TEA & NECROMANCY | written by saveourskinship
read on ao3
translation into español: ao3
translation into русский: ao3, ficbook
summary:
“I’m dead,” she said.
It seemed a simple thing. Her friends laughed.
But Draco watched her and only her. She blinked. Her friends carried on but she didn’t. Her lips didn’t twitch in response to the morbid, gallowed joke, her eyes didn’t crinkle in nightmare’d amusement.
He realised he’d transitioned from observant to staring and looked away. But it prickled at him.
Something wasn’t right with Granger.
AESTHETIC SERIES | made upon a story
I.
“Come up here, Granger.”
She looked at him with a sort of disgusted confusion, “Why?”
“Because I want to talk to you.”
She looked up at him for a few seconds, an uncomfortable silence stretching between them, “My previous question bears repeating.”
“Because I... “ he floundered for something which would entreat her to engage his nosiness, “I want to know when you died.”
She yelled, her voice echoing down into the pit and ringing with ire, but there was something else as well. It hid in the widening of her eyes, the small tremor of her mouth, the further clenching of her hands. Something he knew well.
Resignation.
He supposed she was someone who was rather used to being a commodity. He had noticed a certain lack of fondness from those around her. She wasn’t endeared so much as revered, her brain a service to utilise and respect but not care about.
All the people who actually might want to look after her weren’t here.
II.
“You know this means you’re actually going to be sleeping outside, in a coffin, with a dead girl, right?”
“Anything you can do, I can do better, Granger.”
It felt strange looking after someone like this. Being needed. Having another person’s welfare be a central focus in his mind. He furrowed his brow at the thought and the implications of it.
And Granger had come to sit beside him tonight. Sought him out. Imbued more trust in him.
A dawning realisation crested in his mind how he would be endangering her if he walked away now. This hadn’t been his goal, he’d just been curious. Now he felt a dissonant verve of responsibility. One he wasn’t entirely convinced he wanted, but it was there nevertheless.
III.
“We’ll go to the castle, have breakfast, get ready and meet back in the Entrance Hall at twelve.”
“You don’t much like phrasing invitations as questions, do you?” she said through a sigh.
“Why would I give people better opportunities to tell me no?” he creased his forehead like this tidbit of social manipulation were obvious. “There are specific circumstances where it is warranted, but generally I don’t employ it outside those confines.”
“And when do you deign to -” but she trailed off when he raised his eyebrows and she coloured a touch, “Oh, right, of course.”
She shifted and looked down at the cushioning of the coffin, “I think I’ll just -”
“‘Accompany you to the Great Hall, Draco.’ Yes, thank you, Granger. Your company will be appreciated,” he finished for her.
“Hello, you unsightly fucknuggets,” Theo greeted them with a blasé drawl. As always his golden-brown hair was curled perfectly and his olive-green eyes sparkled with a fey-like chaos. Theo’s tongue grazed over a sharp canine when his impish grin met Draco’s gaze.
It faded as Theo took in Hermione though, his shock at her gaunt appearance clear in the clenching of his jaw and the sharpening of his eyes.
IV.
They were quiet and it was calm. No longer full of finger points or sharp knives like it used to be.
Granger opened a book to begin reading so Draco did the same. They’d been following this pattern since Hogsmeade, content to just sit with no need to validate being in each other’s company with conversation.
It was nice. Relaxing.
He liked it, being there with Granger. The soon-to-be-snowy outdoors were mellow. Comforting. He felt more content here than anywhere inside the castle lately.
He flipped a page, but Draco wasn’t reading. Not really. Instead, he wondered when his changing had occurred. When the pieces of him that were hated for all the right reasons and revered for the wrong, started to feel very other to who he was when he sat in the grass of a fiend-ridden forest with a dead girl.
How astounding and surreal the realisation was - that Hermione Granger had allowed Draco Malfoy to find himself again. To stitch the pieces back in the order he wanted, leaving scraps discarded and others mended.
“You make it easier to say yes.”
Draco blinked at the stars. “To what?”
Her whisper shook the particles of his soul.
“To wake another day.”
Draco stared at the sky. He blinked once more. Then again, a heaviness lodging in his throat.
Hermione made a little hum and continued, “I could sleep eternally in my death, don't you think?”
There it was again, the resignation. The inevitability. The crush of let me be done.
He shifted his gaze over the clusters of the galaxy, willing his eyes not to fill.
“How do you think I would feel if you left this world for good, Granger?” he asked, voice clicking as he held it steady.
“I've put a terrible burden on you,” she murmured, dozy with sleep. “And your mystery would be laid to rest. So, I think you'd feel relief.”
Their calm came again but this time it stuck like burnt caramel in his gums.
“I think I'd feel alone.”
V.
Hermione slowly removed her hand from the pouch and Draco’s stomach flipped. She held a teacup. The same one she’d thrown over her shoulder. The one Draco had left there and promptly forgotten about.
A book. Five photos. A chain… and a teacup.
That was everything Hermione Granger wanted to pass on to those that survived her. She hadn’t even included her Order of Merlin.
But she’d kept the teacup. His teacup. Their time together a ‘silly thing’ that meant a lot to her.
His teacup… meant a lot to her.
How was any person supposed to deal with this?
He was barely dealing with it. And Granger… Hermione-
His eyes stung. This was it. This had killed her.
VI.
“It sort of feels like we’re in a snow globe,” Hermione quietly observed.
“The snow would have to be with us inside the wards for that,” Draco corrected.
Against the white and grey of the morning, Hermione’s eyes glimmered with a tawny amber glow as she bit away a smirk at his immediate contradiction.
“True,” she agreed, dusking her lashes down. “But I meant more how it feels. Like… like a treasure almost, you know?”
Draco did. The security of a snow globe scene, anchored in place no matter how harried one made the storm of water and flakes. The houses still glowed, the figures still smiled. Content knowing nothing could upset them.
The magical, ethereal feeling of everything being okay even when the world was turned upside down.
He twined one of her curls around his finger feeling a pang of shame that he hadn’t been more astute in answering. “I don’t want to be with you knowing it will end. It would be… overwhelming. I want to be sure there will be a tomorrow and a next day after that. I wouldn’t-” He stopped, taking her hand and slowly slipped their fingers together before trying again. “I’m fine with sinking but there’s a difference between that and drowning.”
“How so?” she asked, staring at their lacing and the white points of pressure over their knuckles.
“Sinking has the hope of rising. Drowning does not. If you still think there will be an end, and I’m with you, I don’t survive that scenario. I drown.” He stroked her palm, willing her to understand. “At least if I sink, I know I may surface someday,” he grimaced, “I know how self-serving that is but-”
“No, it’s okay. You’re protecting yourself. I’m proud of you actually.”
Draco tipped his head up and found her giving him a small smile.
“You’ve not been able to do that much the past few years,” she tapped his inner arm knowingly. “It must feel… liberating.”
Yes. Something plucked in him with the ringing truth of a tuning fork. That was exactly it.
He couldn’t help it. He kissed her.
VII.
He took a sip and waited.
