Chapter Text
Hermione Granger was too curious for her own good.
It was a fact of life; just as the sky was blue and the grass was green, Hermione Granger was curious.
She often considered this to be a positive personality trait rather than a character flaw. She was, however, forced to concede that it had led to several…Interesting predicaments.
For example, she’d ruined many a birthday gift for herself as a child, poking around in her parents’ wardrobe when they were preoccupied with preparing dinner and managing other household chores.
After attempting to feign surprise while unwrapping said gifts, she’d learned two things: first, that she was a terrible liar, and second, that some surprises were worth waiting for, after all.
She’d also quickly discovered that it was unwise to enter the boys’ dormitories during their “Boys Only” parties once they’d reached puberty.
She still could not look at rulers the same way.
While she might have been emotionally scarred by some of her adventures, her curiosity had not killed her—yet.
But it had led to her captivity in Malfoy Manor.
Draco Malfoy had ferreted his way into her friend group the year prior in what was a seamless, yet still surprising, addition to their inner circle.
Though Dean had initially vouched for Malfoy a mere month after they’d been paired as Auror partners, armed with lofty promises that he was not the same Malfoy they’d known in their youth, their group had not been convinced.
Of the seven, Ginny had voiced the most (and loudest) reservations:
He attempted to use an Unforgivable on Harry. He relentlessly mocked her family members. He introduced Hermione to the slur mudblood. His father had slipped her Tom Riddle’s diary and nearly gotten her killed.
They were all fair concerns, really.
Because they were fair, and because the majority of them had less-than-positive experiences with Draco Malfoy, they’d vetoed Dean’s request to allow him entry into their social circle.
Until the Prophet published the bloody orphans article.
It wasn’t that he donated thousands of galleons to the orphanage a month, or that he’d formed a mentoring program to counsel the aforementioned orphaned youths. It wasn’t even that he spent every Tuesday and Thursday evening teaching them quidditch.
It was that he’d attempted to conceal those things.
Draco Malfoy was a lot of things, but a fine actor, he was not.
As such, when the Prophet published an exposé on “The Real Draco Malfoy,” accompanied by a looping photograph of his reaction at having been discovered at the orphanage—surprise, then confusion, before settling on overt outrage— they’d had no choice but to concede defeat.
One by one, they fell.
Harry and Ron were the first to cave, softened both by the orphans and Malfoy’s purchasing them season tickets to the Chudley Cannons.
Luna was next, insisting that his aura had been cleansed, shortly followed by Lavender, who’d been guided by her tea leaves to make amends.
Hermione, for her part, had felt compelled to acknowledge Malfoy’s remorse upon his delivery of a succinct, but seemingly sincere, apology over a stale bagel in the Ministry cafeteria.
The scales had tipped into Malfoy’s favor, and Ginny—his lone, staunch opponent—was overruled.
Which was ironic, considering that she’d somehow become Malfoy’s primary advocate.
“He must’ve said something to you,” said Hermione for the hundredth time that evening.
She uncrossed her legs and lay down, pressing her back into the not-quite-soft-enough rug she’d purchased on clearance with her first paycheck. Above her, Ginny draped herself over the arm of Hermione’s sofa, her red hair spilling across the leather.
Floors, decided Hermione, were for moping. Sofas, in contrast, were for witches whose emotions were firmly regulated and whose lives were completely together.
“Draco doesn’t hate you,” said Ginny (again) over the rim of her wineglass. “It was an honest mistake—”
“Not ‘an’ honest mistake, Gin. Three honest mistakes.” Invigorated by the injustice, Hermione peeled herself off the floor and into a seating position, holding three fingers up to emphasize her point. “First: his dinner party.”
“You were invited to that,” countered Ginny lazily.
“In theory only,” argued Hermione. “Don’t you find it the least bit suspicious that he planned to have everyone over for dinner after I said I’d been invited to a work event?”
Ginny levitated their second bottle of wine from her place on the sofa and refilled her glass. “No.”
Liar, thought Hermione. She disregarded the blatant falsity and continued onward.
“‘Honest mistake’ number two: trivia, two weeks ago. He waited until I left to invite everyone over for late-night cocktails.”
Hermione crossed her arms over her chest, the chardonnay sloshing in her glass, as if to say, So There.
“You wouldn’t have gone anyway,” said Ginny with a shrug of her shoulder. “You made it very clear that you had an early start the next day.”
“I’d have appreciated the invitation,” grumbled Hermione, still put out by the snub. “But that’s not even the worst offense.
“Honest mistake number three,” she continued. “Last night’s ‘guys’ night’ that somehow included both you and Lav.”
Ginny opened her mouth as if to protest, but closed it just as quickly. “You’re right. That one’s weird.”
So caught up in winning—(for Hermione greatly enjoyed winning)—she forgot that she did not really want to prove that Malfoy disliked her, punching her fist in the air with a triumphant, “Ha!”
At this (sore) display, Ginny arched a perfectly manicured brow and raised the glass to her perfectly glossed, not-smudged lips.
(She really did deserve the sofa.)
Hermione cleared her throat. “I told you,” she added ungraciously, as she’d never been able to resist an I-Told-You-So moment.
“I have a hard time believing Draco dislikes you,” said Ginny, ignoring Hermione’s gloating. “In fact…”
“In fact,” prompted Hermione.
“I always got the feeling that he felt the opposite of dislike for you.”
“I highly doubt it,” she said.
And she truly did doubt it. Worse, it bothered her.
It shouldn’t have—they were semi-friendly at best, and he was far closer with the others in their group than with Hermione.
They had a tendency to…banter. Engage in passionate discussions. Debate, maybe.
Okay, they bickered.
Malfoy challenged her. He pulled where she pushed, took where she gave.
They sparred over nearly everything: the efficacy of whole or powdered Lionfish spines, the merits of proposed legislation (usually pertaining to creature rights), the proper way to aerate wine.
They debated and sparred and bickered until Hermione was red in the face and thinking of nothing but putting her hands around his poncy, aristocratic neck.
…So.
It shouldn’t have bothered her that he was no longer keen on enjoying (*loosely interpreted, of course) her company. She shouldn’t have cared.
But she did.
With a self-pitying sigh, Hermione drained the rest of her glass and cursed the day that Draco Malfoy waltzed into her life, leaving her bothered and caring.
Really, thought Hermione, it was all the orphans’ fault.
Employing a careful, analytical approach, Hermione scrutinized her interactions with Malfoy over the course of the following month, all of which were documented in her little black address book.
At first glance, her notes revealed highly erratic and inconsistent treatment of her.
Although he paid for every single one of her drinks on pub nights (October 6, 14, and 20) and asked her—and only her—for a dance at Dean’s Halloween party, he’d scheduled both of his bimonthly dinner parties on nights that he knew she’d be working late (October 5, 25).
As she contemplated (and re-contemplated, and re-re-contemplated) the data, a trend emerged, revealing itself and compelling only one conclusion:
Malfoy was perfectly content to speak to her in public, but under no circumstances did he want her in the Manor.
She resolved to find out why.
Gaining access to Malfoy Manor was easier than Hermione had anticipated.
All it’d taken was a dozen freshly baked biscuits, a bottle of elderflower wine, Dean’s promised discretion, and Ginny’s sticky fingers.
On the third Saturday of the month, Hermione, wearing the knee-high chocolate-colored boots she’d purchased for Confidence, strolled through the gates of Malfoy Manor, Malfoy’s tie tucked safely into her bag. She huddled into her coat as she walked, the icy breeze assaulting her already-reddening cheeks.
The walk down the drive, illuminated by the full moon, was not totally unfamiliar, despite her apparent banishment from the grounds as of late.
Before she’d committed the (still unknown) cardinal sin that had led to her aforementioned exile, she’d frequented the Manor along with their mutual friends.
At first, it’d been uncomfortable to revisit the place where she’d been subjected to torture. But she’d made amends with the Malfoy son and matriarch, and had undergone years of intensive mind healing to process and heal from the trauma she’d suffered as a result of the war.
….And it didn’t exactly hurt that the drawing room had gone up in flames and all but disappeared from the Manor itself.
Now, standing before the front door with her fist raised, she felt the familiar pang of discomfort and unease.
After a half-second moment of hesitation, she took hold of the heavy, brass door knocker—a crescent moon—and struck thrice.
She’d expected Malfoy to answer—Dean had assured her, upon receiving his biscuity payment and after thumbing through the calendar that Malfoy stowed in his drawer at work, that Narcissa was to be out that evening—but the sight still took her by surprise.
It dawned on her that she’d half-expected Malfoy to laze about his manor in the finest dress robes a wizard could buy.
Never in a million years would she have expected to see him in loungewear.
Loose, grey joggers were slung low on his hips, but he’d at least had the decency to pair the obscene item with a simple white jumper and thick socks. He held the door open with one hand and a mug in the other, surveying Hermione with open confusion.
She suddenly regretted wearing so many layers, the November chill be damned. She itched to throw her coat to the ground. Maybe she’d stomp on it for good measure.
“Granger?” asked a puzzled Malfoy. He blinked rapidly, as if trying to determine whether she was real or a figment of his imagination.
“That’s me,” she said stupidly.
His lips twisted into a smirk.
Her usual desire to strangle him resurfaced.
“I have your tie,” she blurted, beginning to feel very silly about her master plan.
She slid the monogrammed tote off her shoulder, reaching in to grab the tie that Ginny had, for the price of one (1) bottle of wine, nicked from the back of Malfoy’s chair at the office after visiting Harry for lunch.
“Here,” declared Hermione, all but shoving the (now-crumpled tie) into his free hand.
Amused, Malfoy wrapped it around his wrist. “I’d wonder where it’d gotten off to.”
“Ginny found it.”
“Found it where?”
It was at that moment that Hermione realized that she’d failed to account for a plausible backstory. She faltered.
“Around,” she said, vaguely gesturing to the area around them.
“I see,” said Malfoy, though he sounded as if he did not see at all.
…Scratch that.
It sounded as if he’d seen right through her.
Desperate to regain control of the situation, Hermione said, “She mentioned that she’d found it, erm, at Grimmauld Place—maybe after dinner one evening? And, well, it’s too cold for delivery by owl, really—those poor creatures—so I thought I’d just…Bring it by.”
As she spoke (i.e., word vomited), Malfoy nodded along as if everything she was saying was not a bald-faced lie, leaning against the doorframe as he did so.
“That’s awfully considerate of you.”
“It is,” she agreed with a prim sniff that she hoped hid the self-consciousness that was beginning to constrict her vocal chords. “So. Since I’m here, and you’re here,” she began lamely, “perhaps we could—talk?”
The playful smirk vanished from his features. Hermione’s heart plummeted to her stomach.
“It’s late,” he said, shifting uneasily.
It really wasn’t. It was half-eight.
“Right. Of course,” she said anyway. Her cheeks burned, mortification steadily increasing. Silly, silly, silly, she thought of herself. “I’ll just”—She jerked her thumb over her shoulder—“Be off, then.”
“Yeah,” said Malfoy, something like regret coloring his tone. “Okay.”
Humiliation had her taking a step back.
Determination had her taking two steps forward, just outside the doorframe.
She came here for answers, and answers she would receive.
“Malfoy, wait.”
She reached toward him—a plea, a request, a simple attempt to grasp at the sleeve of his jumper and compel him to explain her expulsion.
But as soon as her outstretched hand crossed the threshold of the Manor, a force—strong, but not necessarily violent—threw her inside.
And directly into Malfoy.
~
Hermione knew of Malfoy’s strength, but only as an abstract concept. He was an Auror, so it made sense that he would be muscular.
She just hadn’t expected him to be so—strapping.
(Merlin. She sounded like her grandmother.)
He’d caught her with a single arm, wrapping it around her waist and steadying her without spilling a single drop of tea.
“I didn’t do that,” she said once she regained her balance, preemptively defensive.
Malfoy merely grunted out a terse, “Yeah.”
“I didn’t,” repeated Hermione, her earlier humiliation giving way to vexation.
“I know,” he snapped irritably.
“It doesn’t sound like you know,” she fired back, her fists making their way to her hips in an indignant power pose.
Malfoy closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose, and inhaled deeply. “No, you don’t know the mess you’ve gotten us into, Granger.”
“I’ve not gotten either of us into a ‘mess,’” said Hermione, framing the term with scare quotes and an appropriate amount of attitude. “But since you’re so bothered by my presence, I’ll just see myself out.”
A dramatic exit: that was what she needed.
With her head held high, Hermione strode to the front door, purposeful and righteous.
Nothing would stop her—not her desire to interrogate Malfoy, not her wish to demand his respect (though she was certain she would still so demand, but on a day on which she’d not sweated through her coat), not even his protesting, “Granger, wait!”
And so she walked, purposefully and righteously, directly into an invisible, but tangible, barrier. She bounced off the wards with an inelegant “Oof,” stumbling backward.
“What the hell was that?” she asked, fighting the urge to commence a duel against the doorway.
As if sensing said urge, the door swung shut with such force it rattled the frame.
Malfoy slumped against the wall, his shoulders hunched forward in defeat. “That,” he intoned, “was the Manor.”
“The Manor slammed the front door in my face?” said Hermione disbelievingly.
“Indeed,” drawled Malfoy with a heavy sigh.
“Why?” she asked, baffled.
“Haven’t the foggiest,” he said quickly.
Too quickly.
“Malfoy,” she said, her tone a warning.
One that he, predictably, did not heed.
“This—happens sometimes. A little quirk in the Malfoy family magic.”
“I’ve no interest in your quirks,” said Hermione, exasperated both by his caginess and her confinement.
“I’m going to leave now, and nothing—nothing,” she repeated, raising her voice so that her words reverberated throughout the foyer, “is going to stop me.”
Refusing to be bested by a fucking door, she grabbed the doorknob, twisting and pulling and jiggling.
It didn’t budge.
“It’s no use,” said Malfoy unhelpfully, who’d evidently come to terms with their quandary. Instead of slouching like a mopey teenager, he stood tall, sipping from his mug and watching her with idle amusement.
Ignoring him, she tried her wand next, sending off various unlocking charms in rapid succession.
Still, the door remained shut.
By the time she admitted defeat, her wrist was aching, her throat was dry, and sweat had her curls sticking to the nape of her neck.
“A little help, please?”
Seemingly unbothered, Malfoy approached the door and gave the doorknob a single, unsuccessful turn.
“I told you it wouldn’t work.”
“Nobody likes a sore winner,” said Hermione, a bit hypocritically.
(So what if she was a hypocrite if she was self-aware of that fact?)
Apparently sharing in her thought process, Malfoy arched a single, blond brow that seemed to say, “Really?”
The action had the benefit of reminding Hermione that she was cross with Malfoy, which reinvigorated her search for an escape.
She would be having a mighty long floo call with Ginny—
A floo call.
“The floo, of course!” she said with a snap of her fingers. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of it sooner!”
Leaving Malfoy in her wake, Hermione beelined toward the floo she knew was located in the cloak room adjacent to the foyer.
He ambled behind her, both literally and metaphorically dragging his feet. She could all but hear the cynicism in his gait.
Situating herself in the fireplace, she grabbed a fistful of floo powder from the porcelain vase on the mantle, knowing she would be put out of her misery in a matter of minutes. While she respected ancestral magic as much as the next witch, she very much doubted that the Manor—clearly working of its own accord—could interfere with the highly regulated floo network.
“We’ll be talking later,” she vowed to Malfoy. Then, aloud, she said, “My flat.”
She went nowhere.
The powder dusted her (new!) suede boots, a mocking swirl of espresso and foam.
Malfoy didn’t even try to suppress his amusement. He stood across from her with an eyebrow cocked and his lips pulled into a smug half-smile.
“I suppose ten seconds theoretically counts as ‘later.’”
“I didn’t speak clearly enough,” reasoned Hermione. She grabbed more powder, threw it at her feet, and repeated, with exaggerated enunciation, “My. Flat.”
Still, she remained in place.
“Hello again, Granger. Or should I say, ‘Hello, still, Granger’?”
“Goodbye, Malfoy,” she said, and dumped the entire contents of the vase on the ground.
It was not flames that thereafter engulfed her, but rather, all of the powder she’d attempted to use. It swirled around her in a relentless, punitive blizzard, one that obscured her vision and pushed her out of the fireplace.
She landed on her bum, her bag slipping off her shoulder and sliding across the floor.
Malfoy was there before she could meaningfully comprehend what’d happened, hoisting her to her feet with casual strength.
“For fuck’s sake, Granger,” he was saying, his large hands gripping her shoulders over her coat, having either vanished or dropped his mug. “Why must you be so stubborn?”
“I’m not stubborn,” said Hermione, who was stubbornly planning her next exit strategy as she spoke.
She eyed the fireplace again. As if reading her mind, it closed itself up by erecting a redbrick barrier.
It was clear that she’d underestimated the Manor’s magical capabilities.
Malfoy rolled his eyes to the ceiling, a disbelieving huff falling from his lips. The sight of it provided her a momentary distraction from her abduction.
“Don’t try to leave,” he said finally, his voice as firm as his grip. “Not yet, anyway,” he continued, for he’d seen the way she’d begun to protest.
“But—“
“Come on,” he continued over her objections. He dropped his hands to his sides, leaving her shoulders tingling from where he’d touched her. “I’ll show you to your room—I’m sure it’s got one picked out for you already.”
Malfoy spun on his heels and began walking down the corridor without another word, as if he simply expected her to blindly follow him.
“I’m not staying here,” she called out as she gathered up her belongings from where they’d scattered across the marble flooring.
“Going to try the door again?” asked Malfoy mockingly over his shoulder.
Why oh why had she let herself become so bothered by the possibility that Draco Malfoy, Prat Extraordinaire, was uninterested in her friendship?
“I have to work!” she protested from where she stood, rooted to the spot. “And Crooks! And—I don’t have any clothes! Am I meant to streak through the halls naked?”
That had him stumbling.
Note to self, thought Hermione: Threaten Malfoy with nudity.
Finally taking her concerns seriously, Malfoy ceased walking down the (ridiculously long) corridor.
“Use your leave,” he called out. “Merlin knows you could use a holiday anyway. And, I dunno, Owl one of the thousand Weasleys you’ve dated to watch your beast.” Then, narrowing his eyes, he said, “I’m sure one of them can Owl you appropriate attire, as well.”
“I haven’t dated a thousand Weasleys,” said Hermione, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Whatever,” said Malfoy, sounding far more annoyed than he had the right to sound. “You’ve dated multiple—”
“Two,” she countered. “Though I don’t know if you could call my fling with Charlie ‘dating.’ We really only—”
“Eugh,” said a shuddering Malfoy, holding up his hands as if pleading for his life. “Don’t say another word. I’d rather not have that mental image in my mind.”
Again, Hermione found herself bafflingly offended at Malfoy’s disdain for her. She felt the familiar flush of mortification, her cheeks reddened from the curious sting of his implicit rejection.
“I’ll ask Gin to watch Crooks and to send clothes,” she said, stressing the name of one of the Weasleys she’d neither dated nor slept with. “Assuming your ‘quirky’ family magic is gracious enough to permit me to use the post.”
“Great,” clipped Malfoy, whose unjustified irritation had not yet faded. “Now. Let’s find your room.”
With one final longing glance toward the barricaded fireplace, Hermione begrudgingly acquiesced, on one condition:
Come morning, Malfoy would tell her everything that he knew about this little “quirk” in his family magic.
Agreement struck and sealed with an unsettling glaring contest, she and Malfoy began the hunt for her designated room.
It would have been too easy, they’d agreed, for the Manor to allow her to stay in the designated guest wing. They were proven correct when every door to that wing was locked, no Alohomora strong enough to unlock any of them.
And when Hermione gazed at the window overlooking the gardens for too long, the Manor sealed that up, too.
(Okay, perhaps it was justified; she had briefly wondered if she could throw herself out the window and escape the grounds by foot.)
Finally, they located the only unused bedroom that remained unlocked.
So grateful was Hermione—with her aching feet and her patience so thin it was nearly nonexistent—to have found her resting place, she’d hardly realized that the Manor had placed her directly next to Malfoy’s bedroom.