Chapter 5: The Prophet's Trap and a Rehearsal Dinner
Hermione’s office was a reflection of her mind: ordered, efficient, and intimidatingly thorough. Draco stood in the doorway for a moment, observing. Sunlight cut through the high Ministry windows, illuminating dancing motes of dust above fortress-like stacks of law books and parchment. The air smelled of lavender, ink, and a faint, sharp ozone from the enchanted devices humming on a side shelf. Her desk was a plain of polished wood, upon which a single sheet of parchment lay, perfectly centered.
She didn’t look up immediately, her quick scratching the only sound. Her brow was furrowed in concentration, a curl escaping the severe knot at the back of her head. She looked every bit the strategist preparing for war.
“You’re late,” she said, still writing.
“It’s three o’clock exactly,” Draco replied, stepping inside and letting the door click shut. The sound seemed to finalize something.
“I said three. Precise punctuality implies eagerness. We should have arrived separately, and you should have been fashionably late by five minutes. First misstep.” She finally set her quill down and looked at him. Her eyes were serious, assessing. “Did you review the draft?”
He approached the desk but didn’t sit. He pulled the parchment she’d sent from his pocket, now marked with his own sparse notes in tight, angular script. He slid it back across the desk to her.
“I did. It’s thorough. And it reads like a bloody property transaction.”
“That’s the point. It’s factual. It states our intent to marry, the date of the ceremony at Malfoy Manor, and the mutual respect between two individuals from different worlds choosing to unite for a shared future. It’s perfect.”
“‘A shared future,’” Draco read aloud, his voice flat. “And this bit: ‘The friendship, which developed over recent months through mutual professional respect…’ Granger, no one who has ever met either of us will believe we became friends. Respect? Maybe, grudgingly. Not friendship.”
“What would you suggest?” she challenged, folding her arms. “That we tell them the truth? That it’s a cold-blooded contract to save your estate and further my legislation?”
“I suggest we tell a better lie.” He leaned over, snatched her quill, and drew a careful line through two paragraphs. In the margin, he wrote four words.
Hermione watched his movements, her jaw tight. When he stepped back, she pulled the parchment toward her and read his annotation. Her lips pressed into a thin, white line.
“Obviously besotted?” Her voice was dangerously quiet.
“It’s plausible,” Draco said, shrugging. “Unexpected, scandalous, but… human. People understand a reckless, inexplicable attraction. They don’t understand two politicians drawing up a merger. It’s too dry. It invites scrutiny.”
“So we’re to sell a fairy tale?” She stood up, her chair scraping back. “A whirlwind romance? Me, obviously besotted with you? The logistics are a nightmare. We’d have to stage sightings, plant anecdotes, fabricate an entire emotional history—”
“Which is exactly what anyone in our situation would be doing if this were real!” he countered, his own volume rising. “Do you think anyone just calmly announces a marriage? There’s gossip, speculation, moments seen in corridors. A look across a crowded room. An argument that ends with a kiss. That’s the story they’ll want. That’s the story that will stick.”
“I don’t do looks across crowded rooms, Malfoy. I do facts. I do plans.” She paced behind her desk, a caged bird. “This ‘obviously besotted’ narrative is flimsy. It’s emotional. It’s based on nothing.”
“Then we base it on something.” He was frustrated now, with her rigidity, with the whole impossible scheme. Blaise’s warning about truth in the heart mocked him. “We have to make it believable. For the vows to take, for the magic to… accept it, the performance has to be complete. We have to convince everyone, including ourselves, for a few hours at least.”
She stopped pacing and stared at him, her chest rising and falling with a quick, annoyed rhythm. The sunlight caught the flecks of amber in her brown eyes. “You’re talking about method acting a courtship.”
“I’m talking about survival. Your legislative gains won’t mean anything if the Wizengamot sniffs out the fraud and voids the marriage the second the ink is dry on my entail release. The scandal would bury us both.”
Silence fell, thick and hot. The hum of the enchanted ledger sounded louder.
Hermione’s gaze dropped to the parchment, to his four scrawled words. A muscle flexed in her cheek. When she spoke again, her voice was low, controlled, and utterly sharp.
“Fine, Malfoy. If we’re selling this, we’re doing it properly.” She planted her hands on the desk, leaning forward. “Your understanding of pureblood social theatrics is undoubtedly superior. So, tutor me. The story says we’ve been secretly seeing each other for months. That we’re obviously besotted. Show me what that looks like.”
Draco blinked. “What, now?”
“No time like the present.” A grim, determined smile touched her lips, devoid of any real warmth. It was a challenge. “Consider this our first briefing. So. How does Draco Malfoy, supposedly besotted, behave?”
He felt oddly cornered. This was his idea, but her clinical approach to dissecting it was unnerving. “He’s… attentive. He listens. He remembers details.”
“Fascinating. Go on.”
“He finds reasons to be near the person. Creates coincidental meetings.”
“I see. And how does he look at her?”
Draco met her gaze. He tried to imagine it, to summon the facade. He let his own mask drop just a fraction, allowed a focus he usually reserved for tailing a suspect to settle on her. He took in the determined set of her mouth, the intelligence burning in her eyes, the defiant curl against her temple. He didn’t soften his expression, but he narrowed it, intensifying it. “Like she’s the only person in the room,” he said, his voice quieter. “Like he’s solving a puzzle only she presents.”
Hermione didn’t look away, but a faint flush crept up her neck. She cleared her throat. “And how does she look at him?”
“That,” Draco said, leaning back and breaking the tension with a sardonic twist of his mouth, “is your department to figure out. But I’d suggest less glaring scrutiny and more… reluctant fascination.”
She huffed a breath, straightening up. “This is absurd.”
“It’s necessary. We need a shared reference. A backstory we can both cite without hesitation. How did the ‘secret meetings’ start?”
“I don’t know!” She threw her hands up. “You tell me. You’re the architect of this romance.”
Draco thought for a moment, pacing a short line in front of her bookshelves. “The Werewolf Code revisions. You were heading the committee. I was the Auror Office liaison on security protocols. We were the last two in the conference room after that brutal session in January. We argued for an hour. You called me a bureaucratic obstructionist.”
“I recall,” Hermione said drily. “You called my proposed sanctuary zones a ‘hobbyist’s fantasy.’”
“And then,” Draco continued, building the scene in his mind, “it started to snow outside the window. You were exhausted. I was frustrated. I offered you a drink from my flask just to shut you up.”
“You don’t carry a flask.”
“For the story, I do. You took it. You said it was terrible. We kept arguing, but it was… quieter. Less venom. We found one point of agreement. A tiny, inconsequential clause about supply chains for Wolfsbane. It felt like a victory.” He glanced at her. “That’s how it starts. Not with a bang. With a temporary ceasefire.”
Hermione was watching him, her earlier irritation replaced by a pensiveness. She slowly sat back down. “And then?”
“And then you ‘accidentally’ left your notes on my desk. I owled them back with a correction to your Arithmancy equation in the margin. You were furious. You stormed into my office to tell me I was wrong.”
“Was I?”
“No. But my correction was inelegant. You showed me a better way. We had coffee. It became a thing. A weekly debate over coffee. Which became a drink after work. Which became…” He gestured vaguely. “This.”
She was silent, absorbing the fiction. He could almost see her filing the details away, cross-referencing them with actual Ministry calendars. “It’s not entirely implausible,” she conceded, grudgingly.
“It has to be more than plausible. It has to feel lived-in.” He ran a hand through his hair, the reality of the undertaking settling heavily on him. “We need to be able to mention that snowstorm, or the taste of that terrible whiskey, and have it feel like a real memory. We need inside jokes. Pet names.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Figure of speech, Granger.” He sighed. “But we need something. A shorthand. We’re going to be observed every second from now until the ceremony, and for three years after. The Prophet will dig. Our friends will ask questions. Our enemies will look for cracks.”
Hermione nodded slowly, her business-brain finally engaging with the problem on his terms. “We need field practice. A controlled environment to test the narrative.”
“What do you suggest?”
She looked at the clock on her wall, then back at him, her decision clicking into place. “The Prophet announcement is set for Friday. That gives us two days. Reconvene this evening. Eight o’clock. Take me on a proper date.”
Draco stared at her. “A what?”
“A date,” she repeated, enunciating clearly as if he were slow. “The story says we’ve been on them. We need to be seen on one. We need to practice the… the dynamic. So pick a place. Somewhere public but not intrusive. And we’ll run the scenario. See if we can sell it.”
The absurdity was profound. He, Draco Malfoy, was being given a homework assignment to take Hermione Granger on a practice date to perfect their fake relationship. A sharp, humourless laugh escaped him. “Any preferences? Or shall I surprise my ‘besotted’ bride-to-be?”
“Surprise me,” she said, her expression once more all steely resolve. “But choose wisely. If it’s some pretentious pureblood-only club, I’ll walk out. And if you can’t manage to be at least marginally charming, as the story supposedly claims, then we go back to my property-transaction announcement and take our chances with the magic.”
She held his gaze, and the challenge was clear. This was the first test. Not of the contract, but of their ability to collaborate on the lie.
“Fine,” he said, turning toward the door. “Eight o’clock. Wear something you wouldn’t usually wear to the office.”
“Why?”
“Because,” he said, glancing back, “if this is the story, then part of it is that I make you want to.” He left before she could respond, the click of the door cutting off whatever indignant or thoughtful reply she might have crafted.
Alone in the hallway, he let out a long, slow breath. The scent of lavender and ink seemed to have seeped into his clothes. He checked his watch. He had five hours to invent a convincing first date for a relationship that had never happened.
As he walked, he pulled a small, blank card from his pocket—a referral from Blaise for a new restaurateur in Diagon Alley, a half-Veela who was causing a stir. It was public, it was fashionable, and it was definitely not a place anyone would expect to find the two of them together.
It would have to do.