A gentle knock on Hermione's office door snapped her from her thoughts. She had been reading the same line of the report on her desk for at least five minutes.

"I think you're due for an eclair," Draco leaned against her door frame. He bore a fresh red bruise on his cheek. Hermione narrowed her eyes at it.

"What happened?" Hermione abandoned the unread report and snatched her purse. She touched his cheek once she was within reach, and he flinched away. His skin was hot and tender.

"Nothing a little potion can't fix," Draco took her hand and kissed her palm. "Let me take you to lunch?"

Hermione memorised the shape of his lips against her skin.

"Your job is either going very well or very poorly." Hermione leaned into him when he slipped his hand around her hips.

"Does work ever go really well?" Draco teased. He pulled his arm away as they stepped into the corridor where cubicles of people had a full view of them. They weren't quite a secret, but Hermione hadn't told anyone. Draco and her had never discussed telling people. Hermione had no idea what his views on dating a coworker and letting their place of work know about it were.

Draco laughed at himself. "What am I saying? Work obviously goes well for Hermione Granger."

"But you're okay?" Hermione asked because he didn't quite answer the question. She respected his privacy; he'd tell her when he wanted to talk about it. Draco didn't look annoyed, his gaze softened.

"I'm okay." His eyes flitted around before he kissed her cheek, then her jaw.. She smiled, satisfied.

A couple of curious eyes followed Draco as they made their way to the lift. Either because he was smiling or because he was the subject of the news this past weekend when he was photographed snarling at his father in the Atrium.

Draco narrowed his eyes at them, his grey irises turning into silver daggers. Faces dipped away again. Hermione felt a cold trickle down her spine at the way he could easily switch it on and off. Charm. He could go from menacing, intimidating, and isolating to charming, warm, and sweet. She had seen less and less of his coldness since they began seeing each other more frequently.

She had teased him about it a week ago.

The television had been blaring in the background, ignored. They were seated, half entangled in each other, their bellies full of take-away.

"You're smiling a lot lately." Hermione had touched the curve of his lips. One tiny sink in his cheek that wasn't quite a dimple, but looked like one in the right light, had adorned the left side of his face when he smirked a certain way like then.

"It's you," Draco had murmured into her neck, trailing kisses to her jaw, "Isn't it obvious?"

Hermione had responded with a giggle, with her fingers in his hair, as he had pressed her into the couch and inhaled the scent of her skin.

"Me what?" Her breath had become uneven, his thigh pressing into her, aching for more than friction.

"You've made me better, Granger." Draco had scooped her hair away and hung it over the armrest of the couch, so she wasn't lying on it. He'd kissed her nose. "You're making me happy."

Hermione had responded with a look of mock shock. "I'm what ?" She'd hit him lightly on the shoulder. "I am not; you take that back right now."

Draco hadn't taken it back. He'd kissed her instead, a smile and dimple-that-wasn't-a-dimple adorning his left cheek.

The clanging stop of the lift pulled her back to the present. She was blushing, but Draco's eyes were focused on a pathway through the people to get into the Atrium.

They took the telephone booth up to the London streets. Draco had started accompanying her on her walks to and from the cafe. He even insisted on buying his own carrot cake and black coffee.

Once they were seated, Hermione touched his wounded cheek again.

"Do you want me to fix it?" Hermione was fairly confident she could. She had learned to calm burns after having to cook for herself since moving to London. She and the stove had a difficult relationship.

"It's okay, Granger." He smiled as her fingers brushed against his cheek, and then she cupped his jaw. He leaned into it. "Besides, doesn't it make me look dangerous?" He smirked and Hermione's stomach swooped.

When he smirked, sometimes not only did the dimple-that's-not-a-dimple show, but his incisors would flash. Hermione had imagined them sinking into her skin as he sank into her.

"Well?" Draco held her hand and snapped her from her daydream. She blushed. The waitress called their order, and Hermione stood quickly.

"But you are, aren't you?" Hermione kissed him on the cheek. "You're very dangerous to my focus."

Draco beamed proudly. Hermione felt his eyes on her as she walked away to collect their order.

"Do you think we're seeing each other too much?" Hermione worried that her words appeared clingy. Not that she was the one to reach out to him in the first place or to ask him to lunch. It wasn't even her idea to spend Friday night rewatching her favourite movie. A rom-com where the woman had been in love with her best friend, but neither knew it until the other was walking down the aisle at their wedding to someone else.

Followed of course by her comfort watch, a movie she revisited time and time again, to the point she knew what the lines were, in order, without watching the film at all.

Draco was happy to do it. Even though she had made the movie choices as a joke to see him squirm uncomfortably.

Instead, he responded with a warm kiss to her temple. Then he whispered in her ear, "I like spending time with you, Granger. There's nothing you can do to scare me away."

Hermione knew it was risky; spending all her time so isolated with him. It ran the risk of things happening. And, it ran the risk of her actually blurting the words out. Three words she had on repeat in her mind for a month. Three words she was sure had at some point solidified into truth beyond the butterflies in her stomach.

She loved him. Irrevocably loved him.

She loved him because of how much he made her fall in love with herself. How he reminded her of who she was, how unashamed he was of her quirkiness. Things she had been teased for in Hogwarts over and over. That even though he was responsible for the lion's share of it, he thought differently now and was trying to amend himself. Draco encouraged her into the best version of herself. To love everything about herself.

Seeing herself through his eyes had convinced Hermione that she could accomplish anything. That aiming so high for herself wasn't farfetched; that it wasn't a dream, or a fantasy, or a hope, or a wish.

If Draco Malfoy could be who he was today, then Hermione could be anything she needed to be to get where she wanted.

"What are you thinking about?" Draco's hand slid up the inside of her thigh, stopping shy of anywhere her body thrummed for him to be.

"How lucky I am," Hermione hummed against his cheek, inhaling his citrusy, musky cologne. "That I decided to buy you desserts and coffee because I was annoyed you hadn't tried anything from my favourite cafe."

Draco laughed, pulling her legs onto his lap by hooking the underside of her knees.

"I think I'm the lucky one, Granger," Draco's hand skimmed her waist, wrapping around her back and threading into her hair at the base of her skull.

"I could fight you on this forever," Hermione wrapped her arms around his shoulders, and Draco helped her onto his lap, more innocent than if she had straddled him. She loved being this close to him. This type of intimacy where it led nowhere but to being as close together as possible; she enjoyed it. Draco was not pushing her, and she was waiting for him to fulfil his promise.

Not on this couch. Hermione was happy as she was, despite the ache inside her.

"Careful, Granger," Draco teased into her neck. His stubble scratched at her throat, sending the sensation downwards to her cunt. "That nearly sounds like a proposal." She laughed, but it sounded more like a gasp.

She should be mortified at the implication of her statement. But she wasn't. Turned on was what she was. She clenched her thighs, willing any kind of friction to relieve her.

Draco pulled her head back by her hair, his darkened eyes searching her face.

Draco looked about to say something. Hermione stared at him, willing him to say the words. Because she wanted to vocalise them but needed him to say them out loud first.

His throat bobbed. His swallow was thick and audible. His eyes were fighting to focus, still glazed and hazy from touching, and touching her.

For a maddening moment, Hermione thought he wanted to propose. He looked suddenly terrified.

"I love you," Draco blurted out. Like he broke the dam inside him, and it was all flowing out. "I love you."

Hermione let the words she so desperately wanted to hear a moment ago sink in. She was frozen on his lap, his hands gripping her hair or hips. His lap was solid and warm under her. His hair was messed up from a tickle fight earlier.

"I don't think I can stop it," Draco's eyes were wild now, saucers of black holes flitting across her expression. Hermione was bursting to respond, but the words were stuck. Like the surprise had dried her throat and was holding the words hostage. It didn't matter. Draco kept talking.

"I don't think I want it to stop." Draco looked worried now. Probably because Hermione was sitting like a doll, motionless, permanently in her mind as she stared down at this man. The man. "I'm in love with you. And it's wild. It's only been a few months, but I can't stop thinking about you," he laughed, disbelieving, slightly panicked, "are we moving too quickly? Am I talking too much?"

"Draco-"

"Oh, Merlin. Did I ruin us?" Draco's eyebrows rose high on his face, more panic pinkened his face and ears. Hermione grinned. Her face finally mobilised, and her cheeks began to ache with the force of it. Her skin was hot; she felt like the sun.

"No, you idiot," Hermione laughed, pressing a kiss to his lips to shut him up. "I love you, too."

When she leaned back to look at him, his face was a mixture of shock and pure adoration. The silver of his eyes became a thin ring; his pupils dilated to their maximum width. He looked akin to a puppy staring at its human or a cat fixated on its very bright, fluffy toy prey.

"Are we telling people now?" Draco asked then, "I suspect the entire office knows anyway."

Hermione kept kissing him, so his words were muffled and interrupted with laughter.

"I can't wait to see what Skeeter writes about us," Hermione said with heavy sarcasm. She disliked the aspect of being forever in the public eye. However, her goal of becoming the Minister for Magic made that impossible to avoid, so she was determined to use whatever may come as practice.

"I'll have her head if she writes anything bad about you," Draco smothered her face with kisses, dragging his stubble across her face.