Shielded

“Ugh, I feel like we’re simultaneously so close and so far!” exclaimed Malfoy, breaking the silence they had been in for the past few hours.

They had been reading companionably for the entirety of the afternoon, sparingly making remarks to each other or asking questions, but otherwise their only interruption was when Hermione decided they could do with a cup of tea, and had gone to make one. Hermione, who had been lulled by the peaceful, studious stillness, jumped in her seat at the interruption.

“What do you mean?”

“This book!” He held up The Art of Imbibing Intangible Objects with Magic. “It’s discussing magic that feels like it’s so close to what we need, but it’s ever so slightly off! Like if they had taken the research one step further, it would’ve been something useful!”

“Example?”

“Well the book mainly focuses on Hughmont’s research about the ability to inject magic into other magical artifacts, such as into Patronuses or Legilimency projections and the like, and according to what he discusses, it acts like a bolstering mechanism. So the Patronuses grow stronger and the projections more effective. And I thought that this sounded a lot like what happened to the Occlumency shield, except that the Occlumency shield isn’t just strengthened , it’s also been fundamentally altered, which this magical anchoring technique doesn’t do! All this approach does is allow magic to be injected where magic already exists, which, no offense to this guy, but who really cares. Not to mention that it therefore has no applicability in situations where there isn’t something to anchor to, so it’s completely irrelevant when there’s no pre-existing shield.”

“Right,” agreed Hermione. “Fundamental properties of the shield have to be changed to set it up and keep you from accessing or conveying your memories, and that cannot be achieved by simply strengthening them. Ugh, I wish we knew what the magic of acquiring the shield felt like, it would make it so much easier to deduce the process.” She chewed her lip in thought before looking at him. “Do you have any memories of the initiation process?”

Malfoy shook his head dejectedly. “No. I mean, I remember the ceremonies and the vow and the Dark Mark application, but between the intensity of the magic that was binding us and my own anxiety at the time, the whole thing is hazy in retrospect. I keep trying to remember when the shield may have popped up, but I truly didn’t notice it.”

Hermione nodded sympathetically.

Malfoy continued, “Which brings back up your point that if he was altering existing shields, how did he know which to change without us noticing?” (Hermione blushed in shame at the memory of her own tactless conclusions but said nothing.) “Maybe he did something to the shields so he could look past them to find where memories about him were stored, which would mean he had to do something that weakened them, and this magical imbibing doesn’t do that either. This Doherty guy who co-authored the book briefly mentioned something about manipulating the artifact being targeted, but didn’t go in depth about it at all. Maybe if we had found a book authored by him instead…” Malfoy huffed out a frustrated breath and closed the book, ruffling his hair.

Hermione, seeing that Malfoy seemed done with research for the night, looked out the window and noticed it was getting dark with surprise. Was it evening already?

She got up and stretched, looking around for a light switch, when a pang of hunger hit her. It was only then that she realized that they had entirely forgotten to eat lunch.

“Malfoy! We forgot to eat anything!”

Malfoy was watching at her stretch with a dazed expression, but he shook himself of it so quickly she wondered if she had imagined it.

“Should we have an early dinner?”

At that moment, Hermione’s stomach growled, and she grimaced at him sheepishly. “Yeah, I think that would be a wise choice. It needs to be something quick — I’ll get started now.”

He chuckled under his breath, raising his arms before stretching himself. Hermione whipped around in her haste to avoid her gaze landing on the strip of stomach that always showed itself when he did that, blushing slightly, and marched to the kitchen to take inventory of what they had. 

It seemed Mrs. Peppers had largely packed a variety of vegetables and herbs alongside eggs, some dairy products, pasta, bread, and two bottles of wine. Too hungry to plan that far in advance, Hermione took one of each vegetable excluding the potato and began slicing up an aubergine, deciding to make up the dish as she went along.

“Can I help?” came Malfoy’s voice from directly behind her, and she whirled around in alarm, only to bump into the counter when she realized he had been right behind her. Like, right behind her.

He shuffled back in surprise, raising his hands. “My apologies! I was trying to see what you were doing.”

Hermione, who was feeling surprisingly on edge, chuckled nervously, and said, “Oh, no problem, you just startled me! But no need, I can handle this.”

To her surprise, he just furrowed his eyebrows and set his jaw. “I’d like to help if I can.”

“Have you ever chopped vegetables?”

He flushed at this, but stood resolutely. “No, but I’d like to learn.”

Her jaw dropped in surprise. Draco Malfoy had just admitted not knowing something. To her. And then had asked her to teach him. And of all things, a menial task like… vegetable prep?

His blush deepened and he mumbled, “Nevermind,” turning to head back to their table, and she quickly reached to grab his wrist.

“No, no, I’m sorry for my reaction. Of course I’d be happy to teach you.”

Like always, he tensed up at her touch, but for a moment, neither of them made a move to pull away. She felt the strange urge to rub her thumb along his skin. Instead, she used her grasp to pull him toward the cutting board, and laid his hand on the handle of the knife that she had been using before releasing him. He flexed his fingers slightly at the lost contact and let out a shaky-sounding breath.

“So,” she started, then realizing her voice was raspy, cleared her throat before trying again.

“So, this is very similar to ingredient prep in potions. There are different ways to cut vegetables, and each vegetable requires different considerations. For example, aubergines and courgettes are easy because they don’t have a peel that has to be removed and they’re solid on the inside, so you don’t have to deal with any seeds. Tomatoes and peppers, on the other hand, are finickier because their insides have seeds, so you have to contend with those. And then onions and garlic are different because they have to be peeled. But onions are their own beast, so I’ll do those. Are you okay to continue the aubergine slicing?”

He nodded once decisively before rolling up his sleeves and picking up the abandoned knife.

“I should just keep slicing the way you were?” he asked.

“Yes, and then cut the circular slices in half.”

He nodded, and then with great focus, holding the aubergine in one hand while lining up his knife with the other, began cutting precise, parallel slices that matched her progress so far. Hermione felt her insides flutter at his firm, suggestive grasp on the vegetable, with his hips thrust close to it by the counter, and then started at her own errant thought. What was wrong with her?? Why did she keep perverting this poor guy just living his life?

Maybe it was the low blood sugar. Or how close he had stood to her just now. Or how close they had been on the horse. Or feeling his pulse at his wrist with her fingertips. Or how graceful and elongated his hands were, with their tendons and smooth, unblemished skin. They were strong and confident, and comfortably moved to complete the task they were set to do, fingers lithely adjusting themselves to more effective positions. Hermione swallowed and felt her insides heating. She needed to look away, but she couldn’t, eyes locked on the hypnotic movements, her insides warring to continue the fantasy while simultaneously not allowing herself to do so.

She watched his progress, before feeling her eyes wander to his exposed forearms. She saw the faint lines of the Dark Mark, but her eyes were drawn from that to the veins she saw in his arms, and she briefly wondered whether he had been exercising while on house arrest. His muscles and sinews moved as he continued the chopping movement.

“Is this good?” Malfoy murmured, and Hermione had the mortifying inclination to moan at the low timber it gave his voice. In fact, Malfoy’s voice was always very nice.

“Granger?” he asked, looking over his shoulder at her, clearly disconcerted by her lack of response.

“Huh?” She jolted, finally shaken of her reverie. “Oh, yeah, that’s perfect! You’ve been promoted to courgette slicing! Let me… let me go put on some pasta to boil.”

She quickly shuffled away, using the moment of reprieve to gather her wits. She needed to get herself together.

When she turned back, she saw his sleeves were lowered again, and she felt a moment of shame. Had he seen her stare before she looked away and assumed it was the Mark she had been focused on? And how was she meant to correct his erroneous conclusion without making him newly uncomfortable with the admission that she was ogling him?

Great, now she was even more flustered. She grabbed the onion and almost aggressively cut it in half before beginning to peel it. She was acting like a petulant, sexually frustrated teenager. She felt Malfoy glance at her warily and had the overwhelming need to distract him from her odd mood. She flailed, trying to think of a way to do so, and as always, landed on blabbering about nothing.

“Did you know tomatoes are fruit?” she improvised.

He looked at her questioningly. “Fruit? How do you mean?”

Eagerly, she grasped onto this topic. “Fruit are by definition the edible part of the plant which serves in reproduction by holding the seeds. They’re meant to be eaten so the seeds will then be dispersed by any animals that consume the fruit, increasing the odds of the plant’s survival. So any plant part we eat which contains seeds is a fruit. Like, for example, tomatoes.” At this, she finished chopping the onion, and moved them to the side to make room for said tomato.

He nodded thoughtfully, refocusing on slicing.

“In fact,” she continued, feeling slightly manic, slicing her tomato quickly, “while I’d call what we’re eating tonight vegetable pasta, it’s in fact fruit pasta, as everything we’re adding besides the onions and garlic are fruit by this definition. I don’t know if you know this, but a lot of religions consider fruit a sign of fertility for exactly this reason, and eat them as a sign of celebration. I mean, because they’re the reproductive part of the plant, not because we’re putting them in pasta. Uh, anyway, pomegranates are popular in these celebrations, but maybe we should get them eating this instead - way more fruit variety.” She laughed slightly hysterically. He looked at her with consternation. She was rambling.

“I’d say let’s bring this to our neighboring clergymen, but I doubt they’d have much use for celebrating fertility. In fact, I wonder if we’re the only nonvirgins on this property.” Oh god, why’d she have to bring up fruit. Now she somehow toppled into the topic of their sexual habits, and that was not helping the conundrum she was shaking herself of.

Malfoy, who had largely been ignoring her nonsense, now looked at her with apparent shock at this last statement.

“Ugh, I’m so sorry, I don’t know what I’m blathering about. I think being hungry is making me jittery. Let me just… get started sauteeing this up.” She turned to the stove again, where the water was bubbling, and dumped in the pasta with some salt before setting up a frying pan with butter to begin melting. She turned back to her cutting board, taking the bell pepper to cut it in half and deseed it. She then gave the other half to Malfoy, who had finished his courgette.

“Final vegetable. Just slice it like this.” She showed him a few slices before he picked it up.

“Final fruit, you mean,” he said, shooting her a small smile. Her stomach flipped, and she smiled back gratefully, finishing her own bell pepper faster than him before tossing the onions in the pan.

“If you’re right about them, you’d be the only one,” Malfoy spoke up suddenly. She turned to him, confused. The apples of his cheeks were lightly pink.

“What do you mean?” The aroma of the onion softening was calming her down.

“Erm, well, if you’re right about our neighbors also being virgins, you’d be the only one who… who wasn’t one.” He was very focused on his bell pepper.

She quickly ran through what he said, trying to decipher it, before it dawned on her.

“Ohhh! You’re a virgin?”

He nodded obstinately. She felt gobsmacked. Well, if nothing else, this finally jolted her out of her strange mood. Understanding his embarrassed demeanor now, she quickly rushed to reassure him.

“Oh, I’m so sorry for making assumptions! It was just that to me you’re very… nevermind, that isn’t relevant. Well, thanks for correcting me. Do you… do you want to talk about it or leave it alone?”

He eyed her skeptically. She tried her best to look approachable, which was much more natural to her than her unhinged behavior until then.

He looked back down, finishing his bell pepper slicing. Thinking he might prefer to talk if he had somewhere else to look, she quickly started peeling a clove of garlic, showed him how to crush and slice it, and then gave him three more. He began the peeling process for the next clove.

“Well, there isn’t much to discuss,” he said slowly. “Growing up, I just hadn’t ever really had much interest in anything to do with sex, and with… everything else going on I hadn’t really had the energy to consciously think of it. Then after Azkaban, I made my vow of celibacy to my father, so at that point I deliberately took it off the table for myself.”

“Wait, vow of celibacy??” Hermione was dumbfounded.

“… Yes? It means I’ll abstain—“

“I understand what it is, I just don’t understand why!”

“Oh. Well, when I swore to my father I wouldn’t have children, I vowed I’d remain celibate to ensure it.” He shrugged casually.

Hermione was doing everything she could not to gape at him. “But… but… isn’t that a bit extreme? Haven’t you ever felt attracted to anyone at all?”

He glanced at her so quickly she almost missed it, blushing profusely.

“Sorry, sorry, that was rude of me,” she hurriedly apologized, “I shouldn’t pry. I was just curious about how far it extended, like if you’ve kissed anyone, or just the whole idea of physical intimacy was never your thing.”

He looked at her somewhat affronted.

“Of course I’ve kissed people! It’s a standard part of greeting women in the circles I run in, and it never particularly appealed to me beyond that.”

She suppressed the urge to laugh. “Okay, okay, fair enough. But just so you know, kissing someone romantically isn’t the same as greeting your great-aunt.”

He looked at her once more with questioning eyes, but then shrugged off whatever he was going to ask, finishing the garlic chopping.

She tossed the remaining vegetables in the frying pan, contemplating their conversation.

“How about you?” His question surprised her, but on reflection, she decided it was only fair.

“Ah, well, I’m obviously not a virgin. I… well, I dated Ron for a couple of years, and then I had a Muggle boyfriend while I was in university, so those were your typical monogamous relationships. And then since then it’s been largely casual.”

“Oh yeah, you mentioned the weasel git already. What happened there?”

She rolled her eyes. “We were just… really not suited for each other. Our approaches to our relationship were drastically different, and after 2 years, it was hard to fix it. We’re too set in our respective ways. In fact,” she chuckled wryly, adding the garlic and herbs to the vegetable mixture before pouring in a bit of wine, “we were fighting for a long time after too. It was part of the reason that Allen – the guy from university – broke up with me. Too much of dragging my history with Ron into the picture. It’s only in the last few years that we’ve gotten back on friendly terms.”

“Let me guess, he found you controlling and you found him uninvested?”

She looked up from ladling pasta water into the vegetable sauce with surprise. “Yeah. Exactly. How’d you know?”

He shrugged. “Educated guess.”

She ruminated over this as she finished the dish off by grating in some cheese. 

“Weren’t you engaged at some point?” she asked after a moment.

He started, having been leaning against the counter and watching her cook. “Oh… well, I was betrothed to Astoria Greengrass for a long time, but then after the war, her family broke the betrothal. My father tried to negotiate a new betrothal after, which… which was the whole reason for our fallout. He tried to tie me to a 17-year-old 2 years ago.” Malfoy’s face twisted in disgust, and Hermione’s reflexively mirrored it. “That was when I swore I wouldn’t have children. It was… just too much to ask, both of me and the girl.”

She nodded sympathetically. It was completely understandable that he’d be so averse to marrying a teenager that he’d commit to not having children out of spite, but to swear himself to abstinence? That’s extreme. He had mentioned he had been betrothed to Astoria – Hermione could remember her, even though she had been a couple of years under them. She had been very pretty, and smart, as far as Hermione could remember. She thought Astoria had been a bit shy, but overall had exuded the regal confidence that Malfoy did as well. They would have probably suited each other. 

Maybe he was just so disappointed that their engagement had fallen through that he couldn’t bear the idea of being with someone else? A bit dramatic, but Malfoy was known to be prone to drama. Hermione remembered his odd reaction to being asked if he’s been attracted to anyone, and wondered whether he had been thinking of Astoria. Probably, she mused. Who else even was there? He’d been on house arrest since the war, and it wasn’t like being on the run gave one much of a chance to date.

She drained the pasta and mixed it in before serving the two of them in silence. Malfoy had, in the meantime, moved their research materials off the table to make space, and she put down the two plates with cutlery and a glass of wine. The food was… okay, Hermione decided after a bite. She was shocked when Malfoy laid into it with vigor she hadn’t seen him show in the past few days. He finished his plate in the time it took her to eat a quarter, and then got up to serve himself the rest before cleaning that up too. She finished her first plate after he finished his second.

At this point, she was additionally surprised by him getting up to clean up their dishes. He washed the plates and glasses first, placing them at their same disparate positions as he had at her house, before he washed the cooking dishes. He looked with confusion between the drying rack and the deep pot the pasta had been cooked in.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, breaking their silence they’d held as they ate.

“Oh… well I’m not sure where to put this to dry,” he admitted.

“If you move the plates forward, you can fit it behind them by letting it hang over the end.”

“Ah, makes sense.”

“Why do you put your dishes like that anyway?”

The blush she was beginning to get used to reappeared. “Well… it was how you put the dishes when you had been drying them at your place. Plates in back, glasses in front.”

Now it was she who blushed, but to her surprise, it was in pleasure at having been noticed. “Oh! Well that’s just because I like putting them in order of size. It can be however you like.”

He nodded at this, but did as she suggested and put the frying pan and pot behind the plates. When he returned to the table, they picked their research materials back up, returning to their studious silence.

–

Draco was rereading the same sentence over and over. He couldn’t help it. He was too anxious. It was getting late, and Granger had gone to brush her teeth, indicating that bedtime was encroaching. He had been trying to mentally brace himself for this inevitability, but between the excitement of meeting Deacon John and the investment in conducting research, the preparation kept slipping his mind, and he now felt woefully unready.

He eyed the bed in the room with some misgiving. It was about the size of his bed at the manor, and he knew he had a bad habit of spreading himself out on there. What if he pushed her off the bed? Or even worse, what if she stayed, and he spent all night touching her? He decided not to overanalyze the way his blood sped up at this thought, and chose to ignore the lingering pressure he felt where she had touched his wrist earlier that day.

He was better than this. He had had extreme control over this part of his life until now, and he’d be able to maintain it for the next one or two nights until they could continue on their journey, Draco told himself. He just needed to keep his distance – after all, he was able to keep it riding on a horse with some success. How hard would it be to do the same on an unmoving bed?

Mind made up, he closed his book at the same time that Granger came out, and he swapped places with her in the bathroom to brush his own teeth. When he came back out, she was laying on one side of the bed, blanket tucked to her chin and looking at the ceiling. He climbed in beside her, turned off the light, and mirrored her pose. They stared at the gray expanse for a moment in silence.

“Draco?” said Granger, making him jolt at the use of his first name.

“Yeah?”

“Why did you roll your sleeves down when you were cooking earlier today?”

His breath caught. Her random conversation switch was very effective at shaking him of his hyperawareness that they were under the same blanket. “I knew it! You had been looking at my Mark!”

“I— no, no, I actually hadn’t.”

He scoffed. “Granger, no need to lie, why else would you be looking there.”

He could feel her tense, so he quickly tried to reassure her. “It’s okay, I don’t blame you. It’s just… still something I’d rather not remember being there. And it makes me feel bad when you notice it.” He was surprised at his own candor. Was it easier to talk about your feelings in the dark? He’d never shared a room with anyone he wanted to talk about his feelings to, so he had nothing to compare it against, but something about the apparent anonymity made it easier to be frank.

“No, really, I —“ she huffed, clearly struggling to convey her point. “Look, I wouldn’t say this otherwise, but I’d rather you be uncomfortable from the truth than uncomfortable from a misunderstanding, especially one of this type, so I’ll just go ahead and say it: I was looking at your forearms because… because you have really nice forearms.”

He heard a sudden shuffling sound, and when he glanced over, he saw she had thrown her arms over her face in an apparent effort to hide herself beyond the cover of dark. Then what she had said sank in.

“I have… nice forearms?” he repeated, befuddled. Was she making fun of him? “What does that even mean?”

She glanced at him from under the crook of his elbow. “It means you have nice forearms. I was… admiring them, and then when you noticed, I felt bad for ogling them, so I was too embarrassed to say anything, but I have no better way to explain it, and I don’t want you to think I was looking at your Mark.”

“Shut up.” Now he was angry. She was definitely making fun of him.

She lowered her arms, lifting her head to look at him in full now, clearly surprised.

“Shut up? What do you mean shut up??”

“I know you weren’t ogling me. Girls don’t ogle boys.”

She looked at him, mouth agape. He looked back petulantly.

“What… what do you mean girls don’t ogle boys?? Of course they do!”

“No, they don’t!”

“Malfoy, girls ogle boys all the time! In fact, I know girls specifically ogle you all the time! You must have noticed!”

He whipped his head, raising it to look back at her in surprise. “What do you mean??”

“I remember at Hogwarts that girls would look at you! And even now while we’re traveling, other women keep looking at you! Of course women can ogle!”

He was momentarily speechless. He remembered girls looking at him. He also remembered boys looking at him. Everyone looked at him. He was rich, and entitled, and obstinate. He had never interpreted them as looks of interest, which ogling definitely was. He decided to say as much.

“Granger, everyone looked at me at Hogwarts because I was a prat. The girls definitely weren’t ogling me.”

“Oh ho ho, believe me, they definitely were. If you don’t trust my judgement, trust me when I say I heard them talking about it.”

“What did they say??”

She eyed him in the dark speculatively, and he blushed for a reason he didn’t understand.

“They were saying how fit you were, and how charming, and they kept bragging about how you had held eye contact with them or used their quill when they offered or whatever. Which I’m now realizing may not have been the complete picture.”

“No, I didn’t even notice them. I have no idea who you’re even talking about,” he responded with complete candor. Then he narrowed his eyes. “I remember you staring at me.”

She was quiet for a moment. “Yeah, well, I actually thought you were a prat.”

“So you weren’t ogling me.”

“… No.”

Silence.

“But you were ogling me now?”

“Well… your forearms. Yes.”

Draco suddenly felt lighter than he had in years. He felt proud. Where was Deacon John when you needed him — Draco could show him how to properly swagger. He let out a laugh and fell back on his pillow.

“Wow. How the mighty have fallen.”

“Shut up,” said Granger, but he could hear the smile in her voice as she laid her head back down too. “Anyway, I’m sorry about that. And for not saying something sooner. I just don’t want you being self-conscious of your Mark.”

His heart sank a little at her apology, but not enough that he couldn’t jokingly quip back, “Oh no, now I just need to be self conscious of my entire forearm.”

She lightly smacked him under the cover with a huff of a laugh, and turned on her side away from him. Taking that as the end of the conversation, he kept gazing at the ceiling, considering this development. He’d gotten compliments from Granger so far, but those had been in passing, almost thoughtless. This one somehow felt more… personal. She had been ogling him. He felt his pride swell. His outlook about himself was better than it had been in… a long time. Nothing could stop him. Maybe he needed to try flying without a broom, he felt so light.

Draco decided he needed to make her ogle him again — the after effects were wonderful. The idea brought him up short and he ruffled his brow. She said it had been his forearms though, which he couldn’t understand. How was he meant to recreate this if he couldn’t predict what she’d admire? He could start rolling up his shirtsleeves more, but that might diminish the effect. Then again, he remembered his continued responses to her plaits, and decided maybe not.

Still, knowing he could get Granger’s admiration was a heady feeling that he wanted to experience as much as possible. He would need to keep an eye on her and see if anything else resulted in a similar response. With this plan in mind, he turned to his side away from Granger, and with more ease than he had in a long time, fell into a deep sleep.