sign up for roaming. He’s just about to voice such a complaint when they encounter a big Black Dog.

“My cousin.”

—At the same time Hermione says—

“Your cousin.”

The dog is messing about with a hoard of mice, nose burrowed among them, sniffing around like he’s looking for something and finding none of it satisfactory.

“Sirius Black!” Draco calls. “Cousin!”

The beast turns, tilts his head in that dotty canine way.

And then, to Draco's utter shock, the dog speaks, “Cousin? You’ve found yourself in the fabric of dreameries, I believe.”

“No such thing. This is naiad land.”

“Is it?”

“Yeah. Hey! Why the bleeding hell didn't you come with us after we called on you? What are you up to at Hogwarts?” He’s stalking toward Sirius like a dog might, slow and deliberate, one foot in front of the other. “Stop pretending like you're an adult, I beg. Adults keep secrets. You are not an adult. No secrets for you. You’re Peter Pan. Like your brother, right?”

His cousin cowers, whimpering.

“Draco! You hurt his feelings. What an awful thing to say!”

He turns to Hermione, the call of her scolding never easy to ignore. By the time he glances back toward Sirius, he’s running off.

Draco supposes his words really weren’t kind at all. But the sight of Sirius only sharpens something that has lived in him for some time. Something akin to a knife lodged in his gut.

That was no dog, no beast. A man, it was. And like many men, a disappointment.

A man with his hand wrapped tight around that knife.

A wound inherited. Never his own, no. But it hurt—how mother hurt. A hurt woman hurts others, he knows.

He imagines that snarling, whimpering beast might be impaled with the same blade, and his mother’s hand not so innocent. But… but he is his mother’s son.

His mother’s son.

“Birdie, do you think it’s possible to love someone, and hate them just as equally?” he asks, visions of a Black Dog nipping at his mother’s heels, his mother feeding it scraps.

“I think love breeds resentment. And the ones you love, can wound you most.”

She twines her arm into the crook of his own and pulls him forward.

They reach a section of the moss that laps like water because, well, they’ve reached a body of water.

A boat fit for two bobs near them and then Hermione is dragging him over wooden planks and he thinks about that time he’d hurled pickle guts all over uncle Thoros’ squeaky clean loafers as they rocked over the Mediterranean. He eyes Hermione’s slippers, no doubt his mother’s doing; velveteen satin by the looks of it, embroidered hellebore, a lining of wyrmfleece. Over her feet and tucked within the slippers are thick wool socks, scrunching up to midcalf; a pert little counterpart, all Hermione. There’s no way he would cover her warm and comfortable attire with his sticky sick. Vowing not to look at the water, he makes sure to keep his chin lifted and gaze settled on the sky as they drift.

Spires leaning at crooked angles catch his eye, and through the mist appears a castle connected. All-white and covered by frozen ivy climbing up and curling inward like haggard fingers. It is not set on land, surrounded by lake water instead. There is a gate in front and slowly it lifts, chains groaning, ice cracking.

Out rows a slight young woman in a small boat, pale blonde hair, gingham shirt tucked into wool trousers, her hand placed above her eyes as if searching. When she catches sight of them she’s all teeth, upward-curved mouth, waving like a loon.

“Visitors!” Her voice is bright and soft, sparkling as if fueled by pepper-up. The gasp she releases once they’re close enough to get a clear view is wildly overwrought, but as soon as he hears it, he understands why. He recognizes her.

“That’s Hypatia Malfoy,” Hermione says.

His Great-aunt Hypatia, close to the age of the portrait that hangs in the manor, is bouncing in her craft as she claps her hands, mouth threatening to burst with elation. She’s wobbling over the water, sending a wave skittering toward them.

“Whatever you do,” Hermione nudges, “don’t mention Alfred Tennyson.”

He could have told her that. Hypatia, or her portrait, was not one to recite poetry but to argue with it, instead. Just give her a reason.

“And Malfoys! What a moment this is!”

He’s about to correct her that only one of them is a Malfoy when she grabs hold of their boat with surprising strength for someone so willowy, and forcefully pulls it toward her and her boat.

“Over here, there’s a jetty, you see? Come on, up, up.”

She clambers out of her own boat, heels clipping hurriedly on a stone path toward the castle, not even glancing back to see if they’re following. And all the way she’s muttering, her hands unable to hold still, “a spilling. A fine one too. Oh, Tennyson would have bungled this metaphor so terribly—thank Merlin he’s dead.”

The entrance is almost deathly narrow, but it stretches wide and wider like a slow yawn as they approach and walk through. Juniper scent wafts around them. Everything is gleaming, the marble white floors, the mirror-lined walls, the crystal chandelier, windows so wide and clear he isn’t sure if they’re windows at all.

Hypatia serves them a hot blend of something tasting of mallow root and toasted vanilla. She sits with her own drink, leaning back on a chair, spread out and relaxed, almost like a man—a dandy, but a man, nonetheless—might be expected to sit, not a woman of her station.

“How deliciously improbable you both are, appearing to me as I am now,” she says, nearly vibrating. “Fallen straight through the surface, yes? Caught yourselves in the current? Oh, how ripping!”

“And why are you here?” Hermione asks curiously.

“Oh,” she responds lightly, “no reason. Does one need a reason? This is my second visit. Probably my last.”

“So you’ve come by way of echo too?” Hermione scoots forward in her seat, jittery with her intrigue.

“Yes, but like I said, I’m the second, you see.”

“So you might have an idea of how to define what an echo is since you’ve done this before. Are our other selves in the realm right now? Is your other self here?”

Hypatia’s lips pucker as she hums from her throat, looking around as if disinterested.

“Well?”

“Yes, I believe my other self is dawdling about in the field of paper lanterns right about now.” She lifts her teacup and right before taking a sip mutters, “About to attend a wedding...” She clears her throat, "Unfortunately for poor old me, I have to go home eventually, and when I arrive back on the other side, it’ll be only some seconds after I dove into the water in a panic.”

“Why panic?” Hermione asks.

“I’ve successfully skirted my second engagement. Sure to be my last. The first time I landed here was when I avoided my first—by pretending I was mad, going starkers and jumping into the pond. So now I get to bop around Europe, living off my inheritance.”

“Oh… okay. Is that bad?”

“I can’t come back.”

“They won’t have you?”

Draco is silent through this exchange, knowing what becomes of aunt Hypatia.

“I won't have them.” She sniffs. “I know once I leave I can’t come back to them, even if they’d have me. They spew convictions that make my blood curdle. And it’s only getting worse and worse. And somehow, I’ve been allowed to keep my name, keep my money, my freedom. But I can’t have them. They want all or nothing. Either I’m waving my white flag, proselytizing about magical superiority or they want nothing at all. At least they grant me the mercy of status,” she spits.

She appears tragically disgusted but also, so very tired.

“The back and forth is exhausting. So I can leave, they say. And I will.” She nods, sharp and true.

“Forgive me for prying,” Hermione interjects, “but it seems you might have been here in this realm for a while yet.”

Hypatia blinks, “What’s a while? So I’m indulging—who wouldn’t? I’ll never get to see this place again. Not once I leave. And not just this realm, but this pond.” She turns to stare wistfully out the windows, gaze drifting outward as a large, furry, winged creature beats past on slow strokes. “I was dipped in this pond water as a baby, you know. Its properties are infused into my hair.” She runs her fingers through her locks with a theatrical smile. Her expression shifts again, she has a face that never quite settles. A moment of softness pulls her mouth downward; she studies her hands, something like sorrow now marring her, but she inhales as if gathering herself, then says, “You can have a few strands if you like. I use them in all kinds of potions.” She sends them a smile. “You know, I love my parents. And I’ve read hundreds of books and I know there is life beyond them, beyond the life I’ve known. But it’s always been narrow for me. Knowing something exists isn’t the same as believing. What will I do when I’m sat at a table set for one?” Her lips wobble. He thinks he ought to remind her that she’s alone now anyhow, but he can understand it’s not the same.

“Hypatia,” Hermione starts cautiously, “your portrait mentioned something about a cage being more merciful than the freedoms of the world. I know you resent Tennyson for Lady of Shalott. I suppose reading it must be like having a mirror held in front of you. But you’re more than some pretty corpse. You’ll never be that if you leave. I just know it.”

“I am doomed no matter what I do. With what little options I have.” Hypatia rises from her seat, quietly pacing back and forth. “A curse is on her. Oh, how I loathe that line. Each time I was presented with a shining stone set upon a fetching little band—I heard it whispered every night against my pillows. And each time I slithered my way out of such arrangements—the curse wouldn’t leave! I am still cursed! I’ve earned my freedom but what freedom is that? My family would send me out into the cruel world, and order me against setting foot on Malfoy earth again. To stave off a sliver of their own humiliation. But what of me?!”

“I’m sorry, Hypatia. I didn’t know as much when I spoke with your portrait.”

“Oh?”

“You may have attempted to throw a teacup at my head.”

A cackle of giggles escapes Hypatia as she dramatically bows over in her amusement.

“Oh my, but my portrait must have been wildly entertained. That was painted right after my first visit— wait, my portrait?” She scrambles toward Hermione, reaching her delicate fingers toward her arms. “How did you— but my portrait—”

“Your portrait is hanging in your old room. Father placed it there some years ago.”

She looks at him as if finally remembering he’s ever been there at all. A hand hovers above her mouth, something akin to a whimper rising from her throat.

“Who is your father?”

“Lucius Abraxas Malfoy. Your nephew.”

“Oh!” she cries out, as if moved, and by his father, who’d have imagined. Then she goes quiet, in that very still way people go when they’re trying to clamp down the overflowing well. “I– I just— so soon? I didn’t think I’d ever be welcome back into the fold, let alone within the same century. But to hang my portrait…”

Hypatia Malfoy lived a very long and sun-washed life at the mouth of a river in Lisbon. She never married, was known for her extravagance, her wild parties, and rousing support for any and every cause that stood in direct defiance of typical Malfoy ideals. She was an eccentric, a pariah. Banished from the estate before she was grown and never welcomed back, not even in death—and in parallel, her portrait banished to the dungeons.

When news came of his forgotten and exiled aunt’s death, father extracted the painting, accumulated with dust and cobwebs, then commissioned her biography—cradle to grave—to be compiled and written. It sits in the Malfoy library, right next to her blood purist brother’s, his particular volume inscribed:

     Purged of its rhetoric.

     Preserved not for honour,

     but for remembrance.

It was strange, knowing that this very woman sitting before him had yet to experience that life, was still cowering in the confines of her childhood pond—their childhood pond. He couldn’t tell her about the life waiting for her beyond the waters edge. He didn’t know much about time law, but he knew enough to know its best not to putter around with it by blabbing about a person’s future in front of them.

“Hah. Looks like we’re coming up, us Malfoys.” Hypatia is looking at them both when she says it, coming to sit back down in front of them.

Draco tells her, “Can’t you see her hair is not—”

“I’m Hermione Granger. Muggleborn, not Malfoy.”

Hypatia raises her brow, then drily replies, “right. Not Malfoy.” Her smile is placating, then she shakes her head while taking a long sip of her drink, only to sputter it out all over her lap. Coughing, she rasps while wiping her mouth and looking at the mess, “Bollocks– but wait, Muggleborn, you say?”

When Hermione nods, Hypatia keels over, frenetic laughter spilling out as she clutches the arm of her chair.

“I didn’t know before!” Her arms lift above her, liquid splattering on the floor as she says, “things really are coming up Malfoy, aren't they?!” Her drink is chucked into the fireplace, the flames bursting out in protest as glass smashes. “This is cause for celebration!” She summons a bottle of champagne.

“We can’t have that,” Hermione insists.

“Mother lets me,” Draco replies.

“Your mother is not here.”

He clamps his mouth shut, though rolls his eyes while doing so.

“Oh, must you be noodles? Fine. Champagne another time, yes?” she winks conspiratorally. Another bottle is accioed. “Apple fizz!”

From a gramophone a muggle tune starts playing, Hypatia sways as she pours their drinks and twirls their way, flutes in outstretched hands.

“Let’s face the music and dance,” Hypatia sings along with the softly crooning vocalist. Draco looks at Hermione, shrugging. She grins, equally baffled but giddy, swaying in time with Hypatia. When his aunt’s eyes open, she catches sight of Hermione, brightening even more than he knew possible. “Oh, dance for me! Both of you, together. Malfoys.” Her eyes volley wistfully between them. “A muggleborn.” When they don’t move, she continues, “Please. If you do this for me, hah, I’ll have just enough wind in my sails to go back home and– and finally leave it.” Her swallow seems aching, her flute of champagne curled in both hands and clutched to her chest. “Please?”

Draco huffs and chugs his drink, fizzy tartness prickling down his throat. He stands, mouth puckering as he chucks his empty glass to the floor with the same gusto Hypatia had thrown her own drink. When crystal shatters, he holds his hand out toward a gaping Hermione, “do try not to bruise my toes this time.”

She sticks her tongue at him as she rises, hands joining his, he sticks his right back.

Hypatia squeals, clapping then twirling her hand, shouting, “from the top!”

The song starts again, he maintains the same positioning they held when they danced only a night ago. Left hand slipping under her coat to wind around her waist, right hand joining hers mid air. The music is mellow enough to sway along with, but it’s looser than the classical training he’s endured, a little more reckless. Very Hypatia, he thinks.

Hermione is warm and pliant against him, lighter in spirit than she was when he’d led her around the floor before.

“I wasn’t kidding about my toes, Birdie. They’re still sore.”

Her huff tickles his collar.

“Hush.” She’s biting her cheek, holding back a smile. “This is much easier to move to anyway.”

His fingers curl into the whisper of fabric that makes up her nightgown, his limbs are weightless, and his lips are relaxing into something syrupy. They lock eyes, and then he’s tittering, then so is she.

He glances at Hypatia, she’s practically dancing with herself, mouthing the tune.

“I thought only Blacks suffered madness.”

“She’s not mad.” Hermione’s smile widens as it goes soft. “She’s lovely.”

“Still funny in the head.”

Hermione looks at him pointedly, brows raised and eyes roving up and down his person, then back to his face, still pointed.

“Oh, you hush now,” he chides, then twirls them just a tad too fast in the name of reprimand, Hermione laughing as the room blurs.

By the time he steadies them again, she’s breathless, laughter petering out, blinking and probably just as dizzy as he is—Hypatia is nowhere in sight.

Once they conclude that Hypatia has finally gone home, they row in the direction of a forest, Hermione claiming she’s in the mood for a meander.

As they walk, they pass glowing mushrooms, resembling the very same mushrooms Luna’s father likes to converse with. Except these mushrooms actually talk back, moving mouths and all:

“You’ve tumbled through the grass and found us, little brats. Don’t you dare climb the trees from whose roots we thrive. Don't you dare.”

What stupid peculiar mushrooms. Their unenthusiastic, flat voices give them away, they obviously mean the opposite. They absolutely want Hermione and Draco to climb those trees. The land here is so… accommodating. Kind, even. Insists on facilitating whatever mad direction one leans toward.

“Draco, we must.”

She doesn’t even allow him a moment to object—it’s unsporting, honestly—before she’s hitching her feet upon bark, grasping branches, hauling herself upward.

“Birdie. Hermione,” he tries, but she’s ascending like a girl possessed by the very laws of this place.

He sighs, following. The branches shift obligingly beneath his hands, stopping and offering themselves like polite doormen. One even straightens into a step, practically ushering him up.

They settle on a thick branch, fit just for two, its bark curving up at the edges like a woodland loveseat.

Overhead they can see a sweep of greenery. Branches that gather in great arching canopies, silken leaves that shimmer as though brushed with dew or moonlight or both. Beyond the gathering of trees are winding paths of water, most likely frozen—pale blue veins threading through dark earth. Soft mist drifts in a large expanse, gathering in pockets like clouds, spots of sparkling light where the paper lanterns converge.

“What do you suppose our other selves are doing right about now?” Hermione asks.

Draco doesn’t think he wants to know. What if they’re monstrously different? Who they are to each other now, transformed to something… unchartable. It’s unfathomable. Transitions, that’s what the fairy said. What transition could they possibly be enduring in the future? What transition were they even encountering right now? Nothing has changed between them.

“I don’t know.” He shrugs. “Verbally assaulting my cousin, too—maybe?”

Hermione snorts, “You know… if I were here with Theo, we’d be mapping the place out, I bet. Logging every bit of vegetation, flora and fauna. Looking for any and every creature around, observing them, asking them questions if they’re able to speak.”

“Right.” Draco replies drily. “As one does.”

“And if I were here with Luna, well, I’d probably not be here with Luna. She would have wandered off by now.”

“Well, those mushrooms can’t interview themselves, now can they?”

“No, they can’t,” she snickers."Honestly, she’d probably have had us out of here by now.”

She sighs, her head mellowing onto his shoulder, fingers seeking out his. Always eager for touch, Hermione. Her affection: like a tide her mortal frame could scarcely ever contain. And it pleases him like something wretched, that despite how it overflows, she only offers it, finds comfort in it, with so very few.

A quiet drapes over them, though he knows it’s a quiet filled with her still-forming thoughts, can feel it in the way she presses into him, a static of energy borne from the ceaseless churn.

Finally, she says, “I think you’re the best to be here with. I hope that never changes, and the quests that aren’t quests. I’m honestly scared—not of this but well, I’ve been so twitchy—”

“You? Twitchy?”

She pokes his ribs. Such tiny things shouldn’t wound so thoroughly, he thinks, as he rubs that very same spot.

“Twitchy about the whole Buckbeak thing, and your cousin, and Professor Lupin, and… don’t you feel like things are changing? Like you’re changing—inside?”

He opens his mouth to tell her that, yes, he does feel it. What he won’t tell her, is mother is turning to divination more often than not and that gnaws at him; that he doesn’t know how to talk to his own father anymore; that girls batting their lashes at him used to annoy him but now it makes his lips twitch and the funniest words come out of his mouth; that boys like Potter making Hermione laugh or Anthony touching Hermione’s hair also makes the funniest things come out of his mouth.

But before he can utter a word she mutters, “must be hormones or something. But anyway, I really am glad that if I had to fall into a frozen pond and thus into a fairy realm—well, I’m glad it was with you of all people. And even though things are scary, you’re like… someone who… makes it less so…”

Her face is rubbing into his shoulder, like she’s scenting him or something, what the bloody hell is wrong with her? Oh, her face is flushed, nearly ruddy pink, her eyes downcast. He looks away.

Her earnestness has always concerned him. The way she so easily cracks herself open, showing those soft and gooey parts. And what would he do if she ever took that away from him? He might… he might not be okay… not at all. But see, he’d never tell her that. Better for him that she’s so generous, and he, as always, selfish.

“That won’t change,” he offers. “Clearly…” he wonders at what the hell he’s saying and why the hell he’s saying it. But then he thinks about his great-aunt and all the feelings she vomited with feral abandon, without rumination over disgust or fear or bashfullness. “Well, clearly I’d follow you to the nine layers of hell and back, wouldn’t I? Even the extra layers you’d probably insist on forging yourself.”

“Demon,” she whispers absentmindedly.

“Though, I suppose, technically, you’d drag me to hell. Seeing as you dragged me here.”

“Dragged?!” Her head finally lifts from where it rests against him and he resents the loss of warmth.

“She came, she saw, she made it my infernal cross to bear.”

“Cross?! To bear?!”

Wandlessly, she sends a hoard of twittering, bluebell-coloured birds that burst over his head like confetti in flurry, pecking at his hair, tugging at errant strands, chiming out their chirrups. He yelps, batting at them uselessly.

And then the birds calm. They settle on his shoulders and on his lap, beaks burrow and preen at the textures underneath them, at the wool of his coat and the cotton of his pyjamas, one tucks itself into the curve of his neck, cooing as it nuzzles.

Her magic is as deft and sure-footed and precious as ever.

When he looks her way, she is watching him, steady as the bulk of roots below, the same impish grin that brought them to this very place, eyes luminous and entirely unashamed.

Sound greeting fury—

ballad swelling to bluster,

frenzy bending toward fever.

What the hell should she, of all people, ever be scared of?

No, not a cross, a privilege. One he names, and one he keeps.

As now, as always.

Just then a roaring tremor shakes their tree, its leaves shudder, the branch is cracking, angrier and angrier until it snaps and they’re tumbling through open air.

A rush of water swallows their fall. It plugs his ears, blinds his eyes, engulfs his body, his arms instinctively thrash upward as a violent force propels him higher, higher, then higher still.

His first gasp of earthside air could stir the ground, he thinks. He’s spluttering, rubbing at his blurred eyes and frantically turning, eyes searching. And then he’s being pulled, his body thuds over onto a small boat, where Hermione is being wrapped in a blanket. A slow-going warming charm streams over him, a heavy blanket weighs on his person.

Mother is rubbing furiously over the fabric that now covers his head, she speaks as if fire has been lit underneath her feet, “Trampling after marvels and mysteries as if without cost. The world will extract its price, Draco—always. In that, you can count.

“Mother,” he shivers. He wants to tell her the cost is their Returning, and that it’s alright, but his jaw is locked with cold and his teeth feel like they might vibrate out of his head.

“Sirius told me, he told me—years ago, I thought it was his cruelty, just— just bullshit, another mark aimed my way, made for the price of my existence. Into the water, he fell, he said. Your son, he said.” Her voice comes out disdainfully, “It was your babe, I saw. Like you, like Regulus. No other could cut so stingingly, Cissa.”

“Moth–er.”

She hisses, “The fate of this Black and that Black and that. Claimed by the water.”

Her hands don’t stop, though they shake now, scrubbing warmth back into him as if by sheer will she might burn the warnings into his skin.

“We drown in our own lore, don’t we? Great house of Black, most superior House of Malfoy. You are so drawn to the brightest, like all of them. Am I fated to watch every man I love march into the jaws of enchantments and legacies that do not love them back?” She is all bitter winds, “but do you know? Everything shifts, evolves, always. Especially magic. It grows, coils, sheds its skin. And people… people can change with it, if they choose. And structures fall and build anew.” Her hands, cold and trembling, clutch at the sides of his face, demanding his attention, he’s never seen her so wild-eyed and undone, “I decide what the elements can have.” Swiftly, her face pulls forward, cheek against cheek, she whispers rapidly into his ear, “You’re going to escort Hermione to her room, go to your own and wait in bed for the healer to arrive, when you’ve been assessed you’ll prepare for the day, come down for breakfast, pull out Hermione’s chair, pour her tea and apologize directly to her parents’ faces… then… when I am well enough, I will apologize to you for this very moment, but I fear—” Her breath shudders into his ear, he nearly grabs hold of her in an effort to pull her into him, “—right now I am not capable. I am glad you were with her, I am.” Her lips, cold as riverstone, peck lightly against his cheek.

When she releases him, the moment of still silence is only a second, but in that second her face expresses solemnity that grips his lungs. And then it is gone. Her inhale brings a sympathetic smile, it is aimed toward Hermione. Concern etched on her face, Hermione grabs hold of his mother’s hand, squeezes it, and mother’s shoulders finally slump in surrender, not a word exchanged between them.

He doesn’t realize father is the one tugging them toward land until they hit the ground, his wand giving one last arc in the air. He considers mother’s words as he watches father, looping his arm around Hermione and hauling her out of the vessel, then patting at her shoulder awkwardly. His whole life, where his father is concerned, Draco doesn’t think he’s ever caught a glimpse of a man who chased brightness, only one inexorably dimmed.

His parents send them off ahead, and they leave them entwined by the water, father’s arm a crescent around mother’s head as she leans into his chest, face hidden in the fabric of his shirt.

By the time he and Hermione make it to her room, they find a sleep–frumpy Theodore sitting on the floor near her door.

“Your mother probably woke all of Wiltshire with whatever it was that she cast when she pulled you from whatever depths of hell you just came from.You both look like shit, by the by. Something a street urchin would turn their nose at. And I’m so bloody tired.”

He rises and hugs Hermione for no reason other than she probably needs it. Such is the way of Theodore.

Theo leaves them with a hobble and a, “night,” despite the mild sunlight streaking over his face.

Draco doesn’t even have room for embarrassment over the scolding Hermione just witnessed—worry over the state of his mother cording into his chest.

They face each other, she wastes not a moment before rushing forth and pulling him into her, an arm wound around his neck and a hand clutching at his back. His arms lock around her immediately, gathering her tight.

“This was my doing,” she says.

“Was not.”

“Narcissa—”

“She’s fine. I’ll tell her about Hypatia, she’ll be elated.”

Hermione sighs, squeezes tighter. He can’t breathe anyway, what’s a little more oxygen lost?

“To hell and back?” is muffled against his chest.

He huffs, a chuckle he can’t swallow cascades over her curls, “to hell and back.”

And he’s not sure if it’s a declaration or a toast in support of the concept of Hell. They’d probably need a drink for the latter anyhow.

She separates and shrugs off her layers of blanket and coat, then says, “You’ll have to transfigure this coat back. It’s your spell, afterall.”

He runs his fingers along the marled fabric, deep earthy olive, with flecks of cream, warm brown, and muted ochre. It was called the First Weft, though older and unearthly tongues had other names for it—names that disintegrate on human lips, they say. Offered to the Malfoys when the name Malfoy was still fresh off the teat, scrabbling at the fringes of magic. A home they made on land where a bond between beings was hewn, safety and protection both given and taken, sealed with fabric acquired and spun in the thresholds: the space between waking and dying, dreams and sleep, before and after.

“Keep it. It’s mine to give, and it’s yours now.”

As he walks to his room the drapes spell open, bright light pours over, flooding his eyes.

There in the corridor, not a shadow.