Chapter 21

Hermione turned off her laptop and placed itin her bag. She turned off her desk lamp and checked her watch.

Six-fifteen.

She had nearly an hour to get herself home to get ready for dinner with Draco. All day she had been distracted to the point of insanity. Twice she had dozed off from lack of sleep at the morning staff meeting, and then she proceeded to spill coffee down her white blouse, crash her computer, and lose her favorite lip gloss.

Well, the lip gloss was not a problem, but it just seemed so much more devastating that day.

Placing her mobile in her purse, she shut her office door and walked towards the elevators, her heart pounding loudly in her chest.

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The waiter placed two wine glasses on the table and poured wine in each before handing them to Draco and Hermione. They had been sitting at their table for nearly twenty-minutes and had barely said two words to each other with the exception of 'hello.'

Gulping down their wine, Draco and Hermione stared at their empty wine glasses before Hermione cleared her throat and took the plunge.

"It was a mistake."

Falling back into his chair, Draco managed a small smile, "I am so relieved that you think so, too."

Both of them finished off the rest of their wine and promptly refilled their glasses.

"Look, Hermione, I'm not saying that last night wasn't a physically pleasurable sexual experience."

"Oh, I know what you mean, it was great."

"Yes, yes it was."

More silence followed, which was soon followed by a second bottle of wine. The salads they ordered came and neither of them touched their plates. Hermione began to push her baby tomatoes around her plate, with Draco following suit by swirling his spinach around the edge of his plate.

"We never should have done it," said Hermione, her eyes never leaving her plate.

"I couldn't agree more."

Taking a swig of her wine, emptying her glass, Hermione finally looked up and tried out the smile she decided she would use that night. She spent the entire ride to the restaurant practicing it.

"Well, I am just so relieved."

"Me too," grinned Draco, practicing his own smile. He spent all day practicing his.

The nodded and returned to playing with their food, occasionally stealing a glance at one another, but careful to not get caught.

"You know, it's so nice when you can sit with someone and not have to talk. It just goes to show how really comfortable you are with a person." Draco looked up to see that Hermione had not lifted her eyes from the table.

And they continued to eat in silence.

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A few weeks later, Draco and Blaise met up for lunch and took a walk around Central Park, dodging the occasional jogger or stopping to take a quick peek at the young women taking their own lunchtime stroll. The two friends walked for a good while before Draco stopped and sat down on a bench.

"It's just like, most of the time you go to bed with someone and then she tells you all her stories and then you tell her all your stories, but with Hermione and me, we'd already heard each other's stories." He leaned his head back and closed his eyes, Hermione's face flashing in his mind. "Once we went to bed, we didn't know what we were supposed to do, you know?"

"Sure, Draco."

"I don't know," continued Draco, "you get to a certain point in a relationship where maybe it's just too late to have sex, you know? It's sort of like...incest."

"You have problems, you know that right?" Draco looked at his friend and just nodded.

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"So, I heard Draco is bringing Emily to the wedding."

Ginny was struggling to get herself into a corseted wedding dress. They had spent the entire morning looking at and trying on both muggle and wizarding wedding dresses and robes. It was past noon, and they had no luck yet.

"Oh, well, Draco and Emily broke up."

"So, is he seeing anyone then," asked Hermione as she absently mindedly twirled a white scarf around her wrist.

"He was seeing this anthropologist," muttered Ginny has she threw the corseted dress to the side and tried on the last dress that was hanging on the dressing rack in her dressing room.

"So what did she look like," inquired Hermione from the other side of the curtain.

Rolling her eyes, Ginny used her wand to zip herself up while she buckled the matching shoes. "Thin. Pretty. Big tits. Your basic nightmare. I'm coming out...well, what do you think?"

Hermione looked up and was absolutely speechless. Standing before her, Ginny was spinning around slowly in a strapless muggle wedding dress with a small bustle in the back and what looked like magically sewn on sequins that made the dress look luminous.

"Oh Ginny."

"Now tell me the truth."

Hermione stood up, getting choked up at the sight of her friend in the most wonderful dress she had ever seen. She placed her hands on Ginny's shoulders, "It's just beautiful."

Looking down, Ginny still looked skeptical, "You don't think it's silly, I mean, all this white..."

"Ginny, it's beautiful," gushed Hermione, "just beautiful." Her eyes began to fill with tears until she broke into full-hearted sobs. "Just...beautiful..." she managed to get out before she collapsed into a crying heap at the foot of the dress Ginny decided was the one.