Chapter Text
Chapter One
The stone underneath her feet was cold and sharp, chilling her bare skin and erupting goosebumps along her arms. She wrapped the blanket more firmly around herself but continued walking.
Hermione didn't quite know where she was going, only that she couldn't sleep because the castle was too eerily quiet and her mind was numb and there was something heavy, settled deep within her, that toppled precariously every time she tried to rest. It didn't help that she closed her eyes, and flashing lights from whizzing spells would assault the blackness lingering there. Every moment of quiet would lend itself to screams and yells, to a fear so debilitating she felt winded, and had to remind herself that this serenity was safe, that she could enjoy it, that she could just breathe-
Hogwarts was not the place she remembered it to be.
Where once, these same stone walls had been the foundation of everything safe and magical in the world, all Hermione could see was death. There were spiders lurking in the darkness, and the swish of a cloak sent her searching for a superseding glint of a silver mask. It was as though every time she closed her eyes, or stared for a little while longer than necessary, she was back there. Back with the monsters and the screams and the threat of a pain so agonising you’d beg Death to take you.
She had thought coming back to finish her final year would have been healing, something like facing her past and raising her chin in defiance to show she wasn’t afraid. This was not like that.
Instead, it all felt like another stab in her back, another flesh wound to match the scar on her arm. Instead of closure, all Hermione had gotten so far was more pain. Instead of covering the grave, she was drowning in the dirt, suffocating in the coffin along with everything else that had happened here.
She had not had a full night’s sleep since she had returned two weeks ago.
Harry and Ron had been adamant they wanted to move on with their lives, and Hermione could honestly say she had been bitter. Though they deserved peace, she selfishly tried to persuade them to change their minds because Hogwarts was nothing without their competitive but fruitless games of chess and Harry’s consequent groan of exasperation when Ron won yet again. They wrote to her every day, but Harry’s signature could not replace the frown of concentration he would do when trying to understand something new, and Pig’s friendly bite of her fingers was nothing compared to the heavy weight of Ron’s arm as he flung it around her shoulders.
She missed them.
She missed normalcy. She missed everything they had been promised before the war had gone and ripped it away from them. Hermione missed living without the poisonous inflection of fear that quickened her heartbeat when she walked down an empty corridor on her own, and the way the three of them used to thrive on youth, gulping it down and wasting it. They should have savoured the way the sun felt on their faces, when their biggest worry was Snape’s essay due in the following day. They should have savoured living.
Because though Hermione was more than aware of her heart thumping against her ribcage, she was also aware that what she was doing was not living. It was hardly surviving.
So she wandered along the cold corridors of Hogwarts for the thirteenth night in a row, wincing when her bare feet would step on something sharp, willing her jumbled mind to be quiet. She felt like a puzzle of her old self, mixed up and jagged with the broken pieces, stabbing anyone who tried to touch her. No matter how many hours she spent in the library, or how many of her favourite books she would read, Hermione could not get the pieces of her old self to fall back into place. She refused to believe she was broken. Maybe she was just lost.
The moonlight spilled in from the high windows, casting the castle in a conflict of light and shadow. Hermione made sure to avoid the light. It made her brain louder, caused her to squint her eyes, and frown. It made her feel too clean and exposed.
She wasn’t clean. Her hands were as dirty as the next person’s. Maybe even dirtier, drenched in so much blood it poured through her fingertips.
If she listened carefully, if she held her breath, Hermione could swear she heard it dripping on the floor as she walked, leaving a trail behind her.
She didn’t know where she was going. She never did. She just folded back the red cover when staring at the darkness of the ceiling made patterns dance behind her eyelids, slipped out of the dormitory then Common Room and started walking. Tonight, she’d had the initiative to bring a blanket with her, sharply aware of the sudden gust of cold that had blown in from the Northern seas.
Hermione used to love snow, but the idea this year made her stomach sick.
She didn’t know whether it was because every snowflake promised for the upcoming winter reminded her of an innocence and a playfulness she had wasted, or if it was the way it made her squint against the brightness every time she so much as glanced outside. There was a dull, throbbing ache inside of her when she remembered how the twins used to conduct the biggest snowball fights in Hogwarts history. Hermione wished she had tears to show for it, but her eyes were always dry nowadays. It was as though even her grief had given up.
She tugged the blanket closer to her body, leaning her head into the softness of it, and rounded the next corner. She stopped.
He hadn’t seen her yet. That much was obvious. If he had, he would look no doubt as she felt; like a rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming truck. He sat in the shadows, with his back pressed against the stone wall, head bowed so his face was cast in obdurate shadow. Hermione knew it was him though. She recognised the golden glint of his hair, and the promise of an angular, aristocratic face tucked into his cloak.
If she kept quiet, she could turn around and leave without him ever realising she was there.
Instead, for some reason she could not fathom, she found her feet moving closer to him. He looked up then, and his eyes widened fractionally before he continued to stare at her. She came to a stop when there were only a couple metres between them. Hermione frowned at the space, thinking it felt more like oceans.
“Are you okay?” she whispered. Her voice sounded harsher in the silence, louder. She cringed.
Malfoy’s eyebrows knitted into a frown and he looked away. His thin lips were pursed tightly together. Hermione swallowed and it was only when he looked back at her abruptly that she realised he’d heard the way that life caught in her throat.
“I’m alive, Granger,” was all he said in lieu of a reply. The laughter that followed was a huff of scathing disbelief, exhaled from his nostrils. He didn’t look amused in the slightest. “It’s more than what anyone expected of me.”
Hermione tightened her arms around her. “I think the same could be said for both of us.”
Now, Malfoy scoffed. There was a hint of something laced through the pale, sharp lines of his face, and it was the only emotion she’d seen on him since they’d come back.
“Everyone expected you to survive, Granger,” he told her, voice nearly choked on bitter mirth. “You’re the brains, after all. Even if Potter hadn’t come out kicking, we all expected you to. You’ve always been stubborn and I doubted a war would take that out of you-”
“I’m not surviving,” she muttered brokenly. It fractured on the air between them and she hated it. “I’m barely existing, Draco.”
He looked surprised at that. His eyes were wide, almost scared, and he stared at her for what felt like hours but was in reality only a few stolen minutes they couldn’t afford to keep. Malfoy cleared his throat and, though it looked to pain him, offered her a small smile. Hermione thought it resembled more of a grimace.
“Neither am I.”
She sat down on the floor beside him, and there was still the empty space and so much more between them, but he bristled at the action. They just sat there, not exactly relishing in the other’s company, and stared at the opposite wall, feeling the biting cold in the flesh of their backs and legs but making no move to leave.
“I knew the war was inevitable but I didn’t think it would be like this,” said Hermione eventually.
Malfoy frowned. There was a silent battle waged in his eyes but it seemed his curiosity won out for he asked, reluctance fringing his voice, “What do you mean?”
She licked at her chapped lips. “I thought I’d be happy. I thought I’d be relieved it’s over… I am. I mean, of course I am. But there’s too much grief to feel it completely.”
“That’s easy for you to say, Granger,” Malfoy replied bitterly, and she looked at him to see his face twisted. The moonlight made him look haunting. “You came out on the winning side.”
Almost absently, her eyes trailed to his ankle, and she could see the band of light peeking out from beneath his pyjama bottoms. It was a bright blue: pending trial.
“I’m starting to think there is no winning side,” she told him quietly.
He let out a derisive laugh. “Don’t you dare, Granger.”
“We’ve all lost, in some way or another-”
“Yes, but you’re not about to be locked in Azkaban with only the Dementors for company so I think it’s safe to say you win in this situation!”
His words were loud and rushed and they echoed along the corridor, ricocheting off stone and making them both wince.
Hermione looked at him, horror crawling up her throat. Her face felt slack. “They want to send you to Azkaban?” she whispered.
Malfoy held her gaze for a moment before he looked back at his hands. They were deathly white, long fingers with almost invisible scars written into the skin. They were trembling slightly.
“I’m an accessory to a number of murders, Granger. You should know that. You were there for some of them.”
Without meaning to, her fingers brushed along her forearm. Malfoy noticed, and his eyes narrowed. He swallowed and looked away.
“But you’re just a child,” she murmured.
Malfoy’s head ducked, and he muttered, “Does it matter?”
“It should!” fumed Hermione, and she felt that familiar burn of anger flare up inside of her. It surprised her a little, and it looked as though she’d shocked Malfoy too. This was the most emotion she had felt since the war. “You had no choice.”
He offered her a tight-lipped smile. “Tell that to the Wizengamot, Granger. To them, I’m just my father’s son.”
She refrained from reaching over and taking his hand. Hermione shook herself and wondered where the thought came from. Maybe she was just so deprived of any human contact that her loneliness convinced her touching Malfoy was a good idea.
Even so, she breathed in shakily and said in the steadiest voice she could muster, “You aren’t to me.”
Malfoy froze. He didn’t look at her, but she felt better that the words were out there for him to do with them what he liked.
This wasn’t the same Malfoy that had tormented her through school. This was a boy as broken as she was. His pieces were like hers, clinging on for dear life, fraying at the edges so if anyone tried to get close, they would be deterred. He was drowning in loneliness.
Instead of replying to her, he picked at a loose thread on his cloak. Hermione thought it odd that anything he owned would be even the slightest bit shabby. He asked offhandedly, “You know why I’m here. Why are you?”
"I don't sleep much," Hermione offered. "The inside of my head can get noisy sometimes."
“Well, that’s no surprise. It’s all that incessant prattling you do,” said Malfoy, but he was smirking and if she hadn’t been so taken aback that he was actually joking with her, she would’ve had the urge to punch him.
Malfoy sobered up then and he stared at her, offering a strained smile. "My mind's pretty fucked up too."
Hermione didn’t say anything, and they settled into a quiet companionship. She didn’t dare call it anything else, lest she ruin it completely, for the sensation of having another heart beating next to her was too comforting to give up. It was only when the shadows shifted, and the darkness outside the windows lighted suddenly that they stirred.
She realised she should probably go to try and wring a few hours of sleep before the school day started. Maybe this wandering would tire her bones out eventually that her body would just shut down on itself.
Hermione adjusted the blanket around her shoulders and got to her feet. She stared at the floor, before glancing at Malfoy. He was frowning at his hands, twisting a silver ring around his index finger. She wondered if she should bid him goodbye, but though her lips parted, no sound came out, and she closed it again, turning on her heel and walking away.
Draco regarded her back reproachfully and he don’t know what made him say it, but he called after her, “Jasmine tea.”
Granger spun round. She shot him a demanding frown. Draco nearly rolled his eyes and stormed away from her there and then, but refrained from doing so. Figures that even her eyebrows would demand things of him. He mumbled, almost embarrassed, “That’s what helps me sleep.”
Granger’s face cleared with realisation, and she looked at him with something resembling gratitude. He swallowed, and kept his lips sealed as she continued walking down the corridor.
The space next to him felt cold and empty, and he shifted his cloak tighter around his shoulders, head dropping. Draco sighed, climbing to his feet and setting off down the other side of the corridor.
There was nothing to suggest they had met at all. No witness. No portrait. Only the windows and the fresh, mellowing sunlight and the stone walls that had always been so chilling. They were just wanderers, who happened to be lost at the same time, desperately trying to find something to make life feel like it was worth living.
Hermione woke in her bed much later on, the taste of jasmine lingering on her tongue. It was the most she had slept in a long time.