Chapter Text
He didn’t notice the mirror behind the bar until the girl with glitter on her cheeks slid in next to him and asked for his signature.
“Just your name,” she said, thrusting a napkin at him with a grin that was entirely too big for midnight at a rundown pub.
Just your name. As if a name were harmless. He heard the girl drunkenly whisper to her friends, “you know she had his mugshot on her bedroom wall, she’s always been a sucker for a man who’s life has gone to complete shit.”
Draco grimaced. He should be mad but he couldn’t disagree with the girl. His life had gone to shit.
He signed D. Malfoy automatically. When he looked up, the pub mirror reflected him in triplicate, three blurred versions of a man who was used to having to break himself into pieces to keep those around him happy.
Well, if not happy, at least alive. Which unfortunately for him, did not translate into his own happiness.
After shaking himself out of his maudlin thoughts, he turned to see a copy of the prophet on the bar next to the communal bowl of peanuts that Draco most certainly had not seen a single wizard scurgify their hands before digging into. The headlines only served to annoy him further:
MALFOY HEIR DONATES TO ST. MUNGO’S
MALFOY ATTENDS MINISTRY GALA WITH GREENGRASS HEIRESS… BETROTHAL REAFFIRMED?
He wasn’t with Astoria Greengrass tonight. He wasn’t with anyone. He wanted to sit in this disgusting pub and feel sorry for himself. He wanted to smoke the pack of muggle cigarettes he had in his pocket. He hadn’t smoked in years, not since hogwarts 8th year.
He liked knowing he had choices that were his alone. He took the pack out, put it back. The choosing not to was its own kind of resistance.
“Malfoy!”
A voice clapped against his shoulder. He cringed. He never knew if a friend or foe was near, though the voice did not sound hostile.
“Still fast on a broom?” The man was smiling stupidly. He might have been a younger Slytherin. Maybe Draco had once talked to him in the common room. Maybe he was in the audience of first years Theo had taught the contraception charm to in their fifth year before they had more to worry about than a contraception charm.
Draco grunted in the man’s general direction and the man laughed as if Draco had told a joke.
But Draco’s reflection didn’t laugh. It stared back at him accusingly.
And then she appeared in the mirror.
Hermione Granger. Hair longer and darker than he remembered, plaited loosely over one shoulder. She had on her muggle jeans and a tshirt and boots built for walking through annything and he thought he had never seen someone so beautiful. She looked like the only warm thing he had ever seen in his life.
His heart reacted before his mind caught up.
He didn’t turn, just stared into her reflection in the mirror behind the bar.
If he turned, it would become an event. Malfoy and Granger Seen Together. Again. Someone would write it down. Someone would make it smaller than it truly was. Or bigger. He couldn’t decide which would hurt more.
She was closer by the time he dared breathe.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi.” His voice cracked. He hated that it did.
“You look… different,” she said.
He swallowed. “So do you.”
“Different good?”
“Yes.”
Silence lodged itself between them. But not the the comfortable silence that used to exist in the late afternoon on Sundays as she read and he tried to read one of her science fiction novels and he’d interrupt her to ask too many questions and she’d pretend to be annoyed until they were both laughing and then snogging and then moaning as he … nevermind. This was decidedly not that kind of silence.
He knew this silence wasn’t a prelude to anything but pain with a side of guilt. He’d seen to that when he’d unintentionally blew up his whole world by trying to keep everyone happy. He blinked and looked in her warm eyes, seeing nothing but kindness. He hated that, too.
She glanced at the exit. Back at him. “Walk with me?”
“Yes,” he said instantly. He almost said always.
***
It was a foggy night, which Draco thought matched the situation he found himself in. Hermione walked with her hands in her coat pockets, chin lifted like she knew exactly where she was headed in every possible iteration of this moment, and in each one Draco would follow her, of course he would. Did she know this? Has he ever told her that he would follow her anywhere?
Draco kept his hands at his sides so he wouldn’t reach for her.
“I wanted to apologize,” she started.
“For what?”
“For not knowing when to stop.” She exhaled. “For asking you to choose before you knew how.”
“You deserved to be chosen,” he said stiffly. He felt cold and nauseous. He didn’t want an apology from her. He didn’t deserve an apology from her.
She looked at him and her brown eyes were filled with sorrow. She looked like someone analyzing an equation that she was about to give up on ever knowing the answer to. He hated that she had to try to figure him out when she’d known every single piece of him once. He loved it because she was looking at him and he missed having the full attention of Hermione Granger on him.
“I did. But not like that. Not as… something you squeezed between appointments and family dinners. Having to cover your tracks just to be with me.”
He winced. “I know.”
She nodded. “I don’t regret loving you. But I regret… staying when I knew I was only being offered half.”
Draco’s throat tightened. “You were never half.”
“I was hidden,” she corrected, voice soft but unshakable. “We hid away In my flat. You held me like I was yours, but never said I was.”
“I was afraid,” he admitted.
“I know.”
He wanted to tell her that she was always the brave one and that he was sorry and also hey do you happen to have that time turner from your 3rd year you told me about because I can think of a couple of times I’d like to hop back to…..
He said nothing.
She took a breath. “I’m seeing someone.”
The words struck like cold water. He didn’t flinch outwardly, but he was surprised to find that his chest had not caved in. He knew this was inevitable. She deserved happiness and he’d fucked it all up when he’d had his chance.
“Is he good to you?” Draco asked.
“He’s kind,” she replied.
He nodded. It was the right answer. It was also the worst answer.
They walked until the streetlamps turned on and the fog became all the more apparent.
“You were all at once to me,” Hermione said softly. “I just wanted to be that to you.” She gave him a sad little smile.
He shut his eyes.
“I’m not here to reopen anything or to be cruel,” she added. “I just wanted… you to know I’m alright. That I’m not angry anymore. Sad, sometimes. But not angry.”
“Are you… happy?” he forced out. He did not want her to say yes but he also knew he was a bad person for thinking that.
“Some days,” she said. Then, quieter, “Are you?”
He could have lied. He didn’t.
“No.”
She closed her eyes briefly. “Draco…”
He stopped walking. So did she.
“Why did you ask me out here?” he asked, trying not to sound desperate. The back of his throat stung. His toes felt cold.
Hermione looked at him for a long, long moment. So long that Draco almost lost control of his arms, still wanting to reach out to her.
“Because there’s a version of me that avoids you for the next ten years,” she said steadily. “And in that version, I pretend I no longer know your voice when I hear it. And you do the same thing when you hear mine. I didn’t want to become that person just yet.”
“And now?” he whispered, trying to hide the anguish that this idea brought him:
Her smile was kind, sad, but absolutely determined.
“Now I say goodbye while we’re still human to each other.”
Then she touched his sleeve lightly. He wanted to grab it and apparate her to anywhere in the world. He wanted to kiss the back of her hand. He wanted to demand the name of the new man she was seeing.
He did none of these things.
He looked at the ground and clenched his fist.
Somewhere in distance he could hear a group of people laughing. He finally looked up.
He watched as she walked away.
***
Draco stood beneath the streetlamp long after she vanished.
When the light flickered out, he stayed.
Because he couldn’t think of a single place to go that wouldn’t hurt without her. Or a place that wouldn’t echo back to him the pain he’d caused her.
***
He didn’t go home.
Home was a transient concept lately.. He couldn’t stay still for too long or else he’d melt into the background of his own life.
Sometimes he would stay at the Manor which felt suffocating and sterile. He drank tea with his mother and avoided his father.
Sometimes he stayed at his flat in Bloomsbury, where he’d try to teach himself how to be a functional adult and prepare his own meals. He didn’t understand the system the muggles use for rubbish collection, so he’d call his house elf Tippy to vanish it for him. Rock bottom was learning that a house elf could look at him with pity as she offered to make him food that was edible.
He accepted and only felt a little ashamed.
Sometimes he’d stay at Nott Manor. Less frequently since he and Theo had gotten drunk off fire whisky and Theo called him a selfish coward for losing Granger.
Draco agreed with him.
Instead, Draco walked until the city blurred and the noises became a steady hum. Past shuttered shops and flickering lamps. Past couples leaning into each other like they shared a spine. Past a busker playing something mournful on a Muggle violin that made his throat tighten. Why the fuck was the music always sad.
He sat on a bench near the river that he hadn’t realized he was walking towards and took out the cigarettes.
He didn’t smoke them.
He just held the box in both hands, knowing they were there if he wanted one.
He didn’t.
***
He didn’t sleep.
He lay in his flat with his eyes open, ceiling unfamiliar and vast. The silence was a punishment.
Before tonight, before seeing her he could have kept on lying to himself. Since they’d never been anything official or public, there wasn’t anything to end. Schrödinger’s cat, he could still have her if he never got confirmation from her that it was over. She’d taught him that concept.
Everything in the flat still looked like she’d been there even though she’d never stayed long.
A bright orange mug that she brought over and never took back. It clashed horribly with his beige China, but wasn’t that just so her?
A muggle mystery book that she had left once. He’s read it twice now. He has hated the ending both times. He never told her he read it.
A hair tie in the drawer he pretended he didn’t keep intentionally. He liked reaching for his deodorant and seeing it every morning.
He got up.
Paced.
Sat.
Stood.
It was the kind of restlessness that couldn't even settle into despair properly. He was in pain. He felt cold. He felt feverish. He wanted to rip his hair out and yell at the top of his lungs. He wanted to down a bottle of dreamless sleep. He wanted to run down the street barefoot.
Nothing felt right and his breathing was coming too fast. What the fuck had he done? Or better yet, why the fuck had he done nothing?
He felt a brief shudder of anger that she got to be okay and he was feeling insane.
He found himself in front of his writing desk. The drawer still held paper. Alright yes it was actually stupidly expensive parchment that felt wrong beneath shaking hands. This parchment should have held good news. Declarations of love, big life announcements.
He wanted to rip it all up and set his flat on fire.
He didn’t, he wrote.
Then wrote another.
Then another.
Not letters exactly, just unfiltered thoughts and ideas and grievances. Things that were causing him physical pain to keep inside himself.
-I didn’t say no because I thought I wasn’t allowed.
-I thought waiting was proof of loyalty. I didn’t realise it was proof of cowardice.
-You were in my hands. And I dropped you to keep them empty for someone else’s approval.
Some simply said the word. “Hey”.
He didn’t send any of them.
Thirty-seven pages, a quick session of pacing around his flat, then twenty-six more.
They filled the drawer. He felt a little bit better. Or lighter, at least.
He still wanted to crawl out of his skin.
***
Days passed.
Or maybe the same day passed repeatedly, refusing to end.
His mother sent owls. He ignored them. She sent Tippy with sweets and letters. He ignored the letters. He ate the sweets as dinner that night.
His father sent nothing. He wasn’t surprised by this. He was, however, surprised to realize that he didn’t care.
Astoria sent one. He felt a certain comraderie with her. Neither wanted the life they’d been forced into. Neither wanted to marry the other. Neither were brave enough to be the one to break it off.
“Are you alive? Respond or I’ll assume you’ve offed yourself and alert the papers.”
He snorted despite himself. It sounded foreign to his ears.
“I saw Hermione”, he wrote back.
“And?”
“She’s seeing someone.”
“Are you going to let her go?”
He stared until his vision blurred.
“No.”
“Then do something about it, idiot.”
***
He didn’t know how to do anything. He’d been a coward his whole life. He’d always opted for the path of least resistance.
He didn’t know where to begin.
How does one go about un-learning every inherited and observed behavior he’d been around his entire life?
How did he stop himself from doing what he’d always done?
He only knew what he didn’t want:
-To be the man who almost chose her.
-To be the reason she had to practice patience instead of being the answer to it.
-To let his father’s silence be louder than his own wants and needs.
It would take months before action found him.
But the shift began that night by the river, when he held the unopened cigarette box and chose not to smoke one.
He whispered into the dark:
No more cages.