Chapter 1: Ink and Obsession
The office always smelled like old parchment and dust, but tonight there was another scent haunting the edges of Draco’s awareness. Lavender. It was faint, clinging to the wool of a forgotten scarf draped over the back of Hermione Granger’s empty chair. His chair was ten feet from hers, a divide he measured constantly.
The ghostly glow of his desk lamp carved a small pool of light in the vast, dark Department. Everyone else had gone home hours ago. The only sound was the scratch of his quill, a frantic, jagged noise against the silence.
He opened the leather-bound journal. The left-hand pages were neat, titled in sharp, slanted script. Reasons.
She chews the end of her quill until it’s a mangled mess. It’s disgusting.
Her hair is a permanent distraction. A cloud of insubordination.
She argues with superiors simply to hear her own voice. A know-it-all in perpetuity.
She hums while reading. It’s a tuneless, irritating buzz.
He paused, the black ink gleaming wet. He could hear the humming in his memory, a low, absent-minded vibration from this afternoon. He’d been trying to compose a memo on international Floo regulations. Her sound had filled the space between them, a live wire of presence.
His hand moved almost of its own volition to the margin. The script here was smaller, tighter, as if trying to hide.
The way her bottom lip catches under her teeth when she’s concentrating.
The specific scent of her—ink, rosemary, and that damned lavender.
The single freckle just below her right ear.
The sound is not a buzz. It’s a low G. It resonates.
He slammed the book shut, the sound like a gunshot in the quiet. His breath clouded in the cold air. He was a Malfoy. He was an Ministry employee in good standing. He was a man who had seen the dungeons of his own home, the Dark Mark burning in his sky. He did not sit in the dark writing poetry about Hermione Granger’s freckles.
“Get a grip,” he muttered to the empty desks.
The flash of green light from the dying Floo network made him flinch. A head appeared, hovering in the grate.
“Malfoy? You still lurking?” It was Robards, the head of the department. His face, peering from the flames, was all weary exasperation.
“Working on the Lestrange evidence logs,” Draco said, his voice perfectly even. A lie. The logs were done.
“Right. Well, Granger’s assigned to the preliminary review with you. She’s taking point.” Robards’s expression was unreadable, but the message was clear. Watch her. Or, more accurately, she’s watching you. “She’ll be in at seven tomorrow. Don’t be late.”
The head vanished, leaving a few spinning embers.
Draco ran a hand over his face. Of course. The Lestrange case was a tangle of dark artefacts and cursed testimony. It required a mind like a surgical blade. It required her. And the Ministry, in its infinite wisdom, required him to be there—the redeemed Death Eater, the walking testament to the power of second chances, shackled to the war’s brightest hero.
He opened the journal again. His quill hovered.
Reason #47: She is a permanent reminder of my failures. The ink flowed, dark and spiteful.
In the margin, his hand trembled slightly.
She never mentions them. Not once.
A stack of files on his desk caught his eye. On top was a memo in her distinct, looping handwriting. A correction to his analysis of a Wizengamot bylaw. He’d been wrong. She was right. She’d phrased it politely, factually. It still felt like a branding iron.
He remembered her laugh from last week. A snort, really, unexpected and unfiltered, when Weasley had told some joke in the atrium. She’d clapped a hand over her mouth, her eyes crinkling. He’d been twenty feet away, getting coffee, and the sound had stopped him dead. He hadn’t heard it since.
The clock on the wall ticked, a skeletal sound. He should go. The manor was empty, cold. This office, haunted by her scarf, was somehow worse.
He stood, his chair scraping. He tucked the journal into his inner robe pocket. It felt like carrying a live coal. As he extinguished the lamp, plunging the office into deep blue shadows, his eyes went to her desk. It was compulsively organized. Except for the scarf.
He walked over. He didn’t mean to. His fingers touched the wool. It was softer than he expected. He lifted it. The lavender scent bloomed, mixing with the dust and parchment. For a terrible, weak moment, he considered bringing it to his face.
“Pathetic,” he whispered.
He dropped it back on the chair and turned to leave. His foot caught on the leg of his own desk. A jar of ink rattled, tipped, and fell. Black ink spread across the polished wood like a dark stain, consuming a stack of blank parchment forms.
“Fantastic.”
He whipped out his wand. “Tergeo.” The ink siphoned away. The forms were ruined. He’d have to replace them from the supply closet down the hall before the morning, or Parkinson from Logistics would file another complaint.
He stalked out of the office, his footsteps echoing. The supply closet was a narrow, dark room that smelled of cedar and mothballs. He fumbled for the light. As it flickered on, he saw it immediately. On a high shelf, tucked behind boxes of standard-issue quills, was a small, charmed thermos. He knew what it was. He’d seen her with it. She charmed it to keep her tea hot through the long hours.
He took it down. It was warm in his hand. Plain blue. He unscrewed the lid. The smell of Earl Grey, sharp and citrusy, wafted out. Without thinking, he took a sip. It was too sweet, exactly how she liked it.
A wave of self-loathing, hot and sour, washed over him. He was drinking her tea in a supply closet. He was a thief of petty, intimate things. He shoved the thermos back, knocking over a box of red tape. It scattered across the floor.
“For fuck’s sake.”
He was on his knees, gathering the coils, when he heard the click of heels on the linoleum floor outside. Too late for janitors. The steps were familiar, brisk, purposeful.
He froze, a stupid animal caught in lamplight. The footsteps stopped outside the closet door. The handle turned.
The door opened.
Hermione Granger stood silhouetted in the fluorescent light of the hallway. She wore a simple grey sweater, her hair a massive halo around her startled face. Her eyes went from his face to his hands, full of red tape, to the open shelf behind him.
A beat of silence stretched, thin and agonizing.
“Malfoy?” she said, her voice laced with pure bewilderment. “What are you doing?”
He stood up too quickly, his head brushing the shelf. “The ink. I spilled ink. On the forms.” He sounded insane.
Her eyes narrowed slightly, travelling over the scene. They lingered on the shelf near the thermos. He saw her put it together—the proximity, his frantic gathering. Her expression didn’t change to anger, but to something worse: a flicker of understanding, quickly veiled.
“Right,” she said slowly. She stepped into the closet, reaching past him. Her sleeve brushed his arm. A static shock jumped between them. She flinched back slightly, then grabbed a fresh ream of parchment. “Robards told me about the review. Seven a.m. Don’t be late.”
She said it evenly, a colleague stating a fact. Then she was gone, her footsteps retreating down the hall.
Draco stood alone in the mothball-scented dark, his heart hammering against his ribs. She’d seen him. She’d seen something. She hadn’t accused him of anything, which was infinitely more terrifying.
He walked back to the office, replaced the forms, and left the Ministry entirely. The night air in London was a damp slap. On the Apparition point, he pulled the journal from his pocket. Under the sickly yellow streetlight, he turned to a fresh page.
He wrote nothing in the main column. In the margin, his quill moved in a frantic, desperate scrawl.
She found me in the dark.
She didn’t curse me.
She looked at me and I wanted her to never stop.
I am utterly and completely fucked.
He tore the page out, crumpled it into a tight ball, and shoved it deep into his pocket. It sat there, a confession burning a hole against his thigh, all the way home to the silence of the manor. The chapter of his evening was closed, but the story, he knew with a sinking certainty, was only just beginning. And he had no idea what to write next.