Kapitel 46: Castles and Cliff Faces
Hermione woke up, hair falling over her eyes, only to be surrounded by a multitude of red . Upon closer inspection, she realized it was a rose. She was surrounded by roses and rose petals, suspended mid-air, throughout the bedroom. Hermione slid out of bed carefully, doing her best not to disturb the floating petals, to make her way to the closet, pulling on a pair of jeans and a red sweater when there was a knock on the door.
"Can I come in?"
"Yep!"
Draco came in, dressed in what one might call Sunday best: a black button-down, dress pants and a jacket, along with a red tie. Hermione glanced down and bit her lip; here was her fiancé in a suit and she was simply dressed in a sweater- that was now falling down her shoulder and simple high-waisted black jeans without any makeup on.
Draco whipped out a bouquet of flowers from behind his back, a beautiful arrangement of lilies and daisies and peonies. Hermione could feel the blush creeping up her face.
"Draco, this is ."
Draco pressed a kiss to her cheek. "Not as beautiful as you."
Hermione smiled. "No, seriously."
"I'm more serious."
"Well, are you ready?"
Hermione made a face. "Ready to go where?"
"I can't tell you."
"Well, tell me if I'm dressed appropriately, at least."
Draco kissed her forehead. "You're so pretty it doesn't matter how you're dressed."
Hermione huffed, half in exasperation, half in adoration. "I'm going to do my hair at the least, if you won't tell me."
She sidled into the bathroom, tugging a brush through her bird's nest of hair and wrestling it into a messy bun, hair falling in front of her face a bit.
"Is this okay?" She gestured to herself, the sweater slipping off of her shoulder once more, the adorableness of it all causing Draco to smile.
"Perfect."
Hermione smiled, rolling her eyes. "Such a flatterer. Let me grab my wand and my boots and jacket."
She shrugged on a black trench coat and pulled on a pair of knee-high boots, slipping her wand into the slim inside pocket of the coat that she'd installed herself. She shoved her phone unceremoniously into another pocket along with a wallet and other simple essentials, looking at Draco.
"Ready."
Draco gave her a wicked smile before grabbing her elbow and Apparating her away.
***
Hermione jumped, frigid air biting into her exposed cheeks. They had landed in a frozen, wintery wonderland, the trees around them and ground around them were blanketed in snow, a frozen lake in front of them and snow was starting to fall, scattering Hermione's hair with snow. She could see mountains beyond the trees. Hermione shivered.
"If I had known we were going to freeze I'd have brought something warmer."
Draco pulled a scarf from his pocket, embellished with a heating charm, and wrapped it around Hermione's neck, and pulled another box from his jacket pocket.
"Did you put an undetectable extension charm on your pocket?"
"Well, of course. Now open the box."
Hermione's fingers trembled as she pulled on the ribbon and carefully opened the box. She gasped as she saw what was inside- a pair of figure skates, gold blades gleaming and white boots trimmed with a shimmering ribbon.
Hermione looked up at Draco, mouth open. Draco smiled.
They walked to the bank of the lake, and she slipped off her boots and laced up the skates, and Draco laced up his own, and he took her hand. Pushing off the ice hesitantly- she hadn't skated in years- she stumbled, letting Draco catch her. Together, they skated graceful loops around the ice, Draco skating backwards with his hands out to help her balance. Hermione realized that they were slowly skating to the frozen edge of the lake that she couldn't see when they had been lacing up their skates.
"Draco, where are we going? For that matter, where are we?"
"We're currently in Northern Québec, and we are going to.."
He trailed off as a castle came into view, set in the edge of a cliff above. Hermione's jaw dropped.
"Draco-"
"The North American manor."
She whirled on Draco. "What is this-"
"It's the family home that's in North America. We have one on every continent save for Antarctica, for obvious reasons."
Hermione snorted. "I wouldn't be surprised if you did."
"Well, we didn't see fit to buy something we'd literally never use. To maintain heating charms there- nah, it was too impractical." Draco waved his wand and a branch levitated, twisting mid-air to become a wooden bench, leading Hermione over to it so she could slip her skates off while he unceremoniously kicked off his own and, after putting his boots back on, walking up to the cliff face and searching in the nooks and crannies for something Hermione couldn't see. She shrank the skates down into her pocket and walked over to him as he muttered.
"Aha! Got it." He pressed down on a tiny button hidden by ferns and dead pinecones, and part of the sheer rock wall slid open, revealing a tunnel and a staircase. Draco slipped inside; Hermione followed.
The door shut with a behind them.
There were torches in brackets along the wall that flared with flame up as they passed, sending bursts of heat towards the couple as they climbed higher and higher and shadows that made Hermione shiver. Finally, they reached a large chamber, a pair of handle-less, gleaming white marble doors flanked by greek-style pillars and stone peacocks (of all things, Hermione thought) beckoned.
A few moments later and another press of a button moving unseen wheels and cogs caused the doors to swing open, a yawning blackness beyond. Draco marched through, and suddenly the interior lit up and Hermione was simultaneously amused and amazed at the sight before her.
It really was a castle, she thought; even just the entryway the two doors opened up to was beautiful. She was surrounded on either side by white magnolias. Textured marble flooring and a long red carpet trimmed in gold ran the length of the hall, the gold embroidery of the wallpaper glinting in the reflective light of the chandelier high above- a huge crystal affair that hung a bit precariously from the ceiling like an unshed tear. At the end of the hallway lined with portraits a grand staircase split into two, leading to places Hermione couldn't yet see. At the edge of her vision, she saw Draco smirk.
"What do you think? I'm assuming it's a good reaction, because the look on your face is rather awestruck."
Hermione felt scarlet blossom on her cheeks. "Oh.. I suppose that's a pretty accurate description of how I feel."
Draco's arms wrapped around her hips and she craned her head to look at his smile. "Hmm.. Well, as Mrs. Malfoy, you'll get rights to half the properties that we own already. My mum's decided she only wants to keep the Manor in England, and I thought that you probably wouldn't want to handle all of them so I said she could sell them all. But this one-" He pressed a kiss to her temple-" this one is our early wedding gift."
Hermione spun around in delight and shock. "Your mum gave us a house? A
"Basically, yes. I hope you don't mind that it's this one; of course, she hasn't sold the others yet so if you want to go and choose another, we can do that- I asked her if we could keep this one; it's the smallest, I didn't think you'd want something as big as the one we have in Africa-"
"Oh no, this one is beautiful. If your mum doesn't mind us having it.."
Draco snorted. "Of course she doesn't mind, she loves you. Now, let's go explore before the day's out."
Hermione laughed as they danced down the hallway. "So which way do you want to go, left or right?"
"Doesn't matter to me."
"Right it is, then."
He took her hand and showed her around; the right of the staircase lead to a wing filled with rooms where swords hung on the walls, where instruments were laid about carefully against the wall, where rooms set for tea were nicely laid out with tea-trays at the ready. On the floor above that, there were bedrooms and washrooms and a pool; in the left wing, a kitchen, a dining table, a potioneering room, and empty rooms that seemed, impossibly, to have never collected any dust.
But the best part of it all was at very end of the hall lined with bedrooms, hanging off of the master bedroom, was a huge circular balcony, made entirely of white marble and currently blanketed in snow. It looked out onto the pond they'd skated across, elegant scratches along the ice running from one end to the other. Hermione smiled as the sun shone on her face, the light angled just so, so that if Draco stood at one spot the gold flecked in her eyes stood out like the light at the end of a tunnel.
Draco smiled.
"Happy Valentine's day, darling."
***
♥️
Wöchentlicher Energiestatus
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Stein