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When the bells all ring and the horns all blow
And the couples we know are fondly kissing
Will I be with you or will I be among the missing?
Maybe it's much too early in the game
Ah, but I thought I'd ask you just the same
What are you doing New Year's, New Year's Eve?
The atmosphere in the Leaky Cauldron is absolutely thick with anticipation on the last evening of 2008. When Hermione Granger opens the door from a drizzly, grey Diagon Alley, the sticky sweet scent of it smacks her in the face.
As she pushes her way through the crowds, she feels her hair expanding, pushing to the absolute limit the promises on the bottle of Sleekeazy’s she’d used earlier to form neat curls with her wand, while humming along to the wireless. The old jazz standard, Ella Fitzgerald’s voice wrapping around her like a caress. A long-held tradition on the last day of the year, dancing in the kitchen with her dad.
It isn’t really like her to be melancholy any more, but something about the day calls for remembrance, even with her parents happily ensconced and blissfully ignorant on the other side of the world for more than a decade now.
Still, in her tiny apartment in Dumbo, she’d allowed herself that moment of bittersweet recollection: the gravy-rich scent of the steak pie mum always made for New Year's Day, champagne she was too young to be drinking bubbling on her tongue, and her dad’s laughter over the crackle of the old record on his prized turntable.
In the Leaky Cauldron, a lifetime away from her memories, she finally spots her friends, tucked away in the corner. It is Harry she sees first, his perpetually-messy head ducked down next to Ron’s red one, listening to whatever story the redhead is telling and narrowly avoiding having his glasses broken by Ron’s wild gesticulations. Hermione feels a fond smile steal across her face at the sight.
Her oldest friends are flanked by their partners - Theo tucked in next to Harry, and Padma, giggling with her twin, on the other side of Ron. At the top of the table, Ginny holds court. Neville is to her right, with Pansy perched on his knee. Somehow, she still manages to look elegant, long black-painted fingernails carding through his hair as she listens to Ginny’s raucous story.
It’s the youngest Weasley who sees Hermione first, standing so abruptly that her wooden stool wobbles and then clatters to the floor behind her. Arms spread like a monarch greeting her subjects, Ginny’s sudden, effervescent smile draws the attention of everyone else, “Hermione!”
Her other friends take up the cry, all broad toothy smiles and slightly glazed expressions which give away how long they’ve already been here.
She’s been away too long.
But her work in New York is important. She’s made herself invaluable in the MACUSA-No Maj relations department. They could hardly do without her - she hardly ever takes her days off, and when she does there are still owls to answer, and charmed notes through the floo which she leaves connected to the office at all times, extending into her shoebox studio flat in Brooklyn.
She feels, unexpectedly, tears prick at the back of her eyelids at the sight of so many familiar faces smiling at her. Even the group’s adopted Slytherins look pleased to see her.
Ginny rounds the table, freckled arms still spread wide, and then they’re tightly around her.
“I missed you so much , ‘Mione.”
That’s just for her, whispered too-loudly in her ear, and then Hermione is crying in earnest, and so is Ginny.
Then her boys are there. Still the same as the scruffy little boys she’d known, and yet completely different, moulded into the shape of men that have become strangers.
But they smell the same, and as she hugs first Ron, then Harry, she remembers everything that has ever passed between them, lifetimes of trauma and fun and magic.
Theo pops up beside his boyfriend, smiling broadly. They don’t know each other well, but she feels like she does know him, from Harry’s frequent letters. He puts his hands on each side of her face and smacks a kiss to first one cheek, then the other. The familiarity of it makes her burst into loud, pealing laughter, although her eyes are still wet.
“Happy Hogmanay, darling. Thought I’d get my kiss early.” His smile is bright and dimpled. Harry cuffs him affectionately round the back of the neck, and pulls his boyfriend in for a kiss that’s achingly sweet.
Ron squeezes her shoulder, “Wine, 'Mione?”
She nods, a little overwhelmed, and he disappears towards the bar, his height providing him some much needed presence while pushing through the crowds.
Ginny still holds her hand, and draws her down to where she’d previously been sitting, righting the chair she’d upended and tugging at Hermione’s hand until she perches on the other half of it. One strong arm slides around Hermione’s waist to hold her in place. Ginny has always been like this, a side effect of growing up around the sheer volume of Weasleys - tactile, her physical contact doled out generously and without discrimination.
“Is he here?” Just for Ginny, a whispered aside too low for anyone else to hear in the general din of the pub.
“He's coming soon. He knows you’re here,” the hushed response.
A large glass of deep red wine levitates over her head and settles on the table in front of her, followed shortly by the other two thirds of the bottle. She catches Ron’s eye across the table, and hopes her tight smile communicates how grateful she is that he still remembers her preference for Cabernet Sauvignon, even nine years on from the end of their ill-fated attempt at a romance.
Across the table, he’s mincing playfully back from the bar, swishing and flicking his wand as he says in quite a convincing falsetto, “It’s LeviOHHsa, not LevioSAAR.”
Their laughter is contagious. A younger version of her would have huffed at his impression, but she knows it’s rooted in affection.
Pansy, immediately to her right now, inspects the bottle and, finding it to her liking, tops up her own empty glass. Her red-painted lips cut a feline smile at Hermione, and they clink their glasses together. Her eyes are cold.
They’d been friends for a while, before Hermione had upended her life and fled the country. Brought together by the unexpected meshing of childhood enemies when they’d all been thrown together in eighth year in the name of house unity. Traumatised eighteen year olds all living together, suddenly lacking the weight of the world they’d carried around for so long and just allowed to be teenagers for the first time.
The success of McGonagall’s scheming is clear here now at this table, with that entire generation of children gathered all together, now on the cusp of thirty.
Pansy’s gaze, as ever, rakes up and down her choice of attire for the evening. She’s always had the uncanny ability to take Hermione to pieces, but she mostly reserves her powers for good, these days. In any case, Hermione had been pleased with her silvery dress and high black heels when her international portkey had activated earlier.
Evidently passing Pansy’s silent test, both women take a long, simultaneous drag of wine.
“So tell me, Granger, what does New York have that London doesn’t?”
Hermione focuses on the wine glass rather than meet her old friend’s eyes, fingernails tapping a tattoo on the glass stem. “You know my work is important, Pans.”
“Americans,” Pansy muses, “are annoying, and you know it.”
Hermione rolls her eyes. “They’re fine. I have friends.” This stretches the truth to its absolute limit, and they are both aware of it. She has people she works with. The man downstairs with the coffee cart. Faces she knows from the hallway of her building.
Pansy raises one sculpted eyebrow. Her cool offhandedness is somewhat undermined by the fact that she’s still perched delicately on Neville’s lap. When Hermione looks at her friend’s hand, she’s unsurprised to see a huge grey diamond solitaire glittering on her ring finger.
“Congratulations,” she says, and means it - though it doesn’t stop a sharp pang from ripping through her stomach.
“Thank you,” Pansy returns the platitude, tone still frosty. In another lifetime, Hermione would have been the first person to know. She would have stood up alongside Pansy in a gown, held her bouquet through the handfasting ceremony, perhaps recited vows as bonder.
Neville is looking elsewhere, patiently pretending not to listen to their conversation, but his hand flexes on Pansy’s waist.
Pansy hums, then returns to what she evidently wants to discuss, “you still alone in that stupid flat?”
“Is that your way of asking if I’m single? You know the answer to that.”
There had been other people since him . Faceless people passing through, magical folk and Muggles alike. Men and women. But never at her flat. Never in her space. Always elsewhere, where she could disappear afterwards like the fog that ghosted across the East River on a summer morning.
Pansy clicks her tongue. “Interesting.”
Hermione takes hold of a frizzing curl, running it between her fingers. She’s at a loss for words, the apology that she owes the other woman catching on her tongue, turning the aftertaste of her wine metallic.
“He still thinks about you, you know.”
This is the real sticking point: why they’d really fallen on each side of the crevasse she’d ripped through their friendship group when she’d left. As much as they had cared for one another, that paled in comparison to childhood friendships.
Hermione thumbs the fourth finger of her left hand unconsciously. Pansy’s eyes track the movement. “I still think about him too.”
“Hermione,” she shouldn’t hear him breathe her name but she does, from across the busy pub. He’s only just entered; hair artfully weather-tousled. He’s out of breath, like he rushed here.
He moves through the crowd, his focus single-minded. Where Ron pushed through, it's like the crowd parts subconsciously for him, making room for the aura he's given off since he was a child. It’s a relief when he’s there, a head taller than her, even in her heels. She stands up to meet him and takes two faltering steps towards him, away from the table.
As she steps away from Pansy, she hears the other woman mutter, "This will be interesting," to her fiance. Hermione ignores it.
It surprises her, for some reason, that he hasn’t taken on the form she’s ascribed to him - small, pushed away into a locked box in her memories and occluded away. His name falls from her like it never left her lips at all, “Draco.”
His hand reaches for her face, a knee-jerk reaction. She notices when he does, fingertips a whisper away from her burning cheek before his hand freezes, then darts away.
Her smile wobbles. She fixes it in place.
“Hi,” she says, pathetically. She’s highly aware of the attention of her friends, who are probably trying to decide if either or both of them needs to be rescued.
“Happy New Year, sweetheart.” Neither of them notice the strangeness of the old term of endearment.
“You look good.” And he does, though he always did. He’d always toed the line between handsome and beautiful, grey eyes lined spectacularly with long dark lashes, sharp features, and a plush mouth. On anyone else it would be too feminine, but he’s just so striking that it suits him. He’s perhaps a little sharper round the edges than she remembers. His outer robes fit across what is unmistakably a broader chest. There are lavender shadows under his eyes, and pale scruff lines his sharp jaw like he rushed here. It’s not like him to be so imperfect. But he's still able to take her breath away.
His smile is tentative. “It’s so good to see you.”
“You too,” and she means it. Then, before she can think better of it, she continues, “Draco –”
“Draco!” The spell is broken by one of the Greengrass girls - Hermione never could quite tell the difference between them - appearing to his left and pressing her lips to the sharp corner of his jaw. Draco’s eyes fall to the woman next to him, a look of such affection suddenly on his face that the wine in Hermione’s stomach sours.
Draco returns his attention to Hermione, one arm looped around the blonde woman’s shoulders, “Hermione, you remember Astoria?”
Hermione nods, stupidly.
The younger Greengrass - Astoria - turns beautiful, shining eyes on Hermione, and reaches to take her hand where it’s lying limply at her side, shaking it vigorously. “It’s so good to see you again, Hermione. Draco has told me everything about you. Are you in London for long?”
Hermione stumbles through the interaction. Her face feels numb, except for where his gaze still burns into the side of it. On Astoria's left hand is a diamond so large it seems to pulse with its own gravitational pull. Hermione's eyes keep falling back to it, drawn inevitably in.
Draco is still staring at her. Merlin, it’s not fair of him to still look at her like - like that. She can’t bear to see the soft smile which still plays across his features. If she was Astoria, she’d be absolutely livid.
Hermione fumbles her way through an excuse, rudely interrupting something Astoria is saying and turns, desperate to get away from them. But he catches her arm, long fingers wrapping around her bicep in a way that’s shockingly familiar.
“I’ll catch you later, Granger. Don’t go disappearing before then, alright?”
She can barely meet his gaze, probably scarlet in a way that can’t be explained by the temperature of the room, and nods, before slipping out of his grasp.
Outside, the drizzle has turned to sleet, the precipitation noticeably colder than before.
Hermione huddles in the meagre shelter provided in front of the door, then remembers she’s a fucking witch and casts a spell with her wand which renders the space above her head impervious to water. The misty rain forms condensation on the invisible pane above her and drips miserably off, splashing her bare toes.
She pulls her papers and tobacco from her bag, rolls a fag with shaking fingers. Not her best effort, honestly. Still, when she lights it with the tip of her wand, the first draw is a relief. She shoves her wand back in the narrow pocket built into her dress, something she tailors into every dress and skirt she owns.
The smoking is a horrible habit, borne from long hours in the office and any excuse to be outside for a few minutes. She’ll give it up in the new year.
She exhales a thin stream of smoke, leaning back against the wall, considering the burning tip of the cigarette. She flicks off the ash with her thumb almost before it’s formed.
Engaged. He's fucking engaged to lovely, beautiful Astoria. She should have known that he would eventually move on. She’d never been right for him. Pretty, dainty Astoria fits so perfectly next to him. Hermione can’t even bring herself to dislike the woman, not when she obviously makes Draco so tooth-achingly happy.
Hermione presses her thumb into the socket under her left eyebrow, where she can feel a pressure headache developing. It's good to see her friends. In her new life, she's managed to pack them all away into neat little boxes, but they would never have stayed contained in there for long.
Pansy was always going to give her a hard time. Her years-long relationship with Neville has only barely dulled the edges that were honed to cut deeply for so many years. Pansy is a law unto herself. It’s why Hermione had liked her so much.
Hermione inhales from the cigarette again, relishing the burn in her lungs. It doesn’t quite stave off the cold that floods her veins. When she closes her eyes, the two diamond rings refract behind her eyelids - proof that other people have managed to move on with their lives. A dazzling reminder of everything she gave up.
Beside her, the door bursts open. Unconsciously, Hermione tucks the smoke into her side to hide it.
But it’s only Ginny, someone else’s jacket wrapped around her freckled shoulders. “There you are!” she cries, “I thought you’d run off again.”
Hermione’s brow creases, “Why does everyone keep expecting -“
Her question is cut off by Ginny’s snort, “Maybe past experience, Golden Girl?.”
Rather than respond, Hermione takes another long drag from her cigarette. Ginny won’t mind it. It’s burnt halfway down already. She’s been meaning to try the magical version, which lasts longer, but that feels like a slippery slope to cementing her addiction.
Ginny makes a grabbing motion with her fingers, and Hermione passes the cigarette over. Ginny takes a decadent inhale.
“I’m not supposed to have these, you know. Terrible for lung capacity. Coach would kill me.”
“Give it back, then.” Without waiting for a response, Hermione plucks it from her friend’s mouth, if only to save her friend’s Quidditch career, and puts it back between her own lips.
In silence, she finishes the cigarette, free arm wrapped around herself.
Ginny breaks the silence as Hermione vanishes the smouldering remains of her fag with a twist of her fingers and a whispered, “Evanesco,” a neat bit of wandless magic.
“Why did you come back tonight, Hermione?”
In a moment of vulnerability, laid bare in the flickering of the streetlight on Diagon Alley, Hermione says, “I don’t know.”
(But she does know.)
Hogmanay was their thing. Once she understood that she would never have her parents back, she’d attempted to make new memories on the last night of each year, but it was truly a coincidence that all of Hermione and Draco’s most formative moments had happened on New Year’s Eves gone by. The first time they kissed, drunk at an illicit party in eighth year, while she and Ron were on one of their many breaks. That moment of soft wonder was followed by the messy fallout of Ron’s return in the spring, on leave from Auror training, deciding he did want Hermione again, after all.
Out of deference to one of her oldest friends, they’d truly given it their best shot, but her heart was never quite in it, distracted by a side of Draco she occasionally caught glimpses of, when his guard was down.
She and Draco had been friends before they’d become lovers in spite of that stolen moment, eighteen months after she and Ron ended it for good. Another Hogmanay party in the flat he rented in Muggle London, where they’d sat on the parquet floors in the early hours of 2001, drunk off of tequila and each other, and found their way back to one another.
Memories of other parties pass in a blur as she came to terms with the loss of her parents, oblivious on the other side of the world, and he realised his parents would never allow this to move beyond what they saw as a rebellious dalliance.
The worst New Year's Day, when he’d smashed all of Narcissa’s best crystal and sworn he’d never return to his ancestral home.
Then their last one, when she awoke to him holding a ring between two fingers, the hope in his eyes devastating in those last moments before disaster.
“I don’t know,” she lies again, and she doesn’t fool either of them.
Ginny is kinder than Pansy would have been, and doesn’t call Hermione on her bullshit. “Let’s go back in, 'Mione, I’m freezing my fucking tits off.”
Hermione laughs in spite of the splintering memories, and allows herself to be drawn back in.
–
“It’s nearly midnight,” a leering voice. A slimy, unwanted relic from sixth year’s Slug Club, “Wanna practise before then?”
Quite how Cormac McLaggen has cornered her in this room full of her oldest friends, she doesn’t know. Exhaling deeply, she turns her coldest, most Pansy-esque stare on him, aware that she’s tucked away, probably out of sight of the table where her friends still sit.
Her glare is wasted on him. He’s obviously plastered, lurching towards her, clearly having mistaken her upturned face as an invitation for sexual harassment. She forces her hands up between them, pushing firmly against his chest.
She has the most bizarre, sudden recollection of a jack-in-the-box in a classroom years before. He lurches away from her then back again, his concept of personal space and consent evidently disregarded in the alcoholic haze which seems to leak from his every pore.
She considers, wildly, if Riddikulus might work on this boggart from her past.
“Whatcha say, Granger?” He slurs.
She considers drawing her wand, but decides against it and defaults - as she always has - to prim, nose in the air. ”Absolutely fucking not, McLaggen. Please excuse me.”
“Don’t be like that, sweetheart,” that name, from the wrong mouth, has her taking a step backwards, away from his damp, grabbing hands - and straight into a hard, warm chest, and an immediately familiar pair of hands which catch her shoulders before she can stumble any further.
Somehow she knows, even before his frigid words pass above her head. Perhaps she’ll know the feel of him when she’s a hundred years old and this is all a faded memory. Distantly, she feels her body relax into him. One hand chafes against the skin of her bicep, and it’s deeply comforting.
“I believe she said absolutely fucking not, McLaggen.”
Cormac has the audacity to raise his hands, reeling away, like he suddenly remembers what no means. “M’sorry, didn’t realise it was still like that - “ and he disappears into the crowd to go and harass someone else.
Draco hasn’t released her. They’re still out of sight. She steels herself, and turns, breaking the gentle hold he has on her. He's shed his outer robes and the sleeves of his crisp white shirt are rolled. He crosses his arms across his chest and raises one eyebrow, two shades darker than his hair. Brown leather straps span his chest, with his wand still tucked in the holster - he must have come straight from the DMLE, which explains the stubble she noticed earlier.
The sight of him makes her suddenly and irrationally angry, which is easier than anything else. “I had it under control.”
His temper doesn’t rise to meet hers, like it once would have. “I know.” It annoys her more than if he’d snapped back.
“You don’t have to save me any more, Malfoy.” His old surname, spat at him. Last she heard, he went by Black since his disinheritance was made legal.
“You made that clear,” somehow he’s still calm. He doesn’t correct her on the wrong name, the one she knows is still a painful spectre in his mind. “But I wasn’t going to stand by while he pawed at you - where is your wand?”
“I had it under control,” she repeats, like that makes it true. “He’s harmless.” Another lie.
“Right.”
“I need a drink,” she mutters.
He rakes a hand through his fair hair, and gestures to the bar, beyond her shoulder. “Come on, then.”
It would be easier if he was aging poorly, but he isn’t. Perhaps, with Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy’s genes, aging poorly was a statistical impossibility, but she might have been able to tear her gaze away from him, as they lean on the bar, if his hairline had receded a bit, or the faint crows feet crinkling around his eyes were a little deeper and a little less endearing.
Who is she kidding? He’ll age like fine fucking wine.
He faces her after ordering drinks for them both. She catches sight of his forearm, and realises that what she'd mistaken for his hideous death eater mark, always glamoured in the years they'd spent as friends and lovers, has been permanently covered by beautiful, swirling vines and leaves. They seem to rustle, as if in a spring breeze. It's a stunning piece of work. He passes a hand over it, seeming to notice her attention.
"Thought it was time to get rid of it permanently."
Hermione nods, a little dazed. On his other forearm is what looks like the tail of a dragon, wrapped around his wrist and flickering across the back of his hand. It disappears beyond the cuff of his shirt, just below his elbow.
Then her attention snags on his hand. There’s no ring on his finger. Engaged then, rather than married. It shouldn't hurt as much as is does. He’d wanted to be married, it was Hermione who was the problem. Surely it's only a matter of time before he and Astoria elope and have a veritable Quidditch team of angelic little brats.
(This isn’t unkind, but simply an observation based on the fact that Hermione has first-hand experience of half of the hypothetical spawn’s gene pool with regards to general brattiness.)
He’s inspecting her right back, gaze settling warmly across her face and shoulders. He’d always liked her shoulders.
“Are you happy, Hermione? Is it everything you dreamed it would be?”
“Yes,” she lies, and it’s like chewing glass.
“Good, that’s - good,” he says.
Does he know it’s all fake? The letters to Harry and Ron that she knows they’ll mention to him, in the office? The facade of a life pursuing empty dreams in a city she doesn’t like, all pointless without someone to share it with? He has always seen right through her.
Does he know that she still dreams of him in soft, diffused light?
“Are you happy?” She asks, quietly, in return.
“Yes,” and there’s a note of sincerity in his exhale that she hadn’t been able to muster, and smile lines bracket his mouth beautifully. “I’m so happy to see you.”
It’s not what she asked, but her follow-up question disappears as long fingers take hold of an errant, frizzing curl. His attention is focussed on it completely as he works up to whatever he’s trying to say. His long fingers smooth the follicles down, looping her hair loosely around his finger.
“Let me come with you,” he finally says, and then his eyes meet hers, burning with determination. “Let me come to New York. Please, Hermione.”
Her brain empties of all thought. Whatever she’d thought he’d been working up to, it wasn’t that. She can only gape at him.
What she wants to ask is, won’t Astoria mind? But it’s like her mouth can’t form the words.
Instead, she says, “You wouldn’t like it.”
His brow creases, “I’m sure I would.”
The thought of him and Astoria there together, in the safe space she’s created for herself, however much she dislikes it, is enough to make her feel physically sick. She shakes her head, wildly. “No - no, you wouldn’t,” she insists. “ A - Astoria will hate it.”
She hates the break in her voice.
She pushes away, still shaking her head, like that alone might dissuade him from whatever insane plan he has. He’s still staring at her, silver eyes wide, pupils dilated in the dim room.
“I have to go,” she blurts out. “I think Ginny wants me - “ she doesn’t, but the thought of continuing this conversation for a fraction of a second longer is absolutely abhorrent.
She pulls away, snatching the curl from where he still holds it. His hand is still frozen in mid-air, expression wild as he tries to piece together her apparently unexpected reaction. Like she'd be thrilled to run into him and his wife and the aforementioned progeny on the street.
“Hermione - “
“Happy New Year, Draco.”
She says it with the finality of an executioner. And she pulls sharply away, bumping blindly into someone. She turns to apologise, and - fuck. She lets out a sharp laugh that might be a sob. Astoria.
She lets herself look, absolutely stricken, at the other woman’s beautiful face.
“I’m so sorry,” she says, apologising for more than her own clumsiness, and ducks past her, head down as she heads for the safety of the table and their friends, away from the pair of them
–
Even in a world where time can be manipulated in a half-twist of a necklace, the countdown to midnight feels inevitable. Hermione feels like time is being turned forward, the world blurring and bleeding around her as she falls back into the seat with Ginny, with several bodies safely between her and Draco. He and Astoria talk quietly together. She tries not to look at them. She really tries so hard. But their two fair heads, bent together, draw her attention like she’s a sun-starved flower.
Tomorrow, she’ll take an international portkey back to her sad little life, and she’ll try to patch up the cracks which have reformed. If she were to look closely at her skin, she feels sure that lightning bolt scars would ripple across her where she is breaking at the seams, a perfect mirror to the sectumsempra scars which still shatter across his torso.
She upends the last of the second bottle of Cabernet into her glass. The amount left is pitiful. Perhaps that’s why the light from the candles hovering above the table seems to bleed in her vision as the wax drips endlessly onto the hardwood table. Someone levitates the empty bottle back to the bar.
Her frazzled mind questions the safety of flying alcoholic bottles and open flames.
Harry appears beside her, his face as daft as she feels. The glasses, still the same shape as when he was eleven, are askew on his nose. She reaches out to straighten them.
His smile is softly affectionate, and so familiar it makes her heart hurt. She returns it, but it’s not as easy as his.
“Where’s Theo?” she asks, hoping he doesn’t ask about her.
“Dunno,” he says, and scans the room, then points over the crowds to his boyfriend’s dark head, “over there? I’ll find him in a minute.”
He casts a wobbly tempus above their heads. Just a few minutes left before midnight.
“Just wanted to check on you.”
It’s what she was worried about. What she practised, at home in her mirror.
“I'm fine Harry, I promise.”
Have they all been talking about her?
“Right,” he says, “Well, did Black talk to you?”
“Draco?” this stumps her a bit. She knows they’re still friends. The new surname rolls easily off Harry’s tongue, and it’s jarring. “For a bit. Why?”
“M’just gonna miss him.” This makes him laugh, heartily. “Who’d’ve thought it? Me missing that wanker. But if it stops you both moping about…”
“I do not mope!” she exclaims, then the rest of his slurred sentence registers. “Wait - I said no, Harry.”
He’s genuinely baffled. “Why?”
“Why? Because - because he can’t just come to New York. He can’t dump Astoria for something that ended years and years ago.”
“Astoria?” Harry stares at her, owlish behind his glasses, then lets out a sudden burst of laughter. “Mione, they’re not together. He’s just as tragic as you are. Tori’s as gay as I am, didn't you meet her wife? I think they're - “
He breaks off as the time ticks over, still flashing above their heads, and suddenly there’s just a few seconds to go.
“Fuck,” they both notice at the same time, but it’s Harry who swears. Glasses of Champagne, poured at the bar, begin to pop into existence in front of them all. “Fuck, I have to find Theo - this conversation isn’t over!”
The last bit is almost yelled, as Harry pushes through the crowd away from her, like he hasn’t just upended her entire world.
She’s suddenly extremely, painfully alone in the crowd, the only person who doesn’t seem to have someone else.
Another part of her heart splinters painfully, even as Harry’s words rewrite the narrative arc of the evening in her mind. But she can’t avoid seeing it as her friends pair off. Pansy is wrapped around Nev. Harry and Theo find one another, and their smiles are shatteringly bright. Ron and Padma. Ginny sits on Blaise’s knee, one hand around his neck, apparently not waiting until midnight to shove her tongue down his throat. Seamus and Dean also have their arms around one another - she hadn’t known they were still together, that’s nice. And Astoria, hands tender on the face of a woman Hermione doesn't know. But their happiness is unmistakeable. The other woman even has a matching diamond ring.
Surrounded by happiness and love and in the middle of a screaming, excited countdown, Hermione drains her champagne, suddenly struck by the potential catastrophe of seeing him kiss someone else, even someone who makes him as happy as she was, once. If it's not Astoria, it will be someone else, eventually. Hermione ruined her opportunity years ago, all by herself.
“ Ten, nine, eight, seven…” the crowd is reaching fever pitch in the too-hot room.
“Six… five…four…”
She looks around again, suddenly desperate for escape. The room is too crowded and she’s had too much to drink to make apparition a good idea. Everything is too fuzzy, too overwhelming. Her much-lauded logic escapes her with the oxygen in her lungs.
“ Three… two…”
She doesn’t hear the last of it. The room is silent, all of it drowned out by the sudden emptiness in her mind, because he’s there. Perhaps the only other person alone in the room.
The flashing time above them signals the beginning of a new year.
They reach for one another at the same moment. His hands are hot as they bracket her face, tilting it towards his own. His silver eyes are impossibly warm and soft.
“Happy New Year, darling,” he says, and then he bends toward her and she presses up onto her tiptoes, out of her heels, and their lips meet somewhere in the crevasse she ripped between them. Or - it isn’t a crevasse at all, just the narrowest of cracks, suddenly crashing back together, and then welded tight.
Everything is white noise, blurring around them, apart from his hands in her hair and the feel of his shoulders beneath her hands and the groan he releases into her mouth, followed by a soft laugh as they part. He buries his face in her neck, arms sliding around her and hauling her into him, like any space between them is no longer acceptable.
His smell is overwhelmingly comforting as she inhales it around the sudden, aching lump in her throat. Why is she crying now, after everything?
“Happy New Year, Draco,” she manages to whisper back thickly. He retreats so he can see her face, one hand sliding up her back to curl around the nape of her neck, tilting her face up to his.
His gaze sees right through her, as it always has.
“Please, Hermione. Please - let me come with you. I can’t be here any more, London is - so goddamned shit without you.”
“No,” she gasps, between sobs, and hastens to continue when his expression crumples like she’s hexed him, “I hate New York. I hate it so much.” It feels so good to finally say it aloud.
“You do?” that fragile hope is back in his eyes, “Well for fuck’s sake, darling, come home.”
She nods, one hand curling in the front of his shirt, desperate to hold on to him. “I will,” she promises.
Ah, but in case I stand one little chance
Here comes the jackpot question in advance
What are you doing New Year's, New Year's Eve?