synaesthesia: a condition in which two or more of the five senses that most people experience separately are mixed so that, for example, a person may see colour when they hear a particular sound or read a particular word

He doesn't question it at first, the fact that sounds have colours and words have flavours. He grows up with it, grows up seeing powerful ruptures of colour when his mother plays the piano and softer, translucent bursts when the people around him speak. His father's voice fills his vision with sombre oranges and lilacs while his mother's is a pleasant mix of delicate greens, blues, and greys. They create a firework display in front of him whenever they talk, varying in intensity depending on the nature of their conversation. He falls asleep to soft shades of blue and wakes up to freckles of purple.

(The albino peacocks produce varying shades of reds and violets, the house-elves create splashy tones that have the tendency to give him a headache when subjected to prolonged exposure.)

It's only later, when he grows up, that he starts to discover the names of these colours, stops referring to them as various shades of the same six hues he knows and combinations of them. He comes to learn that his mother's voice is composed of aquamarine notes, interspersed with azure, Maya blue, Bleu de France, teal, and harbour grey. When he tells her this, she gives him a curious look and makes him promise he would never tell anyone about these sensory experiences of his.

Tasting words and names is an experience that is more peculiar and, sometimes, less pleasant. As a child, the flavours are fairly simple: words like absinthe, python, moth, and thunder taste bitter, while words like cheery, rye, and cutlery taste sweet. The word father tastes like wet wood and the word mother tastes like the pumpkin juice the house-elves frequently serve him. When he hears the word Dementor, he develops a sudden overwhelming urge to vomit as the word tastes like rotten meat and mouldy bread. The meaning of the word sends a chill down his spine and he thinks his taste buds hit the mark with that one.

(Pansy, his childhood friend, has a name that tastes like steamed broccoli, and the taste is so odd that he never says her name when he fucks her, much to the witch's disdain. It doesn't help that her moans are coloured like coal.)

Harry Potter's name is a mixture of sweet and smoky. The name Harry is sweet, much like cheery and rye, but he finds the sweetness nauseating. Potter, on the other hand, is smoky, so he settles with that and decides to call the boy the smoky name. The name Ron tastes like milk that's been left out for hours, better poured down the drain than allowed to linger on the tongue. The surname isn't much better, reminding him of the time his father had made him eat some blue cheese and he gagged it all out, leaving his tongue and throat burning with stomach acid. Every time he says the ginger's name, his face automatically pulls into a sneer of disgust, his taste buds protesting the abuse.

During their first year, most everyone's voices make him see light colours, but as they grow older the male voices turn darker shades and the females' a softer hue. Some voices grate on his nerves, the explosion of colours too vivid, with no sense of harmony, and he often finds himself snapping at these people to shut up.

That's when he becomes certain that this condition is unique to him. If they could see the colours he sees and if they could taste the flavours he tastes, they would all be snappish too.

Then there's Hermione Granger.

Hermione reminds him of a summer trip his family had taken to France before his first year at Hogwarts. His father, ever the champion of luxurious delicacies and drinks, always insisting that he must develop a taste for the finer things, had insisted that his mother let him sample a glass of white wine.

His eleven-year-old tongue quickly detected hints of white peach, dill, and coconut, but they were overwhelmed by the bitterness of the alcohol. He had not appreciated the taste then, not even trying to hide his grimace to the amusement of his parents.

"When you're older, you'll learn to value the flavour of an excellent Sauvignon Blanc," his father had reassured him.

Now the intoxicating flavour is back, every time he hears Potter call her name and every time it flashes through his mind. The taste of it never changes throughout the years, but his reaction to it does. Understandably, his younger self only felt disgust, but the older he got the more willing he became to accept that his father had been right all along—he's learned to value the taste of Hermione's name, learned to savour the white peach along with the dryness unique to the drink.

Sometimes, he could convince himself that he could get drunk just from her name.

Granger was safer, and even in his younger years he had enjoyed the taste of the surname on his tongue. Granger tastes like green apples. It's the first thing he grabs at the dining table every morning for breakfast, and it's a flavour that he chases after constantly. His immature self had found a way to say it every chance he could get, enjoying the sudden burst of citrus inside his mouth with every call of her name. He would resort to taunting, teasing her about being a swot, insulting her and making sure to use her last name by the end of every sentence.

He had been foolish, he soon realises, and so he stops saying her name to her face all the time lest people notice that he has developed an unhealthy habit out of it. He says it in private now, in the confines of the baths and in the privacy of his bedroom. At first it had only been so he could taste the green apples, so he could relive over and over again the tangy sweetness of her name, but later on it became less innocent.

(Later on, he started to favour the alcohol of her given name over the fruit of her surname whenever he would stroke his cock through his sleeping trousers.)

Unsurprisingly, the word Mudblood tastes like dirt in his mouth. When he first hurls it at her, the sensation is so intense that he almost gags before the weasel can even attempt his slug-eating spell at him. It repulses him, but she had insulted him and annoyed him to no end, and not even the sweetness of her name could soothe the headache he got from the bursts of vibrant colours her voice made him see whenever she opened her filthy mouth. Potions quickly became his favourite subject, not only because his Godfather favoured him, but because he almost never allows Granger to recite in class.

He finds that his annoyance slowly dissipates over the years as her voice goes from irritating and migraine-inducing to almost melodic and soothing. The colours stop being so harsh, become muted shades or pastel versions of themselves. He finds that in the splashes of colour he sees every minute of his waking hours, he looks forward to seeing hers.

The first time he realises her voice has ceased to be a source of annoyance for him is during their third year. It's an odd thing to feel, to suddenly yearn to hear the colours of her voice, when two years ago he had wanted to bolt from every room she was occupying. That annoys him, too, because all his life he's been told that his kind should rule the wizarding world and her kind should not even be welcomed, so who is she to drive him out of a room? Throughout their first and second year in Hogwarts, he would stay, not only because he had no choice but to stay in classes he shared with her, but because he's a pureblood and she's nothing but that dirty word that makes him gag.

The sound of her palm connecting with his face is the colour of autumn leaves, a bright orange thunder-like streak that flashes behind his closed eyes. Everything is a sensory blur, and he finds himself running away from her, from them, feeling the shame welling in his chest and the taste of her given name still heavy on his tongue.

The word foul tastes like oatmeal and the word evil tastes like cold chicken soup.

The yule ball is a ticket to a night of sensory overload. The music they dance to causes him to nearly go into a catatonic state, his head thrown back and his eyes following the lights bursting in and out with every note and every chord. Pansy has been clinging to him ever since he had first fucked her three weeks ago, and now he knows what a colossal mistake it had been to ask her to be his date to this ball. She has somehow convinced herself that they're exclusively seeing each other, much to his disappointment, so he's been planning to "break up" with her despite his father's approval of their supposed relationship.

He's thinking of a way to tell her the sex is good (not good enough really, considering the taste of her name and the colours of her voice) but he's simply not looking for a relationship when he catches sight of her again. Immediately the spiked punch is replaced by Sauvignon Blanc and green apples at the thought of her name. She's a periwinkle blue blur from his vantage point, but from what he had seen approximately an hour ago, she's an absolute stunner tonight.

He turns his head so he can fully watch her, difficult as it may be with the pulsing colours interrupting his vision, and all but forgets the witch hanging on to his arm. He watches her dance with Krum, ignores Pansy's demands for him to take her to the dancefloor, and then barely notices when his date finally lets go of his arms and stomps away from him. He watches Granger skip over to her friends, then he watches her get into a row with the weasel before promptly walking out of the ballroom.

None of her friends move to follow her, and he doesn't know what possesses him to do it but he's rising to his feet and moving towards the direction she had gone to. He keeps walking down the hallway until he spots her, snivelling in an alcove and using her hands to wipe at her face. When he gets close enough, he sees that her makeup is ruined, but it's the fact that he doesn't seem to mind that gives him pause.

"If you're pining after the weasel, don't you think you should have gone with him as your date?" he asks, startling her.

She jumps up and whips around to face him, wand already tightly held in one of her hands, tear tracks still marring her face. "Malfoy? Did you… did you follow me out here?"

He shrugs, moving to plop himself down to take her abandoned seat on the alcove. "I think I may be drunk," he admits, the colours still blurring his vision and the word alcove tastes like garlic in his mouth.

She eyes him, her gaze darting back and forth between him and the empty hallway. He can practically hear her calculating her next steps, can hear the cogs in her brain working double time to assess the conundrum in front of her.

He cringes, the taste of residual beeswax coating his tongue at the thought of the word conundrum.

"How can you be drunk? Alcohol's not allowed—"

"We spiked the punch," he cuts her off, reaching for the flask hidden in the inner pockets of his robes. She stiffens, her wand raising ever so slightly to point at him, but he just retrieves the flask and waves it at her. "Paranoid."

Granger watches him return the flask and fold his wandless hands on his lap where she can see them. "Well, it was very bizarre chatting with you, Malfoy." With that, she turns to walk away, the floaty periwinkle blue robes moving with the sway of her hips.

When he returns to his dorm room, he places about half a dozen silencing charms on his bed, draws the curtains closed, and for the very first time, wanks himself off to images of Hermione Granger.

They're prefects, and he should have expected this to happen. Sooner or later they would get paired to do patrols together, he had known this, but he had been foolish enough to neglect to prepare for it. He knows that her voice will no longer make his head throb, has been familiar with the shades of her still-swotty voice for more than two years now.

The castle is quiet, and his eyes are blessedly free of colours bursting around his vision as he and Granger walk the castle grounds side by side. Neither of them speaks, but the silence isn't antagonistic. Last month, they had been paired up for an Astronomy assignment, and although everyone in the bloody castle had been surprised by the pairing and had expected things to blow up, they miraculously did not.

Granger may be an insufferable know-it-all as his Godfather had put it, but her diligence, as he's come to learn, perfectly complements his occasional bouts of perfectionism. He had fully expected them to buttheads, get into rows as bad as the one that had landed him that nasty slap back in third year, but they had ended up working quite well with each other. By the end of the two week-long assignment, he had to begrudgingly admit to himself that his father had been wrong to accuse her of cheating to get good grades.

It had hurt his pride and he had ignored her completely after that. He only resumed "talking" to her last week, when she had come up to him to ask if he was finished with the DADA book lying on his table in the library. He had wanted to say no, tell her to bugger off and find her own copy, but had found himself gesturing for her to take it.

The witch had instead taken the seat in front of him and began working on her own essay right there, in his space. He had floundered for a good minute or two, just staring at her furiously scribbling on a piece of parchment, getting ink everywhere. Nobody would have seen her sitting there with him, his little corner hidden from the heavy traffic of the library. After a while he had given up trying to understand what the swot was hoping to achieve by infringing upon his peace so he had resolutely returned to working on his Transfiguration homework.

When she had finally gotten up to leave, he noted that it was just a little over ten minutes before dinner time. "Thanks for letting me use the book, Malfoy."

From what he can tell, the school isn't abuzz with gossip surrounding the two of them so he can only assume that she had told no one of their little study session, nor the two that had followed the first. He doesn't know what they're doing but he knows that he doesn't mind it as much as he'd like to fool himself into thinking.

"Draco."

He knows the taste of his name, of course. Draco tastes like an expensive brand of chocolate that his mother had indulged him with when he was a kid, and Malfoy tastes like leather. The fact that his name tastes like chocolate had been the only redeeming quality he found out of having sex with Pansy. Every time she moaned his name, the taste of chocolate would make the flashes of coal slightly worth the trouble.

Hermione's voice doesn't bother him anymore. What does bother him is the fact that he has spent months imagining what colour her moans would be and what colour his name would take when it leaves her lips.

Now he knows the answer to one of those things. It's salmon pink, much like what her other notes sound like, the ones she would produce when talking about a subject only she knows about in class and the ones that would leave her lips when something particularly good happens to her.

He can't imagine a reason why she's speaking his name like that, but he turns his eyes to her and gestures for her to keep speaking. He can only hope that she doesn't notice the blood rushing to fill his cheeks in the darkness.

"Why did you save me last year?"

The question catches him by surprise, so much so that he stops walking and only stares at her for a long moment. He instantly knows that she's talking about the world cup, about the warning he had given the trio. Slowly, his features harden, and he feels a scowl replacing his baffled expression. "Is that why you've been hanging around me? You think we can become what, friends, because you assumed that I had saved you that night?"

She doesn't immediately respond, instead taking a step closer to him. He feels his chest tighten at the proximity, every word out of his father's mouth about pureblood superiority suddenly swimming through his head and causing an explosion of varied flavours to occur on his tongue. She's so close, close enough that he can see the freckles dotting her nose, close enough that he can detect the scent of coconuts from her hair.

"I didn't assume anything, Malfoy. You saved me that night."

Aunt Bellatrix trains him, and she becomes fascinated with his condition when she learns about it from his mind. It occupies her interests enough that she doesn't stumble upon the thoughts of her, and he's so frightened by the possibility of her finding out that he's been lusting over a muggle-born that it speeds up the process.

He's always been a quick study, but there's nothing like the fear of your infatuation being exposed to your deranged aunt to really get someone to master a spell.

He had expected that the dark mark would affect his condition, make the colours duller and the flavours blander. He's right—once the ugly black thing gets branded on his skin, he can instantly tell that the colours will be nearly transparent now, the various hues no longer as defined as before and no longer obstructing his vision. His aunt tells him it's a good thing, as he wouldn't want those silly hallucinations coming in the way of a successful Avada or Crucio. The thought of the Dark Lord's name no longer brings up an overpowering seaweed flavour, the taste subdued now.

When his mother plays the piano for him, the colours are still brighter and more pronounced than when people speak, but it's no longer a fireworks display. She looks at him with a forlorn expression, one that he hadn't expected but can understand because, as much as hated the migraines he got from those colours, they had been his. They had been bright, sometimes blinding, sometimes erratic enough that he feared he would go into a seizure, sometimes causing him to miss the target of a hex, but they had been his.

With his Occlumency walls safely in place, he allows himself to think of her name. The Sauvignon Blanc isn't nearly as potent as before, the flavour of the green apples no longer as crisp, but he tells himself he can only be thankful that it's still there.