Chapter 17: The Interrogation at Breakfast
The kitchen smelled of burnt toast and regret. Sunlight, too cheerful for the occasion, streamed through the large windows overlooking the neglected back garden, illuminating a constellation of crumbs on the mahogany table. Draco stared at a congealing mass of scrambled eggs on his plate as if they held the answer to a question he couldn’t bring himself to ask.Blaise leaned against the counter, sipping black coffee from a heavy ceramic mug. He watched Draco with the focused curiosity of a scientist observing a baffling specimen.
“So,” Blaise began, his voice a lazy drawl that sliced through the quiet. “You let the woman you’ve been quietly, and rather pathetically, obsessed with for months just walk out the door. Without even a poorly constructed argument.No dramatic declaration.Just a stoic nod.” He took another slow sip. “Bold strategy. Let’s see how it plays out for you.”
Theo, rummaging in the cupboard for a clean spoon, snorted. “He’s cultivating an air of mysterious sorrow.Very fashionable. Tragic hero stuff.” He found a spoon, examined it for spots, and deemed it acceptable.“Did you at least get her new Floo address? Oh, wait. You had her sleeping twenty feet down the hall for weeks and now you’re back to square one.Brilliant.”
Draco’s knuckles whitened around his fork. “It wasn’t like that,” he muttered, the words scraping against his throat.
“It was exactly like that,” Blaise corrected smoothly.“You had her in your orbit.You made her laugh. You even, Merlin help us, shared parts of your actual self. And then you just… let go.” He shook his head, a gesture of profound disappointment. “I’ve seen you scheme for months to acquire a rare Niffler-breeding licence. You put less effort into keeping a brilliant, beautiful witch in your life.”
“It’s complicated,” Draco said, the weakness of the phrase tasting like ash.Theo dropped into a chair beside him, the legs screeching on the tile. “It’s simple,” he stated, his usual playful demeanour sharpened into something earnest. “You’re terrified.And now you’re an idiot.Fix it. Before she finds some Ministry twat in impeccably dull robes who’ll appreciate her and quote regulatory statutes at her over breakfast.Someone who isn’t you.”
The image was a physical blow. Some earnest, stable, uncomplicated wizard.Bringing her flowers that didn’t glow in the dark. Talking about grain tariffs over dinner. Touching her with hands that had never stained themselves with Dragon’s blood or crafted a poison antidote. The fork in Draco’s hand bent, just slightly, with a soft metallic whine.
He stood up abruptly, his chair legs scraping a louder, more violent counterpart to Theo’s.“I have work,” he announced, his voice hollow.
He left his ruined breakfast and the weight of their scrutiny on the table. As he passed the doorway, he saw it: a forgotten, half-read copy of Advanced Charm Theory she’d left on the sideboard, a curl of her hair still caught in the spine.He didn’t touch it. It felt like a artifact from a lost civilization.
Three streets away, the silence in Hermione’s new flat had taken on a texture.It was no longer an empty void; it was a held breath. Sunlight illuminated the dust motes she’d yet to Vanish, painting stripes across the meticulously organized spines of her books. She’d spent two hours arranging them, not by subject, but by a complex system of usage frequency and colour-gradient that soothed a frantic part of her brain.
She paused, a hefty volume on Centaur treaty law in her hands, and her gaze drifted to the one unplanned empty space.Her nightstand. It was bare, save for her wand and a glass of water.A clean, empty stage.
The small box containing the phial of Moondew sat on her kitchen counter, where she’d left it the night before. She hadn’t moved it.To move it would be to make a decision. To place it on the nightstand would be to admit she needed its soft, alien light in the dark. To tuck it away in a drawer would be to dismiss a gesture that had felt, against all reason, like a fragment of a soul offered.She shelved the book with a decisive thump.
Her mind, ever the escape hatch, latched onto work.The report on international Portkey fraud was due Monday. She unrolled her parchment, sharpened her quill with excessive force, and buried herself in the dry, safe logic of legislative loopholes. Words like “jurisdictional oversight” and “apparition trace dilution” filled the page.They meant nothing. They were walls of sound to block out the memory of a soft click of a door latch.After an hour, her hand cramped.The words began to blur. She stood, stretching, and wandered to the window. The London skyline was a grey tapestry of roofs and chimneys. Somewhere in that tapestry was a townhouse with a grand staircase and a vase that usually held lavender.A knock at her door made her jump.
It wasn’t Ginny’s impatient rap.This was tentative, almost formal. Her heart performed a clumsy, hopeful somersault before she brutally chastised it.It was probably the caretaker about the bins.
She opened the door.
It was Theo Nott, holding a brown paper bag that smelled overwhelmingly of garlic and butter.“Delivery,” he announced, breezing past her into the flat. He looked around, nodding appreciatively.“Bookshelves installed already.I’m impressed. It’s very you. A bit sterile, but we’ll fix that.” He headed straight for her small kitchen table and plopped the bag down.“I brought pasta. Blaise is moping, Draco is being a plague of silent suffering, and I refuse to dine in a crypt. So we’re having dinner here. It’s Thursday.”
“It’s Wednesday, Theo.”
“I’m instituting a new schedule.Personal flexibility.” He began unpacking containers, not waiting for permission. The scent of fettuccine Alfredo filled the sterile room, instantly making it feel more lived-in. “Besides, you look like you’ve been wrestling with a particularly tricky bit of arithmancy for six hours straight. You need carbs and gossip.”
The sheer normality of it was an anchor. She found herself smiling, a real one, for the first time since she’d closed that door.“What’s the gossip?”
Theo gave her a significant look as he set out forks. “Our mutual blonde friend is currently in his lab, ostensibly working on a commissioned Bruise-Balming solution for the Cannons. In reality, he’s been staring at the same cauldron for forty minutes.I checked.He’s in a state. It’s delightful.”
Hermione’s cheeks warmed.She focused on opening a container of salad. “That’s not gossip, that’s just… an observation.”
“It’s gossip when it involves a man who once told me, and I quote, ‘sentiment is a structural weakness in the potion of life,’ currently resembling a kicked kneazle because you’re not in the house.” Theo sat, gesturing for her to join him.“Eat. And tell me you’re not thinking about it.”
She sat.She twisted pasta around her fork.The aroma was divine. “I’m thinking about Portkey fraud.”
“Liar.” He ate a large mouthful, watching her. “He gave you something, didn’t he? When you left.”
Hermione’s eyes flicked involuntarily to the kitchen counter, to the small black-wrapped package. Theo’s gaze followed.“Ah,” he said softly, his tone losing its teasing edge. “May I?”
She nodded, a tight little movement. Theo got up, retrieved the box, and placed it on the table between them.He didn’t open it. He just looked at it, then at her.
“You know,” he said, his voice uncharacteristically gentle, “for years, Draco’s way of caring was to throw money at a problem. The best brooms, the most expensive tickets.Then it became about influence—using the Malfoy name to open doors. This,” he tapped the box, “this is different.This is him paying attention. This is him giving a part of his world, the one he actually values. The one with moon phases and rare enzymes and silent, beautiful things that grow in the dark.”
Hermione stared at the stark words on the note, still visible where the paper was tucked: For the dark.
“He let me go,” she whispered, the words finally escaping their cage. “He just stood there and let me go.”
Theo sighed, a long, weary sound. “Hermione, the man has the emotional range of a teaspoon on a good day. Letting you go was probably the only thing he knew how to do that wouldn’t feel like he was staining you. Staining this.” He pushed the box an inch closer to her.“He’s an idiot.We’ve established this. But he’s our idiot. And I think you might care about the idiot, too.”
The pasta was getting cold. The silence stretched, but this one was different, filled with the truth Theo had laid bare between the garlic bread and her fear.Finally, Hermione picked up the box. The glass was cool against her palm.The Moondew inside pulsed, a slow, patient rhythm.
Without a word, she stood, walked to her bedroom, and placed the phial on the empty nightstand. In the dim afternoon light, its glow was faint but unmistakable—a tiny, captured moon on her horizon.She returned to the table.Theo’s face split into a wide, triumphant grin.
“Right,” he said, clapping his hands together. “Now that’s settled, tell me everything about Portkey fraud. And then we’re going to discuss how you’re going to fix this. Because contrary to popular belief, just because he started this mess doesn’t mean you can’t finish it.” He winked. “Slytherins appreciate a good counter-move.”