Draco had shoved his memo unceremoniously into his robe pocket, stood, and clasped her forearm, right over her scar. It was the sort of thing she would have assumed was conscious and mocking had he done it even a few months ago. Now; however, if felt like solidarity and understanding. A ripple of goose flesh of entirely different sort from the last few weeks radiated across her skin from his hot palm outward. Blaise grabbed Draco's opposite wrist and Apparated them to her front garden.
She let both men bear the majority of her weight toward the house—somewhere between floating and tiptoeing—only to be set down delicately at the front door. Hermione doubted that either of them had noticed the changes in her wards, or the fact that the door was unlocked, but she made a show of pointing her wand regardless.
It was likely better to get this over with, so she headed straight for the parlor and directed them both to sit while she fumbled with the tiny buckles on her shoes. Blaise took mere seconds to become visibly impatient with her ineffectual fingers before he stood, leaning over and propping each of her feet on his kneecap in order to remove the offending wedges. Draco watched Blaise's practiced motions with an intensity that put a fresh ribbon of desire down her spine, but she refused to acknowledge it just yet. Blaise spoke up first as he resumed his seat,
"So, principessa, which whinging Ravenclaw did you get saddled with?"
...
Draco was acutely aware of every time Blaise's fingers unknowingly swept across her ankle bones, and he wondered abstractly if the skin was as soft as it looked, or oddly calloused and raspy from wearing heels, like some of the other women he'd dated in the past. Perhaps both? As he'd have to touch her, or ask Blaise, to know for sure—and both option was unseemly—he supposed he'd never get an answer.
...
Blaise could feel Draco's gaze, the fine hairs on his forearms standing up at the scrutiny aimed at his hands. His spine felt like a bowstring, and he suddenly became painfully aware of the skin under his fingers instead of the mundane task. He'd always helped his mother out of her shoes after long events, and the intimacy of the act hadn't occurred to him until just now. A brick to the face would have been more subtle.
He finished removing her shoes as quickly as possible and reclaimed his seat as if it was a sufficient guise to how thoughtlessly he'd just touched her, but he was really trying to remember the exact texture of the skin above her ankle through his own embarrassment.
For someone who flirted relentlessly as a self defense mechanism and often eschewed propriety, he was mortified that he may have crossed an unspoken boundary. He was just happy that the only person likely to notice him blushing was Draco, who was still absently staring at the Gryffindor Princess' feet, thank Merlin.
...
Hermione re-read the letter in front of her, Blaise and Draco sitting opposite her in the parlor. She chuckled under her breath at the possibility that irony might actually be a driving force in the universe somehow, like gravity, and wondered abstractly if it could be measured,
"No Ravenclaw." She paused, rather unsure how to proceed,
"A Slytherin."
Both men sat straighter in the chairs, hackles raised, which was weirdly comforting. Draco spoke first, his voice taking on a quality of control measured with potential violence.
"Who?"
An image of Osiris flashed in her mind, as if he was about to weigh the merits of the name, and smite the person should they find themselves wanting. It nearly made her giggle aloud.
...
Draco's skin was on fire. It had to be. The tension coiled under his skin Clearly Necessitated Actual Human Self Immolation. He found himself oddly prepared to go set a former classmate Actually on fire. He wasn't ready to examine the fury that was radiating heat through his veins at the moment, but he did have the self-awareness to realize that he clearly valued Granger enough to think his former classmates unworthy.
It was entirely possible that the Sorting Hat has done something terrible for its own amusement and paired her with the likes of Marcus Flint. Flint, who usually preferred women to be vacuously pretty, subservient, and stupid. Marcus Flint with his horror show of a mouth—paired with the daughter of Muggle teeth healers—who had an astounding mind and was Never afraid to speak it aloud.
Oh Merlin help him, but Draco would gladly saunter in to Azkaban with his head held high if it meant keeping the likes of Flint, his leer, and the rumored use of his mean backhanded slap as far away from Hermione Granger as possible.
...
She could see Draco's expression suddenly turn lethal and while she had no idea who specifically he was thinking about—woe betide that poor person ever threatening anyone Malfoy considered worth protecting—she thought it would be unethical to hesitate any further.
It did not make her response leave her mouth any easier, as she was suddenly overcome with a wash of insecurities, and compounded by a blush rapidly overtaking what felt like her entire body. The answer came out as a whisper as she tried her best to maintain eye contact and not give in to the urge to hide behind her hair as a part of her many unexamined and unnamed fears,
"You."
...
Blaise has been holding his breath, and was sure he was going to pass out at any moment, but he was also fairly sure that Granger had just said she'd been matched with Draco, and he wasn't sure if saying 'pardon?' was somehow the more appropriate response, or if he should jump up and cheer as if he'd just seen a spectacular Quidditch play. He chose instead to take a deep breath in through his nose as quietly as possible and wait.
...
"Pardon?"
Draco's ears were ringing. She couldn't have just said what he thought he heard. That's would be insane—and wonderful—and absolutely not a thing she deserved and certainly nothing he deserved—and he was very confused and his mouth reacted with a bit of a sneer at the absurdity of his brains ability to accept what his ears had clearly just misheard—what?
And to Draco's horror she crumpled a bit in her chair, and that was So Much Worse so his mouth started up again,
"Granger—no—you don't deserve that and—oh fuck please stop looking like you might cry, I can't take that—Merlin's bloody tea cozy, I wouldn't wish me upon an enemy—"
And oddly enough, a sound came out of her that might have been a sob if she weren't laughing so hard and now he wasn't sure if he should be embarrassed, so instead he starting frantically rummaging for his own memo in his robe pockets—
—and at the bottom was her name in crimson ink with an asterisk—and a note about the consent of the 'non-citizen with whom he shared a blood bond' and his mouth opened again for him to promptly shove his own foot in would have been better,
"What the fuck—did someone give that barmy hat fly agaric?"
But she was laughing in earnest now, and that was Better, even Blaise was holding in a chuckle. And miraculously, he was finally aware of a strange calm settling over him—the bucket of ants his body had been stuffed into was suddenly gone—which was nearly a tearful level of relief on its own. Adding to it was an odd sense of righteous contentment simmering its way through his very bones.
Not only was he not going to have a wife who hated him for just being himself and having his name, but a shockingly intelligent woman who had threatened that hypothetical wife regarding his 'non-citizen blood bond' was going to be their wife instead. It was like having a pressing stone lifted, and the subsequent intake of air tasted fresher and better for simply being freer than a moment before. He was fairly sure he should jump up and whoop, or thank every deity he could name, or perhaps slap Potter in public without fear of consequence. That's how lucky he felt.
"Did you put Felix Felicis in my tea?"