Chapter Text
The apple he picked today could have been better. It wasn’t the bright green he was used to. This one was duller, paler near the top, with a rough patch where it had been knocked against something hard. Draco turned it in his hand as he walked, thumb moving over the blemish again and again until the skin warmed beneath it.
He bit into it.
The snap of it cracked through the morning air. Juice touched his tongue, sharp and sour enough to make his jaw ache. He kept walking.
Behind him, Hogwarts rose against the grey September sky, scarred and repaired in the same breath. From a distance, it almost was whole. The towers had been mended. Windows had been replaced. The blackened stones were scrubbed clean where they could be, disguised where they could not. He had watched workmen and witches on scaffolds all summer, patching castle walls.
The path beneath his boots curved away from the school and toward the edge of the grounds. Draco followed it because it went nowhere important. That was the appeal of it. The main path led toward the courtyard, toward the new square, toward the raised platform where Ministry officials would stand with damp eyes and polished speeches. The main path led toward rows of chairs and a ribbon made of gold and scarlet silk. It led toward a statue.
He had not seen it yet.
He knew what it looked like because Pansy had described it three weeks ago with a strange, hollow laugh that had turned into shrill cry halfway through. She had apparently donated part of her inheritance to have it made.
That had surprised him the most.
“Heroic, obviously,” she had said, lounging in one of the Manor’s drawing room chairs. “Hair a mess. Wand in hand. They made him taller.”
Draco had stared at the fireplace.
“They put him in the square?”
“Right in the middle. You cannot miss him.”
“I can,” Draco had said quietly, absentmindedly.
And he had.
He had avoided the school for six months, despite the owls, despite McGonagall’s neat handwriting and formal wording. He had no intention of attending the reopening. He had come only because his mother had asked him to.
Not in so many words.
She sat across from him at breakfast two days earlier, her hands folded beside a cup of tea she had not touched, and said, “The Headmistress asked whether we would be present.”
Draco had spread marmalade over toast until the bread tore beneath the knife.
“My presence would not improve the occasion.”
“No,” his mother said softly. “It would not.”
Her face had changed since the war. Not in a way strangers would notice, perhaps. Her hair was still pale and immaculate. Her robes still fell in elegant lines. Her chin still held itself above apology. But there were shadows beneath her eyes that even glamour charms did not fully soften, and there was a new stillness in her, a carefulness that made Draco feel as though every room they occupied contained a sleeping animal.
She had lied to the Dark Lord for Harry Potter.
Then Potter had died anyway.
There were things families did not discuss because to name them would be to invite them back into the house.
His father spoke even less than his mother. In fact, he didn’t speak at all. Not a word in the last six months, much to his mother's dismay. They fought often about it. But it was like something had clamped the man's mouth shut. Lucius had survived Azkaban by not returning to it, but what was left was just a shell.
The Ministry had made an example of him with a fine so enormous half the Prophet had printed the number in bold. It had barely dented the vaults. Everyone knew it. Everyone hated them for it. Everyone hated them more because the fine had been all.
Draco knew why.
He had sat in a courtroom beneath a ceiling charmed to move like a thunderstorm and listened while Hermione Granger, her hair cropped unevenly where curses had burned it away, told the Wizengamot that he had looked Harry Potter in the face and lied for him.
“He knew,” she had said.
“He knew it was Harry. He knew it was me. He knew it was Ron. Draco refused to identify us.”
Draco had flinched when she said his name.
Luna Lovegood had testified after her. She wore yellow robes and earrings shaped like tiny silver birds, and she had told the court that Draco had brought her a blanket when the cellar was cold. She said he had played Snapdragon with her using a stolen pack of cards. She said his hands shook when he unlocked the door.
Several people in the courtroom had laughed when she said Snapdragon. It was not a cruel laugh exactly. It was worse than cruel.
It was disbelieving.
Draco remembered staring down at his knees, unable to decide whether he wanted to vanish or be sick.
Then came the memories.
Severus Snape’s memories.
Twisting around, silver and bright. Holding the key to everything.
Draco thought he had known Severus Snape. He in fact, knew nothing.
He had not known anyone would ever see him crying in a bathroom, bleeding on white tiles, gasping that he could not do it. Begging Severus to let him die. That he could not do it. That he didn’t want to kill anyone.
“Take care of Mum.”
That had been the last thing he had said to Severus before he blacked out.
He had not known his own fear had survived in a glass vial after the man who carried it had died.
The court had watched. Granger had watched. The Weasel—all of them—privy to one of the worst moments in his entire life.
Crying for his mummy.
The court had decided he had been a coward rather than a murderer.
Draco bit the apple again, harder this time, willing the thought away.
The morning was cold enough that his breath showed faintly when he exhaled. Mist sat low over the grass beyond the path. It clung to the roots of trees and pooled in the hollows left by spells that had torn the grounds open in May. Some of the craters had been filled, but the earth had settled unevenly. Patches of new grass grew too bright against the older.
A bell rang from the castle.
Deep and slow, each note rolling over the grounds, settling into his chest.
Draco stopped.
The apple hung at his side.
For a moment he could hear the castle as it had been that night. Stone grinding. Glass bursting. Someone was screaming his name, though he never found out who. Crabbe’s face lit orange by cursed fire. Goyle’s hand slipping from his sleeve. Blaise on the stairs with blood in his teeth, trying to laugh because that was what Blaise did when he was frightened. Theo Nott kneeling beside a body that had once been his father and saying nothing at all, holding the dagger that killed him.
Theo had always been an opportunist.
Draco had seen him twice since the trials. Both times, Theo looked through him as if Draco were another portrait on the wall. The second time, Draco had said, “Nott,” and Theo had replied, “Malfoy,” and that was the whole conversation.
They had been best friends since nappies.
His friends were dead, mad, missing, or impossible to speak to.
The bell rang again.
Draco turned off the path, onto a smaller one. It was half hidden by wet leaves and overgrown grass, the path first-years would use to sneak toward the lake or older students would use when they wanted to smoke, snog, or fuck. He remembered it from sixth year. He had walked it then too, though not for any of those reasons.
The trees closed around him, thinning the sound of the bell. Branches knit overhead, most still green but touched at the edges with yellow. Rain had fallen during the night. Drops gathered on leaves and fell in fat, irregular taps onto his shoulders. The damp smelled of moss, bark, and cold earth.
He should go back.
His mother would be waiting somewhere near the back of the crowd, pale as bone, pretending not to care who stared at her. His father had not come.
Draco pictured himself standing beside his mother while Kingsley Shacklebolt spoke about rebuilding. He pictured the crowd parting around them afterward. He pictured McGonagall nodding with grave politeness, Hagrid turning away, Weasley turning red, the Weasley girl glaring at him as if she had a hex already shaped behind her teeth.
He pictured the statue.
Harry Potter in bronze or marble or whatever material heroes became when they died.
Harry Potter, who had beaten Voldemort and died with him.
Harry Potter, whose blood had dried on the stones while people cheered because they did not yet understand the cost of their victory.
Bloody fucking Potter.
Draco had not cheered then. His eyes were glued to Potter’s face. In the end it had all been for nothing hadn’t it? Potter was gone. Potter, who took Draco’s hand and saved him from Fiend Fyre without question.
Because Potter was good, and Draco was not. He had not liked Potter. That felt ridiculous now. He had envied him, resented him, mocked him, feared him, needed him alive, watched him die. None of those things fit neatly beside one another. They sat inside Draco like broken glass in a drawer, rattling around and scarring the inside. He would have done things differently.
The path sloped downward. He stepped over a root and nearly slipped in the mud. His hand shot out to catch himself against a tree trunk, the apple crushed briefly between his palm and the bark. A streak of green skin peeled back beneath his thumb.
“Brilliant,” he muttered.
The trees thinned ahead. A small clearing opened near the far side of the grounds where the land dipped before rising again toward a line of old stone boundary markers.
There had once been a bench here, rotten and damp, until someone in Draco’s fourth year had vanished it after finding two Hufflepuffs using it for reasons Draco had loudly pretended to find disgusting.
Now there was a bench again.
A transfigured one.
Draco noticed that before he noticed the person sitting on it. The proportions were slightly off, the legs too delicate for the weight they carried, the back curved in a way that suggested it had been a branch or perhaps a fallen log moments before. Its surface still held a faint grain of bark beneath the polish.
Then the person on the bench shifted, and Draco stopped so abruptly that wet leaves slid under his boots.
For a breath, he did not understand what he was seeing.
A witch sat hunched beneath a dark cloak, elbows braced on her knees, hands clasped so tightly her knuckles had gone pale. Her hood had fallen back. Brown curls, shorter than he remembered and wilder from the damp, escaped around her face. She was staring down at the ground, but he knew her anyway. He knew the line of her jaw, the stubborn set of her mouth, the shape of hands that had once punched him so hard his nose had bled.
Hermione Granger.
Crying.
She was trying not to cry, which made it worse. Her shoulders hitched in small, furious jerks.
One hand moved to her face, swiping quickly beneath her eyes. Then she pressed that same hand over her mouth and bent farther forward.
Draco remained at the edge of the clearing, half hidden by trees.
He should leave. He should step backward. He should pretend he had never seen her. He owed her that much. He owed her a great many things, and distance was perhaps the only one she might accept.
Then she shifted again and the cloak parted.
Draco’s gaze dropped.
At first, his mind refused the shape. It took the curve beneath her plain grey dress and tried to make it fabric, posture, and shadow. Then Hermione’s hand moved there, simply settling over the swell of her stomach with the absent familiarity of someone who had done it a thousand times.
She was pregnant.
Very pregnant.
Noticeably, undeniably pregnant.
Draco forgot how to breathe.
The apple slipped slightly in his fingers and he let out a staggered gasp.
Hermione’s head snapped up. Her wand was in her hand before he saw her reach for it.
“Who’s there?”
Draco stepped out because there was no dignified way to hide behind a tree after being caught.
Granger stared at him.
All the tears vanished from her face without actually disappearing. They remained on her skin, caught beneath her eyes and along her cheeks, but her expression hardened around them so quickly it was almost frightening.
“Malfoy.”
Her tone made him bristle. “Granger. Funny seeing you here.”
“What are you doing here?” she demanded.
He saw past her, toward the trees on the other side of the clearing. “Walking.”
“That is unfortunate.”
“Yes,” he said. “It seems to be a theme.”
Her eyes narrowed.
Draco wished, violently and uselessly, that he had said nothing. His tongue had always been quicker than his judgment. War had not cured that. Shame had only made it worse.
“I did not follow you,” he added quickly.
“I did not ask.”
“No.”
The bell rang again in the distance, faint beneath the canopy.
Granger flinched.
It was small. Anyone else might have missed it. Draco did not. He had become fluent in flinches over the past year. His mother’s fingers tightening around teacups. His father’s shoulders went rigid when an owl struck the window. His own body waking before dawn, heart racing, because somewhere in a dream a woman was screaming in his drawing room.
She turned her face away from the sound of the bell.
For the first time since he had entered the clearing, Draco took her in. She was thinner in the face than she had been at the trial. Tired in a way that did not belong to a twenty-year-old witch. There were shadows under her eyes, and her mouth was chapped from cold or crying or both. Her cloak was good wool but plain, the hem wet where it brushed the grass. One curl stuck to her cheek.
Her hand was still on her stomach.
“Gone and let Weasley get you up the duff then?” He said with a sneer.
Her face had gone a few shades paler, and she adjusted her cloak around her stomach to hide it. “Fuck off, Malfoy!”
Potter had been dead six months.
Draco did not want to do the arithmetic.
His gaze flicked up to her face.
All color had drained from her cheeks.
“Don’t,” she said.
“Is it Potter’s then? Well, well Granger. You shouldn’t be out here. He should be over there, getting fawned over.”
Her wand hand shook. “You shut your mouth!”
“Make me,” Draco said.
The words were ugly. Familiar. A reflex dragged up from some old, rotten part of him that should have died with the war.
Something colder passed through her eyes. Her shoulders went still. Her mouth parted around a breath she did not take. The hand at her stomach curled into the fabric of her cloak, fist tight enough to pull the wool crooked across the swell beneath it.
Then her wand snapped up. The tip pressed under his jaw, just to the side of his throat.
“Say another word about Harry,” she whispered, her breath fanning over his face in heated bursts, “and I will remove your tongue.”
Draco tracked down the line of her wand to her face.
Her eyes were wet. Furious and red-rimmed. It reminded him of fourth year when Weasel had said something or other that upset her during the Yule Ball.
“So it is Potter’s.”
Her wand dug harder into his skin. The pressure hurt enough that he felt his pulse beat against it.
“Say his name again,” she whispered dangerously.
Draco swallowed.
The wand moved with his throat.
“Potter,” he said softly.
For one second, neither of them breathed.
Then Hermione shoved him back so hard he hit the tree behind him and bark scraped through his cloak.
“You stupid, arrogant—”
“Careful, Granger. You’ll run out of clever names.”
“I won’t.”
“No?” He laughed. “That must be difficult for you. Losing him and still having to carry his little martyr legacy around like—”
“It isn’t his,” she snarled at him like he was something scraped from the bottom of a cauldron.
Hermione’s wand was still pointed at him, but her arm had begun to tremble.
“It isn’t Ron’s either,” she added.
The bell rang again from the castle, distant and mournful, and Hermione’s face twisted. Her free hand went to her stomach, fingers spreading over the curve beneath her cloak. Her eyes were no longer merely angry.
They were ruined.
Suddenly, the screaming in the drawing room that day came barreling through him. He had left after Aunt Bellatrix started carving her. But Bella had left a few minutes later and the screaming had continued.
It couldn’t be that…
“Granger,” he said, and for once there was no sneer in it.
“Don’t,” she snapped.
“I wasn’t—”
“You were.” Her laugh was small and awful. “You always are. You were about to say something clever, weren’t you? Something vicious. Something about heroes and martyrs and blood traitors and whatever else you still keep tucked under your tongue because you don’t know what to do with yourself if you aren’t cutting someone open.”
His jaw tightened. “That’s rich, coming from the witch with a wand at my throat.”
“You want me to lower it?”
“No.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“No,” he said again, quieter. “I imagine you’d feel better if you didn’t.”
Something in her face flickered. She dragged in a breath through her nose, but it caught halfway. She saw past him, over his shoulder, toward the school he had been trying so hard not to see.
“It happened in your house. In your drawing room,” she said. “After the Snatchers brought us in. After your aunt took my wand. After she carved into my arm.”
“I wasn’t there.”
“No? You weren’t there when she held me down? You weren’t there when I screamed? You weren’t there when Harry and Ron were locked beneath the floor and I kept thinking if I made enough noise, if I fought hard enough, if I stayed conscious long enough—”
“I was there for that—”
“Couldn’t stomach it?”
“Granger—”
She leaned into him, so close her belly was flush against his. He willed whatever Gods to hear him and beg them not to let the kid kick him.
It did. It moved and butted against his abs and all his focus went to that spot.
“Four men in Death Eater masks. Your aunt had left the room by then. Or perhaps she hadn’t. Perhaps she watched. Seems like her thing. I don’t remember all of it. Isn’t that funny? I remember every page I ever read before I was eleven. I remembered every spell, every footnote, every stupid little rule Hogwarts ever handed me, but I cannot remember which of them took me first.”
Draco’s hand had curled against the tree at his side, the other still holding the apple.
“Maybe it was you behind the mask,” she sneered.
Draco’s eyes flashed.
“I would never.”
“Wouldn’t sully yourself with a Mudblood? None of the other Death Eaters seemed to have had a problem with it.”
“Don’t use that word.”
She scoffed and then chuckled.
“I said I would never.”
“You said a great many things.”
“You think I could do that?”
“I think you lived in that house.”
His mouth twisted. “So did my mother.”
Her breathing had become uneven.
“If you thought I was capable of something like that, you should have never testified at my trial. Who were they?” Draco asked.
She laughed again. “You tell me.”
“I don’t know.”
“Convenient.”
“I don’t know.”
“Four men in your house.”
“Do you think they announced themselves to me? I didn’t know that was happening!”
“Liar! You are willfully ignorant! Deep down you must have known something!”
“The Wizengamot has been inside my head! Don’t you think that would have been submitted as evidence when you reported the rape?”
She flinched and lowered her wand, taking a step back.
“Granger. Don’t fucking tell me—you did report this didn’t you?”
“And say what?”
“Brightest witch of our age my arse—”
“Three months had already gone by, when I knew for sure. By then, everyone was just trying to pick up the pieces. The trials were happening—Molly was the first to suspect. When they all found out— they all believed it was Harry’s. Even Ginny. Can you believe that? That I would betray them? I told them the truth, and it made it worse. I’m having a Death Eater baby. I besmirched Harry’s memory—”
“What a load of bollocks,” Draco scoffed. “What did Weasel say about it?”
“He tried,” she said. “At first. He tried so hard. He brought tea. He sat beside my bed. He told me it did not matter. He said he loved me. He said all the right things until one day he looked at me, and I watched him understand that saying it did not matter did not make it true. They wanted me to get rid of it, if it really weren’t Harry’s. I couldn’t. You don’t know what it is to have Molly Weasley cry every time she sees me because she wants to believe I’m carrying Harry’s child, or Ron’s, and she cannot decide which would hurt less. So in denial that it’s neither of them. You don’t know what it is to have Ginny look at me and then away because she loved him too, and there is no clean place for either of us to stand. I think deep down she hopes it’s his too.”
She wiped at her eyes with her cloak sleeve, haggard. She winced and clutched her side, moving away from him finally. “Ron lost Harry. He lost Fred. He lost whatever future he thought we had. Then there is me, carrying proof that the war had followed us home anyway.” She rubbed her arms, trying to bring back some warmth. He muttered a warming charm and she closed her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she sighed. “I’ve been talking your ear off.”
Later, he would replay the moment and understand there had been a clean exit offered to him. He could have turned. He could have walked back through the trees with his half-eaten apple and his pride intact. He could have left Hermione Granger to her grief, her secrets, and the child she was carrying in a clearing far from the statue of the boy who had died saving them all.
Instead, Draco nodded at the bench.
Then at her.
“Sit down,” he said.
She furrowed her brows. “Don’t tell me what to do.”
“Fine. Fall down, then.”
“I hate you.”
He rolled his eyes. “Yes, I gathered.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
Rainwater slid from a leaf and hit the back of his neck. He barely felt it.
“I know,” he said again. “I did not come to the ceremony. I mean, I came to the school. Not the ceremony.”
“I gathered that from the lurking.”
“I was not lurking.”
“You were standing behind a tree watching me cry.”
“That is a rather damning description when you say it like that.”
“That is what happened.”
“Yes,” he said. “Unfortunately.”
Her mouth tightened. For one absurd second he thought she might laugh, but the expression broke before it became anything. Her eyes filled again. She turned her face away quickly, furious with herself.
Draco stared at the apple in his hand.
It had gone brown where he had bitten it.
“Here,” he said suddenly.
Hermione turned back.
He held out the apple.
The moment stretched.
Her stare moved from his face to the fruit and back again.
“Are you offering me your half-eaten apple?”
Draco lowered his hand slightly.
“I panicked.”
This time, she did laugh.
“Baby will be here soon then, huh?”
She stopped laughing. “Yes. Soon.”
“Know what it is?”
“A baby,” she deadpanned.
“No, I thought it was a fucking fish, Granger—honestly!” He threw his hands up in the air.
“I don’t want to know.”
“That’s stupid. How will you know if the baby needs to be dressed in pink or green?”
“There’s yellow, white, brown. And why green? Why not blue?”
He gave her a pointed look. “So you don’t have a name picked out?”
She blushed furiously.
“Godrick—don’t tell me it’s going to be Harry or Harriette. Bloody awful. The kid will never stand a chance.”
Hermione stared at him.
“What?” he said. “It would be.”
“You are criticizing baby names right now?”
“I’m making a point.”
“No, you’re being a prat because you’re uncomfortable.”
“I’m always a prat. Don’t make this about you.”
“You are unbelievable.”
“I have heard that before.”
“I’m sure you have. I’m also sure you thought it was a compliment.”
Draco’s mouth opened.
Hermione lifted one hand. “Don’t.”
He shut it.
“This may be the most we have ever spoken to each other. Ever,” she sighed.
He made a noncommittal sound and crossed his arms.
The bell rang again from the castle. It rolled through the trees, low and heavy, and this time Hermione did not flinch. She closed her eyes. Her chin dipped for half a second before she forced it back up.
Draco watched her stand.
“Sit down,” he said.
“I’m going.”
“To the ceremony?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because Harry is dead,” she said. “Because Ginny has to stand there and hear people talk about him as if he belonged to all of them equally. Because Molly will cry until Arthur has to hold her up. Because Professor McGonagall wrote to me three times and only asked once, which means she wanted to ask more than once and refused to put that on me.”
She pulled her cloak tighter around herself. “Because he was my best friend.” She took one step toward the path and stopped.
“Are you coming?”
The question struck him hard enough that he almost laughed, but nothing came out.
“What?”
“I asked if you were coming.”
“I heard you.”
“Then answer.”
Draco turned toward the castle. He could not see it through the trees, but he knew it was there. He never wanted to go there again.
“No.”
Hermione’s face did not change.
“Of course,” she said.
His jaw tightened. “Careful, Granger. That almost sounded like disappointment.”
“It wasn’t. I did not ask because I wanted you there.”
“Obviously.”
“I asked because hiding in the trees is pathetic.”
He glared at her.
“You should know,” Draco said. “You were doing it first.”
“I was crying.”
“Behind a tree.”
“On a bench.”
“A transfigured bench.”
“That is not the point.”
“It felt worth noting.”
Her nostrils flared. “You are exhausting.”
“Yes, well, you’re carrying on admirably.”
She glanced down at his hand.
“You’re still holding the apple.”
He glanced at it.
The skin had gone brown around the bite marks. A smear of crushed green peel clung to his palm from where he had caught himself against the tree.
“So I am.”
“You look ridiculous.”
“I was trying not to say that about you.”
Hermione’s eyes flashed.
Draco lifted the apple slightly. “That came out wrong.” Telling a pregnant witch she looked ridiculous. What was he thinking?
“Did it?”
“Yes.”
“I’m thrilled to hear there was another option.” She pushed a loose curl behind her ear.
He shoved the apple into his cloak pocket, where it immediately made a damp, unpleasant weight against his hip.
Hermione watched the motion. Then her face crumpled, just slightly, and she turned away before he could see the whole of it.
“I’ll be late,” she whimpered.
The right thing would have been to say nothing. He had been presented with the opportunity several times and had failed to take it every single one of them.
“Granger.”
She stopped.
He did not know what he intended to say until she turned back.
“If you find out who they were,” he said, “tell me.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”
“So I can know.”
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the only one I have.”
She studied him for so long he felt his skin prickle beneath his collar.
“You are not entitled to my grief because it happened in your house.”
“I know.”
“You are not entitled to my trust because you managed, once or twice, not to be the worst person in the room.”
His mouth tightened. “I know.”
“And if I ever find out you knew anything, anything at all, I will not wait for a trial.”
“I know.”
Hermione’s fingers curled against her stomach.
For a moment, neither of them moved.
Then she turned and walked toward the castle.
She did not look back.
He imagined Granger standing among the crowd, pale and pregnant, refusing to sit when someone offered her a chair. He imagined Weasley seeing her and shunning her away. He imagined Ginny standing beneath a statue of the boy she had loved.
He imagined his mother at the back of the crowd, pretending she had not searched every face until she found his and failed.
He stayed on that bench.
A week later, Draco came down to breakfast and found his mother already seated at the table.
The dining room had become too large after the war. Morning light stretched across the polished floor in long, pale bars. The portraits along the wall remained still. Everything in the manor had been repainted or removed. It had taken months of curse breakers to get what was left of the dark energy out of the house. His mother had bombarda’d half the house. The drawing room no longer even existed. It had been turned into a garden. Where they had had dark furniture, everything was now pale and bright.
Once, Draco had woken in the middle of the night to his parents having a bonfire in the middle of the sitting room. All of the old ancestral portraits were being burned, cursing and spitting foul words as they burned away.
His father had poured the rest of his bourbon over the portrait of his screaming father.
Everyone around Draco was fucking crazy.
Narcissa sat at the far end with a cup of tea between her hands. “Good morning, darling.”
“Morning.”
Lucius sat to her right. He had not touched his breakfast. He rarely did before noon. His hair was tied neatly at the nape of his neck, his shirt unbuttoned and slightly wrinkled. He was reading the Prophet, eyebrows creased tightly as his eyes moved across the page furiously.
Draco took his chair without greeting him. A house-elf appeared beside him with coffee and he took it tentatively.
Lucius lifted the Daily Prophet from beside his plate and tossed it across the table. The paper slid over the polished wood and struck Draco’s cup hard enough to rattle the saucer.
Draco glared at his father.
Lucius did not look back.
He simply sat there, one hand resting beside his untouched plate, eyes lowered to nothing in particular.
Draco looked down.
Hermione Granger stared up from the front page.
She had been photographed outside Hogwarts, one hand raised against the flash, the other pressed protectively over her stomach. Her cloak had blown open enough that there was no hiding anything. Her face was turned away, but there was no mistaking her.
The headline sprawled above her in thick black letters.
POTTER HEIR HIDDEN AWAY?
Below it, Rita Skeeter’s name curled like a snake.
Hermione Granger, brightest witch of her age and closest confidante of the late Harry Potter, has reportedly fled England to carry the Boy Who Lived’s child in secret.
His hand tightened around the paper.
The photograph moved again. Hermione turned from the camera, and a wizard in Ministry robes stepped half in front of her. The flash went off. She blinked once, hard, and kept walking.
The wizarding world gathered last Tuesday for the long-awaited unveiling of a memorial statue honoring Harry James Potter, the Boy Who Lived, the Chosen One, and the young wizard credited with destroying He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named at the cost of his own life.
Yet while hundreds came to mourn, celebrate, and remember, all eyes quickly turned from bronze to flesh when Hermione Jean Granger, longtime friend and companion of the late Mr. Potter, made an unexpected appearance at the ceremony.
Miss Granger, who has remained largely out of the public eye since giving testimony during the post-war trials, arrived late and without escort. Sources close to the event describe her as “pale,” “unsteady,” and “noticeably with child.”
Of course, readers will recall the unusually close bond shared by Miss Granger and Mr. Potter during their years at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. While the public has long understood Miss Granger to have been romantically linked to Ronald Weasley, youngest son of the much-beloved Weasley family, questions have quietly persisted regarding the true nature of her relationship with Mr. Potter.
One attendee, who asked not to be named, stated that Miss Granger stood apart from the Weasley family during the ceremony and declined assistance when offered a seat. “She looked like she had been crying,” the source said. “Mrs. Weasley tried to go to her, but Miss Granger turned away.”
It has now been reported that Miss Granger left England within days of the ceremony. While the Ministry has declined to comment, several sources have suggested that she may have sought refuge abroad to prepare for the birth in private.
If the child is indeed Harry Potter’s, this revelation raises a number of difficult questions. Why has Miss Granger chosen silence? Why would the Weasley family, who lost son Fred Weasley and future son-in-law Harry Potter in the final battle, not be publicly involved? Why has Miss Granger not allowed the wizarding world to celebrate the continuation of the Potter line?
Draco’s jaw clenched.
The photograph moved again.
Hermione turned her face away from the flash. Her hand tightened over her stomach.
There are those who will argue Miss Granger deserves privacy. Certainly, the young witch has endured more than most. However, when one carries the possible heir of Harry Potter, privacy becomes a more complicated matter. Mr. Potter did not belong only to those who knew him. He belonged to all of us.
Across the table, Narcissa made a sound.
His mother had gone very still. Her fingers were pressed to her lips. She had been reading over her own copy of the Prophet.
“Oh,” she breathed.
Draco watched the blood leave his mother’s face.
It went slowly at first, draining from the soft pink of her cheeks until she was pale as the china in front of her. Her eyes stayed fixed on the photograph, but her hand had moved from her mouth to the base of her throat, where her fingers pressed hard against the skin. She swallowed once. Then again.
“Mother?”
Narcissa did not answer, her chair scraped back. She stood too quickly, and for one terrible second Draco thought she might faint. Her hand shot out for the edge of the table. Draco looked from his mother to his father.
“Did you know?”
Narcissa’s pale blue eyes flitted to his.
Lucius stared at the table.
Draco’s hand tightened around the paper. “Did either of you know?”
Narcissa opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She glanced back at the Prophet, at Hermione’s picture and swallowed.
“It could be,” Narcissa whispered. “It could be Harry’s, could it not? Or the Weasley boy’s. The article is vile, of course it is, but Rita Skeeter has always been vile. The child could still be—”
“It isn’t.”
Narcissa’s face crumbled.
Draco folded the Prophet once, slowly, until the photograph disappeared beneath the crease.
“I know for a fact it is not Potter’s,” he said. “It is not Weasley’s either.”
Her lips parted, and the hand at her throat slipped lower, pressing flat against her chest that was rising and falling too fast.
Lucius’s fingers twitched beside his plate.
Draco turned to his father. “You knew.”
Lucius didn’t budge.
“Look at me.”
He wouldn’t.
“Fucking look at me damn you!” Draco screamed, swiping away the breakfast. Glass and china shattered everywhere. His father flinched, slowly lifting his chin up to meet his son’s eyes.
Draco regarded his mother. “Who told you?”
Narcissa shook her head once.
“Do not,” Draco said. “Do not do that.”
“Draco.”
“Who told you?”
She pressed her lips together. Her eyes had filled, but she did not let the tears fall. He could see them sitting there, bright and unshed, making her look sick and furious and afraid all at once.
“There were rumors,” she said.
“Rumors.”
“Yes.”
“About Granger being raped in our drawing room?”
Narcissa closed her eyes.
Draco felt something in his chest turn cold.
“So you did know.”
“We did not know,” she said, opening her eyes again. “Not truly.”
“That is a convenient distinction, Mother. Either you knew the girl was raped in our home or you didn’t!”
Her face tightened. “It is the only distinction I had.”
Lucius moved then, raising his hand.
Draco laughed once.
“No,” he said, staring at his father’s hand. “You do not get to say anything now.”
Narcissa paced between them, and her composure cracked at the edges. “McNair had bragged.”
The room seemed to fall away from him. “What?”
Narcissa’s fingers curled into the front of her robes. “Walden McNair. He was drunk. It was days after. Your aunt had already made a spectacle of herself over the prisoners escaping, and the house was full of men trying to convince themselves the Dark Lord would not punish them for it. McNair said things.”
“What things?”
“He said she screamed,” Narcissa whispered. The fire across the room cracked once, and the sound made Narcissa’s shoulders jump. “He said it as if it were funny. He said Bellatrix had left a toy behind for them. He said your aunt had done enough cutting and that they had done the rest.”
Draco’s stomach rolled.
Lucius closed his eyes.
“Do not,” Draco said, “Do not close your fucking eyes. Coward!”
Lucius opened them.
They were all cowards. Himself included.
“You took that with a grain of salt?” Draco asked.
“He was always cruel.”
“That is not an answer.”
“He lied often.”
“That is not an answer either.”
“He bragged about things he had not done because he wanted men worse than him to think he belonged beside them.”
“And did he? Did he belong beside them?”
A tear finally slipped down her cheek. “Yes.”
Draco nodded slowly at Lucius. “And you said nothing.”
The older man’s jaw tightened.
“You sat here, in this house, eating breakfast, drinking tea, pretending you had not heard that Hermione Granger had been raped after your sister-in-law carved her open on your drawing room floor.”
“Draco,” Narcissa said, and her voice broke.
“No,” he snapped. “Do not say my name like I am the thing happening right now. I am not.”
Narcissa stepped back from the table. Her hand went to the chair behind her, but she did not sit.
“We did not know if it was true,” she said. “She never came forward. No report was made. There was no trial for that. There was nothing in the questioning, nothing in the memories the Wizengamot reviewed. When Miss Granger testified, she said nothing of it. She spoke of the cellar. She spoke of you. She spoke of Harry and Mr. Weasley, but she did not say that. I thought if it had happened, she would have said something. If it had happened, we would have said something.”
He thought of Hermione in the clearing, wand pressed into his throat, eyes ruined as she said, And say what?
His fingers went numb around the folded Prophet.
“She was three months gone before she knew,” Draco said. “She told them the truth, The Weasleys and they all wanted it to be Potter’s anyway. Molly Weasley, Ginny, Weasley himself. All of them. She told them, and it made it worse.”
Narcissa shut her eyes. This time Draco let her. When she opened them again, she looked older than she had five minutes before.
“Who else?” he asked.
Narcissa shook her head.
Draco stepped toward her. “Who else?”
“I do not know for certain.”
“Names.”
“Draco, please.”
“Names.”
She glanced at Lucius who stared back at her, and for one second, there was something almost pleading in his face. It vanished quickly, but Draco saw it.
Narcissa saw it too.
She turned away from him.
“McNair,” she said.
“I heard that one.”
“Avery.”
Draco’s jaw clenched.
“Yaxley.”
His hand tightened around the Prophet until the paper split beneath his thumb.
Narcissa’s voice became almost inaudible.
“And Rodolphus.”
He went still. His aunt’s husband. “Rodolphus Lestrange,” Draco said. “You knew my uncle might have been one of them. And you let me stand in that courtroom beside you while she testified for me.”
Lucius’s mouth parted.
No sound came.
Draco waited, because some stupid part of him still thought his father might find one word. One. An apology, a denial, a curse, anything.
Lucius gave him nothing.
Draco examined his mother. “Did Aunt Bellatrix know?”
Narcissa’s face twisted. “That was never clear.”
Draco laughed again.
“Draco.”
“She was in the room before it happened.”
“Yes.”
“She tortured her.”
“Yes.”
“She left her there.”
Narcissa wiped at her cheek with the heel of her hand, but the tears kept coming now.
“Yes.”
Draco fixed his eyes down at the Prophet.
He thought of her saying, Maybe it was you behind the mask.
He thought of how quickly he had said he would never. And he would never.
But he had left her in that room after Auntie Bella started carving into her. Because he was a coward. They were all at fault here.
Narcissa reached for him, then stopped before her hand touched his sleeve.
“I am sorry,” she said.
Draco took in her hand, then at her face.
“Do not say that to me.”
Her hand fell.
He turned away before she could answer and crossed the room to the fireplace.
The flames had burned low, blue and gold beneath the black marble mantel. Draco stood in front of them with the Prophet in both hands. For a moment, he did not move.
Hermione’s photograph shifted against his palm.
The headline showed between his fingers.
POTTER HEIR HIDDEN AWAY?
He threw the paper into the fire.
It caught along the edge first. The flames licked over Rita Skeeter’s name and ate through the letters. The article curled inward, blackening line by line. Hermione’s photograph buckled in the heat, and for one awful second her face gazed up from the grate as the fire took it.
Then she was ash.
No one spoke behind him.
Narcissa had stopped crying, or at least had stopped making any sound of it. Draco stayed where he was until the last scrap of the Prophet collapsed.
He thought of Hermione Granger walking through the trees alone. He thought of her standing under Potter’s statue while half the wizarding world stared at her stomach and decided it was his. He thought of McNair. He thought of Avery, Yaxley, Rodolphus, and his father sitting at breakfast with his clean hands.
Gods be good that at least all four were very much dead.
The biggest mercy for Hermione Granger, he decided, would be to never see a Malfoy again.
Draco watched the ash settle in the grate and hoped, for her sake, that she never did.