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Hermione is elbow deep in History of Magic essays when a rather pretentious looking piece of parchment zips into her office. She ignores it as it zooms around, little wings fanning about the space like a peacock flourishing its feathers, ruffling her hair and her notes and her lesson plans like only a very certain someone’s magically animated memos are wont to do.
After its show, the note lands gracefully on her desk, unfurling itself in a truly pompous display of ink and ribbon.
On the left, half of a frowning stick person dances on the little sketched out gallows, and on the right:
T_s _ _ _ _ _ _ _ s_ _ t _ art_ _ _l_ _r _ _ _ _t t_ _ _ _ _s a_ _ _ _r _'_ _ _
R S T L A
She pushes the little game out of her way, pinning it with a paperweight when it determinedly keeps crawling back to the center of her desk. No sooner has she trapped it than its equally pompous author strolls through the dreadfully unlocked door of her office.
“You’re taking too long,” he says in lieu of greeting.
“It’s been twelve seconds,” she deadpans. “Some of us have to grade essays, Draco.”
“Maybe you should assign fewer essays.”
When she opens her mouth to argue that she assigns the perfectly correct number of essays for a class without as much hands-on work as Potions, he frees the struggling memo and slides it on top of her stack of essays.
“Next letter, Granger.” He taps the page. “Come on, guess.”
Hermione sighs, scanning the parchment. “Is this even a real word?”
“It’s a phrase, obviously.”
“Is it a phrase made up of real words? I don’t understand the apostrophe.”
“You’re wasting time, Granger. Guess.”
“Fine. E.”
He glares at her until she taps her guess with her wand. Several Es appear in the blanks—one with an accent. Hermione glances up at her most irritating colleague, who now wears a sparkling shit-eating grin.
“Is this French?” she asks.
Draco shrugs. “Perhaps.”
“That’s not fair!”
“Why not?” He snatches the note from the air when she tries to incinerate it. “You never said it has to be an English phrase.”
“I could not possibly list out every edge case. You cannot just assume anyone playing this game speaks French.”
He reveals the phrase in a flourish. The bastard is still smirking.
“Your hair looks particularly bushy today,” she reads. As if on cue, a rogue curl escapes from the knot on her head. “I can’t stand you.”
“I did no assuming. I knew you knew French.”
“You hadn’t even seen my hair when you wrote that.”
“I could tell by the humidity.” He shrugs again, but this time she can see him bite back the beginnings of a smile. What’s worse—Hermione is fighting a grin of her own.
“I don’t know why I bother teaching you these games if you’re just going to torture me with them.” She waves her wand, sending a pot of ink his way, but his seeker reflexes aid him in dodging most of it. “Now get out of my office. I have grading to do.”
He frowns. “But it’s time for dinner.”
“I’ll eat at my desk.”
“No,” he whines, sinking into the chair across her desk, hands clasped together as he pleads. “You have to come to dinner tonight. Longbottom has a hickey and I need you to ask him about it.”
This piques her interest. “Neville Longbottom?”
“Do you know any other?”
Hermione groans, but then she shoves the remaining essays into her drawer anyway. “Fine. But you’ve become quite the gossip,” she says, rooting around beneath her desk for her previously discarded shoes, “and I want you to know I think it’s quite ridiculous.”
“So you don’t want to know who could have possibly planted a bruise the size of a galleon on Longbottom’s neck?”
“Of course I do,” she scoffs, hopping on one foot as she shoves her foot back into her shoe. She leaves her robes on the rack, and when she pats her person in search of her wand, Draco summons it from her desk, handing it to her with a raised brow. “Thank you. But it was probably one of his plants.”
“That’s currently my working theory.”
He follows her out of her office, locking the door behind him with a wave of his hand. As he falls into step beside her, she notices he’s forgone his teaching robes as well, and she likes that she’s had that influence on him.
Instead of billowing around the castle like a paler, pointier Snape, as she once told him, he tends to dress in simple—albeit obnoxiously expensive—Muggle-style clothing. Always black, always impeccably tailored. Today, the sleeves of his onyx jumper are pulled up around his forearms. Hermione thinks it might be cashmere.
“But,” he continues, “he’s been suspiciously chipper this week. More than usual. Makes me think it was a real human woman.”
“Could have been a human man.”
“Could have been,” Draco concedes.
His tone fills in the blanks. She stops in her tracks, turning to face him in the middle of the corridor. “But you have a hunch.”
He grins, the lopsided one that goes all the way to his eyes, sparkling and silver. “I do.”
Before Hermione can even rein in her own traitorous heartbeat, a stampede of footsteps sounds from around the corner, giving way to a gaggle of giggling third years. All three of them light up at the sight of their professors in the corridor.
“Professor Malfoy! Professor Granger!” Ruby Hart skids to a halt right in front of them, her loyal Hufflepuff friends Jamie and Emily only a few steps behind.
Hermione adores Ruby. One of her finest pupils, the little Muggleborn witch reminds her much of herself in her early Hogwarts years. Thirsty for knowledge. Brave. Stubborn. But she also has Slytherin levels of cunning and a social expertise Hermione sorely lacked in her youth. The sorting hat spent a record amount of time sat on her head in her first year.
In other words, the girl is frightening.
“Guess what!” she says in greeting.
Draco taps his chin thoughtfully with his wand. “You’re all about to lose ten house points for running in the halls?”
“No.” Ruby barely even blinks. “Professor Granger, you guess!”
“I couldn’t possibly,” she says, biting down on the inside of her cheek to stifle her laugh at Draco’s affronted expression. “You’ll just have to tell me.”
“We used you as our subjects for our Divination project!” Jamie says.
Emily pipes up from behind him. “Did you know you’re soulmates?”
“I’m sorry—you did what?” Draco sputters.
“Well,” Ruby explains, “we took one of your hairs from the comb you keep in your desk.”
Draco pales.
Jamie nods. “And Professor Granger—you shed like a cat, so that part was easy.”
Hermione squeaks.
“So then we put your hairs in the teacup and mixed it with the Divination…stuff,” Emily adds.
Ruby beams. “And it turned pink!”
“Did you hear that, Granger?” Draco says. His words are clipped by the effort he’s put into clenching his jaw. “Pink.”
“Pink,” she repeats.
Emily nods vigorously. “Pink means soulmates.”
“Or it means you hate each other,” Jamie quips.
Ruby rolls her eyes. “But obviously you don’t.”
Despite the absurdity of the last thirty seconds of her life, Hermione manages a small smile. They don’t even understand the irony of the conjectures they’ve just made. That there was a time when she and Draco did hate each other—and on a level far deeper than personal. They’re both branded with it.
But standing before her are children who know little of the past. Children who have perhaps never even heard of the slur on her arm. To whom the name Malfoy means nothing but their obnoxious and handsome Potions professor.
They know about the war, about Voldemort and Harry and the fall of the Ministry—Hermione is their History of Magic professor after all—but they’ve never been touched by it. They know it only in an abstract sense—something their parents lived through. Something they were too small to even remember. They never witnessed the bigotry firsthand.
Draco has gone rigid beside her, and she knows he’s thinking the same. She suppresses the urge to brush her fingers against the back of his clenched fist, to tell him she knows he doesn’t hate her—not anymore. He knows she thinks Divination is a crock of shit anyway.
“So the verdict is soulmates, then?” Hermione rolls her eyes. “Professor Trelawney told you so? Did she also tell you that your virtue lies in the strength of your Inner Eye?”
“Granger,” Draco admonishes.
“Sorry,” she mutters. Draco is right—she can’t be caught badmouthing other professors in front of students, even if said professors are complete and total frauds.
“Right. Well, that’s enough of that. Off to dinner, children.” He shoos the meddling third years down the corridor. “Walking, please. Unless you want a real project, in which case I know of several cauldrons that need scrubbing.”
The children scuttle away, leaving just as giggly as they arrived.
When they’re gone, Hermione remains, flustered and frazzled, self-consciously patting the frizz on her head. Draco rubs awkwardly at the back of his neck.
There’s a pinprick spot of ink on his cheek. She covers it with her thumb, letting the tiniest spark of magic wipe it clean. His eyes flutter closed.
“Sorry,” she says quietly. “Ink.”
His eyes open to shining silver. “I shouldn’t have said that about your hair.”
“I know it was a joke, Draco.”
“I’m sorry,” he whispers.
She lets her fingers brush at the sleeve of his sweater—cashmere, in fact—smoothing over his wrist and squeezing his hand. “I know.”
The next morning finds Hermione hungover and tired in front of a crowd of rambunctious first years. She’d had to practically guzzle her wine to work up the courage to prod about Neville’s sex life, and just as she’d over imbibed, she’d also been unsuccessful in recovering any gossip worthy information.
Even as her head pounds, she continues the lesson on the intersection of magic and mythology, gritting her teeth at every pass of the chalk against the board, every giggle from behind her back, every rustle of paper that is decidedly not the turning page of a textbook.
Halfway through, she gives up.
“Is anyone even listening?”
The students at least have the decency to appear sheepish, their paper airplane notes frozen mid-air, their mouths hanging open mid-conversation. Except for one tiny Gryffindor in the front row.
“No offense, Professor,” he says slowly, “but this class is terribly boring.”
Hermione huffs an indignant sigh. Boring? What about thorough? Relevant? Important? History of Magic had been one of her favorite classes during her Hogwarts years. She could have listened to Professor Binns lecture for hours in all his transparent ghostly glory, but her students don’t seem to give a Niffler’s backside about the cultural impact on their wizarding society brought about by the utter egocentricity of the Roman—
“At least it’s not being taught by a ghost.”
Draco Malfoy—in all his pointy, pretentious glory—leans against the doorway of her classroom with a smirk that makes her want to throttle him.
And, worse, the same student as before mumbles, “Honestly, that would be way cooler.”
“Okay!” Hermione claps once, which she immediately regrets, as the sound slices through her hangover-addled brain like a knife. “Class is dismissed! I want ten-inch essays about Roman wizarding culture by Monday.” When her students groan, she shrugs. “I can make it twelve if you keep whining.”
The students file out in silence, and Hermione collapses into her desk chair, burying her face in her arms. When Draco takes a seat on top of the desk, the fabric of his trousers brushes against her fingers.
“You know,” he says, “that’s just more essays you have to grade.”
Hermione grunts. “I don’t exactly have cauldrons for them to scrub.”
“I’m happy to loan you some.” There’s a rustling beside her head, and when she peeks up, he’s holding a tiny blue vial. “How’s it hanging?”
She does not dignify his childish joke with a response, instead snatching the potion from his hand and tossing it back in one go. She groans at the sweet, sweet relief. “I’m getting old.”
“What was it, two glasses of wine?”
“I think it was three.”
“Impressive.”
“I was feeling very floaty.”
He grins. “I could tell.”
“How embarrassing was I?”
“You did speak at length about the different varieties of sucking plants with Longbottom. Went on for ages—”
Hermione shoves the vial back into his hand. “I did that for you, you prat.”
“And I am forever in your debt.” His warm smile is disarming, so much so that Hermione has to busy herself with stashing random bits of parchment in her bag, lest he notice the heat in her cheeks. After a moment of her rustling, he stops her with his fingers around her wrist. “Hey. Are we going to talk about it?”
“The hickey?” She frowns. “You never did tell me your hunch.”
“I thought it was Pansy,” he says quickly, waving the words away as soon as they’re out of his mouth. “But no—not the hickey. Their little Divination project.”
“Pansy? Pansy Parkinson?”
“One and only. She’s been evasive. And her owl has been more spritely than when it was delivering her letters from Paris. Focus, Granger—their project.”
“It’s Divination.” Hermione rolls her eyes. “They probably mixed our hair in pink paint, for Merlin’s sake. And the relative fitness of an owl is hardly proof of anything.”
“Last time I saw her, she smelled like dirt.”
Hermione considers this seriously. “She doesn’t seem like the dirt type.”
“She’s not.”
“Do you guys always have multiple conversations at once?”
Hermione’s hand flies to her chest. Draco leaps to his feet. Ruby Hart stands in the doorway, textbooks clutched to her chest, shit-eating grin on her face.
“Miss Hart.” Draco’s tone lands somewhere between greeting and admonishment.
“Ruby,” Hermione says once she’s caught her breath. “How can I help you? You know my office hours are in the afternoon.”
“Actually, I was looking for Professor Malfoy.”
“In my classroom?” Hermione asks incredulously.
Ruby shrugs, making herself comfortable on top of Hermione’s desk. “Likely place for him to be.”
Now Draco is the one blushing, which should bring her great satisfaction, but Hermione is too flustered by the implication to pay it much attention. Does he spend that much time in her classroom? He’s always pestering her in her office, but—they’re friends. And their other coworkers are old—some literal ghosts—or, bless his heart, Neville Longbottom. His options are limited.
“Anyway, Professor”—Ruby clears her throat, finally drawing Draco’s attention—“I was wondering if perhaps there was some extra work I could pick up in Potions. Wiggenweld potions, Polyjuice, Draught of Peace—they’re all just so…easy.”
Draco sighs, scrubbing a hand across his face in exasperation. Hermione knows the struggle—for two years, she’s been lending Ruby her advanced History books, Muggle and Magical alike, and staying up late to read her five-foot essays on topics beyond any Hogwarts curriculum.
“You’ve already exhausted the fifth-year curriculum, Ruby—”
“Perfect. I can start the sixth. Right?” Ruby looks at him expectantly.
Draco Malfoy—ex-Death Eater, former school yard bully, survivor of a wizarding war and a psycho-maniac house guest—folds like a chair.
“Yes.” He sighs. “I can put a lesson plan together. We can start after class on Monday.”
“Excellent. Thank you, Professor.” Ruby beams, dismounting from the desk with a little twirl and skipping from the room.
The silence she leaves in her wake is slightly awkward, Hermione still frozen in her chair, Draco still standing stiffly an uncomfortable distance away. She’s not sure why it feels strange to look at him, but when she peeks out of the corner of her eye, he’s doing the same, and then they both hastily look away, only to look back at the same time, and then, well—at that point, it’s just ridiculous.
Hermione breaks first. “Didn’t know you were such a doormat,” she teases.
Draco sighs, exhaling the tension in his shoulders as he slips his hands into his pockets. “She reminds me so much of you.”
She sees the similarities: they’re both Muggleborn, both bookworms, both loud and unashamed and maybe a little annoying. But she sees the guilt in the slant of his lips: the way he’d ridiculed her for all of those things, how he’d believed she should be denied opportunities for the status of her blood.
So often do the shadows shroud his face, do his demons come back to haunt him. He’s paid his penance, she knows, but still, he’s the one harboring his own forgiveness.
“How so?” she asks, aiming for levity. “Because she’s so smart?”
Draco’s lips twitch, and the midmorning sun chases the shadows away. “I was going to say because she’s frightening.”
He’s looking at her again—that open, honest gaze, the one that penetrates to the very center of her—warm and soft in a way that stirs her insides. It’s moments like these where Hermione can’t help but wonder.
But then as she shifts in her chair, there’s a loud crack—and then she’s falling backwards with a shriek. Draco is beside her the moment her arse hits the floor, offering a hand to pull her back to her feet.
Her desk chair has split entirely down the middle. Draco drags her away like it’s cursed, brandishing his wand and clinging to her hand. Even as he casts a detection spell, he doesn’t let go.
When she does finally try to slip her fingers from his grasp, he frowns. Raises their joined hands to his eye-level. Hermione tries to free her fingers again, to no avail.
“Are we…” he starts.
“Stuck together?” Hermione growls under her breath. “That little shit.”
“What? You think Ruby did this?”
Hermione tries to use her hand to push flyaway curls back from her face, but only succeeds at smacking herself in the face with Draco’s hand. “Who else?”
“And the chair…”
“She’s very good at charms, Draco!” She shakes their joined hands again, but they are firmly glued together.
It seems beneath Ruby Hart’s intelligence to simply prank them. And with something so innocuous. No one—not even the culprit—is around to see, which, again, seems like a detail Ruby Hart would not flub—
Oh, no. Oh, no.
“Draco,” Hermione says. “We are being parent trapped.”
Hermione would never admit it, but it takes her almost two hours to untangle all the sticking charms gluing her palm to Draco’s. The spell work is so intricate—so detailed—that she almost forgets she’s supposed to be irritated about it.
She spends even more time trying to replicate the charm, which ends with her stuck to her own desk twice and also with Draco stuck to various things in her office, including, but not limited to: her couch, her desk, the floor, the ceiling, and—only briefly—the inside of his own shirt.
The most time is spent detailing the concept of a parent trap to Draco, who, unsurprisingly, does not understand. We aren’t parents, he says. And there’s only one of her. She even plays the movie for him on her laptop, and his major takeaway is the threat of waking up on a floating mattress in the Black Lake.
Alas, Hermione’s weekend slips away. She falls seriously behind on grading essays, only to arrive to a fresh stack on Monday. Her office is one giant residual sticking charm hazard. Her students test her with their lack of attention.
All she wants by day’s end is to bury her nose in a book and never come out. And so, of course—
“Professor Granger!” Ruby Hart flags her down from the end of the corridor. When she’s close, she grins, though not innocently. “Have you seen Professor Malfoy?”
“No, Miss Hart, I have not. I’m sure you could find him during his office hours.”
“Just thought I’d ask, since you guys are always attached at the hip.” Ruby says it so quickly, Hermione barely has time to react before she continues, “I wanted to show him my progress on the sixth-year potions, but he wasn’t in his office.”
“Progress? Didn’t he give you the curriculum this morning?”
Ruby shrugs. “I have a gift.”
Hermione sighs. Never has she had a student with the same zeal for learning she herself possesses. Never has she taught a mind so already brilliant. Admittedly, Hermione is intrigued. Only thirteen years old and flying through courses made for students three years her senior. With ease. With enthusiasm. How could she not want to nurture that?
Hermione sighs, then grumbles, “Sometimes he does the Monday crossword in my office.” Ignoring Ruby’s waggling eyebrows, Hermione embarks on the brisk walk to her office. “Come on, then.”
Sure enough, a polished blond prat is leaning against the wall outside her office, already scratching answers into his newspaper with one of the ballpoint pens she’d gifted him last Christmas. She’d think he looked dashing, if she didn’t have such a strong urge to strangle him for being exactly where she knew he’d be.
“About time, Granger, I’m nearly finished. I’m pretty sure nineteen across is a dick jo—” Too late, he glances up, blanching at the sight of the student following on her heels. “Oh.” He clears his throat. “Miss Hart.”
“I finished the reading you gave me,” she says.
“Already?”
“And I brewed some of the potions.”
“You—what?” Draco glances sidelong at Hermione like she might have loaned her a time turner. “When?”
“I’ve already finished my exams for Herbology, so Professor Longbottom lets me use it as a free period.”
Hermione frowns. No one ever let her have a free period.
“Can you just come look at it?” Ruby pleads.
Draco sighs, tucking the New York Times into his pocket as he makes to follow Ruby to the dungeons. Hermione pulls her wand to unlock her office door, thinking of the book waiting for her on the shelf, the treats in her desk drawer, maybe even going back to her quarters for a long, hot bath, but, of course—
“Professor Granger, aren’t you coming?”
Hermione lets her forehead bang onto the wooden door.
“Yes, Professor Granger,” Draco parrots, “aren’t you coming?”
How lovely it would be to shrink him and trap him in a jar. Doesn’t he know they’re only making Ruby’s schemes easier by walking into them headfirst?
And yet, she follows them down the hall anyway, in part due to academic interest, but also pure curiosity. What does Ruby have planned for them? Locking them in a classroom? Tying their shoes together?
And what exactly does she think she will accomplish? Does she think Hermione will drag Draco to the front of the great hall and confess that, yes, they are soulmates? Does she think they’ll host a wedding on the quidditch pitch and cite their favorite third year as the driving force that got them together?
Hermione takes steadying breaths as they descend further into the castle. Sometimes she forgets Ruby is just a thirteen-year-old girl. Her intellect is off the charts, but even so—teenagers are weird. Who knows why they do anything?
Hermione is half expecting a string quartet or an obnoxious bouquet of flowers to greet them in the Potions classroom, but when she sees what actually awaits them, she falters at the threshold.
Unmistakable ribbons of steam swirl and curl from the cauldron in the center. One more step inside the classroom, and Hermione can see the mother-of-pearl sheen sparkle on the surface of the liquid.
Amortentia.
Even Draco seems surprised. It’s not the most advanced potion in the sixth-year curriculum, but it’s certainly not the simplest, either.
“Well?” Ruby bounces on her toes.
Draco barely leans over the cauldron before his expression shifts, something longing, something resigned crossing his features as he abruptly steps back. “Well done,” he says. “It’s perfect.”
Ruby squeals her delight. “Professor Granger, do you want to take a look?”
“If Professor Malfoy has deemed it adequate, I’m sure—”
“Please,” Ruby whines. “I worked really hard on this. I’m proud of it.”
Hermione sighs. If Draco had deemed it perfect, she must see for herself. She steps forward to waft a small stream of steam from the cauldron, and—
It’s not at all what she remembers. Gone is the familiar scent of fresh cut grass, the crisp spearmint of her parents’ dental practice. The parchment is still there, though this time it’s accompanied by the bitter tang of ink—the expensive kind.
Next is something fruity, artificial and sweet, like the rare indulgence of Halloween candy. Like the little individually wrapped pieces that she keeps in her desk, and so often shares with her most frequent visitor.
And finally, something floral. Warm and sweet like honey, but earthy, too. Asphodel, unmistakably. The most common ingredient in the potions cabinet, and undoubtedly what a Potions master’s clothes would be doused in after a double block of first years on a Monday afternoon as he labors over the crossword in her office.
“Are you sure?” Hermione mumbles. Briefly, she wonders if it’s one of Ruby’s tricks. “Perfect?”
Draco nods. “I’m sure.”
Ruby glances back and forth between them. “What?”
“Nothing,” she stammers. “Mine’s just—it’s different than I remember, is all.”
“What’s that mean?” Ruby asks Draco.
“It doesn’t mean anything. Our desires change as often as we do.”
Ruby peers into her cauldron. “So you haven’t always smelled the same thing?”
“I have not.” At her expectant, hopeful gaze, he continues. “When I first brewed it in sixth year, I smelled roses, wet grass, and vanilla. My mother’s garden, the quidditch pitch, and my girlfriend’s perfume.”
“Ew.” Ruby’s lip curls in disgust. “And what about now?”
His face is neutral. “It’s been the same for quite some time.”
Hermione waits for a clue, a secret to pass just between them, but his gaze remains firmly on the cauldron, his hands tucked safely in his pockets. Ruby’s head moves on a swivel between them, calculating, and so before the girl can get any more ideas, Hermione breaks the silence.
“Do you want to share what you smell, Ruby?”
Ruby inhales, a little smile spreading across her face as she basks in the steam. “Toffee,” she says. “Then, peppermint. And…ham?”
“You’re hungry,” Draco deadpans.
Hermione shoots him a glare. “She’s homesick, you idiot.”
Ruby frowns at this, but doesn’t deny it. Hermione knows it can be isolating, straddling the line between Muggle and magical. Even in their current climate—where discrimination is at an all-time low, where there are early education opportunities and classes—it still makes them different.
Her first Christmas home, Hermione regaled her parents with tales of unicorns and moving staircases and potions and animated portraits, and while they were excited for her, supportive even, there was an air of disbelief. How could they fully believe in anything they could not see?
It’s not like Muggle parents can just pop on over to Hogsmeade for parents’ weekend. Or send owl post. Or even help with homework.
To be Muggleborn is to enter the world of magic at an inherent disadvantage. Hermione knows the struggle. The fight to fit in. And the sometimes desperate, aching desire for home.
“Smells like Christmas,” Ruby mutters. She nudges the stirring stick in the cauldron, but as a new waft of steam washes over her, she only looks sad.
Hermione tries a comforting smile. “Only a few more days 'till break.”
“Yeah.” She sighs, then seems to remember herself, straightening her spine and schooling her expression. Her eyes dance between Hermione and Draco where he stands on the opposite side of the classroom. “Professor Granger, would you like to share what you smell?”
“No,” Hermione says firmly, “I would not.”
Hermione expects her to push, to force them into whatever prank she has planned, but instead, Ruby just smiles. Shrugs. Gathers her books from the desk.
“Well, then. I must be off to transfiguration. Thank you for your time, Professors.”
And then she saunters out the door, leaving Hermione uncertain and unbalanced in her wake. The silence is long and drawn out, interrupted only by the whirring of the flame that keeps the potion bubbling.
Draco watches her in that sly, Slytherin way of his. For a moment, she’s afraid he can read her thoughts: parchment and ink and sweets and asphodel and him, all swirling around in her mind. Taunting her. Tempting her.
She vanishes the potion. “I can’t believe you didn’t reprimand her!”
“You didn’t either!”
“You saw her first!”
Draco sighs, perching on the edge of the desk. “Look, Granger, I’m just—I’m trying with her. She’s just a gifted kid without an outlet.”
Hermione opens her mouth to object, but Draco levels her with a glare.
“Don’t you dare say you didn’t have an outlet. What’s your favorite third year story to tell?” He counts off on his fingers. “Is it when you time traveled to save a hippogriff? What about when you used said hippogriff to break someone out of Azkaban? Oh—wait, usually it’s when you time traveled to watch yourself punch me in the face.”
Hermione rolls her tongue against the inside of her cheek to keep her grin at bay. “All three are great stories.”
“The point is, Granger, I don’t want to punish her. I’m trying to nurture—trying to grow—” He growls in frustration. “I’m trying to be different.”
Hermione softens. “I know.”
He huffs. “And she already figured out there’s a charm to scrub the cauldrons.”
Despite her chuckle, Draco’s expression is still pained, so against her better judgement—knowing they could be covered in any number of charms or jinxes or tricks—Hermione reaches out, curling her fingers around his wrist, pulling him to standing so she can properly wrap her arms around his shoulders and bury her face in his neck.
He’s warm and pliant and smells exactly like the wisps of potion still lingering in the air around them. His arms snake around her waist, and she feels his exhaled sigh against her shoulder, the tension leaching from his body with every passing breath.
“At least she didn’t parent trap us this time,” he mumbles into her hair.
“Yeah,” she agrees, though she’s pretty sure they walked right into the trap.
His touch lingers as she releases him, his fingertips skimming her arms and leaving gooseflesh in their wake. Her heart skitters in her chest at the soft upturn of his lips.
“Come on, Professor Granger. You have essays to grade,” he says, then pulls the folded New York Times from his pocket. “And I have a crossword to finish.”
She rolls her eyes, but lets him lead her back towards her office where Halloween candies eagerly await them.
“I don’t know if you heard me before, but nineteen across is a dick joke.”
The rest of the week seems to pass quickly and without incident. Hermione keeps an eye out for Ruby’s scheming, but the girl keeps her head down and focuses on her schoolwork.
Hermione and Draco do not get stuck together, nor do they get locked in classrooms with or without powerful love potions. Trelawney watches them with big bug eyes when they walk down the hallway side by side, but that’s not really out of the ordinary.
Perhaps Ruby has gotten tired of her own tricks.
Come Friday evening, Hermione has nearly forgotten about the parent trapping situation. She follows Draco back to his quarters after dinner, kicking off her shoes at the door and making herself comfortable on his very plush and pretentious settee. He frowns at the scant space she’s left for him, but then he just lifts her legs by the ankles and settles beneath them, her feet in his lap.
A flick of his wand serves their tea, and Hermione snatches her mug out of the air and drinks greedily.
“Can you believe he has another hickey?” she says. “At this point, I’m sure it’s one of his plants.”
“And you called me a gossip?”
“You got me hooked on this one!”
“I am insulted on Longbottom’s behalf.” Draco sips slowly. “You think he can’t pull?”
“He’s…he’s Neville. I mean, he’s an angel. A wonderful man—”
“Technically a war hero,” he adds over the rim of his mug.
“—but he’s…Neville.”
“He’s grown up to be quite the dashing young man, Granger. He’s smart. Tall. Inherited quite a bit of money when his gran passed.”
“Are you just describing yourself?”
“Well, I am quite dashing—”
“Your intelligence and height are both attractive traits, sure, but—”
Draco frowns into his tea.
“—the inheritance bit could go either way—”
“Granger,” he says.
“—sometimes you are truly out of this world pretentious, though, I guess a simpler woman might enjoy being showered in jewels and cash—”
“Granger.”
“—personally, it’s the intellect that I—”
“Granger,” he repeats firmly, fingers on her wrist stopping her mug on its familiar path to her lips. “There’s Veritaserum in my tea.”
Hermione shoots upright. “What?”
“Ask me something.”
She panics. “How long does it take you to get ready in the morning?”
“At least an hour.” His reply is instant. “Though I think I would have volunteered that freely.”
Hermione stares into the steaming brown liquid of her own tea. “How can you tell? I’ve never…”
“Did you or did you not fake an illness to get out of last month’s staff meeting?”
“I did,” she answers automatically, gasping as her hand flies to her mouth. “Oh, no.”
Draco growls. “That little shit.”
Ruby. Just when Hermione had thought they were safe.
“Oh, now you’re mad? Maybe if you had reprimanded her—”
“This is dangerous, Granger. This isn’t a sticking charm or a waft of love potion or fucking Divination—this is a violation of—the lack of consent—it’s a regulated substance—”
“Hey,” she says, scooting closer until her knee presses into his thigh. She pries the mug from his hand and curls their fingers together, letting him squeeze. “It’s going to be fine. It’s just you and me.”
He nods, closing his eyes as he exhales. She watches him steady his breathing, watches his shoulders sag. She wants to ask him about his interrogation. About his time with Voldemort under his roof. She bites her tongue until she tastes blood to keep the questions from tumbling out.
“Maybe we should just be quiet until it works its way out of our system,” she suggests instead.
“The urge to ask you things is too strong.” He hides behind his hands as he groans. He, too, must be biting his tongue. “This batch is too strong.”
Hermione manages a deep breath. “Let’s just agree not to ask any personal questions while we’re in this state, yeah?”
Draco swallows. “Yeah.”
“We could—we could walk it off?”
Perhaps it would be wiser to simply go their separate ways. There’s no threat of truth in the safety of their own quarters. But instead, Draco trails quietly behind her on the winding route to outside.
The sun has long since set, but the high moon douses the grounds in silver, light ghosting between the sparse leaves of the trees that line the path. Hermione’s thin cardigan is useless against the late November chill. She could simply cast a warming charm, but—
“Here,” Draco says, “take my coat.”
“Oh, it’s fine,” Hermione protests, though he’s already slipped his arms out of it. “I’ll be fine.”
“Do you want the coat?”
“Yes,” she answers unwillingly.
He smirks and tosses the coat over her shoulders.
“Not fair,” she grumbles, even though she’s just pleased to see him smiling again. “We agreed—no questioning each other while we’re like this.”
“You’re right.” He sighs, then looks straight at her so she knows he’s telling the truth. “I don’t want anything from you that isn’t freely given.”
Despite the warmth of his coat, Hermione shivers.
His eyes search her face for a second longer. What he’s searching for, Hermione doesn’t know.
Whatever it is, she’d give it to him. Freely.
His gaze snags on her lips, and she has to fight the potion in her system to keep her questions from tumbling out: Is your heart beating fast, too? What would you do if I kissed you? Do you think about me as often as I think about you?
Her lips part. She sucks in a breath.
“Granger,” he says.
“Draco,” she breathes.
A twig snaps somewhere in the dark. Hermione whirls around as Draco lights his wand. Two figures stand close by the door of the greenhouse.
“Is that…” Draco mutters.
The shadowed figures part, and in the soft light of Draco’s lumos, Hermione can see one tall, broad shouldered man—unmistakably Neville—and a small, lithe woman with the silhouette of a blunt bob just barely brushing her shoulders.
Draco gasps. “Pansy?”
Even in the dark, Hermione knows Pansy rolls her eyes. “Draco,” she drawls.
“I was right!”
As they come closer, Pansy adjusts her skirt and straightens her hair.
“What are you two doing out at this hour?” Neville asks.
“Walking,” Draco answers vaguely, albeit truthfully. “What are you two doing out at this hour?”
The silence is long and loud.
“Ugh.” Hermione scrunches her nose. “Not in the greenhouse.”
Pansy tilts her head, a cat cornering her prey. “Is that Draco’s jacket, Granger?”
“Yes.”
“Where did you say you were walking, Draco?”
“Around,” he manages.
“You’re being weird,” Pansy says. “What’s wrong with you two?”
“One of our students is convinced we’re soulmates and she keeps trying to parent trap us.” Hermione smacks her hand over her mouth the second the words are out.
Pansy’s brows disappear beneath her bangs as a pleased smile spreads across her lips. “Soulmates?”
At least Neville seems concerned. “Have you been dosed with Veritaserum?”
“Yes.”
Pansy smirks. “Oh, this is too good.”
“Pansy, don’t,” Draco pleads.
“That explains the missing fern root.” Neville furrows his brow. “I’ve been stumped on that for weeks.”
Hermione glares. “Maybe you shouldn’t be giving students free periods.”
“Ruby? You think she did this?”
“We know she did this.”
Neville leads them inside the greenhouse. Hermione is careful not to touch any surfaces as they weave through the desks and plants.
“Well, if any student was brewing Veritaserum, it would be her,” Neville says as he guides them deeper into the greenery. “Reminds me a lot of you, Hermione.”
“I’m starting to resent that,” Hermione grumbles.
“This can’t be her first trap. What else has she done?” Pansy asks.
“A Divination, a military grade sticking charm.” Hermione loses the fight against her own tongue. “Brewing amortentia.”
Pansy’s eyes light up, darting between Hermione and Draco with alarming speed and barely concealed delight before settling on Draco. “Tell me, Draco, what did you smell?” Pansy only smiles at the daggers he glares at her. “At least one thing.”
Draco chews on his words for a long time before he settles on, “Jasmine.”
“Floral,” Pansy says, “feminine—”
“Pansy,” he pleads.
“—vague,” she finishes.
“Here,” Neville says, returning with a handful of small, fuzzy leaves. “Chew on these. It’s not an antidote, but it will boost your metabolism and help move it through your system faster.”
Hermione shoves several in her mouth, as does Draco. Whatever Neville’s given them is bitter and rubbery, but if it ends their state of vulnerability faster, Hermione will chew it happily.
“Thanks, Neville,” she says. She spares a glance at Pansy, but she’s still in a deadlocked stare with Draco. They communicate silently, their cryptic conversation happening in the clench of Draco’s jaw, the tilt of Pansy’s head. “We’ll just leave you two to…whatever it is you do out here.”
Pansy finally tears her eyes away from Draco. “Oh, Granger, I think you know what we do out here.”
Hermione retches, then quickly turns to follow Draco on his swift exit from the greenhouse. The cold feels welcome in comparison to the suffocating heat of the greenhouse, a reprieve from Pansy’s probing questions and Draco’s clipped responses.
Draco seems to agree. Hermione nearly has to jog to keep up with his brisk pace as he stalks along the lakeshore.
Suddenly, he turns on his heel, stopping so abruptly that she collides with his chest and nearly bounces off and into the shallow swells. He catches her with warm hands on her shoulders.
“Sorry,” he says, breathless. “About—all of that. And for me, and—” He sighs, collecting himself. “Pansy can be…”
“Nosy?” she supplies.
“Yeah.”
“Irritating?”
“Yes.”
“Invasive?”
“That too.”
They both sigh. Hermione doesn’t know what truths were revealed between Draco and Pansy in that long Slytherin silence, but she feels more in the dark than ever. Her mind whirrs through it all: bitter herbs, a jacket, jasmine, soulmates—
It’s not worth dissecting. Instead, she pulls a fresh clump of herbs from her—his—coat pocket and offers them to him. His fingers brush her palm as he collects them.
“These are disgusting,” he says.
The tension breaks.
“Truly abysmal,” she agrees, crunching down on one.
She takes a seat in the grass, and when Draco joins her, he finally seems to relax. He conjures a golden snitch from who knows where, flipping and twirling it around in his fingers where he reclines beside her. Hermione picks at the blades that pop up between her crossed legs, tearing the grass into smaller pieces and watching it blow away in the breeze.
He could have left. She could have left.
But she stayed. And he sat beside her.
Warm. Close. Vulnerable.
The Black Lake laps at the shoreline—a lover’s kiss atop the thin stretch of sand. The moon floats on the surface like a large luminescent lily pad, undulating with the ebb and flow of the water. Quiet settles between them, comfortable, unlike the stretches of silence in the greenhouse. Companionable.
Hermione feels truths bubbling up in her throat despite the sure effects of the herb she chews. Is the potion that strong? Or, perhaps, is it the power of the in-between hours—stripping her bare, no potions necessary.
“Granger,” Draco says.
“What?”
He raises his brows. “I can feel you thinking.”
With a sigh, she collapses onto her back beside him. Their shoulders brush, and when she turns her head, his nose is barely an inch from hers.
“Aren’t you tired of fighting it?”
“Yes.” His eyes reflect the stars as they meet hers. “I’ll give you one question, Granger. Ask me anything.”
She has him defenseless. At her mercy. He watches her, open and exposed, like she has the potential to shatter the walls he’s so carefully built around his heart. Like he’d let her do it.
Instead, she musters a grin. “How ridiculous does my hair look right now?”
“Only a little,” he says. And then, “You look lovely.”
Something flips in her chest as she swallows his words. “Your turn,” she whispers.
“Hm.” He taps his chin, pretending to be considering his options. “Are you sure nothing happened with you and Potter in that tent?”
“Yes, I’m sure. Nothing happened.” She snorts. “What a waste of a question.”
His lips twitch. “I just wanted to make you laugh.”
The backs of their hands brush. His lips are so close, she’d barely have to move to cover them with hers. She doesn’t even care that he’d taste like the bitter herbs they’ve been crunching on.
Bitter herbs, a shared jacket, jasmine, soulmates—
Perhaps, if they won’t force themselves to be honest with each other, Hermione can at least be honest with herself.
“Draco,” she mumbles.
“Hm?”
“Do you think—are soulmates even real?”
He furrows his brow. “Of course they’re real,” he says. “It’s magic.”
She mulls this over while she blinks at the moon. There’s still so much to magic she doesn’t understand.
“Do you think we are?” she whispers.
Draco only sighs. “Magic would never be so cruel to you.”
They lapse into silence. Hermione lets her first finger curl around his.
The impulse to correct him is there—how could it be cruel, such a gift?—but it’s weaker, just a single strand of truth remaining, fighting for her to deny, to convince, to admit—
In the end, sleep wins out.
Hermione wakes to the first hints of dawn. Light on her face, a single bird singing overhead. She’s warm, curled into a soft but solid something that smells like ink and herbs. There’s grass under her cheek, and the faintest puff of breath on her forehead.
She shoots to her feet and nearly falls into the lake.
“Draco!” she whisper-shouts, even though a quick whip of her head reveals no one yet awake at this hour. It also reveals a clump of grass in her hair.
Draco only grunts.
“We fell asleep.” She nudges him with her foot. “Outside.”
Slowly, his eyes blink open, and then he, too, shoots to his feet, almost face planting into the lake.
“Shit. Shit. Fuck. What time is it?”
She casts a tempus. “Seven thirty. I doubt anyone’s up this early on a Saturday.”
“And the Veritaserum. Is it…?”
“I want to go fly a broom. Rita Skeeter possesses journalistic integrity. Divination is a real and valid magical practice.” She grins. “I think it’s worn off.”
He breathes a sigh of relief.
Hermione wonders if it’s supposed to be awkward, waking up beside your coworker. On the ground. Outside. Entangled. At your place of work.
Whatever it’s supposed to be—it’s not.
“Well, now your hair looks ridiculous,” Draco says. He pulls more grass from the tangle of curls. “I think a bird mistook it for a nest.”
“Hilarious. You don’t exactly look like you’ve spent a relaxing night between silk sheets, either.”
She stalks off towards the castle, Draco hot on her heels. There’s so much to be done: a pile of essays to be graded, a very specific student to be reprimanded, a Yule Ball to be chaperoned. Already, she’s started the day on the wrong foot. And who knows how long it will take her to detangle her hair?
By the time they reach the Gryffindor portrait hole, Hermione is out of breath. Draco is mostly nonplussed, and has somehow managed to eliminate the general rumpledness from his clothes. Prat.
“Do you want to yell at her,” Hermione says through gritted teeth, “or shall I?”
“Well, I certainly don’t want to do it.” He shifts awkwardly on his feet. “You’re scarier anyway.”
“Perfect.”
He hesitates. “Are you sure—”
Hermione scowls at the portrait hole. “I’m going to make her wish she was never born.”
“Well, that’s a bit much.”
“It’s hyperbole, Draco. I’m going to give her detention.” She shoos him away. “Now, go.”
Once he’s gone, Hermione musters whatever remaining politeness she possesses and summons Ruby from her common room. The Fat Lady looks on with concern as Hermione paces the corridor.
She’s nearly worn a path in the floor by the time Ruby pops out of the portrait hole, all smiley and unassuming. She doesn’t falter when Hermione glares at her. If anything, she looks smug.
“What happened to you, Professor Granger? Is that a stick in your hair?”
“Are you out of your mind?” Hermione herds her down the hall to the nearest classroom. “Veritaserum?”
Ruby’s smile only grows. “So you were together last night.”
“I’m not sure you understand, Ruby. Veritaserum is a regulated substance for a reason. This was beyond a silly prank—”
“I was only trying to help!”
“Help? Ruby, you committed a crime.”
Ruby’s eyes go wide. “You’re not going to turn me in to the Aurors, are you?”
For once, the girl actually looks scared. Serves her right, after what she did, but Hermione has committed her own fair share of crimes—all in the name of good, at least—so there’s no point in pretending.
“No,” she says through gritted teeth. “But I am going to give you a million detentions.”
“A million? How can I possibly serve one million—”
“I will see you in detention until you are forty, Ruby Hart!”
“That’s still only, like, ten thousand detentions—”
“Then I will see you in detention one hundred times a day—”
“I get it, Professor. I went too far. I’m sorry!” Ruby wrings her hands, the first sign of genuine distress Hermione has ever seen the girl exhibit. “I didn’t think—I mean, you guys are best friends, and I just thought—”
“Thought what, exactly?”
“And the Divination said—”
“Why are you even taking Divination?” Hermione rolls her eyes so hard it hurts. “It’s a waste of your time.”
Ruby shrugs. “My sister likes astrology. I thought it would be cool to talk about it when I go home for Christmas.”
Hermione sighs and lets her head fall into her hands. Why is it so hard to be mad at her?
“I’m sorry, Professor. Truly. I didn’t think it would even be that strong. Just a few minutes, maybe, enough that one of you would let it slip—” She quickly snaps her mouth shut at Hermione’s glare. “I’m sorry.”
“You really overdid the fern root,” Hermione grumbles. “We were affected for over an hour.”
Ruby scoffs. “Well I can’t be perfect all the time.”
“Look, Ruby—Professor Malfoy and I are friendly colleagues. We work together. Nothing more.”
Ruby gives her a withering look, but after a beat, holds her hands high in surrender. “Fine. I’ll stop.”
“Thank you, Ruby.”
“Starting tomorrow.”
“Pardon?”
“Listen, this plan has been in motion for ages! I can’t stop it anymore.” She doesn’t look the slightest bit sorry. “This one is out of my hands.”
Hermione grinds her jaw. “Is it legal, at least?”
Even thinking about grading essays gives Hermione a headache, so she spends the middle of her day soaking in the bath, avoiding all thoughts about handsome coworkers or meddlesome students or whatever trap might await them next.
Instead, she replays the previous night’s events over and over and over in her mind—bitter herbs, a shared jacket, jasmine, soulmates—which, in turn, means she only thinks about handsome coworkers and meddlesome students and what trap definitely awaits them next.
She drags herself from the lukewarm water at the very last moment. Hermione detests the Yule Ball. When she was fifteen, it was everything she dreamed of. It was the first time any of her peers had seen her as beautiful. Her first dance, her first kiss. But now, she’s forced to watch awkward teenage love unfold in front of her in the great hall, bumbling and embarrassing, and she can’t even enjoy a beverage.
Nevertheless, she slips into a burgundy velvet gown—long sleeved and modest—and sweeps her hair into a twist at the nape of her neck. Her wand fits perfectly in her sleeve, secure but easily accessible to dispel any last minute teenage nonsense before the holiday break.
It seems like every year, she’s broken up a fight or a public snog or escorted stragglers back to their dorms while trying to convince them not to vomit. Someone always ends up crying. Someone always spikes the punch bowl.
And now, this year, there’s the threat of Ruby Hart.
Ruby will not be in attendance, of course, which gives Hermione a bit of hope. Her favorite third year will be spending the rest of her foreseeable Saturdays scrubbing cauldrons, so surely—hopefully—she’ll have no time to execute whatever allegedly legal prank she set into motion ages ago.
When Hermione emerges from her quarters, she spots Draco leaning against the wall by his own door—waiting for her, but not quite waiting for her. With his hands in his pockets, he’s a long, lean line of black tuxedo with a flash of white blond on top. The only pop of color is his Slytherin green bowtie, which, as she does every year, Hermione promptly turns scarlet.
He rolls his eyes as he looks up, ready to fire back a retort, but whatever he’d prepared dies on his lips.
“You’re—oh—I mean—” It’s the first time she’s ever seen him stutter. “You look—wow.”
Hermione grins. “What an eloquent man you are, Draco Malfoy.”
“You look lovely,” he says once he’s gathered his wits.
Hermione relishes in the fact that she’s stolen his faculties so easily. But it’s the same thing he’d said to her under the stars by the lake, when she’d been mussed and ruffled and frumpy and he’d had no choice but to tell the truth.
She wants to touch him. Wants to run her fingers along the back of his hand. Wants to pull his stupid smirk down to her lips. Wants to barge inside his quarters and drink the spiked tea straight from the pot until she can turn her heart inside out and show it to him.
Instead, she tries to hide her blush as they walk side by side down the corridor towards the Great Hall. He’s so close, their sleeves brush every few steps. Do they look like a couple? The thought only makes her cheeks heat more.
Snow falls and floats and disappears above their heads as they step over the threshold, and only then do they part, weaving through the crowd in opposite directions to greet their coworkers and schmooze donors and glare at any students who might need a reminder to behave.
It’s quick and perfunctory, for some gravitational force seems to pull them to meet, once again, in the middle.
“I bet you a week’s worth of corridor patrol that Longbottom shows up with a fresh hickey,” Draco says, leaning in so only she can hear.
He descends upon her a fresh wash of all her greatest desires. Ink on his fingertips from the spirited hangman memo he’d sent while she was in the bath. The faintest whiff of apple on his breath. The sweet honey of asphodel seems to emanate from his very being, like he’s been steeped in it.
“Did you break into my office for that candy?”
He scoffs. “Of course not. I took three on Friday to hold me over.”
“You’re a menace. And I’m not taking the bet.”
“What?” He follows behind her as she moves to help a first year who’s somehow charmed his shoelaces together. “You can’t just not take the bet.”
“Why would I take a bet I know you’re going to win? How about this—we’ll see which of us can go longer without their wand. Loser has to finish grading all those first year essays.”
“You would have had to grade those anyway,” Draco says.
“That’s the bet. Take it or leave it.”
“Fine.”
“Fine?”
“Fine. I’ll take the bet. Right after this.” Draco waves his wand to stop a goblet’s worth of punch from sloshing out of the glass of an oblivious fourth year while simultaneously cushioning the fall of a second year who trips over his own feet on the dancefloor. “Merlin,” he says. “How do any of them survive a day on their own?”
“It’s why they’re always so sticky.” Hermione tucks her wand in her sleeve. “At least none of them are swapping spit yet.”
“Swapping spit, you say?” A grating, annoying, sing-song voice sounds from directly above as Peeves descends on them in a swirl of ghostly mist.
Hermione pinches the bridge of her nose. “Be gone, Peeves!”
Peeves just waggles his translucent little finger at her. “Ah, ah, ah! Not until you’ve swapped spit!”
A sprig of mistletoe hangs from his…well, toe. Hermione tries to step out from under it, but Peeves follows gracefully.
Draco grimaces unhelpfully. “Maybe if you ignore him—”
“When has that ever worked?”
Peeves continues to make kissing noises above her head. She sidesteps uselessly in all directions. Nearby students have stopped to watch.
“Ruby?” Draco asks.
“Who else?” Hermione growls at the ceiling. “This is childish, even for her.”
“Well, Granger, she is a child.”
Peeves shakes the mistletoe until a wayward leaf sashays its way into Hermione’s hair. She considers pulling her wand—thus forfeiting the bet—to hex the impish little poltergeist into oblivion, but Draco stops her before she can.
“Let’s not go about assaulting the Hogwarts ghosts,” he says. “Just ignore him. He’ll get bored and leave eventually. I think.”
Hermione stews as Draco guides her away from the small crowd of curious students. “She had to have bribed him.”
“We could make another bet,” Draco suggests, once again unhelpfully.
“I just wish I knew how she did it. George convinced him to harass Umbridge once—”
“Ooh, I’ve got one!”
“—but who wouldn’t jump at the opportunity?”
Draco leans in to whisper, “I bet Trelawney comments on the strength of your Inner Eye in three, two...”
Hermione spins around to check if Draco has brandished his wand, because Trelawney appears as if summoned, swathing the immediate area in fumes of incense and absurdity.
“Miss Granger, oh, my dear!” She blinks at Hermione from behind her obnoxiously large eyeglasses. “It seems you have found yourself a dutiful shepherd of romance in the beloved poltergeist Mr. Peeves!”
Hermione is not sure if the sound Peeves makes in response is a giggle or a fart.
Trelawney is unperturbed by this. “Only someone with a truly strong Inner Eye would be able to make such a connection on this plane, and oh—Dearest Mr. Malfoy, your aura is shining so brightly, my dear, oh, how I have Seen things for you, all your greatest desires will come to fruition, if only—”
“Well, thank you, Sybill,” Draco interrupts, grabbing Hermione by the wrist and dragging her nowhere in particular, just away, “but we must be off, you see, we have–oh, look!” He points over Trelawney’s shoulder, and as soon as she turns her head, they make their escape.
Peeves follows, pirouetting delightedly through the air. Even Hermione can’t suppress her giggle. Draco’s laughing too, and somehow he’s managed to pull her closer, one hand resting on the small of her back, the other trailing lightly across the fabric over her ribs.
“Dance with me,” he breathes.
Hermione lets him spin her despite herself. “You know I hate dancing.”
“Terms of the bet.”
“I think it’s a bit of a late entry,” she mumbles, but they’re already moving in time to the music.
The fabric of his suit jacket is soft beneath her palm where it rests on his shoulder. Her hand fits perfectly in his. It’s so easy to succumb to the comfort of his embrace, to shuck off the unsteady start to her day, to fall into the simple rhythm of steps her body barely remembers, making each step anyway because she knows he’ll catch her if she fumbles.
Peeves smooches the air just above Hermione’s head. “Hermy and Malfoy, sitting in a tree! K-I-S-S-I-N-G!”
“When did you say he’d get bored and leave again?” Hermione glares up at the little monster. “I will trap you in a jar, Peeves.”
Peeves only shrugs, floating closer to their heads, dangling the tiny sprig of mistletoe between their faces. Hermione smacks it away.
“I happen to have access to a paranormal exterminator,” Draco says, “and I am not afraid to send him an owl.”
Peeves blows a raspberry in his face. “Threats will get you nowhere, lovebirds,” he sings. He mimics pushing their heads together. “You know what to do!”
“He has galleons, Peeves!” Hermione ignores Draco’s protests about offering his fortune to ghosts. “Loads of them!”
“I accept payment in buttons or marbles.” He does a somersault in the air, and several berries pepper onto their heads. “And you’ll be hard pressed to top Miss Ruby!” Then, he assumes a comfortable cross- legged position and begins an operatic solo.
Just her luck, it barely lasts a second.
When Hermione tears her gaze away from the little menace, Draco is pocketing his wand, his charm cloaking Peeves in silence.
“Well, you lost the bet.”
“Worth it,” he mutters.
The song comes to an abrupt end when two scrabbling fifth years knock over a holiday display right into the band. A nearby firstie starts to cry. Hermione wants to scream, but manages a sigh instead.
She and Draco divide and conquer, him helping unearth the instruments from the holiday debris while Hermione consoles the criers. While walking a group of tired first years back to their common rooms, she also dishes out a detention to a seventh year for spiking the punch and deducts house points from couples sucking face in alcoves, which Peeves finds entertaining.
He hovers above her the entire evening, sprinkling berries and twigs onto her head as she moves in and out of the ballroom. Several unfortunate suitors offer a kiss to make him go away, all of which she manages to decline without vomiting in her mouth. Worse, each silencing charm she enforces on her poltergeist shadow is less and less effective, until he’s basically belting songs and making kissing noises directly into her ear.
He’s once again singing about kissing in a tree when Hermione slumps into a chair in the mostly-empty ballroom, nursing a goblet of the last bits of spiked punch. Silencing him seems like a monumental task, and it’s not his worst song, so she just closes her eyes and sips her drink and counts down the seconds until she’s allowed to leave this wretched event.
She knows Draco has joined her before she even opens her eyes. She recognizes the scent of him, the warmth of him, the tentative fingertips on her shoulder as he alerts her to his presence.
“Hey,” he says. “Ready to head back? I could use a head start on all those essays.”
“Hermy and Malfoy, sitting in a—oh! There he is!” Peeves giggles. “Kissy, kissy!”
“He’s still going, I see.”
“No signs of stopping. I think silencing him has made him stronger.”
Hermione lets Draco pull her to her feet. He ditched his jacket sometime since she last saw him, and now he stands before her in a slightly rumpled white Oxford, top buttons loose and sleeves rolled up to his elbows.
He’s unbearably handsome. He’s always been unbearably handsome, even when he was just generally unbearable—but when did it start making her heart race?
“How was the punch?” he asks, bumping her shoulder as they begin their winding walk back to their quarters.
“Delicious. Spiked. How were your crises?”
“Manageable. Ridiculous.”
“Anything interesting?”
He smiles, something soft and gentle and hers. “Nothing as interesting as that.” He points at Peeves. “Do you have a plan to get rid of him?”
“Well,” she starts. Her voice shakes—perhaps from anticipation, or perhaps the shiver that ascends her spine as his hand steadies her on the moving staircase. “There is one way.”
“Is it legal?”
“My days of crime are far behind me.”
Hermione keeps her head down as they turn the last corner, even though she feels his gaze on her every few steps. She only looks up when they stop outside her door, finding eyes of silver examining her for any sign of doubt or regret.
“Draco,” she whispers.
He swallows. “Are you sure?”
Yes, she wants to say, of course I’m sure. She wants to say, please, wants to say, I don’t know how much longer I can wait.
Instead, she just nods.
He takes a single step closer. Her eyes flutter as his hand rises to her face, not to cup her jaw or draw her closer, but instead to reach around the back of her head and pull the pin from her hair. He smiles as it tumbles down in haphazard waves down her back.
“There,” he says, and then so, so quietly, “You are so lovely.”
He moves slowly, leaning towards her in increments. First, his hand on her cheek, fingertips sliding into her hair. Then, his nose, brushing just slightly against hers. Loose strands of blonde ghosting her forehead. The faintest pass of lips.
Finally, the press of his mouth on hers, an inhale of uncertainty and hesitancy and doubt, an exhale of assuredness and confidence and desperation.
His breath feathers out across her cheek as he exhales, and the hand on her waist slides up and back, pressing her closer. The fingers she’s fisted in his shirt squeeze, holding him in place, drawing him to her chest, grasping for more as a single kiss morphs into two, into three, the gentle press of lips into a seeking swipe of tongue, into soft groans and curling fingers and half a step they both take that puts her back into the doorframe.
He’s smooth and soft and warm and perfect and Hermione doesn’t know how she’s supposed to let go. Can she stay like this—here, in his embrace—forever?
She wants to beg him to stay, beg him for more, wants to drag him into her room and have every inch of him, offer every inch of herself.
His teeth graze her lower lip as he pulls away. Hermione keeps her eyes closed, her chin tilted, willing him to return, but she feels him slipping through her fingers.
“Goodnight, Hermione,” he whispers against her lips.
By the time she opens her eyes, she’s gone, and Hermione is alone.
It’s hard for Hermione to pinpoint exactly when she awakens on Sunday. It’s hard for her to tell if she even slept at all, or if she just closed her eyes for a really long time.
If she thought her mind had been spinning after the Veritaserum incident, the aftermath of the kiss is a category five typhoon.
He’d kissed her like he meant it, but then he’d disappeared, leaving nothing but the sound of her name on his lips. As she stares at the ceiling above her bed, she’s sure she can still taste him.
Hermione’s not sure how she’s supposed to go about her day. She’s not even sure how she’s supposed to get out of bed. She’s lost and confused and aching, but then—
A rambunctious flutter of parchment slips under her door and flies a spirited path around her room before unfurling directly above her head. The smell of ink and flourish of Draco’s penmanship, asking her to kindly deliver the stack of essays he’s to drown in over break.
Are things supposed to be…normal?
When she knocks on his office door, he greets her with a very normal, very friendly smile. When she makes a joke about how many essays he has to grade, he rolls his eyes the same way he would any other time.
He’s so normal, Hermione starts to doubt if she’d hallucinated the whole thing.
She makes her way to her own office with her head spinning. Unfortunately for her, a bored-looking Pansy Parkinson awaits her inside.
Hermione startles at the sight of her. “How the hell did you get in here?”
“They teach Alohomora in first year, Granger.”
“Why the hell are you in here?”
“Are you an idiot?” Pansy blinks, serious.
Hermione bristles. She crosses her arms in front of her chest like some kind of armor. “I think it’s quite well documented that I am not.”
“Then why hasn’t Draco sent me an owl that says, finally, my idiot coworker realized I’m in love with her and she’s in love with me too and just a head’s up, the wedding’s next week!?”
“That’s quite presumptuous of you—”
“Please,” Pansy says, “you look at that man like he hung the moon. It’s disgusting.”
“Even if that were true, he’s not—I mean, he’s never—he could have said…”
“I repeat: are you an idiot?” Pansy snatches the half-empty bottle of perfume off her desk and squirts it in her face.
“You went through my drawers?” Hermione sputters.
“This is your perfume, yes? What do you smell?”
“I—it’s floral, I guess—Pansy, what is the point of all this?”
Pansy grabs her by the shoulders and physically shakes her. “I can’t believe I have to spell this out for you. What flower?”
“How on earth am I supposed to know that?”
“It’s jasmine, you absolute buffoon.”
Bitter herbs, a shared jacket, jasmine, soulmates—
The note pinned beneath her paper weight. The Halloween candy in her drawer. Crosswords and couches and cashmere and tea.
Every walk down the corridor, every apology, every joke, every smile. Every moment between them in their tenure at Hogwarts has been a guiding step forward—first, friendship, and now—
“You seriously had him under the influence of truth serum and didn’t think to have any of your questions answered?”
All Hermione can say is, “I don’t want anything from him that isn’t freely given.”
Pansy looks at her with disgust from top to bottom. “Merlin, you two were made for each other.”
In her panic, Hermione suddenly feels like she needs to divulge everything to Pansy, who is certainly not her friend, but seems inclined to help. “We kissed last night.”
This stops Pansy in her tracks. “You did?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“And…I don’t know. That’s it.”
“You’re both idiots. What do you mean that’s it?”
“It was another trap—there was mistletoe, and Peeves, and—he was just helping me out.” Hermione swallows. “I talked to him for a bit this morning, but he’s acting so normal, but—I don’t feel normal at all.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t—I don’t know.”
Pansy sighs. “But you’re going to do something about it, right?”
“Yes,.” Hermione whispers.
“You’re going to do something about it now, right?”
“Oh. Um—yes.”
Pansy jerks her head towards the door when Hermione still doesn’t move. Only then does Hermione muster the deepest dregs of her courage and march her way back to Draco’s office.
Luckily, Pansy didn’t see fit to follow, and when Hermione slips inside, it’s just the two of them.
He’s wading in stacks and stacks of her students’ essays. Even from the entry, she can see he’s grading them in one of her beloved red pens, marking mistakes and making notes just like she would. It makes her heart twist in her chest. Why has she waited so long?
“Hi,” she says finally.
When she doesn’t say anything more, he raises a brow. “Are you here to watch me suffer?” he says. “I fear this is going to take days.”
“No, I—”
He huffs at the essay on top. “You know, it’s astounding, Granger. Your students don’t seem to know the difference between Ancient Rome and Ancient Greece.”
“They’re eleven, Draco.” She clears her throat and straightens her spine. “But there is something else, actually—”
“There are more essays?”
“No, but—”
“Merlin, why do you do this to yourself? This is hardly legible.”
Hermione huffs. Why is he being so normal?
“I am trying to tell you something,” she grumbles.
“Can it wait until lunch?” He peeks at his watch. “Actually—Merlin—dinner? I am really on a roll with these.”
And then he has the audacity to shoo her out of his office.
At her bewildered return to her own desk, Hermione is pleased to at least find that Pansy is gone. The courage, though, remains.
She releases yesterday’s hangman note from its paperweight, watching it as it flutters about, joyous in its freedom, emitting the barest whiffs of parchment and ink as it goes. She can’t help but smile to herself as it finally lands in front of her, and when she summons her quill from its inkpot, she makes her first guess.
For over ten minutes, there is no response.
She paces. She sits. She stands. Moves from couch to desk to window. Checks her watch. What the hell is taking him so long?
And so she finds herself, once again, marching down the hall to his office.
“What are you doing?” she barks when she lets herself in. The hangman parchment sits obediently on the edge of his desk. “You’re taking forever.”
“Some of us have essays to grade, Granger,” he mutters. “Was that not clear when you were here thirty seconds ago?”
The stomp of her foot gets his attention, earning her a questioning eyebrow.
“I made my first guess! Fill it out and send it back.”
He glares at her but fails to keep his amused grin at bay. With a sigh, he taps his wand to the parchment and it zips back down the hallway to her office.
She follows it, practically jogging to keep up, making her second guess nearly immediately. His succeeding responses are slow at first, gaining momentum as her strategy becomes clearer, until, finally—
The parchment zips through the door and rests flat on her desk. No rambunctious fluttering or fancy ribbons. On the left, half of a frowny stick person dances on the gallows, and on the right:
_ _ e _ e’_ _ _ e _ _ _ _ yo _ _ _ _ i _
I L O V E Y
Draco appears a few seconds behind, wide eyed and out of breath, hair and jumper disheveled as they’ve ever been for such a poncy, pretentious wizard.
“What are you doing?” he breathes.
“Oh, good,” she says. “You’re here. I wasn’t sure if it would let me guess O again.”
“Are you under the influence of any potions?” He sniffs the mug on her desk, only to find it odorless. “What’s your name?”
“Millicent Bulstrode.”
He grimaces. “That was a choice.”
“And a lie.”
He points his wand at her. “Finite.”
“Merlin, Draco, she’s thirteen. Even you weren’t using the Imperius Curse at that age.”
He dares a step closer, within reach now. It’s a miracle she keeps her hands to herself.
“I don’t want anything from you that isn’t freely given,” she whispers.
He reaches for her. “I’m already yours.”
There’s no hesitancy in his kiss this time. It’s all urgency and desire and everything she’s ever felt but never said.
It’s no surprise they fit together perfectly, like the space between his arms was made for her to fit, like the curves of her waist were made for his hands to travel, like the extra space inside her chest was made for him to fill.
Her message stays unfinished at the bottom of the parchment that flutters happily around their heads, but it doesn’t matter, because he knows and she knows and maybe they’ve always known. She reminds him with her mouth, with her hands, with the thump of her heart against his chest.
“Granger,” Draco says against her lips, “did the parent trap...work?”
Snow blankets the platform as Hermione guides students to the Hogwarts Express. Oh, how she looks forward to the silence of the castle during Christmas. A hot bath, a good book, no schemes to avoid or detentions to supervise. Messy sheets, tangled limbs, searing lips.
She watches Ruby trot across the walkway, Emily and Jamie on her heels. She looks happy, despite having spent the last few days before break scrubbing cauldrons and writing essays.
Hermione almost feels like she should thank the girl. Despite the questionable legality of her actions, in the end, it had been her traps that pushed Hermione to confront her feelings. That and Pansy’s unspoken threat of bodily harm.
As if sensing her thoughts—Hermione makes a mental note to screen her for Legilimency after break—Ruby breaks off from her friends, winding through the crowd of students back towards Hermione.
“Professor Granger,” she says, “I wanted to apologize.”
Hermione searches her for traps or tricks before nodding for her to continue.
“All the pranking and scheming…it was immature. I was homesick and stir-crazy waiting for Christmas break, and I took it out on you and Professor Malfoy. I hope I didn’t ruin your friendship.”
Hermione tries her best to hide her grin. “Thank you for your apology, Ruby.”
“Does this mean I can be done with detention?”
“No.”
“For what it’s worth, I really am sorry.”
“I’m glad you’re sorry,” Hermione says, “but what did you learn?”
Ruby shrugs. “Divination is a crock of shit.”