4 times Draco & Hermione flirt with other people + 1 time they admit it’s driving them spare.
So Draco’s flirting with some hyper-blonde at the bar. So she’s draped all over him. So he just checked out her tits—Literally nobody could care less than Hermione does.
“It’s fine,” she says, steering Ginny to the opposite side of the bar. “We hooked up once. It wasn’t serious.”
“Yeah, but we all thought he was obsessed with you.” Ginny scowls in Malfoy’s direction. “Harry says he can’t shut up about you…” Her voice falters, and Hermione follows Ginny’s gaze to where Draco’s unlatching the woman’s arms from around his neck. His eyes are locked firmly on Hermione.
“Granger.” He slips beside her moments later, casting a swift kiss on her cheek. “You came.”
He laces their fingers together, pressing his chest to her spine, and whispers into her ear, “Dance with me,” breath tinged with firewhisky.
Ginny rolls her eyes as Hermione downs a quick shot of tequila and lets Malfoy lure her away.
Hermione shrugs and mouths, “We’re having fun.”
“Isn’t that wanker fifty or some shite?” Draco lowers his spoon, watching Hermione on the opposite side of the canteen, giggling like she’s drunk on Amortentia.
Harry says, “Apparently the term is ‘Silver Fox’. Something to look forward to in a few decades, I suppose.”
“I didn’t realize that’s what Granger’s into.” Draco pushes his tray back, appetite gone.
Harry snorts.
“What?”
“She’s into you, you know.”
He’s desperate to prod Potter for more information, but he’s only slept with Granger twice, so they’re not serious. Explosive doesn’t mean serious, right? That’s what makes it explosive. That enigmatic ‘what if?’ hanging in the air during each encounter.
Draco looks on dejectedly, wondering if he’d prefer exclusive over explosive.
Seven times.
They have slept together seven times, and Draco is still acting like a total wanker, training that new Auror like it’s perfectly dignified to put his hands on her waist to adjust her posture. The girl is blushing so hard Hermione’s suffering from second-hand embarrassment just witnessing it.
Who can blame her? She knows how it feels to be trapped beneath the weight of that intense gaze. She also knows what they look like at the peak of climax. He looks at Hermione with more heat. But there’s no denying the glimmer of interest as he teaches the trainee basic self-defence charms. Damn him.
She slams the gymnasium door shut without looking back.
You can’t have breakup sex if you were never even together, right? But Draco swears there was something final about their last time.
Granger’s face is usually brimming with emotion, but once he helps her off the kitchen island, she goes cold. Detached. All the fire from their eighth time vanishes, and Draco is left wishing for something he thought he already had.
The next evening, she shows up to Potter’s birthday clutching Goldstein’s arm.
What the actual fuck? Is she sleeping with him, too? On the grand spectrum of Ministry blonds, what a prosaic downgrade.
Their eyes meet across the dinner table.
‘Meet me upstairs?’ mouths Draco, gut twisted a hundred times over.
Hermione hops onto the bathroom counter as Draco locks the door behind them.
“Why are you here with another bloke?” He crosses his arms, leaning against the door.
“Why are you flirting with trainees?” she fires back.
“Why are you chasing Silver Foxes?”
Heat crawls up Hermione’s neck. “Who taught you that?”
“Am I not good enough or something?”
“Clearly it’s the other way around.”
“What the hell are you on about?” Draco straightens out. “I can’t get enough of you, if you haven’t noticed.”
“Yes, but I’m not the only one.”
“But you are.”
Hermione pauses, flabbergasted. “You’ve been flirting with other people while you’ve been sleeping with me.”
“So have you.”
“Only because you were.”
“Because you were.”
“Oh my Gods.” Hermione huffs out an exaggerated sigh. “This is going absolutely nowhere.”
“You’re right,” Draco replies. “We’re making no progress, you and me.”
Hermione nods, sadness creeping into her eyes. “I guess that’s that.”
“What? No.” Draco steps forward, blanching. “Do you really mean that?”
“I don’t know. What else is there?”
“Exclusivity,” suggests Draco, point-blank.
“You don’t want that.”
“Says who?”
“Your reputation.”
“I’m pretty sure the entire office thinks I’m obsessed with you.” When Hermione doesn’t respond, having heard that rumour herself, Draco clears his throat and adds, “They might not be wrong.”
“Were you really only flirting with other people because I was because you were?”
He takes a second to reflect, but ultimately shakes his head. “I have no idea what you just said, but how about it? You and me. No trainees. No silver foxes.”
“No hyper-blondes at bars.”
“Course not,” he replies, pretending like he knows what she means. “And no dirty blonds at dinner parties.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.” Draco grins, stepping forward to seal the deal.
Later, Draco’s relieved to discover exclusivity is just as explosive as the enigmatic ‘what if?’ Better even, because Granger is finally, without an inkling of doubt, his.
“I have a confession to make,” Draco said, reading the front page of the Prophet from over her shoulder. It montaged a nondescript wizard dipping a woman in his arms on an illuminated battleground, kissing her like it might be for the very last time.
He tapped his finger on the photo. “I’ve never done this before.”
Hermione looked up at him, puzzled. “What?”
“Kiss someone.”
She snorted. “O-kay.”
“Pansy never wanted to kiss on the lips. She was saving herself for the one. Or whatever.”
“You lost your virginity three years ago.”
“Yeah,” he confirmed, shrugging. “Never kissed her.”
“And there was nobody else?”
“I don’t… do that.”
“What?”
“Stray. Once I’m hooked on someone.”
Hermione’s stomach fluttered. She fiddled with the edge of the newspaper, trying to appear aloof. “And your heart’s still set on Pansy?”
His gaze drifted slowly down her throat. “Is that what you think?”
Hermione froze as he grasped her tie. “What are you doing?”
He undid the loop, dragging the striped red fabric from her collar until it unraveled in his hand.
“It was crooked.”
She had to remind herself that grinning like a fool whenever Draco was nearby was pathetic. But he was a shameless flirt and a damn good co-head. Two things she had not foreseen at the top of the school year.
“I have a confession to make,” Hermione echoed.
Draco lifted a brow, encouraging her to go on.
“I don’t believe you.”
His cheek dimpled. “Shall I demonstrate my wretched skills to prove it?”
Her skin sizzled with heat. They’d been friendly to the point of rousing suspicion among their friends. But this was the first breach beyond platonic friendship, and she wasn’t prepared for the impact.
“I’m terribly hopeless, Granger,” he lamented, draping the tie around her neck asymmetrically.
Hermione swallowed as he coaxed her forward by the ends of the fabric until their faces were inches apart.
“You’re a liar,” she insisted, her voice little more than dazed breath as he righted her collar and crisscrossed the tie, fingertips grazing her chest.
He was all-consumingly close. Daydream Draco close. The one who refused to vacate her mind and never failed to rid the room of oxygen.
He expertly looped the fabric into a Half Windsor, his brow creased in concentration. Maybe if she weren’t so hypnotized by his proximity, she would have noticed the way his breath hitched and the blacks of his eyes expanded. But all she could do was melt when he nudged the knot into place, and whispered, “So kiss me.”
He made a soft moan the moment their lips touched, and she knew it, she knew it, because nobody kissed a girl like that and claimed to know nothing. He yanked the tie. Parted her lips. Teeth and tongue.
It was the kind of kiss she’d only ever dreamed of. Hidden in the depths of the library, alone, but not so remote that nobody could stumble upon them. He wasn’t trying to hide her.
Hermione sank her fingers into his hair, tasting sweet mint, wondering which spell would keep it engrained in her memory for all her future daydreams.
When they separated, Draco’s eyes were hooded and his knees were touching the insides of hers.
“Not bad for a first kiss,” she murmured, distantly aware the bell was ringing.
He took her arm and unrolled her sleeve, buttoning the cuffs. Then did the same with the other. With a wave of his wand, her books tumbled into her schoolbag. He swung her bag over his shoulder and stood, grabbing his own by the handle. The Daily Prophet floated back on the shelf.
“I have a confession to make,” he said, offering her his hand.
Hermione slipped her fingers through his, rising to her feet, looking up at him curiously.
“I wish that was my first kiss.”
And then he kissed her again. So swiftly, she didn’t register it until they were halfway to their next class and her heart was pounding so hard, she couldn’t breathe.
(673 words, prompt: so kiss me, cross-posted from twitter)
dramione drabble | fake relationship | angst with a happy ending
“So, that’s it?” she said it casually, even though it felt like her insides were being torn apart. “Ron apologised, Astoria wants you back. I suppose that means our arrangement is—”
His sharp bark of laughter cut her off. “Don’t tell me it’s over. Don’t you dare tell me that.”
She had never allowed him to get away with speaking to her in that piercing tone before, had never backed down without a fight.
But… there was something in the warning that struck through his demand, in the fractured crack that punctuated the word ‘over’, that made her pause.
And so instead of fighting, instead of warring with him over the one thing that they had ever agreed on—the naïve fake relationship, the understanding that it would end when their respective gains were met—instead of bringing up all of their familiar vitriol, she took a damning leap, and tried instead to accept the small weakness he had offered.
Not to use against him, as perhaps a younger version of herself might.
But instead, to meet with her own, a fragility just as mighty as the one that lingered in the air from his outburst.
So, she continued, as though he had never interrupted her at all, though his plea rung in her ears with each weak word she uttered.
“I suppose that means our arrangement is over.”
His sharp exhale was so anguished, so pained, that the sharpness of it felt like a knife’s edge.
His gaze, she realised, had softened so considerably as of late, and she had grown so accustomed to it’s gentleness that now the stark contrast of his cold stare cut straight through her heart. Such coldness, where once there was warmth.
If she didn’t know better, didn’t feel it in her bones, she would think that he was just as unfeeling as his mask portrayed. But she could see it, the minuscule crack in his facade, and the agony that bled through it.
And so, she continued, quickly, before he took his facade and left her here, alone, with the consequences of her cowardly heart.
“But I—” she choked on her own words, the vulnerability scaring her. She swallowed down the fear, and spoke before she let it consume her, “I don’t want us to be over.”
Shock passed over his features so quickly she almost missed it, the widening of his eyes, his slackened jaw.
And then, in the next moment, his mask was firmly back in place. The crack in his facade hidden once more by cool indifference.
“Why?” he asked, as though he hadn’t been the one begging her not to tell him it was over just moments ago.
Though she supposed this was just his nature. So afraid of being helpless, of putting his heart out on a limb and having it used against him. Such was his upbringing, his love for his family only bringing upon him despair.
But she would not use such weakness against him.
So, she answered his question.
“Because,” she whispered, as sometimes such delicate truth could only be uttered in delicate tone, “I can no longer imagine a future without you in it.”
His mask fell, exposing the agony of the heart he carried.
Two quick strides and he was before her, hand raised as though he meant to caress her. But it fell down by his side again before she could feel his skin against hers.
There was a war waging behind his irises, a war against the man he once was and the man he had become.
She could only hope that the man she loved won the battle.
For several long seconds he said nothing.
But she could tell the exact moment the war ended.
The moment his hand raised for a second time and she felt him caress her cheek. The moment his eyes softened in the way they only ever did for her. The moment his lips parted, not with words, but with a shaky exhale, as though he’d held his breath through their entire encounter.
And then, he whispered, in his own delicate truth, “I do not have a future without you in it.”
Her heart swooped in euphoric glee, and she could not help the smile that stretched her lips so wide it almost hurt.
He laughed as he stared at her, and she knew she probably looked half-mad. But she didn’t care.
Raising to her tip-toes, she kissed him.
Things between them were not over. Far from it. This was only just their beginning.
Since first year, they shared a hunger for knowledge, success, and tormenting obstinate Gryffindors.
Draco was mean. Hermione was sharp and temperamental. They made a fierce pair.
When they became older, Draco started sneaking girls into empty classrooms after curfew. Hermione maintained a long-distance relationship with Viktor. They were never single at the same time. And yet, they were never apart.
They spent candlelit evenings sharing magic and getting up to mischief. In fifth year, they created prohibited Portkeys, and on Hogsmeade weekends, slipped into Muggle disguises and snuck off. Crashing dazzling parties in Bath mansions and London lofts. They drank stolen wine and danced drunk. Sixteen, adrenaline-fuelled, fortified by one another’s presence.
At the end of seventh year, Hermione nailed her N.E.W.Ts, was graduating Hogwarts with a prestigious law apprenticeship and without a boyfriend.
It was time to date people in the real world, she claimed, oddly unaffected.
Graduation marked a new era. One where Draco would start his day without Hermione in their common room. Where they wouldn’t share every meal together, or divide-and-conquer assignments. It was a harrowing thought.
Imagining her ‘dating people in the real world’ ate at him. She would sit across the table from somebody else. Somebody else would know her better than he did.
Narcissa made a fuss when her son stubbornly attended his graduation party in Muggle formalwear. But if Hermione was wearing Muggle clothing, then so was Draco.
Hermione showed up at Malfoy Manor looking indecently gorgeous.
He had a way of making himself miserable, Draco. The words ‘old times’ ‘childhood best friend’ ‘the one that got away’ entrapped his mind like Devil’s Snare and weaved his stomach into knots.
At Hogwarts, whenever he felt lost, his internal compass pointed to Hermione. Tonight was no different.
She wasn’t a social butterfly like Draco. She thought niceties were a waste of time and preferred to hover on the outskirts of a social scene, observing the chaos in judgy silence.
“Where have you been?” she demanded, balancing a glass of weekend rosé between her fingers.
Moping. “Mingling. You should try it sometime.”
“I survived seven years of Hogwarts tolerating nobody but you. Can't kill my streak now.”
“In that case,” he offered her a folded handkerchief from his breast pocket, “got one more adventure in you?”
When Hermione stepped forward to take it, Draco’s hand twisted around her arm, tugging her into him. His mouth slipped over hers as the Portkey tided them away.
By the time they landed on the dewy grass, Hermione’s arm was around his neck, and she was kissing him with just as much enthusiasm.
He clutched her hip and held her close, fears that plagued him all day long misting away.
It was no surprise that the kiss was explosive. Draco had always known it would be. That they would be.
When they stepped apart, Hermione yanked the lapel of his jacket. Relief swimming in her eyes.
“You idiot,” she whispered, smoothing his shirt. Her palm pressed over his heart. “Why did it take you so long?”
(509 words, photo prompt from twitter, potential ecdysis au where hermione's accepted by the slytherins?)
She never imagined an adolescent flame could turn so deadly.
At fifteen they kissed one another on patrol. The first time a boy slipped his tongue between her lips and made her feel desired.
She kept Draco to herself and suspected he did, too. Hermione, his dirty little secret. After three kisses in June, school came to a close. She dreamt of peppermint lips and the drag of solid white teeth all summer long.
At sixteen, she learned how to comfort someone and expect nothing in return. Tight-lipped, subtly explosive, selfish, and uncouth, Draco pushed her away and reeled her back in. He took her virginity in Filch’s supply closet. It was harsh and unromantic and horribly cruel when, afterwards, he revealed his Dark Mark and asked if she still wanted him.
At seventeen, he saved her life.
“Where have you been?” he wanted to know. An unmasked face in a sea of secret soldiers, intent to torture and kill them. The wild jealousy in his eyes was really asking: who have you replaced me with?
“Nowhere.” No one.
He slipped her his wand, told her to stun him, save her friends, and run, promising to find her again.
Seventeen was the longest year of her life.
Draco used his wand to track her whereabouts.
She didn’t know if she could trust him. If he was the cruel sixteen-year-old who hurt her all year long, or the fifteen-year-old who’d kissed her, pulled away, stunned, as if he’d come to a shocking revelation, then kissed her again with reckless, open-hearted abandon.
By eighteen he was her confidante and closest friend.
They met in public spaces. Chiswick. Richmond. Hammersmith. She wore Muggle clothes, and he showed up in all black. Autumnal chic. Trendy Londoners didn’t blink twice. He’d sweep her onto an empty double-decker, a vacant pub, a locked greenhouse in the botanical gardens, remove his leather gloves, and touch her face, her hair, rub her cold hands between his palms and kiss her fingertips. He took note of her scars. The ones he recognised and the ones he didn’t. Demand who did it, vow to make them pay, then offer everything he knew about Voldemort’s next moves.
At eighteen, he confessed he loved her.
It was the worst of the war. She’d been beaten, tortured, scarred, and branded. Draco hardened, trained and bathed in Dark Magic. They did not belong with one another.
Keeping her safe was like clutching a bar of soap beneath the tap and praying it wouldn’t slip from his fingers. But he tried his damned well hardest, and she loved him for it.
By nineteen, freedom tasted like luxury.
War-torn homes, constant nightmares, society’s vitriol, friends who didn’t understand, a world who wished them apart.
It was caviar and champagne.
The ability to sleep in the same bed and touch one another when they felt like it (always), and say I love you without the fear of never saying it again.
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