The Gralfoy Affair (or, The Oblivious Ones) - Dramione

Chapter Two

In truth, Hermione didn't care if Draco Malfoy ate or not. Still, every afternoon, she came to the back garden with something edible for him to tear to shreds, delicately, deliberately. He was like an emaciated raccoon, nimble fingers and deep shadows around his eyes, picking at his food as she sat on the bench between him and sleepy Brutus. Mangled snacks gave their time together a focus other than conversation. When they did talk, they weren't hostile and vulgar, as they used to be at school. Instead, their talk was strange, fascinating to her in its oddness, its detachment from the emotional context of their history.

"You really remember, Malfoy?" she asked him once. "You remember the days before the hospital?"

"Everything," he answered. "I remember it all--all of it but what it must have felt like."

Today her offering was something special, nothing taken from the hospital dining hall but something owled from the Burrow that morning, still warm from the Weasley family kitchen when it arrived at her window. It was a thick slice of sponge cake full of gumdrops which Malfoy was now pinching between his fingers, one by one, setting them down on the bench in a straight line inching its way toward Hermione's leg.

"The gooey half," he said, "is your half."

She had to laugh, like a cough, just once. "This is not what I envisioned when I invited you to share."

"This is from your family?"

She smoothed her hair and dropped it behind her shoulders. "From the Weasleys? Yes. Just eat it."

"They love you?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Malfoy, what a thing to say--"

"Why would anyone send this to someone they were supposed to care for?"

She watched his fingers dropping cake crumbs into the grass too close to his feet for the pigeons to tiptoe over to eat them up. Melted gumdrops in purple, green, yellow. "Amethyst, emerald, topaz," he called them. Sticky jewels advancing toward her. But the thick patina on an orange one had cracked and burst, coating the tip of his index finger with gelatin and sugar when he touched it. He frowned at the stickiness, flicked his hand hard, but the sugar stayed stuck to his skin.

"What did you expect?" she asked, reaching into the pocket on the front of her smock for her wand to clean him up. He hadn't seen his own wand for two years, not since they took him in. It had been brand new then and, frankly, he hardly remembered it.

He growled at himself over his candy-coated fingers, and there, for the first time since their re-acquaintance, Hermione saw the real Draco Malfoy--Hogwarts Malfoy, Slytherin Malfoy, the Malfoy she and Ron and Harry had known. His lip curled back in disgust, eyes narrowed in anger. He was on his feet, scanning the yard for someplace to wipe his fingers clean.

She gripped her wand inside her pocket, waiting, experimenting, her compassion for the pallid psychiatric inmate curbed by his sudden resemblance to the glowering, towering true Malfoy. "Lick it off," she told him. "It's a sweet. It won't hurt you."

He flinched at the suggestion but raised his hand toward his face, wetting his lips.

"Yes, that's it," she laughed at him. "Pretend you're a nice cat. Just open your mouth and--"

He swore. "Sick," he said, holding his own wrist as if to restrain himself. "No. Help me, Granger."

"If you don't want to lick it, just wipe it on your smock," she said.

He looked down at his white hospital shirt, and when he looked up, the corner of his mouth was twitching--a sneer or a smile. "I'll wipe it on your smock, Granger."