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The room was quiet as Draco immersed himself in the process of brewing. He had been working on a new potion recently, one designed to heal internal bruising, and was finding both great joy and frustration in its complexity. The potion called for a complicated mixture of magical and Muggle ingredients, and was therefore highly volatile, which meant that all of his measurements had to be exactly correct, lest he end up in St. Mungo’s due to a cauldron explosion.
Not that he was worried about that.
Part of the reason why Draco enjoyed working with potions so much was that brewing helped him take his mind off of things. He devoted his utmost attention to the steps that required it, losing himself in the methodical process of chopping ingredients, measuring them, and stirring them into a cauldron. It came like second nature to him; it was as easy as— sometimes even easier than— breathing.
He was in the middle of chopping half of a gurdyroot, the rhythmic sound of a knife against a cutting board filling the air, when he heard another quiet noise. He placed the knife down and looked up.
“Granger?” he asked, surprised at the sight of her. “What are you doing here?”
Her lips curled into a soft smile once he made eye contact with her, and the action made something at the edge of his ribcage twist around itself.
“You opened your Floo network up to me, remember?” she replied. Her eyes flitted to the side, and she said, more quietly than before, “If this is a bad time, I can go—”
“—No,” was his immediate reply.
A few months ago, he would’ve slapped himself across the face for being so outwardly desperate, but the events that had transpired since then— namely, six dates, countless kisses, and a few shags, not necessarily in that order— had uncovered some interesting revelations between him and Hermione Granger. The most important— and unbelievable— being that she fancied him too.
“You can stay,” he assured her, and watched as her posture visibly softened. “I was just wondering if something happened. Is everything alright?”
She nodded quickly.
“Everything’s fine,” she replied. “I just wanted to see you.”
The words made his tangled insides nearly burst.
Before Draco did something stupid, like told her he loved her, or climbed over the long table full of dangerous and valuable items that separated them to kiss her, she moved to sit in a chair located near the room’s entrance and pulled out a book from her purse.
“What are you doing?”
Her eyes flashed up as she regarded him with a furrowed brow. “I’m reading. What does it look like?”
“No, I mean—” he dragged a hand over his face, dreading the words that were going to come out of his mouth, and unable to stop them from doing so anyways, “what are you doing all the way over there?”
She smiled at him, and this time it was so full and wide it made her eyes crinkle. He still didn’t understand how she did that: how she gave out such genuine smiles so freely, especially to him.
“You’re busy,” she said casually, looking back down at her book. “I won’t bother you right now. What are you working on?”
He regarded her with an intense stare.
“This is, by definition, bothering me.” As soon as the words left his mouth, he regretted them, wondering if Granger might take them the wrong way and turn on her heel and leave the room. Leave him.
Instead, a quiet huff escaped her lips. She didn’t even blink an eye at his statement.
“Then tell me once you’re done," she said, as if it were the simplest thing in the world.
Nodding silently, grateful for her understanding, he brought his gaze back to the table.
And promptly stared at it.
He couldn’t remember what he’d been doing before Granger had shown up.
His eyes flitted back and forth between the various things strewn across the table’s surface: a gurdyroot on a chopping board, an opened vial of glacial acetic acid, and a lizard eye.
“You were chopping the gurdyroot,” Granger’s voice chimed in. She was looking at him with an amused glint in her eyes, but when he met her gaze, she drew her attention back to her book.
Draco let out a sound dangerously close to a growl as he walked out from behind the table towards her, only stopping until he was a few inches away.
He stood there for a moment before Granger finally looked at him with wide eyes.
“Yes?” she asked innocently.
“You are—” he said darkly, bending down to capture her lips in his, “—going to be the death of me.” He pulled back just a fraction, and when she smiled he could feel it against his own.
“Literally,” he added for emphasis. This potion was, after all, very prone to exploding.
The sound of her laughter filled his ears before she wrapped her hands around his neck and pulled him closer to kiss him again, and by then Draco could care less if his potion blew up into pieces.