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No matter what restorative spells she’d tried to use, Hermione’s potions textbook was ruined. It was supposed to be charmed – the back matter proudly declared that it was almost impervious to damage – and yet one splash of armadillo bile mixture had corroded through the pages and left her with more hole than book.
And of course, there were no spares in the cupboard because Harry and Ron had nicked the last two. Hermione sighs as she taps her wand half-heartedly against the book’s remnants and contemplates the long walk to the owlery and a request for a mail-order form from Flourish and Blotts. Owl post isn’t necessarily slow, but she knows from prior experience that they typically have to backorder Hogwarts textbooks when they’re past September.
In short: she’s sans textbook for at least a few days. Hermione flops her head down onto her forearms and lets out a pained groan.
“What’s the matter, Granger?” A snide voice comes from behind her and Hermione bolts upright. “Can’t fix your precious book?”
“Piss off, Malfoy,” Hermione grumbles as she turns around and glares at him over the back of her chair. He’s got a small pile of books in his hands – transfiguration titles Hermione recognises from doing her essay last week – and she points her wand towards him. “Unless you want to be hexed.”
Draco rolls his eyes at her empty threat. She’s not actually stupid enough to cause a ruckus in the library where there’s witnesses and Ms Pince to contend with. “Should’ve been more careful,” Draco drawls as he continues towards the table a handful of other Slytherins are clustered around. He leans over towards her and lowers his voice. “Didn’t you know that armadillo bile mixture corrodes?”
He straightens up as Hermione is processing which hex she can get away with muttering under her breath and moves away with a victorious glance over his shoulder.
She wants to throw her wand at him. Or the rest of her potions book. But the moment has passed and she didn’t say anything and Hermione has never hated him more than in this precise moment. Of course he’d somehow managed to engineer the splash – he’s never been above petty sabotage. With a pointed huff, Hermione gathers her ruined book and the scrawled pages of parchment she’d copied spells onto and storms out of the library. Hopefully the walk to the owlery will clear her head. And at least she won't be anywhere near that insufferable Malfoy git.
Flourish and Blotts’ response is dropped almost into her scrambled eggs and toast the next morning. She pinches Ron’s unused butterknife to break the wax seal – ignoring his delayed protest – and lets out a sigh as she skims the page.
Their last copy in stock had been ordered two days ago – the same day she’d ruined her textbook. Of course. She’ll have to wait two weeks for a replacement – and it will be twice as expensive as it ought to be.
“Can you believe this?” She complains as she waves the parchment under Harry’s nose. “They want me to pay double!”
“Hermione,” Harry says as he hastily swallows a mouthful of bacon, “I can’t read when you’re waving the parchment around.”
With a huff she lets him take the letter and rifles through her robe pocket for a quill to fill out the mail-order form. If she’s quick about it she can dash to the owlery before class starts and hopefully get her new book one day sooner. “Unbelievable,” she mutters as she sets her inkpot by her orange juice. “I ought to write Malfoy a bloody invoice.”
“He’d just throw it back at you,” Ron says, unhelpfully, as he swipes a piece of her toast. “Waste of ink.”
Hermione huffs again and continues filling out the form. “I know,” she grumbles. “But still.” She sighs as she plucks an apple from the centre of the table and shoves it into her bookbag, just in case she gets hungry between classes.
She dashes to the owlery as soon as she’s finished with her form, her Galleons jingling in her pockets and making her hope that she doesn’t lose any. And as though complaining about him over breakfast had summoned him, she finds Draco murmuring gently to one of the school owls as he strokes its feathers and then pauses – his expression almost guilty – when he sees her.
“Granger,” he mutters, gently shifting the owl from his arm to a nook in the aviary. “Breakfast over, then?”
It takes her a moment to parse his question. Not insults – not a snide remark – not some slight over her abilities or her blood. She swallows and hesitates on the threshold, not wanting to get closer to this peculiar early-morning version of Draco Malfoy who asks questions and pats owls.
“I left early,” she says, her voice almost cracking. She clears her throat and awkwardly looks away – at the grey clouds rolling in behind the owlery tower – at the spires of Hogwarts and the lush forest beyond. “To order a new potions book,” she adds, even though he didn’t ask and won’t care. There’s a moment of awkward silence and Hermione can’t stop herself from opening her mouth once more. “You know they want double the usual price?”
Draco blinks slowly at her and then shrugs. “What, can’t afford it?” His insult lacks its usual bite – as though his worse side hasn’t woken up yet – as though he needs an hour or so after breakfast to warm to insulting her.
“Of course I can afford it,” Hermione huffs as she steps into the owlery and shoves past him. “Just because I don’t have a vault full of gold like you-“
“It’s not mine,” Draco protests as he follows behind her like a shadow. “It’s the family vault.”
“Well, la di da,” Hermione mutters as she gingerly holds a treat out to one of the still-awake owls who takes it gently from between her fingers with what seems like only a little annoyance towards Hermione for delaying its sleep. “It’s the same thing.”
“It-“ Draco cuts himself off with a huff. “Whatever.” She sees him in her peripheral vision as she carefully ties her Galleons into a pouch around the owl’s leg, throwing his arms up and stalking back to the door.
Hermione expects a slam of the door – an insult – and hunches her shoulders as she murmurs, “Flourish and Blotts in Diagon Alley, please,” to the owl. It blinks at her as she passes over the letter as if to say really? and Hermione feels a pang of guilt.
She watches the owl fly off into the horizon – a faint speck against the clouds – and when she turns around, Draco is still there, leaning against the doorframe and watching her.
“What?” She asks, crossing her arms over her chest defensively. He hadn’t hexed her with her back turned – hadn’t shoved her out of the window and watched her topple to her death – hadn’t done any of the cruel and hurtful things she would have expected.
“Nothing.” Draco pushes off from the doorframe and calls out, “See you in charms.”
Hermione rolls her eyes as she follows after him, closing the door behind her. “We’re going to the same place,” she mutters under her breath as she watches the way his robe floats across the stairs without ever dragging on the stone. “You can’t even pretend to be civil for the walk over?”
Draco glances over his shoulder at her and then – much to Hermione’s delight – trips down the next stair and has to catch himself against the rough stone wall. She lets out a giggle that almost drowns out his hiss of pain – and if it were anyone else then she might feel a pang of sympathy for them.
“Seems like you’re the one that can’t be civil,” Draco mutters as he pulls his wand out of a pocket and then murmurs a spell, pressing the tip to his bleeding palm.
“I can be civil,” Hermione protests, catching up to him on the stairs. “I’m very civil.”
“Prove it,” Draco mutters as he puts his wand away and glances towards her. “You won’t last thirty seconds.”
Hermione takes a breath and then pointedly crosses her arms over her chest. She can be civil if she keeps her mouth shut.
Probably.
Draco exhales softly through his nose – an almost laugh – and Hermione grips her fingertips into her elbows. She’ll count out the damn seconds if she has to, just to prove a point.
It’s just that walking next to someone in silence is so boring – so painfully awkward – that she can feel tension spreading through her shoulders and prickling over her skin.
“What were you doing in the owlery anyway?” Hermione asks, having barely managed to count to five.
“Collecting a package from home,” Draco answers with a shrug. “What’s it to you?”
“Nothing,” Hermione says, glancing away from him and towards the scuff marks on her school shoes. “You shouldn’t skip breakfast, though.”
“Didn’t know you cared about my eating habits,” Draco mutters.
“I don’t.” She looks back towards him with a glare. “It’s just that it’s the most important meal of the day-“
“I wasn’t hungry,” Draco interrupts, not meeting her gaze. “I’ll eat a big lunch.”
“You better,” Hermione huffs, putting her hands on her hips and feeling – just for a moment – as though she’s scolding Harry or Ron. She doesn’t even care – not about Malfoy – he could starve to death, honestly – but he does look a little gaunt, a little worn around the edges, his sharp features dulled with exhaustion, the bruises from sleepless nights stark against his pale skin.
He rolls his eyes at her and that awkward silence descends once more, pushing against Hermione’s skin and making her feel nervous in a way she usually isn’t. If he’d just insult her then she’d know what to say – but this is new and different and she doesn’t know how to act or what to expect.
“Did you finish your transfiguration essay?” She asks, because they’re still at least five minutes from the charms classroom and she’ll lose her mind staying silent for that long.
“Copied half of Theo’s,” Draco murmurs, sounding a little distracted. “You?”
“Handed it in last week,” Hermione says, trying not to sound too smug and failing miserably.
“Of course you did,” Draco mutters. “Don’t you ever get tired of being – well – you?” He gestures with his hand towards her, his brows drawing together.
“What? Organised?” Hermione crosses her arms over her chest, bracing for the insults. “So much for your civility.”
He huffs and looks away. “You make the rest of us look bad, you know,” he says softly, not looking back at her. “If I had a Galleon for every time I heard a professor talk about how Miss Granger already handed her essay in, you could all learn from her example, then I’d need a second bloody vault at Gringott’s.” His impersonation of Professor Flitwick makes Hermione bite the inside of her cheek so that she doesn’t laugh.
“Profiting off my hard work, typical gentry move,” she mutters under her breath. The thirty seconds have passed and she’s already proven her point. But a thought strikes her – one of those obnoxious ones that she can’t shake – and she digs through her bookbag and pulls out the apple she’d saved from breakfast. “Here.” She thrusts her hand out in front of his chest. “Eat something.”
“Why? Is it poisoned?” Draco drawls as he plucks the apple from between her fingers.
“Find out.” Hermione narrows her eyes at him.
Draco glances towards her face and then – watching her – takes a crunching bite of the apple. She feels a momentary pang for losing her potential midmorning snack as he wipes at his chin with his other hand and smirks at her. “Satisfied?”
“I will be when you finish it,” Hermione mutters as she fidgets with the strap of her bookbag. She feels as though she needs to talk about something, now, to fill the silence between them, but she can’t think of anything witty or clever to bring up. “You look tired,” she says, and instantly wishes she could snatch the words back into her mouth.
Draco glances towards her and swallows a bite of apple. “I am tired,” he says, giving her a considering look before taking another bite. He swallows before continuing, “But I’m not the only one.”
She instinctively glances away, as though it will hide the faint purple bruises under her own eyes. As though the evidence of her own late nights will vanish if she wills them away. “I don’t know what you mean,” she snaps, and the conversation between them falls away like wilting flower petals.
Hermione is nervously twisting her hands and waiting for Professor Slughorn. Ron said she can look over his shoulder and share his book – but it’s not the same, and she’s never been without her own textbook before – and she wants to just go stand outside and breathe in some fresh air when Draco and the other Slytherins file into the room with a loud and animated conversation about broomsticks.
She’s about to ignore them and finally whisper to Ron that she’d love to share his book when Draco breaks off and narrows his eyes at her.
“Here,” he says, and he drops a copy of Advanced Potion-Making onto her corner of the desk.
He turns in a swirl of robes before she can ask what or why or how, which are all questions Harry and Ron pepper her with until she threatens to slam the book into each of their noses.
But when she peers towards the Slytherin table, Draco has his own copy right in front of him. As though he’s managed to duplicate it – which is impossible, she’d tried – and give her a spare.
Hermione glances at the first page – wondering – and the inscribed Draco Malfoy makes her heart wedge into her throat and stick there for the rest of the lesson – for the rest of the afternoon – all the way until dinner in the Great Hall when she manages to catch his eye across the sea of heads between them and tilt her head pointedly towards the doors.
“I’ll be back in a minute,” she tells Ron, who isn’t listening, and Harry, who raises an eyebrow at her.
He’s lurking in the shadows of the doors – his white-blond hair the only way she can spot him – and Hermione glances around before leaning in to whisper towards him. “Why’d you give me your potions book?”
“What?” Draco gives her a puzzled look. “I didn’t.”
“It had your name inside the cover,” Hermione says, wishing she had her bookbag to prove it to him.
“I must’ve mixed them up.” Draco looks away from her and sighs. “I ordered a new one from Flourish and Blotts. I didn’t know you were ordering one too until this morning.”
For a moment, Hermione stares at him. And then she groans – frustrated. “I’ll have to cancel my order – you couldn’t have said something earlier?”
Draco runs his fingers through his hair as he shifts his weight from foot to foot. “I wasn’t sure I’d even give it to you. That you’d accept it.”
“Why ruin my book and buy me another?” Hermione huffs with her hands on her hips.
“It’s not like I did it on purpose!” Draco protests.
Hermione thinks back – past the haze of book-repairing charms and desperate measures. Draco passing her in potions – stumbling – the drop of bile mixture ripping through her book as she hastily lifted it out of her lap and onto the protectively charmed table. The stumble that she’d assumed was an accident – then malicious – and now an accident again. And his sniping comments in the library could have been well-intended, if it hadn’t been Draco Malfoy saying them to her.
She’s going to get a headache. Hermione sighs and rubs at her eyes. “I have to go to the owlery.” She turns on her heel – she’s not hungry anymore with her stomach twisting into knots – and takes a weary step.
Draco falls into place beside her as though it’s the most natural thing in the world for him to do. Hermione flicks a glance towards him as he shoves his hands into his pockets and looks almost contrite.
“I need to owl home,” he says, glancing towards her. “I may as well tag along.”
“That’s twice today,” Hermione murmurs as they make their way through the silent castle. “Feels like we’re almost making a habit out of it.”
“What, walking in sullen silence next to each other?” Draco smirks at her. “Should we go back to swapping petty insults?”
“I won’t give your book back,” Hermione mutters under her breath.
“I didn’t expect you to.” Draco rolls his eyes. “It’s just a textbook.”
“If Flourish and Blotts don’t send my Galleons back, I’m writing you an invoice,” Hermione huffs. “And charging an inconvenience fee.”
She expects some kind of argument – a bickering back and forth – but Draco just shrugs. “Alright,” he says mildly, and Hermione feels a little contrition of her own.
It weighs her down as they continue to walk towards the owlery until she sighs and lets out a deep breath. “Thank you,” she mumbles, looking towards the painting they’re passing by and not at his face.
“What?” She feels the press of his arm against hers as he leans closer. “Did you say something?”
Hermione scowls as she turns towards him. “I said,” she mutters, feeling as though the words are being dragged out from behind her teeth, “thank you.” She can feel heat rising in her cheeks as she glares at him.
“I thought so.” Draco leans back, smug, and Hermione is struck with the sudden urge to toss the nearest throwable object right at his face. “But I wanted to make sure.”
“I hate you,” Hermione grumbles under her breath as she crosses her arms over her chest, but she can’t muster the usual venomous tone he deserves. He didn’t need to buy her a new textbook – but he did anyway – and he didn’t even ask for anything in return.
It makes it a little harder to remember all the insults he’s hurled towards her over the years.
And it makes her think of the boy who’d sat behind her in third grade and tugged at her braids and annoyed her until she’d gone to the teacher, who’d unhelpfully told Hermione that the boy had liked her and simply wanted her attention.
Her mother had gone to the school in a rage, Hermione remembers, talking about bad behaviour and encouraging nonsense from boys who ought to be raised better, and about young girls who shouldn't have to bear the burden of emotional immaturity.
“I know,” Draco murmurs beside her, and maybe she’s just imagining the pain in his voice, half-lost in her own reverie, but Hermione feels a pang of disappointment over the way things might have ended up if he hadn’t been Draco Malfoy and she hadn’t been Hermione Granger. If they hadn’t been predestined to hate each other for all eternity just because of who their parents were.
It’s never too late to make amends, her father’s voice says in her head – the way he had when Hermione had dragged her feet over apologising to her mother about breaking a particular beloved vase in an explosion of anger and manifested magic.
Draco gestures for Hermione to trek up the owlery stairs first and Hermione almost stumbles – lost in thought and discarded sentences – only for Draco to dart forward and steady her with a hand on her back and another on her bare forearm.
“Careful,” he mutters, releasing her.
“Just lost in thought,” she mutters back, her fingertips ghosting over the goose bumps he’d left behind on her warm skin.
“Give you a Sickle for them,” Draco murmurs as he climbs the steps beside her – his longer legs meaning he pauses for a moment on every second step to wait for her.
And because she feels a little soft around the edges Hermione answers with the truth. “Just thinking about a boy from my old muggle school who’d pull on my braids and how my idiot teacher said it meant he liked me.” She makes a face at Draco’s back.
Draco flicks a glance towards her hair and then climbs another step. “Did he?”
“No idea.” Hermione shrugs. “I don’t even remember his name. Just how much I hated him.”
“Don't tell me I'm in danger of losing my top spot on your list,” Draco says, glancing over his shoulder and smiling at her.
Hermione’s hand flutters to her throat as her heart crashes against her ribs. She’s seen him sneer and smirk and scowl and snicker – truly all the emotions she can think of beginning with S that have flickered across his face, but never smile – not at her, not with a radiance that lights up his features and transforms them from pointed and pinched to beaming and beautiful.
She trips up the next step and Draco catches her – again – the smile replaced with instant concern, his brows knitting together as Hermione blinks up at him, her thoughts scattering like snowflakes in a strong breeze. His hand is on her arm – holding her steady – but she feels as though she’s still falling down the stairs with the way he’s staring at her.
“Sorry,” she breathes, because she has to say something and not just gape up at him as her mind whirls with a shifting and sudden realisation that Draco Malfoy is capable of stunning beauty, and his palms are rough but his fingertips are soft and she wonders for a brief and ridiculous and dizzy moment what it would feel like to hold his hand in hers.
“Are you alright?” Draco leans towards her and lifts his hand to her face. As though he’s going to strike her, Hermione thinks for a second, but he touches the back of two cool fingers to her forehead and his frown deepens. “You’re warm.”
“I’m fine,” Hermione says, and her voice cracks, and she wants to let herself fall back down the stairs and die so that she doesn’t have to live with the embarrassment burning through her veins.
“For someone who lectured me this morning about breakfast, I noticed you skipped lunch,” Draco mutters as he releases her – and her skin feels colder without his touch – and lets out a soft sigh. “I guess we’re both sleeping like shit and not eating.”
“How did you know I skipped lunch?” Hermione whispers as she leans back against the stone wall and tries to remember all the reasons why she shouldn’t be alone in a staircase with Draco Malfoy at night.
Draco shrugs and looks away. In the dim light of the flickering candles along the wall he looks as though he’s blushing. But it’s a trick of the light – surely – and he glances back towards her. “I thought I could slip the potions book into your bag or something. So you wouldn't know it was me.”
Hermione bites her lip as she considers Draco Malfoy like one of those three-dimensional puzzles she used to do with her father – taking him apart and putting him back together in a slightly different way – building a dolphin instead of an elephant – seeing a person and not just the insults he’d lobbed at her over the years. She wants to ask why but she already knows the answer.
Because she hates him. Because he hates her. Because she’d never accept his kindness – would never believe he could be kind to her in the first place. But now, on the stone staircase to the owlery – barely five steps from the door – something in the night has shifted like the candle-thrown shadows on the walls and on their faces. Hermione can almost feel the shift in her chest – like Crookshanks getting comfortable on the end of her bed – like her feelings towards Draco Malfoy are stretching themselves out and finding a different place in her heart to settle down in.
She meets his gaze – his silvery-grey eyes are almost golden in the reflected light – and smiles. Draco’s face shifts like the shadows surrounding them – surprise and then confusion and then something she doesn’t yet know – and she takes a deep breath through her nose and offers an olive branch that never could have existed at any other time or in any other place.
“Thank you,” she says, with all the sincerity she can muster, without breaking eye contact as a blush spreads over Draco’s pale cheeks and she can see the indent of his mouth where he’s biting the inside of his lip, “I really appreciate it, Draco.”
He starts at his own name – the blush creeps along his ears – and Hermione wonders if she’s gone too far in this liminal space unfolding between them. “Well – you’re – you’re welcome, Hermione,” he mutters as he dips his head and looks away and then glances back under the glinting curtain of his hair, as though he wants to see the smile she can’t help giving him.
For a moment they’re caught like that – staring silently at each other – waiting for the other to crack the mood apart with an insult or a gotcha or a sneering laugh. Hermione shakes her head and gestures one hand towards the door. “Come on. The owls will have all left for the night.” She takes a step – one hand on the wall beside her, just in case, because she’s afraid if she stumbles again, she’ll reach for his hand.
“There’s always tomorrow,” Draco murmurs as he falls into step beside her. “I’ll even bring you an apple.”
Hermione laughs, suddenly and unexpectedly, and she hears it echo down the staircase, and Draco’s lips twitch before he laughs too, and it’s not even that funny, really, but they’re laughing and holding themselves up with outstretched hands on their respective walls, because how can she be here, in this moment, laughing like this with Draco Malfoy, two steps in front of the owlery door and suddenly wondering if she’ll look back on this moment and know that it was the moment when they somehow became friends, all because of a spilled drop of armadillo bile mixture and an unexpected kindness.
“Merlin,” Hermione says as she wipes at her teary eyes. “Do you think we’ll even make it to the owlery at this rate?” She raises her eyebrow at Draco as she hovers her foot over the next stair.
He dashes past her and flings open the door, startling a few of the still-remaining owls and immediately looking guilty. “Ten points to Slytherin,” he says, holding the door open for her.
“No, you scared the owls,” Hermione points out as she steps through the door. “It’s a tie.”
“Alright,” Draco says, as though that were the result he’d wanted all along. “Did you bring a quill?”
Hermione shakes her head and moves to the supply cabinet. There’s always extra parchment and quills and inkpots – some of them broken and useless – but after a moment of frowning search she finds a serviceable quill and a piece of parchment that will suffice. There’s even a half-filled inkpot, which is practically like winning the lottery.
She scrawls out a cancellation request to Flourish and Blotts – very apologetic, of course, over the wasted time and mix-up, and listens to the scratching of Draco writing out a letter of his own. Requesting pocket money, Hermione guesses, tempted to peer over his shoulder and not giving into the urge.
She sends her letter off with a small white owl who looks pleased to have been chosen for the job and then leans against the doorframe, watching the moonlight gleam on Draco’s hair.
“Sorry,” Draco murmurs, distractedly, as he glances up towards her and then back down to his parchment. “Not very polite to write home asking for money without inquiring as to everyone’s health.”
“So dutiful,” Hermione teases, one eye on the staircase behind her.
“You’ve no idea.” Draco’s voice is dry – right on that border between teasing and sarcastic. “You don’t have to wait for me.”
“I know,” Hermione says, as she leans her foot against the doorframe and tips her head back. She has to get started on that charms essay before next week, and she needs to finish her Arithmancy homework that’s due tomorrow…
“Don’t fall asleep,” Draco’s soft voice calls out, and Hermione opens her eyes.
“I was just thinking.” She leans up from the doorway and smothers a yawn with her hand.
“About?” Draco asks as they start to make their way down the stairs.
“Homework,” Hermione mutters, feeling oddly defensive. “I haven’t finished my Arithmancy yet.”
“The great Hermione Granger hasn’t done her homework?” Draco raises an exaggerated eyebrow at her. “Maybe you should see Pomfrey.”
She rolls her eyes. “I did half. I just didn’t finish it because I was trying to fix my stupid potions book that you ruined.” She pokes his arm with a finger, emphasising her point, the same way she would if it were Harry or Ron beside her.
But because he’s not Harry or Ron, Draco flinches slightly away from her touch. For a moment the word mudblood seems to hang between them, unspoken and bitter and making the soft light from the candles around them suddenly harsher with the reality that they’re descending back into. As though the last few minutes had been only a brief interlude, a glimpse of an unobtainable possibility that they could never reach.
“I wasn’t expecting it,” Draco says, as though he’s rearranged an apology into different words. “I don’t like being touched without warning.”
The words hang between them as Hermione continues down the stairs. An apology she can choose to believe – a path that will take her to a wild and new place where she laughs with Draco Malfoy in quiet corridors and thinks that he’s beautiful in the light – or one she can dismiss out of hand and restore the status quo – a return to the bickering and bullying she’s worn in like a new pair of school shoes.
She glances back towards him – he’s a step above her, tall and looming with his halo of white-blond hair backlit by a candle. “Alright,” Hermione says, because maybe her father was right about amends, and maybe they start with splashes of acid and green apples and second-hand books, and maybe Draco will still be awful to her tomorrow, but at least Hermione would have given him the chance to change the shape of his own puzzle into something different.
He steps down beside her and gives her an unsure smile. “Alright?”
Hermione bumps her elbow against his and doesn’t let herself read into the flinch that ripples across him like a stone thrown into a still pond. “Think dinner’s over?”
Draco shrugs. “Probably?”
Hermione grins at him and watches his expression flicker with confusion. “Think we can sneak into the kitchens and filch some pumpkin tarts?”
He stares at her as though Hermione has suddenly turned an eye-watering fuchsia or grown another head. Or perhaps both. “What?”
“They might have lemon tarts, too,” Hermione muses, pressing a finger against her lips and trying not to burst into giggles at Draco’s scandalised expression. “What? You Slytherins don’t sneak into the kitchens?”
“Of course we do.” Draco rolls his eyes. “Theo practically lives there. I just didn’t think you would.”
“Because I’m a Gryffindor?” Hermione raises an eyebrow.
“No, because you’re Hermione Granger.” Draco shakes his head. “If you break the rules you’d probably, I don’t know, burst into flames or something.”
“And you’re Draco Malfoy,” Hermione points out. “If you were nice to someone, you’d probably do the same.”
Their eyes meet and Hermione watches Draco’s lips tilt upwards into a smile, less radiant than the one he’d given her before but still rare and precious and worth delighting in. For a moment the stone halls of Hogwarts fade away and all she can think about is how completely different he looks when he’s happy – when he smiles – and how tragic it is that she’s spent six years not noticing.
The best time to plant a tree is ten years ago, Hermione’s mother told her as they carefully dug a hole in their garden, and the second-best time is right now.
Draco raises an eyebrow at her. “Thinking again, Granger?” He teases – and a thrill runs through her like the sparking current of magic at knowing what his voice sounds like when he teases her – quiet and careful, like he doesn’t want her to think he means it – and Hermione can’t help smiling back at him.
“You look nice when you smile,” she says, because her parents raised her to be bold and an ugly old hat put her in a house meant for the brave and because she was never afraid to speak her mind when the truth was right in front of her, shining like the light reflecting in Draco’s eyes.
“So do you,” Draco says, not even hesitating, as though he’d hoped for this exact opportunity and wasn’t going to waste it. “But your old teeth were cuter,” he whispers, looking away and turning pink in the candlelight.
He’s only pulling your braids because he doesn’t know how to talk to you, her teacher had said, and indignant eight-year-old Hermione hadn’t understood then, but now she does. The words still hurt – the scars from his bullying ran deep – but he’d been an ignorant child carving habits out of the prejudices his parents had passed down to him and hadn’t known any better.
“If we’re going to be friends – or friendly – or not enemies or whatever,” Hermione says, waving her hands around in front of her for emphasis, “then you can’t just insult me because you’re socially inept.”
“Well,” Draco says slowly, “you don’t wear your hair in braids anymore.” He leans forward and tugs at a stray curl by Hermione’s cheek. “I had to improvise.”
She’s holding her breath as though she’s waiting for something and doesn’t know what. Hermione blinks up at him and sees herself reflected in Draco’s eyes – her hair gleaming copper in the candlelight and her cheeks flushed pink. As though he’s going to lean down and kiss her – ridiculous – but her heart leaps into her throat at the thought of it as her gaze flicks to his lips and then back to his eyes.
He’d noticed – there was no way he hadn’t noticed – and Draco’s hand is still in her hair – his knuckles brushing against her cheek – and for a moment she doesn’t even dare to blink or breathe or do anything that will startle him like a wild deer – a gleaming unicorn – and cause him to dart away down the stairs.
“If-“ Draco says, and his voice cracks and his cheeks flush and he swallows and clenches his jaw. “Will you slap me again if I kiss you?”
“No,” she breathes, tilting her chin infinitesimally closer towards him. No, because Draco Malfoy would never snog her in a staircase, because Draco Malfoy would never think of her like that, because Draco Malfoy was beautiful and gleaming and she was muddy and plain.
“Are you sure?” Draco asks, leaning towards her and putting his other hand against the wall, as though he’s as unbalanced as she is pressed against it, as though they’re both about to dip their toes into a raging river that will spit them out at some unknown destination and they won’t jump without the other.
“Yes,” Hermione whispers as she reaches a tentative – trembling – hand towards his cheek and ends up touching the loose knot of his school tie instead, because his cheek is so intimate and he hasn’t even kissed her yet-
As though he’s reading her mind, Draco leans closer towards her, his breath fanning across her face. She closes her eyes – steels herself just in case it’s some kind of horrible prank – that he’ll pull his wand out and scream insults at her while the rest of the Slytherins laugh – wishes she’d put some lip balm on at some point during the evening – wishes he wasn’t hesitating.
She opens one eye just in time to see his close. Oh. For a moment all she can feel is the tension between them – his breath against her lips – her heart hammering in her throat – and then she can’t take it anymore and she leans forward at the same time Draco does and their lips meet in the most nervous kiss Hermione has ever experienced in her life.
Draco Malfoy kisses her like he’s afraid she’ll slap him – like he’s afraid she’s made of glass – like he’s afraid too much pressure will cause her to crack under his touch. She kisses him like there’s an answer in his lips to all the questions she’s wondered over the years – the why and how and what of Draco Malfoy coalescing against her mouth and turning into something unexpected and sweet until he’s kissing her back like he’s never wanted anything more in his life than this moment right here.
His fingers slide through her hair and cradle her head so that it doesn’t hit the wall behind her as Hermione sags against the stone. She doesn’t want to stop kissing him even though she needs to breathe and not condense her world down to the feeling of his lips against hers – soft and warm and sending sparks through her veins and causing her heart to beat out of its usual rhythm.
When his tongue runs over her front teeth, Hermione lets out a whimpering sound and he pulls away in alarm, his eyes scanning her face as Hermione sucks in a lungful of delightful air and tries to remember who she is and how to breathe.
“Bad?” Draco whispers as his forehead bumps into hers and his ragged breaths mingle with her own.
“No,” Hermione breathes as she tugs Draco’s tie until his leg presses against hers and her hand is squashed between them – feeling the beat of his heart against her palm and her own against the back of her hand, frantic and pulsing and almost in sync with each other.
He kisses her again – this time with the confidence of someone who knows he’ll be kissed back – and Hermione’s other hand curls around his back and her fingertips brush against his hair, silken and delicate and softer than it looks, as though she’s stroking a unicorn’s mane, the very stuff of dreams, right here in the staircase as she snogs Draco Malfoy like her life depends on it. As though she can’t breathe unless the air comes from his lungs, as though her heart can’t beat if it’s not against his.
Draco pulls away with a soft groan that makes Hermione’s eyes snap open in alarm. “You’re killing me, Granger,” he murmurs as he tugs – gently – at her hair and then turns away from her and tilts his head up.
Her head brushes against the stone wall without his fingers to cushion the blow. Hermione straightens up and smooths out her shirt and her hair and her thoughts and comes up feeling just as wrinkled and out of sorts as the back of Draco’s shirt.
“You started it,” she protests, but her voice comes out breathy and Hermione has to swallow and clear her throat, and then all the words she wants to say feel stupid and insipid and she steps forward and wraps her arms around Draco’s waist instead.
“Hermione?” His voice is whisper-quiet as she leans her cheek against his shoulder and his fingers slide over hers.
Once, when she was younger, Hermione had a reoccurring nightmare about standing on the edge of a precipice. Winds buffeted her closer towards the edge – her clothes and hair whipped around her with stinging and slicing force – and below her feet she could only see blackness, inky and impenetrable. Sometimes she’d struggled back against the force of the wind – solid and pushing her ever closer as her bare feet scraped against the rocky ground. Sometimes she crouched into a sobbing ball and felt her arms drip with blood from the force of the wind tearing into her.
She’d been too afraid to jump, back when she was young enough to struggle with spelling her own name and unable to understand the world around her. Before she’d been taught to be brave and to trust herself. And eventually the nightmare had faded until she barely remembered it, except for moments like this when the precipice seems to rush up in front of her and the wind howls at her back.
But she’s not a little girl afraid of heights any longer, and Hermione isn’t scared of the darkness.
“It won’t be easy,” Hermione murmurs against his back as Draco threads his fingers through hers. “This. Us. Whatever.”
“I know.” He turns around to look at her – shifting their hands until their fingers are laced together and Hermione feels a stabbing ache in her chest at how perfectly their hands fit against each other. “We’re probably doomed.”
“Probably,” she agrees, attempting levity and not quite managing to soar so high. “But do you want to give it a go anyway?”
“Yes,” Draco breathes, and then he kisses her as though he has to punctuate the word with the seal of his lips against her own.
“Draco,” Hermione says between kisses, her free hand pressing gently against his chest. “We can’t snog all night.”
“Mmm.” He leans back with a sigh. “I suppose.” He kisses her one last time – a gentle brush of lips against her cheek – and then starts down the stairs, waiting for her to fall into rhythm beside him.
They reach the bottom of the stairs and Hermione hesitates for a moment. “Do you care if people see us?” She asks, because she doesn’t know what goes on behind those silvery-grey eyes and she hasn’t got a Knut or Sickle to offer him for his thoughts.
“Do you?” Draco asks, raising an eyebrow at her.
Hermione shakes her head slightly. “I thought you would. What about your slimy Slytherin reputation?” She squeezes her fingers around his to take the sting out of the words.
“What about your golden Gryffindors?” Draco asks, nudging her with his shoulder.
“Stuff ‘em,” Hermione says in the archest tone she can muster. “Like how I’m going to stuff myself with pumpkin tarts if we ever make it to the damned kitchen.”
Draco laughs, and the sound seems to echo around the halls and she almost wants to shush him, but he sounds so delighted and happy that she can’t help laughing too.
The best medicine is laughter, her father had told her when she’d fallen and scraped her knee, and then he’d tickled her until the pain receded and her mother had put a plaster over the cut and she’d forgotten all about it by dinnertime.
They probably won’t be able to laugh away all the pain they’ve caused each other – one whirlwind day of fracturing and reforming emotions can’t erase years of anguish – but it’s a start – a blossoming beginning that deserves to be nurtured and protected. The first step in a long journey of making amends – of mending hearts they’d torn asunder – of figuring out how their puzzle pieces fit against each other and make a new picture neither one of them could have imagined on their own.