October
tick tock
The last room in the guest hall, an enormous luxury suite that occupied the majority of the upper level, hadn't seen the light of day since the war. Draco had vague memories of his mother trying to force the room open in the weeks following their sentences, when it was just the two of them under house arrest, wondering how Lucius was faring in Azkaban.
Narcissa had wanted everything cleaned—immaculate—redecorated, redesigned, and renovated from panelled ceiling to tiled floor. Everything, that is, except for two rooms: the drawing room, which she paid to have locked and warded and conveniently erased from her memory, and this one, which she could not enter no matter how hard she tried. She wrote the entire guest hall off as a loss, furious that neither she nor her elves could find a way in.
Hermione Granger could, though, in her own Ministry-mandated version of cleaning house that, under any other context, Draco might have imagined his mother grateful for. After all, Hermione was only doing exactly what Narcissa had done immediately after the war, just with much finer detail and a lower tolerance for cursed objects and poisoned wines.
Hermione heaved a sigh when the door to the suite finally clicked open. Draco had only been paying partial attention, making half-hearted attempts at conjuring a Patronus as he fully expected the door to flummox her for months. Instead, it only took her days. And a substantial amount of sweat. And the occasional angry cursing, which Draco found both hilarious and arousing coming from her mouth.
She turned to Draco, door swinging open behind her, a satisfied but somewhat reluctant smile on her face. "I almost thought I'd have to get Theo a consultant permit to help on this one."
"He would have loved that. Never let you forget it."
"Hence my resistance."
"So stubborn."
She smirked.
"It wasn't easy," she said, glancing over her shoulder at the dark, cavernous room behind her.
"It was his room, after all. I don't expect anything about it will be easy."
Draco tried to ignore the twisting and grinding sensations warring their way through his intestines, his bones. If he had a choice, Hermione would never step foot in this corridor again, would never even so much as look at this room that once housed The Dark Lord.
But he had no choice. Not only was this her job, but this was Hermione Granger. She didn't need to be saved. She did the saving. Even from the ominous room in front of them.
"It's the middle of the afternoon," she said, turning away from him and peering through the doorway. An obvious, errant observation that seemed so innocuous at first that Draco nearly let it slip by him, hurtling down the hallway and into oblivion.
But Hermione did not often speak without purpose. He caught her words first, then her meaning.
"It's very dark in there."
If Draco focused hard enough, he could almost see the darkness moving, like tendrils of black smoke curling in the air, winding their way about the space.
"Suspiciously so," she said in agreement.
She cast her diagnostics at the threshold to the room, still standing in the corridor: a level of caution Draco both appreciated and approved of. He wondered if she did it for him. His chest preemptively ached with worry.
She stepped back, into him, at the force of red runes that erupted from her spell. He'd seen her runes look complicated before—a myriad of symbols both familiar and unfamiliar, some rooms entirely in the red when she began—but he'd never seen them overload in such a way, symbols flashing and expanding, fighting for attention or notice.
With her back against his chest, Draco braced her, preventing her from falling over entirely in her surprise.
"Well," she started, relaxing into him a bit. The small action soothed some of the uncomfortable anticipation in his chest. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by that. But still. That is—that is a lot of red."
Anxiety swirled in an uncomfortable eddy in Draco's stomach, collecting in a blackened rectangular frame, a door through which Draco had no desire to pass. He kept Hermione held against him for calming, seeking a sense of stability in the face of something so unknown and imposing. His hands, which had curled around her upper arms, wandered, brushing her hair off her neck, tracing a line from her elbow to her fingertips. He leaned down and kissed the bit of skin he'd just exposed.
"Good thing you have me to help," he said, trying to sound flippant and unconcerned. But he desperately needed her to know that he wouldn't be able to sit on the sidelines for this one. He'd let her have Bella's room. He couldn't let her have this one, too, both for her safety and his peace of mind.
She leaned further into him.
"You do make an excellent assistant."
"Assistant? I'm your supervisor." He wound a hand around her hips, pulling her against him for good measure, or emphasis, or simply to feel her arse against him. All were valid reasons.
"You are not my supervisor," she said, and he assumed she meant for her emphasis to sound authoritative.
It sounded breathy, beautiful, and entirely at odds with the looming threat in front of them. But Draco could hardly bring himself to care. What was a dark, cursed room when he had a brilliant, pliant woman pressed to his chest, near-vibrating with the kind of energy that with the right kind of encouragement, would have her grinding against him?
"Are you sure you don't work for me? I spend a lot of time watching you, ensuring you do your job correctly."
"Ignoring the problematic nature of power dynamics at play if I were to be sleeping so enthusiastically with my supervisor, at best, you are my coworker."
He chuckled against her ear, both hands now on her hips, mouth trailing hot breath and tiny, fleeting kisses against the side of her throat. He didn't care that they stood in the middle of a hallway, he didn't care that she had work to do, or that angry red runes drowned the already bright mid-afternoon light in a ruddy glow.
"Coworker? I don't care for that terminology. I'd say we're more of a team."
She hummed, whether in acknowledgment of his words or the path his fingers had just taken, dipping under the hem of her blouse, he didn't know, hardly cared.
"I suppose we have made a fairly efficient team," she said. She gripped his thigh with one of her hands, fingers bunching his trousers, releasing them, dragging along his muscle.
"More than efficient," he said, fingers exploring the peaks and valleys between each of her ribs. He explored her skin with a rough touch, something primal seizing control of his limbs. "We work well together. Good balance"—he traced a line beneath her bra—"great chemistry."
He heard her swallow, the back of her head thrown against the soft flesh beneath his shoulder.
"We do work well together."
"And there's so much more to do," he said, voice dropping to a whisper as he slipped his fingers beneath the cup of her bra.
Her wand clattered as it bounced against the tile floor, rolling away.
She made a noise she might have intended to sound questioning, but that came out distressingly close to a moan instead.
"There's the north wing," he said. "The guest house, my parents' wing, the dungeons, and the attics. You've been busy"—he palmed her entire breast with one hand, pulling her arse against him with the other. He shamelessly drove his erection against her lower back, and she shuddered under his touch—"but this manor is very, very large."
Her breath caught on the inhale, but she swallowed, forcing steady words. "I'm not bored yet."
"Neither am I."
"I rather think we're just getting started," she said, breathing heavy.
"I agree."
"Good, that's good."
Draco rolled her nipple between his fingers, bra shoved up beneath her blouse as he sucked at the taut tendons on her neck: nipping and laving and worshipping her skin with hot breath and an eager tongue.
"Draco?" she asked as one of her hands lifted, reaching blindly for his neck, fingers grappling for purchase at the nape.
"Hmm?" he hummed against her neck.
"I think I'd like to have sex while the Ministry is paying me to work. And then I'd like for you to never mention it again."
He tightened: his grip on her hips, on her breast, his latch on her neck, the feeling in his chest, all of it.
"That may be my favorite sentence you've ever spoken." He hiked up her skirt, determined to drown out the glow of red runes with the sounds of her coming, panting his name.
—
It took the entire month. Honestly, the brevity of such a timeline impressed Draco. Walking into The Dark Lord's former chambers had felt like stepping back in time. The unnatural darkness curled around him; a soft, sensual greeting that tasted like smoke and felt like memory. Everything about the space felt putrid, rotting, vile, but they could see none of it; darkness acted as the room's first and primary line of defense.
Granger worked carefully, more so than he expected, given his personal witness of her habits over the last several months they'd spent in this hall.
They worked in near-complete darkness for days. Their diagnostic runes served as their only source of light, pointing out that yes, this chair had lingering dark magic soaking through its fabric upholstery, straight to the wooden frame. And yes, these curtains were cursed to strangle if given the right opportunity and target. And yes, these books have been banned for centuries and have several layers of complicated blood magic keeping them sealed and dangerous. And yes, literally every object, every step, every gulp of air in the room carried with it a level of hatred, of history, and of harm lying in wait.
"Do you feel like the dark is trying to say something to you?" Draco asked one day, putting words to the uneasy, prickling feeling at the back of his neck.
"Say something? No. Do something? Yes. I keep expecting it to attack me, if I'm honest."
"It feels like it's trying to whisper to me, like it's trying to get in. Like smoke blown against my face, and I'm holding my breath."
"This is an unpleasant room."
"To be expected."
Her hand found his.
"I'm being cautious," she said, and he knew she meant to reassure him.
"I'm being bold—though it feels more foolish than brave. I know a Gryffindor who insists those are similar sensations."
"They are." He didn't need to see her face to know she smiled. He felt it in the way her hand pulsed against his, an increase in pressure that acknowledged him.
"It's straightforward though," she said. "This room. We work well together, we have a system. It's been weeks already and neither of us has been hurt."
He pulsed his hand against hers in turn.
It took them until the very end of the month. It took two blood curses, one of which required another trip to St. Mungo's, a suffocation jinx, a terrifying moment where Draco thought Hermione's eyes might burst from their sockets, and a waking terror not unlike a boggart that left Draco collapsed on the floor, screaming, as Hermione kneeled next to him, pinning his shoulders such that he didn't thrash too violently. Every fiber, every stretch of sinew, every tendon, every muscle, every ligament in Draco's being begged him to demand that they abandon the room altogether.
He held that instinct in the bottom of his lungs, a breath he refused to exhale. He followed Hermione's direction instead.
And finally, nearing six in the evening on Friday, the 31st of October, Hermione used her Patronus to drive out the last remaining black tendrils from the room's darkest corners, forcing light into the darkness, turning the nightmare into a dream.
—
"Just come on through with me to mine so I can change, and then we'll head to Harry's together."
Draco barely heard her, still high off the success of finally ridding The Dark Lord's former room of all its evil, hateful magic. Seeing that room flooded with purple light—happy, satisfied runes floating around them—had burned from his brain every drop of anxiety he had over attending a Hallowe'en party at Harry Potter's house.
His step paused just shy of the Floo when her words caught up with him, a knock at his eardrums announcing their irregularity.
"Yours? As in your flat?"
Hermione rolled her eyes, but gave him an exasperated sort of smile all the same.
"I haven't been keeping it from you—"
"—But you've never actually had me over—"
"—I've told you you could come over whenever you like, but yours is so much more convenient—"
"—I'm only teasing—"
"—I know," she sighed. They both smiled, lost in pointless not-banter. Her mysterious flat had become something of a joke, a bruise with no pain that they poked and prodded at when they felt like needling with no hurt. "It's just"—she swayed a bit from side to side, as if physically weighing her words on her shoulders—"it is a very small flat and yours is very—not small."
He smirked. "Would you believe me if I said I'll withhold judgement?"
She laughed, head thrown back as the sound burst out of her. Draco poked at her side, pulling her into the Floo as he tossed the green powder down.
He'd been about to tell her that it wasn't that funny, not enough to warrant such a throaty, involuntary sounding laugh. But then the spinning stopped and he realized she had not been exaggerating.
She turned to him, crossing her arms, foot tapping as she arched a brow.
"It's—certainly not as large as mine."
She shook her head with a snort as if she'd expected nothing less, but she drew her lip between her teeth as she dropped her arms.
"Relocating and healing my parents was expensive, even with help from the Ministry. And, well—I wouldn't let them pay me a ridiculous salary just because I'm—" She shrugged, dropping the end of her sentence.
"Their most brilliant employee, no doubt? Can't imagine why they'd want to pay you an obscene amount of money."
"You're biased."
"Incredibly."
She shook her head, curls bouncing as she did. She didn't hide her smile.
"I'll be right back. I just want to change into something more comfortable and we'll go."
Draco almost followed her, just for the pleasure of watching her change, of seeing her bedroom, and perhaps testing his luck on how late she'd be willing to arrive at Potter's little get together. But she'd already disappeared into a room and closed the door behind her by the time he realized how much he favored the idea of being as late as possible. He imagined there would likely be a heavy Weasley contingent in attendance; he did not relish the idea of spending an evening with an indeterminable number of Gryffindors.
He examined her space as he waited: a tiny living room with the fireplace, walls predictably lined with shelves, crammed to bursting with books, a small, adjacent kitchen that looked relatively unused, and a tiny kitchenette table shoved in the corner.
His gaze caught on her planner, left open on the table, each day crammed with a huge checklist of to-do items, including their upcoming gathering at Potter's. He paused, laugh catching in his throat as he took in some of the other—more scandalous—details of her life that she included in her schedule.
He meant to tease her, but she'd reentered the room with an orange monster in her arms.
"Ah, the other man in your life," he said. "I suppose this had to happen eventually. Did he take it poorly?"
Hermione nuzzled into the creature's fur, impressively ignoring its yowl of protest.
"This is Crookshanks," she said, returning the animal to the ground. It did a few lazy, appraising circles in the space between them, yellow eyes fixed on Draco.
"Hermione, someone lied to you. You told me you had a cat. That is an experimental transfiguration project gone wrong."
She huffed, reaching for a jar on her kitchen counter. She tossed Draco something that he caught out of reflex. He recoiled at the texture: almost-damp, spongy, a bit grainy.
"Be nice. He's half kneazle. Not unlike Hippogriffs; he'll know if you're being nasty. Try offering him a treat."
"Bringing up that Hippogriff is a low blow, Granger. I thought you were a highly moral Gryffindor."
She just grinned at him, a pointed look of amusement crossing her face. Draco didn't know exactly what she expected, but her wide, hopeful eyes told him she had certain expectations for a specific outcome in this introduction.
He sighed, crouched, and held out the treat: an offering to the beast.
Crookshanks surveyed him with wide, assessing eyes, sniffed the air, swished his tail, turned, and trotted into Hermione's bedroom without a second glance. This left Draco crouching awkwardly, arm outstretched, a smelly cat treat in his hand, disturbingly embarrassed over having been shunned by a cat.
He looked up at the sound of Hermione's stifled giggle.
"I honestly didn't expect anything different," she said through her fingertips, pressed over her mouth and chin.
Draco vanished the treat and stood.
"Oh no, you don't get to laugh at me because your questionably feline roommate doesn't like me."
"He must know you're the one who keeps me away from home so often," she mused, eyes sparkling in her enjoyment of the situation.
"I saw your schedule," he said, pointing at her planner on the table, countering her with his own amusement. "I don't think I ever actually believed you included sex in your to-do lists."
She sucked in a sharp breath but didn't drop her gaze.
"Would you rather I not ensure I have time for you?"
Draco laughed. He could see her digging in, determined not to balk. He loved it.
"Do you plan on scheduling our entire sex life?" he asked, a bit of a poke at her armor.
She crossed her arms, rooted to her spot. "Well, it's not always written in advance, you know. You're very—we can be spontaneous. Sometimes I pencil it in after. I like to account for my time."
Draco let his gaze wander to the open page for that very week.
"I seem to be taking up quite a bit of it these days."
"You are."
"You have a little something written in for this evening," he said, grin breaking across his face.
Finally, she flushed, crossing the space between them and snatching up her notebook. Draco caught her wrist, a light touch to halt her retreat.
"Were you planning on seducing me tonight, Hermione?"
He couldn't suppress the self-satisfied smile, or the heat winding its way through his chest, reaching for her.
"It crossed my mind."
His eyes flicked to her planner.
"I don't know if I'm available, you see. I may need to consult my schedule."
She narrowed her eyes and shrugged, stepping out of his orbit. He lamented the loss as soon as it happened.
"We'll see," she said. And they knew, the both of them, that he'd abide by any plans she had for him, any time.
"I look forward to it."
—
"Weaslette, you're looking ghoulish. I was under the impression this wasn't to be a costume party," Draco said in greeting, offering a bottle of firewhisky as their contribution to the evening's festivities.
"Then why have you come as a vampire, Malfoy? Do you miss the sunlight?"
Hermione's hand tightened around his forearm, something shocked, something warning.
He held Ginny's gaze long enough for each of them to arch a brow at the other, not exactly smirking, but close. Potter interrupted with a drink in each of his hands—a little stumble, eyes a little glassy—shoving them at Draco and Hermione.
Draco hesitated as Hermione took her drink.
"Am I to presume there's no threat of poisoning?" he asked, only partially kidding. While Draco didn't necessarily believe the inscrutable Harry Potter would engage in something as nefarious and plebeian as a run-of-the mill poisoning, he suspected there were several Weasleys currently present who wouldn't mind it so much if Draco dropped dead.
Potter rolled his eyes, an exaggerated motion, and stole Draco's drink back. He took a sip from it, lifting his brows and smiling in a far-too-satisfied display of proof, and dropped the drink back in Draco's hands.
"I think I prefer poison to drinking after you, Potter."
Potter merely wrapped his arms around his wife's midsection from behind, nuzzling into her neck. Draco, for a horrified moment, hoped he never looked quite so absurd when he did similar things to Hermione. At least he never did it in public—did he?
"Getting a little drunk before Malfoy got here was an excellent idea," Potter whispered too loudly into Weaslette's ear. Hermione snorted, quickly taking a drink to hide the noise. "He's funny when I'm buzzed."
Potter barely seemed to register his wife's laughter. Draco certainly noticed Hermione's giggles, shoulders shaking just enough to give her away as she hid her mouth behind her drink. Draco locked his jaw, feeling the muscles along his neck tensing as he tried to work through an annoyance that felt disturbingly like reluctant amusement.
He abandoned niceties; he had no desire to mingle with however many other Gryffindors were in attendance. He walked to the chair he so often occupied when avoiding gatherings at Potter's house and sat, downing his drink in several determined gulps.
Hermione followed, just long enough to comb her fingers through his hair, a smirk ghosting across her face. "I'll get you another," she said, before disappearing into the next room.
Draco made eye contact with a floating jack-o-lantern, bracing himself for an evening with Hermione's friends.
—
Once Draco had a few drinks in his system—alcohol buzzing through his veins, warming his blood and fogging his brain—Potter wasn't all that bad.
Hermione, the beautiful, lovely, horrible traitor that she was, abandoned him at some point during the evening in favor of Ginny. She felt so distant, all the way across the room, cheeks rosy and smile wide as she chatted and laughed with several of her friends. Draco had been content to nurse his own drinks in his de facto chair of avoidance when Longbottom decided to join him, followed shortly by Potter, who flopped onto the nearby sofa.
Potter's extended story about a case of his involving a Goblin—a garbled, rambling mess of a tale obscured by poor storytelling skills and a fair bit of drinking—nearly lulled Draco to sleep. But the reminiscing Potter and Longbottom started doing once Potter's tale found its inevitable conclusion where he solved the case and saved the day? Those stories interested him.
"A full body bind? In first year?"
Longbottom grimaced, taking a sip of his drink. Potter just laughed. "Ask her," he said. "She won't deny it."
Draco tapped the side of his glass with his index finger, considering. The words fuck it found their way to the forefront of his brain, a kind of loosening of inhibitions and an inability to ignore the subtle challenge.
"Granger," he said, raising his voice so that it carried across the room, zipping and winding its way around the floating jack-o-lanterns, the transfigured bats, and the carefully smoking cauldrons. Hermione tilted, her whole body leaning so that she could see around Lavender Brown. "Did you put this one"—he nodded towards Longbottom—"in a full body bind when you were twelve?"
She didn't answer at first, and he wondered if his words had difficulty traveling the space between them, forcing their way through other people's conversations and the irritating background noise of The Weird Sisters blasting from the corner of the room.
Then she smiled, that same slow, mischievous smile she'd had when she told him about riding a dragon out of Gringotts. It was a knowing smile, a guiltless one. Just like it had the first time he saw it, that simple curve of her lips ignited a heat inside him.
"Yep," she said. Draco could hear the pop of the 'p' from all the way across the room. She winked at him—bloody winked at him—and then leaned back over, once again obscured from view, rejoining whatever conversation was happening around her.
Draco looked back at Potter and Longbottom, both of whom wore varying expressions of disgust and discomfort.
"Brilliant and ruthless, that woman," Draco concluded, taking a drink in acknowledgement, or perhaps celebration.
Potter shuddered.
"Don't feel bad, Longbottom. She slapped me in third year," he said.
"Sent a flock of conjured birds after Ron once," Potter added.
Draco chuckled. "I assume he deserved it."
"About as much as you deserved the slap."
Potter smirked. Draco did, too. Longbottom laid his head back against the sofa, barely holding onto the empty glass in his hands.
Potter's smirk dropped into something more serious.
"She is brilliant and ruthless. She's also my best friend," he said, words a little wobbly around the edges. "She likes you."
The room blurred a bit when Draco rolled his eyes.
"Careful Potter, wouldn't want you to say anything you'd regret when you're sober."
"She likes you a lot."
"I've gathered as much," Draco said. And all he could think about—all his idiotic, single-minded brain could provide him with in that moment—was how much she liked him when he had her in his arms or in his bed. Vibrant images of her flushed face flooded his brain.
"She really likes you a lot."
"As ever, your eloquence astounds, Potter. Is this where you warn me not to hurt her like some bumbling oaf defending a woman's honor? I'll tell you now, I'm more afraid of her than I am of you."
Potter's face shifted again, back to a smirk. He pushed up his glasses, askew for the last several minutes. "Good. That's good."
"Good," Draco repeated, not really knowing why.
He and Potter didn't talk much after that, mostly drinking in silence or engaging the occasional interloper who dropped in for a chat.
But Draco found he didn't resent him so much, either.
—
When Hermione slid into his lap, some time past midnight and after several guests had already left for the evening, Draco felt a little bit like he could finally breathe.
He hadn't sequestered himself in his favorite out-of-the-way armchair for the entirety of the evening, tempting as the thought was. He'd done a lap with Longbottom, refilling their drinks and managing stilted conversation about what rare potions ingredients he had growing in the Hogwarts greenhouses. He'd chatted with one of the older Weasleys—involuntarily, and he didn't bother to remember his name—while trying to see if he could sneak Hermione away from Luna Lovegood's never-ending oration about her travels abroad. Most of it sounded made up, from what Draco could gather. He even had a surprisingly robust conversation with the Weaslette about Quidditch, wherein they managed to agree that her brother (the worst one, Ron) had no taste with regard to his love of the Chudley Cannons.
Draco returned to his chair, or what had become his chair by frequent occupancy rights, as the party wound down, with more and more attendees slipping out through the Floo or disapparating from the back gardens with a pop.
"I'm sorry I abandoned you for so long," Hermione said, breathing hot, alcohol-laden breath against his neck. Her fingers wandered his chest in a playful exploration. A tipsy Hermione was a handsy Hermione, and Draco had zero objections.
"We're going to need a code," he said, voice just as low, just as suggestive, as he dropped a kiss to her neck. "I've been dying to get my hands on you all night, and you had no idea."
"Oh, I had an idea," she said, leaning back to look at him with a wide smile and an obvious glance at his mouth.
Draco grinned, tugging her closer as he splayed his hands wide along her back.
"Is it time for my seduction?" he asked, mouth hovering close to hers, tasting the faintest hint of cinnamon on her breath. So close.
A disgruntled sound drew Draco's attention away from the beautiful woman in his lap who he very, very much wanted to kiss.
"I'm right here. Just—gross," Potter said, already standing from the sofa.
"Leave then," Draco said with a bite that came from several drinks and a subtly gyrating witch in his laps. Gods, she was killing him.
"It's my house," Potter said, flipping him two fingers but already well on his way out of the room.
"Go find your wife if you're jealous," Draco called after him, breath gusting out of him as Hermione moved her hips again, bearing down against his. The tips of his fingers dug into her hips and the flesh at her backside.
"This is definitely your seduction," she said, dropping several open-mouthed kisses to his throat. "Also, it's a thank you," she said between swipes of her tongue against his skin.
He held her hips steady as he rocked his, seeking friction.
A thank you. He assumed, for spending time with her friends. For that not-exactly-combative exchange of words she'd caught him having with Weasley as he'd passed along a beer. For staying well past her initial estimate that the party would clear out by midnight. For being a part of her life, integrated with the others, an imposter behind enemy lines.
For some reason, that, of all things, stripped him raw, pulled at the ragged edges of his lingering guilt, of the conversations with his parents, about his parents, that he couldn't quite get out of his head.
He'd given her half a relationship. He'd put up such a fight to have one with her, and he'd only given her a facade. She'd given him her friends and family; she'd told everyone in her life that he was in it, and that it was their responsibility to accept that fact. He'd only given her himself, which sometimes felt like it was all he had to give, but it also felt too much like passive participation for his liking.
"What if it was really real?" he asked. He could feel the firewhiskey burning his breath and his brain and his caution. He asked the question to her throat, too much of a coward to ask it to her face.
"What do you—really real?" She'd stilled the rocking she'd been doing in his lap, but her hands and fingers still wandered trails through his hair, along his neck, across his shoulders.
"That's what you said. It wasn't—couldn't be real. What if it was?"
Her hands stopped, slipping like dead weights over the front of his shoulders, landing in her lap. He finally sat back, sat up, looking at her through the slight spin in his vision and the warm blur cast by floating, meandering candles.
"What if I tell them? And we'll go on dates in Wizarding London," he traced a line of freckles across her cheekbone before threading his fingers through her curls, cradling her head. "We'll just be."
She leaned into his palm, releasing a wistful sort of breath. That moment felt encased, enveloped, enclosed in time and space as their own bubble of existence outside the normal passage of time, independent of the forces that pulled it forward. It was just the two of them, sitting together on an armchair meant for one, when the time wasn't quite morning and wasn't quite night, alone and together and strategizing a future with brains soaked in alcohol.
For the stretch of several blinks, before reality forced her to answer, it was a perfect moment: a moment he could never, would never, want to change, even if he could, when he could.
"Do you think they'd—your parents—be accepting of that? Now?" she asked after several wonderful eternities passed.
"They've—" he struggled to find the words, to explain his hope that was mostly, inconveniently, unfounded. "They've been more open to my independence in the last couple of years."
"And if they aren't accepting of this?"
Draco wanted not to have a reaction to that. He wanted not to fear that possibility. But he did. A fear solution mixed with liquor seeping from his brain.
"I don't know," he said. Because he didn't. But he wished he did.
And that wasn't the right answer. He could tell from the tiny twitch in her brow, the small downturn at the corner of her mouth. Expressions so loud in a silent room he wondered if everyone in the house had heard them, if everyone knew of his misstep.
Hermione coerced her disappointment into logic, a skill so impressive he sometimes marveled at the things she could do with a single thought.
"Well—don't do anything irrevocable. Not until you know."
It was a warning and an offering and enough for now.
He kissed her with the intent to convince her that he did know, even when he didn't.