Eight and Eighth--Chapter 8
Title: Eight and Eighth
Author: Marmalade Fever
Characters: Draco Malfoy, Hermione Granger, and more.
Genres: Romance, Drama, weird combo of in-Hogwarts and post-Hogwarts
Spoilers: DH (though no epilogue)
Overall Rating: PG-13
Summary: Up from the ashes of seventh year grow the roses of the eighth. Eight students return for their final year at Hogwarts, and Hermione Granger would never have thought Draco Malfoy would or could be one of those roses.
Click tag for list of chapters.
Note: the computer is driving me bonkers today!
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8 & 8th-Chapter 8!-One Way to Celebrate
By M-Fever
The courtroom was dark, and the man sat strapped to an ugly wooden chair under the watchful speculation of the Wizangamot. Between him and the rows of seats was a long glowing silver-blue flame. It stretched the full length of the room, leaving him completely segregated from the other inhabitants of the room. Every once in awhile, a shape would form within the flame, an animal or another being. Once Draco caught sight of what was unmistakably a rhinoceros head.
“Lucius Malfoy,” a wrinkly witch with a bad comb-over stated, “it is by the order of this court, the Wizangamot, the Chief Mugwump, as well as the Minister of Magic, that you shall be rendered incapacitated from this point until you should come to a natural death.
“The soul is a precious thing, Mr. Malfoy. Many people, muggle and magic alike, believe that it is only with a soul that one can gain admittance into the afterlife. The soul is immortal, while the body is not.
“Your soul, Mr. Malfoy, is now in eternal jeopardy. I cannot say whether we are sentencing you to be damned or not. If so, I offer you my deepest condolences. No one truly deserves such a fate, but your past crimes have brought this upon you.
“Your son and wife have been given leniency. They shall not share your fate, of that you may rest easy.” She was quiet for a long moment. “Do you have any final words?”
Lucius Malfoy’s hair was as perfectly coif as ever, but his general demeanor lacked its usual bravado. He wore pre-owned Ministry-issued prison clothes-black and white stripes like a caricature with dirt, grime, and someone else’s blood ground into them.
And the look on his face. There was no sneer. There was no smirk. There was barely an expression that Draco had come to recognize. It was blank, defeated. The man was ruined at last.
The two sets of gray eyes met across the line of flames, equal pain and equal resignation etched into them. He cleared his throat. “I-” he coughed again, his voice weak, “I’d just like to say something to my family. In private?”
The balding witch looked at him speculatively before nodding to Draco and Narcissa. The two scrambled in a dizzy stupor, crossing the flames. “Stop there,” the woman ordered, and so they did.
Draco’s father looked first to his wife. “I’m sorry, my dear. I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you. So many things you’ve asked me for that I was too daft and sure in myself to concede to. I love you, Cissy. I haven’t said it enough in our time together, but it’s true.”
Tears streamed down the woman’s face, and she made a strangled choking noise and tried to step closer, but a warning from the guards kept her back. “I know, Luce, I know. I love you,” she added, her voice so soft that it was barely distinguishable. She swayed, and Draco caught her. Her tears soaked into the shoulder of his robes.
“And you, Draco,” his father continued, “you turned out much better than I can take credit for. You have something I can only attribute to your mother. You have compassion, my boy. You have the ability to put your loved-ones first. I… I’m sorry I couldn’t have done more to protect you. You deserved so much more.”
Draco squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out the tumult of emotions that threatened to spill over. “Thank you, Dad,” he said softly.
Draco and Narcissa were escorted back to their seats, and the flames rose up in the air, twenty or thirty silver creatures swimming in and out of sight. The room grew incredibly chilly, and what little happiness that Draco felt was sucked straight from him, his lungs leaden.
The caped figure glided smoothly across the floor, and the memory of impersonating a Dementor cut through him in a way that he could only ascribe to guilt. The creature’s bony fingers gently tilted Lucius’ chin upward as if for a real kiss. The last thing Draco saw was his father’s eyes growing incredibly wide before the creature’s hood blocked his line of vision. A moment later, the body in the chair slumped listlessly.
Hermione’s birthday fell on a Saturday. The initial level of anticipation she’d been feeling had drastically dropped off to be replaced by a level of dread. It was the kind of dread that felt similar to wet cement being turned and mixed within her stomach.
She was queasy. She was anxious. She was being bombarded with gifts as soon as she entered the common room. She accepted the gifts from her roommates as well as Harry’s.
Ron had a very large grin plastered across his face, and he had his hands hidden behind his back.
“Hey, there, birthday girl,” he greeted.
She smiled back at him, though she wasn’t sure how authentic her smile actually was, considering she currently felt more like vomiting than celebrating. “Morning.”
He winked once before pulling a small gift-wrapped parcel from behind his back. From the corner of the room, Malfoy scoffed. “Couldn’t get her anything bigger, eh, Weasley?”
Ron turned. “Stay out of it, Ferret.” He pulled his wand from his pocket and twiddled it between his fingers.
Malfoy rolled his eyes. “You’re holding the wrong end, Weasel.”
The cement just kept on churning. “Thank you,” Hermione spoke-up, bringing Ron’s attention back to her. She turned the small polka dot package over and slid her finger beneath the spello-tape to reveal a clamshell gift box.
And suddenly her stomach was churning for a completely different reason. She and Ron had gotten closer over the summer, but the actual dating part of their relationship was still fairly new. They were still relatively young, and he wouldn’t… would he?
She had to mentally remind herself that Ron wasn’t exactly down on one knee and that it was barely ten in the morning, and Draco Malfoy was sitting on the other side of the room.
Ron was not proposing.
But what if he was? a tiny voice in the back of her mind yelped. He hadn’t exactly shown vast amounts of romantic intuition in the past. And if he was….
All her life, she’d dreamt of the day (preferably night) when she would be proposed to. There would be candlelight. Gershwin or Sinatra playing in the background. Azaleas and magnolias and baby’s breath. And most importantly, she’d be more than nineteen and would have been dating the man for more than three or four months.
In short, she felt that dream slipping through the cracks as she hesitated, velvet box in hand. Her heart was heavier than usual.
“Well, go on,” Ron prompted.
With a small gulp, Hermione nodded and opened the box, instantly letting out a sigh of relief when she realized it was a bracelet. She gave Ron a fake little smile as she turned the small silver charm over. Padma and Hannah, who weren’t speaking to one another, both cooed, calling them cute, while August just looked a little speculative.
“It’s a weasel,” Ron informed her, smiling broadly. “Okay, a little weird, I know, but….”
“Actually, Weasel, that’s a ferret,” Malfoy said, having come up behind them, causing both Ron and Hermione to jump.
“Actually,” she corrected, “a ferret is a member of the weasel family. But this isn’t a ferret, Malfoy. This is an ermine.”
“How can you tell?” he quipped. “It’s the size of a pea.”
Feeling considerably better now that she knew that Ron wasn’t proposing, though there was an amount of guilt over that fact that was now nestling its way into her brain, she shrugged. “Its tail and snout,” she said simply.
Ron looked puzzled. “There’s an animal in the weasel family called an ermine?”
Malfoy blinked slowly at him. “Do you think we’d be talking about it if there weren’t?” he said, equally slowly.
Ron scowled. “No one invited you into this conversation in the first place.” He turned to face Hermione, who had just managed to do the clasp on the bracelet. “How do you spell it?”
“I-T,” Malfoy responded, clearly enjoying just bugging them.
“E-R-M-I-N-E,” Hermione answered, sending a glare in the blond boy’s direction.
Ron grinned. “Huh. That’s pretty funny.”
“Way to be explanatory, Weasel.”
“I just meant,” Ron continued, trying to shove Malfoy out of the way, “that it’s funny that it’s called an ermine. Because, you know, it kind of sounds like Hermione… if you say Hermione wrong. And all of the letters in it, er, in ermine, are in Hermione, in the same order, too.”
Hermione covered her mouth and laughed. “That is kind of funny.” And then her heart began beating uncomfortably as Ron uncovered her mouth, squeezed her hand, and leaned in to kiss her.
“Well, I’m going to be sick,” Malfoy remarked, faking a gagging sound.
Secretly, Hermione agreed. She didn’t especially like kissing in front of others. It made her feel as if she were on display, and Harry didn’t look especially comfortable either.
Hannah just sighed. “Oh, Malfoy. You wouldn’t know romance if it came up and bit you on the nose.”
“Says the girl reported to have snogged Longbottom.”
“Says the boy who ignored Pansy to the point that I had to console her in the sixth year.” Hannah shuddered. “She’s clingy! I wasn’t sure I’d ever get her to loosen her grip on me.”
“Tell me about it.” He grimaced. “Now combine that with her trying to stick her tongue down your throat and-”
Ron clapped his hands over his ears. “Come on, let’s go for a walk,” he suggested, and he and Hermione left the common room. Now the wet cement in her stomach had been dashed with lemon juice.
The morning passed much too quickly, and by the time four o’clock came, Hermione felt nothing short of nauseous. There were too many things that could, and probably would, come up in the Grief Counseling session that were personal. Too personal for her to comfortably share with Amorell and downright embarrassing to share with Malfoy.
She paused in front of Amorell’s office door, her hand poised to knock. There had to be a way out of this, but nothing, for once, was coming to mind.
A shadow fell over her, and she tensed.
“You realize you’re the oldest student in the school?” There was something in his voice that just wasn’t quite right. It was gravelly.
“Your point being?”
His shadow shrugged. “Just an observation. Maybe you should use some of that Gryffindor courage and open the door.”
She closed her eyes, breathed gently in through her nose, and knocked. Amorell called for them to enter.
There were two squishy armchairs in front of Amorell’s desk, and Hermione sat down in the one closest to the door. Malfoy sank into his, his face set stonily.
Oddly enough, the overzealous professor had indeed brought fairy cakes with fluffy pink icing and yellow sprinkles on them, but there was no way Hermione was going to be able to stomach one at that moment. Malfoy wrinkled his nose when he was offered one.
“Let’s see now,” Amorell began, leafing through one of two files she had on her desk. “Mr. Malfoy and Ms. Granger, hmm…. Miss Granger, what’s this about Australia?”
Hermione breathed a sigh of relief. She could handle talking about that. “Oh, that would be about my parents. You see, I-.” Okay, so maybe it wouldn’t be so easy to talk about, she felt her cheeks growing pink. Malfoy remained completely stationary out of the corner of her eye. “I modified their memories so that they wouldn’t be at risk and sent them to live in Australia, where they, er, wouldn’t remember me….” Her voice had trailed off at the end.
“Hmm,” Amorell replied, tapping a quill against her chin. “I’m sure that was very stressful for you, given the possibility that you could have permanently damaged their minds. And forcing one’s own parents to forget you? That is rather difficult, isn’t it? Speaking of parents…” she rifled through the other file folder, “Mr. Malfoy, I see here that your father was sentenced to the Dementors’ Kiss a little less than a month ago. How does that make you feel?”
Hermione’s mouth fell open for him, and she clenched her hands into fists. “Not too well,” he ground out through obviously clenched teeth, the most awful bitter tone in his voice that she had ever heard.
“And I hear that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was temporarily living at your home?”
Hermione couldn’t help herself. Although everything about the situation screamed at her not to make eye-contact with him, she had to turn to look.
He was white. For someone so pale already, he looked ghostly. His fingers were tightly clenched around the arms of his chair, and his entire frame was shaking. The whites of his eyes were red and glassy, and for the second time in only weeks, he was on the verge of tears, and Hermione was forcibly present to witness it. There was something deep, dark, and painful swirling within Draco Malfoy at that moment. A wound that was still very fresh and did not need to be reopened just yet.
She wasn’t sure what came over her. Call it righteous indignation, but she was suddenly standing, her voice bellowing. “STOP! Can’t you see? Can’t you see how much this is hurting him to even think about? This is personal. Much, much too personal.”
Beside her, Malfoy stared up at her. “Granger…” he began in a frog-throated voice.
Hermione was too busy staring at Amorell, who seemed completely at ease with the onslaught of emotions ramming at her. “I don’t care anymore!” Hermione screamed. “You can’t do this to him! And certainly not in front of me. Do you have any idea how embarrassing this is for us?”
“Ms. Granger,” Amorell began in what was meant to be a placating voice, “please settle down and allow your classmate to answer the question.”
“Not in front of me he isn’t! I-” a horrible idea had sprung to mind, one that she would probably greatly regret in the long-run, “-I’m just going to skip it! Dock the points from me because I’m not going to participate in this… this… interrogation!” With that, she stomped her way out of Amorell’s office, only to collapse outside the door.
Dock the points? Dock the points? For Draco Ferret-Face Malfoy?
She clasped her hands to her face. There was no way she’d beat him if she failed Grief Counseling. And she’d completely brought it upon herself.
A.N.: Eighth chapter of Eight and Eighth. Say that eight times fast.
Also, ermine is pronounced er-min, rhyming with Herman.