Falling
London, January 2 – Monday, 2006.
Present times.
“Hermione!” It was Harry’s voice that called behind her. He rushed to her side, opening a smile and offering her a side hug.
“Harry!” Hermione greeted him back, just as warmly. “How were the holidays?”
“Oh, great, per usual,” he replied. They were now walking side by side through the long hallways of the Ministry. “We missed you, by the way. We spent Christmas in the Burrow, as always, and New Year’s at Bill and Fleur’s.”
“I missed you all too, and that sounds lovely. How’s Gin and James?” Hermione asked as they entered a crowded lift and scooted to the back, where their conversation could remain as private as possible, even with all the curious eyes focusing on them. It seemed like, no matter how many years they worked there, The Chosen One and the Brightest Witch of her Age walking the halls would always be news.
“They’re great, too. But James is spending a few days with Molly because Ginny has been feeling a bit unwell,” he added the second phrase with a small frown on his face. They exited the lift to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement floor.
“Is she? Do you reckon it’s anything more serious? You know you can always count on me to stay with James, too.” Hermione added with a worried tone.
“It’s nothing to worry about, might be a stomach bug, might be all the food she ate during the holidays,” Harry laughed. “You should’ve seen it, that was not normal.”
“She better not even dream that you are saying such things,” Hermione jokingly reprehended him, but Harry visibly paled.
“She would kill me.” He said, dead serious.
“Yes, she would.” Hermione was the only one laughing now.
“And, about the babysitting, we didn’t want to interrupt the rare days off you take,” Hermione rolled her eyes at him but Harry didn’t even flinch at her reaction, he kept speaking: “Anyways, how were holidays with your parents?”
It was her turn to stop laughing.
“As good as one can expect. They still don’t fully trust me, but we’re getting somewhere.”
Harry hummed, understandingly. Not long after the war, Hermione had traveled to Australia to restore her parents’ memory. They, unsurprisingly, felt extremely betrayed by her actions and took months to even speak to her again. The three of them spent the next couple of years corresponding through Christmas cards and well-wishes and messages of Happy Birthday, but no more than that. As the last year passed, however, Hermione’s hopes of a reconciliation were reborn after her father’s scare with skin cancer.
The disease was mild enough to be cured with a single surgery, but her parents seemed to have an epiphany after hearing the word ‘cancer’. Since then, they had made an effort to invite her over for dinner at least once per week, to invite her to go on Sunday walks with them in Waterlow Park and even to watch a few football games at their family’s home, whenever the English national team played.
Hermione was grateful for their effort. She recognized that, if for her, who knew everything that was happening all along, it felt hard and awkward to fall back into a certain routine, it was infinitely harder for them to accept her back into their lives after what she had done to their minds. It was because of that effort that she didn’t think twice before accepting their invitation to spend the end of the year with them, in their holiday cottage in Devon, an old inheritance of her father’s grandfather.
She was also very grateful for the excuse to pass on Christmas at the Burrow. As much as she loved the Weasley (and Potter) family, she was in no mood to spend her holidays trying to escape Ron’s attempts of trying to mend their relationship.
Their relationship had come to a definitive close in the past May, and, almost a year later, Ron couldn’t get over the fact that they were done. We’re meant to be together! He would say, whenever they met, we’re never going to find a connection like this with someone, Hermione! Don’t you see? We’re made for each other!
Hermione unconsciously rolled her eyes again. Her problem wasn’t the ‘connection’, it was Ron’s lack of effort to meet her halfway in the relationship. After years of trying to make it work, she got tired of having to do all the work. Hermione and Harry found their cubicles, right across from each other in the extensive office of Aurors and Investigators.
To Hermione’s present happiness, Ron had decided to join George in their family business and ended up letting go of his aspirations of being an Auror. Harry, to no one’s surprise, had joined the Auror forces and climbed higher in their ranks as each year passed, but still hadn’t been gifted a private office. Hermione, on the other hand, had found a less physical aspect of the Law Enforcement she quite enjoyed: the Intelligence. She also rose quickly through her respective ranks, but also not enough to be gifted an exclusive room.
That last aspect of her job wouldn’t be a problem if it wasn’t for –
“Granger!” An annoyingly recognizable voice called her from a nearby table. If it wasn’t for him.
Draco Malfoy was walking toward her. He looked healthier, more fit, and more carefree (and more handsome, Hermione’s traitor brain added) than he had looked during their last years in Hogwarts. Being very knowledgeable of the Dark Arts and of the works of dark wizards - for obvious reasons - he had been hired by the DMLE to be an Investigator as soon as he had finished serving his house arrest time.
Hermione remembered the day she had testified in favor of him and his mother in the Wizengamot. He had looked so fragile back then, so defeated, as if he had already accepted the lifetime sentence in Azkaban he believed would be given to him. But, due to Hermione and Harry’s words of defense, his would-be-lifetime sentence became a mere 10 months in house arrest, and a full pardon to Narcissa, for her role in helping Harry.
She sighed as the blond heathen leaned on her desk, with his hand placed on top of her assigned papers and completely obstructing any attempt she could make to ignore him. She eyes his signet ring, refusing to acknowledge the man. Damn, why did even his fingers have to look so good? All long and smooth and delicate…
“What do you want, Malfoy?” She asked, snapping her eyes to his face, pulling herself out of the trance.
Malfoy was smirking mischievously as if he knew exactly what she was thinking about. Hermione refused to blush.
“I just wanted to know if you had missed me during the holidays,” he voiced it as if talking about an extremely important matter. Hermione huffed an unladylike, humorless laugh.
“Sure Malfoy, I couldn’t think about anything else during my time off. Everywhere I looked, I saw you,” she sarcastically said, pushing his hand and arm away from her table. Due to the way he was leaning almost on top of her, she quite literally could only see him. His arm didn’t budge.
Malfoy made an ‘own’ sound as if feeling touched by her statement.
“I, too, missed you a lot, Granger. In fact, I was expecting you at my mother’s Christmas Gala,” he replied, making Hermione truly laugh. She remembered receiving the elegant invite, and promptly throwing it in the fire of her hearth. Hell would freeze over before she voluntarily subjected herself to Draco Malfoy’s antics.
And because you don’t know how well you would control yourself around his flirty comments when you’re drunk, Hermione’s stupid, traitorous, disloyal, backstabbing brain made sure to remind her.
“I even saved a dance for you,” he whispered the words directly to her ear, as he moved to stand fully straight. Hermione’s neck rippled with the warmth of his breath, and she batted a hand to shoo him from her proximity.
Malfoy laughed, circling her cubicle and meeting Harry halfway in a warm ‘dab’ as a greeting.
That was a sight Hermione never imagined she would have seen. If you told her Hogwarts-self that Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter would be buddies, friends who share a pint after work and who had Sunday lunches together, and that the Slytherin boy would even occasionally babysit the son of the Chosen One, she would have had a fit of laughter.
All odds aside, Malfoy and Harry had found themselves in a very close friendship. Happens when you work together with someone for a long time, I supposed, Harry had tried to explain to Hermione a while back. While she remained mostly in the office, supplying intel for the teams, Draco had a more active role in the missions, which made them have a much closer work relationship.
After exchanging a few words with Harry, Draco turned to Hermione again, and she sighed loudly.
“What?”
“As much as coming here only to see your pretty face and experience your wonderful mood pleases me, that’s not the reason why I’ve come to speak to you today,” he said, partially sarcastically but still ignoring her tone. His statement caught Hermione’s attention enough for her to sit straighter. It was uncommon, but sometimes they would be required to work together on an assignment.
“What is it?” She asked, clinically.
“Join me?” he offered his arm as if they were going on a stroll in his Manor’s Gardens. Hermione rolled her eyes but followed behind him, nonetheless.
***
The Department of Mysteries felt cold. Not just the cold of January, or the cold of being in the deepest levels of the Ministry’s underground. No, it was the cold one would feel around a dementor. The chill that came from unspeakable forms of magic.
Draco guided Hermione through the long hallways she had hurriedly, chaotically explored during her fifth year. She tried to suppress the memories and focus on the assignment at hand, but it was hard, especially while being in his company. It had been many years since Hermione had considered Draco a Death Eater or even a sympathizer of the pureblood ideals, but, in moments like those, it was hard to not think about what the left sleeve of his suit jacket hid.
He cleared his throat as they neared a tall door, capturing her attention.
“An artifact?” Hermione guessed. There were little things that would need to be kept under this amount of protection. Malfoy nodded, taking his wand from his pocket and performing a series of nonverbal, unlocking spells.
There was a single piece of furniture inside the room, a metal table. On top of it was a necklace, silvery, dark, and with a huge lapis lazuli stone in the center of it. Like many old, dark stuff, it looked heavy and uncomfortable, borderline evil.
“It is a Black family heirloom,” Draco spoke, unprompted, while the two of them circled the table, both pairs of eyes trained on the piece of jewelry.
“It’s very ancient magic,” he continued. “Time magic. Captured the DMLE’s attention due to its nature.”
Draco bravely – or stupidly – took the necklace in his hand and lifted it to their eye level.
“Don’t worry, its magic is not activated. Or something like that.” He explained, seeing Hermione’s bewildered look at his display of carelessness.
“This necklace is a hybrid of Time Turner and a Portkey,” he continued, and Hermione’s eyes grew more curious, more analyzing. “When activated, you’d be transported to a specific place in a specific time, just by touching the stone. No need for calculations or risks of eventual mistakes, like a Time Tuner would have. Could be very useful technology for the Aurors, if we were able to replicate it.”
“And we aren’t?” Hermione moved closer, letting her eyes analyze both the intricated pattern of the chains as well as Draco’s hand that was holding it up. She was undoubtedly sold on the case, by the description of the spell alone. She had been fascinated by Time Magic ever since their Third Year.
“No. There’s a lock in it,” Malfoy replied. Hermione hummed, understanding where he was getting to. “It only answers to wizards and witches with Black blood, and only indirectly.”
“What do you mean by indirectly?” She asked, eyes never leaving the mysterious object.
“It supposedly works when one needs it very much. Like an emergency portkey. Imagine if you were to attack me right now and I was holding it, the necklace would take me to a time and/or a place where I would be safe.” He finished. Fascinating magic, Hermione thought.
“A spell like that could also be used by the DMLE,” she finally looked up to his eyes.
“Exactly. That’s why you’re here. You’re our best in runes, curses and locking spells. You know that,” Malfoy half complimented, half teased her. Hermione ignored his teasing, smiling lightly at the compliment part. He matched her expression.
“Shall we?” Malfoy extended the jewelry to her, and Hermione gladly lifted her hand to catch it, more than excited to start working on the assignment.
But, when she touched the cool metal, she felt the ground they were standing on disappear, and, just like that, they were falling.
London, January 9 – Monday, 2023.
Future times.
“LET GO NOW!” The scream was powerful enough to echo through the whole house.
The residence was a six-bedroom Villa in Holland Park, certainly enormous to an ordinary family, but an extreme downgrade from the Manor’s size. Draco had accepted the move after much insistence from Hermione. It would be closer to the Ministry, and, eventually, it would be closer to good schools. He relented, as her arguments made sense and he was in no mood to tell her ‘No’ during their honeymoon in the French Alps.
“LET GOOOO” The screams continued, and Draco sighed before standing up from the armchair where he was sitting while reading The Prophet and sipping on a cup of black tea.
He marched through the long, yet bright, hallways, following the source of the noise to the lower floor’s Family Room.
There, a pair of identical blond heads ran around the couches. They were tall for 10-year-olds, standing almost at Draco’s chest level. One of them was laughing, carrying a football that had been a gift from Hermione’s father to the other one. The other one in question was chasing his twin, red with anger. They didn’t even notice Draco’s arrival at the room’s threshold. Malfoy breathed deeply before voicing his words in the firmest way he could.
“Enough.” His tone wasn’t loud, nor was it angry, but it was enough to make both boys stop running in circles and look at him with their bright, grey eyes.
“Pollux, is that ball yours?” He asked, keeping his fatherly tone.
“No…” The cheeky boy replied, shily.
“Give it back, then.”
The boy sighed before handing the toy to his brother, who was still frowning and staring daggers at the twin.
“Good. Now, Castor, thank him.” Malfoy told the angry boy.
“Why should I thank him ifhewastheonethatstarted,” the boy’s voice reached higher tones after each word he spoke, making him run out of breath by the end of the sentence.
Draco closed his eyes as he felt a headache arrive. It was too early for that.
“Thank him. Now.”
“…Thank you…” the boy complied with his father’s wishes after a few more angry looks, not meaning the words. That was good enough for Draco.
Feeling like he had dodged a bigger problem, Draco turned on his heel to go retrieve his tea and paper that had been left in the Sitting Room by his Study, on the floor above. He was midway through the steps when another voice yelled from the first floor.
“Daaaaaaaad,” the call was followed by the sound of steps running to the ground floor. Draco drew in another deep breath and eyed the watch on his wrist. 9 in the morning.
Another boy appeared. A couple years older than the twins, he was equally as blond but had softer, amber eyes that were a mix of Draco’s grey and Hermione’s chocolate irises.
“Did you get the heirloom you said I could take to the History of Magic class’s presentation?” He asked hurriedly.
Shit, Draco mentally cursed. He had forgotten.
“I forgot to look for it Scorp,” he placed a hand on the boy’s shoulder, who was almost as tall as him already. He would take after Lucius’s height, Draco was sure. “Can I owl you it in a couple of weeks?”
Scorpius whined loudly, making Draco remember that, despite his size, he was still very much a child.
“The presentation is this week already!”
“Who schedules a presentation in the first week of the term?” Draco whispered, rhetorically. Scorpius whined louder.
“Dad, pleaseeeeee, it’s worth half of my year’s grade!” Malfoy noticed the boy was almost in tears. Scorpius was academically perfectionist just as much as his mother and hated to get anything but the best mark possible.
“Okay, okay! I’ll go look for it. While I do that, go finish getting ready. You don’t want to miss the train.”
Scorpius seemed pleased enough and ran back upstairs to his room. Draco walked to the Drawing Room and entered one of the annexed bedrooms, their unofficial storage room. Inside, there were piles and piles of boxes of heirlooms, books that were improper to be kept on the bookshelves at the children’s reach, artifacts, and whatever else he had found in the Manor that he thought would be interesting for him and Hermione to study.
As he was opening the third box, looking for the harmless artifact he had promised to Scorpius, the room’s door opened and his wife walked in.
Hermione looked beautiful, dressed in a well-tailored, navy blue set of robes that visually expressed her importance to the Ministry. His eyes lit up at the sight of her and at the little girl walking by her legs.
Aurora was their ‘accident baby’ born from a slip after one too many drinks during their getaway in Bora Bora, five years before. She was Hermione’s carbon copy, with only Draco’s grey eyes to differentiate her from her mother. She was also her daddy’s baby.
Draco stood up and walked to greet the two of them.
“Good morning, my love” he whispered before giving Hermione a brief peck on the lips. She smiled.
“Good morning darling.”
“Ew.” The almost cynical voice came from below them. Neither of the adults could suppress a laugh at the unimpressed look on Aurora’s face. She was also the most undoubtfully Slytherin of their children.
“Good morning to you too, Missy.” Draco greeted the little girl but she seemed more interested in looking around the boxes.
“What is all this junk?” She asked and they couldn’t help but laugh again, as she lifted a tiara that was far too big and far too heavy to her head. Draco intervened and took it from her hands.
“This is your heritage.” He placed the tiara back in its box. Aurora eyed him, unimpressed.
“You’ll understand it, someday.”
Whatever interest she had in the heirlooms was lost with a shrug of her shoulders. Aurora walked past the two of them and toward the stairs that led to the Family Room.
“Did you find it?”
“Not yet but I’m sure it’s in one of these boxes,” Draco gestured to a pile that he had just begun analyzing.
“Great! I’m going now, okay?” Hermione moved to give him another peck, this one of goodbye, but Draco ducked almost in panic.
“Going? You are not taking Scorpius to King’s Cross?” He asked, almost desperately.
“No, I have a meeting with Kingsley in 30 minutes. I thought I had told you yesterday, during dinner?” Hermione matched his worried tone.
Draco had a faint memory of her mentioning something like that, but he had been trying to stop Aurora from biting Pollux and didn’t register her words.
“Fuck, you’re right. I have a meeting with Potter at 10, what should I do?” They were both trying to find answers when chaos broke free on the lower floor.
It started with a scream that could’ve come from either of the boys. Both Hermione and Draco darted out of the storage room and ran downstairs.
“What did you do?” It was Castor who screamed the question at his brother, who was half sitting, half lying on the floor. There was blood staining the carpet from a superficial cut in his leg that had been clearly caused by the glass vase that was shattered by his feet. The crime’s weapon, the football, was not too far from the injured boy who was crying copiously.
Draco rapidly vanished the glass and the blood, and Hermione rushed to Pollux's side to heal the wound.
“Shh darling, it’s nothing, it’s nothing,” she whispered as she quickly worked through nonverbal healing spells that were enough to quickly mend the broken skin.
It would all be okay soon if it wasn’t for Aurora’s mind which was far too similar to Draco’s. Seeing her window of opportunity, she ran and grabbed Castor’s ball, running upstairs with a head start long enough to make the boy run behind her while screaming at the top of his lungs.
“GIVE IT BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACK!”
Draco didn’t think twice before running after them, but, when he got to the ground floor, Scorpius was coming out of the Drawing Room, running to him.
“Father, THE HEIRLOOM!” He insisted.
“In a minute Scorp,” Draco tried to dodge past him but the cunning boy blocked him again.
“I need it now so I can close my luggage.”
“In. A. Minute.” Draco tried his best to keep his cool as the screams moved to the backyard, certainly alerting the neighbors of the chaotic state of their household.
“Dad, pleeaaaaaseeeee” Scorpius whined, blocking his way again.
“ALRIGHT!” Draco relented as the older boy’s lip started to tremble, announcing the tears to come.
Malfoy ran to the storage room, levitating the boxes to the Family Room downstairs, where it would be safe for him to watch Scorpius sort the artifacts.
“You’re searching with me.” He commanded while running down the stairs, with Scorpius on his toes. The screams outside continued, relentlessly.
“What is it that we are looking for?” The older boy asked as they sat on their knees in the open floor space. Pollux was still crying loudly as Hermione fixed a small bandage on his leg.
“A necklace. It should be a dark shade of silver, almost black, with a turquoise stone to it.” Draco explained, “This should all be safe. I tested all of them, but, if you feel anything that doesn’t seem normal, stop at once.”
Scorpius swallowed hard, clearly scared, before nodding and starting their search.
They hadn’t been rummaging through the boxes for more than five minutes before the screams outside turned into cries. Hermione fixed her husband a worried look and Draco stood up to run to the wild children outside. Pollux was matching their cries with a symphony of his own, and Malfoy was sure his head would explode at any moment now. You still need to prepare the material for the meeting with Potter, his brain helplessly reminded him, and Draco almost screamed in frustration.
Draco Malfoy loved his life. He adored his children and he was still madly in love with his wife as he had been on the day that they had gotten married, 15 years before. He had a very nice house and he didn’t even hate his neighbors. He had a loving mother who was a dotting grandmother to his children, and his in-laws didn’t hate him. He had his dream job and money to buy whatever he might want. He had all a man could ever ask for.
But there were moments like the one he was living, moments in which the chaos of those aspects of his life became too much – too overwhelming to bear – that he wished he could disappear. Just for a moment, just for an hour. For enough time for his head to stop pulsing.
“DAD!” Scorpius cried out as Draco stood up.
“I’ll be right back, Scorpius!” He could no longer mask the irritation in his voice, but Scorpius didn’t seem to care, he kept his eyes focused on something inside of the box.
“Dad, this isn’t right! It’s glowing! Is it the necklace you said?” Scorpius words paralyzed Draco and Hermione, who seemed to have managed the Pollux Situation, as the boy had stopped crying and was only whining.
Both adults rushed to the box Scorpius was pointing to, and, inside, there it was. A silvery necklace glowed among the dull artifacts. It matched Draco’s description, but the stone that was supposed to be turquoise was of a deep blue.
“I don’t think it’s exactly it, but I also don’t remember seeing this before…” Malfoy said, instinctively reaching for the mysterious object, in a trance-like state, as if the necklace called to him.
Hermione must have felt the same pull, as they touched the cold metal at the same time.
Then, the space all around them went black, and they were falling.