Post by kcsficmas on Jan 2, 2012 1:53:15 GMT -8
Title: Cutting Corners
Rating: PG
Warnings: EWE
Summary: "Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century." - Mark Twain. With the development of the new wizarding Marriage Law, Hermione must learn to reconcile her life with his.
A/N: Um, so, I got a little off-track with the fic. It started off well, but I got distracted by the quote and, well, here we are. Also I forgot about the third requirement until just now, as I was copy-pasting from my assignment email. And also I may not have included the first requirement to your satisfaction. But... I hope you enjoy anyway! I started a second potential fic but abandoned it - I will post it for you later!
-
Cutting Corners
Harry gives her two days to make up her mind.
“I’ve got to formally submit the idea by Wednesday. I know it isn’t a lot of time,” he says, and he seems genuinely sorry, but Hermione refuses to look at him.
“Do you know what you’re having me do?” she bites out, and up bubbles the resentment that she’s been trying to shove down ever since the first whispers of marriage law began circulating in the wizarding community. She raises her eyes fleetingly and Harry flinches away from the anger. “I can’t even say that you’re asking me.”
“You know I wouldn’t force you, Hermione,” he replies steadily. Hermione is breathing hard and her mind is racing but though she wants to believe him, knows he wants to believe himself, she is aware that even she cannot be exempt from any decree that begins ’All Muggleborns must’. Deep down inside, in a place she doesn’t want to think about, Hermione’s already accepted his words for what they are – the truth, and a necessary one at that. Deep down inside, in that dark and secret place, Hermione has already agreed.
Though she never says it out loud, Hermione slowly begins to offer passive support to the bill. It’s got to pass the Wizengamot, Harry tells her, and so she stays up late for a week to build a presentation that can book no argument. When she stands in the centre of the great room to speak, her voice is loud and clear, words like inbreeding and tolerance echoing off the stone walls and bouncing back to play her own logic into her ears. She sees the witches and wizards, wise eyes focused on her, some nodding with her words. Before she knows it, the votes are being cast. They don’t ask for a recess; the Supreme Mugwump – Kingsley Shacklebolt – calls for all in favour to stand up, and one by one, they all end up on their feet. Every seat is empty.
-
In September, she meets with Draco for the first time and only time. When she walks into a little Muggle cafe – at her insistence, naturally – her eyes are immediately drawn to a shock of white-blonde hair. The way he’s sitting in the hard, wooden chair is casual. He’s wearing dark slacks and a tie that is, as usual, perfectly knotted, and he’s so impeccably neat that Hermione automatically smoothes her hand over her bushy hair, trying to lay it flat despite its defiance toward the contrary. She doesn’t speak, but Draco glances over his shoulder just as she approaches him. The quick, critical sweep of his eyes leaves her face burning red as she considers just how long it’s been since she bought a new pantsuit.
“Trying to keep the nineties alive?” Draco says scornfully by way of greeting, gaze fixed on the high waistband of her trousers. “To those fashions, Granger, I say live and let die.”
“Good thing you’re not the one wearing them, then,” she bites out before she can stop herself, scowling at the mirth in his face. Oh, he isn’t grinning – Malfoys don’t grin in public – but there’s something of the cheshire cat in his eyes, and Hermione can’t help but envy how his good looks simply seem to improve every time she sees him. Draco’s features aren’t as pointed and sharp as they were in his childhood; lines belying his youth have settled around his mouth and forehead, but these are the only indications of the trauma experienced in the war. Hermione thinks he’ll never have to worry about crows feet near his eyes, because those crinkles only come with laughter, and Hermione doesn’t think he knows how to laugh without malice.
These thoughts fluster her, and Hermione pulls out a chair, seating herself without any pomp or circumstance. “I took the liberty of ordering you some tea when I arrived,” Draco tells her as a waitress comes over with a second steaming mug, and bustles off with Draco’s appreciative gaze following her. “How do you take it?”
“Black,” she answers, then helps herself to a creamer and a full packet of sugar when he passes the cup to her. He meets her arched brows with a cool look of indifference.
“If we’re going to make this happen, we’re going to have to learn to tolerate one another.” Draco’s tone is patient; his face is slightly mocking. For a half-second, Hermione feels ashamed of herself, until she remembers to whom she’s speaking.
“You’re right,” she concedes. “Then let’s get on with it. Shall we discuss terms?”
“It’s mostly been worked out. Potter says he’ll have the formal paperwork decided before the ceremony, so we’ll have plenty of time to read it and back out. Though,” he amends after a moment, “I think we both know that backing out is not an option. I’ve no desire to live out the rest of my sentence in Azkaban.”
It’s just then that Hermione catches a flash of light from his hand and her gaze fixes on the delicate band of white gold with the faint glimmer of bluish-greens peering up at her from the inset. “What is that stone, Malfoy?” she asks faintly, but she knows what it is before he answers.
“It’s grandidierite.” Hermione catches her breath and Draco half-shrugs. “An heirloom. I didn’t think you’d go for traditional,” he tells her, absently toying with the band of the ring. Every time the light hits it just right, it sends a reflection onto the wall just over his left shoulder and she focuses on that instead of his face. The stone is cut perfectly.
“I was under the impression that there is only one clean-cut grandidierite gemstone in all the world, and it’s worth three fortunes.”
“Clearly, there are two, and its worth cannot possibly matter to you as this one is already in my possession.” Suddenly impatient, Draco thrusts the ring at her. “Will it do? Or would you prefer I find you a standard diamond?”
“No. This is lovely.” She doesn’t wonder how he knows her so well, and she isn’t surprised when the ring is a perfect fit.
-
The time seems to fly past.
It’s already June and she can’t convince herself that this new reality is about to take place. The event is to happen at Hogwarts, where there is room for every member of the wizarding population in Great Britain to attend if they so choose. Hermione carefully avoids calling it anything but ‘the event’.
She’d met Lavender Brown one day in Diagon Alley, and hadn’t had the heart to walk away. “Are you planning to attend the event, Lavender?” she’d asked her former Housemate politely, flinching away from the girlish squeals not yet grown out of.
“Do you mean your wedding?” The look of excitement on Lavender’s face should have been intoxicating, but it wasn’t. Hermione still winces at the term ‘wedding’ - it isn’t at all how she imagined it, so many years in the making. Her childhood fantasies have put her in a great white dress, her hair swept up into some elaborate style, thousands upon thousands of lilies and roses adorning a hall straight out of a fairy tale.
Instead, she’s wearing a modest white blouse and a classy little cardigan over top; her hair is neatly French-braided down the back of her head. Draco’s shirt sleeves are rolled up around his elbows, the woollen knit of his sweater vest looking altogether too warm and uncomfortable in the early summer warmth. Neither of them make an effort for eye contact even once throughout the ceremony, and when the vows of magical binding are finished, Draco brushes his lips over hers in the briefest illusion of a kiss before stepping back and offering his arm.
Hermione takes it and they walk down the aisle between two seas of magical folk, not looking around, not looking at each other, but looking ahead with eyes full of maybes and what-might-have-beens.
Her parents aren’t there.
She doesn’t like talking about it, but the truth is that when Hermione made it back to Australia, when she was twenty-two, her memory modification charm had failed. They live in St Mungo’s now, in the pleasant suite on the third floor. Sometimes when Hermione visits, Neville is there too, and he doesn’t try to make things better. They sit in companionable silence, and Hermione appreciates that kind of friendship.
-
For a wedding present, Draco gives her a cottage.
Really, cottage isn’t even the right word for it – it’s a cozy home, yes, but it’s almost as large as the house from her childhood, where she grew up in Watford. There are two full floors and a cool unfinished basement that she uses for food storage. There are one and a half bathrooms, two bedrooms, and a study; if it weren’t on its own fair property on the outskirts of a little town France, it would be precisely the home in which she’s always dreamed to grow old. She just never pictured herself growing old with Malfoy.
Hermione spends her summers on her knees in the little garden. There’s something about the feel of dirt under her fingers, about the power of planting and nurturing and pruning that makes her feel connected to the world around her. She remembers being a little girl, growing up in a quiet neighbourhood in London. She remembers her mother wearing old denim coveralls and a hat with a big, floppy brim, grin flashing white against her brown face; she remembers her father, whistling with his tongue between his teeth. Those were the summers of her youth, spent playing and laughing and soaking in the sunshine. In this quiet countryside, she finds it almost impossible to trace those memories.
She loves her little house, but the distance makes her feel so very ostracised from her previous life. As the wife of a Malfoy, she doesn’t need to work – to keep herself busy when she’s alone, which is nearly all the time, she works on unscrambling coded documents from decades before, and one month she even spends revising the entire Constitution for the Rights of Magical Non-Humans. No one is surprised when it’s adopted into legal position within the year. Her husband sends her a congratulatory card and a bracelet of delicate glass beads. She never wears it.
Every other week or so, Hermione is visited by a representative from a guild or a union or the Daily Prophet, and they probe into as many aspects of her personal life as she’ll let them. They end up leaving eventually, after encroaching on her dinner hour and insisting not to be hungry, apparently satisfied with the outcome of the marriage law. More and more, she hears about young witches and wizards registering in the Ministry for match-ups, being assigned a mate of opposite blood status with whom to carry on the line of magical blood in Britain. Every time she hears of a new baby birthed out of a union brought around by the marriage law, it makes her feel like a little more of a failure. She knows that Draco longs for a son to teach the ups and downs of manhood and Quidditch and life, but the universe reminds her again and again that she’s failed as the prototype for the marriage law. All around Britain, her friends are having babies and Hermione’s never felt so left out in her life.
As far as the sources from her frequent visitors know, Draco works for the Ministry of Magic and does a fair bit of travelling; he’s so rarely home that his poor wife misses him dearly. In all truth, he does do a fair bit of travelling for the Ministry, but it goes beyond that, and only Hermione knows just how deeply.
Oh, they have their weekly Floo calls, but he’s usually the one kneeling with his head in the fireplace and she’s usually got her back to him, sweeping or busying herself with some other chore that will give an excuse to avoid seeing his face. Their conversation is stilted and formal. She inquires politely about his mother; he asks if everything at the cottage is to her satisfaction.
When he’s home, he’s moderately affectionate. He holds doors open for her and pulls out her chair at the dinner table. He takes his turn cooking and they sit together in the living room after meals to converse and sit in what they try to pass as companionable silence. But there is always that elephant in the corner of the room, trying so hard not to be noticed and yet following them room to room with a trumpet of fanfare.
One thing she can’t reconcile herself with after years of marriage to this man is his apparent inability to age. When they sit together, she takes the time to study him. Hermione has laugh lines at the corners of her eyes from those long summers of squinting against the sun; there are threads of grey appearing in her hair even as early as her thirty-seventh birthday. She simply looks older. When she asks him about it, Draco shrugs it off carelessly as good care taken, care that she never learned – “And as my father always taught me, you can’t teach an old witch new tricks!” – but she remembers the same uncanny tendency to look younger as the years go on in Lucius Malfoy. Somewhere, she reasons with herself, somewhere in their history there must be Veela blood. The idea is intriguing to her, and not for the last time, she finds herself envious.
-
It’s the tear-stained letter on the table that meets Draco when he steps out of the fireplace, brushing soot from his trousers and dragging a hand through his still-blond hair. Hermione has not one in all these long years missed a homecoming, particularly not one on Christmas Eve. For a moment, Draco frowns, a little offended. It had taken an awful lot of fast-talking to be able to leave Bosnia ahead of schedule. Three weeks was not long enough to deal with the president of their wizarding society; Draco can only imagine what might happen if these dealings were to go awry. Nothing like the threat of inter-European magical warfare to cause participants to tread carefully.
But no matter what the effort taken, the absence of his wife is still an unusual circumstance. Draco crosses the room in two short strides, takes the letter in both hands and reads with a deepening frown.
-
Hermione wakes up Christmas morning in her own bed, familiarly curled around a larger, lithe body. She doesn’t remember Draco coming home, nor does she remember coming to bed – she remembers sitting in the kitchen with a bottle of wine, downing it glass after glass, but she pushes the reason for such woe out of her head. It’s Christmas, after all, and she has some Floo calls to make before the sundown sadness is due to begin. But over and over in her head, she sees those words from St Mungos – “pulling funding” and “sections cut” – those fatal words that would mean her parents’ life of ease is ending.
She rolls out of bed with the intention of brewing a fresh pot of coffee – the Muggle way, letting it percolate – when she spots the Christmas tree in the corner. There are tears pricking the back of her eyes as she spots the tiny little package at the base of the trunk. It’s been many years since Draco has purchased her a gift, and so the grand gift exchange on Christmas morning has become a thing of the past. So she’s surprised to see this package with his unmistakeable handwriting -
To Granger. Always, Your Husband.
She unwraps it with shaky hands and unsteady fingers. She doesn’t know what to expect, but when she pulls out a velvet box and opens it to find the deed for St Mungo’s hospital, Hermione does the only thing she can do.
She sits down and cries.
-
Three things I would like to have included in my gift are...
1) Veela!Draco/Hermione
2) Post Hogwarts Story Line
3) An obscenely expensive gift of jewelry
Three things I would NOT like to have included in my gift are...
1) OOC characters (ex: girly Hermione or super controlling Harry)
2) Slash
3) Love Triangles
Rating: PG
Warnings: EWE
Summary: "Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century." - Mark Twain. With the development of the new wizarding Marriage Law, Hermione must learn to reconcile her life with his.
A/N: Um, so, I got a little off-track with the fic. It started off well, but I got distracted by the quote and, well, here we are. Also I forgot about the third requirement until just now, as I was copy-pasting from my assignment email. And also I may not have included the first requirement to your satisfaction. But... I hope you enjoy anyway! I started a second potential fic but abandoned it - I will post it for you later!
-
Cutting Corners
Harry gives her two days to make up her mind.
“I’ve got to formally submit the idea by Wednesday. I know it isn’t a lot of time,” he says, and he seems genuinely sorry, but Hermione refuses to look at him.
“Do you know what you’re having me do?” she bites out, and up bubbles the resentment that she’s been trying to shove down ever since the first whispers of marriage law began circulating in the wizarding community. She raises her eyes fleetingly and Harry flinches away from the anger. “I can’t even say that you’re asking me.”
“You know I wouldn’t force you, Hermione,” he replies steadily. Hermione is breathing hard and her mind is racing but though she wants to believe him, knows he wants to believe himself, she is aware that even she cannot be exempt from any decree that begins ’All Muggleborns must’. Deep down inside, in a place she doesn’t want to think about, Hermione’s already accepted his words for what they are – the truth, and a necessary one at that. Deep down inside, in that dark and secret place, Hermione has already agreed.
Though she never says it out loud, Hermione slowly begins to offer passive support to the bill. It’s got to pass the Wizengamot, Harry tells her, and so she stays up late for a week to build a presentation that can book no argument. When she stands in the centre of the great room to speak, her voice is loud and clear, words like inbreeding and tolerance echoing off the stone walls and bouncing back to play her own logic into her ears. She sees the witches and wizards, wise eyes focused on her, some nodding with her words. Before she knows it, the votes are being cast. They don’t ask for a recess; the Supreme Mugwump – Kingsley Shacklebolt – calls for all in favour to stand up, and one by one, they all end up on their feet. Every seat is empty.
-
In September, she meets with Draco for the first time and only time. When she walks into a little Muggle cafe – at her insistence, naturally – her eyes are immediately drawn to a shock of white-blonde hair. The way he’s sitting in the hard, wooden chair is casual. He’s wearing dark slacks and a tie that is, as usual, perfectly knotted, and he’s so impeccably neat that Hermione automatically smoothes her hand over her bushy hair, trying to lay it flat despite its defiance toward the contrary. She doesn’t speak, but Draco glances over his shoulder just as she approaches him. The quick, critical sweep of his eyes leaves her face burning red as she considers just how long it’s been since she bought a new pantsuit.
“Trying to keep the nineties alive?” Draco says scornfully by way of greeting, gaze fixed on the high waistband of her trousers. “To those fashions, Granger, I say live and let die.”
“Good thing you’re not the one wearing them, then,” she bites out before she can stop herself, scowling at the mirth in his face. Oh, he isn’t grinning – Malfoys don’t grin in public – but there’s something of the cheshire cat in his eyes, and Hermione can’t help but envy how his good looks simply seem to improve every time she sees him. Draco’s features aren’t as pointed and sharp as they were in his childhood; lines belying his youth have settled around his mouth and forehead, but these are the only indications of the trauma experienced in the war. Hermione thinks he’ll never have to worry about crows feet near his eyes, because those crinkles only come with laughter, and Hermione doesn’t think he knows how to laugh without malice.
These thoughts fluster her, and Hermione pulls out a chair, seating herself without any pomp or circumstance. “I took the liberty of ordering you some tea when I arrived,” Draco tells her as a waitress comes over with a second steaming mug, and bustles off with Draco’s appreciative gaze following her. “How do you take it?”
“Black,” she answers, then helps herself to a creamer and a full packet of sugar when he passes the cup to her. He meets her arched brows with a cool look of indifference.
“If we’re going to make this happen, we’re going to have to learn to tolerate one another.” Draco’s tone is patient; his face is slightly mocking. For a half-second, Hermione feels ashamed of herself, until she remembers to whom she’s speaking.
“You’re right,” she concedes. “Then let’s get on with it. Shall we discuss terms?”
“It’s mostly been worked out. Potter says he’ll have the formal paperwork decided before the ceremony, so we’ll have plenty of time to read it and back out. Though,” he amends after a moment, “I think we both know that backing out is not an option. I’ve no desire to live out the rest of my sentence in Azkaban.”
It’s just then that Hermione catches a flash of light from his hand and her gaze fixes on the delicate band of white gold with the faint glimmer of bluish-greens peering up at her from the inset. “What is that stone, Malfoy?” she asks faintly, but she knows what it is before he answers.
“It’s grandidierite.” Hermione catches her breath and Draco half-shrugs. “An heirloom. I didn’t think you’d go for traditional,” he tells her, absently toying with the band of the ring. Every time the light hits it just right, it sends a reflection onto the wall just over his left shoulder and she focuses on that instead of his face. The stone is cut perfectly.
“I was under the impression that there is only one clean-cut grandidierite gemstone in all the world, and it’s worth three fortunes.”
“Clearly, there are two, and its worth cannot possibly matter to you as this one is already in my possession.” Suddenly impatient, Draco thrusts the ring at her. “Will it do? Or would you prefer I find you a standard diamond?”
“No. This is lovely.” She doesn’t wonder how he knows her so well, and she isn’t surprised when the ring is a perfect fit.
-
The time seems to fly past.
It’s already June and she can’t convince herself that this new reality is about to take place. The event is to happen at Hogwarts, where there is room for every member of the wizarding population in Great Britain to attend if they so choose. Hermione carefully avoids calling it anything but ‘the event’.
She’d met Lavender Brown one day in Diagon Alley, and hadn’t had the heart to walk away. “Are you planning to attend the event, Lavender?” she’d asked her former Housemate politely, flinching away from the girlish squeals not yet grown out of.
“Do you mean your wedding?” The look of excitement on Lavender’s face should have been intoxicating, but it wasn’t. Hermione still winces at the term ‘wedding’ - it isn’t at all how she imagined it, so many years in the making. Her childhood fantasies have put her in a great white dress, her hair swept up into some elaborate style, thousands upon thousands of lilies and roses adorning a hall straight out of a fairy tale.
Instead, she’s wearing a modest white blouse and a classy little cardigan over top; her hair is neatly French-braided down the back of her head. Draco’s shirt sleeves are rolled up around his elbows, the woollen knit of his sweater vest looking altogether too warm and uncomfortable in the early summer warmth. Neither of them make an effort for eye contact even once throughout the ceremony, and when the vows of magical binding are finished, Draco brushes his lips over hers in the briefest illusion of a kiss before stepping back and offering his arm.
Hermione takes it and they walk down the aisle between two seas of magical folk, not looking around, not looking at each other, but looking ahead with eyes full of maybes and what-might-have-beens.
Her parents aren’t there.
She doesn’t like talking about it, but the truth is that when Hermione made it back to Australia, when she was twenty-two, her memory modification charm had failed. They live in St Mungo’s now, in the pleasant suite on the third floor. Sometimes when Hermione visits, Neville is there too, and he doesn’t try to make things better. They sit in companionable silence, and Hermione appreciates that kind of friendship.
-
For a wedding present, Draco gives her a cottage.
Really, cottage isn’t even the right word for it – it’s a cozy home, yes, but it’s almost as large as the house from her childhood, where she grew up in Watford. There are two full floors and a cool unfinished basement that she uses for food storage. There are one and a half bathrooms, two bedrooms, and a study; if it weren’t on its own fair property on the outskirts of a little town France, it would be precisely the home in which she’s always dreamed to grow old. She just never pictured herself growing old with Malfoy.
Hermione spends her summers on her knees in the little garden. There’s something about the feel of dirt under her fingers, about the power of planting and nurturing and pruning that makes her feel connected to the world around her. She remembers being a little girl, growing up in a quiet neighbourhood in London. She remembers her mother wearing old denim coveralls and a hat with a big, floppy brim, grin flashing white against her brown face; she remembers her father, whistling with his tongue between his teeth. Those were the summers of her youth, spent playing and laughing and soaking in the sunshine. In this quiet countryside, she finds it almost impossible to trace those memories.
She loves her little house, but the distance makes her feel so very ostracised from her previous life. As the wife of a Malfoy, she doesn’t need to work – to keep herself busy when she’s alone, which is nearly all the time, she works on unscrambling coded documents from decades before, and one month she even spends revising the entire Constitution for the Rights of Magical Non-Humans. No one is surprised when it’s adopted into legal position within the year. Her husband sends her a congratulatory card and a bracelet of delicate glass beads. She never wears it.
Every other week or so, Hermione is visited by a representative from a guild or a union or the Daily Prophet, and they probe into as many aspects of her personal life as she’ll let them. They end up leaving eventually, after encroaching on her dinner hour and insisting not to be hungry, apparently satisfied with the outcome of the marriage law. More and more, she hears about young witches and wizards registering in the Ministry for match-ups, being assigned a mate of opposite blood status with whom to carry on the line of magical blood in Britain. Every time she hears of a new baby birthed out of a union brought around by the marriage law, it makes her feel like a little more of a failure. She knows that Draco longs for a son to teach the ups and downs of manhood and Quidditch and life, but the universe reminds her again and again that she’s failed as the prototype for the marriage law. All around Britain, her friends are having babies and Hermione’s never felt so left out in her life.
As far as the sources from her frequent visitors know, Draco works for the Ministry of Magic and does a fair bit of travelling; he’s so rarely home that his poor wife misses him dearly. In all truth, he does do a fair bit of travelling for the Ministry, but it goes beyond that, and only Hermione knows just how deeply.
Oh, they have their weekly Floo calls, but he’s usually the one kneeling with his head in the fireplace and she’s usually got her back to him, sweeping or busying herself with some other chore that will give an excuse to avoid seeing his face. Their conversation is stilted and formal. She inquires politely about his mother; he asks if everything at the cottage is to her satisfaction.
When he’s home, he’s moderately affectionate. He holds doors open for her and pulls out her chair at the dinner table. He takes his turn cooking and they sit together in the living room after meals to converse and sit in what they try to pass as companionable silence. But there is always that elephant in the corner of the room, trying so hard not to be noticed and yet following them room to room with a trumpet of fanfare.
One thing she can’t reconcile herself with after years of marriage to this man is his apparent inability to age. When they sit together, she takes the time to study him. Hermione has laugh lines at the corners of her eyes from those long summers of squinting against the sun; there are threads of grey appearing in her hair even as early as her thirty-seventh birthday. She simply looks older. When she asks him about it, Draco shrugs it off carelessly as good care taken, care that she never learned – “And as my father always taught me, you can’t teach an old witch new tricks!” – but she remembers the same uncanny tendency to look younger as the years go on in Lucius Malfoy. Somewhere, she reasons with herself, somewhere in their history there must be Veela blood. The idea is intriguing to her, and not for the last time, she finds herself envious.
-
It’s the tear-stained letter on the table that meets Draco when he steps out of the fireplace, brushing soot from his trousers and dragging a hand through his still-blond hair. Hermione has not one in all these long years missed a homecoming, particularly not one on Christmas Eve. For a moment, Draco frowns, a little offended. It had taken an awful lot of fast-talking to be able to leave Bosnia ahead of schedule. Three weeks was not long enough to deal with the president of their wizarding society; Draco can only imagine what might happen if these dealings were to go awry. Nothing like the threat of inter-European magical warfare to cause participants to tread carefully.
But no matter what the effort taken, the absence of his wife is still an unusual circumstance. Draco crosses the room in two short strides, takes the letter in both hands and reads with a deepening frown.
-
Hermione wakes up Christmas morning in her own bed, familiarly curled around a larger, lithe body. She doesn’t remember Draco coming home, nor does she remember coming to bed – she remembers sitting in the kitchen with a bottle of wine, downing it glass after glass, but she pushes the reason for such woe out of her head. It’s Christmas, after all, and she has some Floo calls to make before the sundown sadness is due to begin. But over and over in her head, she sees those words from St Mungos – “pulling funding” and “sections cut” – those fatal words that would mean her parents’ life of ease is ending.
She rolls out of bed with the intention of brewing a fresh pot of coffee – the Muggle way, letting it percolate – when she spots the Christmas tree in the corner. There are tears pricking the back of her eyes as she spots the tiny little package at the base of the trunk. It’s been many years since Draco has purchased her a gift, and so the grand gift exchange on Christmas morning has become a thing of the past. So she’s surprised to see this package with his unmistakeable handwriting -
To Granger. Always, Your Husband.
She unwraps it with shaky hands and unsteady fingers. She doesn’t know what to expect, but when she pulls out a velvet box and opens it to find the deed for St Mungo’s hospital, Hermione does the only thing she can do.
She sits down and cries.
-
Three things I would like to have included in my gift are...
1) Veela!Draco/Hermione
2) Post Hogwarts Story Line
3) An obscenely expensive gift of jewelry
Three things I would NOT like to have included in my gift are...
1) OOC characters (ex: girly Hermione or super controlling Harry)
2) Slash
3) Love Triangles