the cabaret

Blog contains homoerotic posts that may not be safe for work, you have been warned. I make mangacaps, screencaps, GIFs, and fanfics for multiple fandoms. ERERI & CHANBAEK.

[levirens]

[fanfic] in a different light (one-shot)

Summary: "When he notices the tears cascading down her cheeks, he allows himself to half-believe that they’re tears of joy. When the first words out of her mouth are “we need to talk”, he allows himself to half-hope that she only thinks it’s too soon, that she still has so much to do before she can settle down and start a family with him.

When he finally gets to look into her eyes, he accepts what he knows to be true, because during the small things that kept getting bigger and bigger, he had noticed something else. Had noticed the way she still watched, the way she kept staring, the way she continued to glow and emit the same warmth through her eyes that she used to give him.

He had noticed that those things didn’t disappear; she still glows, just not around him."

LINKS: 

AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30734285 FFN: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13863917/1/in-a-different-light CHAPTER 1

When he thinks about it, he admits that the bad days have been few and far between. Auror training had gone smoothly and he’s survived all of his missions with all of his limbs mostly intact. For the most part, the healers at St. Mungo’s have had no problem healing the injuries he’s accumulated during the past few years, and he’s now a patchwork of scars and regrown bones. Hermione would always come rushing to the hospital, throwing open the curtains and glaring at him, and he would always be able to hear the words pouring out of her pretty little mouth before she’s even had the opportunity to open it.

“Would it kill you to be a little more careful?” would usually mark the end of her tirade, then she would willingly sink into his arms and whisper to him how scared she’d been. He would always tell her he’d be more careful on the next mission, that it won’t happen again, but he knows it’s been quite some time since they both last believed those promises.

The bad days have been few and far between ever since the end of the war, and both he and Hermione have slowly learnt to deal with the demons that have followed them. There would be nights that she would wake up screaming, her hand flying to scratch at the scar on her arm. He would stop her, whisper to her that she wouldn’t want to irritate the still-healing skin, and then he would mould his body around hers to cocoon her from the world. They would both struggle to go back to sleep, their heads filled with images of the past, of loved ones lost and a youth that had slipped through their fingers without them even having the luxury to notice. 

The days following those nightmares would be sombre, the both of them tense due to a combination of sleep deprivation and the weight of the words that remain unspoken. She had tried to explain it to him, the nightmares and something called PTSD, and he believes that he had understood it but only on the surface-level. She had agreed with his sentiment and soon enough he had given up on trying to relate to her trauma and just resolved to comfort her with the words he knows and with the limbs he has.

The bad days have been few and far between, and he has come to appreciate the little things. Yesterday, Hermione had made him a full breakfast; the eggs were just the slightest bit overcooked and they both arrived at work 30 minutes late, but he made sure to thank her properly for her effort. Just this morning his coffee had still been warm when he took his last gulp, and Harry has yet to come to him with any complaints regarding his part of their written report.

He’s laughing with Seamus when he sees it. The shock of white-blonde hair is what initially catches his eyes, a colour so unique to the man walking through the doors of their office. He looks every bit the Slytherin git he is, his robes screaming aristocracy and his walk almost the exact replica of his father’s. His pointy chin is held high, hands wisely exposed to be empty of a wand, and his eyes blank as they stare right ahead at the door to Robards’ office.

Seamus makes to stop the blonde just as he makes to walk past them but he’s halted by the glare that Harry throws their way. The blonde continues on his way, nodding at Harry, a gesture that the other man returns much to everyone’s confusion. They watch as Robards opens the door and gestures for the blonde to enter, ignoring the way the office has suddenly become quiet for the very first time in years.

He wastes no time—the moment the door closes he’s advancing on Harry, eyebrows raised and stride undeterred by the look his best mate is giving him. It’s a look he doesn’t like, it’s the look that tells him he won’t appreciate knowing whatever it is he thinks he wants to know.

“What in the blood hell is Draco Malfoy doing here?” he finally voices the question that he knows is running through everyone’s head.

For a while Harry doesn’t respond, just looks at him while slightly shaking his head.

The bad days have been few and far between, but the words that leave Harry’s mouth are enough indication that today would be one of those days.

“He’s been approved for Auror training. Reckon he’d be starting tomorrow.”

   It’s one of those things that they can’t seem to agree to disagree about, and he isn’t willing to rest his case. Hermione is curled up on their old couch, the cushions mismatched and repaired but still comfortable. He suspects that she’s only half paying attention to him, her brain focused on the length of parchment paper gripped in her hands.

“I still don’t see why you’re making such a big deal out of this, Ron,” she says, momentarily looking up from whatever passage it is she’s reading to give him a pointed look. What she’s pointing out to him he has no clue, so he returns her gaze with a disbelieving one of his own.

“It’s Draco Malfoy, for Merlin’s sake! Have you and Harry both forgotten that he’s a slimy Death Eater?” He struggles to keep his voice in check, knowing how much she hates it when he resolves to shouting. “Who in their right mind would trust him to work in the Ministry, much less as an Auror?”

“Have you forgotten that both Harry and I testified for him in court?” she shoots back.

“I do remember that, actually, but I can’t say I understand why you two did that,” Ron mumbles, looking over her shoulder to read the parchment she’s holding. His eyes catch the words Elves and Rights and he immediately turns away, already knowing what it is that’s she’s working on.

“We’ve been over this, Ronald. Me, Harry, Ginny, even Neville has told you he understands why we did it.” She tosses the parchment paper onto the table in front of her, rising up from the couch and finally facing him. “He was a child. He didn’t even want to be marked. He was lowering his wand, Ron, and he didn’t identify Harry.”

It’s the same thing she’d told him the day she testified for the man. Harry had said something about his mum saving them all, and Ginny had taken Harry’s side because he’s Harry and she’s Ginny. Ron can’t even remember what Neville said to him, but he knows that the latter agreed with the other three.

“Hermione, he’s a bully. He bullied you for years and he called you that foul name! How can you sit there defending him now?”

She rolls her eyes at him and gets up to stalk into the kitchen. The sound of her banging around the room to make coffee grates on his nerves but he keeps his mouth shut, waiting for whatever brilliant excuse she’s going to come up with to defend Malfoy. At first the thought had disturbed him, the reminder that she had been the one adamantly insisting that Malfoy wasn’t a Death Eater even when he was, and now one of the few people he knows who defends the man. Later on, he decided that it was just like any of her other projects; helping the downtrodden and the ones forgotten by society is what she does best.

He can’t always fault her for it. Afterall, her compulsion to help even those who don’t want her help (and those who don’t deserve it) stems from her compassionate nature, the very aspect of her that he had grown fond of over the years. It’s this thought that he holds on to as he watches her walk in with two mugs of steaming tea, the look in her eyes telling him she would have the last say in this argument.

“He may have been a bully, but he’s not evil, Ron. Even you have to admit that.”

He doesn’t reply, only takes the proffered mug and gulps down the scalding tea that has far too much honey and not enough milk.

   “Do you reckon it’s his money?”

“No, Seamus,” Harry responds, hand flying over the piece of parchment he’s been writing on. The man had refused to let Ron and Seamus distract him from his frantic writing, interjecting himself into the conversation every now and then but never lifting his head from the paper. “He got into the programme fair and square.”

“And how’d you know that?” Seamus asks, leaning against the cubicle walls with his arms crossed. “You pals with Malfoy now?”

This finally gets Harry to stop writing, turning around in his chair to look at both Seamus and Ron with a loud sigh. “Look, Robards asked me for a second opinion on Malfoy. He showed me the bloke’s credentials and everything checks out. If it weren’t for his name he would have been accepted immediately, no questions asked.”

Ron scoffs and Harry’s eyes turn to him, challenging him to disagree. Earlier that day he and Harry had almost the exact same conversation, and Harry had revealed that Malfoy had received all O’s in his N.E.W.T.s. Ron raises an eyebrow, accepting the challenge by saying, “He may be smart, but his criminal record should have been taken into account.”

Harry only shakes his head and makes a show of returning his attention to the papers. “You two need to come to terms with the fact that one day, one of you might end up becoming his partner.”

Ron tells Harry to sod off and Seamus only laughs, exiting the cubicle to leave the two behind.

“Be honest with me, yeah? What’s the real reason you’re so accepting of this? And don’t even remind me that you testified for him, Hermione already did that last night.”

Harry laughs at this. “I’m not hiding anything from you, Ron. Malfoy got in based on his grades. He’s not a Death Eater any more than you and I are.”

Ron all but gags at the statement. “Don’t ever bloody compare me to that git, Harry, I swear to Circe. Stop pretending that he’s innocent, both you and Hermione. He’s far from innocent and we all know it.”

With that he walks out of his partner’s cubicle, giving the man one last disbelieving look. Sooner or later Malfoy would slip up, show his true colours, and then he’d be out of the programme and preferably on his way to Azkaban in no time.

   Malfoy does not slip up.

In fact, during the first six months of his training, Ron hears nothing but grumbled praises from his senior colleagues about the Death Eater’s performance. According to the office gossip, the blonde is breezing his way through the character and aptitude tests and would soon be moving on to the formal courses of the programme. After the six-month mark the grumbles turn into actual compliments and he thinks his ears may bleed if he has to hear another person marvel at how Draco Malfoy is on his way to becoming “one great Auror”.

The only comfort he finds these days is that, although they admit that Malfoy’s good at his job, nobody wants to partner up with him. Being the only trainee around, Malfoy would often be seen working and training alone, but every now and then the higher-ups would require one of the people from Ron’s batch to assist. The general consensus seems to be that everybody would benefit from this joint lessons of sorts; Malfoy would be able to complete the tasks that require a temporary partner and the Aurors who got in immediately after the war would be able to sample the rigid training that they had eluded.

He and Seamus have never been called and he thanks Harry for it, as the man must have put in the word that no good would come out of that arrangement. Ron rarely sees the infuriating blonde head in the office, but whenever he does he feels his blood boil and his magic thrumming through his whole being, a hex always ready on the tip of his tongue and the end of his wand. Malfoy no longer gallivants around like he used to in Hogwarts, the air of superiority that he used to carry around wherever he walked muted but not completely gone. Nowadays he walks with the arrogance of someone who knows he’s better than everybody else but doesn’t feel the need to shove the fact down people’s throats and Ron absolutely abhors him for it.

“He’s a wanker with a superiority complex,” he says out loud to their table, a shot of firewhisky just starting to warm his stomach. “He walks and talks like he’s some sort prince when all he is a Death Eater scum.”

“Ron!” It’s Hermione that immediately reacts to his words, her voice pitched low and her hand heavy on his arm when it smacks him. “Do you really have to bring that foul language here?”

“Hermione’s right, you know?” Neville tells him, one of his hands playing with the shot glass and the other twitching on top of the table. Ron eyes it for a second before his gaze slides over to the hand lying just centimetres away from Neville’s twitchy one. He follows the hand up and is not even surprised when he meets Luna’s eyes.

The poor bloke has a crush on the Loony and is working himself into a seizure trying to find the courage to grab her hand. He’s mulling over this information when Neville speaks again, still addressing him.

“He’s quite decent now, Malfoy, I mean. He was perfectly polite when we were partnered up for his training.”

“He’s polite to you because he knows we’ll send him to Azkaban if he puts a single pointy toe out of line,” Ron responds, pouring himself another shot and ignoring Hermione’s glare. “He’s just pretending, and it’s only been a year yet he’s already convinced over half of the office that he’s somehow changed. It’s like you guys forget he’s a Slytherin through and through.”

“Really, Ronald? You’re going to bring up old house rivalries now?”

“It’s not just “old house rivalries”, ‘Mione, and you know it. It’s like our Gryffindor courage—being a Slytherin means being a conniving snake,” he all but spats the last two words, looking her directly in the eyes. He has half the mind to think that maybe he shouldn’t be saying this right now, especially not with such a loud voice, but he pushes down the voice of reason and refuses to look away from her angry stare.

“Big word there, mate,” Seamus chimes in, his laughter breaking the tension-filled silence. The others join and then he’s tearing away from the staring contest with his girlfriend in favour of giving the muggle bird to the shorter man.

Everyone silently agrees to stop talking about Malfoy for the rest of the night, but he can practically feel the waves of anger rolling off Hermione. For a few moments he just lets her simmer in her anger, pointedly ignoring the hole she’s burning into the side of his face. After a while he puts down his drink and moves to wrap his arm around her waist.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers against her ear, delighting in the sight of the goose bumps breaking out on her arm. “I don’t want to fight, ‘Mione. I’m sorry.”

She doesn’t say anything, but slowly the tension in her body drains away and she relaxes enough to rest her head on his shoulder. He knows for a fact that this won’t be the last argument they have about Draco Malfoy working in the ministry, but in that moment, he chooses to ignore the problem and just enjoy their time with their friends.

   Ron and Harry are sent for fieldwork in Greece to monitor a little town that’s been suspected of housing Voldemort sympathizers. Unsurprisingly, their respective romantic partners talk both of their ears off about not dying.

“I’m serious, Ron,” Hermione hisses at him over dinner, her soup barely touched as she had spent the last 20 or so minutes reminding him that he absolutely cannot die. “The last time you were injured you had to stay St. Mungo’s for a week, recovering!”

“Listen, ‘Mione, I really appreciate your concern but I’m an Auror and I need you to trust me because I know what I’m doing,” he insists, talking around a mouthful of garlic bread. “We both knew it would be dangerous work, didn’t we?”

She huffs, spooning cold soup into her mouth, all the while glaring down at her bowl. He knows she’s only worried, but the way she says things makes him feel like she doesn’t quite trust him to be competent enough for the job.

“I still think you and the others should have undergone the same training as everyone else before you,” she finally says, her tone hesitant. She must be remembering the last big row they had about this particular topic, and both the thought and her words make Ron roll his eyes at her.

“I’ve been an Auror for more than three years now, Hermione, that’s the same amount of time that the others spent training.”

She looks like she wants to argue but the expression on his face must stop her, her lips clamping shut instead and her attention returning to the bowl in front of her. They eat in silence after that, neither looking at each other, and when they’re done Ron volunteers to do the dishes. Like her, he hasn’t mastered the cleaning spells his mum is famous for but, unlike her, he doesn’t claim that he’s just used to cleaning it the muggle way.

With the dishes put away he goes to find her in the small living room, poring over the details of their mission. He moves to sit beside her on the couch, letting her read the document for the fourth time since he gave the copy to her.

“I’ll be okay,” he murmurs, plucking the parchment out of her hand when he sees that she’s no longer reading it. “Harry and I are a good team—we’ll keep each other safe.”

“Just promise me you won’t engage them unless it’s absolutely necessary,” she pleads, turning her large eyes to look at him. “I know you want to go above and beyond all the time but please, just don’t be reckless.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he says instead, not trusting himself enough to promise such a thing. Everyone in the office knows that Robards is preparing Harry to be his successor, and with his best friend on the path to greatness, Ron is also eager to prove himself worthy of his job.

He watches her eyebrows pull into a frown and pulls her into his arms, kissing the top of her hair. “I’ll come home to you, like I always do. Believe me, yeah?”

That night she has another one of her nightmares and he apologizes with his words and with his hands that he’ll be gone for a month, leaving her alone to deal with her night terrors. In the morning he doesn’t wake her up, simply presses a kiss to her lips and leaves to meet Harry at the apparition point.

   Unsurprisingly, they both get injured but manage to survive the mission. The backup they called arrived just in time to round up the last wizards still running about, shooting curses at everyone, and both he and Harry had been rushed to St. Mungo’s. He doesn’t have any broken bones this time and it only takes a matter of minutes for the healers to fix him right up. Harry, on the other hand, had been hit with a nasty curse that had him bleeding profusely.

The healers were in the process of forcing blood replenishing potions down his partner’s throat when Ginny came running into the room, taking one good look at her boyfriend and all but collapsing into the chair beside Harry’s bed. Her eyes snap to look at Ron, a question in her eyes, and he responds with a nod. He knows that look, knows that she’s far too distraught to ask him outright if he’s okay, so he moves to give her and the healers some space.

“Is he going to be okay?” she turns to ask one of the healers, an elderly witch performing diagnostic spells on the injured wizard. “Why is he still bleeding so much?”

She starts arguing with the healers and Ron takes it as his cue to leave. Ginny doesn’t even acknowledge him when he moves to the door, her eyes firmly on Harry’s face and her hands clasped around his bloody one. He uses the hospital’s floo network to return to the office, heading straight to his cubicle to write down the details that he remembers from the last twenty-four hours. He shakes his head at the other Aurors still in the office who startle at his appearance. They look like they want to ask questions, but he just keeps walking until he’s seated at his desk, furiously writing on a piece of parchment.

His hands shake, the image of his best friend lying on the hospital bed and staining the white sheets with his blood still etched clearly onto his brain.  When Robards returns and summons him to his office, Ron does his best to look like he isn’t shaken. He relays by mouth what had happened, how the surveillance had been uneventful at first but had quickly taken a turn into dangerous territory a few weeks into the mission.

Robards nods at him after he finishes relaying the information. “Take the rest of the day off, Auror Weasley. I’ve been told that Potter is likely to regain consciousness tomorrow. Go home and rest, you deserve it after all that.”

Ron tells himself it’s the older wizard’s way of saying that they did a good job, so he does an awkward little salute and leaves the office. He debates visiting Harry but decides against it, knowing Ginny would alert all of them if his best friend were to wake up.

He gets home to an empty flat and all but collapses on the bed, shoes and ruined clothes still on his body and likely leaving bits of blood and dirt on the mattress. He tells himself he’ll clean it up later, right after he’s done resting his eyes…

He wakes up to the sound of the floo activating and hurried steps sounding from outside the room. The door to their bedroom flies open and in comes a visually dishevelled Hermione, hair wild and chest heaving with every laboured breath.

Her eyes seem to take in the darkness of the room and his figure sitting upright on the bed before she’s advancing on him, a finger jabbing at his chest. “Where have you been?” she asks, voice tinged with an almost hysterical tone. “I’ve looked for you everywhere! I had to hear from Smithson that Harry was in St. Mungo’s bleeding to death, and I couldn’t even find you there nor where you at your office. You didn’t think to tell me you were back?”

“I’m fine, thank you for asking,” he snaps back, her line of questioning instantly annoying him. He flings the covers off his body and stalks out of the room, ignoring her baffled spluttering.

“Ron, what is wrong with you? I’ve been worried sick for weeks and the moment you get back you don’t even think about telling your girlfriend that you’re safe and alive?”

“While you were worried, I was out there, in the field, and my best friend is bleeding to death as you’ve so kindly put it!” His voice turns into a shout towards the end, his frustration winning over the rational part of his brain telling him to put an end to this fight. “So why don’t you lay off my back, yeah?”

“He’s my best friend, too!” she shouts back, her arm flicking about, probably casting non-verbal silencing charms. “Would it have absolutely killed you to stop by my office before heading back here? Robards told me he sent you home hours ago and—”

“I was tired, Hermione, what can’t you understand about that?”

“—I had to learn from Malfoy that you haven’t visited Harry since he got there—”

“What in the blood hell was Draco sodding Malfoy doing in Harry’s room?”

This gives her pause, her face flushed and her hands balled into tight fists that were shaking by her sides. He has no doubt that he looks about the same as her, probably even worse off. He barely stops himself from insisting that she speak up, settling for crossing his arms over his chest and giving her a half-annoyed half-expectant look.

“He said he was working with the healers, apparently Robards called him in to see if he knew the dark spell that was used on Harry.”

“What? Sure, he knows the spell, he’s a bloody Death Eater for Circe’s sake. Why would Robards think Malfoy would help Harry?”

Her temper visibly flares at this. “I don’t know, Ron, maybe because Robards knows Malfoy’s not a Death Eater anymore and he expects people from his Department to assist whenever they can? Perhaps your superior is keen on trusting people that he hires to do their duty right?”

Ron just scoffs at this, waving a dismissive hand in front of her and moving to enter the kitchen, his original destination before she had roped him into a screaming match right in front of their shared bedroom.

“’Mione, honestly, I just want to eat a decent meal without having to listen to you tell me how much of an awful boyfriend I am for wanting to just go home after nearly dying on a mission,” he tells her, his back to her as he rummaged through the fridge for something to quiet down the rumblings of his stomach. He only turns back to look at her when he emerges with enough ingredients for a sandwich.

There are angry tears in her eyes and he immediately regrets blowing her off, immediately wishes he had been a bit more patient with her. He sets the food on the table and tries to reach out to pull her into a hug but she moves away, wiping at the tears that had managed to escape.

“I’m going to stay with Ginny at the hospital,” she says, already turning towards the floo.

“I don’t think they’ll let you stay there, love,” he calls out. “Family only, I believe.”

“Well then, I suppose this is a good time to bring up the fact that I’m what they fondly refer to as the Golden Girl,” she mutters, voice dripping with sarcasm. She steps into the floo, tosses the powder with one last look at him, then shouts her destination.

He returns to his unmade sandwich, his jaw clenched as tight as his fists and his appetite completely gone.

   Harry’s awake when he comes to visit the following morning, stopping by right before work. The man grins up at him, but he still must be in a lot of pain as it comes off more like a grimace than a good-natured smile. Ginny is by his side, holding his hand, and Hermione is surprisingly absent from the room.

Surprising as she hadn’t been in their flat when he woke up, and it didn’t seem like she had even returned at all during the whole time he had been asleep.

There’s an accusation in Ginny’s eyes that tells him she knows about what happened, but he ignores his younger sister, turning to Harry and clasping his other hand. “You had me worried there, you do know that, right?”

“I don’t know, actually, do tell.”

“Shut up, Harry,” he says, the two of them laughing quietly while Ginny just shakes her head, an amused expression warring with the concern still on her face. “So, Malfoy was here?”

“Ron—,” Ginny starts, but Harry is already nodding his confirmation. She sighs, retracting her hand from Harry’s hold and moving to grab the book lying on the bedside table. “Robards thought Malfoy might have an idea about the curse that hit Harry, and he brought this for the healers to confirm his guess.”

Ron eyes the proffered book, warily taking it from Ginny’s hold and examining the front cover. The words are in a foreign language, one he suspects to be Latin. He hands it back to Ginny and turns to Harry. “So, he knew what hit you?”

“Even helped perform the counter-spell,” Harry once again confirms, not seeming even the slightest bit staggered by this fact. “I’ll be able to come back to work tomorrow, mate.”

Ron quickly pushes down the negative thoughts he’s having over Malfoy of all people helping Harry, leaning down to clasp the other man’s hand again and telling him he’ll see him tomorrow. He leaves the room just as he hears Ginny uselessly pleading with Harry to at least take the rest of the week off to recover.

The thought that Draco Malfoy went to St. Mungo’s, helped the healers identify the spell that had nearly killed Ron’s best friend, and performed the counter-spell that had saved Harry’s life—it’s disturbing, to the say least. He spends the rest of the morning resolutely working on paperwork, hellbent on keeping his head from trying to dissect this information to shreds much like what Hermione would do when faced with a situation she can’t quite understand (yet).

Hermione. At the reminder of his girlfriend, he feels his chest fill with guilt. The witch had been worried about him, and although she had resorted to nagging, he can no longer convince himself that he did nothing wrong. He thinks about the days he had spent away from her during every mission he’s ever completed, the thought of returning to her waiting arms pushing him to do his job better, to get it over with faster.

He decides to swing by her office for lunch to fix things between them, because they’re who they are—they get into big, explosive rows that usually has one of them storming off, but they always make up somehow. He would apologise for whatever insensitive comment he might have made, and she would admit that she could have also handled the situation better.

Ron feels dismayed that their reunion after six agonisingly long weeks had not followed any of the scenarios that had played in his mind, but he knows he can still fix this, and they would make it up with each other.

Because that’s what they always do.

   Hermione forgives him. It’s one of those fights that takes more than just a sincere apology, promises that he won’t do it again, and a nice dinner to fix. For days she acts lukewarm around him, responding to his attempts at reconciliation but wary of forgiving him all too quickly lest he make the mistake of assuming he would get away with doing something like that again.

So he woos her: brings home a bouquet of flowers for the first time in a year, cooks for her to the best of his nearly non-existent abilities, and initiates the conversations he’d rather not have. He listens to her telling him what he had done wrong and how much it had hurt her, and she urges him to tell her his side.

She cries, and she tries to hide the fact that she’s crying but he knows her—knows how she cries for house elves and other creatures she has deemed to be the oppressed minority, knows how she would defend a garden gnome from being terrorised by children, and knows that she feels so much, perhaps too much, all at once despite her being the rational brains of the Golden Trio.

He loves her for it, so he tells her, and he kisses away the tears and she allows him to finally feel her. The days that had stretched between them had done nothing to his memory of her body underneath him, her skin still the same smooth expanse interrupted by the occasional battle scars, her voice still the same breathy lullaby that does the exact opposite of what a lullaby should be doing—it wakes up something inside him that only comes alive when he’s around her, when he’s inside her.

When he comes her name is the sound that leaves his lips, and in that moment, he knows they’ll always be meant for each other.

   Hermione visits him and he scoops her up into a bear hug, lifting her off her feet and twirling her around. Her laughter fills his cubicle and he momentarily forgets that he’s swamped with overdue reports and that Harry is out on a mission with Robards himself.  

“Are you ready for lunch?” she asks, tucking a stray curl behind her ear and grinning up at him.

He feels his own smile slip a bit, his eyebrows drawing together in confusion. Did they make plans? “What?” The memory hits him just as Hermione’s expression turns into a frown, her arms loosening their hold around his waist. “Bollocks. I totally forgot, love, I’m so sorry.”

“Oh. I… that’s quite okay, did you have other plans?” She looks like it’s far from okay, but they have been making an effort to fight less after their big row about three weeks ago and so she probably doesn’t want to incite another one right then and there. He had been careful to avoid voicing his irritations with Malfoy’s continued success in training and he and Hermione have had blissful weeks together ever since.

“No, I just haven’t finished the reports I was supposed to hand in today and I’m kind of cramming them,” he reluctantly admits, his eyes flicking down to the long length of parchment he’s still working on. Again, he curses Harry’s brilliant timing.

“The Andrew case?” Her voice has risen a bit and her arms have completely fallen away from their embrace around his body. He misses the contact as soon as it’s gone but he knows what she’s going to say next. “I’ve been reminding you about that since last week, Ron.”

“I know, okay? You don’t have to nag me about it now when I’m already so stressed.” Like usual, the moment the words are out of his mouth he immediately regrets them. He sees her eyes flash with hurt and anger and he grabs her hands, bringing them to his lips in an effort to fix the situation. He breathes a silent sigh of relief when she doesn’t pull back.

“Look, I’m really happy you came by today. Sorry I forgot about lunch.” He hopes the sincerity in his voice is enough for now, as he sees no other way to finish the reports without skipping on the meal.

She sighs, her hands slipping away from his grasp. Hermione smiles up at him, a small one that says she knows there’s nothing to be done about it now. “Don’t worry about it, let’s just reschedule.”

As she walks away from his cubicle without a backward glance at him, he realises that it’s always been significantly easier to deal with her anger than with her disappointment.

   He doesn’t quite understand the image before him. Just a few minutes ago he had been in a meeting with the rest of the office, discussing information about a raid that would be conducted next week. He had left the room with Harry, the two of them talking about a report they were supposed to get started on and just about to go downstairs to meet Hermione for lunch.

Several feet away from them, standing in front of the entrance to the office, is Hermione. The peculiar part is how Draco Malfoy is standing beside her. Even more peculiar is that they appear to be engaged in some sort of conversation that has Hermione flinging her hands around in wild gestures and Draco’s arm crossing over his chest.

Even from this far away Ron can tell that the blonde git is smiling. He pokes Harry with his elbow, pointing towards the direction of the anomaly, and the other man seems alarmed for a moment. They both start to make their way towards Hermione, Ron certain that whatever Malfoy is currently saying to her would be something foul and prejudiced.

Just as they’re about to reach them the situation takes a dive into what is the most bizarre thing he has ever seen in his life; Hermione snorts, not a sarcastic one, but a snort of air that is followed by genuine laughter. Malfoy, as predicted, is smirking, but even Ron can see that it’s not a smirk filled with contempt.

He finds himself completely flummoxed by the interaction that he stops dead in his track a few metres away from them. Harry keeps walking, shooting him a look as he passes him, and quickly inserts himself between Hermione and Malfoy.

“Hey, what’s going on here?”

Ron gets his feet to move and he makes his way to stand beside Hermione, his hand finding hers and his eyes staring straight into Malfoy’s. The smile on the blonde’s pointy face disappears with their entrance, his expression a carefully constructed mix between indifference and outright boredom. The witch, either oblivious to the tension radiating from the men around her or simply unwilling to recognise it, keeps grinning.

“Malfoy here was telling me that the secret to a more palatable antidote to Veritaserum is, what was it again?” she pretends to ask. “Right, three medium-sized eggs from a Fwooper.” She laughs again and Ron watches Malfoy struggle to keep himself from smirking back at her.

“Try it, Granger, I have no doubts that you would have no problems convincing one to give you some of her eggs,” he drawls, the bored inflection of his voice grating on Ron’s nerve. He nods to her, then to both him and Harry, and promptly walks away.

It’s not until they’re in the cafeteria, their small table protected with about a dozen silencing charms by Harry, that Ron begins to confront Hermione.

“What in Merlin’s balls was that, ‘Mione? Why were you joking around with Malfoy?” 

“I wasn’t joking around with him, Ron, it was actually heading towards an argument about the benefits of using Cinchona pubescens over Cinchona officinalis in brewing a blood-replenishing potion,” she says, the speed at which she speaks almost causing him to go cross-eyed. “And even if I were joking around with him, what would be wrong with that?”

“What would be wrong with that?” he repeats, his tone incredulous and his eyes nearly bulging out of their sockets at her. “What do you mean, what would be wrong with that? He’s Malfoy! He’s a Death Eater!”

He notices a few people throwing surreptitious looks towards their table and he whips his wand to throw several concealment charms around them. All the while he watches Hermione fuming in front of him, her nostrils flared and her fists wrapped tightly around her utensils.

“Ron, don’t you think you might be overreacting some?” Harry interjects before either of them could speak. “If Hermione wants to have a conversation with Malfoy at work then there’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Thank you, Harry, it seems my boyfriend has somehow deluded himself into thinking that I have to ask permission from him to talk to ex-Death Eaters working at the same place as I do.”

“Really, Harry? You’re siding with her?” Suddenly, their seating arrangement makes him angry. Harry and Hermione sit on the same side of the table, opposite from him, and he finds it aptly symbolic of how they all stand on this Malfoy issue.

“As a matter of fact, I am. I already told you, Ron, Malfoy’s a decent bloke nowadays and has been for nearly two years now. You need to stop insisting that he’s a Death Eater because he simply isn’t.”

Ron turns to Hermione, his anger blinding him, making his tongue loose. “He wanted people like you dead, ‘Mione. He wanted Voldemort to kill mudbloods, are you really forgetting that?”

“What the hell, Ron?” It’s Harry that reacts first, his eyes going wide at the use of the slur and his own hands balling into fists on top of the table.

“It’s true! Just because she wants to see the good in everyone, it doesn’t mean there is actually any good in there to see.”

He looks at her, his chest tightening at the sight of her eyes filling with angry tears, but he pushes the guilt down and holds on to his own anger. She moves to leave but he beats her to it, rising so suddenly he almost sends the whole table crashing. “Don’t bother, I’ll leave. Enjoy the rest of your lunch break.”

   At first, he refuses to apologise to both of them. Harry had confronted him the day after the big blowout fight and they almost settled things with fists. In the end he told Ron how much of an ass he was for treating Hermione like that and made him promise that he’ll do everything to fix their relationship.

Harry had not been amused with Ron’s response that had been mostly a noncommittal nod of his head, but that was all he was getting.

Hermione had refused to talk to him for over a week, kicking him out of their shared room and making him sleep on the sofa in the living area. The first few days he doesn’t even try to talk to her, still adamantly holding on to the belief that for once, he was the one in the right. However, as most of their fights go, he later realised his mistake and only then does he try to mend things between them.

It takes a long time, one of their longest fights in all of their years together, but they eventually reconcile, and he finally gets his spot back in their bed and in her arms.

He pretends he doesn’t notice that things aren’t quite the same after that.

   “I’ve been offered a promotion,” she says after swallowing a bite of her salad. “If I accept, I’ll be working in the same Department as you and Harry.”

His eyes widen at this. “As an Auror? I thought you’ve had enough of chasing after dark wizards.” That’s what she had told everyone when they had asked her why she wasn’t joining the other Auror recruits, and to this day he had always thought it would always be true for her.

“No, no. I’ll be in the legal team,” she clarifies. “Kingsley personally offered me the position, he said I could start a week after I accept the promotion.”

The smile that rips its away across his face almost hurts, but then he’s rushing to pull her into a tight embrace, overjoyed by the news. He had always thought that she just isn’t meant to be slaving away at the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures all her life, that she had always been meant for something greater than that. It’s a wonderful bonus that she would now be working in the same Department as him and Harry, practically just a few skips away from each other.

They’re both laughing, smiling at each other, and he even steals a few kisses here and there. “I’m so happy for you, ‘Mione. This is where you belong, making actual change and not just pushing paper and fighting against red tape.”

Her smile falls a little but he attributes it to her thinking about all the times she had to stay up late due to ridiculous revisions that had no other purpose other than to stall her pursuits for equal rights. They return to their food but the atmosphere between them is significantly lighter than it had been in months.

Ron starts to believe that life may be heading back to the good days but then he remembers that Malfoy’s training ends in a month.

   The day Hermione transfers he immediately visits her new office, lifting her off her feet and twirling her around in the air for a few seconds. Her laugh warms his heart and her kisses makes his fingers tingle for something more, but he just kisses her back and tells her how good her office looks.

She’s leading him by the hand, circling the office as if it were much bigger than it really is, telling him how she’d like to add a few plants here and there, hang up some more art works and pictures. Her smile is infectious, brightening up the room effortlessly, and he thinks she really does look like she belongs there.

“Listen, ‘Mione, I booked a table at this restaurant to celebrate your new job,” he says, holding her face in his hands. “What do you say? Would you like to have a really fancy dinner with me?”

If possible, her grin just grows even brighter. “I would love to have dinner with you, Ronald Weasley.”

When their lips meet in a slow, languid kiss, he feels the toll of the last few months draining away from his body. He finally feels as if The Grandest of Rows, as Harry and Ginny liked to call it, back in the ministry cafeteria is finally behind them for good. Between her new job and him making progress as an Auror, he thinks the good days are finally eclipsing the bad again.

He can only hope that he isn’t wrong.

   A week after their successful dinner, Harry proposes to Ginny. They suspect that he had done it in the quiet of 12 Grimmauld place, as everyone had been surprised to see the large diamond sitting comfortably on Ginny’s finger that hadn’t been there before. He’s happy for them, even feels his eyes get the slightest bit glassy when Ginny runs up to hug him and Harry whispers to him that he better have dress robes befitting of a “best man”.

He asks him what a best man is, and the brunet just laughs, clapping him on the back in the awkward way that Harry just does things.  

Everyone is happy for them, no one happier than Molly of course, but Ron is happy for them and he sees Hermione trying to discreetly wipe at her eyes when she finishes embracing Ginny. He’s happy that his sister got engaged to the man she’s been in love with since she knew how to develop a crush on someone, and he’s happy that she’s happy with whatever way Harry had proposed to her.

But when he looks at Hermione, at her bare finger, clapping along with everyone else, he knows that he wouldn’t ask her in private like Harry had asked Ginny. Ron knows in his bones that when he finally asks the question, he would declare to the whole of wizarding Britain how much he loves the witch standing beside him.

Somehow, he doesn’t doubt that she would say yes.

   Malfoy is given the only cubicle left unoccupied, thankfully for Ron it’s the farthest one from his own space and it’s sandwiched between the wall and Ernie Macmillan’s cubicle. Robards makes a speech to welcome the only graduate, one that is heavily laced with reminders to trust his decision and his ability to judge one’s character with frightening accuracy.

“Lastly, and as some of you may already know, Auror Malfoy is a skilled Occlumens. As part of his duties, he has offered to train anyone who wishes to learn both Legilimency and Occlumency. That would be all.”

With that everyone goes back to their respective cubicles while Ron makes his way to Harry’s. Seamus is already there, eating one of the pumpkin pasties Ron’s mum had sent over. “Here to rant to Harry, then?” the Irish asks, crumbs flying out of his mouth with every word. “Don’t bother, he already told me he won’t be hearing any complaints about Malfoy today.”

“Who in the blood hell would want to take lessons from him?” Ron asks anyway, grabbing one of the pasties and taking a huge bite out of it.

“Didn’t Molly give you your own pasties? Stop eating mine,” Harry says, hiding away the treats much to the other men’s disappointment. “To answer your rhetorical question, I would take lessons from him.”

“What?” both Ron and Seamus ask, in the same time and using the exact same tone of disbelief. Ron continues, “I don’t know what you’re trying to prove, mate, probably still going on about the not Death Eater anymore thing, but you’ve gone completely mental if you think you want to take lessons from Draco Malfoy.”

“I’m not trying to prove anything, Ron. I never got to finish the Occlumency lessons with Snape, and it’s something that could really be useful for the job,” Harry explains, as if it made any sense at all.

Ron throws his hands up and shakes his head at his best friend, turning around to leave the cubicle before they get into another fight about Malfoy. He doesn’t particularly care that the git in question would be within hearing distance of their shouts, but he does care about Robards’ reminders. Just as he’s about to enter his cubicle he sees Hermione’s head pop in from the entrance and their eyes meet. She holds up rolls of parchment and beckons him to come to her.

“Hey, what are those?” he asks, giving her a quick hug. She had been adamant that they refrain from any displays of public affection, and he sees that even an embrace like that has her blushing and looking around the office for nosy watchers.

“I believe they’re yours, you forgot them at the table this morning at breakfast.” She hands them over with a shake of her head but she’s smiling and it makes him smile, too. “I’m going to head out for a meeting, actually, and I may not be back until much later.”

He nods, stashing the parchment into his robes. “I’ll walk you to the lift,” he tells her, already leading the way. They stop in front of the lifts, waiting for one to take her, and he asks, “What’s this meeting about?”

Before she can answer, they hear someone walking behind, and the both of them turn at the same time to see Malfoy making his way towards them. He stops when he’s just a few feet away from the two of them, his hands tucked inside the pockets of his trousers. “Granger. Weasley.”

It’s the first time Ron’s heard him acknowledge him in the three years that he’s been training to become an Auror, yet somehow the way his name rolls of the snake’s tongue still sounds so familiar to his ears. It’s the way the git says it, he decides, with that bored tone and the judgment simmering just underneath the aristocratic drawl.

Ron wants to spit at him, but he holds himself back. Barely. “Malfoy.”

“Malfoy,” Hermione says in return, her tone completely neutral whereas his had been full of barely concealed disgust. When the blonde only nods and moves to face the lifts, Hermione’s eyes flash to warn Ron, his mouth already opening to protest.

The lifts arrive and Ron sees that there’s only one other person inside, a witch that he doesn’t even recognize. “I’ll come with you, ‘Mione. I’ll walk you outside.”

Malfoy has already stepped into the lift, one eyebrow arched as he and the other Ministry worker wait for them to get on.

“Ron, go back to work. That’s complete unnecessary,” the last part is whispered so low that only he can hear, but he hears the warning all the same. Don’t make a scene, don’t make the same mistakes as last time.

Every inch of his being wants to argue with her, to tell her it isn’t safe to be riding a lift with Malfoy, but he keeps his mouth shut and watches her take the spot nearest to the opening. With one last look at him, Hermione disappears behind the closed doors of the lift.

His jaw clenches, because right before the doors had closed and the lift had taken them away, he could have sworn he saw the amused smiled on Draco Malfoy’s face.

   She gets home safe that night and only rolls her eyes at Ron’s distress. He tells her he had been worried sick that something had happened to her, that Malfoy had somehow harmed her.

“Ron, he’s an Auror now, not a Death Eater. At this point, you’re the one being prejudiced.”

That shuts him up, not because he agrees with her but because he’s gotten tired of reminding them again and again what kind of person Draco Malfoy is. Instead of arguing any further, he tells her he’s glad he’s safe and then proceeds to walk out of the bedroom.

She doesn’t even follow him out.

   Three months into his job and Malfoy still doesn’t have a permanent partner. The two assignments he’s been given he’d had to complete on his own, and the git had seemed unaffected by this. With Neville’s resignation, citing that he wants to teach Herbology at Hogwarts, their numbers were simply uneven and so no one was available to become Malfoy’s partner, much to Ron’s delight and Malfoy’s apparent disinterest.

Ron would never say it out loud, especially not in front of Harry and Hermione, but he’s glad that the arsehole has to do all his jobs alone. He would have to write reports on his own, he would have no one to back him up if one of his surveillance missions go suddenly awry, and he most certainly doesn’t even have anyone to talk to in the office except Robards and Harry, and even that was extremely rare.

“Heard Ernie there tried to talk to Malfoy today, maybe tried for a little pureblood reunion,” Seamus tells him. The both of them have their eyes on Malfoy, standing in line at the cafeteria and looking as if he had expected all of the peasants to bow down to him for gracing them with his presence. “Apparently Malfoy hadn’t even noticed that the poor bloke was standing right in front of him, had his pointy nose buried in a book or some shite.”

Ron isn’t surprised that Malfoy is still acting like the pureblood snob he is, probably thinks lowly of Macmillan despite the other’s pureblood status solely because he was a Hufflepuff. He doesn’t voice any of this because Hermione’s sitting right in front of him, her own nose buried in a book. Harry rolls his eyes at the two and keeps eating his sandwich, and for a moment their table is quiet.

Seamus nudges him after a few minutes, subtly gesturing for him to look towards where Malfoy’s taking a seat by himself. The table is unsurprisingly empty and several feet away from theirs, and despite the lunchtime rush, no one tries to sit with him. Ron catches a few wizards looking around for a table with seats left, spotting his table then seeing that they would have to share a table with Draco Malfoy, and promptly walking out of the cafeteria.

He turns to look away from the pariah and return to eating his food when he sees that Hermione has been watching the same scene as him. Her eyes dart around, looking at the nervous wizards and witches who keep avoiding Malfoy’s table, then they settle on the man himself.

Ron’s not sure, but he thinks he sees pity in her eyes as she briefly watches Malfoy sitting all alone. She doesn’t catch him watching her and he doesn’t say a thing about it.

   She’s pissed off about the dishes and, somehow, she’s also pissed off that he doesn’t want to read her draft for a new law she’s trying to pass.

“I don’t understand how you expect me to read that and be of any help, ‘Mione, you know that’s not my thing.” He’s grumbling, he knows, scrubbing at the plates harder than necessary and making a ton of noise just to show his annoyance. “Do you think I don’t have work to do? Papers to write?”

“I only asked you, Ronald, because it’s research on pureblood traditions, and seeing as you’re a pureblood—,” she cuts herself off with a groan, and even with his back to her he can almost see her pacing back and forth. “Sod it, I’m sorry I thought you could give me insights on something you have knowledge on that I clearly don’t.”

“Have you seen our family, Hermione? Do you think we practice “pureblood traditions” in our household?’ he asks, whirling around and spilling soapy water every which way. “I already struggle with my own paperwork and you want me to worry over yours?”

“Forgive me for asking my boyfriend for a favour!”

He turns back to the dishes, resuming his angry scrubbing. “You know you can ask me anything, just don’t expect me to be able to help you with your job by reading over 15 metres of parchment for you.”

She doesn’t say anything in response to that, and he hears her stomping away. Lately their fights almost always end up that way, with one of them walking away and the other giving them space to cool down. This time Ron doesn’t chase after her because he wants to get the bloody dishes done, one less thing to have her nagging him about. When he’s finished, he moves to the living room, not surprised to see that she isn’t there, and plops down on the sofa to watch some telly.

He keeps the volume on the lowest setting that he can still hear, knowing how much she hates it when the thing get too loud, stating that it distracts her from her readings. He keeps watching for an hour or so, his mind mostly removed from the muggle show and instead reeling from their recent fight. He only shuts it off when he feels exhausted enough to know that he’ll most likely fall right asleep once his head hits the pillows, an ideal situation to avoid getting into another row with the irate witch. 

She’s lying on the bed, facing away from him, but he knows she’s still awake. When he slides into his spot, he can feel her stiffen beside him, so he keeps a respectful distance between them that only ever exists when they’re fighting like this.

“If you think he’s changed, why don’t you ask Malfoy for help? He’d know all about pureblood traditions,” he whispers, moving around so his back is to her and his body is precariously close to the edge of the bed. His heart is beating fast in his chest, knowing that the comment would further annoy Hermione, but there’s no way for him to grab the words from the air and shove them back inside him so he just waits for her to respond.

For a long moment there’s only silence from her part, stretching out long enough that he begins to suspect that she hadn’t even heard him in the first place. He thinks she may have already fallen asleep, so he stops fighting to keep his eyes open, gives in to the urge to slip into unconsciousness.

“Maybe I will.”

   She’s watching him again, this time her brows are drawn together as if she’s trying to figure him out. Ron doesn’t think Hermione knows that he’s aware of what she’s doing and, although he’s tempted to ask why she stares at Malfoy for a few seconds every time she sees the bloke, he doesn’t know if he wants to bring to light his observation.

Sometimes she would look at him and there would be confusion in her eyes, sometimes it would be something akin to pity, and sometimes there would be something in her expression that he can’t quite put a name to.

He keeps eating, his eyes flicking away from her face when he sees her begin to turn away from her scrutinization of Malfoy. He knows that if he were to ask, she would only explain how she feels bad for the bloke being the greatest pariah of the wizarding world.

It’s just pity. He knows it for sure.

   They’ve been fighting more, but the fights have grown shorter as Ron has gone into the habit of simply walking away whenever things began to get too heated for him. They would make up, promise to do their best to not get into another row, and then things would be peaceful for a few blessed days before one of them sets the other one off.

It’s exhausting, having to fight with her all the time, but he knows that it’s just because of the stress of her new job and the fact that she’s been helping Ginny with the wedding preparations. He tries to be more understanding of this, he really does, which is why he resolves to make things better between them to ease some of the problems off her shoulders.

Ron visits Hermione’s office, planning to surprise her with takeout from a muggle restaurant she loves so much, only to find no other than Draco Malfoy lounging one of the chairs in front of her desk. He sees red at the sight, Hermione sitting behind her desk, the two of them sporting similar poses: arms crossed over their chests, an eyebrow raised in challenge, and a ghost of a smirk playing on their lips.

It strikes him then how similar they are, but he quickly stomps down on the thought as he finds that it disturbs him to no end.

“What in Merlin’s balls do you think you’re doing here, Malfoy?”

Hermione looks up then and he thinks it’s alarm that flashes across her face, her eyes widening for a fraction of a second. He wants to scoff, knows she’s worried he’ll make a scene and maybe even get into a fight with the snake, so he pushes away from the door and goes to place the bag of takeout on the table. From where he’s standing, he easily towers over the blonde still sitting on the leather chair, face impassive and fingers steepled in front of him.

“I asked you a question, Malfoy,” he grits out, jaw clenched fists in clear view.

“I’m sure Granger can explain that you, Weasley,” the blonde finally answers, rising from the chair and dusting off his robes. “No need for me to do it for her.”

He’s about to grab the Death Eater by his shoulder but Hermione’s hand shoots out, stopping him. Malfoy exits the office without so much as backward glance, closing the door behind him and leaving Ron alone with his girlfriend.

“He just came by to lend me some books, Ron. You can calm down now.” She gestures to the stack of books sitting on the corner of her table. “Is this Chinese takeout?”

He ignores the last question. “Why is Draco Malfoy lending you books?”

She sighs, gesturing with her hand for him to pick up one of the books. When he does, she starts explaining, “I bumped into him at the atrium the other day and I mentioned that I’m working on eradicating the laws biased towards pureblood. He said he’d look in their library for the journals his ancestors kept, the ones that had helped pass these laws.”

“He could have just given you the books and been on his merry, slimy way. He didn’t have to sit down and chat with you,” he argues, setting the book down with a little more force than absolutely necessary. Hermione raises her eyebrow at this.

“I can’t seem to find the problem with him chatting with me. If you haven’t noticed, no one talks to him here, Ron. It’s almost been a year since he officially became an Auror and yet he still doesn’t have a partner, Harry told me he keeps volunteering for the more dangerous assignments all on his own! Why can’t you just be a little bit more forgiving?”

He feels his eyes bulge out upon hearing the last bit of her tirade. “Forgiving? Why should I forgive him when he has done absolutely nothing to ask for my forgiveness? For anyone’s forgiveness?”

“He’s apologized to me,” she bites out, jaw clenched as tight as his and eyes challenging. “And to Harry, to Ginny, Luna, Neville. He’s apologized to everyone who gave him the chance to.”

Instantly, he feels the hot flash of betrayal strike his chest. “Why is this the first time I’m hearing about this?”

Hermione throws her hands up, as if he’s the exhausting one. “Because you hate the man! You would just say something about his apology being fake, that we shouldn’t believe a word out of his mouth. You would just argue with me if I had told you, and I am getting so tired of arguing about Draco Malfoy.”

He wants to say more, wants to argue that she still shouldn’t have kept that that from him, wants to tell her how hurt he feels. Instead, he clamps his mouth shut and slumps down onto a chair, the one Malfoy hadn’t been using, and just watches her as he watches him back.

“I don’t want to argue with you about him anymore. If you don’t want to give him a chance, fine, but don’t make it seem like I’m not allowed to form my own opinions on someone’s character based on sound observations and treat them according to those observations.”

He still doesn’t answer, simply blinks up at her until she huffs and settles down onto her own seat. When she asks him if they can just eat their lunch in peace, he wordlessly sets out their food. They eat in silence, and when he leaves, he takes the trash out with him without saying goodbye to her.

   They don’t fight about Malfoy anymore, but not because Ron starts believing that the git has somehow changed. He resolves to let his friends and girlfriend believe whatever they want to believe, knowing that in the end they would see with their own eyes how wrong they are. Whenever he sees Harry talking to Malfoy, he feels that familiar flare of betrayal somewhere in his chest, but he never acts on it. No one brings up the git’s name when he’s around and he never brings it up, either. Along the way, he starts thinking that he could just pretend that the man simply doesn’t exist.

It’s a hard task to accomplish when he notices how easy it is for Hermione to talk to the blonde. He breaks his “No Mention of Malfoy” rule one night, confronting her after once again seeing him lounging inside her office.

“Are you friends now? With Malfoy, that is.”

It’s a quiet question. He tries to keep his voice light, non-accusatory, but he knows he can’t hide the accusation from his eyes so he keeps them trained on his pasta.

“I wouldn’t go as far to say that him and I are friends, no.”

“Then how far would you go?” At this, he finally looks up, letting her see the doubt clouding his eyes.

If she’s offended by the question, she doesn’t show. “I’d say we have the same relationship as you two—colleagues, only I don’t mind talking to him.”

He shrugs, pretends to redirect his attention back to his food, but inside he struggles to believe her words. He wouldn’t put it past her to actually befriend the git, and he swears he would sooner watch Voldemort himself rise from the grave than see Malfoy be integrated into their bubble.

   He’s on his way to an emergency meeting when he hears her laughter, unmistakable in its timbre and its ability to make him feel warm things in his gut. He rounds a corner to see her chatting with Malfoy and another woman from her part of the department.

When he watches the man say something to her, causing her to laugh even harder, the warmth in his stomach turns to ice. He has a feeling that if he were to ask her again if she’s friends with him, the answer would be dramatically different.

   He gets a ring. It’s simple, a style he knows she would love, with a diamond that’s not too big nor too small, a band that’s not too thick nor too thin. A ring that would look perfect on her, and both Harry and Ginny agree that she would love it. He tells them he’s going to propose soon, maybe after the wedding, maybe once the two come back from their honeymoon, and they encourage him.

“It’s about time,” Ginny says, handing him back the box. “What made you finally get a move on?”

He tells them he feels it’s finally the right time. He tells them he knows that the timing would be perfect, that the proposal itself would be perfect. He tells them that when he looks at her, he no longer sees his girlfriend, that he’s started to see his wife.

He doesn’t tell them that he’s scared that if he waits any longer, something might happen that would take her away from him.

   Some would argue that their argument in her office might have been the beginning of the end. It starts with the little things: he forgets the last time she made breakfast for him and the last time he made tea for her. She spends a day at the Burrow without him and doesn’t try to convince him to come with her. That same day, she doesn’t kiss him when she gets home and he doesn’t ask how the day went. They stop brushing their teeth together in the mornings because she starts waking up earlier than him to get a head start. When Harry finally, finally gets promoted to Head of the Auror Office, she doesn’t tell him that she knows his own promotion will come soon enough, that he just has to wait because she knows he works just as hard as Harry does.

Little things, but then they start becoming bigger.

He gets sent to a mission and she doesn’t nag him about it. She kisses him goodbye when he leaves and he tells himself it’s only his imagination making him feel that her lips have become cold against his. When he gets back, he “forgets” to swing by her office to tell her he’s safe, once again heading home to sleep. He can’t tell if he’s surprised or not when she doesn’t get mad, simply hugs him and tells him she’s glad he’s home safe. Somehow, even her embrace feels distant.

Then even bigger things happen.

They fight at the annual Ministry Christmas party and he lets her storm off with tears in her eyes. He doesn’t bother looking for her before going home, and when he finds the door to their bedroom locked he simply resolves himself to sleeping on the couch, all the while thinking it unfair that he always has to be the one kicked out of their room.

She stops clinging to him after waking up from a nightmare. Instead, she gets up from the bed and tells him he’s going to make some tea to calm herself down. She doesn’t say it in a way that would make him feel like his arms are no longer a source of comfort for her, but feel it he does all the same.

They stop going home together. She throws herself into a new legislation, one that keeps her beyond busy and he thinks she would have excitedly told him about it if only these big things just stopped happening to them.

Through all this, through the small things that become bigger and the big things that keep popping up, he knows he should do something. Some days he feels like he’s watching their relationship crumble right in front of his eyes, the pieces slowly but surely falling to his feet. With a little liquid courage, he goes to Harry for advice, but his best friend only tells him that he should be talking to her about it and not to him. He begrudgingly accepts that he’s right, but when he promises that he’ll talk to her, that he’ll make it right, that he’ll do everything to fix it, that soon he’ll pop the question and everything will be alright, he knows it’s a lie.

A part of him feels like he can’t be the only one who’s noticed. To say that Hermione is smarter and more intuitive than he is would be the understatement of the century, so he finds it hard to believe that she hasn’t noticed the gaping hole forming in the middle of their relationship. He waits, waits for her to acknowledge how she’s changed, how she’s noticed that things aren’t the same between them, waits for her to make the first move towards fixing them, but none of that ever comes.

He keeps noticing small things that become bigger and bigger until he feels suffocated by them, and maybe she’s become suffocated too because one day he comes home to find that she’s already sitting at the table, but instead of having dinner in front of her she has the box clutched in her hands.

The box, the one that he had kept inside the drawer on his side of the bed. The box that contains the ring, the perfect ring, the ring that he had foolishly hoped would fix things.

When he notices the tears cascading down her cheeks, he allows himself to half-believe that they’re tears of joy. When the first words out of her mouth are “we need to talk”, he allows himself to half-hope that she only thinks it’s too soon, that she still has so much to do before she can settle down and start a family with him.

When he finally gets to look into her eyes, he accepts what he knows to be true, because during the small things that kept getting bigger and bigger, he had noticed something else. Had noticed the way she still watched, the way she kept staring, the way she continued to glow and emit the same warmth through her eyes that she used to give him.

He had noticed that those things didn’t disappear; she still glows, just not around him.

“There’s someone else. It’s Malfoy, isn’t it?”

He can tell that she’s not expecting this. She looks at him, eyes swollen and red, lips trembling, and he sees guilt mixed with surprise written all over her face.

“You found out,” she finally says, voice barely above a scratchy whisper.

“Always the tone of surprise.”

“I didn’t have an affair with him, if that’s what you think. I just—”

As she speaks, he realises that he’s angry. What had she said before when she was trying to tell him about that PTSD thing? The five stages of grief? If he remembers correctly, it begins with denial, but Ron had already gone through that these past months, when he kept noticing the small things and the bigger things and the way Draco fucking Malfoy made his girlfriend laugh and smile. No, he’s done with denial. He’s skipping over to anger now.

“I know. You want to know how I know you didn’t have an affair with him?” he seethes, relishing in the way her mouth slams shut mid-speech. “Because I know that he’s a bigoted Death Eater scum. He’ll never want you just because you have muggle parents. He’s a pureblood elitist and he’ll never look at you past your blood status. You know this, Hermione. You can’t possibly be that blind.”

“I do. I know all that. I never had plans of telling him, Ron. He’ll never want me, he can never love me, but it doesn’t matter because you deserve someone who wants you. You don’t deserve someone who fell in love with someone else. You deserve someone who can love you the way you love them.”

She pushes the box towards him and he feels well and utterly confused. “You’re throwing this away, you’re throwing us away, for a man who would never want to be with you, much less love you? You’re throwing us away to have nothing with a person who would never even deem you worthy of the magic you possess? Are you serious, Hermione?”

“What would you rather I do, Ron? Stay here, with you, pretending that I still love you when all I think about when I look at you is how I wish, I wish we would have just stayed as friends. That way I wouldn’t have to hurt you like this.”

“That’s a load of codswallop and you know it.”

She doesn’t immediately reply, only rises from her seat. That’s when he notices the bags at her feet, which she proceeds to magically shrink and stuff into the pockets of her jeans. “You can have the flat, Ron. I’ll stay at my parents’ house for now while I look for a new one.”

“Don’t do this, Hermione. We can talk about this. Please.”

Ah, another stage of grief: bargaining. At this point, he feels ready to drop to his knees to beg her to stay.

More tears slip free from her eyes and she reaches out to cradle his face in her hands, kissing him softly on the cheeks. “I’m so sorry,” she whispers against his skin. When she pulls away, he sees something wet on her lips that makes him realise that he’s also crying. “Goodbye, Ron. I hope one day you find it in you to forgive me. I would like to become your friend again, if you would allow it.”

She steps back and he wills the tears to stop blurring his vision, tries to wipe at his eyes so he can see her apparate away, but he can’t bring himself to lift his arms and only hears the tell-tale crack. He isn’t sure if it’s the sound of her leaving or the sound of his world splitting down the middle. He tells himself he’ll follow her, in a minute, once the ground stops shaking and once the lead in his stomach stops weighing him down, keeping him rooted to the spot.

When he collapses into a heap on the floor, his last coherent thought is how he wishes he had done something sooner.

   He wants to ask her if it’s possible to go back to certain stages of grief. Yesterday, he had thought he was already in the bargaining stage, but today he feels like he’s back to being angry. He knows there’s no way in hell, no chance at all for Malfoy to pursue Hermione, but he’s clearly not thinking straight when he puts silencing charms on his feet and on the blonde’s cubicle. He knows Malfoy, knows he’s a slimy Death Eater scum with extraordinary talents in occlumency, but he also knows that the git has a bad habit of putting down his walls when studying a case.

He gets his chance when the man turns in his seat and Ron whispers the word that gives him access to Malfoy’s dark mind. At first, he only sees the details of the case he’s working on, but he pushes harder, using the anger thrumming through his veins to fuel his magic. It takes a while but then he sees it, sees the person he had been so sure he wouldn’t see in the dark recesses of Malfoy’s twisted brain.

He sees her at their office, talking to both Harry and him. Ron notes that his face is blurred, the image focused solely on her. He then sees her at the last Ministry Christmas party, her eyes red from unshed tears and Ron remembers the argument they had that night that had caused her to appear like that. Suddenly he sees her face up close, looking at him, but he knows she’s actually looking at Malfoy. It’s the day he apologized to her. More images of her follow as he roots around, frantic in his searching, his heart splintering under the weight of this revelation.

Malfoy had fallen for Hermione right before everyone’s eyes, but she had been too blind to see and him to blind to notice that the feelings were reciprocated.

Ron wants to fire hexes at the both of them.

Finally, he sees the face of Narcissa Malfoy, peering up at him with pity in her eyes. “Tell her, at the very least. You deserve a chance at happiness, Draco.”

Suddenly he’s being pushed out of Malfoy’s mind, the Occlumency walls coming up faster than his subpar Legilimency can counter. He’s ejected from Malfoy’s thoughts and out of the man’s cubicle with a punch to his face that sends him straight to the ground.  He welcomes the pain blossoming on his cheek, relishes it and prepares to deliver his own punches. He lands one, hits Malfoy on the bone of his brow, before someone hauls the blonde away from him and another person drags him up from the ground, holding him back from pummelling the scum.

“You had no right,” Malfoy seethes, the venom in his words reminiscent of the way he used to talk to everyone else, back when he thought he was above all of them simply because his father would hear about it. “You had no fucking right, Weasley!”

“Fuck you, you Death Eater—”

"Ron. Malfoy. In my office. Now." Harry has placed himself in the middle of the two men, his wand out but pointing downwards. Ron knows that his best mate wouldn’t hesitate to put them in limb-locking spells and levitate them into his office if they don’t comply, so he shrugs off the person still holding onto him and marches his way to the Head’s office.

He doesn’t sit down, just stands in front of the desk and waits for the other two to enter. Harry locks the door behind him and rounds on them. "Can either of you explain what happened out there? I could suspend both of you right now for disrupting the work place, you do know that right?"

It’s Malfoy that speaks, but instead of looking at Harry he’s glaring right back at Ron. "Why don't you ask Weasley why he attacked his co-worker? Why don't you ask him why he performed an unauthorized Legilimency spell on a fellow Auror? Unless it is authorised, then I'll be taking my leave. Just say so, Potter, I'll be happy to leave this fucking place if you authorised that."

"Cool it, Malfoy. I didn’t authorise anyone to perform any spells on any of their co-workers. Ron, that was both reckless and illegal. What were you thinking? I could have your badge taken for that!"

"What, you don't have to ask him why he did it?  Is he afforded the privacy of not sharing with all of us the reason why he had to root around my brain, looking for—”

He gets interrupted by frantic knocks on the door, and Ron feels his anger inflate when he hears Hermione's worried voice. "I'm coming in!"

He watches Harry scratch at his scar, too tired to argue with her. When she enters, she takes a good look around the room, eyes flickering over Malfoy's face before landing on Ron. She takes her time, surveying the damage, before turning to Malfoy. "Why did you do that? Why would you hit him?"

Ron hadn’t expected to see her so soon, feeling his chest further splinter open upon seeing her frazzled appearance. She looks an equal mix of angry and worried, hair wild and cheeks flushed.

It’s only been a day and he already feels empty without her.

"Ron provoked him. There might be serious legal repercussions, Hermione. He performed Legilimency on Malfoy." Harry looks and sounds tired, moving to sit behind his desk and put his head in his hands. He looks like he already regrets accepting the promotion.

“You what?” she screeches, marching over to him. “What were you thinking, Ronald? You could be removed from the force for that!”

He sees it then, a flash of panic in Malfoy's eyes. He thinks that his secret will be revealed, he thinks that Ron would tell Hermione what he found inside the blonde git's head. For a moment, he considers doing it: spitting in her face that she's wrong, apparently a Death Eater scum like him can love her, but he hesitates long enough that he watches as Malfoy comes to his own conclusions.

He watches as the realisation dawns on Malfoy; that Ron doesn't want to reveal his secret. He watches as the blonde tries to come up with a reason as to why Ron wouldn't want to immediately tell everyone what he saw, to embarrass the other man and rub it in his face that Hermione would never want a Death Eater like him, that he’s disgusting for even thinking of her, for wanting her and thinking that he could ever have her. The longer that Ron does none of that the longer he gives Malfoy to figure out the truth.

He had always been smart like that, even Ron can begrudgingly admit it. He had been the top student in their class, just second to Hermione herself, and it shows in the way he’s calculating the silence that stretches between Hermione’s question and Ron’s response. His eyes, cold and grey, flicker between Ron’s tightly clenched jaw and Hermione’s disbelieving and nervous face. Ron watches as he glances at their hands, not touching, not intimate, not together.

He sees the exact moment Malfoy realises it, sees the way his eyes rove over her face, sees the flash of hope that he tries to tamper down. Ron watches as his indecision costs him the chance to make sure that the two never find out about their feelings for each other, watches as it affords his lifelong rival the confidence to hope for a chance with her.

He’s a Slytherin through and through. Eyes as sharp as a snake, lending him the ability to be deathly observant. He’s cunning, and Ron has no doubts that he’ll do everything to make sure that he’s come to the right conclusion; that Ron doesn’t want Hermione to know about Malfoy’s feelings for her because he’s scared of what she’ll do with that information.

With his hesitation, Ron had basically handed over victory to the snake.

So he unpins his badge, tosses it over to Harry without looking at the man, ignores Hermione’s indignant cry, and marches away from the lot of them. He ignores her calls, ignores the way the others watch him curiously as he exits the scene and the office. When he rounds a corner, he catches a glimpse of Harry holding Hermione back from following him.

Perhaps Harry had come to the same conclusion as Malfoy.

   He ends up in the Three Broomsticks and that’s where Harry finds him that night, sloshed but somehow still coherent.

“He loves her,” he says by way of greeting, gesturing to Madam Rosmerta to bring over a new bottle of firewhisky. “That’s what I saw in his head.”

Harry looks only mildly surprised, as if he had half-suspected that already. “Why didn’t you tell her that?” Even as he asks, Ron knows he already has some idea as to what the answer will be.

“She found the ring yesterday, then she broke up with me. Apparently, she’s also in love with him. But you knew that already, didn’t you Harry? You knew it somehow, even back then in your office. How?”

“I saw the way he looks at her, and while I was taking Occlumency and Legilimency lessons from him I noticed that he seems to think about her often,” his friend quietly admits, taking the bottle from Rosmerta and thanking her. “I didn’t think anything would come of it. I thought, maybe I was just seeing things. This is Malfoy we’re talking about; he can reform himself, maybe enough to become friends with half-bloods and muggle-borns, but I hadn’t thought he would actually fall for anyone who isn’t a pureblood. Obviously, I was wrong.”

Ron doesn’t answer, contents himself with making Harry try to fill in the uncomfortable silence that follows his revelation.

“I’m sorry I didn’t say anything,” the brunet finally says. “Do you want me to talk to her? Is she still in your flat? Where are you staying?”

“She left me the flat, mate. Said I can have it and that she’ll stay in her parents’ old house. You can try to talk to her but I don’t really see the point, if I’m being honest.”

“What? You’re just going give up then?” It’s the accusation and the disappointment in his best friend’s voice that finally gives him the energy to be angry again. He slams his hand on the table but Harry only blinks at his outburst, whipping out his wand and throwing silencing and disillusionment charms without missing a beat.  

“Give up? What would you know? Your relationship is perfect, you’re getting married, you’ve probably never had to watch your partner slowly but surely lose interest in you. You don’t truly know what it’s like to watch her fall in love with someone else while deluding yourself into believing that you’re just seeing things, so don’t lecture me about giving up, Harry.” It feels good, to release some of the pent-up anger, and he feels the tears begin to stream down his face just as he watches as the challenge in Harry’s eye deflates. “I know when to fold, I know when to accept that my King is compromised, I know when it’s checkmate and there’s no going back.”

Harry doesn’t say anything in return, and he doesn’t have to. Ron knows he’s right, knows that they both know that no amount of talking or begging could make Hermione change her mind. She’s steadfast to the point of being recklessly stubborn, and once she makes a decision she sticks by it. They both have no doubt in their minds that if she had decided to end a relationship spanning more than five years, it was not a decision made lightly. She had probably been stewing in it, over-analysing every little detail before coming to the conclusion that she would rather break up with him that pretend for a second longer that she’s still in love with him.

Ron thinks he would have also come to the same conclusion given enough time. She had just been one step ahead, like how she always is.

    Epilogue

Neville and Luna get married just a little over a year after Harry and Ginny’s own ceremony. He got invited, and along with his invitation came a warning from his best mate and his sister.

“Hermione will be there,” they had told him, watching him closely. “Malfoy was also invited. They would probably come together since, you know, they’re together.”

Ron had snorted, not bothering to look up from the shelves he had been inspecting. He had made a point to jot down that they were running out of whiz-bangs before replying, “You don’t have to warn me to behave myself. It’s been more than a year.”

And he does behave himself. He sits sandwiched between Harry and George, and his heart only hurts a little when he finally spots her with her hand tightly clutched in his. She waves to them, her smile cautious, and lets Malfoy lead her to another table where Blaise Zabini and Theodore Nott are seated.

Ron doesn’t even comment that Neville let not just one but three Death Eaters into his wedding.

Throughout the ceremony, he can’t help but watch her. He watches as he leans to whisper something in her ear that has her covering her mouth to contain her laughter, glee apparent in her wide eyes that never once stray to look at Ron. He watches as he watches her watching the bride and groom vow eternity to each other, her eyes glassy and his eyes filled with devotion. When Malfoy leans in to kiss her cheek, she chuckles, wiping at her eyes and leaning forward to steal a quick kiss from his willing mouth.

It should repulse him, but he finds that he can no longer hate them for finding each other. When he watches them dance together, he sees that she looks at him the way he had wanted her to look at him when they were still together. When they had broken up, Ron believed that he would hate for Malfoy to be someone deserving of Hermione’s love, but now he can’t even bring himself to truly feel remorse as he watches him spin her around.

When she stops spinning, she lands in his embrace and they stay like that, just rocking from side to side. She opens her eyes and finally meets Ron’s. He feels like a whole conversation passes between them, one filled with endless apologies, hopes that they can become what they were before they ventured into a romance, and promises that they will try to find each other in a new light.

He nods at her and when she smiles back, he finally accepts that in his arms, she has found happiness.

[dramioneficrecommendations]

Best Draco/Hermione Fics Dramione Shippers Read in 2020

A few days ago, I asked you what were the best Dramione fics you’d read in 2020. Here’s the huge list of your excellent recs (in alphabetical order):

A Creature Most Unusual by JMilz: Draco Malfoy is on a mission. Unfortunately, Hermione Granger catches him in the act. When she sees that he has adopted a rather unusual magical creature, she becomes determined to make sure he takes care of it. Little does she know, the animal may hold her key to eternal glory … and a whirlwind romance. M, 9 Chapters, 24,460 Words

A Little More Alive, Far Less Lost by MGL_Dramione_Lover: After Draco’s post-war trial, he finds himself attending his 8th year at Hogwarts with Hermione. As remorse and acceptance replace anger and hate, the old enemies begin a friendship that sparks into much more than they ever hoped for. Hermione’s goal as Head Girl is to banish old prejudices and unite the school while Draco’s only wish is to become a man worthy of her love. M, 22 Chapters, 84,823

A New Light by mithrilstarlight: Draco spent six years doing his best to keep his head down. Then he runs into Hermione Granger. Turns out, they actually have a lot in common.Chapters posted M/W/F. T, 18 Chapters, 33,876 Words

A Second Look by RiverWriter: Her best friend’s life was a mess and she would have done anything to make things better for him and his sons. So, when she found her former enemy in a similar situation her heart went out to him as well… and the beautiful blond baby in his arms didn’t hurt his case. It was certainly enough for her to give him a second look. M, 30 Chapters, 127,243 Words

Keep reading

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thanks so much for including “of flavoured names and coloured sounds” !!!

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Disney redraw challenge! Here's Queen Kida from Atlantis: The Lost Empire

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In the Philippines, we have this belief that when you attend a wake, the ghosts of the dead tend to follow you. Nobody wants a ghost to follow them into their house so people often go to convenience stores to "pagpag" which literally means to shake something off, that something, in this instance, being a ghost looking for a new home. If you like this, do consider following me on instagram and twitter, i’m @jeszz_art on both platforms! 

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hamilton chibi fan art!!! this is part of a sticker set im making for my boi

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i made an icon for my art accounts! warning:  not shaded 

if you can, please follow me on twitter and ig, i’m @jeszz_art 

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favourite snacks!!! my ig is @jeszz_art 

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bedroom art + details !!! follow my instagram art account jeszz_art and my twitter account @ejacyeolate <3 <3 <3 

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hermione fan art wip

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[fanfic] of flavoured names and coloured sounds (chapter 2 of 2)

Summary: "He doesn’t question it at first, the fact that sounds have colours and words have flavours. He grows up with it, grows up seeing powerful ruptures of colour when his mother plays the piano and softer, translucent bursts when the people around him speak. His father’s voice fills his vision with sombre oranges and lilacs while his mother’s is a pleasant mix of delicate greens, blues, and greys. The word father tastes like wet wood and the word mother tastes like the pumpkin juice the house-elves frequently serve him."

In which Draco just wants to know what colour Hermione's moans would be. He also wants to know if her skin would taste as sweet as her surname or maybe as intoxicating as her given name.

LINKS

AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23567740/chapters/56541799  FFN: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13547597/1/of-flavoured-names-and-coloured-sounds

CHAPTER 2

Potter’s following him around. He had thought that maybe breaking the bloke’s nose and leaving him hidden under his own invisibility cloak would get rid of the nosy scarhead, but that had been a mistake on his part. Now he feels the other wizard’s eyes constantly on him, and if he had the same energy as last year, he would have teased Potter for having a crush on him. Unfortunately, the world looks substantially bleaker now, with his condition significantly impaired, and so he doubts that he would still find pleasure in his old shenanigans.

He concedes that nothing would look cheery when one has a skull branded onto their skin, directly connected to a megalomaniac hellbent on killing one of your classmates. Even the sweetness of the word cheery tastes like ash in his mouth these days, and he can no longer tell if what he’s tasting on his tongue from thinking of the word megalomaniac is the flavour of a kiwi or that of a pear.

Pansy seems to have recovered from their messy break up, shifting from pointedly ignoring him to constantly hovering around him and acting like a worried girlfriend. It especially annoys him as her voice produces some of the most monotonous hues he’s ever seen coming from one person, her only contender for the crown being his godfather and the former Durmstrang headmaster turned fugitive.

The great hall, previously a place where he would often get lost drowning in the seas of flashing colours, now looks like it is littered with gossamers of barely-there pigments. From where he’s sitting, he can see Granger and her two wanker friends whispering to each other. She’s arguing with them (real shocker that is) and he can see a look of irritation on her face being directed at Potter. He almost smiles at this, but then her eyes suddenly flit to meet his and, stupidly enough, he feels himself freeze at the contact.

She must realise that he’s been watching them, because she raises one eyebrow at him and doesn’t stop staring until the plates are magically being cleared from the table, even when he finally breaks from the intensity of her gaze and looks away first.

He knows this because every time he looks to check if she’s no longer staring at him, their eyes would meet before his would snap away to look back down at his mutilated food. It’s odd, not to mention stressful, because what he needs right now is for people like Potter and Pansy and Hermione Granger to leave him alone.

He has a mission that’s doomed to fail, after all, and he would rather stumble through that without those three constantly monitoring him.

   Legilimens tastes like strawberry profiteroles and Occlumens tastes like Arabic coffee—they’re flavour he finds odd to associate with his godfather as he can’t imagine the man enjoying pastries and drinking anything other than unsweetened tea.

“I see your Aunt has taught you Occlumency,” Snape finally says, having spent the last three minutes trying to break into Draco’s mind. “Whatever it is you’re trying to achieve, Draco, trust that I am capable of helping—,” he begins to offer, but Draco cuts him off.

“I don’t need your help,” he grits out. “I was chosen for this. He trusts me to do this.” It’s a lie that he keeps telling himself, but Occlumency doesn’t work on one’s own mind and he can only pretend to believe the sham for so long—he knows that this task had been placed upon his shoulders as punishment for each and every one of his father’s failures, hand delivered by the Dark Lord himself, complete with the Dark Mark and a lovely death threat.

Suddenly, the older wizard begins throwing silencing charms all over the classroom, his tunnel-like eyes never once leaving Draco. “Do you even have the slightest idea how to cast any of the Unforgivables?”

Draco inwardly cringes. He had witnessed the Dark Lord performing all those spells, watched as subdued shades of navy blue intermingled with the green and red lights of the curses. Avada Kedavra had tasted like burnt meringue, the flavour not unlike that of Harry Potter’s combined name. Hearing the Dark Lord torture someone with repeated incantations of Crucio had assaulted his tongue with the taste of melting ice, more of a sensation that an actual flavour. Imperio, as he had come to learn, tastes like the air after a period of rain.

His mind had reeled at how innocent these curses had tasted on his tongue, when he could not even attempt to cast the Patronus charm, the purest of the spells in his opinion, as the incantation brought about a disagreeable fishy flavour. Expelliarmus he could manage quite easily, disarming people all the while savouring the taste of lemon sherbet on his taste buds.

“Can you conjure the Dark Mark, Draco?” Snape continues, either oblivious or uncaring that Draco had gone and retreated into his own mind. “Do you even know the incantation?”  

“Morsmordre,” he easily answers, but his voice is barely above a whisper. He prays he never has to cast that spell as he does not particularly like the taste of rust on his tongue. When Snape does not respond to that, Draco turns away and begins to head out of the room, shoving the door open and fleeing from his godfather before the man can further prove to him how unfit he is to take on the role of a Death Eater.

   Petrichor. It’s the name of the taste on his tongue as he leaves the Three Broomsticks, fake galleons tightly clutched in one hand and the feeling of guilt clawing at his heart.

(Upon inspection, he admits to himself and to himself only that the guilt wasn’t so much over what he had done to Rosmerta, but more because of the fact that he had stolen Granger’s ideas and used them for his own twisted needs.)

   “Why are you slacking off on school-work?”

His physical desire to be with her is still surprisingly there, but he had demanded from the Head Boy that he change his patrol partner to no avail. Draco suspects that the Slytherin is aware that the Malfoy family is not in such a good place, as even the mention of his father could not change the mind of the older student.

“Leave it, Granger. It’s none of your business what I do.”

“It’s just curious, is all,” she continues, as if she hadn’t heard a word that he said. “Last year you spent four hours working on one Transfiguration homework, and now you’ve already missed two. Makes one wonder, what had happened over the summer that would warrant such a change—”

The minute his hands wrap around her shoulders, he regrets it, but not enough to stop himself from pushing her against a wall and invading her personal space. There’s an inch or two of space separating their faces, and he can barely stop himself from getting lost in the sea of her freckles. “I said leave it, you filthy Mud—”

“What’s so different about you now that you’d even pay someone to take your place in the Slytherin quidditch team?”

When she speaks, her breath hits him and overwhelms him with the scent of spearmint, presumably from her toothpaste. It washes out the dirty word that he had almost used on her, and before he can stop himself, he’s groaning in response to the stimulus. It startles the both of them, and he can imagine that the blush currently riding high on her cheeks is identical to the one staining his.

He pushes away from her, striding back the direction they came from and cutting the patrol short. He decides then and there that if he has to quit being a prefect to be away from her, he’ll do it.

   The following week he has to listen to her describe her love potion. Amortentia, the word, tastes like overly ripe mangoes, just a good day or two away from rotting. He can’t even muster enough energy to be angry at the fact that he catches a whiff of spearmint, vanilla, coconut, and green apples when he passes by the blasted cauldron.

   His tongue feels cold, but before he can cast the spell, the one that leaves Potter’s mouth replaces the ice with the slight heat of cumin. It’s a spell that he’s not familiar with, but when it hits him, he feels the gashes opening up on his skin as he falls to the bathroom floor.

It’s a queer feeling, being aware of one’s own approaching death. At first it fills him with a sense of dread, panic at the thought that everything ends there, but then as the blood drains out of his clothes to stain the tiles he’s lying helpless on, it takes with it all the regret, the hope, leaving him feeling numb as his life slips from his fingers.

His eyelids close, his ears barely pick up the sound of hurried footsteps, of someone crying beside him, and his tongue tells him that Vulnera tastes like red grapes and Sanentur tastes like sulphur.

   He doesn’t know how she does it, but she sneaks in to the infirmary in the middle of the night and proceeds to spend ten minutes just standing by his bed, arms crossed over her chest, lips set into an angry line, and eyes glassy with unshed tears.

“Crying for me now?” he asks, voice rough from disuse. “Save it for someone who matters.”

“He didn’t mean to do it,” she whispers back, sinking onto the chair beside his bed. “He wasn’t trying to kill you.”

“I don’t care what he was trying to do, I was trying to kill him.” The lie comes easily enough, what with the Occlumency walls and the fact that he honestly doesn’t have a clear idea what he had been trying to do.

Hermione doesn’t say anything, just keeps staring, but the tears don’t fall from her eyes and he’s grateful for that. He wants to remind her that he’s the bad guy in her story, the same bloke who had looked at her like she was beneath him simply because her parents weren’t magical. One successful paired homework and a couple of times spent sharing a library table shouldn’t change that, shouldn’t erase what he was and what he is.

He almost wants to show her his Dark Mark just so she’d stop trying to act like he’s still got a soul hiding somewhere inside his body.

“You should sleep,” she finally says, after a long moment of just staring at each other. “Merlin knows you need it.” With that she rises from her seat, walking away from him. He panics at the sight, his mouth opening before his brain can register what he’s about to do.

“Don’t come back here, Granger,” he tells her. When she pauses her stride but doesn’t turn to look back at him, he clarifies, “Don’t come back to Hogwarts.”

   The word tastes like burnt meringue on his tongue, but he can’t bring himself to say it. Instead, he finds himself talking, telling the old man everything that he’s done during the year, as if he would vomit if he stopped talking. He calls her a mudblood for appearance’s sake and actually laughs when Dumbledore asks him to not use that word in front of him.

Defenceless tastes like biting the rind of a citrus, bitter and unappealing. It’s a word that certainly does not suit the greatest wizard of modern times.

The promise of safety is a jumble of salty and bitter words, one in particular tasting like sardines and another like freshy harvested caviar. He rambles, lowers his wand, then the others rush in to bare witness to his incapability of becoming a murderer.

Albus Dumbledore’s wine-coloured pleas are answered by Snape’s sweet and smoky spell.

   He quickly becomes intimate with the sensation of melting ice on his tongue. It’s when he spends most of the day torturing people that he feels the slightest bit thankful for his impaired condition.

It’s when he watches his deranged aunt torture her that he yearns the most for the colours to come back, to obstruct his vision so it would be filled with explosions of orange and teal and he won’t have to look her in the eye and face her judgment. He would much rather take the cold numbing his tongue than to look at her lying near lifeless on the ground.

   Working as a double agent is beyond exhausting, but he’d sooner get killed than do nothing and allow the Dark Lord to win this war. It’s been three months since he had demanded from his godfather that he take him to the other side, for Severus to make him a spy not unlike the older man. For a moment, they had seized each other up, the both of them waiting for the other to turn out as a cleverly placed decoy to sniff out traitors amongst their ranks.

It’s been three months since he’s been allowed free passage into 12 Grimmauld Place, three months since his godfather had told him everything he needed to know in order to be allowed into the ranks of the Order, three months since he was stunned then questioned by Mad-Eye Moody while under a powerful dose of Veritaserum, unable to use Occlumency to counter the effects of the potion, and three months since Remus Lupin introduced him to the rest of the Order as their new spy.

Draco had tried to explain to Kingsley, Moody, and Lupin that Severus had been acting under Dumbledore’s commands, but the three of them had insisted that even if it were true, it would be too risky for Snape to keep working with them. Still, the clarification on what had truly happened that night at the Astronomy tower proves useful in that they relax just enough to start using the safehouse again.

He doesn’t see Potter even once during those three months, and he doesn’t try to ask them about his whereabouts. The less he knows about the Order’s plans, the better. He does, however, see the ginger weasel on occasion, and he does his best to not hex the bloke on sight.

It’s difficult, but he manages.

The concealment charm is just wearing off as he enters the house, closing the door behind him, when he hears and sees them; the sound of a piano playing invades his ears and colours his vision. The sound doesn’t come together to form music, just random notes here and there as if the person playing them is just testing out the keys. Still, it’s been too long since he’s last heard music and last seen the colours dancing in his vision, as neither he nor his mother have found much reason to touch the grand piano in the manor after he took the Dark Mark.

(It is, after all, quite difficult to indulge in music when Death Eaters are torturing and raping people just down the hall.)

He follows the sound further into the house and finds Hermione Granger sitting in front of the rusty piano. She looks up upon his entrance, her finger hovering over one of the keys, then their eyes meet. Draco mentally prepares a speech declaring himself their ally, but she surprises him by smiling.

“Hello, Draco. I was told I’d see you here,” she says, her voice causing the familiar pinks to flash before him. There’s a pang in his chest when he sees how translucent they are, barely there, and he regrets not enjoying the sights when he had the privilege to. “I must say, I was glad when they told me you defected, but I wasn’t exactly surprised.”

“Why’s that?” he asks, genuinely confused by her declaration. He moves towards her, placing a finger on the piano and swiping at the dust that had accumulated there. He reaches for his wand and performs a quick scourgify, moving to sit beside her. He sits on the very edge of the wooden bench, keeping as large as a distance between them as it would allow. He’s surprised she doesn’t jump up and slap him across the face for daring to sit next to her.

“You did save me that night, and you didn’t kill Dumbledore,” she says, a smirk playing on her lips and a knowing look in her eyes. She gestures to the piano and asks, “Do you know how to play?”

He’s slightly taken aback by the sudden change in topic, but he doesn’t show her his surprise, nodding his head in affirmation. “Do you?”

“No. You should play; I’d love to hear it.”

He should really be asking her where the others are, preferably Lupin as he has information to relay to them, but his hands rise and then his fingers are tentatively pressing down on a few keys. The colours instantly return, and with that he feels a surge of confidence that has him transitioning from hesitant strokes of the keys to the beginning notes of one of his favourite pieces. He plays for a while, closing his eyes and enjoying the dance of the colours behind his lids, and when he opens them again they seek her out as if on instinct.

The look in her eyes as they meet his has him cutting off the music, his fingers lifting from the keys mid stroke. The silence that fills the room as the last vibrations from the piano fizzle out is awkward, to say the least, and he finds himself wracking his mind for something to say.

She beats him to it by declaring, “I didn’t know you listened to muggle classical music. That was Chopin, wasn’t it?”

He nods, still unable to tear his gaze away from her. The words that stumble out of his mouth make it out of their confines purely on accident, only because he’s lost in the colour of her eyes—honey, harvested during the late summer. “His pieces have the prettiest colours.”

Confusion settles on her features and he wishes he could take it back, wishes he could fulfil his promise to his mother that he would never tell anyone about this but then again, he has broken more promises than he can remember, some that had been more detrimental to their well-being than admitting to someone that he sees coloured sounds and tastes flavoured names. Her eyebrows are furrowed, and he can barely stop himself from reaching out to smooth away her frown.

“What do you mean, they have the prettiest colours? Do you have synaesthesia?”

He’s already opening his mouth to explain but then her words register to him and he blurts out, “What? Do I have what?”

“Synaesthesia, from the Greek words sún meaning “with” and aísthēsis meaning “sensation”, is a condition wherein the synesthete, a term for a person who has the condition, is able to process data in the form of several senses all at once,” she explains, and he’s instantly taken back to their classes at Hogwarts, when her hand would shot up and she would then proceed to unload a verbal vomit of information unto all of them. “For example, some people can see colours when they hear music, or they can taste certain words. It’s a very rare condition, and most people who have it go on to become artists or writers.” 

She must mistake his astounded expression as a response to her vast knowledge on the topic because she blushes and looks away. Draco, on the other hand, is experiencing something akin to euphoria. He has never heard anyone describe his little “talent” so accurately, sod it, he has never heard anyone describe it, period. In hindsight, he thinks he shouldn’t be so surprised that Hermione Granger, swottiest of swots, would know that something like this exists. That someone like him exists.

“It’s a muggle thing, then? I’ve never heard of anyone else in the wizarding community talk about something like this, and I’ve tried to research about it but nothing ever came up in my readings,” he tells her, staring at the colours his voice makes.

“I honestly don’t know,” she admits, looking back towards him and appearing somewhat sheepish, as if her not knowing everything is something to be embarrassed about. “What do you see?”

“I taste words and names. Everything has a flavour associated with them. I see bursts of colours when I hear music, and I see fainter, more translucent colours when people speak.”

“Words have colour, too? Right now, you’re seeing colours as we speak?”

“It’s not really the words that are coloured, it’s the notes that people produce when they talk,” he elaborates. Running a hand through his hair, he decides to reveal some more information to her, information that he had thought he would carry to the grave with him. “When you speak, you make pastel colours, mostly pinks and blue. They used to be so harsh and bright when we were younger, used to give me headaches every time you opened your mouth in class.”

“Is that why you hated me so much?”

He feels guilty in an instant, remembering all the things he said to her back then. “That was one thing, it was another thing that I’ve been told my whole life that muggle-borns don’t have a place in our world, but obviously you made me question that by besting me in everything except flying a broom.”

She laughs, a quiet one, but it makes him realise that she’s one of those rare people who have musical laughter. “What does my name taste like?”   

Draco draws in a quick breath, quickly looking away from her searching eyes. He begins to question what he’s doing, sitting beside her, playing music for her, telling her the one thing he has never voluntarily told anyone else, lusting after her, wanting her.

(Falling for her.)

“Hermione tastes like Sauvignon Blanc and Granger tastes like green apples,” he lets out in one breath, overcome by a misplaced need to be honest with her in that moment. Before she can make a comment, before she can do something like reveal to him that she had somehow known his bias for green apples, he rushes to add, “I can’t taste it anymore as well as I used to, and the colours aren’t as vivid as they were before the Dark Mark. It dulled everything.”

He looks away from her, resolutely staring at the piano in front of him and wishing that someone would walk into the safehouse and put an end to this bizarre interaction. Talking to her has been the only good thing that has happened to him in months, maybe in years, but he’s overwhelmed by her and by his need for proximity. It’s ridiculous, wanting someone you had actively tormented for two years, wanting someone you had watched get tortured by your crazed aunt while you stood by and did nothing.

“Does it interfere with your vision, the colours?”

He frowns, turning his head to look back at her. “When there’s too many people talking, it used to throw me off a bit, but not ever since I got the mark.”

She looks pensive, her eyes unfocused before they look up to meet his confused gaze. “After this, what are you going to do about your aim?”

“Pardon?”

“The Dark Mark, it would fade once Voldemort’s dead,” she says, gesturing to his arm. “I can only assume that when that happens, the effects of the mark on your synaesthesia would also disappear or won’t be as potent as it is right now.”

He feels his chest tighten at what she’s building up to, feels something like hope blossoming there. It’s an emotion that he has almost entirely forgotten, and he’s not certain that he should be allowing her to fill him with such a thing when he had only planned to swing by and give information then be back out again in less than thirty minutes—

“What are you going to do when we defeat him, Draco?”

   Severus knows what he’s doing or, at least, knows what potion he’s about to attempt to make. The man takes one good look at the ingredients laid out on the table, one good look at Draco, then wandlessly summons a quill and a piece of parchment. As his godfather writes, Draco begins the preparations for the brewing process, double and triple checking that he has everything he needs.

When he’s finished writing, Severus hands over the piece of parchment and leaves the hidden cottage without uttering a single word. When he peers down at it, he realises the man had just given him something that he would treasure for the rest of his inevitably short life.

There, in his trembling hands, are the potion master’s notes on how to successfully brew the concoction without ending up with a few missing limbs. The word Ashwinder tastes like coriander, squill bulb tastes like a combination of mayonnaise and strawberries, Occamy tastes like dried up carrots, and Murtlap tastes like the back of one’s hand.

   He comes by again, nearly a month after his last visit, and this time Remus is there to receive the information.

Granger sits in the meeting, inviting herself into the table with a tray of tea for the three of them. He’s the only one with a cup that has a coaster and Remus eyes it with a smirk on his tired face. Hermione sits beside him, self-inking quill in one hand, parchment in front of her, and gives him an expectant look that he takes as his cue to start.

It takes him twenty-three minutes to finish relaying every detail he’d been able to cram into his head from the meetings he had attended, every drunken whisper, every careless slip of the tongue, he had shoved into a corner of his brain only to purge it all out right onto her messy notes.

His old DADA professor nods at him, tells him he should stay and finish his tea, then the older man is pushing away from the table and leaving the two of them alone in the old house. He performs a quick warming charm on his tea, taking in the decaying wood of the table while she worked on tidying up her notes. Once she’s done, she looks up at him and he takes the liberty of warming up her tea for her.

“Thank you,” she says, reaching for her cup and bringing it to her lips. “It’s already horrid enough when it’s hot, it’s just plain unacceptable when it’s lukewarm.”

He only nods. He doesn’t tell her it’s the best tea he’s had in nearly a month solely because she’s the person he’s enjoying it with. Not even the most expensive tea in the world would taste good when you have to drink it in the presence of other Death Eaters.

“The last time I saw you, you looked like you hadn’t slept in two weeks. That was two years ago and you still look like you haven’t slept a wink.”

Draco raises an eyebrow at this, gulping down a mouthful of the herbal tea concoction before answering, “The last time I saw you, you were being tortured by my crazed aunt with a spell that makes me feel like I’ve put a cube of ice on my tongue to melt. That was roughly a year ago and you didn’t look quite so good yourself then, Granger.”

“I was actually referring to that night in the infirmary.”

He rolls his eyes at her, plucking the parchment from her fingers and reading over her notes. “I know what you were referring to. It wasn’t the last time you saw me.”

“You’re right, I saw you last month, so I guess we’re both recalling our last meeting all wrong.”

He looks at her, watches her raise her drink to her lips to hide her smile. There’s mirth in her eyes and he’s almost foolish enough to think that she’s flirting with him, but he quickly kills the thought, crushes it underneath his dragonhide shoes and fires a hex at it for good measure.

“It was very nice of you to try and save me again, that night at the infirmary.”   

“When will you stop assuming that everything I do is an attempt to save you—”

He’s used to seeing and hearing her cut off people mid-speech, usually talking over them to correct the way they’re saying an incantation or just to tell them that they’re wrong and she’s right. A couple of times, he had seen her walk away from the weasel during an argument, causing the ginger to splutter at her sudden departure.

He can’t recall a time when he’s seen her kiss someone to shut them up, but that’s what she’s doing to him.

Hermione’s lips are warm, probably from the tea, and they’re soft against his own. His eyes had closed from her sudden movement, bracing himself to get a much-deserved punch, and he doesn’t dare open them now. Her lips start to move against his and he answers in earnest, deciding he’ll enjoy it while it lasts and dissect every moment of this later, in the false safety of his own room at the manor. When he feels the tip of her tongue touch his bottom lip, he immediately grants her access, reckless in his need to finally taste whichever part of her that she’s offering.

She’s a clumsy kisser, using far too much force when she bites his bottom lip, and it’s the best kiss he’s ever had. Her tongue tastes like the tea they’ve just shared, with just the slightest hint of spearmint. When she moans, he answers it with a groan of his own, his hands finally moving to cradle her face. He feels her fingers toying with the topmost button of his shirt, popping the first three open and sliding her hands inside to touch the skin of his collar and the base of his neck.

She breaks away from his lips and trails kisses down his neck, starting at the corner of his mouth and ending at the hollow of his throat.

“Your toothpaste, it’s fennel, isn’t it?”

He tries to clear the fog from his brain but her hot breath repeatedly touching the skin of his neck isn’t helping. Somehow, his own fingers have tangled themselves into the mess she calls her hair, and he spends a quiet moment just admiring how surprisingly soft it is to the touch. When he finally gets his mouth to move, the only word he can manage is, “What?”

She lifts her head, moving to place her lips on his once more, speaking against his mouth and letting her breath fan his face. “Fennel toothpaste, it’s what your breath smelled like back in sixth year.”

   His mother eyes him from across the table, one hand soundlessly stirring her tea, the other idly playing with her wand. They’re all alone in the dining room, his father having ambled away after finishing off three bites of his breakfast and three glasses of brandy.

“You’ve been busy,” she says, placing the teaspoon aside and taking a sip from her tea. He knows that tone, and that tone paired with the look she’s giving him means nothing but trouble for him.

“Death Eater duties,” he offers, his own tone bordering between sarcastic and bored. Truth be told, he has been busy—busy smuggling information to the Order and busy snogging Granger the moment they’re left alone in that house. It never goes further than hurried, messy kisses, and he tells himself he’s fine with that.

   They almost get caught one day, with her sitting on the dinner table and him standing in between her thighs. He doesn’t know how he had somehow missed the sound of the door opening, but then colours float into his vision and he jumps away from her.

She’s hopping off the table, wiping at the residual saliva on her lips, when Weasley walks in along with Tonks. His presence immediately brings back the taste of his name, aggravated by the fact that Granger acknowledges them by saying both their names. Tonks tastes like butter cookies, and it would have paired nicely with the weasel’s milk-tasting name had the milk not been curdled.

It’s a good thing, really, because the taste helps kill the boner he’d been trying to hide.

   It’s the first time he sees Potter after the incident at the Manor, and he barely pays attention to the boy wonder and the fact that he looks almost as pale as Draco himself because he’s reaching for Granger’s quill and a scrap of parchment. The people in the room grow quiet as he writes, and he’s thankful that they’re unknowingly helping him focus by not creating unnecessary colours to cloud his vision.

Merlin knows he needs it, the assault on his tongue already distracting enough without the visual part of his condition contributing to the skirmish. He keeps writing, struggling to maintain a straight face as flavours like soap, tripe, and horseradish clash on his taste buds, fitting together as well as mismatched puzzle pieces would.

When he’s done, he hands the paper over to Potter. His eyes search the room, finally landing and getting lost in late summer honey as the man meant to save them all reads over all the information Draco’s been able to gather about the attack to be launched at Hogwarts tomorrow. Tomorrow, Voldemort will know that there’s an informant in their midst, and Draco will confirm it by fighting for the Order. Tomorrow, he’ll dose his mother with felix felicis, the only protection he can grant her when it’s revealed to everyone on the dark side that he’s a traitor.

Tomorrow, both him and Hermione may die, but right now he ignores the sound of Harry Potter’s voice as he relays orders to the people gathered around the table, ignores the green and red colours swimming in his vision, ignores the flavours on his tongue in favour of staring into her eyes for reassurance that he knows he won’t ever find there.

   He’s surprised he hasn’t had a seizure yet. He had physically felt it when Voldemort died, the burning on his arm disappearing like a bubble popping out of existence. Also like a bubble, the synaesthesia comes back in full force. It’s like having your hearing muffled by water stuck in your ear, and when the water finally gets dislodged the sound comes back in a rush, only for him it’s the colours and the flavours that crash down on him like a tidal wave.

It knocks him off his feet and he lands on his knees, staring at all the colours bursting in and out of his sight. He can barely see the people all around him, can barely focus on anything as he keeps whispering her name and relishing the full effects of Sauvignon Blanc and green apples on his taste buds.

Someone’s kissing him, and even with the colours blocking his vision with his eyes open and the hues persisting behind his lids with his eyes closed, he knows it’s her. He knows it’s her even though she doesn’t taste like the crappy tea they have at the safehouse, even though she fills his mouth with the taste of blood instead of the natural taste of her tongue.

The colours start to fade as he takes notice of the hush that slowly envelops the grounds. He imagines that they must make quite the sight, Draco Malfoy and Hermione granger all bloodied up and kissing each other, but he can’t bring himself to care.

“You were right,” he whispers against her lips, opening his eyes and staring into pools of late summer honey. “I have to figure out what to do about my aim.”

   Granger does not taste like green apples, nor does her skin remind him of an expensive bottle of wine. She tastes like the soap she had used to aggressively scrub out the grime and blood from every inch of her skin, leaving her pink and tender. He understands the almost obsessive way with which she cleans herself—it’s been a week since the war ended but he still wakes up feeling dirty, feeling like he would never get rid of the warm, sticky blood on his hands. He knows she hadn’t killed anyone, unlike him, but she feels dirty all the same.

Her bones are prominent, especially the ones encasing her lungs and her heart, and he takes his time kissing down her ribs to her jutting hipbones. She giggles and it makes him see soft bursts of salmon pink. “I’m ticklish there,” she says, and it makes him see pale yellows, the colour of daffodils. He’s never seen her produce that colour before and he chases after it for a few seconds, enthralled by its appearance.

He tries to keep as quiet as he can, tries his best not to adulterate her colours and her flavours with his own voice. When she had emerged from the bathroom with only a towel wrapped around her body, dripping water everywhere, he had told her in a quiet voice to come closer. He had watched the deep burgundy dance in and out his vision and had decided that he’d much rather see pale pinks and Varathane bleached blues.

Now he’s inching closer to her centre and she’s making breathy little sighs of pleasure, her fingers finding purchase in his still damp hair. He’s doing his utmost best to keep his head as blank as possible, to taste only her on his tongue. She smells like soap down there too, and when he uses his fingers to spread her, he marvels at how pink and wet she is for him.

“Draco.”

Salmon pink flashes behind his closed lids and his favourite chocolate melts on his tongue immediately. He has to kiss her thighs, biting into the soft flesh in an effort to contain himself from tasting that part of her. He doesn’t want to taste chocolates in his mouth, he wants to know what she tastes like without the synaesthesia, so he kisses her thighs and looks up at her. He watches her bite her lower lip, nod at him once, and he knows she understands.

It takes him a moment, but his senses finally calm down enough that his tongue can only detect the faint salt and soap of her thighs. Her hands are still buried in his hair and she begins to tug his face towards her centre. He looks up at her once more, maintaining eye contact when he runs the flat of his tongue over her exposed slit.

They moan almost in unison, both their voices filling his eyes with colours that he hadn’t thought would fit well but surprising compliment each other. She doesn’t taste like Sauvignon Blanc but he thinks he could get drunk all the same. He fucks her with his tongue, watches her bite around her closed fist to keep her moans under control.

She loses the battle when his lips close around her clit and his name comes pouring out of her mouth. He groans against her slick lips, using the flat of his tongue to swipe at her clit and two fingers to fuck her entrance. Her moans grow louder as she nears her release and he’s glad he had put up silencing charms on the room—the rest of the Order still staying in the house would probably appreciate not hearing them having sex.

When she comes, she nearly shouts his name. He pulls back and sheaths himself inside of her with one push, gripping her hips and feeling her walls fluttering all around his cock. He doesn’t move an inch, feelings the muscles in his stomach tightening from the effort it’s taking him to hold back from fucking her into the mattress.

She reaches out to him, pulling him down to kiss her and taste herself on his mouth. With their lips still pressed together, their chests flushed against each other, she whispers, “You can move now.”

It’s all the encouragement he needs. Her name springs out from him unbidden, and it’s one of those moments when he can almost convince himself that he can get drunk just from saying her name.

He makes her come three more times, twice on his cock, and he would have gone for more but she starts crying after the third time and he knows what those tears are for.  War had taken away his father to Azkaban and, along with the older man, much of Draco’s prejudice and the things he used to believe in. It had cost him the life of one of his friends and had crushed any chance of him ever producing a Patronus, but he knows she had lost so much more than that. He was part of the Order, a valuable spy that had ultimately help tip the scale in their favour, but he hadn’t been friends with any of those people.

As for her, they had become her family after she had been forced to give up her parents. They won the war, but he suspects that it would take a long time before her hands stop shaking, before she can go out without holding on to her wand as if her life still depends on it, before she can go to sleep without worrying that she’ll wake up screaming her head off because of a nightmare.

“I didn’t know orgasms could be that overwhelming,” she whispers sheepishly, the tip of her fingers tracing the Sectumsempra scars among the other blemishes he now sports.

The word orgasm tastes like a slice of Victoria sponge. He wraps a moth-bitten quilt around their naked bodies, and when he tells her to go to sleep, her Sauvignon Blanc-flavoured name on his tongue and her rose-coloured laugh behind his eyes are the things that lull him to the most peaceful sleep he’s ever had in years.

[levirens]

[fanfic] of flavoured names and coloured sounds (chapter 1 of 2)

Summary: "He doesn’t question it at first, the fact that sounds have colours and words have flavours. He grows up with it, grows up seeing powerful ruptures of colour when his mother plays the piano and softer, translucent bursts when the people around him speak. His father’s voice fills his vision with sombre oranges and lilacs while his mother’s is a pleasant mix of delicate greens, blues, and greys. The word father tastes like wet wood and the word mother tastes like the pumpkin juice the house-elves frequently serve him."

In which Draco just wants to know what colour Hermione's moans would be. He also wants to know if her skin would taste as sweet as her surname or maybe as intoxicating as her given name.

LINKS

AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23567740/chapters/56541799 FFN: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13547597/1/of-flavoured-names-and-coloured-sounds

CHAPTER 1

synaesthesia: a condition in which two or more of the five senses that most people experience separately are mixed so that, for example, a person may see colour when they hear a particular sound or read a particular word

 He doesn’t question it at first, the fact that sounds have colours and words have flavours. He grows up with it, grows up seeing powerful ruptures of colour when his mother plays the piano and softer, translucent bursts when the people around him speak. His father’s voice fills his vision with sombre oranges and lilacs while his mother’s is a pleasant mix of delicate greens, blues, and greys. They create a firework display in front of him whenever they talk, varying in intensity depending on the nature of their conversation. He falls asleep to soft shades of blue and wakes up to freckles of purple.

(The albino peacocks produce varying shades of reds and violets, the house-elves create splashy tones that have the tendency to give him a headache when subjected to prolonged exposure.)

It’s only later, when he grows up, that he starts to discover the names of these colours, stops referring to them as various shades of the same six hues he knows and combinations of them. He comes to learn that his mother’s voice is composed of aquamarine notes, interspersed with azure, Maya blue, Bleu de France, teal, and harbour grey. When he tells her this, she gives him a curious look and makes him promise he would never tell anyone about these sensory experiences of his.

Tasting words and names is an experience that is more peculiar and, sometimes, less pleasant. As a child, the flavours are fairly simple: words like absinthe, python, moth, and thunder taste bitter, while words like cheery, rye, and cutlery taste sweet. The word father tastes like wet wood and the word mother tastes like the pumpkin juice the house-elves frequently serve him. When he hears the word Dementor, he develops a sudden overwhelming urge to vomit as the word tastes like rotten meat and mouldy bread. The meaning of the word sends a chill down his spine and he thinks his taste buds hit the mark with that one.

(Pansy, his childhood friend, has a name that tastes like steamed broccoli, and the taste is so odd that he never says her name when he fucks her, much to the witch’s disdain. It doesn’t help that her moans are coloured like coal.)

Harry Potter’s name is a mixture of sweet and smoky. The name Harry is sweet, much like cheery and rye, but he finds the sweetness nauseating. Potter, on the other hand, is smoky, so he settles with that and decides to call the boy the smoky name. The name Ron tastes like milk that’s been left out for hours, better poured down the drain than allowed to linger on the tongue. The surname isn’t much better, reminding him of the time his father had made him eat some blue cheese and he gagged it all out, leaving his tongue and throat burning with stomach acid. Every time he says the ginger’s name, his face automatically pulls into a sneer of disgust, his taste buds protesting the abuse.

During their first year, most everyone’s voices make him see light colours, but as they grow older the male voices turn darker shades and the females’ a softer hue. Some voices grate on his nerves, the explosion of colours too vivid, with no sense of harmony, and he often finds himself snapping at these people to shut up.

That’s when he becomes certain that this condition is unique to him. If they could see the colours he sees and if they could taste the flavours he tastes, they would all be snappish too.

Then there’s Hermione Granger.

Hermione reminds him of a summer trip his family had taken to France before his first year at Hogwarts. His father, ever the champion of luxurious delicacies and drinks, always insisting that he must develop a taste for the finer things, had insisted that his mother let him sample a glass of white wine.

His eleven-year-old tongue quickly detected hints of white peach, dill, and coconut, but they were overwhelmed by the bitterness of the alcohol. He had not appreciated the taste then, not even trying to hide his grimace to the amusement of his parents.

“When you’re older, you’ll learn to value the flavour of an excellent Sauvignon Blanc,” his father had reassured him.

Now the intoxicating flavour is back, every time he hears Potter call her name and every time it flashes through his mind. The taste of it never changes throughout the years, but his reaction to it does. Understandably, his younger self only felt disgust, but the older he got the more willing he became to accept that his father had been right all along—he’s learned to value the taste of Hermione’s name, learned to savour the white peach along with the dryness unique to the drink.

Sometimes, he could convince himself that he could get drunk just from her name.

Granger was safer, and even in his younger years he had enjoyed the taste of the surname on his tongue. Granger tastes like green apples. It’s the first thing he grabs at the dining table every morning for breakfast, and it’s a flavour that he chases after constantly. His immature self had found a way to say it every chance he could get, enjoying the sudden burst of citrus inside his mouth with every call of her name. He would resort to taunting, teasing her about being a swot, insulting her and making sure to use her last name by the end of every sentence.

He had been foolish, he soon realises, and so he stops saying her name to her face all the time lest people notice that he has developed an unhealthy habit out of it. He says it in private now, in the confines of the baths and in the privacy of his bedroom. At first it had only been so he could taste the green apples, so he could relive over and over again the tangy sweetness of her name, but later on it became less innocent.

(Later on, he started to favour the alcohol of her given name over the fruit of her surname whenever he would stroke his cock through his sleeping trousers.)

Unsurprisingly, the word Mudblood tastes like dirt in his mouth. When he first hurls it at her, the sensation is so intense that he almost gags before the weasel can even attempt his slug-eating spell at him. It repulses him, but she had insulted him and annoyed him to no end, and not even the sweetness of her name could soothe the headache he got from the bursts of vibrant colours her voice made him see whenever she opened her filthy mouth. Potions quickly became his favourite subject, not only because his Godfather favoured him, but because he almost never allows Granger to recite in class.

He finds that his annoyance slowly dissipates over the years as her voice goes from irritating and migraine-inducing to almost melodic and soothing. The colours stop being so harsh, become muted shades or pastel versions of themselves. He finds that in the splashes of colour he sees every minute of his waking hours, he looks forward to seeing hers.

   The first time he realises her voice has ceased to be a source of annoyance for him is during their third year. It’s an odd thing to feel, to suddenly yearn to hear the colours of her voice, when two years ago he had wanted to bolt from every room she was occupying. That annoys him, too, because all his life he’s been told that his kind should rule the wizarding world and her kind should not even be welcomed, so who is she to drive him out of a room? Throughout their first and second year in Hogwarts, he would stay, not only because he had no choice but to stay in classes he shared with her, but because he’s a pureblood and she’s nothing but that dirty word that makes him gag.

The sound of her palm connecting with his face is the colour of autumn leaves, a bright orange thunder-like streak that flashes behind his closed eyes. Everything is a sensory blur, and he finds himself running away from her, from them, feeling the shame welling in his chest and the taste of her given name still heavy on his tongue.

The word foul tastes like oatmeal and the word evil tastes like cold chicken soup.

   The yule ball is a ticket to a night of sensory overload. The music they dance to causes him to nearly go into a catatonic state, his head thrown back and his eyes following the lights bursting in and out with every note and every chord. Pansy has been clinging to him ever since he had first fucked her three weeks ago, and now he knows what a colossal mistake it had been to ask her to be his date to this ball. She has somehow convinced herself that they’re exclusively seeing each other, much to his disappointment, so he’s been planning to “break up” with her despite his father’s approval of their supposed relationship.

He’s thinking of a way to tell her the sex is good (not good enough really, considering the taste of her name and the colours of her voice) but he’s simply not looking for a relationship when he catches sight of her again. Immediately the spiked punch is replaced by Sauvignon Blanc and green apples at the thought of her name. She’s a periwinkle blue blur from his vantage point, but from what he had seen approximately an hour ago, she’s an absolute stunner tonight.

He turns his head so he can fully watch her, difficult as it may be with the pulsing colours interrupting his vision, and all but forgets the witch hanging on to his arm. He watches her dance with Krum, ignores Pansy’s demands for him to take her to the dancefloor, and then barely notices when his date finally lets go of his arms and stomps away from him. He watches Granger skip over to her friends, then he watches her get into a row with the weasel before promptly walking out of the ballroom.

None of her friends move to follow her, and he doesn’t know what possesses him to do it but he’s rising to his feet and moving towards the direction she had gone to. He keeps walking down the hallway until he spots her, snivelling in an alcove and using her hands to wipe at her face. When he gets close enough, he sees that her makeup is ruined, but it’s the fact that he doesn’t seem to mind that gives him pause.

“If you’re pining after the weasel, don’t you think you should have gone with him as your date?” he asks, startling her.

She jumps up and whips around to face him, wand already tightly held in one of her hands, tear tracks still marring her face. “Malfoy? Did you… did you follow me out here?”

He shrugs, moving to plop himself down to take her abandoned seat on the alcove. “I think I may be drunk,” he admits, the colours still blurring his vision and the word alcove tastes like garlic in his mouth.

She eyes him, her gaze darting back and forth between him and the empty hallway. He can practically hear her calculating her next steps, can hear the cogs in her brain working double time to assess the conundrum in front of her.

He cringes, the taste of residual beeswax coating his tongue at the thought of the word conundrum.

“How can you be drunk? Alcohol’s not allowed—”

“We spiked the punch,” he cuts her off, reaching for the flask hidden in the inner pockets of his robes. She stiffens, her wand raising ever so slightly to point at him, but he just retrieves the flask and waves it at her. “Paranoid.”

Granger watches him return the flask and fold his wandless hands on his lap where she can see them. “Well, it was very bizarre chatting with you, Malfoy.” With that, she turns to walk away, the floaty periwinkle blue robes moving with the sway of her hips.

When he returns to his dorm room, he places about half a dozen silencing charms on his bed, draws the curtains closed, and for the very first time, wanks himself off to images of Hermione Granger.

   They’re prefects, and he should have expected this to happen. Sooner or later they would get paired to do patrols together, he had known this, but he had been foolish enough to neglect to prepare for it. He knows that her voice will no longer make his head throb, has been familiar with the shades of her still-swotty voice for more than two years now.

The castle is quiet, and his eyes are blessedly free of colours bursting around his vision as he and Granger walk the castle grounds side by side. Neither of them speaks, but the silence isn’t antagonistic. Last month, they had been paired up for an Astronomy assignment, and although everyone in the bloody castle had been surprised by the pairing and had expected things to blow up, they miraculously did not.

Granger may be an insufferable know-it-all as his Godfather had put it, but her diligence, as he’s come to learn, perfectly complements his occasional bouts of perfectionism. He had fully expected them to buttheads, get into rows as bad as the one that had landed him that nasty slap back in third year, but they had ended up working quite well with each other. By the end of the two week-long assignment, he had to begrudgingly admit to himself that his father had been wrong to accuse her of cheating to get good grades.

It had hurt his pride and he had ignored her completely after that. He only resumed “talking” to her last week, when she had come up to him to ask if he was finished with the DADA book lying on his table in the library. He had wanted to say no, tell her to bugger off and find her own copy, but had found himself gesturing for her to take it.

The witch had instead taken the seat in front of him and began working on her own essay right there, in his space. He had floundered for a good minute or two, just staring at her furiously scribbling on a piece of parchment, getting ink everywhere. Nobody would have seen her sitting there with him, his little corner hidden from the heavy traffic of the library. After a while he had given up trying to understand what the swot was hoping to achieve by infringing upon his peace so he had resolutely returned to working on his Transfiguration homework.

When she had finally gotten up to leave, he noted that it was just a little over ten minutes before dinner time. “Thanks for letting me use the book, Malfoy.”

From what he can tell, the school isn’t abuzz with gossip surrounding the two of them so he can only assume that she had told no one of their little study session, nor the two that had followed the first. He doesn’t know what they’re doing but he knows that he doesn’t mind it as much as he’d like to fool himself into thinking.

“Draco.”

He knows the taste of his name, of course. Draco tastes like an expensive brand of chocolate that his mother had indulged him with when he was a kid, and Malfoy tastes like leather. The fact that his name tastes like chocolate had been the only redeeming quality he found out of having sex with Pansy. Every time she moaned his name, the taste of chocolate would make the flashes of coal slightly worth the trouble.

Hermione’s voice doesn’t bother him anymore. What does bother him is the fact that he has spent months imagining what colour her moans would be and what colour his name would take when it leaves her lips.

Now he knows the answer to one of those things. It’s salmon pink, much like what her other notes sound like, the ones she would produce when talking about a subject only she knows about in class and the ones that would leave her lips when something particularly good happens to her.

He can’t imagine a reason why she’s speaking his name like that, but he turns his eyes to her and gestures for her to keep speaking. He can only hope that she doesn’t notice the blood rushing to fill his cheeks in the darkness.

“Why did you save me last year?”

The question catches him by surprise, so much so that he stops walking and only stares at her for a long moment. He instantly knows that she’s talking about the world cup, about the warning he had given the trio. Slowly, his features harden, and he feels a scowl replacing his baffled expression. “Is that why you’ve been hanging around me? You think we can become what, friends, because you assumed that I had saved you that night?”

She doesn’t immediately respond, instead taking a step closer to him. He feels his chest tighten at the proximity, every word out of his father’s mouth about pureblood superiority suddenly swimming through his head and causing an explosion of varied flavours to occur on his tongue. She’s so close, close enough that he can see the freckles dotting her nose, close enough that he can detect the scent of coconuts from her hair.

“I didn’t assume anything, Malfoy. You saved me that night.”  

   Aunt Bellatrix trains him, and she becomes fascinated with his condition when she learns about it from his mind. It occupies her interests enough that she doesn’t stumble upon the thoughts of her, and he’s so frightened by the possibility of her finding out that he’s been lusting over a muggle-born that it speeds up the process.

He’s always been a quick study, but there’s nothing like the fear of your infatuation being exposed to your deranged aunt to really get someone to master a spell.

   He had expected that the dark mark would affect his condition, make the colours duller and the flavours blander. He’s right—once the ugly black thing gets branded on his skin, he can instantly tell that the colours will be nearly transparent now, the various hues no longer as defined as before and no longer obstructing his vision. His aunt tells him it’s a good thing, as he wouldn’t want those silly hallucinations coming in the way of a successful Avada or Crucio. The thought of the Dark Lord’s name no longer brings up an overpowering seaweed flavour, the taste subdued now.

When his mother plays the piano for him, the colours are still brighter and more pronounced than when people speak, but it’s no longer a fireworks display. She looks at him with a forlorn expression, one that he hadn’t expected but can understand because, as much as hated the migraines he got from those colours, they had been his. They had been bright, sometimes blinding, sometimes erratic enough that he feared he would go into a seizure, sometimes causing him to miss the target of a hex, but they had been his.

With his Occlumency walls safely in place, he allows himself to think of her name. The Sauvignon Blanc isn’t nearly as potent as before, the flavour of the green apples no longer as crisp, but he tells himself he can only be thankful that it’s still there.

[anartic-monkeys]

[fanfic] opiate this hazy head of mine (chapter 1 of 2)

Summary: The brick walls of his dorm rooms, the white tiles of the baths, the drapes in his childhood bedroom, they all know her name. Initially it had been in anger, in frustration, in denial even as he pumped himself into completion to images of her. Eventually the name was whispered in resignation, in concealed adoration, and in an agonized declaration of a love that would never be returned.

TRIGGER WARNING: Character is diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). If you are triggered by mentions of suicidal thoughts, depressive episodes, panic attacks, or even medication, please skip this story or proceed with caution.

Title is directly lifted from the lyrics of Medicine - The 1975

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23413189

FFN Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13537767/1/opiate-this-hazy-head-of-mine

CHAPTER 1

la douleur exquise: the heart-wrenching pain of wanting the affection of someone unattainable 

August 4, 2002

He knows for certain that she’ll be leaving soon.

The timepiece on his wrist tells him it’s well past one in the morning, but he keeps his eyes open and trained on the woman lying next to him. Hermione Granger’s face is peaceful in sleep, the lines that usually mar the space between her eyebrows hidden from sight. He wants to touch her, her cheeks and the exposed skin of her shoulders, but he’s terrified of waking her up.

He knows that once those eyes open, she’ll realize what a colossal mistake it had been to sleep with him, then she’ll be gone from his life.

Forever.

So he stays still, tries to keep his breathing as even as possible so as not to rouse her. Just minutes ago he had been drowning in a sea of her—her eyes, her warm heat wrapped around him, her hands everywhere, her lips leaving marks that are not his to keep. Now he’s lost, the constellation of freckles dancing across the skin of her nose and cheeks drawing him in deeper into what would be very dangerous territory.

He has never been this close, despite the many cruel efforts on his parts to be physically near her.

The taunting.

The dirty looks.

The insults thrown at her face, right at her face, allowing him just a moment to be that close to her face.

Tomorrow she’ll be gone, but for now he allows himself to live in the reverie that she is his.

Keep reading

[levirens]

[anartic-monkeys]

[fanfic] opiate this hazy head of mine (chapter 1 of 2)

Summary: The brick walls of his dorm rooms, the white tiles of the baths, the drapes in his childhood bedroom, they all know her name. Initially it had been in anger, in frustration, in denial even as he pumped himself into completion to images of her. Eventually the name was whispered in resignation, in concealed adoration, and in an agonized declaration of a love that would never be returned.

TRIGGER WARNING: Character is diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). If you are triggered by mentions of suicidal thoughts, depressive episodes, panic attacks, or even medication, please skip this story or proceed with caution.

Title is directly lifted from the lyrics of Medicine - The 1975

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23413189

FFN Link: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13537767/1/opiate-this-hazy-head-of-mine

CHAPTER 1

la douleur exquise: the heart-wrenching pain of wanting the affection of someone unattainable 

August 4, 2002

He knows for certain that she’ll be leaving soon.

The timepiece on his wrist tells him it’s well past one in the morning, but he keeps his eyes open and trained on the woman lying next to him. Hermione Granger’s face is peaceful in sleep, the lines that usually mar the space between her eyebrows hidden from sight. He wants to touch her, her cheeks and the exposed skin of her shoulders, but he’s terrified of waking her up.

He knows that once those eyes open, she’ll realize what a colossal mistake it had been to sleep with him, then she’ll be gone from his life.

Forever.

So he stays still, tries to keep his breathing as even as possible so as not to rouse her. Just minutes ago he had been drowning in a sea of her—her eyes, her warm heat wrapped around him, her hands everywhere, her lips leaving marks that are not his to keep. Now he’s lost, the constellation of freckles dancing across the skin of her nose and cheeks drawing him in deeper into what would be very dangerous territory.

He has never been this close, despite the many cruel efforts on his parts to be physically near her.

The taunting.

The dirty looks.

The insults thrown at her face, right at her face, allowing him just a moment to be that close to her face.

Tomorrow she’ll be gone, but for now he allows himself to live in the reverie that she is his.

Keep reading

[levirens]

[fanfic] opiate this hazy head of mine (chapter 1 of 2)

Summary: The brick walls of his dorm rooms, the white tiles of the baths, the drapes in his childhood bedroom, they all know her name. Initially it had been in anger, in frustration, in denial even as he pumped himself into completion to images of her. Eventually the name was whispered in resignation, in concealed adoration, and in an agonized declaration of a love that would never be returned.

TRIGGER WARNING: Character is diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). If you are triggered by mentions of suicidal thoughts, depressive episodes, panic attacks, or even medication, please skip this story or proceed with caution.

Title is directly lifted from the lyrics of Medicine - The 1975

CHAPTER 1

la douleur exquise: the heart-wrenching pain of wanting the affection of someone unattainable 

 August 4, 2002

He knows for certain that she’ll be leaving soon.

The timepiece on his wrist tells him it’s well past one in the morning, but he keeps his eyes open and trained on the woman lying next to him. Hermione Granger’s face is peaceful in sleep, the lines that usually mar the space between her eyebrows hidden from sight. He wants to touch her, her cheeks and the exposed skin of her shoulders, but he’s terrified of waking her up.

He knows that once those eyes open, she’ll realize what a colossal mistake it had been to sleep with him, then she’ll be gone from his life.

Forever.

So he stays still, tries to keep his breathing as even as possible so as not to rouse her. Just minutes ago he had been drowning in a sea of her—her eyes, her warm heat wrapped around him, her hands everywhere, her lips leaving marks that are not his to keep. Now he’s lost, the constellation of freckles dancing across the skin of her nose and cheeks drawing him in deeper into what would be very dangerous territory.

He has never been this close, despite the many cruel efforts on his parts to be physically near her.

The taunting.

The dirty looks.

The insults thrown at her face, right at her face, allowing him just a moment to be that close to her face.

Tomorrow she’ll be gone, but for now he allows himself to live in the reverie that she is his.

 He wakes and feels his chest constrict in panic, his breath catching in his lungs and his limbs freezing up. In the back of his mind, he imagines that this is how it would feel for her to wake up the morning of their N.E.W.T.s, realizing that she had fallen asleep in lieu of studying. The space beside him is empty, only the ruffled sheets and some stray strands of hair on the pillow serving as evidence that Hermione had spent the night with him. He had meant to watch her to the very last minute, savour the very last moment before she’d leave, and he had fallen asleep instead and wasted precious time. He doesn’t even try to get up, choosing instead to close his eyes and will the sharp pain in his chest to fade into a dull throbbing. He doesn’t know how much time passes but he finally moves his head to face the other way, discovering a kink in his neck.

“Draco, are you awake?”

His eyes snap open at the voice and he imagines that his body visibly stiffens.

“Do you mind if I use your kitchen to make breakfast?”

He rises slowly, leaning on his elbows, and finds her sitting on the wide windowsill. He swallows at the sight of her wearing his shirt, a book propped open on her exposed legs. For a moment, he entertains the idea of sleep-induced hallucinations, wracking his brain for an explanation for the anomaly that is Hermione Granger.

He opens his mouth to ask her a dozen questions, each one an attempt to explain why in Salazar’s balls she's still here in the poor death eater’s lair, but his mind blessedly decides to kick in before his mouth can do any damage.

She had said his name. His given name.

“I’ll make breakfast,” he says instead, swinging both legs off the bed and turning away from her for a moment to search for his pants. Only half-naked, he takes note of the time and beckons for her to follow him into the kitchen.

She doesn’t move from her spot (he has no idea how many hours she’s been sitting there but he knows for certain that it couldn’t have been long enough for it to justify him referring to it as her spot) and the minutes tick by with the two of them merely staring at each other. She would never hear it from him, but he would much rather stare at her than cook breakfast. A few heartbeats pass and then she’s pushing off the ledge, raising her eyebrows at him and he answers the unvoiced question with a roll of his eyes. “I can cook.”

“Here, I’ll give you your shirt back," she replies, ignoring his declaration.

He shakes his head, not even trying to hide the appreciate way his eyes roam over her body. He doesn’t know why she decided to put his shirt on, it doesn’t seem like something she would do, but he wants to keep her in his clothes for as long as possible.

Maybe then her scent would be permanently engraved into the fabric.

 She says she wants pancakes and Draco pretends he’s not thankful that she chose something he actually knows to make. He doesn’t burn anything, even when he feels her eyes boring holes into the back of his head, but he barely stops himself from going overboard with the blueberries.

Little triumphs.

He’s plating up a high stack for her, ignoring the curious stare she’s been maintaining ever since he poured her a cup of tea. He wants to run away from the scrutiny and jumps on the opportunity once he hears a light tapping sound coming from the window. His owl delivers him letters that he leaves in a drawer for later and a copy of the paper that he brings back to Hermione, wordlessly handing it over to her just to get her to stop studying him.

“Do you have powdered milk?”

“No. Why?”

“Oh, nothing. It’s just,” she pauses, glancing up from behind the face of an elderly wizard being tried for tax evasion. “I usually put some powdered milk on my pancakes, but these are fine. You’re surprisingly good at this.” She makes a show of taking a rather large bite that has him hiding a smile behind his tea.

“Flattery will get you nowhere, Granger,” he says, not without irony. She catches on his meaning and then they’re sharing a smile, an inside joke that only the two of them know, and Draco wonders at what exact moment did the universe tilt the wrong way and allowed him to have this with her.

To have her.

“This is odd,” she finally says, looking at him in a way that tells him its not his culinary skills she finds bizarre. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that she means them, that she means it’s odd that she had slept with him and him with her and that he had made her pancakes with far too many blueberries and she had just shared a smile with him that made the darkest parts of his mind recede for a moment—

“Don’t overthink it, I can hear the cogs in your brain turning all the way here,” he responds, hoping against all odds that he sounds as nonchalant as he wants to be about it. He knows for a fact that if he wants to keep her from finding out the mess that is his thoughts around her, he best start putting up the occlumency walls he had so carelessly torn down last night.

He tells himself he will, in a minute, when she finishes her pancakes and she’s had enough tea. He’ll put up the walls when she stops looking as if she doesn’t hate him, doesn’t hate that she had fallen into bed with him, doesn’t hate that he’s standing shirtless in front of her because she’s wearing his shirt.

He tells himself he couldn’t have expected her to stay any longer. She has work, she tells him, and he doesn’t tell her that of course you’re working on a Sunday. He watches her tiptoe her way back to his room and he watches her emerge once again dressed in her own clothes, her healer robes tucked in the crook of her arm. He tells himself he isn’t disappointed when she only kisses his cheeks, tells himself he doesn’t feel his fingers warm when she tells him that she had a good time, that she’ll see him around soon.

He tells himself it’s not the hope that she would come over again that has him purchasing the tin of powdered milk from the muggle pharmacy. It sits in one of the cupboards, right next to the tea that she had picked out.

  February 11, 2000

Draco grits his teeth, mentally listing off a number of hexes that he could fire at the beady-eyed wizard sitting in front of him.

“I beg your pardon?” he asks, struggling to keep the drawl in place. To the untrained ear, they would hear an almost bored quality to the question. To anyone who pays attention, they would hear the unnatural lilt that his voices takes on right at the beginning.

“Yes, Mr. Malfoy, we need to perform legilimency on all ex-Death Eaters wishing to apply for a job at the ministry,” he eyes Draco, one hand coming to scratch at his whitened beard. “Of course, everyone knows you’re a skilled Occlumens, which is why we’ve prepared a special potion that will ensure you do not… keep things from our knowledge.”

Draco feels a muscle twitch somewhere on his jaw. “And why exactly would such a thing be necessary in the first place, if I may ask?”

The veil covering the cruel sneer falls away and the man in front of him openly shows him just what he thinks of Draco. “Mr. Malfoy, you can’t honestly expect the ministry to let you work here without the reassurance that you do not have any ill plans tucked away that mind of yours. Think of it as a way of earning your future employer’s trust. That is, if we do end up hiring you.”

Draco has no response, choosing instead to steeple his fingers against each other and stare back at the other wizard. When the silence stretches on, with no attempts from Draco to end it, the other man speaks up in a tone brokering no argument, “This is an absolute requirement. If you do not wish to go through with it then I will be bidding you farewell.”

“When?” he asks, feeling the last dredges of his pride slipping away from his grasp.

 A healer performs the spell. When it’s over and he feels like his mind has been repeatedly stabbed by a blunt knife, he turns away from the judging eyes staring right at him. There’s a flurry of papers and the sound of a book rapidly being flipped through. The healer furiously scribbles on his chart while Draco awaits the verdict.

“Mr. Malfoy, you’ve been diagnosed with major depressive disorder. Here’s a prescription for anti-depressant pills that you are to take if I’m to clear you for work at the ministry.”

He turns back to the healer with a deliberate slowness, as if reducing the speed of his movements could aid his brain in keeping his mouth from falling wide open. “I beg your pardon?” he finds himself asking for a second time that day.

“Mr. Malfoy, you have suicidal tendencies—”

“Harry Potter has suicidal tendencies, did you also diagnose him with depression?”

“We value patient confidentiality, Mr. Malfoy, I assure you. You won’t be hearing about Mr. Potter’s medical business as he won’t be hearing about yours,” the healer states this with a pointed look, no doubt alluding to the fear she saw in Draco’s head about his thoughts becoming of public access. Draco takes little relief in this.

“I also know for a fact that when you say suicidal tendencies, you’re referring to the things he did during the war,” the healer continues. “Unfortunately, that was a case of reckless heroism, not a sign of depression.”

Draco raises his eyebrow at this, finding that the comment made him like his healer infinitesimally better than before. “I’m not depressed.”

“Would you like me to read to you all the signs I just picked apart from your mind? Aside from constantly thinking about your own death, you have severe insomnia, you have very little interest in doing things you like, you have virtually no appetite to speak of, you’re conflicted between the belief that your mother would be better off without you and the guilt of leaving her now that your father is gone—”

“Enough.”

The healer pauses, adjusting the spectacles that had started to slip down her nose. “As you know, depression is not something you need to be ashamed of. You’d be surprised how many of the British wizarding folk have been diagnosed with various mental health issues following the war.” 

For the second time that day, he chooses to answer with cold silence. The healer meets his gaze and wordlessly hands over a small sheet of paper. Draco takes it and his eyes drop to read the messy scrawl. His eyebrows draw together at the unfamiliar words staring back at him. “This is muggle medicine.”

“Yes. Do you have a problem with that?”

The question catches him off-guard and he looks up, realizing his mistake a second too late. The potion hasn’t fully worn off and he is unable to build up his occlumency walls in time to counter the healer’s legilimency.

Scared.

Don’t know how to buy these.

Don’t know where to go to get these.

Not depressed.

Can’t be depressed.

“Stop,” he finally grits out, turning away from the healer and finally breaking the spell. He wants to scream, wants to get up and run away from the room, job at the ministry be damned. He almost does the latter when he hears her ripping out a small piece of parchment.

“This is the address of a pharmacy I frequent. You may think of it as a muggle apothecary of sorts. Just hand your prescription over and make sure you have muggle money on you.”

Draco takes it, hating the trembling of his fingers as he fights the urge to crush both pieces of paper in his fists.

“Come back with the filled prescription and I’ll give you your medical clearance. Goodbye, Mr. Malfoy.”

 He likes to think he makes a graceful exit, but he knows that he all but stumbles out the room and into the lit hallway. The walls, white and suddenly so oppressive, seem to close in on him as he feels his breathing grow laboured. A panic attack, his mother had described it on the one occasion he had been weak enough to show her that he wasn’t as put-together as he would like everyone to believe. She had scoffed at him, her aristocratic face wet with tears, and had pulled his head to rest on her shoulder.

Now he thinks the healer would have listed off sporadic episodes of panic attacks if he hadn’t interrupted her.

His legs miraculously carry him towards the floo networks and he struggles to fight off the last vestiges of the potion remaining in his system, already working on constructing the ever-trusted wall around his mind. His throat has gone dry, all moisture seemingly travelling to his now-clammy hands, and his vision starts to blur when he’s only steps away from the floo that would get him away from this wretched place—

“Malfoy?”

Fuck.

If someone were to slice his ears off, damage the sensory organ enough that he would only be able to hear anything if one were to use a sonorous charm and shout directly into the mangled hole on the side of his head, he would still be able to recognize that voice. The last time he had heard her, last time he had seen her, was during his trial shortly after the culmination of the Second Wizarding War. He had been more surprised to see her than when he’d seen Potter, more surprised to hear her testify for him than when it had been Potter doing the same thing.

His hands had been bound before him, but his heart had soared at the sight of her then. He had been so certain that he would never see her again, not when he had been on his way to be locked in Azkaban. He had barely paid attention to the words she was saying, his focus trained on the sound of her voice, the fire in her eyes. Not once during her speech did she glance at him and he had only been given the chance to look into her eyes when she had been about to exit the room.

He had sworn that day that he would never forget that image, would hold on to it through the horrors of Azkaban. When he’d been told that the Wizengamot had decided to put him under ten years of heavy probation instead of 10 years in Azkaban, he had let himself foolishly hope that he’d be able to see her again under different circumstances.

Nearly two years later and he finally gets his wish, but the circumstances are only marginally better than before. He attempts to take a steadying breath and only succeeds in affirming that he still can’t breathe quite properly. The last of the bricks fall into place and he turns to face her. A lesser witch would see nothing amiss, only an ex-death eater making a hasty escape from St. Mungo’s, but she’s no lesser witch.

Hermione Granger takes one look at him and the suspicion in her eyes is replaced by that of concern and he fucking hates it. He pretends to appraise her, feigns the slightest bit of shock at her healer robes, only enough that she would think he had failed at trying to hide his surprise at the knowledge that she works here.

Of course he knows she works here; he had almost worked himself up into an early panic attack worrying that she would be assigned his healer.

“Granger.” He notes that there’s only the slightest bit of a tremor to his voice and he imagines his godfather would have been proud. Still, he keeps his hands behind him where she won’t be able to see how badly they’re shaking.

“Malfoy, are you—” she cuts herself off, eyes narrowing at him. “Are you okay?”

He manages a smirk and a slight inclination of his head. “Never better. Goodbye, Granger.”

“What?” is the indignant cry. He’s already stepping into the floo and tossing down a handful of the powder when she calls to him. “Malfoy, wait—” 

He doesn’t think about the possible repercussions of fleeing from a healer, of fleeing from Granger of all people, the only thought running through his head as he’s engulfed by the flames is how he needs to get away from her and her worried eyes.

He doesn’t deserve her concern.

  August 8, 2002

He startles awake, hanging suspended between grappling for consciousness and holding on to the last images of sun-kissed skin against his tongue. He blinks away the fog clouding his mind and searches for the source of his sudden waking, feeling a throbbing behind his eyebrow that somehow falls into beat with the knocking outside his door—

He’s on his feet and rushing out of the bedroom, wand at the ready. The frontal lobe of his brain catches up to his adrenal glands just as he reaches the front door. He reasons with himself—the  wards wouldn’t have allowed just anyone within 20 yards of the door, and since the knocking isn’t a figment of his imagination, he can only imagine that it’s someone from the ministry on the other side of the door. With a wandless flick of his wand, the door opens.

Draco hadn’t known who exactly to expect, but he had not expected to see her. Her hand is raised mid-knock, her hair is flattened down by the knit cap keeping her ears warm, and her eyes are wide and bloodshot as they stare back at him in shock.

He barely has time to open his mouth and call her name before her face contorts and she starts crying, right there by the doorway. Something in his chest constricts at the sight and he almost rubs at it to soothe the sudden painful throbbing radiating right above his left breast.

In the back of his mind, he suspects that it might be his heart aching at the sight of her tears.

“Can I come in?” she asks, uselessly wiping at tears that are only followed by others. She all but collapses into his arms when he moves to pull her into the flat.

He tries to lead her over to sit on the settee but she shakes her head at him, hands clinging to the collar of his shirt and effectively wrinkling the fabric. He blames the epinephrine still coursing through his blood vessels when he finds himself leaning down to press a kiss to her forehead. He freezes, lips still pressed to her skin, waiting for her to shove him away for daring to do something so intimate to her of all people.

Hermione releases her hold on his collar, her hands travelling upward to cradle his face. She tugs him down until their lips meet in a soft kiss, Draco all too cautious to deepen it and risk scaring her away.

“Can I sleep here tonight?” she asks against his mouth, breath washing over his face and leaving behind a distinct scent of chamomile and peppermint. He wonders if he’s being manipulated, wonders if he should allow himself to be manipulated by soft lips and cold hands.

Why?

“Please.”

“Okay.”

Hermione transfigures her clothes into something more sleep-appropriate and Draco slips away to prepare her a cup of tea. When he returns, she’s already settled in the middle of the bed, hands fidgeting with the edges of the quilt. She spots the cup he’s holding and reaches out to take it from him.

“Thank you, Draco,” she says, turning to him as he moves to sit net to her. “For all of this.”

He frowns down at his own hands, the adrenaline from before already well out of his system by the time he’d finish preparing her tea. Chamomile, the same thing she had chosen the last time she was there, with one heaping cup of honey and enough milk to turn the drink an ugly shade of Dutch white. She doesn’t comment on how he’s already committed to memory the way she takes her tea and he doesn’t ask her the barrage of questions assaulting his brain.

When the tears start flowing down her cheeks in a silent current, he takes the hand that’s not holding on to the delicate china in both of his. He feels foolish, offering her comfort when the whole wizarding world knows he’s the last person qualified to do as such, but she doesn’t pull away from his touch and the trembling of her lips still just enough for her to keep sipping her tea. Draco spots her wand lying on top of his bedside table and his grip on her hand tightens, the sight making him wonder when exactly he started to earn that level of trust from her.

He watches her lower the empty cup and start to pull away from him, moving to put the cup beside her wand. He vanishes the china with a wandless and non-verbal flick of his hand and allows himself to revel in the impressed look she gives him.

“Sleep, Granger,” he tells her. He moves to lie down, giving her enough space to decide the distance that would exist between them, telling himself that whatever she chose he would keep it that way all through the night. He watches her chew on her lip for a moment then promptly slide down to lie with her sides pressed against his. A few moments pass and then they simultaneously move, him raising his arm to circle her shoulders and her moving to place her head right above his erratically beating heart.

The silence stretches out long enough that he suspects she’s fallen asleep, her breathing even and her heart finally calm in its thumping. His own eyes start to drift close when he hears her soft voice whisper against his skin.

“Goodnight, Draco.”

 He wakes up to lips pressed against his neck and he thinks this is how he dies, a bite to his jugular that will drain him of his pure and ancient blood. When Hermione does move to bite him, he finds himself moaning in pleasure instead of pain, his hands shooting out to cradle her head and keep her mouth firmly in place. She soothes the bite with a languid drag of her tongue.

“I thought you just wanted to sleep?” he asks, voice thick with sleep and dick already half hard in his trousers. “Granger.”

“Draco,” she responds, her own voice just the right amount of rough. Her hands move down to work on the buttons of his shirt and he finally gathers enough sense to still her movements.

“Granger,” he grounds out, firmer this time. “We can’t. We shouldn’t. Not when you’ve been crying all night.” He wants to add not when you’re vulnerable but thinks better of it, suspecting it would only grant him a hex or two.

“I’m sorry,” she says, extracting her body from his hold and completely turning away from him. She hunches forward on her sides, curling into a position that makes her look so small and makes Draco’s eyebrows draw together into a frown of genuine confusion.

“Why do I feel as if you’re under the impression that I don’t want you?” he asks, tugging on her shoulder to make her lie on her back and face him again.

“Because I am,” she responds right away. The next part comes a few seconds later, in a much quieter voice. “Because you don’t.”

The occlumency walls fall apart and he grabs her hand and places it right where he wants it, rubs himself using her palm for a few wicked seconds before stilling them both. “You’re as much of a fool as I am.”

Hermione resumes stroking him through his trousers, her eyes alight and her mouth parted. She pushes him down to lie on his back and moves to straddle him, her hand still on his cock while the other works on completing the mission of removing his shirt. She helps him out of the garment and runs warm hands down his chilled torso, leaning down to once again attack his neck with her lips.

His hands map out an exploration of their own, gripping her hips through soft cotton shorts and seeking out the skin hidden underneath her jumper. His hands reach up until the tips of his fingers tease the edges of her bra, feeling up the lace and groaning when he feels her hand leave his crotch.

She pulls back and whips off the jumper, watching his steadily darkening expression. Hermione reaches back and unclasps the final piece of clothing holding her back from being equally half-nude as he is and he watches with rapt attention. The bra falls away, tossed to lie forgotten somewhere on the floor, but his eyes never stray from the sight of her full breasts just inches away from his face. He swallows and her eyes follows the motion, smiling down at him and grabbing his hands to pull them to her chest.

The first time he had seen her tits, he had ended up worshipping them for the better part of an hour, not neglecting to tell her she had the most beautiful breasts he had ever laid his eyes on. He had been granted a sharp laugh for his eloquence, a laugh that quickly evolved into a drawn-out moan when he had wrapped his lips around one nipple and used the nail on his index finger to tease the other.

Now he holds both of her breasts in his hands, testing out their weight much like the last time, caressing the underside with his palms and watching the skin breakout in goosepimples. She leans back to rest her hands on his thighs, pushing her chest out to him and letting out breathy little moans that fill the room. Her hips start a steady grinding motion, the heat of her clothed arse rubbing against his cock enough to drive him half delirious with need.

He rolls her nipples between his fingers, alternating between slow rubbing and fast swiping. He leans forward, sitting up, and catches one hardened nub in his mouth. The answering moan eggs him on to suck harder, switching between breasts with an almost desperate edge to his movements. This close, her scent invades his senses and overwhelms the part of his brain that usually has him questioning every move, every thought, every word coming out of his mouth.

“Fuck, you smell so good,” he tells her, lips pressed against a reddened nipple. She responds by further pushing her chest into his face and he is happy to oblige, continuing his ministrations on her breasts. He feels her hands fumbling to pull down his trousers and he lifts his hips high enough to assist her.

“It’s been days but I can still feel you inside me.”

Her words make him groan and he bites down on one nipple, just a light graze of his teeth. He helps her out of her shorts and her underwear, leaning back down to his original lying position with his hands firmly on her hips. “Think you can ride me, Granger?”

She takes his cock into her hand and the shock from the difference in body temperature has him biting down on his lip. She smiles at him, teasing her entrance with the tip of his length. “Not if you keep calling me that.”

“Hermione, fuck, Hermione,” he gasps, the syllables of her name rolling from his tongue with practiced ease. The brick walls of his dorm rooms, the white tiles of the baths, the drapes in his childhood bedroom, they all know her name. Initially it had been in anger, in frustration, in denial even as he pumped himself into completion to images of her. Eventually the name was whispered in resignation, in concealed adoration, and in an agonized declaration of a love that would never be returned.

He watches her sink down on him, her heat engulfing him and obliterating any coherent thought he was previously capable of making. His muscles burn from the effort it takes him to not move, to keep still and let her do everything in her own pace. He thinks his grip on her hips may leave bruises in the morning, but he allows himself the selfish thought, forgives himself when he doesn’t loosen his hold on her.

She stops when he’s fully inside her, their skin flushed against each other, chests rising and falling in tandem. Hermione leans down and kisses him, her face overheated and her lips slow and wet against his. He lets her take charge of the kiss, following her lead, matching her peck for peck, tongue for tongue. When she pulls back, he catches a glimpse of the scar on her arm and he’s immediately overwhelmed with the familiar feeling of guilt. He swallows, hoping to physically push back the thought.

“Take what you want from me, Hermione. Take what you need.”

For a moment she looks like she’s about to cry, but she swoops down and kisses him with ardour, catching his bottom lip in between her teeth and giving a painful bite that she quickly soothes with a swipe of her tongue. She doesn’t break the kiss when she starts moving, moaning against his lips with every thrust.

He kisses the side of her mouth, making his way down to the spot beneath her ear that had her screaming his name last time. She whimpers when his lips touch the sensitive skin, her hips picking up speed. Her mouth attaches itself to the back of his neck and he feels her sucking, biting, leaving marks that he won’t hide with a concealment charm. The forward-backward canting of her hips transforms into a circular motion and he knows she’s close. Aside from the constant assault of his mouth on her neck and his hands groping her breasts, he keeps still, feeling her walls clamp down on him and her teeth press down on his neck almost hard enough to break the skin.

She lifts her head, kissing him while riding the waves of her first orgasm for the night. Her body collapses on him and he pulls out of her, still painfully hard, and moves her to lie down on the bed. Even in the dim light of the room he sees the flush of her skin, the light sheen of sweat on her chest and on her legs. He kisses her face, pushes away the curls stuck to her forehead, kisses the arch of her brow, both of her cheeks, the tip of her nose and the dip of her upper lip, and kisses his way down her body.

She shudders when he takes his time kissing her shoulders, biting and sucking and selfishly leaving marks that she’ll have to hide with a concealment charm. Her hands shoot out to tangle in his hair when he reaches her breasts, torn between pulling him away from the over-sensitive flesh or pushing him to keep sucking on the spot just centimetres from her right nipple. He promises to worship her tits later, when he’s inside of her again, and begins to move further down her body.

As he draws closer to her centre, her scent grows stronger. He kisses her inner thighs, careful not to touch the swollen folds of her cunt. Hermione has grown progressively louder as he grew progressively bolder in his exploration, his tongue dipping into her wet hole. They moan in unison and he thinks he may get drunk on her taste. He fucks her with his tongue, letting her grow accustomed to the feeling, waiting for her to come down from the high and demand for more.

When the last of the tremors from her orgasm fade away, his lips find her clit and he sucks the sensitive nub into his mouth. Her hold on his hair borders on painful, her hips bucking up into his face. He pushes her down with his hands, keeping her in place as he uses the flat of his tongue to massage her clit.

He alternates between swiping and circling the kernel with his tongue, using two fingers to fuck her hole. He feels her walls tighten around the appendages and he withdraws them, determined to make her cum using just his mouth. He sucks on her clit, pulling her impossibly closer to him and allowing her to mindlessly fuck his face. When she comes for the second time he barely hears his name pouring from her lips, her thighs clamping down on his head and effectively blocking out the world.

He doesn’t give her time to ride out her orgasm, pushing into her in one swift thrust. He makes good on his promise, kissing her to let her taste herself on him then moving down to worship her breasts once more. Draco only half recognizes the things she’s saying, a mix of familiar swears words and his name and then things his orgasm-deprived mind just can’t seem to put together.

“Your cunt feels amazing,” he replies when she tells him how good he feels inside her. “You feel so goddamn good, Hermione.”

“Harder, Draco, please,” she mewls, fingers clawing down his back and leaving even more marks for him to keep. “Please, please, I’m going to come again.”

She comes a third time, not nearly as intense as the first and the second one, but enough to pull him spiralling into his own orgasm. He spills himself inside of her, the euphoria of his release settling deep into his bones. In those blinding seconds he forgets that they’re former enemies, that they were only tentative acquaintances before this whole fling started, forgets that he doesn’t understand her motivations and forgets to question his own.

He doesn’t pull out of her, remembering how she had asked him to stay inside of her the last time, and he’s rewarded with a smile and a tender kiss. He moves them so she’s half-lying on top of him, the sheets shielding their naked bodies from the cold. He’s internally debating with himself on whether he should go back to sleep when she makes the decision for him.

“Sleep, let’s give it another go when we wake up.”

 “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

He only nods, moving to gather his clothes from the floor. He finds his trousers first and slips them on, facing away from her.

“Not yet,” she amends, as if she had somehow known her response had hurt him. “In the morning, I will.”

He doesn’t point out that it already is morning. They had woken up multiple times during the night and had satisfied each other countless times. The first time he had been the one to wake up, pulling her warm body into his arms, kissing her shoulder as an overwhelming feeling of gratitude took over his heart at the sight of her still curled up beside him. She had taken it as him initiating and things had quickly escalated from there. That had been followed by more sleep and even more sex, and now the sky is tinged with a warm orange and he can’t bring himself to feel regret at the prospect of being sleep-deprived at work. 

He looks down at her and catches her watching him, his shirt from last night hanging open on her shoulders. He wants to know if this is her own cruel way of revenge—false hope, a taste of what could have been and what may be but will inevitably never happen. He wants to know why he’s been allowed to feel as much as he has only for it to be violently taken away from him in the end.

“Come back,” she says, delicate hand patting the empty spot beside her on the bed. “It’s far too early to get ready for work, isn’t it?”

“I’ll make you breakfast later. Get some more sleep.”

He retrieves a fresh shirt and leaves her alone in the bedroom, not turning around to give her a chance to seduce him back into his own bed. He waits by the door for a few seconds, listening for any tell-tale signs that she’ll follow him out, and breathes a sigh of relief when his ears are met with silence. The papers he had been reading before turning in for the night lay abandoned on the coffee table, the sight of them prompting images of Hermione stumbling upon them and asking him questions he can’t and won’t answer, even for her. 

His legs carry him to the sitting room and he hastily shoves the papers into the drawer, eyeing the half-empty bottle of pills staring back up at him. He grabs it, pops one pill into his mouth and swallows it dry, then tosses it back in to join the papers. The drawer is locked with a flick of his wand and he starts to breathe easier.

There are many things he doesn’t know about whatever it is going on between them, but one thing he is certain of is that she must never find out about his depression. The thought that she had only slept with him four days ago out of pity had plagued his mind during the interim between then and now. It had taken him every logical cell in his body to convince himself that the impossibility of her finding out about his illness came second only to the impossibility of her sleeping with anyone out of pity for their mental predicament.

He had spent hours every day thinking about what had happened between them, thinking about how and why it happened, how he wanted it to happen again. He wouldn’t go as far as deluding himself into thinking that he was anywhere near done thinking about it, and her showing up in his flat and then fucking him senseless for hours certainly did not offer any help.

What he didn’t have any problem accepting was that there wouldn’t have been a repeat after the first time. Another thing he had been certain of—that Granger would never set foot in his flat again, that it had been a one-time thing. Then last night happened, and now she’s in his bedroom, possibly sleeping, and he’s in his kitchen preparing the ingredients for pancakes.

He’s finally going to put that tin of powdered milk to use.

 Draco suspects that it’s the smell of food that has her emerging from the bedroom, his shirt buttoned up around her form and her hair resembling a nest of some large bird species. He’s torn between the desire to fix her hair for her (with his hands, not using magic) and the desire to see if it would be possible to mess it up even further. He slides her a plate of pancakes and pulls the tin from the cupboard, presenting it to her.

“Is that… did you get me powdered milk?”

His brain tells him to lie, to downplay the gesture, make up a story about seeing it during one of his grocery runs and purchasing it out of curiosity. He knows she would stop believing him the moment he tries to pretend he does his own grocery.

“Yes.”

She stares at him, mouth hanging slightly ajar, and he braces himself for the questions to come. “I have so many questions about that, but I must admit I’m more hungry than curious.”

It’s his turn to gape at her. The many years between them has given him the privilege of knowing enough about her to know that she must be burning to ask him, to clarify, to make sense of whatever it is that isn’t making sense to her brilliant brain. He watches as she pops the lid open and spoons out a generous amount of the milk, pouring it all over her pancakes. The sound she makes when her lips close around the first bite is devilish and he feels his face heat up.

“Here, try some,” she says when she catches him still staring at her. She catches him by surprise when she leans forward to feed him off her own fork. “Go on, it won’t bite you back if you bite it first.”

The milk is too sweet and it dries out the edges of the pancake. He tries to hide his grimace by drinking from his tea but she catches it and openly laughs at his reaction.

“Bit weird, is it?” she asks him, still eating the ruined cakes. “My parents made me these, but they had forgotten that we’d already run out of syrup. They were arguing about it, so I just grabbed a tin of milk and poured it all over my pancakes so they would stop fighting about the bloody syrup.”

He finds that he’s at a loss for words. He’d heard about what happened to Hermione’s parents, what she’d been forced to do to keep them safe from Death Eaters, from people like him. The sweetness from the milk turns sour in his mouth and he feels his hands begin to tremble. Once again he’s left wondering why she would ever associate herself with him, why she would ever trust herself to be vulnerable in his presence, why she would look at him and talk to him like he isn’t scum on the bottom of her shoe.

“I’m sorry,” he finally says. The words are inadequate, useless, but he continues to speak. “I’m sorry about your parents. I’m sorry you had to do that. I know I’m probably the last person you want to hear this from, but I’m so sorry about everything that happened to you during the war. I’m sorry about everything I did to you, every nasty word I told you before the war. I’m sorry, Granger, I’m sorry I stood by and did nothing but watch when my demented aunt did that to you—”

“Draco, shh.” He hadn’t even realized his voice had risen and had taken on a hysterical tone before she was suddenly standing before him, his face in her hands. “It’s okay, Draco, I forgive you. I’ve forgiven you. We were children. I don’t blame you.”

“Well you should,” he says, stepping back from her reassuring touch. “I was your bully, I was a Death Eater, I let those people into Hogwarts and let them torture and kill children. I called you that word, that fucking word, for years.”

She looks like she’s ready to argue but he doesn’t let her, speaking over her attempts to placate him and tell him he’s not a monster. “I let her do this to you,” he says, grabbing her arm and pointing at the word engraved there. The letters are still an angry shade of red against her skin, framed by other tiny scars that have already faded. “You lost your family trying to hide them from us, from me. Many people hate me, Granger, but none of them should hate me more than you.”

She looks like she’s on the verge of tears and he doesn’t know which one of them is shaking harder. He thinks she might slap him, maybe wake up from whatever delusion she had the he could be someone she should be sleeping with. Whatever they had, surely she’s going to end it now that he’s talked some sense into her.

“Are you sorry?”

The words are spoken so quietly that he half believes them to be a figment of his imagination. He stares down at her, into the fire of her eyes and the set of her shoulders. Forget a slap, he thinks she might punch him.

“More than anything,” he replies.

“Then I forgive you,” she tells him, moving to wrap her arms around his waist. With her head pressed against his chest, her voice comes out muffled when she adds, “And don’t you dare presume to tell me that I shouldn’t forgive you. That’s for me to decide.”

He doesn’t doubt her words, doesn’t doubt for a second that her Gryffindor heart has forgiven him. Draco wouldn’t be surprised if she’d forgiven him before he asked for her forgiveness; it’s simply her character to be the forgiving one, to be the person to look for the good in people even when they’ve been swallowed whole by the bad.  He allows himself a moment to embrace her to him, pull her body even closer to his and kiss the top of her wild hair.

When he pulls back, he doesn’t meet her gaze. “Eat your pancakes, Granger.”

 She’s redressed in her old clothes and about to floo in to work. He wonders if she’s not worried about people commenting that she’s wearing the same clothes as yesterday sans the knit cap but decides to keep his mouth shut on the matter. There’s a myriad of questions in his head that he’d much rather voice but, just like the last time, he chooses to savour the last moments. He doesn’t know when he’ll see her again, but he knows last night had only been another moment of weakness on her part. She had been emotional over something and for some twisted reason he had been the one she sought comfort from.

It’s never going to happen again, he knows. A one-time fluke that just so happened to be repeated a second time, but he wouldn’t dare raise his hopes up for a third. The world simply does not work that way.

She looks like she wants to say something, her brow furrowed and her bottom lip caught in between her teeth. She looks up to meet his eyes and they just stare at each other for a few moments, her working something out in her brain and Draco just waiting for whatever it is she’s going to say.

“I never got to tell you,” she finally says.

“Tell me what?”

“I never got to tell you what happened, I said I would in the morning,” Hermione explains. There’s a hint of a smile playing at her lips but she looks nervous and he immediately regrets asking in the first place.

“It’s okay, Granger, I won’t pry into your personal business,” he says, feigning boredom. He sees a flash of trepidation in her eyes and wonders if he could fuck things up any further than he already has.

After a few terse moments, she seems to come to a decision and clenches her fists at her sides. “Would you like to talk about it over dinner?” she asks, her chin raised and her eyes staring directly into his.

He feels his mask slipping through his fingers, the surprise showing in his face and fuelling her confidence. His mind is reeling with about a dozen thoughts per second. She looks less scared and more determined, and she looks beautiful like this. She looks beautiful brandishing her Gryffindor courage. She looks beautiful in old clothes and with her hair smelling like his shampoo. She looks beautiful standing in front of his floo, standing inside his flat, she looks beautiful wearing his clothes—but she’s not his and why is she asking him out to dinner?

“Why?”

“To eat and converse, obviously,” she replies, her cheeks coloring. He thinks she looks beautiful like that too, flustered and annoyed at him. “Do you not want to, then?”

Draco decides then and there to stop trying to pretend that he would ever understand the inner workings of Hermione Granger’s head. He knows very little about her—she’s the most brilliant witch of her age, she eats her pancakes with powdered milk and takes her tea with one heaping cup of honey topped with an obscene amount of milk, and she uses about half a dozen drying charms on hair. She’s the poster girl for all Gryffindors, she’s a reluctant war heroine, she’s a healer and she probably overworks herself to near death. She’s the only girl he’s ever been in love with and she can never be his but there she is, asking him out to dinner.

“I would like to have dinner with you. When and where shall this take place?”

She giggles at his words and he decides that when she leaves his life for good (in the very near future, he knows) he would endeavour to keep the sound of her laughter playing in his head.

“Would tomorrow work for you? I have the day off,” she says, still smiling up at him. “I’ll bring takeout here.”

He realises that it’s only to be expected that they would have dinner at his place, not outside, not where people can see them and judge her for her choice in company. Whatever they are, it could never become public information, which is why he nods his head even though he doesn’t have the slightest idea as to what takeout is.

Her smile grows bigger and she also nods. She seems to hesitate for half a second before pushing on her tiptoes and kissing the corner of his mouth. The contact only lasts for a few blissful moments but it’s enough to leave him the slightest bit breathless.

“Right. I’ll see you tomorrow, Draco.”

[levirens]

Ohayou, Ibarahime - Morino Megumi