Turn 9 of 36

Suggest they set boundaries for their time together

Hermione crosses to the bench. She does not sit either — she stands across from him, one hand resting on the backrest, mirroring his posture without meaning to. The symmetry of it strikes her as absurd. Two people who have spent a decade circling each other like stray cats now posed like chess pieces across a park bench at midnight, negotiating the terms of a marriage neither wanted.

"We should set boundaries," she says. "Before the documentation arrives. Before the Ministry tells us what they expect us to perform."

Draco's eyebrows rise a fraction. "Boundaries. You want to negotiate terms with me now, in the atrium, at —" He glances at the enchanted ceiling, which has dimmed to a faint imitation of a moonless sky. "— whatever hour this is."

"I want to know what you will and will not agree to before someone else decides for us. That is how contracts work, Malfoy. You establish positions before the other side sets the field."

Something shifts behind his eyes. Not warmth — recognition. He has spent his life around negotiating tables, and she has just spoken a language he understands.

"Public appearances. Ministry events. We attend together, we present a functional front. That is non-negotiable — the contract requires it."

"Agreed. But the parameters of the performance need to be clear. We arrive together, we leave together. What happens between arrival and departure is —"

"Choreography," he says. "Not intimacy."

The word lands between them like a dropped glass. Neither of them picks it up. Hermione feels heat climb the back of her neck and wills it to stop. She is nineteen years old and she is negotiating the difference between performance and intimacy with Draco Malfoy, and the binding magic pulses gently behind her sternum as though it finds this amusing.

"And private space," she pushes forward. "Wherever we live — and we need to discuss where — there must be rooms that are mine. Spaces where I am not required to be anyone's wife."

Draco is quiet for a long moment. He looks at her the way he looked at the contract before he signed — measuring, calculating, arriving at something he does not share.

"And the same for me," he says. "I will not live in your flat, Granger. I will not sleep on your sofa and pretend I am a guest in my own marriage. If we do this, we find neutral ground."

"Neutral ground." "Not the Manor. Not your flat. Somewhere the Ministry can inspect and neither of us has history."

It is, she realises, the most sensible thing anyone has said all evening. She hates that it came from him.

"A week," she says. "We have a week before the documents arrive. In that week, we meet once. Neutral location. We bring our lists of terms and we negotiate like adults."

"Like adults," Draco repeats, and the ghost of something that is almost, almost a smile crosses his mouth and dies there.

"I will send word through the Ministry post. Not an owl — I do not want Lucius's birds involved."

"Fine."

"Fine."

They stand in the empty atrium, two people who have just agreed to meet again, and the binding magic settles between them like a held breath — not comfortable, not cruel, just present. A thread neither of them chose, tying them to a future neither of them can see. Hermione turns toward the Floo. She does not say goodnight. Neither does he. Some silences, she thinks, are more honest than words.