Draco had never been one to wander without purpose.
Even as a boy, when his days were spent within the cold grandeur of Malfoy Manor—where everything was symmetrical and sterile and sharp—he had moved with precision. He did not meander. He did not explore. He stalked through corridors with the confidence of someone who knew the walls themselves bowed to his bloodline. His feet were always pointed, his hands always still. Every hallway had been memorized like scripture. Every doorway a declaration of inherited dominion.
But this house?
This house was not his.
And it refused—blatantly, almost smugly—to let him forget it.
The Granger cottage was deceptive in every possible way. From the outside, it resembled a structure plucked from some half-remembered storybook: ivy curling up its weatherworn brick façade, a slanted roof sagging gently under the weight of time, and windows that glowed golden in the fading light like old secrets kept warm by memory. He had expected humble. He had expected quiet. What he hadn't expected was... this.
Because inside, the house did not simply exist—it lived.
Not in the enchanted, obedient way that magical homes often did, bending themselves to their master's whims. No, this house breathed. This house listened. This house remembered.
It was alive in the way deep forests were alive—ancient, unbothered, humming softly with a consciousness that had nothing to do with spells and everything to do with presence.
The floorboards beneath his shoes were treacherous—groaning loudly in spots that should have been silent, and swallowing sound in places where echoes should have followed him like ghosts. The walls curved where they should've cornered, subtle enough to disorient but intentional enough to feel personal. He could not map it in his head. Could not track where he'd come from. There was no axis, no symmetry, no sense of hierarchy or importance to the rooms. One hallway bled into a solarium. Another opened into a music room filled with plants instead of instruments. A pantry with exposed wooden beams gave way to a staircase so narrow he had to turn sideways to climb it.
It was uncurated. Intimate. Terrifying.
The décor was nothing like what he had grown up with—no gilded molding, no severe portraits, no sharp lines or cold marble. Instead, the rooms were painted in shades of moss and wild lavender, of stormcloud grey and the faintest pink just before sunrise. Handmade quilts rested over the backs of chairs. Woven wall hangings displayed constellations in golden thread. Books were everywhere—stacked on windowsills, piled under tables, pressed into gaps on mismatched shelves. Every corner was cradled by some quiet chaos: half-burned candles, chipped pottery, feathers tucked into the spines of old tomes.
And plants. Gods, the plants.
They spilled from every surface—creeping vines and flowering herbs, succulents glowing faintly with stored moonlight, leafy green things with no names that brushed against him as he passed. Nothing about them was ornamental. Nothing trimmed or forced. They grew as they pleased, wild and vibrant, like the house itself encouraged them to flourish without apology.
And every breath he took was filled with her.
Not a fragrance. Not anything purchased or bottled or worn.
But her.
The same impossible scent that had lingered in the courtroom the day she had stood for him—fresh mint crushed underfoot, sun-warmed stone after rain, the dry sweetness of sage and the cool, grounding pull of moss. It was in the cushions. In the curtains. In the woodgrain of the doors. In the air, like memory made tangible.
The house didn't just belong to her—it loved her.
And Draco, already on the verge of coming undone, realized with a slow, awful certainty that it did not love him.
It tolerated him. With the cold, quiet patience of something far older and wiser than he could understand.
And still—he kept walking.
Because even if it didn't want him there, he wanted to know more.
He wanted to see how she lived. How she moved through a space that bent to her joy. What kind of world she built when she wasn't fighting, when she wasn't defending, when she wasn't surviving.
Because somewhere in this house—this beautiful, unpredictable, maddening house—was the truth of her.
And gods help him, he needed to find it.
Every inch of the house felt like it had been shaped by her shadow—like her presence had once moved through it so thoroughly, so often, that the very walls had soaked her in. And now, no matter how many doors he opened, no matter how carefully he walked the halls, it refused to let her go. There was a quiet permanence to it, a kind of invisible residue she'd left behind that clung to the corners and whispered from the floorboards. It was not something that could be scrubbed away. It did not fade with time. It lingered.
He opened doors just to hear the wood resist him, to feel the subtle tension in the hinges, like the house was bracing for him. It was a small defiance, a quiet reminder: You don't belong here.
In one room, the floor glowed faintly beneath his boots. A soft, ethereal light, like moonlight trapped just beneath the surface. It brightened when he moved forward, then dulled the moment he stepped away—like it only acknowledged motion from within the house's favored circle. Like it was keeping score.
In another, the ceiling was enchanted to reflect the sky outside in real time. He stared up at it, watched clouds shift languidly across a dusky canvas, stars flickering gently into life one by one. But the second he entered the room, the movement slowed. Paused. The stars twitched, uncertain, and then held still altogether, as if the sky itself had sensed him and decided to hold its breath.
Then there was the library—though to call it that felt inadequate. It was circular, impossibly tall, and tangled with magic that didn't care for neatness or hierarchy. The shelves weren't furniture, but extensions of the house itself, carved straight into the walls like veins, spiraling upward in uneven loops. The books were mismatched and restless—some leather-bound and regal, others wrapped in twine or cloth, humming faintly to themselves, whispering secrets in languages he couldn't place. Some hovered an inch off their shelves. Others were stacked in precarious towers beside oversized cushions that seemed made for lounging, not study. He reached for one at random—no title, no markings—and the moment his fingers brushed the spine, the book shivered, recoiling from his touch like it had recognized him.
Even the magic here—especially the magic—didn't trust him.
Then, in the center of the living room, just above the landing where the moonlight pooled and the scent of dried herbs lingered, he found it.
Her name.
Etched into the wood in looping silver script, elegant and radiant in a way that felt ancient: Hermione Jean Granger. Beneath it, smaller lines shimmered into view—Beloved by the stars. Welcome always.
He stared at it, jaw tightening, something sharp twisting in his chest. He ground his teeth. Turned away before the walls could see the look on his face.
The only space in the house that felt untouched—unloved—was his.
His room. Assigned to him as a gesture of courtesy. Nothing more.
It was spacious, yes. Tastefully arranged. Designed with every practical comfort in mind. The ceilings were high, the air warm, the windows wide. A writing desk stood near the bed, already stocked with fresh parchment, polished quills, and ink bottles in neat little rows. The bedding was soft. The mattress perfect. Everything was fine.
But it was too fine.
Too sterile. Too impersonal. Too… untouched.
There were no enchanted books whispering. No strange trinkets humming on shelves. No scent of mint and moss and starlight. It felt curated for a guest who wouldn't stay. It felt like a polite nod from the house itself, a reluctant acceptance: Fine. He can stay. But not close.
When he pressed his hand to the nearest wall—just to see—he felt it recoil. Not violently. Just enough to make its displeasure known. A subtle shift beneath his palm, the barest ripple in the surface, like the shiver of fur when a wild animal retreats from a stranger's hand. You are not trusted here.
And then, just as he stepped back into the corridor, silence crowding him, wrapping around him like a second skin—
He heard her.
A laugh. Distant and bright. Floating down from somewhere above. Barely audible, like a thread of sunlight slipping through a crack in the clouds. It was soft and unguarded and full of life, curling through the beams and dancing down the staircase to find him like a spell cast just for this moment.
And somehow, impossibly—that sound, more than the house's wariness, more than the trembling books or quiet magic—that was what stung the most.
Because it reminded him of the truth he hadn't dared say aloud:
She belonged here.
And he didn't.
She stepped forward without hesitation, bare feet brushing over the mossy stone of the threshold as though it were a memory made solid, something intimate and longed for, something she hadn't been separated from but rather misplaced in the corners of her mind, and now, at last, remembered.
There was no drama to the movement, no gust of wind, no sparkling aura or visible spell—just the quiet, matter-of-fact grace of a woman returning to where she had always belonged, barefoot and smiling, her presence folding into the space with the ease of breath drawn after a long absence. The dust clinging to the threshold didn't resist her; instead, it seemed to shift, shimmer, as though it had paused time to keep her place.
The instant her skin met the cool stone, the wards responded in kind—not with alarms or suspicion, not with the prickling magic of defense, but with the tender exhale of a home recognizing its heart. A shimmer of golden light pulsed gently through the air, not with power but with warmth, and the breath of magic that followed felt like a body easing into sleep beside someone it trusted.
The front door, its hinges ancient and its frame carved with runes so old they looked like softened scars, unlatched itself with a faint click and creaked open slowly—not with deference, but with something quieter, more intimate, the kind of invitation that required no words. The ivy along the archway shivered, curling downward like it was bowing, and the breeze that slipped out from within carried rosemary and cedar and something uniquely hers, as though the house had been holding its breath and was now breathing her in.
Draco felt it all at once, not with his eyes—though the slow gold ripple in the air was impossible to ignore—but with his magic, which recoiled before he could stop it, reacting with the defensive snap of something startled. Where her power had been welcomed, drawn in like sunlight through parted curtains, his own remained trapped within his skin, leashed tightly, flickering with unease. The wards had not barred him. They had not flared or bristled or denied him entirely. But they had hesitated. They had pulled back—not in warning, but in refusal, a quiet, firm rejection, the way a body might flinch from cold.
He watched her move into the entryway, her back to him, her steps unhurried, confident, utterly unselfconscious in the way only someone deeply loved by a space could be. She didn't look over her shoulder to check if he followed. She didn't pause to see if the house would accept him. She didn't need to. It already had her, had always had her, and in doing so, it had made its choice.
Still standing just outside the threshold, Draco adjusted his shoulders, his spine stiff with the tension of a man too proud to admit he was waiting for permission he would never receive. When he finally stepped forward, it was with deliberate slowness, a breath caught in the moment between intrusion and invitation. The pushback was gentle, almost imperceptible—the air thickening around his chest, the faint ripple of magic brushing over his skin like a warning touch. The house wasn't denying him, but it wasn't embracing him either. It had tolerated his presence. It had made room for him the way someone might make space at a crowded table for a stranger: courteous, but wary.
He didn't allow the flicker of emotion to cross his face, but his magic churned beneath his skin, unsettled, aware. She had walked in without needing to ask. And he—he would always feel like he was asking. Even now.
Inside, she had already disappeared down the hall, her silhouette vanishing into golden light and quiet laughter, leaving behind the scent of rosemary and the knowledge that this place, this magic, this warmth, would never belong to him the way it belonged to her.
She turned back toward him with deliberate slowness, her fingertips grazing the aged wood of the doorframe, trailing across its runes and ridges as though she were reading the house like a sacred text written in silence. The motion wasn't performative—it was reverent, instinctive, as if every surface spoke to her in a language only she could hear. When her gaze finally lifted to meet his, she regarded him with that same infuriating calm she always seemed to carry in his presence.
There was no smugness in her expression, no hint of superiority or challenge—just a quiet, measured amusement, a subtle curve of the lips that felt more like a private joke whispered to the universe than anything meant to provoke him. It made him feel strangely small, like a stray creature being watched from a distance by someone still undecided on whether it deserved a place by the fire or belonged back in the woods.
And gods, how he hated it.
When she spoke, her voice was almost too soft for the space around them. "It needs love," she said, and the words hung in the air like a spell left to settle.
There was no bite to the statement. No underlying judgment. No edge designed to cut. Just gentleness, woven through every syllable like it belonged here, like it was part of the house's foundation.
His eyes narrowed—not because the words demanded it, but because they stirred something deeper than annoyance. Something sharp and restless twisted behind his ribs, a knot pulled tighter by the way the air still shimmered around her, the way the magic of the cottage seemed to curl around her wrists like golden cuffs, brushing against her skin with fond familiarity. She stood there, barefoot and unbothered, wrapped in a sense of ease so complete that it made him feel like the ground beneath his own feet could collapse at any moment.
"It needs discipline," he said, the words clipped and cold, sharp as flint. But even as he said them, they tasted like ash in his mouth.
She didn't respond, and he knew she wouldn't. Of course she wouldn't. She simply turned back to the heart of the house, lifting her face toward the high arches above, inhaling deeply like the very air here still remembered her. Her eyes slipped half-shut, her posture loose and open, as though the walls themselves were exhaling in time with her.
And in that moment, as the silence stretched and deepened between them, it occurred to him that she wasn't just in the house—she was part of it. Her presence was not only welcome, it was celebrated, absorbed. The house reached for her in the same way the ocean reached for the moon, tides pulled by gravity too ancient to resist.
Meanwhile, he stood with his hands clenched at his sides, the air around him warped and wary, his magic pulled taut beneath his skin, reacting to the soft rejection thrumming through the walls. This place may have belonged to him on paper, may have been his by inheritance and deed, but every brick, every rune, every whisper of ancient charm made it abundantly clear: he did not belong here.
Not like she did.
The silence thickened, stretched taut enough to sting. He opened his mouth to speak, to close the distance with something—anything—that might reassert control over the moment. But before he could shape a single word, she was already walking away, gliding deeper into the house with the unthinking grace of someone who had never feared being unwanted. The hem of her dress whispered against the floor, her hair catching the glow of late afternoon light until it looked silver, like thread spun from starlight.
He followed her—not because he wanted to, not because it made sense, not because he had any idea what he was supposed to do—but because the alternative was worse. The alternative was standing there alone, outside the warmth of her footsteps, with the magic of the house recoiling like a wound refusing to scar.
***
Draco had never despised tea more than he did at this moment.
The brew before him was over-steeped, exuding a potent herbal aroma intertwined with a hint of floral sweetness that clashed with his preference for the crisp bitterness of a well-prepared black tea. The liquid sat in a teacup that seemed to have weathered generations—a delicate piece with a hairline crack mended by a sliver of gold, a testament to the Japanese art of kintsugi, which celebrated flaws rather than concealing them. This philosophy was foreign to Draco, who had been raised to mask imperfections, not highlight them.
He reached for the sugar, only to find no spoon in sight. A small jar of honey was present, but without a knife or stirrer, leaving him to awkwardly manage with the tools at hand. The teapot, an eccentric creation resembling a puffskein with hand-painted features, emitted a soft, disgruntled puff when he attempted to pour a second cup, as if protesting his lack of finesse.
The table itself was a study in organized chaos. It stretched longer than necessary, its surface warped from years of use, creating a subtle dip in the center. Chairs of varying designs surrounded it—one adorned with carved moons on its backrest, another clearly a child's seat that emitted a squeak with every movement. Despite there being only two place settings, seven chairs encircled the table, suggesting a history of gatherings filled with laughter and conversation. A hand-stitched tablecloth, slightly askew, covered the surface, its patterns charmingly mismatched. Sunlight poured in through the window unabated, casting a warm glow that felt intrusive rather than comforting.
And then there was Granger, humming softly as she moved about. The melody was unfamiliar, perhaps a tune from her childhood or a song she had picked up during her travels. It wasn't the tune itself that unsettled Draco, but the ease with which she inhabited the space, her movements fluid and unburdened, as if she were part of the very fabric of the cottage.
He sat rigidly, the teacup poised delicately between his fingers, every muscle in his body resisting the urge to flee. The setting was an antithesis to the structured elegance he was accustomed to—a world where every item had its place, and every action was governed by unspoken rules. Here, the rules were different, or perhaps they didn't exist at all.
Draco's gaze drifted to her, who was now pouring herself a cup of tea, her expression serene. She caught his eye and offered a gentle smile, one that spoke of contentment and a deep-seated peace he couldn't fathom. He returned a tight-lipped smile, the corners of his mouth barely lifting, and took a sip of the tea, its unfamiliar flavors washing over his palate.
In that moment, surrounded by the mismatched charm of the cottage and the quiet hum of a woman at ease, Draco felt like an outsider—not just in the room, but in a world that embraced imperfections and found beauty in the unorthodox. It was a world he didn't understand, one that challenged the very foundations of his upbringing.
And yet, despite the discomfort, he remained seated, the teacup warming his hands, as he listened to Granger's soft humming and the creak of the old chair beneath him.
She sat at the far end of the table, her posture relaxed, one leg folded beneath her as she perched barefoot on a mismatched chair. Her long, chestnut hair cascaded down her back in a tangle of waves, unbrushed and unbothered, catching the morning light that streamed through the window.
Draped in a loose linen dress—its hue shifting between soft gray and lavender depending on how the sunlight touched it—she exuded an effortless grace. With deliberate care, she peeled a blood orange, her fingers deftly separating the segments, the juice staining her fingertips a delicate pink. Each slice was placed on her plate with a precision that spoke of ritual rather than necessity.
She hadn't acknowledged his presence since he'd entered the room. No greeting, no glance, just the quiet rhythm of her movements as she prepared her breakfast. It was as if his arrival was neither unexpected nor particularly noteworthy, as though this morning was no different from any other.
The silence stretched between them, thick with unspoken words. He sat opposite her, his own plate untouched, the food cooling as he watched her. The absence of ceremony, of any recognition of the significance of this morning—their first as magically bound partners—gnawed at him. She had simply begun her day, unperturbed, leaving him to grapple with the weight of their new reality alone.
Finally, she looked up, her gaze meeting his with a calm detachment. "You're up early," she remarked, her tone light, as if commenting on the weather.
"I didn't sleep," he replied, his voice taut, the words clipped.
She nodded, unruffled. "The house takes getting used to."
He took a sip of his tea, grimacing at the bitterness. "The house doesn't like me," he said flatly.
"It doesn't know you yet," she countered, her attention returning to the orange.
"It doesn't want to," he muttered.
She peeled another slice, her fingers methodical. "Houses don't want things the way people do. They remember. They respond. It's not about want. It's about memory and rhythm and energy."
He stared at her, the words foreign and frustrating. She offered a faint smile, the kind that suggested she knew exactly how little sense she made to him.
The silence settled again, heavier this time. He shifted in his seat, the chair creaking in protest. Her plate was a study in simplicity: blood orange slices, a handful of almonds, a piece of dark bread that looked freshly baked. His own plate mirrored hers, untouched. He couldn't tell if it was a peace offering or a test.
She seemed oblivious to his discomfort, or perhaps she simply chose not to acknowledge it. Finally, he reached for the bread, breaking the stalemate not with words, but with the quiet crunch of crust between his fingers.
The bread crumbled the instant he tore it, soft and delicate and warm in the center, but it fell apart in his hands like it had been waiting to betray him. He stared at it for a moment, stunned by the fragility, how easily it had unraveled, how effortlessly something that looked so whole could fall to pieces with a single touch.
"You're very tense," she said quietly, her voice slipping through the room like mist over glass.
"No," he replied, tone cold, brittle. "I'm very married."
A pause.
"That too."
His eyes snapped up to meet hers. He'd expected mockery. Smugness. Some shred of satisfaction hiding in the corners of her mouth. But her expression hadn't changed. Her tone was still soft. Still neutral. Still impossibly unbothered. She simply reached for her tea—a golden-green blend steaming gently in a chipped porcelain cup that looked like it had been inherited rather than bought—and sipped it like the world hadn't tilted off its axis.
He didn't know what to say to that. He didn't know how to sit in this space with her, in this house that breathed her name, in this new reality where they were bound by law and vow and something older than either of them understood. There were too many words. Too many things to say. And none of them safe. None of them worth the war they would invite.
So he said nothing.
Ate nothing.
Let the silence wrap around him like gauze while she continued eating her blood orange in calm, slow motions. Her fingers glistened with juice, stained pink, nails unpolished, hands unhurried. At one point, she lifted a slice and extended it across the long, uneven table toward him, fingers curled just slightly, palm up, offering without insistence. The sunlight caught in the pulp, turning it translucent, glowing like something sacred.
He didn't move.
She didn't push.
After a beat, she dropped it gently onto his plate, and the thud it made echoed louder than it should have. She went back to her tea without a word.
And that—that right there—was what unmade him. What clawed under his skin and took root.
She wasn't trying to manage him. She wasn't manipulating the silence. She wasn't testing him, measuring him, watching for weakness. She wasn't the Ministry, demanding penance. She wasn't his father, demanding legacy. She wasn't even himself, demanding control.
She was just… there.
Unmoved. Unapologetic. Entirely at ease with his discomfort. Expecting nothing from him. Offering nothing more than space and blood oranges and silence.
And that made him want to scream. Want to reach across the table and rattle the chair she sat in, grab her by the wrist and demand she give him something to work with—a shout, a glare, a sneer, anything sharp enough to clash against. Anything real.
Instead, she reached behind her, picked up a book from the sun-warmed windowsill—bound in worn leather, its pages thick with pressed herbs and dog-ears—and opened it with one hand.
"I'll be in the conservatory after breakfast," she said coolly, not bothering to look up, her tone so composed it could have been mistaken for kindness by someone less observant. But he wasn't.
The chair scraped softly against the floor as she stood, her movements unhurried, deliberate. He watched her cross the room, robe trailing like smoke behind her, the early sunlight catching the curve of her shoulder and turning her skin to gold, like even the light didn't dare touch her without permission.
His voice broke the quiet, low and jagged like broken glass. "Why are you like this?"
She paused—not startled, not tense, just… still.
"Like what?"
He exhaled sharply, as though the words burned coming out. "Fake. You hate me. You don't get to play the saint."
She turned her head slightly, just enough for him to see her eyes over the slope of her shoulder, and gods, the look she gave him was nothing short of surgical. Not cruel. Not angry. Just precise.
"Hate you?" she repeated, voice like silk over steel. "Don't flatter yourself, Malfoy. Hate takes effort. Hate takes space in my life. You were never worth that."
The silence that followed cracked something invisible in the air.
"I pitied you," she went on, voice low, calm, almost gentle—and somehow more vicious for it. "Back then. Quietly. Deeply. The kind of pity you keep to yourself because saying it out loud would be too humiliating—for both of us."
Her eyes dragged across him once, cold and assessing, like she was taking inventory of the damage and finding it unimpressive.
"And now look at us. Eight years later. Nothing's changed. I'm still pitying you. The only difference is that now I get to do it from across the breakfast table."
He didn't move. He couldn't.
Her expression didn't soften, not even at the edges.
"And for what it's worth," she added, already turning away, her voice lowering to something that cut far deeper than a shout, "I don't play saints. I just survived the kind of hell that turned boys like you into auctions."
And with that, she walked out, not waiting for a reply.
Because she knew he didn't have one.
***
The dining room was deceptively small, intimate in a way that unsettled Draco the moment he stepped inside. The space had shifted—subtly, imperceptibly—since that morning. The long rectangular table they had sat at for breakfast, awkward and too formal for the silence they shared, had vanished without a trace, tucked away by some enchantment or house magic that seemed determined to manipulate the environment around his discomfort. In its place stood a modest round table, carved from some pale, worn wood that gleamed softly in the candlelight. It was barely wide enough to fit two place settings and a decanter of wine, much less the space needed to pretend he wasn't breathing the same air as her.
He stepped forward cautiously, noting how the candles flickered to life as he crossed the threshold, their golden flames low and deliberate, casting shadows that stretched long and soft across the textured walls. The light clung to the furniture like memory, pooling in corners like secrets left unspoken. The air smelled faintly of wine, thyme, and some delicate floral undertone he couldn't quite name. There was no centerpiece on the table, no flowers or enchanted baubles to fill the silence—only two glasses, polished to a shine, and the unmistakable pressure of proximity.
She was already seated, of course, as if she had been waiting for hours or had simply emerged from the stonework like the rest of this house. Her chair was slightly too high for her frame, so her bare feet dangled just above the floor, toes flexing idly with each shift of her weight. She sat cross-legged, spine straight, as if this was not some deeply uncomfortable arrangement but the most natural thing in the world. The slate-colored fabric of her dress shimmered as she moved, catching the candlelight like moonlight through smoke, and her hair—a rich chestnut, braided loosely down her back—was adorned with tiny pieces of dried lavender he only noticed because they stirred when she breathed.
Her plate was edged with faint etchings of lunar phases, while his was rimmed in tarnished silver. The cutlery didn't match. One fork was bent slightly at the prong; one knife had a handle carved into the shape of a sleeping fox. The napkins were linen, unevenly embroidered by hand, threaded with constellations he couldn't identify. The entire setting felt curated for intimacy and discomfort in equal measure—too personal, too familiar, too tender.
It was domestic in a way that scraped against every layer of his upbringing. No house-elf efficiency. No polished uniformity. Just two people and a space designed to make distance impossible. And it made his skin itch.
The food, maddeningly, was flawless.
He noticed it the moment he stepped into the room. Not with any great revelation or appreciation, but with the bitter, sinking recognition that she had once again managed to perfect something without him asking. The aroma hit first—rich and layered, comforting in a way that made his chest tighten. Roasted vegetables, still glistening from the heat charm that kept them crisp and tender. Buttered flatbread resting in a warm basket, edges kissed golden, the unmistakable scent of garlic and rosemary curling in the air like a spell meant to undo him. A lentil stew—thick, spiced, steaming gently—waited in a deep, earthen bowl, beside a salad of wild herbs and foraged greens he vaguely recognized from the conservatory. Every ingredient, every flavor, deliberate. Seasonal. Balanced. He hadn't eaten this well in weeks. Maybe months. And the worst part—he knew she had made it herself.
He refused to compliment it. Refused to acknowledge the care. The intention. The intimacy of being cooked for. Instead, he sat down like he was preparing for battle, spine rigid, chin lifted, eyes fixed anywhere but on her. He picked up his fork like it might turn on him.
She didn't remark on the silence. She rarely did. She served him first—quiet, unceremonious, her movements slow and fluid as if muscle memory alone guided her. She ladled the stew into his bowl with the care of someone tending to a ritual, sliced the bread and placed it near his plate like she'd done it a thousand times before, offering it all without a single demand for acknowledgment. No flourish. No false sweetness. Just a quiet rhythm of domesticity that didn't belong to him. That had never belonged to him. And it grated.
She spoke, of course. She always spoke.
Not aimlessly. Never aimlessly. Her words were too deliberate for that, too intricately wound with the kind of knowledge most people had long since forgotten. Tonight, her voice moved through the candlelit room like smoke, curling around topics he couldn't find footing in. She spoke of old magic—ancient, sacred things. Covenant-bound candles. The secret resonance of certain wandwoods. Whispered languages that could only be heard by trees on the cusp of dawn. She murmured about dreams passed down between generations like heirlooms. About spells that lived only in oral memory, passed in hushes from grandmother to granddaughter.
He gave her nothing.
No questions. No agreement. No attempt to join her in that strange, myth-soaked world she carried in her voice. Just curt nods, an occasional twitch of his brow, and the meticulous efficiency of someone trained to hold his tongue where words might betray him. He cut his food with the same precision he'd once used to draw runes into flesh. Ate without tasting. Sat in silence while she peeled the night open beside him and filled it with stars.
She poured the wine.
"Are you always this quiet," she asked, voice even, casual, almost tender—
"Or just around women who own you?"
It hit like a curse, precise and personal, slicing into the bone.
His fork, halfway to his mouth, bent beneath his grip. Not loudly. Not dramatically. Just enough that the steel twisted, a soft metallic groan vibrating through the tense air. His knuckles stood white against his skin. His mouth pressed into a line so tight it might have vanished altogether.
She didn't flinch. Didn't apologize. Didn't even look at him.
She poured the wine as if the table weren't cracked in half between them, as if the air hadn't gone sharp, as if his silence hadn't turned into something furious and aching. She filled his glass with the grace of habit, then her own, and sipped.
He stared at her. Hard. Like he could will her into faltering.
She didn't.
She just shifted the topic. Just like that. Back to magic. To roots and networks and the alliances trees formed beneath the soil. How they warned each other of danger. How they survived through secret generosity. How the trees themselves might not scream when cut down—but the earth remembered the wound.
He said nothing. His breath came slow. His chest tight. The wine was dark and dry, biting at the edge of his tongue.
He drank it.
Because not drinking would've meant she'd won. Would've meant admitting she'd gotten to him. Would've meant acknowledging that he had no idea how to fight someone who refused to play by rules.
And Draco Malfoy had always been good at rules.
***
It was nearly midnight when Draco stepped outside, the door closing behind him with a softness that felt too deliberate, too final, like the house itself was sighing him out into the cold. The air hit him immediately—crisp and unnervingly still, the kind of stillness that didn't soothe but unsettled, thin and electric in the lungs, the kind of quiet that only ancient magic could conjure, like the land was holding its breath and waiting for something to break.
The moon hung heavy and full above the cottage, casting long fingers of silver light across the frost-touched grass, and every shadow stretched like it was reaching for something just out of sight. The mist hadn't cleared from the evening's earlier fall, and now it clung to the ground like a veil—dampening the earth beneath his boots, curling against his ankles like something alive and watchful.
He wasn't dressed for the night. No cloak, no heavy outerwear—just a thick charcoal jumper stretched across his shoulders and worn leather gloves pulled tight over his hands. The cold should've bothered him, but it didn't. The cold, at least, was honest.
What bothered him—what truly needled at the back of his spine—was the house.
He hadn't been able to sleep. Not really. Not since arriving. The walls pressed too close, the ceilings too high, the silence too layered. There was something off-kilter in the way the wards shifted through the house—subtle pulses, strange flutters in the magic like breath catching in a throat, like eyes blinking just behind the tapestry-lined walls. The enchantments weren't hostile exactly, but they weren't welcoming either. Not to him. Not to his blood. And he couldn't shake the feeling—not all day, not since he'd crossed the threshold—that he was being watched. Not by Granger. Not even by the cottage itself.
By something older.
Something embedded in the stone and wood and bones of the place.
Something that remembered.
Something that didn't want him here.
He moved along the edge of the property line, steps silent against the frost-damp grass, wand out and steady in his gloved grip, muttering under his breath in a low, controlled rhythm, drawing runes into the air with practiced precision. He was trying to assert dominance over the land, trying to weave his own magic into the soil, the structure, the foundation—trying to make it bend to him. His spellwork was elegant, razor-clean, each rune hanging in the air with perfect clarity before dissolving into threads of light. It should've worked. It should've held.
But every time his magic touched the existing enchantments—hers—it slid beneath them. Not repelled, not rejected. Absorbed. Softly. Silently. Smothered.
Like ink sinking into thick parchment and vanishing without trace.
Like breath drawn in but never exhaled.
Her magic was everywhere.
Woven into the wards, into the walls, into the grass and the gates and the very air curling around thehouse like it belonged to her—because it did. And his, no matter how sharply cast or perfectly formed, disappeared beneath it every time. He couldn't overwrite it. Couldn't carve through it. It was like trying to tattoo over water.
And it felt less like a barrier, and more like a claim.
Like the land had already chosen her, and everything that touched it—including him—had been swallowed into that choice.
It wasn't aggressive, but it didn't yield either. It wove itself around his spells like roots around a buried post. And no matter how many times he tried, how many adjustments he made, the result was always the same. Her magic held. His… didn't.
He wasn't sure if it infuriated him more because it was happening—or because he found himself silently impressed by how thoroughly she'd done it.
The wards she'd cast weren't showy. They didn't flare or crackle with visible power. But they were deep. Bound into the earth. Twined into the house itself. And they had no interest in giving way to him, no matter how tightly he gripped his wand or how forcefully he cast.
He let out a low breath and stepped back from the latest point of resistance. His jaw ached from clenching. He wasn't used to being ignored—especially not by magic.
The sound came soft at first—bare skin meeting old wood, quiet and deliberate, and it pulled his attention like a spell, something in it too intimate to ignore. He turned toward the porch, toward the sound, already knowing who it would be, already bracing for the strange inevitability that she would be there when he least wanted her to be and most needed to look.
She was walking toward him, slow and barefoot again, like the frost-kissed grass beneath her feet was warm, like the cold belonged to her and she to it. Her nightgown was impossibly thin, a slip of fabric that clung like fog and whispered as she moved, trailing along the ground and catching faintly in the wet.
Her hair was loose—again, always—and it tumbled down her back in soft, tangled waves that caught the moonlight in places, gleamed silver where it touched her collarbone. She wasn't shivering. Of course she wasn't. She was humming, too—some strange, wandering tune without a name, without a tempo, the kind of sound that didn't ask to be heard so much as settled into the air, wrapping around him without permission.
She didn't look at him. Not even once. Just walked past him like he was nothing more than a shadow at the edge of the night, like he didn't exist in a way that cut. She passed him as if his presence were incidental, a flicker of something irrelevant beside the moonlit garden. Calm. Composed. Wrapped in a kind of private serenity that made his teeth ache.
It was too much. It always was too much.
"Don't wander at night," he snapped, harsher than he intended, sharper than the cold in the air. "You'll catch a cold."
His voice cut across the silence like a blade thrown out of fear, not protection, and he regretted the edge of it the moment it landed.
She stopped, slowly, her body still turned away from him but her head tilting just enough to glance back over her shoulder, one hand falling idle at her side. Her face caught the moonlight and held it like it belonged there—pale, open, unreadable—and when she spoke, her voice was soft, flat, but not cold.
"Are you worried about me?"
There was no mockery in it. No lifted brow, no teasing lilt. Just a question, plain and undressed, and gods, that somehow made it worse. He could've handled teasing. Could've answered cruelty with cruelty, sarcasm with sharpness. But this? This quiet truth-seeking?
He said nothing.
Because he didn't know how to answer that without unraveling. Because the truth was a twisted thing inside his chest, snarled up in everything he'd tried to forget how to feel. Because yes, he was worried—furious with how worried—and he didn't know how to name that without sounding weak. And maybe he didn't want to be weak in front of her. Or maybe he didn't want her to know she had already made him so.
She waited. A single breath. A heartbeat held between them.
Then she smiled—barely, just the ghost of it—and turned again, the hem of her gown catching softly on the grass as she moved away, her body folding into the dark with the quiet grace of something the night refused to harm. She didn't say goodnight. She didn't ask him to follow. She didn't look back.
And still, he did.
Because the moment she disappeared into the shadows, the air around him changed—flattened, quieted, emptied—and he found himself moving forward before he even registered the thought. But when he crossed the space where she had walked, the wards didn't hum. Didn't flare. Didn't even acknowledge him.
Not for him.
They had stirred for her like a lover sighing into a familiar touch.
And for him, nothing.
As if the house, the land, the magic wrapped in every stone of the cottage, had already made its decision.
As if he was the stranger here.
And she—the girl who had signed his life into hers with a smile and a whispered melody—belonged.
***
He lay awake in the enormous bed she'd given him—if it could even be called that, given, as though he hadn't been placed in it like a relic tucked away for safekeeping, as though this room with its high ceilings and soft light hadn't been chosen to remind him, constantly, that he was somewhere he didn't quite belong. It was vast, that bed—an expanse of stillness and softness dressed in silk-threaded linens that should have felt indulgent but instead felt like a kind of exile, too quiet, too careful, like a space designed for someone who might break if touched too hard.
His body lay stretched across it, tense and too proud, every inch of him rigid with a discipline that had long since outlived its usefulness, one arm folded stiffly behind his head in the old, soldiering habit of pretending posture was a form of protection, the other resting against the cool sheets that refused to hold his heat, untouched despite hours of restless shifting. As if even the bed could feel it—his discomfort, his dissonance, his inability to sink. As if even the furniture, even the walls, knew he wasn't meant to fit here the way she did.
The mattress was too soft—dangerously soft—the kind that didn't support so much as consume, cradling his weight like it meant to disarm him, coax him into surrender. The pillows molded too well to the shape of his skull, as if they'd memorized him before he arrived, as if they'd been waiting, and it made his skin crawl. The comfort was a quiet kind of violence—too intimate, too tender, too kind. It unsettled him more than cold stone ever had.
And then there was the scent.
It wasn't perfume—not anything intentional or performative. It was her, unmistakably, maddeningly her. Lavender crushed between fingers. Old parchment sun-warmed and curling at the edges. Something green and sharp and alchemical like mint still clinging to the mortar after it's been ground to powder. A hint of sage, maybe, but after fire—after the burn. It wasn't overwhelming, not at all, but it was there, stubborn and subtle, haunting the air above his pillow and sinking into the seams of the sheets, rising faintly from the throw blanket folded with too much care at the edge of the bed.
It was in the room. In the bed. In the hollow between his ribs.
And he hated it. Hated that he could identify it so clearly. Hated that he recognized it without meaning to. Hated, most of all, that before his mind remembered to reject it, some quiet, tired part of him responded—calmed, soothed, settled for the barest moment as if his body had known safety in her presence before his mind was willing to admit it.
He closed his eyes, jaw clenched hard, breath shallow, trying to will the softness out of his lungs. But it stayed. She stayed.
And gods help him, he wasn't sure he wanted her to leave.
The moonlight poured through the tall, arched window that overlooked the overgrown hedges and wild trees beyond the cottage, slicing between the folds of the partially drawn curtains in long, silver lines that cut across the floor and spilled over the walls like bars in a cage. It streaked across his chest, his stomach, one pale stripe catching the sharp edge of his collarbone, turning him into something stark and hollow, something half-formed under an uncaring light. The glow was cold—perfectly clear, sterile in its detachment—and he stared at it for what might have been minutes or hours, long enough for his eyes to sting, long enough for his breath to start catching in his throat. It didn't move. It didn't flicker. It simply was. Unchanging. Quiet. Merciless.
He wasn't sure how long he had been lying there. Time inside house twisted in strange ways—it wasn't linear, wasn't dependable. The hours bled together. Clocks didn't tick loudly here. Shadows moved faster than they should. Candles refused to burn down evenly. It could have been midnight, or dawn, or something in between, and the bed would still feel just as foreign.
And then, through the silence—through the low hum of magic pressed into the walls, through the shifting hush of the wind outside—he heard it again.
Her humming.
Soft. Distant. Unconcerned. A melody without rhythm, without a destination. Not meant for anyone but herself.
And yet it found him. Every time.
He could picture her.
And worse—he could hear her in his mind, the sound of her voice no longer humming, no longer distant, but soft and private and unmistakably close, whispering his name like it was a secret she wasn't supposed to say aloud. It wasn't seductive. That would have been easier. It was gentler. Intimate in the way rain is intimate—soaking through, unnoticed at first, until it's under your skin.
Her breath, in that fantasy, caught between a laugh and a sigh, as if even she didn't know whether she meant to tempt him or comfort him. Her fingers, imagined without permission, sliding into the collar of his shirt and tugging—not roughly, but insistently, like she was pulling him down into something warmer than he knew how to survive.
And for a moment—just one moment, one he didn't allow but that happened anyway—he imagined her bare skin against his, pale and endless and unforgivably soft, her hair a curtain over his chest as she leaned in, mouth hovering over the space where his pulse lived. He imagined her in his bed, not as a storm, but as a hush—legs tangled with his, breath against his throat, her body curved into the shape of sleep and warmth and belonging. He imagined her sighing his name into the hollow of his shoulder like it had always belonged there.
He imagined the pads of her fingers tracing runes into his hipbones, imagined the press of her thighs against his as something patient, something inevitable. He imagined her mouth—gods, her mouth—soft and parted, not smiling, just present, trailing across the edge of his jaw with the kind of reverence he couldn't bear.
And he hated himself for it.
Hated the heat that bloomed in his chest and sank low in his stomach. Hated the way his breath stuttered. Hated that his hands twitched toward empty space. That he didn't recoil fast enough.
He turned sharply in the bed, kicked the covers back with a violence that had nowhere else to go, and sat up, breath shallow, like movement might undo the thought. But it didn't. The room was too quiet. Too hers. And the humming—it was still there, still coming from the hallway, still threading through the dark like silk, unbothered, unaware, unrelenting.
She hadn't touched him.
She hadn't done anything.
And yet she was claiming the house with soft hands and bright flowers and humming that curled through cracks in the walls and settled in his bones. And somehow, that was worse than any curse.
Because curses, he understood. Curses had sharpness. Curses came with pain, with blood, with noise. Curses were battles to be fought.
But Granger?
She moved like water—slow and inevitable and everywhere—and took everything without ever needing to break it.
And he was already drowning.