A Second Look - A Dramione Story

Chapter 13

Warning: This is not my story. It is from RiverWriter on ao3.

---

"Oh Merlin, Draco," she moaned as he nibbled at her neck. It was Monday night and she'd come to the Manor for dinner with Draco and Scorpius. But Scorpius had been put to bed over and hour ago and their activities had evolved from talking to snogging on the couch.

"You like that?" He wondered as he ran his tongue across the spot he'd just bitten.

She shivered in his arms. "Yeah." And only then did it fully register that she'd pulled his shirt from his trousers and unbuttoned it. She jerked in surprise when her fingers found, not warm skin, but hard metal. She wrenched her eyes open and regarded the pendant she'd inadvertently captured between her fingertips which was dangling from Draco's neck on a delicate chain. It was positively pulsing with magic. "What's this?"

He immediately froze and she looked up to meet panicked eyes.

"Draco?" She questioned more quietly, the front of it was a simple depiction of the Scorpius constellation, but she could feel engravings on the. Before he could stop her she flipped it over to see some of the most complicated runic work she'd ever encountered- and that was saying something. She was able to begin deciphering it before Draco jerked it out of her hands.

Her magic had always tended towards the defensive, but in the wake of the war she could admit that she'd become somewhat obsessed with warding and protective enchanting. She'd gotten herself a masters in runes in her spare time and thrown herself into several major projects and she was now- at only 27- one of the leading experts on wards in Britain. Many would say she was the leading expert, but prejudice still ran deep and she was a muggleborn with some rather revolutionary ideas.

"This is a talisman that's blood linked to Scorpius." She prompted him to explain.

He squeezed his eyes shut as if he was in pain. "Please don't freak out," he pleaded.

She snatched the pendant back to study it. "Why would I freak out? This is beautiful work Draco."

She felt him exhale and looked up at him curiously.

"The blood magic doesn't scare you?"

"Blood magic kept my best friend alive for his entire childhood. I'm well aware that it can be distorted and made dark, but this isn't dark," she reached up to caress the hand that was clutching the pendant like it was a lifeline.

"I thought..."

She cocked an eyebrow at him.

"This is- at best- grey magic, and you're the Assistant Director of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement."

Hermione fought not to roll her eyes. "There are some benefits to being a muggleborn, we don't come with the same preconceptions," she explained, as gently as possible, without revealing her long-buried bitterness.

"It doesn't bother you?"

"Did you do this yourself?" She wondered, instead of responding directly to his question.

"Yeah, it took several months of research but it was too dangerous to leave to anybody else."

She took the pendant from him and rubbed it gently between her fingertips as she continued to examine the runes. "It's set to track him, monitor his health." She gazed up at him. "This was designed to keep him safe."

"Not everybody would see it like that," he countered.

"You could have manipulated the magic so that you could control him, that's why this is- as you say- 'grey' but you haven't, and I know that you wouldn't."