Margins & Labels
Mid February, 4th Year
The antechamber outside the Restricted Section smelled like parchment and stale wards—like no one had opened the windows in a hundred years. The sconces along the wall flickered low and uneven, throwing long shadows over the shelves of boxed scrolls stacked in too-neat rows.
Hermione stood near the worktable, arms folded tight across her chest, chin tipped up in silent fury. Her detention slip was still clenched in one hand, crumpled at the edges.
One week. One offhand comment to Snape about flawed instructions in the brewing rubric and she got detention for “tone.”
Filch shuffled into view, dragging a large wooden crate behind him. His limp was theatrical today, each step exaggerated as he heaved the crate onto the worktable with a grunt.
“You’ll be sorting these,” he said, breathing heavily. “Cursed scrolls. Some safe, some not. Label them. Carefully. And no complaining.”
Hermione didn’t answer.
He squinted at her like he was hoping for an argument. When none came, he grumbled something under his breath and disappeared into the stacks.
She rubbed her temples and exhaled through her nose. At least it was quiet.
Then the door creaked.
Footsteps. Familiar. Measured.
Draco Malfoy stepped inside like he belonged there—and like he couldn’t be more annoyed about it.
His gaze flicked across the room before settling on her.
“Back-talking again, Granger?”
Hermione didn’t even turn.
“Snape didn’t like me correcting him. Again.” she replied coolly, eyes still on the crates.
Draco let the door close behind him with a soft click. He stepped further in, the tension in the room shifting instantly— warmer somehow, though neither of them moved.
She raised an eyebrow. “What exactly did you do?”
He hesitated, just long enough to seem reluctant. “Hexed a third-year.”
She blinked. “Unprovoked?”
“He sneezed on me,” Draco replied, tone so casual she couldn’t tell if he was joking.
She rolled her eyes. Before she could say anything else, Filch returned, holding a battered pair of dragonhide gloves in one hand and a single pair of protective goggles in the other.
He held them up like a prize.
“Only got one set that works. Don’t touch the scrolls bare-handed unless you want to spend the next month coughing up spiders.”
Hermione’s mouth opened in protest.
Filch cut her off.
“Professor Dumbledore’s orders,” he said, far too cheerfully. “Said the two of you might learn something about cooperation.”
Draco blinked. Hermione stared.
Of course he did.
Filch deposited the gloves and goggles on the table, turned, and hobbled off with a parting cackle that echoed off the stone.
The silence left behind was immediate and uncomfortable.
Draco raised an eyebrow.
“Well?”
Hermione snatched the goggles before he could reach for them. “I’m labeling. You’re lifting.”
“Naturally,” he drawled. “Wouldn’t want you bruising your parchment-perfect hands.”
She ignored him. Barely.
But when the first scroll started humming softly in its cracked wax seal and Draco slid on the gloves beside her, she didn’t stop him. Not this time.
The scrolls sat in uneven stacks at the center of the long table, humming faintly beneath their wax seals. Some pulsed with residual magic—soft and rhythmic, like a heartbeat dulled by layers of cloth. Others simply buzzed, sharp and volatile. Their parchment edges were frayed. The air around them smelled faintly of ash and old rain.
Hermione eyed them with something between curiosity and caution.
She slipped on the protective goggles, adjusting the strap behind her ears as Draco pulled the gloves over his hands with deliberate slowness, like someone preparing for surgery—or war.
“Illusion, compulsion, memory, dark signature,” she murmured, more to herself than to him.
“I know the categories, Granger.”
She didn’t respond.
The first scroll was long and narrow, its wax seal cracked at the edge and scrawled with a rune that flickered faintly red.
Draco slid it toward her. Hermione uncapped a quill and began her notes.
Scroll Type: Probable Compulsion
Signature Residue: Lingering warmth on touch, pressure behind left eye
Containment: Required
She didn’t look up.
Another scroll. This one brittle. Bound in blue wax. Faint shimmer when touched.
Illusion .
They moved like that for several minutes—methodical, distant, practiced. Scroll, test, record, sort. No conversation.
The room was quiet except for the scratching of quills, the soft shift of robes, the low hum of unstable magic, and the metronome tick of the brass wall clock that hadn’t chimed properly in years.
Dust hovered in the shaft of candlelight over the desk.
Neither has heard silence quite this loud . Each movement echoed a little too clearly. Each scroll placed a little too deliberately. Every shift in posture carried the weight of something unspoken .
Draco passed a scroll with a slightly scorched edge. Their fingers nearly brushed. They didn’t look at each other. Hermione sorted it into dark signature , lips pressed tight. Draco leaned back slightly, watching the parchment instead of her.
Another scroll. Another quiet test. Another line in the logbook.
It felt like breathing in sync and refusing to acknowledge it. Hermione reached for the next scroll, brushing dust off its edge with the sleeve of her robe before testing the seal. The wax was worn, the rune half-melted, its color dulled to a sickly mauve. She barely paused before slotting it into the memory tray and moving on.
Draco didn’t say anything. He just reached out and slid the scroll back across the desk to her, tapping it once with his gloved finger.
She narrowed her eyes.“What?”
He nodded toward the rune. “That’s compulsion, not memory. The rune’s sloped right. That’s instability, not recall.”
She bristled. “You could say something instead of acting superior.”
He didn’t flinch. “I wasn’t being superior,” he said, voice flat. “Just accurate.”
Hermione let out a sharp breath—something between a sigh and a laugh that had no humor in it. She pulled the scroll back and corrected the label with a flourish.
Another scroll. She didn’t wait for him this time—snatched it off the top of the pile like she could erase his presence by being faster.
She didn’t look at him when she spoke. “Why’d you do it, anyway? The hex.”
He paused. “Why’d you talk back to Snape?”
The scroll in her hands stilled. She didn’t answer. He didn’t either. For a long moment, they just sat in silence—candlelight flickering between them, the low hum of cursed parchment filling the air like static.
“Was it worth it?” she asked, finally.
He didn’t hesitate. “He deserved it.”
She nodded once. “So did Snape.”
Their eyes met across the desk. No smirk. No sneer. Just... something . Something watching. Measuring. Listening. Something neither of them had the courage—or language—to name.
Another scroll. Thin and tightly wound, the edges slightly warped. Hermione handed it over without speaking. Draco reached for it, but didn’t open it right away. His fingers tapped against the table.
Then, without looking at her: “You hate him.”
Hermione blinked. “Who?”
“Weasley.”
She stared at him, expression hardening. “You don’t know him.”
He glanced up then, meeting her eyes. “I know he doesn’t see you.”
She froze.
That landed differently. Like a sentence carved with precision and left on the table to bleed. Her throat tightened, but she didn’t let it show.
She didn’t respond.
Draco didn’t push.
He just turned back to the scroll and broke the seal with a small, careful flick of his wand. They kept sorting. But the silence now wasn’t empty.
It was electric.
The pile of cursed scrolls had shrunk significantly. The crate beside the desk no longer towered ominously, though the remaining few buzzed faintly, like they resented being ignored.
Hermione’s fingers were stained with ink and dust. Her quill lay beside the sorting chart, the nib worn slightly from overuse. She shifted her notes to the side, trying to find a clean corner to work on—and that’s when the folded parchment slipped from between the pages.
It fluttered slightly before settling on the table, half-unfolded, revealing a few lines of carefully penned script in her unmistakable handwriting.
Draco’s eyes flicked toward it. He didn’t reach for it—just tilted his head, gaze sharp. “What’s that?”
Hermione glanced down. Considered brushing it away. But instead, she laid her hand flat over it. “Draft of a student letter,” she said. “For the new elective. The Muggle Studies expansion.”
Draco leaned back slightly, lips twitching in something that wasn’t quite a smile. “You think House Unity can be written into a syllabus?”
She turned toward him, slowly. Her voice wasn’t loud. But it was certain. “I think change has to start somewhere.”
He didn’t respond. Not right away. He looked at her—really looked—then at the scroll in his hand. It was small and faintly glowing, the seal burned nearly black around the edge. He didn’t scoff. Didn’t roll his eyes. Instead, he carefully pressed the seal with his gloved thumb, letting the magic settle before sliding it into the “compulsion” tray. Then, without a word, he passed it across the table.
Their hands nearly touched.
They both paused, just for a second.
Then Hermione took the scroll.
And the moment passed.
Filch returned with his usual timing—just as the last scroll had been labeled, logged, and placed in the proper tray. He limped in dramatically, arms folded behind his back like he was supervising a prison break rather than detention.
He eyed the neatly sorted piles, the full logbook, the complete categorization chart. “Hmph,” he muttered. “Didn’t think you two’d survive the cursed ones without setting each other on fire.”
Draco didn’t dignify that with a response. He pulled off the gloves with measured ease, flexing his fingers like they’d been stiff for hours. He dusted off his sleeves, adjusted the collar of his robes, and didn’t look at Hermione as he stepped away from the table.
Hermione didn’t move. She was still seated, meticulously reorganizing the labels on the scroll boxes—not because she had to, but because it gave her hands something to do. Her fingertips were smudged with ash, the ink on her notes still drying.
Draco reached the doorway. Paused. “Don’t misspell anything in your letter.”
Hermione didn’t look up. “Don’t assume I will.”
A beat.
Then, quietly—almost too quietly to catch: Draco smirked.
Not cruel. Not smug. Just tired. Wry. Something almost real.
Then he was gone.
Later, as the torches dimmed in the corridor and the last bell of the evening tolled low through the stone, Hermione lingered in the entrance to Gryffindor Tower. Scroll dust still clung to her sleeves. Her satchel weighed heavier than usual against her shoulder.
She climbed the stairs two at a time, pulled the curtain around her bed, and opened the folder she’d tucked into the bottom of her bag.
Her draft letter waited—creased, annotated, half-finished.
She reread the last sentence she’d written before detention.
Then, carefully, she lifted her quill.
And for the first time—
She didn’t change it. She tucked the letter away, but her fingers lingered over her notes. The scrolls were sorted, labeled, done—but the edges of her thoughts still crackled like unfinished magic.
Maybe intent wasn’t just for spells.
Maybe it mattered in silence, too.