the laws of celestial objects

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/36458140.

Rating: Mature
Archive Warning: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Category: F/M
Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Relationship: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy
Characters: Dean Thomas, Luna Lovegood, Hermione Granger, Draco Malfoy,
Neville Longbottom, Ron Weasley
Additional Tags: Post-War, Angst, Non-Linear Narrative, Epistolary, POV Multiple, War
Crimes, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Songfic, Multiple
formats, Interviews, Curses, Mentions of Pregnancy, Attempt at Humor,
Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Ambiguous/Open Ending, (well not really. not
if you squint.), Babies, The Quibbler (Harry Potter), Daily Prophet
(Harry Potter), Song: Untouchable (Taylor Swift)
Language: English
Collections: Fic Fest (Taylor's Version) 2022, Inventive Dramione, ♡UωU♡ for
Dramione, dramione fics that own me, dramione I want to be read to me
on my deathbed, Oneshot Dramione I adore, i would die for these fics

Stats:
MASTERPIECES 🦁🐍
<3, Got me in my feelings <3, BrilLiANT Hermione Fics, DRAMIONE

Published: 2022-01-16 Words: 11,813 Chapters: 1/1

 the laws of celestial objects
by peanutbrittles123

Summary

The first time she sees him again after the trials, he is in a glass cage.

[Inspired by "Untouchable", from Taylor Swift's album "Fearless". For Fic Fest (Taylor's
Version) 2022.]

Notes

Prompt:

Fearless (Taylor's Version)

Song: "Untouchable"

I'd signed up for this fest around two days before it closed, and I'm so so grateful the admins
granted an extension. <3
This concept came to me almost fully-formed after I'd discovered the fest. The song is very
close to my heart.

A few things:

- I'm fairly certain there are plot holes, for which I ask your forgiveness in advance. :( I will
come back to iron this out after a few days. My brain is fried.

- This is a non-linear. I'm... so sorry in advance.

- Please note there are things that I did not tag, to preserve the reading experience, hence
"Creator chose not to use archive warnings". However, what you will NOT find in this story:
any form of non-con, or sexual assault, or graphic descriptions of torture. This story contains
NONE of these.

- A lovely shoutout to @FicWhore for being my beta and giving me the much needed boost.
<3

End notes contain spoilers and I've done my best to tag this accordingly, but I'm open to
tagging better! :)
 Thank you for giving this story a chance! I hope you enjoy!

See the end of the work for more notes

Inspired by the feel-good hit of the summer by disco_vendetta (brinn)

Inspired by Lessons On Loving A Poet by TheWoman (peanutbrittles123)
 in the middle of the night, when i’m in this dream
it's like a million little stars
spelling out your name

1.

“Mr. Draco Lucius Malfoy, after a full and thorough review of the evidence presented
here to the Wizengamot regarding your involvement in the Second Wizarding War, you
are hereby charged with the following: Collusion with a known Dark Wizard, Treason
against the Wizarding Community of Great Britain, three counts of Arson against Public
Property, four counts of the use of an Unforgiveable to Torture Resulting in Death,
thirty-eight counts of the use of an Unforgiveable to Murder in the First Degree, and two
counts of Murder in the Second Degree. How do you plead?”

“The defendant pleads guilty on all charges, Warlock.”

“Very well. Draco Lucius Malfoy, you are hereby sentenced to serve two hundred and
fifty-three years in Azkaban, with no possibility of parole. However, given your…
special role towards the end of the war, as well the admittedly unusual circumstances
surrounding your health, the Wizengamot has elected to allow you the dignity of a
House Arrest, under regular surveillance, for the duration of your life. Provided you
subject yourself under the study of Wizarding Academia. Court is adjourned.”

.:.

PORTRAIT OF A MONSTER
An In-Depth Look into Draco Malfoy’s Final Days

by Dean Thomas

DRACO MALFOY is a monster. He is, and I quote, “vile, dripping with the darkest of the
Dark Arts, you could almost feel your soul enter a cosmic void within two feet of him.” He is
also further described, memorably, as “astoundingly cruel”, “a man with no morals or
principles to speak of”, “viciously cold”, and “shouldn’t be a wizard that exists”. End quote.

But my personal favourite is this gem from a nobody by the name of Harry Potter:

“I suppose he’s what dark wizards have nightmares about,” he tells me over the rim of a cup
of English Breakfast, eyes still bleary from the morning. Not a single drop of venom in his
tone.
Which, out of all the tosh I’ve seen — and believe me, I’ve waded through a lot — is the only
factual statement so far.

.:.

I’VE KNOWN Malfoy since childhood. Or rather, I’ve known of him through the lens of our
rival Hogwarts Houses. He was, in my young mind, an exemplary specimen of “git”;
boisterous, wealthy. Capable of buying anything and anyone — an ability he used liberally
and with little remorse. I’ve wondered if, perhaps, this had set the foundation for most of his
choices during the war. The “spoiled boy reaching catastrophic levels of entitlement in
adulthood,” so goes the Prophet article.

Monsters are made, not born, after all.

I can, at least, admit I’d hesitated in accepting this assignment. My experience is limited to
writing features on celebrities, or Quidditch stars, or the occasional Saviour of the Wizarding
World. There do not seem to be many monsters making themselves available for interview.

Alas, my wife had insisted. Something about the importance of telling the truth.

That is how I found myself at the doorstep of Malfoy Manor, where the Pureblood heir /
former Death Eater / convicted war criminal is spending his house arrest, and the last days
of his life.

I was assured by no less than three reputable sources — one of whom has been touted as
“The Brightest Witch of Her Age”, much to her dismay — that Malfoy will be of no danger to
me. Nevertheless, I’d casted several touch-repellant charms and spent extravagantly on a
half vial of Liquid Luck, which I downed with a wince and a prayer before Apparating. To say
nothing of the mental and emotional stress of seeing the Death Eater nicknamed as “The
Dark Lord’s Dog”, and the wizard responsible for the war’s end.

That they are one and the same man remains an uncanny cosmic phenomenon.

I didn’t know what to expect. But it certainly wasn’t this.

Draco Malfoy answered the door much in the way I imagine someone might greet a
government official at one’s flat for inspection. He stood there, gave me a small nod, and then
stepped away by about five paces to let me in. As though I were about to pass judgement on
the integrity of the Manor’s caulking.

It is as anticlimactic as it sounds.

He is, as expected, covered from the neck down. Black gloves, long sleeves. But even what
should have been an unusual outfit for a casual interview does not diminish his
understatedness; he seemed, at the moment, like someone I would have liked to chat with
about the latest match between the Falcons and the Cannons.

One would think the most notorious wizard alive had more flair and danger to him. Or that
he would be dripping with dark magic, deservedly cursed, and according to many, too
leniently sentenced.

“People are allowed to think that,” he tells me later, once we’re sat at his dining, having tea.
And while Pureblood customs are (finally) at their expiration, Malfoy carries himself with a
special sort of grace. A kind of learned indifference to where he has found himself, here at the
end of an era. “People are allowed to loathe me. I will always be suspected. There is no
escaping the past.”

.:.

IN PREPPING for this article series, the first person I’d thought to ask about Malfoy is
well-known in his own right.

When he’d stared at the scarred tabletop in the Burrow’s kitchen, I could tell Ron Weasley
had been choosing his words carefully. “Well, the way I see it, people ought to remember
what kind of man we’re dealing with,” he said. “Anyone who could do those things is clearly
not right in the head. He’s just not a good person. The things he’s done… you’ve got to be
heartless for it, is what I’m saying.”

Weasley’s words echo in my head when I’m sitting across the man in question. I don’t voice
these thoughts quite yet, of course. I do still have some sense of self-preservation.

Instead, I half joke about how I took on this writing assignment at the behest of my wife, and
was rather hoping he would end up turning down my request.

Malfoy winces. It is a strange thing to see.

“I… I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t realise…”

He frowns, taking my joke as a serious concern. A crime he means to answer for.

“I can’t touch you or harm you, just so you know. Granger did a damn good job with her
spell, and I don’t have a wand. And the Manor has certain wards placed on my magical
signature, if that makes you feel any better.”

It doesn’t. I’m already regretting the jest.

There is something to be said about how Malfoy moves in the discomfort that seeps into our
conversation. He does not tread above the indignity of being called a monster, or being
insulted by his interviewer (albeit unthinkingly). Instead, he sinks. Still and steadily
downwards, weighed by a responsible, resigned acceptance.

The boy I’d known from Hogwarts could never.

.:.

WHEN FINALLY I’d gotten my head on straight, I venture to ask him why he agreed to be
interviewed.
“I thought, might be nice to talk to someone. Could be a good change, having new
company,” he tells me, scratching his ear and appearing, for the most part, like the boy he’d
never been: earnest, naive. Self-possessed, and friendless, and looking for words he can’t
find. “And you were kind enough to offer, in any case. That’s something I never got the
chance to learn.”

I ask to clarify this. He tells me, with very little emotion: “Taking people up on their offer, I
mean.”

We are quiet for a few moments after. I don’t let my thoughts wander too far. I let myself learn
a thing or two about sitting in discomfort, the way the wizard across from me sips his tea,
unmoved by the disgrace he wears humbly over his bespoke suit. I hear it in the tremors of
his hands, in the safe distance he keeps for my benefit. The silence meanders around the
questions I haven’t asked yet.

Like he is patiently waiting for me to deliver a blow-by-blow account of his life as a villain.

But I'm not here for that. And when the silence drags on, he seems to understand.

“And I suppose you could say it gets quite lonely at the end of the world, in a sense,” he says,
out of nowhere. His teacup rattles against the saucer.

It is a very strange thing, indeed, to witness a monster contemplate his approaching

expiration.

— Excerpts from The Quibbler ISSUE 395 (OCTOBER 2009)

.:.

untouchable, like a distant diamond sky

i'm reaching out and i just can't tell you why

2.

The first time she sees him again after the trials, he is in a glass cage.

Hermione looks around the special room the Department of Mysteries had warded for him; it
is large, completely bare save for a folding chair facing the round, windowless and doorless
glass casing set in the middle of the space. Like an upturned beaker, the glass contained the
most basic of living necessities arranged around Draco Malfoy.

A terrarium, Hermione muses. A man set in an artificial habitat.

He sits against the headboard of his threadbare bed, lounging, oblivious to her presence. He
seems to be reading, turning pages with a finger at the same speed Hermione remembers well
enough from school. The white light is glaring and so painfully government-issued, it makes
her think of Muggle microscopes.

“Malfoy?”
He startles, head snapping up in the direction of her voice.

She watches his eyes parse the darkness of the threshold. She steps out of the shadows.
Smiles at him.

Malfoy stares at her for a good long moment.

Hermione allows herself to be unsettled by his gaze; a butterfly pinned and framed behind
glass.

How strange to feel this way.

When he returns to his book, she feels the loss of his attention like a change in temperature.

She notes his appearance; the pallor, the calm. The trousers and button-up, sleeves rolled to
his elbows revealing the Dark Mark. The clean, sharp lines of his attire, his neat hair and bare
feet. The bags under his eyes, the sprawled limbs. He looks both completely at home, and
completely out of place.

“Granger,” is what he settles with, elegant finger resuming its page-turning. “It’s been a
rather long while. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

She does not ask about him, about what he has been up to since the trials, or what he’s
reading, or how he finds the Ministry cafeteria food which she herself is considering
reporting to the Department of Substance Safety & Edible Hazards.

How are you? seems like a trite question, all things considered.

Her heart is running too fast, mind too conflicted for mild pleasantries or smalltalk.

She finds her way to the chair facing his little glass cage. She sits primly as she opens her
folder and consults his case file. A file she has written partially, reviewed thoroughly, and has
no need to consult.

“It’s my understanding that you’ve a very special, very rare dark curse that is transferable via
skin contact, yes?”

His finger stills, page paused halfway on its journey across the spread of his book. His
Malfoy signet ring glints under the horrible lighting.

She clears her throat. “In any case, I’d just like to let you know that I’m here as cursebreaker
and I’d like to run a few tests—”

“Absolutely not.”

The weight of his tone settles into her stomach. Her heart is pounding, her hands clammy.

“Malfoy, we can’t keep you like this indefinitely.”

“Yes you can. I insist,” he throws back. Still not looking at her. “And it’s not ‘indefinitely’,
Granger. You of all people should know that. I expected you to do your homework, you’re
getting sloppy.”

She bristles, but she spots the small, secret smirk at the corner of his lips.

More than a show of his humanity, it is a relief.

“That’s the thing,” she says, “I — the Academe would love to start their research and study
your curse, but they can’t really do anything until we find a way to let you exist outside
your…” Hermione gestures frustratedly, “...display cage.”

“Well, you do have to admit: I’m quite nice to look at.”

Hermione snorts; it is a sudden sound, as unnatural in this space as the situation she has
found herself in.

He still does not look up from his book, finger returning to his beloved words. But she
watches as something decidedly not a sneer crawl to the corner of his mouth, and her heart
doesn’t break, not quite.

But his carelessness about this whole thing lodges in her chest like a splinter.

She braces herself:

“I’ve developed a spell. It’s a very strong spell. Blood magic. It’ll act as a barrier. Like a
shield to prevent skin contact and keep you from hurting or cursing anyone. You needn’t live
behind glass anymore, you could stay at the Manor and be more comfortable. I’ve also
designed special gloves and we could easily —”

“I already said no, Granger. Just leave it.”

Frustration curdles at the back of her tongue. “I— Listen, Malfoy, I’m not—”

“No, you listen, ” he says and he is closing his book and standing up with such harshness,
Hermione almost flinches in her chair. “I have turned myself over without incident,” he
stands up tall, words low and firm, “I have followed every. single. one. of the Ministry’s
requests,” he moves towards her and the magical glass separating them, “And I am living
very peacefully in my little display cage, Granger.”

He leans his left arm against the glass, over his head. Right above where she’s sitting. The
Dark Mark is as stark on his pale skin as ever, looking down at her in its own inhumanity.
“The war’s done, the wizarding world is safe and will feel safer still after a year. Let’s not
risk it, shall we?”

She returns his glare.

But something in his eyes has her standing up to match his towering posture. The tic on his
jaw has her pressing closer to the very thin layer of magic that protects her from contracting a
death sentence of her own.
She watches the small movement of his throat.

Hermione sighs and steps closer still.

“For once,” she breathes, “I would like to be given the basic decency of your consideration.”

She watches his menace transform into an untidy frown.

“I’m trying — I’m just trying to help you. I, I’ve read about your situation and the trial—” he
scoffs but she pushes on, “—so I’ve a good hunch you wouldn’t want my help, but you—”
she tells him, and here is where the fracture gives, here is where she cannot staunch her
bleeding heart. “I think you deserve someone to offer you help, after everything.” Her arms
flop towards him; a tired gesture of Well, there you have it. And if she feels stinging behind
her eyes, she lets Malfoy see it, too. “I’m here. I’m offering.”

Hermione swallows. His expression does not crack despite her sincerity. Instead, he works
his misgivings in his mouth like she just gave him an ultimatum.

(Instead of a piece of her heart.)

“And how, pray tell, would you go about casting this spell?”

.:.

PORTRAIT OF A MONSTER
An In-Depth Look into Draco Malfoy’s Final Days

by Dean Thomas

I SIT DOWN with Malfoy for the second time one rainy November day.

One would think I’d be over the initial shock of interviewing the wizarding world’s
Undesirable No. 1, but there remains that elusive quality to Malfoy. Some strangeness that
made him worthy of the Wizengamot case of the century. In my second time at his home, I
think I’ve finally put a word to it.

The man is a walking paradox.

Now stripped of all his fortune, Malfoy is about as wealthy as a displaced flobberworm. And
yet, he welcomes me with the air of someone who never had to worry about his place in the
world. He is, strangely enough, dressed like a Muggle today — a simple jumper and jeans,
albeit with his usual gloves. And yet, the Pureblood social graces still have him expertly
navigating the conversation such that he is asking me about my family… and I am
comfortable talking about them.

He smiles when I tell him we’ve a second baby on the way.

Don’t get me wrong, I am quite aware the man can kill me.
Wandless and without the use of magic, without having to physically lay a hand on me, Draco
Malfoy has an edge to him. A kind of obsidian sharpness that serves as a permanent red flag.
The thought is a niggling, ever-present infection in my mind.

However, I also (for some reason which I will blame on my journalistic instincts) don’t
believe he would.

“You’re right,” he tells me, chuckling, “I do have that skill set. But it’s been terribly overused
and I’d rather hear about your family anyway. You’re daft if you think I’d choose a
Dementor’s Kiss over a good story.”

The joke is that everything he says is true.

He gives me a partial tour around the derelict Manor; here is where Dolohov used to hold his
hostages, there is where Carox tried to hide his Muggle-born wife. Malfoy takes me through a
brief history of the insanity within the Death Eater inner circle, all with a flippancy that felt
like he was touring me in a museum of natural objects.

He favours his left when he walks, and occasionally leans on the door jamb when he’s telling
a story.

I know, technically, that this man has more blood on his hands than anyone I have ever, or
will ever, meet.

But I tell him about my one-year-old making a chew toy out of my wand and Malfoy laughs
soundlessly, gloved hand coming up on his chest. This morning, my wife informed me that
he’s just been named first in Witch Weekly’s “The World’s Most Dangerous Wizards (And Why
We Can’t Get Enough of Them)”.

See? A paradox.

.:.

WE HAVE TEA , just like before. Unlike before, however, Malfoy opens a bottle of his finest
aged firewhiskey, and I make it a point to ease him into a proper interview, starting with some
basic questions. He surprises me by opting, instead, to get right into it:

“No offense, Thomas, but I’m not going to waste our evening prattling on about the first time
I rode a broom, or who I’ve loved and lost or what have you. If you want gossip, I can direct
you to a certain news outlet that has stories aplenty about my unspeakable dark deeds during
school. I’m sure you’ve got better questions than that, so go on then. Hit me. And consider it
a privilege; I’ve been told there’s quite a queue as my face, apparently, is very punchable.”

I am torn between being surprised, feeling insulted, and respecting his forthrightness.

I humour him, and ask him the first question in my short list: “What changed?”

This being a question that needs no further context; we both knew what I was referring to.

.:.
DRACO MALFOY BEGAN THE WAR as a sixteen-year-old Death Eater, recruited by his
father Lucius Malfoy III. After completing the assignment given to him — to kill our
Hogwarts Headmaster Albus Dumbledore; a deed that, more than any other, has birthed the
public’s resentment towards him — the young Malfoy fully joined the ranks of those who
served the Dark Wizard. He remained in those ranks for years.

After the death of his parents at the hands of his master three years into the war (full
disclosure: I have yet to ask him about this, and perhaps I never will), Malfoy rose to become
one of Voldemort’s most active, most violent soldiers.

So began the reign of “The Dark Lord’s Dog”.

Eager to prove his dedication to Voldemort — in stark contrast to his parents, who were
suspected to be disloyal — Malfoy took to Unforgiveables with ruthless abandon. It was
during this time that he’d commit most of the so-called atrocities that would eventually earn
him a rap sheet longer than the Thames, and enough rumours and hearsay to run the Daily
Prophet’s gossip columns for years.

.:.

AND THEN: THE END.

After more than a decade of fighting, Malfoy sends a cryptic message to the Order, kills
Voldemort, and unwittingly becomes the recipient of a powerful dark curse. (Say what you
will about the shrivelly old demon, but The Dark Lord attaching a “parting gift” to his
corpse was rather unprecedentedly inspired. If not the peak of fucked up.)

Perhaps the only silver lining here is that, having lived through the surprising depth of
Voldemort’s hell and survived, Malfoy seems to have acquired a taste for the creatively
morbid: upon discovering the nature of the curse — the Untouchable Curse is exactly what it
says on the tin — he uses it to dispose the rest of the Death Eaters who are, conveniently, all
well past thirty years of age. Malfoy being the youngest of them seems to be a rather happy
accident.

(“‘Age before beauty’, I believe is the rule,” he’d said when I asked him about this last week.
“Must be a law about that somewhere.”)

I — along with the Wizengamot, the wizarding world, and probably Merlin himself in his
grave — have wondered about what turned Malfoy.

What would have compelled a competent wizard on the winning side of a war to end his own
master?

What changed?

Malfoy looks at me over his tumbler. We are a good few feet away from each other, and like
this, it’s almost too easy to forget his history.
Malfoy ponders my words. “I don’t know what to tell you,” he says, and it sounds like the
same answer he’d given everyone else. But he takes a deep breath, and I watch as a very
specific kind of sadness possess him gently. A sadness that, it would seem, has found a home
in this man who is sitting at the ledge of his life.

“I suppose you could say I wanted my life to matter, for once. I want — I wanted to, I don’t
know. I just wanted to make a decision that was mine.”

We sit with his words for a while.

“First time I choose for myself, and it’s this bloody thing,” he says, holding up a gloved
hand. There is a wistfulness there that I don’t think I have the right to venture into. “It’s just
my luck, isn’t it?”

— Excerpts from The Quibbler ISSUE 396 (NOVEMBER 2009)

.:.

it's half full and i won't wait here all day

i know you're saying that you'd be here anyway

3.

The day that he is meant to move back to Malfoy Manor, Hermione surprises everyone — the
Aurors who’d decidedly not volunteered, the Wizengamot, her friends and the Minister
himself — by choosing to be there as his handler and oversee his move.

No one, it would seem, chooses to be around him if they could help it.

However, when she arrives at the Department of Mysteries, there is a small crowd.

Hermione wrestles her way through a thick wad of photographers and journalists and nosy
Ministry workers, crowding the entryway to Malfoy’s warded room. The room itself is large
enough to keep them at a respectable distance, despite their primary purpose there not being
the least bit respectable.

“Malfoy! Malfoy, look here—”

“How does it feel to be getting away with slaughter?!—”

“Mr. Malfoy, could you — Tell us how you did it! How did you kill the Dark Lord?”

“Is it true — Malfoy! Look here! — Is it true that you used special Dark Arts to torture—”

A slew of loud, contradictory directives along with gossip, inflammatory accusations, and
several reporters speaking into their Quick-Quotes echoed around the large room like white
noise that felt like an impending migraine.

With a swish, Hermione casts a Muffliato on the crowd, before pressing herself forward and
towards the Aurors and the glass cage.
Instead of his usual attire of a button-down and trousers, Malfoy is dressed like an Azkaban
prisoner: a matching set of loose, striped garments hanging over his tall frame. Matching
shackles around gloved hands. And yet, from afar, he remained the way she’d come to know
him in these last few weeks: unmoved, and unmovable. Standing tall, in quiet indifference.

Her approach changes that.

He senses her, of course. When his eyes catch hers, something in his expression shifts;

Hermione is loath to put a name to it, but if she had to, she could almost call it shame. But it
is shuttered away just as quickly.

The Aurors — all eight of them, bless the Ministry’s paranoid soul — greet her. She nods at
them, but her eyes are drawn to Malfoy’s as he is read his charges, his rights, and the
conditions of his house arrest, as though a man like him would deign to forget the details.

“Is this all so necessary?” she asks the Auror to her left, referring to Malfoy’s showy dress
and shackles.

“Yes, Ms. Granger. The Wizengamot insisted.”

Bloody politicians, Hermione thinks, more irritated than usual.

When all is said, Hermione stands there as the magic of his glass casing is cancelled by the
Aurors.

The buzzing of the muffled crowd increases. Some even dare to venture closer, if only to get
a better angle. Hermione catches the crowd’s movement and quickly casts a boundary spell
tied with a stunning hex for anyone who wants to test the stretched skin of her patience.

Draco himself remains stock-still, eyes forward. Unseeing, uncaring. Or so it would seem.

In the last few weeks, she has tried her damndest to get through to him;

She fancied herself an empath, working around his reticence, trying different tactics to build
trust and some form of conciliatory rapport.

Every day, for the last week, she had visited him in his little display cage — so he liked to
joke; he never did let her live that down — and talked him through the mechanics of her
spell... (“We’ll be using my blood as it’s magically compatible with yours, I hope you don’t
mind—”; “Is it perfectly safe?”; “I wouldn’t put you in harm’s way, Malf—”; “No, no, I
mean, is it safe for you? Can you guarantee me this won’t risk you in any way?”; “I—y-yes. I
mean, of course.”)

Asking him basic, non-invasive questions... (“Granger, I can hear you mentally sparring with
yourself. Out with it, then.”; “Is… how do you wear your gloves over your signet ring?”)

And trying her best to be as likeable as possible. ( “Oh, I saw the owl from The Quibbler, I
think it’s a good idea! Dean is a great journalist and an even better friend. He asked me
about it, too, and you’ll live at the Manor soon enough—”; “With all due respect, please shut
the fuck up, Granger.” )

All of which had backfired spectacularly. He’d seen right through it, of course. Because he’s
Malfoy.

Hermione is unashamed of her efforts to break past the walls he keeps between himself and
the world, but sometimes, he does so make her feel like a thief.

(“Stop trying to fix me. I’m already your project, I’m not going to be your pet. I’ve done my
time being someone’s dog.” Which, if she were being honest, had stung rather sharply. But
Hermione soldiered on. It’s what she’s good at.)

Even now, after she’s found him a more comfortable existence, he still feels like bits and
pieces that don’t quite fit. He’s still a locked door, a celestial object. Unknowable,
untouchable, in all the ways that matter.

When the spell of the glass casing has been fully nullified, the Aurors take a small step
backwards; this amuses Malfoy, who looks to be trying to bite a smirk out of his face.
Hermione shares this sentiment.

His gaze snags on hers; she shakes her head, cocks an eyebrow.

Then: something warm appears out of nowhere in his eyes.

Blindsided, Hermione’s heart stutters.

And then it acts up horribly and starts the process of breaking and bleeding all over again.

But before her emotions betray her, the Aurors place Malfoy’s portkey on the floor —
gingerly, like it were a bomb, like they were trying to appease a wild animal, gods, Hermione
wants to roll her eyes — and then they jerk back quickly again, their wands out and at the
ready.

She stares at the portkey: his Death Eater mask.

Did they truly expect him to stoop down to pick it up? In front of the press and all these
photographers?

Fuck that.

Hermione scoffs and, without having to think about it, goes over to the mask to pick it up
herself. She holds it aloft towards him, for him to grab the other end.

The flash of photographs go off behind her from the din of a muffled crowd.

The portkey activates soon. But there is a question in the curl of his brow. In the astonished
expression that has broken through his ever-present indifference.

Hermione stands her ground, chin up, holding his gaze with the surety of a wandhand.
When he touches the mask, in the next moments, the portkey activates, and Hermione feels
the familiar, unpleasant tug at her stomach as they swirl across space. She lands with a thump
in the foyer of the Manor, on her hands and knees.

Too quickly, her hasty decision catches up with her; she closes her eyes.

Apprehension washes over her; a cold, cold feeling, familiar like the edge of a knife running
against the skin of her arm.

She lets it.

With deep breaths, she does not move from her position on all fours; instead, she curls into
herself, tucks her head between her knees. Folds, crumbles. Eyes closed, she breathes; one,
two. One, two.

The cold will pass, she tells herself. And it does.

When finally she has taken enough moments to gather her bearings, Hermione slowly uncurls
herself — gently, allowing herself to feel, allowing the trauma to waft through her like a
ghost, unresisting — and stands up slowly from the floor. When she opens her eyes, she
cannot help but feel better. She takes a deep breath.

But her eyes land on Malfoy several paces away and she frowns.

There is a gutted, open expression of raw terror on his face. He looks like a skittish, confused
animal. She is surprised to see him paler than usual, and idly, she wonders when she ever got
acquainted with different shades of the white of his skin.

“What the fuck are you doing here, Granger?”

The real question is implicit: Why would you come back here? Why would you do this to
yourself?

If she looked too closely, she is afraid of what she might find as an answer.

So instead, Hermione opts for a variant of the truth. “You have no proper clothes and no
wand. The Manor doesn’t have any food, it’s been stripped and abandoned for years. You’ve
lots to do to make this place livable. I figured you could use the help.”

Hermione smiles at him.

She’d come to know his many masks by now: bored, annoyed, uncaring. Draco Malfoy
wasn’t her “project” as much as he was her puzzle box. This last week, convincing him to
take on her spell, she’d been tinkering with his buttons, trying to find a key that fits. And
despite her success with his acquiescence to the spell, she is still nowhere near uncovering
what lay beneath his stony exterior.

She smiles, and it would seem that this time, it is a key that fits;
The terror on his face melts, slowly, until something real appears. Something open, and
warm. Something she is too terrified to name. Something that could break the heart she’s
barely taped together.

The intensity in his look is as searing as those they had exchanged across the frontlines,
across carnage as enemies, once upon a lifetime ago.

It burns; she does not have the skin to hold his gaze, so she drops it.

“So,” she says, to the carpet, to the front door. To everything else but him. “Where shall we
start?”

.:.

PORTRAIT OF A MONSTER
An In-Depth Look into Draco Malfoy’s Final Days

by Dean Thomas

BY THE TIME I arrive at Malfoy’s estate for our fifth interview, I realise I’ve made a grave
mistake.

Malfoy does not come to let me in at our usual five in the afternoon. I am almost tempted to
Apparate home, drenched in forty minutes of December thunder, when I hear a sound.
Something breaking. Considering the loudness of the rain, I assume it must be a sizable
object. I make the snap decision to let myself inside.

I follow the sound of glass shattering.

The image of Malfoy, drunk and disheveled, was certainly not a way to open the interview.

Over the last several weeks, I’d come to know Malfoy as not the Death Eater, or the war
criminal. Not even the Pureblood heir. I like to think I’d come to know him as an
acquaintance — distant, yet human still. He is candid, but never oversharing. Honest, but
only ever about himself — never others. I’d begrudgingly started calling him Draco in my
head. I was writing about the last leg of his life, after all. Seems rather poor form not to be
on a first-name basis, even if just conceptually speaking.

But all that we have ever touched on were the shallows; I was floating in the middle of the
Atlantic with my face to the sky and my eyes closed. Blissfully ignoring the darkness I had yet
to dive in. A darkness I am now looking at.

I stand frozen at the doorway of what used to be Lucius Malfoy’s old study.

A study currently being thrashed by a very drunk son.

I am stuck between letting my presence known and Disapparating for dear life. But Malfoy
catches sight of me. His countenance changes;
I watch as his spine stiffens, straightens. He unfolds himself from his drunken stupor as
though inebriation were a switch, on and off. His expression — anguish, grief; a man living
by the noose around his neck — morphed into what he might wear on a regular Tuesday.
Slowly, his gloved hand returns the decanter he’d been in the midst of hauling against the
fireplace. His polished dragonhide boots crunch on the wet, shard-filled carpet. There’s a
broken mirror to his right: an unlucky seven years that will go unspent. The room reeks of
expensive liquor and unspeakable sorrow, the kind that’s worth two hundred and fifty-three
years in Azkaban.

He takes a deep breath. I am stunned with the thought that my presence would be of any
consequence.

“Thomas,” he greets, and his words are slurred only if one squints. “I don’t suppose I could
interest you in a drink?”

.:.

I LEARN THAT Draco Malfoy has been the recipient of a serious dark curse at least six
times in his life.

He recounts them for me, one by one. I don’t have the heart to tell him I already know most of
this; I’ve done my research. But it’s a different experience altogether when you hear it
straight from the horse’s mouth.

The first one: “They attached a curse to my Dark Mark if I failed: my mother would be made
to kill my father, then she’d be Death Eater property. That put a bit of pressure, as you can
imagine.”

The second: “They tested all the artefacts on me first. They chose the necklace because I was
insensate afterwards.”

The third: “As a cruel joke, they cursed my family ring. Only someone who loves the wearer
can put it on or take it off them. Anyone else tries, the ring shoots Crucio straight into your
bloody veins. My mother put it on me, the day before the bastard took them. I can’t even take
it off; make of that what you will.”

The fourth: “To celebrate our wins, my dearest auntie proposed experimenting on a fourth
Unforgiveable. I was the runt of the litter and they just killed my parents. It was… not
pleasant.”

The fifth: “A blood malediction. I can’t have children. Good old Voldy saw a glimpse of me
holding a toddler in my head, once. Made sure I never entertained the thought.”

As the spirit of sobriety returns to him, Malfoy begins to freely and colourfully express his
revulsion against, in his words, “that utter fucking lunatic”.

I ask him if he’s always felt that way.

“No,” he says, but he spits the word out with bitterness, washed with a swig of dosed
pumpkin juice and self-loathing. “I used to think of him as an overly-ambitious old man I did
not want to get in the way of. Fucking lot of good that did me.”

Something of a grimace layers over his faraway expression. I hold off from asking what it is
he won’t say.

He pauses. “I wish…” he pauses again. Restarts. “I learned too many things too late.
Eventually, I figured out a way to live with myself. I started looking into the mechanics of the
war, all of the Dark Lord's resources and supporters, trying to... If I could help make it easier
for others, I tried.” Malfoy looks into the amber liquid of his drink like it were a Pensieve.
“At least, then, I could make myself useful. Like, I don’t know. Like I was worth more than...”
He breaks off, scoffs. Swallows. Briefly, I glimpse the same hollowness I’d chanced upon
when I arrived. “Like I could be worth more than the life I'm left with.”

Here is where I note that perhaps beneath the monster is simply a man who tried to make the
best of extraordinarily shite circumstances.

He scoffs again. “Sure. If you think so.”

.:.

AS CHATTY AS MALFOY has been in our conversation, I hold off from asking him one
question.

He is already fully sober once he walks me to the foyer. This is the first that I’ve seen him use
his father’s walking cane. I risk it, and in not so many words, ask him what brought about the
rather unusual display earlier in Lucius’ old study.

Malfoy, to his credit, does not appear the least bit upset at my prodding. Instead, he considers
my question. Contemplates some far-off thought writing itself on the marble floor.
Calculating, perhaps, how much of an answer he was willing to give me and, ultimately, the
world.

“D’you know what it feels like to want something so much, you’d do anything to deserve it?”

I assume, incorrectly, that this is a rhetorical question, but he is looking at me like he expects
an answer. I think about it, and shake my head. I tell him: can’t say that I do.

He smirks. “Really, now? You’ve a wife, don’t you?”

This catches me so off-guard, I burst out laughing. Because it’s true. I suppose I do know the
feeling, I tell him.

But the implication of his question isn’t lost on me; once again, I am stunned.

He looks off to the side. I allow myself to wait in the discomfort.

And then he’s looking around, eyes roaming the foyer like it’s a wonder. Like we’re in a
museum. His eyes land briefly on a box of tinsel and glittery holiday decor, in a corner near
the front doors. “Wish I knew how to be someone who deserves… this. Any of it,” he says,
without fanfare, a clenched fist hitting the wall even as he takes in our surroundings.

I understand he isn’t referring to the Manor.

I feel gravity adjust to the weight of what he is saying, in not so many words.

The moment is cut by a humorless laugh. “For the first time in my life, I wish I had more
time.” He shares. “It’s a little fucked up, that.”

The day had been a collection of Bludgers to the chest, I take this one as gracefully as I can.

But the confession hits me hard and I feel swallowed in empathy. In the unbearable weight of
loss, both elapsed and impending.

When he ushers me out, he thanks me for the company, and for asking him about his (“rather
morbid”) life. I tell him it’s no problem. I tell him I appreciate his responses and his time. I
tell him I’ll bring a photograph of my daughter on my next visit.

I wish I had better words.

— Excerpts from The Quibbler ISSUE 397 (DECEMBER 2009)

.:.

untouchable, burning brighter than the sun,

and when you're close, i feel like coming undone.

4.

She doesn't know how to ask him about the curse;

Hermione knows how to come by the Manor every few days. She knows not to let her gaze
linger too long on his trembling, gloved hands or the exhaustion beneath his eyes, knows to
give him a wide berth or he’ll startle and be cross with her for an indeterminate amount of
time. She knows to keep her voice firm, un-coddling and light. To think of him like a co-
worker who is excessively particular about personal space.

To hide her care in unobtrusive, unflattering places: in her research, her swotty tendencies,
her overbearing curiosity, her wit:

“Malfoy, are you certain you’ve enough potable water here? If you die of dehydration it
won’t look good on my record.”

“You should take this tea before bed. You’re positively choleric and annoyingly punchable
when you don’t get enough sleep and I refuse to work with that.”

“The tinsel is to bring a bit of holiday cheer to the Manor. You and your eternal brooding,
I’m afraid, are well past hopeless.”
She knows now to smile at him — not in that Ministry way, but in that small, secret, silly
way she’d only ever dreamt of sharing with someone. She knows to temper her hopes when
he starts to smile back; often a half-bitten smirk hidden in his turning away.

But about the curse, she knows not how to proceed. All she really has are still in bits and
pieces:

“I saw an opportunity and I took it. What do you want me to say?”

“Were that Snape was here, at least he could appreciate the blessing of being left alone.”

“Granger, if you’re asking me to elaborate on how I killed the horrid old fuck, I’m going to
ask to be financially compensated.”

And she is, quite literally, running out of time.

So when, under the unmistakable hands of fate, she discovers a very important, related
literature in his library, it does not escape his notice.

“You do realise, you don’t have to sneak around every time you want to get a peek at my
library, Granger.”

Hermione nearly drops the tome she’d been browsing for the last hour and a half. Her other
hand flies to her chest when she turns to see Malfoy, arms crossed, leaning his hip against a
table two shelves over; a mutually-agreed-upon safe distance, if “safety” referred to the
preservation of his sanity around her.

The distance is not so far when he smirks.

“Sorry. Sorry, I was—”

“Didn’t say I minded,” he interrupts, amusement growing. “Merlin, sometimes it’s like you
get a heart attack when I’m around.”

Hermione — face burning, heart beating wildly — does not have it in her to contradict
something so close to truth.

“What’s that, then?” He tilts his chin towards the book.

Hermione shuts it quickly, trying to hide the spine and its worn title from him. “Nothing,
it’s… just browsing. Bit of light reading.” She gives him a tight smile. Adjusts her grip on the
book so she isn’t touching the ancient pages with clammy fingers.

He looks like he doesn’t buy a single word she says.

The result is a stalemate; he seems content to be very still, arms crossed, regarding her with
the casual attention she had worked so hard to earn from him. And an amusement she never
asked for — a bright, fond thing — which she lets slide over her, past her. Never letting it rest
on her, lest it settle into her bones and in the cracks of her heart.
Malfoy tilts his head, trying to catch the spine of her book; like instinct, she angles it away
from him.

A mistake.

His eyes dart back to her, sharp as the rest of him. A brow quirks up; where once, she’d been
desperate for a glimpse behind his stoicness, now, she looks away.

She has come to discover that behind that handcrafted indifference was a bright, terrifying
burning .

Ever since she’d helped him settle in the Manor, she’d glimpsed it often enough. And while
stories of his intensity were plenty and widely available, Hermione found herself with first-
hand experience of how Draco Malfoy did not do things by halves.

Whether it be ending wars, or looking at her.

Like how she remembered his eyes all those years, the memory of it traversing time and
space and history; a moment locked in silver, whenever he was presented with the same,
recurring opportunity he never took advantage of.

It had taken her years to parse through the details of his life, trying to understand what she
was looking at. What he was looking at, when he looked at her.

Like he did right now. Like he often did, when he thought she wouldn’t notice.

“I’ve been reading Dean’s article series about you, by the way,” she blurts, “It’s—it’s very
good. You… shine through.” Her awkward detour from his unspoken question — and
perhaps his unspoken request, a pleading she shouldn’t be able to read — is a mask of her
own.

She watches as his demeanour shifts;

In slow motion, suddenly, his easy, open frankness starts to fade. Being shoved behind a
stiffness she’d worked so hard to remove him from.

Hermione panics.

“It’s—it’s the Gaunt Grimoire,” she tells him, clutching the book against her chest
protectively.

His eyes widen, and then he is exhaling, jaw clenching. Frowning and furious.

She’d take his fury over his mask any day.

“What the fuck, Granger—”

He steps forward; she steps back; he remembers himself, freezes, steps back twice to keep his
distance. A dance they’ve been doing around each other for the better part of the last several
months.
“When I told you I wanted to help you—”

“I did not consent to this,” he growls, leaning forward but not stepping forward. Anger clear
in the tilt of his body. “I agreed to answering questions and taking potions. I agreed, as per
the Ministry’s bloody mandate, to help you understand the magic behind my curse . I did not
agree for you to expose yourself to the Dark Arts—”

“I don’t see what your problem is, Malfoy! I’m not breaking any laws,” she dismisses and
starts to walk away, unwilling to subject herself under the intensity of him. “And I don’t need
your approval, this is my research—”

In a flash, Hermione feels his wandless magic pull on the grimoire, but her grip on it means
she is stumbling forward when he is also surging, hand outstretched on instinct—

But at the speed of closing the six feet between them, Hermione drops the book and falls on
her elbows and knees from the momentum, Draco stutters in his steps before jerking himself
backwards so fast, he stumbles to the ground and lands on his arse.

The surprise takes them both aback.

Six feet is cut to perhaps two; a little closer and she would have stumbled into him. Into the
gravity she’s been trying, and failing, to resist.

Hermione almost feels her pulse beneath her ear, wretched thing that it is.

“You are not allowed anywhere near those Dark Arts books, Granger,” he warns, low and
meticulously restrained. “You’re forbidden from the library from now on.”

Unrecovered from her hands and knees, her gaze turns to his dragonhide shoes. She only just
realises she’s panting, panic and something else working its way into her bloodstream.

Desperation, perhaps.

With slow, deliberate movements, Hermione sits up, sits back on her heels, and looks at him.
Really looks at him.

Malfoy is on the floor, same as her, leaning back on his hands, long legs folded at the knees.
He watches her with the same intensity she’d never allowed herself to consider. He drips now
with surprise and a near violent horror, features contorted into something she hasn’t seen
anyone wear since the war; she would be scared, she should be scared.

But it’s him, and she’s seen this, and she knows better.

She’d always thought she’d cross this bridge when she got here. She just didn’t realise how
soon it would be.

“I read your case files.”

He quirks a brow, listening. She watches his chest rise and fall. She watches him watch her
openly, intently. So completely present, not a shred of his attention given to anything else
even when he’s fuming.

Hermione swallows. “Why didn’t you plead any of your charges?”

His surprise wars with confusion, the struggle mapped on his face.

“What’s it to you—”

“I read your case files,” she says, and it feels like freefall, it feels like too much, too soon. Far
too soon, the emotions burning her up in a flare, and suddenly, she is coming undone: “All of
it, Malfoy, I read your case files, and the court transcripts. I tracked down Carox’s wife, I—I
spoke to Pansy and the Greengrass sisters. I even visited the locations, all the places you
tortured and killed—”

“Granger—”

“—Death Eaters and Voldemort’s supporters. None-none of it was…”

Hermione breaks off when she horribly starts to feel the familiar sting in her eyes;

She tears her gaze away from his and looks down, trembling fingers swiping beneath her
eyes, but she is burning now and she can’t stop:

“When I offered to help you,” she says after a shuddering breath, “it’s because so many
pieces didn’t fit, and you didn’t even let anyone testify, or, or try to explain or defend you.
You didn’t do anything, and I just, I don’t understand!”

She takes a moment to steady herself on her knees, burying hot eyes in the heels of her
palms.

But she’s not done unravelling yet.

“And I know what you were doing during the war.”

This finally gets his attention: “Granger—”

“I—I figured it out. After your parents passed. You were different. I told Moody we could
perhaps get you to defect—”

“Granger, for fuck’s sake—”

“—but none of them wanted to listen to me so I looked into it on my own.”

And here is where her unstoppable force meets his immovable object. Hermione musters the
courage to say it, even if her soggy, sobbing face is turned down to the ground.

“You—you were looking out for us, weren’t you?”

When finally she looks up at him, she is met with an unobstructed view of his brokenness.
This time, he cannot look at her.
It is confirmation, but shaped wrong all the same: like guilt, and shame. Like she’d just
accused him afresh.

Hermione feels the cracks in her heart splinter impossibly outwards, across her chest, across
her breathing.

When she opens her mouth, her voice cracks with the taste of salt. “Harry and, and Ron. And
me. You were— you were looking out for the three of us. And for others, too. I read all of the
files, Malfoy, even the ones they didn’t present. I know the people you were forced to Crucio.
It was you or Bellatrix, wasn’t it? And the ambush against Ron and Harry in Belfast, you
were there and… I—You saved Neville, and, and Luna from Dolohov. You killed Carox so
his wife could live. You… All this time, all those years. You… were trying to save who you
could. All on your own.”

She watches as her words seem to do the opposite of what she intended: he folds in on
himself, crumples against her allegations, frowning at the floor. His mouth twisted in a blunt
frown.

“Why?” she asks, the word breathed in the careful space between them.

When finally he looks at her, it is brief and fleeting; she stops herself from reaching out, from
trying to touch him.

How she wants to touch him.

“Wh—why go through all that trouble to… Why didn’t you just defect?”

He huffs what may have been intended as a scoff, but only comes out like a tiredness. “I was
scared,” he tells her plainly. An arm comes to rest on one of his folded knees, his thumb
absently working his ring beneath his glove in fidgeting. “I was… You — the three of you —
you shone, you know? You and your House,” he says, mouth curved wistfully. “I envied you
all those friendships more than anything else. I never had that. I didn’t think I could ever have
that. Everyone I could possibly call friends were either dead or long gone by then. But, if I
could protect you and others… if, if I could— I don’t know.”

He looks down. He looks lost. He swallows the emotions threatening to spill.

“I guess, I thought if I tried to… do my best to keep you all alive in a war you’re losing,
maybe I could feel like I had, I don’t know. Some stupid connection to whatever you all had.
Something to live for.”

And then he scoffs, and this is as fully bitter as it wants to be. “Besides, I killed Dumbledore.
Defecting never crossed my mind. I have nothing and I have no one. Never did,” he says,
mouth scornful at the ground. Gloved hand clenching and unclenching.

She frowns. “You have me.”

She doesn’t recognise her voice, doesn’t know why it sounds like that. Flayed open, full of
hope.
He stills.

“You have me,” Hermione repeats, with the same gentleness this truth warrants.

When he looks at her again, the burning is back and brighter than ever.

She smiles at him through blurry eyes, her bleeding heart cut open in the two feet between
them. Beating, it would seem, to the sound of it all making sense. And Hermione feels
nothing but the terrifying weight of what now exists in the space between them. Something
birthed, something coming of age. Some lightness or other, pinning her breaths to her chest.

You have me.

She watches, overwhelmed, when the same feeling is reflected back at her, written in full on
his face.

Hermione almost gasps, seeing now the heart he’s been hiding all this time.

“I never did understand why, all those times, you never tried to hex or, or curse me,” she tells
him, chuckling through sobs stuck in her throat, palming her red eyes as she sniffs, “I
remember, so clearly , every time I saw you during battle… Remember Manchester? You
found me on the ground in the safehouse and you just… you looked at me like a deer in the
headlights,” she laughs because she recalls it like it was yesterday. “And then you’d leave
quickly and ignore me or pretend I wasn’t… completely at your mercy, useless and wandless
—”

“I left to make sure no one else saw you,” he says, his voice cracking at the edges.

Is there no limit to all the ways her heart could break?

“The Untouchable Curse… It wasn’t from Voldemort, was it?”

He does not look away from her this time. Only holds her gaze with heartbroken eyes.

“It was from you. It was your doing. You chose this.”

He swallows. “Granger—”

“I—I figured, it wasn’t possible to attach that kind of blood magic curse to a corpse. Even the
greatest wizards can’t break magical laws. It was all you,” she says, but she hopes he reads
through her and finds her respect and wonderment. “You found that ritual in the grimoire and
made that exchange. Three-fourths of your natural life, for his unnatural one.”

Hermione thinks of how short thirty years is, how terribly short, how unfairly short. How she
is already of that age and she’d only just begun. She’s only just knowing him now—

Loss comes upon her afresh. Her lips tremble and eyes blur at the thought.

A pause. He looks away this time, and nods once.

“He was going to go after you,” he tells her quietly. “He rallied all of us and made you top
priority. Figured it would be the best way to quash the Order once and for all, and he was
right.”

Hermione’s heart feels stopped. Her breaths stoppered.

“It was a long shot, but I had to try,” he says, looking her in the eyes once again. Resigned
and longing and burning and helpless. "It worked."

She lets his gaze steal what is left of her breaths. Lets it sink into the cracks of her heart.

Hermione moves to crawl towards him;

He panics, fear flashing in his eyes as he jerks back, but she tells him not to, tells him to stay
still. He is tense where he sits on the floor, hunched over his folded knees when she moves
behind him. He doesn’t speak when she sits with her legs on either side of him. He stiffens
when she tells him not to move, as she wraps both her arms around his middle, and presses
herself against his broad back. Hugging him from behind.

Hermione presses her face between his shoulders, and he starts to shake.

She holds him as he folds forward, she keeps her grip tight around him when tremors turn
into heaving, the sound of the restrained violence of his sobs, and Hermione doesn’t let
herself think of Malfoy’s years alone, all that time he’d spent cut off by darkness. Untouched,
and untouchable.

When he starts to cry freely, body wracked with a decade’s worth of grief and loneliness,
Hermione presses her own tears into the space between his shoulder blades. His gloved
fingers find hers then fit in the spaces between, while he heaves his overwhelming sorrow
and she cries into the back of his shirt. Two ends of the same, long war, folded into each
other.

You have me,

You have me,
You have me now, she tries to press into him.

Here, she holds him tight, and lets him know he does not have to weather the end of his
world all on his own.

.:.

PORTRAIT OF A MONSTER
An In-Depth Look into Draco Malfoy’s Final Days

by Dean Thomas

THE LITTLE COTTAGE in Nice, France, boasts a fresh coat of green paint; bougainvillea
sprawling across the celery walls. I can feel the wards rippling against my magic. The
woman who greets me at the door questions me with her smile.
I understand that Dolores Carox — a middle-aged Muggle-born witch who’d fled to France
during the war — might be wary of journalists appearing at her door. Most of the British
wizarding press, after all, don’t share her sentiments about a certain war criminal.

I tell her I am from The Quibbler, and that my only hope is to tell a true story.

Dolores reads me like a book. Beneath her quiet eyes is a very learned gaze, and she lets me
in on a true smile: ‘I believe you’, it seems to say.

“I’m glad there are people who want to know the truth,” she tells me as she pours us tea and
takes out the biscuits from the oven. “I want to go on record and say that Draco Malfoy
saved my life. I cannot — I would like to someday visit the memory, and explain everything,
but it is— it’s still hard for me, you see? It’s still painful. But please write that down, and
promise me you won’t twist my words.”

I write it down, and I promise her. And I let her read me in the promise: I believe you, too.

.:.

“I REMEMBER that,” Neville Longbottom’s gaze is far-off, a frown that isn’t confused as
much as it is lost in the memory. “I remember hearing about it, and — I remember panicking.
Yeah, that was it. The, kind of, knowing I’ve got a target painted on my back? That’s not easy
to forget, mate.”

I ask him if his sudden importance that time, during the war, ever got to him.

“Oh, yeah. You were as good as gone if the Dark Lord singled you out. Felt like I was waiting
for the other shoe to drop in those days. Merlin, I still get goosebumps remembering. But,
yeah. I’m— I’m grateful I’m still here. I try not to take it for granted every day.”

I ask him if he knows what happened, why he’d never been attacked as viciously, or taken
captive.

Longbottom — my friend, and one of the Order’s most decorated soldiers, now working his
Herbology Masters — wears contemplation very well. There are few people I admire more
for their ability to have endured the war better than its toll on them. Longbottom is one of
those people; he’d taken a tragedy and forged for himself a truer, stronger, kinder, wiser
heart.

It’s with this wisdom that he looks at me now. He places his coffee down on the table of a cafe
we’d chosen to meet, outside Beauxbatons Academy of Magic.

“I… have a good hunch of what happened. And I’ve been meaning to thank the person
responsible, but he won’t answer my owls. So when you talk to Malfoy in your interviews, tell
him I would really like to see him and thank him in person. And you can print that,
verbatim.”

I ask him if he really wants to have that out, given his current standing as a foreign Masters
student, and the unpopularity of the war criminal in question.
Longbottom laughs, sudden and strong. I join in because we both know that’s not a concern.

“Since when did you care about the tosh printed in the Prophet?” he asks me. I tell him:

Since I have been trying to write a story that’s true.

.:.

THE SQUIRMING bundle in my arms makes it difficult to knock at the Manor, on my next
visit. The cold is bearable, but the bundle is fussy, and I constantly have to fight against a fist
of wool trying to put itself in my mouth.

Malfoy answers the door — wintry and turtle-necked — frowning in surprise, before his eyes
land on the bundle.

I introduce him to my well-wrapped daughter, whom I have named after a certain war
heroine and good friend: little Hermione Pandora Thomas. ‘Panda’, for when she’s being
cute. ‘Hermione’ for when she’s being a little stubborn.

He is dumbstruck. A deer in the headlights.

I tell Malfoy that photographs don’t really do her justice, and that perhaps it would be nice to
just bring her along for today’s interview.

Something — wonder, or awe; some strong emotion — crowds his eyes, but is quickly
replaced by terror.

Malfoy makes to step away, but I bounce my daughter in my arms and she squeals.

I tell my daughter, this is Uncle Draco Malfoy. This is a man who saved Mum, during the war.
I tell her to say hi to Uncle Draco. My daughter’s wooly-mittened hand removes itself from
her drooling mouth and makes a half-circle in a baby's approximation of a greeting.

Malfoy smiles. A full, open, watery smile.

My daughter laughs at him with a toothy grin.

We step inside, and as Malfoy closes the door behind us, I ask my daughter if she’d like to
stay with Uncle Draco for a bit. My daughter looks at him and nods, and says “Yes, please.
Thank you.” I am exceedingly happy at her answer; we’d been teaching her to be quite
polite.

The way Malfoy is looking at us breaks my heart.

I can tell how careful he tries to be when I deposit the bundle into his covered arms and
gloved hands. Malfoy holds my daughter with a kind of fearful reverence. Granger’s magic
shines when my daughter’s covered hands reach for his face; he jerks back, but he doesn’t
have to. The magic holds, like a thinner Bubble-Head Charm over whatever skin is exposed.
My daughter is amused at the magic.
I call on her to behave, using her first name.

She finally settles into his arms and rests her head against his shoulders. I pretend not to
notice Malfoy’s tears as he bounces my daughter in his arms, his breathing shaky and his
grin open as he mouths a thank you. I tell him he is welcome, preoccupied in blinking back
tears of my own.

I don’t know if anyone could ever encompass everything that has transpired in the life of one
Draco Malfoy: monster, Death Eater, war criminal.

I don’t even know if I have done his story justice.

The only true thing I can say for certain is that somewhere along the way, Draco Malfoy has
become my friend. And whatever else the world or history or the sodding Daily Prophet may
say—

That, he will remain.

— Excerpts from The Quibbler ISSUE 398 (JANUARY 2010)

.:.

come on, come on,

say that we'll be together.

5.

There are laws to the universe, both magical and mundane. Principles around which things
behaved, and were made and moved and destroyed. Hermione has always been gifted in
understanding these laws and navigating them.

The laws of celestial objects are no exception.

Every orbit maintained by a body contains two, equal and opposite forces.

Gravity works both ways, despite it feeling like a singular pull.

Stars reach us still, expired and spent, cutting through time and space to remind us that even
the end cannot fully conquer what has once burned bright.

That even death bends to the laws of light.

And that even the most untouchable, far-away, loneliest stars can be reached, if only you
were patient enough to sit in the discomfort of darkness, waiting for their brightness to kiss
you.

.:.

PORTRAIT OF A MONSTER
An In-Depth Look into Draco Malfoy’s Final Days
 by Dean Thomas

DRACO MALFOY moves on from this world on his thirtieth birthday, the fifth of June, 2010,
as per the Untouchable Curse.

His body, as per Ministry protocol, is burned afterwards, his ashes vanished. So I’m told.
Unfortunately, the whole thing is unpublicised and kept hush-hush; the nature of politics in
the face of the death of a villainised figure.

The Manor is warded against intruders, and the prying press, and his friends. I'm told only
his handler had been with him, and only in the most professional capacity. I have written
scores of letters, and have threatened legal action, and have done all that I could possibly do
to be there for him, to no avail. But such is the world.

The Manor and its contents, according to wizarding law, will be bequeathed to the Ministry
as public property.

I have read the single-paragraph obituary the Daily Prophet lends to his passing. I think it
rather bold of the Prophet, if I do say so myself, to suddenly colour him as “the poor victim
of happenstance”, when they — and more than once — called him monster not so long ago.
But such is the world.

We are, all of us, monsters.

Some are just more honest about it than others.

.:.

HERMIONE GRANGER being the brightest witch of her age is, in my firm opinion,
subjective to context.

She visits my wife and I, a few weeks after our friend’s passing. And while our household is
currently reeking of exhaustion and two babies — one of whom is fresh out of the oven, and
still a little world-wary and soft around the edges — we are both glad to entertain her casual
company.

I clear a space for her tea on our kitchen table, sliding away baby wraps and bottles and
half-eaten bowls of bananas.

Luna comes in from the living room, greeting our guest, bouncing our infant son on her hip.
Hermione brightens at the image and my perceptive wife does not need to ask:

Gently, Hermione stands and opens her arms to receive her little godson, Draco, who is
currently — and perpetually — preoccupied with wailing; the boy seems to have taken it as a
sporting hobby. A profession which he endeavours his very best to excel in.

My friend rocks our son in her arms, and like magic, he quiets.

I tell her: well, that’s strange. My wife tells her: finally.

We talk of my son’s namesake. We exchange good memories, fond stories.

We lean into the brightness the "world's most dangerous wizard" has left us, grateful and
humbled for the time we’d had, and that we’d had it at all.

— Excerpts from The Quibbler ISSUE 402 (JUNE 2010)

.:.

Hermione notices Dean staring at her ring while she is bouncing Draco in her arms.

“Something you want to ask me?” She tells him, smirking, before sniffing little baby Draco’s
sparsely-haired head.

Dean is pure frown, blinking, trying to look for words he seems to have lost somewhere in
the excessive demands of his writing career. “I—is that Malfoy’s ring you’re wearing?”

“Oh, this old thing,” Hermione tries, she really does, but she’s never been able to hide a
proper smile from the people she cares about.

Dean looks at her with wonderment. “You know, he told me about that.”

“Did he?” she says, walking a little circle in their small kitchen, a bounce in her step. Idly
thinking of asking for permission to bring baby Draco home for the night.

“That — you can’t wear that,” he says, mind trying to catch up to what he’s seeing. “It can
only be put on and taken off by someone who loves you.”

“You saying I’m unloveable, Dean Thomas?” Hermione quirks a brow.

Luna stifles a gentle laughter, looking at her husband. “Oh, darling,” she tells him, patting his
knee. “Don’t worry, you’ll catch on soon enough.”

Panda comes in from the living room, looking for attention; Dean swipes her up from the
floor and onto his lap. Luna is content to sit at the table, enjoying her tea and likely her first
few minutes of peace since giving birth. The kitchen drips with the afternoon's warmth and
light, the mundane with a magic of its own.

Dean returns her eyebrow, curious. Hopeful. Journalistic.

Hermione shrugs, and hides her smile behind Draco’s snoring head.

.:.

in the middle of the night, we can form this dream

i wanna feel you by my side, standing next to me
you gotta come on, come on
say that we'll be together
come on, come on
little taste of heaven
End Notes

Footnotes:

[1] The line "I will always be suspected. There is no escaping the past." was lifted directly
from Cursed Child; it is something Draco Malfoy says.

[2] The lines "You — the three of you — you shone, you know?” and “I envied you all those
friendships more than anything else." were lifted directly from Cursed Child again. :(

[3] All italicised, lyrics-looking quotes are from Taylor Swift's version of "Untouchable",
which had been a cover, apparently. :))

**SPOILERS!!!**

I apologise for what may seem like a blindsiding death. :(( Also, I didn't tag "character death"
because... it simply wouldn't apply. Not if you look closely. :)

I didn't tag HEA either because... it might feel like a spoiler? Should I tag it, though? I rather
like not tagging it; makes it feel like a little cherry at the end. :)

For SenLinYu, who has given me the courage to wake up and choose pain.

And for anyone who has ever felt lonely, cut off by their darkness, and untouchable:

You have me. :) And you have more people who love you than you might think.

— Katie (reyreyalltheway)

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