(I measure time by how a body sways)
I. “Thank you for agreeing to see me. You’re the only person I can ask,” Draco said. He’d cast a wandless Silencio that he’d modified to prevent any type of recording, which was, as they said, sending roses to Beaubatons, but he’d been more influenced in his youth by Severus Snape than his own father, and the habit for secrecy and self-reliance died hard. The wards on Bill Weasley’s office were the most robust at the Ministry outside of the Department of Mysteries and on the rare occasions a goblin sought an interview, they merited a brief grimace that indicated respect and recognition of what Bill had learned from studying the first level wards at Gringott’s.
The massive door was shut tight and its three locks (melchior, silver, and shakudo) were properly secured. Bill sat behind his slab of a desk, his eyes on Draco and the only means of egress. Short of casting Fidelius, there was no greater privacy to be had in Wizarding Great Britain.
(Draco had discarded the plan to portkey to Durmstrang and use their Rechevi zatvor chamber. Bill could be late for dinner, but Fleur wouldn’t allow him to miss it entirely just to chat with a colleague.)
“I’m the only person, eh?” Bill said, his expression skeptical. He would have raised an eyebrow, if that were an option, but the scarring on his face had affected the musculature as well. He made do with tone or voice and rubbing a hand along his bearded jaw. Something about the touch of werewolf had darkened his hair to bronzed chestnut, but every once in a while, Draco remembered how richly auburn he’d once been, when he’d looked like a Viking warrior, nearly a match for his half-Veela bride.
“Flitwick doesn’t have the expertise in the Dark Arts, plus he’s overdue to retire and is on the verge of turning into a second Binns,” Draco said. “I need help, not a tranquilizer.”
Bill shrugged in apparent agreement.
“Krum’s sister Vela is in the middle of something with their Unspeakables and is on leave from Durmstrang. Master Zesiro at Uagadou refuses to respond to me and before you ask, I sent Owls, tokens and an emissary. No dice,” Draco said. Bill knew why Zesiro was unwilling to engage, Draco didn’t need to go through the whole rigamarole again and have Bill point out Draco’s myriad unforced errors.
“And so you came to me,” Bill said.
“I knew you’d at least agree to meet with me. And unlike the others, you have a vested interest in my…situation. It could be considered a conflict but I think it’s actually something in favor of you as an advisor,” Draco said.
“Plus, no one else is capable, willing, or available,” Bill replied. “I feel honored, truly, Draco—”
“It’s not like that,” Draco said. Bill was probably the Weasley Draco got along best with, Ron and Ginny still unable to completely move past their schooldays, Percy still too much of a prig, Charlie an unknown, having retreated to his dragon preserve, only emerging for Weasley events of great import, ones which Draco would not be invited to. Draco felt George Weasley had lost his mind along with his twin and kept his distance, knowing Fleur agreed and would back him up if she absolutely had to. He and Bill had worked together on a number of cases and there had been three definitive occasions when Draco had saved Bill’s life, plus Fleur liked Draco’s taste in wine and willingness to linger over a cassoulet. Given all that, Draco struggled with Bill’s wry teasing, though the older man had made it clear that it was much milder than any mockery the Weasleys exchanged among themselves.
“It’s all right. Tell me, what’s happened that has the unflappable Draco Malfoy, well, flapped? Is that even a word?” Bill said, the kindness edging amusement in his blue eyes.
“It’s not. Even if it were, I’m not flapped. I’m…I don’t know what I am. I feel like I’ve lost my bearings, like my magic has slipped from my control, it might be wild or absent or—”
“What happened, Draco?” Bill repeated, serious now, all joking cast aside.
“This,” Draco said, rolling up his sleeve and extending his left forearm. “This bloody well fucking happened.”
“Fuck,” Bill breathed, reaching out to take hold of Draco’s wrist but pausing to catch his eye first in a wordless request for permission. Draco nodded sharply, though he couldn’t help flinching when Bill grasped him firmly and leaned closer. He’d worn iron manacles in Azkaban, though they’d been unnecessary, there to make the prison guards remember he was a prisoner. To slake some of their rage that might otherwise have been channeled into assault. Bill’s touch was much lighter than the metal cuffs, but for a moment, it was unbearable. He took a deep breath and Bill, with a wolf’s acuity, heard him, gripping him less tightly.
“When did you notice it changed?” Bill asked with the curiosity of the scientist examining a new specimen.
“How the fuck did it change, Bill? No one else’s Dark Mark has ever altered, not since Voldemort was destroyed!” Draco exclaimed.
Shortly after Harry had cast the final curse that killed Voldemort, the Dark Mark on all surviving Death-eaters had blurred, as if a noxious fog had consumed the brand. By the next dawn, the tattoos were sharply delineated again but they’d changed from the original serpent and skull. Each person carried an image of what they regretted most; those who remained loyal to Voldemort wore an exquisite rendition of Harry Potter wielding the Elder Wand. Severus Snape’s body showed with a cameo’s perfection Lily Potter’s face in profile, which made Draco wonder how long the man’s spirit had lingered and whether his ghost must haunt the Shrieking Shack. Lucius had the door of the family vault left open, the stacks of Galleons sharply diminished, the Malfoy crest half-destroyed.
Draco had borne the cabinet of mysteries he’d brought into Hogwarts emblazoned against the pale skin of his inner arm, the grain of the wood, the elegance of the scrollwork, the dangling key with its gold tassel all included in precise detail.
Had being the optimal word. Because the cabinet was gone and, in its place, the word Mudblood was carved with in the spiky hand his aunt had used to sign any document, the letters in dusky atramentum. The flesh around them was stained with the angry red streaks of blood poisoning.
It was the mark Hermione Granger still carried fifteen years later after Bellatrix Lestrange had tortured her with a cursed blade and repeated Crucios, impervious to any enchantment, potion or balm. Something about the combination of assaults, the raving madness of the caster, her last bit of sanity held like a shard of glass, had rendered the scar beyond the purview of any magical healing, though Potter in particular had been loath to accept it and had spent a decent chunk of his vault’s holdings on attempts.
Now it was on Draco Malfoy’s arm.
Now it was his greatest regret.
Now he had no idea what to do about that.
“You don’t need to bite my head off. I’ll remind you, you came to me for help. Advice. So, again, when did you first notice it had changed?” Bill asked.
“About a week ago, I went to bed early. I’d felt ill the whole day, thought I’d sleep it off with a little Dreamless, whatever it was. I woke in the night with chills and then again, soaked to the skin, but in the morning, I felt all right, if not terribly rested. When I was washing up, that’s when I noticed it,” Draco said. That first moment, the shock had been like that of a curse caught full in the chest, his breath pulled from his lungs, an unearthly cold at the base of his spine. He’d dropped the loose shirt he’d worn to bed without thinking about it, muttering Lumos Lumos Lumos until the bathroom was as bright as an operating theater. He’d never before experienced his body as separate, but his arm had not felt like it belonged to him and he’d touched the tattoo gingerly with a forefinger before he tried to claw it off.
“Has it changed since that first morning?” Bill said.
“No, it hasn’t. It doesn’t feel any different now than it did before either,” Draco said.
“So what you’re most distressed about is that it changed,” Bill said.
“Yes, Bill, that’s what I’m most distressed about,” Draco said, trying to keep himself restrained. He sounded unhinged, even to himself. Or was that only to himself?
“Because I thought maybe you were most upset about it changing to Hermione’s scar from Bellatrix torturing her,” Bill remarked coolly. Hermione’s romantic relationship with Ron Weasley had barely lasted a fortnight, but the Weasley clan still considered her one of theirs and Bill, in particular, having learned what was expected of her by Dumbledore and the rest of the Order of the Phoenix, dating back to her first year at Hogwarts and lasting through the horcrux hunt and the final battle, was inclined to be protective of her in lieu of all the other adults who’d failed her or dismissed the risks to her with the praise that was supposed to sustain her through terror and torture. His reaction was what Draco had meant when he’d mentioned a vested interest, though as per usual, Draco had avoided thinking about what term Bill would have chosen. It would not have been the legal phrase, no matter how icy Bill’s tone turned.
“I can’t—if she knew, I’d never,” he faltered. It had been like this since he’d realized what the brand was, his thoughts fractured, resisting all attempts at coherence. His magic fought him as well, an experience he’d found referenced in only one, quite Dark volume shoved to the back of the Malfoy library, a book they’d kept because it had come with Narcissa’s The Most Noble House of Black dowry. He’d tried Occluding, to no avail, and a half-dozen potions, even that most British panacea, a proper cup of tea, and he still found himself lost when he tried to imagine Hermione’s reaction or why he now carried her curse on his body.
“It’s possible it has nothing to do with her,” Bill said, holding up a hand before Draco could interrupt. “I only mean, that she wouldn’t be aware of it, that the change is something for you to deal with, without telling her. Asking her for her take on it, making it one more iteration of Bellatrix’s torture.”
“I don’t want her hurt. Ever,” Draco said. That’s pretty much the endpoint he’d reached after all his ruminations, the only inviolable truth he’d been able to find, mucking about in his own head.
“I don’t want her hurt ever again. I don’t want to hurt her.”
“Good, because this was going to be a very short conversation otherwise,” Bill said. “For the record, I didn’t think you were so self-absorbed you wouldn’t consider what it could do to her. I know you better than that.”
“You hold me in greater esteem than I do myself,” Draco said.
“Yeah. I know,” Bill said. “What have you tried already? Read already?”
“Flamel, Bao Gu, Senior Zadith, Katherine Dee, Isola Vyvyvan,” Draco said, ticking them off on his fingers. “The obvious choices and I’ve looked through what seemed relevant at the Ministry and the Malfoy library.”
“Hogwarts?”
“Unless Madam Ossett has tampered with the inventory for the Restricted Section, there’s nothing there worth looking at,” Draco said. “Possibly Durmstrang has something, but I’d rather not have anyone there…conjecturing. I’ve taken the potions you’d recommend and tried the Etiologica clarissa.”
“Not clarissima?” Bill said.
“Too Light to risk it,” Draco said. “If I off myself, we’re none the wiser.”
“And you’re dead,” Bill said.
“That too,” Draco said. “Strangely enough, not my chief concern.”
“Not strangely enough. Fleur and I feel you’ve held your life too cheaply since—”
“Since I survived Voldemort and the Final Battle and Azkaban? I should live each day as the gift it is?” Draco said.
“You’re always ready to throw it away, in some sort of penance. It wouldn’t help anyone. Certainly not Hermione,” Bill said.
“Who said it would be for her?”
“Your arm, for one,” Bill replied. “The look in your eyes when someone mentions her. How you say her name if you’re in company, Madam Hermione Nimue Granger. You never leave out either honorific. It’s not like it takes Divination or an eye for poker tells.”
“I suppose I’m giving new meaning to wearing my heart on my sleeve,” Draco said.
“That’s the spirit,” Bill said. “I don’t mean to pry and I’ll remind you that you came to me, but, has something changed between you and Hermione?”
“It must have,” Draco said. If he hadn’t already been sitting, he would have collapsed into a chair. As it was, his shoulder slumped and he sensed that if she’d seen him, his mother would have scolded him for his slovenly posture unbecoming of a Pureblood Wizard. He would have wanted to chuck something at her. “I don’t know how to put it. I guess, I realized, I’ve fallen in love with her.”
“Got it in one. You did know how to put it,” Bill said. He leaned back in his chair, satisfied, as if Draco were his struggling, dunderhead student who had finally gotten a correct answer to the simplest equation. Basically as if he’d been who he’d thought Neville was, until he discovered Longbottom’s steady intelligence and propensity to tend to others instead of seeking glory.
“If you already knew, why didn’t you say?”
Bill had been generous enough not to crow over Draco’s…announcement?
Realization?
Sentence?
Doom?
Because however he felt about her, he couldn’t expect Hermione to return his feelings, not when he considered how he’d treated her when they were in school, when he had allowed himself to become her mortal enemy. When she’d been brought to his home and he’d watched her being tortured and he hadn’t said a word. In the years that followed, he’d sent to formal apologia that was expected of him and made the recompense the Ministry had required, the months at Azkaban, his magic withheld, and he’d focused on making something of himself that was worthwhile, breaking curses, retrieving and restoring magical items that had been stolen, taking whatever cases the Ministry asked. If that meant he was brought into contact, sometimes close contact, with her, he made no complaints. No excuses. After the first time they’d met again, her stubborn chin raised when he greeted her with her title, they’d got on well enough; that had been the moment he’d realized her face was heart-shaped and that her eyes were the brown of an autumn leaf in a brook, a very fine, very dry sherry.
They’d worked cases together and he’d liked her. Went to annual, dull Ministry galas and he’d liked her, admired how she nursed one glass of wine all night, didn’t leave early. They’d ended up at the pub together, with more of her friends than anyone who’d call themselves his and he’d liked her, her sharp wit and her affectionate humor, the way she flushed after the second glass of ale. There had been conferences they both attended, her comments measured, provocative, rarely cruel and he’d liked her, how closely she’d listened to the witch from Uagadou, how she’d made the formal obeisance before launching into an idea for a collaboration, the offer to meet over dinner, the casual way she’d included him.
He liked her smile, her laughter, her solemn expression when Snape was mentioned. He liked her chestnut hair and the silver streak that ran through it, her determined gait, her pretty ankles visible through the swish of her formal robes. He liked the scent of her perfume, something Muggle with bergamot, and the line of her neck when she tilted her head to one side in contemplation. He liked the way she’d looked up at the ceiling of the Great Hall when they’d come back to Hogwarts and turned to him, wonder mixed with grief in her eyes, the gleam of tears that would have made an exquisite potion if she’d let them fall. He liked how she spoke to the students and the faculty, how she was candid, how she kept her secrets. How she lied.
She’d walked with him through the hallway where he’d brought the cabinet. Where he’d been desperate, convinced it wouldn’t work. Wouldn’t be enough if it did. Where he’d told himself he had to and that they wouldn’t kill children. She’d taken his hand in her own and said They let you down, let you go hang, I should’ve done something and he knew if he’d come to her she would not have turned him away. Sorry, she’d said, a little word for an absolution.
A little word to rearrange the world, his world, around her.
Irrevocably.
“At the risk of annoying the fuck out of you, I knew you had to get there on your own. Personal journey, coming to it in your own time, all that shite,” Bill said. “Trite, but true.”
“You’re enjoying this,” Draco said.
“Not as much as you’d think. I owe Fleur fifty Galleons,” Bill said.
“You bet on me? Against me?”
“I was on your side, mate. I thought you’d figure it out sooner. Without the Dark Mark changing part of it,” Bill said. “I didn’t anticipate totally unprecedented magic as the catalyst for your epiphany. And if you’ve a mind to make some snide, superior dig at me, feel free to fuck right off and remember you came to me for help.”
Draco, who had been grappling with the urge to make snide, superior and cutting remark, likely regarding Bill’s intelligence, House, and scholarship, found himself choking on a laugh instead.
“How’d you guess?”
“I have five younger brothers and my family is the poorest of the Sacred Twenty-Eight,” Bill said. Five, which meant he still counted Fred. It was a wonder they were all walking and talking with the degree of loss they’d had to cope with, though Bill’s grief was understandable, acceptable, especially since he hadn’t been fully turned when Greyback savaged him and Fleur hadn’t for a second countenanced leaving him.
“What am I going to do, Bill?” Draco asked.
“I think you know but I’m happy to talk it through,” Bill said.
“You won’t tell her. If I don’t, I’ll have to wear a glamour all the time. I won’t forget to cast it, she wouldn’t find out accidentally. I’ll know though. I’ll think about it every time, this secret, and it’s my body, she’d be the first to say I have autonomy, but it will change things between us. Not for the better,” he said.
“Yeah,” Bill said.
“She’s one of the only people in the world who’d be able to figure out what happened, magically speaking. To my arm. If it had turned into Katie Bell and that bloody necklace, I’d have gone to Hermione, not you. She’d be excited to figure it out. I expect there’d have been a monograph drafted within a fortnight,” Draco said.
“Translated into Bulgarian and Kiswahili,” Bill added.
“If I go to her, she’ll know. What she doesn’t understand right away she’ll ask me about. I won’t lie to her,” he said.
“Never a good idea to lie to her. She can cast wandless, both hands,” Bill said.
“She’ll know I’m in love with her,” Draco said.
“You don’t need to sound so bleak,” Bill said. “If it turns out she doesn’t feel the same, she still cares for you. About you. It’s not the end of the world to be friends, even if you’re also in love with her.”
“You’re happily married to a half-Veela. Excuse me if your reassurance about how great it will be for her to be aware of my unrequited love falls flat,” Draco said.
“I said if, you glib prat,” Bill said. “Let’s just say you don’t have the best perspective on the whole situation.”
“Has she said something to you?”
“If she had, I wouldn’t tell you. That’s why you came to me, for privacy. I have eyes, don’t I? And once a month, I have the acuity of a wolf,” Bill said.
“I have to tell her,” Draco said. “Everything.”
“Yeah,” Bill replied. “Everything’s a good place to start. One suggestion though—”
“What?”
“She doesn’t like Firewhiskey. Bring a good brandy,” Bill said.