“Be home before dark!” Hermione’s mother calls as Hermione races out of the house, eager to explore the creek and meadow surrounding her new home.
It is almost Christmas. Hermione grins widely, spinning around with arms stretched wide as snowflakes kiss the freckles on her face. She scoops a snowball into her hands and places it in front of her. She frowns in displeasure, wishing the snowball was bigger. She wants to build a snowman.
As she furrows her brows at the unassuming snowball, it starts to expand, growing until it is half as tall as eight year old Hermione. She giggles happily, and plops another snowball on top of it. She scowls in concentration, and it does the same thing, growing until it is the perfect proportion for her snowman’s midsection.
A small blond-haired boy peeks his head out from behind a tree. He’s watching the girl in the meadow in curiosity as she builds her snowman. His eyes pop out of his head when he sees the snowball magically grow when she places it on the ground.
“You can do it too?”
Hermione jumps, startled. She spins around and notices the boy behind her, pale face shy but hopeful as he looks at her.
“What do you mean?” She tilts her head, confused.
“Magic.” The boy scoops up a handful of snow and throws it into the air.
Hermione watches in wonder as the snow turns to white butterflies that flutter away into the grey winter sky. “Wow,” she breathes in awe.
“What’s your name?” The boy asks.
“Hermione Granger.” She smiles. “What’s yours?”
“I’m Draco Malfoy. I live up there,” he points proudly to an imposing mansion on top of a nearby hill.
Hermione grins at Draco in delight. “My family just moved in over there!” she exclaims happily, pointing out her new home by the creek. “We’re neighbors. You’re my friend now.” She tells him bossily.
Draco smiles at her. “Okay.”
“Do you want to build a snowman?” She asks hopefully.
*******
Hermione learns that Draco’s whole family is magic. He’s surprised and puzzled to learn that hers isn’t. She learns that he sneaks out of the house regularly to play in the meadow. His parents don’t like when he gets his clothes dirty. When the day is almost over and Hermione exclaims that she has to be back before dark, he shows her how he sneaks out of his room. She watches with wide eyes as he shimmies up a tree and onto a balcony on the second floor of the manor. That’s his room, he informs her. He waves a shy goodbye to her before disappearing into the house.
The next few years are some of the best times ever for young Hermione and Draco. Hermione likes to bring a book out to the big oak tree in the middle of the meadow and read for hours. Draco joins her, asking curious questions about the stories she’s reading. He’s fascinated by her books, written by Muggles. She is equally fascinated when he brings books from his house. They are written by people who can do magic – real witches and wizards, he tells her. She asks if he has more books like that.
“A whole library full,” he tells her proudly.
Hermione’s eyes light up. “Can I see?”
Draco’s face falls. “My father doesn’t like me being around other kids. I’m scared he would tell me we can’t be friends anymore if he saw you.”
Hermione is disappointed. She doesn’t really understand, but she tells him she does. She doesn’t want him to be sad.
Sometimes Draco brings a toy broomstick out to the meadow with him. Hermione is nervous, chewing her fingernails as she watches him zoom across the field, feet barely brushing the tops of the long grass. He convinces her to hop on the broom with him, and she keeps her eyes tightly shut as they skim over the meadow.
Every winter, Hermione wakes up one day to the first snowfall of the year. A wide grin splits her face, and she hurries to put on her jacket and boots before running and stumbling across the fields towards Draco’s home. She climbs up the tree next to his second-story balcony. Hermione jumps down onto the balcony and knocks on Draco’s door. She calls out the same question for three years.
“Do you want to build a snowman?”
Within a few seconds, the shades fly outwards. A beaming Draco takes in the sight of the snowflakes in the air and the blanket of white on the ground. He nods excitedly and disappears for a few moments, returning wearing a warm cloak and fur-lined boots. Sometimes he wears his favorite pair of fluffy earmuffs, and Hermione giggles at the funny sight.
Every winter from the time they met, it is the same.
******
The summer before Hermione turns eleven, an owl shows up on her windowsill. It’s carrying a letter tied to its foot. Hermione’s eyes widen at the sight. It’s just like Draco told her.
That afternoon, she races out to the big oak tree in the meadow. She can’t wait to tell her best friend the news. They’re going to school together. Hermione is delighted.
Draco is already under the oak tree, staring into the distance with his knees pulled to his chest. The happiness in Hermione’s chest fades to an aching disappointment when he tells her his father is sending him to Durmstrang instead of Hogwarts. Draco sees her smile disappear and promises to write to her.
“My father bought me an owl,” he says hopefully. “I’ll write you letters. Every day, I promise.” He feels better when Hermione’s smile returns.
******
Hermione doesn’t think she likes Hogwarts very much. She misses Draco. She is sorted into Gryffindor, but wistfully thinks she would have enjoyed Ravenclaw more. Hermione isn’t very good at making friends in her new house. They look at her funny when she raises her hand eagerly in class, and ignore her when she tries to chime into their conversations.
One day she tries to help a struggling Ron Weasley in Charms class. He’s pronouncing the charm wrong, so she tries to tell him the right way to say it. She doesn’t understand why he gets angry at her when she shows him how to do it correctly. She is walking behind him and Harry Potter when they leave class when she hears him making fun of her.
“It’s Levi-Oh-sa, not Levi-o-sah, she’s a nightmare, honestly, it’s no wonder she hasn’t got any friends…”
It hurts so much more to hear someone else say she is alone. Hermione bursts into tears and pushes through the crowded halls of chattering friends. She spends the rest of the afternoon crying in the bathroom. She wishes Draco were here with her. Her heart hurts from missing him.
If her day wasn’t bad enough, a troll breaks into the bathroom where she is hiding. Hermione screams in terror and hides in a stall. The troll is breaking through each stall door one by one, and soon Hermione’s door is next. She is shaking. She is sure this is where she is going to die.
Hermione probably would have died then if it weren’t for the professors intervening. Professor McGonagall bursts into the girls bathroom along with Professor Snape and Professor Quirrell. They make quick work of the troll, and a sobbing Hermione is escorted kindly to her dormitory.
******
Hermione’s days quickly settle into a comfortable routine. She attends her lessons, fascinated thoroughly by each subject. The teachers seem to like her well enough, even if none of her fellow students do. She truly doesn’t understand how they can sit through lessons in a bored stupor. Don’t they realize how utterly riveting learning magic is?
After classes, she retreats to the library. Hermione adores the school library. Every day she pulls down about twelve different books and loses herself in her learning. The time she spends in here is quite possibly her favorite part of the day.
When Hermione returns to her dormitory her face lights up. Every night without fail, Draco’s eagle owl is waiting for her on the windowsill. She opens the window and Noctua swoops in. Hermione gives her a treat from the jar she keeps on her bedside table specifically for the bird, and Noctua nuzzles her hand with an affectionate hoot before taking off for the Owlery.
Hermione spends her time before bed reading the long letters Draco sends her from Durmstrang. She smiles fondly at the stories he tells her and notes with intrigue the spells he is learning, so different from the Hogwarts curriculum. When she’s done reading, she writes back. Her rolls of parchment often reach the floor as she eagerly scrawls her responses to her best friend in the north. She couldn’t care less about the stares and titters of her dorm-mates.
Hermione’s mornings begin with a trip to the Owlery. Noctua always patiently awaits her, and Hermione gives her another treat before sending the owl off to return to her master.
Perhaps life at Hogwarts isn’t so bad after all. Hermione enjoys her solitude after a while. She stays out of trouble that way. Most of the others in her House seem to be magnets for trouble, especially Harry Potter and Ron Weasley, who get into trouble every year without fail. She wonders how they haven’t been expelled. Hermione is glad to be on her own. Really, she is.
******
The highlights of Hermione’s and Draco’s lives are holidays. For their first three years, both return home for every holiday. The Christmas holidays are Hermione’s favorite. Each year, the day after they both return, Hermione wakes up to a fresh snowfall. Each year she throws on her jacket and boots before running and stumbling through the snowy meadow and climbing the tree to Draco’s balcony.
“Do you want to build a snowman?” she calls out happily.
Each year, Draco’s grinning face pops out from behind the shades, and he appears within a few seconds in his fur-lined cloak.
Each winter, they spend their time together in the snowy fields between their homes. Shrieking laughter drifts through the air as Hermione ducks to avoid his thrown snowballs. They race sleds down the rolling hills. Each winter they build a snowman near the big oak tree, and catch their breath sitting under its bare canopy. When they begin to shiver, Hermione leads him to the cottage by the creek. They sit in the living room by the fire and chatter happily about their school lives and the books they’ve read lately as Hermione’s mum brings them each a mug of hot chocolate.
The first time Draco is at Hermione’s home, he is rather distant and reserved around her parents. Hermione is puzzled at his sudden change in character. But Hermione’s mum welcomes him with a hug and thanks him for being such a great friend to her daughter. Draco is startled by the contact but melts into the warm embrace. From then on, he is his normal self with Hermione’s parents.
In their third year, Draco brings Hermione a Christmas present. Hermione is surprised when he shyly hands her the black box, tied with a white satin ribbon. She opens it and her face lights up with joy when an orange kitten with a rather scrunched up face mews at her. Draco is delighted at her reaction to his gift. Hermione decides to name the kitten Crookshanks.
******
When Hermione arrives at Hogwarts for her fourth year, she receives stunning news at the welcoming feast. That evening she bolts down her dinner and races to her dormitory to write to Draco. Noctua is already waiting for her at the window. Hermione eagerly unties the scroll and scans it, a wide smile breaking over her face.
She races to the Owlery that night to send Noctua off. She simply cannot wait until morning. She apologizes to the owl for sending her back away so soon, gives her a treat and an affectionate pat, and skips all the way back to Gryffindor Tower.
******
Hermione watches with bated breath as the great ship rises from the swirling black lake. Draco is among the first students to disembark, piercing grey eyes scanning the crowd. They light up when his gaze lands on Hermione.
Hermione thinks this year is easily the best she’s had at school. Her usual solo study sessions in the library are so much better when she’s regularly joined by Draco. Sometimes they simply study quietly together and enjoy the presence of the other in companionable silence. Sometimes they can be found bent over the same book, whispering to each other as they hotly debate the contents.
They regularly stroll around the castle grounds together. Hermione is content to simply walk with him and discuss all manner of things – from Harry Potter’s controversial role in the Tournament, to the spells the champions might use in the tasks, to Crookshanks’ delight in Draco’s presence at Hogwarts (he has taken to spending the night with the Durmstrang students, curled upon Draco’s chest. Draco will never admit it, but he doesn’t mind at all).
The pair watches the first task together. Hermione looks on in awe as Harry Potter zooms around the angry dragon on a broomstick, and in a flash, appears with the golden egg to the roar of the crowd. Draco watches the first task too but spends most of it glancing across at Hermione.
Hermione bites her lip hesitantly.
“Hermione, you’ll be okay. I promise,” Draco reassures her, his silvery eyes sparkling with anticipation.
She takes a deep breath and climbs onto the broom behind him.
Draco has become an excellent flier, Hermione thinks as she holds onto his waist tightly, breathing in the comforting scent of his cloak. He is careful to stay relatively close to the ground at first, doing slow circles around the Quidditch pitch until Hermione tells him it’s okay, he can go higher.
From that moment, they spend each warm evening after dinner soaring over the castle together. Draco usually flies them up to the Astronomy Tower, and there they sit, talking and laughing together until dusk has set in. Hermione never laughs as hard as she does with Draco around anyone else. When darkness sets in, Draco flies them over the turrets of Hogwarts to Hermione’s dormitory. She gives him a tight hug each night before climbing in the window and bidding him goodnight.
Each night this year, Hermione has fallen asleep with the ghost of a smile still on her lips.
******
The Yule Ball is announced. All of the students fourth year and above begin chattering excitedly about their plans for the evening. Hermione spins in her seat to face the Slytherin table where Draco and the rest of the Durmstrang students sit. She meets his eyes and he raises his glass at her, giving her a knowing smile.
The next day, Draco asks her to the Yule Ball when they are sitting on the Astronomy Tower together. Hermione says yes. She doesn’t stop smiling for the rest of the night. This time, when Draco takes her to her dormitory window, she gives him a quick peck on the cheek before hopping off of the broom, cheeks flushed. When she bids him goodnight shyly, she thinks his cheeks are red too.
Draco does a few barrel rolls on his broom that night before returning to the Durmstrang ship. He, too, falls asleep smiling.
******
Hermione uses her wand to float the last strand of hair into place atop her head. She does a quick twirl, admiring with joy the way her periwinkle robes float when she spins.
Draco paces back and forth at the bottom of the stairs to the Great Hall in his well-tailored black dress robes. He’s quite nervous, though he can’t quite figure out why – he’s known Hermione for ages, after all. Why should he be nervous?
Hermione grins as she sees him waiting for her at the foot of the stairs. He looks up suddenly and freezes, drinking her in with his eyes. Her emerald green ball gown brings out gold flecks in her eyes that somehow, Draco had never noticed. Hermione’s heart does a little flutter at the way he is looking at her.
She floats down the stairs toward him, and Draco thinks this must be what it feels like to be in love.
Draco extends his arm. Hermione places her arm in his. She doesn’t think she’s ever been happier than this.
It’s the best night of their lives. Hermione and Draco dance and laugh all evening, and Hermione’s face hurts from smiling by the time he bids her goodnight. She is about to head to her dormitory when he grasps her wrist gently, spinning her back toward him gracefully. Her breath catches as she takes in the intensity of his gaze as he leans ever so slightly closer.
It’s a sweet kiss. A gentle kiss. Hermione’s stomach explodes into butterflies. She beams up at him when they pull apart. Draco’s smile is overjoyed.
“Goodnight, Draco.” Hermione breathes, lips tingling from his touch.
“Goodnight, Hermione.” Draco whispers in return, raising her hand and kissing it once while his gaze never left her perfect face.
They both go to bed elated that night.
******
The next day Hermione returns home for the Christmas holidays. She wakes on Christmas morning to fresh snowfall. As she does every year, she throws on her jacket and boots and sprints up to the manor on the hill. She climbs the familiar tree and knocks on Draco’s door. As he does every year, he hurries to join her.
This year is different in only one way. After Draco chases Hermione all the way back to the big oak tree in the meadow, he pulls out a small black velvet box and hands it to Hermione. He stares nervously as she opens it. Hermione’s eyes widen as she pulls out a delicate gold chain upon which dangles a single small, teardrop-shaped ruby.
“I know it isn’t much – “
Draco is cut off by a ferocious hug.
Hermione hands him the necklace and turns around, lifting her unruly hair from around her neck. Draco carefully clasps the gold necklace around her neck. He smiles softly as he admires it on her.
Hermione turns around. She looks at him like he’s the only person in the whole world. She presses a soft kiss to his lips.
“I adore it.”
Things are the same again. The pair runs out into the fresh snow. They build a snowman together. They shriek and throw snowballs, and finally retreat to Hermione’s cottage. As they sit on the sofa by the fire, Hermione rests her head on Draco’s chest as she drifts peacefully to sleep. He presses a gentle kiss to her unruly hair, inhaling its sweet scent. He would trade anything for this moment to last forever.
******
The rest of their fourth year passes peacefully. Hermione dreads the day Draco leaves Hogwarts again. She treasures each moment, each memory she shares with her best friend.
They are watching the final task together. Well, they start to. They quickly tire of watching the quiet hedges and instead turn to each other, heads bent together, quietly talking and laughing. Happy, as they always are together.
With a flash, Harry Potter appears on the field. He’s clutching the motionless body of Cedric Diggory and the Triwizard Cup. The audience erupts into chaos as people realize that a champion is dead.
Draco pulls Hermione out of the crowd. She is stunned, in shock. Together they walk silently to the shore of the black lake. They sit under the canopy of a large willow tree. Draco holds Hermione to his chest and strokes her frizzy hair gently as she cries into his shoulder. He doesn’t cry. Draco gazes off into the distance, a sense of dread and foreboding inching throughout his body.
Hermione is terrified. She doesn’t know what’s going on. All she knows is that the realization Cedric Diggory was dead washed over her like a bucket of ice water, and the next thing she knows, she is crying into Draco’s chest. She doesn’t know what will happen next. There are rumors, yes. But she hopes against hope that they are just that - rumors.
******
At the end of year feast, Albus Dumbledore gravely announces the return of Voldemort. Hermione’s stomach plummets. She knows the name from her classmates, from the rumors she desperately wished were false. She knows what he fights for, too. She is terrified to think about the return to power of a wizard that wants people like her eradicated.
Hermione glances at Draco for reassurance. She knows as long as they have each other, they’ll be alright. They can make it through a war together. He’s her best friend in the entire world. When she glances at him, though, he is staring down at the table, fists clenched and face pale.
******
This summer, Draco is always the first one out to the meadow. Hermione can tell something is wrong. His grey eyes, usually light and kind when he looks at her, are dull and empty. Dark circles appear underneath them, so dark they look more like bruises. Once in a while, she asks him what’s wrong. Draco always shakes his head. He doesn’t tell her. Hermione’s heart breaks for him. For them.
Sometimes the looming threat of war is too much. Sometimes Hermione is reading quietly with her friend under the big oak tree and it hits her out of nowhere. When this happens and tears begin to stain the pages of her book, Draco notices and pulls her in. She sobs into his robes until her eyes are red and dry. Sometimes, he cries too, staring into the distance with her head on his chest. He holds her tightly while his heart breaks for both of them.
******
Hermione returns to Hogwarts for her fifth year. She storms up to her dormitory on the first night in a terrible mood. The new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor is terrible. She can’t wait to write to Draco about it. She’s looking forward to the familiar comfort of their letters.
Noctua isn’t waiting for her that night. Hermione is crestfallen.
Noctua doesn’t show up for nearly a week. When she finally does, Hermione’s face lights up. Her happy grin fades, however, when she reads Draco’s letter, less than half a roll of parchment long.
Draco doesn’t write every night anymore. He writes to Hermione once a week now. His letters are shorter, emptier. Hermione’s heart cracks a little bit more each time she reads another of his notes. She wants so badly to be there for him. She wishes he would tell her what was wrong, trust her like he used to. She wants to help, to get rid of whatever has siphoned Draco of everything that made him him.
******
Hermione distracts herself from her best friend’s fading character by joining the D.A., a club run by Harry Potter. She usually hates breaking school rules, but she reluctantly accepts that it is the best choice in this circumstance. The new professor refuses to teach magic at all.
******
Hermione returns home for the Christmas holidays. She’s excited to tell Draco what she learned in the last D.A. meeting. She wants to teach him how to cast a Patronus – she is practically burning with curiosity wondering what his might be. Her excitement is tinged with trepidation, though. She doesn’t know if she can survive seeing him as a shell.
The day after she arrives, she wakes up to fresh snowfall. Hermione throws on her jacket and boots and clomps across the meadow to the manor. The energy emanating from the mansion this year feels different, she notes. Hermione shivers. It feels sinister.
Hermione scales the tree outside Draco’s balcony effortlessly as she has done for all these years. She knocks on the door.
“Do you want to build a snowman?” She sings out her usual question.
This year, the shades stay drawn. Hermione hesitates, confused. She knocks again, louder this time. This time, there is no doubt that Draco has heard her.
“Go away, Hermione.”
The muffled voice from inside the room breaks Hermione’s heart.
She doesn’t see him at all that Christmas.
******
Draco continues to write to her once she returns to Hogwarts. He apologizes to her for his absence over the Christmas holidays, explains he’d had a ‘horrible houseguest’ and pleading her forgiveness. His note, though short, aches with genuine regret. A tear disfigures his immaculate script where he’s signed I love you for the very first time. Hermione feels her own tears welling as she unwraps the parcel he’s sent along with the letter, discovering he’d sent her a snow globe. Inside it among the glittering flakes lies their very own field, complete with their figures beneath the tree admiring a snowman.
******
At the end of her fifth year, Hermione reads in the Prophet that Lucius Malfoy was arrested in an attack on the Ministry involving Harry Potter. She urgently scrawls out a letter to Draco. What was his father doing, attacking Harry Potter? Was her best friend okay?
Draco writes back shortly. Hermione practically devours his response. His father, apparently, placed his loyalties with Voldemort in the previous Wizarding war and has done so once again. Draco is expected to follow in his footsteps. He does not believe that with his father’s imprisonment Voldemort will be kind enough to give him a choice in the matter.
What he does not write is that it isn’t only his life on the line. Voldemort knows about Hermione and of their treasured winter days together. What’s left of his heart shatters further as he sends the owl away. If she knew, she would try to save him.
Draco needs her to stay away.
Hermione cries herself to sleep that night, clutching the note to her chest. The thought of Draco swearing loyalty to an army that wants nothing more than to kill people like her leaves a hole in her heart.
******
The next day, Hermione returns home for the summer holidays. She goes to the big oak tree in the meadow and sits for a while, staring at the manor in the distance that holds Draco in its iron grip.
Hermione gathers her resolve and approaches the tree she climbs every winter. She scales it once again, hesitating for only a moment as she stares at the drawn shades in Draco’s room.
Hermione knocks on the door.
“Please, I know you’re in there.” She swallows back the lump in her throat. “People are telling me to have courage. I’m trying to, Draco. I really am.” Hermione’s voice cracks.
“Please, Draco,” she says quietly. “I’m right out here for you. Please, just let me in.”
Hermione crumples against the wall between her and her best friend. “What are we going to do?” She whispers the question into the breeze before dropping her head into her hands and letting the tears fall from her eyes.
*****
On the other side of the wall, Draco is curled up against the same place Hermione is sitting. His face twists in revulsion as he stares down at his left arm. A single tear falls from his face and lands upon the ugly black mark marring his fair skin.