Red
He claimed to have loathed this colour, the hue reminding him too much of the association with gold, the two plaguing his memory of every childhood hatred that once clouded his mind. But with gradual exposure, through her ratty old Gryffindor jumpers and lipstick shades enhancing her mouth, he receded his earlier hatred.
She had taken to despise the pigmented shade as well. When he had come back from his job, his pale hair and milk face stained with the vermillion hue, Hermione leapt to her feet, embracing him, worrying for him. He had stroked her locks and whispered into her ears those three words over and over and over again, until she could perch her chin against his blood-soaked clothes and press her lips against his the pulse of his neck just for the skin on skin contact, breathing in his cardinal scent.
The colour also acted devilish—of course—on most days, usually when the night darkened the clouds above, and Draco had taken to strolls around their garden with her tucked into his hand. On her pleading, he wore a scarlet jumper, the sleeves baggy against his lanky arms.
But against the moonlight, when he slyly smiled at her underneath a bushel of cherry-tipped roses, her crimson coloured heart skipped a beat. He pulled their entwined fingers close to them, leaning down towards her lips to brush against hers; it was slow and soft, the complete opposite of their relationship. He kissed her like she was the oxygen flowing through his body; the garnet veins coursing, beating, pulsing underneath his skin. And when he pulled back, his grey eyes twinkling and his lips swollen with a ruby glaze, he looked like the opposite of an angel.
And when she brushed out her hair in front of their mirror, the golden curls smooth against the flesh of her wrist, he leaned next to her, adjusting his cufflinks, a smile glazing over his lips for a brief second.
"Why are you grinning like that?" she had asked.
"You look angelic in red."
She proceeded to blush the merlot tone of her fitted dress, the corners of her lips tilting upwards when she glanced up at him, his platinum hair shimmering through the gold sunlight peeking through the curtains. And she felt like she was at Hogwarts again—in the way that his gold speckled face complimented her flushed dress perfectly, just like they did to each other.
Blue
The first time she had seen Draco wear a colour other than his gloomy pieces, it had been blue. He strolled into her office, a paper bag in his bony hands filled with Indian food from that place across the street, wearing a cobalt polo against his ashy torso. She didn't look up from her desk when he stalked in, still darting her eyes around her paperwork, but when she finally glanced up at him, she gasped. He didn't even bat an eye, ignoring her gaping mouth when he placed a chaste kiss on her cheek. And as she dug into the naan and chicken curry during their shared lunch hour, Draco blinded her with his celestial appearance, but she didn't mind.
When his father finally passed away, his body rotting away in a cell in Azkaban, Draco didn't speak for a week. At the first news, he looked at her, slate eyes darkening under the shadow of his eyebrow. She tried to embrace him, but he didn't move, didn't eat, didn't say anything. He never snapped at her though, keeping his tongue down and eyes away, even when she yelled at him for being detrimental to his own self.
Draco still curled up to her when they slept, holding her so close—as if she would disappear at any moment—to his chest that Hermione was positive through the night, she would turn blue from lack of breath. He lost his muscle during this time, leaning down to a glum form. And when she stroked his hair as he lay in her lap at the end of the week, his usual smoke eyes gleaming a steel lapis from the reflection of the sky, he spoke his first words in seven days ('he wasn't much, but I loved him').
Their eight date had been at a Muggle karaoke bar, which in itself, scared Draco down to his bones. He showed up forty minutes early to her flat, stuttering an excuse for being way too punctual and eager, and handed her a single indigo coloured orchid, that glowed underneath the moonlight.
The sign of the establishment glimmered a neon azure, flickering with lights as they strolled up to the door. They got a booth in the back, one with scratched mahogany tables and velvet navy cushions. And through the voice of George Harrison singing "Blue Jay Way" through the speakers and the throaty rumbling of his chest, she tingled and cupped her head in her palm.
Purple
She ran her fingers over her collarbone while leaning closer to the mirror. The purple bruises reflected underneath the white light. He walked out of her shower then, blond hair hanging soaked over his brows and drops of water running down his shoulders. She turned and glared at him, his primal beam directed at her, when he darted his eyes to the crook between her neck and deltoid, where his mark lay for all to see.
Most people ask Hermione how she finally succumbed to friendship with her arch nemesis from school. She usually lies and skips over the fact that she saw him in a bakery one day, a dark purple scarf wrapping his neck and plum colours adorning his cheeks. Draco looked so regal then—the glimmer of aristocracy seeping from his stiff stance and haughty look.
When exiting the aroma-filled shop, he bumped into her, quite literally, and left a violet bruise to appear on her clavicle the next day (the first one of many to come). Muttering a sincere apology—for his snarky comments back when they were kids or dropping his scalding coffee down her blouse, she still didn't know—he then proceeded to ask her out. She found her lips saying yes.
During their sixth year, when Harry constantly tried to convince Hermione of Draco's dark status, he looked like hell. He talked to her once during Potions with Slughorn, barely mumbling out the list of ingredients from his violet stained lips. And Hermione took the pregnant pauses between his reciting to look at him, to really let her eyes trace over his face in detail.
His stature had grown, as she had to strain her neck to look up at him. The features on his face pointed out, leaving his bones to stand up against his flesh. He looked as though he hadn't slept a wink all summer long. Their proximity allowed her to see the stark contrast between his pale porcelain skin and the permanent dark shadows underneath his eyes. Even when she caught him rubbing his eyes absentmindedly, the purple circles never vanished from the chasm between his cheekbones and lashes. He looked hollow, incomplete, filled with a void she never asked about until later.
When she finally questioned him years later, her head leaning on his warm chest, her breath tasting of the wine she brought in a picnic basket, he looked at her, eyes still hooded with a shade between scarlet and blue. Then she glanced away, back at the lavender stricken sky, and toyed with the hem of her mauve jumper. He spoke after a few minutes.
"You think there's something more out there for every one of us?" Draco whispered as the side of her face pressed up against his warm chest. "More than what we assumed will become of us?"
He played with her curls as they stretched out on the field of lilacs. Hermione felt him suck in a deep breath through his teeth after his question, his hands stiffening in her locks. She propped her chin up on his chest.
"I think that everyone has a chance to redeem themselves," she honestly replied, watching his Adam's apple bob up and down against the silver skin on his neck. "They just need to grasp it when it comes along."
"And what if it slips through their fingers?"
"If you really want something that much," she mumbled into the fabric of his shirt. "Then you would do anything to hold onto it, wouldn't you?"
Yellow
He swore on his favourite butterscotch coloured broom that his hair wasn't dyed—even after she mercilessly chortled at him when they first went to a Muggle barber together, the stylist asking how his hair wasn't damaged after all the bleach he applied. Draco scowled at the barber, the ebony cloak wrapped tightly around his neck contrasting against his pale face.
More than anything, his real hair colour glistened a fervent flaxen underneath any and all light. During candlelight nights, when she sat against his chest and craned her neck back to place an open-mouthed kiss on his tense jaw, the golden hues stood out through his locks. He nuzzled his nose into her shoulder, the yellow strands of hair glimmering against the flickering flames. And she kissed him again on his temple—this time with more fervour as she began to crack his layers like the scrambled eggs they make together at dawn, one lustrous yolk after another.
Whenever Hermione and him ventured out towards Muggle world, usually the park where she practically grew up in if the scars on her knees told as much, he ate fish and chips. It proved to be his guilty pleasure, one that Narcissa shook her head in exasperation at and Hermione loved him for.
The first time he ordered it with anxiousness from the street vendor running the stand, receiving the greasy paper cone, he asked for mustard as a condiment. The yellow coloured food stained his cupid's bow as he chomped down on another lukewarm chip. He licked it away with a flick of his tongue, the tangy flavour staining the bumps on his tongue a lemon colour for the rest of the day.
She gave him a piggy-back ride in the park after that, groaning underneath his weight when he laughed in mirth at her dainty structure. She grasped underneath his damp knees, moaning how her sleeveless daffodil tainted dress crumpled when he moved against her back. Releasing him, he lifted her up into the sky, sunlight pouring through his locks once again as he kissed until she was out of breath. And when they walked back through the daisies hand in hand, the herd of gold ducklings underneath the bridge made Hermione squeal with joy as he held onto her waist. He grinned down at her, placing a kiss on her bare shoulder.
But even then, she never realised how much she adored the colour yellow until it showed up, in a little bundle of joy, the blond locks against the second love of her life's head, the perfect mixture of her golden brown and his platinum.
Green
During third year, she sat in a crowd of gold and red on the stands opposing the green and silver, cheering for a sport she really had no interest in. And after the game Gryffindor won, she found him sitting alone on the bench, clenching his face in his palms. A smudge of dirt stoked his cheek, and his hair sat fluffed on top of his head, instead of slicked to the side.
Hermione's breath hitched in her throat, and for the first time, she saw his beauty, all dressed up in the Slytherin green uniform. She found her feet moving at their own accord, making way to comfort him—for reasons she still couldn't figure out—but then his dad came out from underneath the stands, cane clad in his hand and the classic Malfoy hair flowing down his back.
Draco scrunched his face up when he glanced up at his father, his Adam's apple bobbing erratically underneath his milky chin, as his father uttered the words the Hermione never forgot ('I'm ashamed to call you my son'). Then in a flash of ebony robes, the head of the Malfoy house turned and strutted away, leaving a desolate Draco in his own sorrow. And only afterwards, as she tossed and turned in her bed into the hours of the early morning, she wish she had gone up to him.
She never really enjoyed visiting the Manor; too many memories, too many deaths. But at the insistence of her maternal in-law, she plastered a fake smile on her heart-shaped face and walked hand in hand into his birthplace during Christmas. The Malfoy crest, she discovered, didn't radiate the Slytherin green she had grown used to associate with him, but instead a verdant evergreen—one that reminded Hermione of the snow-tipped Douglas firs that her family strapped onto the top of her seafoam car after visiting the tree farm during the holidays.
He wore an emerald green jumper against his pale torso when he strolled down the marble steps of his house on Christmas Eve, dark trousers sitting on his hips. She deemed it to be unmistakably expensive, just by the feel of the fabric gliding underneath her fingertips when she snaked her arms around his waist, engulfing herself in his smell—the pine resonating off his body like a sea of tranquility. That year, underneath the twinkling jade lights, he brought out a matching jumper, helping her raise her arms to put it on her upper body with a tug of the fabric. He looked at her, eyes lusting over with greed.
"The Sorting Hat did you so wrong, Granger," he finally growled out. "You look fucking gorgeous." Her face turned the colour of her own house.
On New Year's, he took his first tequila shot, sputtering up the clear liquid all over his torso, the shirt sticking tautly to his muscles. And then she demonstrated with a smirk playing on her lips. Sprinkling salt on his collarbone and holding a fresh lime in between her forefinger and thumb, she licked, drank, and sucked. And then he repeated, the hind of the green fruit between his teeth as he tilted his lips up.
White
The colour of his milky skin skimmed underneath the pads of her thumbs as she traced his wrists up to his elbows, fluttering her eyes shut as she went on to memorise the feel of his pearly flesh. She did it absentmindedly, he once told her.
Whenever they sat perched on his ivory couches or on the coconut tarnished benches in the garden, her narrow fingers always found a way to trace the peel of his skin, just letting him know that she was there, that she was with him forever. Draco didn't seem to mind, flashing a glimpse of his porcelain teeth that her parents would be proud of when she stroked his fingers with her own.
As the first snow season they shared together came about, she shrieked like the doves that sat on the window of his flat, clapping her mittens together when he asked her to build a snowman. He looked absolutely iridescent, the snowflakes landing on his lashes, gleaming against his powder skin. It didn't matter if she now felt the brisk air, she felt his insides warm at his slight smile. She then tip toed up and placed an open mouth kiss on his cheek before pulling his frosted beanie over his red-tipped ears, letting her hand travel down his jaw to his neck.
There's this one picture that Hermione always stares at when she walks into his office, right above the snake coasters and adjacent to the antique Persian vase. It had been one that her friend took of them when they sat, tangled up on her eggshell couch during her birthday party. She pleaded with him to wear the party hat, her head adorning a similar one. But he grimaced in response, simply waiting for her to put the cone on his white hair herself.
Her hands had grazed Draco's pointy chin, before purposely releasing the elastic string to sting against his jaw. The alabaster skin flushed underneath the whip. He winced in pain, causing her throat to resonate a laugh. It started out as a small chuckle before it took up her entire body. The chortle seeped through every pore, and it was not long before he started laughing too. He reached out to grab her squishy flesh underneath her cream lace dress but she dodged his grasp, instead leaning in to rest her head on his bony shoulder, still laughing against the rumbles of his chest. And the white flash of the camera clicked.
Grey
He broke the nasty Muggle habit after he met her, at her incessant begging for him to stop clouding his lungs with the billow of cigarette puffs. Draco, you're going to kill yourself if you keep this up, Draco stop throwing your life away, or Draco I won't fucking kiss you if you reek. He flicked the bud towards the pebbled sidewalk, crushing the ablaze tobacco with the bottom of his slate shoes, rubbing it into the crooks of the ground with the toe. He looked up and blinked at her with those eyes.
Draco's eyes were so full of animosity when she first saw him—on the Hogwarts' express when she was an eleven-year-old who placed way too much importance on fictional characters. His grey eyes barely glossed over her in a whirl of molten silver, leaving her small self to reflect on the amount of hatred stuck in them. She pitied him wholeheartedly—someone who holds on to that much loathing could never be capable of love, she once thought.
And then there was this moment, fourteen months after they started becoming more than friends, when he stared at her, really stared at her, with those smokey eyes boring into her golden brown ones with such ardor, it made Hermione's palms sweat.
It had been just after he helped her move into her new flat, and he offered to help carry cardboard boxes full of novels with cracked spines and teddy bears with missing button eyes up the flights of stairs instead of levitate them to not attract the attention of her Muggle neighbours. She found herself nodding to his persistence, glancing into those eyes, those pewter orbs that had been filled with such abhor when as a child, he used to sneer at her in the cobblestone corridors.
Instead she looked up after placing a box on the ash granite counter of her kitchen, and he stood leaning against the tall doorway, staring at her sweaty self, softly—as if she could break under his most intense of gazes. And she found herself melting into those slate eyes for the second time.
Black
He always wore black. Even when he stumbled out of his bed in the early hours, when she still curled up underneath his ink sheets in slumber, his hands unconsciously grabbed for dark trousers and an jet black oxford shirt. She asked him why all his albums (that Narcissa so eagerly showed Hermione one night) of him as a teenager had him sporting the raven colour, he shrugged one shoulder and muttered out the next words ('I wore what I felt').
Black was such a funny concept to Hermione. An absence of light, they said. Maybe that's why they put a name to the colour; they were scared of it dominating, clouding, immersing minds to the point where the onyx nighttime ruled.
And when she ran her tongue gracefully over his midnight scar on his left forearm, he flinched, clutching his own arm as his bottom lip trembled. He shook his head, running the interior of his cheek with his tongue. But she persisted, placing soft caresses of her mouth on his fingers, spidering up towards the coal mark—the one that a young boy with an absence of light reluctantly accepted. And she placed sloppy kisses up to his shoulder, down the slope of his pectoral, over the bumps of his ribs—he shuddered at her contact, goose flesh erupting in the jade of the room. But that night, under the fortitude of soot and grease and through the pouring moon, he shined for the first time.