Chapter Text
The Gryffindor common room was unusually crowded for a Thursday night. Most people were pretending to study for N.E.W.T.s while actually watching the slow-motion disaster unfolding near the fireplace.
Draco Malfoy was sprawled in the best armchair like he’d personally purchased it with Ministry bonds. Hermione Granger sat at the table directly opposite, quill scratching furiously, occasionally shooting him looks that could strip varnish.
Neither of them had spoken in seventeen minutes.
That was the new personal record.
Ron finally cracked.
“Malfoy, if you sigh one more time I’m hexing your lungs shut.”
Draco didn’t even look up from the book he wasn’t reading. “Weasley, if your face gets any redder people are going to start asking if you’ve joined the Weasley family tradition of spontaneous combustion.”
Pansy Parkinson, perched on the arm of Draco’s chair like a very expensive gargoyle, snorted so hard her pumpkin juice nearly came out her nose. “He’s not wrong, Ronald. You look like a Howler about to pop.”
Ginny, cross-legged on the rug and braiding Luna’s hair mostly out of spite, didn’t even glance up. “At least Ron’s face matches his hair. You two—” she jerked her chin between Draco and Hermione “—are giving me sympathy heartburn.”
Hermione’s quill snapped in half.
Everyone’s heads swivelled.
She cleared her throat, cheeks flaming. “The nib was faulty.”
“Sure it was,” Blaise drawled from the sofa, legs stretched across Theo’s lap. Theo didn’t even bother pretending to move them. “Just like the last four ‘faulty’ nibs. And the mysteriously vanishing ink bottle. And the way the fire keeps flaring green every time Malfoy breathes too loudly in your general direction.”
Harry, who had been trying (and failing) to read Quidditch Through the Ages for the sixth time this month, finally gave up and dropped his head into his hands. “I’m begging both of you. Just snog already. Or duel. Or set each other on fire. Anything that ends this.”
Draco arched one perfect eyebrow. “Potter, I’m wounded. Granger and I have a perfectly civilised working relationship.”
Hermione made a noise that was halfway between a scoff and a dying kneazle.
“Civilised,” Pansy repeated, delighted. “That’s what we’re calling it now? Last week you spent forty-seven minutes arguing about the proper way to shelve restricted-section tomes while standing approximately three inches apart. I timed it. Theo owes me six Galleons.”
Theo sighed like a man who had long ago accepted his fate. “I still say she would have kissed him if you hadn’t started cackling like a hyena.”
“I have excellent comedic timing,” Pansy said primly.
Hermione slammed her book shut. “You are all insufferable.”
“Says the woman who reorganised Draco’s entire potions kit last Tuesday ‘because the labels were aesthetically offensive,’” Ginny shot back without looking up. “You spent longer touching his cauldron than most people spend on foreplay.”
Hermione’s mouth opened. Closed. Opened again.
Draco, traitor that he was, smirked into his book.
Ron threw a Chocolate Frog at him. It hit him square in the forehead and fell sadly into his lap.
“Oi!” Draco plucked it up, inspected the card (Godric Gryffindor, naturally), and flicked it back at Ron with perfect aim. “Keep your confectionery violence to yourself, Weasley.”
Hermione stood abruptly. “I need air.”
“You need to jump him,” Blaise muttered under his breath.
Theo elbowed him. Hard.
Hermione pretended not to hear. She stalked toward the portrait hole.
Draco was on his feet before anyone could blink.
“I’ll make sure she doesn’t fall down the stairs,” he announced loftily. “She has a documented history of being blinded by righteous fury.”
“That’s rich coming from the bloke who nearly set the library on fire last month because Granger called his handwriting ‘aggressively pretentious,’” Harry said.
Draco didn’t dignify that with a response. He simply followed Hermione out.
The portrait hole swung shut.
Silence for exactly four seconds.
Then—
Pansy clapped once, sharply. “Right. Bets. Who cracks first?”
Ginny raised her hand. “Hermione. She’s got that ‘I’m going to snog him against a wall and then lecture him about it’ energy.”
Ron groaned. “I hate all of you.”
Harry rubbed his scar like it personally offended him. “I just want one peaceful evening. One.”
Blaise leaned forward, smirking. “Ten Galleons says they come back with lipstick on his collar and her hair looking like she fought a tornado and lost.”
Theo considered. “Fifteen says they come back pretending nothing happened while standing so close their robes are touching.”
Pansy grinned like a shark. “Twenty says they come back and immediately start another fight about something deeply stupid so they have an excuse to keep staring at each other’s mouths.”
Ron looked around at his so-called friends, then at the empty portrait hole.
“I hate you all,” he repeated, but there was no heat in it.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a single, sad Galleon.
“Put me down for Granger snogging him against a wall,” he muttered. “If only so I never have to witness this slow-motion train wreck ever again.”
Outside in the corridor, two voices were already rising.
“You did that on purpose.”
“I did nothing of the sort, Granger.”
“You sighed.”
“It was a sigh of intellectual exhaustion brought on by your refusal to admit that Dewey Decimal is an objectively superior system—”
“Oh, for Merlin’s sake—”
The argument echoed down the hallway, sharp and bright and so painfully fond that even the Fat Lady rolled her eyes.
Back inside, the six of them exchanged looks.
Then, as one, they sighed.
“Another three weeks of this,” Ginny said mournfully.
“Minimum,” Pansy agreed.
Harry dropped his head back against the sofa.
“I’m going to need a bigger butterbeer budget.”
And somewhere down the seventh-floor corridor, two idiots who had been circling each other since September were still arguing about cataloguing systems, standing far too close, and pretending—very badly—that they weren’t both counting the exact number of heartbeats between one insult and the next inevitable almost-kiss.
Business as usual.
(For everyone except them, anyway.)