***DISCLAIMER*** All characters & background stories herein belong to the wonderful JKR and Warner Bros. Don't own don't sue!

"You know, Gin," Hermione was clearly making an effort to ask this as off-handedly as possible, "a while back…you said that you all saw it coming. What did you mean?"

A very pregnant Ginerva Potter broke into a sly smile, "it?"

To her own dismay, Hermione's cheeks still could not resist a telling blush when she mumbled, "Draco. Draco and I."

"Oh?" Ginny leisurely re-arranged the cushions under her sore hips, clearly in no rush to heed to the embarrassment of her friend. They were lounging away a rainy afternoon in Hermione's apartment, enjoying a muggle baking show that had somehow became one of the few cures to Ginny's bouts of foul mood in her last days leading up to the due date.

Hermione's fingers were now wrapped tightly around the remote. "Answer the question," she deadpanned, assuming an air she usually reserved for apprehended criminals she interrogated at work, "or I will wipe this channel out for good."

"You can't do that! There's no way —"

"You just wait. Do not underestimate a muggle-born's mastery of muggle technology."

Ginny grunted, casting a suspicious glance at Hermione's confident grasp on the remote. Finally, she decided that further teasing of her blush-easy friend was not worth risking the end of this heavenly muggle bake-off telly show. She simply adored the sharp-tongued wench who just had the perfect insult for every participant's pastry.

"Well…", Ginny drew out the word, knowing that Hermione was dying for her to get to the actual sentence. "I just…sort of…had a hunch, you know. I didn't go through 'a string of boyfriends' at Hogwarts for nothing, as you guys like to remind me."

A hunch? What Trelawney crap was this?

"It was the small things, really," Ginny continued, in a smug tone that touted her discerning sense when it came to the matters of the heart, "He didn't care much for the rest of the group, you know, when he first became friends with Harry. But he made sure to show up every time he knew you'd be there."

Hermione tried to focus her eyes on the golden pain au chocolat on the telly, though she could feel the heat on her cheeks creeping towards the back of her ears.

"The thing that really drove it home for me, though," Ginny paused in suspense, clearly finding baiting the ever so level-headed Hermione even more entertaining than watching that shrewd harpy tearing apart every pastry chef's ego, "was the cinnamon apple pie incident."

It was one of Draco's first dinners at the Burrow. He had arrived early that day, or rather, most of the Gryffindor crew were just routinely late. Mrs. Weasley was still busying through the finishing touches of the evening feast, and Ginny had shoved a broody Draco into the kitchen as free labor, so she could sneak upstairs with Harry before their rowdy flock of guests busted in.

She was met with quite a sight when she sauntered back into the kitchen later that day: Draco Malfoy, cladded in one of Mrs. Weasley's lilac floral aprons that went quite nicely with his platinum hair, flour-dusted from head to toe, was pinching the fringes of a pie crust with a dainty pinkie up in the air. An overbearing Molly was hovering — not literally, with Draco being almost two heads taller and all — around his work station and muttering an incessant string of instructions that had set a rather constipated look on the blond's face.

"No — not like that — you CAN'T use magic for this part, that's the secret — oh I don't know why you are so bent on making this cinnamon apple pie! Right, pinch it just like that — we are running out of time, for Merlin's sake! We should have just settled with a fruit salad —" Ginny snuck back out to the living room under the cover of her mother's increasingly shrill nagging; she knew better to let Mrs. Weasley spot a pair of idle hands in the house.

Aha, Hermione could pinpoint just exactly which dinner Ginny was talking about. No wonder Mrs. Weasley's cinnamon apple pie was just slightly off that one time. On a side note, she also underlined "once attempted to bake a pie for me" on her ever lengthening mental notepad of Taunts for Draco — and the hypocrite had the audacity to remark that he feared ever being trapped on a barren island with her every time he saw her wolf down a cinnamon apple pie.

"We thought he just really liked the pie, you know." Ginny mused, sounding almost sing-songy now. "Turned out that he barely took a bite when it came on the table, and you gobbled down almost half of that thing. Then I remembered the one dessert you love the most — the Achilles heel of a dentists' daughter —"

"Look!" Hermione had suddenly piped up with a finger pointed at the TV, "It's your favorite judge! She's back on!"

Grinning from ear to ear like a cheshire cat, Ginny slowly tore her gaze away from her scarlet friend who was struggling to contain a growing smile, a silly look that Ginny had, from first-hand experience, learned to be a surefire sign of happiness.

"You know what, Hermione, I actually caught a whiff way before you two started casting moon eyes at each other — "

"NO WE DID NOT —"

"Point is," Dean said smugly, "I knew way — ahead"

"How so?" Hermione asked suspiciously, feeling slightly on edge at that pleased look on Dean's face.

"Quidditch." Dean concluded, as if the single word was naturally the answer to everything on this planet.

It was one of the bi-weekly Potter Cups, only that Harry was out of town on an Auror mission that week, so Dean played seeker against Draco in Harry's place. Their team did not have much of a positive outlook, Dean being admittedly a less skilled seeker than Draco by a long stretch.

"And you know how I caught the snitch?" Dean baited.

Hermione merely rolled her eyes, bracing herself for another long-winded gloating Quidditch victory speech.

"All thanks to you, Hermione." Dean grinned, "you were at the stands that day, keeping an eye on lil' Teddy because last time he almost got swept away by Angelina's broom — "

Hermione fumbled through her memory. She had been assigned similar tasks so many times she could barely remember any specific day, what with Teddy's inexplicable — fine, perfectly explainable fixation on Quidditch, given that he spent more than half of his time at the Potters, it was probably only thanks to the word's impossible pronunciation that his first word was not the sport that made muggle F-1 races look tame in comparison.

"— he was ahead of me by at least a broom, with that showy flip thing he liked to do —"

Hermione's eyebrows furrowed together at her effort to recall any particular "flip thing" Draco enjoyed doing. She did indulge herself in quite of a bit of…harmless observation back in the day, before she felt entitled to appreciate every detail of his patrician good looks any second she liked; Draco liked to do all kinds of barmy things in the air, but like all things broomsticks-related, Quidditch terminology never failed to escape her like a house elf running away from her hand-knitted hats. Despite her enthusiasm for everything else magic, her subpar knowledge of the sport had not much improved, even with her Slytherin boyfriend's constant effort to swindle her into watching his matches with low, unmentionable means that set her earlobes aflame every time she thought of the topic. The lack of progress might have something with her attention usually being…well, rather more focused on Draco's person than whatever maneuver he was pulling.

"— so he did the flip thing, which got him a good few feet closer to the Snitch, and then — then he looked at the stands, and just kinda lagged for a second — " Dean was clearly savoring a moment of tremendous pride, "And voilà! I caught up and snatched the gold lil' bugger."

"The funny thing is, judging from that book in your lap, you probably wasn't watching any of his flashy moves at all."

Hermione grinned despite her best efforts not to. This did sound a very Draco thing. A huge boyish ego and an incessant need to hog her attention, a very Draco thing indeed.

"Do the bloke a favor and wear that yellow sundress more often, Hermione, he probably loves it more than that all the galleons in his vault combined."

Hermione tried to shoot a glare at Dean, but she was really in too good of a mood for it to be anything vaguely effective.

Hermione had realized that asking Lavender how she'd known had been the biggest insult to her intelligence to date.

And she had realized that too late.

"— oh you have NO idea — sometimes he would look at you with this dreamy look — emotions roving about in his silvers eyes like two swirls of unicorn tail —"

"Lavender, I get it —"

"And he would stand extra straight when you are around — boys do that, you know? It's an instinct thing, showing off their assets — "

" — look, actually, I told Harry that I'd help him —"

"Speaking of assets," Lavender beamed at Hermione, "that Mr. Malfoy of yours has got quite a cute little tush —"

"Um, I really gotta — "

Lavender seized Hermione by the elbow, "Ooooo, actually, Parvati and I had been dying to know this — does he have those sexy dimple things above his buttocks? He does, right? He looks like he would —"

It had taken Hermione another 20 minutes and a dozen crimson-faced answers to various inquiries on Draco's anatomy to wrangle free from Lavender's death grip. She had run headlong into Draco when she scurried down the corridor, and she barely hesitated before cupping his face and plastering a loud smooch on his mouth. Draco had rewarded her with one of those smug I-know-I-am-irresitable smirks that made her humph at his oversized ego yet could not help but finding it incredibly endearing. He then proceeded to practically carry her upstairs, his fingers dangerously skirting the hem of her t-shirt throughout the quest for a dark corner. For once, she'd let him, even knowing that a quick snog at the Burrow was nothing short of an open invitation to unfortunate walk-ins. Words would be out soon that Draco had a little pink heart tattoo-ed on his left ankle (she had to give Lavender something juicy to salvage herself from the dreadful gossip-fest), and she deemed it fair to give the man a little treat before his world came crushing down.

"Hermione, I knew about Draco and you before you guys told us." Luna had addressed Hermione in her signature dreamy voice.

Hermione hummed in agreement, feeling relaxed in the knowledge that, for once, this conversation would not drag up some embarrassing personal memory that would cause her traitorous facial capillaries to dilate like it was a race to explosion. Luna would probably comment on something like their "aura", or tell her that a sprig of Nargles whispered the news in her ear.

Well, turned out that she was wrong in thinking that she could ever predict what came out of the mouth of Luna Lovegood.

In her soft, feathery voice, Luna had delivered something that hit Hermione harder than a peeves water balloon: "I saw you guys at Ginny and Harry's baby announcement party."

Oh. Hermione worried her bottom lip in embarrassment, or maybe in an instinctual reflex upon the mentioning of the … fateful night. Hermione was not a romantic by nature, and had Merlin and she sat down for a conversation about how she would like to see this go, she would not have asked for dewy roses or sonnets serenaded in glimmering moonlight; her only request would probably be not being a slurring drunk who lacked the basic cognitive circuits to properly register things of a certain significance, such as a kiss.

Yet that was exactly what she was. A chatty sot lushed up on Champagne — which she later learned Draco had acquired at an atrocious price and was decidedly not meant for binging — who babbled on about anything and everything and who, lo and behold, promptly forgot her first kiss with Draco.

It had always been a small yet nagging regret of hers, not remembering what exactly it was like, though certainly not from lack of trying on Draco's part. He had recounted the event countless times, going as far as frequently volunteering to reenact the scene to "jolt her memory". Only with the amount of jolting and rumbling that often ensued, she was fairly certain those memory therapy sessions bore very little resemblance to the actual event.

Well…in this case…might not be that bad to get a third-party opinion. Hermione braced herself.

"You guys were sitting on the porch. Draco looked like he had to support your back so you didn't topple over."

The porch? Draco had said it happened under the marquee? The lying scoundrel —

"You couldn't stop talking about…something about his hair…how it's gold…and his eyes…which are silver…and how strange it was for a grown man to be made of the colors of fairy dust."

Hermione groaned. She did not know her drunk self had a flair for such cringe-worthy poetry.

"Well, I think more things in this world should be made of fairy dusts."

"Right." Hermione went along with Luna, knowing the kiss would come up any second now.

"And then — then you mentioned that there was a muggle lullaby about twinkling eyes, or stars? You seemed confused yourself."

Huh?

"And you started singing it," Luna carried on with a complete disregard of social protocol that only she could muster, "you sounded like you could win an above-water singing competition among Merpeople — by their standards, of course." She added, as if the look of mortification on Hermione's face was not yet compelling enough.

"— and he just smiled at you like the Singing Sorceress just came on the Witching Hour."

Luna ended her recollection with an airy smile, before drifting away to leave Hermione steaming alone in the utmost form of embarrassment and a sweet, tingling sensation in the pit of her stomach.

"And then I knew. "

"Actually, Hermione," Neville approached her with his perpetually boyish grin, "I accidentally overheard Luna and you talking — really sorry!"

He put up his hands in an innocent gesture at Hermione's exasperated look — as if it was not enough that Luna had thought she sounded like a mermaid —

"There was something, actually. It took me a while to connect the dots, me…being me, you know," Neville smiled sheepishly, the now Hogwarts Herbology professor still bearing traces of the chubby schoolboy with an ever-glowing Rememberall, "but I realized it a while back and I think you ought to know."

"I, um, needed to look up some herbs in one of his potion books — his family has actually got quite the collection —"

Hermione voiced her agreement enthusiastically. One look at the Malfoy library and she nearly swooned. Given Draco's considerable virtuosity in emotional and…sexual blackmailing, she sometimes wondered how he had never attempted to lure her in with the vast amount of rare volumes in his possession before going down the "let me just glare as hard at her as humanly possible and see if she gets the message" route.

"He probably reads a lot," Neville commented. Yes he does — Hermione beamed proudly, her mind drifting to those lazy Sunday afternoons the two spent reading on the tiny couch in her apartment. Draco would always find a way to get his limbs all tangled up in hers, yet he had protested vehemently when she contemplated on buying a bigger couch.

"Most of the books look a bit worn, and a few looked like he had gotten quite a bit of use out of them recently." Neville continued, "then I noticed there were underlines here and there, most of them about herbs that could have unconventional effects on everyday potions."

Hermione ran the account over in her head a few times — since when can't Hermione Granger follow a story?

"Well, potions like," Neville kindly offered help, "the child flu cure you were making for Teddy, you guys fought about the Sniffle Grass thing; the gardening potion — I heard you guys arguing from all the way out in the backyard; and the medieval practice of using Geranium in sleeping droughts —"

Neville had gone on to numerate what came to be a rather impressive list of rare usage of potion ingredients, and it had certainly not taken Hermione as long to connect the dots. The prat had been doing HOMEWORK to pick fights with me, she realized. Somehow, on top of the amusement that was on plain display via her smug grin, she also felt this ridiculous tug at her heart that added an altogether different layer to her delight. Who's the swot NOW?

Hermione had planned to dish out the blow the moment she next saw Draco, yet somehow she never did. Not that she had any pity for his ego — he had certainly toughened up quite a bit through her regular ego-thrashing that she rightfully dubbed "daily public service"; she simply indulged too much in the warm feeling of having something so…dear safely tucked away in a corner of her heart. Well, there was also the utterly insignificant factor that she may or may not have done something of a similar nature herself, but that, she reckoned, was entirely negligible in light of the bigger picture.

"I know! I know! I know, too!" Little Teddy had also piped up, tugging Hermione's robe with one of his chubby hands.

Hermione flushed a deep shade of crimson in a matter of seconds. So Teddy had seen them — oh no — NO — what they did in that hallway that day was decidedly NOT child-friendly — just how —

"Um, Teddy, look — " the horror of scarring her best friend's Godson was enough to send Hermione Granger into tongue-tied sputtering despite her world-class vocabulary, "sometimes — when grown-ups —"

"I was drawing flowers on your book with my crayon," Teddy carried on, completely unaware that Auntie Hermione had almost just blasted a hole in the ground with her wand and promptly hopped right in, "and Cousin Draco took my crayon away." Teddy pouted, clearly still holding a grudge against Cousin Draco for intervening in his artistic pursuit, " — and he charmed away my drawing! All of it!" Teddy's little nose scrunched, looking deeply offended even at the mere mention of the audacious offense.

"I followed him around and sang," Teddy poised for the grand reveal of his revenge, "'Cousin Draco looooooooves Auntie Hermione!' I thought he will say mean things about I like Victoire," Teddy puffed up his little chest, with a proud look that did not seem like he had an issue with liking Victoire at all, "but he just shushed me and his face was all red! Like how Uncle Harry looks at Auntie Gin." Teddy had finished with a mischievous grin that Tonks would have proudly picked for the family Christmas card. "Ta!" He pointed a tiny finger at a much relieved Hermione and chanted on, "Cousin Draco looooooooooves Auntie Hermione!"

"How did I know?", Ron eyed at Hermione with an incredulous look, as if she just asked him how he knew he was a wizard, "Well, I might not be the sharpest fella around, but a bloke knows when another bloke wants to drag him into a dark alley and beat the living daylight outta him."

"What? If he ever so much as said a threatening word to you —"

"Calm down, Hermione," Ron grumbled, "I mean, he was civil. But that murderous look he kept shooting me — "

"That's just how he looks at everyone. It's a genetic disease that runs in his family. I've already told him that he needed to practice on a look that does not scream serial killer — "

"Merlin's beard," Ron laughed at her hurried explanation, "maybe the poor bloke does have a reason to look that pissed every minute of the day — don't you get it? The way he looks at you is entirely different, okay? That's how I actually know. He looks at you like he wants to hex the rest of us to the North Pole any second so he could shove you up a bloody wall!"

Hermione's face flushed at Ron's unfailingly exquisite wording. Her humongous streak of stubbornness had had a hard time coming to terms with the fact that Draco could look at her with anything other than despise. In fact, Draco had admitted just as much — it was truly a miracle that the two of them had both survived the cognitive rollercoaster that was being attracted to your childhood nemesis.

Well, sometimes people need time to grow out of what they grew up believing in. And courage, a Gwarp-load of courage at least.

"You know, Ron," Hermione cleared her throat. She had meant to have this conversation for the longest time, yet the time never seemed right and she knew Ron had his insecurities —

"Nah," Ron shook his head gently "It's okay, 'Mione." He gave her one of those Ronald Weasley smiles, the genuine, warm, familiar freckled smile she had grown up with, "I never saw your eyes lit up like that when we were…you know, together. I am just happy that you are happy."

"What we had was…real, and don't you ever try to dismiss that. It was the best thing I could have asked for," Hermione carried on nonetheless, "I wouldn't…wouldn't have gotten through it all without you."

Ron nodded, his smile unwavering, only that his eyes looked a little moist. "Well —" He croaked through the heavy air, "but you let me know if he ever ticks you off. I've gotten pretty good at Transfiguration, you know, a ferret might be kind of a stretch, but something with a less complicated anatomy —"

Hermione bursted out laughing, "I might just take you up on that," she said, assuming an air of feigned solemnity, "a flobberworm, that sounds do-able?"

"I can't believe all these people have known for so long," Hermione grumbled, petting an expansive pool of gold-orange feline magnificence currently purring on her lap.

The half-kneazle let out a noise that came very close to a human snort. Despite the general brilliance of his owner, the girl can be appallingly oblivious when it came to her personal appeal. The anemic-looking bloke had been glaring at him with unmistakable jealousy for months every time he leapt onto Hermione's lap. One sniff and Crookshanks knew the kid would pay a Graphorn load of gold to be in his place as much as he knew that shaggy hound with intolerable hygiene was no dog at all.

Crookshanks liked the kid all right, though, despite his less than charming personality and his propensity for using him to provoke Hermione. Humans cast cats as the species of mystique and capriciousness, yet they themselves are the bona fide epitome of a fickle heart. That broody sort, however, had enough faith to share with half of England.

Generally considered himself bounds above the theatrics of human romance, Crookshanks had even intentionally clawed away bystanders on a few occasions to give the yet unwitting lovebirds a bit privacy. Perk up, kiddo, she will see the good in you one day, he had circled past Draco's ankle with the superior look of an old-timer, you hadn't even rammed your face into a wall, for Scamander's sake.

"Actually, Miss. Granger," Narcissa had spoken in her cultured accent as she gently set down her saucer. Merlin bless the woman for saving Harry's life and for breaking the silence after Draco had been called back to work during an afternoon tea gathering of the three. "There was something I've been meaning to tell you."

Hermione probably visibly tensed up at the latter half of the sentence, and Narcissa smiled placatingly. "It's not an alarming matter," the elder woman reassured her, "rather amusing, actually. "

"I thought you had been the one on Draco's mind when he turned down my offer to arrange a marriage with the younger Miss. Greengrass."

"He's a sweet boy, really; rarely ever said a 'no' to me." Narcissa continued with a graceful smile that made Hermione wonder if there was a pureblood handbook on the twenty steps to orchestrate the perfect smile. "And I thought he got along with Miss. Greengrass; he did actually. They organized quite a few social functions together, all great successes — surely boded well for a praiseworthy marriage."

Hermione tried not to wince at the notion that a marriage should be first and foremost "praiseworthy", not to mention that according to Draco's mother, the ability to put together lavish charity galas was a deciding factor in a successful marriage. Sometimes she could not help but admiring how far Draco had come, no sarcasm intended.

"I did not press him to change his mind, but I did inquire his reasons for declining such a perfect match," Narcissa reminisced with a sorrowful smile, "he didn't say anything at first, but upon my insistence, gave a few reasons on why he thought Miss. Greengrass an inadequate candidate for matrimony."

"Not bright enough, he had said, he would rather spend his life with a woman that could challenge him; too timid, he would rather have a wife that made him look forward to certain adventures in life. He even had something to say about Miss. Greengrass' impeccable tresses, something he called 'too glossy and smelt like Gilderoy Lockhart hyperventilating in a struggle with pixies'".

"Well, Miss. Granger, then I thought, but who else would fit the bill?" Narcissa turned to cast a meaningful gaze on Hermione, handing her a powder blue porcelain plate with a few macarons assembled at the center.

Hermione took over what she recognized, even in her fidgety state at the moment, to be the first gesture of friendliness from Narcissa. She thanked the elder lady for the macarons, and then, fumbling for something else to fill the silence, blurted out that in hindsight, Professor Lockhart's liberal application of cologne could amount to an aromatic disaster at times .

Narcissa's smile deepened to what a Malfoy lady would allow. If it was up to her, Draco would have married one of the pureblood heiresses; but she was a mother, after all, and a mother wanted nothing but her son's happiness, even if that happiness lied with a messy-haired muggle-born whose only redeeming quality was her unwitting beam every time she mentioned Draco's name. Narcissa's mind travelled back to when Draco was a little boy, coming home for the summer and running headlong into his father's arms, prattling days on end about a certain bucktoothed, frizzy-haired little girl — how ridiculous she looked when she jumped up and down in her seat every time a professor asked a question; how she was so short that sometimes he could not see her in the corridors; how she made a potion in the prettiest shade of azure blue; how she liked to scrunch up her nose like a piglet; how she, this one he had whined with a particularly bitter pout, hung around Harry Potter like they were joined at the hip. Lucius had known all about Miss. Granger before their unfortunate run-in at Flourish and Botts prior to Draco's second year; in fact, Lucius had continued to berate the "insolent girl" upon their return to the manor, and it was Draco's attempt to interrupt him that prompted Lucius to deliver one of his first lengthy lectures on the "filthy nature of Mudbloods".

In the nightmarish year they lived with the Dark Lord, the girl had the very word etched into her flesh on their living room floor. Draco had barely talked for days afterwards.

She thought about her sister Andromeda, who she exchanged holiday greetings with nowadays. Funny how fate worked its way around, she reflected, her eyes softening at the Granger girl's nervous chatter about Draco's favorite Quidditch team, yet unaware that she had just stumbled upon the one common territory Narcissa and she shared beyond their affection for Draco — the utter lack of interest when it came to the mind-bogglingly dangerous sport.

"Well, I knew because," Harry grinned, "the man bloody told me himself."

Oh? Hermione could not help her look of surprise. She had since come to know that Draco was in possession of more human emotions than she had previously given him credit for, but she still had difficulty picturing a heart-to-heart between Harry and he, where an earnest Draco would confess his feelings like a gossipy 14-year-old schoolgirl.

Harry laughed at the incredulous look on her face, "well, not entirely…willingly. He was pissed drunk and it just kind of…slipped out."

"…What do you mean? Just kind of slipped out?"

"We got plastered with the lads at the Hog's Head that day," Harry went on to explain.

They had just had a brutal Quidditch match, and as much as an almost enraged Harry was unwilling to admit, the last dive that got Draco the snitch was nothing short of brilliant. Seamus and Dean had to report home early to their girlfriends, and Ron was summoned home by Mrs. Weasley on the account of de-gnoming duty. The rest of the crew popped home one by one as the night drew on, until Harry was left alone with a bleary-eyed Draco Malfoy who was starting to blabber about things that made Harry doubt his hearing.

"That crazy cat lady you hung around…" Draco had mumbled, one hand supporting his chin, his eyes clouded in a combination of pensiveness and butterbeer-daze, a few strands of blond hair dangling elegantly in front of his forehead. As a heterosexual wizard that could not be happier with his wife, Harry had reluctantly come to admit that witches probably did chase down this foul-mouthed bastard for a reason. Even drunkenness agreed with his looks.

"The harpy with all that mad hair…'n that insufferable self-righteousness…"

Harry snorted. Whoever Draco was talking about, the lady had to be quite something to be called self-righteous by a Malfoy.

"'s quite something, innit?" Draco's voice had trailed to an airy whisper, and Harry was ever more confused.

Nobody would have pegged Draco Malfoy for a chatty drunk, but the man clearly had quite a bit to get off his chest. "Feisty," he said, with a dreamy look on his face, a lopsided smile growing bigger by the second.

"Wait — who —" Harry had tried to interrupt, only to be cut off when Draco suddenly threw a punch at the air between them, almost knocking off half of the drinks that had covered every inch of the small tabletop.

"Has a mean right hook," Draco grinned, with a look of amused reminisce, "that one."

It had taken Harry's groggy mind a few seconds to process the piece of information Draco had just let slip, and once his alcohol-addled brain had fully grasped what those few words entailed, Harry felt that he himself had just received a punch to the face that had left him stone-sober and utterly speechless.

Draco was not bothered by Harry's lightening-struck look in the least. "All that bloody Gryffindor sense 'f justice…" he had mumbled on, "couldn't even let a shoddy Death Eater go to Azkaban, could she? She has this funny look…you know, the one that looks like she's about to jump you when she gets mad."

Draco chuckled, seemingly recalling some fond pieces of memory, "dead smart, though." He nodded approvingly.

"You can't be talking about —"

"Pity," Draco shook his head, now gazing at the shot glass in front of him with a rueful smile, "That Weasley sidekick of yours. Hope he makes her happy."

"Actually, they are no longer —"

Clunk.

Draco had downed the last shot of firewhisky, and their tiny table toppled towards Harry as the blonde smacked facedown onto the table, his uncanny tolerance finally trumped by what must have been a good portion of the Hog's stock.

"I wanted to bring it up to him later, you know," Harry admitted to Hermione sheepishly. He had not meant to let Draco go on thinking that Hermione was still dating Ron, "but it felt like…almost felt like a breach of privacy? I mean…I don't think he would have said all that stuff to anyone if not for…a hundred galleons' worth of booze," Hermione scrunched her nose at the price, making a mental note to regulate Draco's alcohol spending.

"Anyways, I thought…I thought you two might work it out yourselves," a slightly teasing tone had crept into Harry's voice.

"What do you mean?" Hermione was genuinely confounded. Her brain was still piecing together the jigsaw — so that was why he would not talk to her for the longest time — she tried to suppress the idiotic smile that was no doubt spreading on her face now — he thought she was still dating Ron! The presumptuous git. All that time — well, served him right.

"I was there when you first started liking Ron, remember?" Harry winced at the awkward memory, "You have a particular brand of anxiety that screamed feelings louder than a Mourning Myrtle in distress."

In a way, Draco had always known.

That Hermione Granger was trouble.

He thought that, in the absolute literal sense of the word, for a very long time. He had thought that for the entirety of his childhood and the majority of his adolescence, from the moment her unruly hair first assaulted his eyes, to her attempt to crush his cheekbone with apparent gusto, to the exasperation at the supposedly inferior muggle-born beating him in every single subject. In his mind, Hermione Granger had always been a hassle, an eyesore, a source of humiliation, an unfailing catalyst to disaster, yet she had never not been there. The girl had an exasperating ability to get on his nerves, and once she was there, she bloody stayed put.

He thought he hated her. Hated her for her funny teeth, her insufferable swottiness, her acing him in tests, her taunting him about buying his way into the Slytherin team, her perpetual tagging behind Potter and Weasley, and he took pride in hating her. It was the right thing to do, after all, everything he knew had told him so.

And at one point he started to wonder if she had more reasons to hate him, along with everything he stood behind and for. Only that he was not allowed much time to mull that over.

Then the world flipped over and he had to stand by and watch her writhe under the Cruciatus of his aunt. His mind was blank, or rather, a white-hot state that had burned out from the millions of thoughts that had shot into his brain at the sound of her scream. This is Hermione Granger, he had muttered, as if the sight of her alone would not convince his brain to register the atrocity she was being put through. The same Granger that he had grown up with; the same Granger he had taunted, mocked, hated with a childish petulance, but never this. Never once in his life had he wished this upon her, or anyone, because who the fuck would. And yet there he was, standing besides her torturer, watching this happen in front of his very eyes. He felt sick. This — them — his family — his upbringing — the people in his house, in his life — sick.

Then the war ended, and he miraculously escaped Azkaban, a miracle he knew, begrudgingly at the time, was in no small part thanks to Hermione Granger's eloquence and constant urge to polish her halo. He knew he should thank her, but he could not. He could not because he would have to apologize first, a million times, for himself, for what he regretted standing for, for people and ideas in his life that he could denounce but the evidence of whose existence he could never eliminate, and that was one colossal apology his pathetic self felt incapable of. So pathetic, that he could not look at her, knowing that she was capable of all the forgiveness in the world, while he did not even have the guts to acknowledge her presence.

Yet one joined work project and a dozen ministry-sponsored Quidditch games later, he became friends with the chosen Potter. And he thought, maybe he could do this, after he had first experienced the exhilarating sense of deadweight lifting off his chest when he blurted out the half-assed apology to Potter. Potter had grinned, punched him in the shoulder, and then knocked him off balance with a vengefully firm hug and they patted each other on the back. It had almost been easy, but it was decidedly not easy when he tried to say the damned S word to her. Hell, nothing was ever easy when it came to her.

And it had gotten even less easy from there on. It was not easy to have her in his life, to sit at the same dinner table with her from time to time; it was not easy to remind himself that he had no reason and no right to hate her, and it was even harder to figure out how he should feel about Granger now that the one emotion he had reliably fallen back on for almost a decade was gone; it was not easy to have her bushy head blocking his vision, to notice that insufferable waft of apple scent that had made him want to tear her or his own hair out; it was not easy to listen to her gloating about being right about every bloody thing under the sun, and it was damn near impossible to refuse acknowledging a different layer of that quivering satisfaction when his retort had her going up in smoke; and the least easy of it all was to watch her prancing about in that unseemly yellow sundress, playfully smacking that Weasley dunce on the arm. Eventually it became the bloody hardest thing, to refrain from grabbing her by those dainty little hands and pinning her on the nearest surface and ravaging her lips until she was on fire for an entirely different reason than a heated argument, and he wanted her to tingle, to melt, to get utterly lost in that fire until she realized that there was one thing she was doing wrong, and that one thing was not being with him where she belonged — he had never wanted anyone or anything so badly, and he thought it was really the cruelest joke of all to have that someone be Hermione Granger.

Yet she would not bloody budge. She had to be there, to be in his sight, in his life, laughing, stirring, glaring at him, showing off her brilliance with a fire that branded every sense of him with a burning desire. And one day she ran into his office huffing like he had been the offending party all along, and later that day he had deemed himself irretrievably mad when he could not stop replaying in his head her panicked grasp on his arm; one day she screamed that Weasley and she were off; one day she blushed at him, and his heart skipped a massive beat; and the next day, she did it again.

And one day he kissed her, under circumstances he was not particularly proud of, given that she may or may not had been in full possession of her reflexes to push him away. But pride can go rot in hell, he had thought, sighing at the warmth of her lips that tasted like champagne, apple pie, and a notion that had scared him witless at the time, a lifetime.

And the rest was history. Really bloody effin' brilliant Merlin doing a Wronski feint in a Santa costume kind of good of a history. The woman had the uncanny ability to see the good in everyone, even in someone who shuddered and ached involuntarily at the notion of "good" and what it entailed, abandoned, and prevailed over. Yet they each had their own nightmares. The war had left indelible marks on every single one of them. In his case, a now blurred Dark Mark; in hers, a line of ragged scar tissue on her forearm. The first time he touched her there, he did not quite know what to do. He knew Hermione was not someone that needed delicate handling, yet he had felt his stroke gone shaky from the emotions coursing through his body. He had wanted to pepper the lightest kisses there, each one a pious "I'm sorry"; he had hoped that the heat of his palm would burn onto her skin all the words he did not know; he kissed her forehead, wanting to pour all the tenderness in the world to ease the pain of that memory; he pulled her in for an embrace, feeling her marked arm looping around his neck as his marked arm squeezed her tight. He hurt for her, and he was proud of her. He may never be good enough for her, but he'd like to see anyone else bloody dare try harder.

In the end, he was not the sort of bloke to tell her that she had healed him, or fixed him, or some balderdash like by a streak of fate blessed by the graces of heavens above they had completed each other. The two of them, by nature, were not people who worked that way. They suffer, and they grew, and who was to say there was ever a whole, a closure, or a destination for anything in this world with its wicked penchant for wild curveballs. He knew she made him want to be better, and he knew he could do that with her at his side. He knew he loved her, and it was a good feeling to know where your heart was, and even better, to know that your heart was in a really good place, the best bloody place in the world actually, because it was with the brightest, kindest, most generous witch of their age, who blushed the prettiest shade of cherry-red and who spelled trouble like it was the most worthy challenge in all of eternity, and who, truly by a streak of fate blessed by the graces of heavens above, loved him back.

Hermione had always wondered when she actually knew. The thing was, it was not easy to separate the going-ons in her heart from the armors of over-analysis her brain had habitually wrapped them up in, and she was almost convinced that she would never get a straight answer out of herself.

It was not as if she had not investigated the issue extensively. She had first thought maybe it was the hurt in his eyes in the hallway that day that had her insides seized up in a painful knot; or maybe it was her depraved nap after he had taken advantage of her drunkenness, one that was filled with dreams where she came apart completely unravelled under the pressure of his heavenly lips; or maybe earlier, when she first caught herself rubbing the knuckle where he had accidentally brushed past; or even earlier, when she came out of an argument with him heaving for oxygen, her heart thumping like she had just raced 500 yards with an army of Death Eaters on her heel; or even earlier than that, when she first spotted him in that diabolical Quidditch uniform that outlined every sinewy line of his muscles to sinful perfection, and had against all reasons known to Hermione Granger felt excited about a Quidditch game; or it started when her heart threatened explosion at the proximity of his warm, ragged breath when that paper plane broke through the window, or at the ensuing realization that he had put himself in front of her at the first sign of danger; or maybe it went all the way back to when she first spotted those stoney gray eyes as he followed Harry into the dining room, and underneath all her anxiety, defense, and questioning of Harry's sanity, there was a gnawing sense of curiosity for what lied behind all those layers of metallic frostiness that grew more intriguing by the day.

A sense of curiosity. That she always had for him, since the beginning of times, when she was a jittery little girl determined to gain a foothold in a brand new world, and he was a pretty little boy who disappointed her marveling at the existence of silver eyes with the foulest temper.

And over time, she realized that she was content in not knowing, a sentiment she had thought fundamentally at odds with her cognitive programming. Hermione Granger ran a tight ship in her life, yet she would rather not pretend that Draco Malfoy had not been running amok since the moment he showed up onboard. Hell, he had probably also short-circuited the dashboard, smashed the transceivers, and done barmier things than that "you jump, I jump" tear-jerker her mom dragged her to see in a muggle theater.

She often mulled over how bizarre it was to think that the two of them had actually grown up together. It just sounded like such an intimate thing, something you read in cute fairy tales and typically started with an innocent peck on chubby baby cheeks and ended on a porch looking out into a sweet, caramel-colored sunset. Yet Draco and she shared none of the sort when they were children, and she had good reasons to believe that they would still bicker with admirable vigor even when old age had rendered them less capable of physically maiming each other.

They had grown up together, yet far, far apart. When they were younger, he had been a nuisance, a thorn in her side, a pretentious git she felt necessary to protect her friends from, and when things were at their absolute worst, a failed murderer she had wanted to hate so badly but ultimately could not, because deep down she knew it was not so much him as the people, the monsters prodding their wands at his back. Nonetheless, they had grown to love each other, and they both knew they would not have been capable of that very love if they had not truly grown up and grown past the past.

The first time she touched his now somewhat faded dark mark, she threaded her fingers through his and felt him squeeze her hand so tight he might have hurt her. She did not flinch, though, merely squeezed back with all her might, feeling her heart growing so full that it might burst any second. So full of the man in front of her, so full of his bared soul and how she thought it was beautiful, so full of an urge to let him know how he deserved every bit of trust, brightness, and happiness in his life and ten times more, and if the world did not know better she would happily spend a lifetime to prove them bloody wrong.

What an odd pair they made, she often thought: he with his colossal streak of git reflex and she with her bossiness; he with his uncanny ability to unreel her rationality and she with her aptitude for stripping apart his composure; he with his linguistic barrier of saying sweet things aloud and she with her often overdue realization of his clumsy efforts in showing them; and of course, there was their mutual need to have the last word on every argument and hence the necessity to hold onto each other for the rest of their lives, because they both knew no other rivals would make for competitions as gratifying.

He had always irked her and he always would. He had a way of announcing his presence by making the hair on her nape prickle, her mind accelerate, her temper gear up, and as of late, her chest tighten and her eyes light up. Yet despite the various maladies he had inflicted upon her, he had also set her free from her own manically brilliant mind that had bottled up her vulnerabilities and put up an exterior of consummate good sense.

The press had routinely credited him as her "one lapse in judgment", and maybe they had been worrying about the right thing after all. Maybe Draco Malfoy had corrupted Hermione Granger and she now felt pretty okay about — fucking up, the infamous smirk she had picked up from Draco made an appearance as she imagined the collective gasp if she were ever to issue such a statement in public.

Who could have known that Draco Malfoy was going to be the demise of her almighty sense of control. His existence had always demanded the full force of whatever she had in her with a pull as incontrollable as the first time she felt magic course through her arm and made a lamp rise to midair, a pull so powerful that she had panicked, denied, and resisted, but in the end leaned into and never made it back from the deep end. She knew that with him, she could be strong, and he would never be intimidated like the male egos she tip-toed around during her entire adolescence; he would admire her strength with that savoring look of his, one that made she blush and gloat even more; she also knew that, with him, she could allow herself to fall apart, fire up, or — Merlin help Professor McGonagall if she ever heard this — be wrong, be really, seriously, exhilaratingly, wrong. And she'd be safe, be embraced, be on the butt end of a snarky comment, maybe, but ultimately, she'd be good.

And at that thought, she reached over to the blond wizard soundly asleep by her side, an arm draped possessively over her waist. She nestled closer to him, feeling a wave of contentment washing over her as she savored his reassuring body heat. It did not matter when she knew, she reckoned, the important thing was that she knew, they both knew, and that was a piece of knowledge she would willingly trade with a million loose ends, knowing that he would be there to scoff at her exasperation when she spent the rest of her life going through them one by one.

The End

A/N: Hope you enjoyed the story! A quick note about Draco supposedly having vaaaaague feelings for Hermione when they were little: I do think Hermione was someone of *interest* to Draco in their early schooldays, though not necessarily a romantic interest. Of course the interest did not really pan out in canon, and I think it's reasonable to assume that it probably faded out at some point when Draco had to deal with more pressing issues. That being said, I am firmly against the "boys will boys" rhetoric and hope all the young readers that stumble upon this piece (and my other writings) do not get the wrong idea. The world will be a better place if little boys are taught to respect the girls they like instead of pulling their hair. And as always, reviews are love!