Drabbles and Draughts

Sophia | she/her | 24 canon-compliant? absolutely not. you can me on AO3 under sophia_m open for requests :)

[hexmebaby]

After Curfew

Remus Lupin x Reader | 258 words

You find him in the library long after curfew, exactly where you expect him to be. The fire has burned low, coals breathing instead of blazing, and Remus is hunched over a stack of books that look older than the castle itself. He startles when you clear your throat.

“You’re up late,” you say.

“So are you,” he replies, mild as always, but there’s a tired smile tugging at his mouth.

You sit across from him without asking. He doesn’t move the books and doesn’t tell you to leave. Just watches as you fold your hands together, waiting, like this is something you’ve done a hundred times before.

Maybe you have. There’s a pause that's comfortable and heavy. It's the kind that settles between people who don’t need to fill every silence. The fire pops. A page turns.

“You’re thinking too loudly again,” you say.

Remus exhales a quiet laugh. “Is it that obvious?”

“Only to me.”

He looks at you then, really looks, eyes softer than they were a moment ago. Like you’ve caught him unguarded and he’s decided not to pull the walls back up.

“I forget,” he says gently, “that you notice things.”

You reach across the table and tap the edge of his book closed. He lets you.

“Someone has to,” you reply, tone light “Otherwise you’d disappear into footnotes.”

For a moment, neither of you moves. Your fingers linger where they touched his book. His hand rests too close to yours. Outside, the castle creaks and breathes and continues to keep its secrets.

[hexmebaby]

Harry, walking in to a room: Sorry I’m late… I was… doing things. *Sounds of running footsteps progressively getting louder* Draco, out of breath: THEY PUSHED ME DOWN THE STAIRS.

[hexmebaby]

James: Are you the big spoon or the little spoon? Sirius: I'm a knife. Remus, from across the room: They're the little spoon.

[hexmebaby]

A Recipe for Disaster

Seamus Finnigan x Dean Thomas | 304 words

The thing about Seamus Finnigan was that he never did anything quietly. Dean learned this the hard way during eighth year, when the rebuilt Hogwarts had finally settled into something resembling peace, and Seamus decided, very suddenly, that he was going to learn how to cook.

The kitchen exploded. Not blew up, exactly. No fireballs, no missing eyebrows. Just a sharp bang, a plume of flour drifting into the air like smoke, and Seamus standing there with a spoon in one hand and a sheepish grin on his face.

Dean, halfway through sketching the scene by the window, didn’t even look up at first, “Please tell me that wasn’t the kettle again.”

“…It might’ve been the eggs,” Seamus said.

Dean sighed, smiling despite himself. He set the sketchbook aside and crossed the room, nudging Seamus gently with his shoulder as he reached for a cloth. There was flour on Seamus’s cheek, a smudge Dean brushed away without thinking. Their eyes met. It always went like that. These tiny, unremarkable moments turning suddenly electric. The quiet after laughter. The space between breaths. The way Seamus stilled, like he’d realized something important and didn’t quite know what to do with it.

“Y’know,” Seamus said softly, voice losing its usual bravado, “I’m not great at… subtle magic.”

Dean laughed under his breath. “I’ve noticed.”

“But you-” Seamus gestured vaguely, like the words were hard to grab onto. “You make things… steady. Like I don’t have to worry about what I’ll blow up next.”

Dean’s chest warmed in a way that felt dangerous and wonderful all at once. He reached out, fingers curling lightly into the front of Seamus’s jumper.

“I like your explosions,” he said.

Seamus grinned, then leaned in, forehead resting against Dean’s. Flour dusted their noses. The world felt small, safe. Neither of them moved.

[hexmebaby]

Fred: I can explain. Percy: Can you? Fred: If you give me thirty seconds to think of a lie.

[hexmebaby]

Hermione: Treat spiders the way you want to be treated. Ron: Killed without hesitation. Hermione: No.

[hexmebaby]

Hermione: Okay, I’m going to get the wedding cake. Ron: Perfect, while you do that I’ll check on the ring bear. Hermione: ... Hermione: You mean ring bearER, right? Ron: ... Hermione: Look me in the eyes and tell me you are not going to bring a dangerous wild animal to our wedding.

[hexmebaby]

What Stays

Neville Longbottom x Ginny Weasley | 346 words

Ginny Weasley knows Neville Longbottom by the way he stands.

Not the hunched boy from first year, not the nervous one from the DA meetings, but the man he became during the year she wasn’t there. Grounded. Steady. Like someone who learned how to hold his ground and never quite forgot the cost.

They don’t talk about that year much.

But sometimes, when the Burrow is loud and full of laughter and the war feels like a story someone else survived, Ginny catches Neville watching the door the way she does - counting exits, listening for sounds that aren’t there.

That’s when she sits beside him.

“Still strange,” she says one evening, voice low, “being somewhere that doesn’t need defending.”

Neville nods. “I keep thinking I should be doing something.”

“You are,” she says. “You’re here.”

He smiles at that, a little shy, a little real. It does something to her chest she refuses to name.

Later, they end up outside, sitting on the old stone wall behind the house. The air smells like grass and summer and things growing despite everything. Ginny picks at the hem of her sleeve.

“You were good that year,” she says suddenly.

Neville stiffens. “I don’t-”

“I mean it,” she interrupts. “You kept people going. You kept me going, even when I wasn’t there.”

He looks at her then, really looks, and she sees it. She sees the weight he never brags about and the fear he carried quietly.

“I was terrified,” he admits. “All the time.”

Ginny exhales a laugh, soft and bitter. “Yeah. Me too.”

The silence that follows isn’t uncomfortable. It’s shared. Earned.

She reaches for his hand without thinking. He hesitates, just a second, then curls his fingers around hers, warm and certain.

“You don’t have to be brave all the time,” she tells him.

He squeezes her hand. “Neither do you.”

For the first time since the war ended, Ginny lets herself lean into someone else’s strength, not because she’s weak, but because she doesn’t have to be alone.

Neville doesn’t say anything. He just stays.

[hexmebaby]

Drarry Enemies-to-Lovers Post-War Headcanons

First insult (again): “Still think you're the Chosen One, Potter?” “Still bleaching your hair with unicorn tears, Malfoy?”

First truce: Forced to sit next to each other at a Ministry hearing. Neither hexes the other. Progress

First crack: Harry notices Draco’s hand shakes when he speaks at a war reparation meeting. He covers it discreetly.

First fight (real one): “You don’t get to play the hero anymore, Potter!” “I’m not trying to!”

First softness: Draco finds Harry crying on the roof of the Auror department. Doesn’t speak. Just sits beside him.

First kiss: Mid-argument. Neither admits it was good. Both lose sleep.

First home: They buy a flat with mismatched furniture and a library with only one armchair. They share it anyway.

[hexmebaby]

Hermione: Are you alright? Harry: Short answer or long answer? Hermione: Short? Harry: No. Hermione: Long? Harry: Nooooooo.

[hexmebaby]

Draco: I prevented a murder today. Blaise: Really? How’d you do that? Draco: Self control.

[hexmebaby]

Post-War AU: Remus and Tonks Survive

Remus opens a secondhand bookshop called Moony’s Corner.

Tonks joins the newly formed Magical Trauma Response Unit. She makes up her own uniform rules.

Teddy has a wild, joyful childhood filled with rainbow hair, bedtime stories about the Marauders, and a dad who reads him poetry.

Sirius' old motorbike sits in the shed. Teddy’s first lesson on it is a disaster. Tonks records the whole thing.

Sunday mornings are sacred. Pancakes. Storytime. Magic tricks. No war talk. Just love.

Sometimes, Remus still wakes in cold sweats. Tonks lights a blue flame in the hearth. It's their signal. You're home. You’re safe.

[hexmebaby]

Still Warm

Draco Malfoy x Reader | 466 words

You find Draco Malfoy in the library because of course you do.

Not the main floor - never there - but in one of the side rooms that smells like dust and old parchment, where the windows are tall and narrow and the light comes in slanted, like it’s unsure whether it’s welcome.

He doesn’t look up when you enter. He’s seated at a long table with only one book open in front of him, spine cracked, margins crowded with notes written in a precise, almost aggressive hand. His sleeves are rolled to the elbow. His wand lies untouched beside the book, parallel to the table’s edge.

Careful. Controlled. Always.

You clear your throat softly.

Draco startles anyway.

It’s subtle. Just a tightening of the shoulders, a pause too long before he exhales but you notice. You always do.

“Sorry,” you say. “I didn’t mean to-”

“It’s fine,” he replies, too quickly. He looks up then, grey eyes sharp before they soften when they land on you. “I just didn’t hear you come in.”

You don’t point out that he never does.

You take the seat across from him, leaving the careful distance he seems to need. For a moment, neither of you speaks. The silence isn’t awkward, exactly but it’s heavy, full of things you’ve both learned not to say aloud.

“How are you sleeping?” you ask finally.

Draco snorts, faint and humorless. “That obvious?”

“Only to people who care,” you say.

That earns you a look. A look of something searching, something uncertain. Then he looks back down at his book.

“Better than I was,” he says. “The nightmares don’t last as long.”

You nod, like this is normal conversation. Like the war didn’t carve its way into both of you and leave scars that ache in quiet rooms.

You reach across the table before you can overthink it, fingers brushing his wrist. He stills. Not pulling away, but also not leaning in. Just… waiting.

His skin is warm. That surprises you. You don’t know why. Maybe because he always feels like someone carved from marble - cool, untouchable, distant. But he’s warm. Real.

Alive.

“You don’t have to be alone with it,” you say gently.

Draco’s jaw tightens. “I’m not very good company.”

“I know,” you reply. “That’s why I’m here.”

He lets out a slow breath. Then, carefully, like it might vanish if he moves too quickly, he turns his hand palm-up and lets your fingers lace with his.

It’s a small thing. Barely anything at all.

But his thumb presses once against your knuckles, tentative, grateful and you feel it like a promise.

Outside, the light shifts. Dust motes drift. Somewhere far away, students laugh.

And for a moment, just a moment, Draco Malfoy lets himself believe that some things can still be rebuilt.

[hexmebaby]

After the Applause

Draco Malfoy x Ginny Weasley | 461 words

They met again in a place neither of them had planned to be.

Draco Malfoy had only gone to the match because his probation officer, who insisted on being called a reintegration liaison, had suggested it might be “good for him to engage with contemporary wizarding culture.” Draco suspected that was code for stop skulking in libraries and pretending you don’t exist.

So there he was, seated high in the stands, collar turned up, sunglasses on despite the clouds. He hadn’t followed Quidditch since school. He told himself he was there out of obligation.

Then Ginny Weasley streaked across the sky like a comet.

The Holyhead Harpies wore their reputation openly, sharp flying, ruthless precision, a confidence that bordered on defiance. Ginny was all of it, hair braided back, face set in fierce concentration. When she scored, the stadium erupted.

Draco felt something unpleasantly like awe.

After the match, he lingered too long near the exits, pretending to study the programme. He nearly escaped unnoticed.

“Malfoy?”

Her voice hadn’t changed. Older, maybe steadier, but unmistakably Ginny. He turned, already bracing himself. She was still in her team jacket, cheeks flushed from the cold and the match, eyes bright. Not angry. Curious.

“Weasley,” he said, because old habits died hard.

Ginny raised an eyebrow. “You know, you’re allowed to use my first name now.”

“Yes. Right. Ginny.” It felt strange on his tongue. Less dangerous than he remembered.

They stood there, an awkward pocket of silence forming between past and present. Draco became suddenly aware of how many apologies he’d never said, how many things she’d survived.

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” she said finally.

“I didn’t expect to be here,” he admitted. Honesty had become easier, if nothing else.

She smiled, not wide, not unguarded, but real. “Did you like it?”

“The flying,” he said carefully. “You’re… very good.”

Ginny laughed softly. “High praise from a former Slytherin who once called Quidditch ‘brutish.’”

“I was an idiot at sixteen,” he replied. “Among other things.”

Something in her expression shifted—considering, weighing. Then she nodded, as if accepting a truth he’d been carrying for years.

They walked together, slowly, talking about nothing and everything: her training schedule, his work cataloguing cursed artefacts for the Ministry, the strange quiet that followed surviving something catastrophic.

At the Floo entrance, she stopped. “I’m glad you came,” she said. “Really.”

“So am I,” Draco replied, surprising himself with how much he meant it.

As she turned to leave, Ginny glanced back. “There’s another match next month. Same place.”

He smiled—small, tentative, but genuine. “Then I suppose I’ll have to engage with wizarding culture again.”

And for the first time in a long while, the future didn’t feel like a punishment. It felt like a possibility.

[hexmebaby]

Draco: You love me, right, Herry? Harry: Normally, I’d say yes without hesitation, but I feel like this is going somewhere and I don’t like it.

[hexmebaby]

Ron: Come on, I wasn’t that drunk last night. Harry: You were flirting with Hermione. Ron: So what? She's my girlfriend. Harry: You asked her if she were single. Ron: Harry: And then you cried when she said she wasn't.

[hexmebaby]

Things That Don’t Need Explaining

Ginny Weasley x Luna Lovegood | 342 words

Ginny liked people who said what they meant.

Luna liked people who listened.

They sat side by side in the Ravenclaw common room, legs stretched out toward the windows where moonlight spilled in pale and silver. Ginny had claimed a cushion off one of the armchairs and dragged it down to the floor without asking. Luna hadn’t commented. She rarely did, not when things felt right.

Ginny pretended to read. Luna actually was.

“You’re thinking very loudly,” Luna said, not looking up from her book.

Ginny snorted. “Didn’t know that was possible.”

“It is,” Luna replied serenely. “Your thoughts feel… sharp today.”

Ginny leaned back on her hands, staring up at the enchanted ceiling. “That’s just how I am.”

“I know,” Luna said, finally glancing at her. “I like it.”

Ginny turned properly then, heart doing something stupid in her chest. She searched Luna’s face for a joke, for that dreamy detachment people always mistook for not caring. But Luna was looking at her with the same calm certainty she brought to everything, like this was simply a fact, already observed and accepted.

“You don’t mind?” Ginny asked, quieter.

“No,” Luna said. “Sharp things are useful. They cut through the fog.”

Ginny swallowed. She’d spent years being told she was too much. Too loud, too quick to anger, too intense in a world that preferred softer edges. Luna said it like it was a gift. 

After a moment, Ginny reached out, fingers brushing the sleeve of Luna’s cardigan. Not grabbing. Not demanding. Just asking. Luna didn’t hesitate. She slipped her book aside and laced their fingers together, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Ginny felt herself exhale.

They sat like that for a while, listening to the crackle of the fire, Luna’s thumb tracing absent-minded circles against Ginny’s knuckles. Ginny realized she wasn’t bracing herself, for judgment, for expectation, for the moment she’d have to explain who she was or why.

Some things, she realized, didn’t need explaining.

And with Luna, she didn’t feel sharp.

She felt clear.