Chapter Text
Song Inspiration: “Solitude” by M83, Felsmann + Tiley
Dreamscape—Monday, April 12th, 2010
Draco sank into sleep, feeling the weight of his past pulling him backward through dark water. Awareness seeped in slowly. Awareness seeped in slowly, a whisper that grew to a murmur, then sensation and feeling threading through his blood.
This time, the greenhouse emerged like an opulent canvas he’d once seen in an overpriced gallery: splendidly fractured, divinely decaying, every fissure a small, exquisite wound.
Light broke through shattered glass, casting drifting dust into flecks of gilded reverie. Silver ivy hung in swathes, delicate as veins beneath thin skin. Everything was alive. Everything breathed. The world outside felt like the lie; this perfumed dream felt like the truth beneath the ash. The dream had weight. He could feel the soil in his hand and the humidity on his skin. When he was awake he endured, but here, in this dream, he could become something more. He stood ready to bloom through the cinders, a testament to his resilience, someone who remembered the fire and chose to grow despite it.
He lingered in the entryway, wrought iron entwined with vines that throbbed softly like a heartbeat—perhaps his own. Roses sprawled everywhere, spilling from planters, choking trellises, and cascading down the fountain in a spill of blush and crimson. They wept tears of dew onto the moss. Even the Devil’s Snare slept at the foot of a broken statue, docile for once. How quaint a picture it all paints. He almost laughed at the absurdity of it all.
And then there was her.
She drifted forward, petals scattering in her wake, each step pulling the dream inward, intensifying the ache of his longing for her. Towards her.
She didn't turn. She never needed to. An incline of her head or the shift of a shoulder was enough to unmake him. Warmth flooded his chest, rich and terrible, as he watched her.
Around them, whispers rose and fell. At first they sounded indistinct, then they sharpened into voices he recognized and despised. His father’s cold scorn. His mother’s exhausted quiet. Wartime screams. Laughter edged with cruelty. Each sound crawled along his skin and dug in.
He shivered and looked again at the woman at the greenhouse’s center, untouched by that shadowed chorus. She settled onto a chaise with velvet the color of bruised roses and carved legs twined with serpents. He wondered, as he had before, if she had chosen it, if the dream was only a reflection of herself.
She settled onto the chaise, a tome resting in her lap, fingertips smudged with ink. Of course they were, he thought, bitterness blooming under his ribs. Even in his dreams, she bled prose while he only stained margins.
He moved closer, drawn not by courage but by compulsion. Magic with a will.
He sank into the chaise behind her, feeling the weight of his years of transgressions lift off his shoulders. The chair cradled him, as if the greenhouse didn’t care what he’d been, only caring that he was here.
He placed his hand on her waist but nothing more. Restraint was ritual. Desire was a liturgy he refused to recite aloud.
She sank back into him and let out a sigh, then opened the book. He knew what came next.
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea…
Her voice sounded different here, and the greenhouse received it with solemnity, absorbing each line like stone taking in a hymn.
He closed his eyes and allowed the sound to pass through him like smoke. When he opened them, he saw her mouth shape the words, saw a curl brush her neck, and caught the flutter of lashes. He had no idea when he’d started loving her like this. Sometimes it felt like he always had.
That a maiden there lived whom you may know…
His hand found hers, fingers intertwining. Her skin was warm. Real. It shouldn’t have been.
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
He buried his face in the hollow between her neck and shoulder. Vanilla, parchment, ink. His other hand skimmed along her arm, barely touching. If he pressed down too hard, he feared she might disappear
I was a child and she was a child…
He almost laughed. Or screamed. Or tore open the sky. He had not been a child; he had been molded into a weapon, cloaked in charm and tailored silk, a past that haunted his dreams. Yet she had seen him.
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven
Coveted her and me.
She paused. He felt it emanate from her before she spoke.
“Do you think they were jealous? The seraphs?” Her tone was curious, but her shoulders carried the question like habit.
His response came low, nearly pleading. “Everyone envies a love that endures.” The words settled like ash. Beautiful. Heavy. Incurable.
She turned the page. Vines rustled overhead. A faint sound arose through the greenhouse, a thin note like glass on the verge of shattering.
A wind blew out of a cloud by night…
His grip tightened around her. His grip tightened around her, not enough to alarm, just enough to tether. Through her, he felt the last part of himself that still believed in daring.
He wanted to stop her. To say, just once: Don’t read the next stanza.
Let me stay here with you.
She read on.
He knew this part too well; the dream always started to crack on the threshold of that word, as if even here it refused to let him keep her.
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.
“Sepulchre.” She tilted her head, and he knew she felt his breath stutter.
The angels, not half so happy in Heaven…
The air changed. Light dimmed around them. Pressure blossomed behind his eyes, a seam working itself open. He pressed his forehead to her shoulder. His mouth ached with unsaid words, and all that emerged was, "Keep reading, love."
She did. However, she appeared to do so with reluctance.
Nor the demons down under the sea
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.
Something cracked.
When he looked up, fissures spidered across the glass overhead. Dust lifted from the frame in a faint green-copper haze, the color old statues wore when the sea forgot them. The once-gentle pale light thickened and darkened, dripping like honey. They were underwater now, the dream becoming a pressure chamber.
Her breath hitched, the smallest tremor that rang through him. She turned sharply, her features drawing into focus. Soft pink mouth. Shadowed gaze with eyes like firelight. A constellation of freckles scattered across her face. Detail by detail, she came into clarity.
Before recognition could strike, the room dissolved. The greenhouse smoldered into smoke. Petals turned to ash. She slipped from his arms and into darkness.
“Stay—”
Hermione.
Draco’s Townhome, London
He awoke with her scent clinging impossibly to his skin—vanilla, bergamot, and ink. Instead of it being a memory, it was a tangible thing, as if his magic had anchored her here with him. He left his eyes closed in a desperate attempt to stay enveloped in the dream as much as he could, but it was no use. Other sensations came forward, grounding him in reality. Sweat was cooling on his ribs, and his sheets, heavy and damp, tangled through his limbs, holding him down like strangling vines.
Waking felt underlit. The dream had been saturated.
He lay motionless, staring at his ceiling. He could almost make out the warding lattice hidden behind layers of plaster and paint. The walls pulsed with breath, seemingly drawn from a dream. He could feel the wards awakening through a subtle pressure tightening in his limbs, instinctively trying to shield him from threats seen and unseen alike.
It was a home that remembered too well.
His first movement of the day was a flex of his fingers. He found they ached as if he had been gripping onto something firmly, unable to stop it from escaping his grasp, but he still made futile attempts to keep it.
He dragged a hand up to his face to inspect it for signs of change. There it was again. The mark was faint, barely a whisper, but unmistakably a spiral. It consistently manifests there after her. As if she left ink behind on those who were near her. He hated that the proof insisted on living on his skin, even if the mark faded before his morning coffee.
He rested a bit longer than necessary, allowing the dream to decay in the atmosphere. Greenhouse heat. Sweating glass. Light transforming vines into a shimmering silver. Her weight, her form, and the awful gentleness of it.
The velvet curtains allowed faint sunlight to filter through in slender strips, dividing the room into narrow bands. He swept his hair back and forced himself to stand up. His feet made contact with the pale, bone-white floorboards, and warmth emanated from the wood effortlessly, obedient as breath.
It was suffocating, and worse, it was efficient. That was the problem. He never needed to ask more than once about anything here.
His family's signet ring rested on the bedside table. In the morning light, the object appeared harmless. It never was. He stared at it until anger surged within him, almost instinctively. Cold metal. Old duty. The name carried a weight that was heavy enough to bruise. Like a shackle.
He still slipped it onto his finger.
He despised how effortless it was. He despised that he still felt more secure with it on, as if an answer arrived before he even posed a question.
His reflection in the dresser appeared pale and cautious, with eyes dimmed by a sleep that had not truly been restful. He placed his hands on the polished ebony surface and leaned closer, staring at his reflection in the mirror. That was indeed his face. The expression wasn’t. It seemed as though it had been borrowed. Or rehearsed.
The dream clung under his ribs like a second skin, with silver vines and the lingering touch of her hand resting against him. When he blinked, the memory of her face seared behind his eyes.
"That's enough," he spoke to his reflection in the mirror.
His voice was rough, a product of disuse and feelings of disgust. "It's nothing. It's always been nothing."
The lie landed. It did what it always did. Bought him a few minutes.
He turned away sharply, building his occlumency walls with practiced efficiency. Methodically, he dressed. Each movement was precise, a small act of control that smoothed away visible traces of vulnerability. He dressed without glancing at his reflection once more. Charcoal silk, expertly warded and tailored, glided over his skin. Trousers. Dragonhide boots polished to a subtle shine, magically enhanced to remain silent and provide a firm grip. He chose to leave his cloak draped exactly where it was.
He didn’t need theater today. Once grief took root in the bones, it required no disguise.
Under the polish, the same old shadows shifted. Longing persisted, quietly and steadily, as if it were a tangible presence.
He had been aware all along that it was a dream.
That was the cruelty.
He could sense her weight pressing against him. Counted her breaths. He recalled the warmth of her hand on his chest with the same level of detail that a curse-breaker would employ mapping a trap.
He could no longer claim it was merely a dream. That was no longer possible after the events of the past few months. Not after the fragments and the symbols and the way the world kept answering questions he hadn’t spoken aloud. Objects responded when he thought of her. Rooms shifted in subtle, incorrect manners. Runes illuminated on their own, without any prompting.
Memory seemed to be moving ahead of him.
His hand twitched toward the spiral on his palm. He curled his fingers into a fist and counted anyway.
One. The war is over.
Breathe.
Two. You are not in Azkaban.
Breathe.
Three. You survived.
Breathe.
A practice to center yourself. It ought to have been beneath him.
However, it wasn't entirely without value.
It worked just enough to make him furious. Stop being pathetic.
The cold never left.
Azkaban had been brief and mostly symbolic, the Ministry’s theatrical bow in the direction of justice. Prison wasn’t measured in months. The sentence lasted longer in the way the world looked at him afterward. In doors that opened a fraction slower. In silence that wasn’t peace, only avoidance.
His name still granted access to certain opportunities, though not as many as it once did. His influence kept the worst illusions intact. People tolerated him. Sometimes requested. Magical architect. Curse-breaker. Structural consultant. He made broken things behave.
No one ever asked why he understood the nature of broken things so well.
He didn’t need them to.
The townhouse occupied all five levels of a Georgian structure in Marylebone. It was older than much of London's magical architecture and possessed ancestral warding that seemed almost boastful. He purchased it shortly after his release from Azkaban, stripped it down to the bare bricks and enchantments, and then reconstructed it fueled by spite and memory. Every archway could collapse or reassemble on command. Every wall carried wards sharp enough to cut.
There were no guards, portraits, elves, or witnesses. He had no need for any of them.
The hallway stretched out, silent and elongated, adorned with dark oak paneling and white-veined marble, while the walls bore a mottled appearance, a limewash reminiscent of bruises. He lifted a hand in the kitchen, and with a flick of his wrist, the runes on the counter responded, glowing briefly, and the coffee began to brew in a slow, irritating trickle. The kettle would take long this morning, he knew. It always happened when he was tired.
His mornings were more ritual than routine.
He grasped his original wand, made of hawthorn, and sensed it thrum in his hand, as if it were resisting him. He gazed at it for a moment longer than necessary, then set it aside and reached for the second wand. Hornbeam, a handle crafted from bone, and a core composed of phoenix feathers. Made in silence. Only devoted to him. It nestled into his hand as if it were aware of all his imperfections and still chose him.
He entered his study. The room was silent, as it usually was, making any noise seem impolite. Dark walnut shelves extended to the ceiling, packed with field reports, spell schematics, and magical texts bound in coarse vellum. The sconces dimly lit the room as he entered.
The desk, a slab of black marble, seemed suspended in mid-air, immaculate except for the dream journal. It stood poised and orderly, like a courteous charge. He sat, opened it, and recorded the latest iteration: the chaise, the vines, and the roses. He had the unshakable sense she had almost seen him this time. He couldn’t decide if that was hope or warning. What changed when someone in a dream looked back? Would she still let him hold her? What might she remember? What might it cost him?
His quill, veiled in neat runes, tapped once. “Reveal inconsistencies,” he murmured. The page glowed. Nothing shifted.
Same dream. Same layout. No deviation.
He pressed his thumb to the paper, letting magic bleed into the parchment. “Show me what I missed.” Again, the page remained unchanged, blank of answers. He closed the journal.
He was foolish to think the dream would change in his favor.
He rose to venture to the far shelf, where a hidden drawer slid open under his wand’s touch. He should have discarded the small assortment of items within, but he couldn't stop keeping them. His gaze caught on a ring—an ouroboros of goblin-wrought platinum and a fire opal.
The shard was adjacent to the ring.
A fragment of memory drifted in a realm of stillness, pulsing gently like a heart restrained.
He recalled the conclusion of his previous role as a consultant in the Department of Mysteries, when the Archive's wall turned pliable and a splinter landed in his palm—cold, dim, humming with cataloged grief. He’d pocketed it before he’d even thought to alert anyone, as if the Archive had decided ownership for him. He would be a fool to refuse such a gift.
He studied it for a moment too long, then lifted it. The shard warmed against his skin, its thrum rising as though it remembered more than it would be willing to tell. Without his consent, a memory began to unfurl before him.
Hermione’s sleeve was smeared with blood. His arms were around her. Her voice cracked, raw with terror. “I can’t lose you, not again…”
He tore himself loose and allowed the shard to drop.
With a gentle click, it settled back into its nest. It seemed as though the room had been arranged for silence in an instant.
His defenses tightened nonetheless at the mere thought of her name.
He returned to the desk, placed his hand on a leather-bound portfolio beside the journal, and softly uttered the incantation that released its nearly imperceptible clasp. Inside, there were rolled-up blueprints, their edges worn and frayed from extensive use. They were not traditional architectural plans. These were schematics of magical constructs, rituals, and spell arrays—work with no known commission.
One diagram made his breath pause. He was certain he had not drawn it. The ink, the crispness of the line, the patient symmetry of the runes: someone else’s hand.
It was hers.
A sigil rested in the lower corner, a perfect ring of old magic inscribed to create a simple spiral shape that mirrored the one he had noticed this morning. Next to it was written a single date: August 32nd.
His fingertip traced the edge of the parchment. There had been no revealing spell this time, no incantation. The writing had simply surfaced—or had always been there, waiting to be seen.
The signet ring on his finger gave a faint tremor. It echoed the ring in the hidden drawer, attuned to fluctuations in his magic. Coldness hugged his knuckle like a warning. On the nearest shelf, several books snapped shut, their spines settling in impatience.
“Hermione,” he said. Her name tasted like a spell from a previous life.
He looked in a nearby mirror, and for a fleeting instant, he believed he glimpsed her beside him—not as she is today, but as she could have been back then. In certain areas where memory faltered, polished stone and reflective silver surfaces ensnared her instead of him. He reassured himself that it was not a hallucination.
Why did seeing her feel like grief?
He stood in the quiet of a house that remembered too vividly, each room heavy with the weight of what had not been said. By the time the mirror fell silent, he was already moving towards the floo. Standing still was how you let fate do your work for you.