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He shouldn’t have come.
He shouldn’t have let his eyes linger on that crumpled invitation — the one that’s been gathering dust all month in the corner of his office ever since he tossed it there to rot. He shouldn’t have stopped for even a second to consider whether things might not go as badly as expected. Shouldn’t have dared to second guess his better judgement.
No, he shouldn’t have come — and he shouldn’t have touched those fucking gooseberry tarts.
Don’t eat the fucking gooseberry tarts.
It’s not that they’re poisonous. It’s that they might as well be. Probably some miserable halfwit’s idea of a joke — a halfwit from one of the lesser departments. Magical Accidents and Catastrophes, if he had to guess. Possibly Wayne Hopkins. No, definitely Wayne Hopkins.
Fuck Wayne Hopkins.
After another ten minutes of this humiliation and a dozen more swigs from that glass of self-refilling Firewhiskey, he’s sure he’ll have the man’s untimely death all planned out.
But if he’s being honest with himself — a practice he generally prefers to avoid — it’s his own fault.
He read every word of that invitation more times than he cares to admit — enough to have the curls and dips of Granger’s handwriting memorized — and nowhere did it mention this year’s annual Christmas gala was a fancy dress event.
And there’s simply no universe in which Ministry employees have this much holiday spirit.
No — the tarts are jinxed.
There’s some watered down variety of Polyjuice baked into the filling, undetectable by taste but obvious enough only a few moments after swallowing.
Each unwitting guest who takes a bite gets transformed into a walking Christmas ornament, himself included.
But oh, if it were only so simple.
He’d thought at first that the tarts’ effects were entirely random. Frobisher’s already-green party dress grew into a forest of holly branches, and Macmillan sprouted reindeer antlers, though apparently they don’t bother him enough to pull him from the dance floor. He caught a glimpse of Potter at one point, sleeves transformed into dove feathers, and he’s fairly certain Weasley’s the one making the atrium stink of gingerbread.
Had he been in better spirits, he’d have found a way to use that to his advantage — thought up some clever insult to toss over his shoulder and make Weasley’s gumdrop buttons melt off.
But Zabini — ever the bearer of bad news — informed him as he waited at the bar that these festive transfigurations are actually supposed to mean something.
“Oh, that is unfortunate,” was his greeting, looking Draco up and down.
Draco only sniffed, at the time still nursing his first drink of the night. “Yes, well — seems I picked a bad tart.”
Zabini’s breath clouded in the air as he laughed, dozens of icicles dangling from his extremities sparkling in the firelight. “Good lord, no one’s told you?” Another frosty laugh, this one somewhat pitying. “The tarts are charmed to reveal your true nature.”
All the blood drained from his face around then, aftertaste of whiskey going sour in his mouth. It would explain why so many people had been staring.
He abandoned Zabini without another word, abruptly on the hunt for a suitably dark corner to hide. Hide and get thoroughly drunk.
It took a while — walking anywhere in his present condition isn’t exactly simple — but he eventually found refuge in the Christmas tree’s massive shadow. He hasn’t moved since, busy planning the most direct route to the exit and the most discreet moment in which to utilize it.
Amidst plotting Wayne Hopkins’ grisly demise, of course.
He sets his drink down on the floor next to him, finding his wand and transfiguring a napkin into parchment.
As he makes his escape, he decides he’ll perform his one good deed of the decade. It’s Christmas, after all. Peace on earth and good will toward men, or some such rubbish.
He’ll leave a warning at the refreshments table.
Do not, under any circumstances, touch the gooseberry tarts.
With what the enchantment’s done to his hands, his scribbling is barely legible. Growling under his breath, he scratches it out and tries again, this time with larger letters.
DON’T EAT THE FUCKING GOOSEBERRY—
“I’ve always found that legend fascinating.”
Oh, marvelous. Simply marvelous. Distinguished members of the audience, please welcome the one and only thing in the whole of the Wizarding World that could make this evening any worse.
Crumpling the parchment in his fist, he gathers a steadying breath before allowing his gaze to lift to her.
“Spare me, Granger.”
She’s insufferable at the best of times — and it’s just salt in the wound that, in her case, the worst those gooseberry tarts could do was put her in a nightgown. A frilly and ill-fitting thing, trimmed with far too many bows, but even so. Not entirely offensive to the eye.
Ignoring what was likely more of a snarl than words, she lifts a calm brow and asks, “How much have you had to drink?”
“Well, I’m still conscious — so not enough.”
The silence that follows is painful, even when there’s nothing silent about it. The party rages on around them, the night’s hired entertainment playing their way through a somewhat violent rendition of Winter Wonderland. Glasses shatter. Guests laugh. Shoes scuff on the dance floor.
And Granger only sighs.
Sighs and then does something only she would do. Something he probably should’ve expected her to do.
She smoothes down the front of her bow-infested skirt and takes a seat beside him on the floor.
He stares at her openly for as long as he dares — the same way people have been staring at him all evening. A look that’s one part disturbed and three parts incredulous.
But when she lets him gawk for nearly half a minute without reaction, he eventually has to give up, head slumping back against the wall.
“Surely you could find better company in a room full of people.”
“Surely,” she agrees.
“Is something preventing you from trying?”
One white-ruffled shoulder shifts against the wall — a shrug. “Perhaps I don’t want the most memorable part of this meticulously-planned evening to be the man drinking himself to death in the corner.”
He scoffs, shutting his eyes because the room’s starting to spin a little. “Man is not the operative term here — and there are several more drinks between me and death, I assure you.”
“Glad to hear it.”
Another excruciating pause — long enough to notice some lingering glances from around the room. On his own, he’s a spectacle, but the two of them sitting together? That’s an exhibition.
Which begs the question…
“Was this your idea?”
Granger makes a curious sound and waits for him to elaborate.
There’s no use sugarcoating it. “Inviting me,” he demands. “The tarts. The jinx. Turning me into this thing. All some elaborate form of sabotage?”
Oddly enough, she doesn’t sound offended. “I had nothing to do with the tarts — I was in charge of the guest list. But in that sense, I suppose, yes. Inviting you was my idea.”
“Why?” It comes out far more gobsmacked than he intended, and he does what little he can to school his tone before he continues, going for noncommittal. Indifferent. “I’ve worked here three years and never once been invited to anything. Why break such an immaculate streak?”
“This is the first event I ever had any control over.”
There’s an implication there he can’t ignore, try as he might. Highly irregular — the thought. That she might have invited him to all the others, had she been in charge.
Irregular and nonsensical. Clearly something to brush off, by cruel means if necessary. “Right fine job you’re doing, then,” he spits, gesturing vaguely to himself. “Where were you to control this?”
He can sense her sideways glance. “You don’t know anything about it, do you?”
There’s that tone he remembers from their school years. Superiority, pity and arrogance all mashed into one. It makes his jaw clench.
“The legend?”
“I know enough.”
“No, I don’t think you do,” she continues, either oblivious to the barely-controlled rage in his voice or just choosing to ignore it. “If you did, you wouldn’t be taking it so hard.”
“Oh, by all means — enlighten me, then, Granger.” He doesn’t remember picking up his glass of whiskey again, but he somehow manages to slosh it all over her silly-looking skirt with an angry gesture.
They both stare down at the stain in silence, and when he doesn’t apologize, she just clears her throat and looks up again. Up and off into the distance, speaking like she doesn’t care whether or not he’s listening.
He doubts she’d stop herself either way.
“It’s from Alpine folklore. Krampus, derived from the German word for ‘claw,’ is the dark counterpart of St. Nicholas. Bound in chains, with cloven hooves and the horns of a goat, he represents—”
“Evil. Yes. Thank you, I gathered as much.” He thrusts out his hands for emphasis, spilling more whiskey — because they aren’t really hands at this point. His skin is a withered gray, stretched too thin over the bones, and from each unsightly finger extends a curved, razor’s edge claw. “Lo and behold, I've the true nature of a demon! What a surprise!” The whiskey creeps up on him quickly. He’s slurring his words now, louder by the second. “Except no one’s surprised. You’re not surprised. I’m not surprised. Potter’s not — yes, you, Potter! You lanky twat — I SEE YOU STARING WITH ALL FOUR OF YOUR FUCKING EYES—”
In a logical universe, this would be the part where Granger gets up and throws his own drink in his face. Or something like that.
She should have the whole monstrous state of him escorted out at wandpoint for causing such a scene. Disrupting her meticulously-planned festivities.
He thinks he’s managing that with his presence alone, sudden outburst notwithstanding.
But the music never stops and no one comes to drag him away.
No, she just rests her hand on his knee, and the crass words tangle up on his tongue, tapering off into nothing.
Potter blinks at him stupidly from across the room for a good while before the Weaselette pulls his attention — and that’s that. He wanders off, bemused stares fall away, conversations rekindle and Granger’s hand just…stays where it is.
He has to look down to make sure he’s not imagining it.
But there it rests, plain as day — frilly sleeve and all. Her hand on his leg.*
*Note: temporarily inhuman, grotesquely deformed leg.
And he must be very drunk indeed, because he doesn’t move away. Not even an inch.
“As I was saying…” She clears her throat again when she’s certain he can control himself, almost too careful about the way she takes her hand back.
His eyes follow it like a lantern in the dark.
“…He doesn’t represent evil. Or from what I’ve read, that’s not the point.”
It’s just a hand. Five perfectly normal fingers. A scar on one of them, actually. Why in Merlin’s name is he so preoccupied with it that he can’t make himself look at anything else?
“What then?” he hears himself ask, only half-aware.
“A gray area. Neither good nor evil.”
It’s silly enough to make him scoff, and he yanks his eyes away at long last, grateful for an excuse. “A horned demon with a forked tongue who runs around beating children with a birch stick before dragging them off to hell is a gray area?”
Unfazed, Granger only shrugs. “Some versions of the legend say he takes them to Spain. Not hell.”
He mirrors her shrug, bringing the whiskey back to his lips — a grounding comfort. “Spain. Hell. To whatever end. What does it matter?”
“He’s a symbol of judgment and retribution.”
It’s a grave mistake to turn and look at her then. He means to toss her a glance so full of sarcasm it could curdle milk — to say, “Do I look like a symbol of judgment and retribution?” and then roll his eyes and turn away again.
The words come out as planned, but nothing else does.
Because, just faintly, he can see his own reflection in her eyes, obscured by candlelight and the darkness of her irises — and at his foolish invitation, she lets her gaze pass long and hard over his mangled form. Calculating. Merciless.
And then that hand — that fucking hand, once again — lifts without even the slightest ounce of fear or shame, and she lets her fingertips glide along the length of one twisted horn.
He shouldn’t be able to feel the touch, softer than velvet. The horns aren’t really part of him — just an illusion. But he does.
And she shouldn’t say it. The only words she could possibly say in this moment with enough power behind them to unapologetically rip his guts out.
But she does.
“You look lost.”
Yes, he’s lost.
He’s been lost since he crossed that decimated bridge and walked away from everything he’d ever known — all those years ago. Lost in a disgraced generation. In a job he was offered out of pity. Lost in his family. In time. In himself.
He’s desperately lost — and fuck you, because he already knew it.
But how dare she have the wherewithal to point it out straight to his face? And look so inviting while doing it?
He won’t even blame the whiskey. What happened was entirely her fault.
Hers and fucking Wayne Hopkins’.
And he spends the next twelve months even more lost than he was before — only now he’s lost in her.
There’s no erasing the moment. It’s illegal to use memory charms for such purposes, and he’s painfully aware that there’s not a single Time Turner left in existence.
That kiss is never going away.
But she said those words like she knew what they really meant, and with a look in her eyes he couldn’t fathom. A look that saw right through the demonic effects of those tarts, and then several layers deeper still.
To this day, he thinks he kissed her out of fear. He’d felt naked and exposed under that gaze, and some highly inebriated excuse for fight or flight told him it was the best way to hide.
By surging forward and colliding with her, horns and all.
She froze up as fast as he realized what he was doing, and he’d barely managed to tear himself away by the time she was on her feet.
She vanished like a warm breath evaporates in winter air. There for a moment, red-faced and wide-eyed — and then a moment later, gone.
He’s been chasing her ghost ever since.
He doesn’t know why.
There was nothing truly remarkable about the kiss itself. A rush of nerves, and little more.
He thinks perhaps he didn’t like the sight of her running away from him — as though he really was a monster, down beneath the claws and chains. Or perhaps it was the mortifying realization that he hadn’t kissed anyone in almost five whole years before that night.
Or perhaps it was simply because it was her. Of all people.
Probably that, if anything.
But for twelve fucking months she manages to make herself impossible to find. Inaccessible in every sense of the word.
Is Granger in today? Seems I was sent her post by mistake.
Oh, Miss Granger’s on holiday.
Who goes on fucking holiday in fucking February?
I’ve come to see Granger about that inquiry…
Mr. Billings is actually the right contact for matters regarding Muggle interference. He can see you now.
He’s never even heard of Gerard Billings. Did she hire Gerard Billings on the spot after she received his inquiry?
Fucking hell. Probably.
One morning, near the end of the summer, he catches a glimpse of her horrifically tangled mane entering a lift as he arrives in the atrium, and he thinks very seriously about taking a shortcut through the fountain to make it there before the doors close.
But then he sees Weasley follow her in, and his legs lock.
They’ve been separated for the last two years, or so he heard. But the word ‘amicably’ flashes behind his eyes as he watches the lift zip away.
Amicably enough to take the same lift. Amicable in the sense that Weasley would probably still break his nose for trying to speak to her. For being within five feet. For sharing the same air.
Weasley’s presence is a brick wall.
And Weasley is somehow almost always present.
So finally, in November, he gives up on the pretense and schedules a private meeting. Wears his best suit and his best scent and spends the entire half hour prior standing at the mirror in his office, trying to tame that stray strand of hair — all of it an exercise in humiliation, because about five seconds before he plans to leave, a letter slips under his door.
Not even from her.
From her assistant.
Mr. Malfoy,
Miss Granger sends her sincere apologies, but she’s unfortunately taken ill and will need to cancel your meeting this afternoon.
Cancel.
Not reschedule.
Just cancel.
Fuck it, then. Enough of this.
She can play games all she wants — no one plays quite so well as he does.
He waits for mid-December. Around the time holiday cards start getting passed around.
This year, he’ll send one of his own.
All in all, it’s a very Slytherin move. He’s long since outgrown the House mindset — no longer attributes any real weight to it — but in this particular instance, the telltale signs are hard to ignore.
The cunning is in his blood. Manipulation comes easy, and striking when one’s back is turned will always be the preferred method.
Besides — adversary or not, he thinks he has a fair sense of what makes Granger tick. Some small part of her is bound to appreciate the attention to detail. The poetic justice.
She’s to blame, after all, for his newfound interest in that grotesquely festive demon. For those endless nights he spent poring over the legend — how quickly he became obsessed.
He’s practically fluent in German now, purely by mistake.
Gruß vom Krampus…
Each letter is charmed to glisten like hot coals in the dark, a sharp contrast to the blood-red envelope.
Greetings from Krampus…
Greetings, indeed.
When Granger opens his jolly little missive, she’ll activate the Portkey he’s hidden inside — and then she’ll have no choice but to face him.
Only, he’s forgotten one thing.
This is Hermione Granger. War heroine to most, and fiendishly clever, she's the sort of witch who stows her wand up her sleeve for easy access.
And now there’s a two week gap in his memory he’ll never be able to account for.
The gap between the Portkey delivering her to his parlor, as planned, and waking up in St. Mungo’s Intensive Care Ward — decidedly not as planned.
Of all the disastrous outcomes he considered — (and there were many) — being permanently disfigured was not one of them.
Yet here we are.
There are more healers attending to him than to all the other patients on his floor combined — and not out of concern for his well-being.
Many of the poor fools he’s spotted across the way are in far worse condition, and at this point he’s confident the whole staff at St. Mungo’s is simply fighting over the opportunity to see his mangled face.
Granger’s spell was catastrophic. A panic-induced cocktail of hexes she fired off instinctively within seconds of arriving. Part stunning spell, part severing charm, part particularly nasty incendiary curse.
The healers say they’ve never seen anything like it.
He just calls it the Granger Special — much to her chagrin — each time earning a scathing look from the chair beside his cot. “Don’t.”
Yes, she visits. Often.
It surprised him too.
Seems she’s possessed of a guilt complex that could rival even the likes of Helga Hufflepuff — and evidently she’s planning to punish herself forever.
His old self would’ve let her. Happily.
She deserves it, doesn’t she? Her spell spliced together so many different forms of magic in such a never-before-seen way that modern medicine could do nothing for him.
The burns slashing across his face like claw marks will never heal. He’ll always be blind in his left eye — an eye forever clouded and mismatched. And the flesh that melted away along his jawline isn’t growing back.
Untreatable.
Only hours after waking up, he was having his ear chewed off by a solicitor whose absolute favorite word was 'litigation,' with 'damages' coming in close second.
He has every right to press charges against her. Gryffindor to the marrow, Granger even suggested it to him herself, all the while pretending the horrific sight of his face hadn’t frightened her to tears.
His old self would’ve jumped at the chance to stew in her misery, using the heat of it to boil away his own.
But that self hasn’t shown signs of life since he kissed her that night. Missing in action. Presumed dead.
Mostly, when he looks in the mirror, what comes to mind is an overwhelming feeling of indifference. He never fancied himself good-looking in the first place, so is it really that bad?
Apparently so, if his mother’s reaction is anything to go by. She’s always been a very austere, collected sort of woman — and until that moment, he’d never heard her scream in his life.
Still. He’s finding it difficult to muster the will to care. To be furious. Devastated. To respond the way everyone around him keeps insisting he should.
If he’s honest, the only thing he’s truly bothered by is the look in Granger’s eyes. How much time she spends at his side, dressed head to toe in pity like a mourner in black.
He fucking detests pity — and if he’d known his Gruß vom Krampus was going to bring him this, he never would've sent it. Disfigurement he can handle.
But not pity.
He only survives those early days with her in St. Mungo’s by way of gallows humor.
“—can’t imagine the constant peril your friends face, knowing you, if that’s how you react to a surprise.”
She hates his jokes. Would clearly prefer to be screamed at for the duration of visiting hours than make light of it. It’s obvious she wants him to share the burden of punishing herself, tired of doing it alone.
But in the end, she always plays along.
“Kidnapping doesn’t fall under the umbrella of surprise.”
“What if it’d been Weaslebee, whisking you off to a secret birthday celebration? Would you’ve blown his face off too?”
“My birthday is in September.”
“Granger, I promise you — Weasley doesn't know that."
Her laugh is half-hearted, as always, and inevitably followed up by her thousandth apology a few minutes later.
Yes, those early days are the hardest.
Things improve drastically when he’s released into the comfort of his own home, at long last. When he’s finally permitted to return to work.
Nevermind the slack-jawed stares from everyone in his path. The gasps and not-quite-quiet whispers.
They only make him think of that night he skulked around in horns and got the same reaction — so, really, they only make him think of her.
He doesn’t mind thinking of her.
Especially considering she’s still visiting.
He thought their incredibly fragile acquaintance would snap like a heartstring as soon as St. Mungo’s set him free. That she’d consider her self-prescribed sentence served and leave it at that.
Instead, she arrives on his doorstep Saturday morning with fresh tea and an expectant look on her face.
He likes that look much better. Almost as much as he likes the snap in her voice — the rude way she demands, “What?” when it takes him too long to invite her in.
It’s a demand that dares him to hope. Dares him to question why she shouldn’t be there, all the time, always.
A challenge to consider whether she’s there for better reasons.
Still, he finds he can’t help himself. Self-sabotage is a survival instinct at this point. “Oh, you weren’t informed? Visiting hours with your favorite monstrosity ended last week.”
So many emotions cross her face at once, it gives him whiplash. Hurt bleeding into anger, sparking into rage for a millisecond and then receding back into a dark, self-assured sort of look he’s entirely surprised by. An eyebrow tilt that suggests she expected and prepared for this. A look that throws down the proverbial gauntlet.
“…So Krampus can send greetings all he likes but won’t receive them?”
He was wrong before. This is whiplash.
She shoves her way unabashedly through the space he made intentionally small, taking advantage of his shock and inviting herself in.
“I wasn’t aware he retired from dragging little children off to hell.”
It takes him an absurd amount of time to shut the door, turn around and face her. Longer still to pick his jaw up off the floor and return fire.
“You said it was Spain.”
A phantom smile crosses her lips.
“Spain. Hell. To whatever end.”
It feels entirely breakable — this odd, intangible thing between them, whatever it is. So tenuous and so unlikely that he’s terrified to push the envelope even slightly in any direction.
She ran away once. What’s to stop her from doing it again?
Thus, for several months, he accomplishes the remarkable feat of taking absolutely no risks at all, ever. Wills himself to appreciate this for what it is.
Closeness. Human connection. Conversation.
Things he didn’t even realize he’d been lacking to such a violent degree. And now suddenly he’s relying on them the same way he relies on air to breathe.
Losing that can’t be worth any risk, even if he still thinks of that kiss every time he closes his eyes.
But Granger is as Granger does, and naturally she makes it as difficult as she possibly can.
She seems hellbent on being seen in public with him. Always insists on meeting at crowded Wizarding pubs. Tourist traps. Sometimes even the Ministry’s cafe, in full view of everyone they work with.
A concept that would thrill him, were it not for the creeping doubt steadily growing larger and louder at the back of his mind.
And one fine Friday, sitting at the most conspicuous table of said Ministry cafe, he can no longer contain himself.
She laughs so loudly at some random snide remark — far from his most clever, he’s sure — and she looks so happy and radiant and obvious, careless of who sees. And it just —
Fuck. He’s about to break his streak. The first risk he’s taken since she blasted half his face off.
But he has to know.
“Is this pity?”
She makes a face around the rim of her cup, like the tea’s too hot. Struggles to choke it down, blinking at him. “What?”
“Pity. Are you here with me because you pity me?”
He doesn’t much care how people look at his face, but he knows full well that she does. And she always notices.
“Do you just feel sorry for me? Feel guilty? Is that it?”
In the handful of seconds it takes her to process the words, he sees fire catch behind her eyes and knows he’s done for.
The ensuing fight will likely go down in Ministry history as the loudest, most public altercation to grace its walls since Potter’s ordeal in the Department of Mysteries.
But he gets his answer — and it’s certainly not pity.
He knows that now.
Pity doesn’t try to throw hot tea in the same face it mutilated a few months prior. Pity doesn’t scream the things she did at the top of her lungs, for all to hear.
Things he still can’t wrap his head around.
Pity doesn’t tend to make people so violent — and it’s certainly not what makes her back him into his own office and barricade the door.
He feels drunker than he did knee-deep in whiskey at that fucking Christmas party just trying to comprehend what’s happening, but at the very least his body still knows what it’s doing. What it’s wanted to do for ages now. What she’s quite literally begging it to do, though he can hardly fathom it.
Is she always going to catch him off guard like this?
Whether she’s hexing the flesh off his face or fucking him against the door of his office so brutally that his hips are starting to bruise, it seems she always manages.
He’s as lost now as she said he was a year ago. And he should be focusing on the repercussions. Everything liable to fall apart in the aftermath.
But his thoughts are otherwise occupied. Thinking she’s so tight it actually hurts. Thinking she smells like the Earl Grey she spilled all over both of them. Thinking yes. This is right. Exactly how it should be. Everything and nothing he expected all at once.
Because of course she’s still trying to argue while he’s inside of her.
But never in his wildest dreams did he allow himself to believe he might get to know what that feels like.
He comes — and his brain goes. And as he presses that monstrous face against the soft flesh of her chest, he gasps out the first and only thing that comes to mind.
“What were you supposed to be that night? I — fuck — I never knew.”
Equally breathless, she whispers, “What are you talking about?”
“The tarts. From that night. I could never figure out what it was they turned you into.”
“Oh.” A reasonable person would laugh at him — bringing this up at such a time.
But she doesn’t. And he’s slowly realizing that she might be just as foolish as he is.
“Clara, I think. From the Nutcracker.”
“…Just a girl?”
“A girl too curious for her own good.”
In the end, it’s him who laughs. A heavy, winded laugh he has to smother against her skin, because that…
That is poetic justice.