Chapter Text
Draco
She is a masterpiece of will.
I stand in the shadowed corner of her bedroom, disillusioned and breath held not from fear of detection, my magic is a ghost in the veins of her own wards now, a silent partner to her security but from sheer, arrested awe. She lies perfectly still in the spill of moonlight, but she is not asleep. I know the rhythm of true sleep, slow breaths, relaxed limbs, the subtle twitch of dreams. Hers is a performance. A calculated, furious stillness. Her chest rises and falls in measured cadence, but her grip on the wand under the pillow is too tight, her eyelids too still. She's aware. She's waiting. For me to slip, to reveal, to make the mistake that hands her the upper hand. It's intoxicating this defiance wrapped in feigned vulnerability. She's not just enduring my presence; she's wielding it against me, turning intrusion into her weapon. How does she do it? How does she turn every shadow I cast into light for her path? She's brilliant, terrifying, and mine to guard whether she accepts it or not. The obsession coils tighter, a vine around my thoughts, her every breath pulling me deeper.
The compass on her bedside table is a clever little thing. Its needle, an extension of her own magic, points at her like a lodestone. For now. But it knows I’m here. It strains against its nature, wanting to swing toward the cooler, denser presence by the window. She feels it too. I see the exact moment her consciousness surfaces from the pretended depths: a subtle tightening of the eyelid. She knows.
And she does nothing.
Theo, when I tell him later, will absolutely lose his mind. But in this moment, it's just her and me in a silent duel in the dark, her will, a force that rivals any curse I've cast. She's not afraid; she's calculating. Weighing me. And that realization sends a shiver through me not of fear, but of something darker, hungrier. She's the only one who's ever made me feel seen, even in invisibility. The need to reveal, to step forward and shatter the silence, tugs at me like an Imperius, but I resist. Not yet. She'll come to me. She has to.
The minutes stretch. The silence becomes a physical thing, thick and humming. My own stance, which felt like control when I phased through her wards, begins to feel like paralysis. She has turned my vigil into a standoff. She has made me the intruder, the uncomfortable variable. This was a mistake. Not the coming that was inevitable, the baited gap too tempting to ignore, her challenge from earlier echoing in my head. But underestimating the sheer granite of her composure. She's not breaking; she's bending the moment to her will, forcing me to question mine. The obsession surges: how can one woman wield such power without a word? She's a riddle I need to solve, a flame I need to hold, even if it burns.
I cannot stay here, frozen by her will. It is a defeat.
I let my presence dissipate. As I go, I let a single, perfect black rose petal fall from my fingers onto the windowsill. A fragment. A question. What will you make of this? A taunt, or an invitation? Let her ponder it, let it draw her closer. The rose is my mark, my claim blood on the petal, a piece of me left in her world.
Then I am gone.
“Let me get this straight,” Theo says, perched on the edge of our massive oak worktable, an apple suspended in mid-air from a lazy Levitation Charm. “You, the self-appointed spectral guardian, the patron saint of dramatic entrances and gorier exits, actually managed to slip into the innermost sanctum of Hermione Granger. And instead of finding her cowering or, Salazar forbid, grateful, you found her… napping?”
“She wasn’t napping,” I grit out, pouring a firewhisky with a hand that's steadier than my thoughts, though the burn of defeat still lingers. The lair's fire crackles, casting long shadows on the stone walls, the scrying mirror still glowing faintly with her image now sitting up, examining the petal with that analytical gaze that pierces like a curse. She's turning it over in her fingers, her expression a mix of fury and fascination. Beautiful. Maddening. Mine to protect, even from herself.
“Even better!” Theo claps his hands, making the apple wobble in the air. “So she was just lying there, ignoring you? The great Draco Malfoy, a lurking monument in the corner, being given the same attention as a mildly inconvenient dust bunny? The humiliation! The sheer, unadulterated snub! I’d pay a thousand Galleons to have seen your face. Was it puckered? It was, wasn’t it? Like you’d bitten into a particularly bitter lemon.”
Blaise doesn’t look up from the runic array he’s etching into a new set of warding stones, but a faint smirk touches his lips as he taps one with his wand, the rune flaring blue. “I told you it was pathology. You’ve graduated from distant admirer to certified bedroom phantom. Congratulations. Does one send a fruit basket for that, or just a restraining order?”
“It was reconnaissance,” I say, the excuse sounding hollow even to me. Reconnaissance? It was compulsion, the need to be near her, to see if she'd break or bend under the weight of my presence. She did neither. She endured, turned it against me. The obsession twists deeper. How can I not admire that?
“Reconnaissance?” Theo’s laugh is a short, sharp bark. “Of her duvet pattern? Her preferred sleeping posture? Brilliant tactical intel, Draco. ‘Subject prefers supine positioning, has tastefully minimalist linen. Concludes: threat neutralized.’ Next you’ll be reporting on her brand of toothpaste.”
“The kind that whitens, fights plaque, and probably files her taxes,” Blaise murmurs, his voice deadpan as he adjusts a rune with a precise flick. “A minty-fresh overachiever, just like her.”
“She knew I was there,” I repeat, as if saying it will somehow reclaim the dignity of the encounter, the way her stillness had unnerved me more than any hex, more than the war's chaos. “She felt a magical disturbance. She chose inaction. It was a statement.”
“Oh, it was a statement all right,” Theo agrees, finally taking a bite of his apple with a crisp crunch. He chews thoughtfully, then swallows. “It said, ‘Hello, uninvited creep. I am aware of you. You are beneath my response threshold. You may now evaporate, like the pathetic ghost of poor life choices that you are.’ It’s a powerful statement! Very minimalist. Very her.”
The needling is precise and painful because it’s true. I swirl the amber liquid in my glass, watching it catch the firelight. They’re right. I’ve been setting the stage, but she’s refusing to read my script. She’s writing her own, turning my intrusion into her victory. The obsession surges her composure, her defiance, it's a drug, pulling me back even as it pushes me away. How does she do it? Turn every move I make into fuel for her fire?
“The Dover cell,” I say, changing the subject, my voice cutting through Theo’s theatrics like a curse, redirecting the frustration into action. “They’re moving the cursed artifacts. They’ll be her next target if she follows the financial trail we leaked last week.”
Blaise nods, finally setting down his etching tool. “They’ll be expecting a Ministry hit. Layers of protection, anti-Apparition jinxes, the works. Werewolves on guard, dark wards woven tight.”
“So we hit them first,” Theo says, tossing the apple core into the fireplace, where it sizzles and pops. “Make it look like a goblin turf war. Gory, but financially motivated. No floral notes this time save the romance for Granger.”
“No,” I say, a new, sharper plan forming from the embers of my irritation, the sting of her silence fueling it like kindling. “We do it clean. Surgical. But we leave a single piece of evidence behind. Not for the Aurors.”
The room goes quiet. Blaise stares at me, his tools stilling completely. Theo’s mocking smile slips away, replaced by genuine incredulity. “Not more breadcrumbs! Draco, your trail is less ‘Hansel and Gretel’ and more ‘a full, five-course banquet laid out on a checkered cloth.’ The woman is going to get institutionalized from the sheer volume of your clues!”
“A specific crumb,” I continued, ignoring him, my mind already mapping the scene in detail to the warehouse by the docks, the artifacts humming with dark energy, the guards' positions. “A page from their internal ledger. Partially burned, as if it was missed in the panic. It will detail a meeting. A location she hasn’t found yet, one that's live, active.”
The silence this time is profound, broken only by the crackle of the fire in the hearth. Theo finally breaks it, reaching for the firewhisky bottle. He pours two generous fingers, not into his own glass, but into mine, topping it up. “Well,” he says, his voice uncharacteristically solemn. “When you finally do introduce yourself, it’s certainly going to be a memorable icebreaker. ‘Hello, Granger. Fancy meeting you here in this den of assassins. I’ve just slaughtered everyone for you. Would you care for a drink?’” He tries for his usual grin, but it’s strained. “Romantic.”
Blaise returns to his warding stones, the scrape of his tool the only sound for a moment. “Just ensure your grand romantic gesture doesn’t get her killed. Obsession is one thing. Getting your object of obsession killed through your own cleverness is just tragically poor form.”
I don’t answer. My eyes are already on the maps of Dover, my mind constructing the scene: the clean, quiet takedown, the strategically placed, charred ledger page. The next move in a game only two of us are playing.
She wanted to out-wait me? To silence me with her stillness?
Fine.
Now, she would have to come and find me.
Theo leaned over the map of Dover, his earlier levity replaced by the sharp focus he reserved for planning. “The lighthouse, then. Clichéd, but defensible. They’ll have lookouts here, here, and probably a nasty surprise in the lantern room.” He tapped the points with a charmed quill that left glowing, temporary marks. “Anti-Apparition, standard. But they’ll also have portkey disruptors. They’re not amateurs.”
“They’re thugs with a budget,” I corrected, but I noted his points. Theo’s mind, for all its jest, was a razor when it came to tactical vulnerability. He saw the world as a series of pressure points and jokes. “The priority is the ledger. The secondary ledger, the one they think is cleverly hidden.”
“Ah, the MacGuffin,” Theo said, grinning. “The plot coupon. Shall I retrieve it while you’re busy redecorating the place in their internal organs? I’ll wear something slinky. Blend in.”
Blaise didn’t look up from the array of dark, smooth stones he was arranging in a precise circle on the floor. “You’ll retrieve it after Draco has ensured the room is… quiet. We do this as a symphony, not a cacophony. No flourishes. No roses. Clean, fast, and forgotten.”
“No roses?” Theo pouted dramatically. “But it’s our signature! It’s like the Dark Mark, but with better aesthetics and less skull. People expect it now. We have a brand to maintain, Blaise. A shadowy, murderous brand.”
“This isn’t for ‘people’,” I said, my eyes tracing the lighthouse’s interior from the memory of the scout’s confession. “It’s for her. And a rose here would be a billboard. This needs to look like a professional, rival takedown. Greed, not poetry. Except for the one page.”
“The burned page,” Theo mused, tapping his chin. “Dramatic. Melodramatic, even. A single, salvation-offering page, rescued from the flames of villainy. Will it have a heart drawn around the location in her blood? Too much?”
“It will have a smudge of sea salt and a drop of myrtle oil,” I said. “From the cliff air and the preservation charm on the ledger’s box. Authentic detail. She’ll check.”
Theo stared at me, his expression a mix of horror and admiration. “You’ve thought about the smell. Salazar, you’re gone. Completely, irrevocably gone. You’re not just a stalker, you’re a method actor preparing for the role of ‘Omniscient Murderous Boyfriend’. Next you’ll be leaving her chocolates charmed to taste like your specific brand of angst.”
Blaise finally stood, dusting his hands. The stones at his feet glowed with a faint, sickly green light before fading to dull black. “The perimeter wards are ready. They’ll induce confusion and paranoia in anyone looking out for more than a minute. By the time they realise they’re seeing loops of empty sea, it will be too late.” He looked at me. “You’re sure about drawing her there? You’re creating a situation where her life will be in immediate, tangible danger.”
“Her life is always in danger,” I said, the truth of it a cold stone in my gut. “This way, the danger is on my terms. In my theatre. Where I control every variable except her. And I need to see what she does. I need to see her in the field, not behind a desk.”
“You need to see her in your field,” Theo corrected softly. “You need to see if the lioness hunts as well in your jungle as she does in her library. It’s a test drive. For a partner you haven’t even asked to dance.”
He wasn’t wrong. The compulsion was a physical thing now, a pull stronger than any apparition. It wasn’t enough to guard her from afar. I had to witness her brilliance under pressure, to see the steel in her spine when faced with the genuine article of the filth I’d been clearing from her path. I had to know if the reality of the fight would match the fierce, analytical creature in my mirror.
“We move at moonrise,” I said, closing the subject. “The tide will be high, covering any sound. Theo, you’re on extraction and evidence placement. Blaise, you hold the silence. I’ll make the introduction.”
The introduction was brief.
The lighthouse keeper’s room stank of stale fish, cheap firewhisky, and the metallic tang of dark magic. Three of them were playing cards, galleons glittering under a hanging lantern. Two were checking crates. The sixth, the lookout in the lantern room above, was already asleep, victim of Blaise’s concentrated somnolence charm wafting up the stairwell.
I didn’t bother with disillusionment. I simply opened the door and stepped inside.
The card players looked up, irritation turning to shock, then to the instinctive reach for wands.
They were slow. The war had weeded out the truly slow, but these were the complacent, the ones who thought the darkness was a club they could rejoin at leisure.
“Confringo,” I whispered.
The card table erupted. Not in a blast of fire, but in a contained sunburst of splintering wood and shattering glass. The three men were thrown back, bones cracking against stone, wands spinning from limp fingers. Before the debris had settled, I was moving.
The two at the crates were faster, wiser. Spells shot towards me, a sickly yellow Sectumsempra knock-off, a blinding Fulminatus. I deflected the first into a crate, which screamed as the dark magic ate into the wood. I absorbed the second on a shield that glowed violet and spat the energy back as a crackling whip of lightning, catching one in the chest. He convulsed, teeth cracking together, and dropped.
The last one, a wiry man with a scar through his lip, tried to run for the seaward door. “Colloshoo,” I said, almost bored.
His boots fused to the stone floor. He stumbled, fell, and looked up just as I stood over him. His eyes widened in terror, not at me, but at the blank, impersonal focus in my gaze. “Wait, Malfoy, isn’t it? We can talk! The artifacts you can have them all! A percentage!”
“I don’t want your trinkets,” I said. My voice was calm, flat. It seemed to frighten him more than shouting would have. “I want the secondary ledger. The one you keep in the hollow step of the stairwell.”
His face went ashen. He knew then this wasn’t a robbery. This was a dissection. “How did you”
“The page for the myrtle-oil order. Where is it?”
He swallowed, a bead of sweat tracing his scar. “In… in the ledger. It’s all there. The meeting with the financiers. Tomorrow night. The old granite quarry near Aberdeen. Please…”
I nodded. “Thank you.”
His relief was momentary, extinguished as my wand moved. “Obliviate.” Not a gentle nudge, but a scorching river through his mind, burning away the last hour, my face, the very knowledge of the ledger’s location. He’d wake with a headache and no memory of why his comrades were dead.
I turned. Theo was already there, a slim, dark shape flitting between the bodies. He found the hollow step with a deft tap of his wand, pulled out a slim, leather-bound book, and began carefully tearing a single page from the middle. He used a precise Diffindo, then held the page over the smouldering remains of the lantern fuel, letting one corner blacken and curl, leaving the crucial lines about the quarry meeting legible. He sprinkled a pinch of something from a vial sea salt and myrtle oil over it, then slid it under the limp hand of the man I’d hit with the reflected lightning.
“Artfully placed,” he murmured, standing and surveying the room with a critic’s eye. “A scene of violent avarice. One man, desperate to destroy evidence, caught in the act. The others, tragically, in the way. Greedy, messy, human.” He glanced at me. “And you? Not a scratch. Not a hair out of place. It’s unnerving, you know. You don’t even look like you’ve exercised.”
“Clean is efficient,” Blaise said, appearing in the doorway. The silence around the lighthouse was profound, as if the very waves had stopped to listen. “The outer wards are dissolved. The magical signature is a generic wash of combat spells. Nothing ties it to us. Or to her.”
“Except the page,” Theo said, his eyes glittering in the dark. “That ties it directly to her. A love letter written in ash and someone else’s blood. She’s going to hate it. And she’s going to follow it. Because it’s the only thing in this whole morbid tableau that doesn’t fit.”
That was the point. The one flaw in the perfect crime. The one thread only she would see.
We vanished from the lighthouse, leaving the silence and the dead. Back in the lair, the scrying mirror was dark. She was sleeping, or pretending to sleep. The petal would be in its box. The compass would be by her bed.
Theo poured three glasses of firewhisky, the good stuff from the Black family cellars. “To a successful performance,” he said, raising his glass. “May our leading lady take the bait, follow the trail, and not immediately Avada the director when she sees him in the third act.”
I didn’t drink. I was already watching the mirror, waiting for the morning, waiting for the alert that would go through the Ministry, waiting for the moment her clever, furious eyes would land on that charred page and see the invitation for what it was.
An invitation to my world.
Blaise took his glass and stood beside me, following my gaze into the dark glass. “You’ve set the stage for a confrontation,” he said quietly. “But remember, Draco, on this stage, she is not a prop. She is the other lead. And she hasn’t read your script.”
“I’m counting on it,” I said, a slow smile touching my lips for the first time that night. “I want to see what she writes.”