I want to see it
She thought she’d escaped notice, losing herself in the crowded hallway and slipping away to splash her face. She’d triple checked the stalls, then locked the main door for good measure. She just needed a moment to gather herself.
Hermione should have known better.
He undid her spell as effortlessly as when he’d caught her unawares at the start of eighth with this new version of himself, one she barely recognized from the boy she’d grown up hating. Silent. Blank. Unwilling to bring any attention to himself. His attempts only served to catch her eyes even more as she tried to puzzle out why she even cared.
She had her own demons.
They stared back at her from within her own eyes. They wore the same clothes and shared the same unruly hair. They kept her awake at night and haunted her during the day. Hermione would throw herself into her studies, and, still, they waited to pounce the moment her mind was left to wander free from the pages of her books.
She tried to ignore them, at first. Then, she’d attempted to exorcise them like real demons, bathing herself in pure waters and breathing in smoke that only made her eyes water and throat burn.
When she’d dared to ask Harry and Ron about how they coped, they’d responded very differently. Harry’s eyes fogged over like he’d gone somewhere else, leaving just his body behind in the room. When he finally returned, his gaze sharpening and focusing on her once more, he shrugged and said he’d left them all behind where they belonged. Hermione wasn’t sure what he meant about that, but perhaps it had something to do with his time with Death.
Did she need to die?
Ron gave her an answer she knew at her core wasn’t the right one, but appealed to her more than she was willing to admit dying did. His solution was found in the bottom of a bottle, drinking enough to deaden the senses. How could demons torment someone who felt nothing?
Drinking didn’t appeal to her, not with the different ways she’d seen other students react under the influence. While Ron was a happy drunk, there was always the risk she’d be one of those angry sods, or, worse, sappy and crying everywhere and in front of anyone.
No. Hermione wanted a more predictable fix.
First, she mastered glamour charms. Glamours to hide, glamours to mask, glamours to perfect every flaw. She’d been so disdainful of other girls over the years, but now she could cast her charms wordlessly and wandlessly with the best of them.
Next, she researched potions: elixirs to induce euphoria, draughts of peace, pain potions, and, yes, the occasional sober-up. She learned and she brewed and she kept a steady supply to rotate through and avoid dependence.
She thought she’d been clever. Nobody noticed her new potions hobby aside from assuming she paid even more attention to that area of study than she ever did before. They did pay compliments to her looks—did she do something new to her hair? What moisturiser did she use? She was safe for the first few months of her new routine. She could look in the mirror and see nothing looking back at her.
Somehow, Malfoy noticed.
He’d gone months without acknowledging her or anyone around him, but now he stared at her with an intensity that should have frightened her. Instead, it only pissed her off. She took to sitting wherever she could to block his gaze. She hadn’t talked to him since their return to school, so her change in seating arrangement didn’t seem to bother anyone.
She’d been slow to gather her things after one lesson, and, when she finally stood up, she realized he had waited for her.
“What happened to your scar?” He pointed a slender finger to his neck, indicating the spot where his aunt had pressed her knife into Hermione. He knew the knife was cursed.
“It’s none of your business, Malfoy,” was all she’d said in response, brushing past him towards the doorway.
He’d breathed in deeply and tutted in recognition. “You’re on a calming potion today. Yesterday, it was euphoria. What’ll it be tomorrow?”
“Sod off.”
So what if he could pick out whatever potion she used off of smell alone. She wished he’d just keep his sharp nose to himself.
Unfortunately, naming her drug-of-the-day turned into a daily exercise of his. Every day, without fail, he’d find a way to drop his infuriatingly accurate deductions. She’d taken to making her own additions to standard ingredients to try and throw him off. Peppermint, thyme, Lady’s Mantle. Her variations brought odd little smiles to his face and he’d hum in what almost sounded like appreciation before guessing correctly yet again.
Worse, her coping methods were starting to fail her.
Despite all her glamour charms, she’d started seeing her scars like phantoms on her skin. She could cast the spells in her sleep and had taken to doing so the moment she awoke before even getting out of bed.
Even her concoctions seemed to be failing her, and she placed the blame squarely on Malfoy. They’d been perfectly fine until he’d woken up from his stupor and started tormenting her with his little game. She shouldn’t have cared so much; she should be floating on clouds, completely at ease with the world around her.
And now, he’d followed her into the bathroom.
“I want to see it,” he said.
“See, what, exactly,” Hermione snapped, looking at him in the mirror’s reflection from where she leaned against the sink.
“The scar Aunt Bella made.” Silvery eyes glinted in the dim light.
“You first.”
She hadn’t expected him to concede. She thought he’d leave, maybe say something spiteful.
Without breaking eye contact, he unbuttoned his cuff and rolled up the sleeve to bare his left forearm. Hermione finally turned around then, if only to get a better look at the Mark still burned into his skin. She’d wondered if it had disappeared over time, or, at the very least, faded.
The skull and snake stood out sharply against his pale flesh, looking as fresh as she imagined it had at the start. She wouldn’t have known. There hadn’t been an occasion for her to see back then. She wouldn’t know now if he hadn’t followed her and she hadn’t taunted him.
She stared and she stared and she stared.
And then he stood in front of her, having walked forward into her space and now holding his arm up in some kind of twisted offering, one that she took without even thinking about it. The moment her fingers touched his skin, he brought his hand up, ignoring her flinch, to push aside her hair and press two fingers against the exact spot where he knew her scar lay hidden. “Here?”
Hermione’s hand rotated so she now gripped his wrist lightly, thumb rubbing circles across the skull’s dome. She dragged her eyes up to look into his and nodded, then she closed them and released her magic.
This time it was his palm against her neck, cupping the curve, and his thumb running along the silvery white cut now visible to his eyes.
Even though she’d dropped her glamours and someone else’s eyes could see her imperfections, the demons in her head stayed quiet. Maybe they sensed their brethren within Malfoy. Maybe they’d return the moment she was alone again. Maybe it was pure shock from his touch, gentle in its study of her.
When his hand slipped away and he stepped back, Hermione prepared for a return to privacy, for his curiosity to be satiated in proof.
He surprised her once again.
He slowly uncuffed and rolled up his other sleeve, shifted his bag more securely on his shoulder, and jerked his head towards the door. “Let’s go, or we’ll be late.”
Within this bathroom where the faucet leaked and the candles flickered, casting shadows against the glass, she stared at Draco Malfoy and chewed her lip in indecision. She couldn’t read his expressions, but she thought his eyes might have softened.
He rolled both sleeves back down and waited for her to recast her glamours, before saying lightly, “Let’s do this again sometime, yeah?”
He walked to the door, holding it open for her even though students passing by double took at the sight of a boy walking out of the girls’ washroom.
Hermione could handle five minutes of mutual vulnerability every now and then. Maybe those five minutes would lengthen into fifteen, then into an hour, and then maybe, just maybe, one morning she’d wake up and not need glamours or potions at all.
She glanced out of the corner of her eye at the boy with his own impeccable mask and starched cuffs. She still thought his nose was too pointy, the pale scruff on his jaw in dire need of a shave.
“Same time tomorrow?”