Turn Up the Music
Draco had smothered Hermione with gifts and attention since they’d received the news that he was going to see his mother. He’d always been engaged in conversations they’d had but now he paid even closer attention to everything she said, as if he were searching for something. She had three large bouquets of flowers – he’d fetched one a day – a large box of chocolates, a soft brown teddy bear that he thought was cute and a set of books that a TV show they’d begun watching was based on.
He gathered up his things as they readied to leave, Hermione was to apparate him to the house in Sussex but wasn’t required to stay. He waited until she left the living room before he placed down a stack of papers with a note attached, atop it was a small crystal statue in the shape of an otter. The last present he was going to give her for this, he promised himself as they walked out of the door. Draco leaned in close to her as she wrapped an arm around him and breathed her in, completely unaware that she had done the exact same thing.
They landed on the designated spot at the front of the house, in the shade of a huge oak tree. The house had four bedrooms too many for this visit, but it was set up to facilitate contact for families of all sizes. Pansy had met with her cousins and siblings there once a week during her probationary period. Draco didn’t immediately step away from Hermione, he clung to her for several moments more, looking down at her with an intense expression that she couldn’t decipher. As he began to step away from her, she traced her hand along his arm and down to his hand, which he had intentionally held towards her so that she could. He took her hand firmly in his before she could break contact and pulled her towards him.
“Don’t miss me too much, okay?” He smiled.
“I’ll try not to.” She chuckled as he let go and sauntered up to the front door, looking back at her once as he went and waved. She smiled to herself as she made her way back home.
She could hear the ruckus before she even opened the door. Luna, Pansy, Ginny and Romilda were all in the kitchen throwing together charcuterie boards and cocktails, music blaring and chattering loudly. She snuck upstairs first to use the bathroom and change into comfortable clothes; she knew this night wouldn’t require her to look presentable. In fact, the less presentable they looked the better, there should be no inhibitions on girls’ night in.
“She’s back!” Romilda sang over the noise, picking up the food and taking it through to the back garden where they had laid out several picnic blankets on the grass. They’d also got beanbags from who knows where for them all to sit on too. “Girls, someone bring the speakers out.”
“Ladies, it’s 1pm on a Thursday afternoon..” Hermione giggled.
“Yes, and it’s the first time we’ve had an empty house for a month!” Pansy exclaimed. “And Romilda’s finally back, it would be rude not to!” She leaned in to whisper. “Don’t worry, I’ve already cast charms for your neighbours, they won’t be able to hear us.”
Hermione was glad of that several hours later when they’d spent most of their time loudly discussing Romilda’s antics on her little tour of Europe. She had the girls kicking their feet and squealing with some of the details she dished out, the men she’d encountered sounded divine. Eventually, inevitably, the conversation came back around to Draco. Romilda had missed out on everything so far, but there wasn’t much to tell other than the crash, which had made her cringe and beg not to hear any more details.
“So, you slept with him right?” Ginny asked Pansy. Pansy scoffed before laughing.
“No, I absolutely did not.” She attested. “We did… Stuff.. But no. I was a virgin when I met Neville!” All of them turned to her, slack jawed. “Oh, wow. It’s nice to know how you all thought of me back then.”
“Honestly, we all thought Slytherin house was fighting on weeknights and orgies on a weekend.” Luna bantered.
“What! No! There was a strong rumour that Blaise and Daphne were caught on a sofa in the common room but.. No, it wasn’t like that.” Pansy explained. “If anything, we were all just in competition with each other all the time.”
“So, if you didn’t then who did?” Romilda asked.
“Oh, let me just check my list of the people that everyone else has had sex with.. Oh, sorry, I don’t keep one.” Pansy rolled her eyes.
“Soo.. He’s still got his V card?” Ginny speculated. “Maybe that’s why he hasn’t tried it on with you yet..” She looked at Hermione, who had tried to stay out of the conversation.
“What?! Why would he do that?” She gasped.
“Oh please, he wants you so bad.” Pansy confirmed.
“He does look at you a lot..” Luna added.
“It sounds like I’ve missed a lot..” Romilda raised her eyebrows.
The conversation continued for the better part of an hour, Hermione made sure that they knew it was absolutely not on the cards but yes, obviously she found him attractive. He was an objectively good-looking man, but after everything she had been through, he’d need to be more than just physically appealing. Romilda told her not to be so uptight about it, but Hermione reminded her that last time she’d taken that advice she’d had to deal with Cormac for six months. Which led to the story of how Cormac was no longer an issue.
Friday morning started with a groggy head, Hermione felt drinking coffee would not be enough, she needed it injecting into her veins. She groaned as she rolled over in bed, Pansy was lay beside her, fast asleep and looking a little worse for wear too. Edgar was glaring at her from his radiator bed, angry that she’d ruined his morning cuddles. He followed Hermione downstairs as she went to dish his breakfast up and have the strongest coffee known to man.
She settled on the sofa, squinting in the daylight as she waited for the hangover potion to kick in. She noticed the pile of papers on the coffee table. She didn’t see the otter shaped crystal until it rolled across the table when she pulled the papers from under it. She swore under her breath, it had been too loud for her liking. On inspection she actually found it rather adorable, even more so that he’d remembered her corporeal patronus from the hospital that day. She read the note on top of the stack.
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Dear Hermione,
Your books have shown me a different side of you.
Consider this an opportunity to do the same if you’d like to.
It isn’t written to your literary standards, so I apologise for that.
Try not to miss me too much,
Draco.
P.S – The otter’s name is Barry Trotter.
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“Barry Trotter the otter.” She muttered as she turned it in her fingers and giggled slightly. “What a weirdo.” She sipped at her coffee and began reading immediately.
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I was born on the 5th of June 1980, at Malfoy Manor, in Wiltshire, England. For all intents and purposes, it was a life of great privilege, one that many could only dream of. I wish it had been perfect, the way that people would imagine it to be. I wish I had been surrounded by adults that I could trust to have my best interest at heart. I wish that I hadn’t been led so far astray in my desperate need for approval. I wish I hadn’t ended up in this cell. But all the same, I’m glad I did. Because my presence in this place means that Voldemort did not win, and for that reason alone, I am blessed. Had he won, there would be no one in prison, he would bestow the death penalty on someone for breathing out of line if he was in a bad mood. No one would have survived his New World Order, be that physically or mentally.
It's been three years since I first laid eyes on this room, three meters long and two meters wide – or there abouts. I have a bed, a desk, an uncomfortable chair, and a very basic bathroom through a solid metal door. I am allowed to leave it for my therapy session and to work out. I no longer have the privilege of freedom, or human contact. But at least I have the freedom to untangle the web of who I am and who I would like to be. When does one usually figure that out? Is it during school, but only if you’re not fighting for your life for half of the years there? Is it after school when you’re in the big wide world? Or are you born with it, does it become part of you the moment your soul connects to your body? I hope not, I would like to be someone different. Someone worthy of the great privilege I once had.
I asked Mr Moreau if I would ever be worthy of anything ever again, especially when all I had done to atone was sit in a prison cell. I hadn’t been a particularly fantastic student. I wasn’t a brilliant son. I didn’t stand up to the bad guys. I don’t possess great power. He simply asked me one question in return; ‘do you have to be exceptional in order to be forgivable?’ It’s food for thought, that’s for sure. I want to figure out who I can be, but first I must lay bare who I have been.
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Hermione knew that she’d spend the rest of the day reading this stack of papers, Draco was lefthanded, but his writing was spectacular. It was clear that he didn’t have any particular direction in which he aimed to go with his writing, he just wanted to put it down on paper. He began with his earlier memories, of playing with Dobby and the fact that he was his only company unless his parents were having a get together with the other families with children. In which case they’d be expected to be as far away from the parents as possible. There were memories where Dobby would be punished if Draco injured himself or they were being too loud. There were memories where Lucius would expect Draco to punish Dobby himself, which led to a deep conflict of emotions. On one side, he loved Dobby, and they were friends, they trusted one another. On the other, his father was someone he respected and feared and when it came down to it, Draco would punish Dobby just to save himself a punishment. The self-preservation efforts of a child against one of his parents wasn’t enjoyable to read, but it did help Hermione to understand why Draco had been easily manoeuvred into the role of killing Dumbledore.
He spoke about the fact that Dobby had become so enthralled with Harry Potter because Draco himself had talked about him relentlessly on the build up to attending Hogwarts. Many of his memories in school revolved around quidditch games, his rivalry with Harry, Ron and herself, and girls. Also, a lot of silly titbits about Crabbe and Goyle, they seemed like a less intelligent version of Fred and George, providing comedic relief in the Slytherin common room. She winced several times at the way he recalled thinking about her and the way he spoke to her. But then she read a page that had her set the stack down for a moment to digest.
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It had been so easy for me to believe her inferior. First of all, she hung around with the Wonder Twins, Ron, and Harry, that in and of itself was a problem to me. But she was also muggleborn. Something that I’d been raised to believe made her my enemy. As if her mere existence somehow impeded my own, I had the rights to my magic, she did not. I’d been raised to believe that she was somehow stealing what was inherently mine. In hindsight, I know that I was jealous of the attention she got for being so brilliant. She should not be brilliant; we should be the brilliant ones. Why weren’t we being celebrated? In truth, she was brilliant. I saw her take to magic like a duck to water, I saw how hard she studied and how much she tried to be like one of us. So desperate to fit in, so desperate to stand out. In the end, she’d proven herself stronger than me. On the floor of my home, underneath the wrath of my aunt Bella. I hadn’t held up that well under torture and for me it had been friendly fire, there were no holes barred for her.
I should have done something, anything. I had been awful to her for all of those years, but I didn’t want her to die in my home. I didn’t want her to bleed into my floors and live there forever. But seeing her blood run the same colour as my own did, I knew there was nothing pure about me and nothing dirty about her. It made me think about Cedric Diggory, the first wizard we had lost in the second wizarding war, he’d been pureblood, but you wouldn’t have known it to look at his corpse on the field that day. You could have put him next to a muggle and you wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference. The magic doesn’t live in our blood or our bodies, it lives in our souls, in the cosmic dust of which we are all born and will one day return. She deserved every ounce of the magic she wielded, just as much as I did. And so, I couldn’t identify her, I couldn’t confirm who she was, who I knew she was. And I hope she found peace. Wherever she ended up.
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Her hands were shaking, the juxtaposition of the memory he had written and the notes he had taken of his thoughts in hindsight made her chest ache. She’d expected a lot more resistance when she first decided to sponsor him, but now it made sense that he had been so agreeable. It was just a pity that it took watching her be tortured for him to finally see her as worthy. She began to wonder when, exactly, she had viewed him as worthy too. She made herself another coffee before continuing on.
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My mother married a cold man, and together they had a cold son. Or so I thought. I thought that I’d been born with a level of distance and coldness that afforded me the ability to be uncaring and unfeeling. But then Voldemort took over the Manor. It’s a big house, a lot of space to fill with screaming and boy did he fill it. Some days it was impossible to get away from. My presence had been ignored in the beginning, so I left every morning to sit by the creek that ran along the boundary of our property. I’d take books, food, drinks and – if I could find it – alcohol. I thought that summer would be the breaking of me, those sounds tore through me even when it was quiet. I’d pull myself from nightmares about them and find no relief in waking up.
Eventually my absence was noticed. That was the year my father had encouraged me to take the Dark Mark, placing the onus on me to be the salvation of our family name. I had been so desperate to be respected by him that I’d taken it without hesitation. My mother had been furious when she returned from France at the end of summer. He had promised her that I would be safe if I stayed with him, instead he had put my life on the line for the sake of his own redemption. I met the devil without trying that year, split between my aunt Bella and Voldemort himself. I’d been forced to do things to people whose names I never knew but whose faces I will never forget, tremendously horrifying things. They made me watch whilst they did far worse and promised me a similar fate if I did not deliver Dumbledore’s corpse on a plate. My father watched from the corner of the room; his eyes glazed over as I frantically searched for any safety within him. Instead, I found only ice, that was when I realised that I was truly alone in all of this. And I hated him for it.
When I returned to school with that Dark Mark, I realised I was alone there too. My peers either feared me or – worse – worshiped me for it. They had no idea what it had taken from me to be branded with it, they only prattled on about getting their own one day. I couldn’t talk to them about it, they wouldn’t have understood. How could I tell them that feeling someone’s life drain from them whilst you held the knife wasn’t something that your soul would let you rest from? How could I explain the feeling of someone else’s blood spilling through your fingers as you removed their entrails as they screamed? How could I tell them what it felt like to taste your own tears through that whilst your father watched on, idly, from the corner of the room? How could I explain the way the Cruciatus curse felt, every single time I refused to do what they had asked of me? None of those things are something that can be fully understood through explanation alone, those things had to be experienced to be understood.
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She was over halfway through the stack when the first living corpse in the house arose. Pansy, hair in disarray, clothes crinkled and messy, practically growling, arrived behind her. Peering over her shoulder.
“Draco’s handwriting.” She grunted, more of a statement than a question as she moved off into the kitchen for coffee and hangover cure.
“Yes, something he wrote in Azkaban.” Hermione called after her as she dropped the pages onto the table and followed her through for another drink.
“Thrilling I’m sure.” Pansy looked a little green as she swallowed the potion and chased it with milky coffee. “Merlin I feel fucking awful.”
Romilda and Luna came down ten minutes later feeling much the same until Hermione handed them coffees and cures, realising that she was now out of it and would have to make more at some point. The weather promised another sunny day, but it was going to cool down after the weekend, so they made plans to take advantage of it. Hermione opted out though, stating that she had work to do and that she’d catch up with them another day.
She cast spell work to take care of the household chores before jumping in the bath for a while longer than necessary. Try as she might, she couldn’t keep her thoughts from the conversation about Draco last night, especially after what she’d read. Had she been missing social cues that the others had picked up on immediately between them? She didn’t think so. She’d never caught him staring at her, he was never inappropriately close to her, and he’d never said anything untoward.. So maybe her friends were just reading into signs that didn’t exist. It must be that.
She towel dried her hair as much as possible before slipping on some comfortable shorts and a vest top. She scooped her hair up onto the top of her head, it was too warm to have it down. She’d been just about to go back downstairs to the stack of papers when she remembered the ring she’d taken off before bathing, she could practically hear it humming with emotion when she picked it up. Frustration was what she felt when she placed it on her finger. Or maybe exasperation was the right word. Either way, it was incredibly intense, and she couldn’t ignore it. She didn’t even give herself time to think before she apparated to the house, landing underneath the oak tree, and ran inside. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing when she entered the dining room where Draco and Narcissa sat.