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He finds her out by the Black Lake at lunch time, sitting on a blanket she must have conjured to protect her bum from the snowy ground, her arms wrapped around her knees pulled to her chest, head tipped back looking towards the sky.
She must have heard him approach, dragon-hide boots crunching through the snow, but she doesn’t acknowledge him.
He stands there for only a moment before joining her on the blanket by the shore of the lake.
“You weren’t in Potions class today,” he says.
A beat passes and then she responds, “Nope,” popping the p for emphasis. She keeps looking up.
Draco scratches his forehead absently and scrunches his brow. He feels like she’s angry at him about something but can’t think of what he’d done. If he knew, he’d apologize. He’d gotten very good at apologizing to Granger that year.
He’d cornered her in the 8th year common room the first week of term and apologized for the past seven years, for everything from the Densaugeo (which had actually worked in her favor, but she undoubtedly would’ve straightened her teeth anyway, her parents being dentists and all) to the Inquisitorial Squad days, to the day he was helpless to do anything but watch her suffer on the floor of his family’s drawing room.
He’d apologized for everything.
She'd tried walking away from him more than once, but something in the sincerity of his voice eventually called her to stay and listen.
They'd been as assigned potion partners early in the school year. As the top two students left at Hogwarts, it only made sense, As 8th, they were also given twice weekly patrol together in order to assist the prefects and 7th year head students as they too tried to get caught up on their schoolwork after the last year of insanity inside and outside the walls of Hogwarts.
Over the course of time, Draco and Hermione formed a bond of sorts, both misfits struggling to remember who they were beyond mere survival. Two children of war from opposite sides, with more in common and a connection they wouldn’t ever have been allowed to explore otherwise.
Draco knows she likes to come out by the lake and watch the clouds float by in the sky when she's sad or upset. It's a self-soothing act for her. He knows she misses her friends who didn't return to school or ones who didn't survive the war, and that she fears her parents will never remember that they once had a daughter they loved deeply. He knows she's lonely, and lost, just like him.
What Hermione didn’t know was that Draco got butterflies in his stomach whenever he saw her face or heard her voice. Whenever she called him by his first name or brought him a muffin after noticing he had missed dinner.
She didn’t know that he didn’t feel lost or lonely when he was with her. That he worried about her when she got like this and wanted so badly to offer her a refuge in his presence, in his arms. That he is almost certain she would never want that.
But still, he sits at her side and waits for her to come back to him.
She finally does, rolling her neck from side to side as she sighs, and glances at him out of the corner of her eye.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks.
She sighs again and rests her chin on her knees, fiddling with a patch of grass, poking out of the snow near her boots.
“I’m confused about something,” she admits, averting her gaze and keeping it there.
“Confused about what?” he asks, puzzled himself because Hermione Granger is never confused about anything.
“Every time I think you are about to kiss me, you don’t. You…you disappear for a while and then come back acting like…”
Draco’s head spins, but he urges her on, in an embarrassingly breathless voice. “Like what?”
“Like you're scared,” she says.
“Scared of what? You?” He huffs a strange laugh because he knows she is right. He is scared. Scared of this thing between them, scared of being unworthy, scared of rejection. Scared his nightmare of a father will do something to her if he ever finds out. Scared of what comes next.
But the way she looks at him right now tells him she is worth all of it. He knows it’s true.
“Last night at the Valentine’s Day ball, when we were dancing, you were going to kiss me, weren't you?”
Also true. He leans in toward her, “I wanted to.” He’s softly earnest in his response. He can’t believe they are actually having this discussion.
“Then why didn’t you?” She's whispering, their faces closer now, noses practically touching and his eyes on her lips.
“Did you want me to?” He thinks he’ll die if she says no.
“Yes,” she breathes, and he leans in further and presses his lips to her soft, pouty pink ones as she puts her hand on the back of his neck to keep him there and oh, it's just so right.
Their arms come around each other, and their kiss deepens, their connection to each other forged in fire. Their bodies press together in places and ways he’d not even allowed himself to dream of.
When they finally pull apart, they lay next to each other on the blanket, hands linked, and staring up at the clouds.
“You haven’t given me a Valentine,” she remarks breathlessly. “I really thought you might.”
His heart pangs a little at the thought of her waiting for a pink or red card from him to float its way to her seat the Great Hall yesterday, and never receiving one. He wondered if that’s why she missed lunch.
He'd never imagined she would want this with him.
But, he remembers, magic exists for a reason. It’s silly, he thinks, but he pulls his wand out of his pocket and aims it at the sky. One of the clouds passing by is transfigured into a giant, fluffy pink heart, with an arrow through it. Another flick of his wand and there is a DM plus an HG in the center of the heart. She gasps and squeezes his hand. He squeezes back and their faces turn toward each other; their lips meet once again.
Other students milling around see it too, see them there on the blanket, embracing like their lives depend on it. The whispers begin; the Hogwarts gossip mill has always spread like a brushfire. The failed Death Eater, and the Golden Girl kissing.
He’d written their names in the sky for her.
When they get cold, Draco helps Hermione up by her hand and doesn't let go. She slides her fingers into his, and they walk past the gaping students, into the castle, together.
——
A few years later, he’ll find her yet again, sitting at the shore of the same lake, staring up at the clouds.
It is a Saturday, and they finally have a day off together, free from teaching classes (he potions, and she DADA respectively) at Hogwarts and from patrolling the halls for misbehaving students. They have plans to walk to Hogsmeade and enjoy a sunny Autumn afternoon.
But he has other plans too.
As before, he sits next to her on the ground. He takes her hand and kisses it. “Happy birthday, my love,” he tells her, and it truly is.
Hermione’s reunion with her parents had gone better than expected, and Hermione and Draco were planning on visiting Australia soon to spend a weekend with them.
She smiles softly and puts her hand on his cheek and kisses him.
Again, Draco appreciates the beauty of magic.
A flick of his wand, and the clouds above them rearrange to form a heart, and inside of the heart shaped cloud are the words: “Marry me, Granger.”
And unbelievably, unfathomably to him…she does.