Chapter Text
Theo plucked the cigarette from between Draco’s lips, took a drag, laid back onto the pillows, and blew smoke straight up into the air.
“Christ in heaven,” he breathed, exertion still in his voice. “Must have been good for you, Mister light-a-cigarette-before-handing-your-poor-boy-a-towel.”
Draco took the cigarette back, careful to not ash on the newly purchased finespun cotton sheets, and turned to slide off the bed. Theo watched him with unabashed interest, although they’d just finished, and although the long lines of his back, neck, backside, and thighs were as familiar to him as his own. Draco caught him looking, and threw him a little quirk of his brow before reaching down to where they had shucked their clothes in a hurry and tossed Theo a scrap of fabric.
Theo picked it up with his left hand- the one not still coated in the detritus of their coupling. “This is my best cravat, don’t be a louse.”
Draco rolled his eyes, and got up again to grab a square of linen from the washbasin. “Here, you princess.”
Wiping up as best he could, Theo glared at the blonde who was lowering himself back into bed after stubbing out the cigarette into one of the Madeira glasses they’d brought into the bedroom upon retiring. “Your wife is never going to put up with this kind of behaviour.”
Draco snorted, then laughed, throwing one long, pale arm over Theo’s chest and pulling him closer. “I don’t have a wife. I do have a laundress that is very good at getting stains out of cravats, though.”
“You don’t now,” Theo hummed in appreciation as Draco bit the ball of his shoulder. “But you will soon.”
“Do you have to do this?” Draco retorted, biting again. This time, Theo winced. “I’m here. I’m with you. I’ve been here. I’ve been with you. When and if I procure myself a wife, she’s going straight to Wiltshire to stay there with thrice annual conjugal visits. Let’s talk about you, Theo. Why don’t you get a wife?”
“Because a stupid, swotty, absolutely darling boy walked into my lodging room at Eton one fall morning in 1862, and I laid eyes on his smug little face and I couldn’t possibly do anything other than love him for the rest of my life,” Theo rambled. Draco was smiling again, and Theo resisted the urge to push him back down onto the mattress and turn things about. “That and I’m the bastard son of a semi-disgraced earl. More than that, I’m the second bastard son of an actress, and a semi-disgraced earl. Men like me are meant for the church. Or the army, like me. Or maybe both.”
Grey eyes locked blue, and Draco twisted to murmur into the warm, tan shell of Theo’s ear: “I’ll be your wife.”
Theo groaned, “I thought this was supposed to slow down as we got older.”
Draco’s erection against Theo’s hip disagreed. “I’m only six and thirty. A man in his prime.”
“I hope I can keep up with you forever,” sighed Theo into the juncture of Draco’s shoulder and neck.
Draco closed his eyes, lashes falling onto his cheek, “I’ll keep you forever.”
It had taken Theo a while to become accustomed to Draco’s valet coming in every morning before they were awake, but once he realized that Mr. Goyle was dumber than a bag of hats, it got easier to accept. In fact, it was very nice to wake up in a nicer home than he could afford, and be given a tall glass of water flavored with cucumbers or apple slices or orange peel, depending on the season, and have the fire stoked in the cold months, or the windows opened in the warm ones.
Not to mention, waking up with Draco was a chief joy in his life. He had meant what he said the night before about how Draco was the only person he’d ever wanted. In what passed for the wee hours of the morning for the pair, Theo had held Draco in his arms as he slept peacefully. His pale-blond hair, which he wore much longer than the fashion dictated, fell over his forehead and down his cheek, soft and slack with sleep. Draco was delicate, beautiful, and rarely did Theo look at him and not feel some amount of stun in his chest. Shorter than Theo by a head, which wasn’t hard as Theo was uncommonly tall, and slighter than him as well, Draco fit perfectly nestled into the crook of his arm. When Theo thought about it, or when he caught a glimpse of the two of them together in a mirror, he thought them very well suited. Draco was as silvery as he was dark, and Theo’s broader shoulders, chest and height complimented Draco’s classically beautiful features.
The morning was cooler and greyer than Theo hoped for when Goyle came in and roused them. Never once in the four years since Draco had hired him had he made anything more than a blink in Theo’s direction when he found them tangled in the covers, naked as anything, wrapped around each other like a pair of kittens.
Goyle hefted the heavy velvet curtains open, letting weak sunlight fall in shafts into the room. “Ten o’clock, sir. Post is on the bureau. Would you prefer breakfast here, or in the morning room?”
“Mmm,” Draco mumbled, and pressed his forehead into Theo’s shoulder. “Good morning.”
Theo took charge. “In here, please. A light breakfast for Lord St. Armand, who seemed to over-indulge last night, full for me.”
Goyle left, leaving still-warm from the iron newspapers on the bureau as well as a neat stack of correspondence on a shallow silver tray.
“You’re bright this morning,” Draco yawned, reaching to his side of the bed for a glass of water, this morning flavored with thin slices of lemon and lime. “And I’ve not over-indulged. I’m simply starting slowly.”
Theo pointed out the now empty bottle of Madeira on his side of the bed with good humor, and got up to retrieve the post. He picked it up, thumbed through it, and picked up the folded paper below it. “You’re in the Daily Prophet again this morning. Let’s see, what have you done now…”
Draco took the stack of letters from Theo, smirking. “Let me guess, Viscount S-A spotted at The Criterion in the company of Captain N, Baronet Z and Lord F and Lord P, followed by a walk to the East India Club where the men disappeared into a cloud of cigar smoke until after two in the morning wherein Viscount S-A and Captain N wandered into the direction of Mayfair, and the others in the direction of Belgravia. The permanent lodging of Captain N are still unknown, gentle reader, and it seems to this author that Captain N will continue to reside with Viscount S-A until the moment that either should seek a wife, though likely after as well.
Do I have it about right?”
Theo frowned, and pulled on his robe. “Not quite. They only mentioned that you’d a new waistcoat that was very handsome and that mine was quite tattered. You don’t think it’s tattered, do you?”
Draco considered, “It’s not in the best kit. Best have Goyle look at it. He’s got the biggest sausage fingers, but they’re ever so delicate with a needle.”
With that, the door opened again and Goyle brought in the trolley with their breakfasts, along with a new bottle of Madeira and a pot of tea.
“Right on time, Goyle,” Draco said slowly, pulling the sheets up and over his hips. “Look out Captain Nott’s waistcoat from last night and make the necessary repairs, and give him my dove grey until it’s completed.”
“No, the Prussian blue,” Theo corrected urgently. “The dove grey is a perfect match for your eyes.”
Goyle looked between the blond and the brunet until Draco sighed and waved his hand, “The Prussian blue, Goyle. See to it.”
Theo poured cups of tea for the both of them, and balanced a plate of ham, toast, and hardboiled eggs in the crook of his arm. Draco took the offered tea and plate gratefully, and Theo settled in beside him with his own cuppa and the financial section of the Morning Herald.
Thus began another morning, like so many mornings, over the past eleven years since they’d both come back to London. After Eton, Draco was off to Cambridge, and Theo a short stint in Her Majesty’s finest 16th The Queen’s Lancers and a two year tour of India. After matriculation with honors in Botany, of all things, Draco joined Theo on a lark as companion to Prince Bertie on his Prince of Wales tour of India from November of 1875 until March of 1876.
Draco had come to India happy to see his dearest friend from Eton, but left heartbroken and mourning the distance between them, with only a few letters and a lock of Theo’s hair to keep him warm. He still wore the lock of Theo’s dark hair intricately woven into the inside of a locket attached to his pocket watch every day.
And thus began that morning, like eleven years worth of other mornings, with no inkling that today would be the day that life would irrevocably change.
Miss- No, Lady- Lady Hermione Granger’s morning could not have been more different. The new title was something to get used to, to be sure. She was as different from the Viscount St. Armand and Captain Nott as she could be. She was as wealthy as the Viscount, but her father’s money was very, very , new. She had grown up as much of an outsider as the Captain, but had the legitimacy that he did not.
Their constitutions were almost entirely different as well. For starters, she had been up since before six, or around the time that Draco and Theo had collapsed into sleep. She, on the other hand, could barely contain herself to stay asleep for that long. The night before, her dearest acquaintance, Mr. Harry Potter, Lord Black, had found a quiet moment for her at the soiree thrown at Lady McGonogall’s and given her a most delightful gift.
A new French translation of the young bacteriologist, Jaume Ferran’s, treatise on the inoculation against cholera was exactly the kind of present Lady Hermione hoped for. If only the other young men that called at her father’s house in Grosvenor Square could get that through their thick heads. Or, if Lord Black wasn’t already married she would have given him a second look. Harry had been married for far longer than was fashionable having taken the impoverished not-even-heiress of the Irish Weasley clan to wife directly after his investiture as the first Lord Black for his service to the crown during the Boer War.
They- Lady Hermione, Lord and Lady Black, and Lady Black’ older brother, Mr. Ronald Weasley- had become fast friends as soon as they’d met, owing to their mutual outsider status: Hermione and Harry as newcomers, and the Weasleys as impoverished second cousins. All it had taken was one interminable evening stuck at a musicale that none of them wanted to be at with absolutely no alcohol save what Mr. Weasley had snuck in in a flask that they divided amongst them and dumped in their glasses of lemonade. The four of them getting accidentally locked in the conservatory for a total of five hours after the alcohol and lemonade did the trick.
Hermione checked her engagement diary at half past eight in the morning once Abbott, her lady’s maid, had come in with her breakfast. Abbott knew by now that Hermione was usually the only one at home and that it was futile to set out a full breakfast for just her. Lady Hermione’s father was invariably still asleep after a night of cards and cigars at the club, whereas her mother was invariably in Kent, taking the air. Or, staying away from her husband. Hermione thought it was rather the latter.
The day was rather unremarkable, although the evening was something of a highlight for Hermione. Of course there would be callers for her- likely one of the Blacks or Mr. Weasley- and her three new evening gowns were supposed to be delivered today. But the evening… now that would be a treat.
“You’re a very clever girl, Lady Granger,” Professor Binns had said to her after witnessing a heated debate between Hermione and the vicar the Sunday before last. “I think you would be an excellent addition to a little salon I hold every third Tuesday. Some big headed men there would love to be used to wipe the floor with your brain.”
Hermione gaped at him, having only ever seen him in passing at the Anglican church she had selected upon moving permanently to London. He was a shrewd sort of man, tall and rangy, with cloudy blue eyes that made him look far older than what she could reasonably guess was around fifty.
Since then, Hermione had thought of nothing else. And since she thought of nothing else, a plan was formed. All Hermione needed was to ingratiate herself into this salon of open minded, free thinking men and women, and maybe she would make the right contacts to get her where she wanted to be.
Last year, Cambridge had begun allowing women to take their entrance exam. Among these people, Hermione might find a patron. If she found a patron, or a protector, or a husband that could be both, she might be free. The idea itself was enough to make her eyes water. In America, women had qualified as doctors for years already, and Britain was so far behind. A practical backwater. If she could just get to Cambridge, Hermione had a burning conviction that she could be one of the first female doctors qualified in England.
But first, she had to have a protector.
The day passed quickly for Hermione, and once her father was out of the townhouse, she pulled on the plainest dress she owned, pulled a shawl over her hair, and slipped out the back door. Past the stable, and into the alley, she waited until her watch showed 8:15 and slowly made her way to the end and looked for Mr. Weasley’s waiting hansom cab. The lights on it winked from half a block away and she set out quickly for it, before she was seen.
“Oy, Mione,” Ron whisper-shouted from his seat. “Over here!”
She shushed him as she climbed up into the carriage, “Stop it, Ronald. What if someone hears?”
“You’ll be ruined, and then you’ll have to marry me,” Ronald replied glibly, then called up to the driver. “Portman Square, please.”
The cab lurched, and they set off North through Grosvenor Square.
“Don’t talk like that,” Hermione said quickly. “You know that isn’t a thing.”
Ronald laughed, the coachlight catching his brilliant auburn hair. “Of course not, Lady Hermione. I’ll just waste away with want of you.”
Hermione shoved him with her shoulder. “Poor Miss Brown will waste away in want of you then. I bet she’ll have a lovely funeral.”
“Ah, Lavender’s a sturdy lass, she’ll do just fine,” he retorted, smiling broadly. “She won’t agree to marry me either, but I know she’ll give up eventually.”
“And I will happily be there on that happy day, supporting you as you support me going to an unfashionable part of town so as to enrich my starving brain,” she assured him. “By the way, thank you for going with me. I would have asked Ginny to come as well, but I take it she’s engaged tonight. Probably it would be better for my reputation if she was here, but that’s just that, I suppose.”
“She’d just stare at the wall all night,” replied Ron. “She’s sweet as anything, my sister, but dumb as anything too.”
“She’s just fine the way she is,” defended Hermione staunchly. “Just because she likes clothes and hats and the like doesn’t mean she’s stupid. I like all of those things too!”
Ron cackled, “Doesn’t look like it in that dress.”
“There’s nothing wrong with this dress,” Hermione looked down at it. “Sure, it’s a bit plain, and a bit… brown, but it’s only a year old.”
He nudged her, “You’ll be taken seriously with a mumsy dress like that. Just need a frilly, lace cap and you’ll look just like my gran.”
She glared back at him, considering shoving him out the side of the cab. “You know this is important to me.”
“Aye, I do,” he sobered. “You’ll not be content until you get what you wish. It’s better for all of us to get out of your way and let you go about it.”
His words didn’t inspire much confidence in Hermione, and by the time they reached Portman Square, she was nearly shaking herself out of her boots. It wasn’t that she thought she was stupid, or dull, but that at that exact moment, she couldn’t quite remember anything sparkling or clever. She checked the note for the address again, and pointed to a narrow, tidy townhouse in the middle of the row. A single torchiere stood beside the door, blazing to mark the home.
Ron paid the cabbie with the money from Hermione’s reticule, and he helped her down and onto the sidewalk. Up the steps they went, and Ronald drew back on the door knocker and tapped three times. A moment later, it was opened for them and they were drawn inside.
“Mr. Ronald Weasley and Lady Hermione Granger,” Ronald announced to the butler, and they were admitted past him, and up the stairs. The salon was in full swing at this point by the steady sounds of conversation and music as they ascended. Outside the doorway to the drawing room, he leaned down and patted Hermione’s hand. “Chin up, little one.”
She steeled herself, pushing her shoulders back a bit and tilting her chin up in what would look to an onlooker like an arrogant manner, but Ron knew it was just nerves. He patted her hand in the crook of his elbow again and urged her forward. A group of twenty or so were gathered in a comfortable if not entirely fashionable room, with a fire blazing merrily on one wall and an older woman playing a harp next to it. Hermione recognized her as Mrs. Binns.
Professor Binns noticed her immediately, and broke away from his conversation to greet her. “Lady Hermione, I’m very pleased you took me up on your offer. Sir, I am Professor Binns, humbly retired, and welcome to my little Salon .”
Ron introduced himself, mentioned that he’d also been at Eton although never one of the Professor’s students, and the Professor asked him what he thought about the recently signed Mediterranean Agreements. Ron gave Hermione a look- he hadn’t thought that his keen political interest would come up at a hoity-toity intellectual gathering, and he was thrilled to explain his position. Two other men wandered over and the discussion became lively very quickly with the Professor arguing that it was critical to curb Russian expansionism into the Balkans, and another man arguing that the agreements did not go far enough and only preserved the status quo of the region.
Hermione, in fact, knew little to nothing of the Mediterranean Agreements, and tried to keep her face schooled into an expression of neutrality and hoped that neither side would ask her opinion. Spying a table of refreshments, and seeing that Ronald had taken to the conversation like a fish to water, she nodded her excuses and slipped away.
“Mediterranean Agreements,” she grumbled under her breath, reaching for the punch bowl ladle. “Couldn’t be anything on science, or history, or anthropology… no, ma’am. Politics.”
“They bore me, too,” came a voice in her ear. Hermione jumped, sloshing punch on the table and on the hem of her dress.
“Damn!” she swore, whirling around to look at the cause of her catastrophe. It was hard to be irritated looking at the man’s stricken, gobsmacked face, and she felt the true ridiculousness of the accident.
“Christ, I’m sorry,” he said genuinely, his blue, blue eyes wide with shock. “I just heard you and it gave me a laugh and I wanted… Christ, I’m sorry. Here, let me get a cloth for you.”
Hermione looked up, and really had to look up because this man was much, much taller than her, and eyed him. “It’s a very ugly dress anyway.”
Captain Nott didn’t know whether to laugh at her cat-like little face turned up in a lopsided smirk or to die on the spot. He didn’t know what had come over him, truly. He’d just been loitering by the fireplace listening in on various conversations and not really taking part in any of them. This was Draco’s sort of scene anyway, not his, if he could ever convince Draco to come with him it would be. Theo only ever came out of respect for his former teacher and mentor, spent a few hours feeling like an idiot with no original opinions or ideas, and always left before midnight to get home to have a nightcap with Draco before bed.
“I’m sure it’s not ugly,” is all he could reply, feeling the corners of his own mouth tip up.
Hermione giggled and reached down to take hold of the hem to look at more closely. It really was just a splash, and the punch wasn’t a dark color, so it might not stain. “My companion told me it was mumsy on the way over here, and I’m inclined to agree with him.”
Theo’s eye followed where Hermione had gestured to another tall, ginger haired fellow still deep in conversation with Professor Binns. He cleared his throat, “Is that Ronald Weasley? Are you engaged to him? Haven’t seen him much around since he got back from New York.”
“Just a friend,” she revealed. “Are you scandalized?”
“I’d be much more scandalized if you had a husband,” Theo tossed back, “considering you just lifted up your dress and showed the room your petticoat.”
She abruptly dropped the hem and it fluttered down again. Reflexively, she slapped a hand over her mouth to stifle another giggle. Heavens, what was she doing here? She’d come to the salon to overwhelm the company with her intellect and she was flirting instead.
“I don’t think anyone noticed,” continued Theo. “They’re all terribly busy explaining how correct they are.”
Hermione snorted, and dropped her hand. “It’s my first time. It’s not entirely what I had thought.”
“I haven’t seen you before. I’m Captain Theodore Nott,” he replied, nodding a quick bow. “I think I should have introduced myself before I frightened you. Can I pour you a glass of punch? I don’t trust you with my good cravat in the splash zone.”
“Hermione Granger,” she bobbed a perfunctory curtsy. “Lady Hermione, that is. I’m insulted, but will accept the drink.”
“Think how insulted my cravat would be if it got sodden,” Theo said gravely, and picked up the ladle from where it had fallen on the table. He poured a glass, and handed it to her.
“Thank you, sir,” she said, suddenly feeling a bit shy. “I was hoping this might give me a little liquid courage. I’ve been looking forward to this, and suddenly I don’t know what to say.”
Theo poured himself a glass, and sipped, considering. He thought of all the conversations he’d taken part in in this very room over the years. “What are your subjects? Anything burning in your mind?”
“Like I was muttering,” she reminded him slyly, “I’m interested more in the social sciences, and regular science. Medicine, specifically. More specifically, medicinal plants and their applications.”
“Medicine?” Theo questioned. “I can’t say that I’m particularly knowledgeable about anything other than the blasted taste of quinine for malaria. It’s not my area. Now, I have a friend that would gladly indulge you, although I can’t get him to come to this sort of thing. He thinks he's too clever for things like this.”
“I know the feeling right now,” Hermione mused. “I wish he would have come, unless he’s as clumsy as you are. My dress can’t bear it.”
Theo snorted, nearly spitting out his punch. “If I recall correctly, and I might not because you’re very convincing, you were the one who spilt the punch.”
“Yes, but it was entirely your fault. You were clumsy with your words.”
“Draco’s never clumsy with his words,” Theo revealed. “He says precisely what he means at all times. You’d never meet a more careful speaker.”
Hermione finished her glass of punch. “Opposites attract, then?”
Theo grit his teeth, angry at himself that he had brought up Draco. Every moment of every day, Draco was on his mind. One day, Theo would talk the two of them into the corner and the rumors would start. They’d talked vaguely about what they would do if the rumors swirled, but never had come up with a plan. They probably should have a plan.
He changed tack, keeping his tone light and airy, “So what are you hanging around here for? Shouldn’t you be at a gathering for other bluestocking lady doctors?”
“Let me know when you meet any lady doctors and I’ll gladly confer with them,” Hermione pined. “It’s been less than a decade since the Edinburgh Seven started receiving their licenses, and there’s less than twenty in the whole of England.”
“What does one have to do to become a lady doctor?” Theo asked, pouring another drink for himself and Hermione.
Hermione set her shoulders and declared, “First, I will complete a course of study at Cambridge after excelling at the entrance test, and attain a degree in anatomy and physiology. From there, I will find a physician willing to train me in the necessary healing arts. Finally, I will sit the Triple Qualification Examination and become a licensed physician.”
Theo whistled long and low, “That’s quite a lot to be done.”
“And I’m not getting any younger,” Hermione quipped. “I’m seven and twenty and I’ll only be able to put my parents off for so much longer before they force a marriage on me. By my guess, I’m looking at a matter of months before they’re very annoyed with me.”
Drinking deeply, and wondering at the forwardness of this young woman, Theo quirked a brow. “And you believe that there are no men who would take a doctor to wife?”
Boldly, Hermione fired back, “Know any interested parties? I’ll happily have a very long engagement that we can mutually break as soon as I’ve matriculated.”
Theo nearly choked on his punch again, “Well, aren’t you the bold sort?”
“It’s always gotten me what I want,” Hermione shrugged. “That’s how I bullied Weasley into bringing me to this gathering.”
“This gathering that you are not taking advantage of,” Theo pointed out, feeling suddenly like he was enjoying Miss Granger’s company a little too thoroughly.
Hermione flushed, and Theo noticed. “You’re right, of course. Thank you for the company, and the souvenir on my dress.”
Theo watched her make her way back across the room, and was immediately sorry that he’d scared her off. He regretted what he said as soon as her cheeks and chest had flared scarlet. He hadn’t expected a woman with her skin tone to flush quite so brightly. She wasn’t as milk-pale as other ladies, and he wondered if perhaps she had a bit of Italian, or Spanish heritage. Her hair was a sort of burnished brown-gold, and in light or shadow it straddled between the shades. If he was asked, he would have said it was a bit of a treacle color in the firelight, and not at all like Draco’s, which was like butterscotch. He tried to remember the shade of her eyes exactly- he knew they were dark, but the color escaped him. Theo wanted, suddenly, to find her again and assess.
At that moment, Hermione turned from where she had found success talking to the group her companion was with, and she smiled. Inexplicably, Theo found his knees just a little weak.