Chapter 12
She would rather bleed than touch it. She’d touched it once before, only because there’d been no other choice. This was different. This was voluntary.
But that didn’t matter. Because this morning, she had promised him she would let him help her with the wand.
Hermione stood frozen in the center of the room, spine stiff, hands limp at her sides. The early light filtered through the windows in thin, unforgiving lines, and the cottage around her felt too quiet, like even the air was holding its breath in sympathy for her. Her eyes were fixed on the hearth, but not because of the cold. She wasn’t cold.
She was terrified.
It had been buried for so long, tucked away where her fingers couldn’t reach it and her thoughts couldn’t wander too close. She’d been careful—obsessively so. Out of sight. Out of reach. Like if she never touched it again, she’d never have to feel the way it had felt then. When she had tried to help Malfoy, it had been proof that she needed to get away from that.
The floor creaked beneath her step, her pulse was thunder in her ears. She stepped forward and then stopped, overwhelmed by her body remembering what her mind had worked so hard to forget. The wand hadn’t broken that day, but something else had. Something in her.
Another step. Her legs shook. Her hands moved automatically, as if guided by a memory she didn’t consent to. She knelt slowly, hands already damp with sweat, and slid the board free. The cloth bundle stared up at her, still exactly as she’d left it.
Her fingers hesitated. Not for long—but long enough that she hated herself for it. Hermione seemed to enjoy living hostage to hesitation.
The second her fingers brushed the edge of the cloth, she flinched. The cloth was cold. The wand inside, colder. She unfolded it like something sacred, or cursed.
Hermione knew it was stupid, irrational. It wasn’t alive. It couldn’t hurt her. But her heart pounded so loud it drowned out the logic, and by the time she unwrapped it, her vision was swimming with heat she refused to call tears.
The wand looked innocent. It wasn’t. It looked harmless. It wasn’t. It looked like it belonged to her. It didn’t— not anymore.
Her fingers hovered just above the familiar wood, twitching once… then twice. She could almost hear the whisper of spells gone wrong. The echoes of curses. Her own screams, faint and faraway.
And when she finally curled her hand around it, the contact made her gasp. Magic sang up her arm like an electric wire. She recoiled instinctively, clutching the wand in her fist like a lifeline and a weapon all at once. Her lungs seized. Her knees nearly gave out.
She didn’t want to feel this.
But she did.
Oh, she did.
It was hers. Still. Always. And somehow, that was the worst part.
Hermione closed her eyes.
And let it burn.
She stood slowly, the floorboard groaned beneath her as she stepped away from the hearth, and that tiny sound—so ordinary—felt deafening.
But Malfoy was outside, waiting for her, she reminded herself again.
The thought alone nearly sent her spiraling. With every passing second, she regretted agreeing to his proposal. Accepting his help meant letting him knock a few more bricks off the wall she had created around herself. She didn’t want to be seen. Not like this. Not with her shame and scars so exposed. But if she didn’t walk out that door now, she wouldn’t forgive herself later.
Gold and dusky pink had just begun to warm the sky, stretching over the vast sea that lapped against the secluded stretch of beach. It was too early for anyone to be awake—or at least, it would have been, had Hermione not felt the silent weight of an unspoken promise pressing against her chest.
Draco was already outside, standing near the edge of the shoreline, hands buried in her father’s jeans. The ocean wind tossed strands of his pale hair across his forehead, but his gaze remained fixed inland—toward her. Before Hermione reached him, his eyes flicked briefly to the wand in her hand, then to her face.
Each step towards him felt like a betrayal of the girl who’d buried this wand beneath the floor. But she couldn’t be that girl anymore. Not if she wanted to live.
“You actually came.”
“You’re not that surprised.”
“No,” he admitted, noticing her hands, “But you’re shaking.”
Her hand clenched tighter around the wand, and she resisted the urge to hide it behind her back. “I’m fine.”
“That’s a lie,” he said calmly, and—annoyingly—without judgment.
“Shut up, Malfoy.”
He smirked. “There she is.”
She hated that he always pushed her just enough to make her feel something. It was calculated. And effective.
His mouth twitched—something between a smirk and something too tired to be one. “I won’t ask you to cast anything.”
Hermione doubted she had ever felt such relief. He gestured, carefully, toward the sand a few feet away. “Will you just… sit with it? For now?”
Malfoy turned away to give her the illusion of privacy. Sat down on the sand and leaned back on his hands like he didn’t care whether she joined him or not. She did. Eventually. Although she was a little afraid of what would come out of it.
They sat like that for a while, as if that was the whole point of being there. As if nothing else mattered apart from the waves moving back and forth, the seagulls in the distance. His voice was the first to break the peace that had settled over them.
“You’re holding it like it bit you,” he said, not unkindly.
She didn’t look at him. “It might as well have.”
“Has it done anything yet?”
“No,” she whispered.
“Then maybe don’t punish it for what it hasn’t done.”
Malfoy's words reached a place in her that they weren't supposed to, making her shudder. Her reaction didn't go unnoticed by him. And she hated that.
“I’m not—” she started, then stopped.
Draco looked over at her finally, tilting his head just enough to catch her eyes. “I’m not asking you to trust it. Or yourself. Just hold it. That’s it.”
“That’s not nothing,” she muttered.
“I know.”
Just two words were enough to wreak havoc in Hermione's chest. The way they slipped out of his mouth, wrapped in a layer of softness and concern that she wasn't used to. Least of all from him. His gaze kept flicking to her hands, the way her fingers wrapped around the wand like she might drop it or stab it into the ground.
After a long moment, he moved, slowly. He didn’t say a word as he shifted closer—just enough to make her heart betray her.
“I’m going to touch your hand,” he said, voice low and deliberate. “Alright?”
Hermione felt the gears of her mind stop working, as if someone had unplugged her. He stared at her expectantly, waiting for her answer, but she felt tongue-tied, unable to form words. Her stomach flipped, and it was not because of the wand.
She nodded once, subtly, unsure of what to expect.
His hand slid over hers—barely there, more suggestion than contact. His fingers didn’t curl around hers, not yet. He just guided the tension in her grip with feather-light pressure. Adjusted her posture with the smallest tilt of his wrist.
Breathing has become too elaborate a task.
She couldn’t breathe.
He was behind. Not like the other times it happened. This was closer. Calmer. Patient. Adjectives she never thought she would one day attribute to Draco Malfoy. His knees bracketing hers in the sand. His chest not quite against her back—but close enough to feel. His knees hugged hers in the sand. His chest wasn't quite against her back, but he was close enough to feel it. And, oh, how she felt him.
His voice brushed her neck when he spoke.
“You’re not trying to cast,” he murmured. “You’re just… remembering how to hold it.”
Her eyelids fluttered shut. The wand felt heavy in her hand now, finally something real.
“Don’t think,” he said. “Just be here.”
With you, she thought. And hated herself for it.
She let her shoulders ease back, just a little. Her fingers loosened. Strangely, her body was obeying his request.
Draco’s hand ghosted over hers again, this time with a little more pressure. His palm was warm, grounding. His breath stirred the hair behind her ear, and she hated the way it made her knees press into the sand.
She could feel him — all of him.
“You’re not broken,” he said suddenly, and the words slammed into her harder than any hex.
Hermione's throat tightened, a suffocation leaving her in despair.
“You think you are,” he continued, voice barely above the wind, “but you’re not.”
She turned her head to look at him, startled by the certainty in his eyes.
“You don’t know what I am.”
“No,” he agreed. “But I’ve seen what you’re not.”
Their faces were inches apart now. Breath mingling. The wand still between them like a live wire.
“Malfoy—”
His eyes sinned by choosing her mouth as the destination to rest on for a few seconds. He was motionless and she didn't dare move a muscle either. And for a moment, it felt like something was going to break.
But it didn’t.
Instead, he let go of her hand, standing up and making the distance between them safer.
Took a step back, and the chill hit her like a bucket of seawater.
“We’ll try again tomorrow,” he said, voice clipped now.
She stared at his back as he walked away. The wand was still warm in his hand. The ghost of his touch burned on her skin, but it was inside her that the fire burned.
***
The rest of the day passed in quiet.
Hermione sat on the beach for a long time after he left, without courage to face him. She let the sand shift beneath her palms, stared out at the water, and turned Draco’s words over and over in her mind.
Her fingers tightened around the wand again, the wood familiar and cold under her touch. It felt like an echo, a reminder of the person she had once been. There was nothing but emptiness now, a hollow weight that clung to her palm as if it were tied to her very soul, dragging her down.
Long gone were the days when bright, sharp bursts of light escaped from her wand. She had never questioned its power or its ability to make her do exactly what she wanted. But that was before. Before everything shattered.
Her chest tightened as she remembered the first time her wand had failed her. She could still feel the panic rising in her throat, the hot wave of fear when she realized that the wand wasn't responding, that the magic wasn't there when she needed it most. It wasn't just a spell that had gone wrong. It was something deeper. Hermione had become a petal without flowers, but with a rotten root that contaminated the soil in which she had once been planted. The magic she had trusted for so long had betrayed her. And in that moment, she was forced to accept that it wasn't just her wand that had broken.
It was her. All of her.
She couldn't keep up with the chaos of the war. She had been broken long before she realized it. So it didn't matter how much Draco tried to convince her of the opposite. He couldn't see inside her, the dust that accumulated in the cracks that grew every day, sucking her into the abyss.
The thought made her sick, and she tried to push it aside, but it clung to her like the cold, salty air around her. And it wasn’t just the war that had shattered her. It was the guilt that came with it - the weight of others expecting more from her, of having to diminish herself in order not to be considered a bad person, of writing off her scars in order to take care of those of others. But Hermione quickly blamed herself for these thoughts, for wasting her time with such frivolous feelings compared to those of Harry and Ron. She felt ashamed of herself, especially for wanting more than she had left
The wand in her hand didn’t just carry the memory of spells—it carried all of that, all of the failure and the loss. It carried everything she had wanted to forget, everything she had buried deep inside her.
That was why she had left. Left the life she had known. Left the wizarding world behind.
The island had been her sanctuary, a place where the world couldn't reach her, a place where war could no longer hurt her, where she could drown her pain and guilt at the bottom of the ocean. The muggle life had been peaceful, simple. It had been a balm for the rawness inside her. For once, she didn't need to be strong. She hadn't needed to have answers. She had been able to simply exist, to heal in her own way, without the constant reminder of who she had been and what she had failed to do.
But now, here she was, holding her wand again, learning that both pain and guilt can swim, and will always swim until they reach the shore of Hermione's mind.
And she hated it.
She hated how much she still wanted the power the wand represented. How much she craved the feeling of control, of knowing that when she flicked it, when she spoke the incantation, it would work. She loathed how much she wanted that again, how much she wanted to feel like the Hermione Granger who had faced the darkness with nothing but her wits, her heart and her magic. She hated how, despite everything, a part of her still believed that magic was the answer. That if she could just get it right again, everything would fall into place and be fine.
But she knew that wasn’t true. She knew it wasn’t that simple.
Because holding the wand now felt like holding a broken part of herself. Like trying to rebuild something that had been shattered, only to find that the pieces didn’t fit together anymore. She didn't even know if she still had them all.
She closed her eyes, her throat tight. Maybe it had never been about the wand, after all. Maybe it had never been about the spells or the power. Maybe it had been about believing in herself. Maybe, somewhere along the way, she had lost that belief. Lost the part of herself that had believed in the magic, that had believed in her ability to shape the world around her. It was difficult to resurrect a version that had already been buried and given a funeral.
The wind picked up, tugging at her hair, but it couldn’t move her. The sky above was darkening now, the soft hues of dusk stretching across the horizon. The ocean rolled relentlessly beneath her, but she couldn't hear it. She couldn't hear it anymore. Her mind was making too much noise
In that moment, Hermione felt the weight of everything she had left behind—the war, the wand, the girl she had been—and it was suffocating. The island had given her peace, but it had also reminded her of everything she had lost. Everything she was too afraid to try and find again.
That night, after forcing herself to eat something, Hermione cleaned up the kitchen, careful not to make too much noise. Her wand lay on the table, far away enough from her touch.
The living room was bathed in warm, soft light. The storm lamp on the table flickered lazily. The air smelled like the remnants of tea and something faintly herbal. Draco was sitting on the arm of the couch, one long leg stretched out, still wearing that smug, untouchable expression like it had been stitched into his skin.
He didn’t say anything when she walked in. Just looked up from the book in his lap and met her eyes.
There it was again—that buzz . That hum under the surface. That taut wire strung between them that refused to snap. Hermione cleared her throat, trying to make her voice sound normal.
“You used to read fiction?”
He shrugged, like it wasn’t important. “I was bored. You’ve got terrible taste, by the way, Granger.”
“Funny, I was just about to say the same about you,” she snapped back, slipping off her shoes and walking toward the small kitchen alcove.
“Still tense?” he called after her.
“Still insufferable?”
He chuckled softly. And it grated on her. Or thrilled her. She couldn’t tell anymore. It was late, and she was tired. Her eyes drifted, unbidden, toward the bedroom. And Draco, damn him, noticed . He stood leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed, watching her.
“You should sleep in the bed.”
Hermione stiffened. “I’m fine on the sofa.”
“You’re clearly not.”
“It’s just easier,” she said quickly, remembering the night they both slept in her bed. “We already did this once. Don’t make it a thing.”
Draco was quiet for a moment, his face unreadable, before he pushed himself off the doorframe and moved toward her, each step controlled. "Obviously," he muttered with a dry humor that didn’t quite reach his eyes. "But this isn't about the sofa, is it?"
He was too close again. Just like earlier. Not touching, but there, and it was just as potent.
She crossed her arms, a shield to protect her from him. “Don’t pretend to know what I’m thinking.”
“I don’t need to. It’s written all over you.”
“That I don’t want to sleep in the same bed as you ? Yes, I think that’s pretty obvious.”
His eyes glittered. “That’s not what you’re afraid of.”
Hermione’s breath hitched. He wasn’t smirking anymore. He looked serious. Dangerous. Right on the edge of something.
“What am I afraid of, then?” she whispered, eyes locked on his.
He didn’t answer. Not with words. Just a slow, loaded look that dropped from her eyes to her mouth—and lingered there. When he finally turned away, it felt like someone had pulled the air from the room.
He walked to the bed, sat down on the far side, and pulled the cover back. “Suit yourself,” he said, tone lazy now, back to that irritating drawl. “But you snore. So maybe the distance is a mercy.”
Hermione scowled at him.
She didn’t sleep in the bed. But she didn’t sleep much on the sofa either. She kept hearing the whisper of his voice. The rasp of his breath. The phantom brush of his hand over hers.