Needing Is One Thing; Getting? Getting's Another

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Prompt: "Anonymous asked: I LOVE that minific with Draco, Ginny and Hermione! I really love it. I'm curious now, will Draco get Hermione?"

Ginny: Part 2

Spring 2004

They had an unspoken agreement to never mention it again.

The first social interaction with Draco had been painfully awkward. Ginny had been flighty and nervous and weird, and he'd been almost stiffly formal. She longed for those eight months they'd spent growing more and more comfortable with each other.

She wished she hadn't said anything.

Now that their friendship was officially on the rocks, it left her without many prospects for conversations at the parties. Pansy and Ron had become nearly inseparable, and Ginny was pretty sure they were snogging in closets when they both mysteriously and conveniently disappeared from the room at the same time. Harry and Daphne were usually making love-eyes at each other (barf), and Blaise was usually tied up debating social issues with Hermione.

Blaise and Hermione being friendly was sort of out of left field, in Ginny's opinion. She hadn't thought Hermione would appreciate his passive aggressive little comments.

And she didn't.

But instead of seething quietly like most people did, she called them out, bluntly and boldly. Maybe that was what Blaise liked about her: she certainly didn't fail to keep things interesting. Hell, maybe Blaise fancied her, too, since apparently Hermione was just the best thing ever to these insufferable Slytherins.

Doing her best to swallow her resentment, Ginny debated between Harry/Daphne and Hermione/Blaise and eventually picked the former. She would have preferred Pansy, all in all, but she'd disappeared with Ron somewhere again.

As she chatted with Daphne about something nice and good and utterly banal, she watched Draco smoothly insert himself into Hermione and Blaise's debate.

Predictably, the good-natured debate had become a vicious little verbal sparring session within about ten minutes, one that Blaise was simply spectating, his eyebrows nearly up to his hairline. His eyes slowly panned to Harry, and they shared a look, both rolling their eyes.

Ginny grit her teeth. Was Draco's crush on Hermione apparent to everyone except her?

This really was embarrassing.

Time to drink the pain away, she figured, swirling the rum around in her little cup before downing it all in a single go.


"Why don't you talk to Malfoy anymore?" Hermione asked, suddenly, and Ginny nearly tripped into a shelf. They'd passed a bookstore on the way to the cinema and Hermione had, of course, insisted they go in.

"What?" she asked, feeling a bit of a panic settling in.

"Malfoy," Hermione repeated, slowly. "You guys used to talk for hours, ignoring the rest of us, but now it kind of looks like you're avoiding each other. Did something go wrong?"

Catching the dangerous tone in Hermione's voice, Ginny said, quickly, "He didn't do anything, Hermione. We just… ran out of things to talk about."

She didn't look particularly convinced, eyeing Ginny skeptically, but finally shrugged and continued perusing the books. She ran her fingers over the spines as her eyes traced the titles, and Ginny took a moment to really look at her friend.

Beneath the frizzy mess, her face was pretty, although Ginny often ached to make her put on mascara or something, at least. She had a small, pert nose, big brown eyes, and shapely lips.

But Ginny had seen the type of women Draco usually dated; his romantic life was always photographed in the Prophet. Cool, beautiful, collected supermodel-types. Nothing like Hermione.

By looks alone, Ginny would have definitely placed herself as more Draco's type than Hermione. She always saw tall, slim women with perfect hair and gleaming smiles on Draco's arm. In contrast, Hermione was short, pretty but nothing special, and far too awkward and pigheaded to maintain any sort of dignity in a social setting.

He couldn't possibly be serious about her. His parents, for one, would have a heart attack and possibly die.

And secondly, Hermione would probably nag him to death over using his fortune to do some Good Deeds or something. He'd hate that. They'd constantly be arguing, belittling each other. They'd probably get into a duel and straight-up kill each other before the third date, if, that is, he ever got around to asking her out.

"Why? Did he say something?" she asked, casually, lowering her gaze purposefully to miss the speculative look Hermione shot her.

"No," Hermione admitted, slowly. "I mean, nothing about you, no. He looks sort of sad about it, I guess. I haven't really asked. It's not like we're friends, or anything, after all."

"Just screaming buddies, apparently," Ginny muttered, referring to their high-volume 'debates.'

Hermione scowled. "I can't help it if he's such a stupid prat," she sniffed. "I think he's up to something, anyway. He's trying to be nice to me, for some reason, and I just do not trust that, at all."

"He is?" Her voice had grown faint with surprise.

"Yeah. He even tried to invite me to the opening of this new museum in Muggle London. I told him the tickets were sold out, and can you believe it? He had some. God, I wanted to go so badly," Hermione sighed. "But whatever he was planning probably wasn't worth it."

Merlin.

So he had made a move.

Feeling a lump grow in her throat, Ginny swallowed a few times, trying to force it down. He was a little serious, it looked like. She wondered if he'd already spoken to his parents about it – if they'd given him the green light. Or maybe they'd threatened to disown him and he'd bravely refused to relent in his pursuit of his lady love.

"I wonder how he got tickets to a Muggle event," Ginny intoned. She really did wonder how he'd managed that. Probably paid someone a thousand Galleons to go find some.

Hermione sighed. "Who knows. Maybe he just transfigured some and he was going to lure me out to have his friends beat me up," she joked, laughing.

"Or maybe he just wanted to go with someone he knew would appreciate it," Ginny mumbled. She wanted desperately to stop feeling sorry for herself. She should be happy for Draco, finding someone he liked and furthermore having the guts to try and ask her out. She should be happy for Hermione, to have a prospective suitor interested enough to actually figure out what kinds of things she liked and try appealing to her as a person instead of just taking the lazy route and asking her to coffee.

She wanted to be a better person than she knew she was. "You should go."

"What?" Hermione asked, shocked. "With Malfoy?"

"He's not as much of a prat as he was in school, you know. He's actually kind of… cool," Ginny said, with as nonchalant a shrug as she could muster. It was killing her to say this. There was a part of her that she was ashamed to say wanted to poison Hermione against him – wanted to destroy any hope he had of getting her.

She wasn't going to give in to that part. Catching Hermione's incredulous look, she said, "I told him you liked going to museums and that none of us really liked to go with you." Just a little white lie. "He must like them, too, and thought you'd be interested."

"You really think so?" Hermione asked, frowning. "I do want to go, but it's so hard to trust his intentions after all those years of him being such a git."

"He's changed," Ginny said. It wasn't really true. Draco was as much of a prat as he'd always been, at least in her estimation. But something had changed in him, hadn't it? If he found himself sincerely thinking about taking up with Hermione Granger, Queen Mudblood, then something must have. Maybe he'd decided that certain things he'd been raised to believe weren't important.

And that was a huge step to take, even if he was still kind of an arsehole.

Hermione sighed, unsure. "Maybe," she finally said. "I'll have to think about it. I mean, spending time with him is so exhausting. I think he likes seeing me get angry."

"Think of it as debate practice," Ginny suggested.

Her heart was breaking, even as Hermione laughed, and agreed to give the not-a-date a chance. But she summoned a smile and wore it, stubborn, refusing to be less than the friend Hermione deserved. Merlin knew she had some ground to make up in that department.


Some paparazzi had found them.

Ginny wasn't sure how they'd tailed them all the way out into Muggle London, but the picture they'd taken was definitely a moving one and definitely published the next morning in the Prophet, under the headline: Is Britain's Most Eligible Bachelor Finally Off The Market?

She forced herself to look at the picture as it moved, over and over, refusing to look away until she felt like she'd grown numb to it.

Hermione was wearing something nice, since it was a museum opening – one of the two nice dresses she owned, and one she'd owned for nearly five years. It was plain and blue, a simple A-Line that drew no attention. She'd picked it up off a rack in a store somewhere, so it wasn't the best fit, although she insisted it was 'fine.' Her hair was pulled back, but already escaping the clips she'd used to pin it into a bun.

In contrast, Draco looked impeccable in a three-piece suit, perfectly tailored to his body.

The picture started with them appreciating one of the exhibits, and Hermione grew excited at something she saw and grabbed his arm, pointing across the room at something out of sight of the camera. Draco's gaze flicked from the hand on his arm to her face, and Ginny could see the moment he'd made the decision to move in, his face softening as his eyes dropped to her lips.

She turned up to him, saying something that was probably swotty and annoying, just in time for him to lean down and catch her lips with his.

Surprise made Hermione go still, her eyes widening a bit. When he pulled back, she blushed, pressing the back of her hand against her mouth. Ginny could see her lips forming a question, suspicion filtering into her expression.

Then Draco shook his head, and leaned in again, a soft smile on his face.

And although Hermione still looked a little suspicious, she didn't stop him. And this time, she closed her eyes, her fingers fluttering uselessly before grasping at the edges of his coat and leaning back towards him.

The kiss was chaste, and sweet, like a fairy-tale.

"Ugh," Ginny announced, turning the Prophet over to hide the picture. "Ugh." She turned the newspaper over again, glaring at the picture as it moved through the motions again. "Ugh!" she yelled, throwing her hands up at her ceiling.

Because damned if they weren't fucking adorable together.