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jomiddlemarch · 17 days

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VII. It was a balancing act, looking after Hermione. On the one hand, he was well-aware she was an intelligent and competent adult witch, capable of making her own decisions, entitled to plenty of time and space to herself.

On the other hand, she rarely made decisions with her own best interest as the chief concern, she had never learned how to use leisure time for actual leisure or leisurely activities that weren’t productive and/or virtuous, and she had an isolative streak that made her choice of familiar understandable. There was only so much one could do for her and it was especially challenging for Draco to be the one doing.

However, he’d told her he’d look after her and no matter what anyone thought, he did not break promises or fail to fulfil the terms of an agreement.

Which meant that on a chilly Sunday morning, when he found her at the kitchen table with a towering stack of essays in front of her and another at her feet instead of tucked up in bed or lolling on the sofa with tea, pastries, and a chunky Muggle paperback, he didn’t hesitate.

“Accio Professor Granger’s essays,” he said, pitching his voice loud enough to call the parchment to him without startling her unduly.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she said. She was seated, so she could put her hands on her hips but the gesture was quite present in her tone. It was impressive. She was undoubtedly not startled in the slightest.

“Grading your fifth and, unless I’m mistaken, seventh year Arithmancy class mid-term exams. I don’t even know why you have a fifth year class, you were only supposed to be teaching that tutorial but I imagine Minerva did her version of begging with all the shortbread and her plaid robe,” he said. Hermione nodded. “You must have a rubric—”

“I must?”

“You’re Hermione Granger, you wouldn’t grade without a rubric,” he said.

“Did Neville tell you that?” she asked.

“Give me some credit. I didn’t need him to tell me,” Draco said.

“So he did,” Hermione replied.

“Scorpius too. The students appreciate it, although the Slytherins and Gryffindors both feel the rubrics are overly detailed,” he said.

“I was frustrated by how arbitrary our educational experience was,” she said.

“It didn’t help how they all played favorites,” Draco said. “McGonagall obviously, but Snape was a terror.”

“He’d had a lot to answer for, if he hadn’t also been a double-agent Dumbledore was willing to manipulate within an inch of his life after failing him abysmally when he was a student himself,” Hermione said. “It doesn’t bear thinking about, how he treated Neville.”

“Agreed. Though you seem to be following in his footsteps when it comes to the length of your assignments. Merlin’s manky knickers, these essays are long,” Draco said.

“Manky knickers?”

“Scorpius told me that was au courant, so to speak, but I admit, it may sound more appropriate from a fourteen year old,” Draco smiled.

“I don’t tell them they’ve got to give me twelve feet. I just say that they may,” Hermione said.

“They have done, most of them it would seem,” he said. “You’ll run yourself into the ground grading these—”

“I’m fine,” she said.

“You’re not and you won’t. I’ll see to them,” he said. He was hoping his expression and tone would convey a respectful but conclusive end-of-discussion, but Hermione was used to being the one ending discussions and looked at him skeptically. Her color was better though—it seemed she found arguing with him invigorating.

“How will you get through them? You don’t even know what they’re about,” she said.

“I’ll run a few charms, apply the rubric, leave a few pithy Professor Granger-esque comments,” he said. “I’m thinking along the lines of Extremely detailed, good use of references, tickety-boo.”

“I have never and would never write Tickety-boo on a student’s essay,” she said. “In a fit of whimsy, I might say it was Excalibur, a little pun on excellence and caliber—”

“I got it,” he said. “It’s painful. A Weasley wouldn’t even make a pun that gruesome. Maybe you should start writing tickety-boo.”

“It seems I’m not writing anything at the moment,” she said. “I’m not sure what to do with myself in the meantime.”

“I am,” Draco said, fishing a small bundle from his vest pocket, setting it an arm’s length from Hermione on the table, and flicking his wand in its direction. “Engorgio liborum.”

“Cleopatra’s alembic,” Hermione breathed. Draco grinned. He’d been hoping for awed surprise as her response. “What did you do?”

“Rather, the salient question is what have I procured for you?” he said. “Books. An excessive number, none of them relevant to your work. Leisure reading, it’s called.”

“There’s so many,” she said softly.

“Yes. I started with classics, the entire collection of Austen’s works, Gaskill’s Wives and Daughters, and then I added some modern choices—you needn’t feel any excessive guilt, all of those,” he said, pointing to one stack of paperbacks, “are written by an English professor at a university in New York and those over there are by a former clerk to a US Supreme Court judge. You can Transfigure the covers if you prefer, it’s entirely your business what you read.”

“They’re all romances,” she said.

“You indicated they’re a guilty pleasure, though I don’t think you ought to feel guilty about them or any other pleasure. I paid attention,” he said. Before she could start in on him for his advocacy of hedonism, especially as it pertained to her and him, he spoke again. “I did add in Sayers’ Gaudy Night, because if you haven’t read it, you must, it was written for you, and I can’t take the credit for knowing that. Pansy recommended it—”

“Pansy Parkinson?”

“Pansy Parkinson Finch-Fletchley,” Draco said. “She spends more of her time passing as an aristo Muggle than being a proper witch, but her family didn’t come out well on the other side of things. She’s an antiques dealer, they have a son who bears an unfortunate resemblance to a red-billed stork they’ve saddled with the name Peregrine and he’s been sent to some place called Harriot or Herring instead of Wizarding school. Wouldn’t even consider Beauxbatons.”

“Harrow. They sent him to Harrow. You may have broken me with this,” Hermione said, laughing helplessly. “The books and Pansy and Peregrine-the-stork—”

“Crane might be more apt, come to think of it,” Draco said.

“Broken, I said,” she gasped.

“Hardly,” he said. “Not how you’re made.”

“You’re overestimating me,” she said, speaking in her normal tone again.

“No,” he said. “I know you better than you think. There’s a difference. Now you ought to let me get to work grading these essays. The sofa and your novels await.”

Two hours later, she set a steaming mug of tea beside his left hand and briefly squeezed his hunched shoulder. If he hadn’t been half-dazed from reading the essays, he would have had a more pronounced response to her touch, the first time he could recall her initiating physical contact between them. However, the rambling lengths of parchment had nearly done him in.

“You do this every week? These are excruciating,” he said.

“Yes, but they’re learning. We were excruciating back then too. It wasn’t just being a double-agent under a crushing load of guilt and stocking the infirmary’s potions for Dumbledore to use that budget for the Order of the Phoenix that made Snape so exhausted,” she said.

“I would have said snarky,” Draco replied. “Biting. Derisive. And he was my Head of House and obviously favored us.”

“He did have a mouth on him, didn’t he?” she said nostalgically. “And when he was really put out, you could hear the Manchester in him. Drink the tea. I added a lot of honey.”

“For strength?” Draco asked. “Once more unto the breach and all that?”

“Because you like it sweet,” she said. “You can tell Pansy she was right. I’m loving Gaudy Night.”

“I thought you’d start with Austen,” he said.

“Those are old friends. I thought I’d try something new,” she said.

#dramione #draco x hermione #hogwarts professors #hurt/comfort #mostly just comfort #grading someone else's papers as a love language #tea and sympathy #romance #slow burn #references to Pansy Parkinson #discussion of Snape #So Many Romance Novels #widower!draco #posted on AO3

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jomiddlemarch · 4 months

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The Black Widow

“I think I’ve been too hard on Blaise’s mum, all these years,” Hermione said, her shoulders slumped instead of maintaining her usual impeccable, McGonagall-inspired posture, her chin held in the hand that wasn’t curled around a cup of tea. It was actually a very fine cup of masala chai that Padma had made using the Patil family’s own karha recipe and Hermione had chosen it over a glass of Shiraz and the two fingers of bourbon that had also been offered and perhaps foolishly declined. She took a breath, tried to let the scent of the spices soothe her.

No dice.

“Maybe you’re, I don’t know, exaggerating a bit?” Padma said carefully.

“She means you’re being more dramatic than Celestina Warbeck and Sarah Bernhardt put together, darling,” Theo said. They were her two most rational friends, Theo a hatstall for Ravenclaw, Padma properly Sorted and also Second Wrangler for her year at Cambridge. It had made sense to come to them and not, say, Harry, who was pants at validation, or Ginny, who only ever wanted salacious details and sulked when Hermione wouldn’t share, or Luna, who might say something daft or something that was as sharply acute as an Unforgivable, with the additional burden of being Unforgettable, and who was also in Svalbard. It had made sense and yet now Hermione was considering she could have just gone to any wine-bar in Soho and gotten sloshed without any incisive commentary.

“Incisive, I like that,” Theo said as Hermione had evidently voiced that bit of her internal monologue aloud.

“I always said she must be a dreadful person and now I’m the dreadful person,” Hermione said. Was there a slight moaning quality to her tone? She had come seeking tea and sympathy. “I should have understood the cards were stacked against her and that she couldn’t fight the patriarchy of the Wizarding world by herself—”

“I’m not discounting the point about the patriarchy, but I don’t think you and Madame Zabini are much alike. Nor are your circumstances,” Padma said.

“She means you haven’t murdered any of your men,” Theo said, peering at Hermione through his glasses. “In case you were too addled to make out what she meant by circumstances. You’re still a Gryffindor, you often need things told to you point-blank. Or at wandpoint, but that seems unnecessary.”

“He’s right,” Padma said. “Though to be unfair, there’s no confirmation about several of Madame Zabini’s husbands’…demises. There was no body recovered for the last one and she’s always spoken fondly about Blaise’s father. She’s allowed to have some bad luck and there have been two wars—”

“Come off it, Padma, the witch is a bloody menace and even Riddle was scared of her. That’s why Blaise didn’t have to get the Dark Mark,” Theo said. “Tom was into Dark magic, but Madame Zabini knows the Old Ways.”

“Fine,” Padma said. “Still, Hermione, it’s not the same.”

“First of all, no one you’ve dated is dead,” Theo pointed out.

“Anthony said I was a life-ruiner,” Hermione replied.

“As if he had a life worth ruining, the tosser,” Theo said, scoffing. “So full of himself.”

“Ron got cursed at the Final Battle because he was trying to protect me,” Hermione said.

“He’s been getting free rounds of drinks off that injury for the past twenty-odd years,” Padma said. “If he’d listened to anyone, he could have had it repaired at St. Mungo’s that first week instead of relying on a field dressing by a fifth year Hufflepuff. He’s only still got the limp and the scar because he waited and then it was permanent.”

“Bill said that too,” Hermione admitted.

“And just because Viktor Krum hasn’t been heard of in about nine years, that’s nothing to do with you,” Theo said. “I know you’ll mention that last letter of his, where he wrote about Ioanna and her amber halo, but really, that could mean any number of things. And also, again, not confirmed dead and not at your hand.”

“McLaggen had it coming to him,” Padma said and sniffed. “You were helping out all female-presenting creatures and beings when you hexed him.”

“I don’t feel that bad about him,” Hermione said.

“Good. That’s progress, love,” Theo said. “You’re not still counting Snape, are you?”

“I mean, I let him die, Theo. I was right there—”

“You had a crush on him during sixth year but I don’t see how he counts as one of you men. I think he would rather have died again, more gruesomely, as Nagini kibble, than have a relationship with any student, let alone a Gryffindor like yourself,” Theo said.

“You couldn’t have saved him,” Padma said more softly. “You were with him when he went, his portrait said as much. He doesn’t bear you any ill-will. Quite the contrary, I think he’s a bit fond of you now, though he’d say this was a bunch of bloody sentimental shite. And probably take one hundred points from Gryffindor and call you a silly cow.”

“Death has not softened him up much, has it?” Theo said. “Good old Snape. Or Bad old Snape. Whichever. That was his thing, double-agent, et cetera, wasn’t it? But he’d never see himself as one of your victims.”

“I appreciate you are both trying to cheer me up,” Hermione said. She took a gulp of the chai, which was at the perfect temperature, because Padma had used the good Charmed china.

“We are trying to reason with you, brightest witch of our age,” Theo said.

“Neville—” Hermione said, breaking off.

There was a moment of silence, respectful, sincere, thoughtful. Sort of like Neville had turned out to be, besides being the Prophecy’s spare, the slayer of Nagini, champion wearer of Fair Isle jerseys and well-worn cords, strider of moors, Sprout’s successor. Hermione’s former almost-fiancé.

“It never would have worked out,” Padma said.

“I know. I just loved him so much, he was so dear,” Hermione said. “When he proposed, it was like a dream—”

“He fell in a bog and broke both his legs,” Theo said. “Again, Not Dead. Perhaps terminally embarrassed, especially since he lost the ring in the bog and now the bog kassapu won’t give it back and Madame Longbottom is furious—”

“His gran didn’t mind that much,” Hermione said. “But she did say it was a sign. And that because Neville broke his legs in an enchanted bog, it wasn’t something St. Mungo’s could heal up easily and I wasn’t to think twice about refusing the offer. Neville said the same thing.”

“I suppose you could wait for him,” Padma said. “You are a witch. Another couple of decades—”

“We agreed it was for the best, ending it. We’ll stay friends, close friends, but he saw what was happening,” Hermione said. She’d often been told, dismissively by Slytherins, that one could read her face like a book; at the moment, it must be a torrid, fraught romance, albeit one without any ripped bodices or irascible, secretly wounded dukes.

“It’s not like you and Draco planned to meet at St. Mungo’s,” Theo said. “It’s not like you orchestrated it for him to be on-call when you and Neville arrived and for him to be the one who sat up with you the whole night while the other Healers stabilized Nev. It’s not like you tried to fall in love with each other, former rivals and adversaries who had more in common than they’d admit until they couldn’t any more, wouldn’t—”

“Even though the rest of us could see it coming from a mile away. Years before. Since that first night at the pub,” Padma said. “Harry saw it. George Weasley’s had a bet going since you went to the loo that night, the pot could buy a lovely holiday villa in the Algarve by now. Minerva—”

“You call her Minerva now?” Theo whistled. “I thought that was reserved for the brightest witch here.”

“I advise some of the more gifted Arithmancy students who are beyond Vector’s skills,” Padma said. “Hermione might have done, but she had that Potions torch to carry and then Bill roped her into the side-gig at Gringott’s. Minerva told me she didn’t want to be called Professor by a colleague, certainly not one who made a better pot of tea than she did.”

“She said that?” Hermione exclaimed.

“I made the masala chai. She’s not stupid,” Padma said. “She said she’d wondered about you and Draco since the Yule Ball and that if Dumbledore had simply managed the Voldemort situation better, we could all have spent our Hogwarts years waiting to see if the two of you would get together.”

“Oh my,” Theo said, laughing. Hermione made a face, scrunching up her nose, then shoved back the hair that had come loose from the combs she’d used to pull it back.

“I guess the truth is, I’m afraid,” Hermione said. “I’m thirty-eight years old and I’ve never had a successful romantic relationship, they’ve all been unmitigated failures, well, maybe I get a pass on Neville, but otherwise it’s all been utter shite and I don’t want to mess anything up with Draco. I don’t want to hurt him. I don’t want to be the Black widow and Walburga has been giving me the evil eye since she heard—”

“There it is,” Padma said.

“You cannot let that blasted portrait bother you,” Theo said. “Draco ought to be able to shut her up, heir to the House and all.”

“You’re not going to mess anything up. At least, you won’t do it by yourself. This is about you and Draco, what’s between you. What you make with how you care about each other,” Padma said. Theo nodded.

“And for the record, Draco has done a superlative job of keeping himself alive in situations that would have killed any lesser being. He survived Riddle as a houseguest. He survived Bellatrix changing his nappies. He survived Lucius finding out you’d beaten him in every class and Harry winning the Tri-Wizard Tournament,” Theo said. “You can’t take him out, darling girl, even if you try.”

“You should talk to him,” Padma said.

“I don’t know, he’ll think I’m being silly or that he has to take care of me,” Hermione said.

“You are being silly and he does have to take care of you,” Theo said. “So, yes, he’ll think that. But I am confident that he will express himself most eloquently on the topic.”

“How care you be so sure?” Hermione asked.

“Because this isn’t the first pot of masala chai I’ve made that one of you hasn’t drunk this week,” Padma said. “You’re the more secure of the two of you though—he went to Harry first.”

“And then to Millie,” Theo added. “She has not become more patient with age. It was a near-fatal error.”

Bonus image of my Madam Zabini fancast:

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