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Chapter Text

During the winter holidays of Draco’s fifth year, he came home and found his home full of Death Eaters.

Draco’s mother kept him away from these new Death Eaters, and she kept the Death Eaters away from him. They stayed in different wings of the manor, the Death Eaters were warned to keep away from certain parts of the grounds that supposedly contained blood curses or beastly guardians. The Death Eaters, many returned from hiding in other countries, amused themselves drinking and snooping and ordering the house elves around. Draco continued to have family dinner with his mother and father once a week, and they pretended the Death Eaters weren’t there. 

Draco cast a heating charm on himself in the foyer one chilly morning after coming in from an early flying practice. 

“Draco,” said a cooing voice. “I thought Cissy was hiding you from us.”

His Aunt Bellatrix stood at the doorway to a sitting room. “I’ve been busy,” Draco said stiffly, propping his broom up against a wall where a house elf immediately apparated and disapparated to take it away. He hurried forward and kissed his aunt’s hand. “I’m so glad to see you.”

“Come sit with us,” Bellatrix said. “We’re having tea.”

He did not trust the way she emphasized tea, but followed her into the sitting room. A dozen other Death Eaters sat around the room, some the guests of Malfoy manor, and others apparently just visiting. Snape had tucked himself away in a corner. A tea tray bobbed over to Draco. “Is the Master wanting tea or firewhiskey?” asked the high voice of a house elf.

Draco accepted tea. 

“Draco,” said a loud, drunk voice. It was one of the Death Eaters who had been living at the manor. “We were just talking about omegas. Got any omegas at Hogwarts?”

Draco felt himself flushing. “Ah. No. Don’t think so.”

“Look, the poor boy’s gone red in the face,” laughed a rotund Death Eater who Draco had never seen before. “Little Master Malfoy, why haven’t we been seeing you around?”

“So rude of Cissy to hide you away,” added Bellatrix in a sweet, inflammatory voice.

Draco wove his way through the Death Eaters to sit near his professor. Snape didn’t acknowledge him. 

The Death Eaters, many of whom were clearly drunk, quickly lost interest in Draco. “Can mudbloods be omegas?” asked the first Death Eater. “Ever heard of a mudblood omega?”

“Don’t see why not-”

“It’d be an affront to magic,” interrupted a scar-faced man who Draco recognized as Rookwood. “A disgrace. Disgusting.”

“I think it’d be kind of fun,” mumbled that first Death Eater, more to himself than to Rookwood. “If she’s a mudblood, she doesn’t know anything. It’s like deflowering a virgin.”

Draco glanced at his professor to see what he thought of this conversation, but a mask of stone had descended over Snape’s face. 

“Who wants a virgin?” cut in another Death Eater. “Give me a girl who knows what she’s doing. Imagine a needy girl, but multiply it by ten, and you get an omega. Make her a mudblood, Travers, and you might as well dig a hole in the garden and start rutting with the flowerbeds in front of the gardener. All consequences, no fun.”

The Death Eaters fell apart at this. Draco smiled over his teacup, not wanting to be left out of the joke. 

“No alphas at Hogwarts either?” asked the Death Eater called Travers. 

“Um, no, I don’t think so,” Draco said, wishing he were not being addressed. 

“Not even Dumbledore’s golden boy?” Bellatrix asked.

“I’m not his keeper,” Draco snapped, and this made the Death Eaters fall into uproarious laughter again. The conversation meandered away from the topic of alphas and omegas and Draco leaned back into the cushions.

The conversation lulled. “Say, Bellatrix,” said Travers, who seemed unable to let it go. “What if you’d been an omega?”

The room went still. Bellatrix was the only woman in the room. Her mouth tightened and her hand brushed over her skirt where her wand was holstered, and Draco was sure he was about to see a man crucioed. After a long, tense pause, she said, “I would have been honored to serve our Dark Lord in any way he saw fit.”

Later, after the Death Eaters had dispersed, Snape grabbed Draco by the arm and dragged him into an empty hallway. “You need to learn Occlumency,” he hissed.

“Excuse me?”

“Your every emotion takes a stroll across your face like it’s a sunny Sunday afternoon. I’ll be back Wednesday evening for your first lesson.”

It was a sign that Draco didn’t know what was to come that he spent the rest of the day annoyed at Snape for making him do lessons over the holidays. 

Two weeks back at school for Eighth Year, and Draco wished the Wizengamot had just thrown him in Azkaban. He was open target practice for anyone with itchy fingers and a new curse to try out. Somehow, none of the professors or portraits were ever looking when Draco grew horns, or when he started dancing uncontrollably, or when his ears grew so long he had to carry them with both hands so they didn’t drag on the floor.

“You again,” Madam Pomfrey said. She looked him up and down. “What do you need this time?”

As if he wasn’t practically carrying his earlobes in a basket. “My ears,” he said flatly.

She stared a moment longer. “Oh yes, they do seem rather long, don’t they.” She pointed to a chair. “Sit. This might make you dizzy. Would’ve thought you knew the counterhex for this one, it’s quite elementary.”

“Reversing schoolyard hexes wasn’t part of my Death Eater education,” Draco mumbled. “We rather focused on the more murdery stuff.”

Madam Pomfrey let out a sharp bark of laughter and then covered her mouth as though she hadn’t expected her own reaction. “This was a popular prank when I was in school, but then that was about three hundred years ago, wasn’t it. Spells fall in and out of fashion. Auris Horreat!”

For a moment, nothing. Then a slight tightening in his ears, like he had gotten water stuck after swimming, and the room spun and Draco fell out of his chair. 

“Vertigo,” Madam Pomfrey said, sounding mildly amused and helping him sit back up. “Common side effect of spells affecting the ears.” Draco tried to get back into the chair and staggered, grabbing at the air. Madam Pomfrey levitated him into a bed. “This will be over in a few minutes.”

Draco closed his eyes and tried not to think about the swirling. All his insides were smudging together in circles, like he was dead drunk. When he opened his eyes, it was dim in the hospital wing and twilight slanted through the windows. He must have fallen asleep. He looked around, but the other beds were empty. A bar of light spilled out from under the door of Madam Pomfrey’s office. He swung his legs out of bed, testing his balance, and the vertigo had gone away. 

He doubted Madam Pomfrey would appreciate being disturbed just so he could say goodbye. But he felt an odd fondness for the little old witch these days. She seemed to be the only person left in the castle willing to treat him like a person, and not a skulking villain or a walking target. Just as he was about to slip out, he heard a light cough from behind him.

Madam Pomfrey stood at the door of her office, dressed in her nightgown. 

“Sorry,” Draco said immediately. “I felt better, so-”

“You know how to disillusion yourself?” she asked.

Draco nodded. 

“Why don’t you use that more often? I’m far too busy to be attending to you three times a day.”

He looked around at the empty hospital wing. “Yes ma’am.”

She stepped forward and tapped him on the head with her wand, and a sensation like cold egg yolk trickled down his neck, making him shiver. She tucked something into his hand. “Get back to Slytherin before curfew, now.”

Draco nodded, although all she would have seen was a shimmer in the air. “Yes ma’am,” he repeated quietly, and ducked out. It was not worth explaining that the Eighth Years had a later curfew than the rest of the school, that as full adults they could stay out all night without repercussion and leave school when they wished. She probably knew this, he reasoned, and was looking for an excuse to pack him off. 

Footsteps sounded down the corridor and Draco pressed himself to the wall. A trio of girls, fourth or fifth years, chattered about some assignment as they passed him, not sparing a glance his way. The disillusionment must be working. If they had seen him they would have gone quiet and stiff, and hurried by. He had, in fact, already been using the disillusionment charm to wander about the school during odd hours when he needed a break from the empty eyes in the Slytherin dungeons and the anger of the other houses. But there was value to being seen here and there, to being caught by a few jinxes or curses a day. It kept people from asking, where’s that Death Eater? Seeing him punished brought everyone else together in some perverse way. 

And in many ways, he felt it was the least of what he deserved.

He went to the sixth floor and tried to make the Room of Requirement appear again. He repeated this same futile experiment every evening. He didn’t know whether the Room of Requirement had been fully destroyed by the fiendfyre, or whether it had simply locked him out. But he kept coming back up at night to try. Finally, once his watch said curfew for the younger students had begun, he went down to the library where he knew it would be quiet. There were less than twenty Eighth Years who had chosen to return to Hogwarts. Potter, aka the Golden Boy, aka Savior of the Wizarding World, had elected to take an assistant aurorship at the Ministry. 

Draco wondered, if Potter had been back at Hogwarts, whether he would have protected him from the opportunists. Potter had always been stupidly noble like that, and during the final battle he had seen some sort of understanding in Potter’s eyes. Forgiveness, maybe. 

But whatever. Potter was gone, leaving the other two members of the Golden Trio to finish the year as the slightly less shiny Golden Duo. He rarely saw the Weasel. He had several classes with Granger, but they didn’t talk. Draco sat in the back of all his classes, and everyone, including himself, tried to pretend he wasn’t there. 

The library was nearly empty. Madam Pince was nowhere to be seen. Draco settled down at a table near the entrance, his eye on the door, and removed the disillusionment charm. He took a look at the object Madam Pomfrey had given him.

It was a small, worn book. A History of Schoolyard Spells. Subtitle: Children’s Curses and Countercurses Through the Ages. By Arithmea Jones.

He flipped through the book. Its pages bent back easily, and some were dog-eared and had notes in the corners. He flipped to the index and found Ears. Subtopics: color change, hearing loss, size change, transformation… He went to the page on size change. There it was, Auris Horreat, along with the reverse spell to make ears grow, Auris Germinentur. A note beneath said, Side effects include dizziness. A blurb gave an anecdote about a period at Hogwarts in the 1920s when it was so common to have overgrown ears that students started tying their earlobes under their chins like ties. 

He put the book away. There was time to read it later. He needed to do his classwork. 

He worked on his arithmancy. He would have thought the space was empty, but for a sweet, distressed smell from the stacks. He tried to ignore it, but the smell got stronger, and he stared at his parchment until the numbers swam. Was distress a smell? He rose almost as if imperioed, following his nose deeper into the library. He wove through the stacks, trying to pinpoint where this horribly unhappy scent was calling him from.

Sitting at a table by herself with her back turned was a figure with a head of bushy hair. Granger. Draco sniffed again. No doubt the smell was coming from her. Had she been spelled to smell weird? A strange feeling rose within him, a desire to comfort her. He took a step, and then rocked back, wondering what was wrong with him. This was Granger. She hated him. She’d testified at his Wizengamot trial, affirming that he had mostly acted out of self-preservation, and then in the lobby after the sentencing she gave him a scathing once over, as if helping him had been beneath her. He had avoided her since.

She sniffed wetly, and again a rush of tenderness almost bowled him over. He clenched his fists. The bubble head charm would be useful right now, except he couldn’t quite remember the incantation. 

Suddenly she jumped up and whirled around, her wand out in front of her. “What are you doing?” she hissed. Tear tracks streaked her face and Draco imagined himself wiping them away.

He held up his hands, and that familiar old sneer settled over his face like armor. “You stink, Granger. I came to cast an air freshening charm.”

“I-” She looked around, her anger faltering. “I don’t stink.” She gave a quick sniff towards her armpit. “I smell fine.”

He leaned to the side, trying to get a glimpse of the book she’d been reading. “What’s the big deal, then? Reading some sappy romance novel? Rosalie Gold’s newest?” They both paused for a moment, taking in the fact that he had admitted he knew one of the most famous romance novelists of the era—and a muggle, no less. “Seriously, I can- I can hear you from across the library. Why’re you so upset? You won the war, didn’t you?”

She stared at him, her mouth chewing over her words as if she had so much to say she didn’t know where to start, and Draco wished he’d stayed at his table on the other side of the library. 

“I’m doing some research,” she said after a moment.

This was unlike her. Usually she took any opportunity to go into depth on her current project. Draco had overheard many sessions in the library where she rambled on about some new interest, while Potter and the Weasel, or Looney or the Weaselette or whoever was with her nodded and mhmed their way towards the exit. Unless-

“Dark magic stuff,” he surmised, backing away. “Right. I’ll get going. Don’t want to expose the former Death Eater to Dark Magic. He might relapse.” He turned towards the stacks.

“Wait!”

Her desperation hit him like a shockwave. He grabbed the closest shelf so he didn’t rush back to her, fall to the ground at her feet and bury his face in her thighs, proclaim that he would do anything for her-

“Have you ever heard of wandless compulsion?”

The distress and sadness was stronger now. Draco bit his tongue, trying to remember the bubble head charm. Slowly, he ground out, “The imperius charm can’t be cast without a wand. It requires…” He breathed shallowly. “It requires precision.”

“What about other charms? Confundus?”

“Someone been confunding you?” he said, attempting to summon his careless drawl. 

“No, I-”

“Granger.” Without thinking he deepened his tone. “Tell me what-”

“Don’t!” she shrieked, and his voice caught in his throat. They both froze, eyes darting around, waiting for Madam Pince to swoop down and tell them off. 

“What’s-” Draco tried again, but his throat didn’t make any sound. She had silencioed him. 

“Ron does this thing,” she said, her voice shaking and her eyes bright with tears, but her hand steady, still holding him at wandpoint. “When he speaks, he’ll tell me to do things and- and I’ll want to do them. I don’t know how he’s doing it. I’ve been writing half his essays for him, and I come to all his quidditch practices even though I hate that stupid game. This morning he said, ‘You know you want to give me your pudding.” I think he was joking, I really do, but I gave it to him, and then we left the Great Hall and I never finished breakfast. And he’s not the only one. Neville asked me to review his astronomy charts and I was going to tell him I didn’t have time, but instead I sat down with him and spent an hour correcting them.”

Draco struggled to place the name “Neville”. Longbottom, he reminded himself. 

“I’m not crazy.” Her voice sharpened. “I don’t want it to continue. I don’t know if they know they’re doing it. But you almost did it too, right now. What’s going on?”

Draco opened his mouth to speak, and then remembered the silencio. He went to pull out his wand to reverse the spell, but she accioed it away with a jerk of her hand. 

“I don’t trust you,” she snarled. She pointed to a muggle notebook on the table. “Write.”

He was loath to step forward, closer into that libidinous fog. The very last thing he wanted was to lose control and force her to stupefy him, and then wake up in the morning to rumors of Malfoy pawed Granger in the library! winging their way around the castle. He shook his head, looking down at his shoes.

“For Merlin’s sake, Malfoy! I can’t smell that bad.” She threw a charm at him and he flinched, but then he breathed in clean, scentless air. She had bubble headed him. With this it seemed safe to approach, so he gave her a wide berth and bent over to write in her notebook. 

Have you heard of alphas and omegas?

“The Greek alphabet? Yes, Malfoy, I’ve heard of it.”

He could no longer scent her, but he suspected if could, he would smell her distress turning to irritation. Do you know what it means when a wizard is an alpha and a witch is an omega?

She spent a long time reading this. “Obviously I don’t,” she said haughtily, as if trying to hide the pain of not knowing something. 

This would be easier if you gave me my voice back.

She shook her head. 

Draco tapped the quill on the page, trying to think of a succinct way to phrase this. Becoming an alpha or an omega is a rare trauma response. You should look it up.

“I will,” she snapped. “Anything else to add?”

No, she had better look this up on her own. She didn’t need a childhood enemy to explain it for her. It would be better for her ego, he thought sourly. Wand? he wrote.

“I’ll owl it to you.”

Once upon a time Draco might have argued, might have tried to swagger or even grab his wand off her. She was so small compared to him now. He could just press her up against the table and feel down her side until he had a wand in his hand, and even though she had two wands he didn’t think she would stop him. His saving grace was that it was past curfew for all but the Eighth Years. He could easily slip down to the dungeon now, even without a wand to defend himself. Granger was many things, but he knew she wouldn’t go back on her word. Come next morning, she’d return his wand.

Right, he mouthed, and turned away. He was sure she would watch him until he had left the library, which he did quickly, scooping his things off the table by the entrance. He hurried to the dungeons, and was met with another problem—he couldn’t say the password to get in. He sat down on the chilly stone floor, resigned to wait. The prefects would finish their rounds and have to let him in eventually. 

So Granger was an omega. And he had smelled it. He was an alpha. 

She had gotten pretty over the years, hadn’t she? And that year on the run had made her rather fit. She wasn’t as bone thin as she had been at Malfoy Manor last spring—her screams suddenly echoed through his mind and he hated himself, struggling to throw up occlumency barriers. Occlumency, for him, had always been a frantic, desperate thing, like being faced with a raging grease fire and trying to remember whether or not water was the answer. No, water would only make it worse. He quieted the fire, and Granger’s agonized shrieks faded to gentle happy moaning. He imagined her underneath him, writhing in pleasure. She doesn’t know anything, said a nasty voice from somewhere in his memory. You could be the one to teach her. 

She had been crying, though. Not knowing scared her. This softened his half-hard erection immediately. He wasn’t going to be like those Death Eaters. 

Another thought occurred to him. Longbottom and Weasley were both alphas as well now. How many other students had returned to Hogwarts after the trauma of battle, and not realized what they had become?

Chapter Text

Draco woke to shooting stomach pain. He had missed breakfast. Technically, he could have gone down to the Great Hall and sat with the other Slytherins and food would appear before him, like it did for everyone else. But he never dared go to breakfast proper; he darted in just as the doors to the Great Hall opened in the morning, buttered himself some toast, and ate in a quiet wing of the castle. If he was lucky, he wouldn’t be hexed until lunchtime. 

Lunchtime. He groaned. He had herbology during lunch hours today. He wouldn’t eat until dinner, then.

Remnants of his fitful sleep came back to him. He had dreamed of a clever girl with a bright smile, a girl whose affection he wore like armor. He would protect and teach her, and she would love him and make him less empty. He had kept waking himself up, expecting to find her in his arms. She reminded him suspiciously of… Granger.

He sat up with a start, throwing his blankets off. Had she figured it out yet? It was inconceivable that she hadn’t. Where would she be this morning? The library? Did she have class? Why did he care so much? This last thought slowed him down a bit. Granger wasn’t his responsibility, and she could take care of herself. No doubt she would appreciate being left alone by the most notorious and reviled student in the school.

Draco dressed slowly. He had the Eighth Year Slytherin boy’s dorm to himself. Theo, Blaise, and Goyle had all chosen to lay low in the aftermath of the war. Draco would have done the same if his probation had allowed it. None of the Slytherin girls from his year had returned either. The Prophet decried Draco’s sentencing to repeat his final year at Hogwarts, calling it too light, but short of being sent to Azkaban, Draco couldn’t think of any worse punishment. He wanted to be done with Hogwarts, done with Britain, done with Europe. Towards the very end of the war he had started entertaining ideas of escaping to America, someplace completely different where people didn’t know about the Sacred Twenty Eight or the pureblood fanaticism that drove the war. 

“Hello?” Draco said, testing his voice. The silencio had faded. His stomach dropped—Granger had said she would owl his wand. The owls didn’t come to the dungeon, so he would have to go to the Great Hall to pick it up. 

He threw on his uniform and moved quickly through the halls, taking the less-used routes that were now familiar. A few first or second years passed him on their way out of breakfast, but no one tried to stop him or hex him. His heart hammered as he approached the Great Hall and the roar of students filled the corridor. 

He swallowed hard, and threw back his shoulders. The Malfoy name still carried water. He swept into the Great Hall.

The roar died to a whisper. Draco paused impressively at the entrance to let everyone see him. He spared a glance over to the Gryffindor table, where Granger sat between Weasley and Longbottom. She didn’t meet his eyes. After giving the room a long, haughty appraisal, Draco took his seat at the end of the Slytherin table, and breakfast appeared before him.

People were still staring. His own housemates peered down the table, apparently dumbfounded by his presence. There was nothing to do but pretend he was comfortable, and to eat. His stomach had contracted from nerves and he was no longer hungry, but he forced himself to butter some toast and take a bite. Yes, he thought, smirking a bit at all the curious faces. The famous Draco Malfoy eats.

But, looking around the room, he saw a scattering of newspapers, and students here and there read their personal letters. The mail and come and gone. He kicked himself; he should have gone straight to the owlrey. 

No point in dragging it out. He dropped his half-eaten slice of toast and got up. 

The hair on the back of his neck prickled. 

A curse went flying behind his head. He whirled around and saw a dark-haired Slytherin with her wand out and her friends grinning evilly. None of the professors reacted as though they had noticed, continuing their conversations in low voices or reading the paper. 

She looked familiar. He curled his lip in her direction and stalked over. She and her friends tensed, waiting for him to pull out his wand. “No doubt you’ve won yourself buckets of favor from the other houses with that,” he hissed. 

“It’s not about the other houses,” she said primly. “It’s about you.”

Her friends all smiled in that simpering pureblood manner that Draco knew so well from his own mother’s face. The smile was the mask. 

He searched her face, and the haughty tilt of her chin reminded him of someone from his year. “Daphne Greengrass.” 

“My sister. I’m Astoria,” she responded. “You’re making a scene.”

All the other houses watched, riveted. The odors in the hall were everywhere: curiosity, fear, disgust, excitement, and from this girl in front of him, nothing. Draco looked around, disoriented, like surfacing from underwater and finding the sky too big and bright. A desire to sit down nearly buckled his legs. 

Prepare yourself, said Snape, peering down his nose at Draco, who sat on the floor. The muscles in Draco’s arms and legs spasmed. Slow down, he wanted to beg. Snape drew up his wand in an elegant arc, and this was the only preparation time he ever gave. Draco threw himself into his image, I pour oil on the raging sea to calm the waves, I pour oil on the raging sea—LEGILIMENS.

Anger and fear and embarrassment splintered away. “Next time,” Draco said coldly to Astoria, “you’d better not miss.” He turned on his heel and left the Great Hall. 

As he stalked down the corridor, he heard light footsteps running after him. Without sparing a glance, he walked faster.

“Malfoy, wait!” Granger called. “I have your wand.”

He stopped, holding out a hand. She returned his wand to his hand, and without missing a beat, he kept going. 

“Wait,” she said again, panting. “I need to talk to you.”

“About what,” he grunted, still walking, forcing her to half-jog beside him. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed this made her breasts bounce. I pour oil… 

“The alpha and omega thing you mentioned last night. I barely found any reference to it in the library. The medical books say it’s an uncommon trauma response that’s usually seen in the aftermath of war. But there’s no explanation of what that means. Malfoy, will you slow down?”

He scanned the corridor to make sure they were alone, and stopped under a portrait of Redford the Bloody, with his watchful six eyes. “Why are you chasing me? Why didn’t the Brightest Witch of her Age go talk to Madam Pomfrey?”

“You think that wasn’t the very first place I went this morning?” Granger asked, her eyes blazing. “Madam Pomfrey doesn’t know any more than the medical books. None of Ron, Ginny, or Neville have heard of alphas or omegas either. You’re the only one who seems to know, so unless you’re making it up, I want you to tell me what it means.”

“My family library might have the information you want. What’ll you give me in return?” Draco gazed down at her. Somehow they had gotten to be standing very close. She smelled like fresh parchment and rose-scented hair product; she had drunken pumpkin juice at breakfast and she was soaked through her knickers. He should spin her around and flip up her skirt and take her right there in the corridor. She was practically begging him to. Just as his hand reached for her waist she jumped away, putting several feet between them. Draco clenched his fist, forcing it down by his side. I pour oil… 

“What do you want?” she asked in a chilly voice, studying a patch of wall near Draco’s knees.

Come to bed with me, sang some filthy animalistic part of his brain. Something was very wrong with him; he didn’t think of Granger like that—really, he didn’t. Draco veered rather too hard in the other direction. “Will you tutor me in runes?” 

Merlin’s beard. He didn’t even take runes anymore, he had only said it because there was a runes textbook sticking out of the top of her bag. “I haven’t seen you in runes before,” she said. 

Thinking fast, he said, “I’m in the sixth year class.” Thinking too fast. A classic mistake.

“...Right. How soon can you get these books?”

Her skeptical tone of voice was inappropriate. Omegas were supposed to submit, to believe their alpha’s every word. A dark impulse flashed through Draco’s mind. Grab the back of her neck. Then she will have to submit.  

He cleared his throat. “Tomorrow. I’ll have to owl home to get some books that talk about alphas and omegas. Let’s meet in the library around seven. Unless- unless you’re busy?” Draco swallowed and tried to collect himself. 

She pulled out her planner and flipped through. Everything was color-coded, how in character. “I’m free.” She marked him in: 7PM Draco Malfoy.

“See you then,” he said, attempting to regain his trademark careless attitude. “I’m not going to come to breakfast tomorrow. I’ll address the books to be dropped off with you. When they arrive, they’ll be wrapped up. Don’t unwrap them. All the books at the Malfoy Manor library are cursed to burn m- uh, to burn muggleborns. Bring it to the library and I’ll lift the curse for you.”

“Hey! ‘Mione! Ready to go to practice?”

Weasley’s voice echoed down the corridor. Granger stuffed her planner into her bag, backing away from Draco with panic in her eyes.

“Oi, what’s he doing here? Incarcerous! ”

Draco dodged the binding curse. “See you,” he grunted, and dashed down the hall in a fully undignified manner. Weasley’s footsteps pounded behind him, and Draco ducked around the corner and cast the disillusionment charm on himself. 

“Bugger,” Weasley said, returning to Granger. “I don’t know where he’s gotten off to.”

“Leave him alone, will you?” Granger asked. “He was just-”

“Why was he bothering you in the first place?” Weasley put an arm around Granger’s shoulders. Something possessive bristled in Draco’s chest and a curse jumped to his lips. I pour oil… Fighting violated his probation. He reminded himself that the only reason he was suddenly interested in Granger was because she smelled nice. 

“He was asking about runes homework,” Granger said.

“Is that what they’re calling it these days? Stay away from him, he’s bad news.”

She pulled away from him. The irrational, possessive beast roared inside Draco. “Honestly, Ron. I don’t see the point in treating him like a Death Eater lurking in wait. He’s not going to do anything that could get him in trouble, we all know he’s one wrong move away from a cell in Azkaban.”

“Really.” Weasley bounced on his heels and grabbed Granger again, rubbing his thumb across the smooth back of her hand. “Now there’s an idea.”

Dear Pibs,

Please ask Timothy to find the books in the library on alphas and omegas and owl them to “Hermione Granger”. The books must be wrapped in paper. 

Thank you, Draco

Pibs was the only house elf in the service of Malfoy Manor that could read. Draco rolled up the note and his eagle-owl Astraea hooted in his ear, clacking her beak. “Bossy bird,” he said, patting her head gently and avoiding her ear tufts. Touching her ear tufts always meant a sharp nip on the fingers. “I need this delivered by tonight.”

She hooted again. 

“Yes, I should visit you more often,” he murmured, pressing his nose against her soft feathers. “When you get back I’ll find you some fat little mice. Real mice, not transfigured teacups.” He tucked the note into her ankle carrier. “Take this to Pibs, alright?” 

She took off from the owlrey, dropping into the empty air outside the castle. An updraft caught her outstretched wings and she lifted up into the sky. Something in Draco’s heart ached. If only… 

He scented the rival before he saw him. 

“Woah, woah.” Longbottom raised his hands to show he wasn’t holding his wand. “Just sending a letter.”

They studied each other, sizing each other up. Longbottom was no longer that round-faced little boy. He had a hardness to his posture, weariness born of war. 

“Writing off to your auntie for more sweets?” Draco purposely knocked into Longbottom as he passed and sent the rival alpha off balance.

“Hey,” Longbottom said, squaring up. “What’s your problem?”

“What isn’t my problem these days? Gonna hex me too, Longbottom? I’m sure there’s virgin ground on me somewhere. Don’t think anyone’s got the back of my knees yet.”

Sadness, rather than the expected aggression, crinkled Longbottom’s eyes. “I wouldn’t-”

Draco slammed the door of the owlrey behind him and rushed away. He needed to be someplace else, somewhere that wasn’t so high up, anyplace would do as long as it didn’t remind him of his plans from Seventh Year to grab his broom and sneak to the owlrey and-

“You’re not trying,” Snape said in that infuriating drawl that Draco strove to mimic. “The Dark Lord will cut straight through you and leave you a gibbering fool. If you cannot control your emotions then you will never control your mind.”

Draco’s forehead shone with sweat. He wiped his eyes with a trembling hand. “M-m-maybe if you gave me some time-”

“The Dark Lord will not give you time. At no point when you need Occlumency will you have time to sit down and gather your thoughts. Now throw away that useless image of a sea, I’m tired of seeing it. Think of something new.”

Draco focused on his mother, sitting in the garden on a warm spring day with a cup of tea, the steam rising from its surface and spinning and spinning and spinning… 

“Draco, my boy, is everything alright? How can I help you?”

Draco focused blearily on his Head of House. His feet had taken him to Slughorn’s comfortable office down in the dungeons. “Professor Slughorn,” he said. “Sorry to interrupt.”

“No problem, absolutely no problem at all.” Slughorn bumbled about his office, not meeting Draco’s eyes. “Now what can I do for you?”

“I was wondering if there was any space in the sixth year Ancient Runes class. I’d like to take it.”

“Ancient Runes, hm?” With a wave of his wand Slughorn summoned a file from the closet. It fluttered and fell open to a page with a picture of Draco as a young boy clipped to it. The young Draco sneered at the camera and turned to say something to someone outside the frame, before turning back and sneering again. Slughorn scanned the sheet. “You passed Ancient Runes in your sixth year with an Exceeds Expectations. You want to repeat the class? This won’t cover the material you need for the NEWT.”

“The NEWT doesn’t matter to me,” Draco said, hoping that Slughorn wouldn’t ask him to explain. “I just want to take the class.”

“Ah, yes, well…” Slughorn studied Draco’s file with great intent, studiously avoiding looking at Draco. “I suppose I could ask Professor Babbling. I can’t make any promises, of course. Two weeks into the term she may not be up to accepting new students.”

“Of course,” Draco said. “I fully understand. I appreciate your help.”

“Any time, my boy!” Slughorn waved his hand and the door to the office swung open. “Off you go, now.”

Draco rolled his eyes as he left the office; Slughorn clearly thought he was a bomb whose fuse was lit by eye contact. Doubtful his Head of House would get anything done. Draco should have gone directly to Professor Babbling, she was polite and straightforward. Importantly, he hadn’t taken her class during his disastrous Seventh Year, and perhaps she did not have such a horrible opinion of his character. 

Not, he conceded, that a horrible opinion of his character was wrong. 

Sketching in Herbology was one among many things that could sour Draco’s day. He wasn’t terrible at it but he found it so dreadfully boring, and his Holsterflower kept moving, finding new positions to settle in. No one else’s blasted Holsterflower was being such a pain. 

Draco assigned his unusually terrible mood to the sight of Granger and Longbottom sitting shoulder to shoulder, one table over, sharing a Holsterflower. Longbottom nudged her and pointed to their Holsterflower as it stretched and yawned, and Granger grinned. She took a feather and tickled the plant. The plant shivered and went to sleep.

Right. Draco stared at the feather he had been given. He was supposed to do something with it. Glaring around at nobody in particular, he brushed the little plant with the feather. It tensed and he tensed as well. 

“WHO can tell me where the Holsterflower fits into Garnelda’s Catalogue of Species?” boomed Professor Sprout. 

Draco’s Holsterflower jumped.

“Prot-”

The shield came too late. Black ink splattered Draco’s face. He threw an arm up to no avail, and his classmates tittered.

“Mr. Malfoy, you must not have been soothing your Holsterflower. Did you do the readings before class?”

Draco pressed his lips and eyes closed to keep the ink out and didn’t answer.

“Oh well,” Professor Sprout said. “Five points from Slytherin, and I expect this is a lesson in NEWTs students being well prepared. If you’d done the readings you’d know that Holsterflower ink is indelible once it dries, so it must be treated wet, and preferably we would avoid encountering it at all. Luckily you have several hours before the ink dries, Mr. Malfoy. Let’s have someone take him to the hospital wing, Poppy is prepared with a solvent. A volunteer, please? Miss Granger, thank you very much.”

He felt a small presence next to him. Draco’s face went hot and red under the ink. 

“Malfoy, I’m going to take your hand.”

He’d rather stumble blindly around the castle than hold hands with Granger in front of the Seventh and Eighth Year Herbology class. But he couldn’t even open his mouth to protest. A warm hand slipped into his, and he let Granger tug him off the stool and lead him through the greenhouse. 

“There’s a step down here,” she said, and he carefully stepped out of the greenhouse. Warm light fell across his face. A light breeze ruffled his hair. Today would have been a beautiful day for flying. 

This was not how he had imagined holding hands with Granger. The Holsterflower ink had no odor, and he could smell her rose-scented shampoo and now the earthy fragrance of the greenhouse and that smell of arousal. Merlin, did Granger walk around with soaking knickers all the time? Didn’t that get uncomfortable?

“So you didn’t do the readings,” she said.

“Hm?”

“Holsterflower ink isn’t toxic. You can wipe off your mouth.”

“Mm.”

“Your shirt’s already done for, it’s got ink all down the front. Might as well use your sleeve and wipe your mouth.”

Draco wiped his mouth and the first thing out of his traitorous lips was, “You smell good.”

“Excuse me?” She dropped his hand. “You’d better not try anything. I’ll silencio you if I need to.”

“I- no, that’s not what I meant. Your shampoo smells nice. That’s all.” He held out his hand. “Will you…”

“Actually, I offered to walk you to the castle because I wanted to talk to you.” Granger’s voice had taken on that know-it-all tone that she used to lecture her friends. “This alpha and omega business. What is it really? Why can you and Ron and Neville use it to compulse me, but I can’t compulse you? Can you compulse anyone else? Is it just us that have changed? Is it a physiological change or a magical change? It is caused by a spell? Is it a curse? Why do wizards become alphas and witches become omegas? When did it start? Are there other side effects or is the compulsion the side effect and how-”

“Merlin, Granger.”

“My name is Hermione.”

Draco almost laughed. “I don’t know the answer to most of those questions.” He shoved his hands in his pockets, missing with his right hand and trying twice. “Listen, all I know about alphas and omegas is that it’s something to do with boosting post-war reproduction. That’s why witches and wizards change differently. And-” And sex with an omega is supposed to feel amazing. “-and you’ll have to get the rest from the books. I sent for them this morning.”

She was quiet so long he had a sudden worry that she had left him. Finally she said, “I can smell you too.”

“Yeah?” Draco grinned. “What do I-”

“I can also smell Ron, and Neville, and I’m not sure but maybe Ernie as well. I’m starting to think we should go to McGonagall.” She slipped her arm through his and they continued walking. “Step up, we’re at the front door.”

“You have a way of making everything unsexy,” Draco muttered.

She sniffed. “Now that we’re inside the castle I’m sure you can find your way to the hospital wing by feeling along the wall. You have about three hours before the ink dries. I don’t want to leave you, but if you’re going to make crude come-ons, I can tell you right now I’ve been getting more than enough of those from Ron and I’m quite tired of it. If you’re incapable of holding your tongue, I’m happy to silencio you.”

“Charming as ever, Granger. Fear not. I shall be a perfect gentleman.”

They walked for a minute. “Oh no,” Granger said.

“What?”

“Ron’s down the corridor. He’s about to get all smothering again.”

“Disillusion me.”

“Didn’t you read the textbook-”

“Obviously not-”

“Holsterflower ink obstructs the disillusionment charm. Turn around and walk the other way, maybe he won’t recognize you.” She spun him around and he put his head down and shuffled awkwardly. 

“Hey, ‘Mione, thought you were in class right now.” 

“Sprout sent me to Madam Pomfrey for some Holsterflower solvent.” She had moved down the corridor, directing Weasley away. 

“Some what?”

“The Holsterflower is a semi sentient-”

“I don’t really care,” Weasley said, and his voice became strange and deep. Draco recognized this, it was the same thing he had almost done in the library last night. Alpha compulsion. 

“Sorry, of course,” Granger murmured. Their voices were getting farther away. “You should be studying right now, I set up your schedule…”

“Can you not nag…”

And she left him. Draco reached out, expecting to touch a wall, and finding only more air. He grabbed his wand, readying a defensive spell, and took another unsteady step towards what he hoped was a wall. His fingers touched canvas.

“Don’t you know it’s rude to grab a lady’s garden without permission?” said a nasal voice.

He had brushed up against a painting. Many paintings disliked being touched; it dirtied their canvas and over time dimmed their sight. “Where am I?” Draco asked, pulling his hand away.

“You’re standing under Klenella’s garden party,” said the painting. “What happened to you?”

The figure in the painting must not recognize him. He was sure the paintings had been instructed not to speak to him, because they usually went silent when he approached. A sly thought occurred to him. “Draco Malfoy threw ink in my face.”

“You poor thing!”

“He’s very mean,” Draco added. “Don’t you think so?”

“I was always telling Sherrie that boy was a bad seed. How could you not be, with a family like that?” Draco’s stomach turned over. “When he first came to Hogwarts I thought there was hope for him, he was a spoiled little boy but maybe being away from home would do him some good. I suppose he did grow out of his bullying phase, but he was always a mean, selfish creature. Dumbledore, rest his soul, asked the portraits to keep an eye on the boy two years ago. Some of us never got out of the habit. It’s hard to look away from a young man so clearly set to destroy himself…”

Draco swallowed hard and moved away from the portrait, his fingers tracing a low path on the wall. Perhaps the canvas would split open like torn flesh under sectumsempra. The portraits didn’t know anything. They were hollow shells that filled their days with gossip and voyeurism, frozen in time.

He lifted his hand to his face, not quite touching his skin. The stains would never come off. His eyes burned. Was he risking permanent blindness? He should have read the stupid textbook; he didn’t know where he was and he couldn’t see and it was like flailing underwater and not knowing which way was up. No matter what he did, he kept swimming downwards, and where the hell had Granger gone? Swirling steam. Mother on a spring day in the garden. Occlude… 

“Malfoy, I’m sorry.” Draco whirled towards Granger’s voice. “I got rid of Ron as quick as I could.” There was something else in her tone, some sort of unhappiness. She did not say how she had gotten rid of Weasley. “Is everything alright?” She sounded hesitant. 

“Yeah,” Draco snapped. “Why?”

“You look like… nevermind.” 

“No, say it.” 

“I-”

“Don’t hold back, Granger, tell me what you think of me.”

Draco thought perhaps he was verging on being a bit cruel, but he was past caring. He knew she blamed him for everything that had gone wrong. If he hadn’t let the Death Eaters into Hogwarts, Dumbledore would still be alive, and Potter wouldn’t have had to fight the Dark Lord. She loved Potter, a fact that made Draco’s chest hurt, because there was no one in the world who cared about him the way Granger cared about Potter—not because she was related to him, not because she had to, but because she chose to. 

“I was going to say you look like you were crying. Is… is the ink irritating your eyes?”

He took a deep breath. “Yeah.”

She took him by the hand again, and the tension in his chest eased. The smell of roses, and mother’s garden, and swirling steam, and Granger… 

They arrived at the hospital wing. “Goodness,” Madam Pomfrey said. “What now, Mr. Malfoy?”

“Holsterflower ink,” Granger explained, before Draco even opened his mouth. 

“Of course. You may go, Miss Granger.”

Granger tried to pull away. “Malfoy, can you-”

A small, plaintive voice said, If you leave me I’ll fall apart. But he let go. The door to the hospital wing opened and closed, and Draco assumed Granger was gone, leaving an ache in his chest, like an organ had vanished. 

“You have no one to blame but yourself for this one,” Madam Pomfrey said from across the room. “Unless someone else squirted ink at you.”

“No,” Draco agreed, twisting his lips. “Both Sprout and Granger have informed me that this is all due to the cardinal sin of not reading the textbook.”

“Lesson learned, I should hope. Alright, unbutton your shirt, let’s make sure none of the ink went down your collar. This will be cold.” She dabbed a cool paste onto his face. “I see you got it in your mouth. I’ll have to pack your cheeks with potion-soaked cotton so your teeth and gums aren’t stained. This is a slow acting solvent. You’ll be here a while.”

It was past dinner when Madam Pomfrey let him open his eyes and spit out the foul-tasting cotton. She made him shower and brush his teeth in the hospital wing bathroom, and he redressed in his pants and his outer robe. His uniform shirt was, as Granger had said, done for. He buttoned up the robe so as not to offend Madam Pomfrey. Although she had seen many an unclothed chest while treating students, she deserved the respect of a fully buttoned uniform otherwise. 

His stomach rumbled and the half slice of toast he’d eaten for breakfast flashed through his mind. How he now wished he had eaten the whole slice. 

Pomfrey met him at the door to the bathroom. “Looks like the solvent did its job. Open your mouth so I can check your teeth. Lux.” She shone her wand in his mouth, standing on her toes. “It looks good.”

A horrible groaning noise came from his stomach. “Sorry,” Draco said immediately.

She smiled. “I expect you’re hungry. I was just about to take dinner in my office. Care to join?”

Draco pressed his lips together.

“Come on.” She opened the door to her office and ushered him in. Draco had never seen the inside of her office, and found it warm and spare and filled with golden light. Where he expected a desk sat a small table and two chairs. A plate of steak and greens steamed on the table, and the room swam as the world narrowed to that single plate of hot food. “A second plate, please!” The second plate appeared, and without waiting for permission he collapsed into a chair and started wolfing down the dinner. A second serving appeared and he scarfed this too. Madam Pomfrey watched him with a twinkle in her eyes as she cut into her steak. 

She didn’t try to make conversation. Draco could have cried. 

Chapter Text

“Blimey, more textbooks? What class are they for? I thought all the time turners broke—d’you have time for more classes in your schedule?”

Hermione detached the package from the eagle-owl, avoiding its talons. The package was wrapped in brown paper and had Miss Hermione Granger written on it in flowing script. “These are for my personal research.”

“Don’t start.” Ron speared a whole slice of french toast on his fork. “Don’t even tell me.”

“I wasn’t going to,” she said, miffed, and slid the package into her bag. “That’s all, thank you.” The eagle-owl blinked politely, and then flew off with the rest of the birds. “You don’t need to act like hearing about my research will kill you. You might even find it relevant.”

Ron spoke around a mouthful of french toast. “I only came back because Mum is making me. If I had my way I’d be applying for the same assistant aurorship as Harry right now. Heard from him, by the way?”

“I think he’s in the field.” Ginny slid in across the table. “You know how he writes these days. Dear Ginny.” She mocked a serious deep voice. “Can’t say much but the auror training keeps me busy. Hope you are taking care of yourself. Might not be able to write for a week. Affectionately, Harry.”

Hermione smiled. Harry had taken to signing all his letters affectionately. She didn’t know where he had picked it up. 

“I think Kingsley is ghostwriting for him. His letters are so redacted he might as well throw a bottle of black ink at the page,” Ginny said. “Hermione, don’t you have a free period before your next class? Want to come study with me? Slughorn’s assigned an essay, of all things.”

“She can’t,” Ron cut in. “She’s coming to quidditch with me.”

“Don’t be a prat, Ron, Hermione hates quidditch.”

“But she likes watching me play. Don’t you?” Ron turned earnestly to Hermione, and that familiar dreadful feeling enveloped her. I mustn’t displease Ron.  

The word no was on the tip of her tongue. One simple word, a single syllable, touch her tongue to the roof of her mouth behind her teeth and let it slide out, no, no, no. “I love watching you play,” she chirped.

Ron threw an arm around her shoulders and shook her lightly. She grinned and her stomach fluttered. “You’re the best.” He jumped up, knocking his knees on the table and making everyone’s drinks wobble. “I’ll go change. Meet you on the pitch in ten.” 

The moment Ron left, something collapsed inside Hermione, like all the strings holding her up had gone loose. She swallowed hard and took a shaky sip of pumpkin juice. 

Ginny tilted her head, a hint of a smile on her lips. “So… is there something you and Ron want to tell me?”

“I’d- I’d better start heading down.” She buttoned her bag and folded up her newspaper and stood, but Ginny stood as well and chased her to the entrance of the Great Hall.

“Hey, is everything alright? I was joking about you and Ron. Seriously, I know you hate quidditch, I’ve seen you bring books to the games. Hermione? You look really pale.”

“I’m being a good friend,” Hermione said. “I- I-” She looked around the Great Hall. No one was paying attention to them, but she gestured for Ginny to follow her out into the corridor where it was quieter. Ginny frowned, and she smelled like concern. Hermione’s breath caught in her throat. No, concern wasn’t a smell. She sniffed again, leaning closer. Ginny had rubbed peach-scented lotion onto her hands before coming to breakfast, and she had brushed her teeth with a cinnamon flavored paste. She had a caramel in her pocket, her robe still smelled faintly of Molly Weasley’s detergent, and that impossible scent of concern and confusion was intensifying.

“Uh, Hermione? You know my shoulder’s here for you to cry on, but sniffing my neck is a little, how should I put it, weird?” Ginny backed up a step and Hermione blinked, falling out of the world of scents and back into the corridor outside the Great Hall.

“I’m so sorry! I don’t know why I did that,” she exclaimed. “There’s something strange going on, I don’t know where to start-”

“You can smell it too.” Ginny’s eyes widened.

“Smell what too?”

“Everything and everyone,” she hissed, her voice low and conspiratorial. “Perfume, what they ate for lunch, whether they’ve diddled themselves recently, I can smell it all. I’ve turned into a freaking human bloodhound. There’s a psychic element too, it’s like I can smell what they’re feeling. I thought I was going bonkers. Your shampoo smells nice, by the way, can I borrow it?”

“Uh… yeah, any time.” Hermione checked her watch and turned toward the front door. “Do you want to walk to the pitch with me? I don’t want to be late.”

Ginny grabbed her arm. “Forget Ron, we need to talk about this.”

“I have to go,” Hermione said, pained. “I really do, I can’t let Ron down.” She sensed that if she didn’t do what Ron wanted, all the strings holding her up would be cut, and she would fall to pieces. “Come with me, please? We can talk on the way.”

They left the castle and Hermione shivered. The leaves shuddered on the trees and the wind cut through her robe. She cast a heating charm on herself, and Ginny did the same. 

“Remember how I asked you yesterday if you knew anything about alphas and omegas?” Hermione said. “I read in an old medical book that sometimes, in the aftermath of war, wizards and witches of a certain age will… present. The wizards become alphas, the witches become omegas. It’s something to do with magically boosting reproduction rates, but it’s not a well-studied phenomenon. The last time it happened in great number was during the Haley-Coulson feud of 1824.”

“The what?”

“Some obscure American land feud between wizarding families.”

“If it’s a post-war thing, why didn’t it happen after the defeat of Grindelwald? Or for that matter, after the first defeat of Voldemort? And what does it mean?”

“I don’t know.” Hermione explained in brief the compulsion that Ron and Neville could do, leaving out the part about Malfoy. “I don’t think they know they’re doing it.”

Ginny contemplated this as they climbed the stands to find a spot sheltered from the wind. “The other day,” she said slowly, “Justin told me to lick his arse—I told him the Falmouth Falcons’ seeker couldn’t catch a snitch if it landed in his hand—and there was a moment where I really wanted to do it. Like, I imagined getting down on my knees and giving his arse a big wet sloppy kiss.”

“Ew.”

“I know.”

“But you didn’t do it.”

“No,” Ginny admitted, sounding sorry she couldn’t better sympathize with Hermione’s situation. “Neither Ron or Neville have made you do anything, like, weird, right? I know Ron’s had a crush on you since sixth year. I’ll kick his arse and then write Mum to come kick his arse if he does anything you don’t want.”

Hermione smiled dimly. They sat next to the announcer’s podium. “It’s all the same stuff he’s always wanted me to do. Essays, homework help. I don’t want to make waves. I need to get through this final year and take my NEWTs. Ron’s being Ron, I can handle him.”

“Why don’t you tell him what’s going on? He’d stop.”

“I’m waiting for the right moment. You know him. The way he reacts to news is contingent on the way he receives it. I’ll do it soon, when I know more about this alpha and omega thing. I’ve got a… research session planned tonight. With Malfoy, of all people.”

“Sorry, I must have misheard, I thought you said Malfoy, as in Draco Malfoy?”

“The very same. I ran into him in the library. He’s… also an alpha.”

Ginny turned to face her, eyes wide and watery from the wind. “Hermione. You’ve got to be kidding me. He’s a Death Eater. Tell me you’re kidding.”

“I’m not,” she said. “He’s the only person who knows anything about the alpha and omega thing. Even Madam Pomfrey hasn’t really heard of it. He’s sent me some books from his family library, but I need him to uncurse them for me before I can read them.”

“Let me come with you,” Ginny said seriously. “I don’t want you to be alone with him. When are you meeting?”

“Seven tonight.”

“I have practice from six to eight. Could you move your meeting?”

“I’ll be fine! I doubt Malfoy will pull any moves, he’s one wrong step away from Azkaban. I don’t want to delay our meeting.”

Ginny opened her bookbag and set out a sheet of parchment on her knee. “If there’s anyone I trust to figure this out, it’s you. But you’ll keep me updated? And you’ll be safe? Don’t get too close to him, don’t turn your back on him.”

“Of course—oh Merlin, there’s Ron.”

Ron shot up into the sky and did a showy loop. “HERMIONEEEEEE!”

Ginny shook her head. “Sloppy. He needs to keep his knees in.”

Hermione arrived at the arithmancy classroom early and transfigured her quill case into a pocket mirror. The wind had brought pink to her cheeks and made a bird’s nest on her head. She finger-combed her hair, catching knotted strands on her fingers and accidentally yanking some out. The strands made a loose clump on the desk. With a groan, she vanished the clump and tied her hair back in a messy ponytail.

A seat scraped on the floor and she tensed, hand tightening around her wand. “Anthony, you scared me. I didn’t hear you come in.”

Anthony Goldstein gave a sorry grin and dropped into his chair a few desks down. “I’ve been told I move quietly. I should be noisier, I know lots of us have still got the war-jumpies.”

“Muggles call it PTSD,” Hermione said, transfiguring her quill case back and setting out her notebooks.

Anthony unpacked his bookbag as well. “Yeah, my mum’s mentioned that. Ah, what’s it stand for. Post Trauma Soldier… Defense, something like that?”

“Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.”

“Post Trauma… yeah, that. War-jumpies is easier to say.”

“I suppose.” Hermione focused on dating and titling the page on her notebook, and the class filled up. Arithmancy was a hard enough subject that not many students bothered to take the NEWT level, so the seventh and eighth year classes had been combined. Padma Patil sat down next to Hermione, smelling of sweat and something else. Hermione glanced over. Padma’s hair, usually neatly brushed, looked mussed, and her cheeks were dark. She caught Hermione’s eye and grinned. “Hey, Hermione.”

Hermione gave a faint smile. They were friendly longtime acquaintances. “Morning, Padma. You look… bright today.”

“Really?” She sounded out of breath. “I was just-” She looked over her shoulder. Hermione looked back as well. “No, don’t look!”

Alarmed, Hermione looked harder. It was the regular class: Anthony Goldstein, Padma Patil, Justin Finch-Fletchey, Hannah Abbott, and a half dozen or so seventh years whose names she hadn’t figured out yet. Way in the back, skulking and practically oozing malcontent, slouched Malfoy. “What, what’s going on?”

“Look forward!” Padma whispered, her voice slightly giggly. “It’s me and Justin. We- well you can guess.”

Hermione certainly could. Now she knew what that other smell coming off of Padma was. She bit her lip, trying not to laugh. “Oh—my very hearty congratulations.”

Before Padma could dish any more salacious details, Professor Babbling strode in and dropped a heavy book of runes on the desk. “Professor Vector has been called out and asked me to fill in for her today.” The class erupted with whispers. Subs usually meant an easy period. “She’s given me eight worksheets for you to complete in pairs. Each pair will get a different sheet, so I don’t want to see the class trying to pool answers. When you’re done you can go. Pair up!”

The whispers grew louder and more excited. Hermione turned to Padma. “Do you want-” 

Padma had already turned to Justin. Being deprived of her usual partner left Hermione open to everyone else. Anthony and Hannah Abbott came up to her. 

“We can split up the sheet and get out of here faster,” Anthony offered.

“Don’t listen to him, he’s trying to use you,” Hannah said.

Professor Babbling came over, handing out the worksheets to pairs. “What’s going on here? We can’t do a group of three, we’ve got an even number in this class. Miss Abbott, Mr… You two pair together. Miss Granger, Mr. Malfoy still needs a partner.”

Malfoy glared from over in the corner. Hermione grabbed her bag and brought their worksheet over, sitting as far as she could from him while still able to see the worksheet.

“Shall we split it up?” she said, setting out her notebook to copy down the problems, and determinedly not looking his way. 

Malfoy gave a stiff nod, and started working on the second problem. They calculated for a few minutes as the classroom became quiet—most of the other pairs were splitting the work as well—and then Malfoy murmured, “Did you get the books?”

Hermione nodded.

“Do you still want to meet at seven?”

She could have laughed; Grindelwald himself couldn’t have stood between her and these books. “Of course.”

They finished their problems and flipped the sheet over. The third question required them to use their work from the first two questions. “I’ll do it,” Hermione said, reaching for Malfoy’s equations. 

He yanked his parchment away. “We can do it together.”

“It’ll be faster if I do it myself.”

“That’s not fair,” Malfoy said, his voice getting low.

Warning bells rang in the back of Hermione’s mind. Against all instincts, she peevishly said, “I’ve been doing more than my fair share of the work my whole life.” She waited for the mental blow—these days if she was snappy at Ron, he pulled her strings taut and made apologies spill out of her mouth.

“I meant it’s not fair to me,” Malfoy said. 

Hermione pursed her lips and shifted her chair closer so they could both read the paper. He leaned towards her, and well he was rather large, wasn’t he, like sitting shoulder to shoulder with a boulder. Perhaps he had grown over the summer, and it was something to do with being an “alpha”. She wondered what it would be like to be held by someone so large. Warm and safe and small. He was being rather civil right now. He was excellent at arithmancy, too, not asking her to slow down or explain things, sometimes making logical leaps even before she did. They were the first pair to finish. Anthony and Hannah handed in their worksheets immediately after.

Anthony grabbed Hermione by the arm in the corridor outside the arithmancy classroom. “Hey, got a minute?” She looked down at the hand on her arm, and he released her sheepishly. “Sorry, got afraid you’d run off and I didn’t want to miss my chance.”

Down the corridor, Malfoy had paused, apparently rifling through his bag.

“It’s fine,” Hermione said politely. “What can I help you with?”

Anthony laughed, rubbing the back of his neck. The air filled with a spicy, electric scent that filled Hermione’s head and made her woozy. A bolt of lightning shot down to her groin. She reached a hand out towards the wall, needing to feel something cold and real. 

Anthony didn’t notice her reaction. “Everyone’s always academic with you, huh? That’s what I like about you. I was wondering, ah, if you wanted to go to Hogsmeade this Friday.”

Hermione blinked several times in a row, shifting her weight, trying to chase off the ache between her legs. “What?”

“With me, I mean! Do you want to go to Hogsmeade with me?”

“When—now?” Hermione asked foggily. 

Anthony stepped into her space and she almost melted, tilting her head back to allow him access to her neck. “Yeah, now, anytime you want. You smell… good…” He lowered his nose to her neck and she moaned, the spicy smell getting stronger, the emptiness between her legs gaping, aching to be filled. 

“Alright, that’s enough,” Malfoy growled, grabbing Anthony by the shoulder. “No one wants to see two nerds go at it in the hallway.”

Anthony started and swung at Malfoy, but Malfoy already had his wand out and threw a shield up in front of him. Anthony’s fist smashed into the shield and he yelped, shaking out his hand. The fog seemed to lift from his eyes and he backed away, his eyes wide. “Wait, I didn’t mean to- Hermione, I don’t know what’s-”

Reality struck Hermione. If Malfoy had not intervened, she was sure she would have spread her legs and let Anthony fuck her right there against the wall. “I’d better go,” she said, and hurried away, stickiness rubbing between her legs.

She turned down a corridor with open windows. The windy day, such an annoyance before, now blew away all the spice and confusion so she could breathe again. She slumped against a pillar, wiping sweat from her forehead. The desire to be filled didn’t go away, and neither did the desire to sob. It was like going through puberty again, except at least during puberty she could read all of the You and Your Body, a Girl’s Guide to Growing Up books. Her hands itched to unwrap the books in her bag; she didn’t care whether they were cursed to burn her. She considered looking for Malfoy and begging him to uncurse the books now so she could start figuring out what was wrong with her, but the idea of moving, much less going back towards the arithmancy classroom, made her faint and shaky. Finally, a group of seventh years turned down the corridor and she forced herself to stumble back to Gryffindor tower. She flopped down in her bed, shut the drapes, put her hand down her pants, and came almost immediately.

Hermione arrived at the library ten minutes before the appointed time and found an empty table in a secluded corner. She laid out her notebooks and her Ancient Runes textbook, lined up a quill and ink pot, and placed the package wrapped in brown paper to the side. This took less than one minute. She straightened her quill, then opened her planner and began needlessly reviewing for the upcoming week.

“May I sit here?” asked an airy voice.

“Oh—Luna.” Luna had already sat down. “I’m actually waiting for someone.”

Luna smiled graciously and stood back up, her orange peel earrings swaying. “We should get dinner sometime. I haven’t seen you at all. I miss having Harry around.”

“Yes, we should get dinner,” Hermione agreed. She fidgeted with her quill, running her finger up and down it. 

Luna lingered a moment longer, that odd smile still on her face. “I hope our paths cross again soon, Hermione.”

“Yes, I hope so too.”

Luna drifted away. Hermione jiggled her leg and tapped her foot and reread the introduction to her Ancient Runes textbook. Harry had always been so fond of Luna, and Luna had been a good friend to Harry. Maybe she should suggest Harry write to Luna. But Hermione hadn’t heard from Harry since the beginning of term, and his letters all summer had been weirdly brief and empty. Now she understood how he had felt the summer that she and Ron had stayed at Twelve Grimmauld Place. Even knowing Harry had a legitimate reason not to write, it stung in some petty place that he didn’t make an exception for her. 

Malfoy emerged from the stacks and hovered behind the chair across the table. His fingers wrapped over the back of the chair. “Are we going to talk about what happened with Goldstein?”

“We are not.”

He sat, and pulled the paper package towards himself, unwrapping it without a word. It contained three large volumes bound in dark blue fabric. Malfoy glanced up as if to make sure she was watching, and then, one by one, he pressed the tip of his wand to each book and whispered a long incantation. When he was done he stacked the books, passed them back across the table, and made to leave.

“Where’re you going?”

“You don’t need me here for this,” he said, robotically addressing the stacks behind her. “When you’re done with them, pass them off in one of those classes we have together.”

She wanted him to stay. She had been expecting him to, she had mentally prepared herself for a study session with Malfoy, even made light of it to Ginny in the common room. “Weren’t we going to do Ancient Runes after?”

“You think you’ll read all those in forty-five minutes? Not even wonder-Granger can do that.” 

“We made a deal,” she said, “and I’m not going back on it. I’ll work on these for forty-five minutes, and then we’ll do Ancient Runes for forty-five minutes. Then, if you don’t mind, I’ll take these books back, study them in my room, and return them to you when I’m done.”

His jaw ground back and forth. “Fine.” 

Hermione did her best not to pay attention to what he was doing, and ran her fingers over the first large tome, waiting for her flesh to burn. The cover was fine, old bookbinding fabric. It didn’t hurt her skin. She heaved the book open and read the title page.

Magickal Maladies Known to Those Pure of Blood

By Madeline Malfoy

She flipped through it and found nothing, so she opened the second volume and found the section on alphas and omegas, and quickly understood what Malfoy had meant about “boosting post-war reproduction”. Omegas were super-fertile and had heightened sex drives; alphas were super-virile likewise. They were meant to pair together—Madeline used the metaphor of lock and key, which Hermione found a bit regressive. She called this pairing a “bond”, which could be sealed by a mating bite to a gland on the back of the neck. There was no description or picture of where the gland was located, and Hermione absent-mindedly felt around the back of her neck for lumps or glands.

“Don’t do that,” Malfoy said sharply. She looked up. His pupils dilated, turning his eyes dark and uncanny, and a muscle worked up and down his jaw. Arousal spiked off him. 

“Sorry,” Hermione said. “I forgot. That’s what Anthony did, isn’t it? He rubbed the back of his neck and activated a pheromone reaction.”

“Please don’t talk about Goldstein right now.” Malfoy sounded genuinely strained.

“Why shouldn’t I?” Hermione asked lightly.

“Don’t talk about other alphas while you smell like that. It makes me want to do… bad things.”

Hermione would rather have faced a dementor than had this conversation with Malfoy. “If you can’t control yourself-”

“You’ll stupefy me. I know.”

Unsure if he was hinting at an off-color joke, Hermione returned to the book. The next section went into “heats” and “ruts”, week long periods of incapacitatingly heightened libido, which sounded both awful and ridiculous. Heats happened every three months except during pregnancy. Periods were painful and annoying, but at least they didn’t literally incapacitate her. 

Heats were negative motivation, she concluded. Most omegas, after experiencing one or two heats alone, would find an alpha to lessen the pain, which would inevitably lead to pregnancy—although perhaps modern birth control methods could work around this. Alphas didn’t have regular ruts, but would begin one after scenting an omega in heat. They would either attempt to spend their rut with the omega, who could match their libido, or they would have to spend it with several people over the course of several days. It’s a win-win for reproductive rates, Hermione thought wryly. But it sounds miserable.

The entry on alphas and omegas ended with heats and ruts. There was no explanation of compulsion, or heightened olfactory senses, or the circumstances that led to presentation. 

“Who was Madeline Malfoy?”

“She was my great great great aunt, a million times removed or something.”

“Was she an omega?”

“I don’t know. She lived through the Regency.” Malfoy had put his feet up on the table and rocked his chair back on two legs. 

Hermione chewed her lip. “Get your shoes off the table, no one wants to work where your dirty feet have been.”

“These shoes cost more than you spend in a year, anyone would be glad to sit where they’ve been.” But he put his feet on the floor. He was working on a piece of parchment propped against his knees, sketching what looked like Saturn’s rings.

“What classes are you taking?” Hermione asked politely. 

“Astronomy, herbology, arithmancy, potions, ancient runes. And, uh, muggle studies. Court ordered.”

She had been there on that hot summer day at the Ministry. Malfoy had sat in an iron chair before the whole of the Wizengamot, and irrationally, she had been nervous to testify. She hadn’t had pre-test jitters in years, but usually when she took tests it didn’t decide the fate of someone’s life. He hadn’t looked at her once during the trial. 

“Yes, it’s very funny, the former Death Eater learning about muggles,” Malfoy said. “Get out your giggles now.”

“I wasn’t going to laugh.” Hermione tried to meet his eyes. “The wizarding world is very small, compared to the muggle world. Muggle studies is meant to prepare you to move through the muggle world. I’m always disappointed more students don’t take it. Ah, why don’t we work on ancient runes now?”

Malfoy looked like he was about to argue, but instead he picked up his chair and moved it around to her side of the table. She had been expecting him to stay on the other side, with a nice sturdy table in between them, and found herself overly conscious of his presence, like her skin tingled where it was closest to him. 

It was pheromones, she reminded herself. Physical attraction doesn’t mean anything. 

She brought him through the first chapter of the textbook, focusing on theory and runecraft. She kept staring at his fingers as he twirled his quill, trying not to imagine them inside of her. It was like trying not to think of elephants. At the end of their allotted time, she said, “Shall we meet on Friday? Are you busy then?”

“My social calendar is completely free,” he said flatly.

“Right. Um. I’ll mark you in for seven again, then?”

He started gathering his things. “Sure.”

He managed to make the sure sound like no, and the implicit rejection stung. “We don’t have to do this, you know. I’ll be working on this research on my own time, and I’ll return them to you as soon as I’m done. You can… send me your essays to check, and we’ll call it even.”

A hot flush colored his face. “I don’t want that.”

“Well then would it hurt to act a little more like you want to be here?” Hermione’s voice rose to a slightly hysterical pitch. She took in a deep breath through her nose. “This research is relevant to you too.”

“I know it is,” he said quietly. “I’ll see you on Friday, Granger.”

Hermione huffed. He would be easier to deal with if he were outright aggressive. When he acted almost like a normal human, she couldn’t read his game. “Goodnight, Draco.”

His flush deepened and he ducked into the stacks, leaving behind a whiff of something that Hermione might have called pleasure.

Chapter Text

“Mr. Malfoy, if you’ll stay after class,” Slughorn rumbled as he passed by Draco’s cauldron.

Justin Finch-Fletchey peered over. “Got yourself in trouble again, Malfoy?” Finch-Fletchey hissed. He elbowed Goldstein. “The Death Eater is in for detention.”

Draco focused on stirring his potion. Counterclockwise thirteen and a quarter times exactly, and the potion began to simmer. Seemed right. He sprinkled in a pinch of powdered ashwinder skin from the blade of a silver knife, and set a two minute timer with his wand. 

“Is it true that you can’t take any wand magic classes as part of your probation?” Finch-Fletchey asked, the malice clear in his voice. When Draco chose to recheck the heat of the flame under his cauldron rather than react, Finch-Fletchey stage-whispered to Goldstein, “I heard they designed a special trace for the Malfoy line. If he does offensive magic he’ll have the aurors on him faster than you can say lux. That true, Malfoy?”

The potion roiled, its bubbles popping and releasing belches of silver steam. Draco checked his timer and reviewed the instructions for the Botanic Philter. Nowhere did it mention silver steam, but part of the day’s lesson was in interpreting vague recipes. He decided to lower the heat, and as he bent down to remove some of the kindling, the foot of his stool jumped.

He teetered off balance and instinctively grabbed his cauldron for balance. It tipped forward, the boiling potion splashing out towards his robes, and he just had time to think, at least I will get to see Madam Pomfrey today.

The potion froze in midair, and then wound its way, sinuous, back into his cauldron. Baffled, Draco looked to his hand. He was sure he was not causing this. Finch-Fletchey gaped as well. Goldstein had his wand out, guiding Malfoy’s potion along. The last drop plopped cheerfully into the cauldron, and Goldstein turned back to his own potion as if nothing had happened. 

The liquid had lost its shimmer while being thrown out of the cauldron, but it was not entirely ruined. He finished the potion, coming up with a passable reproduction of the half-described end product, and bottled it for Slughorn. Slughorn gave homework instructions as the Eighth Years cleaned and stored their cauldrons, and Draco lingered by the front desk until he was alone in the room with his professor. 

“You wanted to talk to me, sir?”

Slughorn frowned as if he had forgotten he’d asked Draco to wait. “Yes, yes, indeed. I have good news for you, Professor Babbling has space for one more. Her class meets Tuesdays and Thursdays from two to three—grab a quick lunch, she’ll be expecting you this afternoon.”

Draco nodded, almost bowing, to hide his grin. “Thank you sir.”

“Any time, my boy…” Slughorn bumbled towards his office. Draco checked both ways down the corridor to make sure it was clear before he left the classroom. 

Goldstein leaned against the wall outside the classroom door, examining his notes. Draco put his wand up, a defensive spell at the ready.

“Chill, Malfoy, I’m not going to attack you,” Goldstein said, still looking at his notes. “Can we talk?”

“Not if you’re going to ‘talk’ to me the way you ‘talked’ to Granger.”

Goldstein folded the parchment and stuffed it in his bag. “If this is the way you act towards everyone, I can’t say it’s surprising people keep hexing you.” A group of girls appeared at the end of the corridor and Goldstein nodded towards the empty potion classroom. “Mind if we?” They moved into the classroom. Goldstein leaned against a stool and Draco stood by the door, his wand still at the ready. “Muffliato.”

A buzzing noise filled the room, and then died. “What’d you just do?” Draco asked, his eyes narrowed. The classroom, once big enough to hold a dozen NEWT students, felt paradoxically too small for two alphas.

“It’s a version of silencio. Harry taught it to Dumbledore’s Army in Fifth Year. It lets us have a private conversation without others listening in.”

“Hate to break it to you, Goldstein, but I’m not into blokes. I’m flattered, though.”

“Haha. I wanted to offer a truce. I’ll get Justin to leave you alone, and you don’t talk about what happened yesterday.”

“You talking about the part where you got handsy with Granger?”

Goldstein shot up, his hand on his wand, and paced between the desks. “Listen, I don’t know what happened with Granger. I wanted to ask her to go to Hogsmeade with me on Friday, not cop a feel in the corridor. For all I know, you imperiused me to make me look like a fool.” The desks started rattling. “I don’t lose control, I’m not that kind of guy. When I broke up with Tracey we stayed friends. All I’m asking is you keep your mouth shut about what happened and I’ll keep Justin off your back.”

Draco eyed the rattling desks. From across the room he scented anxiety rolling off of Goldstein. “Looks like you’re losing control right now.”

Goldstein put his wand in his pocket and the desks went still. He ran his hand through his hair. “Have we got a deal, or not?”

“What would you do if I started telling people you came onto Granger and she ran away crying?”

“She wasn’t crying!” Goldstein exclaimed, and the desks started rattling again. “She wanted it as much as I did. It was like we were possessed, it was weird! I don’t want it to happen again, I swear on Rowena Ravenclaw.” A loud pop made them both jump. One of the desks had cracked down the middle. “Shit. Reparo.”

Draco inched toward the door and considered his options. Granger had already talked to a bunch of her friends, so he supposed there was no reason to treat it like a secret. “Goldstein, have you ever heard of alphas and omegas?”

Goldstein stared blankly. “Er… the first and last letter of the Greek alphabet?”

“No.” Draco checked the corridor, even though Goldstein had said he used a privacy charm. “It’s a… post-war thing. Witches and wizards of a certain age might become omegas or alphas. It’s designed to, uh, motivate wizarding folk to, uh, pair off.”

“Why’ve I never heard of this?”

“Have you heard of every obscure magical malady and condition in the world?”

The question was rhetorical, but Goldstein shook his head. “And it forces us to, what, go at it like rabbits?”

“More or less.”

Goldstein curled his lips. “That’s barbaric. What’s the cure?”

“There’s no cure.”

“Like hell there’s no cure. Let’s talk to Pomfrey and-”

“Granger’s already done that. Pomfrey’s barely heard of the alpha and omega thing.”

The odor of anxiety had given way to a calmer confusion. “You’re an alpha too,” Goldstein said, sniffing experimentally. “Weird. You smell like-”

“Merlin, Goldstein, I don’t want to know. I told you I’m not into blokes.”

“You say that an awful lot for someone who’s not into blokes. How many of us are there?”

“Weasley, Longbottom, maybe Macmillan. Those are the alphas I know of. The only omega I know is Granger, but there’s probably more.”

Goldstein was back to pacing. “We have to get together. We need to talk about what to do, we need to-”

“Great idea,” Draco snapped. “Two alphas in a room and you nearly explode a desk. I’m sure five alphas will go much better. Granger is working on this and you should trust her. They call her the Brightest Witch of her Age for a reason. If she figures anything out, she’ll tell you. Until then, I want you to stay away from her.”

“Didn’t know you cared so much about Hermione,” Goldstein mumbled. 

“I don’t.”

Goldstein rolled his eyes. “Alright, sure. Do we have a deal? Your silence, my protection?”

“This isn’t the bloody mafia. I wasn’t going to tell anyone anyway.”

Goldstein actually laughed. “Man, Malfoy, we should’ve been friends. It’s a shame you were so preoccupied with being a racist, classist prick.”

Draco pressed his lips shut even as his stomach sank to the level of his knees. What was there to say to defend himself against an accusation that was basically true? 

“I’ll see you around,” Draco said.

Chapter Text

Whispers and conspicuous sideways glances filled the Ancient Runes classroom as Draco sat down in the back row. Whoever’s seat he was stealing would just have to deal with it.

“Good afternoon!” Professor Babbling swept in and slammed a thick book of runes down on her desk. “Mr. Malfoy, we have assigned seats, please come sit in the empty chair next to Miss Greengrass. Alright class, I’ve had three cups of coffee so I hope you’re ready to write. The homework focused on three general rules of the medieval runic script, but rules are made to be broken, can anyone give me an example of an exception to the rule of second cross? Miss Jones, thank you-”

Astoria looked over her shoulder and raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow. Hadn’t the last thing he’d said to her been “Next time, you’d better not miss”? He couldn’t imagine her missing from three feet away. Draco knew everyone was waiting to see whether he moved seats, and a spotlight seemed to shine down on the empty seat in the second row, as if a choir of angels had popped up and were singing come meet your doom in four part harmony.

“-all supposedly stemming from a single scribe with bad handwriting in the fourth century. Mr. Malfoy, any day now, you’re disrupting the feng shui of the classroom and I can’t teach properly when my room is off balance. One popular late nineteenth century theory proposes that this scribe had certain agenda-”

Astoria gave him a “come hither” finger and tapped the desk in front of the empty seat with a long red fingernail. He grabbed his bag and dropped into the seat, tossing his stuff on the desk and baring his teeth—though he did not bare his teeth at her. Everything about her dripped with danger. Draco tried to focus on scribbling down Babbling’s mile-a-minute lecture. He remembered that Babbling talked fast, but after a year off from her class he had forgotten her frenetic energy, and he found himself struggling to keep up. 

“-due to the resemblance to the Chi Rho, which I doubt any of you have heard of. Here is where you will all wish you took muggle studies more seriously, because I am about to condense a major turning point in Western history into one baffling minute, or forty five baffling seconds if I talk fast enough-”

His inkpot fell over, blotting out half his page. Draco glared around, searching for the culprit, but everyone had their head down, furiously scribbling in their notebooks. Even Astoria seemed to be trying to record Babbling’s explanation of the Battle of the Milvian Bridge. He pulled out his wand and tapped the page, whispering, “Charta Aridam.”

“No wands in my class Mr. Malfoy, I’m sure you remember,” said Professor Babbling. “Twentieth century discoveries make the Chi Rho theory fall apart, because several examples of the type of writing stick the scribes used were discovered…”

His notes were ruined. He tore the page out and started fresh on the next one. He thought perhaps he saw Astoria smile. 

While he generally hated admitting that idiots like Finch-Fletchey were right about anything, the prick had gotten vaguely accurate information on one thing: Draco wasn’t allowed to cast any offensive spells. But he was itching to set her notebook on fire, to prove he wouldn’t let himself be attacked without retaliating. Babbling swept in and grabbed his wand without missing a beat of lecture. She was now going on about experiments with Chinese chopsticks, which she was convinced no one in the wizarding world had ever heard of. Draco doubled down on his notes, seething. By the end of class his hands ached, and he saw several other students stretching out their fingers as well. Babbling returned his wand, and the moment she had gone into her office, Draco snarled, “What the fuck is your problem?”

“You’re the one who can’t keep an inkpot steady,” Astoria said. 

Draco let out a long breath through his nose and closed his notebook deliberately. Astoria twirled her wand. Draco’s hands shook, and suddenly he was back in Snape’s office, trying to pick up his wand and ready himself for the blow of legilimency. Snape raised his wand, except he was no longer carrying a wand, he was carrying an icepick, and he slammed it through Draco’s eye. Draco flew backwards as if tugged by a string attached to the small of his back and landed outside his parents’ bedroom the day after arriving home for summer break after Fourth Year. 

He hovered at the door as his father collapsed sobbing on the floor, dark mark bared and fingers white-knuckled around his Death Eater mask. His mother begged his father not to go, offering to put on the mask herself, and Draco was frozen in place—he thought of shouting for Pibs (though how could Pibs possibly help), and he thought of marching in and grabbing the Death Eater mask and bravely proclaiming he’d do it himself, but the large part of him wanted to run away and pretend he’d never seen it. Then Snape slid the icepick out with a pitiless surgeon’s hand and ice in his eyes, and Draco was back in the Ancient Runes classroom.

Several students had paused their packing to watch the confrontation. Occlude.  

“What, the Death Eater can throw around Unforgivables, but he draws the line at hitting a girl?” Astoria sneered. “What they say about you Malfoys is true.”

Draco didn’t wait around to find out what exactly people were saying about the Malfoys now. He made it out of the classroom and around the corner before he started running. He didn’t dare think about where his feet were taking him until he burst into the owlery and several dozen owls all startled at the same time, hooting their displeasure and making a show of tucking their chins into their chests and going back to sleep. 

He found Astraea tucked in her nook. “Hey,” he murmured. Astraea blinked sleepily at him and cooed. “I forgot to bring the mice—sorry.” 

Astraea hopped onto his hand, and he sat down on the straw-lined floor and patted her head. 

He began to talk mindlessly. “Are the aurors nice to you when they search my correspondences? Ever been searched by a wanker called Potter? I’ll describe him for you. His forehead’s got this big famous scar and his hair has never met a comb in its life. He’s got an enormous hero complex, probably to make up for having a tiny dick, and he thinks he’s got some moral authority because he was born on the right side of the war. Although… these days I’m coming to think maybe he’s got moral authority because he’s been a good person.” He looked down as if she had contributed to the conversation. “No, you’re right. He’s a total wanker.”

Astraea pressed her forehead against his chest and sighed. He wrapped an arm around her, hugging her gently. 

“Maybe I should think of you when I try to occlude,” he mused. “You, snoozing away in the owlery, dreaming about chasing mice—hey!”

She flapped her wings and hopped out of his grasp. Betrayal lurched inside him, and then a sweet, pungent scent reached his nose and he scrambled to his feet, wand out.

“Sorry,” said the intruder airily. “I didn’t mean to disturb you and your pretty owl. I like watching people talk to their pets when they think they’re alone. Someone who’s nice to their pet can’t fully be a bad person. What’s your owl’s name?”

The intruder was a blonde girl with messy hair and pale, strange eyes. The scent coming off her reminded him of Granger, but it was more overripe. “Lovegood,” he said, swallowing a mouthful of saliva. He cleared his throat. “You were spying on me?”

“A nargle took my maple leaf garland. I followed it down this way, and I saw you run in here. I thought maybe you were chasing it too, so I came in. You were being so sweet to your owl that I didn’t want to interrupt.”

He gulped, turning his face towards the fresh air blowing in from the window. “A nargle?”

She tilted her head from side to side, appraising him. “Draco Malfoy.” In her mouth, his name sounded like a lilting spell. “I stayed in your house last year. Your dungeons could use some renovating. The whole time I was there, I thought they would benefit from some soft chairs and better lighting. Perhaps some heating as well. It was very hard for Ollivander down there.”

Draco felt his face go cold. Finally, he stammered out, “W-well, they’re not exactly meant to be comfortable.”

“One wonders why a country manor even has dungeons,” she said. “Never mind. I don’t hold it against you. I was at your hearing this summer, I believe everything Hermione said about you.”

“Uh, yeah. About that, I’m sorry-”

“Yes,” she agreed. “Like I said, I don’t hold it against you. You never told me your owl’s name?”

“Um. Astraea.”

“Oh, how lovely.” She held out her hand and to Draco’s complete disbelief, Astraea fluttered down and settled there. “Astraea, the Greek goddess of purity and justice. That makes quite a bit of sense for you.”

With a graceful sweep of her arm, she pushed Astraea into flight. Then she left the alcove, taking her pungent sweet smell with her, and the fog in Draco’s mind cleared. “Wait!” 

She turned back towards him, a friendly smile on her face. “Yes?”

“Do you know you’re an omega?”

“No—what’s an omega?”

Draco thought he might melt from embarrassment if he had to explain the alpha and omega thing to Luna Lovegood. “You should talk to Granger about it.”

Her smile faltered. “Yes… I’ll do that. Although Hermione doesn’t seem to want to talk to me these days. It’s been lonely since Harry left.”

Draco did not think he was the right person to be confiding in. “Ah, well. I’m sorry about that. Um, this alpha and omega thing…” He sped through an explanation in the least explicit terms possible. He thought he might have to obliviate himself when he got back to his room. 

Lovegood took it in stride. “I wonder why it happened after this war, but not after the first wizarding war. Or after the defeat of Grindelwald.”

“That’s the question of the hour.”

“And it’s happening to other students in the seventh and eighth years?”

“Yes—probably. Don’t let anyone… use this against you,” Draco said gruffly, studying the pattern of hay on the floor. “You should really talk to Granger. Bye, Lovegood.”

“You can call me Luna, you know! All my friends do.”

“...Right. Luna. I’m going to get going. Don’t spy on me.”

“I won’t,” she said brightly. “Now that we’re friends, I’ll just come say hi.”

It occurred to Draco, as he stared at his arithmancy homework and tried to gather the will to do it, that there was no part of his probation that stipulated he do well in school. He dropped his quill, splattering tiny drops of ink across the parchment, and leaned back in the chair, hanging his head upside down. The eighth year Slytherin dorm flickered in the candlelight, the four empty beds dusty and draped in shadows. Slughorn could easily have had the extra beds removed. But he chose to leave them; for all his affable bluster, he was a Slytherin, and the empty beds were by design. 

He flipped back up, giving himself a head rush. The arithmancy homework lay smugly on the desk. “Fuck off,” Draco grumbled, closing his eyes. A small presence settled beside him, and turned the paper towards herself. 

Draco, you need to keep your mind sharp, Granger said. 

“I’ll dissolve into a heap of goo if I want to,” he mumbled.

What will you do with your time if you don’t do your homework? You haven’t joined any clubs. You’re banned from flying. You don’t have any friends.

“If you’re going to be bothersome, be sexy while you do it.”

This really isn’t that hard. You were always good at things, when you tried. She ran a soft hand down his arm to his wrist and drew a circle on his palm. You saw how I looked at you when I realized you understood arithmancy.

“How did you look at me?”

Open your eyes and you’ll see.

He pressed his hand against his groin, rubbing his half-hard erection through his pants and canting his hips slightly. The imaginary Granger stood and traced a finger up his arm, putting her head over his shoulder and leaning over him from behind. Eight years a witch and there are still things I don’t know. She ran her hands down his chest, and he turned his head and imagined her scent, sweet and savory, a candy begging to be bitten. Draco, why don’t you let yourself feel good? He unzipped his pants and pushed himself away from the desk, stroking his erection and imagining her kneeling down between his knees. 

“Do you know what to do? Put your mouth on it.”

She peeked up at him through her lashes, and innocently kissed the tip of his erection. He gasped, and came so hard he buckled, his abdominal muscles rippling and tensing. 

There was cum on his desk. He vanished the cum before it got sticky and hard to remove, and closed his eyes, already sleepy, waiting for himself to soften as the aftertremors phased through him. A minute passed, and he was still hard. He looked down.

“What the fuck.”

There was a bulb the size of a clementine at the base of his penis. It was like a tumor. He touched it and shuddered, doubling over. More cum spurted on the desk, and some got as far as his arithmancy homework, like his penis was pressurized. He vanished the cum again only to spurt on his wand in the middle of the vanishing. Each time he came, his penis ached, like he was being wrung out. “Accio tissue.” He wiped his wand and examined the penile growth. He came again while staring at it, and his balls were starting to feel sore and empty. 

He imagined trying to fit this new growth into his pants and waddling to Madam Pomfrey to explain he was having a men’s problem. Thereafter he would always be a sexual deviant in her eyes.

Fifteen minutes passed and he came six more times, each time ejaculating less. The base of his penis began to shrink. The growth hadn’t appeared when he masturbated last night. The only circumstantial change between this time and last night was that this time he had been explicitly thinking of Granger… oh. 

It was part of the alpha and omega thing. Waves of sleepiness rolled over him, and although it was early, he put out the light, tucked his wand between his mattress and his headboard where it would be inches from his hand, and was asleep within minutes. 

In his dreams, the Great Lake glittered in the moonlight. The surface of the water unzipped and a hand emerged from its depths. Take the sword of Gryffindor, Draco. He waded into the split, pushing through the void as though through water, stretching towards the glimmering sword. Just as his fingers closed around the hilt, he looked down and recoiled. The hand holding the sword was attached to Astoria’s body. She grinned at him with razor sharp teeth and lunged for his neck.

Potter swept down on his broom and snatched the sword. Suddenly Draco was chasing Potter through the clouds, and then he was back in the arithmancy classroom, and Hermione held his hand under the desk, running her thumb back and forth over his. Then she was lying in bed with him, pressing her forehead to his chest, and he held her tightly and promised to always protect her. He looked down, and she was no longer Hermione, but a blonde with a dreamy smile and an overripe scent, and he rolled over and woke up, a pit in his stomach. 

“Lumos.”

Under the dim wandlight, he pulled out a scrap of parchment and a quill, and titled the parchment, Reasons I cannot like Hermione Granger.

1. My pheromones are misleading me.
2. Hermione Granger does not like me.
3.  

A third reason eluded him. In the past, even as recently as a few months ago, he would have written, because she’s a mudblood. But would he have been writing it because it mattered to him, or because he thought it mattered to other people? When he was little, he thought mudbloods had literal mud flowing through their veins, and they looked like golems shaped from dirt. Then he had come to Hogwarts, and they all looked like children, and he had hated them because they confused him. They seemed to hide all of their evilness deep inside their skins. He despised Hermione for years because she worked so hard and acted so nice, and he had wanted to shake her until she burst open and revealed how rotten she was at the core, proving once and for all that she had stolen her achievements. Stolen them from him, he had complained to his father once when he was twelve. Only when all the muggleborns were gone from the castle did he come to understand that mudblood had no meaning—it was just another word, like sectumsempra or crucio, created for the purpose of hurting people. 

“Nox.”

He went back to bed, and thrashed and sweated and fought with his sheets for what felt like hours, and then with no ceremony it was Friday morning. 

“You’re late,” Hermione said, already buried in Madeline Malfoy's book. 

“Altercation in the corridor outside the charms room,” Draco mumbled, dropping his bag on the table. “A fourth year was practicing some new spells.”

She looked up, and then covered her mouth. “Oh my.” He could tell she was laughing behind her hand, and this made him scowl. “You- your hair-”

“I’ve got more rainbows than a leprechaun,” he said. “No need to make fun.”

“I’m not making fun,” she said, her eyes still bright with mirth. “It’s a nice look. It really, uh, sets off your dark aura.”

His hair was cycling through the rainbow at a steady pace. “Don’t suppose you remember how to reverse this one? I left my ref spellbook in my room.”

“I kind of like it-”

“Granger…”

“Go to Madam Pomfrey if it bothers you so much!”

Draco rolled his eyes. “Hi Madam Pomfrey, no I’m not injured, but could you make my hair less technicolor? She’s already made fun of me once for not remembering basic counterhexes. What will she think if I can’t turn my hair back to normal on my own? Sorry excuse for a Death Eater I am.”

They suddenly both sobered. We are not friends, Draco reminded himself. She’s a hero, and a good person, and I’m me.

“Well,” Hermione said carefully, “it’s not unreasonable that you’d have forgotten spells like the color-changing charm. They’re not very applicable in real life—unless you do much color-changing your clothes. We learn these elementary spells to practice the theory behind them.”

“You spend a lot of time color-changing your clothes?”

Hermione rolled her eyes. “I’ve seen Lavender and Parvati do it. Let’s move on, shall we?” She pushed the book on Magickal Maladies across the table towards him. “I’ll assume you’ve read this. It’s clearly missing a lot. There’s no mention of compulsion, no discussion of what an omega witch’s pregnancy is like, it doesn’t explain what triggers presentation. It’s incredibly frustrating—I don’t know if Madeline Malfoy simply didn’t have access to the right information, or if she was omitting details to fit the moral guidelines of her era. And the third volume is in French, so I'm not entirely sure what's in it. I’m not getting through it very fast.”

“It's in French? I know French.”

“Really?” She leaned forward, curious to learn something hidden about him. “Say something in French.”

Draco’s mind blanked. He did not really speak French; he had only picked up a decent listening ability because he used to summer in France with Mother and Father every year. “Uh, je parle français.”

“Wow.” She did not sound very impressed, and leaned back in her chair, looking back to the book. An urge to impress her, to keep her looking at him, overcame him.

He pulled the book across the table and flipped open to the first page. “This is my problem too, Granger. I don’t want to leave you to do all the work.” She opened her mouth as if to say something and he raised a finger. “I know, you already said everyone else is happy for you to do all the work yourself. But it’ll go faster if we both do it.”

She gave him a shy smile. “You know, Harry and Ron wouldn’t have offered to help.”

Draco didn’t respond for a moment, scanning down the page. Finally, he said, “Potter and Weasley didn’t go off and become Death Eaters. So, all other things being equal, they still come out on top.”

He didn’t know why he kept bringing up the Death Eater thing. She was in a cheery mood, they had been building a rapport, and every time it seemed they were getting too friendly, out slipped, “I was a Death Eater!” Then the chasm reopened between them, leaving Draco safe and alone on his own side. 

They weren’t doing this to become friends. They were meeting to figure out the alpha and omega problem. She was better off not being associated with him.

He struggled through a few pages of something to do with foot disease. He couldn’t help checking every minute or so to make sure Hermione was still there. She curled up in her chair and wound a hand inside that bushy mane, propping her head up, and she looked so soft and vulnerable that Draco wanted to both ruin her and save her. With a jolt shot straight to his groin, he remembered his fantasy from last night. 

She glanced up and caught his eye. “Need something?”

“I was just wondering,” he said slowly, “is our goal to solve the alpha and omega problem?”

She sat back up in her chair and marked her place in her book with a finger. “I wanted to wait until we knew more about the problem to make concrete plans, but yes, I suppose my end goal was to find a treatment that would allow us to return to symptom-free lives. In the meantime, I want to know as much about the problem as possible, so we can mitigate the more troublesome manifestations of the condition. The heat especially worries me. It sounds like it has the potential to be incredibly disruptive to our academic studies and our peers. But it may still be far off on the horizon. My more immediate concern is the compulsion.” She bit her lip. “What if there are other girls at school who don’t realize they’re omegas?”

“Luna is an omega,” Draco blurted.

She froze. “Luna Lovegood? How do you know?”

“I. Um. I smelled her. In the owlery.”

“Does she know?” Hermione pressed a hand to her forehead as if in pain. “Oh Merlin, I have to go talk to her, people are always saying cruel things, she might hear something stupid as a direct order and go do it.” Muttering more to herself than to Draco, she said, “I once overheard this boy tell her to go find a tall tower and jump from it. What if the wrong person said that to her now?” She started to gather her books and quills in a rush, the study nook oozing anxiety. Draco reached across the table and touched her wrist.

It had been instinct. He hadn’t been sure what would happen. But the light brush on her wrist stilled her and made her scent sweet again. Her eyes were wide and confused, and he jerked back as if the contact stung. “I already told her what she was,” he said, after a moment. “I told her to be careful. I also told her to talk to you.”

Hermione rubbed her wrist where he had touched her. In a small voice, she said, “I was dismissive of her, last time we talked. I’m afraid she won’t—this is such a mess.”

Draco sensed that right now she needed him to be calm. “She’s not the air-headed loon she pretends to be. Trust her to take care of herself.”

“Still.” She didn’t elaborate, and dropped her hand from her wrist. “I suppose you should know that Ginny’s probably also an omega. She can do the scent thing. I’m keeping her updated on what I learn through my readings. She doesn’t like that I’m doing this alone with you, and frankly I don’t really like it either, but-” She froze. “That’s not what I meant.”

There was a gaping empty hole inside him, like she had taken a spoon and chipped out his heart. He was already on his feet, packing his bag. “I understand what you meant.”

“No, really—I meant it was awkward, doing this alone, because we don’t know each other! When I told Ginny I was meeting you, she wanted to come with me to make it less awkward, but she has quidditch practice! And I would’ve brought Ron or Neville, but I thought that’d make things worse, you know, in case being an alpha made you more aggressive or territorial, plus you have all that history with Ron that I didn’t want to dig up—please don’t go!” She grabbed the sleeve of his robe as he headed for the stacks. 

She was standing so close, and she was so desperate, and Draco’s feet felt like they were trapped in thick mud. “Why should I stay?” he breathed. 

“Because- because-”

“There’s no part of this that we need to do together. I think this… alpha and omega thing is clouding our minds. It’s making us think we should be friends, and I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

A wall of steel went up behind Hermione’s eyes, and briefly Draco thought does she know Occlumency? She let him go and took a calculated step back. “I admire that you’re committed to your tragic role as a former Death Eater. If you really want to spend the rest of your time at Hogwarts wallowing in self pity, I won’t stop you. But I meant every word I said at your Wizengamot trial. No one should be defined by the circumstances of their birth. Your parents, whatever their crimes, love you. I believe you acted not out of hatred or belief in Voldemort’s cause, but out of self-preservation and love for your family. There’s redemption from that, if you choose to pursue it. You should give yourself that chance.”

A lump formed in Draco’s throat and his eyes were very watery. He turned away, and, failing to inject any venom into his voice, said, “Don’t be sappy, Granger.”

“I’m not being sappy,” she snapped. “I’m quoting exactly what I told the Wizengamot at your trial.” She returned to her seat. “Come sit down Draco, we’ve still got a lot of work to do.”

Against all better judgement, Draco sat down. Maybe she was subtly compulsing him, but the thought wasn’t frightening. If he had to trust one person to have such power over him, he would have chosen Hermione Granger. 

“Anthony Goldstein’s an alpha also,” he said to break the silence. “We talked about it. He feels bad about what happened.”

“I figured he was. Should I talk to him?”

“Probably not.”

“Fair enough.” Now that she had gotten him back at the table, she seemed to shrink into herself, embarrassed. “Ernie Macmillan is definitely an alpha as well. I’m starting to think it may be everyone who was at the Battle of Hogwarts. Perhaps we should… take a poll, or something.”

“Send out invitations to come get sniffed,” Draco offered weakly, and Hermione cracked a close-lipped smile. “Let’s, uh, keep reading.”

Chapter Text

The day had come to tell Neville and Ron about the alpha and omega problem. Best to do it now, before it became common knowledge. Neville was not really one for tantrums, Hermione mused from the cushiony comfort of her four poster bed. She had no doubt he would receive the news calmly. It was Ron who was the problem, not least because he was likely to shut her up before she could explain the situation. 

There was power in numbers, and in proof of fellow suffering. She would get Ginny to help her talk to Neville, and then she would bring both Neville and Ginny along when she talked to Ron. 

But when Hermione knocked on the door to the seventh year girl’s dorm, one of Ginny’s roommates answered. “She’s sick,” said the roommate.

Ginny rolled over in bed. “I’m not that sick,” she protested. Sweat showed through her shirt under her armpits. 

Hermione laid a hand on Ginny’s forehead. Ginny’s forehead burned. “You need to go to Madam Pomfrey.”

“No!” Ginny scrambled up, pulling her knees in close. Her sheets fell away, revealing that they were soaked in sweat. 

“Madam Pomfrey could have you right in a couple of hours. Do you want me to go?”

“Is it selfish that I want the day off?”

Hermione studied her friend. Her hair looked as though it had just been through a tornado and her skin was blotchy. In the muggle world these kinds of sicknesses were called 24-hour fevers. 

“As long as it doesn’t get worse,” Hermione said reluctantly. “I’ll come check on you in a bit.”

She checked her watch. It read, You are going to be late for breakfast! She would rather it tell the time, but magical devices never worked in sensible ways. Once, for fun, Hermione had designed the syllabus for a class on Functional Design for Witches and Wizards. She proposed it to McGonagall, but McGonagall had unfortunately not seen the need. 

Sharp pain stabbed through Hermione’s rib cage. She realized the implications of being late for breakfast—Ron wouldn’t like it. Her feet dragged her forward as if pulled by a fish hook hooked around one of her ribs. Panic shot through her. She hadn’t even seen Ron this morning, there was no way she should be affected by his compulsion yet. 

Her adrenaline spiked, cutting off her connection to the compulsion. She whiteknuckled her wand like it was holding her in place. The stairs down to the Gryffindor common room undulated before her, their shape loosening as her grip on her own will tightened. It was like snagging a protruding tree branch while being sucked into the maelstrom—Ron’s maelstrom. 

Hold fast to that anchor. Focus. And-

“Excuse me.” A fifth year slid past and headed down the stairs.

Hermione’s hold on the tree branch slipped. She wasn’t strong enough to swim against both the current and the weight of her already waterlogged clothes. The whirlpool caught her, dragging her into its orbit, and she screamed and wailed at her lost chance, watching the anchor spin by, now out of reach, although no one she passed would have noticed because she wore a beatific smile and skipped into the Great Hall and leaped on Ron from behind. 

“Hey! Happy Saturday!” she sang.

“‘Mione,” he exclaimed, dropping his fork and reaching up to half-hug her. She took her customary seat next to him. “Mum’s sent me a houseplant. Remember last week it was a fruitcake? I thought she was sending care packages, but I now think she’s trying to unload her junk on me. I’ll probably give it to Neville.”

You shouldn’t give away things that your mother sends you to show her love, Hermione wanted to scold. Perhaps it would be different if Mrs. Weasley was constantly sending useless junk, but Hermione knew that Mrs. Weasley wasn’t frivolous like that. “That’s so thoughtful of you,” she said. “Neville will really appreciate it.” 

He gave her a warm smile, and he really did have a nice smile. Nice arms, too. His hair was especially nice, hopefully their children would have his hair, and the way he held his shoulders was very authoritative and masculine—oh, he was saying something. 

“What do you think?” he asked, his eyes bright and hopeful.

Huh? 

Suddenly Hermione was looking down from above as if floating in a high corner of the Great Hall. There were two Hermiones. One was the girl sitting at the table, blankfaced and dumb, a puppet controlled by strings. The other was the girl holding the strings and providing speech for the puppet. Hermione was both puppet and puppeteer, and right now, neither knew quite what to say, because neither had heard the question. 

The puppeteer’s only goal was to see Ron smile. Based on his expression, Ron wanted an affirmative answer. The puppeteer gave the puppet a hard yank, and Hermione flew back into her body and parroted, “That sounds like a great idea!”

So she found herself out on the quidditch pitch, a broom between her legs, getting ready to kick off, and kicking and screaming from inside her mind. It was to no avail. The ground shot away below her. 

Everyone knew Hermione didn’t like flying; she was deeply mediocre at it. She didn’t like being mediocre at things and thus avoided flying because the best way to deal with lack of natural talent is denial. That is sarcasm on the part of the author, but really—Hermione liked the ground and liked to keep it within ten feet of her at all times. 

That wasn’t what Ron wanted, and it wasn’t what puppeteer-Hermione wanted, so Hermione was locked in the back of the car, holding tight to the Jesus handle and trying to scream. The ground was fifty feet away and her broom drifted with the wind. Every dip felt like freefall. Ron shouted instructions, something about counterbalancing. Normally, this was the part where Hermione would get dizzy and drop precipitously. But puppeteer-Hermione had the wheel. As Ron guided her through turns, stops, and her first loop-de-loop, Hermione stopped fighting the weightlessness. She was like a different creature, transformed into a dolphin, spinning and speeding and swooping for the sheer delight of it. 

She shot over to Ron and skidded to a clumsy stop, forcing him to dive out of the way and then rise back up to meet her. “I never realized how fun this could be,” she panted.

“And I never realized you could fly like that.” Ron leaned over and gave her a shoulder hug, causing both their brooms to dip. Hermione squirmed. “Do you want to do some laps to cool down?” Some Hufflepuffs had arrived on the field to practice. By the looks of them, they were second or third years, still struggling to get the handle of their school-shed brooms before the quidditch tryouts. “Let’s go up high and let the little twerps have the ground.” He grinned. “I’m so proud of you Hermione. I really never thought I’d see you fly like that.”

I want to land. “It’s because of you,” Hermione said robotically.

They took a leisurely pace, flying side by side. 

“-probably because I got banned from the team in fifth year,” Ron was saying. “But I’m the oldest returning member, so the title should have gone to me automatically, like it did to Harry in sixth year. This is retaliation for that one time McGonagall overheard me calling her a crankypuss and it’s not fair, she really was being a crankypuss-”

It’s probably because you’re an eighth year, and we’re all here on invitational status, said the locked away Hermione to herself. She had screamed and fought herself to exhaustion. The puppeteer-Hermione was in ironclad control, and though she hated to admit it, she was probably safer if she didn’t fight the compulsion while flying high above the ground.

“-then Ginny sends me a patronus saying the tryouts tonight are cancelled because she’s sick. That smells like bullshit, why doesn’t she go to Madam Pomfrey? I think she’s trying to keep me off the team. Has she said anything to you?”

“Nothing about quidditch.”

“You should talk to her and figure out what’s going on-”

The puppeteer nodded her head and made a note. 

While Ron babbled, Hermione squinted out at the castle. The tower closest to the quidditch pitch was the tower that held the owlery. A tall figure, dressed in black but sporting a shock of white-blond hair, stood at the arched window.

Draco?

Hermione glanced at Ron, but he was deep in his conspiracy about Ginny trying to keep him off the team, and had forgotten to pay attention to her. Hermione raised her hand experimentally. Ron did not look over, and the puppeteer did not jerk her strings—the puppeteer only cared about things that Ron cared about. 

Hermione gave a hesitant wave in the direction of the owlery. 

Perhaps he had not seen her, or perhaps she had been wrong, and it was not Draco. There is something distinctly embarrassing about waving to the wrong person, and Hermione considered asking Ron whether they could turn around and fly in the opposite direction so she didn’t have to face the owlery.

The figure at the owlery raised his hand in greeting. 

“Do you want to study this afternoon?”

Hermione squirmed, fighting the yes on her tongue. She could twist her words, especially when Ron did not really want what he was asking, and Ron never really wanted to study. “I was thinking of getting ahead on my transfiguration homework, maybe you could drill me on theorems.”

“You’re so cute,” Ron said. “I was actually wondering if you could help me with the charms practical next week.”

“Maybe this evening? I need to go talk to Ginny. I could talk to her about-”

“Quidditch tryouts,” Ron filled in. “You’re the best.” He bent down and tried to peck her on the lips, as he did sometimes these days. Hermione shuddered inside her body and wrestled enough control from the puppeteer to turn her head. His lips landed on her cheek, and chased her mouth. She tossed her head again, like a baby avoiding avoiding their mother’s spoon. 

“Wait-”

His knee fit between her legs, and he backed her against the wall, and his scent was too strong. She felt dizzy. 

“Ron, please,” she whispered. “We’re in public.”

He chuckled and pressed her forehead to hers. “Yeah, sorry, I got carried away for a second. Later we should-”

Whatever he said next, the puppeteer did not hear it. She had cast an unconscious muffliato. She rocketed down the corridor. Soon, her footsteps would force her to the Gryffindor tower, to talk to Ginny and ask her about quidditch. But for a few brief minutes, her body was hers again. She threw herself inside an unused classroom and locked the door. 

Abruptly she was crying. All her energy had been sapped away by the struggle against the compulsion, hollowing her out into paper mache with a few dry kernels rattling around inside. Why was this happening to her? How did Ron—one of her best friends—not notice how strange their relationship had become? Harry would have noticed immediately. The only answer that Hermione could think of was that Ron liked her better this way, like a windup doll begging to do his bidding, which he could put away in the closet when he didn’t want to play with her. 

** Ron wants me to go talk to Ginny. She wiped her face. Her body was no longer hers to control. She knew Ron well enough to know what he wanted. When he wanted to kiss her, or take her clothes off, eventually she would do it. The omega part of her had recognized him as her alpha. The path played out in her mind—Ron leaned down to capture her lips in a kiss, pressing her against a wall. She smiled and giggled into his mouth, and he led her by hand to the Gryffindor boy’s dorm and threw her down on his bed. The drapes flew shut with a wave of a wand and their clothes vanished by magic, and with no preparation he was inside her, thrusting roughly, and she didn’t want it and she did want it, because she was wet and ready and willing.

“No!” she shouted. In a flash of light, she conjured a pair of muggle handcuffs and cuffed herself to the bar of a heavy desk, and threw her wand across the room. 

She thrashed against the desk, sobbing and wailing accio wand, accio wand until her throat went hoarse and her wrist was purple. 

The compulsion began to fade. 

In certain types of Rosalie Gold novels, this was the point where the dashing lead would burst into the room, having sensed the heroine’s distress, and scoop her up in his arms and gallantly declare that she was safe with him. This did not happen to Hermione. She did not know who to cast in the role of dashing lead.

She leaned her head against the side of the desk. The stone floor was cool and hard beneath her legs. “But he’s my best friend,” she rasped. “Not a cackling villain. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, and he’ll stop when he understands. I need Ginny to talk to him. I need to talk to Ginny. Accio wand,” she added hopefully. Her wand did not twitch. “Maybe I could write him a letter, explaining the alpha and omega problem. I should have done that days ago. I should have gone to McGonagall the first day I knew about this.”

She thought miserably of the list of assignments and readings she had set out to accomplish today. Her unhelpful wristwatch read Time’s a-wastin’! The classroom had a single window facing out towards the Forbidden Forest, and Hermione watched a flock of thestrals play around the treetops. She rested her head on her knees and dozed as much as the hard stone and her stiff knees let her. 

She estimated it was 7 o’clock when her conjured handcuffs faded. The first thing she did was summon a glass, fill it with water, and chug it. Then, with considerable hesitation, she stepped out into the corridor and braced for the tidal force of compulsion. 

The strings let her be. In the hours Hermione had spent handcuffed to a desk, the puppeteer had gotten bored and gone off somewhere else. Her body was her own again. 

She caught sight of Draco Malfoy wandering down the hall towards her with his nose in a book. This was a bit odd, since he definitely hadn’t been there three seconds earlier. “Draco?” she said, her voice wavering. “Is that you?”

He lowered his book. “Granger, what’re you doing in an empty corridor? That’s how people get attacked.”

She wanted to give a snappy retort, maybe remind him that his experience of being hexed in empty corridors was not universal, but the words didn’t come. Her mouth opened and closed, like a fish out of water. 

Draco came closer. “You don’t look too good.”

The only words Hermione could think of to say were, “Was that you I saw this morning in the owlery?”

“Yeah.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “You were flying. I thought you didn’t do that.”

“Why would you think that I don’t fly?” she asked.

“I’m guessing,” he mumbled, not meeting her gaze, and then added, “You were with Weasley. I figured he was making you do something you don’t want to do.”

“Ron and I are good friends,” Hermione said, without much conviction. “But… I will admit the flying lesson wasn’t my idea.” She sagged against the wall, the impact knocking the air from her chest. 

“Woah, careful.” Draco conjured a stool and hovered his hand over her shoulder, not quite touching, as he guided her onto it. “I stand by my original point—you look like you just got done wrestling a cave troll.”

Hermione huffed out a chuckle. “A mountain troll, actually.”

“Come again?”

“An old joke,” she said, and then she missed Harry terribly, a physical ache like being homesick for the planes of a friend’s face and the shape of their smile and the layers of memories you shared. “Don’t stand there, it makes me feel weird.” She summoned a squishy velvet armchair.

“It’s not a competition,” Draco muttered, perching on the very edge of the seat and leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. 

Twilight fell, and the torches in the wall sconces flared up and settled to a steady flicker. This usually happened while Hermione was eating dinner, and the hiss of the flames never failed to startle her. She twiddled her thumbs, not sure why she didn’t make her excuses and leave. The pile of classwork grew larger and larger the longer she waited, and yet here she was, sitting on a stool in a remote corridor with her best friend’s oldest rival. 

“You smell fucking unhappy,” Draco said, interrupting what Hermione had thought was an amicable silence. “Want to talk about it, or should I cast an air-freshening charm and leave you alone?”

Hermione chewed her lip. If only Draco had the power to turn into Harry.

“If this is about Weasley, you know I’m happy to murder him. I don’t really need a reason, I’ve been plotting his death for years,” Draco joked, or at least she hoped he was joking. When she didn’t answer, he pressed his lips together and said, half to himself, “I’m being a bloody psycho about this.”

“I appreciate that you’re here,” Hermione blurted out. 

Something changed in his posture. He pulled his shoulders back and straightened up, she thought she smelled something like pride and arousal. Hermione’s eyes flicked down to his crotch, expecting to see a bulge. Perhaps his pants were too tight. “Um. Sure. Anytime, Granger.”

“Can you call me by my first name, please?”

He swallowed. “Hermione?”

The word coming from his mouth unknotted all that confusion and tension inside her chest. She leaned back against the wall. “Thanks. What were you doing here?”

“Lurking,” he said vaguely. She raised an eyebrow, and he added, “I enjoy being able to walk freely while everyone’s at dinner.”

“Makes sense…”

Draco leaned back in the armchair. “What’re you doing tonight? Back to Gryffindor to study?”

Hermione had thought about this over the hours she had spent handcuffed to the desk. She couldn’t risk seeing Ron again today. With Ginny sick and quidditch tryouts cancelled, it was likely she would run into him if she spent the evening in Gryffindor tower, unless she wanted to hole up in her room. “I don’t know,” she said after a long pause. “I had all these plans for today, but… I don’t want to do any of them.”

“There’s a disco theme party tonight in Ravenclaw tower,” Draco said, picking his words with care. “Goldstein invited me because he owes me a favor. The concept is lame, but it’s the kind of tripe you Gryffindors eat up. He told me not to show up alone or I’d probably get turned into a frog and hurled out the window, and I didn’t really want to go anyway, but perhaps-”

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“I want to go.” This was probably impulsive and stupid and dangerous, and Hermione knew she was in an odd headspace. Probably more than anything she needed a lie down and a cup of hot tea. But what she wanted was to drink and dance and feel herself in control of her own body.

“You want to go with me, or—with me, got it. When shall we meet?”

Chapter Text

Hermione burst into Ginny’s dorm. “I’m going to the Ravenclaw party with Draco Malfoy.”

Ginny was reading a book in bed, her forehead shiny with sweat despite the open window and the chilly breeze ruffling the drapes. “What? Hermione—what?”

“It’s a long story, and also I need you to talk to your brother. Are you faking sick to get out of holding quidditch tryouts to keep him off the team? He wanted me to ask you that. I spent the entire morning with him. I was under his compulsion before I ever talked to him, it’s getting worse. I meant to sit him and Neville down and explain the alpha and omega problem, but I never got the chance because-”

“One thing at a time! Go back to the part about Malfoy. He asked you out?”

“That’s not the important part,” Hermione said frantically. “The important part is that your brother keeps trying to kiss me but I don’t want to kiss him. But he doesn’t know that! When I’m with him, all I want to do is make him happy. It’s because of the alpha and omega thing. I know he’ll be upset when he finds out none of this was real on my side, so every time I try to explain, I find myself nodding along to quidditch statistics. I need you to explain it to him. You’re not affected by his compulsion, right?”

“No…” They had discussed the possibility of Ron having power over his sister, but Ginny observed that she could barely scent him, and they surmised that their siblinghood probably overrode the alpha and omega thing. “I’m so sorry this is happening, Hermione. Do you need me to talk to him tonight?” She made to get out of bed and hunched over, her eyes shut and her hand pressing down hard on her lower abdomen. 

Hermione rushed over and stopped Ginny from getting out of bed. “It’s not that urgent, it can wait until the morning. Are you okay?”

“It’s PMS,” Ginny said, her face relaxing as she laid back. “I’m having bad cramps. I already took a pain relief potion, I don’t want to bother Madam Pomfrey.”

“Bad cramps don’t usually come with a fever,” Hermione joked nervously. 

Ginny waved her off. “Explain to me what’s going on with Draco Malfoy.”

“There’s not much to explain. I ran into him in the hallway. He mentioned the Ravenclaw party and… I thought it sounded fun. It’s not a date or anything. We barely know each other.”

“What’re you going to wear?” 

Hermione got the distinct impression that Ginny was changing the topic to distract herself from her PMS. This was a situation with which Hermione could sympathize. “It’s a disco theme party, so I was hoping for something… sparkly?”

“Ooh, I’ve got the perfect thing. Look in the pile on the bed.” Ginny waved her hand at the bed across the room. Two of the girls from Ginny’s year had not returned to Hogwarts, meaning that Ginny and her roommates had turned the extra beds into storage space. Or perhaps the three remaining girls were just messy, Hermione thought, eyeing the explosion of clothes and paper and dishware littering the room. She dug through the pile of clothes on the bed, pulling out a low cut dress covered in red, yellow, and black sequins.

“That’d be cute on you,” Ginny said.

“This is stripperwear.” Hermione tried it on. “I feel like I’m naked. This skirt is so short.” 

“You’re such a prude. What’s wrong with stripperwear? There are spells to keep your skirt down. Abby even taught me a vagina dentata spell if you want the extra security.”

“I’d like not to curse my crotch before I go out.”

“Never hurts to be safe. Especially if you’re going with Malfoy.”

Hermione almost snapped that it was Ginny’s brother who was the real threat, but she didn’t want to start an argument. Ginny spelled the dress to stay put, and she let Ginny teach her the vagina dentata spell, though she refused to use it. Hermione sat on the bed, inhaling Ginny’s pungent scent of sweat and citrus, and let Ginny do her makeup and hair. 

“When are you meeting Malfoy?” Ginny asked. 

“Nine, outside the portrait hole.”

“Do you want me to patronus Ron and make sure he’s not in the common room or near the portrait hole? That way you won’t run into him, and he won’t run into Malfoy.” This seemed prudent, and so Ginny sent off a patronus telling Ron that he’d better be on the quidditch pitch practicing if he wanted to make it on the team.

“Won’t that make him not want to practice?” Hermione asked. 

“Ron loves quidditch more than he resents me.” Ginny sighed. “I don’t really know what to do. I wish McGonagall hadn’t made me captain. If I let him on the team he’ll try to captain from the goal hoops, but if I don’t let him on the team—well, you know him.”

Hermione did know. “Do you want me to stay? We could go over the Ron situation. Or we could play cards, or I could explain the stock market again. I feel bad leaving you alone.”

“I’m fine, honestly. It’s just cramps, I’ve had them before. So… d’you think he’s hot?”

“Who? Ron? Draco?”

“You’re on a first name basis? Ooh la la. Yes, do you think Draco Malfoy is hot?”

“Um. He’s alright.”

“Don’t lie, he’s objectively attractive. Tall, and nice hair. It almost offsets the aura of evil. Is that the reason you’re hanging out with him-”

“No!”

“-are you thinking with your vagina?”

Hermione’s pelvic floor clenched as she remembered the sensation of having him sit close to her, or her heady fervor when he touched her wrist. “I just like hanging out with him.”

“Yes, I can see you must be attracted to his sparkling personality,” Ginny deadpanned. 

“He’s… funny, and kind of sweet sometimes. I mean, he’s still himself, but I feel like without the pressure of his parents or his housemates, he’s letting a different side of himself out. I want to give him a chance.”

“You and Harry are both too ready to find the light in dark wizards. They do tell you not to try and change men. Next you’ll be trying to explain to me why Tom deserves forgiveness.” Ginny clamped her jaw shut, looking away. 

Hermione checked her watch. It read It’s party time! The windup clock by Ginny’s bed read a minute to nine. “I should get going.”

Ginny forced a smile. “Send a patronus if you’re uncomfortable and want to leave. Then I’ll send a big loud one asking for you to come back.”

“You’re a good friend.” Hermione bent over and kissed her forehead. She really smelled ripe. “Go take a shower.”

She crept down the stairs to the common room, trying to see if Ron had ignored Ginny’s instructions, but the common room was empty except for a couple of students playing exploding gobstones by the fireplace. The clock on the wall said it was exactly nine. She took a deep breath, tugged at the bottom of her dress, and stepped out into the corridor.

There was no one there. She looked up and down the corridor, disappointment swooping through her stomach. Draco had stood her up. 

“Hey,” said a low voice, and then he was there.

She looked up at him. He wore a black suit with no tie and the first two buttons on his shirt undone, showing a bit of skin. He had shaken out his hair, and without thinking, she reached up and touched it. 

He held himself still. His hair was very soft, and she found herself glad that he had left it loose instead of combing it neatly to the side. He looked gentler this way. 

She pulled her hand back, aware of the awkward intimacy of her touch. “You look nice,” she said. 

He gave a half-smile. “So do you.”

“You look excited. I thought this party was ‘lame Gryffindor tripe’.”

His smile turned into a sneer. “I’m looking forward to the expressions on their faces when the scum of Slytherin enters the party with the princess of Gryffindor on his arm.” He made a chicken wing motion as if to offer his arm and then thought better of it. They headed across the castle towards the entrance to Ravenclaw tower, leaving several feet of space between them.

“I’m not the princess of Gryffindor.”

“But you don’t deny that I’m the scum of Slytherin.”

“I was going to deny that part next. What’re you even going to do at this party? Dance?” She couldn’t imagine The Draco Malfoy getting funky on the dance floor to the Village People, or whatever witches and wizards had listened to during the height of disco. 

“I was intending to stand in the corner and drink a lot and scowl at everyone who looked at me.”

“We should make a plan. First we’ll head for food and drinks. We’ll hang in the corner and talk for a few minutes—just long enough for everyone to see that you and I are getting along—and then we’ll go talk to Ernie’s group, if they’re in attendance. Ernie’s pompous and so are his friends, but they’ll be polite. Then maybe we should dance, separately of course, and I’ll try and get Neville over to say hi. Although I’m not sure Neville will be there. Then we should talk to Padma and Justin, since they’re prefects, and thank them for throwing the party. Here’s a list of neutral topics to talk about: how nice the Ravenclaw tower is, the weather, the full moon, the-”

“Have you ever been to a party?” Draco interrupted. 

“I’ve been to the quidditch afterparties…” They arrived at the top of the spiral staircase leading to Ravenclaw. Hermione crossed her arms. “It won’t be much different, will it?”

“The music will probably be louder.” The door thumped with the beat. “Ready?”

Hermione suddenly wished she were in her bed, wrapped in pajamas and curled up under the covers, reading a book. “I suppose.”

“You don’t have to come.”

“I thought you couldn’t get in if I didn’t go,” Hermione said.

“Granger—Hermione—are you daft? I invited you because you looked like you could use a pick-me-up, not because I’m dying to go to a theme party.”

“If you don’t want to go-” Hermione said, her voice rising, and Draco shook his head impatiently and banged the eagle-shaped knocker. 

It cawed, “These tragedies have reminded us…”

“Words matter and the power of life and death is in the tongue,” Draco finished. The door swung inward, and the first thing Hermione noticed was that the music was unfathomably loud and the room was darker than she had expected. A mass of bodies gyrated in the middle of the common room, and the scents in the room jumbled together into a sweaty, salty funk. She wrinkled her nose, and Draco did the same. 

Either the Ravenclaws had cast an illusion on their common room, or every student in Hogwarts had showed up. Hermione couldn’t make out a single person she knew. She did see the food and drinks table, and they went there first.

The punch was potently alcoholic. Hermione bobbed her head to the music and nursed her drink to have something to do as Draco leaned back against the wall, and for a minute it seemed like perhaps no one was going to notice him. Then Padma sidled up to her, and said in her ear, “I can’t believe you brought Malfoy.”

Hermione glanced over at Draco, who stared blankly out at the dance floor as colored lights washed over him. To Padma, she said, “Why shouldn’t I?”

Padma shrugged. “Don’t blame me when Justin starts frothing at the mouth and shooting off curses.” She spun off towards the dance floor. 

Hermione cast around for anyone she knew. Clearly her plan of having a series of smalltalk conversations and then ducking out was not going to work. This was not that kind of party. 

Draco leaned down. “You should dance.”

“I don’t think I’m drunk enough.” Hermione took a gulp of her drink. 

“Luna’s here. Why don’t you talk to her?”

“Are you trying to get rid of me?” 

Draco’s eyes were flat. “You should go have fun.”

Luna wore a pink glowing dress that appeared to be constructed out of the long skinny balloons that are used to make animals for kids. Hermione took a sip of her punch; she didn’t drink much and already the room spun slightly. A loose bolt in the back of her mind thought Draco was doing that thing where he was being prickly on purpose, but the front part of her brain didn’t care. “Okay,” she said. “Have fun over here by the wall. I’ll be back later.”

It didn’t occur to Hermione until she was halfway across the room that her last interaction with Luna had been embarrassingly cool, and perhaps showing up and dancing with her wouldn’t help their relations. Hermione sputtered to a stop and drank some more, nodding to the beat, trying to decide what to say when she reached Luna. Luna jumped onto the dance floor at the start of the next song and began to dance solo, her eyes closed and her arms flung out widely. She looked blissful. Perhaps a tad drunk, too. Hermione was relieved to have an excuse not to interrupt.

There hadn’t been parties like this before the war. The quidditch aftergame parties had been raucous, but she had mostly stuck to the wall, reading a book, while people drank and reenacted the most heroic plays around her. 

Harry sometimes hung out with her during those parties. He didn’t like the hero worship like Ron did. She was sure Harry would have stuck by her side tonight. 

“Hey, Hermione. Your hair looks nice.”

Neville planted himself beside her. He flashed a sweet smile. Of all her friends, Neville was the most like Harry. “Thanks,” she said, patting her hair and immediately feeling rather dumb. “Ginny did it.”

“Well, it looks nice. Sorry, I said that already.” He lifted a cup. “Had a bit already.”

She showed him her cup. “Me too. How’s the herbology essay going? Don’t answer that—Neville, I swear I can talk about things other than school.”

“We’re a pair, huh? Cheers.” They tapped their cups together. The song changed to a slower classic. “My aunt loves this song.” 

“Well—in honor of your aunt—want to dance?” Hermione held out her hand. 

“I’m not really a good dancer…” But Neville accepted her invitation and they spun at the edge of the dance floor, rocking in the general direction of the beat. 

“I need to tell you something,” Hermione said. 

“Yeah?” 

The alcohol must have been affecting her judgement. The middle of a loud, crowded party was not the place to explain the alpha and omega problem. A group of jumping girls bumped into her, and Neville steadied her elbow and tugged her out of the way. 

“I’ve never been to this type of party,” Hermione said.

Neville’s face fell, but he laughed to cover it. “Me neither. I don’t think there were any like this before.”

As they rocked in circles, Hermione caught glimpses of Draco through the crowd. He was watching her, and drinking, with a very dark look in his eye. His gaze heated her skin, and she again wished she had covered up more. 

“I have a question,” Neville shouted over the music. “Where do witches keep their wands when they’re dressed like- like you are?”

“Down the front of my dress,” Hermione said, and pulled her wand out from between her breasts.

Neville flushed and he looked politely over her shoulder. “Does it get uncomfortable?”

“A little.” She stuffed her wand back down her dress. They did another spin, and Hermione instinctively looked for Draco. But he was gone.

She froze. What if he’d been turned into a frog and hurled out the window? She pulled her wand back out, scanning the room for perpetrators. “What’s wrong?” Neville was asking, but then she saw it:

Draco was dancing with Luna.

Luna had clearly dragged him into it. His expression was one of poker-faced sufferance. They danced the way Hermione danced with her father, hand in hand, Luna pushing and pulling to get him to move his body. She was doing a complicated step that might have been the charleston. 

Neville and Hermione were not the only people who stopped to watch. “Accio punch,” Hermione murmured. “Am I dreaming?” A cup of punch flew to her hand and she downed it in two large gulps. She started to giggle. “Neville—let’s dance with them.”

“What?” Neville yelped. She grabbed him by the arm and pulled him over to Draco and Luna, copying the way they were dancing, hand in hand, push and pull. Neville had drunk enough to get into it, and soon he was laughing too, and spinning her, and people were applauding and calling out requests—do a dip!—which Hermione and Neville ignored because they weren’t good dancers at all, but it was a lot of fun, and as Hermione spinned she caught Draco’s eye, and he was smiling too. 

Then somehow they had all switched partners, and Hermione was dancing with Draco. She knew she should care, but it didn’t seem to matter that this was Draco Malfoy, her best friend’s oldest rival and a former Death Eater. The beat had infected her brain. She swung wildly and he caught her, his hand on her waist and his face inches from hers, and Hermione thought maybe he’ll kiss me, but then they switched partners again, and Hermione was dancing with Luna. 

Luna spun Hermione under her arm. “I’m so glad you came!” Luna slurred, and yes, she had definitely been drinking. 

“Me too!” Hermione enthused, and then she was distracted by a thunderous roar. Both she and Luna faltered. 

Draco and Neville had grabbed hands and were dancing together, to the intense delight of the crowd. They only did this for a second before breaking apart, but Hermione had time to think, this is the moment that everyone will talk about for the rest of the week before the beat possessed her again and she lost track of Draco altogether. 

Hermione didn’t count who she danced with or how many drinks she had. She remembered dancing with Padma and Justin, and then with Hannah Abbott and her friends. Dean Thomas sauntered up to her while she was taking a break to drink some water and eat a handful of chips, and they had danced rather intimately. Hermione would have been worried about the repercussions of their dirty dancing, except Dean was obviously as wasted as she was. When Dean left to get another drink, Hermione was absorbed into a circle of seventh year Hufflepuff girls who cheered to see her and introduced themselves with names that Hermione immediately forgot. 

The party thinned out. Hermione needed to pee, so she went up to the girl’s dorm. The bathroom lights hurt her eyes. Beauty products and abandoned cups littered the counter. She took a moment to check herself in the mirror. 

Her watch read It’s bedtime.

She didn’t want to leave without saying goodbye to Draco. Where had the sulky bastard gone? 

When she tiptoed back down to the common room, the party was clearly winding down. Luna still danced solo in the center of the room, but Neville had gone back to Gryffindor, and so had most of Hermione’s new party friends. Draco lounged on an armchair, waiting for her. 

She plopped down beside him. Her wand jabbed her stomach as she slouched, and she pulled it out of her dress. “You’ve got good moves.”

“My mother thought mastery of all forms of social dance was essential to a proper upbringing. Waltz, foxstep, rumba, disco… I can do it all.” His head lolled back. “No one hexed me tonight. Or maybe they did and I’m too drunk to feel it.”

“You look normal.”

Draco lifted the collar of his shirt and peered down. “All seems right down there.” He grabbed his crotch. “Feels as big as ever. Hm. Maybe I did get through the night with no curses.” He yawned. “Wanna get out of here?” 

He stood and offered her his arm gallantly. Hermione minced out of her chair. “Why thank you, kind sir.”

“Of course, milady. After you.” He helped her through the entrance to Ravenclaw, and they both held the wall as they descended the spiral staircase. “Shall I escort the princess back to her tower?”

The corridors were dark and quiet, and Hermione knew that the moment she re-entered Gryffindor tower, the night would shatter. She would return to her life, where she spent weekend evenings curled up reading in bed, and where Ginny was her closest friend, and where she was terrified to see Ron, and where she missed Harry so desperately it felt like a piece of her heart had been torn out. “Not yet. I’m not ready yet.”

“Where do you want to go?”

“Where do you usually go when you don’t want to go back to Slytherin?” Hermione countered. 

“I usually go looking for the Room of Requirement.”

“Then let’s do that.” They headed for the sixth floor. “You don’t suppose it’s moved.”

“I thought it was keeping me out. I wouldn’t blame it. Either that, or it’s been destroyed.”

They paced up and down the hall where the Room of Requirement used to be. “Let’s try a different corridor,” Hermione suggested. 

Draco stopped her. “Not tonight.”

“Don’t you want to find it?” She slid down against the wall and sat on the floor, numbly registering the hard stone under her tailbone. Draco sat down beside her. 

“I don’t know. Maybe not.”

“Why not—’cause Crabbe died there?” Hermione clapped her hand over her mouth. “Pretend I didn’t say that.”

Moonlight played through the window and reflected white on the floor tiles. “I miss Crabbe,” Draco admitted. “I know I shouldn’t—he was mean, and he made stupid decisions, but I can’t help feeling like it was my fault. Like I should have protected him from himself.”

“You’re not a bad person for loving complicated people.”

Draco’s voice hardened. “Love is a strong word. I don’t know if I love my friends. I miss them. I wish at least one of them had chosen to come back.”

“Why don’t you write to them?”

“That’s not really our type of friendship.” 

“Why don’t you try and see what happens?”

Draco leaned his head back. “I guess I could. It feels like it’d be weird—a couple of blokes writing each other heartfelt letters. The aurors who monitor my letters would laugh their pants off.”

Hermione placed her hand on the tile, a few inches from his. “I miss Harry.”

“You have lots of friends,” Draco said. “What’s so special about Harry—about Potter?”

“He’s my best friend,” Hermione said simply. “He would have understood this alpha and omega thing.”

Suddenly he leaned over and sniffed her neck. “I can’t smell you.”

She sniffed him as well. “I don’t think I can smell anything.”

“How much have you had to drink?”

“I stopped counting. At least five cups of whatever was in that punch.”

“Merlin,” Draco muttered. He wobbled to his feet, bracing one hand on the wall. “Al-right, c’mon. Time to get the princess back to her tower.” She reached out and he yanked her up. She crashed into his torso. 

“Sorry,” she giggled. Instead of pulling away like she should have, she hugged him and rested her head against his chest. He was just as warm and solid as she had imagined. 

“You’re lighter than you look.”

“Maybe you’re stronger than you think.”

He wrapped his arms around her shoulders, holding her tightly. “So this was all a ploy to get close to me? Granger, you could’ve asked, it would’ve been easier.”

She looked up at him. His eyes were dark and heavy-lidded. “How much have you had to drink?”

He rested his chin on her head. “A whole lot. A whoooole lot, princess.” 

“You’re nicer when you’re drunk,” she mumbled into his chest.

“Is that so.” His chest vibrated when he spoke. She could hear his heartbeat, steady and slow and grounded. Somewhere far, far away, Hermione imagined that little puppeteer frantically tugging her strings and trying to make the marionette work. But Hermione was in control of her body. 

“I think… when I’m drunk... the alpha and omega thing kind of goes away. Do you feel that? Tell me to do something. Tell me to… pat my head and rub my tummy at the same time.”

Draco snorted. “What? Have you lost your marbles?”

They spun a few steps, like they were slow dancing to the silence of the empty corridor. Draco lifted his head and Hermione tensed, waiting for him to pull away from their embrace. She wanted to stay warm and safe in his arms. “We should get you back to Gryffindor.”

She did the only thing she could think of to make him stay. “I want to kiss you.”

Her words didn’t have the intended effect. He pulled away for real this time, holding her at an arm’s length and inspecting her face. “You are so drunk.”

“It’s insulting that you would blame my desires on being drunk,” Hermione said, the indignity of his accusation clearing away some of the alcohol fog. “The effect of alcohol is only to lower my inhibitions.”

“You’re still Hermione Granger, that’s for sure.”

“Don’t you want to kiss me?”

He stared at her mouth. “Yes.”

“Then kiss me.”

He put a hand behind her head and kissed her. Hermione wobbled and grabbed at his shoulders to keep from falling backwards. Syrupy heat pooled in her lower belly and she moaned and pushed against him. She had always thought kissing was something people did because the movies told them to, but this… she could do this for hours.

He backed her into a wall, one hand still behind her head to protect it from the stone and the other caging her in. 

“Ow,” she squeaked as he bit her lip.

“Too much?” he murmured, a smile in his voice.

“A little,” she admitted, and then immediately wished she hadn’t, because he pulled away. She chased him, leaning up on her toes and pressing her lips to his. “Please don’t stop,” she said between kisses.

“Fuck…” His hand traced lower, gliding over her ass. “Can I touch you?” She nodded and she wasn’t sure if he had really seen it, but he tried to tug her miniskirt up to her waist and it didn’t move. He tried again, harder, and there was an uncomfortable pinching sensation on the back of her legs. “Did you- did you glue your dress to your ass?”

“Oh my god.”

“God?”

“Ginny spelled my skirt down. I don’t know how to undo the spell.”

“I assume it can come off in the other direction…” Desire was thick in his eyes and his hand traveled upwards to the zipper pull between her shoulder blades. 

“Draco!” She swatted his arm. “I’m not getting naked in the corridor. I’ve got no bra on!”

“You haven’t?” The hand that was still on her shoulder traced a line across her collarbone with a cool finger. Hermione’s breath caught in her throat. Draco’s thumb rubbed lower, towards her breast, and left a tingling line of heat. He met her eyes as if asking permission. “We should go back to Gryffindor.”

She understood he was offering her an easy way out. There was a pragmatic part of her that thought she should end things now so they could wake up in the morning with headaches and pretend they were too drunk to remember. 

She took his hand and placed it over her breast. He groaned and kissed her again, harder, and they stumbled into the closest empty classroom, slamming the door shut. He pressed her against it, groping her breast, and she kicked off her shoes and clumsily unbuttoned his shirt.

“Can I unzip your dress?” 

“Mhm-”

He practically ripped the dress off her and it fell down around her ankles. She shivered as the cool air hit her torso, and then she stood there in the nearly dark classroom in nothing but a pair of plain panties with a sizable damp spot in their crotch. To her surprise, Draco took a step back and looked her up and down. 

“What’re you doing?” she asked, crossing her arms over her breasts protectively. His shirt hung open and light from the window glinted off one of the buttons. 

“Just… looking at you. I can’t believe how beautiful you are.”

“Sounds like something a Gryffindor would say.”

He stepped closer and gently tugged at her wrists to make her move her arms. He kissed her again, and whispered into her mouth, “Can’t let the Gryffindors have all the fun.”

His erection pressed through his pants against her stomach. Hermione rolled her hips against his thigh, trying to relieve some of the pressure building between her legs. “We should lock the door.”

“You‘ll have to. It might look suspicious on my wand.”

She had completely forgotten about keeping track of her wand, but Draco managed to collect it. She cast a solid locking charm, then she conjured a pile of pillows, and he pressed her down into them. He teased his wand down her torso, between her breasts, stopping at her lower abdomen above her bladder. She thought she heard him mutter something but didn’t catch what it was, and then he tossed his wand out of the way and ground against her, dipping a hand under the hem of her panties.

She gasped, that syrupy arousal burning through her body as he rubbed between her legs. “Draco—keep doing that-”

“Fuck,” he groaned, pressing his face between her breasts. “I want to fuck you so bad.”

She scrabbled with his pants, trying to undo the button. “Then fuck me.”

He shucked his pants in an instant and his erection sprung out. Hermione sat up on her elbows to look at it. It was hard to see, but even so she knew he was large. 

He slipped a finger inside her, pumping in and out, and when she was relaxed and slippery he added a second finger and began rubbing his thumb over her clitoris. She arched up, gasping, and her inner walls tightened around him. He kept fingering her through her orgasm, and as the tremors faded he lowered himself over her, pressing kisses over her cheek and jaw and down her neck and chest. “Have you ever done this before?” he murmured.

“I- no.”

Something dark flashed in Draco’s eyes—something possessive. He positioned the blunt head of his erection against her and she widened her legs to allow him better access. He rubbed against her entrance and she pushed back, trying to impale him inside her. “Are you ready?” 

“Please-”

There was a stretching sensation as he pushed in. It wasn’t uncomfortable, exactly. He was helped along by her looseness from the alcohol and her natural lubrication. She simply felt very full. He bottomed out. “How’s that?”

“It’s good,” Hermione said uncertainly. Was it supposed to feel more magical?

“Can I move?”

“Yeah—you can move.”

Draco pulled back and then began thrusting slowly. The friction was pleasurable, as was the sensation of being caged under his body. She felt small and desired. Any doubt about Draco’s history was washed away by the blurring effect of alcohol. He thrusted harder and faster, bouncing her up on the pillows, and he buried his face in the crook of her neck, sucking at a spot that tingled and ached. Something began to tug on his outstrokes. 

“I’m going to cum,” he panted.

“Okay,” she moaned, and then before she had the clarity to ask where, he thrust himself all the way in, catching at the base of his erection and locking them together. She felt him pulse as he came inside her, and he relaxed, nearly crushing her. “Draco!” He rolled them over so she was perched on top. She tried to pull off, but was stuck. “What’s going on?”

“This happens sometimes,” he said, already sounding sleepy and satisfied. “When I think of you while I jack off, I get this… expansion.”

“You think of me?” she asked shyly, testing again, trying to pull off.

“Ow.” He grabbed her hips to keep her seated. “Give it a minute. It’ll go away.”

She wiped sweat from her forehead and from between her breasts, and leaned forward to rest against his chest. “You think of me?”

“Constantly.”

She listened to his heartbeat for a few minutes. It was slowing. “Are things going to be weird now?”

“Are you going to remember this in the morning?”

She had never been that drunk, she thought. “Yeah, I’ll remember.”

His hand threaded through her hair, gently tugging at tangles and muss. “I’m glad. Drink a glass of water before you go to sleep.”

Despite the fact that he was still physically inside her, she felt a strange sting of distance in his words. “Why did we do this?”

“Because we wanted to. You wanted to, right?”

“Of course I did. Are we- do you want to- are we going to do this again?”

“You want to get blasted and bang in empty classrooms on the reg?” Draco laughed breathily. “You’re kinkier than I thought, princess.”

“No, I mean-” She sat up again, her stomach tightening with anxiety. Maybe this had been a mistake. “You know what I mean.”

He softened enough for her to dismount with a pop and settle on her back next to him. He pulled her close, nuzzling his nose into her hair. “I want to do this again. I want to spend every moment with you. I don’t care if that makes me sound like a sappy Gryffindor.”

Hermione laughed and then yawned, and her buzz was still enough to push away the anxiety.

“Let’s talk about this tomorrow when we’re both sober, okay?”

“Okay,” she agreed. She listened to the calm in and out of his breath, and a sleepy haze settled over her. He sat her up with a hand on her back and pressed a magically conjured goblet to her lips. She gulped the cool, fresh water, realizing how thirsty she had been. Then he pulled her close again, wrapping an arm around her waist and conjuring a blanket over them. As she fell asleep she thought she heard him murmuring, you’re mine, I’ll protect you… but perhaps that had been part of her dream.

“Hermione Granger!” 

Hermione woke to a thudding headache, like the beat from the party had localized in her braincase. She squinted. The light outside was a dim pre-sunrise gray. A luminescent cat paced the air, swishing its tail. 

Hermione rolled over, pressing the heels of her palms into her eyes. She was cold and naked. Lying on a pile of pillows had left her back sore and her feet ached from dancing. Her mouth felt like it was filled with a layer of fuzzy moss. She conjured a glass and used aguamenti to fill it, then looked for Draco.

Draco was gone.

She ached like an organ had been cut from her body. He had left her. He couldn’t even be bothered to wait for her to wake up. 

“Hermione Granger!” the patronus repeated in McGonagall’s voice, and when it saw she had woken, it said, “Come to the headmistress’s office immediately! The password is Thessaly.” It dissipated. 

Hermione scanned the classroom for her dress and underwear. There was absolutely no way she could show up to McGonagall’s office dressed to go clubbing. The patronus had said immediately, but clothing was notoriously hard to conjure. If this was really urgent, she figured, McGonagall would’ve sent a person and not a patronus. 

Her watch read The early bird catches the worm! She threw on her minidress and underwear, and vanished the cushions and blanket. She spotted a black crumpled shape on the floor and picked it up. Draco had left his suit jacket behind. It smelled comfortingly like him and she wrapped it around her shoulders. Maybe he had left it on purpose. She snatched up her shoes and jogged to Gryffindor, her bare feet slapping on the cold stone corridors. 

Pale sunrise lit the common room. She ran to her dorm, put her hair up, and changed into jeans and a turtleneck. The gusset of the jeans rubbed painfully between her legs. 

She hurried down quiet corridors to the entrance to the headmistress’s office, and the gargoyles let her in even before she said the password. She opened the door to the office apprehensively and found the room full of people.

Ron, Neville, Luna, Anthony, Draco, Ernie, and an extremely stern McGonagall.

“Miss Granger,” McGonagall said, “take a seat. We’ve been waiting for you. Mr. Malfoy has explained what he knows about ‘the alpha and omega thing’, but I think I speak for all of us when I say we’d like to hear the details from you.”

Her throat seized as though preparing to vomit. She looked over the six seated students again, counting them, and then she turned and looked around the office. The five known alphas were present, but only two of the three omegas. “Where’s Ginny?”

Chapter Text

McGonagall had redecorated. Where Dumbledore had kept a menagerie of whirligigs and golden instruments, and Snape had kept nothing, she kept orderly stacks of books and notebooks. The portraits of former headmasters peered down in blatant interest, even the portrait of Dumbledore, although Dumbledore at least had an eye in his book. 

Draco scanned the walls for the portrait of Snape. As a former headmaster, no matter how short his tenure, he was due a portrait. It would not be beyond McGonagall to commission a very small one and place it way up high in the corner, but after several passes Draco had to conclude it was missing. 

Ernie Macmillan jiggled his leg furiously. “I’m not sure why I’m here.”

“You’re an alpha,” Draco snapped. “I literally just explained.”

“Yes, but the rest of you-” He waved his hand generally. “-all know each other. You’re all Potter’s crew.”

“Call me Potter’s crew again,” Draco growled.

“I wouldn’t call myself part of his inner circle,” slurred Anthony Goldstein. “I knew him through DA, same as you, Ernie.”

“Potter’s crew or not,” Macmillan said smugly, ignoring Goldstein, “it’s common knowledge you were obsessed with Potter for years.”

Draco lunged out of his chair. “Do you want to go?”

“Slytherin scum-”

“Pompous prick-”

“Enough,” McGonagall barked. “Let’s wait for Miss Granger.” Draco and Macmillan fell back into their seats, simmering.

Luna swung her feet, looking around the office. Longbottom picked at his nails. Draco observed with vindictive pleasure that Weasley was pale and staring at his knees with a tight-lipped expression as though he was going to be sick. While explaining the alpha and omega problem, Draco had emphasized the power of compulsion that the alpha could exert over an omega—intentional or not. 

“Maybe we should go get her,” Longbottom offered. “She was at the Ravenclaw party last night. She might be sleeping in.”

Dread flickered through Draco. He had left her in that empty sixth floor classroom. He was a bad alpha, abandoning his omega unprotected like that. 

“How would you get up the stairs to the girl’s dormitory?” Weasley mumbled. 

Longbottom had no answer for this. Something scraped at the door, and everyone whirled around. 

The door opened to reveal Hermione, her pretty curls from the party crushed by sleep, and deep bags under her eyes. Draco bristled as the other alphas stared; he wanted to grab her and pull her into his chest so none of them could see her. 

“Miss Granger,” McGonagall said, “take a seat. We’ve been waiting for you. Mr. Malfoy has explained what he knows about ‘the alpha and omega thing’, but I think I speak for all of us when I say we’d like to hear the details from you.” She conjured a chair and nodded pointedly.

“Where’s Ginny?” Hermione asked. 

“Please sit, Miss Granger.”

Hermione hesitantly took a seat. 

“Last night, Miss Thompson woke to the sound of screaming. She thought they were being attacked, but found Miss Weasley alone in her bed. Miss Thompson ran to Madam Pomfrey, and in quick order Miss Weasley had been transported to the hospital wing.” McGonagall’s voice took on the sharp, sing-songy tone of a storyteller in a hurry. “Evidently her presence in the halls roused some of the young men in Hogwarts from around the castle, and by the time Madam Pomfrey alerted me to the situation, Mr. Malfoy, Mr. Goldstein, Mr. Macmillan and Mr. Longbottom had all gathered outside the hospital wing. Mr. Malfoy had the good sense to cast a bubble head charm on himself, and convinced Mr. Goldstein, Mr. Macmillan and Mr. Longbottom to do the same. When I arrived, Mr. Malfoy made an attempt at explaining what he calls ‘the alpha and omega thing’, and informed me that Miss Lovegood, Mr. Weasley and you yourself, Miss Granger, were also involved. He assured me that you could give a better explanation. We have been waiting on you.”

Draco caught Hermione’s eye and gave what he hoped was a fortifying nod. She looked utterly lost—she had probably woken only minutes ago. 

“Well,” Hermione said, “I’m not sure how much Draco has told you…”

“Start wherever you need,” McGonagall said crossly. “Miss Weasley is only in agony as we speak.”

“Sorry,” she said, and shrank in her chair. She began to explain what she knew, and as she talked, she picked up speed, as she did when answering in class. Much of it Draco had already explained, but Hermione added in details he hadn’t known. Alphas and omegas presented when they were post-pubescent, but not yet finished growing—thus, they were most likely to be found among the seventh and eighth year classes. The more an alpha used his compulsion on an omega, the less ability the omega had to resist. Ginny Weasley had confided her suspicions in Hermione that something had changed about her body when her sense of smell sharpened. Hermione knew heats came every three months, but hadn’t thought any of the omegas would be affected so soon, nor that the alphas would sniff it out from across the castle. 

McGonagall pinched the bridge of her nose. “Is there any way to… relieve the heat?”

“In the book I read, the only thing that can stop the pain is, um, the presence of a male, preferably an alpha.”

“The presence?”

“You know,” Hermione hedged. “Like… to tend to her physical… needs.”

“Sex,” Goldstein interjected. Draco kicked him. 

“That’s really all I know about it,” Hermione finished, sounding glad to be done. “Draco and I were doing research together. It’s a very rare condition. There haven’t been any alphas or omegas reported in almost a hundred and fifty years.”

“And close contact with a witch in heat-” McGonagall pursed her lips. “A detestable phrase, as if witches can be compared to dogs.”

“If it rhymes,” Goldstein mumbled. 

“Are you still drunk?” Draco hissed. 

“Almost assuredly.”

“Contact with a witch experiencing a heightened state,” continued McGonagall, louder, “causes wizards who have presented as alphas to experience a similarly heightened state. Am I correct, Miss Granger?”

“Yes.” 

“Four of the young men in this room came running to the hospital wing when Miss Weasley started experiencing heat, but none of them started a parallel rut. So we can infer that the contact must be close. That is a good thing. Now I have a question for all of you: how many knew about this ‘alpha and omega problem’?”

Slowly, Draco, Hermione, Goldstein, and Luna raised their hands. 

“Fifty points from Slytherin and Gryffindor. One hundred points from Ravenclaw. We’ll discuss further repercussions later. I cannot believe not a single one of you thought to tell an adult about a serious magical malady running rampant in Hogwarts. Now we face the urgent matter of finding other witches and wizards who are affected by this ‘alpha and omega problem’. All of you are to go back to your dorms until I have spoken with the experts from St. Mungo’s. You are not to leave your rooms. You are not to have contact with each other. Food will be delivered.” Her gaze passed coldly from face to face. “Miss Granger and Miss Lovegood will take the floo. The rest of you will walk.”

Longbottom and Weasley whispered something to each other, looking at Hermione. Hermione gripped the seat of her chair so hard her knuckles had gone white. 

“Well?” McGonagall thundered. With a wave of her wand, the door to her office slammed open. “Get going!”

Everyone stood and there was much shuffling of feet and wide berths given as the boys pushed toward the exit and the girls towards the fireplace. 

“Not you, Mr. Malfoy.”

Hermione was the last to leave. She looked back at Draco, an unreadable expression on her face. The hearth flared green and she stepped through, leaving Draco alone with McGonagall. All the chairs had vanished, so he folded his hands in front of him and stood, head bowed, trying not to make it obvious he was looking around. 

McGonagall tossed a handful of floo powder in the fireplace. “Horace Slughorn’s quarters,” she said, and the fire blazed green. “Horace, please come at once, you are needed.” She took a seat at her desk and appraised Draco. 

What is going to happen to me? Draco wanted to ask, but could not make his voice work. Dampness spread under his armpits. 

He looked up at Dumbledore. 

Draco had done occlumency lessons in this very office. He had been better at it by his seventh year, or perhaps Snape had been less determined, more preoccupied with the war. There had been days when Draco left the office trembling but triumphant, having concealed his mind as Snape demanded, and there had been days when Draco sat by Snape’s desk for hours, waiting for the lesson to begin, while the former potions master wrote his correspondences or read or stared out the window. On those days, Draco looked openly at the portraits. He knew better than to speak to them. But he could have sworn, sometimes, that Dumbledore was trying to communicate with him. 

Draco had never been left in the headmaster’s office alone. He had never gotten the chance to speak with Dumbledore’s portrait privately.

Dumbledore fixed his steady gaze on Draco once again. 

Draco wiped his palms on his pants and crossed his arms over his chest. The hearth blazed up again, and Slughorn tumbled out, wrapped in a plush bathrobe. “Minerva, what is the-” 

McGonagall nodded curtly in the direction of Draco.

“What’s happened? Should we contact the ministry?” Slughorn murmured behind his hand, as though this would prevent Draco from hearing him.

“In a moment that may be necessary, but Mr. Malfoy has not technically violated his probation yet.” McGonagall explained the alpha and omega problem, while Slughorn went increasingly paler. 

“Dear Merlin,” he said at last. “I can start looking into novel treatments, suppressants-”

“We can discuss that later. I brought you here to act as Mr. Malfoy’s advocate.”

“Advocate? I’m not sure I’m qualified-”

“You are the Slytherin Head of House.”

“I’m the acting Slytherin Head of House. I came back as a favor to Albus, and I’m now here a second year longer than intended. Perhaps I could discharge my duties in this particular circumstance to Professor Sinistra or Professor Vector-”

“Who were both Ravenclaws-”

“Who are both perfectly competent!” Spittle flew from Slughorn’s mouth and flecked McGonagall’s desk. “This old rule—nay, this old convention—comes from the same line of traditionalist head-in-the-sand hogwash that started the war! I’ve told you once and I’ll tell you again, if you intend to only ever have a Slytherin as head of Slytherin house then you may as well shut the house down. Good luck, Minerva! You will not stop me from retiring at the end of this year!” He turned, hastily wiping his mouth with his sleeve. “Draco my boy, good morning, let’s see what the matter is and how we can solve it, yes? Why don’t you sit?” A green chintz armchair appeared and creaked as he settled into it. 

Draco took this as permission to conjure a chair. He chose a plain three-legged stool. 

McGonagall didn’t seem to know who to address, refusing to meet Slughorn’s eyes but also unable to look directly at Draco. She settled on a middle point above their shoulders. “There were some interesting details about Miss Granger’s explanation, and about the circumstances in which I found you outside the hospital wing, that lead me to believe you know more than you are letting on. She was quite specific that she was researching with you, and not with one of her close friends like Miss or Mr. Weasley. All of the other gentlemen on the scene agree that you were the one who thought to cast the bubble head charm. I’d like to give you this chance to explain yourself before I bring in the aurors.”

“Now, Minerva,” Slughorn said, “a magical malady is serious, but surely not an issue of dark wizardry.”

“Mr. Malfoy,” McGonagall said, plainly determined to ignore Slughorn. “If you’d please.”

Draco glanced between the headmistress and his Head of House. 

“Go on, boy,” Slughorn murmured.

“Alphas and omegas are… known… in certain pureblood circles,” Draco began. “There haven’t been any in over a century, like Hermione said, but I’ve heard them spoken of like creatures from folklore.”

“Folkloric creatures exist,” McGonagall said. 

Draco swallowed, trying to think. No matter what McGonagall had said, he got the distinct impression his probation balanced on his next words. “I suppose I mean that alphas and omegas are regarded as folkloric creatures like… succubi and incubi. Creatures which haven’t been proven to exist.”

“Except alphas and omegas do clearly exist.”

“His metaphors aren’t terribly apt, are they?” Slughorn jumped in. “Draco, tell us what is known about alphas and omegas among pureblood circles that Miss Granger couldn’t have gotten from a book.”

Draco tried to speak but his mouth had gone completely dry. He cleared his throat and chewed his tongue to try and produce saliva. “Ehm. I suppose I’ve heard them talked about as… objects. Such that if any had presented in the last century, they would have been…” He pressed a clammy hand to the back of his neck, trying to cool his flush. Dumbledore’s eyes twinkled. Mother in the garden with a cup of tea. Astraea sleeping in the owlrey. Hermione’s hand in mine, and my hand on her waist.

“It’s alright,” Slughorn encouraged. “There are no repercussions for what you say here.”

“...collected,” Draco finished lamely. 

McGonagall opened her mouth and then didn’t speak. Draco stared at a thick filing folder on her desk. It was titled House Elf Register. Underneath, the words Linen Accounts had been crossed out. 

McGonagall finally said, “Miss Granger and you both spoke at length about the power of compulsion that alphas have over omegas.”

“I never did anything—Luna and Hermione will say the same thing—if anything it’s Ron Weasley who-”

“Nevertheless,” McGonagall cut over him, “I think it best if you plan not to have close contact with any of the witches who are identified as omegas until we deem it safe.”

“There might be more,” Draco said. “I think all of the alphas in the school outed themselves when they came to the hospital wing, but there might be more omegas. You’ll need an alpha to identify them. Granger was the one who found the other alphas, but I was the one who found Luna Lovegood.”

“Your help in that regard will not be necessary. If there are more witches suffering from this alpha and omega problem, we will find them through interview or ask one of the other young men to help with identification.”

“That’s not what I meant-”

“You’ll stay in your dormitory until further notice.” To Slughorn, she said, “We’ll need to call a staff meeting. Maybe we should cancel classes until we’ve screened the student body.”

“Do you really think that’s necessary?” said Slughorn. “The parents will be in shambles…”

“They will be in shambles either way once it gets out that Mr. Malfoy was involved. The letters I get, every day, demanding his immediate expulsion…” McGonagall shot Draco a frigid glare. “We’d better do your weekly wand check now.”

“Due diligence,” Slughorn added kindly.

Draco’s weekly wand check thus far had involved reporting to Slughorn’s office for a session of priori incantatem. He pulled his wand from his robe and handed it to McGonagall. Rather than casting priori incantatem, she opened the door to a back room and gestured for Slughorn to follow.

“Won’t be but a minute, my boy,” Slughorn said, and then Draco was alone.

Alone except for the dozens of former headmasters, all pretending to be occupied with whatever painted diversion they had been provided. 

Draco shot a glance towards the closed door. “Dumbledore?”

Dumbledore did not lift his eyes from his book.

“Professor Dumbledore? Headmaster? Did you want to speak with me?”

“We are all headmaster here,” declared the portrait of a rickety, hollow-faced old man from high on the wall. 

“Or headmistress,” added a deep-voiced woman.

You all bloody well know who I’m talking to. “Professor Dumbledore, I’ve seen you looking at me,” Draco said. “I thought maybe you wanted to talk-”

“He doesn’t talk to anyone,” said the deep-voiced woman.

“Not even Minerva McGonagall,” said a nasal voice that Draco recognized as Phineas Nigellus Black. “He hasn’t talked to anyone since Severus left.”

“It’s a right shame,” said a portrait of a woman holding a telescope. 

“It’s irresponsible,” Armando Dippet boomed. “It’s a dereliction of duty!”

The portraits tittered in agreement. Draco got the sense they weren’t talking to him, but to Dumbledore. 

“What do you mean, since Severus left?” Draco asked, trying to keep the conversation on track. He eyed the door, knowing McGonagall and Slughorn could be back any second. “You mean, since he died?”

“Since his portrait was removed-”

“-stolen away in the dead of night-”

“-or taken and hidden-”

“-Minerva refuses to address it-”

“-refuses to reproach Albus Dumbledore-”

The door opened and the portraits fell silent, busying themselves with their books and cauldrons and telescopes. McGonagall handed Draco his wand. “Everything is in order. Horace will see you back to your dormitory.”

Slughorn put a plump hand on Draco’s shoulder. “We’ll take the floo.”

Some of the floo powder dissolved in Draco’s sweaty hand and stained his skin green. He looked over his shoulder. Dumbledore had lowered his book to watch again.

“Come, my boy,” said Slughorn. “We’ll figure this out. You can take the day off, hm? The house elves will deliver something nice for breakfast.”

Chapter Text

Less than a day after McGonagall confined the known alphas and omegas to their dormitories, the entire school knew what had happened. Hermione hadn’t been planning to tell Parvati, but it wasn’t easy to hide from her only remaining roommate when she couldn’t leave their shared room. She had made up some lie about not feeling well, and Parvati had been all sympathy, worrying that Hermione had caught whatever poor Ginny had had. 

But the other alphas, or maybe Luna, had not been so tight-lipped. From the confines of her room, with Parvati as her only contact, Hermione couldn’t know for sure who had leaked it first, although she would not be surprised if the information had gotten out through Neville and Ron. She couldn’t blame them for wanting to talk about the alpha and omega problem while holed up together, and they had probably let something slip to Dean or Seamus. 

Late in the afternoon of Hermione’s first day of confinement, Parvati had burst in, distraught, demanding to know what alphas and omegas were and all their symptoms. The rumors were all over the school.

McGonagall came knocking the next morning, with a new schedule. The alphas and omegas were being funnelled into separate classes. In some cases, Hermione had simply been transferred from the eighth year class to the seventh year class. In the case of Ancient Runes, which didn’t have a separate seventh and eighth year class, she was doing a private tutorial with Professor Babbling once a week. 

“The young men who have been identified as alphas have received strict orders not to approach any of the young ladies who are omegas,” McGonagall said. 

Changing their class schedules was one thing, but they couldn’t exactly create separate mealtimes, or segregate the library, or designate certain corridors for omegas and others for alphas. And Ginny was the captain of the quidditch team. Would she be prohibited from letting Ron onto the team?

McGonagall waited expectantly. 

“What if I want to talk to one of the alphas?” Hermione asked. “Can I still sit with Ron and Neville in the Great Hall? Will Ginny be allowed to talk to her brother?”

“There is nothing prohibiting you from approaching your friends. But given the testimony you gave—about the unfortunate compulsion Mr. Weasley used on you—we would like to protect you and your fellow omega witches from advances-”

“Ron won’t be punished, will he? He didn’t know. I never got the chance to tell him.”

“No,” McGonagall said. “As you said. He didn’t know. As for you…”

Hermione shrank. “I should’ve told you.”

“Yes. I cannot imagine what was running through your head when you decided not to. I suppose you thought you knew better than professionally trained healers and researchers from St. Mungo’s?”

“No-”

“I really expected better from you.”

“I’m sorry,” Hermione said automatically. Shame sunk through her stomach. She had always been too beholden to the approval of her professors.

McGonagall examined her face. “I’m not sure you are. You’ll be serving detention on Wednesday and Friday nights for the rest of term. Eight o’clock. My office. You’ll be marking transfiguration homework for the first through third years.”

“Professor?” Hermione asked, faintly surprised that she was getting off with something so easy. She rather expected to be sent to muck out the owlery.

“Not all of them are as good a student as you were,” McGonagall said coolly. “It won’t be as easy as you’re expecting.”

Hermione took lunch in her room. She wasn’t sure what she had been expecting from McGonagall. Sympathy, maybe? But McGonagall had every reason to be furious with Hermione. During her interview last evening, they asked why she hadn’t alerted the professors to the problem sooner.

Her answer was honestly given: she hadn’t thought the alpha and omega problem posed a real danger to anyone. Ginny had clearly said that she was able to resist compulsion from Justin. Until that flying lesson with Ron, Hermione thought she would be able to resist also, if she truly needed to. And she had been planning to talk to McGonagall about it. Eventually.

Sometimes, ironically, Hermione missed the endless months of camping and running, the long periods of intense boredom punctuated by explosions of intense fear. The mind has a clever way of smoothing away rough edges of memory, like not showering for days and days, or having to steal period supplies from muggle stores, or the moments when she craved something sweet so badly she would’ve traded Ron to the dementors for a packet of sugary biscuits. Those days had been miserable and hard, but they were hers, a life where she was her own higher power.

Sometimes she forgot she was a student again, accountable to professors. She drifted through the hallways like a memory of that time from before. Expulsion no longer seemed like a fate worse than death. There was a world outside Hogwarts—she knew that now.

Sometimes she wondered if she just missed Harry so bad it was messing with her head. It was making her do the very things she would have scolded him for. That had to be the reason why she wanted to see Draco again.

MUDBLOOD WHORE.

The words were inky and uneven, like someone had painstakingly dragged their quill along the paper. Whore. Whore. Hermione read the two words several times, struggling to believe what she was seeing. 

A group of sixth years sat down at the Gryffindor table next to her, plates of breakfast appearing before them. Hermione folded the letter and stuck it under her napkin, her hands shaky. She ate a bite of eggs and struggled to swallow. Mudblood whore.

Abruptly she stood and stuck the letter under the sleeve of her robe and left the Great Hall. All notions of hunger had faded. She put her back to the wall in a quieter corridor and opened the paper again, holding a hand behind it so no one might read it through the paper. For some odd reason, she expected it to read something different when she looked at it a second time, but there it was:

MUDBLOOD WHORE.

Two words. Someone had gone to the effort to send her a letter with only two words. No signature. 

Did someone know? Had someone seen her in the corridor with Draco?

Her heart beat fast. She pulled out her wand and tapped the paper, her wand point landing squarely in the center of the D. “Specialis Revelio.”

Nothing happened. It was just a letter.

The letter crumpled as she stuffed it into her bag. 

“Hermione!” Luna wibbled her copy of the Quibbler as Hermione entered the potions classroom. “Let’s be desk mates.”

Hermione hovered her cauldron next to Luna’s. Hannah Abbott and Padma Patil had been transferred into seventh year potions as well, and were sitting next to each other across the room. Were they omegas also? Hermione waved politely. Padma lifted her hand in greeting, giving a tight smile. Hannah wrinkled her nose as if she had smelled something bad, and whispered something in Padma’s ear.

Whore. 

Hermione pressed down a nervous, angry impulse to go confront Padma and Hannah. There would be time to talk to them later. 

“Welcome, ladies!” Slughorn said, rolling into class. “Miss Granger, I’m especially glad to see you, I was thinking it’s time to have a Slug Club dinner—perhaps we can even rope in our old friend Harry.” He winked and went to the front of the room to address the class as a whole. “Today marks the first day of our alchemy unit. Who can tell me the base goal of all alchemy?” 

Hermione had been looking forward to the alchemy unit since fifth year, but when Slughorn looked at her expectantly for the answer, she wanted to crumple into a tiny ball. 

“Surely someone must know,” Slughorn said. “Miss Granger?”

Hermione swallowed dryly. “Um. The base goal of alchemy is…”

Her mind went blank. The base goal of alchemy. To get past Fluffy with a mouth organ, to solve a riddle where the wrong answer meant death, to grow up and defeat the Dark Lord and try to live a normal life only for it to keep slipping from between the cracks in your fingers. Unicorn blood. Chocolate frogs. Nicholas Flamel, and the clue they had missed. Whore. People were looking, where was the Brightest Witch of Her Age’s answer? 

“Lead into gold,” Luna prompted under her breath. “Elixir of immortality.”

Hermione stammered out an answer.

“Indeed,” Slughorn boomed. “Your knowledge of the theory of transfiguration will be paramount for your understanding of this unit. Transfiguration alters the physical properties of an object. The transfigured object will refer back to the original object, in size, shape, or behavior. Transmutation permanently alters the elemental properties of a substance. A teacup can be transfigured into a mouse, but the mouse will always be a teacup on a metaphysical level, and can be transfigured back. When lead is transmuted into gold, it truly becomes gold.”

At the end of class, Slughorn asked Hermione to stay behind. 

“Do you want me to wait?” Luna asked. 

“No,” Hermione said numbly. 

Luna gave her a concerned look. “Are you okay?”

Mudblood whore. Whore. Whore.

“I’m fine,” Hermione said, and turned towards Slughorn. When Luna had gone, his jovial smile dropped.

“I noticed you seemed off in class today,” he said. “I would have thought you could teach the entire alchemy unit yourself. Is… is everything alright with you? You’re not having… feminine problems?”

Hermione’s body was cold and stiff and alien. Put a stash of tampons in the girl’s bathroom and everything will be fine!

“Miss Granger?” Slughorn repeated gently. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

She wanted to tell someone about the letter, but not Slughorn or a professor. She didn’t want them thinking of her and the words mudblood whore in the same sentence. She wasn’t sure she’d even be able to tell Luna, or Ginny if she ever came back; they’d be filled with too much righteous indignation. For a moment she thought of Draco, but she hadn’t been able to find Draco since being let out of confinement. Was he avoiding her? Every day that passed without his face hollowed her out a bit more. No, right now she wanted Harry. At least she knew why she couldn’t see Harry. 

“Someone told me,” she said haltingly, “that they think communications in and out of the castle are being monitored.”

“You’re absolutely right,” he said. “The parents aren’t supposed to know about the alpha and omega problem yet.”

“Is it possible for a letter to pass through other means?”

“We are witches and wizards, my dear, I’d be a fool to say something isn’t possible. What means are you thinking of?”

“...House elf magic.”

Slughorn clapped a hand to his forehead dramatically. “House elves. One would think that after the role they played in the war we would remember to include them in our enchantments, and yet here we are. Thus goes the folly of tradition. I’ll have to speak to Minerva.” He paused, seeming to remember the original reason he asked Hermione to stay. “With Minerva acting as Headmistress, she has let her duties as head of Gryffindor fall to the wayside. I hope you know that you can come to me for help as well.” 

“Thank you,” Hermione whispered.

He chuckled, turning away as if to shatter too much intimacy. “Slug Club connections have to be good for something, hm? Now if only we could get the old group back together. If I could entice Harry… hm. Much planning to do…”

“If you don’t need me for anything else,” Hermione said leadingly, and Slughorn let her go, already plotting how he was going to lure his star trophy back to Hogwarts. 

“Thessaly.”

Hermione reported to her first detention with some apprehension, but McGonagall wasn’t in the headmistress’s office when she arrived. There was a stack of first and second year essays on the desk, and Hermione picked these up, conjuring herself a seat and beginning to read through them. She’d wait to mark until she read McGonagall’s rubric, but she wanted to get a feel for their writing.

Merlin, even the best of them were bad. Was this really the caliber of work she had been doing in second year? When the plain desk clock said it was quarter to nine, Hermione put down the essay she was struggling through and rubbed her eyes, looking around the room. The desk was clean, except for the clock and a quill stand. Hermione glanced up at the wall of previous headmasters and headmistresses, her eyes instinctively going to Dumbledore. 

He lowered his book and adjusted his glasses, gazing serenely at her. Hermione gave an awkward wave. “Hi, Professor Dumbledore.”

The other portraits watched to see what Dumbledore would do. He didn’t speak, or give any indication that he’d heard her. Feeling rather watched, she returned to the essay she had been reading. 

McGonagall returned from a staff meeting a few minutes after nine, and as Hermione marked the essays according to the rubric, it occurred to her that she hadn’t seen Snape’s portrait anywhere on the wall. 

Despite returning to a routine of meals in the Great Hall and studying in the library, the alphas at the school were doing a remarkable job of staying away from Hermione. With the exception of Neville, who she occasionally cajoled into eating breakfast with her, she had barely laid eyes on any of the alphas. She desperately wanted to talk to Draco, but he was impossible to find. She even tried waiting outside his classes, to no avail. It was as if he had vanished from Hogwarts altogether. Ron’s disappearance was also mysterious. When she sat in the common room for five hours over the weekend and Ron didn’t pass through once, she began to wonder if perhaps he was using the Marauder’s Map to avoid her. 

Then Ginny came back.

Hermione leaped on her, hugging her and then holding her delicately as if she had been remade out of spun glass during the time she had been missing from Hogwarts. Ginny looked haggard. Her long hair, which she normally took such good care of, had lost its healthy shine. Hormonal acne dotted her jawline. But she was in good spirits.

“I’m so glad to be back,” Ginny said. “Mum would’ve kept me home all term. She was babying me to death.”

“What was it like?” Hermione asked. “The heat?”

Ginny turned away, looking towards the boy’s dorm. “Where’s Ron?”

Ron appeared as if out of thin air and hugged his sister long and hard. It was the first time Hermione had ever seen Ron and Ginny express physical affection that didn’t involve hitting each other. 

“I was so worried,” he muttered into Ginny’s hair. 

“I’m alright. I’m alright.” 

Ron released her after a lung-crushing few seconds. “Let’s get dinner. They’re serving a trifle for dessert. You look like you haven’t eaten in a week-”

“I leave Mum at home only to find she’s at Hogwarts also,” Ginny sniped. 

“I’m just saying,” Ron said, crossing his arms and falling back into that bossy tone he usually took with his sister, “you look like a snitch could body slam you off your broom right now.”

“Let’s all get dinner together.” Ginny gestured to Hermione.

Ron had been doing a masterful job of ignoring Hermione, but Ginny’s suggestion forced him to look her way. Hermione gave a tight smile. She wasn’t about to miss Ginny’s first night back, and unfortunately, neither was Ron. 

It was the first time Hermione had gone to the Great Hall during peak dining hours since she had been allowed out of her room. She had been sticking to early breakfasts, late lunches, and dinners in her room. A hiss passed around the hall as they walked in. 

Ginny crossed her arms over her stomach, holding to her elbows. “This is weird,” she muttered.

Blood pounded in Hermione’s ears and she could almost hear what they were thinking. Whore. Could someone have seen her and Draco in the corridor? The letter was hidden away at the bottom of her trunk. No one knew. No one knew.

Ron bared his teeth. “What’re you looking at?” he snapped at a young group of Hufflepuffs. “Wanna get hexed?”

“Don’t bully the first years,” Ginny said blandly. 

“We’re second years,” one of the Hufflepuffs said. 

They sat down at the end of the long table, Ron and Ginny on one side and Hermione on the other. Dishes appeared, and Ron started piling mashed potatoes onto his sister’s plate. Both Hermione and Ginny stared at him. He added two steaks next to the mound of potatoes. There was a blankness in his expression.

“Do you expect me to eat all that?” Ginny asked, as he lined the edge of her plate with stewed greens. 

Something broke in Ron’s expression and his hand faltered. “Uh-”

“It’s fine,” Ginny said, obviously wanting to avoid an argument. “You take some.” She started scooping food onto Ron’s plate, but he took over for her, shoveling half of the food onto his plate, and then shoving it across to Hermione. 

This was the first meal Hermione had eaten with Ron since the reveal that he was an alpha. It was the first time they had really seen each other. She pulled a napkin into her lap, running her finger along the hem. 

Ron refused to serve himself until Ginny and Hermione had begun eating. Ginny met Hermione’s eyes across the table. He’s being weird, right?

Hermione nodded. He’s being weird.

“So what have I missed?” Ginny asked, her mouth full of greens.

With a sideways glance to Ron, who was now gorging himself on a homestyle swirl of greens and potatoes, Hermione began describing what was happening in each of their shared classes. They took different electives—someone else would have to help Ginny there—but they were now in the same seventh year core classes. 

“The joint alchemy unit.” Ginny groaned. “I’ve heard it’s ass with Slughorn. Apparently he’s a terrible alchemist.” Privately, Hermione thought Slughorn was a mediocre teacher all around, but she didn’t share this opinion, given that everyone liked him so much better than Snape. 

The conversation kept starting and stalling. With Ron there, Hermione couldn’t ask Ginny the questions she really wanted to know: what was the heat like? And with Ginny there, she couldn’t ask Ron, what’s going on between us now?

Ginny’s sleeve rode up, revealing the edge of a red mark. 

“What’s that?” Ron said sharply.

She tugged her sleeve but he grabbed her arm and pulled it up. Red lines scraped across her wrist, like she had been scratching herself violently. She tried to jerk away but Ron had a vice grip on her arm, and they quaked the table in their struggle. Ginny snarled and slammed into Ron’s jaw with her elbow. 

He released her, rubbing his jaw. She pulled her sleeve back down protectively. 

“The hell is wrong with you?” she asked. People had stopped talking to watch their fight. 

“Is that from the heat?” he asked, sounding lost.

“You’re my brother,” she said under her breath. “Ew.”

“Fuck me for worrying about you, huh? I’ve barely slept since they took you to St. Mungo’s. Let’s go to Madam Pomfrey, she can heal your arm-”

“I don’t need it! I-” Her eyes darted around the Great Hall at the curious students. “Hermione, let’s go. We can review your notes for the classes I missed.” She stood and stalked out of the hall.

“You didn’t finish your food,” Ron called after her, but she didn’t stop, her hair blazing behind her. 

Hermione half-stood, debating whether to hurry after Ginny, or to steal this chance to talk to Ron before he went back to avoiding her. No, they had better do this now. She sat. 

“Not going after her?” Ron muttered. He stuffed an enormous bite of steak into his mouth and chewed furiously. 

Hermione watched his jaw work. “How have you been?”

He took a deep swig of pumpkin juice. He drank too fast and coughed, his face going red. When he had his breath under control, he answered, “Everyone treats me like I’m about to fly off the handle and strangle a first year, but other than that, I’ve been peachy.”

“What?”

“Haven’t you heard the rumors?” he said bitterly. “Alphas are unstable. Ernie and Neville had an argument and started duelling in the corridor outside charms.”

“Neville?” Hermione repeated, struggling to imagine it. “And Ernie? Neville didn’t say anything about this.”

“Flitwick had to break them up. Anthony keeps doing accidental magic. He blew up a cauldron.”

“And what have you done?”

Ron made a face at his plate. “Nothing.”

Somehow, that seemed unlikely. 

“How have you been?” he asked.

“Fine,” Hermione said, rubbing the hem of her napkin under the table again. “I’ve been hanging out with Luna more.”

“Oh. Luna. You know Hannah Abbott and Padma Patil are also omegas. That makes five omegas, and five alphas.”

“How do you know?” Hermione hadn’t heard any word of more omegas in the castle, but it made obvious sense that Hannah and Padma were omegas, since they had also been transferred into the seventh year classes.

“Um.” Ron started cutting into his steak again. “They’ve been bringing me and Neville in to sniff people. Girls, I mean. All the seventh and eighth years. Maybe they think it’s okay because we’re ‘heroes’ or whatever, but it’s really weird. How do you politely sniff someone?”

“That’s weird,” Hermione agreed, and they both let out a laugh, and things felt normal. Was now the right time to bring it up? 

“I’m sorry,” Ron said, eyes on his plate. 

“For-?”

“For, uh, for everything. I didn’t realize I was controlling you, or using compulsion, or whatever it’s called. I mean—you acted like you liked it.” He cracked an ironic smile, but let it fall when Hermione didn’t smile back. “Should’ve known something was up when you agreed to go flying with me. Would you believe me if I said it was a test?”

“A test.”

“I thought you were acting weird. I knew you wouldn’t normally want to go flying. But then once we were in the air, you seemed to really be enjoying it, and I thought, well, maybe this is real. I wanted it to be real, y’know?” He laid his hand on the table, a limp offering. 

“I know you wanted it to be real,” Hermione said, a lump in her throat. She glanced at the Gryffindors who sat a few feet down. They were absorbed in their own conversation. “But maybe we can focus on being friends?”

“Sure,” Ron said, letting his hand slip from the table. “Sure sure.”

They ate in silence for a minute. 

“I can smell it,” he said out of nowhere.

Hermione frowned. “Um. I suppose you’re going to elaborate?”

“I can… smell someone else on you.”

Whore. Hermione laughed nervously. “Y-you what?”

“Have you been with someone else?”

“I don’t-” Hermione rubbed the hem of her napkin harder, digging it under her fingernail. People were watching. Judging. “That’s none of your business.”

“It’s my business if someone’s been hurting my best friend-”

“No one’s been hurting me-”

“Who was it? Anthony? I’ll turn him into a rat and use him for a bludger-”

“Merlin, Ron, it’s really none of your business!” Hermione stood, throwing her napkin on the table. “I want us to go back to normal but if you’re going to act like this then maybe-”

He surged across the table and grabbed her by the wrist. Hermione’s brain turned off. Alpha says submit. She stared, wide eyed, at the panic in Ron’s face. Why did he seem so scared? What was there to be scared of, when her alpha was here to take care of things? Is this my alpha? I don’t think this is my alpha-

All the noise and smell and light burst back in. Hermione yanked her wrist away and wobbled backwards, bracing herself on the table, then vaulted over the bench and hurried towards the exit. 

“Wait, Hermione-” Ron jogged after her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think-”

“You never think,” Hermione hissed, drawing her wand. Tears shone bright in her eyes. “I’m going to find Ginny. Don’t you dare follow me.” Her skin burned all over and a heavy sickness settled in her chest as she left Ron behind at the entrance to the Great Hall. Bad omega, bad Hermione. She should have submitted, she should have done what he wanted.

She hated these stupid instincts. He was Ron, a boy she had met on the train to Hogwarts when she was eleven. There had been a time in her life when she lay in her bed, content and happy, and thought that her friendship with Ron and Harry was the closest she would ever get to having siblings. 

Instead of pulling out her notebooks to help Ginny study, she beelined for Draco’s jacket and pressed it to her nose. It still smelled like him, musky and comforting. But the smell was fading after so many days apart. 

What was she doing? Cuddling Draco’s jacket like a comfort blankie? Draco, who had taken the Dark Mark, and who hated her two best friends, and who had called her the first slur she ever learned. Mudblood. Two syllables. After she learned it, it had seemed to thump in time with her heartbeat whenever she was alone. She had wanted to write home to her parents about it, but she didn’t want them to be upset. They struggled with that kind of stuff. Her dad once innocently asked, if both Harry’s parents were magical, why was he still called a halfblood? To them, mudblood would sound like a funny word. So she never told them.

Whore. That was a word her parents would understand. But there was no use in telling them about the nasty letter that now sat at the very bottom of her trunk; they would only feel more upset by their inability to protect her. 

She inhaled deeply from Draco’s jacket. His scent was nearly gone. He was so different, away from the pressures of his parents and expectations of blood and Slytherin. He was nice, even funny. And he was attractive—he had always been attractive. Maybe that was why she slept with him. She wasn’t sure.

Hermione got out her notebooks, and went to find Ginny.

Ginny sat at her desk in the seventh year girl’s dorm, applying lotion to the red scratches on her wrists. She stiffened when the door opened, and then relaxed upon seeing it was Hermione. 

“Sorry,” Hermione said. “I got held up talking to Ron.”

“He’s being so weird about this,” Ginny mumbled. She rubbed her wrists to make the lotion sink in. 

“I think he’s being protective.” Hermione didn’t know why she was defending him. Maybe it was habit. She looked curiously at the scratches on Ginny’s wrists. “Can I ask about those?”

Ginny sighed. “I’ve been scratching myself in my sleep.”

“Why don’t you-”

“Go to Madam Pomfrey? The dermahealing potion fixes the scratches but it makes the itching worse.”

“It shouldn’t do that.”

“I know,” Ginny said, irritated. 

“Is it because of the heat?”

Ginny turned away and started packing a bookbag. “Do you want to study in the library, or the common room? Or we could find a classroom.”

“Ginny, what was the heat like?”

An odor of anxiety flooded the room. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Ginny…”

“I need a few days!” Ginny shrieked. Hermione flinched. She had heard Ginny lose her temper before, but it had always been on the quidditch pitch, and never directed towards Hermione. “It- it fucking sucked, okay? I kept begging for them to bring someone in to help but they said I couldn’t consent under the heat’s influence. The St. Mungo’s healers were there the whole time, it’s not like I’m the only person you can ask. Right now I want to focus on catching up on class.”

“Okay,” Hermione said, because she couldn’t think of anything else. “I’m sorry.”

Ginny deflated. “No, I’m sorry. I… shouldn’t have yelled. It’s just—they said that if they had caught me before the heat really started, they might have been able to give me a potion so I could sleep through it. Why didn’t you tell anyone earlier?”

“Tell anyone about what?”

“This whole-” She waved her hand vaguely. “This whole alpha and omega thing. You’re the one who knew the most.”

Hermione balled her fists in her pockets, wishing she had a sensible answer. I didn’t want to get anyone in trouble. I wanted to protect Ron. I wanted to trust my peers. I was confused. 

“Nevermind,” Ginny said when Hermione hesitated. “It’s not surprising that you want to know about the heat. I’m sorry I got mad.” She still sounded bitter.

“You’re stressed,” Hermione said. “I get it. We’re studying for the NEWTs and you lost over a week of instruction and that’s a lot of pressure.”

“I don’t even want to think about it.” Ginny cracked a dim smile. “Merlin, I wish I weren’t taking so many NEWTs. Why did I decide I needed Muggle Studies?”

“At least you have an expert at hand,” Hermione joked. 

They went and studied in the library. Ginny chewed on the end of her quill as she struggled through the transfiguration truth tables, which were essential for the new joint potions-transfiguration alchemy unit. When she finished the set, she tossed down the quill. “My brain hurts. Distract me.”

Hermione searched for something appropriate. “Draco and Neville danced together at the Ravenclaw party.”

Ginny snorted. “No fucking way.”

“I have witnesses. Neville will deny it happened, but… it happened.”

“How did that whole thing go, by the way? Your ‘not a date’ with Draco?”

Hermione flushed. “It went well.”

“Hermione! Details!”

“We, uh…” Hermione loosely outlined the evening, up until she asked Draco to kiss her, and then she got very vague. 

“You banged,” Ginny jumped in eagerly.

“What? Why would you guess that?”

“Why aren’t you denying it?”

“Because- because- oh, Ginny, please don’t tell anyone else. I haven’t even had the chance to talk to Draco yet, I don’t want this running around the school.” I’m already getting scary letters.

“Well, if you’re happy, I’m happy. I don’t know if I’ll ever understand why you like Draco Malfoy, but I trust your judgement. Mostly. As long as you were both safe about it.”

“We were safe,” Hermione said immediately, and then felt a flicker of doubt. She thought she remembered him fiddling with his wand, but he had never said he casted a contraception spell. Admittedly she didn’t know how they worked. During those months on the run, there had been moments when she wished she knew one, in case she found herself under duress and without a choice. But in the end she had never needed it, and then she had never bothered to learn one when she got back to Hogwarts. She couldn’t exactly go searching for a contraception spell right now, in front of Ginny, after confidently proclaiming she had been safe with Draco. 

After some teasing, Ginny moved on from the topic and started in on the next transfiguration problem set. Hermione stared down at her own herbology essay. She placed her hand on her lower abdomen and it seemed to quicken.

Chapter Text

“You’re all done, Hermione,” Madam Pomfrey said, putting the vial of Hermione’s blood into a cupboard. The St. Mungo’s healer, a witch named Deborah, made notes on a clipboard. 

Hermione tugged her sleeve down. She had had blood drawn, and the healer from St. Mungo’s had palpated the glands on her wrists and neck, asking her questions about their sensitivity and whether they changed size over the course of the week. She hadn’t liked the woman touching her neck or wrists—she smelled too cloying and sickeningly sweet—but forced down her squirmy unease. The most important thing to do now was make it as easy as possible for the St. Mungo’s healers to solve the alpha and omega problem. She had already given Madeline Malfoy’s book on Magickal Maladies to McGonagall. The St. Mungo’s healer had asked her a barrage of questions about the symptoms of being an omega, and the date of her last menses.

Her last period had been twenty-nine days ago. 

“Um. Madam Pomfrey?” she asked, her voice high and shy. 

Madam Pomfrey looked up, her hat askew. “Yes, dear.”

“Could I talk to you alone?”

Madam Pomfrey closed the curtain between them and the St. Mungo’s healer, and cast a privacy charm around the little cell. “How can I help you?”

Her face was hot and she focused on the white curtain behind Madam Pomfrey’s knees. “Is there, a, um… How do I cast the pregnancy detection spell?” 

Madam Pomfrey hesitated. “I can write it down for you.” She ducked out of the curtain. 

Hermione stared down at her belly. She rubbed it. She felt numb. She felt nothing. She was convinced that the world had split in two directions that night she lost her virginity, and in another universe she had woken up with Draco by her side and Ginny recovering from a twenty-four hour fever, and somehow in that world everything was alright. 

You wanted to, right? Yes, unequivocally yes. Hermione stared down at her belly, trying to summon some sort of emotion, any emotion at all. A baby—no, best not to think about babies. 

A shadow moved on the other side of the curtain and Hermione sniffed and wiped her nose and blinked several times, looking up at the ceiling. Madam Pomfrey came back in, handed Hermione a piece of paper, and placed a leather case on the hospital bed next to her. “The spell is very simple,” Madam Pomfrey said. “A bright light is positive. A dim light is negative. It works best in a dark room. This-” She patted the briefcase. “-is three months of contraceptive potion. I’m not sure how well it will work, given your status as an omega, but under normal circumstances you should take one vial a day, at the same time every day. You don’t have to use it,” she added kindly. “But why don’t you take it with you, so you’ll have it if you decide you want it?”

“Okay,” Hermione whispered, staring down at the piece of paper with the handwritten spell instructions. Touch wand to abdomen over the womb. Say spell, hold wand in place for 10 seconds or until the tip glows. Bright white light means pregnant, dim light means not pregnant.

Madam Pomfrey sat down on the bed next to her. “Do you want to talk about what happened?”

“I’m fine,” Hermione said, her voice rising to a squeak. “It’s just—you know—we forgot to discuss some stuff beforehand. I, um-” She swallowed with some difficulty. 

“There are options,” Madam Pomfrey said gently. “For whatever decision you make.”

“Yeah,” Hermione agreed. “Yeah. I’ve got to go.” She crumpled the paper into her pocket and snatched up the case of birth control potion and threw aside the curtain, making the St. Mungo’s healer look up from her clipboard. 

“Hermione—please wait,” said Madam Pomfrey.

Bile rose in Hermione’s throat. “I should go.”

“Just one minute of your time?” 

Madam Pomfrey was still sitting, and there were deep bags under her eyes. Hermione glanced over at the St. Mungo’s healer, who was assiduously writing again, and stepped back behind the curtain. She stared at Madam Pomfrey’s sensible white shoes. 

“I’m sorry that this—all of this—is happening to you.”

Tears welled up in Hermione’s eyes. “It’s okay-”

“It’s not okay. I’m sure it’s scary and stressful. When you first asked about alphas and omegas, I thought it was a purely academic interest. That was my mistake. After the war…” Madam Pomfrey trailed off, seeming to reconsider the course of her sentence. “We’re going to do everything in our power to solve this problem. You can always come to me if you need—anything.”

Suddenly Hermione wanted her mom. She had always been so good about being strong for her parents, being independent, not scaring them with magical things they wouldn’t and couldn’t understand. But right now she felt like a little girl who had fallen and scraped her knee and needed her mother to put a bandaid on it and kiss it better. 

“Is Minerva being very harsh about it?” Madam Pomfrey asked.

“What?” Hermione took a deep breath, swallowing down the lump in her throat. It wouldn’t do to cry in front of Madam Pomfrey. Madam Pomfrey wasn’t her mother. “She’s got me grading papers for the rest of term.”

Madam Pomfrey gave a sad smile. “How like her. She’d never waste the chance to put a clever mind to work.”

“It’s not so bad-”

“I’m sure once she calms down, she’ll let you off. She’s very anxious, you know. About security in the castle. We all feel terrible for overlooking this.”

Hermione had no space in that numb cavity in her chest to feel sympathy for the professors. “I need to- I should- I should go.”

Madam Pomfrey didn’t stop her as she left.

She needed to talk to Draco. Where in the world was he hiding?

Draco was not clear how many days had passed. Maybe a week, maybe more. The professors had decided to keep him in confinement while the St. Mungo’s healers dealt with Ginny Weasley and consulted with McGonagall, so he found himself inundated with free time in which to think over the alpha and omega problem. And he did spend a fair bit of time thinking about the alpha and omega problem, albeit usually while masturbating. Sometimes the object of his fantasies was a nameless, faceless collection of sensations: a soft breast in his palm, a tight sheath around his erection, the smooth skin of a woman’s inner thigh, and the roaring satisfaction he felt when she submitted. Other times his mind wandered and he found himself thinking about his classmates: girls he had flirted with, or who despised him, or who had expressed crushes on him. His mother would hex his hands off if she knew how often he thought of his female classmates in compromising positions. He had imagined fucking half the school by now. Pansy, his first lay, often tumbled through his mind, her legs pale from lack of sun and soft from lack of exercise. He fantasized about the Patil twins (because if one pretty girl was good then two were better), and Hannah Abbott (she had really filled out), and Daphne Greengrass (because she had always looked down at him as if the Malfoy name wasn’t good enough for the Greengrasses). Thinking about Daphne inevitably led to imagining Astoria, malicious and seductive, chaining him to the bed with a flick of her wand and raking her glossy fingernails down his chest. Sometimes he even imagined Luna, perched on his lap while he held her waist and rocked them both, his nose tucked in her neck and her eccentric earrings swaying in time with his thrusts. 

He always felt weird when his mind strayed to Luna during masturbation sessions. She smelled quite good, and if he had never met Hermione, he would have thought he could smell Luna and die happy. She was pretty, too, and if he didn’t exactly like her personal style he could at least appreciate her surety in having one. And she had wanted to dance with him… But her dotty personality was not quite his thing. She seemed more like a friend than a lover, and there was also the matter of her imprisonment in his family home to grapple with. So he tried to keep Luna out of his fantasies.

His qualms over masturbating to fantasies of girls who had been imprisoned in his family home didn’t extend to Hermione, which he at least had the good sense to be embarrassed about when he didn’t have his hand on his cock. He imagined laying her back on his bed and putting his head between her legs and eating her out until she was mewling, then climbing up and easing inside her while she gasped and begged for more. Or she would wear a short little uniform skirt (nevermind that he had never seen her wear the uniform skirt and had no idea if she owned one) and innocently bend over to pick up a fallen quill, and it would be too much for him; he’d grab her by the neck and bend her over a conveniently present table, tossing her skirt up and pulling her panties to the side and sliding himself in, inch by inch, as she whimpered and squirmed attractively. But she always submitted, and enjoyed it. 

He didn’t remember that night in the empty classroom very well. They had been talking and joking around, and then things had happened so fast, and he hadn’t exactly been sober. He thought he had cast a contraception spell but maybe he had messed it up. Magic was harder when he was drunk. 

He didn’t like thinking about it. He had no way to contact Hermione unless he asked Slughorn to relay a message. Hi Professor Slughorn, could you please tell Hermione that I think I cast a contraception spell when we had sex but she should get tested to make sure? Absolutely not. She would probably go do it on her own, anyway. She was thorough like that. It stabbed somewhere inside his chest that he couldn’t be with her for the aftermath of their coupling, so he focused on what he could control: his fantasies. In his fantasies she started as a maiden in white—a sheltered Victorian virgin with no concept of sex, men, or pleasure—and she ended debauched and desperate for more. He knew what her desperation felt like. He’d kiss her violently under the streetlamps and then rip himself away, and she’d beg, please don’t go, and he-

CRACK. A floppy-eared house elf wearing an immaculately starched tea towel appeared in the center of the room. Draco threw a blanket over his erection. 

“Excuse me, Mr. Draco Malfoy,” said the house elf, staring stoically ahead as Draco fumbled with his pants under the blanket. “Swirly is hoping he is not interrupting anything.”

“It’s too late now,” Draco gasped, stuffing his quickly softening erection away. “Who are you? Why- why’re you here?”

“Swirly works in the laundry. The healers and professors are asking to speak with you. Swirly is supposed to be apparating you to meet them.”

“Right now?” 

“Perhaps Mr. Draco Malfoy could be washing his hands first.”

Draco scowled, more at the ache in his balls than at the floppy-eared house elf. He washed his hands, grabbed his wand, and took Swirly’s proffered hand. 

CRACK.

Instead of the familiar sucking feeling of apparition, Draco felt like he was being flattened and run through a roller. Hard ground materialized under his feet and he immediately sensed he had an audience. He choked down his cough and straightened up, running a hand through his hair. 

His eyes contracted painfully. He had been taken to an old-fashioned anatomical theatre, the type with steep narrow tiers that circled all the way around the room and seemed about to pitch their occupants into the next row down. There was a gap in the rows for a door on the lowest level. The aisles were exceedingly narrow, and the only light in the room shone down on the place where the dissection table should have been—where Draco and Swirly stood. Five shadowy figures stood in the second row back, just beyond the circle of light.

Swirly disapparated. Draco eyed the shadowy figures. There appeared to be no end to the tiers. The top of the room faded into steep shadows, like he had been placed at the bottom of a deep pit. 

There were no rooms like this at Hogwarts. 

Was no one going to speak? Draco cleared his throat. “Excuse me—where am I?”

He squinted at the figures. One of them was definitely Slughorn. Why did none of them speak?

“Septima’s not here yet,” whispered one of the figures. “Should we start?”

“Where am I?” Draco repeated louder, his hand tightening around his wand. “Why am I here?”

His eyes began to adjust. Slughorn and McGonagall stood in the second row on one side of the lecture hall, Slughorn holding onto the row behind him so he didn’t tip out of his tier. On the other side stood a witch in a uniform with St. Mungo’s embroidered on the breast, a witch in sleek black auror’s robes, and Madam Pomfrey.

“Draco,” boomed Slughorn, leaning forward so the bright light fell on his face. “How have you been? Enjoying your little vacation? Keeping up with your studies?”

“My vacations usually involve sunny, warm locales,” Draco said. “I haven’t seen the sun in at least a week.”

“Ha! Funny boy.” Slughorn turned to address the St. Mungo’s witch and the auror. “He’s got a right good sense of humor about all this, truly commendable in such a situation. I’m sure you’ve been making the best of it. At least one can easily learn Ancient Runes from a book! How are you enjoying that class, by the way?”

“Professor Babbling is excellent,” Draco said stiffly. 

“Yes,” McGonagall grumbled. “I’m sure Septima would agree—if she were here.”

Septima Vector—his arithmancy professor. Why did she need to be here? Perhaps Slughorn had won his argument with McGonagall, and Professor Vector was now being trained to take over as Slytherin Head of House.

The door on the floor banged open. Everyone turned, and a witch in red robes and a pointed red hat that looked unfortunately like a dunce cap emerged from the door’s shadowy depths. She took her place next to McGonagall.

“Apologies,” she said. 

“You’re late,” McGonagall snapped.

“Bertie needed something from me.”

“I’m sure she did.”

“I don’t see why we needed to do this at St. Mungo’s. We could’ve used an empty classroom at Hogwarts.”

Slughorn reached across McGonagall and patted Professor Vector on the arm. “You’re here now.” McGonagall gave Slughorn’s offending reach a look of extreme distaste. 

“Let’s get started,” said the auror. “This hearing will be recorded by enchanted quill.” She set a quill and a piece of floating parchment out in front of her, the way Draco had seen Rita Skeeter do. “I’m Auror Sara Nayak, here with St. Mungo’s Healer Deborah George. Also present are Healer Poppy Pomfrey, Hogwarts Headmistress Minerva McGonagall, and Professors Horace Slughorn and Septima Vector. Please state your name for the record.”

“What have I done?” Draco asked.

“Your name, please.”

Draco cleared his throat. “Draco Lucius Malfoy.”

“Mr. Malfoy, you are in the anatomical theatre of St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries. You have been brought here to assess whether you have violated the terms of your probation, in light of your newfound status as an ‘alpha’. Do you testify that you are of sound mind, and that you will speak the truth during this hearing?”

This had all been orchestrated to catch him off-guard and deprive him of proper counsel. Draco felt that old urge to invoke the name of his father.

“Do you need me to repeat the question?” the auror asked. 

“I testify,” Draco said. 

The scratching of the quill filled the room. 

“Do you understand that if you are found to have lied during this hearing, it will constitute a violation of your probation and you will be sent to Azkaban for the remainder of the period?”

“I understand.”

“How long have you known of the existence of alphas and omegas?”

Draco searched the enshadowed faces of his audience. His legs felt weak. He had hated the iron chair at the Wizengamot trial, but now he wished he could sit down. “I’ve known of alphas and omegas for as long as I could remember.”

“Have you always known what they were?”

“...No.”

“When did you find out what it meant to be an alpha or an omega?”

“I’m not sure.” He thought back to that baudy conversation among the Death Eaters in his family’s reception room. “By my fifth year I knew that it had something to do with… intimacy. Afterwards I looked it up in a book.”

“Which book?”

“Magickal Maladies Common to Those Pure of Blood, by Madeline Malfoy. It was in my family library.”

“The same book Miss Granger handed over to us,” McGonagall added quietly. “She had mentioned she was borrowing it from Mr. Malfoy.”

“Were any alphas or omegas known among the Death Eaters and your family friends?”

“No,” Draco said. 

“This isn’t relevant,” cut in Professor Vector. “We’re here to find out whether Mr. Malfoy violated the terms of his probation, not to plumb his brain for Death Eater information. I’d like to stay on topic and finish this hearing as quickly as possible.”

“Got somewhere you’d rather be?” McGonagall muttered.

Draco glanced between Vector and McGonagall, wondering what their history was. 

A wrinkle appeared in Vector’s brow. “As I understand it, Mr. Malfoy’s probation rules that he cannot use offensive spells, cannot take wand magic classes, cannot fly or leave the Hogwarts grounds without permission, cannot have contact with either of his parents or any former Death Eaters, and cannot ‘incite mayhem or spread untruths.’ And he must take Muggle Studies. Unless I’m terribly mistaken, he has not violated any of these terms.”

“Septima is quite right,” Slughorn said. “Draco’s failure to alert his professors is a simple lapse in judgement, not an untruth.”

“Mr. Malfoy,” said the auror, ignoring the crosstalk, “were you aware that alphas have the power to control omegas using their voice alone?”

Draco’s stomach sank. So this was how they were going to try and get him. “I never used that power. Ask Hermione Granger or Luna Lovegood. I would never do that.”

“Using compulsion is as serious an offense as the imperius charm.”

“I never did anything-”

“Which you cannot prove.”

“What do you want me to do?” Draco’s voice cracked. Down by his side, his hands shook. “Do you want me to take veritaserum? I’ll do it-”

“Absolutely not,” McGonagall barked. “He’s already sworn to tell the truth. There is no need for veritaserum.”

“Does he have a history of panicking under pressure?” Vector stage-whispered to Slughorn. 

Slughorn shook his head. “He was cool as ice at his Wizengamot trial.”

This whole hearing had been designed expressly to catch him off guard. Don’t forget to pack those emotions away. Mother in the garden. Astraea sleeping in the owlery. The anger and fear folded into tiny specks, little manageable slivers of emotion.

“I’ll take the veritaserum,” he repeated, his voice strong and steady. “I’m a full adult. I can consent to veritaserum without a legal guardian’s permission.”

Slughorn leaned over the seats to address the auror. “How long will it take to get the veritaserum? Could we do this today?”

“I’ll have an assistant auror go fetch some,” said Auror Nayak. She waved her wand and a slip of paper, like the kind that comes in fortune cookies, burst from its tip. She wrote a note on the paper, and then it smoldered and dissolved into ash. “If it’s found that you are lying, that is grounds for immediate expulsion. You will be sent to Azkaban.”

There was quiet in the room. Mother in the garden. Astraea in the owlery. Hermione pressed against his chest, asking to kiss him. Hermione wanting him. Hermione.

“What exactly are you going to ask him?” McGonagall said.

The door on the lecture floor banged open. “Sara, I’ve got the veritaserum,” called out a horribly familiar voice.

Potter. 

Hermione went to a windowless bathroom in the dungeons. The spell was too personal to try in Gryffindor tower. At least in this dingy little bathroom where the walls dripped with condensation and the toilet seats were cracked and crooked, she could leave behind whatever happened here and never return. 

She locked the door and reread the instructions. Dim light means not pregnant. Not pregnant. Not pregnant, please let it be not pregnant. 

Pregnant was too much word. It was a word for happy settled people who were ready and planning for children. Hermione needed some other word. She had so many plans for her future before children. 

Hold wand in place for 10 seconds. Or until the tip glows. Hermione looked around the bathroom, memorizing the positions of the sinks and the stalls as if this might keep them from creeping around when she turned off the light. She unbuttoned and unzipped her jeans and jabbed the tip of her wand right above her bladder. Then she closed her eyes, groped for the light switch, and said the spell as the room went dark.

She counted to ten. Then, for good measure, she counted to ten again, and then she counted to ten a third time because she could see a faint light through her eyelids and she was too scared to open her eyes. When Hermione did open her eyes it was too late; the room was dark and she would need to recast. She stifled a hysterical laugh, wiping her nose and staring at the nothingness. This time she was determined to keep her eyes open. She said the spell.

One. Two. Three… 

Ten seconds. Or until the tip glows.

Sixteen seconds.

A dim glow. Barely enough to see her own hand. 

But would it grow to a bright glow?

Twenty-one seconds. Twenty-eight seconds. 

The dim glow faded and the room was dark once more. Hermione slapped the light switch back on, sinking to a squat and burying her face in her hands. Not pregnant. Thank Merlin. Thank God. 

She cast the spell six more times to make sure.

Potter was an alpha. Draco knew it as surely as he knew his own face in the mirror. He growled, and Potter stopped dead, still swathed in shadows. 

“Harry,” Slughorn exclaimed. “Who would’ve thought we’d meet here? Do you have a moment to stay after the hearing? I’d like to talk to you-”

“Not now, Horace,” said McGonagall. “Harry, nice to see you.”

“Hi, Professor Slughorn. Hi Professor McGonagall. I’m only here to deliver the veritaserum.” 

“Why don’t you stay?” Slughorn continued. “We can catch up if there’s time afterwards.”

“I’m on the clock right now, but maybe later-”

Auror Nayak rubbed her forehead, muttering to the St. Mungo’s healer, “And there’s a history between Harry and Draco Malfoy as well. Why didn’t I think about who was on duty before I called for an assistant auror? Why does everything to do with Draco Malfoy go belly up?” Louder, she said, “Harry, come on.”

Potter still hovered at the edge of the shadows, as if he had hit an invisible barrier. Draco squinted at the darkness, trying to make out Potter’s expression. 

Auror Nayak waved her hand impatiently. “C’mon, Harry. I’ll administer.”

“It’s alright.” Potter’s voice deepened. “I need practice administering veritaserum. I’ll do it.” He stepped into the light, and finally Draco could see him clearly.

His hair was shorter and neater than it had ever been at Hogwarts. The ministry had shelled out to send him to a proper barber. It had the effect of making his scar look enormous. He held a tiny bottle of clear liquid in his hand and a small spoon. “How many drops?”

“Two drops,” Auror Nayak said. 

Potter stepped closer, holding a spoon in one hand and twisting the cap to the tiny bottle open with the other.

“Just an old schoolboy rivalry, perfectly harmless, I’m sure they’re past it…” Slughorn was murmuring to Vector.

“Nice haircut,” Draco said, quiet enough that the adults in the audience wouldn’t hear him.

Potter eyed him disdainfully. 

That wasn’t going to fly. In no world should Potter get to be the high and mighty while administering Draco a truth serum because he was being accused of using compulsion to control girls. If this was how things were going to play out, then Draco was at least going to drag Potter down to his level.

“Hermione misses you,” he hissed.

Potter froze in the middle of decanting the veritaserum. “Hermione?” he whispered.

“You should write to her.”

“Harry,” Auror Nayak called sharply. “You’re only here to administer. I can have Healer George do it if you’re not able.”

“I’m able,” Potter said, and shifted so Auror Nayak couldn’t see his face. He carefully tapped a drop of veritaserum into the spoon. “Why were you talking to Hermione?”

Another drop fell into the spoon. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“Why were you talking to Hermione?” Potter asked again, more urgent. 

Draco grinned. This was really too easy. “She was practically crying on my shoulder.”

Potter upended the bottle and gave it a shake. A large glob of veritaserum fell onto the spoon. 

“Harry!” McGonagall shouted, pushing past Vector towards the aisle.

“Open up,” Potter said, grabbed Draco’s jaw, and shoved the spoon in Draco’s mouth, nearly choking him. “Why were you talking to Hermione?” 

A gray blanket fell over Draco’s mind. He had been questioned under veritaserum several times before his Wizengamot trial, but he had never taken so much at one time. 

“Harry, stop!” Auror Nayak was saying. She had come down on the floor and yanked Potter away. “What are you doing?”

The words marched out of Draco’s mouth as if his voice was separate from his mind. “I’ve talked to Hermione for lots of reasons recently. We were trying to figure out the alpha and omega problem-”

“Draco, you don’t have to answer,” McGonagall said. She had come down to the floor as well. 

But Draco couldn’t stop. This was one of the effects of a high veritaserum dosage. “-and we went to a party together. I was talking to her because she’s smart, and sweet, and pretty, and every time I see her I feel-"

Potter’s fist met Draco’s jaw. 

“HARRY!” yelled several people at once, and then Auror Nayak and Slughorn were wrestling with Potter while he shouted obscenities and McGonagall loomed over Draco and said,

“When is your birthday?”

“June 5th, 1980.” Somewhere in the back of his mind he was thankful McGonagall had thought to ask an intervening question so he could stop rambling about Hermione.

“Stop fighting or I’ll have to stupefy you!” Auror Nayak was saying, and they dragged Potter through the door into the darkness, and the door slammed shut. The room fell silent except for the heavy breathing of McGonagall and Madam Pomfrey, who had also leaped onto the floor. Slughorn, Auror Nayak, and the St. Mungo’s healer had left the room. 

“What just happened?” asked Vector, the only person who had not left her row.

“Potter’s an alpha and I provoked him on purpose,” Draco said immediately, staggering to his feet.

“No questions,” McGonagall barked. “We need an auror present if we’re going to ask him questions.”

“Did you see how much he was given?” Madam Pomfrey asked.

“Two drops, then at least half the bottle,” said McGonagall.

“That’s enough to give him veritaserum poisoning,” Madam Pomfrey said anxiously, and sure enough, Draco began to retch. “He needs to keep talking, auror or not. Draco, what is your mother’s name?”

“Narcissa Malfoy, née Black.”

“And your father’s?”

“Lucius Malfoy.”

“And the names of your former roommates?”

With a twisting in his chest, Draco listed them, and then he told Madam Pomfrey the classes he was taking, and inadvertently admitted he had asked to take Ancient Runes in order to study with Hermione. Then Slughorn, Auror Nayak, and the St. Mungo’s healer came hurrying down the aisle, disheveled and breathing hard. 

“Let’s make this quick, I have an assistant auror to discipline,” Auror Nayak said, taking her place. “Is he still under the effects of veritaserum?”

“He’ll be feeling it for hours,” Madam Pomfrey said. 

“A fucking waste of veritaserum,” muttered the St. Mungo’s witch.

“Is your name Draco Lucius Malfoy?” Auror Nayak asked loudly.

“Yes.”

“Have you ever knowingly used your alpha compulsion?”

“No.”

“Why didn’t you tell a professor when you found out there were alphas and omegas in Hogwarts?”

The harder questions took longer to process. “Hermione didn’t seem to want to tell the professors, and I wanted to do what Hermione wanted. I thought as long as we were researching the problem, we could spend time together. I wanted a reason to spend time with her.”

“So it comes down to a schoolboy crush. He hasn’t violated his probation, and we can go,” Vector announced.

“Have you had any contact with former or current Death Eaters or Death Eater sympathizers since your Wizengamot trial?” asked the auror.

“Objection,” McGonagall snapped.

“I haven’t,” said Draco. 

“Nayak, I refuse to let you question my student any more,” McGonagall said. “Swirly! Come bring Mr. Malfoy back to Hogwarts.”

Swirly appeared with a CRACK. He took Draco’s hand.

Auror Nayak leaned into the light now, continuing, “Have you attempted to contact-”

Swirly disapparated, and Draco found himself back in his room, daylight shining through the lake and projecting glowing undulations on his floor. He sank onto his bed, retching.

“Is Mr. Draco Malfoy needing anything else?” Swirly asked in a disinterested voice, as though he was really looking forward to starching some linens. Draco’s veritaserum-addled mind struggled with Swirly’s words. It had sounded like a question, but it wasn’t a truth-question. Do I need anything else?

Hermione. Things would be alright if Hermione could hold him. “Can you take me to Hermione Granger?”

“Swirly is not allowed to do that.”

“Can you…” Draco doubled over, swallowing hard, trying to keep his stomach lining inside his stomach. “Can you deliver her a letter?”

Swirly’s ears twitched. “Swirly is supposing that is allowed.”

“Right.” Draco stumbled to his desk. There were so many words inside him, but without a proper question they had no way easy out. He grabbed his wastebin and vomited all the words up. He spat several times, wiping his mouth. Swirly waited, impassive. 

Draco dipped a quill in his inkpot and set out a sheet of parchment.

Dear Hermione,

I had a run in with Potter at St. Mungo’s today...

Chapter Text

With a dollop of trepidation, Draco slid into the potions classroom and carefully shut the door behind him. The other eighth years were gathering their ingredients for the potion of the day. Draco scanned the room for Hermione, but as Slughorn had said, she had been moved to a different class. The room seemed slightly hollow. After a few mental tallies he figured it out. Hannah Abbott and Padma Patil were missing as well.

He began setting up his cauldron in the corner where he could have his back to the wall and his eye on the entire room when Anthony sauntered over.

“Hey arsehole. It’s a cooperative potion. Let’s be partners.”

“Did Finch-Fletchey die?”

Anthony started setting up his cauldron and didn’t answer. Finch-Fletchey was on the other side of the room, partnered with Seamus Finnegan. 

They took a look at the assigned potion: Transmuting glass into sugar candy.

“He isn’t going to make us eat our final product, y’think?” said Anthony. “Snape would’ve.”

Draco fondly remembered Snape’s unit on poisons and antidotes in which they had to test their antidotes on themselves. True, he had been convinced he was going to die at the time, but in hindsight he doubted Snape would have really let a student die of poison. 

“Where have you been?” Anthony asked conversationally as they started prepping their ingredients and heating their cauldron. 

“In my room.”

“All this time?”

“What’s that mean?” Draco asked. 

“The rest of us were let out the next day. There are rumors that you were expelled.”

“Clearly I wasn’t.”

“Yeah, I can see that.”

They fell into silence and Draco focused on cutting his puppyweed into neat parallelograms. Slughorn passed by their cauldron and gave an ambiguous hmm.

“I saw you dancing with Neville at the party last week,” Anthony said when Slughorn had gone.

“We don’t need to talk.”

“You also danced with Hermione. Is there something there, or…”

Draco’s knife went crooked on one of his parallelograms. Now it was wasted; they needed a specific number to make the potion work and they didn’t have abundant materials to work with. 

“Sorry,” Anthony said. “She’s your territory. Won’t bring it up again.”

“What?” Draco asked, tensing.

Anthony was grinding a fine powder to form the base of the potion. He lifted his head and seemed to sniff the air. “Er… you guys are a thing, right?”

“No,” Draco said through his teeth. “Why would you say that?”

Anthony gave him a side eye. “We’re not supposed to talk to the girls, anyway. Hermione’s been hanging out with Neville, and I saw her getting dinner with Ron, but I guess they think girls are more trustworthy. That’s a bloody double standard.”

“Maybe it’s the Gryffindors they think are more trustworthy.”

Anthony snorted. “We all fought You-Know-Who. Well, you didn’t, but then that’s why they kept you in lockdown for a week longer than the rest of us.”

It occurred to Draco that Anthony was using this cooperative potion as an excuse to be spiteful. And here he had been, like a fool, thinking that they were starting to be friends. 

“What’s up between you and Finch-Fletchey?” Draco asked, just to be nasty. 

“Nothing.”

“I thought you two were potions partners. Why’s he partnered with Finnegan? Finch-Fletchey and Finnegan. Try saying that five times fast.”

Anthony measured out a scoop of the powder and tossed it in the cauldron. Pink sparks began to fly as the powder heated. Finally he said, “Lotta people are being weird about this alpha and omega thing.”

“Weird how?” Draco’s mind flashed to Hermione and felt the odd urge to growl. If anyone was bothering her, he’d kill them. 

“Dunno,” Anthony said, his posture cagey. “Just weird, y’know?”

In retrospect, Draco should have expected to find Hermione in the quidditch stands. Not because she enjoyed quidditch, but because her friend was the captain of the Gryffindor quidditch team and they were finally holding tryouts. A sizeable crowd of students from different years and houses had gathered to watch the long-delayed tryouts, and the draw was undoubtedly more to do with curiosity about the omega captain and her alpha brother than any particular fascination with quidditch. Draco took a seat near the top of the stands. Hermione was sitting near the middle. 

Draco thought about climbing down through the stands to go talk to her directly when Longbottom settled beside her. Longbottom handed her a mug of something steaming, which she sipped from, and then handed back. He sipped from the mug as well. They sat with their shoulders almost touching.

Fury boiled so hot in Draco’s chest that he felt lightheaded. Hermione was his. Forget the wand, he was going to go down there and rip Longbottom’s throat out with his own teeth and then fuck his girl under Longbottom’s arterial spray so everyone knew who she belonged to. 

A group of girls in blue Ravenclaw scarves passed by him, stepping into his line of sight and momentarily snapping him out of his image. “Creep,” one muttered as they passed. 

Draco whirled around. “Excuse me?”

They eeped and scurried further up the stands.

Self-consciousness flickered through Draco. Perhaps this had not been the best idea. The optics of attending a quidditch tryout when he didn’t know anyone on the team suggested some unflattering things about him.

Down on the pitch, the Weasley girl had gotten into a shouting match with her brother. “If you keep interfering with how I run tryouts, I’ll hex you with hemorrhoids, and then we’ll see how much you like being an arsehole!”

It would be better to leave, as much as it hurt to see Hermione so close. He could send her a letter asking to meet. One more day wouldn’t make a difference, except now that he saw her he felt like their hearts had been sewn together and a single step in the wrong direction would tear him apart. He realized he had stood and stepped into the aisle, and was rocking on his heels. A gaggle of young Gryffindors were staring at him and clutching their wands. 

Draco gave them a cool nod, fingering his wand inside his pocket. He needed to leave. 

But then Hermione turned and looked behind her—someone was pointing to him. She mouthed Draco? and he was drawn towards her, his feet tripping through the stands. 

She started to climb the stands towards him. Longbottom grabbed for her arm, missed, and followed, his wand out and pointed towards Draco. Draco focused his ire on this rival who was trying to touch his girl. He began preparing a spell that would knock Longbottom on his back and turn his ears into maggots, but then Hermione was standing there before him, peering up into his eyes, and the entire world stopped. 

Her cheeks were pink from the cold, and her lips were red. They looked slightly chapped. Her eyes were bright and watery. He searched her up and down, his hands hovering by her shoulders. It was hard to tell through her jacket, but she seemed alright. There was no real reason she wouldn’t be, except there were so fucking many alphas skulking around her, dirty lecherous rivals who were going to try to hurt her and leave her.

She’s my girl. My omega. My heart—mine. 

The world hadn’t stopped only in Draco’s head. Everything had stopped on the quidditch pitch as well. Ginny Weasley had paused shouting at her brother to watch what was going on in the stands. 

Draco reached out to touch her face and she knocked his hand away.

“Hermione?” Draco croaked. Was she… angry?

“You shouldn’t be here,” Longbottom said, putting his hand on Hermione’s shoulder, and if he had done this a second earlier Draco probably would have lunged at him, but now he was just confused. 

Hermione shrugged Longbottom’s hand away. “We’d better go.” Draco hovered uncertainly as she started back down the stands and Longbottom followed, and when they reached the bottom, Hermione turned back. “Well?”

Draco nearly tripped over himself to catch up. 

The Weasleys flew over to the stands, and now everyone really went silent, watching the meeting of the alphas and the omegas with voyeuristic excitement, already planning how to recount the tale to the unfortunate souls who missed it. 

“What’s he doing here?” Ron Weasley hissed, his wand in hand, hovering on his broom a head higher than the rest of them.

“I’m handling this,” Hermione said. “Go back to tryouts.”

“I’m not letting that Death Eater- ” Ron finished his sentence with a growl, apparently too angry to speak, and lunged at Draco, grabbing him by the collar and forcing Longbottom to leap out of the way. His nostrils flared. “It’s you,” he snarled. “You’re the arsehole who-” Draco stumbled backwards, and a voice in the back of his mind that sounded like his mother warned, don’t fight, it’s against your probation, but another voice that sounded like his father sneered, no son of mine would take a hit without hitting back, and as Draco raised his fist to swing, Hermione caught his arm, trying to pull him back with her wand pointed at Ron. Draco could have shaken her off—she was too small to physically hold him back—but his mind went still with calming omega pheromones. 

“Ron,” she said sharply. “I’m handling this.”

Ron let Draco go and his broom bounced a foot in the air. He looked to his sister, and then to Longbottom. “You’re going to let this- this scum put his hands on Hermione?”

“I think Hermione is the one putting her hands on the scum,” Ginny said coldly. 

“Gin…”

“Go back to the pitch or your tryout ends now.”

“That’s not fair-”

“Who’s the bloody captain here, Ron?”

“It should have been me! Everyone knows it should have been me!”

Hermione took this opportunity to hustle Draco out of the stands. Longbottom followed, glancing over his shoulder at the Weasley siblings, who were in another full blown argument. The three of them headed towards a copse of trees next to the former hippogriff pasture, where they would be hidden from the stadium. 

The odd trio sputtered to a halt. Longbottom angled away, as if he wasn’t sure what his role was in the group. 

Hermione crossed her arms and took a half-step away from Draco, staring at some point above his shoulder. “You saw Harry.”

Longbottom looked up curiously. 

“You got my letter,” Draco said.

“This… changes things. I don’t know why I thought all of the alphas and omegas would be at Hogwarts. Now… who knows how many are out there.”

“Harry’s an alpha?” Longbottom murmured. 

Why are you here, Draco wanted to ask. He swallowed down his sneer; he knew Hermione was fond of Longbottom. 

“How did he look?” Hermione asked. “Did he look healthy? You said he-” Her voice caught in her throat. “-he misses me?”

Draco curled his lip; the excited sheen in Hermione’s eyes when Harry’s name came up was giving him that irrational, lightheaded feeling again. “If punching me in the face when I said your name means he misses you, then yes, I think he misses you. His fist was healthy enough.”

“How did he look?” she probed.

Magic sparked at Draco’s fingertips and he clenched his hands to hide them. “He got a haircut,” he ground out.

“What else did you talk about? Did he say why-”

“We didn’t talk,” Draco said, his voice getting darker and more annoyed. “He punched me in the face. We saw each other for less than a minute. I told you everything in the letter.”

“Hey,” Longbottom snapped. “Don’t do that.”

Draco’s ire snapped to Longbottom, and then he looked back to Hermione, and saw that she was curling in on herself, her eyes lowered and head tilted to expose the side of her neck. Shame flooded through him. “Granger, stop it,” he said, consciously using his normal voice. “Be yourself.”

She blinked rapidly. “What was I doing?” Her hand flew to cover her mouth. “Oh no.”

“Maybe you’d better go,” Longbottom said, stepping in between Draco and Hermione. Draco’s wand shot out at waist level, angled up at Longbottom’s neck. “Woah, hey. Careful there.”

“Actually Neville,” Hermione muttered, staring at the hard, cracked ground, “you should go.”

“Go?” Longbottom repeated faintly. “Don’t you need me?”

She gave him an incredulous look, and Draco didn’t need to smell it to know she was annoyed. “I want to talk to Draco alone.”

“I’ll be on the other side of the trees,” Longbottom suggested.

“No. Go back to the castle. Please!”

Longbottom acquiesced, but paused as he passed Draco to murmur, “I’ll kill you if you hurt my friend.”

Draco rolled his eyes. A bloke pulls one sword out of a hat and suddenly thinks he’s a big man. When Longbottom was sufficiently far away, he said, “I’m sorry.”

“Everyone else I know seems to have done it at least once. I’m not surprised you finally did too.” She sounded bitter.

“I’m still sorry. I won’t do it again. We can talk about Potter if you want.” Draco took a step forward, closing some of that chasm between them. “How have you been?”

He was expecting her annoyance to soften to sweetness, but if anything, it got sharper. “ Where have you been?”

“The professors wanted to keep me in my room until they could arrange a hearing with an auror.”

“Of course,” she muttered. Draco reached out to touch her face again, and she stepped away, carefully adjusting the chasm. “Can you stop trying to touch me?”

“What?” Draco laughed awkwardly. “Do you not remember-”

“I remember! That doesn’t mean you have permission to touch me whenever you want.” Something shriveled inside Draco. “I think we moved too fast.”

There was a constriction in Draco’s throat. Should he apologize? Was she going to report him to the professors? There was no doubt that if she reported him, he would be expelled and sent to Azkaban. The breeze chilled him through his sweater. 

“Did you-” She turned her head so her hair blew away from her face. “Did you use a contraceptive charm?”

Draco felt his face go cold. No—there was no way. Not for their first time, not when he only remembered it in flashes. An image flashed unbidden through his mind: Hermione cradling a round belly, heavy his child. It was pleasing in a virile, animalistic way. But it also came with his father’s imperious voice as they walked past the red light district in Knockturn Alley. I don’t care if you fuck a muggle or a mudblood. I’ll disinherit you if you put a bastard in one. Draco had been mortified. His mother had been there with them. He had given her the slightest sideways glance, but her mask was up and her face drawn in stone. 

“You- you’re not-”

“I’m not pregnant,” she said, still not looking at him.

Draco ran a hand through his hair, slightly nauseous. Thank Merlin. “I thought I used a contraceptive charm.”

“Okay,” she said in a small, empty voice. “I just wasn’t sure.”

So that was it. They had gotten drunk and stumbled over an increasingly smudgy line, and now they were going to go back and redraw the line and stand on their opposite sides and pretend the boundary had never been crossed. Golden girl versus Death Eater. Once again, Draco would be utterly alone. 

She turned, sniffing the wind. “I thought you’d be happy—no consequences to your little indiscretion.”

Draco stared. 

“Well?” Her voice cracked. “Aren’t you? You were right all along—the alpha and omega thing is-” She cast about for words, wetting her lips. Draco watched her tongue dart out. “It’s clouding our minds. It made us make mistakes.”

An ache of loneliness nearly bowled him over. She was throwing his words back in his face. They were the same phrases he had used to try and push her away in order to keep himself safe from his desire to have her. 

“Merlin, Draco, say something.” 

He wanted to speak but he was suddenly afraid that he might accidentally use compulsion again. 

Windy tears leaked from the corner of her eyes. She shook her head to get her hair out of her face, and from miles away inside his head Draco wanted to see if it was as soft and springy as he remembered from the night of the party. She flinched away. “Don’t fucking touch me!”

His hand had moved of its own volition. He clenched it back down by his side. 

“Do you think we made a mistake?” he rasped, not sure if he wanted to know the answer.

“I don’t know.” She sounded terribly vulnerable. 

“Did I- did I hurt you?”

“No. It was good. I enjoyed it.”

“You sound like you’re being sarcastic.”

“I’m not. From what I remember, it was nice.”

“Then what-”

“I’ve been so mad at you,” she said, getting quiet. “I feel like I shouldn’t be. From what Neville tells me, you didn’t have a choice in going to the hospital wing when Ginny’s heat started, and you didn’t have a choice when the professors made you stay in your dorm. But I’m mad at you anyway, and it makes me madder that I’m not supposed to be.”

“I wasn’t there for you afterwards,” Draco said softly. “I should have been.”

Hermione sighed. “Like we’ve both said, the alpha and omega thing is clouding our minds. We had a one night stand. It doesn’t have to be some big thing.”

“I want it to be,” Draco said without thinking.

Her eyes snapped to his, searching his gaze for any hint of insincerity. “We barely know each other.”

“Then we’ll get to know each other.”

“My friends will hate it.”

“I’ll make friends with your friends.”

She scoffed. “I don’t know how you’re going to do that.”

“I will,” Draco said, even as he knew he was basically promising the impossible. 

“It won’t work.” The wind rustled the golden leaves on the trees above them. “There’s too much history. You and Ron—you and Harry. You and me.”

“Are you saying that because you believe it, or because you feel like you should say it?”

She uncrossed her arms and raised her fists, and for an absurd second he thought she was going to try and hit him, but then she brought her hands to her mouth and blew on them, and he realized she was cold. She could have used a warming charm but there was something sweet about her decision not to. Very muggleborn. He held out his palms. She blinked, and then put her hands in his. He folded them together—her hands were small and soft and he had a chilling thought that it would be all too easy to press too hard and hurt her—and rubbed, massaging warmth into her fingers. 

“You were a Death Eater,” she said finally, watching him rub her hands. “I don’t know how I can get past that.”

“I never wanted to be. I’ll remove the mark.”

She regarded him with suspicion. “Can that be done?”

Draco held onto her hands tighter, afraid she was about to try and pull away and leave his life forever. “I don’t know.” Suddenly he realized that he was doing exactly what Weasley had done: he was denying her all her options. He let go and took a step back. “You don’t have to say anything right now. Or you can tell me to fuck right off, and I will.”

She thought for a moment, still studying his face. “I have a question.”

Draco’s heart thumped dreadfully. She was going to ask to see his Dark Mark. He would have to remove the glamour he used to hide it, and he would have to see the part of himself that gave him so much shame. 

“Have you always been like this?” she asked. 

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure,” she said, after a pause. 

But he thought he knew what she was asking. She wanted to know if the vindictive, power-drunk boy who threw around insults like confetti, and who had gone to obsessive lengths to wound her best friends, was still lurking about at the core of him, like a viper waiting to sink its fangs in the moment she turned her back. He didn’t know what answer to give her. He sensed that he couldn’t say no, he was a changed man and none of that cruelty remained, because she would distrust and disbelieve him—with good reason—even though it was the answer she was fishing for. But he couldn’t say yes, he’d been like this all along, because then she would be endlessly on guard, expecting him to pull out his hateful old tactics every time they had a minor disagreement. 

He also knew that if she was asking at all, then she was wavering too, looking for an excuse to give in. 

“I don’t want to lie to you,” he said, waiting for her face to fall. She stared obstinately up at him. “I’m not the same person you grew up with, but—I’m still me.”

A hint of a smile played at her lips. “I figured you were still you when you said you tried to start a fight with Harry during your own probationary trial. And Harry is still Harry.” She stiffened, seeing something behind Draco. He whirled around, herding her behind him, his mind running through a list of defensive spells, but it was just Ginny Weasley soaring over on her broom. 

She landed a few yards away, regarding Draco’s defensive posture with disdain. “Is everything alright?”

“Everything’s fine,” Draco barked.

“I wasn’t fucking asking you.”

“It’s fine,” Hermione said, attempting to step out from behind Draco. He shifted to keep her behind him. “Draco? Please don’t.”

He forced himself to relax and let Hermione step around him. Ginny’s brow furrowed, and she took three quick steps forward towards Hermione. Too fast. He cast a shield charm without thinking. She ran straight into it and was knocked on her behind on the hard dirt. 

“I’m sorry,” he yelped, more to Hermione for hurting her friend than to the red haired girl who was seething on the ground. He let the shield charm fall and immediately his knees buckled and he dropped to the ground as well. The Weasley girl had hit him with a jelly-legs jinx. 

He growled. He couldn’t use any offensive or painful spells, but getting caught and charmed by a fourteen-year-old had given him some ideas. He shot a color-changing charm at her and her robes turned reddish orange, the same color as her hair. 

“Fuck you!” she shrieked, slashing her wand through the air, and suddenly there were dark flapping creatures everywhere, chittering and getting in his face and trying to fly down his throat. 

“Stop! STOP!” Hermione shouted, and the bat things were gone, and Ginny’s robes were back to their plain black. Hermione helped Ginny off the ground first. She cast the counterjinx to allow Draco to stand. She cradled her friend’s hand protectively, then tossed it away in a fit of fury. “What is wrong with the both of you? Everything was fine, until you started duelling-”

“Be glad it was me and not Ron,” Ginny spat. “He’s mad enough to honor kill you.”

Hermione drew back, paling. “Ginny. Don’t say that.”

“The only way I could get away to check on you was to let him run tryouts on his own. I should get back.” She glared hatefully at Draco. “I wanted to make sure you were alright.”

“I’m fine,” Hermione said. “Go back to tryouts. Draco and I were only talking.”

Ginny’s lip twitched, and then she swept around and sped off on her broom. 

Hermione sighed. “She was on the verge of being okay with you, and now she’ll hate you.”

“You’re not mad?” Draco asked cautiously. He would have thought that anyone who shot a spell at her friends was dead to her. 

“I guess,” Hermione said, rather indifferently. “She’s always been trigger happy, and all you did was knock her down and turn her robes orange. She’s probably more embarrassed than anything. Why did you do that?”

I don’t know how to explain in terms that won’t scare you. You don’t know it yet but you’re mine. I’m yours. If something happens to you then there will be nothing left for me. “She moved too fast. It was instinct.”

Hermione gave another little sigh. “The war is over, Draco.”

“I’m-” -not sorry, he thought, although he knew he was supposed to be. He settled for, “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“No, you shouldn’t have.”

They shuffled, not looking at each other. “You feel like you can’t trust me right now,” Draco surmised. The words scraped in his throat.

Hermione opened her mouth as if to speak and then shook her head at whatever she had been about to say. “There was a moment where I thought we could be friends. I like you, maybe against my better judgement. I… want to give you a chance. I don’t know if that’s the alpha and omega thing talking. But I can’t be friends with someone who’s going to act like Ron on steroids.”

Draco nodded blankly.

“Steroids are a muggle thing,” she added. “They’re drugs that enhance your muscles.”

“...Okay.”

“I need to think about this whole—whatever it is you’re proposing.”

“When will I know your answer?” Draco asked hoarsely. 

She brushed his cheek with her fingertips. They had grown cold again. “I’ll find you.”

“Whatcha got there?” Ginny asked. 

Hermione’s hands twitched, but she didn’t rush to hide the letter. Concealing it would make Ginny more curious. “Some notes I took on a piece of scrap.”

“You’ve been staring at it for a bit.” Ginny twirled her quill. “Anything I can help with?”

“I don’t think so,” Hermione said, folding it away. “It’s just some random thoughts. Can’t remember why I wrote it down.”

“Hm,” Ginny said, returning to her homework.

Hermione didn’t need to see the letter. She had already memorized its contents, the perfectly trained cursive, the confusing flurry of warmth it caused in her stomach.

Dear Hermione,

I had a run in with Potter at St. Mungo’s today and he punched me in the face when I brought you up. Thought you might find that funny. He’s an alpha too, so now there’s six of us. I told him to write to you. I know how much you miss him.

The professors decided to keep me in my room. They wanted to make sure I didn’t break my probation. I’m sorry I wasn’t there when you woke up. I hope you’re well. It’s all I hope for. 

Yours,

Draco

Chapter Text

Draco stared at McGonagall’s hands.

McGonagall cleared her throat politely. 

“Bless you,” Slughorn said. 

“I didn’t sneeze.”

Draco let his gaze slide down to the beveled edge of the headmistress’s desk. Another day, another mysterious meeting. What the fuck were they waiting for now?

The hearth in the headmistress’s office flared green and Draco fought the instinct to see who it was. He needed to appear like he didn’t care; Snape and his father had hammered that lesson into him. 

“Evening, Minerva,” chirped Professor Babbling from the fireplace. “Septima won’t be able to make it. The Iraqi Bureau of Magical Artifacts just called about a Mesopotamian curse tablet with unusual arithmetic patterns, and you know Septima did her thesis on Neo-Babylonian arithmancy, so they called her in to help translate the- well anyway- and she wanted me to let you know that she wasn’t going to be able to make it because-”

“Yes, alright, thank you Bertie,” McGonagall said, waving her hand. The fireplace went dark. 

Draco dared to lift his eyes to meet McGonagall’s severe gaze. 

“No need to keep us in suspense,” Slughorn said, smiling but with a pointed nod that made his jowls jiggle. “I’m supervising detention tonight, and I’m sure Mr. Malfoy wants catch dinner.”

“I received several reports in the last twenty-four hours that you violated your probation,” McGonagall said stiffly. “Flying on a broom, duelling with Mr. Weasley, attempting to blow up the Quidditch field. I just had an audience with a trio of sobbing third year girls, all hysterically insisting that you-” 

She paused, clasping her hands and taking a deep breath. 

“Now, before you say anything, I know none of this is true, because every breathless tattletale has a different story from the next. Mr. Malfoy, I could care less what you do with your free time. But could you please attempt to stay out of situations that will obviously result in false accusations? For Merlin’s sake, do not go the Gryffindor quidditch practices and antagonize Ronald Weasley-”

“I was just trying to see Hermione.”

“-and you shouldn’t be spending time with Hermione Granger or any of the witches who are omegas.”

“I-”

“For Merlin’s sake, Mr. Malfoy, I’m trying to protect you here! You realize I have as much security on you as I do on Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley. More, even! Your incoming mail is filled with cursed letters, I have the portraits watching you constantly to make sure no one grievously injures you, and I field multiple demands for your expulsion every week. Please do not put yourself in situations that-” She stopped, pinching the bridge of her nose. “I will make an address to the student body about tolerance during the Halloween dinner. I can- I can have a house elf tail you. You will have to take some responsibility upon yourself.”

Draco’s face twisted. He had been infinitely responsible. Why didn’t she tell him what she was really thinking: stay in your room for the rest of the year and pretend you don’t exist.

Was she actually trying to tell him that? His gaze flickered to Slughorn, who was expressionless.

And they had the portraits watching him all this time and they were just letting him get attacked by random students. She had an awfully high bar for injury, if she didn’t think the time Draco’s elbows got inverted and he had to have his arm bones vanished and regrown to be ‘grievous’. “I don’t want that,” he said, grinding his jaw. 

“No house elf tail?” McGonagall sounded skeptical.

“No.”

“Perhaps Mr. Malfoy would like to do his weekly wand check before he goes to dinner?” Slughorn said out of the blue. 

“It doesn’t matter,” McGonagall said wearily, leaning back in her oak chair. “That’s the extent of the discipline I care to give right now. Enjoy your dinner, Mr. Malfoy. Horace.” She got up and went into one of the back rooms.

Slughorn blinked, then clapped Draco on the shoulder. “Minerva is absolutely right. Enjoy your dinner, my boy. Sounds like they don’t let you enjoy much else around here!” He stepped into the fireplace and disappeared with a flash of green fire.

Draco wondered if there was a reason that he was being left alone in the headmistress’s office, or if McGonagall truly just didn’t care.

He looked up at Dumbledore’s portrait, then glanced to the door McGonagall had disappeared through. His gaze skated over the wall of portraits and landed on Phineas Nigellus Black. 

“We’re related, aren’t we, Headmaster Black?” he said in his most polite voice, the one he used at his mother’s dinner parties. Maybe if he could get Phineas talking, he could get some information on Snape’s portrait.

Phineas blinked, apparently startled to be addressed. “Well yes, through your aunt Bellatrix Lestrange, I suppose we are. All pureblood families are related these days, bit of a shame what’s happened to us, isn’t it. Inbreeding will be our downfall. I recall your mother had quite a hard pregnancy with you, didn’t she?”

Draco frowned. “Uh- how did you know that?”

“I was a physician. I had a third portrait.” Phineas sniffed and adjusted his narrow glasses with his pointer finger. “When Bellatrix married Rodolphus, she brought my third portrait from the house of Black to the Lestrange manor. She would ask me questions about magical pregnancies. She was very anxious for your mother’s health—she used to say she’d kill your father if anything happened to her sister. A very unstable woman, but she cared about your mother. At least back then.”

Draco blinked. He tried to occlude but there was an emptiness in his brain. The memory of his mother that he usually started his occlusion with tasted sour. Non-neutral. 

“After you were born, your mother started to regain her strength. And as your mother got healthier, Bellatrix got worse. She stopped consulting me, but of course I could monitor her through any of the portraits in the Lestrange manor as long as I had a portrait stationed there. It was as though her concern for her sister’s health was the last human tie she had left. She fell completely to the Dark Lord after Narcissa’s pregnancy ended and you were born. I remember the night she came home, cackling like a hyena-”

The blood left Draco’s face. “Headmaster Black.”

“-blood on her teeth and dripping down her chin and the front of her dress, mumbling to herself about what she had done to the Longbottoms, smile as wide as the moon-”

“Headmaster Black!”

Phineas stopped. “Yes, Mr. Malfoy?”

“I don’t- I already know that story.” 

Draco wondered if all portraits were this talkative to everyone. Maybe they were naturally loquacious—he wouldn’t know. It had been a while since he had really gotten to talk to one. He found himself unable to look at Phineas, instead staring at Phineas’s frame. Ornate gold. His mother would have called that frame ostentatious with a sniff and a sly look to Draco, and Draco would have raised his eyebrow and given her a crooked, knowing smile. New money. Their little joke. He used to attend galleries with his mother and they would say, it’s a small portrait, but an ugly one. And they would smile, and Draco would think that perhaps his mother would be the only person who could ever really know him. Phineas had been one of the founders of the Black line, what, three centuries ago? Two? No wonder the Blacks had crashed and burned as a member of the Sacred Twenty Eight-

“Anyway,” Phineas continued, “after the Dark Lord fell, she burned every portrait in the manor. She left me for last, she knew I had two other portraits, she knew she’d never be able to destroy my other portraits in time to silence me. I was hiding in my Hogwarts portrait, but I could hear her screaming at me from the Lestrange Manor. She cursed me with something Dark so I couldn’t speak about her to anyone except those of Sacred Twenty Eight Blood. As you can imagine, I don’t meet many of the Sacred Twenty Eight—and I certainly do not plan to divulge Sacred secrets to the Weasley clan-”

The door to the headmistress’s office opened. Phineas’s mouth snapped shut.

“Draco,” Hermione yelped.

“Hermione-” Draco jumped out of his chair. “You- why’re you here?”

She went red, staring down at his shoes. “Weekly detention with McGonagall. I’m grading papers.”

Draco bit his lower lip, feeling dead skin and subtly chewing it off to distract himself from how much he wanted to lower his nose to Hermione’s neck and hold her where he could live in her presence. He coughed. “That’s evil of her.”

“There are worse detentions,” she said wryly, still not looking at him. “Remember when we were first years and got sent into the Forbidden Forest?”

“Merlin.” Draco chuckled. “I was so mad about that.”

She stepped towards the desk, giving him a wide berth. “Feels pretty innocent, in retrospect. I miss those days.”

“Back when we hated each other?”

Her hand paused over a pile of papers on McGonagall’s desk. The top one had the crumbly handwriting of a sloppy first year. “Well-”

The door at the back of the office opened and McGonagall swept out. “Mr. Malfoy, why are you still here?”

The sky outside had rapidly turned from twilight to darkness in the few minutes Draco had been talking to Phineas and Hermione. 

“I got here early,” Hermione said. “I was bothering about the arithmancy work-”

“I was just leaving,” Draco said, meeting McGonagall’s piercing glare. She shook her head slightly. Don’t talk to the omegas. He gave her a slight nod. 

Good luck enforcing that one.

Chapter Text

Draco didn’t see Hermione for several days. 

He endured a very awkward Herbology lesson with Longbottom and Professor Sprout, and got a strong impression that Sprout was annoyed to be teaching extra tutorials for the alphas. At least Longbottom enjoyed it. He was full of extra questions, had maddeningly boring side conversations with Sprout, and stayed behind in the greenhouse to help prune a wandering vine that had some sort of plant illness. Draco hovered at the exit of the greenhouse at the end of the lesson, watching Sprout and Longbottom through the rows of potted plants. Twilight had fallen while they were in tutorial, casting the greenhouse in shades of shadowy blue-green.

Smile as wide as the moon-

Draco ducked out of the greenhouse, a lump in his stomach. The air outside was cool and refreshing after the humidity of the greenhouse. It smelled like autumn on the wind. He liked the rich musk of decomposing leaves on the forest floor and the human scents of smoke and cinnamon wafting from a fire pit somewhere on the Hogwarts grounds. The thestrals grazed by the edge of the Forbidden Forest. They were getting downright friendly. A lot of people could see them now, and were bringing them meat from the Great Hall. 

Voices drifted down the path. It sounded like a group of younger boys, maybe third or fourth years—some of their voices had broken but others were still high and boyish. They were laughing and talking over each other. 

“-cuz you chew the skin from the tips of your fingers and eat it, you’re fucking disgusting, man.” The boys laughed.

“It’s called reduce reuse recycle, baby. I waste nothing. You wish you were like me. A peak physical speciman. A machine of a man!” 

Draco debated whether he should disillusion himself or put a glamour over his face before the boys got close enough to recognize him. He should. He knew he should, and even as he thought so, he dug his hands deeper into his pockets and stared at the ground. Maybe the boys would leave him alone—sometimes people did—and if they didn’t, then technically it was them who were bad people. 

“Hey hey hey-” One of the boys shushed the group. They were a few yards from Draco now. 

Draco kept his eyes to the ground and kept walking like he didn’t notice they were blocking the entire path. “Excuse me,” he muttered, trying to step around them.

A pair of tennis shoes moved to stand in his way. “Where’re you going?” asked the shoes’ owner, a boy with a deeper voice. 

Draco didn’t answer, trying again to pass.

A wand flicked out and caught him in the chest. 

“Where’re you going?” asked another boy to Draco’s right. 

Draco stared down at the tip of the wand. At point blank range, even a simple stunning or disarming spell could stop his heart. He wondered if the boys knew this. “Dinner,” he heard himself mutter.

“What’s that?” The boy with his wand to Draco’s chest leaned in, cupping a hand around his ear, putting on a show for his friends.

“Dinner,” Draco said louder, still staring at the wand. 

There was a pause, as if the boys weren’t quite sure where to take this.

“I didn’t know Death Eaters ate human food,” said one of the ones off to the side. 

A detached part of Draco’s brain wanted to laugh. Of all things, he had run into a group of inexperienced bullies. 

“Didn’t they say that one of the old professors turned him into a rat once? He probably eats bugs and worms.”

“That’s what he’d be eating if he were in Azkaban. He’d be licking mold off the walls-”

This was starting to feel like a waste of time. “I’m going to get going,” he said flatly.

The boy with his wand out dug it into Draco’s chest. “In a rush?”

Curse me or let me pass. Suddenly annoyed, Draco lifted his right hand out of his pocket and flicked the boy’s wand out of the way, shoving through the group. The boy hadn’t been expecting this. It was clear from the way they moved, jerky and stiff, that none of them had duelling experience. Draco could’ve flattened them before a single one could get the word impedimenta out. 

But it seemed like they were just going to let him leave. 

“What d’you think mummy and daddy are eating in Azkaban right now?” said one of the boys from behind him. 

“I saw daddy Malfoy in the paper. Kind of a fairy with that long hair, isn’t he?”

“Bet the other Death Eaters love him. Hey Malfoy, you ever think about what your daddy eats for dinner?”

Haha, Draco knew where this was going. He kept walking. 

“Hey, his mum’s not in Azkaban. They put her under house arrest.”

“Wow Jake, didn’t know you followed mummy Malfoy’s trial so closely.”

“How many people d’you think she sucked off to get a lighter sentence?”

They laughed nastily. They had found their stride after all. Draco could feel his blood beginning to heat under his skin, but it wasn’t enough. “You’ll have to do better than that,” he said.

“‘Scuse me?” asked the boy with the deeper voice who had had his wand pointed at Draco.

“You’ll have to come up with a more original joke about my mum than that.” Draco turned around and finally looked at the boys’ faces. Seven. They were definitely young. Several still round-faced. Their cheeks were red and blotchy from being out in the cold. Draco counted four with wands out, one with his hand inside his jacket, one in the back where his hands were obscured, and a final boy who looked confused and a bit scared. Draco raised his hand as if beckoning them forward. “My mum’s what? C’mon, let me hear it.”

The ringleader glanced at his friends, his wand wavering.

Stop wasting time on taunts, Draco wanted to say. Just hit me already. His lip curled. Now they were too intimidated and confused to do anything. For once he wished he had encountered someone with a little more cruelty baked in. Fine. If they were too afraid to taunt him to his face, he’d give them his back. 

He turned away from the boys.

“Stupefy-” 

But there was no flash of red light. 

“HEY.” The boys all flinched and started to scatter. Longbottom came sprinting down the path, wand out, and caught the disarmed wand in his free hand. “What’re you doing? It’s past outdoor curfew for Fourth Years and below.”

Two of the boys had already fled back to the castle. Four more had dashed into the quickly falling darkness but then stopped before getting out of earshot; they knew that their friend would need his wand back. The ringleader stood rooted to the path.

“What’s your name?” Longbottom asked, approaching the boy.

The boy refused to look at him. 

“Hey. You hear me? What’s your name?”

“Travis Peters,” the boy muttered to the ground.  

“What’s your house and year?”

“Ravenclaw. Third Year.” 

Longbottom gave Travis a disapproving shake of the head. “I’ll be reporting this to Professor Flitwick.” The boy was silent, and kicked a rock on the path. Longbottom held Travis’s wand out, hilt first. After a moment, the boy snatched it. “Get back to the castle.”

Only when all the boys had scurried off did Draco turn and start heading back towards the castle as well. Longbottom jogged to catch up with him. “Hey, uh-” He fell into step next to Draco. Irritated, Draco walked faster. “They didn’t, uh, get you or anything, did they?”

“I’m fine.”

“Cool. Alrighty then. Uh, see you in Herbology.” Longbottom abruptly split off toward the quidditch pitch.

Draco stared at Neville’s back. Smile as wide as the moon. Longbottom had always been wimpy. He was a poor excuse for a pureblood, a blemish upon the Sacred Twenty Eight. He had always found it pathetic that Longbottom’s boggart took the form of Snape. Usually Longbottom summoned in him feelings of mild amusement and vague superiority, the way one might laugh at a dog chasing its tail, but now Draco just felt angry. Let down. He wished Longbottom would punch him or something. A memory came to his mind unbidden: his Aunt Bellatrix regaling a group of slightly uncomfortable Death Eaters, describing the way the Longbottoms had screamed as she tortured them. She had called them her magnum opus.

“Hey, Longbottom?” he said.

Longbottom paused and turned. It was dark enough that his face was unreadable.

I’ll make friends with your friends. Merlin, Draco wished he hadn’t promised that. He swallowed. “Um. Since we’re doing Herbology together—would you want to work on the homework too? Together?”

No, nope, he wanted to take that back. He started walking down the path before Longbottom could answer, but Longbottom came up next to him again. “I mean- d’you need help or something? Sprout would be happy to… I always thought you were pretty decent at Herbology, uh… I mean, I can check my schedule, but-”

“Nevermind,” Draco said. “Forget it.” He disillusioned himself before Longbottom could get another word in, and stalked back to the castle.

Draco sat on his bed. He was shaking slightly, his wand trembling in his sweaty grip. What time was it? It was dark outside. He had been sitting here for—awhile. 

“Diffindo,” he snarled, suddenly slashing at the bed drapes with his wand. "Diffindo.” A length of heavy curtain fabric fell to the floor and laid there like- sort of like Voldemort had, when Potter killed him. He pointed his wand at it. Be ruthless, Bellatrix hissed. 

Pathetic, drawled Snape. Try harder.

“Incendio.”

The crumple of fabric burst into flames and Draco stared at it. He pulled his feet onto the bed so the fire wouldn’t lick him and wrapped his arms around his knees. 

This was definitely breaking his probation. Good, he thought numbly. Finally. Maybe he could turn himself into McGonagall right now. She was obviously itching for a reason to can him. 

But he didn’t move. He watched the fabric burn until it was burning low. He had hoped he might catch the bedframe on fire too but the fabric wasn’t burning hot enough and his arms felt too heavy to cast another incendio. The bright flame made a white spot in his vision that didn’t go away when he closed his eyes. 

He laid down on his bed. 

CRACK.

A house elf with floppy ears appeared in the center of the room. It pointed a finger and the smoldering curtain went out with a hiss of smoke. 

“Swirly is hoping Mr. Draco Malfoy is having a good evening,” Swirly said.

Draco groaned, flopping back down on his bed. McGonagall had put a house elf tail on him after all. 

“Swirly would like to deliver a message.”

“You can just… apparate me there. No need to formally request my presence in the headmistress’s office to be expelled.”

“Swirly is not delivering a message from the Headmistress.”

Draco sat up. Hermione?

“The Headmaster is wanting to remind you not to break your probation. He is also wanting you to know this.” Swirly cleared his throat. “B F 1622 G 8 G 74 1986.”

“What?”

Swirly pursed his lips as if annoyed. “B F 1622 G 8 G 74 1986.”

Draco scrambled over the charred pile of fabric and grabbed a piece of paper and an ever-inking quill from his desk. “Say that one more time.” 

Swirly heaved a sigh and repeated the code. 

“Which Headmaster sent this message?” Draco asked, his heart pounding. “Which portrait?”

CRACK. Swirly was gone. 

Draco searched back and forth over the string of letters and numbers. Shit—he knew where to go.

Chapter Text

Draco didn’t want to take any chances. He disillusioned himself on the way to the library.

Hogwarts was quiet. It was past curfew for all but the Eighth Years. Draco slipped past Peeves, who was rattling about inside a suit of armor, and took a longer route to avoid a pair of prefects doing the rounds before bed. 

The door of the library had a selective locking charm to keep out the younger class years after normal closing time at 9. He didn’t know how the locking charm worked—perhaps a general age gate? 

There was a magical parchment by Madam Pince’s circulation desk where students could write key words or titles. (It worked remarkably like a search bar…) Draco scratched out the call number Swirly gave him on the parchment.

Instead of the writing glowing blue and then vanishing, a sure sign that the book was whizzing its way over (and a warning to be ready to duck in case the book had built up a bit of momentum), the ink dried flat black and slowly faded. Draco shook the magic parchment, then poked it with his wand. 

Huh. Maybe it didn’t work with call numbers. 

The call number started with BF. Guess it was time to start exploring the stacks. He had very rarely had to retrieve a book himself in the stacks and found himself completely baffled by how they were organized. The A’s and C’s were easy enough to find but where in the world were the B’s? 

He was deep in the library, huffing his way through the P’s (why so many P’s?) when he smelled something. Hermione. She was here, or had been here recently. Suddenly there was no thought in his mind except getting to her and just seeing her, laying his eyes on her. She didn’t even need to say hello, but if he could just see her for a few seconds. 

He couldn’t find her. It was like she was everywhere, disorienting him, and every time he thought he was about to turn the corner and come upon her face, it was another row of the wrong books. He rushed through the shelves, blinded, and suddenly came to a stop. He had no idea where he was. Maybe he had never gone this deep in the library before, or maybe he was losing his mind.

“Draco?”

He turned, and there she was, throwing off light in his vision like a glass prism in the sun. The sparkle faded, and he swallowed hard, trying to gather himself. “Hey.” She was in a skirt and pink blouse that showed some cleavage. Girly. Not her usual thing. She smelled a bit like beer. 

She looked down at herself, twisting her lips. “There was a party in Gryffindor tower. Ginny wanted me to go, but it wasn’t agreeing with me.” She pulled the blouse closed over her chest. “Thought I might come here and get some studying done, but it isn’t really- isn’t really that type of night, I guess. How ‘bout you?”

Good, now that you’re here. Draco chewed down his words. “Uh. I’m looking for a book. Do you know where the BF section is?”

She frowned at him for a second. “...Yeah. C’mon.” Her ass swayed as she led him through the stacks. Draco tried to keep his eyes to the books on the shelves. “What book are you looking for?”

“Uh- I just have the call number. It’s for a personal project.”

“Ooh a research project? What about?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

“That’s the best part of the project, when you haven’t quite decided what you’re going to do and there’s a million possibilities and directions to go. The other day I was working on an extra little research project for Vector, on the geometry of early ancient Egyptian city layouts and how they—well, that part doesn’t matter, but—I started reading about the Wall of the Crow, you know, the one by the Sphinx-” 

Draco didn’t know, but a funny little smile had crept onto his face as he listened to her ramble and speedwalk through the stacks.

“-apparently the Old Kingdom ancient Egyptians had quite a complex magic figured out to ward their land, of course nothing compared to what we have now, but given that they didn’t use wands or magic channels, and were relying entirely on rituals, it’s really fantastic to see what clever solutions they came up with, things I never thought of, did you know that the Wall of the Crow was actually—aha. What was the call number again?”

They had reached the B section, which was inexplicably isolated in its own area back by the restricted section. Hermione glanced at the call number, skimmed a finger along a shelf of books around eye level, and said, “It should be here.”

Draco leaned in, and his shoulder touched hers. She stiffened. “Sorry,” he said, stepping back. 

“It’s- okay.”

There was a gap on the shelf where the book with call number BF1622 G8 G74 1986 should have been. In mystery novels there’s often a conspicuous lack of dust where an object has been moved, which indicates how recently it was moved, but there were no helpful dust hints here. 

Hermione peered down at the paper in Draco’s hand, carefully not stepping into his space. “Let’s try… accio B F 1622 G 8 G 74 1986. ” They waited a moment. “What did you say this project was for again?”

Draco scanned the books on either side of where his book should have been for inspiration, overtaken with a strong urge to lie, at least until he knew more about who wanted him to find this book. “It’s- on- ancient Greek… spells.”

Hermione immediately grabbed several books off the shelf. “Well, these might be a start-”

“Sorry, that was a lie.”

She paused in the middle of handing him a stack of books. “...Oh.”

The urge to hide the truth was still so strong. Draco pressed his hands down by his side and addressed the top of the stacks. “I got a message from a house elf with that call number. The house elf didn’t say what book the call number was, or who was sending me the message or why. He said it was from the Headmaster.”

“Headmaster? Not Headmistress?”

“He specifically said Headmaster. He disappeared before telling me which one.”

Hermione grinned. “Draco, do you think it’s a message from Dumbledore?”

“What-”

She was already heading off down the row, the books flying back onto the shelves with a wave of her wand. “Dumbledore’s portrait doesn’t talk, I’ve tried speaking to him and he doesn’t speak back. But how many headmasters do you know? It’s got to be him, there’s got to be a reason he doesn’t talk and he’s trying to send you a coded message. There’s something hidden in this book. I’ve got to talk to Ron and Harry-” She paused, wetting her lips. “Well, maybe not Harry, but-”

Draco grabbed her by the shoulder. “What are you talking about?”

She froze under his grasp. Her shoulder felt small and a bit bony, like touching a bird’s wing. Without even stretching his fingers he could cover from the top of her arm to the side of her neck, and his pinky pressed lightly against her pulse point. Her heart was beating fast. Just a centimeter higher was a small lump, imperceptible if you didn’t know what you were looking for, and as Draco stared at this gland he smelled Hermione’s arousal on the air.

His grip tightened for a millisecond and then he yanked his hand away. 

She was flush. A sheen of sweat had appeared on her forehead. “We, um- we can go talk to the house elves.” Almost robotically she rubbed her shoulder where he had touched her. “I know one of the elves who works in the kitchen. We can start there.”

Draco found himself having to walk rather fast to keep up with her, even though his legs were longer than hers. “The elf who delivered the message is named Swirly, he works in the laundry.” She was walking like she was trying to lose him. “You know you don’t have to help me, right? I can figure this out on my own.”

“You know you don’t have to reject help all the time, right?” She was breathing hard and still refusing to slow down or look at him as they sped through the corridors. “Plus, I want to.”

Why, Draco wanted to ask. She was the Brightest Witch of Her Age, War Heroine, Potter’s Golden Girl, Certified Genius and Arithmancer Extraordinaire—there had to be a million other things she could be doing. She needed to be studying for her NEWTs, she had a hundred friends who she was actually friends with, she was probably doing an extra research project in every class just for fun. He didn’t understand why she wanted to get involved in this as well. 

“How do you know where the laundry is?” he asked.

She turned her head just enough to let him see a vaguely disgusted lip curl, but he didn’t know what he had said wrong. 

Suddenly he was annoyed. He didn’t get why she was acting like this. This whole interaction was reminding him that despite years of noticing her from the corners of his vision, and despite the ugly little voice in his head that kept saying, she’s my omega, I own her, he didn’t really know her that well. He didn’t like feeling two steps behind her. He wanted the soft, sweet girl from the party back, the girl with cold hands who needed him to warm her. 

“Nevermind, it’s not a big deal,” he said, stopping in the middle of the corridor. “I think I actually want to go to bed.”

“What? No way. Don’t you-”

“I’m tired.”

She rounded on him, and despite the flash of fury in her eyes he couldn’t help but think, she’s pretty. “I don’t know what your game is, Draco Malfoy, but- but you can’t just walk away from this! Dumbledore sent you this message for a reason. He would expect you to follow up on it.”

“Okay, maybe, but I can figure this out on my own-”

“Do you not want my help?”

“I want your help-”

“Because I can leave, I won’t waste my time where I’m not appreciated-”

“I don’t want you to leave-”

“-though it’s not like you’d have ever found the B section of the library without me, and you obviously don’t know where the laundry is-”

“Granger! Of course I want you here, I just don’t get why you want to be here!”

Her lips pursed. “I- the laundry is on the ground floor. The entrance is under the staircase to the third floor that turns once an hour. There’s no door, just an alcove with a bureau and a chinoiserie lamp that doesn’t work. Turn the switch on the lamp and it’ll open the entrance to the laundry.” She pressed a hand to her cheek as if trying to cool her skin with her cold fingers. “I’ll uh- you don’t really need me for this part. I’m sure you remember SPEW. The Hogwarts house elves tend to get a little anxious around me so it’s better if I don’t go.”

Draco couldn’t remember if he should know what in the world SPEW was. “I wasn’t trying to chase you off,” he whispered. 

“No, it’s okay.” She was back to avoiding his gaze. “Sorry if I’ve been acting a little manic this evening. This is, um… I’m not sure how to explain it. I miss being involved in mysteries like this. That sounds like such a- a Ron and Harry thing to say, right?” She laughed awkwardly. “I said I would come find you when I had decided what I wanted our relationship to be, but it’s difficult when we keep running into each other like this and I still haven’t made a decision. And I know you’re not trying to rush me or pressure me but I still feel this pressure to act like everything is okay until the moment that I change my mind, if that makes any sense? I like you, but you’re you and I’m me, and maybe this is silly but the opinions of my friends matter to me, and it bothers me that they don’t like you even though I do. And um, I’ve made my decision actually, here it is: I just want to be friends. Let’s just be friends for now, and maybe in a month we can do a reassessment, but for now we’ll just be friends, does that sound alright with you?”

Draco had to take a moment to process.  

“Yeah,” he said eloquently. “Alright. We’ll just be friends.” 

“Great. Well—now that that’s settled—I guess I’ll… go back to Gryffindor?”

Draco still felt two steps behind. The best thing to do seemed to be to agree. “Yeah, alright.”

“Right. Well. Goodnight then, Draco.” She stared at his chest and Draco thought she might hug him, and then she spun off on her heel down the corridor. He listened to her footsteps until they were so faint he might have been imagining them. 

Something hurt in his chest. 

Right. Well. First floor, under the staircase, turn the lamp switch. 

When he found the alcove, he took a moment to study the lamp. It was made of shabby porcelain, the way things tend to look when they’ve been reparo- ed too many times. A painted peacock on its side poked at the painted ground as if looking for seeds. The lamp seemed very out of place. It occurred to Draco that he had never seen a lamp in Hogwarts before. 

“Huh,” he said to himself, and reached up under the shade and groped around for the switch. It clicked and there was the sound of stone grinding against stone as the back wall of the alcove swung open. Draco squinted at what lay through the portal. 

The laundry was small. A floor to ceiling mountain of white cloth occupied the left side of the room, perhaps making the room look smaller than it really was, and as Draco watched, a number of towels appeared and fell on the pile. On the right side of the room sat several wash basins embedded in the floor, a number of ironing boards, and four little beds. There were two open windows, and a cool breeze blew through. 

Three of the house elves were asleep, but one was up. She wore enormous round glasses and had balanced a book on her knobbly knees and was so absorbed in it that she didn’t notice Draco until he cleared his throat and said, “Hello?”

“Oh!” She lost her grip on the book. It fell forward and smacked her on the nose. “A student! How did you get in? Are you needing anything?”

“Hi,” Draco said rather uselessly, trying to keep his voice down. “Sorry to bother you.” It felt weird apologizing to a house elf. 

“It is not a problem, not a problem at all, how can I be helping you?” She glanced back at her book as if she wanted to pack him off and get back to reading. Draco squinted at the book. De civitate Dei … the rest of the title was too small to make out. 

“Did you get that from the library?” he asked. 

“Ivyvine buys her own books,” she said with a firm nod that made her ears flap. “Ivyvine is a free elf.”

“Oh. That’s great.” A bit weird if he was being honest. ”Ivyvine, is Swirly here? I need to speak to him.”

“Who?”

“Swirly. He said he works in the laundry, he wears this very sharp tea towel and always looks a bit annoyed…”

“There is no Swirly working in the laundry,” Ivyvine said. “Perhaps the kitchen? Hinge, wake up.” She smacked the sleeping elf next to her. The elf sat up with a yawn. “Hinge used to work in the kitchen,” she explained. “Hinge, is there an elf named Swirly working in the kitchen? A student is wanting to know.”

Hinge rubbed their eyes. “No elf named Swirly working in the kitchen. Maybe there is a Swirly in the owlrey? Libby would know.” They poked the elf next to them. “Libby!”

Libby rocketed out of bed into a fighting stance. “Who is calling? Who summons- what is a student doing here?”

“Do you know an elf named Swirly from the owlrey?” asked Hinge. 

Libby peered around as if looking for enemies to sock before deciding it was safe to speak. “Libby does not know a Swirly. Maybe Swirly is working in the kitchens?”

“Already thought of that,” Ivyvine said, massaging the bridge of her nose.  

“Maybe Napier knows,” Libby suggested. “NAPIER. WAKE UP.”

Draco shuffled his feet, wondering if perhaps he should leave before someone came past the alcove and heard the commotion. The fourth house elf just snored. 

“NAPIER.” Libby shook Napier violently. 

“Sleeping…” Napier mumbled, eyes still closed. 

“DO YOU KNOW A HOUSE ELF NAMED SWIRLY? A STUDENT IS WANTING TO KNOW.”

“Never met a Swirly… maybe there is a Swirly working in the offices… Napier wouldn’t know.” Napier rolled over and resumed snoring. 

“A few house elves help with bookkeeping and office work,” Ivyvine said. “They are not associating with the rest of us very much.”

“They are thinking they are too good for the rest of us,” Libby said. “Because they read and write…” She shot a cool glance at Ivyvine. 

“Okay,” Draco said, one foot already half out the door. “Thanks for your help, sorry to bother you.”

“Are you needing anything else?” Ivyvine asked, picking her book back up. 

As Draco watched her skinny fingers flip through the pages of the outsize book, a thought occurred to him. “I was having trouble finding a book in the library. It wasn’t on the shelf and I don’t know its name. I’ve just got the call number. Do you know how I might get it?”

“What is the call number?” Ivyvine asked, already holding out her hand expectantly. Draco gave her the parchment with the call number and she studied it. “Oh. Here you go.” The book appeared in her hand and she held it out towards Draco. 

Draco stared at the drawing of the beetle on the cover of the book, dumbfounded. The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation. “…Where was it?”

“It was in the room where hidden things go.”

Suddenly Draco’s knees felt like they were made of jello. “The Room of Requirement? It still exists? Do you know how to get there?”

“Ivyvine does not know where the room is, only that it still is."

"Could you take me there?"

"Ivyvine cannot be apparating students without permission. She could lose her job.”

“Right, right…” The Room of Requirement still existed. It hadn’t been destroyed. He hadn’t killed it, it was out there, he just had to find it, and if this book had survived the fiendfyre in the room of hidden things then maybe the vanishing cabinet had as well. Maybe he could find it and use it-

He wasn’t sure how he ended up back at Slytherin. Maybe he walked there. He lifted his head out of The Greek Magical Papyri when early morning sunlight sparkled through the window. He rubbed his eyes. He had read the entire book, cast every reveal spell he knew on it, and checked for marginalia. Nothing. 

It was just a book. And honestly, kind of a boring one.

Chapter Text

The door to Draco’s dorm opened. Draco looked over from his bed. 

A Second Year boy poked his head into the room, taking a moment to scan the empty beds and Draco’s things scattered across the floor. Clothes and papers. A charred pile of cloth. Finally his eyes landed on Draco.

“What?” Draco rasped.

The boy stared, his eyes wide.

“What?” 

“There’s someone here to see you,” the boy squeaked, and then slammed the door. His footsteps faded as he scurried away down the hall. 

Draco sighed, staring at his wand. 

The Greek Magical Papyri lay open on his desk. He swung his legs off the bed, slipping his feet into his shoes, and padded over and closed the book. The beetle on its cover mocked him, seeming to dance in the watery light of the window. 

“Useless fucking book,” he muttered. He grabbed a quill and scratched out a quick note on a scrap of parchment, slapping it on top of the book:

For Hermione Granger.

He meandered down the hall, taking his time, gazing haughtily at the empty hallways. It’d make his father proud. Always exit with style, Draco. Never let them see weakness. Although there was no one here to see him at all. 

Who you are when you’re alone is who you are. And you are always a Malfoy.

He paused at the entrance to the common room. It was mid afternoon, so most of the students were in class or enjoying the last of the good autumn weather. But there was one person sitting in an armchair in the middle of the room, sipping a cup of tea as if she had been waiting for him. Astoria.

She locked eyes with him. Her wand sat on the arm of the chair, a few inches from her hand. Draco felt his wand settle between his fingers in a dueler’s grip. Light. Good for quick movements. 

“It emerges,” she said.

“You sent a Second Year for me?”

Astoria rolled her eyes. “Heavens no. There’s someone outside for you.” Her fingers drummed the arm of the chair, slipping closer to her wand. 

“Don’t you have class?” Draco asked, charting his path across the room. If he went far around her, he’d have more chairs and tables to duck behind in case she tried to curse him. But she would notice if he went the long way. She would perceive it as weakness. 

“Don’t you have class?” she countered. 

It didn’t really merit an answer. He might have class. He wasn’t sure what day it was. 

“Have a good day,” Draco said curtly, striding across the common room. 

“Draco,” Astoria called as he reached the door. Draco turned, readying a shield spell. She twirled her wand loosely between her fingers. Bad wand practice—she could shoot magic at herself that way. The side of Astoria’s lips curved up. “You have a good day too.”

Draco stared at her a second longer, then stepped out of the dungeons and closed the door behind him. 

He had been expecting Slughorn, asking him why he hadn’t been to his last weekly wand check, but instead came face to face with Anthony Goldstein.

“Hey, motherfucker,” Anthony said, popping off the wall with his arms crossed. 

Draco’s shoulders dropped. It did make a bit more sense that it would be Anthony, and not Slughorn or another professor. If a professor wanted to see him, they would just enter the common room themselves. “What do you want?”

“Some St. Mungo’s healer wants to see us. They sent me to come get you.”

“Why?”

“Could it be to do with the rare magical condition we’ve got? Just a guess, though.”

“Why didn’t they use the floo or something?”

“Is this twenty fucking questions?” Anthony started off down the hall, and over his shoulder he said, “Pomfrey mentioned the Slytherin floo hasn’t been reconnected to the network yet. They’re probably worried someone’s going to slither in—geddit?—in the middle of the night and stab you to death.” He chuckled. 

Draco didn’t smile.

“Where’ve you been?” Anthony asked as they headed up into the castle.

“Here,” Draco grunted. 

“Why’ve you been skipping potions?”

“What’s it to you, Goldstein?”

Anthony ran his tongue over his upper teeth, giving Draco an odd look. “Slughorn is assigning another cooperative for the alchemy final, so…”

“So?” Draco knew what Anthony was hinting at, but it gave him a weird burst of pleasure to force him to say it out loud. 

“So, are you gonna be my partner?” Anthony flushed. 

“Probably best if you ask someone else.”

It wasn’t because he disliked Anthony. Really, it wasn’t. Anthony was… decent, and nicer to him than just about anyone else in the castle, except for Hermione and Madam Pomfrey. But the moment someone did Draco’s wand check and saw the two diffindo’s and that little incendio, he’d be expelled. He didn’t even expect that they’d let him return to Slytherin and pack. Hopefully whoever found The Greek Magical Papyri saw his note and delivered the book to Hermione. She’d know what to do with it. 

“There isn’t anyone else,” Anthony muttered. “The class is an odd number unless you’re there.”

“Then use your critical thinking skills and make a group of three.”

“There isn’t anyone else,” Anthony repeated, his blue eyes meeting Draco’s. 

Something that Anthony had said a while ago echoed in Draco’s mind. Lotta people are being weird about this alpha and omega thing.  

“Yeah, alright, fine,” Draco said. “Potions partners. What’s the project?”

“Slughorn’s explaining it next class.”

They arrived at the hospital wing. Madam Pomfrey ushered them towards a small side room. Both Anthony and Draco froze at the threshold of the room.

Inside the room were a St. Mungo’s healer, and two omegas. Luna and Hermione. 

Hermione looked up at Draco from her seat. She bit her lip, then looked away. 

“Alright boys, go on, she just needs to run a few tests,” Pomfrey said, putting a hand on each of their backs and giving them a light push.

The scent of omega had entirely pervaded the small enclosed room. Draco glanced over at Anthony, who was staring at the girls, his nostrils flared. Suddenly all Draco could think about was hexing Anthony, hexing the St. Mungo’s healer, and locking himself inside the room with the two girls—Hermione dropping to her knees in front of him, peering up at him with wide eyes—Luna stripping off her dress and bending over the back of a chair-

“We need to open a window,” Anthony croaked. 

The St. Mungo’s healer glanced between the two alphas, seeming to register the issue. With a wave of her wand, the window opened and a magical breeze began to circulate around the room. 

“Please sit,” she said. Draco tested the air again. The sweet scent of omega was still there, but muted by the cool breeze and the whirlwind of scents coming in from outside. Earthy forest, a hint of sweat, something a bit damp, like maybe it was going to rain soon… He sat down in the chair opposite of Hermione, and Anthony sat next to him. Hermione still wouldn’t look at him, but Luna gave a tiny wave from her lap. Draco lifted his hand slightly in acknowledgement. She smiled. 

“My name is Healer George,” the healer said. “It’s good to see you. We’ve been working on some formulations to help control the more… problematic side effects of your conditions. Our focus so far has been to reduce the compulsion that alphas have over omegas. Before we go any further, I need your consent to participate in the testing process.” She handed Anthony and Draco each a form and a quill. 

“Do you expect to accidentally poison us?” Anthony asked, looking over the form.

“The formulations will not poison you. Signing this form means that you’ve consented to physical intervention in case one of the tests gets out of control.”

Draco swallowed, picturing a scene where she asked him to scent Hermione’s neck and then he latched on, like an anglerfish, and was unable to let go. Anthony was hesitating as well.

“Everything that happens during testing stays in testing,” Healer George said. “You will not be blamed for anything I ask you to do.”

That seemed to reassure Anthony, and so after a moment Draco signed as well. 

“Good,” Healer George said. She produced a pair of vials out of a small case on the table. “These are topical solutions meant to suppress your scent. Miss Lovegood and Miss Granger, could you please apply some of this solution to the glands on your neck and your wrists?”

The girls accepted the vials, uncorking them and carefully tapping the clear, gooey solution inside onto the ends of their fingers. Draco chewed his lip, staring at the wall over Hermione’s shoulder. She had small hands. Would her fingers even meet if she wrapped her hand around his cock? She applied the solution to that spot on her wrists, and then reached up and smeared some into her neck. Even with the window open, a spike of sweet, libidinous omega scent filled the room as she pressed on the gland on her neck. Anthony shifted in his seat, leaning forward and placing his elbows on his knees, turning his head to the side. Draco rapidly realized that he was having the same problem as Anthony—an erection.

“Could I please have one of you gentlemen come up and sniff Miss Lovegood’s wrist, and tell me what you smell?”

Luna offered her wrist up, a relaxed smile on her face, as if she wasn’t affected at all by this. 

Anthony shook his head mutely, still not looking at either of the girls. Draco flexed his thighs, which sometimes helped his unwanted erections to go down. 

“Mister Goldstein? Mister Malfoy?” asked Healer George. 

Draco felt his erection begin to soften. He stood and bent slightly to sniff Luna’s wrist. She still smelled sweet, still smelled like her, but with a hint of something unpalatable now. “I can still smell her,” he said, stepping away quickly. “The smell is a bit different but it’s not gone.”

Healer George noted something on her clipboard. “Could you please try Miss Granger?”

Hermione’s gaze flicked up to meet Draco’s for a split second and then she looked away. She lifted her hand up—not as high as Luna. Draco again bent to sniff her, and blood rushed to his head. He rocked back. “Smells the same,” he choked out.

“Could you try it closer?”

Draco would have to bend over at an awkward angle, or Hermione would have to stand, which neither of them seemed willing to do. Hermione was still determinately avoiding Draco’s gaze. Gingerly, Draco reached out and touched her hand to lift it higher towards him, and she tensed. Draco let go, trying to figure out if he had done something wrong. He looked over at Healer George, who watched with bland anthropological interest. Again, Draco lifted Hermione’s hand up towards him, sniffing her wrist. 

His mind went blank. 

omega on her knees, presenting for him, cooing underneath him, writhing with pleasure, his mouth on her breast and her neck as he fucked her open and she submitted and submitted and submitted

“Draco,” Anthony barked. 

Hermione had stood, gazing up at him as if she could see the stars in his eyes. He yanked her close, and was breathing heavily. His hand flexed around her wrist. Her pupils were blown, her gaze darting between his eyes and his lips. He could kiss her right now—she wouldn’t say no-

“Draco,” Anthony said again, yanking Draco by the collar of his shirt. “Let go.”

Both Draco and Hermione suddenly flushed, pulling away from each other. Draco wiped sweat from his forehead, turning to face the window. “Smells the same,” he mumbled to Healer George. 

“We need to try the neck also-”

“No we don’t,” Draco said. “I promise it doesn’t work. I- I should leave.”

“I need to run more tests.” Healer George said.

“It doesn’t work,” Anthony agreed, sniffing Luna’s wrist. “She still smells—like herself.” He looked over at Draco. “I don’t think I need to try Hermione.” 

Healer George sighed. “...Goddamnit.”

“C’mon,” Anthony said to Draco. “We’ve got potions in twenty.”

The end of potions class.

The weekly wand check.

Every time Draco closed his eyes, he saw fire. 

The pile of burnt fabric on his dorm floor had gone cold days ago, but its light still flickered behind his eyelids. Two diffindo’s and one little incendio, and he had thrown away his entire probation. 

He didn’t care. He didn’t, he truly didn’t, it didn’t matter if he was expelled, except it did, because-

“So… are we doing this or what?”

“What?” 

Anthony waved a hand. “Picking our project?”

Draco looked around the classroom. Everyone else was crowded around Slughorn’s desk. “What project?”

“You can’t be- the alchemy final, you know, the one Slughorn’s been explaining for the last half hour?” The air around Anthony’s head warped and Draco was hit with a blast of heat. Anthony clenched his jaw and ran his fingers through his hair as if trying to distract himself. “Sorry.”

“No, I-” Vaguely, Draco recalled that Slughorn had been going on about rocks, and seeds, and trace spells to prevent cheating. “...Yeah, let's go.”

“Great. Great. Since it took you a million years to decide, we’re probably going to have to do the hardest plant.”

Draco frowned, following Anthony to the table where his classmates were haggling over slips of paper with plant names written on them. Anthony grabbed a slip reading Salvia Officinalis.  

“Alright,” Slughorn said as the pairs returned to their seats. “Next class you’ll get your rocks, and you will begin the process of transmuting a rock into a seed. Au revoir! Remember, no class on Friday! Enjoy the Halloween parties—of course I know all of you will be in the library studying.” He winked merrily to a general audience of no one as the Eighth Years packed their bags and hurried to dinner.

Dread washed over Draco as the room emptied. 

“Speaking of Halloween parties, there’s a costume party in the dungeons this Friday. Sixth years and up.” Anthony stuffed the paper reading Salvia Officinalis into his bookbag. “Are you coming?” 

“What?”

“To the Great Hall?”

Was Goldstein inviting him to dinner? Draco nodded distractedly. “I have to talk to Slughorn.”

When he looked back at Slughorn, there was another student already there. Draco didn’t recognize her from the back. Fuck. Slughorn was holding the girl’s homework and saying, “Well, I can take a look, but you know I don’t usually change grades…”

“I can hang,” Anthony said. He sat down on a desk and pulled the paper out. “Salvia… O-fiss-in-al-is. Don’t suppose you know what that is?”

Draco shook his head jerkily. He wished Anthony would burst into fucking flames and leave him alone. He lifted a trembling hand to his collar and straightened it, pulling it away from his sweaty neck. What if he got expelled and the book never got to Hermione? He should have let Hermione come with him to the laundry. She’d have known what to do with the book. She liked this shit, the mysteries and secret messages and ambiguity. 

Slughorn noticed Anthony and Draco. “Boys, I’m afraid I’ll have to talk to you later.”

Draco had a sick weight in his stomach. He walked with Anthony down the hall, feeling like he was floating slightly outside his body.

“You okay, man?” Anthony asked. Draco glanced at his face and was surprised to read a frown of concern. He sort of smelled worried, too. It was harder to scent alphas than omegas. 

“Yeah, I just need to… uh…” 

He needed to talk to Hermione. He needed to talk to Slughorn.

He needed to talk to his mother. 

“...I have to send a letter.” 

Anthony gave him a weird look. “Alright. See you, then.” 

Draco disillusioned himself once he was alone and then headed towards the owlery, wondering who he was going to send this letter to. Per his probation, he wasn’t allowed to contact his parents. But then again, he was about to be expelled for breaking his probation anyway. What difference did one measly letter make?

He removed his disillusionment after entering the owlery and checking to see he was alone. Astraea poked her head out of her nook and hooted, flapping over and landing on his shoulder. 

“Hey pretty girl.” Draco patted her head gently. “Sorry I haven’t visited.”

She pulled on a strand of his hair. 

“Ow,” Draco said, without any real annoyance. “Is this about the mice? I’m still working on it. Turns out that real, untransfigured mice are not easy to come by.” 

She hooted in his ear.

“Yes, I know I could go accio a mouse, but I’m not going to give you lousy Hogwarts mice. I’m going to get you the good stuff.”

He sat down on the edge of the low stone basin where the owls liked to splash around and clean themselves, pulling a piece of parchment out of his bookbag and balancing it on his knee. He pulled out his ever-inking quill, and looked out at the twilight. 

Dear Mother,

He imagined his mother sitting at the big table in the breakfast room, sipping her morning tea and reading the Daily Prophet. Pibs would come in with the mail on a silver platter, Draco’s letter already sorted to the top of the pile. She would take his letter and read his handwriting, readying her silver letter opener, and she would—smile?

Would his mother be happy to hear from him?

Maybe she’d curl her lip in disgust, or maybe she’d put the letter back down, unopened, and contact the Ministry. That way she could prove that she wasn’t breaking her probation.

Something crumpled inside Draco. Of course—his mother had her own probation to guard, whose terms mirrored his. Perhaps she’d be wise enough to put his letter down unopened, but more likely she would open it out of fear that Draco was in danger. And she would be displeased to find out that both of them had broken their probations because he was a little homesick. 

He had never found out what the consequences of breaking probation were. Perhaps he’d get sent home and he’d get to see his mother anyway. 

He folded over the top of the parchment and tore it off, starting fresh. 

Dear Pibs,

Please prepare my quarters in case I come home soon. Don’t let my mother know.

Draco

He folded the letter up and Astraea offered her leg, but Draco didn’t attach it to her carrier. If he was removed from Hogwarts, what would happen to Astraea? Certainly they would know to clean his dorm, but they might not realize he had an owl. Astraea would wait for him. She wouldn’t know why he had stopped coming. 

His stomach twisted at the thought.

He unfolded the letter and added an extra line:

P.S. Please keep Astraea at home with you.

He put the letter in Astraea’s carrier. “Take this to Pibs,” he told her. “Not my mother. Understand?”

She hooted. 

“Not my mother,” he repeated sternly, and she took off. 

The next step was to go to Slughorn and admit he had broken his probation. That was all that was left; the book would get to Hermione and Astraea was taken care of. But instead of leaving, Draco sank down to the dirty floor of the owlery and leaned his head back against the hard stone wall, and watched the night fall. 

The door to the owlery opened and Draco leapt to his feet, wand out in front, his back to the wall in a defensive position. He swallowed, his heart beating. He must have fallen asleep. It was dark, probably past curfew. 

The person fumbled around, and then the tip of their wand lit up, illuminating a head of bushy hair.

“Granger?” 

She noticed him. “Well well well. Maco Dralfoy. Who would have thought you’d be smulking around the owlery.” She stumbled, throwing out an arm, and Draco rushed forward to catch her.

“Are you drunk?” Without thinking he leaned down and sniffed her hair. She smelled like shampoo and soap and almost nothing else. No sweet omega scent. “Tell me you haven’t been wandering around the castle sloshed.”

A wide, dumb smile blossomed across her face and she leaned towards him. There was a hazy look in her eyes. “Hey, Draco.” She slumped into his chest, and the side of her breast pushed against his arm—soft. The heat inside him fluttered.

He shuffled her to one arm like a ragdoll and maneuvered his wand into his other hand, conjuring a bench, then thinking better of it and conjuring a velvet fainting couch instead. He helped her down onto it. 

“‘m not a damsel. I spent months living in a tent. You could've given me the bench.”

Draco sat down on the very edge of the fainting couch. She crawled close to him. He stood, and she grabbed at his shirt. Starlight glinted off her glassy eyes. “Granger,” he warned, gently pulling her hands off him. 

She put on a coquettish simper. “What?”

You said you wanted to just be friends. Draco’s gaze wandered down to the top of her blouse, which was unbuttoned but hidden in shadows. Fuck. She was still gazing at him imploringly, like she’d do anything he asked. Her gaze kindled the heat in his chest. But she was wasted. “Let’s get some water in you. I’ll take you back to Gryffindor.”

“I don’t wanna go back to Gryffindor. I came out here looking for you.”

“You searched the entire castle for me?”

“Noooo. I went to Slytherin and asked where you were. Some girl told me you might be in the owlery.”

Draco’s stomach dropped. “Who?”

“Yeah, exactly.” She giggled. “Who who.”

“Who told you?”

“Iunno. Some girl. She had dark hair.” Hermione pawed at his shirt. “Sit with meee.”

Draco took another awkward step away. “Was her name Astoria?”

“Iunno.”

“Why’re you drunk? It’s the middle of the week.”

“Me and Luna… went to Hogsmeade and bought some liquor. ‘Cuz after you left, I told the healer that acklo- alcohol makes it go away. The omega thing. I wan’ it to go away. Luna does too. Was- we were drinking in Ravenclaw. Luna got sleepy, and I got horny, and I wanted to see you-” Her hand trailed down his chest.

“Alright, okay.” He batted her hand away, turning so she wouldn’t see his penis perk with interest through his pants. He conjured a goblet and filled it with aguamenti water. “Here.”

She held out her hand for the goblet and immediately let it slip from her limp grasp. “Hehe. Oops.” A couple of owls hooted and ruffled their feathers. 

“Merlin, Granger. You’re a mess.”

“Draco. Come sit down. Sit with me. Stop calling me Granger.”

“You told me that you just want to be friends.”

“Friends call friends by first names.”

“Friends don’t tell each other when they’re horny.”

“Sometimes me and Ginny do.”

“You and I don’t need to do that.”

She huffed, pulling back and crossing her arms. “You’re being an asshole.”

Draco felt himself rolling his eyes. “Yeah?”

“‘Cuz I wanna- I wanna-” She mumbled something unintelligible, and then continued, “And you won’t let me.”

He sighed and turned his gaze towards the quidditch pitch off in the distance. It looked like a flock of birds had settled down on it for the night. 

“Hey, Draco?” There was a rasp in her voice like she was on the verge of crying. “Don’t you want to kiss me again?”

If she weren’t drunk, he’d be willing to take her right there on the shitstained floor of the owlery. “Not when you’re like this,” he ground out, a lump in his throat. “You’re like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I’m beginning to think you shouldn’t drink.”

She slumped back on the couch. “Jus’ sit down.”

Draco did, staying as far as he could from her grabby hands. “Will you let me take you back to Gryffindor?”

“No. I’ll scream if you try to move me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. You can’t whine to get what you want.”

“Why not? It seems to work for other girls. Sorta worked for you, too. Used to.” She crawled up next to him on her knees. The whisper of her breath tickled the hairs on his neck. It would be so easy to grab her. She was small—skinny—if she was his, he’d feed her more, he would feed away the malnourishment of those months spent in that damned tent. Her breasts would become fuller if she gained a bit of healthy weight. He liked when girls were soft and gentle. Like she was being now. 

She laid her cheek on his shoulder very tentatively, as if expecting to be pushed away again. Draco grit his teeth. “Are you trying to torture me?” he ground out. “Why are you here? Why are you doing this?”

“I- I don’t know. I told you. I got…”

“You said you wanted to be just friends. Why are you-“ He could still smell her shampoo. He would only have to turn his head to kiss her hair. If only she smelled like an omega. 

“That’s not nice.”

He had said that out loud, he realized. 

“I don’t like being an omega. I feel so empty all the time. Everyone stares at me. It’s completely ruined my friendship with Ron. I keep wishing I were someone else, and I feel like-“ She swallowed and her throat shifted against his shoulder. “Um. I feel like I can be someone else with you.” He wondered if she had been about to say something else. The thought that she didn’t like being an omega rattled hollowly inside his skull. “Why are you smulking up here?”

“Skulking,” he corrected under his breath. “I was… sending a letter.”

“To who?”

“One of my family house elves. Just… taking care of some business.” A strand of her hair brushed his neck and he wanted to touch it, rub it between his fingers, he wanted to tell her that he had broken his probation. He wanted to touch her and if she weren’t drunk out of her mind he would have by now, but it didn’t mean anything to touch a girl when she was so gone she wouldn’t remember it in the morning, just like it wouldn’t help anything to talk to her like this. “Let me walk you back to Gryffindor. We can finish this conversation… when you’re sober.”

“You’d better not leave me,” she mumbled, letting him haul her to her feet. “Like you did last time.”

Last time he hadn’t had a choice. This time—Draco’s hand drifted up and nearly brushed against her cheek. “I gotta leave you at the door to Gryffindor, princess. I don’t think your friends will take kindly to me helping you into bed.”

“Draco,” she whined. In different circumstances, he would have laughed. Never in his previous life would he have imagined that studious, serious Hermione Granger got clingy when she was drunk. “We still have to study Ancient Runes. God knows when we'll find the time. I’m losing my mind. I can’t- I can’t do NEWTs and deal with this omega stuff and be Harry’s Golden Girl all at the same time. Not without Harry.” She hiccuped. “Sorry.”

He guided her down the stairs, letting his eyes linger on her, drinking her presence in one last time. He was starting to feel like his words were coming out through a long tunnel, rooted someplace far away from him. “You can say his name in front of me. I don’t care.”

They walked through the corridors in relative silence, except for Hermione tripping over her feet every few steps. Draco wrapped an arm around her shoulders to keep her steady. He knew as he did it that it was perhaps more than was strictly necessary—he could have guided her by hand—but it was the type of touch she had been begging for anyway. And as long as he touched her, he could feel himself grounded inside his body. 

They turned down the corridor to the Gryffindor portrait. Draco swallowed through the lump in his throat. “Alright princess. Here we are.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she murmured, swaying. 

“No. I doubt it.”

“At the Halloween party on Friday, then? I wanna see you again.”

“Probably not there, either.”

“I promise no one’s gonna jinx you. You should come. Luna wants a date. Take her.”

“What about you?” Draco asked, interested despite himself. 

“I’m going with Anthony Goldstein.”

Chapter Text

“What was Draco like last year?”

Ginny and Neville stopped chewing. “Why do you ask?” Ginny asked in a carefully blank tone. 

“I was just wondering.” Hermione took a nonchalant sip of pumpkin juice. “Since you were both here, and I wasn’t.”

Neville cleared his throat. “He was…” He exchanged a glance with Ginny across the table. “He wasn’t around much.”

“He kept to himself,” Ginny elaborated haltingly. “Unlike some of the Slytherins.”

Crabbe and Goyle, Hermione remembered. They had been top students of the Carrows; they apparently loved practicing dark magic on younger students. “So Draco didn’t… with the Carrows…?”

“Not that I know of,” Neville said. “We had charms together, but outside of that I barely ever saw him.”

“Why do you ask?” Ginny said again, more pointed. 

“Ron alert,” Neville said suddenly, looking at something over Hermione’s shoulder. “Ron alert.”

Ginny turned. Ron was stalking across the Great Hall towards them in his quidditch practice gear. “Merlin. C’mon, Hermione, let’s go.” 

Hermione grabbed a piece of toast, meeting Neville’s sympathetic grimace, and then she and Ginny took the long way around the Gryffindor table and hurried out of the Great Hall. 

“I’m going with Anthony Goldstein.”

Draco felt his heart stutter. Hadn’t he seen Anthony a few hours ago? Hadn’t he been thinking that maybe Anthony was a decent person, perhaps dumb and annoying, but still one of the few people for whom he had mutual toleration? Now all that was out the window. He was going to go to Ravenclaw and pound on the door until Anthony came out and then he was going to stab Anthony’s eyes out with his wand-

“Draco? Uh-”

He realized he was squeezing Hermione’s upper arm like he was trying to strangle it. He let go, flexing his fingers. “Why?” he asked in a thick voice.

“Well—he asked me, so… why not?”

“Because-” You’re mine. “Remember what happened in the corridor outside arithmancy?”

Hermione swatted him lightly on the chest. “C’mon, you know that only happened because of the alpha and omega thing. I’ve known Anthony for ages. We did DA together. We’re going as friends.”

“Does he know that?” Draco asked darkly. 

Hermione raised her chin with an air of hazy superiority. “I don’t see why this is any of your business, Mr. Malfoy.”

“Because- because-” Draco wanted to shake her by the shoulders and make her understand. She couldn’t come onto him like this when she was drunk and then pretend that her actions didn’t matter when she was sober. “Go with me instead,” he suggested.

She dropped her gaze. “I can’t. I said I’d go with Anthony.”

Draco glanced up and down the corridor, then over Hermione’s shoulder at the snoozing portrait which guarded the entrance to Gryffindor. “Is he making you do this?” he whispered. 

“No.” Hermione twisted her lips. “You shoulda asked me earlier if you wanted to go together.”

“Can I remind you that you are the one who wanted to be friends?”

“I was lying.” She swayed, stumbling back and throwing a hand behind her to catch the wall. “I dunno what I want. I wanna go to bed.”

Draco took a deep breath and let it out slowly. His chest hurt like he was having heartburn. “Okay. Go to bed. Goodnight, Hermione.”

Hermione poked the portrait and whispered the Gryffindor password. As she stepped through the portrait hole, she mumbled, “Luna still wants a date. Ask her. She’ll go with you.”

Draco stood outside the portrait hole, blankly staring off down the dark corridor for several minutes after Hermione left. Perhaps it was time to rethink things—perhaps he didn’t need to remind Slughorn about the weekly wand check just yet.

Draco had no idea what classes Luna was taking, and found himself resorting to hovering outside the Great Hall, disillusioned, dodging people as they came in and out of breakfast. Nearly Headless Nick floated through the wall and passed through him, giving him a shock and a brain freeze, and making Nick yelp. A couple of passing students looked over, and Draco stilled. Disillusionment wasn’t perfect—they would see through it if they knew where to look. 

“Nothing to see here,” Nick blustered to the students, adjusting his frilly collar. “Head gave a wobble—move along now…”

 Draco spotted Luna exiting the Great Hall among a large crowd of students, all likely heading to their 9 AM classes. He ducked along the wall, narrowly avoiding a group of girls who were weaving across the corridor from laughing so hard—he’d never understand how they had so much energy this early in the morning. Finally Luna split off down the hall towards the charms classroom.

But to his surprise, she walked straight past the charms classroom. Rather than her usual dreamy pace, she walked quickly, glancing over her shoulder. Draco removed his disillusionment as she rounded a corner away from him down a known dead end. When he turned the corner, she was gone.

He could still smell her bright, sweet scent of ripe peaches. He turned a full circle, sniffing the air. Her scent was shot through with something sour, something that made his stomach turn and his protective instincts flare, and he was unable to tell where it was strongest or how she would have vanished down a dead end. Luna suddenly appeared behind him.

“Were you following me?” she asked, tilting her head. She had her wand out by her side and flexed her fingers. Not a threat—but clearly intended for him to notice. 

“I wanted to talk to you.” Draco tested the air again. That new, sour scent was still coming from her, though it wasn’t as sharp now. Her cheeks were pink and she was breathing hard, like she had been in a hurry. He felt the uncomfortable urge to reach out and pull her into his arms, as if he might be able to make the strange scent go away. 

“Why did you follow me?” she asked again, her hand tightening around her wand. Hardness replaced her usual lilt. 

“I wanted- I just wanted to ask if you knew about that Halloween party this Friday. If you were going with anyone.” It occurred to Draco that she had moved quite tactically, leading him down a dead end and then disillusioning herself to get between him and the exit. Fear, he realized. That sour scent was fear.

“Oh.” Her wand arm relaxed. “You’re going to that? I wasn’t sure if I wanted to.”

“I thought it might be fun—we could go as friends.”

This seemed to have been the right thing to say. Luna grinned, the sour scent fading. “I’d love to go as friends! What’re you going to wear? Should we coordinate? Wait, don’t tell me. It has to be a surprise.”

“Right.” Draco scratched the back of his neck. “So… I’ll meet you there at nine?”

Luna nodded, opening her mouth to agree, and then turned at the sound of footsteps slapping against stone down the corridor. Weasley spun around the corner, his wand out.

“What’re you doing?” Weasley called, rapidly advancing towards Draco and Luna. 

Although Luna already had her wand out, Draco shoved in front of her, throwing up a wordless shield charm. “None of your business, Weasley.”

Weasley shot a spell off but it ricocheted against the shield and nearly caught him in the shoulder. 

“Nice wandwork,” Draco sneered. “Just like in quidditch—you’ve always been best at scoring against yourself.”

Weasley grit his teeth. “Get away from her.”

Draco glanced at Luna, who had a strange, stiff expression on her face. “You’ve got us stuck behind a shield, genius.”

“Luna,” Weasley said, deepening his voice. “Come out.”

Draco felt Luna shift behind him. Her eyes were unfocused, slightly dazed. “This is none of your business,” he said, again stepping in front of her.

“I could smell her from halfway across the castle. It smelled like she was about to piss herself.”

“Ron,” someone said, and Longbottom stepped around the corner also. “What’s going on?”

“I’m okay,” Luna said lightly. All three alphas turned towards her. “Draco and I were only talking.”

“What’ve you got in common?” Weasley spat. “D’you share classes? D’you chat about the time he had you locked up in the family dungeon?”

“We’ve talked about that,” Luna said, her voice regaining its usual dreamy lilt, although there was something determined about it, like she was putting on an affect. “I’ve already forgiven him. Excuse me, Draco. Excuse me, Neville. Ronald.” She stepped around the shield charm. “I’ve got to go to class.” She gave Draco a close-lipped smile. “See you all later.”

Longbottom and Weasley both watched her go, and then turned back to Draco. “What were you doing with her?” Weasley asked. 

Draco recast his shield charm, keeping a wary eye on Weasley’s twitchy wand hand. “Asking her a question.”

“There’s no reason you need to talk to Luna. Ever.”

“C’mon,” Longbottom muttered to Weasley. “Let’s go.”

“If you do,” Weasley continued, “I’ll make sure you go the same way as dear old dad.”

“Let’s go,” Longbottom said again, and after one last hard glare, Weasley went.

Draco could hear the music of the party even from the Slytherin dungeons. He had put on a trim black suit, the same type of outfit he had worn to every party since fourth year. He gave another glance to The Greek Magical Papyri—he hadn’t opened it since putting that note for Hermione on its cover—and then slid out of his dorm and up towards the common room.

The prefects had put together some Halloween activities for the younger students who couldn’t attend the parties. It was all simpleton stuff, jars full of Every-Flavour Beans to be awarded to the student who guessed closest to the number of beans, animated masks that briefly transformed you into a ghoul or a hag when you put them on. Someone had cast a locomotor spell on a skeleton, which tried to grab Draco as he passed by. He ducked out of the way, wondering whose skeleton it was. Most of the younger students had gathered around a prefect who was teaching them an incisory spell for pumpkin carving. One of the boys had clearly gotten impatient with the spell and was carving his pumpkin with a steak knife. His friend said something about the quality of his carving and the group laughed.

Draco stopped in the middle of the common room to watch. He had never done anything like this with Crabbe and Goyle. During the Halloween of sixth year, he had been in the Room of Requirement, desperately struggling with the Vanishing Cabinet. There had been no Halloween celebrations during seventh year. 

Would it be weird if he skipped the party and carved a pumpkin instead? 

He shook his head and left the Slytherin dungeons. The party music grew louder. Of course it would be weird. 

Even though no one had told Draco where the party would be, it wasn’t hard to find. He could already smell a wall of sweat and hormones from far down the corridor. A girl dressed as some sort of book character in striped socks and red shoes stopped a group of boys ahead of him at the door and handed them bracelets, which they put on and then entered the dark dungeon. She squinted at Draco, and Draco looked down the corridor for-

A hand touched his arm and Luna waved, gesticulating and mouthing something that he couldn’t hear over the music. She seemed wet, like she had showered in her clothes. Luna pointed to the girl who was bouncing, and then gestured to the bracelet on her own wrist.

Doubtfully, the bouncer held out a bracelet for Draco as well. Draco slid it over his wrist, and the music suddenly quieted down to a tolerable level.

“It’s so you can adjust the volume,” Luna said, her voice ringing clear. “Turn it right to make the music louder, and left to make it quieter.”

He tested it out. It was a clever piece of magic. Someone had gone to quite a lot of effort to pull this party together—he wondered if he would ruin it by showing up.

“What’re you dressed as?” Luna asked. “Let me guess… vampire?”

Draco glanced down at himself. “...Yep.”

Luna held a mischievous finger up to her lips and pointed to a flask-shaped lump in her skirt. “Let’s go in. Ginny and Neville are here.”

She grabbed his wrist and dragged him inside. Draco swallowed thickly. An omega—touching him—but not his omega—and she smelled strange anyway—he needed to get himself under control. This was Loony Lovegood. He had been part of a group who had stolen her bookbag once and hidden her homework all over the castle in third year. They had thought it was so funny. Now she was one of the only people in the castle who seemed willing to look him in the eye. Oh how the mighty have fallen. 

Why did I think that was funny? 

“You’ve got to do it all at once,” Ginny was saying as they weaved towards her and Longbottom. She mimed tipping a shot down her throat. Longbottom examined the shot glass in his hand. “C’mon, it’ll be worse if you drag it out.” 

Just as Longbottom was trying the shot, he spotted Draco and Luna, and choked. “Luna?” he coughed, wiping his mouth. 

“Good lord,” Ginny said. “Seriously, Luna? The Death Eater?”

Luna’s excited smile faded slightly. “Why not?”

Ginny’s eyes darted between Luna and Draco. He could see her chewing her tongue, struggling with a decision. “He should put on a mask. Hide that ugly mug. We don’t want to get hate-crimed for being seen with him.”

Draco made a point of rolling his eyes. But maybe she was right; maybe he should have worn a better costume. 

“Is Hermione here yet?” Luna asked, and as she said Hermione’s name, they spotted Hermione and Anthony ducking through the pulsing crowd. Draco’s stomach tightened. Hermione was wearing a blue and white dress that reminded him of a French milkmaid. Her fingers were laced with Anthony’s. 

He’d kill Anthony. 

“Hey!” Ginny exclaimed, hugging Hermione and giving a nod to Anthony.

Hermione gave a nervous glance at Draco and flexed the hand that Anthony had a grip on, trying to make him let go. Anthony obliviously held on. 

“Look who showed up after all,” Anthony said, making strange eye contact with Draco.

“How did over half the alphas and omegas in the castle end up here, in this five foot radius?” Ginny asked. “This is really asking for trouble. Hermione—ew, stop making eyes at the ferret. Let’s go get some food and let them measure dicks by themselves.”

Hermione mouthed something at Draco and gave him a shy smile. 

“Ron alert,” Longbottom said. Ginny and Hermione both froze, looking around the dance floor. “By the snacks.”

“Didn’t you-”

“I told him I would be studying in the library,” Hermione said, panic rising in her voice.

“Maybe he looked for you?”

“We should go.”

“You’d better put a bag over your head, Draco.”

“We need to go before he sees Hermione-”

Too late. “Are you fucking kidding me?” Weasley muscled through a group of dancing girls to get to them. They shouted, calling him rude, but he didn’t seem to hear. “All of you? Is Ernie here? What happened to ‘stay away from the omegas’?”

“Ron,” Longbottom tried to say, putting a hand out to stop him, but Weasley shoved Longbottom away. Heat crackled and the music got louder. 

“You all are so goddamn embarrassing,” Weasley spat. “Sorry, does seven years mean nothing to you? I seem to recall Malfoy being an utter prat. A real pureblood supremacist. The number of times his crew tried to get us expelled—and now you’re replacing me with him—it’s goddamn tasteless.” He turned towards Hermione. “And you-”

“Hey,” Draco said, stepping in between Weasley and Hermione. “Leave her out of it.”

Weasley had his wand out. Draco could smell the fury oozing off of him—his own blood was rising.

“How’re you doing it?” Weasley asked, his voice hardening. “How’re you having a better final year than I am?” 

“Ron-” Longbottom said, reaching for Weasley’s arm. “Let’s go.”

“Merlin.” Weasley barked out a bitter laugh. He knocked Longbottom’s hand away, and sneered at Hermione, then at Anthony. “I’d say half the people in this little group you’ve got here are in love with you. Fucking disgusting.”

“You should leave,” Draco warned. 

“Luna, ‘Mione, Anthony—though I always knew Goldstein was a loser-” A fleck of Weasley’s spit landed on Draco’s cheek. “Even Ginny was telling me the other day that maybe you deserved a second chance-”

“Shut up before you embarrass yourself more,” Ginny snapped. 

“Leave it, Ron,” Longbottom said, and a hint of alpha command leaked into his tone.

“You’ve even got Neville slobbing on your dick-”

Several things happened at once. Longbottom whipped his wand out and cast a bright blue hex that went over Weasley’s shoulder. Hermione and Ginny both shouted something. Draco tried to lunge for Weasley, the only thought in his head being rip out his throat, and someone caught him around the waist and dragged him back. The people around them scattered.

Weasley had managed to disarm Longbottom, but Hermione had disarmed Weasley, and now both alphas were brawling on the floor. Sharp thundercracks and frissions of static electricity filled the air around them, making Draco’s skin prickle and his nose hurt. He tried to kick at Weasley as he rolled near but was yanked back again, and he heard Anthony’s voice, low and close in his ear-

“Let them get this out of their systems. They’ve been at each other’s throats all week.”

The bystander effect had taken hold over the partiers who had noticed the brawl. They were dazed, unsure what to do, perhaps estimating that doing magic under the influence was more dangerous than letting the alphas wrestle it out and go to the hospital wing later. Finally Ginny shot a stunner indiscriminately at the pair, catching her brother. The electricity in the air faded. Longbottom shoved Weasley off him and staggered to his feet.

“We’d better go,” he choked out. A black bruise was spreading over his cheekbone. 

The bouncers thought the same. The music had stopped, and a pair of witches shoved through the crowd. “Get out,” one of them said, gesturing sharply with her wand. “Give the bracelets back and get out.”

Ginny ripped her bracelet off without hesitation and threw it at the bouncer. She shot a kick at her stupefied brother’s stomach. “Take a hint, doofus! She doesn’t want to talk to you.”

Hermione and Luna were both flushed, and they removed their bracelets as well, handing them over and slinking towards the exit. After a pause, Longbottom did the same, scooping up his wand. 

“Let go,” Draco hissed.

“Stay calm,” Anthony warned.

“I am calm-”

“You don’t feel calm.”

Draco was still twisting and straining to get towards Weasley’s prone body. Quiet, curious gazes tracked his furious writhing. The music had gone silent. No doubt Draco soon would be hearing from McGonagall about how he had lost his mind and shot off dark curses on Halloween. 

Draco met Hermione’s wide eyes from across the room, and then she was weaving back towards him, ducking through the shocked crowd, and reached out a hand.

His mouth went dumb and dry. 

Hermione nodded encouragingly, and Draco could have sworn they were alone in the room, that the world was spinning on the axis where she stood. He knew he was imagining it, he must have been, but he could almost see the pulse in her wrist, right next to her gland. 

“Let’s leave,” Anthony murmured, dragging Draco back to the dungeon full of sweating, stinking humans. He still had a hard grip on Draco’s shoulder. Being this close to another alpha made Draco’s throat itch. This was Anthony, his rival. He was supposed to lock antlers with him and fight over who got to breed the eligible does—to fight over Hermione. Fight. Fuck. Same thing. 

Hermione gave him a tiny smile, her hand still outstretched, palm up and wrist pushed forward, and he realized she was doing this on purpose. I’m not a slave to my instincts, Draco reminded himself. He didn’t need to fight Anthony, nor did he need to fuck Hermione in public in order to make it known that she was his. A pragmatic voice in the back of his mind wondered if perhaps there was even a benefit to being seen with Anthony Goldstein. Anthony had been in Dumbledore’s Army. He ran in the same circles as the Golden Trio. 

Draco followed Hermione, letting Anthony keep a grip on his shoulder, and only shoving him away once they reached fresher air. They caught up with Longbottom, Luna, and Ginny outside the dungeon. As they hurried down the corridor, the music started up behind them.

Draco wrinkled his nose at the sour scent of discomfort and unease rolling off the omegas. Longbottom smelled it as well, and reached for Ginny to put an arm around her shoulders.

Ginny leaned away. “I’m fine.”

The rest of the group seemed have an idea of where they were going. Maybe there was some Dumbledore's Army hangout spot that Draco didn't know about. They passed the corridor that led to the entrance to the Slytherin dungeons, and he paused. Already he was walking at the back of the group. He didn’t really belong. Maybe he should just—go. Before he made things worse. 

Hermione glanced back.

Coming? she mouthed. 

Draco followed as if led by a string. 

They went out to the grounds. “Not the quidditch pitch,” Ginny said darkly. “Ron likes to hit bludgers when he’s upset.”

A sharp autumn wind blew through them, and Hermione casted a heating charm on herself. 

“Cold?” Anthony asked, pulling off his jacket.

“She’s a competent witch, she doesn’t need your jacket,” Draco said.

But Hermione took the jacket, and stared at Draco as she pulled it on. 

She was lucky they were outside, the wind was blowing, and they were surrounded by her friends, he thought furiously. Or he’d-

Not a slave to his instincts, he reminded himself. But if she wants to play games—we can play games.

Draco turned to Luna, whose hair and clothes were still soaking wet. Water droplets beaded on her skin, and he thought perhaps she looked a bit green. “Aren’t you cold?”

“I’m a nereid,” Luna said, wrapping her arms around her stomach. “One of the daughters of the sea.” Her teeth clacked, and despite himself, Draco’s stomach twisted. Crazy Loony Lovegood. He distinctly remembered the first time he noticed her was when an older Ravenclaw knocked a glass of pumpkin juice into her lap. He had laughed and pointed, and got Crabbe and Goyle to join in. 

“Nereids don’t live in Scotland,” he said gently, pulling off his own jacket and draping it around her shoulders. He cast a drying charm over her. 

“Thanks,” Luna said, peeking up at him and pulling his coat tight around herself. Draco draped an arm around her shoulders, glaring at Hermione. A warm, sweet scent suffused him. He looked down at Luna, but she had dropped her gaze to the ground, a flush high and hot on her cheeks. A primordial instinct roared inside him. Good omega. He was taking care of her. He was a good provider. Hermione should take notice.

“There’s already a group by the Whomping Willow,” Ginny said, pointing to a small bonfire off in the distance. “And I know that the Hufflepuffs are having their own thing down by the lake. What about near Hagrid’s cabin?”

The former groundskeeper had gone on leave to work on diplomatic relations with the giants, leaving his cabin dark and empty. Draco hadn’t thought about the half-giant in ages. The rest of the group—minus Anthony—all sighed over how much they missed the great lumbering oaf. All Draco could think of was that time he had been bit by a hippogriff during Care of Magical Creatures class. 

They settled down in a circle behind Hagrid’s cabin. Anthony plopped himself down between Draco and Hermione, unnecessarily close, so that his knee touched Draco’s. 

Even with their heating charms, it was chilly.

“Should we start a fire?” Longbottom suggested. 

“I’m three deep,” Anthony said, raising his hands in defeat. “I’d better not try any pyromancy right now.”

Luna, Ginny, and Longbottom all agreed, looking to Hermione and Draco.

“I—can’t,” Draco said after a pause.

“I’ll do it.” Hermione sighed like she was resigned to always ending up the responsible one. The group watched in awkward silence as she accio-ed tinder from the edge of the Forbidden Forest and set it alight.

“Want some?” Luna whispered, offering Draco her little flask. “It’s got an expanding charm on the inside. I’ve got lots.”

Getting drunk was the dumbest thing Draco could imagine doing right now. He had already made that mistake once. But Luna was looking at him like he held the world in his hands. Did she even know that he had been among the many who used to laugh at her?

I’ll make friends with your friends.  

Or was it—I wish your friends were my friends?

Even if Hermione wasn’t watching, Draco wouldn’t have been able to say no. He took a sip of Luna’s alcohol and handed it back. 

“I don’t usually drink this much,” Neville was saying as he passed a bottle to Ginny. 

“Me neither.” Ginny took a long drag and made a face, then very carefully set the bottle on the ground. “I actually… don’t think I’d ever been drunk before this year.”

“Me three-ther,” Luna said. She rocked back and forth, throwing a hand out behind her. “I like being drunk. It makes everything easier.”

They gazed at the fire for a minute, Ginny and Neville passing the bottle back and forth at a worrisome pace. Anthony produced his own flask from his pocket and knocked it back. 

Just as Draco was about to announce that he was tired and needed to leave, Hermione said, “It’s Halloween. We should do something.”

“Like what,” Ginny groused. “Carve pumpkins? Is the Death Eater allowed to be within 50 yards of a knife?”

“Ghost stories,” Anthony drawled. “On Halloween you’re supposed to tell ghost stories.”

“Here’s a ghost story for ya,” said Ginny. “Here lies my sixth year. Murdered in infancy by You-Know-Who. WoOoOo.” She wiggled her fingers sarcastically and snatched the bottle from Neville. “Feel the goosebumps yet?”

“You’re in a mood,” Hermione muttered.

“Well now my seventh year is circling the drain too, so why shouldn’t I be?” Ginny’s face was bright red and her eyes were watery. She wiped her nose furiously and put the bottle down too hard. It fell over, spilling out towards the fire, and a tendril of flame lit up the puddle of alcohol. Neville grabbed the bottle, rubbing the dirt off on his pant leg. 

Hermione stared at the fire. “Is this about the alpha and omega thing? Or is it about Ron and Harry?”

Draco suddenly felt like a student who had just realized they wandered into the wrong class, and now couldn’t leave without appearing rude. Anthony raised his eyebrows at Draco as if to say, get a load of this.

“I mean, they always say seventh year is the worst, but I didn’t think it would be harder than living through an actual war.” Ginny pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them. “This stupid alpha and omega problem—and Ron is making things so hard on the quidditch team—and all the professors seem to think we should be able to go back to normal, as if we didn’t live through the worst year of our lives. I miss Harry, and-” Her voice cracked, and she glared at Draco with shining eyes. “-why is he even here?”

“He came with me,” Luna said quietly. 

“I should go,” Draco said, starting to his feet, but Hermione said, “No, you should stay,” at the same time that Anthony reached out and grabbed Draco’s arm, tugging him back to the ground. 

Anthony flexed his fingers around Draco’s bicep for a moment before letting him go. 

The fire crackled. Neville pulled up a handful of dry grass and tossed it in. “Witches and wizards don’t really tell ghost stories,” he said to no one in particular. “Not like muggles do.”

Ginny shot to her feet and rocked back on her heels. “I’m gonna go for a walk.” She spun around and wobbled off into the former hippogriff pasture. 

“Is she okay?” Draco asked.

Luna shook her head.

“She’s been having a rough year,” Hermione said. “I think having that heat really got to her.”

Draco poked a finger into the hard ground, avoiding Hermione's gaze. His dress pants would be dirty later.

“When do you think our heats will be?” Luna mumbled. She swung her flask between two fingers and nearly dropped it. “Oh—Draco. Did you want more?”

“No. I’m alright.”

“Never,” Hermione mumbled. “I hope never.”

“Is there anything we can… do?” Neville asked delicately. 

“Ginny says…” Hermione paused, and swallowed. “She wishes she had had someone there with her. I guess—I don’t know-” She shook her head, unable to continue.

Draco could suddenly picture it. One of the omegas went into heat and needed an alpha to get them through it. Hermione would ask for him, he was sure of it, and he would go to her and fall into her and fuck her for five days of blissful oblivion, and then she’d finally realize-

“Stop thinking dirty thoughts,” Anthony said under his breath, poking Draco with a twig. 

“I think I want to go back to Ravenclaw now,” Luna announced. 

“I’ll walk you back,” Draco said quickly. He stood, and held out a hand for Luna to get up. “Goldstein, you coming?”

Anthony waved a hazy hand. “In a bit.”

Draco’s lip twitched. “Are you sober enough to make it back on your own?”

“I’m never sober, sweetcheeks.” Anthony flopped back on the dry grass and grinned up at Draco. “I’ll make it fine.”

Hermione looked up at Draco. “Can we talk later?” she asked. 

“Yeah. We should talk.”

“Hermione really likes you,” Luna mumbled. “I like you too.”

“Okay,” Draco agreed. “You’re drunk. Don’t go saying things you’ll be embarrassed about later.”

“What do I have to be embarrassed about?” She weaved down the corridor, one arm out to keep from running into the wall. “I think Neville likes you too. You shouldn’t worry too much about Ginny. She’s being mean because she’s unhappy. I’m unhappy too.”

“I’m—sorry.”

“I think you do what Ginny does. You remind me of her. You’re mean to people when you’re sad.”

Draco didn’t know what to say to that. He focused on the cobblestone, trying to pick a straight line in contrast to Luna’s back-and-forth. “Maybe,” he said after a while.

“Ginny was my first friend at Hogwarts,” Luna offered, unprompted. “She’s the reason I got to know Hermione, and Ron, and Harry. My friends.” She said friends as if casting a spell, as if the very word glowed out of her mouth. 

They walked for a few minutes. When they reached the staircase to Ravenclaw tower, Luna went up first, and Draco followed her in case she tripped. 

“I know you’re going to pick Hermione,” Luna said as she trudged up the winding stairs, holding tight to the railing. “But if you don’t-”

They reached the door to Ravenclaw, and she banged the eagle-faced knocker. 

“What has two hands, a face, and cannot see?” asked the knocker. 

“That’s… a crumple-horned snorkack.”

The knocker made a face. “I suppose.” The door swung open.

Luna turned sloppily to face Draco. “Toodle-loo, Draco. Thanks for coming to the party with me.”

“Goodnight.” He didn’t think she had heard him because the door closed before he got the word out. He felt strange, like he was walking two feet to the left of his body. What had she been about to say?

“Nice of you to walk her back, eh?”

Draco’s wand leapt to his hand. “Motherfucker,” he snapped. “Goldstein, they should put a fucking bell on you.”

Anthony slouched against the wall a few steps down. “Maybe you’re just drunk.” He grinned, resting his head on the stonework. “It can be a bitch answering the riddles when you’re drunk.”

“I bet,” Draco muttered. “Pardon.” He stepped down past Anthony.

“Muggles have this thing called a designated driver, so when the rest of the group goes drinking, they can still get home safely. We should have a system like that for the tower, huh?”

Draco sighed. “Do you want me to do the riddle for you?”

“You’re a fucking champ.”

The top of the stairs was rather narrow; it must be an enormous inconvenience during high traffic times of day. Anthony’s fingers brushed Draco’s shirt as he went to knock on the door to Ravenclaw.

“What flies without eyes?” asked the bronze knocker.

“A… bat,” Anthony mumbled.

“A snitch,” Draco said.

The door cracked open without indicating which answer it had accepted. 

“You’re welcome,” Draco said. He stepped past Anthony once again and Anthony grabbed his shirt. “What now, asshole?”

Anthony smelled like lemons and radio static. He had a glazed look in his eyes and alcohol on his breath. “Why’d you come to the party?”

Draco tried to pry Anthony’s hand off him. “What?”

“Was it ‘cuz of Loony?”

“Her name’s Luna. And it’s not really your business. You should know this shirt is more expensive than you can afford to repair.”

Anthony searched Draco’s face up and down. “No other reason?”

“Fuck off.”

“‘Cuz I noticed you only come to the parties I ask you to.”

Draco pulled back warily, but Anthony still had a fistful of his shirt. “Yeah, well no one else tells me when the parties are-”

Anthony smashed his lips into Draco’s. Draco jerked away, his back hitting the wall, stumbling down a step. His heart hammered and the usual rush of fury he felt when other alphas stepped into his territory was curiously absent. There seemed to be a gap in his instincts, as if the alpha and omega thing had not been designed for this type of interaction. 

Anthony looked horrified. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.” 

The scent of lemons was stronger now. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it was accompanied by a harsh odor, like bleach. Draco rubbed his nose. His wand was still in his hand, and he consciously put it in his pocket, staring down at the crumpled spot on his shirt where Anthony had grabbed him. He cleared his throat, looking down and away. “I don’t swing that way.”

“Yeah, I—I wanted to find out for sure.”

“You have a good night, Goldstein.”

“Wait! Draco, please don’t tell anyone. Please.”

Draco waved his hand as he walked down the stairs. “You picked the one bloke no one would believe.”

He thought that would end it, but Anthony followed him. “I don’t think people hate you as much as you think. I, um—I can tell Slughorn I want to switch alchemy partners.”

“It’s fine,” Draco said. “I like having you as my alchemy partner.”

The scent of lemons brightened. “Br-brilliant. And this—what happened here-”

Draco rolled his eyes. “Your secret’s safe with me. Again. Goodnight, Anthony.”

Chapter Text

“Are they gone?” Ginny rasped as she came back and squatted next to the fire. She raised a hand in front of her. Shadows flickered around the edges of her fingers. 

“You okay?” Neville asked.

Ginny pursed her lips and reached for the bottle. 

“Maybe we should cut you off,” Hermione suggested. 

“Magic folk don’t get alcohol poisoning.”

Hermione knew about magical resistances to certain respiratory diseases and genetic disorders, but she was pretty sure that if they could get drunk like muggles, they could get alcohol poisoning like muggles. “Ginny. Getting drunker isn’t going to feel better.”

Ginny sighed pointedly and fell backwards onto her butt with a grunt. Neville handed Hermione the bottle. 

“You should drink some water,” Hermione said, magicking up a cup. A flitting memory skimmed the surface of her mind. Someone else had done this for her when she was drunk…

Ginny sullenly accepted the cup and let water run down her chin as she slurped. When she was done she aimed her wand and tossed the cup in the air. “Evanesco.”

The cup vanished at the peak of its arc. Her accuracy surprised Hermione; maybe her hand-eye coordination was sharp from quidditch, or maybe witches and wizards really were affected differently by alcohol. The fire was dying down, and none of them bothered to restart it. 

“Do you want me to heal your face?” Hermione asked. 

Neville’s left cheekbone was purple and black from his fight with Ron. “No.”

She squinted, trying to read his expression in the dying firelight. The bruise cast a distortion across his face. “We shouldn’t do that ‘Ron alert’ stuff anymore. It’s unkind. We need to find a way to talk with him.”

But Ron had become impossible to talk to. He bickered constantly with Neville and Ginny. With Hermione he had taken to incessant sighing, long forlorn glances, and frequent unnecessary trips back and forth across her field of vision whenever they were in the common room at the same time. Hermione once snapped at him to stop acting like a child and tell her if he wanted something, and he had agreed to stop. Less than an hour later he was back at his passive aggressive sadness. 

Avoiding him was easy. It was simple. 

“He’s not handling this whole alpha and omega thing well,” she mumbled. “I mean, who is? But we don’t need to make it harder for him.”

She glanced at Ginny. Ginny looked up, then away, her lips twisted. “He’s said himself that he doesn’t want to be at Hogwarts. We’re speeding up the process.”

“Merlin, Gin.” 

Ginny pulled her knees up in front of her and put her chin on top of them. Under her breath, she whispered, “I wish I wasn’t here myself.”

“I’m gonna go in.” Neville lurched to his feet and she saw that he wasn’t quite as sober as he was feigning. He had been hiding it by keeping quiet. As he brushed off the seat of his pants, he said, “Prolly right ‘bout Ron. We should talk to ‘Gonagall. Tell her I started it.”

“I think I’m ready too,” Ginny said. She reached up, signaling for Neville to grab her hand and help her, but he didn’t notice and started wandering towards the castle. With a grunt, she staggered up. “Coming?”

“In a minute.” Hermione found herself hypnotized by the last pulsing fingers of the fire. 

“It’s cold. I don’t want to wait.”

“Go ahead without me.”

“Are you trying to sneak off and fuck Draco Malfoy again?”

That didn’t deserve an answer, and she knew Ginny didn’t really want one. “Do you think the alpha and omega problem would have been easier if Harry had come back?”

“Who cares? Harry’s not here.” Ginny smothered the end of the fire with a sloppy snap of her wand. Hermione rose and wrapped her arm through Ginny’s, and they trudged towards the castle. After a minute, Ginny mumbled, “Sometimes I think about how if Harry had come back, we’d still be dating. Then maybe when my heat came, they would have let him help me.” She snuffled sourly. “D’you like Draco? Even after everything he did?” She didn’t wait for Hermione to answer. “You have a better perspective on these things sometimes. I’m not good at letting people change. I’m too much like my brothers… Dad always told me I was hasty. It’s been a month since my heat—one of the rest of you is going to get one soon. Maybe you should start making plans.”

Hermione couldn’t bear to stay in Gryffindor after putting Ginny to bed. Ginny had refused to sleep in the seventh year dorm, mumbling something about her grumpy roommate who didn’t like it when she got in late, so Hermione had tucked her into the bed that used to be Lavender’s in the eighth year dorm.

She found herself at the entrance to Slytherin, still thinking about Ginny’s warning. Maybe you should start making plans. The deafening party in the dungeons had stopped. She didn’t have her watch, so she didn’t know what time it was—not that the watch would really have helped—but an anxious, moody part of her hoped that Ron’s fight with Neville had shut the party down. 

“Looking for Draco again?” asked a girl.

Hermione whipped her wand out between herself and the girl. “Who-”

She recognized this girl, very vaguely. Dark hair. Fifth or sixth year. She had seen this girl last time she came to Slytherin, banging on the hidden entrance, demanding that Draco come out. Hermione’s cheeks went pink. She had made a fool of herself. “Um—yes, is Draco there?”

“He’s not in,” the dark-haired girl said carelessly. “But I can show you his dorm, if you like. You can wait for him there.”

Hermione glanced up and down the quiet dungeon corridor. “Thanks.”

The girl let Hermione into the Slytherin common room. Hermione had heard from Ron and Harry in second year how gloomy Slytherin was, but her stomach twisted as she stepped through the entrance and looked around the dim common room. It was lit by a few spare chandeliers that glowed a sallow yellow. Unlike the squishy armchairs in Gryffindor, the Slytherin couches looked as hard as tombstones. Hermione squinted, trying to make out the details of the paintings on the walls. “It’s dark in here.”

The dark-haired girl shrugged, nearly walking into a couch and dodging it awkwardly. “I guess. You get used to it.”

Being underwater, the Slytherin dormitory must receive practically no natural light. Perhaps everyone in Slytherin was suffering a year-round vitamin D deficiency. Hermione made a mental note to explain to McGonagall that humans need a certain amount of sunlight to be mentally healthy. Would Voldemort have been so genocidal if he had gotten enough sun as a young man?

Tom Riddle was born without the capacity to love, she reminded herself. 

They descended the stairs to the boy’s dormitory. The dark-haired girl wobbled and held tight to the railing, and Hermione got a sharp whiff of liquor off her. 

“Were you at the Halloween party?” she asked the girl politely.

The girl ignored her. They passed the doors to the younger boys’ dorms, and stopped at the end of a dark, velvety hall. “Here’s Malfoy.” She patted the door congenially, and gave Hermione a sneer. “Have fun.”

Hermione’s face heated. “Excuse me?”

The girl exited the boy’s dorm with surprising speed, her dark hair floating behind her, though she wasn’t quite walking in a straight line, and then Hermione was viscerally aware that she was standing alone at a dead end hallway in the boy’s dormitory. In the Slytherin’s boy’s dormitory. Besides Draco, she didn’t know a single boy in Slytherin. A prickle ran down the back of her neck—this was no place for an unmated omega. 

She knocked the door, despite already having been told Draco wasn’t in. She twisted the knob, not really expecting it to open, but the cool wood gave way under her fingers and she slipped into Draco’s room and closed the door behind her.

“Oh-” 

It smelled like Draco. Heavy and musky and masculine and everywhere, like he had slipped his fingers up under her chemise, lifting it away from her hips, his hands hot and large around her waist. I shouldn’t be here. This was an alpha’s space, and she hadn’t been invited in. She sagged against the door, feeling her heartbeat, trying to breathe through her mouth. Her mouth flooded with saliva and she pressed her thighs together, aching between her legs. Air-freshening charm, she needed an air-freshening charm. 

“Con- convertat aerem.” No, convertat was for poisons and deadly smogs. “Um- emundare! Emundare aerem.”

It took three tries to get the wand motion right, but then the overbearing musk of Draco lightened and Hermione’s head cleared enough to look around the room she had entered. It was very like the dorms in Gryffindor, four-poster beds and steamer trunks and writing desks tucked between. The bed-curtains were green instead of red, and where the window would be, there was only a heavy curtain. Hermione peered around the five beds. Draco had tossed a dress shirt across the bed farthest from the door—probably the one where he slept. He had spread his things across multiple of the desks, but one held his quills and extra parchment, and had the chair half askew, like he had stood up and not bothered to push it in. There was a black book with golden lettering and a stylized image of a beetle on the cover. Half the title was covered by a note. For Hermione Granger. The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation.

He had found the book after all. She stepped towards the desk, away from the door, and ropes dropped out of nowhere and tangled around her arms and ankles, tightening abruptly. Hermione gave a little shriek and toppled over onto the floor, landing painfully on her shoulder. She struggled on instinct, trying to cast a diffindo on the ropes as they wrestled her hands down to her sides. Instead of cutting the ropes, she accidentally cut herself, which put a stop to her attempts to do magic with her hands now tied behind her back. She rolled onto her back, leaning against the cut on her palm, trying to slow the bleeding. 

Shit. This was not how she had imagined her talk with Draco going. 

Her arms began to go numb. She rolled over a full rotation to see if she had bled very much onto Draco’s floor, and then wished she hadn’t, because her shoulder felt like it was about to pop out of its socket. 

The sound of pounding feet carried down the hall and then the door slammed open. 

“Hermione?” said Draco.

She squinted up at him, twisting her neck. “Hello. I see you booby-trapped your room.”

He bit his lip as if trying not to smile. “You never know when a rogue Gryffindor is going to sneak into your room to assassinate you. I assume that’s what this is—an assassination attempt?”

“Please just untie me.”

He kneeled down next to her, glancing over toward the bloody spot on the floor. His nostrils flared. “You’re bleeding.” Immediately he got behind her and started fiddling with the knots. Hermione let out a sharp breath when he pushed her onto her shoulder, and he paused. “Can I use your wand? It’ll go faster.”

“Please.”

“Diffindo.” The ropes fell away, and quickly began to disintegrate. Hermione tried to push herself up, but her arms were still numb and cold, and Draco caught her and helped her sit up, kneeling in front of her and holding her bleeding hand. “Let me do your hand.” Hermione looked at her palm. The cut was deeper than an episkey would fix, though at least the severing charm had cut so cleanly she could barely feel the wound. Draco tried the episkey and grit his teeth when it didn’t work. “We should go to Pomfrey.”

“It’s the middle of the night. I know a healing spell for skin wounds.”

Draco nodded, his face oddly blank and focused as he cradled Hermione’s hand in his palm.

“Can I have my wand back?”

He looked up at her. “What?”

“So I can cast the healing spell?”

“But you’re hurt.”

“On my non-dominant hand.”

“Let me do it,” he said, still cradling her hand gently with that odd, focused expression, like he was half somewhere else. “What’s the incantation?”

“...Consuendi cutis simul. With a sort of zipping motion across the cut.”

He healed her in a single try, then cast lumos to examine his work. The cut had left a faint white line. “Maybe you should still go to Pomfrey.”

Hermione slipped her hand out of his. “Mother hen, I’m fine.” She stood up and looked around his dorm room again, and he stood as well, his eyes following her as if he was lost and she was his only source of light. It occurred to her that she hadn’t actually come up with a reason for being here. She could have waited until morning to talk to him, like a normal person, instead of reverse-ambushing him and ending up hogtied on the floor of his room. She pointed to The Greek Magical Papyri. “So you found it.”

“A house elf did.”

“Swirly?”

“I couldn’t find him. The elves in the laundry don’t know where he works.”

A mysterious house elf, a message from Dumbledore, and a book. This was all too familiar. “Specialis revelio,” Hermione murmured, tapping the cover of The Greek Magical Papyri.  

“I’ve tried every curse detection spell I know. It’s just a book.”

She opened to a random page and flipped through, scanning the spells. “Books don’t need to be Riddle’s possessed diary to be powerful. Simple words on a page can be powerful too. Are you sure there isn’t a spell or ritual in here that someone might want you to know? Or a hidden message in the marginalia?” She felt his presence behind her, peering over her shoulder, and she swallowed, trying to hold still, as if looking up at him or moving over would be meaningful in some way—an admittance that she cared he was close to her. 

“Half of these spells require me to sacrifice a baby goat to the Nile, and the other half want me to pray to a retired Egyptian god. It’s not the most useful spellbook I’ve ever seen.”

The front table of contents gave a list of all the spells and spell fragments that the book contained, and Hermione traced her finger down this list, forcing herself to ignore the shimmer of heat spreading across her neck. Despite her air-freshening charm, the room was rapidly beginning to smell like Draco again, heavy and heady and everywhere. Wet discharge gushed in her panties, and she gasped and ducked away from the book, away from Draco. “Sorry—sorry. I shouldn’t have come down here. I should go back to Gryffindor.” 

She ducked her head in apology, waiting for her alpha to accept her apology and fuck her in forgiveness, or to grab her and fuck her as punishment. The room had gotten quite warm. 

“Hermione?” Draco said softly. 

Air-freshening charm. Clear air, clear mind. But her alpha wouldn’t like that. Would he? Would he care? This was just Draco, who was supposed to hate her, who clearly wanted to fuck her, who had a heavy cock and was strong enough to hold her down and make her take it.

“Emundare aerem,” Draco said, clearing the room again. 

Hermione gasped, the scent-free air like a cold shock of water. 

This had been monumentally stupid. She should have known better than to come hang out in a small, windowless room with an alpha who was attracted to her, and who she was attracted to.

“Are you okay?” Draco stepped towards her and she backed away, a shaky hand out to ward him off. 

“I- um-” She touched her hair, and then her sweating neck, and then wiped her hands on her skirt. “I want to apologize for being so drunk the other night. It was foolish, and presumptuous, and—I know I’ve been giving you mixed signals.” Her face burned. “The thing is, I know Luna likes you, and Neville said he doesn’t hate you, and when Ginny’s not in a shit mood she seems okay that you and I are friends, and you said you’ve been working to get rid of the dark mark, and I was wondering- I was wondering- since the other alphas who I trust the most are also the ones who I’ve grown up with, they feel more like brothers to me-”

Draco’s brow furrowed, as if he had lost the thread of her ramble. 

“-and Ginny advised to make a plan just in case the healers don’t figure out a treatment before my heat, to- to have decided in advance-” Oh god. She’d never be able to go out in society again if he said no. Hermione twisted the fabric of her skirt between her hands. “-who I want to help me during my heat, if it comes to that. And—will you? Help me during my heat? If there isn’t a treatment by then?”

She watched the column of his throat as he swallowed, and then the room was filled with him again, as if the air-freshening charm had suddenly reversed itself. A rumble sounded somewhere deep in his chest, a sound she didn’t know he could make. Her knees went weak. “Hermione-” He stepped forward, and Hermione hadn’t realized how long his legs were, that he could cross half the room in a single stride. He lifted both his hands to her face, almost cradling her cheeks, looking down at her with dark eyes, his pupils blown. “Do you know what you do to me?”

“So—you’re saying yes?” she whispered.

He kissed her, drawing her towards him so that she was forced to lean up on her toes. Her hands clenched uselessly at her sides, and then found purchase against his chest, keeping her balance. His hand traced down the line of her jaw and then pulled at the zipper on the back of her dress.

“Do you want me to do it?” she asked hazily against his mouth, and his grip tightened in her hair. No. He pushed her to make her turn around and kissed the side of her neck, right over her gland, scraping it lightly with his teeth. He was stronger, more dominating, than she had expected. The dress loosened around her middle and he tugged it off her, goosebumps rising all over her exposed flesh even though it was warm. Her mouth went dry. This dress didn’t require a bra, so she hadn’t worn one. Draco brushed his hand across her breast, and her breath hitched as he passed his thumb over her nipple. He chuckled, and tweaked her nipple again. 

“Sensitive?” Hermione had lost the ability to speak, but he didn’t seem to mind. All she could seem to make was an embarrassing keening sound that she was sure everyone in the Slytherin boy’s dormitory could hear. It was a sound of pure, animal need, expressly designed to attract alphas to her, and she was glad this was happening in the Slytherin dorm and not the Gryffindor dorm, where Ron and Neville would certainly try to come crashing in. She could feel Draco’s hardness pressing into the cleft of her ass through his pants, and she squirmed back against him, needing to feel his length against her cunt. Draco groaned now, palming her breast almost painfully, and then he slipped his hand inside her panties, combing through her curly pubic hair and reaching between her legs. He brushed against something that made her gasp and buck in his hand, and he pressed again, rubbing, his other hand still on her breast and his cock hard against her ass. 

She felt tiny, utterly lost in his grasp. She couldn’t have pulled free if she wanted to—though she didn’t want to. There was something deliciously satisfying about being wanted by a strong, attractive male, by being made to submit to his will.

“I want to see you,” he said, his voice hoarse, and he tugged at her panties. She pulled them down, letting them drop to her ankles, and he spun her back around and fell to his knees in front of her, his nose level with her pubic hair. She bit her lip, reddening, not sure where to look. Despite, or perhaps because she was already naked, she felt much more vulnerable when she could see that he was still fully clothed. “Have you done this before?”

What was he talking about? Sex? Yes—with him. She finally found her voice. “W-what?”

“Has anyone…” He blinked up at her, gently squeezing the side of her hip, and she realized he meant to put his mouth on her. 

She found her hand pushing at his forehead, trying to push him away even though he had a grip on her thigh and her hip and was too strong to overpower. She didn’t even know why, exactly, she was pushing him away.

Draco didn’t let go, holding her harder for a moment, and then he seemed to break out of his trance, and released her and leaned onto his heels. Immediately she stumbled back, where he couldn’t reach her without standing up. 

“Do you want to stop?” he asked, a bruised confusion coloring his voice. 

Hermione searched wildly around the room, and grabbed his dress shirt from his bed and wrapped it around herself to cover her breasts. “No,” she said uncertainly. 

Draco ran his hand through his hair, standing up, and she took another step back on instinct. Seeing her anxiety, he put his hands in his pockets, as if to show he wasn’t going to try and touch her again. “I’m really sorry.”

“No no no no no-” She flapped her hands, then pulled them back inside the shirt. Bad omega. He was disappointed—she didn’t need omega instincts to guess that. But this was something that Hermione the girl, not Hermione the omega needed. “I just- I need to regroup. It’s a lot of things I haven’t done before. And, you know, reading about things in books is—different.”

“Or doing it when you’re drunk?” he added with an air of suspicion and slight irony. He picked his wand up off the floor. “Emundare aerem.”

Hermione didn’t answer. She sat down on one of the beds that wasn’t Draco’s and pulled her legs up under her, breathing the fresh air. Already the heavy musk of Draco’s arousal was filling the room again; he leaned casually against the bedpost, but had a strain in the grit of his jaw, like he was working very hard to keep Normal Draco at the surface. 

She cast about for something to distract herself while her heartbeat slowed. “How does the booby trap work? Does it violate your probation to set that up?”

“It’s thirteen spells,” Draco said tersely. “None of them register on their own. And no one’s tried to trip it until tonight. Thanks for proof of concept.” He came and sat on the other end of the bed by her, and Hermione found herself staring at his thighs, how strong they looked, even through his pants. Unfair that men could look like that. Their bodies could contain all that power wound up inside them. “Do you want to stop?”

Hermione ached between her legs. She could go back to Gryffindor and use her own fingers to make herself come, but then all of the arousal that was currently making a damp spot on the bed underneath her would go to waste. Her body craved to be penetrated, held down and fucked hard and knotted. “I just… don’t want to be more naked than you.”

His eyes flashed dark, and he leaned back on his hands. “Then come take this off me.” 

Hermione shivered at the tone in his voice. It wasn’t quite an alpha command, but it was close. Perhaps her intense desire to obey was muddling with her ability to tell the difference. She crawled over on her knees and reached out with shaky hands to undo the top button of his shirt, trying to look anywhere except at his face. The small, fine, buttons refused to give way under her fingers, and as she struggled, her face getting hotter and hotter, he stroked her hair with the back of his hand. Light, patient, almost paternal. 

She undid the last button and reached up to his shoulders to tug the shirt off him, and he grabbed her chin and kissed her lip, a kiss so quick she barely realized it was happening before he pulled away and removed his undershirt in that way that men do, lifting from the back of the neck in one fluid motion. Hermione reached for his belt buckle but he slid his belt off himself, impatient, and then he stood, standing her up with him, again sucking at the gland on her neck. His cock pressed into her side through his pants, and her hand skittered over it, not sure what he wanted. 

“Should I—help?” she whispered. He shook his head, unbuttoning his pants and kicking them off, and slick gushed down her leg as he rutted against her again. She stumbled and her knees hit the bed, falling backwards onto it so he was on top of her, caging her in with his arms. She gazed up at him, waiting, and realized he was waiting for her as well.

“What do you want me to do?” He traced the gland on her neck and then trailed his hand down her breast to circle her nipple, making her shiver.

“I… don’t know.”

“Not an answer, Granger.” He pinched her nipple lightly, his voice dangerous. “I’ll stop if you don’t tell me to keep going.”

“No, I want you to f- fuck me.”

He buried his face in her neck, then kissed his way up to her lips, rutting hard between her legs. Then he rolled them over, and Hermione found herself on top of him, rubbing herself on the length of his cock through his underwear. She pulled at the fabric and he yanked them off, and then his cock was right there, thick and hard and leaking a white fluid from its tip, and all Hermione could think was how badly she needed it inside her. She touched it hesitantly, and Draco tensed, grabbing her hips, holding her up away from him. “Contraception?”

“I’m on a potion,” Hermione said, and then she positioned his cock underneath her and sank onto it in relief. Draco let out a groan, his fingers flexing on her hips as she adjusted to being penetrated. She tested a shallow thrust, and he bucked as if he couldn’t quite help himself; she almost purred with delight. How fascinating to be desired so intensely. This is what it should have been like, their first time. It should have been something she could feel and remember, it should have been on a bed and not on the floor of a classroom. She rocked gently on his cock, placing her hands on his broad chest and not moving too deeply.

“Fuck, you’re tight.” He pumped up into her, beginning to take control of the pace, and she let him, feeling like a small boat being rocked on the waves. Then he slowed, propping himself up on his elbows. 

“Is something wrong?”

“Can’t come like this.” He rubbed sweat from his brow.

She sat for a moment, focusing on how full and thick he was inside her. “Then what…”

“Can you—turn over?”

She climbed off, his cock falling out of her, and sat down on the bed, hesitant. “Like-”

“On your hands and knees,” he said, his voice rough. Slowly, Hermione turned around, glancing over her shoulder. His one hand went to stroke himself as he watched her with burning hunger. She understood he was waiting for her to make a decision. If she wanted to finish face to face, he would acquiesce. But there was something animalistically pleasing about sublimating herself in obedience, and doing something purely because he wanted to. She bent over, and felt his hand come to rest on the curve of her ass. “I need you to—sort of—present yourself to me.” His thumb rubbed back and forth, and she tentatively lowered her head and arched her back. “Fuck,” he breathed, pressing lightly on the small of her back to make her arch further. “Good girl.” His erection nudged at her entrance, slowly cleaving her open, and she pushed back, her world narrowing to a single point of sensation, a primordial joining. He pushed in further, and it was different now, it was like the universe was being remade around his cock. She hadn’t realized how much more depth she had to give. A pitiful gasp rang through the room as he sheathed himself fully inside her, and she realized the sound had come from her own throat. This was what it was supposed to be like, said the prideful little omega inside her. “Alright?” he asked, almost teasing.

“Um-”

Draco waited, letting her adjust to the new angle, and then she made a sound of helpless assent. She tensed around him as he began to thrust, and he reached down to stroke between her legs as if to comfort her. He slammed into her, making her squeak and lift her head, and he grabbed her neck and pushed her back down, then almost as quickly let go. “Sorry—sorry.”

She understood implicitly that he needed her not to talk, that the domineering alpha was in control of him as much as the omega had possessed her, and that her job now was to take whatever he gave. She didn’t think she was capable of speaking anyway; he had filled her, mind, body, and soul. He slammed into her again, picking up in urgency, and a coil of pleasure wound between her legs, every thrust like a turn of the key. 

Draco pinned her down between his arms and rested his nose over that spot on her neck that he liked so much, murmuring almost as if to himself, “Good girl, taking it so well… You’re doing perfect…” Something thickened at the base of his cock, tugging on each pull, and she pushed back, meeting his thrusts and moaning helplessly. Suddenly she gasped, her pleasure cresting and narrowing to a single point between her legs, the point where she was being split open, and the pleasure shimmered through her body like champagne bubbles, a strange elation frothing up inside her. This was what her body was made for, crooned the omega instincts. She was made to receive cock, to be the hole that her alpha pleasured himself with. She rolled her hips and Draco groaned, driving in and holding himself there. Warm semen splashed inside her. She shivered in contentment. His hand rested over her neck again, not pushing but lightly reminding her of her own submission. He tugged on the knot, testing its strength, and she whined, oversensitive. Slowly she shifted down onto her stomach, and then he rolled them onto their side so they could rest more comfortably while they were joined together. Another hot gush of semen bathed her cervix. She was beginning to feel a little uncomfortably full. 

“Are you okay?” Draco asked quietly.

Hermione nodded, mute.

“Can you say it for me?”

She swallowed, searching for her voice. “I’m okay. That was good.”

He pressed his lips to her shoulder, and she let her eyes close. She could probably fall asleep like this. Behind her, Draco’s breath slowed as well. This was basic procedure, she reminded herself. After orgasm, the body rewards you by making you relaxed and happy. She needed to stay awake long enough to go to the bathroom—something she had read you had to do after sex. After a few minutes, his knot softened enough to slip out of her, and he rolled on top of her again, kissing her lazily. 

“Beautiful… perfect…” He seemed to be talking to himself. “Will you stay here with me tonight?”

It hadn’t occurred to her that she would leave, but she didn’t want to go back to Gryffindor like this anyway; she didn’t need Ron losing his mind a second time in one night. “I’ll stay.”

“You’re a good-” He stumbled over his words, almost saying omega and then course-correcting to, “-witch.”

She almost laughed at the formality of it. “Not a bad wizard yourself.” Suddenly she worried that was the wrong thing to say, when in fact she was almost sure he did think of himself as a bad wizard, or at least a bad person, but it appeared to go over his head; perhaps he was too lost in the post-orgasmic glow. “So… is that a yes?”

He frowned.

“To being with me during my heat?”

“Yes.” He kissed her nose. “I can’t believe you thought I’d say otherwise.”

Chapter Text

The party had run long, late into the summer evening, and the outdoor torches had come on by magic. Perky young witches in short, attractive dress robes scurried through the crowd, refilling drinks and serving hors d'oeuvres. 

Narcissa leaned over and murmured to Draco, “Still no house elves. You know they could afford it. I suppose that tells you what kind of family the Greengrasses are.”

He was supposed to laugh, and he did, though he didn’t know what kind of family the Greengrasses were. They watched as Mr. Nott grabbed the arm of the witch who had bent attractively at the waist to refill his champagne glass. His other hand snaked up the back of her skirt and she jumped, then giggled shrilly, reddening and twisting away. Mr. Nott laughed as if at a shared joke, letting her go. 

Narcissa’s mouth was a flat, hard line. “Go play, Draco. Do not talk to the serving staff.”

Draco watched his eight-year-old self dutifully walk towards the other children. He barely remembered this night. The occasion was lost to him now, maybe a birthday, or a summer solstice event, or had it been a baby shower? Or—had it been a betrothal?

His usual companion Theo was missing. Theo had always been introverted and high-strung, less able to handle the pressures of the title Pureblood Heir than Draco at that age. Probably he had gone home early with his mother. At age eight, Draco had been disgusted by the idea of playing with the girls, who had gathered under a rose trellis and were showing each other their enchanted hair ribbons and charm bracelets in a fantastic, simpering caricature of their mothers. 

If Draco had run into Blaise, he probably would have tried to talk about Ministry affairs, like their fathers did. But Blaise was nowhere to be found. Draco’s feet carried him away from the civil torchlight, deeper into the grounds, padding across soft, cool lawn. The tones of the party faded, replaced by the pleasant trinkle of water. 

Two boys crouched at the edge of a pond, their faces half lit by moonlight. Draco watched them silently before asking, “What are you doing?”

Crabbe turned. “You can drop stuff in, and the fishes will come eat it. They’ll even eat rocks.” To demonstrate, he picked up a handful of gravel from the path and sprinkled it into the pond. The water stirred, and dim shapes swirled over to investigate under the water. 

Goyle thrust a stick into the water, stabbing several times and grunting when he failed to spear any of the fish. 

“You shouldn’t do that,” Draco said. “You shouldn’t feed them rocks or try to kill them.”

“It’s okay,” Crabbe said. “They’re just fishes. They don’t have brains.”

“But the Greengrasses might get mad. It could get your fathers in trouble if you kill their fish.”

Goyle looked up at Draco, his mouth hanging open as if this had never occurred to him. “Maybe we can catch one and put it back after we look at it?”

Draco became aware that there was a body curled between his arms. She smelled like cinnamon sugar and sex. He pressed his nose into her hair, breathing deeply, and she wriggled back against him. On instinct, he pressed his morning erection against her warm little body. 

“Hello, stranger,” she said, her voice low and raspy from being asleep. “I was wondering when you’d wake up. You’ve got me trapped like the devil’s snare.”

“D’you expect me to let you leave?” he said jokingly, and thrusted against her ass for emphasis. She had put on her panties and one of his silk sleeping shirts for bed, and he enjoyed the sensation of smooth fabric sliding between their bodies. She should always be dressed in soft, silky fabrics, things that felt nice to wear and nice to touch as he took them off her. 

She moaned as he rutted between her ass cheeks. His hand reached up under her shirt and squeezed her breast. Everywhere he touched, she was soft and giving. She wormed a hand under the covers and the musky scent of sex exploded on Draco’s tongue as he realized she was masturbating. 

“Fuck,” he groaned, almost drooling in anticipation of sinking into her. He rolled her onto her stomach so he was above her, throwing the covers out of the way and staring hungrily down at the wet spot in her panties and the desperate movements of her fingers behind the fabric. He pulled her panties down to her thighs to reveal her glistening cunt, and rubbed his cock across her slit, coating himself with slick. She arched her back, pressing her cunt out towards him, and he drove into her lush, wet heat. He fucked into her slowly, relishing her tightness. Her slick made a wet spot on the bed underneath their joining, and she gasped quietly at the peak of every thrust. He felt his orgasm coming and forced himself to stop, still embedded in her. “Touch yourself.”

She had stopped when he started fucking her, but now she eagerly began rubbing her clit again, almost the way a house elf will run to punish itself when ordered. Primal satisfaction roared in Draco’s chest. She obeyed him, the way an omega should. She would take his cock, and take his seed, and carry his children. He had never felt so whole; he began fucking her again, harder this time, drunk on the image of her belly round with his baby—visible proof to the entire world that she was his, that he possessed her from the inside out and had done the most fundamental human thing and impregnated her. 

Her inner walls fluttered around his cock as she orgasmed, and he came deep inside her with a shudder. He hadn’t produced a knot this time, and his cock slid out as he collapsed on the bed next to her once again. 

Sober reality trickled back in. “You’re on a potion, right?”

She was quiet for a moment. “Yeah.”

He touched the wing of her shoulder, feeling the bone underneath the smooth skin. I love you, was on the tip of his tongue, only a foolish turn from stealing out. “Good morning.”

She shifted, turning towards him, and he was relieved to see a sleepy smile on her face. Her eyes slipped closed and she pressed her forehead to his chest. His heart sang. 

“Is it late?” she mumbled. “We should go to breakfast.”

Was this the royal we? He disentangled an arm and reached between the mattress and the headboard for his wand, tensing and getting out of bed when he didn’t find it. Hermione let go, watching him curiously, and he found his wand sitting on the floor. His spike of panic subsided. 

Hermione sat up, and then pulled under the covers again, shivering. 

“Is it too cold?” Draco asked. 

“Slytherin does seem to be colder than Gryffindor,” she said, letting him wrap his arms around her. He cast a warming charm and she bit her lip. “Draco, I should—I should probably go back.”

Go back? he thought fuzzily, almost purring at how small and soft she felt in his arms. And warm. Like how he imagined holding a kitten might feel. He never had pets, his father thought animals were disgusting, but he remembered going over to play with Theo once and seeing Theo’s little sister had a white kitten. He had been enchanted by the impetuous little creature and completely uninterested in playing on brooms, to Theo’s annoyance. All he had wanted to do was stare at the kitten. He had wanted to touch it but was afraid he might hurt it—or it might hurt him. Go back where?

“To Gryffindor,” she elaborated. “I need to shower… and get dressed…”

He forced himself to nod. Hermione wasn’t a kitten. He couldn’t keep her in a basket in his room with a pink ribbon around her neck, no matter how appealing that sounded. She slipped out of bed, her toes curling as her bare feet hit the cool floor, and her eyes passed over the burnt spot on the wood paneling. But she didn’t ask. 

“I want to see you again,” he said, the words slipping out. He had to say it without letting himself think, because admitting that he cared about anything, much less the attention or affection of another human being, was-

A weakness the Dark Lord will exploit, Snape said. He controls your parents through you, he will control you through anyone he thinks you care for.

“You will see me again,” she said, touching her hair and combing through it with her fingers. “I don’t have my planner but maybe we can schedule-” She glanced at the burnt spot on the floor, and then at The Greek Magical Papyri.

“A study session,” Draco filled in stiffly. 

“I was- well I was thinking maybe more like a- a study date-”

His heart glittered so bright that a niffler might see him and try to claw it from his chest in greed. “A date,” he agreed, and then impulsively kissed her on the cheek just to see her blush. 

He was strongly considering snapping his wand.

If there was no wand, there was no way to prove he had broken his probation. In one night, his entire world had spun on its axis. Hermione needed him. He had always thought heat was a blunt, bland word, but now it was all he could think about. It started to be a nonsense sound, a nothing syllable. He hoped for Hermione’s sake it never came; a selfish part of himself hoped that it happened tomorrow. 

He would arrange with Anthony for there to be an “accident,” some sort of anonymous ambush in a corridor where his wand was broken, preferably into enough charred pieces that it couldn’t be repaired. Then Anthony would obliviate Draco, so Draco had no memory of premeditation or using offensive magic to damn him under veritaserum. For good measure, maybe they would have a neutral third party then obliviate Anthony. 

This would leave him with a minor—or perhaps not so minor—problem. He would have no wand. His fingers twitched over his wand’s smooth hawthorn handle, feeling the wood warm pleasantly. He liked his wand. It had always been fussy and exacting, with a preference for smaller magicks that frustrated him as a child who wanted to shoot off bright, impressive spells, but which came in handy when he was trying to repair the Vanishing Cabinet. 

After the Wizengamot trial, they released his wand from evidence, and he found that it had become more placid, more malleable during Potter’s tenure. He was still getting used to it. He liked his wand. He didn’t want to break it. 

But there wasn’t another way out of the wand check.

“Mr. Malfoy? Mr. Malfoy.”

Draco stepped out of the tide of students leaving the Ancient Runes classroom. “Yes, Professor Babbling?”

Babbling lifted her wand and a leaf of parchment flew from her office and landed on the lectern. She smoothed it over. “According to my records, you’ve only turned in a single assignment since you joined my class. You’re failing.”

Two girls in Hufflepuff scarves looked over from the doorway where they were lingering and chatting, and quickly made their exit. Draco’s stomach sank. He should have dropped this class weeks ago; it had been a stupid idea to take it in the first place. He needed to come clean with Hermione anyway. 

“Septima told me about your jaunt with veritaserum so I know why you’re in this class, and I think it’s all very sweet, Mr. Malfoy, but purposely doing poorly to get a girl’s attention isn’t any way to establish a relationship of equality and mutual respect. I have your records from sixth year, and I’m certain that you are capable of passing. Rather than assign you a nice weekly detention for your own good, I have a better idea: your housemate, Miss Greengrass, is also struggling. You may have noticed she has missed the past several classes. I would like you to tutor her in the last two weeks of material. What say you?”

Merlin. Draco would rather let a hippogriff take another chunk out of his arm. “Sorry, Professor. I was actually looking to drop this class.”

“Is young love not working out? Either way, there is no need to drop the class, since I’ve worked out a better solution.” 

“I’m willing to take the mark on my transcript.”

Babbling pushed her glasses up on her nose. “To that, I say no, Mr. Malfoy. You are not dropping out.” 

Draco wasn’t quite sure what to do. I’ll tell my father about this? His father couldn’t do anything behind the bars of Azkaban. He had always seen Babbling as a chatterbox who lived in a world of symbols and semiotics, the kind of person who patterned the background of more important things, like fixing the Vanishing Cabinet or trying to angle how he was going to assassinate his shrewd old Headmaster. She wasn’t supposed to push back. 

“What if I won’t tutor Astoria?” he said. “And what if I stop coming to class?”

“I can dock twenty points from Slytherin for every missed class or tutoring session. You may not care, but your housemates will, and my understanding is that you still have to live with them. Really, Mr. Malfoy, I’m not doing this out of spite. I believe people should live with their commitments, and you made a commitment to this class, even if it was for a silly reason. If you can’t serve me a better reason for dropping than ‘I want to,’ then I will enforce that you keep taking this class.” Her voice softened. “Miss Greengrass needs the help. Don’t you want to assist your housemate?”

Draco glared stonily at a desk where some bored student from years past had worn a hole with their wand. 

“Then it’s a plan. Wednesday and Friday evenings. I will make sure Miss Greengrass is informed.”

Surveying the neatly organized stacks of parchment, pile of books, and the tidy to-do list of homework on the library table, Draco realized with some disappointment that Hermione had been quite serious about the study part of the study date.  

“Hey,” she said, barely glancing up from the book she was reading. “Ginny and Neville’ll be here in a bit.” She gave a wry smile. “They invited themselves.” She patted the chair next to her, and Draco sat, looking over her pile of books. 

The demotic magical papyrus of London and Leiden

Ancient Egyptian magical texts

Symbol & magic in Egyptian art

Dunninger's complete encyclopedia of magic

Ancient magic and ritual power

“I was doing some background research on Roman era Egyptian magic,” she said. “Different cultures have used different types of foci for their spells—in the modern West we almost always use wands, but you could also use rings, staffs, knives, musical instruments, and so on. The ancient Mesopotamians used magical seals. Different foci operate differently. Wands are like a multitool, good at everything, but rarely with great aptitude for anything. Staffs more easily channel power than wands, but they’re hard to create and they blow up small magicks. Knives are fantastic for healing and battle magicks but terrible at charms and transfiguration, while seals specialize in defensive and protective magicks but can’t do offensive magics. There’s some evidence that the ancient Egyptians used staffs and scarabs as foci, but they mostly performed magic through ritual and used gods or natural landmarks as foci. It would be very interesting if we had a Ritual Studies elective at Hogwarts… I know they have one at Beauxbatons…” She tugged a curly strand of her hair, self-conscious about rambling. “I suppose I’m curious if you’ve noticed any rituals in The Greek Magical Papyri that might be feasible in modern practice. Spells that don’t require you to be at the Nile, or- or pray to Bast, or things of the sort.”

Draco opened to the index at the front of The Greek Magical Papyri. “I can check-”

“Perhaps you could go through and mark out all the ones that would still be possible to perform today, even if we had to adapt them slightly? That might give us a hint as to how to use this book. I’m still grading papers for McGonagall twice weekly. She leaves me alone in her office sometimes, and I could try going through her files. I figure she must have a record of the house elves who work at Hogwarts—perhaps hiring papers, or something.”

“You’re a force of nature, Granger.” 

She grinned, bashful and proud. “I’ve been told that Harry and Ron would’ve been nothing without me.”

He had always resented her brilliance, the ease with which she churned out E and O-level papers, and the way her wand leapt to her hand to do her bidding. He had tempered his resentment with the knowledge that at least she was bookish and muggley, carried socially through Hogwarts by her more charismatic friends. But now, having her on his side, he was understanding the depth to which she had carried them. If he’d had her working on the Vanishing Cabinet with him, he would’ve had the Death Eaters in Hogwarts by Halloween. 

It did rankle to be ordered about by an omega. As he read through The Greek Magical Papyri, he rested his hand on her knee to comfort himself. She had worn a pleated skirt—his hindbrain approved of the outfit choice, it gave off a sexy schoolgirl vibe—and he rubbed his thumb back and forth slowly over her smooth skin. 

She ignored him, which pleased Draco. The part of his brain that was now controlled by alpha instincts purred at the idea of chasing her and convincing her to submit to him, even if as part of a game with a foregone conclusion. After a few minutes, she parted her legs slightly and he scented slick on the air. His hand slid up her thigh. Good omega, ready for her alpha…

“Hey, Hermione,” Neville said, popping out from between the stacks and glaring murderously at Draco. Draco yanked his hand back to his own lap. “Sorry I’m late, Ginny got caught up with a quidditch thing, so she’s not coming.” He sat down directly across from Draco, his nostrils flared. 

Neville could smell the slick as well. Draco smirked. 

Hermione and Neville chatted about the upcoming Gryffindor-Ravenclaw quidditch game, and then settled down to work. Draco’s hand returned to her knee under the table. This time she pressed her hand down to keep him in place, but then seemed to change her mind and directed him towards her inner thigh. He traced his fingers idly over the soft skin. He could tell she was working hard to suppress her scent, a flush riding high in her cheeks as she opened her thighs an inch more. Neville gave them a suspicious glance across the table.

Mine, Draco wrote lightly with his finger on the inside of her thigh. He pushed his luck higher, towards her panties, and the scent of slick wafted through the air again. Hermione quickly cast an air-freshening charm. “I’m going to the bathroom,” she announced, giving Draco a significant look.

Draco managed to count to thirty before his legs forced him to stand. He was practically vibrating in anticipation. “I’m going to- get a book from the shelf.”

He traced her through the library by scent, out into the corridor and down to a nearby girl’s bathroom. Very carefully, checking up and down to make sure no one saw him go in, he slipped inside. 

“Colloportus,” Hermione murmured, and the lock clicked shut. 

Draco opened his eyes to an empty dorm. He should have been more careful; he was lucky he was alone. Rarely was he so tired that he needed to sleep in the middle of the afternoon, and he never slept with his bed curtains open. Sleeping was vulnerable. All the Slytherins learned that early on. The very first night at Hogwarts, the Second Year boys snuck in and poured lukewarm apple juice on all of the First Years’ crotches, so that they woke in the morning sticky and uncomfortable. Draco had written to his father about the indignity of it, and Father had written back that he had better man up—there was no outside defense from the other Slytherins. 

Where were Crabbe and Goyle? They had probably gone to dinner without him. They did that sometimes these days, going places without him. If he told them not to, they would obediently wait. But he was finding that after six years of having Crabbe and Goyle attached to him like barnacles on the side of a ship, he didn’t mind the space. 

Father said a few lackeys were always good to keep in orbit. But Mother despised that Crabbe and Goyle were Draco’s closest friends… 

Suddenly Draco sat up, chewing the fuzziness away from his tongue. He hadn’t meant to sleep this long. He checked his desk clock; he had been due at the runes classroom five minutes ago. Perhaps he could play it off as a power move, he thought, as he combed his fingers through his hair and cast a freshening charm to get rid of the pillow marks on his face. Half-heartedly he tried to make his bed with his wand, a skill he had never quite mastered since house elves usually did it, and then disillusioned himself and headed to Ancient Runes. 

It wasn’t too late, but the sun set depressingly early these days. Draco slowed as he turned down the corridor to Ancient Runes, trying to quiet his footsteps. Lamplight flickered off the windows of the classroom. Astoria had turned a desk so she could sit facing the door. 

Draco hovered at the doorway, watching her for a moment. Perhaps it was an effect of the lamplight, but her eyes were sunken into her face and her hair looked frizzy and cut with split ends. She picked at her chipped nail polish, hardly the glossy pureblood heiress who had tried to hex him back at the beginning of the year. 

A strong wind would blow right through her. Draco felt silly for being so worked up about this tutoring session. They would come to a mutually beneficial agreement, the way Slytherins always did, and part ways with Babbling none the wiser. He removed his disillusionment charm.

Astoria looked up sharply, clutching her wand. 

“Evening.” Draco didn’t move from the doorway. 

“You’re late.” Her voice was dry. “Come in, I didn’t curse the classroom.”

“I suppose you won’t mind if I check?”

She shrugged. Draco tossed out a set of diagnostic charms that Snape had taught him, then sat down at a desk a proper distance from Astoria. 

“Well?” asked Astoria.

“Well what?”

“Well, tutor me.”

Draco leaned back in his seat, stretching his legs forward and looking out the windows at the depthless night and refractions of lamplight. “We can just tell Babbling we did the tutoring. We don’t have to actually-”

“You wouldn’t deceive poor, naive Bathsheda Babbling, would you?” Astoria gasped dramatically. “After she trusted you to perform this important task? Don’t you care for my education?”

Draco rolled his eyes, suppressing a laugh. “Yeah, okay, I mean, do you want me to tutor you? I figured it would be easier if we said we did it and you caught up on your own.”

“Maybe,” she said, “but I would never dare disobey the direct orders of a professor.” She gave him a simper, an expression that all girls from the Sacred Twenty-Eight learned in the cradle, and now Draco laughed for real, and her real smile broke from behind the simper. 

“Alright,” he agreed, and shoved his desk a foot closer to hers. 

Without thinking he sniffed the air, testing for her scent, and found that she had none. If not for the fact that he could see and hear her, he would think he was alone. Suddenly he felt cold. He needed to construct a way to touch her—to be certain he wasn’t being fooled by a clever illusion.

“What’s the last section you did?” he asked, reaching over to her desk and opening her textbook. The textbook, at least, was real. He tried to bump his elbow into her arm, and she shifted away.

“Excuse you. Didn’t you take etiquette lessons? Or is that something only girls do?”

He sat back down. “What’s the last section you did?”

She flipped through her textbook. “Don’t remember.”

“When was the last time you went to class?”

“Eons ago.”

“Why’d you stop going to class?”

“Why did you stop going to class?” she countered. 

Draco sighed pointedly. “If you don’t want to do this, just tell me.”

Astoria twirled her wand in that careless manner that made Draco’s skin crawl. They should have done this in the Slytherin common room. Footsteps sounded down the corridor and he tensed, running through a list of defensive spells, calculating whether to shield from the door or from Astoria first, but then the footsteps faded without ever passing by. 

“Sorry I tried to kill you at the beginning of this year,” she said.

Draco tried to sound light even though he felt like he had swallowed an ice cube whole, chilling him from the inside. “Kill me? Didn’t realize they were teaching deadly hexes in sixth year these days.”

“I don’t suppose you’d know either way, given that you spent your whole sixth year trying to help the Death Eaters infiltrate Hogwarts.” She spun her wand faster, her eyes glittering. “Sorry, should I not have brought it up? You aren’t scared I’m going to try and hex you again, are you? A big manly Death Eater should be able to take on a little girl. Or are you worried because you’re not allowed to defend yourself?”

Draco grit his teeth. I’m allowed to defend myself. Just not fight back.

“Tell you what,” she said. “No wands. We’ll put them across the room.”

“And if one of your little friends comes in?” Draco asked tersely. “You’ll have conveniently separated me from my wand.”

“Come on, Malfoy, really, what motive do any of my friends have to try and kill you?”

“What motive did you have to try and kill me?”

She shrugged, then leaned down and rolled her wand across the floor towards the door. “Your turn.” When he hesitated, she added, “If we don’t have wands, you’re stronger than me. You should be at an advantage, mister alpha.”

Heat burned low in his groin at those words, and Draco swallowed, trying to maintain a clear mind. Mother in the garden—Hermione’s hand in mine—call me alpha-

He rolled his wand across the floor. They went through a translation exercise that had been assigned the previous week. She obviously wasn’t a great talent at Ancient Runes, but Draco hardly considered himself skilled either. At the end of the translation, she tossed down her quill and stretched, her shirt riding up and revealing her stomach and some very prominent ribs. 

She noticed him looking. “Perv.”

“Why would I be attracted to a skeleton?”

He regretted it as soon as he said it. She was silent for an agonizing minute, and he was about to apologize and offer to leave when she said, “I’m on medication that suppresses my appetite.”

“I’m sorry. Shouldn’t have said that.” 

“Did you know my sister Daphne?”

He contemplated the change of subject, scanning the next translation exercise as he debated how to answer. Daphne had been in his year, but they didn’t interact outside of class. She had been quiet, almost shy, and close with Tracey, who was a halfblood. He had made out with her during a very drunken party at the beginning of fifth year, but that was the same night he fingered Millicent Bulstrode in the bathroom, so he had long since decided nothing from that party really counted. 

“She’s getting married in December,” Astoria continued. 

“Oh. My congratulations.”

“Yes,” Astoria said bitterly, slouching in her seat. “Good for her.” 

“Shall we… move on to the next exercise?”

“As if it matters,” she muttered under her breath, picking up her quill again. “How’d you have time to learn all this, anyway? I thought you spent your whole sixth year plotting for You-Know-Who.”

“I’m capable of multitasking,” Draco said flatly. “What’s your excuse?”

“Fuck you, Malfoy, you’ve still got your whole head up your ass. Don’t think you’ve redeemed yourself just because you’ve sampled some muggleborn pussy.”

Draco found himself on his feet, the desk knocked out of the way. He was almost growling. “You don’t know anything.”

“I know you’ve got Hermione Granger drooling at your feet, showing up outside Slytherin every week asking for you like a lovesick puppy. You pureblood men are all the same.” She slowly rose from her desk as well, her eyes flaming. “You get all your fucking jollies out with halfbloods and muggleborns, and then you come trotting back home and ask your mummy to set up a respectable marriage with a pureblood girl and spend your career writing legislation that disadvantages non-purebloods as if you didn’t lose your fucking virginity to one.”

“It’s not like that with Hermione-”

“Of course it fucking is, Malfoy, do you know the first thing about her? What’s her favorite book? What are her parents’ names? What does she want to do after she graduates? How many kids does she want?” Astoria’s face flushed. “See, you can’t answer any of those questions. You don’t know her!”

“What’s your issue, Astoria?” Draco shouted, slamming his hand down on the desk. “Why do you care?”

Something like fear flashed across her face as he hit the desk. She lunged for her wand, and Draco grabbed her wrist. It felt like bird bones between his hand, like he could break her wrist with a single squeeze. 

“Let me go,” she said, panic leaking into her voice as she twisted in his grip. “Let go. Malfoy, let me go.”

She weighed almost nothing. She had been right—there was no way she’d ever overpower him with physical strength alone. Mother in the garden, steam spinning up from her tea, swirling clouds and bright blue skies and koi ponds at midnight… 

“Let me get my wand first,” Draco said, regaining control. “I can’t do any spells that will hurt you. Not even a stupefy. It’s safer for us both if I get my wand first. Okay?”

She nodded, her eyes wide. Draco kept a strong hold on her wrist as he stepped around her and reached for his wand. He looked away for half a second to locate it, and in that second, she leapt across the floor, snatched her wand up, and pointed it up under his chin.

“Stupefy,” she said.

He fell backwards, and she was yanked with him, her wrist still locked in his grasp. 

“Fuck,” she grunted as they tumbled to the floor. She tapped his hand, de-petrifying just enough of him so she could extricate herself and re-petrifying him. Draco almost went cross-eyed trying to keep her in his line of sight. “Why did you make me do that?”

He couldn’t answer. He couldn’t even swallow, and he had a horrible thought that he might suffocate on his own saliva. His tongue was heavy in the back of his mouth. What if it choked him? 

“What am I going to do now?” she muttered, pacing. “Fuck—fuck. What am I supposed to do? They won’t be here for another half an hour. I’ll get expelled if I'm caught like this. But who would believe him over me? I’ll have to move him. Fuck—oblivio.”

Chapter Text

PLEASE READ THIS: I’ve been debating with myself for ages whether this story could be rescued, but I’m just not passionate about it anymore, and honestly I got in over my head with some of the plotlines. So here’s all the drafts I wrote of scenes from later chapters, and an outline of what was supposed to happen. It includes a basically complete chapter 19, some miscellaneous dialogue, two full scenes from later chapters, and a tiny epilogue. The miscellaneous dialogue scenes aren’t in any particular order. I hope this satisfies anyone who was still wondering about this story. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to provide a full ending. Thank you all for reading.

General outline:

Chapter 19: Luna goes into heat, and in the commotion that follows, no one realizes Draco is missing for several days. An auror speaks to McGonagall about missing Draco, and Aberforth Dumbledore shows up to try and talk to Albus’s silent portrait. Meanwhile, Draco has a flashback to an occlumency lesson with Snape. He’s found in a linen closet with his memory wiped. 

• Most of this chapter is written, and posted below. I didn't feel confident about a chapter primarily from McGonagall’s POV, which is why I never finished it.

Chapters 20-22: After Draco and Hermione officially hook up in chapter 17, they realize they're in this weird not-quite-dating relationship where they know each other's physical intimacies but they don't understand each other emotionally. A lot of these chapters were devoted to them working out what exactly was going on between them. At some point, Hermione was supposed to encourage Draco to write to his former Slytherin friends.

• A couple miscellaneous ideas for dialogue from this section were written, and are below.

Chapter 23: I think this was supposed to be a winter break chapter where Harry visited and reconciled with Draco.

• None of this was ever written.

Chapter 24: Something something leading to a reconciliation scene with Astoria (Draco still doesn’t know she obliviated him). She is upset and drunk and reveals that she is an omega who has been hiding it using a potion she takes for a blood curse on her family, but is going into heat and can no longer hide it. He is kind to her and she warns him about the anti-Draco conspiracy. A group of students kidnaps his owl Astraea and he breaks his probation by getting on a broom to chase them down. 

• The Astoria reconciliation scene is below, although it doesn’t include the final detail where she warns him of the anti-Draco conspiracy.

Chapter 25: A scene in Dumbledore’s office where Dumbledore’s portrait finally speaks. Then the probation trial. Draco’s new friends (Ginny, Luna, Anthony, Neville, Hermione) give character witnesses that he’s a good person and shouldn’t be sent to prison. It’s ruled that he should be given a second chance because he was forced to break probation, and he is allowed to return to Hogwarts. 

• The scene in Dumbledore’s office where Dumbledore’s portrait finally speaks is below.

Chapter 26: A cute epilogue set during breakfast at Hogwarts, where Draco and Hermione eat together at the Gryffindor table. He receives a letter from his friend Goyle, implying that his old friendships had the potential to be true friendships.

• A very short potential ending is below.

Resolutions to various plotlines:

• Draco gets obliviated by Astoria: she hides him in a linen closet near the owlrey, which turns out to be the new Room of Requirement, though none of them know this yet. He wakes a few days later with no memory of that evening. 
• Why did Astoria obliviate Draco/what’s going on with Astoria: she’s an omega and deeply resentful about it. There’s also a conspiracy to get Draco expelled by a group of students who hate him. Idk, I didn’t think this through well.
• Snape’s missing portrait: it’s in the Room of Requirement. McGonagall moved it. I never could come up with a sensible reason why, and wish I’d never written that detail into the story. 
• Missing Room of Requirement: it’s now a small closet near the owlrey.
• Draco broke his probation by casting an offensive spell: Astoria breaks his wand when she obliviates him, meaning no one ever finds out.
• The Greek Magical Papyri book: was supposed to hold the key to removing the Dark Mark. Swirly was a house elf working in the headmistress’s office, and the coded message about the book was sent by the portrait of Phineas Nigellus Black (who was cursed to only be able to say certain secrets to descendants of the Sacred Twenty Eight, and therefore could only communicate through code).
• Dumbledore’s silent portrait: He’s mourning the loss of Ariana’s portrait when the Room of Requirement burned in the Battle of Hogwarts. He also disagrees with McGonagall’s decision to hide Snape away.
• The anti-Draco conspiracy: a group of students was supposed to incite Draco into breaking his probation by kidnapping Astraea (his pet owl) and forcing him onto a broom to try and get her back.
• Is Harry relevant: yes, he was supposed to come back about three chapters from the end so Draco could make good with him.
• Swirly the house elf: he worked in the headmistress's office. Draco would have found this out through the file called "house elf register" (mentioned in chapter 8).
• “I’ll make friends with your friends”: Friendship is Magic was the main theme of the story. In the beginning of the story, Draco is convinced that he is worthless as a person and never had any real friends, only lackeys. Over the story, he comes to like and respect Hermione’s friends, and he was supposed to slowly gain their trust (Ginny, Neville, Luna, Anthony, Harry, even Ron maybe) so that they could each give character witnesses when he’s tried at the end for breaking his probation by flying. In the latter half of the story he also started to reflect on some of his friendships with other Slytherins, and eventually was meant to decide to reach out to them and attempt to rekindle some of these friendships.
• The solution to the Alpha and Omega Problem: there was never meant to be a cure by the end of the story, but with the revelation that Astoria’s blood potion can suppress some of the effects, there’s hope they will come up with something in the future.

Chapter 19 - Scene 1

Usually Minerva ignored the huge, vacant silence of the headmistress’s office and quarters. Long after sundown, after dinner, after curfew, the space of the tower seemed to grow in size while all the objects within it shrank, until she felt she was the size of a mouse, sitting at a dollhouse desk, scribbling dumbly with her clumsy little paws, all too aware of the cavern she occupied. She looked down at the quill in her hand, its point resting against a Fourth Year’s transfiguration essay, a dry blotch spread over several lines of cursive. She blinked. Her eyes were dry. 

“How’d you do it?” she muttered.

From behind her, Albus didn’t answer. 

A tap of her wand cleaned the ink off the parchment. “I’m turning in,” she heard herself say, and one of the portraits behind her said, “Probably for the best, dear.” She flipped a glance over her shoulder, trying to pinpoint who it had been, but all the former headmistresses and headmasters studiously avoided her gaze. Including Albus. 

She changed into her nightgown and washed her face, and then padded back out into the office to dim the lights and shuffle her papers in order for tomorrow. Probably it was already tomorrow. All week the sky had been padded down with clouds like a thick layer of quilt batting, creating the nightly impression that the castle and surrounding forest had been placed under a bowl. Starless, moonless, and muffled. 

The fireplace flared green and a student tumbled out.

“Professor,” he gasped. “Anthony’s gone mad and we keep stupefying him but he keeps breaking through and Ron and Neville are losing their minds outside the entrance asking for Luna to come out-”

Minerva recognized the young man as Michael Corner; his house was not coming to her. Groggy and deeply desirous of her clean sheets and soft mattress, she found herself preparing to say, Twenty points from whatever house you’re in for the poorly timed disturbance. Then she went over his words again. Anthony, Ron, Neville, Luna. 

Alpha, alpha, alpha, and omega.

Luna Lovegood, evidently, had begun her heat. 

“Take a breath,” she barked. “I’ll send for Poppy and Filius. Expecto Patronum.” A silvery cat poured out of her wand. “Tell Poppy and Filius that Miss Lovegood—that their presence is urgently needed in the Ravenclaw common room.” The cat split into two and vanished to deliver the messages. “Come, Mr. Corner.” Minerva grabbed a handful of floo powder and tossed it into the fireplace, but before she could step through, another student somersaulted out, their pajamas covered in soot.

“Professor!” gasped a Fifth Year girl named Amelia Babbit, scrambling to her feet. “You have to come, Ernie MacMillan’s trying to get into the girl’s dorm and he’s hexing anyone who tries to stop him!”

Merlin with cheese and crackers. “I’ll get Pomona-”

“We’ve already sent for Professor Sprout!”

For a moment Minerva weighed the situations—Luna Lovegood gone into heat in Ravenclaw, and likely Hannah Abbott in Hufflepuff. She had miscalculated, allowing the young ladies to remain in the common dormitories, although it had felt a compassionate decision at the time. “Attempt to stupefy him and place a bubble-head charm on him,” she told Amelia. At the girl’s frozen stare, she added, “Limpiaspiro.”

“Limpiaspiro,” the girl repeated. “Limpiaspiro. She stepped back towards the emerald flames, still mouthing the bubble-head incantation, and whirled away towards Hufflepuff. 

Minerva was sharp on the heels of the girl’s pajama slippers, and was already spinning through the floo system as she shouted Ravenclaw common room! as her destination. “Mr. Goldstein,” she roared as she stepped out into the common room, and milling mass of anxious and confused students parted. Anthony Goldstein lay crumpled in a heap at the entrance to the Ravenclaw girl’s dormitory. The stairs had turned into a slide as a security measure, and Anthony twitched, already half broken through the stunner. “Out of the way,” she bellowed at the peeping students, almost all boys from younger years—the girls were probably asleep or hiding up in the tower, frightened by the commotion they heard below. “ Limpiaspiro.” 

Almost immediately, Anthony stilled, and then he curled inward like a dying spider. She removed the stunning charm. He didn’t bolt for the girl’s dormitory, or even get up. She turned to Michael Corner and the other Seventh Year Prefect, a girl named Eliza. “Go out and put a bubble-head on Mr. Weasley and Mr. Longbottom. Stun them if you need to.” She stepped towards the girl’s dormitory and the slide transformed back into a staircase under her feet, the steps rising and smoothing away behind her like a wave as she climbed. 

She was surprised to find the hall to the girl’s dormitory completely empty. 

It had been a while since she had been here and though she suspected the Ravenclaw dorm was laid out much like the Gryffindor dorm, she was loathe to burst into anyone’s dorm room unannounced. “Ladies,” she called down the hall. “It’s Professor McGonagall. Everything is safe.”

Immediately several doors opened, and a thicket of wide-eyed, tense girls peered out at her.

“What’s going on?” one asked, her voice threadbare.

“Has someone broken into the castle?” asked another girl, her face gone grey.

Minerva tried to place the second girl: a Third Year, unmemorably mediocre at transfiguration. She could think of no comforting or concise way to explain. “No one has broken into the castle. One of your housemates triggered the safety measure on the girl’s dormitory but it’s all being taken care of. Where is the Seventh Year dorm?”

She found Luna Lovegood curled into a tight knot on her bed, her arms locked around her knees, rocking back and forth. She had sweated through her nightclothes and into her sheets. Minerva cast an air-freshening charm as she entered the room. Luna’s roommates tripped over themselves to describe the chain of events: Luna had been nauseous at lunch—refused to go to the nurse—wouldn’t let anyone touch her—feverish by dinner-

Poppy Pomfrey appeared at the door. “Oh dear, Miss Lovegood,” she said, stepping forward. Luna shied back as Poppy reached for her. 

“Not you,” she mumbled. “Not you. Not you.”

“We need to transport her to St. Mungo’s,” Poppy said, pulling back. “We’ll need the floo.”

“Go downstairs,” Minerva told Luna’s roommates. “Clear the common room.” The girls hesitated, trading doubtful glances and not moving. “Now, ladies. It’ll be fifty points from Ravenclaw for every student still in the common room when I get down there. Now!” The girls scurried into action. 

“Not you,” Luna was still saying, sweat dripping through her eyelashes. She was shaking so hard and holding herself so tightly that Minerva felt certain she was looking at an unmoored machine on the verge of rattling to pieces. 

“We’ll have you to St. Mungo’s soon,” said Poppy. “Is there anything we can do to help?”

Luna’s dilated eyes struggled to find Poppy’s face. Her nostrils flared. “Draco. I want Draco.” 

Chapter 19 - Scene 2

“Focus on your mother, Draco.”

“Keep my mother out of this,” Draco spat. 

Snape’s face rippled into focus above him, and the floor became hard and cold below. His neck and back and arse ached; he had fallen again during his occlumency lesson. 

“The only time your pathetic grounding image has ever worked is when you have focused on your mother. So focus on your mother, and maybe we will eventually move on to the part where you don’t need a mantra and can do occlumency that will actually fool the Dark Lord. If he sees you have built a wall, then he will know what to destroy. You must get to the point where you can convince him you haven’t built a wall-”

“I KNOW.”

Snape’s lips flattened. “Get up.”

Draco shook his head. The joints at his knees and the sockets of his hips felt thin and worn, like his bones were rubbing together when he moved. “Fuck off.”

Suddenly he choked, the air balling and pushing backwards down his trachea. Snape’s spell ragdolled him into the air and dropped on his feet. He gasped as a sharp pain shot up his knees. 

“Legilimens,” Snape said, almost lazy, and split Draco’s mind open as easily as pressing a thumb between the slices of an orange. Draco lost his balance and stumbled backwards into a desk, losing his balance and whacking his wrist. The pain was so sudden and fracturous that he thought his wrist might be broken, not that Snape would care. His mother plucked a ripe orange off a tree with a graceful twist of her wrist and handed it to him as the branch wobbled. How do I peel it? he asked, sniffing its fragrant rind. In answer, his mother took it back and bit the top, right through the flesh under the navel. She shelled the fruit with her deft, manicured nails, puncturing it in a few spots so that the sticky sweet juice ran between her fingers. 

“Pathetic,” Snape said as Draco cradled his wrist and tried to banish the fragrance of oranges from his nose. If his wrist didn’t feel full of shards, he might have tried to punch the man in his huge hooked nose. 

“Jealous?”

Snape was still. 

“I’m guessing you and your mum didn’t have such a good relationship,” Draco said poisonously. “She probably told you every day that she wished she’d thrown herself down the stairs rather than-”

“Legilimens.”

Draco’s starched white collar hurt his neck and he was dying to get outside try his new broomstick before the sun went down, but he needed to remain a well dressed little prop while his mother’s friends cooed and fluttered. He played the part well, and afterwards he received a pat and a dim smile from his father. Father was only happy when Mother was happy, and rarely even then-

“Can’t get enough,” Draco gasped as he resurfaced. “You’re slavering for any glimpse of them—didn’t have a happy home life so you’ve got to steal mine-”

“You call that shell of a childhood happy?” drawled Snape. “A peeled orange and a pat on the shoulder do not a happy home life make-”

“Fuck you-”

“And when spells exist to flay skin from living flesh, I expect you to come up with something a bit more dazzling than fuck you—could it be, Mr. Malfoy, that you enjoy our little exercises?”

“CRUCIO.”

Snape didn’t even twitch. He seemed carved from stone, which only made Draco more aware of how hard he was breathing. 

“You don’t have to keep coming,” Snape said, finally.

“You don’t have to keep teaching me,” Draco snapped in return. 

“What kind of educator would I be if I refused to cultivate a willing young mind?”

They stared at each other, Snape sarcastic and cold, Draco sweating and heaving and aching all over. 

“Occlumency is about patience and mental discipline,” Snape said. “You don’t have the mind for it.”

“I know.”

“You don’t have the mind for it because you are young. Someday when you’re old, you’ll find occlumency comes easily to you.” It seemed for a moment that Snape’s eyes softened. “There will be hidden grottos and medieval groves within which you can conceal your memories so completely that even you will forget they’re there. You’ll lose memories, and find them, and lose them again. I realize there’s a certain folly in asking an adolescent to hide or control their mind, when they’re still just learning the contours of their own internal landscape. So I’m trying to teach you an alternative method. Focus on one thing you know with absolute certainty. You know your own depth of feeling for your mother. I’ve seen it more clearly than anything else in your memories. Let her be the organizing principle by which your control your mind.”

It was the end of Fifth Year. 

Something dark and amused twitched on Snape’s lips. “Prepare yourself. Legilimens.”

Chapter 19 - Scene 3

“Visitor,” warned the gargoyle that guarded the spiral staircase up to the headmistress’s office.

“Well, who is it?” Minerva snapped. 

The gargoyle fiddled with some nonexistent lint between its stone toes and then finally said, deeply bored, “Aberforth Dumbledore.”

“For Merlin’s sake,” Minerva muttered, and just as Aberforth barged into her office, her fireplace lit up green, spitting out flecks of ember and ash.

“Minerva, do you have a moment to talk?” asked Auror Nayak’s visage from the flames, at the same time as Aberforth demanded, “I want to speak with my brother.”

Minerva watched ash float from the floo and spot the floor, thinking of her unfinished lesson plans. Surely there was a house elf who was meant to deal with these intrusions. She made a mental note to find the file on house elf allocations. An itch of deja vu told her she had meant to do this previously, and kept getting distracted by other Situations, so it continued to slip her mind.

“Sarah.” She addressed the fireplace first. “Is this about the Malfoy boy, or the alpha and omega situation?”

Sarah Nayak spied Aberforth, ruddy and huffing from the climb. “Do you have a moment to speak privately?” she asked.

“Come through and we can speak in my quarters.” To Aberforth, Minerva said, “I’ll just be a minute.” He nodded. His beady gaze, eyes bloodshot from too many years of sipping his own stock, shifted to Albus’s portrait. She pressed away a flash of derision, trying to mold it into a kinder emotion like pity. No doubt being left alone in her office was exactly what Aberforth wanted. Hopefully he’d finish his yelling before she finished with Nayak.

Nayak spun gracefully out of the fireplace in a burst of green sparks, brushing soot from her sleeves. Minerva brought her into the back room, the sitting room that led to her private quarters. Without pausing for niceties, Nayak said, “I need to speak with Draco Malfoy.”

Minerva found Auror Sarah Nayak’s to-the-business attitude admirable in its absolute disregard for civility. Nayak had been an excellent student; even a decade after she had graduated, Minerva remembered how she could make teapots trip over themselves to turn into doves. “I wish you the best of luck,” Minerva said. “Given that Malfoy has been missing since Miss Lovegood and Miss Abbott were taken to St. Mungo’s.”

“Yes, I’m aware. But I cannot emphasize enough how important it is we find him.” 

“We are doing everything we can.”

“I’m sure you are.” Nayak gave a sarcastic smile, which Minerva threw back in her face. 

“Three nights ago,” Minerva said. “You want to know where he was the night Miss Lovegood and Miss Abbott… went into heat?” She disliked that terminology immensely. It made her think of a mangy feline yowling in an alleyway for a tom to come mount her. It wasn’t how she wanted to describe young women barely out of girlhood, especially young women who had had nearly their entire adolescence obliterated by a cascade of catastrophes. “Why don’t you speak to the young ladies directly? I’m sure they’ll tell you they didn’t encounter any of the young men who have presented as alphas on the night they went into their—heats.”

“The girls have got more drugs than blood running through their veins right now,” Nayak said grimly.

“Poor things.” She suspected why Nayak hadn’t talked to Luna Lovegood or Hannah Abbott, though it was nice to hear her confirm it. 

“Yes.”

“Is he wanted under suspicion for approaching one of the girls?” Minerva asked. “Because if you saw the state the girls were in when we found them, you would know that there is no possibility that surreptitious relations would have gone unnoticed.”

“Hm,” Nayak said blandly, and then pivoted. “Who saw him last?”

“The last certain sighting of him was in the seventh year muggle studies class, four days ago. Later that evening, two housemates claim to have seen him passing through the common room.”

“What time, exactly?”

“They don’t agree. One says after sunset, the other says before the evening lamps went on. Anywhere within two or three hours.”

“And of course the Slytherin common room receives no natural light, so the sunset isn’t visible and the lamps are always on,” she mused, and it seemed more of a performance than a real thought process. Nayak wanted her former teacher to see how impressive she was, to show Minerva that she wasn’t going to easily get away with hiding anything. 

Sarah Nayak had been a Slytherin, Minerva recalled: the only Slytherin to be made an auror in over thirty years. She was one of those Slytherins who had managed to craft a neutral path, remaining in with her housemates without ever endorsing or rejecting their families’ tendencies towards extremist beliefs, and maintaining connections and friendships outside the house. She was cunning and ambitious, everything Salazar had wanted in his pupils, but she had directed her single-minded drive towards arresting dark wizards. 

“Did he have any appointments that evening? Anything he failed to attend?” Nayak asked. “Who was the first person to notice he was missing?”

Surely she already knew the answers to her own questions, and Minerva was beginning to tire of this. She wanted to check on Aberforth; make sure he hadn’t tried to take a penknife to his brother’s portrait. “He was meant to tutor another student in Ancient Runes that evening, but she says he never came. He didn’t attend class the next day, but-”

“But that’s not unusual for him,” Nayak cut in. “So the first time you were aware he might be… absent, shall we say, was the evening that Miss Lovegood and Miss Abbott…?”

“Yes,” Minerva confirmed. “He didn’t come to either of their dorms when all of the other young men did. Miss Lovegood even asked for him.”

“Asked for him?”

“It seems they may have made some agreement. Or she thought that he might be willing to help her through—it. Nevertheless, we sent a student down to Slytherin to find him, if only to be sure he wasn’t a risk on anyone’s safety, and they reported he wasn’t there.”

“No one thought that was odd?”

“Of course we thought it was worrisome, but our first priority-”

“-Was securing the omegas,” Nayak said smoothly.

“The young ladies.”

“Mhm.”

Minerva pursed her lips. “What, exactly, are you investigating?”

Nayak grinned. “Who was this student he was meant to tutor? Does she have an alibi? Where were they supposed to meet?”

“Astoria Greengrass, a sixth year student in Slytherin. They’re in the same Ancient Runes class. I understand that a friend accompanied her to the Runes classroom and waited with her for Draco to arrive. When he never did, they eventually left, assuming he had stood her up.”

“Would it be possible for me to speak with this young lady? Astoria Greengrass?”

“She’s said she doesn’t want to speak with aurors.” 

“Oh, I know how Slytherins can be around aurors, but perhaps she’ll make an exception for me. I’m just trying to get to the heart of this matter—what happened to Draco Malfoy, account for his actions. It’s all due diligence. Minerva.”

“I’m sure.”

“Well,” Nayak said, becoming breezy as if they had just finished brunch and were kissing each other on the cheek goodbye, “do let me know if she changes her mind about speaking to an auror. And make sure to let me know the moment Draco Malfoy is found.” 

“Are you assuming he’s fled and broken the terms of his probation?”

“You know what they say happens when you assume,” Nayak said, a sly smile curving across her face. She let herself out through the floo.

Aberforth had seated himself behind the desk in Minerva’s office. A single stern glare from her dispatched him to his feet. 

“How is he?” she asked. 

“Mum as a flower,” Aberforth grumbled. 

“Hm.”

“Can’t you-” Aberforth coughed sharply and blew his nose into a yellowish, phlegmy-looking cloth that he stuffed in his back pocket. “There’s no point in me visiting if he doesn’t talk.”

No one had ever asked Aberforth to repeatedly visit his brother’s portrait, but Minerva didn’t point this out. Again, she had allowed him to visit because it seemed cruel not to. “Shall I have someone see you down?” she asked. 

“Ariana’s still not back,” Aberforth said suddenly. “Her portrait, I mean. The frame is still empty.” He peered up at Albus.

Albus stared at his book.

“Why don’t you just tell him to talk?” Aberforth said, a pleading tone edging into his voice. “At least to me?”

“He doesn’t talk to anyone,” said one of the other headmasters’ portraits. “Not anymore.”

Another added, “Not since-”

Minerva flicked her wand down by her side, and the wall of portraits went silent. “If Albus is going to talk, it will be because he wants to, and not because I forced him to. There are no spells that can compel a portrait to speak. They’re not… people.”

She wished she hadn’t said that last part. Aberforth’s tongue worked around inside his mouth. 

“Being a bloody arsehole about it,” he finally muttered, and Minerva couldn’t tell if it was directed at her or Albus. She stepped towards the door to let him out, and he waved her away with a swollen, liver-spotted hand. “I’m going, I’m going. Good luck, Minerva.”

Chapters 20-22 - Miscellanea 1

“Draco,” Pomfrey said, magicking up a stool and sitting down beside his bed, “what are your plans for after Hogwarts?”

He almost automatically said Well, I’ll enter the ministry in the diplomacy office and then we’ll see where things go. Usually accompanied by a knowing wink which his father’s friends always understood. “I was thinking I might move to America,” he said finally. 

“What do you envision yourself doing in America?”

“I hadn’t realized this was a job interview,” Draco snarked and then immediately wished he hadn’t. “Uh-“

Pomfrey stared at him so long that he began to shift in his bed, uncomfortable. She had a very narrow nose and enormous eyes, sunken into her face and perched above prominent cheekbones. Her skin stretched tight over her cheeks, as if all her motherly plumpness had been stolen by the war. “I never worried about you before this year,” she said. “Now I worry.”

“Would’ve thought you rather disliked me, to be honest. You’d have good reason.” He cracked a smile. She remained stony. 

“I’m never angry at my patients.” She searched his face up and down, then abruptly stood up and went to her office. Draco wondered if he should vanish her stool for her. Then she returned carrying a small potted plant, and placed it on his bedside table. “Mr. Longbottom gave this to me when he visited earlier. I suspect he meant to give it to you. Either way, now I’m giving it to you, and I want you to learn how to take care of it.”

“Why?”

“I think it will be good for you. I’ll write to you in a month and I’ll expect you to bring it back here and show me how it’s progressed.”

What if I kill it? asked a small voice inside Draco’s chest. He swallowed it down. “If you want.”

“Good boy.” She smiled, patted his shoulder, and returned to her office.

Chapters 20-22 - Miscellanea 2

“Let’s do it. Let’s have sex, let’s practice right now.”

A lance of lust from Draco speared Hermione and fluid gushed into her panties. But rather than grabbing her, throwing her against the wall, kissing her violently, Draco took a step back. A wall had gone up in his eyes. “We don’t need to.”

“Why not? I know you want to.”

“Not when you’re like this.”

“Like what? I haven’t had a drop all evening. Sober as a stone.” Hermione stepped forward and Draco grabbed her by the shoulder, bracing his arm to keep her from coming closer. She hated that she was so weak that he could push her around like this—and she wished he would be rougher. 

“You’re—emotional.”

“And you’re occluding,” Hermione accused, suddenly aware that she was being desperate, and a bit pathetic. “Let that wall down and let’s see who’s standing behind the Mr. Self Control curtain.”

His wall faltered. The grip on her shoulder tightened. 

“Sorry, are you the romantic type? Do you want it to be face to face on silk sheets strewn with rose petals? Or does it bother you that I’m the one who’s chasing? It’s an alpha thing, isn’t it. You’ve always got to be in control.” She could see from the dark shift in his expression that she had hit something. “Don’t like it when I talk back, huh? Let me guess, in all your fantasies, you get to be the big strong alpha and I’m the submissive little omega who bakes you muffins and sucks your dick whenever you want-”

Draco kissed her. It was hard, it almost hurt, with his hand clenched in her hair, and Hermione felt herself melting, letting him control it the way things were supposed to be between alpha and omega. He pulled her up on her toes, his free hand tracing the curve of her waist and then sliding up her back to press her breasts against his chest. Fight it—fight it. But she couldn’t. His kisses became hot and open, and he mouthed down her jawline and then sucked on the spot on her neck that made her gasp, throwing her head back. His scent was everywhere, masculine and overwhelming. 

“You want it?” He groaned, and it made her quiver. “I’ll make you regret you asked.”

“Yes, alpha—please-”

Chapters 20-22 - Miscellanea 3

And then he was sinking to his knees, pressing his face between her thighs, mumbling as if half-drunk, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you…” over and over. What way he meant to take care of her he didn’t know. She thrust a hand through his hair, pulling him up towards her crotch, and a part of him wanted to bark at her—let him take care of this—and a part of him wanted to purr. His omega wanted him. Hazily he wondered whether it really mattered whether his omega wanted him or not, but as he raised his nose up between her legs and smelled her slick he knew it mattered. 

She gasped when he raised his hand to rub her through her panties. She bore down on him, her hand holding his hair tighter, and then she tore her panties off, kicking them around her ankles. Draco didn’t waste any time raising his mouth to her clitoris and she let out a delicious moan as he sucked and swirled his tongue around. 

Her hips rocked against his face and there was a moment where he thought he might suffocate between her legs (but wouldn’t that be an excellent way to go) and then she said, “Can you-”

He knew what she was asking, and rubbed a finger against her entrance, getting it covered in slick. 

“Please-” She pressed against on him and he growled, grabbing her hip with his free hand. “Sorry!”

“It’s okay,” he muttered, detaching his mouth for a moment before returning to between her legs. He pushed his forefinger inside her. She was tight. Her inner walls were sort of hard. Draco pumped his finger in and out a few times. She could take more; he instinctively knew she needed more to cum. He pressed a second finger inside her, pushing hard against the front wall of her vagina. Heaven. He’d die to be fucking her right now.

His own erection was beginning to rise. A distant voice in his head wondered if they were being too loud. But the library was supposed to be empty and he liked hearing his omega moan. 

Hermione tightened hard around his fingers and her clit pulsed in his mouth, and then Draco thought he might have blacked out for a moment because the next thing he remembered was her on her knees next to him, palming him through his pants with a blurry look of lust in her eyes.

“Can I help?” she whispered.

The instinctive beast inside Draco was whispering for him to throw her down and fuck her on the floor of the library. She’d be wet and soft and warm and open. But there was something weird about the way she was looking at him. It was like she was drunk… and he wasn’t. 

“C’mere,” he said, pulling her into a side hug that wouldn’t rub his erection against her body. She sighed, pressing her cheek into his chest. “You’re a good- a good witch.”

He had stumbled over good omega , then tried to compromise with good girl , which sounded weird, and landed on good witch. She looked up at him, raising her eyebrow. Now there was there Hermione Granger he recognized. “Good witch?”

He kissed her forehead. It was slightly sweaty. “Brightest witch of her age. Or whatever.”

“And you’re… the second best quidditch player of his age.”

“Oh?”

“After Oliver Wood, of course.”

Draco snorted, a rush of warmth flooding his chest. He thought he might do anything for this girl. 

Chapters 20-22 - Miscellanea 4

 “Why plants?” Draco asked suddenly. 

Longbottom kept turning the plant and squeezing for dead roots, then looked up as if only just realizing Draco was addressing him. “Huh?”

“How’re you so mediocre at everything else and not at plants?”

Longbottom frowned. “I dunno. Just am. Just like them better.”

“Why?” Draco demanded.

“Why d’you ask?”

Draco pressed his lips together, and squeezed a root of his own orchid. It was squishy, so he felt further up to see where the root became firm again. He cut the root just above the infirmity. 

“I like being around plants,” Longbottom said. “I don’t have a better explanation than that. Sorry.” He wiped his clippers on his pants, then continued, “Relationships with plants never have to be complicated. You can lo- care about them as much as you want, and you don’t have to worry whether they care about you back.” He shrugged. “Or whatever. I dunno.”

{...]

“You grew up on a big piece of land as a kid, right? Did you get out much… did you play in the dirt a lot?”

Draco thought back to the perfect hedge rows and walks of tawny, even pebbles. He tried bringing his mother a bouquet from the garden once when he was little and she shouted at him for mutilating the rose bushes. “Uh. No. Mum didn’t like it.”

Longbottom’s hands paused over his orchid. He brushed an attached piece of moss off the roots. “Yeah. My aunt neither.”

Chapters 20-22 - Miscellanea 5

“I wasn’t… good at occlumency,” Draco said slowly, feeling his tongue dry and foreign in his mouth. “I know I wasn’t. I’m still not really. Snape always said…” He chewed moisture into the side of his tongue. “Fuck Snape. Fucking arsehole. Nothing was ever good enough for him. He loved setting people up to fail. He-” His eyes darted to Hermione’s. Her gaze was bright, glistening with some unreadable emotion. Draco swallowed. This wasn’t about Snape—except everything was about Snape, just like everything, in the end, was about his mother, was about Hermione, was about Voldemort, his entire life and person dangling from a few sheer threads. Snape and the Dark Lord were both dead, but they weren’t gone, they still had Draco’s threads tied to their fingers and were tugging at him from beyond the grave. “The Dark Lord was powerful because he could know you, inside and out. Unless you were good at occlumency, unless you were perfect, he’d know if you were anything less than faithful-”

A lightbulb pinged in Draco’s mind: an idea half formed, why Snape wanted so badly to teach him occlumency—Snape sometimes had a strange gaze on those long evenings of occlumency, something halfway between fury and paternal joy. Snape had seemed to want so desperately to keep him alive. It was a desperation beyond reason or Slytherin self-preservation; by seventh year Snape should have had nothing left to gain from teaching Draco occlumency. Nothing was holier, to a Slytherin like Snape or Draco, than self-preservation—except, perhaps, for that fluttery warmth that Draco felt in his chest when he thought about his mother, or his elegant pet owl, or intelligent, savvy, lovely Hermione Granger. He’d do something counter to his own self interest if Hermione needed it of him. He’d jump broomless from the highest tower, he’d wrestle a savage hippogriff. 

“I-” Draco found himself at a loss, tracing over the lines of her face in wonderment, as if this was the first time he’d ever seen her. 

“Occlumency?” she prompted softly. 

He couldn’t keep getting distracted like this. “Occlumency. The Dark Lord would know if you were having doubts. If you weren’t good at occlumency, and I knew I wasn’t, the only way to stay safe was to be completely devoted to him. So that’s… what we did. We brainwashed ourselves into his cult because there’s no other way to survive a man who can read your mind. I could say this under veritaserum, too. I- it’s- Snape always said I didn’t have the temperment for occlumency; I wasn’t cold enough yet, or I didn’t have anything I really wanted to hide-”

Chapters 20-22 - Miscellanea 6

“I like you best when you need me.”

Hermione’s lips tightened almost imperceptibly. “I- I do need you.”

“But—not the way I need you. You don’t need me as badly as I need you. That’s—I-“

A hard lump rose in his throat, so sudden and thick that he thought he might have been silencio-ed. Hermione searched his face beseechingly. He hoped she might interrupt and fill his inadequacy with words, but she just waited, and waited. 

“Relationships are about power. What you can get out of other people. If you need someone more than they need you, they have power over you. And if other people know about your needs, they can use that to manipulate you. The Dark Lord knew my parents lo- he used me to manipulate my parents—I could get you hurt by caring too much about you. Or by admitting it. I-“ He swallowed involuntarily. 

“Voldemort is dead,” Hermione said in the pause, touching his hand. “The war is over. Relationships don’t need to be about power and manipulation. Forget the dynamic of the alpha and omega thing for a moment. We don’t need to need each other—we can just choose to care about each other. There doesn’t need to be a string of fate that binds people together.”

“It’d be easier if there was a thing like soulmates.”

“I think you like the alpha and omega thing because it lets you need and be needed without feeling guilty. You like that the choice comes pre-made with the alpha and omega thing.”

“Maybe,” he admitted. “I’ve never been close to anyone just for the sake of it—just for closeness. Maybe my mother. I like how you are with your friends. I want—I wish-“ Again that lump in his throat cut him off. “I was always jealous of you.”

“You mean Harry and Ron and me?”

“Not Potter. But yes—I was jealous of you and Weasley. Because neither of you had anything to give him except friendship, and he still—he chose you.”

Chapter 24 - Astoria and Draco in the Astronomy tower

Astoria leaned forward against the rail of the Astronomy tower, a bottle dangling from her hand out over the vast empty space where Dumbledore had fallen backwards in a flash of green light. Draco stood where Snape had stood, confused that his nose would mislead him.

Astoria turned, sharp and sloppy, her bottle whacking against the stone railing. Draco flinched, but the bottle held solid. “What’re you…” She hiccuped. “I locked the door.”

The clouds shifted, casting moonlight through the arches and illuminating wet tracks under Astoria’s eyes. 

“Colloportus isn’t a strong spell,” Draco said. 

“Asshole.” She was slurring her words slightly. “Couldn’t remember a better locking spell. Fuck… Suppose you’re here to, what, throw me off the ramparts? Can’t let a cunt be drunk in peace.”

Draco tested the air again. It was that same despair, that wild despair that would drive an animal to chew through its own leg to escape a trap. Layered under the despair was the sweetness of omega. 

“It’s you,” he said. 

“It’s me,” she muttered. “Astoria Greengrass. Bitch of the week. Merlin, what the fuck are you talking about?”

“You’re the omega.”

She pulled her wand from her skirt and pointed it vaguely in his direction. “I’ll fucking kill you.”

Draco forced his hands down at his side. “I’m not joking. You’re an omega. I came here because I smelled-”

“No fucking duh, I’m an omega.” Sparks burst from her wand. “Oh, shit.” She dropped both her wand and the bottle, and she jumped girlishly when the bottle shattered. “Shit, I can’t see anything.”

Draco lit his wand tip and came closer, illuminating the area around her feet. She picked her wand up from the broken glass. 

“Stay away fro’ me,” she slurred.

He moved towards the opposite wall of the astronomy tower, putting the exit between them so she wouldn’t feel trapped. “Astoria. How- how have you been concealing it?”

Red sparks still spit from her wand. “I don’t owe you shit. All I want…” She held out her empty hand, palm up, and attempted a spell with a sloppy circular motion. She tried it several times. “The great fucking irony of these alcohol creation spells is that they’re impossible to cast when you’re wasted. You wanna try? The incantation is vinimenti. Counterclockwise circle. Don’t forget the cup.”

“I’m not drinking with you. I want to know how you’ve been concealing your status. Are you taking potions? Do you have something in your family library that could help us?”

“I haven’t been concealing it,” Astoria slurred nastily. “Vinimenti. Vinimenti. Fuck. Don’t you know anything about the Greengrasses?”

They were one of the Sacred Twenty Eight. They had their money in wand wood. They were a Slytherin family, but they hadn’t taken sides during the war. “Uh-”

“We have a blood curse,” she said. “Not all of us. Only the women. I take a potion.”

“What potion? What’s the curse?”

“Nosy much, Malfoy? Fuck off and let me drink in peace.”

“You don’t have any alcohol,” Draco pointed out. 

She turned and looked back out over the Forbidden Forest. Her long hair seemed to glow in the moonlight, and it shook as she let out a strangled sob. 

Draco crept around the edge of the tower, edging towards her. She buried her face in her hands, elbows resting on that narrow dividing barrier between the tower and the open night. 

Draco summoned a goblet. “Vinimenti,” he murmured, and a dark liquid flowed from his wand. It stank like cheap cooking wine. “Hey. Astoria?”

She wiped her nose on her sleeve and took the goblet. “You’ve poisoned this.”

“I haven’t.”

“I would’ve… I would’ve done it to you.” She wiped her nose; she was really truly wasted. She sniffed the wine experimentally and took a sip. “Disgusting.” She took a long swig and made a face.

“So you have a blood curse,” Draco said. “What potion do you take? How long have you known you were an omega? Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

“Straight to the point. Fuck off. I told you I don’t owe you anything. You’re doing this for your girlfriend, not for me.”

Draco groaned. “Astoria… Why are you like this, honestly?”

“Why am I such a cunt?”

“Yes. Why are you such a cunt?”

She stared into her wine. “What other option is there?” The moonlight reflected off the surface of the liquid. She swirled it and a few drops slopped out. “You’re born into a world that expects nothing from you except that you be the perfect wife. You’re praised when you’re demure, and when you’re pretty, and when you say yes to men. You’re raised to believe that blood purity is everything, but you’ve been born into a family that hated its daughters so much it cursed its own blood to kill them. The only way out is to become Astoria Somebody’s-Wife. Then I find out that I’m an omega, and it’s like my body will never be my own. If it’s not the cursed blood in my veins, it’s the cursed fucking womb. My only option now is to get married and let my husband fill me with babies. I don’t even like children. Are you about to ask why I hate you so much?”

Draco ground his jaw shut.

“You should have gone to jail with the rest of the Death Eater blood purists. Don’t tell me you’ve changed because you’ve had some muggleborn pussy now.”

“I love Hermione.” Draco watched her swirl her wine. “I’m trying to remove my Dark Mark.”

“Why should I care?”

“We’re all struggling with this alpha and omega problem. You could help us. The potion you take for your blood curse. What is it? Why is it failing?”

“It’s a family recipe. You can smell me now because I’m going into heat.” She stared out at the dark grounds. “Or maybe it’s failing because my liver has fallen out through my vagina and I’m finally about to die of alcohol poisoning. Thank Merlin.”

Draco thought if she was an animal caught in a trap, she would have chewed her leg off by now; she was too determined and too ruthless and too desperate not to. But she wasn’t in a trap, she was in a cage, and she knew there was only one way out. 

“Maybe I could help you through your heat,” Draco said, and immediately regretted it. Her need was more affecting than he had realized. 

Astoria screwed up her face. “Hermione Granger might not have any standards, but I’d rather throw myself off this tower than let you penetrate my body,” she spat. “It’s not like you’d marry me—I’d never marry you. And I’ll never risk passing this curse on to another innocent girl.”

“I wish I could help you.”

Astoria blew her nose on her sleeve. “I wish you would leave me alone.”

“I can’t. I really can’t. It’s not about pheromones. But if you go into heat-”

“Yes, I know what happens!” She hiccuped. “I’ve heard my brothers talk about it when they think I can’t hear. It’s supposed to feel good, but it’s not as if any of us get a choice about it. At the end of the week we all feel raped anyway. Would you stop me if I tried to throw myself off the astronomy tower right now?”

Draco grabbed for her hand and she yanked herself away. 

“Don’t fucking touch me! I wasn’t actually going to do it.”

But he didn’t believe her. He needed to send a message to someone. Astoria is an omega and she’s about to go into heat. If only he had a patronus. He should have learned that spell that Auror Nayak used to send messages to Potter, with that slip of paper like inside a fortune cookie. He needed to keep her talking, to distract her from the not-so-metaphorical ledge. “Where were you during the Battle of Hogwarts? Were you in the castle?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“We’re trying to figure out the common link between everyone who presented. Everyone else was at the Battle of Hogwarts. We were all in the Great Hall when Harry Potter killed Voldemort.”

“Well I wasn’t.”

Draco’s stomach plummeted. 

“I was on the sixth floor. I had been attacked by an acromantula. I killed it, but it collapsed on top of me and broke my leg. They didn’t find me until hours after You-Know-Who was dead. I wasn’t supposed to be there, I was underage. I’m old for my year but I only came of age this fall.”

“All the Slytherins were supposed to leave.”

“I wanted to stay and fight.”

“On whose side?”

Astoria barked out a laugh. “Do you really need to ask?”

No, he didn’t. 

“Can I see it?” she asked.

For a wild moment he thought she was asking to see his penis. She jabbed her wand into his left arm. Oh—she meant the Dark Mark. He rolled up his sleeve, staring at the unblemished skin on his left forearm for a moment, then passed his wand over the glamour, revealing the skull-and-serpent that stained his body. 

“And you’re getting rid of it?” she said, her tone tinged with suspicion.

“I’m trying. It’s meant to be non-removable.”

“You could cut off your arm.”

“Thanks. Already thought of that, but thanks.”

She heaved a sigh and took a tentative sip of her wine. “This wine is so nasty. Fuck. I’d rather die than be sober.”

There was no hint of humor or hyperbole in her voice. Draco tried the vinimenti spell again, producing a less salty-smelling wine. They traded goblets, and she lifted the wine to her lips and drank the goblet empty. Then she leaned over the edge of the railing and retched. 

“Are you okay?” Draco asked uselessly. He wished he hadn’t given her more alcohol.

“The problem with wine,” she groaned between convulsions, “is the low alcohol content. A bottle of firewhisky will get me through the night, but you can’t produce liquor with magic. That stupid Gamp’s Law. So I have to drink three times as much conjured wine to get equally drunk, and I start to run out of space in my stomach.” She suddenly plopped down on the floor of the astronomy tower, the glass scattering around her feet, and she put her head between her legs. “I’m gonna barf.”

Draco conjured a bowl and thrust it into her hands. A thin, dark liquid that looked like a lumpy concoction of wine and stomach acid poured from her mouth. She groaned, retching again, and another slop of vomit burst out. 

“Do you want me to get Madam Pomfrey?”

She moaned and shook her head. “Water.”

He held out a goblet filled with aguamenti water, but she was still hunched blindly over the bowl. He took the bowl from her, placing it on the floor between her knees, and wrapped her fingers around the neck of the goblet. “Here.”

She took a few sips. She used the water to rinse out her mouth, spitting into the bowl, and then looked up, her eyes leaky from the pressure of squeezing them closed. “Your girlfriend’s softened you up.”

“I like to think being given a second chance has softened me up. The fact that Hermione has chosen me… I’ve just got to keep working to be the person she chose to be with.”

“How redemptive of you,” she said cruelly. 

A rush of fury shot through him. “Astoria. I’m sorry this has happened to you. Will you please let me take you to Madam Pomfrey before you go into heat?”

Her voice was rough from vomiting. “You can kill me like Snape killed Dumbledore. Avada Kedavra me right off this tower.”

“Leave his name out of your mouth.”

Her watery gaze searched his face. “It was a mercy kill, wasn’t it? That’s what Harry Potter said during the Death Eater trials. I followed them all. Yours especially. I was hoping they’d put you away for life. But when Granger said…”

Draco pressed his lips together. 

She threw a hand out toward the wall and staggered to her feet. “I’m going to Madam Pomfrey. Come if you want.”

Chapter 25 - After getting caught breaking probation, but before he’s taken to trial, Draco speaks to Dumbledore’s portrait

“Why did you let it happen to me?”

Sadness crinkled Dumbledore’s painted brow. Draco could have stabbed his painted face. 

“I was- innocent. I was eleven, I was too young to know any better, you could have- you could have saved me. You could have put me in Hufflepuff, you could have kept me away from Snape, made me face consequences for being a little bigot, you- you let me get to the point where I was going to kill you, and that’s the line you decided I shouldn’t cross. As- as if-“ He was shaking. “I came to Hogwarts with half a chance. I didn’t have to- I didn’t have to get this far. Why did you let that happen to me? Why won’t you answer me?”

All the portraits watched Dumbledore. He opened his mouth as if to speak and then closed it again, looking away. He wiped at the corner of his eye. 

“That’s not fair,” Draco said, his voice cracking. “Why do you get to cry and I don’t? I’ve been just another piece on your chess board, and what happens to the pieces when the players leave the fucking game?”

“They go back in the box,” mumbled Phineas. 

“Shut up,“ hissed another portrait. 

Draco smelled something burning and pulled his hand away from where he was white knuckling a charred handprint into the desk. “This has been a waste of time. I’m happy I’m going to be expelled. I’m going to go home and be with my mother. I don’t care if you never give me answers, I can go home, and me and my mother can be evil together, and-“

“Draco,” Dumbledore said, and Draco’s heart leapt to his throat, choking off his words. Dumbledore coughed as if he had not spoken in a long time. “Draco. It is good to hear from you.”

The desk began smoking under Draco’s fingers again. 

“Every time you come into this office,” Dumbledore continued, “I feel as though everyone else speaks, and I never get to hear what you are thinking.”

Draco couldn’t swallow. He couldn’t breathe. He could only stare at Dumbledore’s portrait. 

“I take it you’ve spoken to Severus?” Dumbledore gave a small smile. “I can very well have this part of the conversation on my own. That was my running joke with Harry—I would explain things to him, and he would listen. I do remember one delightful time I had to explain something to him and he nearly destroyed this very office, but I digress… you are angry with me. For not saving you. For letting you become a Death Eater, and letting you be sorted into Slytherin—which, may I add, you wanted very much—and letting you be loved and cared for by the people who loved and cared for you.” He searched Draco’s face. “Your mother, your father, Severus-“

“Snape didn’t love me.”

“Severus was complicated. So are you. You are a Slytherin through and through, Draco, single-minded and filled with want, that’s not a bad thing. The Sorting Hat can only see who you are, not who you need to be. If I had rigged your sorting and put you in Hufflepuff, I would risk alienating you from your parents, who care so much about the family’s Slytherin legacy. You wouldn’t have received Severus’s protection, and say what you wish about how he expressed it, I do think Severus came to care about you. Humans have an innate need to love and be loved, even when that love is imperfect. You have living, loving parents. That is much more than many of your peers, and I don’t say that to make you feel guilty. How am I to save a little boy from the people who love him best in the world? I didn’t- I didn’t know that you were walking down the road to becoming a Death Eater. I hope you will forgive my candidness for a moment, and please stop me if this becomes too much to hear, but you were not a part of my plans until very late. I saw in you a self-possessed little boy brimming over with unearned confidence. Not a key piece in the grand scheme. It never occurred to me that one day you’d be sitting in this office, demanding to know why I didn’t save you earlier. Call that the folly of an old man. One begins to- to forget how deeply children feel—and if I may confess one more thing-“ Gentle tears were running down Dumbledore’s painted cheeks now. “I made many mistakes in the course of orchestrating this war so that my side would win. As it turns out, war tends to be all-consuming. If you feel as though I failed you, then you are probably right. I am sorry, Draco.”

Draco wanted to shout I hate you but he didn’t think Dumbledore would care. He wanted to say something that would make Dumbledore hurt, something so flesh-eating and corrosive that the portrait would feel true pain. He was shaking again. [this paragraph isn’t quite it]

Dumbledore had wiped his eyes and recomposed himself. “While we are here alone—as alone as anyone ever is in this panopticon of an office—may I ask you a question?”

Draco shook his head slightly, staring at the smoking wood beneath his fingers.

“Well, how about I ask you a question and you decide whether to answer it.”

Draco’s throat hurt so bad he was fighting the urge to vomit. “I hate you.”

“That is within your rights. And yet, I find myself sad to hear it.”

“I fucking HATE YOU,” he roared. “I HATE YOU. I WISH I COULD KILL YOU AGAIN.”

“If you keep setting this room on fire, you may very well manage it.”

Draco’s head whipped up and suddenly he smelled the choking smoke. All around the room, tiny fires had broken out on piles of papers and books. The rest of the portraits had fled in fear of immolation. 

“Don’t worry. They all have other places to go. It’s only me who would perish.” Dumbledore sounded almost cheery about the idea. “But while we are alone I have to ask. Where did Swirly put Severus’s portrait?”

Draco looked wildly around the room, which was filling with grey smoke. Instinctively he knew that if he could become calm again, he could put the fires out. But his heart was beating too fast. They would use this against him. They’d call it wanton destruction. If he couldn’t stop panicking he’d keep breaking probation but as long as he kept breaking probation he couldn’t be calm. It was becoming hard to breathe. “I- I-”

“Draco.” Dumbledore’s serene voice cut through the choking smoke. “Touch the owl on the back of the headmistress’s chair.”

Draco found a small owl carved in low relief at the top of McGonagall’s chair. His fingers brushed over it and the room filled with a cool, sweet-smelling spray of water. The fires died and the smoke went down. 

Dumbledore smiled gently. “A former headmistress thought the accrued wisdom in this room was too valuable to risk. She added a number of safety mechanisms to keep the portraits from being damaged. If you hadn’t activated it, it would have activated itself, though not before destroying a number of students’ papers. I guess the students wouldn’t have been terribly upset.”

“The Room of Requirement,” Draco blurted. “Swirly put Snape in the Room of Requirement.”

Dumbledore went ashen. “Ah.” He swallowed. “Of course. The Room of Hidden Things.”

“I found it. It’s by the owlery. It’s smaller now. The old- the old Room of Hidden Things was too conspicuous. You’d never find it without wanting to explore it. This one is small. I almost didn’t see Snape, he was behind a pile of mopheads. He didn’t want to see me.”

“I very much doubt that. Was there anything else there?”

Draco felt cold. “I killed the old Room of Requirement. Or Crabbe did. Nothing in any of the rooms survived—unless it was fiendfyre-proof.”

“Ah,” said Dumbledore in a very tight voice. “Ah.” He was crying again.

Draco studied the old man. His first impression of Dumbledore had been a child’s image of a grand old wizard, a knee-length beard representing the depth of his wisdom and still-bright eyes confirming his aged vitality. Even during that dreadful Sixth Year when Draco had been assigned to assassinate his headmaster, he’d been unable to see him as anything but a towering opponent, the puppeteer and the chess grandmaster. Now, in a slightly smaller than life portrait, Dumbledore seemed remarkably like a very fragile old man. 

Chapter 26 -  A short epilogue after Draco has been cleared of guilt

The owl dropped its letter directly onto Draco’s toast and flew off, knocking over a goblet with its wing and splashing orange juice towards Hermione. She flinched, but was unable to avoid the splash.

“Great,” she said. “Trelawney saw that. She’s predicting my death at this very moment.”

Draco glanced over in mild concern, but she was already magicking herself dry. “You’ll smell nice and fruity all day.” He sniffed her neck. “Although you already smell delicious, sweetcheeks.”

She snorted. “I like ‘princess’ better.”

“Sure thing, princess.” He picked up the letter, turning it over. He hadn’t received mail all term. The name on the outside of the letter simply read Draco in big block letters.

“Who’s it from?” Hermione asked, leaning over his arm.

Draco pressed lightly against her. “Dunno.” The letter had been spello-taped closed rather than sealed with wax, and he ripped the envelope as he tried to open it. The letter inside was a thin single sheet of parchment, folded into thirds. His heart did a funny flip flop when he unfolded the letter and scanned its few short sentences.

That was Goyle’s handwriting. 

“Well?” Hermione asked curiously.

Draco held the letter down so she could read it with him.

Draco,

It’s nice to hear from you!...