Serenade
She wakes with a start, befuddled and not quite sure she isn’t still dreaming. Even now, hints of a soothing touch and a curl tucked behind her ear linger, then fade away as Hermione’s eyes adjust to the darkness.
Did she drink too much caffeine before bed, again?
It doesn’t feel like she needs to pee, and she isn’t sweaty the way she sometimes gets beneath the thick blankets that cover her bed all year round.
A shuffling movement at her feet, then Crooks ambles up to curl onto her pillow.
“Do you know why I’m awake, old boy?” There’s no reason to whisper when it’s just the two of them, but she does so anyway.
Her question receives nothing but a flick of a tail in response.
That’s when she hears it: a familiar melody, but different.
The faint strums of…a guitar?
She’s up on her feet without conscious thought, padding across the floor and reaching for the door knob within seconds. Quiet as she can be, Hermione slips into the hallway, a line of closed doors guiding her way towards the 8th-Year Common Room.
Who could it be?
Hermione has a hard time imagining any of her classmates playing the sort of song she hears now–melancholy, exploratory. It’s part song, part dream. Whoever it is, they have a light touch.
Then, she sees him.
A faint glow of candlelight is all that illuminates where he sits beside the fireplace. If not for that, she might have missed the signature starlight hair that is currently bent over the guitar, completely oblivious to her presence. Pale, too, are the fingers strumming the strings; she might think him a ghost, if not for the nearly-silent hum as he bobs his head in time with the music.
She knows the lyrics, though this version is far different from the one she remembers on her childhood radio. Slower, wistful.
Draco Malfoy listens to Muggle music. There’s no other explanation for it.
Not just listens, but makes it his own.
How? Why?
It’s a song of a father and his newborn, a song full of awe and hope and everything she knows Malfoy and so many others have lost these past years. Hermione can’t remember the last time she saw any emotion other than defeat on his face.
Perplexed, she retreats back the way she came. The last thing she wants to do is ruin whatever this moment is for him. They aren’t friends, but she doesn’t think they’re enemies. Not anymore.
Maybe never again.