Pairing: Draco Malfoy x Hermione Granger (Dramione)
Setting: Coffeeshop AU
Written for: Cocoartist's birthday

To be completely honest, Hermione applies to work at Brew Glory because the décor is perfect.

There are freshly cut flowers in big glass vases littered strategically around the repurposed shophouse. The paintings on the walls look curated. The floor is a sheet of perfectly even cement and the tables and chairs are hewn out of reclaimed wood. Everything is bright and airy and beautifully industrial with a touch of home and they make patrons pay $13 for a pot of tea, so really. Hermione is not ashamed when she admits to listening to enough Fleet Foxes, the xx,and DCFC to be considered part of the local college hipster community.

Also, she kind of really needs a job, because her parents are upper middle class but not that upper middle class, darling, and this is the only place within sprinting distance from the campus library that's hiring.

The manager, a tall black senior from the business school, eyes her dubiously as she slides her résumé across the table. "I don't see how winning best delegate in three high school Model UN conferences and getting 2400 on the SATs qualifies you to make coffee."

"It shows commitment and excellent memory," Hermione offers. "Furthermore, I can bake a variety of sugar-free cakes and pastries that are fully organic and don't taste like shit."

The manager glances around the bustling coffee shop, eyes lingering on the two clearly overworked baristas manning the counter. She can pinpoint the exact moment when he caves and figures that it probably doesn't matter what her coffee tastes like, because Brew Glory attracts its clientele on the strength of it being so damn pretty.

He hands her a denim apron trimmed with faux leather and tells her to report at three the next day.

Orientation involves herding her into the tiny kitchen where she is told that she is to bake at least one sugar-free cake every two days, teaching her how to use the cash register, and introducing her to the other two baristas on duty: an effervescent varsity cheerleader and her bitchier sorority sister.

They skirt around the eight thousand dollar coffee machine that sits, gleaming and spotlighted, in the centre of the long counter space.

The manager – whose name is Blaise – gravely informs her that the coffee machine is largely Draco's responsibility. She is not to touch it until Draco says that she can, because Draco will know; Draco always knows, and she will only learn how to make coffee after Draco has walked her through its maze of knobs and levers and is convinced that she will not destroy the coffee shop's golden goose.

Draco is apparently the owner of this entire business – or, rather, his father, who owns a chain of ridiculously trendy restaurants in LA, does – and he only does the evening shifts. Hermione jokingly inquires if he is, in fact, a vampire, but then the bitchy sorority girl scoffs audibly. She fights the urge to throw a bag of coffee filters at her and retreats into the kitchen to start sifting flour. There's enough time to get a sugarless lemon drizzle pound cake into the oven before this Draco person turns up to start her on her hipster barista career proper.

It turns out that she already knows who Draco is.

Harry has been bitching for weeks about the smarmy, arrogant, inbred motherfucker in his classes who casually critiques every single fucking point of law – purely academic, Harry mimics sourly – and never misses an opportunity to shove his prep school education in everyone's face.

She and Ron had made all the requisite noises, scrolled through Malfoy's Facebook profile and dutifully called him a dipshit, and then taken Harry out for pizza.

So Hermione is quite aware that Malfoy is a jackass to the nth degree, and by the unspoken laws of Friendship in General, she should be punching him in the face before dramatically quitting her new job.

But, because she is twenty-one years old and a first year medical student who is sinking deeper and deeper into debt, she makes a mental note to discourage Harry and Ron from visiting her new workplace in the evenings and joins Draco Malfoy at the coffee machine.

He's tall and almost distressingly blonde and attractive in a polished, polo-shirt wearing kind of way, but three seconds into meeting him, Hermione can see why Harry has been driven to plotting actual murder.

He scowls at her hair and her oversized linen pants and blithely informs her that they have an image to uphold, so he'd appreciate it if she looks less Homeless in Harlem and more Gentrified Greenwich Village. He asks if she wears her retainers regularly, and sniffs when she tells him that as a child of two exceedingly facetious dentists, her teeth are perfect. He calls Blaise over, expresses disappointment over how he hadn't been involved in the hiring process at his own coffee shop, and tuts over the battered résumé that Blaise had chucked under a pile of old waffle makers.

Blaise throws her a look from over Malfoy's shoulder that reads please just roll with it; I really need to keep you, and Hermione refrains from doing the aforesaid punching her new boss in the face and dramatically quitting her job.

Malfoy eventually balls her résumé up, tosses it into a corner, and glides over to his coffee machine. "I'm only saying this once," he threatens, and Blaise sighs the sigh of the long-suffering and disappears into the kitchen.

And then, Malfoy launches into an incredibly intense tutorial on how to brew the perfect cup of coffee.

Hermione struggles to keep her expression neutral, because nothing about roasting beans or cleaning out coffee grounds should be funny, but she hasn't seen anybody this passionate about something since freshman year, when she'd snuck into Professor Snape's postgraduate chemistry lecture (which had, towards the end, devolved into him striding up and down the front of the lecture hall, muttering about alchemy).

And a Draco Malfoy this passionate about coffee isn't at all annoying.

It's… cute?

"You need to take pride in every cup, Granger," he's saying fervently as he churns out a sample cup for her. "Every sip should taste like an essence of effort distilled into gold."

She has no idea what he's talking about, but she takes the cup and sips from it dutifully.

It's good, but she really wouldn't call it an essence of effort distilled into gold. She does, however, see why people would pay eight dollars for it in the early mornings.

She makes a double macchiato and Malfoy doesn't spit it out.

She's officially hired.

Hermione starts taking the busy afternoon shifts with Daphne the cheerleader, who begins sneaking expensive European conditioner into her bag along with Zalora vouchers. Pansy, who is far less tactful, tells her that there is a difference between being artfully grungy and looking like she's wearing her father's jeans.

She gets the hint and bullies Harry's girlfriend into going shopping with her. Ginny tends to lean towards the whole Nike Flyknits with sundresses aesthetic, but she's also spent her entire life dredging through bargain bins and taking a needle to someone else's clothes, so she knows a thing or two about what looks good on a body.

Malfoy comes in for his shift one day and stares at her while she takes off her apron before muttering that she doesn't look too bad in the yellow shift dress she's got on. Blaise sniggers and Pansy lifts her eyes to the heavens and Daphne asks him if he intends to close his mouth any time this century, and Hermione feels very smug when she exits and he's still squinting after her.

He starts coming in earlier and entertains himself by engaging her in conversations about Donald Trump and laughing at her rising fury. He discusses the Black Lives Matter movement through the lens of social media with surprising insight and delicacy, so she almost doesn't want to reach over and strangle him when he concludes, completely deadpan, that all lives matter.

Harry and Ron come in to surprise her one day at work, and Malfoy is in such a good mood from lounging around the counter taking pot shots at Hermione's stance on gun control laws that he only makes one crack at how Ron is probably unable to afford his coffee.

Hermione pretends not to see Daphne quietly giving Ron a discount. Malfoy is too busy watching her carefully measuring out coffee beans to notice.

Malfoy gathers them together after a month for employee bonding, which involves sitting around at one of the tables after closing time with leftover cake and decaf coffee. He's read in one of his father's self-help business books that the key to a thriving company is in knowing both one's employees and one's clients, so he's gotten people to participate in a raffle. The prize is a bag of kopi luwak, and Hermione does not envy anyone who wins it, but some people take coffee really seriously.

People like Malfoy, who can order a schlong with a straight face.

("Why can't you just call it a short black?" she'd asked once, after a group of frat boys had stumbled in and ordered, extremely loudly, eight schlongs, and make them all extra large.

Pansy, engrossed in detailing the windows of the empire state building in the foam on top of a flat white, hadn't looked up. "It's the novelty factor," she'd mumbled around a breath. "People order things just so that they get the thrill of saying something a class of grade six boys would find uproariously funny.")

Either way; Malfoy is now adding a shot of liquor into everybody's cup while inquiring if you were a cup of coffee, what would you be?

"Hot," Pansy smirks. Malfoy rolls his eyes.

Daphne, who'd modelled for Abercrombie and Fitch in high school, resignedly refers to herself as a flat white.

Hermione chokes, and Blaise thumps her good-naturedly on the back before affirming that he would be a long black.

"You think very highly of yourself," Malfoy huffs, but Blaise just grins.

He then turns to her, and Hermione tries not to get distracted by how the shadows cast by the low (stupidly artistic!) hanging jar above them make his cheekbones look glorious. "A latte, I guess."

Malfoy tugs her coffee from her to make it more Irish before she can protest.

"Don't be boring!" he chastises, and is she imagining how his fingertips linger against hers as he passes her back her cup? "A affogato? Ristretto? Insomnia? That's four shots of ristretto. Very helpful for finals week," he assures her.

Hermione shudders. Four shots of ristretto during finals week sounds like a health hazard waiting to happen.

"What do you like best about working here?" Malfoy presses, and out of the corner of her eye, she notes that Pansy has sat back, a little put out at the fact that Malfoy is clearly only addressing her.

She takes an uneasy sip of her coffee – it's really quite alcoholic; Malfoy did not stinge on the liquor. "Your interior decorator is a genius," she says evasively, and is a little surprised when Pansy snorts and says thanks.

Malfoy, however, barrels on. "What else?"

On her left, Blaise downs his coffee like a shot and reaches – very unsubtly – for his jacket.

"Um. The coffee really is quite good."

"And?"

"It's really convenient to get to from campus."

"And?"

Daphne is pouring the rest of her coffee into a to-go cup. Pansy is emptying hers into the sink. Hermione feels a little trapped, but also not trapped, if you know what she means?

"And?" He pushes, and she misses the other three employees sidling out the back door.

"Um," Hermione breathes, suddenly hyperaware of how broad Malfoy's shoulders are and how straight his nose is. Why would she ever want to break it?

Malfoy is clearly still waiting for an answer.

"You're not a complete dick," she blurts out, and Malfoy recoils as if he's been slapped.

"I mean, I thought you'd be," she explains, and she can barely hear herself through the blood pounding in her ears. "Harry says you're an asshole, and you do say really offensive things but I don't know if you even actually mean them half the time or if you're just saying them to get a rise – and – but you're funny? When you're being nasty? And adorable when you talk about coffee? You have a face? Oh my god."

Malfoy, who has been looking steadily more confused but flattered, barely catches the coffee cup that she thrusts at him before she stands up hastily enough to jostle the table. "Bye!" she squeaks, and flees before she can lose the job that puts her in daily contact with a person that she would otherwise never see.

The next day, Hermione's common sense eventually wins out over her cowardice and she puts on her fancy new skinny jeans (they make her ass look phenomenal, Ginny promised), holds her head up high, and goes to work.

Malfoy's already there, lounging against the counter, and he hands her a steaming tulip cup of coffee. "It's a double ristretto topped with milk," he tells her conversationally.

She takes an experimental sip, and tries to tell herself that it's the coffee that's warming her cheeks and not the concentrated fascination that she can read in his eyes. "What's it called?"

His smile is slow and warm and jolts every nerve ending that she has into action. "Magic."