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It’s not like she’s actively looking to start these little arguments with him.
At least, that’s what she tells herself as they’re studying together and she complains to Malfoy about how the colours he’s using to highlight his study guides completely clash with each other—distracting and not at all conducive to learning
It’s what she tells herself when she finds her trusty stock of Sugar Quills in the kitchenette of their dorm suspiciously depleted, immediately seeking him out to tell him off.
It’s what she tells herself when she sees him talking to Astoria Greengrass after dinner one night, scowling and quickly calling him over to tell him that he should stop dawdling and get on with patrols so the prefects aren’t up too late past curfew.
“You know what I think?” Theo asks one night in the library, on a rare day when her usual blonde, snarky study partner isn’t around.
“I don’t, nor do I think I particularly want to,” she mutters, reading over her Ancient Runes essay for the nth time. “Your mind is a terrifying place, Theo, filled with depravity and general wickedness.”
“I think,” Theo continues, evidently unfazed by Hermione’s assessment of his mental faculties, “that this is some weird kind of verbal foreplay. You both look much too happy when you’re going at it with each other.”
Hermione sputters, her hand slipping and drawing a jagged line across her parchment. “Theodore!”
“Tell me it isn’t.”
“It isn’t.” She glares. “We’re on much better terms now than before, yes, but Malfoy just—he gets on my nerves.”
“Mm, I bet. Oh look, speaking of Draco, he and Astoria are on their way over to us right now!” He says, waving an enthusiastic hand up in the air.
Hermione immediately whips her head around to look.
At absolutely nothing.
She slowly turns back to glare at Theo, whose lips are stretched wide in a Cheshire cat smile.
“On your nerves, huh?”
“Shut up, you’re getting on my nerves. I’ll work on this in my dorm.”
“Maybe he’s not on your nerves, maybe he’s in your heart. Ferreted his way right in there.”
“Good night, Theo!”
“All that sexual tension is making you all snappy—“
It doesn’t help that Draco himself keeps acting all weird.
He asks her what colour she’d rather he use on his notes, leaning in far too close, hands brushing against her own on the table.
He comes back to their dorm one Hogsmeade weekend with a big box cradled in his hands, saying, “I got you some more of those Sugar Quills you love so much since you keep insisting I nick some from your stash—yes, they’re the blue ones.”
He walks beside her on patrols, bumping his shoulder against hers, poking her in the ribs and distracting her when their route brings them to parts of the castle that remain barricaded and in disrepair.
They’ve gotten much closer over the past year. They’re friends now, yes, but sometimes…
Sometimes she feels like he’s toeing that fine line between friendship and something more, moving closer and closer towards crossing it.
Sometimes she thinks he gets maybe a little too close.
Sometimes she thinks she wants him to.
The realization of just how badly she wants him to hits her like a truck in full-speed.
And maybe, if he spends so much time just dancing over that stupid line—maybe she can give him the little push he needs to finally just cross it.
There’s only two weeks left of their eighth year when she decides to do something about it.
Hermione marches up to Draco where he’s sitting with Theo at their usual table in the library, where they’d spent the better part of the last few months studying together for their N.E.W.T.s.
“Malfoy, I have to tell you something.”
“What is it today, Granger? Complaining about how I organize my study guides? Accusing me of stealing from your stock of Sugar Quills in our dorm again? Finally declaring your undying love for me?”
“That last one, actually.”
“Great! I—what?!”
Hermione vaguely registers Theo rolling his eyes at the pair of them, muttering “About bloody time,” under his breath before silently gathering his things and leaving.
Draco is looking at her, bug-eyed and slack-jawed, he tips of his ears reddening more by the second.
“Well, maybe—maybe not undying but,” she exhales, hands twisting in the front of her jumper as she stands in front of him. “there’s definitely potential for it.”
Hermione scoffs and throws her hands up. “You’re bloody infuriating! You do all these things that I find annoying, that I should find annoying but at some point—I don’t know when or how but—at some point the annoying things weren’t–weren’t as annoying anymore.” She knows she’s rambling. She knows it and yet she can’t find it in her to stop.
He’s looking at her like she’s speaking an entirely different language. The expression on his face makes her own heat up in embarrassment but she pushes on, determined to get this out.
“I realized that,” her tone softens, eyes moving up to focus only on his. “I like when you annoy me. I like when we argue. I like the way you look whenever I walk up to you to tell you off for something because your eyes get really bright and beautiful and the way you look at me makes me feel like I’m the only person in the room worth looking at, the only person you want to look at.”
“I’ve—I’ve never been the best at voicing my feelings. Merlin, I probably sound utterly insane right now, but that’s just it, isn’t it? You drive me completely mad, in the best possible way. You—you ferreted your way into my heart, somehow, and I like it. And I like you.” She finishes with a shrug, looking at him anxiously.
She watches him gulp and shift awkwardly in his seat, looking at a loss for words.
The silence stretches on, and there’s a voice in her head that keeps telling her maybe this was a mistake, that she was too rash and she really should have thought this through more before barging in on him like this and voicing out the words that would irrevocably alter the very nature of their relationship. The voice tells her that maybe she’s got it all wrong and she just went and ruined their dynamic forever.
She quickly realizes that it’s her wounded pride speaking.
It’s her wounded pride that prompts her to give one shaky nod, slowly backtracking away from the table. “Th—that’s all. You don’t—don’t have to say anything, really. I just—thought you should know.”
When he still doesn’t respond, her chest tightens. The courage that’s been keeping her shoulders back and her spine straight all this time withers, and she feels herself physically deflating at his lack of reaction.
She mutters out a hasty goodbye with an excuse about meeting Ginny before dinner and practically runs out of the library, leaving him and Madam Pince’s reprimand of ‘No running in the library!’ behind.
Gryffindors are known for their courage, bravery and determination.
Courage and bravery be damned, Hermione thinks, because in the week that follows she is simply determined in her effort towards avoiding a certain blond-haired Slytherin at all costs. She throws herself into her studies and her last few N.E.W.T.s, and she almost forgets the disaster in the library.
Almost. Until…
On the final day of their exams, one of the seventh-year prefects becomes so ill that he ends up in the Hospital Wing and, as there are no other available prefects to take his place for patrols, Hermione ends up taking over his shift.
She really, really should have checked the schedule first, because now she’s stuck with Draco Malfoy as a patrol partner, and there is absolutely no chance of avoiding him now.
“So. How have you been?” He asks, after they’re through with checking the first two floors on their route.
“Fine, thank you. And yourself?”
Draco doesn’t answer right away, and after a few moments, Hermione looks up to where he’s silently walking beside her.
He’s staring straight ahead of him with his mouth turned up ever so slightly at the corners. “Not so fine, to tell the truth.”
“Oh, that’s—a shame. Would you like to talk to someone about it?” Her tone is overly polite and her posture is strained. She tries her hardest not to look like a harried animal looking for the quickest escape.
“I would, actually. Unfortunately, the one person I want to talk to about it has spent the last week running away from me.” He replies, giving her a pointed look.
She feels the heat rush up to her face as her mouth repeatedly opens and closes in an attempt to give a biting retort that never comes.
“See, there’s this girl.” Draco continues, returning his gaze to the corridor in front of them. “Ambushed me in the library a week ago. Told me all about how horribly infuriating I am for ferreting my way into her heart—Unoriginal, by the way, that ferreting bit.”
She doesn’t know when her heart decided to climb up towards her ears, but the beat pounding in her head almost blocks out his words as they come. Is he really doing this now, in the middle of their patrol route?
“It took me by surprise, of course,” he breathes out a laugh as he shakes his head in apparent disbelief, “because no one teaches you what to do when the girl you love tells you she’s absolutely mad for you, too.”
What? What?
“Especially not when you’ve spent the last few months convincing yourself that you’re a fucking idiot who doesn’t deserve her in the least. There’s no instruction manual for that, unfortunately.”
There are tears in her eyes now, and she can’t seem to fathom why they’re there. She can’t think of anything other than the words ‘the girl you love’ repeating themselves over and over in her head.
“But I’ve realized that that’s not for me to decide—whether I deserve her or not. That’s entirely up to her, and who am I to say no if she decides she wants to keep me around, no matter how annoying I get?”
He gives a nonchalant shrug, doesn’t notice that she’s stopped in her tracks. “So no, I’m not exactly fine, but I’m holding out hope that I will be, soon enough.”
Hermione chokes out an incredulous laugh through the tears that were now running freely down her face. He stops a few paces ahead of her and turns, quickly walking back towards her when he sees her standing in the middle of the corridor, sniffling and swiping at her cheeks.
“Hey, hey,” Draco’s hands come up to cradle her wet cheeks, an alarmed look in his eyes. “Granger, what… Are you alright? Look, I’m sor—“
“Theo,” she blubbers, cutting him off. She looks up at him with doleful eyes, the panic in his own turning into confusion.
“Theo? What—?”
“I got the ferreting bit from Theo. His words, not mine.”
Confusion melts into understanding, before finally his expression settles on relieved. He rolls his eyes. “Of course.”
They stand there with his hands on her face, holding her cheeks while his thumb swipes delicately over the tear tracks on her cheeks.
She sees the deep affection in his eyes now, sees how he’s looking at her like he’s got the entire world right there in the palms of his hands. Wonders why she never saw it before.
“Did you… did you mean what you said? About—about me being—“
“The girl I love?” He asks softly, and she nods. “I did. Merlin, Granger, you don’t exactly make it hard. It was—practically inevitable, falling for you after getting to know you more. After getting a taste of what exactly it means to be someone Hermione Granger cares about.”
His lips quirk up in a crooked smile. “I’m a bit selfish, you see. A taste won’t ever be enough—not when it comes to you. I’d say I’m fucking addicted, actually.”
She sniffles again with a watery laugh. He shakes his head as he watches her, an exasperated fondness in his eyes.
He leans in close, lips mere inches away from hers.
“Can I—“
“Yes. Yes, please,” she breathes out, and his lips immediately slot against hers. A perfect fit, as if it isn’t the first time he’s doing this—as if his lips were made solely for kissing her, carved to mould perfectly against her own.
There’s a loud screech, and Mrs. Norris appears at the end of the hall, with Filch quickly hobbling behind her.
They stand close to each other, mouths clamped shut to keep from laughing, as the caretaker grumbles at them for canoodlin’ on the job.
Draco’s hand brushes against her own, his pinky finger linking with hers. Hermione smiles, turning her palm and intertwining her fingers with his beneath the sleeves of their robes. Another perfect fit.