The Arrangement
Pairing: Draco Malfoy x Reader
Summary: Draco Malfoy has a brilliant idea: fake date each other so you can finally get your crush’s attention. The only problem? You two can barely go five minutes without arguing.
Word Count: ~6k (estimate)
Warnings: fake dating, enemies to lovers, mutual pining, fluff, banter, emotional vulnerability, kissing, happy ending
Author’s Note: okay listen… i know fake dating is such a classic trope, but i will never get tired of two people being like “we can’t stand each other” while everyone else is watching them fall in love. i had so much fun writing draco because i feel like he’d be the type to act like he doesn’t care while secretly remembering every little thing about you. also the ending was kind of a surprise because i originally imagined their first kiss being a lot softer, but then i remembered this is draco malfoy and there was absolutely no way he was going to have a normal emotional moment after months of pretending. anyway, i hope you enjoy!! feedback and constructive criticism are always welcome :)
The Slytherin common room was cold in a way that had nothing to do with the dungeons themselves. You'd always thought that—how a room full of ambitious, calculating people could somehow feel so frigid, despite the crackling fireplace. Maybe it was the ambition itself that did it. Maybe it was knowing that everyone around you would step on your throat if it meant getting ahead.
Or maybe it was just Draco Malfoy, materializing in front of you like a particularly irritating ghost, his silver eyes glinting with that signature smirk that made you want to hex him.
"What do you want?" you asked without looking up from your Potions essay. You'd learned long ago that acknowledging him too quickly was like chumming the waters for sharks.
"Charming as always, darling." His voice was lazy, draped in that aristocratic drawl that somehow managed to sound both bored and cutting at once. "I'm almost wounded by your icy greeting."
"Almost," you echoed flatly, turning a page with perhaps more force than necessary. "Key word."
He settled into the armchair across from you with the casual entitlement of someone who'd never been told no in his entire life. Which, knowing Draco, was probably accurate. You finally glanced up, already braced for whatever patronizing comment he was about to make about your essay, your robes, your *existence*, but instead you found him studying you with an intensity that was somehow worse.
"I have a proposition," he said.
You laughed. You actually laughed—a sharp, bright sound that echoed off the stone walls. "If this is about borrowing my notes again, the answer is—"
"I want to fake date you."
The essay fell from your fingers.
"I'm sorry?" Your voice was dangerously quiet now, the way it got right before you said something truly cutting. "Did you just suggest, entirely seriously, that I pretend to be romantically entangled with *you*? You, Draco Lucius Malfoy? The same person who told me last week that my crush was 'a walking advertisement for mediocrity'?"
"He *is*," Draco said, utterly unbothered by your tone.
"And you don't get to—" You stood up, papers scattering. "What is wrong with you? Actually, don't answer that. We don't have that kind of time. But for your information, just because *you* think someone is beneath you—"
"That's not what I think," he interrupted, and there was something in his voice that made you pause. Something unexpectedly sincere, which was so unusual for Draco that it was almost alarming. "I think he's an idiot. There's a difference."
You stared at him. "Why would you even suggest this? And more importantly, why would you suggest it to me? If you want to fake date someone, shouldn't you be asking Pansy? Or literally anyone else who can stand being within five feet of you without developing an aneurysm?"
Draco's jaw tightened—imperceptibly, but you caught it. You were getting better at reading him, though you'd never admit that under torture. "Pansy would actually develop real feelings. And everyone else is either too obvious or too stupid."
"You're neither," he agreed, and the casualness with which he said it somehow made it feel like a compliment, which was infuriating. "Plus, you've been mooning over that idiot for months, and he hasn't noticed. But he'd notice if you showed up on my arm."
Your throat tightened. He was right, and you hated him for it. He was always right about the things that mattered, and wrong about everything else, which somehow made it all worse.
"What do you get out of this?" you asked carefully.
Draco stood, and suddenly he seemed taller, more imposing in the way he usually did in Potions class when he was about to make some cutting remark about Harry Potter. "That's my business."
"If I'm going to pretend to date you, I deserve to know—"
"No," he said flatly. "You don't. That was never part of the deal, and you know it. The deal is simple: you show up to public places with me, we act like we're mad about each other, and your precious crush finally realizes he's missing out. I get what I want, you get what you want, and we both stop wasting time on people who clearly don't deserve it."
There was something almost bitter in that last part. You filed that away to think about later.
"And if this blows up in our faces?" you asked.
"Then we were already at each other's throats," Draco said with a shrug. "Nothing changes."
He wasn't wrong. You spent half your time insulting his friends to anyone who would listen. Blaise was a spineless yes-man, Pansy was a shallow social climber, and Draco himself was a spoiled, entitled nightmare. At least, that's what you told yourself. That's what you'd been telling yourself for months.
You should have said no. Every rational part of your brain was screaming at you to say no.
Instead, you heard yourself say: "There are rules."
Draco's smirk widened. "Of course there are."
The rules, as you hammered them out over the next half hour, were simple:
1. In public, you acted convincing.
2. Neither of you got jealous.
3. Under no circumstances did either of you catch actual feelings.
"Obviously," Draco drawled when you said that last one, and you resisted the urge to throw something at him.
The first "date" was at Hogsmeade, strategically scheduled for a Saturday when you knew your crush would be there. You'd spent approximately forty-five minutes trying on different outfits, which was absurd. It was fake. It didn't matter what you looked like.
You stood in front of your dormitory mirror and found yourself carefully pinning your hair back, the way you thought he liked it. You'd asked Draco about it weeks ago, early in the arrangement. "What kind of girls does he usually go for?" And Draco had looked at you with something like contempt and said, "People who are agreeable. People who let him think he's charming. People who have questionable taste in romantic prospects. You're all three, so I suppose that's encouraging."
You'd thrown a pillow at him for that.
But you'd also pinned your hair back.
Now, waiting outside the Three Broomsticks, you caught your reflection in the window and barely recognized yourself. You looked nervous. You looked like you cared.
Draco arrived exactly on time, which was irritating because it meant you didn't have to wonder if he would show, which meant he was taking this seriously, which meant—
"You fixed your hair," he said, and his eyes were tracing the pins, the way the strands fell across your shoulder.
"It looked better this way," you said, which wasn't an answer.
"It does," Draco agreed, and then he reached over and tucked a strand behind your ear, his fingers lingering for just a moment longer than they should have. "Come on, sweetheart. People are watching."
The nickname was new. Sweetheart. He'd taken to calling you ridiculous things since the arrangement started—darling, love, angel—all delivered with such theatrical flair that it should have been obvious he was mocking you. Should have been.
But there was something in his voice that morning that made you question whether mockery was all it was.
You let him link his fingers with yours, and the contact was warm, sure, steady in a way that surprised you. You'd touched before, obviously. You'd argued in close quarters. You'd shoved him, and he'd caught your wrist. But this felt different. This felt intentional.
Inside the Three Broomsticks, you spotted your crush immediately—sitting in a booth with his friends, completely unaware of your existence, as usual. You felt the old, familiar twist of longing in your chest, and you leaned into Draco, resting your head briefly against his shoulder.
"There's your knight in shining armor," Draco murmured against your hair. "Looking absolutely riveting as he discusses Quidditch. My God, however do you control yourself?"
You elbowed him, but you were smiling. "Shut up."
"I will not. I'm trying to figure out what you see in him. And I'm coming up short, angel. Really, truly short. It's like looking for hidden depth in a puddle of mud."
"He's kind," you said, which came out sounding defensive.
"He's pedestrian," Draco corrected, ordering you both butterbeers with the casual confidence of someone who'd never been denied anything in his life. "He's got the personality of a wet blanket and the intellectual capacity of a flobberworm. I genuinely don't understand the appeal."
"Because you're a sociopath?"
"Possibly," Draco acknowledged. "But I'm a sociopath with taste, and you, precious, are associating yourself with a man who wore that jumper yesterday. That exact jumper. Do you know what that means?"
"That he's comfortable in his own skin?" you suggested.
"That he's lazy," Draco shot back. "There's a difference between comfort and complacency."
You wanted to argue, but the truth was—and this was something you'd never admit to a soul—you'd begun to notice things like that. The way he never seemed to try very hard with anything. The way he looked at you sometimes with vague confusion, as if you were a puzzle he couldn't quite be bothered to solve.
Draco noticed everything. He noticed when you were upset. He noticed when you'd gotten your essay back from Professor Snape and it had bruised your confidence (a 'Dreadful. See me after class' in that familiar slashing handwriting). You'd been quiet about it, thinking you'd hidden it well, but Draco had somehow known. He'd made some cutting remark about Snape's standards being impossibly high for everyone except him, and then he'd slipped you a letter of recommendation for Madam Pince's summer reading program without ever directly acknowledging it.
He also remembered, somehow, that you took your tea with just a tiny bit of honey and exactly two sugars. He remembered that you were allergic to shellfish. He remembered that you'd mentioned once, months ago, that you found the Divination classroom unsettling.
Your crush had forgotten your birthday last year. You were fairly certain he still didn't know it.
"He's looking at you," Draco said suddenly, and his voice had shifted into something sharper, more possessive. "Don't be obvious about it, but he's looking."
Your heart gave a little leap. Despite everything—despite the emerging doubts, despite the way Draco was looking at you now with an intensity that made your stomach flip—you still wanted this. You'd wanted it so badly for so long.
You turned to Draco, and he was already leaning closer, his silver eyes dark and fixed on your face. "What are you doing?" you whispered.
"Giving him something worth watching," Draco replied, and then he kissed you.
It wasn't a stage kiss. It wasn't performative. His hand came up to cup your jaw, his thumb brushing your cheekbone with unexpected gentleness, and he kissed you like he was trying to memorize the exact shape of your mouth. Your eyes fluttered shut. When he pulled back, you didn't immediately open them.
"Your crush is looking away now," Draco said softly. "He looks upset."
You finally opened your eyes and found his face still very close to yours, his expression unreadable. "Is this part of the act?"
"Does it matter?" he asked, which wasn't an answer.
Over the next few weeks, the lines began to blur in ways that were impossible to ignore.
Draco continued to insult your crush with increasing viciousness, which should have bothered you more than it did. Instead, you found yourself sort of… agreeing with him? You started noticing the same things—the lazy way your crush moved through the world, the absence of any real passion or depth, the fact that he'd never once asked you a genuine question about yourself.
You also started noticing other things.
Like the way Draco looked at you sometimes when he thought you weren't watching.
Like the way his insults had shifted from truly cutting to almost teasing.
Like the way he'd started sitting with you in the library—not directly next to you, never too close—but close enough that if you needed something, his arm was within reach.
"You're staring at your Potions essay again," he said one afternoon, and it took you a moment to realize he was talking about you, not the essay itself. "The one Snape liked, remember? The one he actually returned without a single deduction? That was an entire point shy of a perfect mark from Snape, which is essentially a love letter in his language."
"You were looking at my essay?" you asked, startled.
"I was looking at you," Draco said, and he said it so casually, as if it wasn't the most devastating thing you'd heard all week. "You had that expression. The one you get when you're doubting yourself unnecessarily."
"I don't have an expression," you said, defensive.
"You have many expressions," Draco replied, turning a page in his book without really looking at it. "I've catalogued them. The one when you're frustrated—you purse your lips and tap your quill against the table exactly three times. The one when you're worried—you get this little line right here." He reached over and brushed his finger against the space between your eyebrows. "The one when you're lying—your eyes get brighter, almost like you're overcompensating."
You were very still. "Why would you catalogue my expressions?"
"Because," Draco said, still not looking at you, "it's useful research."
"The arrangement," he said smoothly, turning another page. "I need to know if you're upset with how things are progressing. Whether you're faking your reactions. Et cetera."
It was a reasonable explanation. It was also complete rubbish.
But you let it go because admitting what you suspected was true terrified you.
The thing about fake dating is that it's surprisingly easy to convince other people when there's so much real emotion underneath it all.
By the fourth week, most of Hogwarts seemed convinced. Your crush had apparently asked around about you and Draco—you'd heard it through the grapevine—and seemed to have come to the conclusion that he'd missed his window. There was something almost satisfying about that, except for one problem:
You didn't actually care anymore.
You realized it during Potions, when your crush managed to produce a perfect Draught of Living Death and Professor Snape awarded him points without his usual sneering commentary. It was objectively impressive. You should have felt something.
Instead, you felt Draco lean against the desk beside yours and murmur, "Stolen from last year's textbook, I'd wager. Watch the color—it's two shades off. He probably didn't even try, just followed the steps like a mindless automaton."
You glanced at your crush's potion. Draco was right. It was two shades off.
"How do you know that?" you whispered.
"Because," Draco said, "I actually pay attention. To the important things."
The way he said it made it clear that he considered you one of the important things.
That was when you realized you were in serious trouble.
We need to talk about this," you said, cornering Draco in an empty corridor after Defense Against the Dark Arts. You'd waited until you were alone—genuinely alone, no risk of anyone overhearing. "The arrangement. We need to talk about what's happening."
Draco had that expression on his face—the one where he looked almost trapped, like you were asking him questions he didn't want to answer. "Nothing is happening. Everything is proceeding as planned."
"You're a liar," you said flatly. "You're a professional liar, actually, I'm sure it's a skill you were born with, but I'm asking you to try something different right now. Try honesty."
"If I'm honest," Draco said, his voice dropping low, "then this gets more complicated. And you're in love with someone else."
"I'm not," you shot back. The words came out before you could stop them, and then they hung in the air between you like something alive, something dangerous.
Draco's eyes narrowed. "You're infatuated with—"
"I was infatuated," you corrected. "Past tense. I've spent the last month trying to manufacture feelings for someone who wouldn't notice if I disappeared, and meanwhile, there's someone who remembers exactly how I take my tea. Someone who knew I was upset about my Potions grade before I even said anything. Someone who—" Your voice cracked slightly. "Someone who looks at me like I'm not just some puzzle he can't be bothered solving."
"Don't," Draco said, and his voice had taken on a dangerous edge. "Don't do that. Don't rewrite what this is."
"I'm not rewriting anything," you said, moving closer. "I'm finally seeing clearly. And you're doing the same thing I am—you're running. You suggested this whole arrangement for a reason, and I don't think it had anything to do with whatever excuse you gave me. I think you wanted an excuse to touch me. To be near me. To—"
"Stop talking," Draco interrupted, but he wasn't moving away.
It was a challenge, pure and simple. It hung between you like a held breath, and for a moment Draco didn't move. His silver eyes traced your face—your mouth, your cheeks, your eyes—cataloguing you the way he'd said he did. Mapping you like you were a place he desperately needed to find his way back to.
"If I do this," he said quietly, "if I kiss you right now, there's no going back. You understand that, don't you? No more pretending this is just an arrangement. No more rules about not catching feelings, because I've already broken that one spectacularly. So you need to be absolutely certain, because once I start, I'm not going to be able to stop."
Your heart was thundering in your chest. "I'm certain."
Draco's hand came up, and this time there was no hesitation, no care for who might see. He grabbed your face like you might disappear, like you might change your mind, and he pulled you toward him. His mouth met yours and it was nothing like the kiss in the Three Broomsticks.
This was desperate. This was real.
His lips were soft but commanding, and he kissed you like he was trying to make up for every insult, every cutting remark, every moment spent pretending this was casual. His other hand fisted in your robes, pulling you flush against him, and you gasped into his mouth because he felt like coming home to something you'd never known you were looking for.
"Merlin," he breathed against your lips, pulling back just enough to speak. "Do you have any idea what you do to me?"
You didn't answer. Instead, you grabbed his collar and pulled him back down, kissing him with everything you had—all the months of arguing, all the tension, all the longing that had somehow, impossibly, transformed into something that had nothing to do with your crush and everything to do with him.
Draco made a low sound in his throat, and suddenly you were being pressed against the stone wall of the corridor. His knee nudged between your thighs, and his mouth traced a burning line from your lips to your jaw, down to your neck where he sucked gently at the sensitive skin there. You gasped his name—just his name, nothing else—and it sounded like a prayer.
"Say it again," he murmured against your skin. "Say my name like that again."
"Draco—" you started, but he kissed you again, cutting you off, and this time it was slower, deeper, more thorough. His tongue slid against yours and he tasted like expensive chocolate and ambition and something uniquely, intoxicatingly him. One of his hands came up to tangle in your hair, the same way you'd pinned it that first fake date, and he pulled gently, tipping your head back so he could kiss you deeper.
"I've wanted to do this for months," he said, his voice rough, his breath ragged. "Since that first day you told me my personality was about as appealing as a Dementor's Kiss. I've wanted to shut you up and touch you and make you understand that—"
You cut him off by kissing him again, because you couldn't bear to hear him say something vulnerable when you were both so exposed, so fragile. His hand on your jaw tightened, and he pressed you further back against the wall, his body covering yours completely. Everything about this was too intense, too real, too much, and it was perfect.
When he finally broke away, you were both breathing hard, your foreheads pressed together, your hands shaking slightly.
"The rules are completely void," Draco said, his voice a rough whisper. "I need you to understand that. I'm not following any rules anymore. I can't. I won't."
"I don't want you to," you replied, and you meant it with every fiber of your being.
He was still an absolute nightmare.
He was still cutting and arrogant and impossibly difficult.
He was also yours.
And you were his.
And the funny thing about fake arrangements is that sometimes, they become the most real thing in your life.
