To dance with your mother again. By briar and bone.
It's a funny thing, Falling in love despite all odds, all
reservations, all history. Despite their differences, their
doubts, their pride, despite the warring dance of wills, the way
they tested one another's boundaries like duelists.
Indeed, despite it all, Draco Malfoy never meant to fall in
love with Hermione Granger. Not at the Ministry gala, where,
by some unfortunate twist of fate, they'd found themselves
paired for a formal dance. Her ink stained hand had gripped
his with stiff civility, yet he had been petrified into static
silence. She'd been wearing a figure
hugging black dragon scale dress, wielding hushed barbs and
snarky remarks like a wand to his throat.
Here they fell in step. Not during the endless policy
debates at the Wisengemot hearings were they clashed in a
dance of rhetorical intensity. Eyes narrowed, sneers sharp,
sparks flying here they fell in lust, not even on their first
date. Hard won on his part, where she
sat across from him in a quiet muggle cafe, lips pursed, her
foot tapping beneath the table. Whether from nerves or habit, he
wasn't sure, and without thinking his foot slid beside
hers and began to tap along with the melody.
Here they fell In Sync. But there had been that one
moment that had dropped him off the Cliff of fate, broomless and
wandless, where he truly felt what it was to fall and not have
anything to cushion the blow. They just finished their second
course at the upmarket restaurant of Kismet.
Sultry jazz played from a live band, while the dim lighting
provided the perfect mood for shameless flirting and even more
shameless caresses. Grainger was swirling her wine
absentmindedly, red staining her lips in a way that made him want
to taste them. She'd been animatedly discussing
Goblin Wand writes, when a familiar smoky tune was struck
up. A twinkle in her eye was
followed by her standing and offering him her hand.
Come on. She said, flicking her gaze to a
patch of clear floor space by the bandstand.
Dance with me. Ah, here.
Draco scoffed, swallowing down his nerves, looking to all the
seated guests and baffling over the impropriety of the
suggestion. Why not?
She challenged, mouth twisting with that impossible mix of
mischief and sincerity that was so uniquely hers.
Afraid of a little dance, Malfoy?
His trepidation was eased by the sheer audacity of the witch
beaming down at him, challenging him to once again go against the
grain of his upbringing. He took her hand.
It wasn't a perfect dance, a little awkward at first as he
found his feet in the public, setting all eyes on them.
He stumbled over a table leg and, flustered, stepped on her
foot, cheeks flaring in unexpected bashfulness.
Granger had laughed so hard she snorted.
He wanted to bottle the sound, capture it like a pensive memory
and never let it go. But once they'd found the beat,
chest to chest, her head resting on his shoulder, his hand
framing her waist, Draco's heart never left hers again.
Here they fell in love. They danced more the next night,
and the one after that. She always found a way in the
secret atrium garden of the Department for the Regulation of
Magical Creatures, in the candle lit library at her cottage in
the Cotswolds, in their kitchen amidst flower clouds and half
finished pancakes, in rainstorms and under moonlight, and once
even in the middle of Diagon Alley, A St. musician playing
something. Mr. Cullen irresistible.
She danced like she had something to prove, that even
after everything she'd been through, every slur and
prejudice set against her, everyone she had lost, this
could not be taken from her. He danced like he was finally
home. On their wedding day.
Hermione had chosen a Grove just outside of Ottery St.
Catch pole enchanted gardens and the night sky lit with floating
lanterns hovering like memories waiting to be wished on.
Draco closed his eyes and thanked the universe for
bringing him a love he could only ever have dreamed of.
She wore a muggle gown with lace shoulder sleeves and a corset he
was desperate to deconstruct. He wore his heart in his eyes.
Their first answers. Husband and wife wasn't
choreographed. It didn't need to be.
They'd had enough practice over the years to know how to move.
As one, the guests faded. The music melted.
What remained was only her missus Granger Malfoy.
His wife, his love, his world. If Draco had known then, if he'd
seen the curse weaving its way beneath her skin, acrid and
insidious, would he have found a way to hold her tighter?
Would he have memorized the weight of her hand in his just a
little more carefully? Would he have selfishly
squirreled her away to take her for himself and himself alone
for a little longer? It began subtly, a tremor in her
fingers, the graying of her skin, a weakness in her steps.
She waved it off. Work, stress, burnout, magical
pregnancy symptoms. Nothing I can't shake.
But their private healer had spoken with a graver tone, her
tone low and reluctant, as if naming it gave it power.
A curse, she said. Not a new one.
An old remnant, buried deep. The last spiteful kiss from his
aunt, left on the drawing room floor, mad blad still etched
like a brand on Hermione's forearm.
The red wound had mostly faded from view, but the magic, the
magic had not. It had coiled inward, silent and
Serpentine, Slytherin between her veins, muscles, bones, and
wrapping itself around her magical core, dormant and
patient, much like the Dark Lord himself once had, gathering
strength in the shadows, waiting for the moment to rise again.
But when it did, it would not seek power.
It would seek devastation. It would tear through her from
within, and with her, that would tear Draco's world to pieces.
They fought it, and of course they did.
Hermione fought everything with potion regiments and ancient
rituals, obscure texts and experimental spellcraft.
For a time, in the latter stages of her pregnancy, it seemed to
have worked. Throughout it all, she still
danced, even through exhaustion, even through ache.
She danced with him in hallways at night when she couldn't
sleep. She swayed with him in starlit
silence when words became too heavy.
She bobbed with him in the pregnancy ward when their
daughter, stubborn as her parents, refused to shift into
position. Hermione had grinned at the medi
witch's suggestion, her face lighting up with gleam, and
pulled Draco to his feet. We're shimmying.
She said. Says who?
He asked, bemused. Says me, the healer and the
baby, apparently. Come on, sign to side.
That's it. Swaying back and forth to a
radio she smuggled him, they fell into step together, bumping
into medical cabinets and laughing like they used to, like
they didn't have a care in the world.
Perhaps their little wonder had cured the curse from within.
One hoped, one could only hope. Aurora roared into the world
with the ferocity of her mother, all feral cries and charged with
life. Hermione sighed and lay back,
body spent, and Draco thought he might just burst from love.
After Aurora's birth, the world became soft edged and golden.
He would find Hermione in the nursery, tiredly rocking, their
daughter cradled to her chest, singing muggle rhymes that were
entirely new to him. Draco would slip behind her,
wrapping them both in his arms. They moved together like flowing
tides. The rhythm was always the same,
a dance of heartbeats and devotion.
But time is a thief and curses are cruel.
The illness washed over her like a building tsunami, A fierce
torrent, a thrashing crush. There was nothing more to try,
no spell untouched, no hope unspent.
She left this life on a morning sprinkled in Dewey mist and
birdsong, her hand in his, her final breath a melody locked in
his heart forever more. The grief was immeasurable.
Some days he was certain that if he stood still long enough, the
pain would rise like a tide and swallow him whole.
And perhaps, perhaps, that would be a kindness, the final dance.
But the world did not stop, could not stop, Not for the
small child at his side. Silver eyed, wild haired, her
untamable curls the same chestnut brown as her mother's.
The life that they'd created together stood clutching his
hand, looking at him with a gaze too wise for her years.
Aurora squeezed his hand gently. She needed someone to show her
how to move through this world, someone to take her hand and
teach her the steps that her mother would have shown.
And though every beat of that rhythm hurt, he understood.
The dance wasn't over, not yet. When she was little, he would
hold her feet atop his and sway to the sound of the old records
her mother had loved. As she grew, so did their
dances. From clumsy twirls to graceful
spins, from giggles to thoughtful conversations, from
jigs in the playroom to sophisticated soirees, Aurora
Granger Malfoy grew into a storm of a woman.
She had Hermione's mouth, quick to argue and even quicker to
smile. She had her hunger for justice,
for books, for truth. But she also had Draco's
stillness, his keen observation, his quiet cunning.
And he watched her change the world, one curse, one case, one
dazzling dance at a time on a summer's day, cherry blossoms
floating in the breeze. Draco stood on the edges of the
reception, held in the middle of a Meadow, the flowers charmed to
sing sweetly as guests walked by.
A raised wooden dance floor glimmered with ancient ruins of
blessings traced in light. Aurora stood before him in moon
pale robes, dark girls cascading down her back, white petals in
her hair. She smiled at him, twinkling and
mischievous. Dance with me, Papa.
He placed his glass down on a tall table and pressed his palm
in hers. It was smaller than her
mother's, but still bore the trademark ink stain she seemed
to Don as an ode. They swayed to the melody She
led the way just how he'd taught her, just how her mother would
have done. He twirled her like the precious
gift she'd always been to him, her gown sweeping the floor in
silken waves. One blink, one shift in the haze
of memory, and for the briefest of moments, he could have sworn
he was dancing with her mother again.
The music rose, and as they moved across the floor with the
fluid ease of a choreography long practised, long cherished,
known now only to the two of them, step by step, breath by
breath, heart to aching heart, his chest swelled with the
music, with pride, with a love so fierce it almost brought into
his knees as the final note hung suspended in the air, they came
to stillness. He bowed low, pressed a kiss to
the back of her hand and with his own wily smile, spun his
daughter deftly into the waiting arms of her husband.
She was laughing, luminous. The guests circled around the
couple, singing old songs of love and life and luck, while
Draco stepped back the sunset. Slowly, the flowers whistled,
the Meadow sighed, and he whispered softly, so only the
wind might hear. Hope you're saving me a dance,
my love. And in that sacred space between
memory and magic, where grief feeds into love, he felt her,
just as he always did when he danced in the sway of the music,
in the glint of their daughter's eyes, in the sweet song of
heartbeats. Always, she answered.