Work Text:
1st occurence:
It’s so stupid because Ginny was the leading proponent of saying it in the first place. And then somehow, it had just caught on.
Summer at the Burrow, and the youngest Weasley would leave a room saying, “Bye, love you in case I die!” Which is morbid at worst, and ridiculous at best. Then Fred and George had taken it up a notch by going, “Love you in case we lose both our ears!” Or “Love you in case you die!” Which was mostly just threatening.
Molly hated it of course, thought of it as a self-fulfilling prophecy; but even Arthur would say it every now and then as a joke. Having Ron and Harry join in was no longer unprecedented at that point, but what was is Hermione catching herself saying it ironically at first, and then all at once as second nature.
This year, because she’s sharing quarters with Head Boy and ferret extraordinaire Draco Malfoy, she’s had to bite her tongue every time she left their dorms.
And he’s become something worse than a prat each year – he’s become downright palatable through every growth spurt since third year. She suspected there was a malignant growth in his brain that she’d magically slapped into radiation after the whole Buckbeak incident – which has all but tamed his barbed childhood insults into what she’d daresay as…tasteful ribbing. He’d throw a joke at appropriate times whenever Ron would do something humiliating in Potions, and only comment on Hermione’s hair during the balmier tail-end of Spring when it really, truly begins to take on a new life form as the humidity marries into the keratin.
Which is why she hasn’t had to threaten him in the three-point-five months they’ve been dorm mates.
However, it is almost midterms; and it has been increasingly more difficult for her to stay lucid in between tutoring half of Gryffindor house and studying for all her NEWT-level classes. But because she’s also a true blue (red?) Lion, she’s put on her big girl pants today and stuffed a red-and-gold flag in her book bag because it is also, inanely, Quidditch season.
Who does that? Who schedules the first quarter match two weeks before exams?
Professor McGonagall that’s who. Which is precisely why she’s only cowed into attending and not kicking up a fight.
And this is how Draco Malfoy finds her, sitting on their plush emerald couch, a beanie covering her ears, in a state of near-catatonia.
“Should I be calling someone?” He intones, waving a hand in front of her face. It is testament to her exhaustion that she doesn’t even think of biting it, even just a little bit.
“I’m fine, Draco,” which is what she calls him when she’s in a moment of weakness. His face always just very slightly pulls into discomfort when she does, so it’s partly a win for her anyway. ”I’m going to go to the Quidditch pitch soon.”
The blond looks at her warily. “Yes, I know that because we’re the team your house is playing against.”
Now that she really focuses her eyes to look at him (she tries not to look at him a lot, as on some days he looks attractive enough in that disgusting pure-bred way that she almost forgets her baseline irritation at him), he is wearing his Slytherin kit.
“Ah,” she says, “so you are.”
”Granger, should I be calling someone? Potter? Lovegood? If you have any mercy, you won’t have me contacting the Weasel.”
He’s leaning over her now fully, the surface of his knee plate catching the light from their oversized window that she likes to read at. It irritates her immensely, because it leads to truly, devastatingly defined broom thighs. Ginny loves to mouth off at him and also loves to watch him walk behind them.
What a fucking prick he is.
“Malfoy, I’m fine.”
”Right, you haven’t moved for a half hour from the couch because you’re fine.”
“I love this couch, I could die on this couch, easy.”
He grimaces. “Do not die on that couch.”
It’s her turn to frown at him. “Do you need something? Or is it part of your pre-game ritual to bother an unfortunate soul?”
He puts his hands up, “Crucify me for being worried. You literally haven’t done anything all week but look like you need a Pepper-Up. Have you eaten food? Do you even remember how to get to the Great Hall?”
She bites the inside of her cheek as she tries to recall the last time she ate in front of an entourage of friends instead of squirreling away various forms of carbohydrates and fruit from behind a tickled pear.
“I believe I can still find my way there.”
”Name the last time you saw the sun not from a classroom window,” he crosses his arms and inclines his head, which makes the blond stragglers of fringe fall onto his immaculate face. Prick, prick, prick.
“Thursday.”
“This week?”
”The previous one.”
”Granger it’s Sunday.”
She responds by melting back into the backrest, with the hem of her hat being pushed down ungracefully into her eyes in the process. There, she thinks, now I can’t see you unsolicited advice.
”Granger, I am heading out to defeat your friends. You can leave now or later, but when I come back you better be fed.”
“Can’t tell me what to do,” she mutters into the hair that has enclosed her chin in a swell of curls.
Rudely, her hat gets yanked up by the pom-pom that flops on the top of her head. Draco Malfoy is staring her down and she sees a peek of his chest from her viewpoint.
“Food. Mandatory for life. Your books can’t educate you into a self-sustaining plant.”
In a petulant tone, she responds, “If anyone can find out how to photosynthesize, it would be me.”
”Yes, well the first step would be to actually see the sun. Goodbye.” Even more disrespectfully, he lets go of the hat’s hem to snap back into her eyes.
She hears him thudding, rankling, and stomping around, possibly assembling the bits and bobs of his kit. When his footsteps reach the edge of their door, he calls out, “I’m leaving now!”
And because she is a basketcase, and because she is likely deficient in Vitamin D, she calls out right back hoarsely — “Love you, bye!”
And then her back shoots up, ram-rod straight, and a gasp all-but pulled out from her gut. She scrambles to get the bloody beanie off to thoroughly explain to Malfoy that she made a mistake and that she obviously meant it as a joke, and that he shouldn’t be getting bloody ideas – when she peels the fabric away and sees not a sight of his hind behind a closed door.
She breathes out and thinks, Jesus H. Christ.
—
2nd occurrence:
In early 1997, the Ministry of Magic in the United Kingdom had a bilateral agreement with a very small, very classified Magical Division at the UK Parliament to integrate telecommunications in the wizarding world.
The very first magi-muggle tech corporation in Wizarding England (soon to expand to Wales and Scotland) was named, funnily enough, Volumart.
And one mobile costs three-hundred galleons.
So of course, Malfoy had an unreleased iteration. It’s reminiscent of a rectangular rubix cube, with square buttons to dial a number and an equally-square screen that shows those numbers. Nothing more and nothing less, for an exorbitant amount of money capacitated to transcend Magical signal jammers.
“…Crabbe nearly dropped it in Charms, the absolute oaf. I told him if he did it again with his sausage hands he’d have to pay me double.”
In the rare truces they find themselves in, they usually find common ground in having lavender tea on the odd midnight peckishness. They – as a rule – try not to speak many words to each other, but Malfoy as Hermione now knows, is a bit of a gab himself. And of course, she could never pass up contradicting his less-than-informed opinions, so this is how the night boils into: with Malfoy recounting creative insults he had thought of in the morning and Hermione marvelling at the thousand-pound cellphone that belongs to the blond git currently balanced on a precarious corner of their end table.
“What does it even do?” She inquires blearily, sleep tingeing the corners of her eyes and the edge of her voice. The teacup in her hands sloshes unhelpfully on her lap.
“Oh come off it, Granger, you know how a cell works. Where’s yours? It should work like mine for as long as it’s connected to the Hogsmeade signal-tower-thing.”
“You know what, what the hell. Let me get your number.” Which is something Hermione simply never thought she’d say to his face.
Her cell is the Nokia 5110 in the colour chartreuse, which looked nicer on the box than it did in her hand. In Hogwarts, it might as well be an underpowered tamagochi, which she hopes is the next great magi-muggle integration.
She dials his number (area code +394) and waits for the ring that should come from his mobile. The screen lights up, but no sound comes through. She sees upside down letters flash on his cell.
“It says, device detected in proximity,” he reads aloud with a squint. “What does that even mean?”
“Maybe…my mobile’s too close? Well that’s a shame if I ever lose mine and need you to ring it.”
He shoots her a confused look. “Or you could accio it to you?”
In her mind, she’s slapping a hand on her forehead. But out loud, she only says, “You just wouldn’t understand.”
Testament to how much he’s been tamed by time, he only shrugs at this. “Right, well, one of us should go farther to test the theory.”
“Might as well, I’m knackered anyway.”
“What happened to good old ‘tired’? You spend too much time with the girl Weasley, you used to talk proper.”
“Here’s proper,” she brandishes her middle finger at him as she retreats from the living area. And for one shining moment, the moon that filters in through the blinds makes Malfoy look so much like a fallen angel – pearly-whites on shining display as he laughs at her with his whole body – that she well and truly high-tails it out of there to glower at the moon in private because it is clearly at massive fault.
She throws herself to the bed and scrambles to get comfortable. While on her back, she goes ahead and re-dials the number in her history.
It rings once. And then —
“It works! Can you hear me? Hello?” His voice is slightly grainy though gratingly loud on her end.
“I’m right here, hold your horses. Can you hear me?”
“Yep, loud and clear and bossy. Now to convince Theo to get one.”
“You people clearly have too much money on your hands!”
“Don’t be jealous, curls. We can hook you up with your very own.”
“I don’t need one, clearly, as we’re speaking on the one I brought with me.”
“Why’d’you carry it around if it didn’t even work in the first place?”
“I get to use it up until a certain point in Edinburgh, and my lot like to sleep halfway through the journey.”
“Ever heard of books?”
“I’m categorizing that as you being facetious,” she says in a flat tone. His easy laughter followed suit.
What was supposed to be a sound check for Malfoy’s mobile stretched well into the early hours, with the conversation lengthening every time one of them attempts to cut it short as soon as they can. Draco asks about the functionalities of a Muggle cell and Hermione over-explains, then he reacts, to which she reacts to his reactions. They get into name-calling each other’s friends, then switch gears into debating on topics discussed during their shared NEWT-level classes
Around three in the morning, Hermione starts to really slip into the abyss. While her roommate was still defending the merits of his in-house peacock sanctuary – that she had been vehemently criticizing a couple topics prior – she couldn’t help falling further into slumber, her consciousness ascribing Malfoy’s tirade as part of general white noise.
But at some point, Malfoy had heard snoring from her end of the line, and chuckled into his. He’d told her goodbye, presumably, and Hermione half-dreams that she had responded in the general direction of her cell, “Bye. Love you.”
Good thing she’s nearly sure it was a dream.
—
3rd occurence:
The problem with midterms is it is an eventuality that falls upon the student body, regardless if any of its better members were as prepared as Hermione was. She’d pre-prepared, prepared, pre-crammed, and crammed all throughout her natural life in her 18th year of living. It was exhilarating during the first quarter of the year, and gruelling in the second half. She’d done her best to remain optimistic, confident, sure, that all her hard work would pay off in staggering, flying colours.
However, today was one such day that she’d rue for her entire academic career. The second day of exams, and Hermione Granger woke up late. It isn’t late like I’ve got twenty minutes until class, it was Merlin’s balls it IS currently class time. She would have vomited if she weren’t busy flying off the walls.
She’s currently attempting to brush her teeth while putting on an undershirt, spelling both of them into functioning independently but unfortunately mismatched the function. Her undershirt is mechanically putting itself on and off her torso in vertical motions while the bristles of her toothbrush are doing their best to wear itself on her bottom teeth. She screamed into a fist bite for a singular second before continuing to rush through her morning preparations (did she pee? Maybe she forgot to pee, it doesn’t matter anymore) and prioritised getting out of the dorm with all her clothing on and at least one quill and one ink pot on her person.
And this is the bit that posed a problem. Her book bag is a massive, magically enlargened cavern that should have her essentials.
“Shit, shit, shit, shit,” she mumbles under her breath in quick succession as she continues her haphazard rummaging, ardently feeling for the tail of a quill or the smooth neck of an ink pot. “By Merlin, this cannot be happening. Not today, not today.” It was Transfiguration today, and though her head of House might forgive her for being late if she grovels enough, McGonagall does not excuse sloppy behaviour and would sooner send her out for not bringing along a writing device for her exams.
“Draco,” she says breathlessly to herself, and then louder when she turns around to exit her room to yell out in the Head commons, “Draco Malfoy!”
He’s startled at the breakfast counter, his tea projectiling itself on the copy of the ‘Prophet in his other hand. “What, Merlin’s tits, what are you yelling for?!”
He looks at her with a furious expression that quickly flits into panic. It is a strange switch, which she doesn’t understand, until her voice warbles out, “I’m late! I need a quill! They’re taking the exam right fucking now!” which sounded more like “M’layt! I-eed a kill! They’re taking the ‘zams right fucking now!” and then she realises her unprecedented early morning nervous breakdown has probably alarmed the living shit out of her previously disgruntled roommate. Malfoy, who is now taking three footsteps’ worth of strides as he rushes towards her, says firmly, “What is going on? You’re late? And what the fuck was that you needed?”
“Quill!” she says desperately.
“Okay, Salazar, stay fucking put, you headcase,” he tuts, which she would have scorned at, but seeing him disappear into his room to bring out a rather premium-looking bottle of ink and one of those poncey long-feathered quills, she weighs her options and decides to stay fucking put.
He grabs her book bag and puts the items in, and then hears it tumble down and knock into several textbooks.
“One day,” he says evenly, “I will ask, and you will not come up with a lie. But for now, what the hell else do you need to get out of that door?”
Her mouth is dry, but manages to sound out, “Shoes, probably a chocolate bar if you have any, and – Christ, some chamomile would be a pipe dream.”
He puts his hands on his hips in consideration. “You don’t even have socks. Where are your shoes? Chocolate is a travesty of a breakfast item, and I only have black tea on the kettle.”
Before she could respond, he’s already jumping into action. He flicks his wrist and wordlessly conjures her socks and shoes.
“Put these on,” he instructs, and then quirks an eyebrow at her, “Can you even put them on? You know what, don’t answer that.”
Suddenly she’s toppled into the couch when he unceremoniously grabs her ankle to wrestle a sock and a shoe on each foot. She’s sure she’s stepped into the twilight zone, in an alternate reality where it’s normal for childhood bullies to grow into empathetic almost-adults who volunteer to dress the girls who punched them in third year.
He tugs her up to follow him to their tiny kitchen, conjures a weetabix and some milk splashed with cooled black tea into an equally tiny bowl, and commands, “Eat. One huge bite, and try not to asphyxiate.”
She does not asphyxiate. With cheeks slightly shredded by the rough bits of cereal, she slings her bag over one aching shoulder, trip on a small bump in the wooden flooring, and sprint outside with a “Love you in case I die!” which sounded a lot more like “‘Of-u n-kiss ah-dah!”
She barely hears herself say this or how much louder the door slammed behind her back.
—
4th occurrence:
It isn’t always so cumbersome to be Head Girl. Of course, having double the patrolling shifts and being mandated to be involved in forty percent of all staff meetings year-round isn’t terribly convenient for anyone. Not even Hermione was immune to the affliction Ginny describes as senioritis, which is a common ailment amongst the graduating folk crawling their way to the end of their schooling.
However, she also enjoys several privileges unique to Headship, such as free reign over a modest but entirely private common room. Well, fifty percent of it anyway.
“Thank you again for inviting us for tea, ‘Mione,” Luna says kindly. “I think I did well during the exams.”
They’re all seated around the couch, dressed down and feet kicked up. They had all made it through exam season one way or another, and that deserves a spot of celebration that did not involve firewhiskey (Ron and Harry are hosting an illicit rager that Hermione has turned an eye blinder than Trelawney’s alleged third one as a gift to the entire Lion’s Den).
“Luna love, you forgot to answer all the back parts of the test sheet,” Ginny reminds her. “I was going to suggest I could accompany you to appeal for a re-test.”
Luna shakes her head. “Well see, I did see them, I was just certain I’d have bad luck if I answered any.”
“Fascinating,” a voice cuts through their cozy circle. Hermione jumps, and is reminded that the other fifty percent of the common room is owned by her roommate.
“I thought we agreed you’d attend the Slytherin party,” she cranes her neck around to see him on the breakfast island, tea he’s nipped from her kettle in hand, shaking his head slowly in the general direction of Luna.
Luna only waves back genially.
“Worst part of being the leader of the band during a party that shouldn’t exist is that no one wants me supervising,” he shrugs. “Now, what was that about bad luck on the backside of the test paper?”
“You can’t sit with us, Malfoy,” Ginny sing-songs. “Hermione said you’d be fucking off.”
He takes a prim sip of tea seemingly just to spite the red-head. “I am fucked off. I’m not in the couch area. The kitchen is a neutral zone.”
“Why can’t you stay in your room or, better yet, accompany the Giant Squid?” Ginny smiles acerbically.
“Where else would I overhear a more scintillating conversation?” He smiles right back.
“Malfoy,” Hermione chides. “We agreed last week. You had your cronies over for exploding snaps, and I stayed away as discussed, so now I expect you to hold up your side of the deal.”
He sighs dramatically. “Fine, fine, have your fun. I’ll fuck off in the Hufflepuff commons, I heard Fletchley has some of the stronger stuff anyway.”
“Don’t come back smelling like a distillery!” Hermione protests.
He flashes her a grin with all teeth as he makes his way out of the room, bringing nothing else but his dishevelled self, all rogueish charm.
When he’s gone, there’s an extended silence that is broken by Ginny saying, “Merlin’s tits he is unfairly fit, isn’t he?”
Hermione looks at her, scandalised like a conservative at a concert. “Gin!”
Lune doubles this down with, “His shoulders do seem broader every day, don’t they?”
“Unhelpful,” Hermione punctuates. “We are not talking about this further.”
“Oh don’t get your knickers in a twist, love, we aren’t trying to shag him – just providing commentary,” Ginny says.
“I see him everyday Gin, I’d rather not have to think about his shoulders on top of everything I must endure about him as Head Boy.”
“You can’t convince me that it isn’t painful to have someone that fit, regardless if he’s as pleasant as a flobberworm, walking around your living quarters. How do you cope when he’s half-naked?” Ginny says emphatically.
“I don’t,” Hermione corrects, “I have my own bathroom and I don’t make a habit of peeping around like a creep.”
“I would, off the record.”
“Gin, seriously. Stop objectifying the prat.”
“Hey, blokes do this to us all the bloody time in much more public places, why is it creepier when I do it in private company?”
“She has a point,” Luna says serenely.
Hermione grumbles, “I’m not seconding anyone’s double standards, I’m saying I find Malfoy a disagreeable object of desire and living with him and his broad shoulders isn’t beneficial for me to think about.”
Ginny sucks her front teeth, eyes squinted in visible thought. “And why is that?”
“Why’s what?”
“Why’d’you say it isn’t beneficial for you?”
“Well,” Hermione starts, but soon finds that she’s at a loss. “I mean, aside from the obvious, of course–”
“What’s the obvious?” Luna follows up.
Hermione looks at them momentarily in suspended disbelief. “Come on, you guys, it isn’t that hard to understand why you’d put me in a hard place.”
“Hermione my love, I would really, really like to see you against a hard place,” Ginny waggles her eyebrows.
“No more commentary on my sex life!”
“What sex life?” Luna asks, unhelpfully. Very, very unhelpfully.
“Don’t make me kick you both out,” she warns with finality.
Her friends laugh, though the subject gets mercifully dropped and they move on seamlessly into other topics of interest. They talk about Ginny’s own sex life and the premature marriages of most of their pureblood peers, and thought up imaginations of what life could be after they graduate. Would Hermione want to work for the ministry immediately or take on higher studies? Would Luna want to be an alchemist or continue the Quibbler? Would Ginny audition for the Chudley Cannons? (Yes she would.) Or propose to Harry? (She might also do this.)
Their gathering came to a rather natural end. Instead of letting the girls help with clean up, Hermione only asks them to help her pile the sink high with their small saucers that held nine different snack items a few hours ago.
She’s stationed at the sink area putting away boxes of biscuits while Luna and Ginny bundle back up into their winter coats before braving the sub-zero corridors of Hogwarts.
“Can I use your toilet, ‘Mione?” Luna asks behind, to which she responds an affirmative without really looking behind her.
“Mind if I head in earlier, Luna? Harry wants to meet for a celebratory snog.”
Hermione scrunches her nose up as she tidies the sliver of space they call a cupboard.
Ginny comes up behind Hermione to bid her farewell, “Love you in –”
“--case you die!” Hermione finishes for her. She places a kiss on Ginny’s cheek before the redhead takes her leave.
Hermione only realises she’s forgotten her wand at the bottom of her book bag in her room, possibly caught between whatever chaos her exam gear is in, when she’s looking at all the dishes to wash by hand. But she might as well start.
She hears the padding of Luna’s socked feet walking around after she’s done in the loo. Her friend comes up behind her, and when Luna leans into Hermione’s space…she leans down. But this hadn’t caught up to Hermione before she instinctively forms the words “I love you, bye” and turning her head from the sink to the side, where she lands a kiss on a jarringly scratchy chin.
Her surprise gets caught in her throat, because of course Luna doesn’t smell like bloody spearmint and cedar. Luna is five-foot-two and would not be leaning down to say goodbye to Hermione.
She had just kissed the five o’ clock shadow of one Draco Malfoy.
He looks just as stunned as she was, and smells like firewhiskey.
“Woah,” he says, all drawls and swaying stances, “Bad touch, gorgeous. Would you take advantage of an inebriated bloke?”
The blood rushes so quickly to Hermione’s cheeks that she feels like her head could very well explode by its impact.
“You – I thought you were –”
“Oh hullo again, Draco!”
Head Girl and Head Boy look back at two wildly varying speeds (Hermione whips her head back like a thunderclap and Draco imitates a heavily rusted door hinge) to look at Luna, who had now only just come out of Hermione’s bathroom.
Luna looks at them curiously. “Are you two having a moment, then? I was leaving anyway.”
Hermione splutters, “We – omigod we were absolutely not –”
“Bye Looney,” Draco cuts in with ease, then points an unstable finger in the blonde’s direction before enunciating, “Never let them change a thing about you.”
Luna smiles at them both and flounces out with a spring in her step.
Hermione can barely believe this blunder.
“You know what,” she says with venom in her tone, flicking her wrist to spray his rumpled shirt with sudsy water. “You can wash the dishes!”
She steps around him and stomps straight into her room, ignoring him when she hears him exclaim, “Oi! What did I do!”
—
5th occurrence:
The problem with Draco Malfoy is that he is, at his pompous core, a man who signs things. With the kind of blind confidence usually reserved for people who have never had to read the fine print in their entire lives.
Hermione Granger, unfortunately, is not one of those people.
Which is why she is currently staring at a sheet of parchment, locked in a mental battle in her most hideous jammies and a knot of rope she calls hair piled high on her head. She has a headache, and she is so bloody tired.
“You absolute idiot,” she says, not even looking up.
“That seems excessive,” he drawls. Across from her, said idiot is leaning back in his chair, one ankle propped over his knee.
She slaps a hand flat against the parchment.
“It says,” she begins, voice tight with the kind of restraint that precedes violence, “paired participants must verbally confirm completion of joint duties before separation.”
“Yes,” he says again, because apparently that is his contribution to this discussion.
“Yes,” she echoes. “And you read that and thought – what? That it was decorative?”
“It’s a formality, curls. McGonagall handed it to me in the meeting which you didn’t attend –”
“I had an interview!”
“So obviously I had to fend for the both of us. If McGonagall tells you to sign a piece of parchment, you sign it. How on Earth could I have known she was piloting a new prefect system to weed out the lazy bastards who don’t go on patrol?”
She harrumphs. “I see the wisdom but I hardly think we’re the two best guinea pigs.”
“We’re the what?”
“It is a magical formality,” she says, ignoring his question, each word clipped. “Which means it will not let us leave until we…?” She gestures at it helplessly, because what even is that. The ink on the parchment glows like it’s waiting impatiently for them to figure it the fuck out and pronto.
“Oh, brilliant,” she mutters. “It senses my emotions.”
“It’s not sentient,” he quips.
“It’s responding,” she snaps. “That’s close enough.”
He leans forward slightly, peering at the line with mild interest, as if this is all very entertaining and not at all a problem that is actively preventing her from going to bed.
“We finished patrol,” he says. “So confirm it. See, I did it, mine’s not glowing.”
Because she would actually like to sleep sometime this decade, she exhales sharply and tries, “Patrol completed.”
Nothing happens. The parchment continues to glow.
“Fantastic.”
“More detail?” he offers.
“We patrolled the third-floor corridor and the east wing,” she tries.
Nothing.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she pinches the bridge of her nose, “This is why people read contracts, Draco! This is why literacy is important.”
“I am literate.”
“You are selectively literate.”
He snorts.
She ignores it.
Focus, focus, focus. She thinks, if I were a magical contract meant to extract genuine and accurate confirmation from two different people, what would I want each person to say?
It says before separation.
So it wants… a closing?
“What did you say for your bit, then?” she asks him, two fingers pinching the bridge of her nose.
“Uh, I just told McGonagall that sounded good and then my name stopped glowing.”
“Immediately, like immediately after?”
“Yes.”
“Knowing McGonagall she’d make sure it can’t be cheated so easily. Right, okay, so it’s possible it’s built to recognise our speech patterns. And if that’s the case then it needs to be unique to the patroller to match the usual cadence and language. I suppose you do say that often, so then mine could be…”
God. God.
“No,” she breathes out in a drawn-out way. Her stomach sinks into the floor.
“What,” Malfoy says flatly, more statement than question.
“That is ridiculous.”
“What is.”
She looks at him.
Then back at the parchment.
Then back at him again.
“You have got to be joking,” she mutters.
“Granger, what is it?’
“Oh, this is so stupid,” she says, and then, because she is tired and this is idiotic and she wants to go to bed, she proclaims out loud:
“It’s done, love you, bye–”
The moment it leaves her mouth, she knows. She knows. The glowing line for her name goes completely defunct and the ink turns solid black next to his.
The parchment seals on its own before zipping out of the open window, likely travelling fast to the faculty office.
Draco’s howling laughter follows shortly after.
Hermione and her undereye bags look at his laughing form in commiseration. He’s leaned back and laughing into his fist, his well-defined chest stretching a black night shirt adding insult as it convulses up and down.
She shakes her head emphatically. “I’m going to bed, and I will be speaking to McGonagall first thing tomorrow.”
She begins to turn on her heel when Draco reaches out to keep her in place by circling her wrist and tells her, “Hey, hey, hey no need to spoil our fun, Granger.”
She, momentarily, fantasizes about slapping him across the face for old times’ sake, but decides she’s more evolved than that.
“This is not fun,” she says in a weaker voice, making a vague gesture in the air. “This is all one big whoopsie, and I do not like making a habit of making them.”
He quirks one blond eyebrow, a smirk touching the edge of an impish smile. “Oh, like the tens of other times you’ve said it to me?”
”What are you even talking about, that was one time, and I thought you were Luna.”
”Mh-mm,” he tuts, stepping into her personal space. “Not once. Do you seriously not remember every other time you’ve graced me with an adoring adieu? I have to say, it’s a flattering experience.”
He’s standing too close to her now, but her mind doesn’t really process depth of field after double patrol shifts.
”I really don’t believe you,” she says firmly, crossing her hands in front of herself, “but if I did, I’d tell you that it’s all because of Ginny. She started this thing, this idiotic thing that had the whole lot of us saying it to each other.”
“Mhm, and say you do it for friends. Do you not mean it every time?”
“Mean what?” She furrows her eyebrows at him in an attempt to mask how hard her pulse is beating against her neck, with how close his smug face is.
“Love you,” he rolls it off his tongue with mirth, and she blushes. “Whenever you say goodbye, you say I love you. At first I definitely thought I was hallucinating. And then you said it over the cellyphone. And then a couple of other instances. It’s very sweet. You know at one point I considered calling you out on it but I have to say, it’s nice hearing it every now and then.”
She hums. “What, snakes don’t have a heart? You know we throw it around like candy in the Lion’s den. Parents never told you it?”
He shrugs. “Never, have you met Lucius and Narcissa?”
Her joke turned sour under her tongue, not expecting an affirmative answer.
“I don’t think it would be safe for me to…?”
”They only bite the dim-witted, doll. You’ve got enough brain for half of your entire house. They’re begrudgingly impressed by you.”
She scoffs. “You tell your parents about me?”
“All the time.”
”Why in Merlin’s name —“
”I spend seventy percent of my waking life with you, or have you not noticed? Probably why that overfired brain of yours has started including me in your most intimate circles. Never stop, curls. It’s nice to hear, even as an after-thought.”
Her eyebrows scrunch into truly acrobatic motions. “I dont…I don’t understand this conversation anymore.”
He reaches out to pinch the pointy edge of her chin. “You don’t have to. Go to bed. You can take the world by storm again in the morning.”
She would protest again, regarding something or other, but he’s pushing between her shoulder blades to lead her to her room. The door closes and she makes a beeline to drop to her plush bed.
—
+ one (and then some)
Despite popular accounts, Draco Malfoy believes himself a rather simple man. He was sorted into Slytherin at age eleven, therefore he behaved like a snake. He’s presented a curriculum to follow each term, therefore he might as well do it properly. He gets told to shack up with the head honcho of Gryffindor, he moves his shit in and does his role of Head Boy with diligence in healthy fear of doing her wrong.
Granger is not so a simple creature. She is, often, a hurricane unto herself and the rest of the general populace. She’s left a thousand bobby pins around their dorm, has misplaced her wand more times than either one of them could count, but is also the first to ever organise a coherent thought. She calculates at the speed of light in Arithmancy, knows five variations of a spell before it’s even taught in Charms, and to this date, is the only person to have achieved a complete human transfiguration spell when she turned Potter into a rather charming coat hanger that sported spectacles on its hooks.
One time, Blaise had described her as a high-performing witch with zero personal awareness. Draco thinks she’s just singularly quirky. That or he’s just thoroughly amused with whatever’s wrong with her.
Case in point: he and Blaise are stretched out on a window sill, watching her walk down the East corridor, seemingly exiting from Potions at the rate her hair was growing in size, looking intently down a book as she makes a beeline to certain impact against a large pillar. He’s ruminating if he should tell her, or if it would be far more hilarious to see her butt her head in.
Draco decides a middle strategy would achieve optimal amusement. She walks slowly until her forehead sort of just smooshes into the marble.
Draco’s already supported her book bag and returned it to her shoulder in a split second. And the girl just does not look up.
“Oh thanks,” she mutters. “You, too,” she continues.
Me too…? Draco mouths to Blaise. There was no time to ask because she’s sashaying away into oblivion, off to terrorise the next professor with her advocacy of incessant hand-raising.
And because Draco is a simple, simple bloke, he watches the swishing fabric of her skirt that’s always been shorter from the back brush the middle of her thighs. Suddenly, he finds himself in a better mood.
But a scowl immediately forms when he catches Blaise’s neck bend so far to the side it could have broken off. Draco then proceeds to hit him square on the back of the head.
“Don’t be a fucking perv, you donkey.”
“Hey, we both looked!”
“Yeah but only one of us suffers under her rule of law. You don’t get any passes.” He points a finger at his friend.
It isn’t that Hermione is particularly strange, unlike the precocious nature of one Luna Lovegood, or even scatter-brained like the Theo Nott. She’s just always too preoccupied, too busy presumably planning how to overthrow governments and reform laws, and whip every underperforming classmate into shape. So she’s known to him as someone who says things off-handed, at times off-kilter, and in special occasions, completely off her rockers.
It’s Monday at seven in the morning, and she’s off in a flurry of gravity-defying hair and lavender perfume.
“I left you meatloaf under the fruit bowl! Bye, love you!”
He stopped bringing a spoonful of milk and stale cereal mid-way to his mouth. He looks in her direction, at a spot where she is no longer at.
In the months he’s learned to live with the white-hot blinding star that is Granger, her most arresting moments are the times she seems to forget her weak, onion skin-thin filter.
The wench is a veritable dam of thoughts and energy, so much empathy distilled and spilled into every corner of the Heads dormitory; pools of it are left in the wake of her miniscule shoes. Such a tiny being with the biggest emotional range he’s ever bloody seen. It is exhausting to be her roommate.
But times like this, it can be completely, and staggeringly rewarding.
She has more than a few slip-ups. It isn’t always when she’s rushing out, it’s also in times she’s completely caught unawares – which is truly most of the time.
Hogsmeade weekend, and he comes back to the dorms with an armful of her favourite sugar quills. Whatever gremlin invented this gods-forsaken candy is the bane of his existence with the way Hermione tends to suck loudly on them. Hell was made for bastards who enjoyed the sight, so he tries not to look. But he does buy her more when he notices her stash has run out.
She’s camped out and cross legged by the low coffee table, around five books set neatly next to each other in front of her.
“Hello, how was your trip?” she greets softly, as though only a set of hard-drilled manners were putting her on autopilot. Which seems to be the case as she appears to be reading all five textbooks at once. Terrifying stuff, really.
“Alright – I saw Potter and Ginevra on a date. Got a couple of things from the shops to stock up.”
He doubts she hears anything of what he just said. While he putters around the kitchenette, he hears her gentle humming to a tune he neither recognises nor needs to in order to appreciate. Just like this, with the light of the evening moon usually bathing their common room seating area, she reminds him of a siren calling ships to wreck. He understands why so many men come to die just to hear a couple notes and lay sight on a sliver of long hair.
His throat clicks when he swallows. Which is a good cue to retire for the night.
When he’s changing at the dresser, he hears her sound of excitement which informs him she’s spotted the sugar quills.
“Yes! Thank you, I love you!”
And then he mouths to himself you’re welcome, on behalf of the confectionery, because someone had to and it certainly wouldn’t be the quills.
The dangerous part is when he started to lean into it, as if he were expecting her to say it every so often. He’d retrieve a book from the library at the call of her favour, and then after he brings it to her he’s just standing there like an idiot owl waiting for his treat. It’s simply embarrassing.
He finds himself aligning his behaviour to pull out the desired response from the witch. She likes those cornpone pies, so he swings by the kitchen to bring up a small, take-out skillet for her whenever she pulls one of her signature all-nighters (he suspects she’s still in possession of that time turner, because how else is that daft woman sleeping?). He’ll then walk very, very slowly to his bathroom to see if she’ll say anything. Sometimes she does, and sometimes she’s knocked out cold already and disappointment fills him.
He especially relishes when she’s rushing out; it’s when she says it the most. She’ll make it even stranger and tacks on an in case I die, or sometimes seemingly respond to nothing with a lazy, yeah, you too! when she’s especially tired.
He’s still trying to figure out how to trigger the reflex for a kiss on a cheek again.
The height of his obsession comes to a head eight weeks before the seventh years take their NEWTs. At this point, the worst has already begun of Hermione’s dissociation from the rest of the natural world. She’s completely taken over their dorm’s common room, plastering scrap parchment scribbled tight to the farthest margins with small, squiggled writing. There’s some on the pantry and some that extends way into her bathroom door.
He’s become somewhat of a mother hen these days, as a natural reflex to witnessing the Great Spiral of Hermione Granger’s exam season. He isn’t so bothered himself, to put it simply. He knows what life after Hogwarts is supposed to look like for him, so he sits back on their couch as often as she nearly puts her face through the coffee table with the veracity of her note-taking. He does, however, take charge of feeding the Head Girl, and reminds her to put on shoes on days she doesn’t get enough sleep. There was an instance she’d mistakenly put on a Slytherin tie instead of a Gryffindor one, and the fact that he wouldn’t be able to reign himself in if she walked around all day with it made him turn her around to change.
But the best reward for essentially waiting on her hand and foot is she slips up so much more often these days –
“Oh, thank you darling,” is said when he drops a saucer of snacks next to her teetering pile of scrolls;
“Yep, love you, too” is the breeze that whips by when she’s off to plant herself in the library.
One day he decides to test the waters. She’s stuffing bits and bobs that seem very important to her in the chasm she calls a book bag, off to the races once more (class), when he works up the courage to conjure a blasé, “Love y—”
“-in case I die,” is her automatic response even before he could finish the sentence. Huh.
He tries it again, reverses it this time, and says as he’s about to leave for a Slytherin prefects’ meeting, “Alright, I’m off.”
And he hears her say distractedly into the sugar quill she’s twirling in front of her chin, “‘Kay, love you.”
So, it’s been a results-yielding experiment so far all in all. But the problem is Draco gets cocky, he gets real cocky. It is a symptomatic byproduct of his blue-blood upbringing.
He’s kicked things up a notch by lingering a second longer than usual when he hands over his spoils of war (the kitchen elves fight over whose recipe to thrust into his hands for The Mostest Kindest Hermionest Granger), because she’s started reaching out to pat him. On the hand, on his bicep. All of which has emboldened him to place feather-light touches on her elbow when he’s slipping past her immovable form, and then even riskier, the middle of her back.
He feels like a boy gone barmy with how these ghost points of contact bring a thrill to him, which makes him feel very, very ungentlemanly and slightly ashamed. So he compensates by leaving her wanting for naught. During Care of Magical Creatures, their session included a lengthy trek into the Cranborne Centaur Sanctuary: a muddy, mossy piece of land with fences built in illogical patterns. (Hagrid says centaurs love training their agility.) While locked in a highly cerebral conversation with one of the Patil twins – he could never tell which one’s which – Hermione’s physically struggling to move along while her mind’s disengaged from the rest of her.
She was about to step on a small, Granger-shoe-sized puddle. He doesn’t bother verbally warning her. He picks her up, moves five paces forward, and sets her back down on dry land.
Padma/Parvati looks at him strangely, but Granger doesn’t notice. Not even when he takes her hand and guides it to clutch the strap of his dragonhide satchel, so she can be relegated to follow the path he cuts through in his wake.
And then Draco gets even stupider. Sunday morning, and he thanks Hermione for brewing a fresh pot of Earl Grey with a satisfied sigh and a, “Thanks, love,” to which she responds with a passive hum, already taking a rare cat nap on the couch. He eventually picks her up and moves her to her proper bed. He notes that the early morning sun makes her hair appear like a halo around her fair face. It’s almost painful to stare at, for more than a few heartbeats.
There’s a part of him that starts to want to believe in these facsimiles of intimacy. At first, he had gone the logical route: that of course he wanted this, who in this entire school would oppose being the apple of Hermione Granger’s eye?
But then there are unmistakable moments of worry: how he wakes up and rushes out if only to catch the tail end of her leaving; how he’s so sure how much salt and vinegar to put on the side of her chips; how he’s built an entire schedule of chance to see if she’d do the thing Ginevra has influenced her to do and say goodbye in that sweet way of hers. He imagines, often, getting permission to kiss the top of her head before she runs outside into the world that would never truly be ready for the heavy steps she makes.
When she touches him in passing, he imagines catching her hand and just…holding it. Which is the most saccharine, loser shite he’s ever had the displeasure of thinking up with his own two brain hemispheres. Really. What has he gotten himself into.
But mercifully, he had to do his own bit of studying three days before his first NEWT-level Potions exam. He isn’t as awful as his roommate, but he does hole up in his room for extra silence and less distractions.
As a welcome surprise, Hermione returns the favour of foraging for dinner for the both of them from the kitchens. She’d even taken to preparing toast for breakfast, and so he would assemble the spreads while she’s in the shower. He’d give her a little more of the ink he orders from Norway (she doesn’t need to know shipping alone costs at least a pair of arms and legs), and she’d throw a blanket over him when he falls asleep on the couch.
So of course, he’d get what was coming for him faster than expected.
The day after the final NEWTs, he’s rather knackered himself, to borrow from Ginevra. Whatever relaxation he’s enjoyed months before cost him late nights of hardcore cramming, leaving dizzy spells in its wake.
But time passes, the period of high-stress along with it, and morning breaks into a mercifully unimportant Sunday.
“You look unwell,” Hermione says to him at the breakfast counter after he’s exited the bathroom for ablutions and a weak attempt to brush his teeth. She’s looking refreshed, in muggle jeans and a soft-looking cardigan buttoned up. By comparison, he must look like he was smacked into unconsciousness by a bludger.
“I made oatmeal!” She enthuses.
“So you did,” he says hoarsely. He pads into the kitchenette, conjures a glass of water. When he turns around, there’s a fresh bowl with cut up green apples already in it.
And maybe it’s the gesture that catches him unawares, how absolutely thoughtful and kind; and maybe (likely) it’s because he’s in a state of the walking dead warmed up, that he makes the the sloppiest mistake of all time;
Hermione crowds into his side to get a milk carton, and he reaches out for her before he could really think about it.
He mutters, “Thanks, love you,” and it isn’t until he realises his hand on her waist that the entire world freezes over.
“Draco Malfoy, what did you say to me?” She asks softly, curiously.
“I– I didn’t –”
“You did, yes you did. You said thank you, love—”
“Love, like a term of endearment. I think I’ve earned at least that, I’ve single-handedly kept you alive for months.”
Hermione turns to face him fully, “No, no, you’re not getting out of this one.” She’s got a laugh locked and loaded in the edge of her tone.
He swipes a hand over his face, “Will you drop it, Granger? You say it all the time.”
“Do not!”
“Do too. Where do you think I bloody picked it up from – Ginvera?”
Her amused expression sobers into a taken-aback look. “What, so you mean I’ve been saying it, like, often?”
He heaves a put-upon sigh. “Not often – all the time, Hermione. Every day since the day you decided to go full throttle for NEWTs. Every. Day.”
She crosses her arms. “Well what are you so bloody miffed about anyway, it’s not like I spit in your tea.”
“Yes, well, nothing like a woman telling a bloke she loves him every day without meaning it at all. What if I did that to you?”
Hermione’s frown seems to be unable to fully develop, flitting between confusion and surprise and then indignance, as she so usually is.
Finally, she says, “I hardly think that’s a relevant question.”
“And so drop it,” he says firmly.
She crosses her arms even tighter. “Fine.”
“Great.”
“Brilliant.”
“Will you leave me to my breakfast now?”
Hermione shakes her head, angling to leave the space. But she isn’t a lioness for nothing. She stomps right back in front of him.
“Honestly, I don’t even know why you’re being so dramatic about this,” she says, turning away with a huff that suggests she very much does.
“I’m not being dramatic,” Draco replies, affronted. “I am being appropriately reactive to a deeply confusing emotional environment that you’ve cultivated.”
“I have not—”
“You tell me you love me on a near-daily basis and then act like it’s a clerical error,” he cuts in. “Forgive me for attempting to reconcile that.”
“…I think,” she says slowly, then throws her hands in the air with a harrumph. “I just got used to saying it before I realised you were included.”
His brows lift slightly. “Included.”
“Yes,” she says quickly.
“In your…what, your circle of affections?” he asks, a hint of something wry slipping in.
That sounds ridiculous when you say it like that.”
“That is what you’re implying.”
“Well, stop making it sound like I’m handing out certificates.”
“I’m simply asking a fair, clarifying question, Granger.”
“You’re fishing.”
“Obviously.”
She presses her lips together.
Then, after a moment:
“…Yes,” she says.
He exhales, slow.
“Right,” he says. “So you love me?”
In for a penny, in for a pound, he thinks.
The suspended disbelief in Hermione’s face brings with it bubbling mirth from way inside his chest. He laughs slowly, and then all at once, and then Hermione is sputtering in that affronted way of hers that he so enjoys.
So he can’t be blamed – he really can’t – that the next move he has is to step into her space, put his hands on the cherubic swell of her cheeks, and whisper, “Stop me if you don’t want this,” with a kind of grin that’s more hopeful than teasing.
Her eyes look searchingly up at his, and he kisses away the furrow of her eyebrow.
When she gasps, he goes in for the pound, the penny, and the whole fucking vault.
Her lips part for him and he notices, firstly, how soft they are – sticky in the way he’s imagined her lip balm would feel like in all the months he’s cared for her. It’s flavoured like grape – he prefers apple – and it is so darling that he takes a nip at it.
He’s prepared for a millisecond to step away if he’s crossed a line, but then he feels her torso give way to gravity and he catches her, presses her right against him. Soft, so much softness; the buttons of her cardigan were shaped like yellow daisies and it imprints itself on his chest. He threads a hand through her newly-washed tresses and they might as well be silk between his fingers (has she been stealing his products without his knowledge?).
He hums at the exquisite texture of the inside of her mouth, impossibly, delectably velvet-soft. It tastes like the cinnamon she takes with her apple oatmeal. He’s supremely rewarded by the sound she makes: this delicate, mewling thing that makes him hold back a growl and instead turn it into a groan that the angle of his kiss asks her to swallow down deep, straight in her throat.
He feels her knees knock against the top of his shin, buckling. He realises his grip is the only thing preventing her from swooning – how absolutely sweet of her to swoon for him. A terrible, unbecoming primal feeling rises in him, and this is how he knows he has to rear back. The moment he moves an inch, Hermione tightens her purchase on his shoulders, where she has to reach up just to secure her hold.
Next time, he thinks, I won’t let go. But for now – for fucking now he has to. He has to ask her to come up for air.
So he taps his thumb against her cheek bone, makes sure to support her weight with his other arm, and when he slowly encourages them to part, he presses his lips into the mole on the topside of her cheek. It’s plagued his dreams long enough.
“D’you love me?” he whispers again, catching his breath and only being able to breathe in her perfume.
“Not fair,” Hermione pants out, looking up at him with an expression cracked open in wonder.
He smiles slowly, swoops down to hide it on the side of her head. And then he mutters low as a secret, “‘S fair, cause I love you more.”
Her laughter is a gift, high and special and just for him. “You’re lying.”
He pulls away only to keep her close by the back of her neck, fitting well into the cradle of his cupped palm.
He tells her, “You have no idea how long I suffered.”
She pouts as a taunt. “Poor you.”
But Draco’s brain nearly short circuits at the pink petal of her lips jutting out like that. He asks, “Put me out of my misery?”
“Gladly,” she says. “Kiss me again?”
He grins, and it’s all teeth. “Always.”
He lifts her on the counter, her hips posing as a danger to the ceramic bowl that held his breakfast, and sips mouthfuls of all her wayward emotions. The sun shines too bright behind the elegant curve of her shoulders, so he closes his eyes, and shows her how much he feels right back.