Theories of Proximity

Mid January, 5th Year

The morning air in the Charms corridor had teeth.

Cold seeped through the castle’s thick stones, curling into the gaps between warming charms. Somewhere outside, frost laced the windows of greenhouses, silvering the glass like trapped breath. Inside, cloaks stayed fastened longer than usual. Fingers lingered near pockets for warmth. A few students passed with scarves pulled up to their noses—muffled, red-cheeked, blinking hard against the hour.

Hermione moved slower than usual, her bag heavy with scrolls and the dull ache of too much unfinished thinking. The hem of her robes brushed the flagstones in even rhythm. Her mind was already several corridors ahead—on the week’s reform meeting, the latest adjustment to the House Unity draft, the next citation she needed to pull from Rewriting Magical History: A Comparative Ethics Reader—when a voice pulled her gently back.

“Miss Granger?”

Hermione turned.

Anna Kingsley stood a few steps away, her posture neat but hesitant. She held a roll of parchment in both hands like it might unfurl into something too big to carry. The younger Hufflepuff glanced up, eyes wide, cheeks pink with cold. “I was wondering… you mentioned a few sources last time. For students who… don’t quite fit what the Ministry wants us to think.”

Hermione’s expression softened. “Of course,” she said. “Hold on.”

She pulled her bag over one shoulder, unfastened the buckle with a practiced flick, and drew out a slim, thread-bound packet. Her annotated reading list—tucked between the last two pages, a small excerpt from Magical Integration Histories, Vol. II. She’d meant to revise the footnotes last night, but something had stopped her. As if it had been waiting for this.

Hermione handed it over discreetly, keeping the motion casual. “It’s not exhaustive, but it’s a start. Just be careful where you read it.”

Anna clutched it to her chest, eyes bright. “Thank you.”

She turned and walked off, the parchment already beginning to unfurl between her fingers.

Hermione watched her go—only for a second.

Then she felt it.

The change in air pressure.

A silence too sweet.

“Such thoughtful resource-sharing,” came a voice behind her. “Though I wonder…”

Hermione turned slowly.

Umbridge stood at the end of the corridor, pink wool robes buttoned high against the chill. Her smile was the shape of a teacup. Empty. Polished. Dangerous.

She didn’t raise her voice. Didn’t take a step forward. Just stood.

“I do hope, Miss Granger, that what you just handed that child wasn’t… unauthorized.”

Hermione’s stomach dropped, but she didn’t let it show. “It was a reading list,” she said evenly.

“Yes,” Umbridge replied, the word syruped with something poisonous. “And some of the most troubling ideologies begin that way. Lists. Books. Ideas not properly vetted by approved educational channels.”

She tsked. Gently. Her clipboard shifted against her chest.

“I’m sure you understand,” she added, still smiling, “that this constitutes distribution of ideological contraband. Quietly, of course. Subversively.”

Hermione’s throat tightened, but she held her ground. “It’s not contraband to think critically.”

“Oh, no, dear.” Umbridge’s voice dropped, almost a whisper. “It’s only contraband when you teach others to do it.”

A pause. Soft. Deadly.

“You’ll report to my office,” she said, glancing briefly at her clipboard, “after dinner.”

Hermione didn’t answer.

The silence did that for her.

The walls of Umbridge’s office felt too soft to be safe.

Doilies rimmed every surface—each desk corner, every shelf. They fluttered faintly in the charmed breeze from a cracked window, like lace ghosts that didn’t know how to leave. Plates lined the walls in perfect rows, each adorned with wide-eyed kittens mid-meow or frozen in perky poses. They blinked occasionally. Purred. One scratched at porcelain with an endless, rhythmic paw.

The room smelled like tea and polished cruelty.

Hermione stood until she was told to sit.

Umbridge gestured delicately to the straight-backed chair on the opposite side of her desk. She didn’t speak at first. Only poured herself a cup of something floral and steaming, letting the silence do most of the work.

Then, as if they were discussing nothing more than a forgotten homework assignment, she reached into her drawer and placed a single quill on the blotter between them.

It gleamed, fine-tipped and delicate, with no inkpot in sight.

“You will write,” Umbridge said, voice honeyed. “I must not seek what does not belong to me.”

Hermione didn’t move. She simply reached out—calmly, precisely—and picked up the quill.

The parchment in front of her was soft, unnaturally smooth. She held her breath as the tip touched down.

No ink.

Only skin.

The first line scratched its way into the back of her hand.

I must not seek what does not belong to me.

The pain wasn’t sharp. It was slow. Surgical. Like a truth being dragged from under the surface, one word at a time.

Hermione didn’t flinch.

She wrote it again.

And again.

And again.

The words glowed red as they carved into flesh, fading slowly behind each new repetition. But the memory of the sting stayed. It lingered like a whisper against bone.

Her face remained unreadable—composed in the way only someone very practiced in restraint could manage. She focused on her breathing. Counted the rise and fall of her chest like it might anchor her.

Inhale. Exhale. Again.

She pictured the reform room. Its shifting walls. The floating maps. The way Luna had tucked her feet beneath her in the circle, gaze dreamy, voice unshakably sure.

She remembered Dean’s sketches—loose lines blooming into structure. The way he'd said, We could do both. And meant it.

She thought of the names she’d already written. The ones who’d signed. The ones who’d waited.

And—unbidden—her mind conjured a single word.

Interesting.

Neat, slanted. Sharper than her own.

A margin reply.

A conversation in ink.

The quill dragged through her skin again.

She kept writing.

Kept breathing.

Let the blood say what her mouth refused to.

The castle had long since dimmed by the time Hermione stepped into the corridor.

The sconces had gone low, casting flickers of gold against the stones. The air was colder now—late autumn bowing toward winter. Her breath came in soft clouds as she wrapped her scarf tightly around her hand. Too tightly. The wool pressed into the raw letters beneath it.

She didn’t go back to the tower.

Didn’t want to answer questions.

Didn’t want to lie.

Instead, she climbed the corridor that curved around the greenhouses and wound quietly toward the hospital wing, her steps unsteady but even. The castle was still. Listening.

Inside, Madam Pomfrey looked up once—just once—and frowned, deeply, before setting aside her ledgers.

“Oh, child,” she murmured, wearily. “Sit down.”

Hermione obeyed. Just held her hand out like an offering.

Pomfrey took it gently. Peeled the wool back like parchment.

The carved words shimmered angry red across the back of Hermione’s hand, blood threaded through each letter.

I must not seek what does not belong to me.

Pomfrey hissed softly through her teeth.

“There are wounds,” she muttered, more to herself than to Hermione, “that don’t respond to salve.”

She dabbed something cold across the lines—slow, methodical strokes that burned in a different way.

“I’ll numb it,” she said. “But not tonight. The worst of it needs to surface first.”

Hermione nodded faintly.

She didn’t want to be numb anyway. She leaned back against the pillow Madam Pomfrey offered her and let her eyes drift closed. The sting faded to a dull throb.

She let herself drift.

The fire in the Slytherin common room hissed green, casting long shadows across stone and leather. The air smelled of damp stone and smoke, warmed by quiet murmurs and the occasional flick of a page. Near the hearth, Blaise leaned forward, his voice low enough to be overheard.

“I’m telling you,” he said, glancing around, “Umbridge kept Granger after dinner.”

A chuckle rose from a nearby armchair. “Finally cracked, did she? All those manifestos caught up with her.”

Theo didn’t laugh. He sat straighter instead, eyes sharper than before. “No. It wasn’t about her. Not directly. She gave something to a younger student. Abbott said Kingsley came back white as a sheet.”

That name landed.

Draco didn’t move.

Hadn’t said much all evening, tucked in the corner with his legs stretched toward the fire, eyes half-lidded like none of it mattered.

But at that—Kingsley, Granger, after dinner—something in him went still.

A silence that sharpened.

He rose slowly, hands sliding into the pockets of his robes, every movement casual, practiced.

“Going somewhere?” Pansy asked, voice coated in curiosity she didn’t bother to soften.

“Library,” Draco replied, already turning.

Pansy arched a brow. “It’s late.”

He didn’t respond.

Didn’t look back.

He crossed the threshold of the common room without another word, the heavy stone door sealing behind him with a whisper of old magic.

The corridor beyond was quiet, the air colder now, each step echoing against the walls. He walked with purpose, though his mind hadn’t caught up yet. He didn’t know what he would say.

Wasn’t even sure he’d say anything.

But he knew where she’d be.

The next morning, whispers moved faster than owls.

In corners. Between pages. Along the edges of library tables and between stacks of toast at breakfast.

“Malfoy went to her office. After lights-out.”

“Didn’t even knock, they said. Just walked in.”

“It wasn’t about Granger. He said—‘Student abuse. Procedural oversight. Power abuse.’ Like it was a bloody board meeting.”

“She smiled the whole time. One of those too-small ones. You know.”

“And said, ‘That will be noted in your disciplinary file, Mr. Malfoy.’”

A pause, always, at that part.

And then—

“He didn’t flinch.”

“Didn’t even raise his voice.”

“Looked disgusted, though. Like she was something he’d scrape off his robes.”

“He’s on her Disruption Watch List now.”

A hush always followed that line.

Because the list was real.

The list meant your mail got read. Your detentions doubled. Your footsteps echoed too loudly in corridors suddenly too quiet.

It meant you were being watched.

Not whispered about.

That night, the hospital wing was still. Quiet in the way only certain rooms in Hogwarts could be—charmed against noise, grief, and whatever couldn’t be healed.

Hermione lay curled on her side beneath a wool blanket, hand loosely bandaged, face turned toward the shuttered windows. Madam Pomfrey had administered a numbing salve, muttered something about deep tissue spells and "wounds that resist closure," then dimmed the sconces and disappeared behind the curtain.

She hadn’t stirred since.

The door creaked open just past midnight.

No one spoke. No footsteps echoed.

Draco stood at the threshold, robes dusted faintly with cold, something tucked under his arm. He didn’t step fully inside.

Just enough.

Just close enough to see her there. The faint glow from the sconces cast her profile in pale amber—the tight set of her jaw, the twitch of her fingers even in sleep.

He hesitated.

Then crossed to the small table beside her bed. Slowly. Deliberately.

He placed a book down. Magical Resistance Through Educational Frameworks. Its spine was cracked from use.

Inside: a folded scrap of parchment. Tucked just behind the dedication page.

He didn’t linger. By the time the curtain stirred, he was already gone. Like he’d never been there at all. 

When Hermione opened her eyes an hour later, throat dry and hand aching, she saw the book. And the note.

You were right. They’re afraid of you.

And for the first time since the words carved into her skin, she let herself feel it.

The clarity that comes after pain.

The light when she woke was wrong.

Too golden to be early morning. Too steady to be candlelight.

It poured through the tall mullioned windows in quiet sheets, washing the hospital wing in pale sun and long shadows. Hermione stirred beneath the stiff white blankets, the sterile scent of spell salves clinging to the air. Her hand throbbed under the bandages—dull, rhythmic, like a memory that refused to fade.

She didn’t remember falling asleep. Only Madam Pomfrey’s muttering. The sharp scent of cooling charms. The cold. The ache. And the weight of the book still resting across her lap.

It hadn’t been there when she arrived.

Now it balanced perfectly—deliberate, unmoved—with a folded scrap of parchment slipped between its pages. The note lay like a whisper.

Outside the curtain, voices murmured. Tight. Sharpened at the edges.

“This is political, Headmaster,” Madam Pomfrey was saying. “I know what this is.”

A pause.

Then, Dumbledore. Quiet. Calm.

“Not everything that must be done begins with what can be said.”

The curtain drew back.

He stepped into the light as if he belonged to it—robes trailing behind him like smoke from a smothered fire, his expression carved in something older than serenity.

He said nothing.

Didn’t offer morning pleasantries. Didn’t ask how she felt.

His gaze found her hand. Not the rest of her. Just the bandage.

He looked—and kept looking.

And in that stillness, Hermione saw it all: the blaze that lived beneath his calm, the way sorrow and fury could share a silence. He didn’t need to rage. He didn’t need to speak.

His eyes did that for him.

They held the kind of fire that didn’t burn rooms—it reshaped them.

Finally, he met her eyes.

“Rest,” he said softly. “We’ll talk later.”

A beat.

“The castle remembers.”

He turned without another word, the hem of his robes brushing the floor like a storm passing through velvet. 

The day passed slowly after that.

Visitors thinned. Whispers faded. Even the sunlight, once bold, seemed to pull back as the afternoon waned, curling into corners and shadowing the tiles like it, too, had grown quiet.

Hermione sat propped against the pillows, hand wrapped in gauze, the ache more familiar now. Duller. Sharper. Both.

The book remained in her lap. The note no longer folded.

She’d read it.

Again.

You were right. They’re afraid of you.

She didn’t rewrite her original letter or reach for the neat policy draft tucked in her folder. Instead, she opened her notebook. Pages flipped past her fingertips like breaths she hadn’t taken: names and signatures, rebuttals and reasoned arguments, ink-thin hope folded and refolded until the paper weakened.

Then—blank parchment.

Finally, with her bandaged hand, she uncapped her quill. The grip felt foreign now. Slower. Sharper as she wrote. Each letter pulled deliberately from pain. Each curve edged in defiance.

Plan B: Reform Without Permission

The ink shimmered faintly. Absorbed itself into the page.

She exhaled and closed the notebook.

Outside, frost had crept onto the edge of the windowpane—thin, sharp, blooming like scars made of breath.

The skin would scar.

So would the silence.

Let them.