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I. September 1 — The Careful Cut
The rain starts like someone drumming fingers on the roof tiles. Hermione hears it in her bones: not yet, not yet, now.
“We have to stop,” she says in the old Arithmancy annex they’ve been borrowing. Chalk dust floats like surrendered stars. Lavender polish lingers in the wood, stubbornly pleasant.
Draco’s sleeves are rolled, ink smudged onto the pale knuckle of his thumb. He looks like a sketch someone nearly erased. “Say it again,” he asks. Not dramatic; just wanting to be sure he won’t later call a dream a memory.
“We have to stop.”
Because her seams are new and her hands still shake sometimes when it’s quiet. Because secrets are heavy and so are futures. Because loving him feels like betraying the version of herself who survived not loving him. Because Gryffindors do brave things and then count the cost in private.
He nods like fitting glass into a frame. “All right.”
When he reaches for his satchel, his fingers brush the tiny Muggle music player she leant him in July. Press here, she’d whispered then, conspiratorial. A tinny bell-lullaby had spilled out—steady as a heartbeat that volunteers to keep time when yours stumbles. He’d listened like it was a wandless spell.
He pockets the player without comment, coat over his arm, and walks into the rain as if he might learn to trust it.
Crookshanks slinks out from under a desk, a battered orange cushion with legs, and head-butts her elbow until her ribs remember how to hold. She breathes. It sounds like both don’t go and we already did.
Later, in Gryffindor Tower, Harry opens his arms before he opens his mouth. She folds in. They don’t fix anything. They stand next to it until it looks less impossible.
II. September 3 — The Boulevard
There’s a corridor behind the tapestry of the Witch Who Lost Her Hat where the torches don’t quite agree on their job. Draco walks it alone because alone matches. He presses the earbud in, the cheap wire like a lifeline that refuses to fray.
He lets one song become a street. He walks it. The sort that says you’re not the only one here even if you feel like it. He thinks of a wand held wrong on purpose; of a boy who chose to live anyway; of a girl who taught the world to use its inside voice around grief.
He stops by a high, slit window. Outside, the hills wear the same grey they wore last September, as if the sky refuses to learn new tricks. He hums under his breath—just the shape, not the words. He has always been good at memorizing shapes.
Theo finds him there.
“You look like a painting they forgot to name,” Theo says, leaning on the stone with the insolence only best friends and cats can manage. “Are we sighing, or plotting?”
“Respecting her decision,” Draco says, and it sounds like he practiced it in the mirror. “Then… waiting.”
“Waiting is a verb if you do it right.” Theo bumps his shoulder. “And if you need homework, Luna’s very good at assigning it.”
Draco nearly smiles. “Luna?”
“Dispenser of mystical practicalities. She says I stir honey in ways that reveal my moral character.”
“I’m scared to ask what it revealed.”
“That I’m sweet,” Theo says cheerfully. “Come on. You need a plan that doesn’t involve withering aesthetically.”
III. September 5 — Theo’s Sincerity as a Weapon
They occupy the last table in the quiet end of the library, where Madam Pince pretends not to see Slytherins being gentle. Theo brings contraband biscuits. Draco brings the weight in his chest and puts it on the table between them like a heavy book.
“She gave me a song,” he says.
Theo’s face does the fond, annoying thing. “She does that. You get the sense she could giftwrap oxygen if you were drowning.”
“It asks for time,” Draco says carefully. “A kind of permission to sleep through the hardest bit and wake without being punished for it.”
“A month.” Theo drums steadily on the table. “Thirty days of not making the problem worse. That I can respect. All right: no grand gestures. Breadcrumbs, not cakes. No fireworks. Light signals at sea.”
Draco nods, relief making his shoulders drop a fraction. “I don’t want to haunt her.”
“Then hum,” Theo says. “Be obvious to the people who care about her, not to the one who needs space. We leave useful things in the world and pretend it wasn’t us. We fix three small problems she’s muttered about so the world feels bearable. Do that, and you’re making room, not noise.”
“And if I misstep?” Draco asks, sincere in a way he once thought was beneath him.
“I’ll trip you,” Theo says pleasantly. “It’ll be hilarious, and you’ll thank me.”
IV. September 8 — Luna’s Hinge Theory
Xenophilius’s crooked tower smells like citrus and old ink. Plants, offended by pots, trail across shelves. Luna moves through them like a treaty in motion.
“Tell me the ache,” she says, as if asking for the weather.
Draco does. The annex. The rain. Hermione’s voice when it had to be precise. The way the music player felt like a borrowed heart. The foolishness of learning to breathe at twenty-one. The wickedness of being allowed to. All of it ached. He can still smell her.
“September is a hinge,” Luna says, pouring tea into a cup the color of a calm bruise. “People think doors open or shut. But they swing. They pause. They rest. You don’t slam; you oil.”
“How?” Draco asks, and the word is honest as hunger.
“Three offerings,” Luna decides. “Confession without insistence—write letters you do not send. Service without signature—leave help where needed. Witness—ask someone to stand where you shouldn’t.”
“Potter,” Draco says, grimacing out of habit. He knows the shape of Harry’s steadiness now; it’s one of the few shapes the war gifted him without cost. “He…wouldn’t.”
“He would,” Luna says, no more dramatic than the kettle cooling. “He’s very good at holding string while other people untangle kites.”
Draco cradles the cup and lets the heat decide his fingers will live. “And the song?”
“Hum it,” she says. “We’ll get to the words later.”
He nods. He can do that. He can hum.
V. September 10 — Harry Invents Shelf-Talk
Harry brings a paper bag to the library like contraband. “Food,” he says. “Not optional.” He is careful the way people are after a bomb goes off in their house and they’ve learned how to walk around new architecture.
Hermione smiles because he’s trying not to be ridiculous and almost succeeding. “I might be the first person to eat a sandwich as an act of friendship.”
“Please,” Harry says. “Ron thinks eating is foreplay.”
She snorts, and the worst of the day loosens.
They shelf-talk: quick truths, no picking. I’m lonely. I’m angry. I’m relieved. I’m still in love with him. Harry’s face does the quiet thing that makes Gryffindors more dangerous than Slytherins—like he’s chosen patience the way he used to choose curses.
“If you want me to be kind to him,” Harry says, not looking at her so the offer can live, “I can.”
“Not easy,” she warns. “Just kind.”
“I’m spectacularly bad at easy,” he says dryly. “Kind I’ve been practicing.”
Crookshanks climbs into Harry’s lap with the entitlement of royalty and kneads a promise into his jeans. They both accept the binding.
VI. September 12–16 — Anonymous Kindness
Confession without insistence: Draco writes nightly. Ink that is for burning only. Today I noticed you still circle the word ‘however’ three times when you’re thinking. Today I realized I’m more scared of being forgiven than punished. Today I bought a cheap guitar and the man behind the counter told me I was holding it like a broom. He burns each letter in a shallow brass dish Theo nicked from his aunt. The smoke smells like clean rain. He sleeps.
Service without signature: a slip in McGonagall’s in-box detailing mislabeled library texts. A jar of salve left on Neville’s desk formulated for the nettle species in Greenhouse Three that fights back. Two quills placed on the library counter that don’t splutter under speed. Madam Pince squints at the ceiling, suspicious of miracles.
Witness: Theo, obviously; Luna, relentlessly; and Harry—who receives Draco in an empty classroom like a veteran letting another veteran sit on his stoop without making a speech.
“What do you need?” Harry asks.
“To stand where she can see me,” Draco says. “And to stop being the kind of problem that makes her smaller.”
Harry’s mouth turns down at the corner. “Good,” he says, as if he were praising Draco on a particularly difficult Quidditch move. “Then the rules are simple. Don’t make me defend her. Don’t make me lie to her. Don’t be brave at the wrong times.”
“Define wrong.”
“Any time you want credit for it.”
He nods, chastened and grateful.
Before Draco goes, Harry mutters, “There’s a secondhand Muggle shop in Hogsmeade that gets instruments sometimes. The one with the chipped red door. Ask for extra strings. They break when you stop pretending not to care.”
Draco doesn’t say thank you because the word isn’t big enough. He just lets Harry see it in his posture and leaves.
VII. September 17 — Knockturn’s Odd Corners
It’s technically High Street, not Knockturn, but there’s a narrow brick lane that forgets its name halfway down. A bell jangles like something ashamed of itself when Draco pushes into the shop with the chipped red door. Stacks of radios glare at him. A turntable sulks. In the back, leaning like it’s tired, lives a row of guitars.
“Looking for trouble or therapy?” asks the proprietor, a witch with hair like she fought it and lost. It reminded him of Hermione.
“Is there a difference?” Draco asks before he can help it.
She cackles. “You’ll do.” She puts a battered acoustic into his hands, rearranges his fingers, and says, “You’re going to hate your hands for a while. They’re going to hate you back. Keep going anyway.” She hands him extra strings and a strap at no extra cost.
Back in his room, he closes the curtains and makes a terrible sound. Then a slightly less terrible one. He plays the spine of the song Hermione taught him until his fingertips whimper. He feels something unknot by millimeters.
When the pain grows distracting, he flips through the album she told him the song came from, reading title cards like little spells: Holiday—joy loud enough to be defiance; Are We the Waiting—a prayer you hum so time knows you’re here; Give Me Novacaine—not a cure, just a pause; Letterbomb—the danger of words thrown instead of given; Homecoming—a circle you finish because you don’t know what else to do; Whatsername—the ache you’re not willing to rename.
He thinks: I know every one of those streets.
VIII. September 18 — Holiday (Observed)
Quidditch practice spills laughter into the air like a carelessly opened tin. It smells like grass and adrenaline. Hermione sits on the stands with a clipboard that she isn’t actually using, Crookshanks coiled in her lap like a smug stole. Harry dives and comes up with something like joy on his face; it looks borrowed and right.
Padma and Dean start a chant, badly. Someone starts a drum on a borrowed bucket. The sky considers whether to keep sulking and decides not to for an hour. Hermione lets herself drum a heel on the wood. The world leans into a different rhythm. It feels almost like…holiday.
Draco—who should be in the library—finds himself at the top row, two sections over. He doesn’t sit. He stands where the railing is stubborn and hums quietly, not the song, just its backbone. Hermione doesn’t look but she knows somehow; the way the hair on her arms calms, the way Crookshanks’ rumble deepens like a hearth.
After, Harry drops onto the bench beside her, breathing hard and pleased with himself.
“You looked happy,” Hermione says, almost accusatory, because happiness still feels like a contraband sweet you’re embarrassed to enjoy.
“I was,” Harry admits. He steals her clipboard to fan himself. “We’re allowed.”
She nods. Crookshanks reaches a paw and taps the clipboard like stamping a form. Approved.
They share a butterbeer in paper cups so thin the heat tries to run away. Down on the pitch, Theo fakes a limp to avoid putting away the hoops and gets yelled at by Madam Hooch, who yells like it’s good for your posture.
Hermione laughs. The laugh catches on a snag and then frees itself.
IX. September 20 — Are We the Waiting
Midnight thinks it’s clever when it sneaks into the dorm. Hermione’s quill scratches, pauses, scratches. She’s writing notes that are really prayers.
Dear Tomorrow, she writes, I will be very brave if you can manage to be ordinary.
Crookshanks takes up more bed than anyone legally needs. He purrs like a malfunctioning radiator. Hermione’s jaw unclenches enough for her to notice it had been clenched.
When sleep comes, it’s on the back of a hum she didn’t make. She dreams of doors that swing quietly, of oil that doesn’t stain, of songs that begin before the singer finds the first word.
On the other side of the castle, Draco sits cross-legged on a rug he’d once have sneered at for being cheap and now is grateful is forgiving. He lets his fingers find the shape. He plays soft because walls judge. The piece he practices tonight isn’t the September song; it’s one with a drumline in its bones that says we’re waiting but that doesn’t mean we’re stopping. He thinks of Luna counting hinges, of Theo counting biscuits, of Harry counting breaths.
He thinks of Hermione, and for once the thinking doesn’t have teeth.
X. September 22 — Give Me Novacaine (Potions, Adjacent)
Hermione has been staring at a wrinkle of air for ten minutes when Madam Pomfrey appears with a linen roll and that expression that says I tolerate you because I adore you.
“Headache?”
“An essay,” Hermione says. “Wearing a headache as a hat.”
“Drink,” Pomfrey orders, handing over a vial of willowbark potion gentled with mint. “And take that orange lion back to your room if he continues harassing my charge nurse.”
Crookshanks is on Pomfrey’s scale, pretending to be an unknown medical condition.
“Sorry,” Hermione says, not sorry at all. “He finds hospital corners a personal affront.”
“Most cats do.” Pomfrey softens. “You are doing very well, Miss Granger.”
“I’m…not,” Hermione admits, surprising herself. “But I’m practicing.”
“Good,” Pomfrey says. “That’s the only spell anyone trusts.”
On her way out, Hermione nearly collides with Draco, who is leaving Madam Pomfrey’s with a packet of finger bandages and the expression of a man who has tried to become a musician overnight and offended his own skin.
They do the delicate dance of people who haven’t decided what their faces are for.
“Guitar hand,” Draco says, showing the fingertips, open and tender.
“Studying jaw,” Hermione replies, flexing hers lightly.
They smile at the same time, startled. Hermione nods toward the packet. “There’s a salve that helps with callouses. Neville keeps it for nettles. If you— If you needed—”
“I have it,” he says quickly, because service without signature should stay that way, but he tips his head, gratitude clear. “Thank you.”
Silence arrives, companionable if not quite comfortable.
“Take the night off from essays,” Draco says, surprising them both. “Read something for no reason.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Do Slytherins allow joy on weeknights?”
“On probation,” he says, almost smiling. “Ten minutes at a time.”
She snorts. “I’ll schedule it.” The heat between them starts to gather. A blush creeps up on both of them as they run out of small talk.
They pass each other like ships that remember the maps if not the currents.
XI. September 24 — Letterbomb (Defused)
A first-year ties a library notice to the wrong owl. It sails into Hermione’s window with comedic determination. She unrolls it and sees, neat and unmistakable, D. Malfoy—Catalog Corrections on the bottom.
Boundaries shiver. Temptation sharpens. She imagines marching down to the Slytherin corridor with a speech about lines and names and the danger of seeing someone’s handwriting when you’re trying not to see their face.
Instead she folds the parchment into the book she’s reading and goes to find Harry.
He is teaching a first-year to make a broom behave like a friend instead of wild animal. He looks up, catches the weather on her face, and dismisses the child with a grin and a “You’re brilliant; tell your broom I said so.”
She hands him the parchment. He reads. He breathes. He says, “Do you want to be angry or grateful or both?”
“Both,” she says. “But I’ll choose grateful first. I miss him, Harry.”
Harry considers, then nods. “I can talk to him.”
“You already have,” she says, and he doesn’t look surprised. “Can you… keep doing that? Not as an advocate. As a witness.”
“I can hold the string,” he says quietly.
Crookshanks arrives late to the conversation and rubs his entire face on Harry’s boot, leaving hair like a blessing.
XII. September 26 — Theo’s Intervention (The Good Kind)
Theo drags Draco to an empty classroom with two rickety chairs and a view of the lake that makes the world look not so gray.
“I have been grading your choices,” Theo announces. “You’re passing.”
“High praise from someone who doesn't care about grades."
“But you look like someone who’s been sleeping with spikes under his pillow for comfort,” Theo continues. “So: tonight, you compose an offering that is neither apology nor demand. A third thing.”
“A what?”
“A map,” Theo says, spreading his fingers like he’s pulling a rabbit from the word. “Something true about where you are that doesn’t presume where she is.” Theo sits back, watching Draco's expression shift from confused to understanding.
Draco thinks for a long time. Then he pulls parchment and writes:
There is a bench by the oak near the greenhouses that has forgotten how to be comfortable. I sit there anyway. If the month is a hinge, I’m learning what noise it makes when the door is almost moving. Meanwhile, I will keep inventory of the sky for you: small clouds, one stubbornly shaped like a tea kettle; two ravens who cannot agree on the rules of flying; a thin line of sunlight at four-thirty that pretends it is a promise. — D
He folds it. He doesn’t send it. He gives it to Theo to burn.
Theo reads it twice, then tucks it into his pocket instead. “This one can live,” he says. “As evidence.”
Draco doesn’t argue. He has learned to pick his battles, and none of them are with Theo anymore.
XIII. September 28 — Threshold Practice (Expanded)
Hermione finds Draco in the narrow corridor off the Runes wing again. The window makes a painting of the sky’s bad mood. He is humming. She says “Hi,” and the hum startles into silence as if it had been shy.
They do the half-angle dance. Names: “Hermione.” “Draco.” It still scalds pleasantly.
“I got your… corrections,” she says.
“I meant to be invisible,” he admits. “I failed.”
“It helped.” She lets the true thing stand between them like a chair they could both sit in if they wanted. She looked and allowed herself to linger at him.
His ears are pink. He looks at her hands, as if they’re where her voice is coming from. “I miss you.”
“I know.” It doesn’t land like a door. “I asked Harry to be kind to you.”
Draco blinks. “Potter knew ahead of time then. I suspected as much. He's almost worse than Theo."
“September’s nearly over,” she adds, like reporting the time.
“It is.” He wets his bottom lip, nervous. “If there’s a waking you’d like… I can be nearby.”
“I’ll think about the shape of it,” she says, and realizes as she says it that she already has. “And I’ll let you know.”
“Thank you.” He almost bows; he stops himself. Sometimes his upbringing is a real curse. He reverts to formal when nervous.
She leaves with the shape of his hum fitted under her ribs, where Crookshanks likes to nap.
XIV. September 29 — Homecoming (Practice Run)
Hogwarts puts on a concert sometimes, not on purpose. Someone plays violin in the Great Hall at odd hours; a cluster of Muggle-borns harmonize in a stairwell; a Hufflepuff fourth-year brings a tin whistle to Astronomy and accidentally invents a folk song about Orion and a hunt
Draco, emboldened by the fact that courage is a muscle you tear and then it grows, takes his guitar to the courtyard at dusk and practices the spine again. He doesn’t aim for audience. He aims for her.
A few students pass and pretend not to listen. One sits and does her homework with exaggerated attention. The sky goes lavender like it mispronounced the day.
Harry returns from a run and leans against a column. He doesn’t speak. He pulls a spare set of strings from his pocket and, when Draco looks up, tosses them underhand.
“Don’t say I never bought you anything,” Harry says, deadpan.
“I wasn’t going to,” Draco says, amused and undone.
“Good.” Harry pushes off the column. “I’ve got her when she needs me. She's my family. You’ve got her if she wants you. Mind the difference.”
“I will.”
“And Malfoy?”
“Yes?”
“Be gentle when she allows you back. She wasn't wrong when she said you needed this.”
Harry leaves before the thanks gets awkward.
XV. September 30 — Whatsername (Not Lost)
The last night of the month smells like wet slate and a dare. Hermione lies under a blanket that has learned her moods, Crookshanks a weight across her shins, daring her to move. She thinks of all the names she has worn this month: friend, prefect, witch, tired person, liar, girl learning.
She turns the music player on, just for the count-in at the start of the September song, that little heartbeat. She turns it off before the first line because she doesn’t need to borrow the words. She already knows them by heart
Harry knocks and enters. He sets a blanket and two chocolate frogs down like offerings to the domestic gods of grief.
“I’m keeping September company,” he says. “It’s had a long month.”
She smiles. “You’re a good priest.”
“Don’t get me started on vestments,” he says gravely, then sobers. “If he asks and you want to go—”
“I know,” she says. “You’ve got me either way.”
He nods, something at peace at last. “Always.”
“I am a master spy,” he says. “Goodnight.”
When the door shuts, Crookshanks kneads her calves like bread. (Bread, not crumbs, she thinks.) She sleeps.
XVI. October 1 — Waking
Morning pulls itself over the hills like a sweater that’s been mended and still fits. Hermione wraps in wool, the old cardigan that smells like clean paper and cedar, and steps into a courtyard that has decided to believe in light.
Draco waits by the ivy wall with the guitar across him like a polite animal. He looks terrified and certain. She loves him a little for both.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hi,” she says back breathless, and the word lingers in the air
He doesn’t rush. He sets his fingers. He looks at her, checks that she is still there, not an illusion conjured by wishful thinking, and begins.
The first chord is a quiet door. The second is the room. The third is the window you didn’t realize was open. He hums—not the words, not yet; the spine she lent him. It’s the sound of late summer asking for one more minute. It’s the sound of grief that sits down beside you and keeps time. It’s the sound of choosing to wake without requiring applause.
When the last note fades like a well-behaved guest, he lowers the guitar.
“I can’t promise I won’t be afraid,” he says. “But I can promise I won’t make my fear your job.”
Hermione laughs, a small, astonished thing. “I can’t promise I’ll never ask for space again,” she says. “But I can promise I won’t vanish into it.”
He nods. “If you say stop, I stop. If you say rest, I shut up. If you say wait—”
“I say wait today,” she answers. “But not to stall. To be deliberate.”
“Deliberate, I can do.” He looks like someone who has learned in whole and wants to keep it.
Crookshanks, who has been conducting the sunrise with his whiskers, makes an executive decision and leaps into Draco’s lap. Draco yelps, then laughs, the sound young in a way it didn’t know it could be.
From the archway, Harry stands like a punctuation mark, quiet and supportive. Draco meets his eyes. Harry gives him one nod: be good to her. Draco’s return nod says yes.
Hermione steps into Draco’s space like she’s stepping back into her room after someone cleaned it to her notes. She kisses him—careful, present. He tastes like morning. He smells, maddeningly, like cedar and thunder.
“Wake me,” she whispers, no theatrics, just the agreement they both asked for.
“Every time you ask,” he answers.
They kiss again. It isn’t an ending.
Wake me up when September ends