The Cell

Chapter 6: Day 12, Gaps in history

I saw you fell asleep

While you were reading

The pages on your face

You had been weeping

And I saw

What it was

That I had done

- I Was Wrong, Sleeperstar

"Tell me about your parents," Malfoy said one day. He was sitting with his back against the wall and his legs sprawled in front of him, tossing bits of rock against the cell door where they made a little 'ping' sound before dropping to the ground.

She was positioned to his left, laying with her back on the blanket he usually slept on, with her legs propped against the stone wall. She looked at him incredulously.

"You want to know about my parents? My muggle parents?"

He shrugged and threw another shard of stone.

"Alright," she continued after a beat. "Their names are Daniel and Emma Granger, they live in Hampstead and they're dentists."

"What's a dentist?"

"The muggle version of a healer," she said in a rehearsed response. "But they only fix people's teeth."

"You're taking the mickey," he fired back, glancing at her with narrowed eyes.

"No," she laughed. "They make a decent living doing it too. There's a lot of education required to be a dentist."

"What did they think of you going to Hogwarts?"

It was her turn to shrug.

"I think it probably explained a lot," she said. "Like all magical children, I had several outbursts when I was little. One time in a tantrum, when I was five or so, I turned my mother's hair green because she was trying to get me to eat peas."

"The first time I experienced accidental magic I was three," Malfoy said thoughtfully. "Or at least that's what they told me. My mother had taken away this toy dragon that flew a few centimeters above the ground; I was rather attached to the thing, and I kept summoning it back and telling her the house elf gave it to me."

"That's rotten" she exclaimed, laughing. He smiled, a warm smile that touched his eyes, and something in her chest tightened a little.

"Trust me, I was an extremely irritating child."

"Well you don't need to tell me that, I knew you as a child. 'My father will hear about this,'" she crowed in a poor imitation of him.

At that he all out laughed. "At least I wasn't going around hitting people!"

"You deserved that, and you know it."

He shook his head but made no effort to defend himself.

"That was actually not even close to the strangest thing I did that year..."

"That I believe – you and Potter were always getting into trouble."

"You truly can't imagine the half of it," she mused, reflecting upon some of their adventures. "I suppose when your friendship stems from a near death experience with a mountain troll you can't really expect much else. But again, that ended up being a bit of a non-event all things considered."

"Nearly being squashed by a mountain troll wasn't an experience of note?" he asked, skeptical.

"Mmm, a couple weeks after that we were almost eaten by a Cerberus in the third-floor corridor. That year we also smuggled a dragon out of Hogwarts via broom, almost got strangled by Devil's Snare, and played a giant game of wizard's chess, in which we were pieces – and yes, it was exactly like real wizard's chess. Oh! And I also lit Professor Snape on fire. Briefly."