June
tick tock tick tock
The thing about fights with Hermione—which often ended up more like runaway, misfired conversations drowned in good intentions—was that they never seemed to last. They were never more important than the other things in their life. Sure, they sometimes happened. Occasionally with the same spectacular sort of implosion as Draco's complete and utter fumble wherein he didn't-exactly-not-propose to her. But at the end of the day, they could both agree that it would never trump them.
It was a unique sort of conflict management in which Draco learned he could simply decide not to let something affect him, or his relationship with Hermione. They could move on: together. So he didn't propose. Though he didn't not propose, either. Not yet. He'd left a stasis charm on a bigger relationship milestone—the biggest, he could probably argue—and he knew he couldn't manage it indefinitely.
Such impending considerations for his future only registered in a peripheral way as he woke on the morning of his birthday: rested, contented, and with a breathy, beautiful voice singing in his ear.
He smiled, eyes still closed as he laid on his side, back facing Hermione. He savored each and every warm touchpoint where her body pressed against him as she leaned over his shoulder, hot breath gusting across his ear, fingers walking a flaming path up his ribs.
He dared to open his eyes, bedroom awash in a faint blue, early morning light. He twisted to see her, smile shifting into a smirk, the sort of affected snark he was allowed to indulge in on his birthday.
"While this is undoubtedly the best start to a birthday I have ever had, your lyricism might require work. I don't know that you can repeat happy birthday to you over and over again and call it a song, lovely as the tune may be."
He rolled more fully on his back, infected by her smile as she giggled, quieted, then sobered.
"No, Draco. It's a—you know what? Never mind. I'll forgive your pureblood ignorances just this once. But only because it's your birthday."
He smiled, not even remotely riled by her implication that she knew something he didn't. He leaned in, hands winding through her hair as he kissed her: lazy, sweet, smiling birthday kisses for the beautiful woman he had the pleasure of waking up to in his—their—bed.
Her breath caught against his lips as he pulled her bottom lip between his teeth, a gentle pressure as he endeavored to savor every last touch from her. He let her lip pop free, smiling, still nose to nose with her.
"I've caught up with you again." He brushed his thumb across her cheekbone, memorizing the way her eyelids fluttered. "I'm twenty-four, you're twenty-four. Always just a bit behind you, I am."
He tasted her small laugh. Her eyes fluttered back open as she rolled them in response to his weak, self-deprecating jab. Not so long ago, he wouldn't have been capable of such a statement, not even of conceiving it.
He disentangled a hand from her curls, slipping it beneath the covers in search of her skin, twining his legs with hers, pulling her close.
He found her skin. Easily. He found a lot of skin, and something distinctly lace-like.
Draco nearly choked on his own tongue as he threw the covers back.
"What in the—fucking hell, Hermione."
He might require emergency services. He didn't much fancy spending his birthday in the hospital, but Hermione Granger had just made an attempt on his life via her undergarments. She flushed a bright pink from her chest to her cheeks as he struggled to regain his ability to speak.
"You weren't wearing that when we went to bed last night."
She held a curl hostage between her fingers, twisting and pulling it as she chewed at her bottom lip.
"No, I—woke up a little early and changed."
She reached for the blankets in an attempt to pull them back up. Draco snatched them from her, silently grateful for his Seeker's reflexes.
"Oh no you don't, Granger." Impossibly, she flushed a deeper shade at his slip into using her surname. "Is this my present? Because if it is"—he flipped an errant curl over her shoulder and then let his forefinger trace her collarbone, towards her shoulder, finding a satin strap—"you have truly outdone yourself."
She groaned, one arm crossing her middle in a futile attempt at protecting her modesty. Draco couldn't fight his smile; the apples of his cheeks strained from the force of his grin. He slipped his finger beneath the strap and encouraged it to slip over her shoulder, falling limp against her upper arm.
"This is so outside your norm, love. There's so much lace and silk and fucking Merlin." He paused, pulled in a breath through his nose. He'd missed it the first time, predictably distracted by her tits. "Is that a garter belt?"
He and Hermione had a very healthy sex life. He knew this. He'd never in his life been so obsessively attracted to a woman. And she'd told him once, in the afterglow of several outstanding orgasms as he struggled to catch his breath, that she hadn't even known she could come more than once during sex. They had physically satisfying sex. Emotionally satisfying sex. The kind of sex that Draco literally fantasized about getting to spend his entire fucking life having.
And now she'd gone and made it better by several orders of magnitude. She had purchased and put on a gorgeous little red lingerie set—he could forgive her predictable Gryffindor color choice—and she looked completely otherworldly in it. Beauty that transcended his understanding of reality as it ground his brain to a halt and sent all his blood rushing south. And all of it for him.
He settled back against his pillows, fingers laced together behind his head as he stretched, settling in.
"Well, let's have a look, love. I'd like to get the full view."
She clawed for the sheets again, refusing to meet his gaze.
"Oh, Draco. Don't embarrass me."
She only managed to cover half of herself before he was on her, body wedged against hers. He resisted a very vocal, yet nonverbal acknowledgement—a groan or a grunt or a moan—of just how much he loved the feeling of silk and lace against his skin.
"Embarrass you?" His voice came out low, deadly serious. "Why would you be embarrassed?"
She blinked several times: tension melted from her muscles, seeped from her skin, banished from their bed.
"You said it yourself," she started. He kissed near the base of her throat, along her clavicle, restraint wavering. "This is hardly my usual—I thought you might like it but I'm not"—she swallowed—"well, I'm not really sure I'm cut out for such impractical undergarments."
Draco literally could not fathom such a thing. Did she not look at herself in the mirror when she put on this glorious, outstanding, utterly debilitating collection of fabric scraps?
He surged against her, one arm around her middle, lips traveling up her neck, finding her ear.
"Do you feel that, Granger?"
She shivered when he used her surname again. He rocked against her, cock painfully hard against her hip.
"You have to know how gorgeous you look, how badly I want you." He canted his hips again, enjoying a fractional burst of pleasure. "You putting on this ridiculous, impractical, fucking divine lingerie is the greatest birthday present I didn't even know I wanted."
He forgot to breathe when her hand wrapped around his cock through his pants.
"You are"—a kiss behind her ear—"the most"—a kiss beneath her jaw—"beautiful fucking creature"—a kiss at the base of her throat—"I have ever seen"—a kiss through flimsy lace, tongue teasing her nipple—"in my entire life."
She writhed beneath him, squirming for contact just as desperately as he needed it, already flushed and panting and well beyond her embarrassment. He pulled away enough to look at her face. Despite his impulse to have her quickly and desperately, he intended to make the most of this glorious deviation from their norm.
He placed tiny, barely-there kisses along the laced edges of her bra, memorizing the shape, color, and feel of it against her skin, against his lips. If he wasn't careful he would devour her.
"I'm very seriously considering skipping my birthday breakfast with my parents. And they've mentioned on no less than six occasions how disappointed they are not to have me joining them regularly in the mornings any longer."
She whined: a needy, instructional sound meant to tell him that he was talking too much, that his lips had strayed too far from her skin. Her hips lifted off the mattress, driving against this thigh.
He dragged his tongue down her sternum, down the center of her stomach, straight over the lacy fabric on her garter belt—fucking garter belt—and stopped at the edge of her deliciously tiny knickers.
"I'd also be willing to miss our lunch with Theo and Blaise if it means I can keep you in this bed all day." He angled to look back up at her as he let his breath coast along the wet trail left by his tongue. She released a small, frustrated huff; he smiled. How he loved to tease her, to string her impatience along as far as possible, a thread stretched to its snapping point. And when it snapped, gods she was breathtaking.
"Draco," she breathed, a frustrated growl edging out her tone. "I woke you up with plenty of time before you have to go."
"Oh, did you?"
Her fingers threaded through his hair, nails against his scalp.
"I did."
"And what were you hoping to accomplish in all that time?"
"Draco Malfoy, if you do not take this ridiculous underwear off me right now, I swear to Merlin I will do it myself. And then take care of my own needs, you frustrating man."
He laughed against her stomach before doing the opposite of what she asked, sliding back up her body and kissing the pout from her lips.
"I have two questions," he said, willpower nearly failing him as he relished the feeling of her body beneath his, her skin on his, two flimsy layers of fabric separating them. He ground his hips against hers as he asked, "Do you promise? And can I watch?"
He'd never had a better birthday in his life.
—
Lucius and Narcissa met Draco in the Floo parlor, dressed in their traveling cloaks with tight, wary expressions on their faces. True to his word, and finally feeling like he'd found something of a balance between his old, obligatory routines with his parents and his new lifestyle with Hermione, Draco had removed breakfast at the manor from his schedule. He still spent nearly every evening dining with his parents, strained as it was. But he gave his mornings to Hermione. His afternoons, too. His nights. His dreams. As much of himself as he had to offer.
But evidently, his parents had made reservations for a birthday breakfast at a new, expensive restaurant in Diagon Alley as soon as Lucius's sentence had been commuted.
The gesture was—thoughtful. Though inconvenient. It would mark the first occasion that he ventured back out into public with his parents.
He'd barely accepted the box of toffees from his mother, greeting her with a perfunctory kiss to the cheek and a murmured thanks, when Lucius gestured for them to leave.
"Our reservation was for ten minutes ago," Lucius said, jaw tight, fingers flexing on the head of his cane. Draco followed the motion with cautious eyes; it felt unreal, knowing his father had a wand there again. Something about his father's wand felt less like a tool for everyday life and more like a weapon he could wield. Knowing Lucius had it in his possession snapped the muscles along Draco's spine to stiff attention, incapable of feeling at ease.
He met his father's eyes.
"I apologize. I got held up at home." Fucking my girlfriend through the mattress, over and over and over again. Draco knew he probably looked a little bit shagged. Not excessively so, but he hadn't bothered pulling himself into the pristine condition his parents likely expected of him: cufflinks left on the dresser, hair in place, but wavy. He'd opted to look just a bit more casual, a bit more freshly fucked.
A muscle in Lucius's jaw flexed—the pterygoid, Draco thought: a muscle attached to the mandible he only knew about because Mr. Granger had insisted they make an anatomical lesson out of Draco's Christmas gift the year before. But only after the initial shock had worn off and the brandy had started to sink in, of course.
Without another word, they Floo'd to the Leaky and proceeded to their restaurant. Stepping inside, Draco knew exactly why his parents might want to patronize such a place: expensive, exclusive, and touting a robust, authentically French menu with novel, self-seasoning dishes that adjusted to an individual's palate. The entire establishment screamed of old money in new packaging, side ventures for the extra Galleons earned from extraneous accounts long forgotten by old estates. Just the sort of thing that looked and felt like progress—new dishes, fresh linens, updated architecture—but that still excluded anyone and everyone who couldn't afford the literal and figurative price of entry.
Draco had almost stopped noticing the stares, having grown more accustomed to them in the time he spent with Hermione in the wizarding world. With his parents, though, his skin crawled under the inspection of several sets of eyes as the host led them to a table.
Lucius made it worse: head held high, haughty expression pulling his lips into a sneer, ostentatious fucking cane clicking on the wooden floors with every step he took. Everything about his posture challenged the other patrons to say something, look for too long, pass judgement on them.
Draco sank into his chair, staring out the nearby window into Diagon Alley, desperately wishing for an escape.
Breakfast with his parents at a restaurant felt much the same as breakfast with them at the manor, but with the added benefit of an audience. Uncomfortable stares. Tight facial expressions. Stunted, awkward attempts at conversation. The change of scenery didn't change the actors in the stage play his family had become.
Draco reeled from the emotional whiplash. His morning with Hermione had been so perfect, so mind-numbingly lovely. But this? This was awkward and uncomfortable. Every clink of silver against their plates sent a cringe careening up and down his spine, seeking release in expressions he kept forcibly neutral.
Narcissa glanced around the restaurant, a cascade of faces looking away as she scanned the room. She released a small, but tight breath.
"We won't be forced out of public from a few stares," she said, dragging her knife through a perfectly rolled french omelette.
Lucius gave a stiff nod. "We have just as much right to dine here as they do."
"Do we?" Draco asked without thinking. He blinked up at his parents, who had both paused mid-bite at his sudden participation in their conversation. He resisted the urge to sigh. He'd already committed, he might as well dig himself a little deeper. "What if the owner of this place is muggleborn?" He doubted it, based on what he'd seen of the restaurant, but what-ifs made for important questions when trying to unravel absurdities.
His father scowled. His mother tittered a nerve-grating laugh. Draco waited for an answer.
"Don't be silly, dear," Narcissa said. "Such a lovely place like this? Quite unlikely."
Draco tilted his head. The loveliness had nothing to do with it. More likely, the prime real estate spot—which Draco had learned from experience looking at shop options with Blaise—would have been prohibitively expensive for those without generational vaults at Gringotts or an extensive list of connections who could remove barriers. Beyond that, it was the overt, excessive use of magic for every little thing.
Narcissa's gaze slipped from his face, out the window behind him instead.
"Oh, is that Theodore? We still haven't had him over. And Blaise, too."
Her eyes widened, hardened, and closed off completely in the space of a blink. What had been a casual sort of interest on her face transformed into disbelief, waylaid by something that almost looked like betrayal.
Draco turned to follow her stare and felt immediately as if he'd been dunked into a frozen lake. Theo and Blaise had just walked out of the Quidditch supply shop across from the restaurant with Hermione at their heels.
"Disgraceful," Lucius seethed, fork falling onto the tabletop.
Draco knew he must have looked murderous—his own face contorting itself into a scowl and a furious stare as his father spoke—because whatever else Lucius had intended to say stalled in his throat.
Draco fisted the tablecloth where it draped over the edge of the table, falling onto his lap. He twisted it up in his hand, a tight, angry fist holding him together as he tried very, very hard not to make a scene in public, not to draw any more attention than they already attracted.
Draco's plate, silver, and glassware all slid closer to him as he bunched up the fabric from the tablecloth, tugging everything a bit closer to the ledge.
"What exactly is so disgraceful, Father? They're just walking. Shopping. Do you even realize how—don't you understand who she is to me?" Anger ate his words, so he tried again. "Could you, perhaps—just on my birthday—pretend not to abhor the woman I love?"
Lucius matched Draco's anger breath for breath, disdain carved into his features.
"It's not about such silly sentimentality as that, Draco. If I am not allowed to abhor her for being a bastardization of magical ability, for flaunting her substandard breeding and manners in our faces, or for gutting my ancestral home, am I not at least allowed to abhor her for taking my son from me?"
Draco did not often think of his father as being snake-like. Not when he'd had The Dark Lord for comparison. But Lucius hissed the word son with such venom that Draco couldn't help but imagine spitting snakes: vipers or cobras or whatever kind it was that reared and spat and put everything it had into self preservation in the face of a threat.
Worse than the venom was the hurt, lingering just beneath the surface, tugging at Draco, encouraging him to sympathize, to take pity on his father's position.
Draco ground his teeth together.
If Lucius had wanted to better preserve a relationship with him he should have done something—something different, something else—long before now. Hermione's bright, fierce, ruthless voice flared to life inside his head: things she'd said about actions being what counted. Lucius's actions accounted for very little, if Draco really stopped to consider them.
He would not let Lucius make Hermione a scapegoat for his personal misfortunes now that he could no longer blame her for his political ones, not publicly, at least.
Abruptly, Draco stood.
"Thank you for taking me out for my birthday," he said, trying to control the furious waver in his voice as he made eye contact with his mother. It killed him that she looked on the verge of tears. "I have to go."
Narcissa blinked, looking up at him from her place at the table. Draco had the sense he'd just witnessed her experiencing her worst fears actualizing. "As a reminder," he said. "I won't be dining with you this evening."
It was another blow, he knew it. But Draco was feeling spiteful, furious, offended for himself and for Hermione. And he felt so, so disappointed in his parents. Narcissa physically recoiled at his words, hands falling limp off the table. Draco didn't dare look at Lucius.
"I don't think I'll be dining with you for the rest of the week, either," he added. A pause for consideration. "Or for the foreseeable future." It hurt more than he wanted it to, saying such a thing, such a damning, permanent-feeling thing. It felt like taking what last little scraps of hope he'd clung to and bombarda'ing them to bits. "I just—I don't know," he said as a final, inconclusive sort of apology, even while knowing they didn't deserve one.
His box of toffees remained on the tabletop as he walked away.
He'd wanted it to work with his parents. He'd hoped for years now that they could evolve, that they would, with the right amount of time. They kept resisting him every step of the way, and he, a tired, worn-down traveller, needed a break.
—
Thank the gods for Hermione's wild, distinctive hair. He spotted her, and by association Theo and Blaise, down the street when he exited the restaurant, heart pounding from the furious, disappointed, and appalled looks his parents had given him as he excused himself from his own birthday meal.
Draco caught up with them as they paused in front of a used bookshop.
"—in two hours, are you capable of spending less than two hours in a bookstore, Granger?" Hermione swatted Theo's arm in response. Dramatically, he massaged his bicep, hissing about her violence.
Draco wrapped his arms around her shoulders from behind, dropping a kiss at the crown of her head.
"Careful," he said with a wink. "She bites, too."
That earned Draco a swat of his own and a retching sound from Theo. Blaise only rolled his eyes as he leaned against the storefront.
Hermione turned in his arms, looking up at him with a tiny furrow between her brows.
"We weren't supposed to meet for another two hours."
It was a question disguised as a statement, but he knew exactly what she meant. He leaned down and kissed her temple, lingering near her ear.
"I'll tell you later," he said in a quiet voice, offering her a small smile as he pulled back.
Her tight smile in return asked another question. It didn't go well?
He gave a single, short shake of his head.
She still looked concerned—not exactly a push, but a check to make sure he was alright. Meals with his parents tended to go either fine or spectacularly awful and she clearly knew which one his morning had been.
"Blaise, if I ever start looking at someone like that you have my permission to hex me," Theo said. He clapped Draco on the shoulder, a clear reminder that he and Hermione were not, in fact, alone.
Draco looked away from Hermione in time to see Blaise's arched brow, the faintest trace of a smile pulling at his lips.
"Deal."
Theo just shook his head and pulled something from his pocket.
"So, we'll just do our after lunch plans before lunch?" he asked, holding up a rusted bronze key.
Hermione looked from the key to Draco to Theo and back to the key again.
"That's not—is it?" she asked.
"A portkey to our destination, Granger," Theo said, twirling the key between his fingers, held right at her eye level.
"And how questionable is its legality?" she asked as she folded her arms across her chest.
"Entirely questionable. But keep your voice down about it"—Theo leaned in, a conspiratory smile flashing across his face—"there are ministry employees afoot and we wouldn't want them to catch wind of it."
She rolled her eyes. "Could we not just apparate?"
"This is much more fun."
With a wink and a glance at Blaise, Theo reached out and took Hermione's hand just and Blaise caught Draco on the shoulder. Draco sighed and shook his head, wrapping an arm around Hermione's waist.
"Hold tight," he whispered in her ear as the portkey whisked them away.
—
They landed with surprising ease in what looked like—
"A Quidditch pitch?" Draco asked.
It took Hermione a second longer to recover herself than it did the rest of them. More than anything else, Draco could see a reluctant wonder crawling across her face. Theo's portkeys were smooth, almost pleasant, with less spinning and much less torque at the navel.
She blinked a few times, clearing whatever thoughts had taken control, before she turned to him.
"I thought you might want to play a little Quidditch on your birthday."
Fresh cut grass, country air, a light breeze: Draco had hardly realized how much he missed it until that moment.
"My broom?"
"Theo has it."
"Kit?"
"Blaise."
Draco smiled, wrapping his arms around his thoughtful, beautiful witch.
"Well, you've just thought of everything, haven't you?"
She smiled. "I even brought a book. Mr. Dwight D. Eisenhower will be keeping me company this afternoon."
"I can't tempt you to take a ride on my broomstick?" Draco asked, leaning into her. He could feel the wide grin stretching his face.
She pressed her hands to his chest and pushed him back.
"I'm choosing to believe you did not intend that as innuendo because one, it's quite the overdone joke and you're cleverer than that and two, you're being gross in front of your friends. Theo is gagging."
She wasn't wrong, Theo had taken up his retching again, one hand braced against Blaise's shoulder for support. But even as she'd said it, Hermione smirked, flashing him the kind of smile that told him even though she thought he was being ridiculous, she loved him for it anyway.
It was one of his favorite fucking smiles.
She reached into her tiny beaded bag and conjured an opaque shield between herself and the rest of them.
"No peeking, you three," came her voice from behind the milky white oval partitioning her from them.
Draco looked to Theo and Blaise and tilted his head to ask the question, what is she doing? Theo just shrugged, Blaise didn't bother with a response.
When she dropped the barrier, Draco's jaw dropped in tandem. She'd swapped her shirt for his Slytherin jersey and, Merlin, did she look imminently fuckable.
"Oh gods, now I really am going to be sick," Theo lamented, turning to face away. Blaise just chuckled.
"Two for one, Granger: gift for Draco and torture for Theo. Impressive."
Hermione practically beamed at the compliment from Blaise. Even Draco felt a bit of second-hand pride that she'd impressed the generally unimpressible Blaise Zabini.
"I'm getting the game set up. Blaise, come help," Theo called, already walking towards the pitch. Draco took the gift of privacy for what it was and stepped right into Hermione's personal space, fingers playing with the jersey's hem.
Hermione bit her lip: a hesitant glance up at him as a tiny hint of blush bloomed to life in her cheeks.
"Do you want to know what I have on under this?"
Draco didn't pause to consider his response.
"Please say nothing."
She laughed. "Sorry to disappoint. It's not nothing—but it's the green version of that red lingerie I was wearing this morning."
She rocked once on the balls of her feet, an almost-unnoticeable pause before she committed to her movement; she lined herself up against him, flush. Her voice came out breathy, a whisper, but with enough force to double him over.
"If you play extra well for me, maybe I'll let you take it off me later."
"Maybe?" he asked, voice rough in a strangled throat. "You're telling me you don't already have it written in your planner?"
She bit that damnable lip and Draco very seriously considered abandoning his friends for the afternoon in favor of this witch.
"You don't want to know all the things I have written in my planner for you today."
"We don't need to play Quidditch. Let's go home. Right now. Gods, I love you."
Hermione did the exact opposite of what he wanted and took a step back, out of his reach.
"You don't want to abandon Theo and Blaise; they might not give you their present if you do."
Draco attempted to close the space between them, only to have Hermione step back again, a playful smile breaking like a sunrise across her face.
"Whatever they got me I'll just buy it for myself."
Hermione shrugged and giggled, another step out of his reach. "I don't know about that," she offered in a sing-song sort of voice.
"Granger doesn't know something? Impossible."
Theo and Blaise had returned, changed into Quidditch attire. Theo looped a casual arm around Hermione's shoulder. "So, what is it you don't know?"
"Divination, mostly. And how to make tea," Draco supplied, a brow arched. Hermione didn't even huff, not a drop of indignation. She only shook her head with a half roll to her eyes.
Theo made a dismissive sort of gesture, waving vaguely towards Blaise. "We keep him around for the Divination part."
Hermione elbowed Theo's side and nodded towards Draco. For a split second, Theo put on an excellent show of having been debilitated by Hermione's elbow. To be fair, having been on the receiving end of them, Draco knew she had a fondness for wielding them as weapons to her own devices. As Theo straightened himself, clutching pitifully at his side, he pulled out his wand and sent an envelope flying to Draco.
He caught it and lifted a brow, peeking inside.
"Is this—"
"Quidditch World cup tickets for August," Theo confirmed. "For all of us because we want to come, too. But it's your present. And they're good seats"—Theo advanced, liberating the envelope from Draco's hands and pulling out one of the tickets—"not greased-hands-with-the-Minister-of-Magic-good, but respectable boxes, nevertheless."
"Oh. I could have asked Kingsley for you."
Draco could practically see Hermione's statement wash over Theo from behind. His eyes went wide, then narrowed, before he released a sigh and shook his head: "Of course she could have." Theo sounded caught somewhere between being impressed and distraught for not having thought of such a thing himself.
Another thought stole Draco's attention. He leaned, peering around Theo to catch Hermione's eyes.
"In Italy?"
She smiled.
"Italy."
"And is that why you've agreed to come?" he asked, simultaneously teasing and serious.
She reined her smile in, lips pursed, an attempt at coy. Her right shoulder lifted toward her ear, just a bit, a tiny shrug.
"I have always wanted to see Italy."
Such a simple statement, standing with all of them, about to play Quidditch and celebrate his birthday, filled Draco with a warmth not unlike the magic he used to cast a Patronus.
"Thank you," he said, eyes shifting to each of them. He clapped Theo on the shoulder, "Truly, thank you."
In the aftermath of a day that had started so beautifully, transitioned into something terrible, and now found him surrounded by those he loved most, with the rest of the day ahead of them, Draco smiled.
