Draco Takes a Mark

Chapter 14

The dress Draco chose from Hermione's catalogue of holiday robes did not arrive at Hogwarts until the morning of Slughorn's party.

"It's a Christmas miracle," Draco grumbled when she told him.

She stepped closer to him in the alcove where she'd stopped him to tell him the good news. "Malfoy, either stop being so fussy about it or come with me to the party. I'll throw Cormac over right now."

He sighed and declined, trying to cheer up.

His reasons for not wanting word about his connection to Hermione to spread outside the school were still perfectly good reasons. But in addition to them, Draco needed to remain available to Borgin tonight. The school was emptying for the holidays, making this evening a prime time to arrange a test of Draco's progress with the sham of his cabinet repair project. He had worked on it all term, nervous and sick with self-loathing, caught in a task so vile he had no one to call on but Crabbe and Goyle to disguise themselves and stand watch outside the Room of Hidden Things. They wouldn't be watching tonight.

The repair process was slow -- Draco made sure of it. It meant for some unpleasant meetings where his mother was sent to beg the Dark Lord to be patient with him, but awful as the meeting were, they were preferable to having Death Eaters in the castle for Christmas. After all these months, the cabinet was no longer useless but it was still not fully repaired. Draco was sure of it -- almost sure. He and Borgin would assess the full extent of his progress tonight.

After the test, a report would be made to the Dark Lord, and a little more time would be bought -- more time to keep his mother safe even in her death-drowned house, more time for Snape to pretend to be searching the school for the witch who cast the love charm.

The truth was that the Dark Lord would rather see Hogwarts overrun with Death Eaters than infiltrated by spies. He'd rather have the headmaster killed and the witch who cast the love charm captured through a bold invasion rather than through treachery. It was better for his movement. Treachery was a weapon for spies and cowards, not conquerors like he envisioned himself to be.

When she had finished dressing for the party, Hermione climbed to the seventh floor, to the Room of Hidden Things. Draco always seemed to be able to summon it these days, and he was hidden there tonight himself, making it visible to her. She came through the door to find him on the rug, tossing an apple between his hands, sitting in front of a mass of broken wooden furniture, most of it draped in dingy white dust covers, some in richly coloured velvet.

Light was coming from somewhere but the room was still so dim the pink of her dress may as well have been coloured blue. As he always did at these pre-event meetings for fancy dress parties they couldn't attend together, Draco sprang to his feet at the sight of her. The dress was self-tailoring, perfectly fitted, cut in a low V in the front, slim at the waist, with a full, gathered knee-length skirt. Her arms were bare and she wore her hair down, falling past her shoulders, pinned up and away from her face in the front.

He squinted at her. "Granger, are you blushing?"

She took his hand and let him pull her to him. "Maybe a little. The neckline -- it's lovely on paper, and I'd think nothing of it on someone else, but it's not how I usually dress."

His right hand curled around her waist, a dance hold that came naturally to them even though they had danced in public together precisely once. "It's perfect, a grown up look," he said. "You're not some girl done up in a fancy dress anymore. You look like who you really are: a beautiful woman."

Her hand rose from his shoulder to his neck. "Do you like me as a woman? That's not who I was when you first took me on."

He pulled her tighter and turned them in a circle, dancing in rhythm though without music. "I love you like this, and every other way there is for you to be."