An alternative universe, no war. fic This entire thing is fluff and nonsense and I apologize for nothing. Rating may go up.
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Sucker
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Hermione decides, about two minutes in, that this is a terrible mistake – an error of mass proportions – like knocking a piece of expensive china unceremoniously off its pedestal and sweeping it none too subtly under a rug while pretending she isn't being distastefully eyed by bystanders of her public faux pas.
Her miscalculation is vast and embarrassing, and she can't even believe –
"Granger, you're hurting my feelings."
She huffs out an annoyed breath.
How he has the audacity to sound offended is beyond her.
"Well, you're hurting my eyes," she snaps, still refusing to let go of her face which she's clutching with a desperation reserved for riding hippogriffs bareback.
She absolutely will not capitulate. No. She's seen many things in her life she could have absolutely positively done without, and with her powers of recollection as formidable as it is, daring to look at him directly is just asking for trouble.
The fact that the only warning she had of his intention to strip at all had been the sharp, milk-white jut of his hip and the grooves of the dimples in his lower back, is appalling enough. How Hermione will be expected to look at the man's waist again, as casually as one does, she can't fathom.
God, she's been too long without a shag, and that's the only reason – she swears – that the idea would even enter her head at all, period.
She can practically hear the insufferable smirk in his voice, "I wouldn't mind helping you put a blindfold on if that's what you're into."
Arse.
"I bought you for charity," Hermione reminds with a huff and an indignant wave of her hand, trying to dispel the embarrassed flush of heat that rises rebelliously from her skin. "for Circe's sake, put your shirt back on."
"Granger, do you have any idea how this is supposed to work," is his dry response, and the fact that his voice is low, heavy with implication, but also much too loud for him to be so easily heard, makes Hermione realize that the ferret is trying to get closer and no – she will not have it!
"Stop," she interjects, waving a hand in front of her to emphasise the point.
Not that it really helps.
For one, he's actually, rather promptly, obeyed (which puts his blindfold suggestion in an entirely different light) and for another, her flailing has led to physical contact and fucking damn it – when did he get muscles?
Fifth year, her brain unhelpfully supplies.
After Viktor Krum came to Hogwarts on that European student exchange tour, and suddenly no one cared about Draco and his storm-grey eyes and slicked back platinum blond hair and –
"Granger." His voice is patient, infuriatingly so.
"Put on your shirt," she grits. "I refuse to have a conversation with you otherwise."
"So, you'll stop yelling?" he casually asks, and he's entirely too reasonable for a man who's standing half-naked in her living room.
"Yes," she replies, biting her tongue against the immediate urge to retort that she wasn't yelling, she was emphasizing.
"Alright then."
There are footsteps and then a rustle of fabric, and Hermione makes her second – third? Isn't it a bit too early to be making so many without the assistance of alcohol? – mistake of the day and peaks between her fingers and nopenopenope! "You did that on purpose!"
He straightens from his bend-and-snap routine, and peers over his shoulder innocently. "Granger, you've gone absolutely batty."
Why you little –
"Ugh," she says instead, and as if summoned by that incantation alone, her doorbell rings.
Circe, she curses once more as she leaves Draco to button up that damnable shirt which was at least eighty-seven percent of the reason why she'd even put her bid in and – really, if she'd known how mesmerizingly distracting the play of muscles at the man's back were, not to mention how biteable his arse, she might've gloated more for winning at all, but –
No. Not. Stop.
Upstairs brain, Hermione, focus!
While she could make every excuse in the book for why she'd even attended Daphne Greengrass' charity tea in the first place – a good cause, the opportunity to network, the free cakes, Pansy's famous 'punch' – her reason was far more selfish, and frankly, petty as hell: and his name was Louis Hugo.
One-time ex-boyfriend; all-time piece of work.
He'd gotten a new belle, if the woman he'd been snogging outrageously in the hallway whenever Hermione left her flat, was any indication, and by the loud conversations he conveniently held within her hearing, it was serious.
If it had been happening to anyone else, Hermione would've scoffed – said it wasn't worth it, do her best impression of her best friend, Ginny, and decree that he was an utter pounce and she could do better; that she shouldn't care at all.
Except it wasn't happening to anyone else.
It was happening to her.
And though Hermione had never divulged the nature of her research, her work or her heritage as a witch, Louis and her had been together since her final year at Stonehenge.
With over three years since, and the closest thing to living in each other's pockets they could get – flats in the same building while her parents warmed up to the concept of cohabitation without marriage – Hermione would've thought it was courtesy to mourn for a bit, indulge in some mutually assured loneliness as they both internally juggled over getting back together and forgetting the whole spat had ever happened. What was the saying, absence makes the heart grow fonder?
No, apparently not
Absence makes the dick harder for literally anyone else.
They'd only been separated for two weeks and he already had someone new?
The audacity; the sheer gall.
And maybe it was the agonizing hurt that overwhelmed her whenever she saw her first love all over someone else; to do so enthusiastically, so uncaring of her feelings, that it made her bury it all in inconsequential fantasies of revenge with a vague plan she'd concocted with Cho after a frustratingly fruitless night of rune translation, to show Louis up with a new beau of her own. Someone who was better in every way.
And then Daphne's tea invite had dropped into her lap, hours into her hangover, like her own personal answer from the fates herself.
Annual bachelor auction, it had said, and she'd bit her lip and debated as the charity prizes worked the room; flirting up storms and winking like they were being paid for it.
It was ridiculous to think she'd win.
And then, she'd caught Draco's eye, and the thought had moved from ridiculous to impossible.
Yet.
Yet.
She opens her door with a sigh, prepared to see Mrs Bonaszek and hear the same story she tells fifty times about her grandson – and oh, has Hermione seen her cat – and Hermione, you look thin! Instead, what she gets is Louis, awkward smile and blue eyes and a hickey on the hinge of his jaw and – she just barely stops herself from slamming the door right in his face.
"Hermione, hi, I wasn't sure you'd be home uh – my key, it doesn't -"
"Work?" she interjects, voice flat, "I changed the locks."
She'd spelled them as soon as she moved from heartbroken to furious to vengefully throwing up a charm on his door that led him to paying a locksmith twenty-two times to replace it.
It wasn't exactly malicious. Childish, most definitely. But she'd taken her glee where she could get it.
"Er, yes I suppose you would," he rubs the back of his neck, bashful – embarrassed – perhaps just a hint ashamed? "Actually, I-I forgot one of my boxes here, do you mind?"
She does.
She does a lot.
They'd worn her parents down after three years. He was going to move in next month, had started leaving boxes of his things in preparation. And then Hermione - Hermione was going to tell him the truth.
She'd arranged it with the Ministry and everything. An appointment had been made. A representative from the Muggle-Relations Council had been organized. It would be official, on paper, he'd finally get to see her world – see her for who she really was –
Hermione is startled when Draco pops up beside her in the doorway, hip pressed against hers to make room for himself as he balances the offending box in one arm, and snakes the other around her waist.
"Yours, I'm guessing?"
Louis flushes – awkwardness giving way to anger that riles up hers – how dare he –
"That's it," he replies, offering his hands to take the weight which Draco none too subtly accepts, and doesn't ruffle a hair on his perfect windswept hair to do.
"Figured," Draco tells her, "you always did have horrible taste," and his smirk says what he doesn't, that he knows and Hermione can't decide if she's furious or mortified.
"Beg your pardon?" Louis interjects.
"Yes, you would," Draco observes, his gaze both unimpressed and withering in that way only the aristocratic could ever pull off.
"Excuse us, won't you?" Hermione says through her teeth as she slams the door with a satisfying rattle of the door-chain, and the thud of the wood before she's turning to him with a scowl. "Malfoy, what the -"
He raises a single brow in silent interruption, his lip twisting in that incorrigible Slytherin smirk. "So, charity, you said, was it, Granger?"
Ugh.
A/n: I have no self-control. None whatsoever. Thank you to the Dramione Facebook group, Strictly Dramione, for reminding me I was still in this fandom when they featured Thursdays for their Under the Radar event.
As usual, I have no idea what I'm doing.
But there will be fluff and fake-dating and pretending they're not in love, and that's the kind of speed I'm on.
Also, this fic is on ao3 by the same name.
Find me on tumblr at everything-withered