The Fearsome Name of Riddle

Young Fun

Long slender fingers raked through white blonde hair as Draco turned the pages of one of his uncle's journals. He let out a sigh as he lounged in the armchair of an upstairs room of Grimmauld Place where Potter had left him. A small glowing light hovered at his shoulder, illuminating the pages of messy handwriting. Octavian wrote legibly but in a way that would have gotten what Lucius used to call a ruled knuckle. He was quite grateful his mother had stopped that before he had to learn what it meant the hard way. 

Draco tried to read critically, the more he delved into Octavian’s writing, the more he noticed the biases of his father's and grandmother's accounts of her behaviour. Beside the other Death Eaters, Victoria looked like a saint in his father's eyes, but simply loving her children did not make her one. She had been cruel to everyone else around her, not even her friends were safe from her rage. But Draco shouldn't have let himself be fooled into believing there was an anomalous angel in the Malfoy family. They had been dark wizards for generations, Victoria was no different. 

"Oh." A gentle voice made Draco jump. 

His head whipped up to see what usually spread out into a mane of brown curls had been plaited into a single French braid. Sunlight hit Hermione's brown eyes and made them shine in gold as she watched him from the doorway. He wasn't used to her treating him civilly yet, and it seemed neither was she. They had become more acquainted during their return to Hogwarts when Pansy had made the effort to mend broken bridges with their classmates but his guilt and exhaustion from the war had stopped him from forming a proper friendship with the witch. 

"I didn't realise you were here," she said with a courteous smile, taking a step into the room to continue on with whatever she meant to do. "Harry's got a head like a sieve so he probably just forgot to mention you were here." 

"Right." Draco nodded, straightening in his seat before standing to greet her with the respect he had withheld before. "There were some family things here, so I came to get them." 

An awkward sort of smile went across her face. Sometimes he assumed she must think that he tried too hard to redeem himself. Hermione hadn't grown up like him. Draco had taken lessons on etiquette as well as ordinary tutoring, the manners drilled into him demanded he stand to greet acquaintances. When he chose not to, just like his Grandmother, it was to insult the other person. 

"About um— Victoria her name was, wasn't it?" Hermione asked curiously as she ran an extended finger across the bookshelf, looking for her next read. 

"You ask like you don't know," Draco said jokingly, looking over at her innocent expression as she plucked a volume from the shelf. "You cannot convince me that Hermione Granger didn't research the Dark Lord's wife extensively." 

Hermione returned his amused look which took him by surprise. The apologies he could handle, he knew what to do then. He knew to bow his head and speak as respectfully as he knew how to. He knew to be honest if sincere and stick to his promises afterwards. But this? Settling into the borders of forgiveness when he had yet to forgive himself? The feeling was a mystery to him. 

"I looked into what sort of threat she would be," Hermione admitted, clutching the book comfortably to her abdomen. "And if she was still alive mainly. There honestly wasn't much to find, someone tried to bury her very existence and they got extremely close to doing so. Even Rita Skeeter can't find most of the old society articles she was mentioned in. No engagement announcement, a coming of age and her own birth, the odd gala appearance if you really search the pictures."

"Seems excessive," Draco said, letting out a sigh as he thought about how much of her life she had kept safe in her journals. Victoria would have remained a dwindling memory if that photograph hadn't been found.