Turn 7 of 36

"I need to understand what I just signed." "Did your mother know about Clause 14 before today?" "I wanted to make sure you were… all right."

Hermione opens her mouth and three sentences try to come out at once. She swallows them all, regroups, and starts with the one that matters most.

"I need to understand what I just signed," she says. The words come out steadier than she expects. Across the space between them, Draco's expression doesn't change, but his weight shifts — a fraction, forward, onto the balls of his feet — and she wonders if he is as tired of standing as she is.

The atrium is nearly empty now. The janitor has moved on, his whistling fading down the corridor toward the lifts. Somewhere above them, a memo flutters past a window and disappears. Draco looks at her for a long moment, then glances toward the Floo bank as though measuring the distance between himself and escape. He doesn't move toward it.

"She knew," he says. "She read the contract before either of us did. Before Thicknesse even drafted the final version." He says this without inflection, as though reciting a fact about weather or geography, but the muscles in his jaw work and release, work and release.

"She tried to have it amended. The Ministry refused."

"Why didn't she tell you before the signing?"

"Because she wanted to see what I'd do." His voice is flat, empty of self-pity.

"She wanted to see whether I'd sign anyway. Whether I understood what I was agreeing to." He pauses.

"I did. I just didn't know she knew."

Hermione lets that settle. The binding magic pulls behind her ribs, steady as a tide, and she is suddenly aware of how alone they are — two figures in a vast marble room, the enchanted ceiling above them dimmed to a murky dusk. She thinks of the third thing she almost said, the one about making sure he was all right, and discards it. It would sound like pity, and she suspects pity might be the one thing Draco Malfoy cannot survive tonight.

"The power imbalance," she says instead. "The penalty falls on your family, not on me. That means I could break the terms and you would be the one who —"

"I know what it means, Granger." Something flashes behind his eyes — not anger, something hotter and more dangerous, something that looks like the edge of a cliff he is standing very close to. Then it closes over, and he is just tired again.

"You signed a contract that costs you nothing and binds me to everything. That's not something you did wrong. That's something they designed."

"I didn't know."

"No," he agrees. "You didn't."

The silence between them is not comfortable, but it is honest. Hermione realises, with a jolt that surprises her, that this is the first real conversation they have ever had. Eight years of antagonism, of slurs and hexes and silent fury, and this — standing in an empty atrium at nearly midnight, both of them bound to something neither chose — is the first time they have spoken to each other without performing for an audience.