Chapter 4: The Missing Spectacle
The silence was the worst part.
Three days. Seventy-two hours of uninterrupted peace in her flat. The armchair remained steadfastly at room temperature. Her quills wrote only what she told them to. The walk to the Ministry was devoid of aerial escorts. Golden afternoon light pooled on her floorboards, undisturbed by any foreign magic.
Hermione stood at her window, a cold cup of tea forgotten in her hand. The bustling square below was a postcard of normalcy: students huddled over textbooks, a witch selling charmed flowers that bloomed and wilted in a five-minute cycle, the distant melody of a ramshackle band. But her focus was narrowed on the windows across the way.
His curtains were open, offering a clean, unobstructed view into an empty sitting room. The expensive, minimalist furniture looked like a showroom display. No moving shadows, no flicker of light from a fireplace, no silhouettes. It was just… space. Vacant.
She should have been elated. This was what she wanted. A cease-fire. A return to her sanctuary.
Instead, a low-grade agitation hummed under her skin. The quiet felt deliberate, a new and more sophisticated provocation. She’d spent two evenings perfecting a retaliatory hex—a charming little spell that would cause all the socks in his wardrobe to subtly mismatch themselves, an annoyance just persistent enough to be maddening. It was elegant, non-destructive, and she was rather proud of it. Now, the knowledge of it sat in her mind like an un-fired arrow.
“You’re being absurd,” she told the empty room, her voice too loud in the stillness. She was jumping at shadows. Or rather, at the lack of them.
She turned from the window with force, setting the teacup down with a sharp click. She had research to do. A mountain of pre-trial motion summaries from the Goblin Liaison Office awaited her review. She settled into the cool, inert leather of the armchair, determined to lose herself in legalese.
An hour later, she realized she’d read the same paragraph about non-tradeable mineral rights seven times. Her gaze kept lifting, darting to the window like a compass needle finding north.
A knock at her door made her jump. It wasn’t his knock—that had been a precise, arrogant tap—this was a rapid, impatient staccato.
She opened it to find Pansy Parkinson standing in the hallway, a large, ribboned box in her arms. She looked impeccably annoyed.
“Don’t just stand there, Granger. It’s heavy. It’s for you.”
“For me?” Hermione blinked, standing aside automatically. Pansy swept in, her eyes doing a swift, appraising circuit of the flat before landing on the view.
“From the boutique. A client ordered a bespoke set of traveling robes, paid in advance, then decided to become a hermit in the Outer Hebrides. Vanished. They’re in your size. More or less. Figured you could use something that isn’t ministry-issue sackcloth.” Pansy dropped the box on Hermione’s sofa.
“That’s… unusually charitable,” Hermione said, suspicious.
“It’s not charity. It’s inventory clearance. And you loiter in front of my shop window every day on your way home. It’s bad for business. You look wistful. It depresses the customers.” Pansy wandered over to the window, peering across the alley. “He’s gone, then.”
The statement was casual, but it felt like a spotlight. “I wouldn’t know,” Hermione said, her tone carefully neutral.
“Of course you wouldn’t,” Pansy said dryly. “You just happen to be staring at his empty flat with the intensity of a hawk. He’s in Stockholm. Some last-minute potions investors’ summit. Theo’s with him. Probably arguing with Swedes about cauldron thickness as we speak.”
A sudden, unexpected knot loosened in Hermione’s chest. Stockholm. A business trip. Not a strategic retreat. Not a capitulation.
“Why are you telling me this?”
Pansy turned from the window, a smirk playing on her lips. “Because the simmering, unresolved sexual tension between the two of you is starting to affect the property values. Also, he’s been insufferable. Moping about his ‘failed campaign.’ Apparently, a flock of hawks and a warm chair don’t have the desired effect on modern witches. Who knew?”
Hermione felt her face grow warm. “It was harassment.”
“It was courtship,” Pansy corrected, rolling her eyes. “A deeply stupid, childish, Malfoy-brand of courtship, but the intent was glaringly obvious to everyone but you. And him, probably. He’s emotionally stunted. You’re just stubborn.” She gestured to the box. “Try the sapphire blue one. It’ll bring out the… whatever. I have to go. I have a four o’clock fitting for a witch who thinks leopard print is a neutral.”
And with that, she was gone, leaving behind a vacuum of silence and the scent of expensive perfume.
Hermione stood in the middle of her flat, Pansy’s words hanging in the air. Courtship. Luna’s crup. Neville’s observation about effort. It all lined up into a picture she had been deliberately refusing to see.
She wasn’t irritated by the silence. She was disappointed by it.
The realization was like a small, cold shock. She walked slowly to the box, undid the ribbon, and lifted the lid. Inside, folds of exquisite fabric shimmered. She drew out the robe Pansy mentioned—a deep, vibrant blue, cut from a fluid wool that felt like water in her hands. It was nothing she would ever buy for herself. It was daring.
On impulse, she shrugged off her cardigan and pulled the robe on. It settled over her shoulders with a perfect, tailored weight. She walked to the full-length mirror by her bedroom door.
The woman who looked back was unfamiliar. The blue was dramatic, the cut elegant yet severe. It looked like something a witch with a secret might wear. It looked like something that belonged in a Stockholm hotel room, at an investors’ summit.
She let out a slow breath. This was ridiculous. She was getting worked up over a spoiled, reformed bully who communicated via pranks and then fled the country. She was Hermione Granger. She had a twelve-point plan for her career and a five-year savings goal. She didn’t have time for dead gnomes.
Her eyes drifted back to the mirror, to the witch in the blue robe. The witch in the blue robe looked profoundly bored by twelve-point plans.
The setting sun now painted a deep orange stripe across the floor of Draco Malfoy’s empty flat. It highlighted a single detail she’d missed before. On the low table by his window, something small and green glinted. A potted plant. It hadn’t been there three days ago. A maid, perhaps? Or had he placed it there just before he left? A placeholder. A sign he was coming back.
She didn’t take the robe off. She stood there, wrapped in sapphire wool, watching the light change on a stranger’s plant, and acknowledged the simple, frustrating truth: she was waiting for him to come home. And the next move, when he did, would have to be hers.