They had been married for three excruciating weeks. Each day passed like molasses, dragging behind it a weight that settled in their bones—silence thick as fog, bitterness that soured the air, and the slow, horrifying realization that everything they once believed in, everything they had ever dreamed of, had been gutted and stitched into something monstrous. There was no love in it. No companionship. Not even the strained courtesy of two people trying to make the best of a bad situation. What they were living through wasn't marriage. It was theatre. A cruel, bureaucratic illusion designed by a desperate Ministry that had run out of ideas.
They called it progress. Rebuilding. Reconciliation. But the truth was uglier. It was about control. It was about bloodlines and fear and the unspoken hope that if they chained enough survivors together, maybe the rubble wouldn't look so bad. Maybe the past could be rewritten with enough propaganda. So they took the girl who had once stood in the fire and the boy who had once helped light it, and they forced their hands together and told the world to clap.
Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy—two names that had once existed on opposite ends of every war room—were now printed side by side on Ministry records, spoken together by clerks with ink-stained fingers and dead eyes. They were the first trial run. A test subject. And it was already failing. Not with shouting or duels or hexes flung across the dinner table, but with the kind of quiet collapse that leaves no debris. They ate separately. They didn't look at each other. They passed one another in corridors like strangers in an empty museum. Every attempt at civility disintegrated before it reached their lips.
The wedding had been cold. Fast. A blur of parchment and signatures and mandated vows delivered in a voice that didn't shake. He hadn't touched her hand. She hadn't looked at his face. The horror came later, when she realized what it meant to sleep across the hall from someone whose cruelty she remembered with muscle-deep clarity. And he, for all his pride, could not look at her without seeing what he had done—or failed to do—when the war had called for backbone.
It was supposed to be symbolic. It was supposed to say, "Look, even they can find peace." But there was no peace to be found here. Not in the long halls of the Manor, where paintings watched them like sentries and the walls held too many memories. Not in the rooms they avoided filling, or the meals that sat untouched under silver cloches. It was a house meant for triumph, and it had become a tomb.
Nothing had exploded between them. Nothing had shattered. And yet, somehow, everything already felt broken.
IIn those three weeks, he had seen her only twice. Twice. And both times, she moved like a ghost, like smoke avoiding fire, like being anywhere near him might scorch her skin. The first time, she swept past him in the corridor with her eyes locked on some distant point ahead, as if she couldn't risk seeing what was right beside her. Her hair was wild, storm-tossed, full of stubbornness and freedom, and it struck him, how clearly she didn't belong here. Not in this house. Not under this name. Not with him.
The second time, they nearly collided outside the library. His mother's old sanctuary. A room filled with polished silence and shelves too heavy to breathe. She didn't even flinch. Just vanished. Gone in the space between heartbeats. No words. No glance. No trace. Like she had never been there at all. And that, somehow, hurt worse than anything he had prepared himself for.
He had thought she'd fight. He thought there would be shouting, the kind that rattled walls and left echoes behind. He thought she'd throw every memory of him back in his face, spit each one like a curse. He had pictured her full of fury, alive with it, burning so brightly that he wouldn't be able to look away. But she didn't rage. She didn't burn. She gave him silence. Not the quiet kind. Not peace. A cold, deliberate nothingness. And that? That was worse.
It wasn't anger that gutted him. It was being ignored. Being erased.
He couldn't stop thinking about it. That absence. That lack of anything at all. It curled inside his chest and settled like rot. He walked through the house feeling translucent. Like someone had peeled his skin back and left him raw. Like he was haunting his own life.
Yes, he was bored. Yes, he was restless. But beneath that? Something else. Something heavier. He was lonely in a way that didn't come with tears or tantrums. It just sat there, low in his ribs, pressing until each breath felt like effort. The manor around him didn't help. It was all cold halls and too much space, full of relics and shadows and rooms that remembered too much. A house built to impress, now standing hollow, not even trying to pretend anymore.
She made it worse, though she never meant to. Her silence followed him like smoke through every room. And when he sat in the dark, reading nothing, thinking about too much, he started to wonder if this was what exile really felt like. Not being banished. Not being cast out. But staying exactly where you are while everything you used to understand walks out the door and doesn't look back.
He wandered. Through corridors that felt too long. Through rooms that smelled like memory. Through shadows that didn't belong to him. Sometimes he sat in his father's old study, surrounded by the scent of whisky and firewood and grief, holding books he never opened. He let the portraits glare. He let the dust settle. He tried to feel something other than useless.
He didn't.
He was nineteen. Legally married. Officially alone. The war had torn his world apart and handed him back the scraps with a marriage certificate and a house too big for one person. His parents were gone. His childhood buried with them. His name no longer made him proud. And now, the only person he had left was the girl who once wanted him dead. The girl who had been right to want that. The girl he couldn't even look at without remembering every cruel thing he had ever said to her, every moment when he had chosen power over people, pride over truth.
And here she was. Still breathing the same air. Still refusing to look at him. Still so far away, even when the walls were thin.
It would have been easier if she hated him out loud.
Instead, she said nothing.
And somehow, that silence broke him more than any war ever could.
She hadn't said a word. She hadn't needed to. The line had already been drawn in the space between them, so stark and unmoving that he could feel it even when she wasn't in the room. It hung there like a spell that hadn't needed casting, a boundary made not of words but of everything they hadn't said. A shared refusal. A mutual disdain. Wounded pride dressed up as indifference. And he—arrogant, brittle, aching in a way he hated to admit—hadn't crossed it. Wouldn't. He refused to humiliate himself, not when every inch of her body language screamed that she didn't want to be touched or seen, let alone understood.
Because what would he even say? Sorry for trying to ruin your life? Sorry for the unforgivable things I did while wearing the weight of a name that never fit me? Would you like a scone?
It would almost be funny if it didn't hurt so much. That kind of pain where the only thing left to do is laugh. Or drink. Or disappear.
So he left her alone. Let her hide in the library, let her wander the house as though he were some ghost she refused to acknowledge. He told himself it was the kind thing to do, that this was what respect looked like. Giving her space. Giving her silence.
But if he was honest—and he rarely was with himself these days—it wasn't mercy. Not really. It was fear. It was the slow, coiling ache of watching himself unravel in a house that felt less like a home and more like a cage. And the quiet wasn't peace. It was noise turned inward. A constant scraping in his chest. A kind of madness that dressed itself up in stillness.
He wanted to blame her. He did, sometimes. For the way she refused to look at him, for the way her eyes froze over every time their paths nearly crossed. For the fact that she didn't even give him the dignity of hating him out loud. But underneath all that resentment was something colder, something sadder. She wasn't cruel. She was grieving. And not just for the war, or the people she'd lost. She was grieving the life she was supposed to have. The future that had been taken from her the moment someone at the Ministry decided that binding her to him would be some kind of symbol.
She was surviving. That was all. Just like him.
And that silence he hated so much? Maybe it wasn't a weapon. Maybe it was her last defence.
But knowing that didn't make it easier. The marriage was still unbearable. The quiet still rang in his ears at night. And the fact that they had once stood on opposite sides of a battlefield made the idea of connection feel impossible. He didn't know her. She didn't want to know him. They had nothing in common but a contract and a house too large for their grief.
And yet.
Somewhere beneath the weight of all of it, a thought began to grow. Quiet at first. Almost laughable. But it stayed. What if it didn't have to be like this? What if silence wasn't the only thing between them? What if they could talk, just once, without strategy or bitterness?
What if the Ministry had chained them together, but they still had a choice in what that meant?
He didn't know how to reach her. Not without looking weak. Not without tearing down the last bit of armour he had left. And she? She was a fortress. A girl made of stone and storms. There would be no halfway with her.
So they didn't speak.
They moved like ghosts, passing each other in a house built by people who were long gone. Strangers in every sense but legal name.
Three weeks. Three long, hollow weeks.
And nothing yet to break the dark.
· ─ ·ʚɞ· ─ · ·
Hermione felt like a prisoner. Not one locked behind bars or chained in a dungeon, but the kind of prisoner who smiled politely at the staff and drank from fine china while her freedom slipped through cracks in the marble. Malfoy Manor was beautiful in the way ancient things often were—cold, massive, and haunted by a history that had never been kind. The walls were too high. The silence stretched too long. The rooms echoed even when she didn't speak. It had been three weeks, and every single day felt longer than the one before it.
She was not herself here. She couldn't be. She wore robes someone else had chosen. Ate meals she hadn't asked for. Answered to a name that made her skin crawl. Every mirror in the manor showed her face, but it never quite looked like her. It looked like a version of a woman who had given up trying to argue with fate.
The Ministry called it a law. They used words like necessary and diplomatic and stabilising. They had printed her new title in clean, black ink and handed it to her like a gift. But it hadn't been a choice. Not really. It was a sentence. And now, she was Mrs Malfoy, a name that landed in her mouth like a swallowed stone.
The idea had been to unite the country. That was the story. A way to prove that even enemies could find peace. But there was no peace in this house. Only velvet curtains that never moved. Only doors that closed too softly. Only a husband she had barely spoken to since the wedding, who existed somewhere else in the manor, living his own version of captivity.
The war had ended, but she felt no victory. Just exhaustion. Just grief that never got to speak its name. The old battles had been loud. Screaming, sprinting, spells flying through the air. This was different. This war was quiet. It waited. It settled into the bones. It wore her down in half-finished conversations with the house-elves and the constant hum of her own thoughts looping over and over again.
She read books she couldn't remember the titles of. She walked the same corridors, counting her footsteps like that might offer control. She spent mornings curled on the window seat in a room she hadn't known existed until she stumbled across it. It smelled like dust and old lavender. That was the closest thing she had to comfort now.
The elves tried to help. They brought her tea. Offered pastries she never touched. One of them even cried when she thanked him by name. That nearly broke her. She couldn't tell if it was kindness or guilt that made her heart ache like that.
Sometimes she thought about leaving. Apparating out. Vanishing. But where would she go? She had no flat anymore. Her friends had scattered, and the ones who stayed were too tangled up in their own healing to carry her grief as well. And besides, there were wards. She couldn't even walk through the front door without permission.
So she stayed. She sat in silence. She avoided his wing of the house. She stared at the gold trim on the walls until her eyes watered. And when she went to bed at night, she lay on her side of the mattress like it was a fault line she dared not cross.
Hermione Granger, brightest of her age, witch of fire and fury, now spent her days drinking tea in a gilded cage, wondering how long it would take to forget the sound of her own name.
She missed her friends with a kind of desperation that sometimes woke her in the middle of the night. The ache lived in her chest, heavy and constant. She missed Harry's quiet loyalty, the way he could make even the worst moments feel bearable. She missed Ron's warmth and the easy rhythm of his teasing. She missed how they had once leaned on each other when everything else was falling apart. Letters came now and then, filled with concern and reassurances that things would get better, but the words never reached her the way they used to. They felt thin, like echoes of another life. It wasn't distance that separated them, not really. It was shame. It was the bitter weight of something they could never quite understand.
Because how could she explain any of this? How could she tell them that she, of all people, had been forced to marry Draco Malfoy? That she now woke each morning in a house built by his ancestors, sharing a last name that didn't belong to her, wearing a ring that felt more like a shackle than a promise? She couldn't even explain it to herself most days. She didn't know how to live with it. She didn't know how to feel. Her life, once so certain and purposeful, had twisted into something unrecognizable, and she was still trying to catch her breath in the wreckage.
She missed her parents too, perhaps even more. She missed the sound of her mother humming in the kitchen and the way her father's voice softened when he said her name. She missed the ordinary comfort of being someone's daughter instead of someone's symbol. She had fought so hard to give them back their lives, and yet, somehow, she had lost hers in the process. The war had taken them away, and when she finally restored their memories, she never got the chance to restore what they had been to each other. Before she could, this new nightmare began. Now they were an ocean away, living quietly in a small house where she could not go, and the distance between them stretched wider with every day she spent trapped inside these cold, perfect walls.
There was nothing for her here. Nothing but the vast silence of the manor, the echo of her own footsteps against marble floors, and the sinking realization that her choices no longer belonged to her. Everything she had once fought for—freedom, control, the right to her own future—had been stripped away by the stroke of a quill and the seal of a decree. The Ministry had taken her victory and turned it into a sentence.
She avoided him whenever she could. It became an art form, almost a kind of strategy. She planned her walks through the house with precision, memorized which staircases creaked and which doors led to escape routes. Anything to keep from seeing him. Because every time she did, something dark and furious stirred in her chest. It wasn't just anger. It was humiliation. It was disbelief.
Draco Malfoy, of all people. The boy who had sneered at her blood and mocked her every chance he got. The boy who had stood on the wrong side of everything that mattered. And now, by law, he was her husband. The thought alone made her skin crawl.
She couldn't understand how anyone could have thought this was a good idea. The Ministry called it unity. She called it cruelty. It wasn't reconciliation. It was punishment disguised as progress.
And what infuriated her most was that he had gone along with it. He had signed the papers. He had stood beside her and said the vows. He had accepted this without a word.
That, more than anything, was what she couldn't forgive.
He represented everything she had spent years fighting against. Pureblood arrogance. Entitlement dressed in fine robes. A smirk that had always meant cruelty. He was a name, a face, a history wrapped in everything she had sworn to tear down. And now she was bound to him. Not just by law, but by magic. Tied to him in parchment and consequence. Not in love. Not in choice. Just in permanence.
The absurdity of it made her sick. Because it wasn't just that he had been on the wrong side of the war. He had. That much was true. But worse than that, he was Draco Malfoy. The boy who had spat slurs with the casual sharpness of someone who had never been told no. The boy who had made her school years heavier with every passing insult. To be forced to share his name now felt like a violation. As if the very institution she had once defended had decided to betray her in the most intimate way possible.
She hated him. Not passively. Not in some cold, distant way. It was a hot, living thing in her chest. She hated the way his face hadn't changed. Still pale. Still pointed. Still carved from whatever self-importance had raised him. She hated the way his presence made her feel like she was being dragged backward into every memory she had tried to leave behind. Marriage to him was not just unpleasant. It was a sentence. And she hadn't even done anything wrong.
But he wasn't around much. That was something, at least. Some small mercy carved out of this mess. The manor was too large, too ornate, too sickeningly grand to be anything but a prison. But it was big enough to keep them apart. Most days, they moved through its halls like ghosts assigned to different hauntings. She hadn't spoken to him since the ceremony. That mockery of a day. No flowers. No family. No warmth. Just two people forced to stand side by side while magic did what politics demanded.
She didn't look at him then, and she hadn't since. There was no need. He seemed content to vanish into whatever corner of the manor he called his own. And that suited her just fine. The idea of sitting across from him, of breathing the same quiet, stifling air, of pretending this was anything but punishment, made her feel like she might come undone.
So she escaped. Every day, she ran from the cold marble and the gilded ceilings. She fled from the rooms lined with portraits that watched her like they were waiting for her to fail. And she found her way to the only space in the entire manor that did not feel like it had teeth.
The garden.
It was quiet, tucked behind old iron gates and climbing ivy. But unlike the silence in the house, it didn't feel empty. It felt whole. It felt alive. It felt like something her soul could breathe in. A place that hadn't forgotten how to grow. It was the only part of Malfoy Manor that didn't feel like it belonged to the Malfoys.
The garden stretched on longer than she'd expected. A maze of paths and hedges and overgrown wonder. Every corner held a different bloom. Roses and lavender and white jasmine spilled over stone walls. Vines curled through wrought trellises like they didn't care for human permission. There were trees too, ancient and quiet, with branches wide enough to hold secrets. It was the kind of place she would have loved before all of this. And somehow, even now, she still did.
It became her sanctuary. Not because it was beautiful, though it was. Not because it was private, though that mattered. But because it was untouched. She had never once seen him here. Not in the morning. Not in the evening. Not in passing. Never.
And that made it hers.
It was strange, almost laughable, how completely he avoided the space. Like it offended him. Like the sun itself might set him on fire. She often wondered, with a bitterness she didn't bother to hide from herself, if he would actually melt beneath its warmth. If the brightness might undo whatever darkness had stitched him together. There was something about him that always seemed allergic to softness. To color. To joy. As if he had been built for shadows and couldn't quite survive the light.
So she came here. Every day. Sometimes with a book. Sometimes just to sit. Just to listen to the wind move through leaves and the soft hum of bees drifting from flower to flower.
It was the only place in the manor where she felt like a person again. Not a symbol. Not a wife. Not a pawn in someone else's war. Just Hermione.
But the garden… the garden was hers in a way nothing else in this miserable arrangement could be. It was not official, not written in blood or ink, not something she had to ask permission for. It was hers because she needed it to be. Because when everything else was unbearable, the garden stayed quiet. Kind. Alive.
Every morning, she slipped away before the house could wake properly. Before the silence turned heavy again. Before the walls remembered they had teeth. The air outside was always cold at first, sharp enough to clear her head. Sometimes she didn't even feel it at all, just kept walking until she reached the gates. There, the fog in her chest loosened a little. The pressure eased, just enough for her to breathe again.
She clung to that garden like it was the last part of herself that still made sense. Something quiet. Something safe. Something untouched by the rest of her unraveling life.
Hours passed without her noticing. She moved slowly, letting her fingers brush the petals as she wandered between the flowerbeds. Sometimes she carried a book. Not always to read. Just to hold. Just to have something familiar in her hands when everything else felt like it was slipping away.
There was an oak in the middle of the garden. Massive. Ancient. Its branches stretched wide over the path like a protective spell no one had cast. She would sit under it for long stretches, not thinking, not planning, just letting the filtered sunlight flicker over her skin until her shoulders loosened. Until the ache inside her stopped screaming and started humming.
Other days, she walked. No direction. No purpose. Just her feet in the grass and her thoughts too loud to silence. She let the sound of wind through the trees swallow the memories she couldn't carry. The wedding. The vows. That cursed name now stamped beside hers. She let the bees and birds fill the air with something other than grief. And she watched the water in the marble fountain shift and shine and ripple like it might take her somewhere else if she stared long enough. Somewhere far. Somewhere safe.
A dream, maybe. Where she could still laugh. Still go home. Still make her own choices. Where Harry and Ron were waiting at a café table. Where her parents smiled when she walked in. Where no one had ever said the words "Mrs. Malfoy" out loud.
But no amount of sun or lavender or quiet would change the truth. The garden could not undo the paperwork. It could not unbind the magic. It could not free her from the house waiting just behind the hedges. The manor was still there. Still looming. Still cold and polished and filled with a silence that scraped her raw.
And he was still inside it.
It didn't matter how many hours she sat in the sun or how many pages she pretended to read. She still had to go back through those doors. She still had to sleep in a bed that wasn't hers, in a room that smelled like nothing at all. She still had to live beside a man she could hardly stand to think about, let alone share a name with.
It had only been three weeks.
Three.
And already she felt like she was coming undone. Not in big, dramatic ways. Just slowly. Quietly. Like a thread working its way loose at the edge of a sleeve. She was fraying where no one could see. Coming apart inch by inch.
And the worst part was not knowing when it would stop. Or if it ever would.
She kept asking herself the same question. How much longer? Could she do this another month? Another week? Could she even survive one more day of this silence, this falseness, this aching, shapeless life?
She didn't have an answer.
So she stayed in the garden. As long as she could. As long as the weather allowed. As long as no one came looking for her. She sat in the sun. Let the breeze touch her cheeks. Listened to the bees. Watched the shadows change.
It was all she had.
· ─ ·ʚɞ· ─ · ·
She lay stretched beside the fountain, her limbs lazily arranged across a woven blanket, body half-draped in sun and half-shaded by the tall hedges behind her. The stone beneath her spine was cool against the heat of the afternoon, anchoring her in something real. It eased the ache in her muscles, that slow, restless ache that never quite went away.
The sunlight washed over her in long, golden waves, warm and heavy across her skin. It made her feel drowsy, lulled into stillness by a heat that seemed to press down on the garden like a thick velvet curtain. The air smelled sweet and almost too rich, thick with jasmine, roses, and earth. Bees moved lazily from flower to flower. A few petals drifted across the water's surface beside her, spinning in slow circles.
It should have been perfect. Peaceful.
But the ache didn't leave her.
She let her eyes close, face turned toward the sun, and tried to breathe slowly. Tried to let the light do its work. Tried to let the warmth soften whatever it was that had been coiled up inside her for days.
The sound of the fountain helped. Water arced and fell in a soft, rhythmic loop, catching the light in flashes as it spilled back into the basin. She focused on that sound, the soft splash and trickle, and imagined—just for a moment—that this wasn't Malfoy Manor. That she wasn't trapped here. That the ring on her finger was part of some other life. Someone else's life. Not hers.
She pictured a beach. Not one she had ever been to, just something her mind offered up. A quiet shoreline, pale sand, blue sky. The waves touched her toes, and her hair blew back in the salt wind. No titles. No last names she didn't want. No politics or Ministry documents. Just a girl. Barefoot. Free.
It lasted about six seconds. Maybe less.
The illusion broke before she could even hold it fully in her mind, crumbling like sand in her grip. The manor was still behind her. The name was still hers, even if she never said it aloud. She was still married to him, still living in a house where every corner reminded her of something she didn't choose.
The garden had become the only place she could breathe. A small, strange mercy carved out of a life that didn't feel like her own anymore. It sprawled out behind the manor like it had always been waiting for someone to need it. Gravel paths curved between beds of peonies and lavender. Roses climbed iron arches. Ivy swallowed old walls. Even the air felt different here. Softer. Quieter. More forgiving.
It was too perfect to be natural, yet it didn't feel fake. Not to her.
She found herself drawn to the overgrown corners, the ones with cracked stone and wildflowers pushing their way through. There, in the parts that felt less curated and more forgotten, something inside her settled. Something small, but essential.
It was nothing like the manor. The garden held no cold mirrors or frozen portraits. No silver frames filled with people who looked through her like she wasn't there. No heavy doors or long corridors or rooms too silent to feel real. The house was all history and performance. The garden was life.
And that made all the difference.
She let out a long sigh and threw one arm over her eyes, blocking out the glare. Her body had gone loose against the blanket, the tension falling away in pieces, though not fully. Not yet. The usual thoughts pressed at the edges of her mind, still sharp around the edges, still unfinished.
But she didn't want to think right now. She only wanted to listen. To the wind pushing through the hedges. To the bees. To the birds nesting somewhere out of sight. All of it simple. All of it enough.
Until something changed.
It wasn't loud. Not at first. Just a shift. A flicker of awareness. That creeping, cold sense of being watched.
Her spine tensed. Not all at once, just a ripple of instinct moving through her bones.
Something was off.
She stayed still for a moment, arm still over her eyes, breath held like a question. The garden hadn't changed. The light was the same. The air still smelled of flowers and soil.
But the peace was gone.
Something had stepped into the quiet.
And she was no longer alone.
It started as nothing. Just a soft tightening at the back of her neck. The kind of quiet prickle that didn't make sense at first. Her brow furrowed, barely, even with her eyes still shut. She tried to ignore it, tried to breathe through it and let the stillness pull her back down. But the feeling didn't pass. It stayed. Tense and sharp.
There was a strange awareness in her chest now. Old and wordless. That subtle shift that told her she wasn't alone.
She told herself it was nothing. A trick of her nerves. The silence in this place could make anyone start imagining things. The manor did that. Got under her skin. Stretched her thoughts thin until even the smallest sound or shift of light became something else.
And this was the garden. Of all places, it should have been the safest. Warded within an inch of its life, tangled with spells that had been knotted into the ground for generations. Nobody could get in without setting off half the manor's enchantments. That was the point. That was why she came here.
Still, her fingers moved slightly against the blanket. Just enough to ground herself. To touch something real. She told herself again that it was probably a house-elf, slipping through the edges of the space without making itself known. They often did that. Gliding in and out like ghosts. Watching without watching. Waiting to be needed.
But the feeling didn't leave her. It dug deeper.
She could feel it now. Not just a suggestion, not something imagined. Something real. A gaze. Still. Focused. It settled on her skin like cold mist. She didn't know where it came from, but she could feel it moving over her as if someone were tracking each breath, every small shift of her body. Her heart began to knock harder against her ribs, not quite panic, but far from calm.
She opened her eyes fast, squinting into the brightness. The garden spun for a moment as her eyes adjusted, everything too sharp and too soft all at once. She sat up slowly, letting her vision steady, and looked around.
Nothing had changed. The hedges were the same. The trees swayed gently in the breeze. Petals drifted across the gravel like they always did. There were no footsteps. No rustling in the leaves. No hint of motion that didn't belong. It looked exactly as it had a moment ago. Peaceful. Quiet. Undisturbed.
But the feeling wouldn't leave.
It crawled under her skin now. Made her ribs feel tight.
Her eyes flicked toward the house, scanning the high windows that lined the back of the manor. Stone and shadow. Arches like hollow mouths. She half-expected to see something there. A flicker of pale fabric. A silhouette caught in the act of vanishing. A sliver of movement behind the glass.
There was nothing. Just her own reflection in one of the panes, distorted and vague.
Still, she couldn't stop staring.
The house looked back at her like something alive. The windows didn't seem like windows anymore. They felt like eyes. Watching from above. Silent. Patient.
She sat up straighter, hands braced beside her, eyes still moving across the line of trees, the edge of the rosebeds, the curve of the path that wound out of sight.
The garden felt different now. Not wrong, exactly. But altered. Like someone had touched the air and left fingerprints behind.
She drew in a shallow breath and held it for a moment. Tried to make sense of what was happening. Tried to reason with herself.
The garden was safe.
She repeated it, even in her mind, and the words felt hollow.
Because it didn't matter how much magic protected the gates. It didn't matter how thick the wards were or how long the enchantments had been layered into the stone. Her body had already made up its mind.
She wasn't alone.
She didn't know who it was or where they were standing, but someone was watching. And they weren't trying to hide it.
They wanted her to know.
And now she did.
A flicker of movement caught her eye. It was quick, just a flash of pale motion slicing through the sleepy stillness of the garden, but it made her head snap up, breath hitching in her throat as she tracked the source of the disturbance.
There he was.
Draco Malfoy. Sitting on the bloody roof.
Perched on the very edge like it was some kind of stage, like he was born to pose dramatically over a haunted manor in broad daylight. His frame was long and lean, stretched out with a kind of practiced ease that made her stomach clench, half in disbelief and half in a very real kind of annoyance.
Of course.
She blinked against the harsh sun, lifting a hand to shield her eyes, squinting at the ridiculous figure perched on the slate tiles like some moody architectural flourish. His platinum hair nearly glowed, a gleam of silver-white against the dark roof, catching the light like some overgrown bird of prey who hadn't quite decided if he was hunting or sulking.
His legs swung idly. As if it were nothing. As if this was his idea of a normal afternoon.
She stared up at him. "What are you doing up there?"
Her tone wasn't concerned. It wasn't even surprised. It was laced with the kind of disbelief that came from living too long under the same roof as someone who constantly operated on a wavelength just slightly to the left of reason.
He turned his head lazily at the sound of her voice, the angle sharp, slow, like a cat watching a fly. He didn't seem bothered. If anything, he looked faintly amused.
"Just thinking, princess," he called down.
There it was.
That stupid nickname. That smug little drawl. That smirk she could hear without needing to see it.
She groaned, actually groaned, and rolled her eyes hard enough to see stars.
"If you're planning to jump," she called back, her voice sweet and sharp and dipped in something venomous, "at least do a backflip. Make it interesting."
He laughed. Low and lazy and far too pleased with himself. The kind of laugh that made her skin crawl and stomach twist for reasons she didn't want to think about.
"You'd love that, wouldn't you?"
"Very much so."
She crossed her arms. That half-smile was already tugging at the edge of her mouth, and she hated it. Hated how easily he got under her skin, how quickly her annoyance sharpened into something pricklier, more alive.
He exhaled, loud and dramatic, clearly for her benefit. And then his eyes shifted.
She felt the change before she saw it. His gaze had dropped. His posture straightened a little. His focus narrowed.
He was staring.
At her. At the thin cotton dress clinging to her frame in the heat, at the bare skin of her arms, her legs. The straps had slipped a little. The hem sat high.
And he was staring.
"What are you even wearing?"
His voice was colder now. Not loud, not mocking. Just judgmental. That clipped, quiet kind of disapproval he'd spent a lifetime perfecting.
"What if someone sees you like that?"
She raised a brow. Stood straighter. Let the words settle and turn to ash.
"And what if they do, huh?" Her voice was steady. Hard. "It's not like I'm parading down Knockturn Alley, Malfoy. I'm in the bloody garden. Your garden. Or have you forgotten that I'm locked up here like some museum exhibit no one wanted?"
His mouth twitched. Not quite a response. Not quite a rebuttal. He looked away.
"They can't see you like this."
The words were muttered. More to the sky than to her. But they landed anyway. Heavy. Hot.
"And… whatever, Granger."
She stared at him, her arms crossed tight across her chest. Her teeth clenched.
"Get off the roof."
Her tone left no room for argument. She was done.
He sat still for a second longer, outlined against the sky like some kind of reluctant deity, and then something flickered in his face. Not apology. Not guilt. Just something tired. Something small.
"Fine."
He stood. Unfolded his limbs with that same infuriating grace. And then, with no more drama than a breath, he turned and vanished from view.
Typical.
Hermione let out a breath she hadn't realised she'd been holding, one of those tight, shaky exhales that slipped out before she could stop it. Her hand rose without thinking, pressing against her chest as if her own heartbeat might offer some kind of reassurance. It was pounding—loud, quick, restless. Far too much for what should have been a passing exchange. He hadn't even said much. Not really. But somehow, even in silence, he still managed to get under her skin.
She knew better. She really did. After three weeks of skirting each other's presence, of polite distance and carefully timed exits, of pretending they didn't exist under the same roof, she should have grown numb to it. But every time he spoke, every time his voice cut through the quiet like it belonged there, it felt like something ignited. Not fire, not quite. More like the start of a duel. Tense. Measured. One misstep from disaster.
Three weeks. That was all it had been. And yet somehow, it already felt like years. Like they were living through the slow decay of something that never had the chance to grow. No foundation. No consent. Just a signature on a piece of parchment and the weight of Ministry magic pressing into her skin. A match made of law and bitterness, dressed up like fate. And now here they were, two strangers forced to share a name and a life, orbiting each other like magnets stuck on the wrong poles—never touching, never quite able to move away either.
She dragged her gaze back to the fountain. The water was still beautiful in the sunlight, all glittering arcs and soft ripples, but the calm from earlier had vanished. In its place was a dull throb behind her ribs, a tension that didn't seem to have a name. She tried to let the sound of the trickling water soothe her, but her body stayed alert, every nerve humming with whatever he had left behind in the air.
She told herself not to dwell. Told herself to move on, to think about anything else.
But the thought had already settled in. That same question, the one that had haunted her since the day they were married.
What is he actually thinking?
Because no matter how sharp his tone or smug his words, no matter how far he held himself from her with all that cold indifference, there were moments—brief, quiet ones—when something in his face shifted. Just enough to make her wonder. Just enough to make her question what it was she wasn't seeing.
And it bothered her. More than she was willing to admit.
She picked up her book, hoping the pages might distract her, but the letters swam uselessly across the paper. She stared without seeing, her mind already halfway back to the roof. Back to the way the light had caught his hair. Back to the expression on his face right before he disappeared.
Whatever was going on in his head, she couldn't let herself care. She couldn't afford that. Not when she was still trying to hold on to some version of herself inside this arrangement. Not when her heart was already working overtime just to keep steady. Not when the only rule that made sense anymore was this: survive it. With your head clear. With your walls up.
With a quiet sigh, she shut the book and let it rest beside her. Her body eased slowly onto the blanket again, eyes slipping shut against the sunlight. She wasn't going to waste another minute thinking about Draco Malfoy.
But even as the warmth pressed against her skin, even as she tried to breathe through the quiet, she knew the truth.
He had already taken up more space in her thoughts than she was willing to admit. And letting that go was going to be harder than she thought.
Draco was furious. No—furious didn't even begin to cover it. He was vibrating with the kind of rage that settled under the skin and refused to let go. His jaw ached from how hard he'd been clenching it. Every step down the grand staircase of the manor sounded like a warning. His boots cracked against marble with the sort of weight that dared anyone to stop him, that demanded someone try. No one did, of course. No one ever did.
Not that it mattered. He wasn't looking for a fight. Not this time. This was something else entirely. This was her fault. All of it. That bloody woman.
He had been minding his own misery. Quietly. Which, frankly, was already more than anyone deserved from him. Perched on the roof like some dramatic recluse, hiding from everything that made him want to peel off his own skin just to feel something that wasn't hollow. He had come to rely on those hours. He even had a name for them. Depression o'clock. Sad-boy hour. Pick one. Either way, he had been alone. That was the whole point.
And then she ruined it.
Granger. Of course it was Granger.
He should have known the peace wouldn't last. Should have felt it in the air before it even happened. That low hum of disaster that always seemed to follow her. She had marched into the garden like she owned the place, laid herself out on the blanket like she belonged in his space, in his sun, in his morning. Like this was hers to enjoy. Like she wasn't currently living in his house because some Ministry official decided he didn't get a say in his own life anymore.
The dress didn't help. That stupid dress. Thin and soft and pale enough that he could see the shape of her through it. He hadn't meant to look. Of course he hadn't. He wasn't that much of a bastard. But then he did. And then he couldn't stop.
Her hair was everywhere. Wild, golden in the sunlight. Her chest rose and fell like something out of a story he didn't believe in. And her skin. Merlin, her skin. It made him dizzy. And then he thought it. The word that changed everything.
Not beautiful. That was too tame.
Delicious.
And he stopped cold on the stairs, one foot halfway down, his body freezing like he'd just walked straight into a wall. His brain blanked. Completely. His stomach dropped. And somewhere inside his skull, a small, panicked voice screamed, what the absolute hell was that?
His hands clenched at his sides. He stood there like a statue while his mind unraveled.
No. No, no, no.
This was wrong. So unbelievably wrong.
He wasn't supposed to notice her. That was the whole deal. That was what had made this tolerable. She was annoying, and self-righteous, and nosy, and loud. And that made her safe. Easy to ignore. But now she wasn't loud. She was silent, sun-drenched, stretched out in a dress made of air and bad decisions. And his pulse wouldn't stop hammering like it was trying to warn him that this path led straight into fire.
This couldn't be happening.
He scrubbed a hand down his face, dragging his palm through his hair until it stood on end. He needed to stop. Immediately. He needed to put her back where she belonged. Mentally, emotionally, ideologically. Granger was off-limits in every conceivable way.
Not just because she was a Muggleborn. Though, yes. That too. If his mother knew—if Narcissa Malfoy, pureblood saint and terrifying woman, could hear his thoughts right now—she would rise from her grave just to hex him blind. And honestly, he might welcome it.
Because what the hell had that been?
He tried to reset. Tried to think of anything else. Anything at all.
But his mind, traitorous and cruel, shoved the image of her straight back into focus. That goddamn dress. The way it clung in places it had no right to. The slip of strap down one bare shoulder. Her head tipped back, eyes closed, face soft. At peace.
And something inside him cracked a little.
Not because he wanted it to. Not because he meant to let it.
But because she looked like something warm. Like something untouchable. Like something that wasn't his, and never would be, and still somehow managed to get under his skin in a way no one else ever had.
He didn't want her.
He didn't.
He couldn't.
But wanting didn't ask for permission. It just bloomed. Sharp and fast and hungry.
And now he had a problem.
A big one.
Because there was a difference between living with someone you couldn't stand, and living with someone you couldn't stop thinking about. And he knew—deep in that part of himself he rarely let speak—that he had just crossed the line.
And worse still, he didn't know how to come back from it.
He had been raised to know better. Trained for it, really. Every dinner, every tutor, every formal lesson wrapped in silk and superiority had been designed to drill a single truth into his spine. Girls like her were beneath him. Girls like her were not to be seen, not to be thought about, certainly not to be married.
And yet here he was, flushed and disoriented, heart pounding like it didn't belong to him at all. He could feel the thud of it behind his ribs, fast and loud and traitorous, as his thoughts spiraled again into territory that should have been off-limits.
She was supposed to be everything he hated. She was supposed to be Muggleborn, obnoxiously clever, unbearably moral, the kind of person who always had to be right and made sure everyone else knew it. She had been a thorn in his side since they were children. She was his opposite in every way that mattered.
Now she was also his wife.
Not because he wanted her. That wasn't the point. He hadn't signed up for this. The Ministry had done it, drawn up their lovely little decree and assigned him a wife like it was a matter of bureaucracy. He hadn't chosen her. And yet none of that stopped his thoughts from circling back to her over and over again.
Her voice. Sharp and biting, full of that clipped impatience she always used with him. Her eyes. Hard and bright when she looked his way, even if she barely looked anymore. Her smile. Rare. Reserved for someone else. Still burned into his mind like a scar.
And her body, stretched out in the sun today like a spell had pinned her there, golden and still and so completely out of reach that he wanted to tear something apart just for noticing. It had knocked the air right out of him. Not because she was beautiful. That word didn't even fit anymore.
She was maddening.
She was untouchable.
She was absolutely fucking divine.
Stop. Stop thinking. Stop picturing. Stop remembering.
He could feel himself slipping, losing the grip he had spent so many years perfecting. He tried to summon the part of him that had always kept things neat, the version of himself who didn't let things like this happen. The version who would have laughed at the very idea.
But the image was there again. Vivid as if it had been painted on the backs of his eyelids. Her lying in the grass. Her dress shifting in the breeze. Her skin catching the sun like it had been kissed by it. That look on her face like she was somewhere else entirely, somewhere peaceful. Somewhere far from here.
And worse—so much worse—it had looked right.
She had looked like she belonged there. In his garden. In his morning.
That thought alone was enough to make him press the heel of his hand to his forehead and groan aloud. He dragged his fingers through his hair, rough enough to sting, trying to push the madness out of his skull by force.
Maybe it was just the proximity. That had to be it. It wasn't her, not really. It was the house. The isolation. The suffocating closeness of living under the same roof without ever speaking, without ever seeing anything but the flicker of someone else's presence out of the corner of your eye.
Anyone would start to unravel under those conditions.
Anyone would start to invent stories just to keep the silence from swallowing them whole.
He clung to that thought like it was the only thing keeping him sane.
But then, from the dark corner of his mind, something small and cutting rose up, slow and smug.
You don't even see her that often.
And that stopped him cold.
Because it was true. It was painfully, blindingly true. In all the time since the marriage, they had hardly spoken. Hardly even crossed paths. A few glimpses here and there. Nothing meaningful. Nothing prolonged.
She moved through the manor like a shadow. Quiet. Quick. Always gone before he could process the fact that she had been there at all. And that was fine. That was exactly what he had wanted. Their mutual silence had become the only thing he could rely on.
But today—today had been different.
Today had cracked something open.
And now he was bleeding out in the middle of his own corridor, unraveling from the inside, haunted by the memory of sunlight on her skin and the simple, unbearable truth that he couldn't stop thinking about her.
Today hadn't just unsettled him. It had knocked the air out of his lungs and left him standing in his own corridor like a man who had forgotten how to move. She hadn't been a background figure or a problem to avoid. She had been everything. Blinding. Maddening. A storm wrapped in sunlight. And he hadn't been able to look away.
Not from her hair, wild and bright like it had stolen fire from the sky.
Not from the way she moved, slow and steady, like she didn't owe anyone her urgency.
Not from the way her eyes had locked onto his, sharp and unflinching, like she dared him to see her and hated him for doing it at the same time.
And now he was unraveling. Not because she was beautiful, though she was. Not because of her body, though that, too, had ruined him more than once. What terrified him was the awareness. How suddenly and completely she had filled his mind. Every breath she took, every memory of her he didn't know he had stored, now replaying themselves without mercy.
He leaned back against the wall and let the cold press into his spine. It was unforgiving, but it helped. It gave him something real to hold onto while the rest of him spun out. He stayed there until his pulse slowed enough for his thoughts to come back in pieces. Not all of them. Not the helpful ones. Just enough to remind him that he needed this to stop.
Whatever this was.
He couldn't afford to let it live in his head, let alone his chest. Not when she had made it so clear she wanted nothing from him. Not when his entire defense depended on pretending he felt the same.
It wasn't real. He repeated the words until they started to sound like fact. It was the house. The Ministry. The bloody silence. The pressure. The strangeness of waking up married to someone who would rather be anywhere else, and knowing you agreed with her. That was all this was. Not desire. Not longing. Not anything he couldn't burn off with distance.
Still, his eyes dropped to the floor, to the fine pattern of the marble tile beneath his boots, and he couldn't even focus on that. Because the truth—quiet, poisonous, relentless—was already in.
No matter what he told himself, no matter how many times he tried to write her off as a problem or a punishment, something deeper had begun to pull at him.
He felt it. He knew it. It was already there. Something small and hungry and real.
That terrified him more than he wanted to admit.
He shoved off the wall, sharp and sudden, and started pacing like movement might drown the noise in his head. His steps echoed through the corridor, uneven, too loud. He needed air. He needed space. He needed to not be inside this house where everything smelled like her. Even the quiet felt like her now, stretched thin and warm and waiting to cut him in half.
He had to get out. Now. Away from her. From the scent she left behind when she passed him in the hallway. From the sound of her voice in the mornings when she forgot to be angry. From the way she smiled when she thought no one saw.
But even as he tried to outrun her, even as he stormed toward the exit like he was chasing a fire escape, he knew it wouldn't matter.
Because she wasn't just a situation he could manage.
She wasn't a puzzle he could solve and be done with.
She wasn't even a mistake he could regret and move on from.
She was his wife.
Not just by ink and law and cursed decree.
Not just by name.
Now, somehow, by something else too.
Something that made his hands shake and his jaw ache and his throat burn.
Something that felt like the beginning of everything he had been trying not to feel.
And no matter how far he ran or how long he lied to himself, he wasn't going to escape that.
· ─ ·ʚɞ· ─ · ·
Draco paced the length of his bedroom like the floor itself was taunting him. His footsteps hit the polished stone in uneven, frantic beats, and his fists were clenched so tightly at his sides that his arms ached from the tension. His shoulders were locked up, every muscle tight, like he was preparing for a fight he couldn't name. He kept walking. Kept moving. Kept hoping that if he moved fast enough, if he raked his hand through his hair one more time, if he muttered under his breath just loud enough to drown out the echo of her voice in his skull, maybe the memory would let him go.
But it didn't.
It stayed right there, behind his eyelids. Still. Bright. Relentless.
And it made his blood boil with something that looked too much like shame.
She was in his head. That girl. That woman. Hermione bloody Granger.
From the moment she had stepped into the manor, she had been a problem. No—more than that. A complication. An insult. A walking storm of righteousness and rules and clever little barbs that had no business making his chest feel tight. And worse, she had been forced on him. This entire mess had been handed to him by the Ministry with a smirk and a signature, like his life could be reshaped by parchment and law.
She didn't belong here.
Not in his home. Not in his thoughts. And definitely not in the center of whatever heat was curling through his spine right now.
Today had ruined everything.
Because something had changed.
And he didn't know how to change it back.
It wasn't her mouth, sharp and cutting, or the way she always had a retort ready before he could even finish a sentence. It wasn't the way she looked down on him when she thought he was being childish. That was normal. That was safe. He could fight with that version of her.
This was something else.
It was her body. It was the way she had been lying in the garden like she was made of sun and softness. That bikini, or whatever the hell it was—he had no idea what Muggles called those things—had no right to exist, let alone cling to her like that. It had short-circuited his entire brain. He didn't even know what it was supposed to be. Swimwear? Sleepwear? Torture?
Probably all three.
And the worst part? It was normal for her. She hadn't done it for attention. She hadn't even looked at him when she wore it. She had just existed in it. Like it was fine. Like it was just clothes. But it wasn't. Not to him.
And it had all started when she shouted up at him.
He had been on the roof again. His usual routine. His quiet hours. The only part of the day when the house didn't press in too close. The wind was sharp up there. Cold enough to sting. And that was what he needed. He needed to feel something that wasn't guilt or boredom or legacy.
And she ruined it.
She had looked up at him, hand shielding her eyes, and shouted something snarky. Loud. Mocking. Her voice reached him easily. It always did. He had yelled back, of course. Said something to put distance between them. But the second he climbed down and reentered the quiet of the manor, it was already too late.
The damage was done.
She had taken root.
She had looked like she belonged out there in the sun. She had looked happy. Peaceful. Her skin glowing like gold, her hair catching the light in a way that made him think of wildfires and fever dreams. She hadn't been looking for attention. She hadn't been trying to stir anything in him. But it didn't matter.
Because now she was in his bloodstream.
And he couldn't get her out.
He stopped walking and gritted his teeth hard enough that his jaw ached. His hand went to his hair again, tugging at it like he could shake the memory loose. But it stayed. The slope of her waist. The way her stomach rose and fell so slowly, like she didn't have a care in the world. The way that damned bikini hugged her hips like it was tailor-made to haunt him. His stomach twisted. A surge of heat built beneath his ribs and then dropped fast, settling low, heavy and hot.
And that was when his body turned on him completely.
He froze.
It hit him all at once.
He was hard.
He was actually hard.
For Granger.
He stared at the ceiling, eyes wide with disbelief, jaw slack, as his entire nervous system caught fire. Shame poured in next, cold and fast, like being dunked into ice water after a fever dream. What the hell was wrong with him?
He had spent years hating her. He had trained himself to hate her. There was a script, a map, a deeply ingrained sense of right and wrong. And somehow, none of that had protected him from this.
From her.
From whatever this was becoming.
He dropped onto the edge of the bed, elbows on knees, face in his hands. His breathing was shallow. His fingers trembled.
She was not supposed to be this.
She was not supposed to be his undoing.
Draco looked down, heat rising up his neck as realisation hit. Every nerve in his body went hot all at once, and he swore softly under his breath, half in disbelief and half in fury at himself. "Brilliant," he muttered, pressing the heel of his hand to his face, voice muffled. "Absolutely brilliant. A full‑grown man losing his mind like some schoolboy."
He tried to breathe it away, to think of anything else, but before the humiliation could cool, the door opened.
Granger.
Of course. Because the universe had a sense of humour.
She stood there in the doorway, sun‑flushed and still dressed for the garden, her hair a halo of wild curls, her face unreadable. She didn't even look surprised to find him there; she just stared for a moment, eyes cool and assessing, and somehow that indifference burned worse than any ridicule would have.
"Your suicidal moment is over, Malfoy?" she asked, tone light, almost bored, as if finding him looking completely undone was a normal occurrence.
His throat closed around words that wouldn't come. "Uh… yes," he managed finally, a pitiful sound that barely qualified as speech.
Her brow lifted a fraction. Then, with the kind of calm that made him want to scream, she simply turned and walked past him. Her scent drifted after her—soap and sunlight and something he couldn't name—and he just stood there, rigid and mortified, every muscle tense with confusion.
He needed to move. He needed to stop staring. He needed to remember who she was.
This was Granger. The same woman who had spent years outsmarting him, arguing circles around him, cutting him down with words sharper than any curse. His wife on paper, his enemy in every other sense. She was supposed to drive him mad with irritation, not whatever this was.
But his body didn't seem to care about logic. It didn't care about the war, or the hatred, or the vows neither of them had wanted. It only cared that she was close enough for him to feel the air shift when she passed, that her voice could still hit some unguarded part of him he thought had long since turned to stone.
He let out a long breath and dragged both hands through his hair until it stood on end. This couldn't keep happening. He needed distance. He needed a wall between them thicker than stone, something that could shut her out completely before this spiral took him apart.
But deep down, in the quiet place where pride no longer mattered, he already knew the truth.
He wanted her.
Not as an idea or a passing thought, but with a sharp, relentless pull that scared him more than anything had in years. And no amount of denial could make that disappear.
He pressed a hand to the wall, steadying himself, jaw tight.
How had this happened? How had she slipped beneath his skin so easily?
He had spent years despising her, years reminding himself why he should. Yet one careless afternoon in the sunlight had undone all of it, and now he couldn't go a single hour without the thought of her finding him again.
Draco closed his eyes and forced himself to breathe. He told himself it would pass, that it had to. That this was just the house, the loneliness, the silence between them turning cruel.
But even as he whispered the lie to himself, the truth settled deep in his chest and refused to move.
He was already falling.
And he had no idea how to stop.