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The wind is a bitter whip across the white plains of Wiltshire when he sees it: an egg, rolling and bumping against the unforgiving bark of a tree with every gust. Draco considers it for a long moment—alone in the woods, neglected and lost and abandoned—scoops it up, and takes it home.
*
He has no idea what kind of egg it is. Too big to be a common bird, too solid to be a reptile. He builds it a nest in the old barn where his father used to breed Abraxans.
When spiderwebbed cracks appear on the exterior, Draco thinks he’s broken it. Another thing ruined, another life destroyed.
He’s beside himself until he hears a staccato rhythm tapping against the inside of the shell. Then, from the tiny split, a beak pierces the membrane, wet and gooey and gasping for breath.
For hours, the creature doesn’t move. Draco is sure the thing has given up, and he finds himself on his knees in the dirt, pleading with an egg, begging it to keep trying.
He shouldn’t interfere. He knows he shouldn’t interfere.
But he pictures the tiny creature, trapped inside the very walls meant to keep it safe, spent and empty and too big to stay—
And so as the soft orange of sunrise peeks through the slats in the wall, Draco whispers, “Diffindo,” and the shell splits down the middle.
*
At first, he thinks it’s a hawk. A feathered head with tired, inquisitive eyes peers at him from the opening he created. But then, with a burst of energy, the creature works itself from its shell, emerging on four long, wobbly legs, skittering around the barn like a newborn foal.
For the first time in many years, Draco laughs.
A Hippogriff.
*
He names her Sefi.
She grows like a weed. After three weeks, she stands nearly as tall as his hip.
Her talons shred through squirrels and rabbits like blades. Her beak filets and debones fish in seconds. She’s a terrifying creature, proud and self-righteous, ruffling her feathers and squawking her indignation when she doesn’t get her way.
Draco knows he should be afraid of her.
But she’s also perceptive—with sharp, knowing eyes and a curious tilt to her head. She’s fiercely loyal, protecting him from the horrors of frogs and worms and wayward leaves as they walk through the woods. She’s full of energy and life and happiness, unafraid and unconcerned with his past, his mistakes, his failures.
He bows to her. She bows back.
*
It’s no surprise Granger shows up. Draco wonders if she has some sort of Magical Creature sixth sense.
She taps her foot outside the main gates, like he’s inconveniencing her.
“The Department of Magical Creatures has received a credible report that you’re breeding Hippogriffs,” she says in lieu of a greeting.
“Hello, Granger,” he says. “I’m doing well. Thank you for asking.”
Her scowl deepens. “Malfoy.”
“I’m not breeding Hippogriffs.”
She narrows her eyes. “Do you have a Hippogriff?”
“Do you have a warrant?”
“Hippogriffs are protected creatures,” she calls, though he’s already retreating to the safety of his manor. “They deserve to be treated with respect, Malfoy!”
*
Sefi follows on his heels as he tends to his mother’s garden.
The rosebuds are just beginning to unfurl with the barest hints of spring. Daffodils push through the dirt at his feet, bright and yellow and bitterly ironic. Sefi nips at the petals, huffing petulantly when he pushes her beak away.
“Stop that,” he mutters. “What did the flowers do to you?”
When he plucks a bloom and spins it between his fingers, she eyes him knowingly and butts her head against his thigh in commiseration.
Perhaps that is the strength of their bond—they are the same. Alone and neglected and lost. Abandoned by their mothers.
Draco runs his fingers through the soft, downy feathers at the crown of her head. She chuffs her approval, butting him again, pushing him away from the shadowy memories and out into the open sun.
In the field, she cavorts in circles, flapping her wings and chirping her enthusiasm. Draco is unable to curb his growing grin—at least not until Sefi stops in her tracks, her head whipping around to glare daggers at something behind him.
Gone is the free-spirited foal, and in her stead is a fearsome, lethal creature: hackles raised, wings spread wide, talons bared.
When Draco whirls around, it’s Granger, standing at the edge of the garden, wide eyed and slack jawed in the face of his loyal companion.
“Sefi, no,” he commands, shooting his arm out just in time to stop her charge at a shell-shocked Granger.
Sefi obeys but squawks her dissent.
It’s a standoff, silent save Sefi’s occasional huff. In one hand, Granger grips a piece of parchment, and in the other, a vial of what he assumes is his blood, stolen by the Ministry at his trial, her clever way of bypassing the wards.
“I got a warrant,” she says finally. Her voice is unwavering.
Gryffindor bravery burns bright in her eyes as she takes a small step forward. Sefi stomps a hoof, but still doesn’t charge.
“Granger.”
Granger ignores him, daring another step. Something rumbles from deep inside Sefi’s chest.
“Granger.”
Sefi snaps her beak, but Granger is undeterred.
“Hermione.”
Granger finally stops, barely an arm’s length away. Her knuckles are white around the warrant in her fist.
“Please don’t take her away,” he pleads.
Granger bows. Sefi bows back.
*
Draco wonders how much it would take to bribe the ever-honorable Hermione Granger. Half his vaults? All of them?
When they reach the gates, he’s ready to offer his fortune, his soul—but Granger beats him to it.
“She’s bonded to you,” Granger says. “That’s rare.”
Draco swallows. “I know.”
“Kind of ironic, considering your history with the species.”
“I know. Granger, please—”
“This warrant here grants me permission to search Malfoy Manor for evidence of illegal creature breeding.” Startlingly, she sets the thing on fire with a wave of her hand. “I didn’t see any of that here.”
Draco only stares, dumbstruck.
“However,” she starts, and the golden bravery in her eyes is replaced with the silver glint of ruthless Slytherin cunning as her lips curve into a smile. “I did see a research opportunity.”
A laugh escapes him. “Are you blackmailing me?”
“That depends. Is it working?”
*
Draco is ashamed to admit that it is, in fact, working.
Granger keeps her mouth shut about his illegal possession of a Class A protected creature, and he allows her to come over twice a week and scratch gibberish into her journal about Sefi’s height and weight and diet.
She’s loud and bright and smells like vanilla. She wears her wand in her hair and does most of her magic with a wave of her hands, from flipping the pages of her books to dangling mice in front of Sefi so she can measure the size of her hooves.
The manor hasn’t seen this much action in years. It sat empty while he was held in Azkaban. After, it was just Draco. Then, Draco and Sefi. Now, it’s the three of them—Draco and Sefi and Granger—and the place that once felt like a prison suddenly feels like a home.
*
Summer breaks loose over Wiltshire in slow motion. Little bugs hover over the grass, backlit by the hazy late afternoon sun.
Granger sits next to him on the steps leading from the courtyard to the patio. He can feel the warmth of her thigh through his trousers. Her research is tucked to her chest, odds and ends of parchment sticking out the sides of her journal.
“What are you going to do with it?” he asks.
“I’d like to write a book, I think.” She fiddles with a frayed edge of parchment. “No one’s ever been able to study a foal so closely.”
“You’re welcome.”
She rolls her eyes. “I’ll be sure to include you in the acknowledgements.”
In the field, Sefi chases a butterfly. Granger knocks her knee against his. She has no reason to stay, but he doesn’t want her to leave.
“Tea?” he asks quietly.
She stays.
*
“You two are a lot alike, you know.” Granger walks beside him through the woods behind Malfoy Manor. Sefi meanders in front of them, investigating the foliage as they go.
“Yes, yes, we’re both very prideful creatures,” he grumbles. “I assure you, Granger, I am aware of the irony.”
“I meant your mannerisms. Look at how she sneers at the other animals.”
Just then, Sefi unearths a chipmunk, eyeing it with disdain as it scampers across the forest floor. Granger’s laugh carries across the breeze like a song.
“I see your point.”
She bumps his shoulder as they walk. There’s no journal in her hands today, but there’s an ink stain on her jaw, right by her ear, and Draco thinks about covering it with his thumb. He thinks about letting his other fingers graze against the wayward curls at her temples. About letting them sweep over her neck, her collarbone, her shoulder.
“When was the last time you left this place?” she asks quietly as they approach the babbling brook that slices through his property.
He bristles. He knows the question has been eating at her for weeks—why he refuses to leave the safety of the manor.
“The last time I left, it was to go to Azkaban,” he says. He steps across the rocks in the stream to avoid her knowing gaze.
Her own footsteps echo behind him. “Why?”
“Well, Granger, the Aurors didn’t exactly give me a choice—”
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
He sighs. When he turns, he’s met with deep pools of honey and clustered constellations on her cheeks. “It’s better for everyone if I stay here.”
“That sounds lonely,” she says.
He offers a hand to guide her onto the bank. When she lands, she doesn’t let go.
“It’s not lonely anymore.”
*
Sefi learns to fly at the turn of autumn.
The waves of her wings are backdropped by a canopy of amber. Her joy is a tangible thing, whispering through the grass all the way to Draco’s seat on the patio, mirrored in his gratified grin and echoed in Granger’s delighted gasp.
Sefi’s bouts of flight are short and close to the ground, but each time she leaves the earth she glides a little longer, landing with a thump and a chirp and a gallop around the field.
Even though he’s proud, it aches, and Granger knows it too.
Her hand slides across the table to his, three fingers bumping into his pinky. “Soon she’ll be above the trees.”
“I know.”
“She can’t stay here forever.”
He fights a frown. “I know.”
“There are sanctuaries,” Granger says.
He ensnares her ring finger with his pinky. “What if she forgets me?”
“You could always visit her.” Granger looks at him expectantly, but her face falls at whatever she finds looking back at her.
“I can’t,” he whispers.
Sefi’s well on her way to outgrowing Wiltshire. But Draco—he’s stuck.
“She’ll never forget you.” Granger slides her fingers fully through his. “But you can’t stay here forever, either, Draco.”
*
Granger hardly bothers with her journal at all anymore. She simply watches Sefi soar over the tops of the trees with her chin in her hand.
Their time is coming to an end, he knows. She’s taken all the data she can. But still she comes, sits next to him on the patio or walks with him in the woods or lounges with him in the grass.
Draco clings to whatever he has left—chilly sunrise strolls with Sefi, hazy afternoon tea with Granger, smile-crinkled eyes and ink-stained fingertips and the ease of conversation rarely found in his self-imposed exile. It slips slowly through his fingers with each day that passes.
He fears the day he loses them both: Sefi to the skies, Granger to the pull of her next project.
The cool breeze blows a curl crosswise over the fading freckles on her nose as Granger turns to face him. His hand moves on its own accord, sweeping the strands off her cheek and stowing them behind her ear. A flush of pink follows the path of his finger.
“I finished my research,” she says suddenly. His hand freezes on its descent, and her blush blooms brighter.
“Oh.”
She fishes her journal out of her bag. It’s bursting at the seams, notes and diagrams peeking from the pages. Months of work and laughter and growth packed into a book the size of his hand.
“I think there’s something really special here.”
Draco only bites his cheek between his teeth. The tree line blurs at the horizon until Sefi is a white cloud amongst a sea of orange.
Granger taps her fingernail against the leather surface. In his periphery, he sees the furrow of her brow, the tug of her lip between her teeth. Her hand, reaching across the table and curling into a fist.
“I’m glad you got everything you needed,” he finally says.
She sighs. “Draco.”
His name is a whisper off her lips, a gentle caress of friendship and trust and healed wounds. He braces himself against the stroke of it on his sensitive skin, the way it resonates inside his ribcage. How can she say his name like that and leave him behind?
“I need to work through the data. I was thinking of grabbing a pint at The Leaky,” she says. “If you’d like to join.”
The silence is long while she waits. Then, there’s only the sound of her boots on stone as she finally walks away.
Draco does at least have the wherewithal to follow her, though he’s far too late, gasping for breath as he skids to a stop at the gates. He’s alone, and now Granger is just out of reach—just beyond the safety of his wards, just outside the home he knows he’s outgrown.
He hears Sefi land behind him with a gentle thump. Her feathers shuffle as she bends to rest her head on his shoulder.
“I’m not ready,” he says.
Sefi huffs her displeasure.
Draco stretches to stroke the silky soft feathers of her neck. He remembers how he carried her egg in his arms, and now she’s nearly double his size.
“What if I’m not ready?” he whispers.
Sefi pushes him forward with a nudge to his back. She’s always been warm when he’s cold, strong when he’s weak, and now—when he’s too exhausted and afraid and broken to break through the shell of his self-made prison—she makes the cut for him.
Draco steps outside the wards on shaky legs. He finds his destination in his mind: brown eyes, wild curls. Just before he apparates, he turns, basking in the proud gaze of his mirror, his protector, his greatest companion.
He bows. She bows back.