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

Chapter Five

The dizziness abated enough for Draco Malfoy to finally stand up after his first apparation in over two years. On his feet, he looked from side to side, pulled a leaf from a hedge as if it was a botanical exhibit, and nodded sharply. The grass had grown tall and the hedges were shaggy as great hairy ogres, but he would have been able to tell just from the smell and taste of the air in this place that he was in his long lost miserable ancestral home.

"This," he told Hermione, far too grandly, "is Malfoy Manor. We're here because I didn't trust myself to do a rushed, side-along apparation after all this time with the kind of neat elegance we'd need to arrive and carry on in a busy street. I trusted you to do it even less, with the man of your dreams, or whatever, bearing down on us in his night-clothes. So at the last minute I brought us somewhere I couldn't possibly miss, and where if we did botch it, no one would notice."

She had to admit this was fair enough, even wise, considering how it had turned out. But she had to add, "And I suppose it's not at all relevant that you can find something here to wear beside Davey Mikeldee's street clothes."

"If you mean to ask, can we find some of the supplies you were whinging about not having while packing last night, then yes, that's a benefit of coming here too. Though," he narrowed his eyes, squinting through the hedges, "it looks like my parents made good on their intentions to send everyone away and seal the place up until after they're--rehabilitated. Place is hardly recognizable." He began walking along the border of the hedge, looking for a way beyond it.

"Always so practical, your parents," Hermione said. "I'm all for practical now. Did you notice, Malfoy? Did you notice I'm following behind you, looking for a gate instead of lying in the lane-way bawling my eyes out at losing yet another entire family, a wonderful loving family, for the second time in my life?"

From over his shoulder, he turned to look at her. "Maybe you're not bawling, but your eyes are doing that 'swimming' thing."

She choked out a little sob, then another, fighting to stifle the sound as they walked and walked around the manor grounds. "Go ahead, Granger," he said, finally, shouting in an almost jolly way. "Let it all out. Everyone cries at Malfoy Manor, and nobody minds at all."

Behind him, her sob changed a little. He turned, walking backwards, facing her. She was finished crying, almost laughing now. "You're all so horrible," she said. And they smiled at each other, eye to eye, like actual friends for a moment. "Where is the gate? We need to get inside before anyone comes after us."

At that, he stopped before a slight bend in the hedge. "This is where the ends have grown together. The gate should be here."

She stepped forward to see.

He pointed through the leaves. "Lookit. They enchanted the hedge to grow ten years worth of foliage for every two and it's gone and--and entombed the gates."

She smirked. "Sleeping Beauty's castle."

"Well, it's old, grade II listed, but it's just a house."

"No, I don't mean literally. I'm talking about an imaginary castle in a story, a muggle fairy tale. Yes, they have them too, Malfoy. Even one about a thicket of thorns that grows for a hundred years to protect the castle of an innocent princess held captive in an enchanted sleep."

Malfoy was muttering something about anti-magical propaganda.

"Don't be like that," she teased, hooking her arm around his neck and craning it uncomfortably downward, like she was George Weasley. He yelled out, shocked, but she shouted over him. "And if this is Sleeping Beauty's castle, Malfoy, then that would make you the trapped princess yourself--"