mock-orange
The potion maker formerly known as Draco Malfoy busied himself amidst the flowers, steadying his hands enough so as to cut them cleanly from their stems. He retreated to the outdoors whenever the noise in his head would grow too loud, whenever he could hear the echo of his dead aunt's laugh, or the sound of his own name on his dead father’s tongue, a sound laced with fear, disdain and agonized love. He would wander through the trees and tall grass until the sounds of wind had carried the noise away.
In time, he had noticed other sounds as well: the sounds of beating wings, of water lapping at the edges of the lake, of undulating grass, his own footfalls amidst it all. Sounds of the living, he had realized. The calm was his favourite part of life in the meadow. He loved the fact that within it there was no trace of the war, that the gentleness within which life unfolded there seemed to foreclose any possibility of violence.
During the war, he had become a fearful creature attuned to sounds of danger. He knew the sounds of different Death Eaters’ footfalls, of Voldemort’s screams of pleasure or displeasure. He taught himself to become as ghostlike as possible amidst their reverberations, desperate for his body to lose its opacity and disappear into the walls.
That morning he had awoken at dawn with a start, blinking away nightmarish images of the manor. This was a day of noise, a day the ache he carried within his bones thrummed harder than usual, perhaps as cosmic punishment or as a manifestation of his shame. And so, he had dragged himself out of bed into the early morning mist, intent on replenishing his stocks of herbs and plants. The sun had long since set and his hands had grown increasingly unsteady.
He sighed. Better call it quits. Some firewhiskey might help ease the shaking, and also everything else.
Gathering the delicate blossoms in the crook of his elbow, he gingerly picked up his shears and set out towards his cottage, the moonlight guiding his trajectory home. But as he grew nearer, an unfamiliar figure cut a dark outline in the night. A twig snapped under Draco’s foot. The dark outline drew out a wand and spun to face him.
The face he saw in sleep greeted him. He recognized her dark brown eyes, now widened in caution and surprise rather than overwhelmed with pain and fear like in his nightmares. Her hair had grown longer, he found himself noticing. It now fell across her shoulders in thick waves. An irrational wave of relief washed over him at how alive she looked, how strong, poised to strike him down. Suddenly overwhelmed with an awareness of the treacherous geography that stretched between them, he winced, dropping his gaze, his shears and the blossoms to the ground.
This seemed to stun her back into herself. “What are you doing here Malfoy?” she asked, lowering her wand slightly.
“I live here,” his voice came out hoarsely. A few days had passed since he had last spoken to anyone.
Confused frustration flashed across her face, “I’m looking for the potion maker D.B.” She already knew the answer but seemed to recoil at the mere possibility of it.
“Well, you’ve found him,” Draco said quietly his gaze now trained on her wand.
“I don’t understand,” she said, seemingly to herself, her wand now fully lowered.
Draco motioned to the door “It’s late. I can make us tea, if you’d like.”
She nodded. Draco stooped down, gathering what he had dropped, before waving his hand towards the door which clicked softly and swung open.
She trailed after him, lingering surprise rendering her speechless. Draco waved his hand, activating the burner on which the kettle rested, and pulled two mugs out of the kitchen cupboard. The cottage was mercifully tidy, the books that did not fit within his vast bookshelves stacked neatly on various surfaces – a coffee table, a desk, the fireplace. Although it was sparsely furnished, Draco had taken pride in transforming the cottage into a space of his own. It had felt rewarding knowing that he could live outside of the Manor, in a place of his own making.
Hermione Granger took a seat by the fireplace. Curiosity, bewilderment and wariness waring on her face as she attempted to school her features. She still wears every feeling she has on her face. Catching himself staring he lowered his gaze to the white flowers in his hands.
“Mock-orange.”
“Pardon?”
“They only bloom at night. That’s what I was picking.” What are you saying you utter prat. “They help ease nausea that accompanies certain potions.”
Silence.
“Is this where you have been, all this time?” she answered, seemingly finding her bearings. He felt the intensity of her gaze on his face.
Don’t look at me. His gut twisted. “Since Azkaban yes.”
More silence. “Harry and I tried. To keep you out of there. I don’t know how much you remember of the trial.”
Her face still bruised from the war. Her brow furrowed in righteous outrage as she had testified on his behalf. She had met his stunned gaze as he sat in a cage of dark wrought iron. Please, don’t look at me.
“Yes, I remember,” he said with a small smile, “I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why you both were there.”
“Our own difficult history has no bearing on the fact that it was morally wrong to put you on trial when you were coerced into participating in the war as a child. And besides, without your mother’s love for you Harry would have died. Surely that meant something,” she stated matter-of-factly, her brow furrowed at the memory of events long past.
The invocation of his mother seized his heart like a clenched fist. He turned towards the kettle and busied himself making tea despite the water still being too cold.
“You’ve got a frightening moral compass,” he chuckled quietly.
“Yes, the papers thought so too.”
He handed her the mug of tea, moving to sit in the seat farthest from her.
“Why D.B.?” she asked, her eyes still on him.
He felt overwhelmed by her presence, the ferocity of her attention which was trained on him as if he were an untranslatable rune. “It’s Draco Black now.”
This seemed to spark something within Hermione. Her eyes came alight furiously: “And you think that’s enough to rid yourself of it all?” she snapped.
Draco flinched as if she had struck him. To distance myself from the father who made me all that I am? From the house where I watched you scream and bleed? Yes of course I want to burn it all. I want to rip the past from my body. He felt his mind spinning. Gripping the arms of his chair he retreated within himself and felt the fog of occlumency envelop his senses.
Hermione exhaled sharply, “I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s gotten into me. It’s this day, it always makes my emotions all tangled up. It’s not fair to take it out on you, not when I’m here to ask for your help.”
My help? he thought, curiosity gently piercing the veil of occlumency.
“I need Felix felicis. I would compensate you generously for your time and can help source the ingredients. Can you do it?” she asked.
Draco opened his mouth, then closed it. “Felix felicis is an extremely complex potion that requires six months to be brewed,” he paused to catch his breath, his heart beating rapidly in his chest “I can do it if you are able to assist me during the full process as I require the use of a wand.”
Genuine surprise darted across Hermione’s face. “What happened to your wand?”
“When I left Azkaban-” he cleared his throat. “I learned that part of my sentence entails being barred from the use of a wand. They snapped it in two in front of me.”
“That’s barbaric.” Hermione said softly.
“The Death Eaters wished to prohibit Muggleborns from using wands. It makes sense that as a form of punishment they in turn have their own wands destroyed.”
Hermione remained quiet, her brow furrowed.
“I’ll brew the potion. That is, if you are willing to be in such close proximity to me for the next six months,” he said, his voice still low and full of gravel.
“Thank you, and yes I am willing to do so,” relief flooded her face and suddenly, she appeared much older than her years. Draco found himself wondering what had occured in decade since they had seen each other in passing, when they were for a brief instant two teenagers separated by a metal cage and several lifetimes worth of right and wrong choices. She placed her untouched tea on the surface closest to her and stood, smoothing her robes reflexively. “Can we get started tomorrow?”
Draco nodded. Hermione nodded in turn – to herself most likely – and moved towards the entrance. But rather than walking into the night she paused in the doorway. She turned back towards him. “What kind of wand was it?”
He pictured the weathered box from which it had emerged in Ollivanders. The nights he had fallen asleep clutching its dark wood to his chest. “Hawthorn with unicorn hair.”
She frowned. “Isn’t it particularly difficult to perform Dark Magic using wands with unicorn cores?”
Suddenly Draco found himself doubled over laughing, the unusual sound spilling out from a deep forgotten place. He righted himself quickly, smiling and met her gaze. “Yes. Yes, it is.”