A Change in Temperature

For Joanna Hemsley, who I promised this to a long time ago.

***

A year before the winter in which they died, Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger fell in love.

Draco Malfoy was a very sensible boy. Despite his almost legendary bad character, he was responsible, hard working, and self disciplined. He hated wasting time, and rarely partook in anything he didn't believe to be worthwhile. He never had much interest in girls, preferring to bathe in their attentions than to chase after them. This, unfortunately, meant he was an easy target for his older cousins, who apparently revelled in the idea that beautiful, rich, and intelligent Draco may be gay, and therefore bought it up as often as they could at family dinners. It wasn't a rumour Draco discouraged, as he had no intention to marry. He was ambitious, more so than even his father, and a wife wasn't part of his elaborate plans. Although he had been obliged under Malfoy family law to have his first fuck when he was sixteen, he had since maintained chastity worthy of priesthood. As far as he was concerned, sex and drink were the fastest roads into decadence and worthlessness, and those were destinations he wanted desperately to avoid.

Hermione Granger was a very dangerous girl. She had worked her entire life to build up as broad an understanding of the world as she could, but this, unfortunately, hadn't taught her about men. She had been blessed with a particular charm and charisma, but was completely oblivious to it. This granted her a particular type of innocence that was disturbing for her 18 years, but kept the men who met her on an invisible hook. She was bemused when, in her fourth year, Viktor Krum had asked her to the Yule Ball, and cast it off as him liking the studious types. When a childhood friend had molested her in the summer after her fifth year, Hermione chose to believe that the boy had simply had just too much to drink. And when Ron had confessed to her that he loved her, she decided he was desperate. She would never have believed the dreams that all three men had had about her, the sheets that were hurriedly washed in the middle of the night, the way her name sounded when it was moaned into a pillow, the hands that slid along pulsing skin.

*****

It began with a touch.

Her bag had broken. She kneeled by a staircase, collecting her books and quills. He was behind her; a smirk had tiptoed its way onto his lips. He snatched up the pouch of runes she was reaching for, and held it out of her reach

"Will you be needing this, Granger?" he sneered.

She had learned how to ignore him. He, on the other hand, had learned how to wait for her like French peasants in the Aude wait for wine to age.

"Give them," she whispered. She blinked rather too slowly.

Draco laughed. His arm stretched out, the pouch dangling between them.

Hermione was reminded of mistletoe.

And in an instant, her right arm had snatched out from her side, her fingers spidered at the cloth of the bag. His left hand grabbed her wrist.

They froze.

Blood pumping, hearts racing, a bag dropped on the floor, ink bottles broken, black, red, and blue streaming down the fissures between the stone tilling, colours that whispered into each other as they slid down the stairs, curious glances, a jealous glare, a clock in a tower that struck mid day an hour too late, a thin breeze that traced it's fingers across skin, stone, and paint, a fire that burned in a room above them, a single ray of sunshine that danced in it's reflection on the lake.

***

At first it was just looks. Ones that she stole at him across her cauldron in potions, and ones that he hid from others behind large textbooks and quills. He was endearing, in his confidence and perseverance. She was alluring, in her innocence and dark eyes. They pulled each other in, stitched their skin together with their veins, broke into each other's systems with thin knives that dug deep into their stomachs. Neither was stupid; they both knew that the moment in the hallway had not been the thunderbolt of love. It was something more carnal, something indented in their own animalism, their own instincts.

Malfoy,

I think it was the temperature change. We were cold; the heat from our bodies would have done it.

Granger

Granger,

You're probably right. Mudblood.

Malfoy

They're watching each other again.

He grabbed Belladonna Nott's wrist today. He stood there then just let go. He looked so furious in Charms.

Granger,

Charms classroom, 10:30

M

Black moonlight shining through the windows, rats of shadows slowly scrambling across the floor, branches screaming as they slide along the walls outside, the ink black lake reflects stars like bloodstains on white sheets.

She sits alone, black trousers and jumper, pale skin drawing her out of the dark. He pushes the door, finds her sitting at his desk practically swallowed in the nighttime. Her eyes slip into his, sense and logic building walls higher between them.

"What is it," she asked.

Neither of them was stupid.

***

Hogwarts Castle has been extensively researched and written about since it was founded about a thousand years prior to the incidents discussed here. Magical analysts, architects, and conspiracy theorists (as well as the odd marine biologist), have meticulously recorded each of it's oddities, legends (one may think of the so-called Chamber of Secrets), and histories as if writing about the history of a Very Important Country. Indeed, one particular writer has claimed that if Hogwarts were to be laid out completely flat, it would be big enough to be it's own little Luxembourg. Nevertheless, some of Hogwarts mysteries remain unsolved. Helen Fairhead spent a great deal of time attempting and failing to understand exactly why some staircase of Hogwarts took days off at a time, and why the Founders would have wanted such an impotent addition to the school. She would have been sadly disappointed to learn that it had been the work of one James Potter, and that his main motivation for it was for a bit of a laugh.

None of these esteemed researchers, however, had ever begun to examine the sheer number of empty, unused, "abandoned" classrooms that seemed to reproduce like the school like leaves in an autumn garden. Though there are no records on the founder's reasons for this, it would be fair to assume that Slytherin approved of the design as it made the castle look bigger and grander, Ravenclaw would have assumed that students would use them for their own study and magical practice, Hufflepuff would have considered them a great hangout for the students, and Gryffindor...well Gryffindor probably thought that the students of his house would use them as bases for revolutionary groups in the future. (A little known fact about Godric Gryffindor is that the man was a tad overconfident in the initiative of his students). It's fair to say though, that none of them would have expected or approved of the usage of these rooms as meeting grounds for Hermione and Draco's clandestine meetings at sometimes absurd hours of the night. Here, the pair of them would sit on window sills and watch the sun rise in total silence, sometimes staring at each other for long periods of time, and talk about things too big to concern them directly. Draco's favourite topic was that of religion: to him, the whole premises of the various (and different!) groups were more laughable than questionable. Hermione often lost her temper with him, and reminded him that people based their entire lives around their religion, and that it was simply disrespectful to dismiss them as easily as he did.

Hermione's favourite topic was that of human interaction. Being the only child in a workaholic family had inspired an inspiration in examining the relationship between a child's environment, and their eventual character. Draco always interrupted the conversation by telling her that his father was a bastard, and his father's father was a bastard, and so forth, and that that was all the evidence she bloody needed.

They never discussed their meetings. After that first note that Draco had sent Hermione, they simply followed each other discretely to relatively random rooms all over the castle. They never discussed the implication of these meetings either: neither had the patience or the courage to assess the nature of their relationship. There were, surprisingly, no rumours about their newfound alliance. But since friendly interaction between a Gryffindor and a Slytherin was as common at Hogwarts as it was to have a manticore cook breakfast for the students, no one ever really caught on.

The meetings carried on throughout their sixth year. When the summer rolled around, neither said good-bye to each other, but acknowledged their parting with a rare smile before boarding the Hogwarts Express. Hermione spent the two months with her parents in Greece, writing letters to Harry and Ron, reading through all her books for the coming year. Draco spent it alone in the Malfoy home: his idea of company there was to talk to the paintings that littered the corridors like hay in a barn.

***

A thin ray of moonlight stole its way through the window, and into the dark room.

Hermione closed the door behind her, and turned to face Draco. He pulled her closer, she pressed herself against him with all the need she had ever had. His hands clutched at the thin fabric of her t-shirt, closed his eyes and felt her bury her head in his neck. Her arms, wrapped around his waist, shook as she felt his heart beat through her body.

She'd missed the way she knew he needed her.

He kissed her. In their own darkness they found sights so beautiful they would never be seen on this earth. It was beyond her reason, his sense, and neither of them gave a damn. It was everything they could never own, could never witness, and it was all that they ever had. She'd melted into his blood months ago, in the freezing cold of winter, and he had wrapped himself into her heartbeat like nicotine in the moonlight of their evenings. However much they wanted each other, however much it couldn't exist, however much it destroyed them and however much it created them, it was all surreal, all too much like the dreams that slipped out of their hands when they both awoke in the morning. It was all too much like something that wasn't happening.

They didn't notice the eyes watching them in darkness.

***

I witnessed it all myself.

The flames caught the piece of parchment and engulfed it like waves around a wrecked ship. He stood and stared out of the window, his long fingers twisting around a vial from his desk. A rage unlike any he had felt before has filling his lungs. He watched red leaves fall off trees, watched them sink into the coffin of a dying autumn, and didn't as much as consider what he knew the winter would bring.

***

Draco took Hermione out to the grounds one night. They sat underneath the weeping willow and watched the giant squid underneath the thick film of ice over the lake. Hermione told Draco about the merpeople that lived down there, about how embarrassed she had been to discover that she would be the one thing Victor Krum would miss the most. Draco laughed and played with her hair, assuring her that the thing he would miss the most would be his talking mirror. She laughed, and pulled him towards her by the collar, kissing his forehead.

"I used to sit here with Harry and Ron and complain about you when we were in our first year," she said, smiling into his shoulder.

"And now?" he asked.

"I sit here with Harry and Ron and complain about you in our seventh year," she laughed.

"Oi," Draco barked, not without some amusement. She leant against his chest, and stared out at the Forbidden Forest.

"How the hell did we get here?" she whispered.

"Well, we climbed down the stairs that lead to the Astronomy Tower, turned right at the end of the Charms corridor, went straight until we reached -"

"You know what I mean," interrupted Hermione. They were silent for a while.

"I think," said Draco "We just went with the current. Do you know what I mean?"

"Sort of," said Hermione. She was quiet for a moment. "I think...I'm sort of grateful to that current."

The wind whipped around them once. If either of them knew that those would be the last twenty-four hours they would ever spend breathing on earth, they might not have stayed so long in the cold.

He held her close to him, feeling the curve of her waist in his palms, as she leaned her head back onto his shoulder. She stared at the nape of his neck, where his skin was the softest. She stared at the hard edge of his jaw line, the angle of his chin and the odd point of his ears. She stared at the hollow in his cheeks, at the crease of skin just under his eyes, at his gentle under bite, at the thin swell of his lips. He followed the length of her legs, watched the way her knees curved, smiled at her bitten fingernails, her short fingers and large palms, her thin wrist and at the hair on her forearms. He listened to the impatience and the resolution of her voice in his head, while she heard all the ways his heart had beaten beat behind her breast. He felt the tenderness of her fingertips, the crush of her grip while she felt the warmth of his touch and the tension in the air that remained between them.

They both smelled the insanity, the absurdity, the recklessness of every moment they shared hang in the branches of the weeping willow before Lucius Malfoy stepped out of the forbidden forest and saw them holding onto each other for dear life in the middle of the night.

***

By the time Draco and Hermione died the next evening, they had endured so much torture and humiliation that if they had survived Lucius's final moment of rage, it is unlikely they would ever have been the same again. Hermione's body had been ravaged and ripped open by rapes, torture, and curses, her mind torn apart and crushed by some of the greatest dark arts on earth. Draco had been forced to watch as Hermione was slowly destroyed, throwing up until blood covered the stone tiling of the dungeons. He watched as the pain took over her entire being, listened to her screams and cries, and felt each and every thing that she endured. He pulled at the chains he had been strung to so hard he knew some bones had broken.

Finally, Draco was taken down from his fastenings. His father gave him a choice, leave the girl, or spend the rest of his life as an outcast. Draco spat on his father, and told his he would rather be an outcast than Lucius's son.

Then Lucius laughed the kind of laugh that made Draco's stomach tighten. The kind of laugh his father laughed when someone had just made a big mistake.

"You stupid boy," hissed his father, "Do you honestly think I would let you simply become an outcast of society, of my home? You will be an outcast of life, of your own body. You will die as you will deserve to if you choose her."

He stared at the man who had raised him, beaten him, insulted him, and never loved him, and then turned to look at the wrecked body of the girl who had held him, laughed with him, taught him everything he never needed to know. He stared at the woman who could have held up all the stars in the world, and the woman he almost never knew existed. He stared at the woman he was to die for, and stared at the woman he wanted to die for.

"Then I'll die, Father," said Draco.

"How very much like a Mudblood you are, Draco," said Lucius.

***

As Hermione and Draco lay dying in the snow, their bodies curled around each other, with the strength running out of them with their blood, their minds began to uncurl each and every one of their memories. Draco saw his childhood alone in his room, the dark arts that hung over his house, the cronies he kept as friends, his mother's tears, Hogwarts, the way Slytherin house had worshipped the very ground he walked on, his jealousy at seeing the way Harry Potter flew. Hermione saw herself playing dentists alone in her room, her bookshelves full of books, the day she got into Hogwarts, all the adventures and misadventures she had had with Harry and Ron. Harry and Ron - Harry's laugh and Ron's indignant splutter. And as their memories spread out in front of them as roads for their souls to walk along when their bodies finally failed them, they saw each other. They had loved each other like nothing on earth could ever hope to be a part of. They had loved each other like the world needs mistakes and vulnerability to keep functioning. They had loved each other as imperfections so often make things beautiful, and loved each other as they would never dare to say. They died together, knowing that nothing had ever happened: knowing that even the greatest pain on earth was not a milestone, knowing that there had never been a great thunderclap of love, a final orgasmic epiphany. All it had been was the two of them, as they had chosen to be, and as they died.

All it had been was a temperature change, after all.