Chapter 2: Forbidden Appetizers
The scent of roast pheasant and rosemary was cloying. It couldn’t quite mask the other aroma in the Headmaster’s dining room: tension, old and sharp as a newly opened wound. The long mahogany table, a lake of polished wood under the crystal chandeliers, was a map of the war’s aftermath. On one side, the golden trio and their allies, faces still holding the bright, hardened look of victors. On the other, a handful of returned Eighth Years like Draco, their postures too stiff, their laughter a beat too late.
McGonagall had called it a ‘healing feast.’ Draco thought it felt more like a strategic deployment.
He was seated directly across from Hermione. Fate, or more likely McGonagall’s peculiarly Scottish idea of penance, had arranged it. Two places down to Hermione’s right, Ron Weasley was dissecting his bird with a focus usually reserved for high-stakes chess, his ears already flushing a tell-tale pink.
“So, Malfoy,” Dean Thomas said from further down, the words carrying over the polite clatter of silverware. “Hear you’re applying to the Magical Research Guild. For potions, is it?”
Draco took a slow sip of water, buying time. He could feel multiple sets of eyes on him. “Potion theory. Specifically, the neutralization of certain corrosive magical residues.” He kept his tone flat, informational. A fact, not a confession.
“Useful,” Hermione said, her voice clear and measured. She didn’t look at him, instead focusing on adding a tiny, precise amount of pepper to her potatoes. “The environmental damage from dark magical spills is still largely unaddressed by the Ministry’s clean-up crews. A standardized counter-agent would be revolutionary.”
Her defense was clinical, brilliant, and utterly devastating. It was why he loved her. It was also why he wanted to kick the table leg.
“Revolutionary,” Ron muttered, not quite under his breath. He finally looked up, his blue eyes finding Draco’s. “Suppose it helps to have an inside track on what needs cleaning up, yeah?”
The table went quiet. Lavender Brown’s fork scratched loudly on her plate.
“Ron,” Hermione said, a warning in that single syllable.
“What? Just making conversation.”
Draco set his goblet down. The crystal made a soft, definitive clink. He held Ron’s gaze, letting the silence stretch, letting the old hatred bubble between them. Then he offered a slow, thin smile. “Your insight, as always, is as deep as a teaspoon, Weasley.”
A muscle in Ron’s jaw twitched. Before he could retort, Hermione spoke again, her voice artificially bright as she turned to Parvati Patil. “Parvati, did you finalize your application for the Magical Law internship?”
The conversation splintered into safer channels. Under the cover of the table’s heavy linen drape, hemmed with those absurd embroidered vines, Draco shifted his foot. His leather shoe sought and found Hermione’s ankle, clad in a thin stocking. He hooked his around it, a firm, undeniable anchor.
Her breath hitched, just a tiny catch he only noticed because he was watching for it. She took a sip of pumpkin juice, her throat working. Her free hand, resting in her lap, disappeared under the tablecloth.
A second later, he felt her stocking-clad foot slide up his calf, a slow, deliberate friction. He nearly choked on his own mouthful of wine.
The juxtaposition was maddening. Above the table, she was the picture of scholarly composure, debating the ethical implications of self-modifying parchments with Ernie Macmillan. Below it, she was tracing the line of his shin with her toes, a secret, scandalous morse code.
“Everything alright, Malfoy?” Ron’s voice cut in. He was staring, his eyes narrowed. “You look a bit flushed.”
“The wine,” Draco managed, his voice slightly rough. He cleared his throat. “A bit robust for pumpkin juice, isn’t it?”
He felt Hermione’s foot press a warning against his leg before retreating. The loss was immediate, a physical coolness.
The main course plates vanished with a wave of McGonagall’s wand, replaced by bowls of pear and ginger pudding. The shift in the meal seemed to amplify the noise, the conversations layering into a dull roar. It was in this cover of sound that Draco leaned forward, just slightly. Hermione instinctively mirrored him, reaching for the little dish of salt that sat between a pepper mill and a vase of crystallized flowers.
Their fingers didn’t touch. But as her hand closed around the small porcelain dish, his voice, low and meant only for her, slithered through the gap.
“Pass the salt.”
It wasn’t the words. It was the texture of them. It was the library in his tone, the promise of ruined plans and whispered secrets against ancient bookshelves. It was, I think about the way you gasp. I remember the weight of you against me. Midnight can’t come soon enough.
Her knuckles around the fork at her place setting went bone-white. A faint, delicate pink climbed up her neck, staining her cheeks. She didn’t look at him. She slid the salt dish across the table, her movements precise, her eyes fixed on her dessert bowl.
Ron, watching this silent exchange, frowned. His own goblet of pumpkin juice, ignored at his elbow, began to bubble. Tiny, agitated effervescence rose from the bottom, fizzing softly against the sides. He didn’t seem to notice the magical spillover of his irritation, too busy trying to decipher the silent language happening right in front of him.
“You sure you’re alright, Hermione?” Ron asked, his voice louder now, demanding entry into whatever was happening. “You’ve gone all quiet.”
“I’m perfectly fine, Ron,” she said, her tone landing somewhere between fond and final. “Just thinking about the Arithmancy problem set for tomorrow. It’s quite complex.”
“Right. Arithmancy.” Ron sat back, not believing her, but helpless against the wall of her intellect. He shot another dark look at Draco, who merely quirked an eyebrow in response, the picture of aristocratic indifference, even as his pulse hammered against his ribs.
The rest of the feast passed in a torturous blur of polite conversation and covert glances. Draco participated just enough to not draw suspicion, all the while mapping the subtle shifts in Hermione’s expression—the press of her lips when someone made a veiled comment about ‘second chances,’ the slight softening of her eyes when Neville mentioned his Mimbulus mimbletonia was thriving. He saw her, wholly and completely, in a room full of people who only saw fragments.
Finally, after an eternity of petits fours and tedious well-wishes, McGonagall rose. The dinner was over. Chairs scraped back, a cacophony of relief.
Draco stood, smoothing his robes. He offered a stiff nod to the Headmistress, then turned to go, the current of students pulling him towards the door. As he passed behind Hermione’s chair, where she was still collecting her purse, his hand, shielded by the din and the shuffling bodies, brushed the back of her neck. Just a whisper of contact, his fingers skating over the delicate hairs at her nape.
She stiffened, then slowly relaxed into the touch, a fleeting, invisible surrender.
Then he was past her, merging with the crowd leaving the room. He didn’t look back. He couldn’t. The image of Ron’s bubbling goblet, of Hermione’s white-knuckled grip on her fork, was seared into his mind. It was a tableau of what he stood to burn down.
He walked the familiar corridors back to the Slytherin dungeons, the castle’s nightly chill seeping into his bones. The taste of the expensive wine had gone sour in his mouth. The memory of her ankle hooked around his, of her foot on his calf, was the only warmth he carried. It felt like a brand. A promise, and a sentence.