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Crookshanks keeps bringing her rodents.
She moved into her new place in Shrewton for the proximity to Stonehenge and her research. The back of it faces a huge empty field, presumably filled with all sorts of mice and rats. Crooks has never been particularly predatory (middle-aged men masquerading as rats notwithstanding). But now it’s constant. Mice—usually dead but occasionally still running around—always in the middle of the night when Hermione is in absolutely no state to deal with them.
She buys him a bell, a garishly-coloured collar, specialised hunting toys. Even a ridiculous cat bib that she later finds on the doorstep with a dead mouse on top like a threat.
He continues on his rampage for four weeks when she gets a knock on the door.
She opens it to find Draco Malfoy, holding Crookshanks in one hand and his latest lurid collar in the other.
“Malfoy?”
She’s wearing her pyjamas: ratty old flannel trousers and a faded top with a hole at the hem.
“So it is your bloody cat, then.”
He’s perfectly dressed, as always, in full wizard’s robes in the middle of her Muggle street. The neighbours will think she’s insane.
“My bloody—Why do you have him? Let him—Is he just letting you hold him? Have you Stupefied him?”
“I haven’t harmed your cat, Granger. He came quite willingly. Happily, even.”
Crookshanks does look remarkably happy. The last time she tried to catch him against his will to take him to a Healer, he left scratches all up her arm and wouldn’t talk to her for days. Now, he’s sitting comfortably in the crook of Draco’s arm like a king.
“He’s been coming to the Manor. Hunting mice, I think. Today he got this”—Malfoy gestures to the collar in his right hand—“thing caught in one of the hedges. Wouldn’t stop meowing until I came and got him out.”
“To the Manor?”
Draco looks at her blankly, like perhaps she’s slow on the uptake.
“Yes. It’s only a quarter mile away, after all.”
Hermione thinks. The university is paying for the house, semi-detached and backing on to acres and acres of fields. She hasn’t given much thought to who owns them, but Godric, they are in Wiltshire. She feels horror creep across her.
“Malfoy, are you my landlord?”
He doesn’t answer, and Crookshanks lazily meows. Malfoy lets him go immediately, and the cat—the traitor, running off to Malfoy Manor at the earliest chance—wends his way around her legs, tail raised as he stares at Malfoy.
He’s not her landlord. She checks the lease to make sure.
He does, however, own the land behind her, the great swathes of pasture that lead all the way to Malfoy Manor.
Crookshanks keeps leaving, bringing back mice and once, notably, a live gnome that screamed bloody murder in her kitchen until she came and let it out.
Then he goes and doesn’t come back.
Hermione knows he’s a cat. A very clever cat, but a cat nonetheless, who is old and fond of chasing things that bite back. Cats go missing, sometimes.
She thinks about making some posters on the new computer that lives in her lounge, but she looks at the photo of Crookshanks that she took with her new Muggle camera and almost starts crying. Crookshanks wouldn’t just… go missing. He’s wearing that stupid garish collar in the photo.
And Malfoy said he’d been going to the Manor.
Which is how she ends up outside the wrought iron gates that she last saw years ago, before she'd put three degrees and a PhD between then and now.
She feels seventeen again anyway.
The gates open for her.
It’s him that answers, by some luck—she has no desire to see Narcissa. She’s just here for her bloody cat.
“Granger.” He’s tall and lean, with shiny blond hair that he’s learnt not to slick back. He looks well. She hadn’t noticed that, when he came to hers.
“Do you have him?”
Malfoy raises an eyebrow at her.
“Crookshanks.”
He has the audacity to try and look confused, but the smirk gives him away.
“My cat, Malfoy.”
“Oh, is that his name?” Malfoy moves out of the way of the door and gestures inside to the long, dark corridor. “He won’t leave.”
“And you didn’t think to call? Send an owl?” She follows him in, ignoring the sense of foreboding. It’s just a house, now, he’s just some rich snob who’s not even her landlord.
“I thought I’d give him another day. He seems quite content, and the elves like him. He eats the mice.”
They walk down the corridor together. Through one of the doors is the drawing room, but it’s been so long she wouldn’t know it. Someone’s redecorated, she thinks. Probably Narcissa.
It’s a big house. She follows him up a set of stairs in silence to a large windowed corridor that looks out over the grounds. In the far distance is a long chain of houses, one of them probably hers.
He opens a door, and Hermione tries very, very hard to keep her cool.
The Malfoy Manor library is magnificent.
It is… large. Merlin, it’s massive, with dark wood shelves to the ceiling and the trail of carpets on the floor and doors on each wall, labelled by topic, as though it might take up the whole floor of this wing. It smells like heaven, old parchment with none of the musty smell she’s come to associate with universities, fresh ink and sunlight through layers of protective enchantments over the books.
Her face must give her away, because Malfoy looks amused.
Crookshanks is there, curled up in a low armchair next to an unlit fireplace. He looks over at her expectantly.
“Crookshanks! Naughty little cat!”
He has the decency not to make a sound, just arches his back to stand and then trots over to her feet like she hasn’t been dreading his demise for days. She crouches down to pat his head.
“Oh, beautiful baby boy. Are you okay, my darling?” He leans into her palm with his stout face, and she is hit with a sense of relief so acute that she wants to cry.
“I assure you, Granger, he has been well fed.”
“I should hope so.” She moves to pick him up and suddenly his hackles raise, tail flicking dangerously. “Come on, Crooks. We have to go.”
Crookshanks turns to give her a spectacular view of his arse.
Malfoy coughs to cover a laugh. She purses her lips. Short of putting Crooks in a full body bind, there’s no way she’ll make him move, let alone get him down the overly lengthy driveway and into the car.
“Crookshanks, come on. Pspsps.” She abases herself fully in a crouch, rubbing her fingers together like she might have a treat.
Malfoy and Crookshanks give her matching looks of derision.
“Fine. Malfoy, kindly stop feeding my cat so he comes home.”
“It’s not me, I assure you. I’ll tell the elves.”
She pauses to take in the library one last time. The shelf closest to them has three titles she’s itching to look at—tomes even Hogwarts hadn’t had.
“You can look, if you like. He’s not going anywhere.”
She looks at him. He looks casually disinterested, as though he really doesn’t care either way.
“I—” A scream comes from outside, and Hermione’s stomach drops. She’d almost forgotten where she was, what had happened here. The horror curdles on her face, and Malfoy looks quickly up at her.
“It’s the peacocks. Sorry.” Malfoy looks paler, which she didn’t think possible.
“The pea—Right. Of course.” The Malfoys gave up on torture long ago. Bellatrix and Lucius are long dead.
Her heart pounds anyway.
She casts a full body bind on Crookshanks, despite the fact that last time she did it he pissed on her carpets for weeks in revenge. She picks him up in both arms, his fur getting all over her, his weight soft and comforting.
“Stop feeding him, Malfoy. We’ll be on our way.”
“Whatever you like.”
He knocks on her door two days later.
Crookshanks lays on one arm, cozy, and he has a book in the other hand. It was one of the titles she looked at on Saturday: a book of spell etymology for charms with French origin.
She looks at him warily.
“In case you wanted to read it. It’s very good; Martine’s prose is impressively readable.”
“Right. Thanks, I suppose.”
The thing is: is she supposed to give the book back?
Crookshanks stays at home for several days—no mice to speak of. He only wees on her carpet once, which is probably fair. Hermione works, and researches, and works some more.
The book sits on her coffee table.
It is impressively readable for an eighteenth century work.
There’s no way she’s meant to keep it. It’s a rare title—surely not something the Malfoys would have two copies of just lying around.
She puts on her big girl trousers and takes it back.
Malfoy answers the door.
“I haven’t got your cat, Granger.” He’s wearing a Muggle suit and the sight is so unexpected that she actually forgets what she’s doing for a minute. He looks… nice.
“I know. It’s—The book. It’s here. I have it.”
He smirks at her. She feels a flush rise over her cheeks. She's holding the book out in front of her like a peace offering.
“Thanks. For letting me borrow it.”
Crookshanks disappears for two days and comes back with a whole cooked prawn.
She sends him an owl.
Malfoy. Stop feeding my cat. -HG
An hour later she gets a response in the form of a box of Turkish delight, freshly-made and wrapped in brown paper.
Please accept Pomsey’s apology. She says she thought he was starving to death. -DM
She tries not to smile.
He brings more books.
It turns into a regular thing: every few days, Malfoy drops a book at hers. After the third time, she invites him in for tea, and then somehow it’s practically a book club.
“—but Pyrites’ treatise is different! It makes the underlying tenets of Alchemy clearly accessible through a chemical understanding!”
“You’re not wrong, but what I’m saying is that the chemical approach isn’t everything. Pyrites is lacking in the metaphysical aspects of the art of Alchemy.” Crookshanks is lying lazily on Draco’s lap, seemingly intent on ruining every piece of black clothing he owns. On Tuesday, he came over and she found cat hair already on him, like it’s permeating through his wardrobe.
“Metaphysical!” She looks over at him disapprovingly. “Malfoy, you know as well as I that the metaphysical aspects couldn’t be contained in a book anyway. Although it pains me to say it. Why not lay out a clear and easily-understood introduction, and leave the more… esoteric parts for in-person teaching? It’s not like he’s misleading the reader.”
Malfoy takes a long sip of tea and the last bite of his biscuit. He seems to consider her.
“What?” she says.
“Come to dinner. Not at the Manor, if you don’t want to,” he says. “Theo says there’s a great new place in London. We could Floo there.”
“None of that was a question.”
“No, it wasn’t. Eight? Tomorrow?”
After the dinner (which goes well, actually), it’s more than books.
Suddenly there are fresh flowers from the gardens that he insists would have rotted at the Manor. Pastries from the kitchen, fresh bread and a cheese board on the day she said she’d be doing field work.
If she didn’t know better, she’d say she was being… wooed.
He comes over again on Wednesday with another bunch of flowers—peonies this time—and she has to Transfigure her last drinking glass into a vase to put them in.
“This is ridiculous, Malfoy. My house is turning into a florist’s.”
“Mere tokens of my affection.”
She lets herself smile, this time.
Crookshanks moves into the Manor six months after they start officially dating.
She genuinely can’t seem to stop him—the house-elves do adore him. They slip him all sorts of treats when Draco isn’t looking. Turns out when you free your house-elves and re-employ them, they don’t have to listen to you anymore. Crookshanks now eats whole prawns and fresh slices of ham and turns his nose up at the idea of a cat biscuit.
And the Manor is big and full of mice and warm spots next to fires, with people and elves around all day.
“Draco.” She tugs at his arm. “Draco.”
He makes a strangled sort of noise.
“Draco, there’s a mouse.”
“It’s a sixteenth-century Manor, Hermione. There are mice.”
He rolls over and dislodges Crookshanks from the end of the bed with his foot.
“Go, Crookshanks.”
The cat—her cat, who has never followed an order from her in his life—jumps up and immediately crouches into a hunting stance. The poor mouse doesn’t stand a chance.
At least he drops them at the foot of Draco’s side of the bed, these days.