Disclaimer: Harry Potter is owned by JK Rowling.
A/N: Written for Holiday Hideaway 2018, hosted by Hermione's Haven. Thanks for another great event, admins!
Prompt: Hermione/Draco in Venice, Italy. Must feature Hot Cocoa.
ooOOoo
Bradley holds out his hand. My jaw drops; but not because of Bradley, with his roguish smile beckoning me to the edge of the water. Just beyond his muscled shoulder stands a man on a wooden boat floating on the Grand Canal. He wears a black-and-white striped shirt, dark pants, and a scowl that twists his otherwise handsome features.
"Granger," the man says, although his tone implies, "Oh, for fuck's sake!"
"Malfoy," I return with a stiff nod, one that really means, "How the hell was I to know you were here, of all places?" His blond hair is longer than the last time I saw him; it now grazes the tops of his sharp cheekbones. His cheeks and nose are sprinkled with fine freckles, and his face has a healthy glow about it, obvious even in the twilight. I take in his healthy complexion, the striped outfit, and the flat-bottomed boat and quickly surmise, "You're a bloody gondolier?"
Bradley—beautiful, dense Bradley—glances between us, his face contorted in a grimace as if slowly piecing things together. "You two know each other?" he asks after a full minute.
I clear my throat. "Malfoy...that is, Draco and I are—"
"Old chums." The word drips with innuendo, and I flash Draco a warning look.
"Ah, brilliant!" Bradley beams, Draco's obvious hit going over his artfully tousled hair. "What a coincidence! Of all the gondolas I could have booked, I got the one with a rower you know, Mi!"
Draco rolls his eyes at the nickname. I open my mouth to retort, "It wasn't my idea!" when I remind myself that: one, it's none of his business what Bradley calls me, and two...
Well. It's none of his fucking business what anyone calls me. Not anymore.
Bradley flutters his fingers, inviting me to join him on the gondola. Carefully avoiding Draco's pointed stare, I accept Bradley's broad hand with a tight smile and let him guide me onto the boat.
As I step onto the narrow gondola, Draco murmurs, "Welcome aboard. Mi." My shoulders hike up to my earlobes. Bradley's fingers, threading through mine, does nothing to help me relax as we settle in.
The three of us are silent as the boat pushes out into the water. We gently bob along gentle swells made by passing boats. I train my eyes forward into the dark water as Draco's gaze burrows at the back of my head.
"So." Draco's voice rumbles over the city noise. "What brings you to Venice?" From the hardness of his tone—I highly doubt he would use the same one on innocent tourists—the question is intended for me.
Bradley answers, anyway. "We're here for the holidays." He brings my hand up and kisses my knuckles.
I press my lips together, hoping that in the faded light, it might look like a smile. "We're here for a conference," I gently correct, "and the holidays just happen to be this weekend."
Draco tuts. "You still work for—"
"The Foreign Office?" I finish for him, glancing over my shoulder, telegraphing that we are in the presence of a Muggle.
Draco arches an eyebrow but keeps his eyes to the bow as he rows.
"Yes, I'm still there." I pull my hand from Bradley's grasp and fold my arms. "And you're...working as a gondolier, I see. For how long?"
Draco ignores my question. "What about you, Gary? Do you also work for the Foreign Office?"
"It's Bradley, actually. And, no." He puts an arm, thick and toned from his daily visits to the gym, over my shoulder and sidles closer. "I'm a model."
Heat crawls up my neck as Draco's gaze pierces my back.
"A model? Really," Draco drawls.
"Yeah."
"You...walk for a living?" His unimpressed tone would have offended any regular bloke.
Bradley, however, isn't the regular sort. "Oh, God, I wish. I've been trying to book fashion shows, but I have a hard time."
"Walking?"
Bradley nods deeply. "The booking agents say I'm too bulky for the runway."
"Hmm." Water sloshes against the side of the boat.
"So I mostly do print."
"Catalog?" Draco sneers.
"Yeah. Mostly underwear—"
"Bradley," I interrupt. "Darling, isn't it a nice evening?" I gesture to the buildings along the waterway, with their glowing windows and stoops bathed in yellow lamplight.
He tucks me closer to him. "You bet! It's nice to spend an evening with you in the City of Lights."
Draco covers his snort with a cough. Barely. I stamp the urge to bury my face in my palms.
"In fact, I enjoy every evening I spend with you." My stomach curls when he turns toward me, bright blue eyes twinkling. "And, well, I know we've only been dating for six months, but, Mi, I love you so much—"
The boat slows down. There is an unnatural stillness in the back of the gondola.
"And I thought, since we're here already, romantic city and all that,"—Bradley pulls something from his pocket—"I want to ask you—"
Without warning, our boat rocks, nearly tipping perpendicular to the water—on Bradley's side. I yelp, my hands grappling my side of the boat. Bradley flies out and lands on the water with a gigantic splash!
"Bradley!" The boat rights itself, and I scramble to the other side, frantically searching the dark water for any sign of him. "Bradley! "
He breaks through the murky surface. "Wha-What the hell?" he sputters.
"Apologies." Draco slowly lowers himself to one knee. He doesn't bother to replace his bored expression with any semblance of regret. "There was a wave..." he trails off weakly. He juts a hand above the surface of the water.
Bradley grabs it. As he tries to climb up the side, he slips back down. His head pops up again as he coughs out a mouthful of canal water.
"Oh, do be careful," Draco murmurs. "The sides are slippery when wet."
With a grumble, I fish Bradley out of the water, shoving away Draco's half-hearted attempt to help. It takes two tries before Bradley is back on the boat clutching his brawny arms as he shivers.
"M-M-Mi." He feels around his jacket pockets; searches the shadowed bottom of the boat near his feet. "Where is it?"
"What?"
"The ring box." His eyes dart around in a panic as he pats down his clothes. "I took it out of my pocket."
"Lost to the water, I'm afraid." Draco muses.
"W-w-we need to get it back." Bradley jumps to his feet, jostling the boat with his unsteady knees.
"We need to get you back to the hotel." I push down on Bradley's shoulder, forcing him to sit. "Take us to Hotel Antiche," I say to the git behind me, tacking on a "please" under my breath.
The boat turns around. Soon, we are at the other end of the Grand Canal. I rush Bradley off the boat and hurry him to the hotel, not bothering to look back.
It's two hours later, but Draco is still sitting on his gondola, facing away from curious tourists. He sips from a mug while tendrils of steam waft in the night air.
I stop a foot away from the boat and wrap my jacket tighter around me. Without a word, he gets up—turns around and hands me his mug. He takes his position at the stern, his rèmo firmly in hand. Without making eye contact, I step inside the boat.
He rows down the Grand Canal and turns into a narrow waterway, where fewer tourists loitered. The only sound between us is the gentle swishing of water from the single oar. Mindlessly, I bring the mug to my lips, and the taste of the hot fluid startles me. Draco Malfoy has always preferred liquor to anything else. Now, I'm met with hot cocoa, rich and smooth as it hits my tongue and slides down to my belly, warming me from the inside.
It's a few minutes before I work up the nerve to say something. "Well—"
"So—" he says at the same time.
I bite my lip, waiting for him to continue.
"You're here on assignment," he says; not a question.
I take a deep breath and sigh.
"Ah. The Non-Answer. Can't say I missed that." He lets a minute of tense silence pass before asking, "Why did the underwear model come along?"
I turn things over in my head before deciding for the simple truth. "I told him I had a conference, and he wanted to come. And it was better for my cover, anyway."
"Of course it was," he says with a bite in his tone.
My chin nudges to the side, bringing him into the periphery of my vision. His expression is cold, unrelenting—his 'Society Mask,' I once told him. The face he wears for his father, his mother, and his friends stuck on their Pureblood ideology.
"Did he happen to finish the question he was about to ask?" For a moment, his mask hardens; then it slips as his gaze lands on me.
I blink. "I didn't give him a chance to." I meet his eyes squarely. "It was an unfortunate misunderstanding between me and Bradley. I hadn't realized he was under a different impression about our...arrangement."
"Moping in the hotel room, is he?" he asks carefully.
"Maybe for a bit." I sink my teeth into my bottom lip again as I debate. What good would it do if I told him the rest? I've been so used to keeping information to myself, my intense training often overriding every other urge. And yet..."Though he'll only stay for a while longer. He doesn't have much to pack. He's decided to take an earlier flight back to London."
The gondola drifts slower as Draco pauses. "I see."
Another heavy silence falls between us. I clear my throat. "And you're working as...a gondolier."
"You know, I've often wondered how you became an Unspeakable," he says, a teasing smile evident in his voice. "Now I know. Extraordinary investigative skills."
I shrug off the barb. "It just took me by surprise, that's all. Of all the things I expected you to be doing with your time..."
"You have something against honest work, Granger?"
A wry chuckle escapes my lips before I could check it. "You know I don't. It's just that I thought you'd be lounging on a beach with Zabini or something."
He laughs, but it's hard, unforgiving. "I did that for a while. Sailed around the Italian peninsula. Spent a few months traveling in Croatia and Montenegro."
"How did you find yourself working as a gondolier in Venice?"
He stares at me for so long that I thought he wouldn't answer. Then: "When I was traveling," he says so softly that I have to lean in to catch his words, "there was this little voice in the back of my head. A voice that kept asking me what I was doing, wandering the world without intent. Without purpose."
Heat grows below my scarf, but I dare not move. Not with Draco's hooded eyes on me in that way—dark and raw. It pins me to my seat.
"That bloody nagging voice got louder every day. 'Find your purpose, Draco,' it said. 'Don't look down on me for being committed to my job just because you don't know what it's like to have purpose.'"
My entire body warms as he repeats my words back to me—things I said to him two years ago in anger.
I didn't think he was listening.
" After months of wallowing in self-pity because the woman I love passed me over for her career,"—a shadow of remorse flickers over him—"I decided to find it. Purpose, that is. I stopped tapping into my inheritance. Took odd jobs as I traveled. Bartender, server. Once I even worked as a courier. Have you ever ridden on one of those bicycles? Like a Muggle broomstick—minus the flying."
As he speaks, there's a lightness to him—the glow is back, the one I attributed earlier to a healthy exposure to sunlight and fresh air. How mistaken I was, though I shouldn't be too hard on myself. It's not like I ever get the chance to assess my reflection while I'm working hard on a case, but I suspect I have a similar smile on my face and reverence to my tone.
"Anyway, I worked my way back to Italy. And now, I'm a gondolier." His lips break out into a wide smile that reaches his grey eyes.
His image blurs, and I turn my face away to wipe my tears before I embarrass us both. When I turn back around, he's still smiling at me.
"I'm so happy for you, Draco," I rasp.
He nods once. "Thank you, Hermione." He locks his oar and bends down, prying the mug from my cold fingers and then taking both my hands in his. "I was...complacent. Before. I was living, but I wasn't alive. It took losing you to realize that I was just a passenger in life." A corner of his lips pulls into a slow smirk. "I no longer want to be the passenger. I want control. I want purpose. I want to be the gondolier."
"Quite literally." I laugh quietly. Tears are now streaming down my cheeks; he rubs them away with his thumb.
"I don't know if I'll want to do this for a long time," he admits with a chuckle, "but I do know I love to work. Soon, I'll move on and find something else. Maybe one day, I'll find something permanent, something that sticks to my soul like..." His lips stop moving; but words aren't needed. All his sentiments are spoken by the warmth of his eyes, the gentle caress of his thumb along my cheekbone. The way he glows as if his very soul is ablaze.
The evidence points to one conclusion—and I don't need my Unspeakable training to figure it out.
ooOOoo
A/N: Thank you for reading! Reviews are appreciated!
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