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When Hermione starts sleeping with Draco Malfoy, she doesn't need an immediate stay at the Janus Thickey Ward at St. Mungo’s like Ron and Harry tell her she does. (“...right, don't get huffy, we were just joking, ‘Mione...")
Nor does Hermione grow two more heads, even though when she tells Ginny over brunch, that's exactly how Ginny looks at her for a solid minute before she spits out her tea.
As Ginny blots the tea from her blouse, Hermione does, in fact, make a small, impish grin into her own mug. She repeats herself: "Like I was saying, Gin, we've been sleeping together for about a week, I guess, but we've been a thing for about half a year, I suppose?”
If Ginny's brown eyes looked like saucers when Hermione first mentions Draco, they look like dinner plates now. “Hermione Granger. You better start talking.”
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Hermione assumed that everyone had secret little traditions. Nothing terribly perverse or bizarre, just secret because you didn't have any reason to tell anyone else. For example, she always gave a box of lasagna noodles a good shake before opening it, and, if she was making the final stretch of a walk to her flat after working overtime, she always pressed her thumb against the wooden base of her wand, just inside her jacket.
Hermione supposed, though, that her most secret - but mundane and innocent, she swore - little tradition was how she loved to watch Draco Malfoy.
It's just - Hermione just appreciated the way he fit into his surroundings. By now, they were both Wizarding lawyers employed by the Minstry's Department for the Regulation of Magical Law, so whenever Hermione took a break from poring over her desk and all the paperwork, she could take a peek at Draco Malfoy’s desk across the way.
Of course, it was only innocent looking. Looking at the way he always sat with perfect poise but reorganized his paperwork with a certain languidness. How he might write a memo with neat but elegantly swooping letters. Or perhaps it was simply the slope of his pointy nose, his blonde eyelashes downturned as he studied another report about regulations and rules, his elegant hands drumming his desk. Elegant fingers, moving slowly, deftly -
Right. So maybe it was a little less than innocent. Maybe it was a little guilty (pleasure).
But it wasn't certainly that bizarre. And far from perverse -
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Ginny snorts loudly. “I suppose everyone is entitled to their own opinion,” she remarks pointedly, arching her brow as she sips more tea.
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The point is, Hermione finding entertainment by observing Draco Malfoy was just a harmlessly secret tradition she had. Now, if she watched him smile to himself after receiving approval on a draft and her face began to warm? Simply coincidence. And if she peeked at him, simply minding his own business, and her motivation to get through the rest of her day burst like the sun through the clouds -- well. Hermione never found any need to read into that.
She usually snuck in her routine peeks when the rhythm of Draco's day led him to turn to the left (speaking to his desk mate, an older fellow named Bartholomew), the right (answering the phone), or to pore deeply into the paperwork on his desk. If she wasn't careful, she might just catch his gaze, and that would ruin the entire secret tradition.
Then, a few months ago, Bartholomew offered Draco an extra pour of coffee - complaining the whole while that one of the new hires had made too much that morning. Hermione reacted, almost instinctively, at the sound of their interaction - it was the perfect time to take a mid-morning peek, after all.
As Draco chuckled at Bartholomew's grievances, Hermione's eyes darted over to him. She couldn't help herself. The wispy blonde hair at the nape of his neck looked so soft, and the skin just behind his ear looked even softer. Yet, she thought, he holds himself so steadily. Something about the balance between his mannerisms gave her a sense of peace. Like all must be right in the world if Draco Malfoy was soft yet steady, somewhere in her orbit. Just a few more seconds, she thought, and then she could be satisfied.
Eventually, Bartholomew, pleased that someone reasonable had listened to him, bid Draco goodbye before he offered a few others the rest of the coffee pot. Now, Hermione's eyes usually took the change in Draco's body language, just as now, as their cue to move back to the work on her own desk, but today, absentmindedly, they lingered on him. Just a few more seconds, they pleaded with her frontal cortex. But it was too late: Draco turned to face her, gray gaze meeting hers.
Her secret had been revealed to the one person she had never wanted to share it with. Whatever sense of peace she had always felt with him in her sights instantly crumbled. Maybe imploded. Her heart was likely on fire, at this point.
And yet - neither one of them looked away.
-----
Maybe, Hermione thinks, she may have replaced her secret with something far better. Over the ensuing months, Draco has eased Hermione into being courted by him and she acquiesces to an occasional upscale French dinner, she observes how much more there is to him that she gets to see, and that she will come to see. While Draco engages their server in rapid French conversation about their wine selection, her ears prick at the tiny lisp that emerges from his mouth. Later, he admits, his childhood au pair had never bothered to correct him.
Over too many dates to count, she learns that Draco takes three sugars with his tea (“I'm afraid Mother never successfully tamed my sweet tooth,”) and that he takes great pride in his clean, well-manicured nails (“Hermione, I have a system for this.”). With glee, she catalogues all his ticklish spots (just under his ribs, the small of his back and the bottoms of his feet). Eventually, she even notes how quickly his skin can be sunburnt (long story short: “Guadalupe would be a nice escape for the summer hols, wouldn't it?”).
Not all of this is offered by Draco so easily. One night, just after they start spending the nights together, Hermione is awoken by the sound of his whimpers - a nightmare. She tries her best to soothe him after he thrashes himself awake, but she learns that there are stories in his head that only he can ward off with time. The clench in his jaw, the tremor in his breath, is seared into her memory. But she resolves to offer him a soft and steady hand, whenever he might need it to return to himself.
She considers that maybe, just maybe, there is more to him than what can be seen, even if she stays by his side for the rest of her life.
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Hermione's friends might still make a remark or two under their breath about her beloved Ferret, but they never forget that Hermione Jean Granger of the Golden Trio, brightest witch of her age, et cetera, et cetera, is still their Hermione. No if’s, or but’s about it. Their Hermione is still an avid learner. Swot jokes aside, if Draco Malfoy were a Ministry-approved Hogwarts elective, Hermione might just pass the final exam with full N.E.W.T's.
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Hermione’s known, since always, how pale Draco is. But it’s when she studies his profile while she lies tucked under his arm, in his - their - bed, washed in starlight, that she learns how Draco can look silver and breathtaking. A man made of moonlight, descending from the sky just to nestle in her blankets, to nuzzle his pointy nose into her hair.
It's the peace and stillness of such nights that Hermione learns the story behind a little crescent-shaped scar on the corner of Draco’s mouth, how he got it during the Final Battle at Hogwarts, in a split decision to protect younger, more reckless students from Death Eaters and anyone else he could manage. She learns to just brush that little crescent with her thumb, how it feels compared to the satin of his lips. She learns to kiss it with fragile reverence, and when he asks her why she seems so fascinated by the little silver nick in his skin, she just says, without thinking, “I love you, that's all.”
And that's all it is, really. The best part is hearing him whisper it back in the hushed nighttime, wrapped around her, and seeing the sheen of his little crescent-shaped scar under the starlight.
Hermione thinks that if love is anything tangible, it's his mouth -
it's like, even though when she sees him, she thinks mine, she also can't help but think oh god, it's him it's him it's him -
so, when he echoes her, I love you, Hermione learns how it feels when someone is your moon and sky and they say your name.