marked me (like a bloodstain)

stars and tea leaves

i believe in nothing, not in sin and not in god

The stars had shaped a dragon in their midst.

Hermione had spent the previous night staring out of her bedroom window, practicing the fanciful, imprecise art of reading constellations to decipher the future to come. Her brain had screamed at her to close the curtains, crawl back into bed, and chase sleep instead of silly practices, but her heart was beating too loudly for her to settle. The echo of that frenzied sound had pushed her to the window, begging her to find clues of the consequences her choice will have. Maybe it was delusion—maybe it was the only four hours of sleep in the past few days that had her squinting at the night sky, thinking she would see bleeding stars forming a neon sign, telling her to grab Scorpius and blend into the shadows where they would never be found. Instead, her heavy, exhausted eyes caught a wing. She followed it with a fingertip, tracing it back to a dragon shining brighter than moonlight.

Draco Malfoy hovered over the night sky and her home, watching and protecting.

It wasn't real, of course.

Even when morning came in with a dull, gloomy orange and Hermione found herself twisting the curls at the nape of her neck to comply them into a smooth ponytail, her brown eyes lost on the sky, she knew it was a ridiculous prediction.

The truth of that realization started with Harry.

After kissing Scorpius on the cheek, after pressing him close to her like she could keep him safe inside her chest, right next to a heart he owned, healed, and gave reason to, Hermione left Andromeda Tonks' house with dread weighing down every one of her steps. She kept looking behind her shoulder like Draco would be vanquishing her shadow, ready to push her into the nearest corner to put his hands around her throat.

To kill or kiss her, Hermione wasn't sure—which it would be or which she wanted.

What she did know was that her magic was humming, her restraint wearing thin, coaxing the power she kept calm and collected to rush out of her. To lose control. Like it had done those years ago, deceiving Hermione to walk further into that Potions classroom, her trembling, brave, reckless hand touching Draco on the arm, making his tired, grieving, scornful eyes look away from his demons and right at her.

"How are your parents?"

The fingers that wrapped around her left wrist did not belong to the person the stars predicted she would stumble upon first. She knew that before she felt the warm touch; not just because she had absolutely no faith in the cheap magic tricks Divination sold, but rather a skill she had perfected ages ago.

Hermione would always know when Harry and Ron were near.

She finished reading the sentence she had been picking apart, slowly closing the file she had borrowed from the DRCMC two days prior, before fixing brown eyes on Harry's remorseful green. Had it not been for a patch of blue darkening the edge of his mouth, Hermione would have kept walking, leaving him alone with the consequences of his own choices.

"It's nothing. Just a promise I made," Harry tightened his grip around her wrist when she raised her hand, fingertips trying to touch the bruise. "When Zabini joined the Aurors, I told him he couldn't shut down. This line of work isn't easy, especially when you have memories of war. I told him if he couldn't find the words, I'd spar with him and let him win."

"You have a habit of breaking promises," Hermione told him, tugging herself free only to bring the pads of her fingers to the side of his stubbled jaw. "This should've been another. You're his Head Auror—"