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“I understand what happened,” Hermione says, frowning at him, and it feels so otherworldly―to experience her frown from his face. “But what I don’t understand is why.”
Draco lets out a sigh, wants to crawl underneath his covers and sleep forever.
“We don’t have to talk now. Just―later.”
He nods and flops down on the bed. “Later, then.”
They don’t talk later, if the definition of later is within twenty-four hours. It’s a day and a half before they do actually talk, mainly because Draco has gotten really good at avoiding people he doesn’t want to see, and because Hermione is in the middle of a project, which means that she spends almost all of her time at the office and he can barely talk to her.
They talk when the issue has festered for long enough, when there’s a pitter-patter of raindrops pounding on the window, when Hermione has drunk enough chamomile tea to drown a small village of mice, when Draco’s investigated their tiny bathroom and the scent of ammonia emanating from the shower rug.
They talk then.
“So,” she begins. “What the fuck were you doing with Polyjuice in our bathroom?”
He shrugs, tries to avoid the issue for just a second longer.
“Draco.”
“I don’t know, alright?” he hisses, anger bursting into his voice like a popped blister. “I don’t know.”
She turns over on the bed, facing away from him, her long brown curls fanning out over the chartreuse duvet cover like tumbleweeds on a windy day. “I don’t believe you.”
“Why should you,” he says, not asking a question, even though it’s phrased like one. Technically. “You never do.”
Hermione twists over, brown eyes meeting his grey ones. Her brown eyes. A day and a half ago, they’d been his grey ones. “That’s not fair,” she says, tears beginning to form. Seeing them feels like something plucking on his heartstrings, dragging a tune out of personal misery and new chords from old hurt. “I just―I don’t know why you would want to leave like that. I don’t―”
He cuts her off with a kiss. It’s the wrong thing to do right now, of course, because kissing is for normal people that don’t make plans and supplies to leave off in the middle of the night wearing someone else’s skin, normal people that don’t hide polyjuice in their bathrooms.
Her voice after he kisses her is one that’s going to break the second she says his name. “Draco―”
And it does.
“Look, what I want to know is why you were mixing bleach with what was supposed to be 80 proof!” he says, anger curling his fists and twisting through his voice, anger tearing him up, gathering in his hands, redhotredhotredhot, the kind of anger that makes him want to hurt. “I―Hermione―you―you were going to do something and it’s better that it happened this way, okay? I don’t know why you would do that, either.”
His anger, the anger that was wrapping up into itself like a tangled ball of yarn has now relaxed, the sight of her crumpled face doing to him what a kitten’s claws would to the yarn ball. Draco lets out a breath, looks at Hermione again.
He wipes a tear off of her cheek. “If it’s going to upset you―I guess we could―we could just pause and talk later.”
“I just―no,” she says firmly. “We have to finish talking. I guess―Draco, my big question is why.”
“Same goes for you,” he says. They’re at an impasse. It’s generally where they end up.