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Being casual friends with Draco Malfoy was really odd. He was a part of their friend group now, but he was always at the edge. He always came to drinks, but he stood at the periphery. They worked in the same Ministry office, but he was politely, professionally aloof.
He went to school with her for six years plus two remedial ones after the war, but they’d hardly had a single real conversation.
So it was odd to observe him quietly thread through her life and stay there like a fixture.
He was different after the war.
“He’s obsessed with you,” Ginny said one day. Hermione laughed and didn’t catch Ginny’s exasperated look.
Another time, Harry shook his head at her and said, “You should give him a break. He’s trying to give you space.”
“Harry,” she laughed, “Space would not be far enough away to send that git.” Harry didn’t laugh back. When did this stop being funny? Hermione wondered.
Then randomly Theo said, “He’s pretty fucked up about you still.” That made her stop dead in her tracks as they meandered through the Ministry cafeteria line. “What?” she demanded.
Theo looked back at her. “He’s struggled a lot getting over you. After everything that happened. He didn’t think it would be fair to you. It’s only destiny, right?” He chuckled as if there was a joke.
“I don’t understand—“ she began to say, but the getting over-er himself joined them. Her getting over-ist? Her erstwhile under-thing?
Was everyone losing their minds? She paid attention during that lunch conversation and Malfoy scarcely looked at her.
At Pansy’s birthday party many weeks later, Pansy and Neville were flirting and canoodling in a corner of the bar and the rest of the group were squished around a halfmoon booth forcing Hermione and Draco to sit with their whole sides pressed against each other.
Every time anyone on their right spoke, Draco got a face full of bushy, curly hair. When Hermione finally realized this, she apologized.
Blaise let out a barking laugh. “Don’t trouble yourself, Hermione, he’s in bloody heaven! It’s his sixth-year Amortentia dream come true!”
As soon as he said it, Blaise’s face took on a shocked expression like even he knew he’d said too much, drunk too much and blurted out something that was never meant to be spoken. “I mean—“
“Blaise. What the fuck.” It was Draco, soft and hoarse.
The table was silent.
“I didn’t mean—“ started Blaise.
“—didn’t you?” said Draco.
“No! Draco—I’m sorry! I—I—“
“Ah, what the fuck is going on?” Hermione finally asked, staring at Draco.
A look passed through the group, like a runaway pinball.
“I’m going to get a drink at the bar,” Harry said to his full pint glass.
“Me too!” said Ron, a little too loud. That drew everyone else to their feet and amid the hasty, mumbled agreements and the scrape of chairs over sticky floorboards, Hermione stared at Malfoy.
He would not look at her and shuffled back in the booth to put some space between them but turned himself towards her. He crossed his arms around his body protectively. He sighed, like he was giving up, and spoke quickly.
“Do you remember in sixth year when we all smelled our amortentia?”
“Yeah?”
“I knew what mine would smell like because I’d already encountered that potion. My granny brewed it for me when I was ten and it was the same thing I smelled sixth year.”
“Okay?”
“Except I’d also been smelling it nearly every day for six years. He glanced at her and then away again.
Her lip trembled with a question she couldn’t possibly ask, an idea beginning to form in her mind. Except he was already telling her.
“Roses, pink peppercorns, and a hint of clove.”
Hermione felt her face go slack as she recalled the scent notes of her mother’s perfume. The one she’d taken from her mother’s dresser before they left for King’s Cross at the age of eleven. The one she started wearing first year because she felt so lonely and homesick. The one she kept in her magically extended bag and eeked out a half-spray at a time onto her ratty baby blanket to cuddle and breathe in when things got tense and desperate in the tent. The one she adopted as her own after the war as a reminder that her mum and dad were safe and happy even if they didn’t know they had a daughter. Draco Malfoy’s amortentia scent.
“My perfume?” she whispered, her voice failing.
He still wasn’t looking at her but down at the tabletop. He smiled wryly but it could have been a grimace. “Warm and floral but fresh and spicy. Like . . . rain-drenched rose petals with their thorny stems.” He glanced at her and this time held her gaze. “Soft and gentle but fierce and powerful at the same time.”
Hermione swallowed and closed her eyes, hardly believing what she was hearing.
“I know it was you,” he said at last. “I’ve always known. I’ve spent the last twelve years trying to deny it. I can’t anymore.”
She didn’t know where to look. She glanced at his face. But the expression of sorrow there was so exquisite, so deep, that she had to look away.
“I’m sorry. I know you don’t want to hear this. After everything that’s happened. All the ways I’ve wronged you. I didn’t want it to be true either, at first. That’s why I— Well . . . .”
Hermione was trying to put together her myriad thoughts. She looked up to find him studying her. He looked older suddenly, much older than his age. And terribly sad. It broke her heart.
“Please just forget this, “ he said at last. “I know how much you hate me, Granger.”
There was a tremor in his voice at the end, and Hermione looked up, horrified, to see the sheen of tears in his beautiful light grey eyes, clinging to his thick, pale lashes. She had never seen him like this. Was this him “over” it?
“I was never going to say anything. I’m sorry you found out like this. Please, let’s just forget. I’m trying to forget—“
She didn’t think she could stand to hear another word. She moved into his space and grabbed his hand where it gripped his other elbow. She wrapped her own hands around it.
“Malfoy,” she said. She took a deep breath. Then slowly, she continued. “Fresh cut grass. New parchment. The Manor. The lawns outside and your drawing room. They dragged us in through the herb garden at the side of the house. It smelled of crushed mint.”
He looked completely confused.
“That night.” He blanched with sudden understanding but she pressed on. “I knew it that night. You’re not the only one who’s been in denial.”
He blinked and his mouth fell slightly open.
Then he shook his head and pulled his hand out of her grasp. “You don’t have to go along with it. Amortentia doesn’t predict the future. Preferences change. I don’t blame you at all for being in denial.” He paused. “For rejecting the results entirely.”
He looked away and sighed before saying, “I should go. If you want me to stop joining the group, I’ll do it. Just say so.” He made to leave but Hermione demanded, “Wait!”
He looked back at her, surprised and sad.
“This is very disappointing, Malfoy,” she said. He paled again and she spoke before he could say another word.
“I’ve just never known you to back down from a challenge.”
“A challenge?” He gaped at her. “Our profound incompatibility and years of mutual hatred are a challenge?”
“Yes!” she insisted. “But I never hated you.” He looked shocked at that. “And maybe we could have compared notes sooner if I hadn’t made such drastic assumptions about how you viewed me. And vise versa.”
He sat wordlessly.
“I appreciate you clearing up some things just now,” she said. “It seems we’ve had our wires crossed for some time.”
“I don’t know what that means,” he said. “Wires? Is that a lecktricity thing?”
Hermione rolled her eyes. Wizards were so stupid sometimes.
“Nevermind. The point is that amortentia can be a useful guide. But if you never do the research, you’ll never really know if it’s valid, right? You have to put the hypothesis to the test. Collect the data.”
“What exactly would we be testing?” he asked cautiously.
“Our compatibility, as you said. See if we actually get along. Intellectually, emotionally, physically—“ She nearly choked realizing the implications of that last word. Heat spread across her chest and up her neck.
He looked at her intently but skeptically.
She tried a new angle. “Look, denial clearly hasn’t worked for either of us. We could outright reject what the amortentia tells us. Accept that there’s too much history between us. Or the timings were never right. Or we could . . . try? And see what happens?”
He held still for a moment, then shook his head again, refusing to take her rather obvious bait.
“You can’t possibly want that. And I don’t want to be your failed experiment. I couldn’t bear that. I’m sorry.” He was gazing despondently down again.
She huffed in frustration and said, “Draco, look at me.” He raised his eyes to her face. She saw the moment he realized she meant what she said. “Don’t you think we need to gather more data?”
He nodded slowly, and she smiled.
She was happy. She was excited. There was nothing difficult or complicated about this feeling. It simply was. And it made sense. She was scared, at how right it felt. No one was more surprised than her. Well, except maybe Draco.
“Would you like to go to dinner with me?” he asked. “Maybe we can just . . . get to know each other.”
She rolled her eyes. They’d known each other more than half their lives. They shared a friend group, an office, and drinks most Friday nights for years. But she smiled again.
“When?” she asked.
“Saturday?”
“But today’s Saturday,” she pointed out.
“Yes?” he frowned in confusion.
“You want to wait a whole week?”
His eyebrows raised in surprise. “No!” he admitted.
“Shall we go somewhere now? I know a good spot.”
“Yeah,” he said, bewildered.
She took his hand and they stood up from the booth. It wasn’t until that moment that she recalled how incredibly tall and lean he was. He looked down at her, his eyes dropping to her lips before a smile curved his. That put a number of crinkles and creases around his mouth and eyes that she’d never noticed. It felt like rays of sunshine touching her skin. She was warm, and the flush on his pale cheeks told her he was too.
She squeezed his hand in warning and apparated them directly to her flat.
“Erm . . . .” He looked around her sitting room, to the knot of their hands still entwined, and finally to her. She smiled at him with a hint of mischief. “Is this your ‘good spot?’ Do you even have food here?”
She thought for a moment, not dropping his hand. Instead, she pulled him closer saying, “I can throw in a frozen pizza.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means—“ she huffed, exasperated. This man could not take a hint. “—shut up. Come here.” She put her palm against his cheek, pushed up to her tippy toes, and drew his face down to plant a soft, brief kiss on his mouth.
Because he had a beautiful face and was ridiculously fit and always had been. That she couldn’t deny, even to herself. What she also couldn’t deny to herself was the opportunity, when there was finally a good excuse, to kiss that beautiful, pale, pointy, smug, arrogant, sad, confused, delighted, lit-up face.
He pulled back, just far enough to look into her eyes. Her entire body was fizzing with energy, with effortless joy, with unspoken dreams and endless possibilities.
“Guess we’ve answered the physical compatibility question,” he mused.
“I’m not sure,” she said. “I need more data.”
So she kissed him again.