A Ghost?
Three years later
Time marches on. Hermione wakes up each morning and dons a silk blouse or chiffon dress or linen pants. She allows house elves to bring her tea and a spot of breakfast. Sits in the arched windows of her private rooms and watches birds flit through the trees just outside.
After she eats, she has lessons. Either with the tutors Narcissa had insisted teach her son and Hermione separately, or with Lucius. His lessons were different for each of the children under his roof. Not that either child knew that. Hermione wasn’t allowed to speak to Draco. Wasn’t meant to see him either.
As Lucius would tell her, she has been given everything she needs to survive. That she is meant to bring about the return of the Dark Lord and serve him however he pleases.
Usually, by lunch, Hermione has managed to find a reason to be content. Not happy, never happy. Because as much as the Malfoys give her, they never give her love. So while she eats alone, she writes to Tom, pretending that he is across the table from her, instead of fractured inside of the journal she scribbles in.
Some days, she eats with Naricissa, or Lucius and one of his many slimy acquaintances. Others the ghosts of the manor keep her company, incapable pf eating but pleasant just the same. It seemed that hundreds of years after death, even Malfoys could accept mudbloods.
Still, she is a child, and so it is natural for her to seek out other company. To explore the forbidden corners of the manor.
Which is how she comes to meet Draco for the first time. Properly meet him. In the past, she’d watched from behind cracks in doors and corners of walls. Taking in the world she is not permitted to be a part of.
She is hiding in the tall stacks of the library when she hears his voice, just like his father’s only higher, less sure of itself. Her intention of avoiding her Latin tutor is gone as she kneels down between the stacks and peers through the books at the Malfoy heir.
He looks just like his mother. Just as slim featured and pointed.
The boy is sitting sprawled across a leather chair, doing an assignment for his gathering class. It is intended for him to learn the origins of potions ingredients. He is meant to walk the grounds and collect specific herbs and plants. Instead he is cheating. Asking the elves to bring him what he was meant to look for.
Hermione takes the same lessons as him, only on opposite days. She’d quite enjoyed walking the grounds, searching for sprigs and fallen leaves.
Hermione shifts, thinking about alerting their tutor out of a sense of righteousness that seems to have been bred into her.
Unfortunately, she accidentally knocks a book from the shelf in front of her.
“Who’s there?” Draco asks, standing.
She isn’t supposed to be there. She isn’t supposed to talk to him.
Hermione doesn’t care.
“A ghost,” she says from her hiding spot.
“You’re no ghost,” he says, though there is a tremor in his voice. He spins looking for her but not finding her.
“How do you know?” She asks.
“There are no ghosts in the manor,” he answers, his voice closer.
Hermione laughs, thinking about the ghosts in the east wing. There are two that she is quite familiar with. One is a man covered in silvery blood that he swears was from his fallen foe and not from his own death.
Another is Rosabella, Hermione’s primary confidante. An older witch who had died at the very impressive age of 146.
“Who are you?” Draco rounds the corner, finding a girl who looks about his age. She has wild hair and a sort of feral stare in her eyes.
“I told you, a ghost,” she repeats.
“No you’re not. You’re a girl,” he sneers.
Hermione is taken aback by how similar the expression is to Lucius’s own sneer.
“Draco?” A voice calls from the doorway.
Draco turns towards it, and when he turns back, the girl is gone.
After that, they run into each other more frequently. Draco doesn’t tell anyone about the ghost. He likes having a secret all his own.
The other children he spends time with are all the same. None of them are ghosts. None of them are a mystery for him to solve. They are all heirs to their own family fortunes. Measured and controlled. Made to be by their parents. Their fathers.
Hermione is a force of nature. Nothing like the rest of the little pureblood heirs.
When Narcissa finds them playing together in the garden, she does not react well. The normally graceful woman tears them apart, sending Draco to his room and dragging Hermione by her arm into Lucius’s office.
“She was playing with Draco. The elves let her out of their sight,” Narcissa says while the girl tries to wipe away the dirt on her dress.
“I will handle it,” Lucius reassures his wife.
Narcissa huffs but accepts, leaving the girl standing in the office.
Lucius looks at the girl, wary of her increasing disobedience.
“Have you seen Draco before?”
Hermione nods.
“Frequently?”
Hermione shakes her head.
“I expect you to obey the rules of my home. You are not to see him again. Am I understood?”
Hermione nods.
“Put your hands on the desk,” Lucius orders.
She does as she is told. Always. Because what other choice does she have?
Lucius stands from his desk chair, grabbing the rod he keeps on the side of his white oak desk.
Whap!
It comes down across her knuckles.
She inhales sharply and presses the pads of her fingers into the desktop.
Whap!
It comes down ten times, in quick succession.
Hermione sniffles when it is over, looking at her red knuckles and steeling herself against the pain.
“Now go back to your room,” Lucius snips, setting down the rod and retaking his seat as though nothing has happened.
Hermione blinks away in a moment, her own form of apparition.
Her powers are growing.
Long after she leaves, Lucius sits in his study, worrying about the girl he took so long ago.
Her magic was only growing stronger.
A few weeks ago, Draco had exhibited a feat of accidental magic. Exploding a fountain in the gardens when a house elf had asked him to come back inside.
It had been three years since Hermione had done accidental magic. Everything she does is purposeful.
She is made of magic. Even Lucius can admit that she has more in her than he ever will. He has to, in order to accept the fact that she will be the instrument of the Dark Lord’s revival.