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Draco Malfoy fell in love with Hermione Granger quietly, which was the most inconvenient way it could have happened.
It was not dramatic. There was no singular moment he could point to and say there, that was it. No lightning strike, no sudden clarity. It was a slow accumulation of small things that refused to stop adding up.
The way she listened. Not politely, but fully, as if the act of understanding was a moral obligation. The way she frowned when reading, lips pressed together, brows drawn in concentration, like the world might fall apart if she missed a single line. The way she said his name now, without hesitation, without edge.
Draco noticed things. He always had. It was both his strength and his curse.
Hermione did not notice him at all.
Not like that.
She treated him with an easy familiarity that would have felt like mercy if it did not also feel like death by a thousand paper cuts. She asked his opinion on legislation drafts, trusted him with delicate negotiations, handed him books she thought he would like without ceremony or expectation.
She smiled at him often. Warmly. Unthinking.
Draco learned to survive on scraps.
They worked late most nights at the Ministry, the building emptying out around them until only the hum of enchanted lights remained. Hermione would kick off her shoes under the desk, hair slipping loose from its careful twist, sleeves rolled up as if rules did not apply when the world needed fixing.
She would glance up at him, eyes bright.
“You look tired,” she would say. “Have you eaten.”
“Yes,” Draco would lie, because the truth was that hunger had become an abstract concept.
Sometimes she would bring him tea. Always exactly how he liked it, though he had never told her.
Once, when he had asked how she knew, she had shrugged.
“You just seem like a two sugars kind of person.”
He was not. He took one. He took two anyway.
Draco kept his distance with the discipline of someone who had learned control the hard way. He sat across from her, not beside her. He never reached out first. He never let his gaze linger too long, though it wanted to.
The wanting was the worst part.
He wanted to tell her everything. He wanted to say her name like a confession. He wanted to reach across the table and tuck her hair behind her ear and see if she leaned into it or away.
He wanted to know.
Hermione, infuriatingly, assumed the best of him.
She assumed his silences meant thoughtfulness, not restraint. She assumed his politeness was habit, not devotion. She assumed that when he left early it was because he had somewhere to be, not because staying had begun to feel unbearable.
“You are very kind,” she told him once, smiling over her shoulder as she gathered her papers. “I am glad we work together.”
The words settled in his chest and refused to move.
That night, Draco went home and stared at the ceiling until morning.
He told himself it was temporary. That this was a phase, a misfiring of emotion after years of proximity and shared purpose. That eventually the feeling would dull.
It did not.
If anything, it sharpened.
It showed up in the smallest moments. In the way his hand hovered when she brushed past him in the corridor. In the way he memorized the cadence of her laugh without meaning to. In the way he felt irrationally irritated when she spoke fondly of someone else, which was often, because Hermione Granger loved people openly and without reservation.
She spoke of Harry and Ginny and Pansy and even Blaise with the same warmth she gave the world.
Draco learned to live in the space between what he felt and what he was allowed to say.
Until the day he could not.
It happened in the archives, long after sunset, dust motes drifting lazily through the dim light. Hermione was perched on a ladder, reaching for a volume that was very clearly out of her grasp.
“Granger,” Draco said, already standing. “That is unsafe.”
“I have it,” she replied, stretching further.
She did not have it.
The ladder wobbled. Draco moved without thinking, hands on her waist, steadying her as the book slid free and landed with a dull thud.
For a moment, they were too close.
Hermione looked down at him, breath shallow, hair falling loose around her face. Draco’s hands were warm where they rested, firm and unyielding, as if he could anchor her to the earth if he tried hard enough.
Something in his chest broke open.
He let go at once, stepping back too quickly.
“I am sorry,” he said. “I should have warned you.”
Hermione blinked, then smiled. “Thank you. I forget sometimes.”
She climbed down, completely unbothered, already opening the book. “Honestly, Malfoy, what would I do without you.”
The words hit him harder than any insult ever had.
That night, Draco sat at his desk long after the quill had gone dry, staring at a single line he had written and rewritten until the parchment was worn thin.
In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.
He had copied it from memory, hands shaking.
He folded the parchment carefully and tucked it into the inner pocket of his coat, where it stayed for weeks. He carried it with him like a talisman and a threat.
Hermione noticed he was quieter after that.
“You are distracted,” she said one afternoon, concern creasing her brow. “Are you all right.”
He looked at her then, really looked, and wondered how she could be so perceptive and still miss this.
“Yes,” he said, because it was easier than the truth.
She nodded, satisfied, and turned back to her work.
Draco watched her for a long moment, then did something reckless.
He spoke.
“Hermione,” he said.
She looked up. “Yes.”
The world narrowed to the space between them.
“There is something I have been meaning to say,” he continued, voice steady through sheer force of will.
Her expression softened, encouraging. “You can tell me.”
Draco swallowed.
He thought of the letter in his pocket. Of restraint. Of all the moments he had let pass.
He met her eyes.
“I admire you,” he said.
She smiled. “I admire you too.”
The words landed gently, missing the mark entirely.
Draco smiled back, because that was what was expected of him, and tucked the rest of the confession away once more.
For now.
Because loving Hermione Granger, he had learned, required patience.
And Draco Malfoy, if nothing else, had become very good at waiting.