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Chapter Text

Harry and Ron stare at Hermione with their mouths open.

“What did you just say?” Ron asks, a bit of toast falling out of his mouth and onto his breakfast plate.

“I said your new cologne smells like Buckbeak took a dump in Crookshanks’ litter box, Weas-Ron.”

“But you said you liked it last week?”

“Must’ve had a stuffy nose, my bad.” Hermione smirks at his dumbfounded face, taking a sip of her iced pumpkin juice.

Suddenly, a loud smashing sound echoes through the Great Hall. All three of them whip their heads around to the Slytherin table, where Draco Malfoy is profusely apologising to Theo Nott, apparently having knocked Theo’s cup of coffee onto the stone floor. Draco, blushing a deep red from all the stares, grabs his pile of books and meekly makes his way out of the hall, platinum blonde head transfixed onto the floor so as not to trip over his feet and draw any more attention to himself.

“What in the—,” Harry shakes his head, trying to get rid of the remains of sleep still fogging his brain, attempting to make sense of what is playing out to be a very unusual morning. He turns to say something to Hermione, but she is already out of her seat and halfway out of the Great Hall.

In the Entrance Hall, Hermione runs up to Malfoy and grabs his sleeve. He spins around, surprised. Hermione looks around, making sure that they are alone before dragging him into the nearest broom closet.

“Have you lost your mind?” Hermione whines indignantly. “Why are you carrying books around with you? You’re as inconspicuous as a Devil’s Snare trying to pass itself off as a houseplant. I don’t READ.”

Draco huffs, his back straightening. “Me? I’m the one who’s conspicuous? I’ve never seen Ron look so offended—what in the world did you say to him?”

Before Hermione can answer Draco’s face begins to shift. His features melt and bubble as if made out of molten wax, grotesquely rearranging themselves under the low light of the broom closet: his long, straight nose shortens; his sharp cheekbones soften; his eyebrows and eyelashes thicken, and turn to a dark shade of brown. In less than a minute, Hermione Granger stands where Draco Malfoy once stood, green Slytherin robes now loose on her small frame.

“Good thing you dragged me in here,” she smiles, “I guess my potion wore off faster than yours.”

Chapter Text

Hermione waves her wand over Draco’s skin, the tip a hairsbreadth away from touching the still-raw wounds.

He takes a sharp breath when the wand wavers, accidentally grazing the lines made by the Sectumsempra.

“Sorry,” Hermione whispers softly, sitting up, “did I hurt you?”

“No, it’s fine.” He is laying on his bed in the Slytherin Boy’s Dormitory, Hermione straddling his lap. The curtains are drawn around the four-poster, muffling the sounds of sleep coming from the other boys.

“I’ll be gentle,” she promises, once more leaning over his chest and getting to work. Incantations he has never heard of before flow from her mouth like silk as she traces shimmering runes onto the air above his skin. They linger for a moment, suspended, before gently sinking down and into the sharp slashes. For a second the wounds glow white—deep canyons filled with a pure light that illuminates the darkness before fading.

Her hair slips around her shoulders, loose curls grazing his bare chest. His breath hitches.

“Am I hurting you again?”

“Yeah,” he breathes out, not really comprehending the question, momentarily stunned by the image of the witch as she gazes up at him from underneath her eyelashes, her big eyes coloured with concern.

“I mean, no. No, of course not,” he stammers, his foggy brain finally catching up to his ears. “You’re perfect.”

Hermione gives him a warm, lopsided smile - his favourite. Her Muggle watch suddenly beeps midnight.

“Shit, it’s past curfew.”

She starts to get up but Draco pulls her back down and onto his chest, arms wrapping tightly around her.

“Stay, please?”

Chapter Text

Hermione’s shoulder explodes in blinding pain as she dives onto the hard stone floor, narrowly avoiding a stunning spell that was aimed at where she stood half a millisecond ago.

Still down, she shoots her own offensive spell back at the masked Death Eater, hitting him squarely in the chest. She does not stay to see whether he collapses or not.

She sprints down the hallway, the grey uniform of the other students and the black cloaks of Voldemort’s supporters whizzing past her in a blur.

She makes it onto the seventh floor, and skids to a stop in front of a tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy, her clammy hand painfully gripping her wand. I need to see Malfoy. I need to see Malfoy. I need to see Malfoy… I need to know he didn’t do this. Three thoughts for the Room of Requirement and one for herself, a silent prayer made to whichever god or deity would take pity on her today. Hermione was not one for religion, but today she would have willingly fallen down on two knees and sworn her life-long devotion to the practice, any practice, if it meant her prayers would be answered.

Hands shaking and eyes scrunched closed, she stands listening to the ancient stones grind and rearrange themselves and, further away in the distance, the screams of her classmates.

She enters the Room and starts sprinting again, this time past mountains upon mountains of magical artefacts, furniture, and books—contraband items discarded by generations of Hogwarts students. Hermione expertly navigates the precariously stacked piles, thoughtlessly following a path she has followed many times before.

She finally stumbles to a stop in front of it: a single unsuspecting and innocuous black cabinet…in front which stands Malfoy.

“Did you do it?” Her voice shakes.

He just stands there, facing the Vanishing Cabinet.

“I asked you a question, Malfoy.” Her voice comes out sharper this time, stronger. His refusal to turn around and look her in the face and acknowledge his broken promise transforms her fear into a vicious anger which she directs at him like a weapon, driving its sharp point straight into where she knows it will hurt the most.

“I never should have helped you fix it. I should have let him kill you, and let you rot in hell like like you deserve.”

He shifts, turning his head to the side enough for her to see his profile: an aristocratic, carved nose; long, blonde eyelashes, a mouth set in a grimace.

“I didn’t have a choice, Granger. You know that I didn’t have a choice.” His voice sounds dead and dejected, all the spite, sarcasm, and wit that she is used to gone.

“You always have a choice, Malfoy. And you chose to betray me.” She starts shaking, the anger now transforming into despair. A sensation like falling, the dawning realisation that this will never, ever work out, and that she was stupid to ever think that it would.

“You betrayed me! You fucking betrayed me,” she screams, tears finally streaming down her face. He spins around and gathers her tightly in his arms. She can feel that he’s shaking as well. She sobs into the familiar scent of his cologne, hating herself for once again finding comfort in his arms.

“I’m sorry, I— … I’m so sorry, Hermione.”

Chapter Text

She sidesteps his swing and, while he is occupied with the momentum of his movement, brings her sword up to his neck.

“Dead.”

From the corner of her eye she can make out the impressed nod of their Swordmaster. Good, she has been training hard for this.

Malfoy is less impressed.

“Come on, Granger. Is that the best you can do?”

His voice is teasing but anger flashes in his eyes like lightening. There is only one thing that Malfoy hates more than being beaten, and it’s being beaten by her, the Mudblood. Hermione feels herself rising to the bait, a hot wave of indignation overriding all the tiredness in her body, all the aching in her bones. She’ll show the slimy little weasel.

She sinks into position, knees bent, both hands on the hilt of the sword. Malfoy charges at her with a ferocious yell, his attack more personal now, less focused on technique.

Hermione blocks him and the two swords collide in mid-air. The sharp clang of metal on metal reverberates around the training yard. She meets his gaze over the criss-cross of silver and nearly buckles underneath it—his eyes are steelier than the weapon in his hands.

Hermione pushes and the screech of the swords as they slide against each other rings in her ears. Before Malfoy has time to recover Hermione swings and hits him on the back of his armoured knees, knocking his legs out from underneath him.

Hermione kneels down with her knee on his chest, keeping him on the ground. She leans close, until their noses are a hairsbreadth apart, and does her best to mimic the voice that he had used to tease her with.

“No, Malfoy, this is the best that I can do. Also, you’re dead.”

Malfoy’s features twist into an ugly and bitter grimace. Beaten by the Mudblood, again.

Suddenly, his sharp, aristocratic face clears. He stares up at Hermione, assessing. He stares so long that she grows uncomfortable, and is about to ask him if he hit his head a little too hard on his way down, but she never gets the chance.

Because he brings himself up and crushes his lips to hers.

Her mind goes blank.

It feel as though the ground has been snatched up from underneath her and she’s free falling into a deep abyss. She can’t think. She can’t breathe. She can’t feel anything but him, his mouth moving insistently on hers.

His arms wind around her waist, pulling her closer.

Then, suddenly, he flips her around so that he is on top, breaking the kiss. Hermione gasps, the manoeuvre expelling all the remaining air, the air that wasn’t stolen by him, from her lungs. The hand that was a second ago gripping her back is now holding a sword to her throat.

She stares up at him, wide-eyed. His eyes are dark, shining in triumph.

“I believe you’re the one who’s dead now, Granger,” he says in a low voice.

It takes Hermione a few seconds to get her bearings. Then, as soon as she realises what has happened, she growls and kicks him off.

She storms away from the training yard, the sight of his arrogant smirk burned into her mind.

She lost. She lost because of a kiss.

For the remainder of the day Hermione furiously launches herself into her training tasks and duties, determined to not dwell on the humiliating incident.

However, as she lays down in bed that evening, exhausted and on the precipice of sleep, her brain presents her with one last thought for the day, a thought that intrusively makes its way to the forefront of her mind. It’s something that she has been trying to not think about, but also something that she’d be lying if she said she wanted to forget.

Because she swears, in the split second between the tip of his tongue nudging her lips open, and him slamming her into the ground, that she heard him groan.

Chapter Text

She stands in front of him as radiant as the sun, as youthful as the last time he saw her. His throat closes up—she hasn’t changed at all.

“How’s Scorpius?” she asks, straight to the point. Very Granger-like.

“He’s good,” Draco manages to choke out. “He’s going to university next year, to study social sciences and law. He says he wants to advocate for the protection of magical creatures.”

“I wonder where he gets that from,” Hermione teases, her eyes crinkling around the edges.

“He looks like you,” Draco goes on. “He has your hair, but my eyes. And your brains…and tenacity…and stubbornness…and slight psychotic streak.”

The sound of Hermione’s delighted laughter peals around the room.

“Well, we always knew that would be a risk. I used to transfigure people into bugs and trap them in jars…” Hermione laughs again. “It’s in his blood, I don’t blame him.”

Draco chuckles, unable to take his eyes off her. Her presence is like a balm to a wound that he’d had for so long that he’d forgotten what it was like to feel normal.

“It is in his blood,” he nods, “but his friends aren’t helping either.”

“James and Hugo are just as bad then?”

“Oh, terrible. They all got suspended last semester for charming all the school toilets to sing the school song and spurt out water every time someone sat down on them.” Draco tries to laugh but the sound gets caught in his throat. It comes out strangled, choked.

“I miss you,” he whispers, his face finally breaking.

“Hey,” Hermione consoles him, reaching her hand out. “Don’t be sad, it’s okay.”

She’s so close. He can almost see the freckles scattered all over her nose. He can almost smell the scent of parchment and books and fireplace smoke and vanilla that always seemed to linger on all her clothes. He can almost touch her…

Her palm feels cold and smooth against his. Her face falls.

“It’s not the same, is it?” she asks with a small smile.

Draco rests his forehead against the Mirror of the Erised.

“No, darling. It’s not.”

Chapter Text

Draco knelt down on one knee and pulled out a ring. “Will you marry me?”

Hermione thought she might cry. Tears welled in her eyes as they stared at each other.

And she did cry, later that night. And again the next morning, when she saw pictures of the engagement printed in The Daily Prophet: Astoria flashing a huge heirloom diamond to the camera, and Draco, arm draped loosely around her waist, looking wistfully at someone off-frame.

Chapter Text

Draco snatches Hermione’s notebook out of her hands, before the message that she had just written on it has time to disappear.

“What’s ‘Niagara Falls’?” he asks, his forehead crumpling.

“Give that back, Malfoy!” Hermione attempts to grab the notebook back, but Draco holds it out of her reach.

“It says, ‘It feels like Niagara Falls down there, Gin. I swear to god, if I don’t get that taken care of soon…’” he reads out, slowly.

Hermione’s face turns so red that it matches her Gryffindor tie.

“It’s, uh, it’s a rare magical illness. I-I might have a rare magical illness,” she stammers.

Draco’s grey eyes narrow as he slowly hands it back.

Across the library, Ginny curiously watches their exchange, then doubles over in fits of silent laughter as the message finally appears in her own twin notebook.

Chapter Text

She staggers through the hoard of bodies, being pushed from side to side by strangers. She feels ungrounded and strangely weightless, like a jellyfish floating in the sea, content to let the waves of drunken students push her to and fro. She floats on like this for a while, lost in the music and the sway of the crowd, before the wave spits her out near the bar. Great—she’d love another drink.

As she finishes telling the bartender her order she spots a shock of bright, blonde hair in her periphery.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

His tone is nonchalant, detached; the voice of someone who is speaking to a child about to pet a rabid kitten, but who has no desire to prevent the inevitable injury and onslaught of tears that will ensue. He clutches his whisky, black leather gloves still on, as if he has just come in from outside. There’s a slight dusting of snow on his hair, only a shade lighter than the layered strands.

It is his voice that startles Hermione. She had been used to hearing a different voice, a different tone: sarcastic and snarky but light, always teasing. Hearing him like this—casual, unaffected, slightly cruel—was like having a rug pulled out from underneath her. She suddenly didn’t know where she stood, where to place her feet.

“I thought you went home for winter break”, she says, trying to pretend that he’s just another college classmate. Trying, desperately, to be civil.

“I decided to come back.”

They drink in silence. Hermione is grateful for the loud thumping bass, the generic pop ruckus that is playing throughout the bar, if only for the fact that it saves her from the unbearably awkward silence that would otherwise undoubtedly unfold between them.

Draco orders another round and pushes a drink towards her.

“A toast,” he says, smirking a little, meaning to mock, but Hermione can see the shadows under his eyes. He looks terrible, like he has not slept in days.

“To new beginnings.” He raises his glass, then drains it. She takes a careful sip of hers, no longer in the carefree, careless mood she was in before she had spotted him.

“That’s unfair, Draco,” she says quietly, more to herself than to him. She’s surprised that he hears her.

“Hardly unfair. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

“But it’s not…it’s not like I’m just going to forget you. Chapter closed, moved on—it’s not like that.”

“But that’s exactly what you’re doing.”

“I think it’s important for me. For my own self development, you know…” she cringes into her drink as the words linger between them, floating in the tense air. The most cliche break-up lines in history: it’s not you, it’s me.

He laughs without humour. “Alright,” he says. “Enjoy your coming-of-age, ‘finding yourself’ trope. Very original and exciting. I’m sure you’ll find what you’re looking for in a random stranger going at it between your thighs tonight.”

She feels her blood boil. She stands up, suddenly charged with too much energy and nowhere, and no way, to release it. Shaking, Hermione aims her anger at the only person she can think of.

“If I have a random stranger between my legs tonight then don’t blame anyone but your mother, Draco,” she spits.

He chokes on his whisky. “What?”

“She couldn’t bear the thought that her perfect little pureblood boy was going around with a filthy Mudblood like me on his arm. She was the one that threatened to get me kicked out of here if I didn’t break it off with you. And I am sorry but I have worked way too hard for my place here to let some callous, archaic cow derail my—”

Hermione halted, eyes widening in shock. She didn’t mean to say any of that. She had promised Narcissa that she wouldn’t. Or, more accurately, Narcissa had threatened her to not tell a soul.

Draco stares at her, eyes wide and luminous for the first time that evening; mouth slightly ajar.

“Shit,” Hermione groans, sitting back down on the bar stool and putting her head in her hands.

“I didn’t know my mother did that,” Draco murmurs. Through her fingers, she can see him staring at the rows of liquor bottles behind the bar, eyes glazed and unfocused.

“I wasn’t going to tell you. I’m sorry, I’ve just had a lot to drink. Firewhiskey is so good,” she laughs feebly, pathetically, trying to lighten the air.

“It is,” Draco concedes and, out of the corner of her eye, Hermione sees a flash of crystal spin in his long fingers. “But Veritaserum has no taste.”

Chapter Text

“We could run away together.”

Draco snorted, and she felt his bare chest move against her bare back. It was early Sunday morning, and they were laying in his King-sized bed together, savouring the small window of time before the rest of the world woke up from its slumber.

“I’m serious.” She turned around to face him. The sun was just beginning to filter through the curtains, bathing his face, his hair, his chest in soft yellow light. They had woken up early, despite their late night. “We could just vanish. Poof. We’d be careful not to leave a trace. No one would know where we were.”

“And where would we go?”

“I don’t know. Spain.”

“Spain?” Draco laughed. The sunlight glinted off his teeth and for a second, Hermione was stunned silent. “What’s in Spain?”

“Beautiful beaches, for one. Anonymity, for another. We could live in some small town, or a fishing village.”

“I don’t fish, Granger.”

“Neither do I, but we could learn.”

He looked at her sleepily, his eyes still half-lidded with the remnants of sleep. He yawned and pulled her in against his warm chest, wrapping his arms around her. She was suddenly engulfed in him, his warmth, his smell—musky, with a hint of citrus, mixed with something distinctly male. She closed her eyes and buried herself even further into his arms. Surely there couldn’t be a war waging on outside, not when the sun was so bright this morning. Not when she felt like this.

“Okay, Granger,” he said, his voice still rough with sleep. His words ghosted over her shoulders, raising goosebumps on her skin and she thought: if I could die here, I would.

“We’ll run away together,” he said, his fingertips drawing lazy lines down her back.

She knew he was lying. She knew their days were numbered. She knew that in just a few short hours they would both have to report back to their respective sides. They would have to hear the the news of who didn’t make it through the night, heal the ones who did, and then strategise, plan, fight.

Hermione didn’t know how much more of it she could take.

“Spain,” he promised, and sealed it with a chaste kiss to her lips. Hermione, suddenly overcome, grabbed his face and held him there. She kissed him as hard as she could, hoping that her kiss conveyed all that she couldn’t bring herself to say.

I love you. I’m sorry that it’s this way. I’m sorry it took a war for us to realise how good we are together, and I’m sorry it will be the war that breaks us apart.

She spoke these words over and over in her head, even after Draco’s breathing had steadied and he’d fall back asleep, still clutching her to his chest.