Green Apples and Unfinished Things

DRACO

In Draco Malfoy's well-informed opinion, there were precisely two acceptable uses for Apparition: escaping Death Eaters, dodging paperwork, and making a grand, slightly foolish gesture before one's better judgment had a chance to intervene.

Tonight qualified as the latter.

He didn’t wait for her permission. He rarely did.

His hand closed around her arm—lightly, but with intent. Warm skin. Familiar magic. The kind of familiarity that made his stomach twist in the worst possible way. Like longing had turned into instinct.

She started to protest, of course.

She always did.

The world lurched sideways, and then they were standing on ancient stone, the air thick with moss and memory. Granger's boots landed with a thump, her knees braced, her wand hand twitching like she hadn't entirely ruled out cursing him on instinct. He considered that a promising start.

It took exactly four seconds before her eyes narrowed with suspicion.

Reasonable. He had, after all, abducted her.

"You remember this place," he said quietly, as if he hadn't just risked life, limb, and basic etiquette to make a point.

Of course she did. She was Hermione Granger. She remembered everything, including facts no one had asked for and that embarrassing night in third year when he'd spilled pumpkin juice on his trousers in front of McGonagall.

Still, she said nothing.

The Beaumont Ruins stood around them, noble in their decay. The broken archway let in just enough moonlight to give the whole affair a deeply theatrical aura, which he appreciated. If one was going to be emotionally vulnerable, one might as well have the set dressing for it.

They had been here once. Years ago. Summer. Firewhisky. Silence. A moment so delicate it felt like it might snap in two if spoken aloud. She'd told him about her parents and the journey she went on to bring their memories back. He'd told her about dreams he didn’t like admitting he had. They hadn’t said it, but that had been the first time he realised he was going to ruin everything.

"I haven’t been here since—"

"I know," he said. "Neither have I."

She turned, arms folded, eyes sharp as ever. "Why would you bring me here?"

Draco, who had once negotiated with goblins and foreign ministers, shrugged like an adolescent caught out after curfew. "Seemed like the only place I wouldn’t say something regrettable in front of witnesses," he said. 

“So naturally, kidnapping me was the logical alternative.”

"You could've pulled away," he said, softly.

"I should hex you," she muttered.

She didn’t hex him. Not yet. But her wand hand was twitching. He watched it like one might watch a rattlesnake.

And that, frankly, was the first sliver of hope he’d had in months.

"You should," he agreed, because when in doubt, concede the obvious. “But you won’t.” Then, as if to clarify his own idiocy: "And yes, I realize kidnapping you was not a more rational alternative."

She looked up at the shattered arch, arms crossed. Her expression was unreadable, which usually meant he was about to be hexed, or worse, earnestly lectured.

"I thought you were going to let me leave."

He nearly had. He’d almost watched her walk away from that bar and disappear back into the meticulously rebuilt life she’d fashioned in his absence.

He was silent.

Then: "I almost did."

She turned to look at him properly, and he nearly stepped back under the weight of it. Nearly. But he’d come this far, hadn’t he?

Draco, whose family crest was practically a thesis on emotional suppression, stood tall in his best coat and tried not to feel like a very expensive, very breakable man. The coat was helping. He’d buttoned it to the chin, like emotional repression made manifest in wool.

"You don’t get to do this," she said, and it was so gentle he almost missed the blade inside. "You don’t get to conjure nostalgia and expect it to patch the damage."

"I'm not asking it to," he said. "I just needed you to remember it wasn't all damage."

And Merlin help him, he did. He needed that memory alive between them. He needed her to remember that for one brief, impossible stretch of time, they’d managed something close to peace.

"You left," she said. Her voice quiet now. Worse than shouting. Absolutely devastating. “No note. No goodbye. I checked for you. I thought… I thought I’d made it all up.”

It physically hurt to hear. He felt it in the gut. His chest ached in the particular way that came from hearing your sins listed back to you in chronological order.

"You didn’t," he said.

“Then why—”

And because he owed her more than silence: "Because if I’d said goodbye, you’d have asked me to stay." He swallowed. “And I would’ve said yes.”

She stared.

So he pressed on. (Like a fool. Like a man trying not to drown.)

Breathless and slightly dizzy from the honesty, he said: "And if I had stayed, I would’ve wrecked us. I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t—me. Not yet. Not the version of me you deserved."

He could have lied. He could have said something self-deprecating and charming. But she’d never liked the version of him that ducked behind sarcasm. She liked the bastard who told the truth. Even when it wasn’t pretty.

Her eyes narrowed, and he knew the question before she asked it.

"And you think you are now?"

“I think I’ve spent two years becoming the version of me who wouldn’t run from you again.”

And it was true. For all the bourbon and missions and hours spent pacing empty rooms in America, it had all come down to this: he was ready to stay.

She didn’t speak.

He stepped closer. 

“Two years working on becoming a better man who could try to be worthy of you—because, well, I don’t think any man is truly worthy of you.”

She stared at anything that wasn’t him. His heart nearly dropped to his stomach when he noticed her bottom lip trembling.

“You can walk away. I won’t follow. But I had to say it here. Somewhere that meant something.”

"I don’t know what you want from me," she said, breathless.

"Nothing," he replied. "Except the chance to matter again."

She laughed. Short. Bitter. Beautiful. Sucked in her tears and acted like they were never there to begin with.

"You already mattered. That was never the issue."

That nearly broke him.

One last step. Stupid. Reckless.

"Do I still?" he asked.

She didn’t answer.

Which, of course, was the cue for Draco Malfoy to do the one thing he should absolutely never be allowed to do when unsupervised: speak earnestly.

"You know," he began, attempting levity and missing spectacularly, "I didn’t take the assignment in America because I suddenly developed an affection for bureaucratic labyrinths or wanted to spend two years interrogating magical hedge fund managers with superiority complexes. No. I took it because Kingsley—ever the persuasive bastard—dangled something rather shiny in front of me: complete exoneration. The sort that came stamped, sealed, and kissed by three departments and an overpaid goblin."

He exhaled, tugging at his sleeve like it might help him find a less mortifying version of the truth.

"But if we’re being painfully honest—and clearly, I am—I didn’t go because I wanted a clean slate. I went because I couldn’t bear to face you as I was. I was a walking apology wrapped in expensive tailoring and unresolved trauma. The sort of man who makes a woman cry and then writes it off as an unfortunate misunderstanding."

Granger stood across from him with her arms crossed in the manner of someone who had no time for liars, ghosts, or whatever hybrid category he currently occupied. She did not look at him, nor did she answer. Instead, she regarded the archway as if the moonlight might provide better company.

He paced then—just a step, but enough to suggest that even his dignity had begun to grow nervous.

"So I thought, brilliantly, that if I went away and became... better, somehow—less broken, more useful—you’d look at me like something salvageable. Not like a ghost with good cheekbones and a history of catastrophic decisions."

He smiled, vaguely deranged. "It was noble, it was poetic, and it was—predictably—idiotic. Because you never asked me to change. That was me. That was always me."

The ruins muttered in the language of ivy and wind, as though gently warning Draco that sentiment rarely ended well in places like this. Moss had conquered the old stone like it held a personal grudge, and above them, the broken archway framed the moon with the quiet accusation of someone who’d seen it all before and rather wished it hadn’t.

"You know what else?" he added, spinning half a circle before stopping himself with a sigh that sounded like it belonged in a tragic opera, "It wasn’t just about becoming better. It was about becoming bearable. For you. For your world. For those impossibly perfect friends of yours who always looked at me like I was one cursed object away from a relapse."

He ran a hand through his hair. Pacing again. Of course he was. Emotional honesty demanded movement, and Draco Malfoy was nothing if not performative in his suffering.

"I overheard them once, you know. Scarhead. The Weasel and his pest of a sister. That lunatic Lovegood and her fiance Longbottom—un-congratulations to them, by the way—talking about how I’d never be good enough for you. And here’s the really inconvenient part, Granger—" he turned, arms flung outward like punctuation, "I agreed with them. I did. Fully. Completely. I was already ten steps ahead, listing every single reason I wasn’t worthy of you before they even got to ‘Death Eater.’"

He inhaled a deep breath before continuing. “Oh, and not just them. My own friends weighed in too, if you can believe it." He gave a humorless laugh. "Especially Theo. Merlin, he never shut up about it. Every time I so much as mentioned you, he got that look—you know, the one that says 'you poor, deluded idiot' without needing to say a word. Told me outright you were too good for me. Too brilliant, too moral, too Gryffindor. Multiple times, actually. Said I’d ruin you by proximity alone. And frankly? I think he meant it as a kindness.”

He paused, breathless, and then softened—not in posture, but in pitch.

"But I wanted to be worthy. Not for them. Not for the Prophet. For you. Because I knew how people looked at us. At you. I knew what it meant to be seen beside me, and I hated it. I hated knowing that loving me would cost you something, even if it was only a raised eyebrow or a quiet doubt."

He swallowed, throat dry.

"So yes. I left. I disappeared. I tried to make myself into someone you could be proud to be seen with. Someone who, if you said, 'This one, this ridiculous, difficult man,' the world wouldn’t question your judgment."

A beat passed. Then another.

"Though, clearly," he added with a weak, lopsided smile, "you’ve always had terrible taste."

He finally looked over at her then. Just turned his head—slowly, reluctantly, as though afraid she'd turned to stone mid-monologue.

She hadn’t. She was still human. Devastatingly so. And she was staring at him.

Not glaring. Not rolling her eyes. Just... staring. Like he was something fragile and flammable and on the very edge of combustion.

"So," she said at last, tone dry as old parchment, "America."

Draco exhaled through his nose, the universal signal of a man both tired and faintly theatrical. "Do you want the postcard version or the full tragic epic?"

"I want the truth," she said, and looked at him properly. Her gaze was as sharp as it had ever been. Worse, it was familiar. "Assuming that’s something you’re still capable of."

He smiled, but it was not a charming one. It was the kind you wore just before jumping off a cliff. "Ouch."

And so, he began.

Leaning back against a column that looked only slightly more stable than he felt, he folded his arms with the casual posture of someone about to reveal far too much.

"New York first. Magical Crimes Division. I spent a year chasing hedge fund wizards who thought laundering cursed galleons through Muggle shell companies was clever."

She blinked. Just once.

"I also interrogated a sentient briefcase," he added. "It screamed every time someone lied. Which, in hindsight, made my job both easier and significantly louder."

Her lips twitched. He saw it. Logged it. Filed it under minor victories.

"Then came MACUSA. Joint task force. Magical trafficking rings near the southern border. All very noble. All very grim. Firewhisky and funerals, mostly."

Her arms had dropped slightly, the defensive wall lowering not by truce but by gravity. "So that’s why you couldn’t write."

He looked at her for a moment. And then, very quietly, very plainly: "That. And because I was a coward."

She said nothing. Simply stood there, watching him with that maddening calm that always made him want to either confess or flee.

"I took the assignment to disappear," he continued, voice rough around the edges. "Told myself it was useful. Noble. Self-punishment in an official capacity. If I made myself lonely enough, maybe I’d atone by accident."

"And did you?"

He shrugged. "No. But it kept me too busy to think."

She stepped forward. A single, careful step. And he forgot how to breathe.

"So what made you come back?"

He didn’t hesitate.

"You."

It hit the space between them like a dropped wand in a dueling circle.

She stiffened. "Don’t say that."

"It’s true."

"You don’t get to say that."

"Why not?" he said, voice flaring sharp now. "You wanted honesty. Fine. You were everywhere. You were the bloody wallpaper of my life. Every time someone corrected grammar or stirred tea wrong or had the audacity to mention Arithmancy in casual conversation, there you were. In my head. Glaring."

She held his gaze, searching him like a riddle she had no intention of solving.

Draco could have stopped. The reasonable man might have. But he had never been particularly reasonable where she was concerned. And in truth, he was already in too deep, already floundering in that well of foolishness reserved only for the besotted and the damned.

So, naturally, he did the only thing a man truly in love and catastrophically unequipped for vulnerability could do: he kept talking.

"Do you know how many times my coworkers asked me if I had someone back home?" he said, the words coming faster now, tumbling over each other in their haste to get out. "Some fiancée in the countryside, maybe. Or a wife—Merlin, a wife. They said it with that hopeful American smile, like maybe I had someone domestic and sensible waiting in an apron with a roast chicken and a pension plan."

He huffed a laugh, short and incredulous. "And every bloody time, I said no. Because what was I supposed to say? 'Yes, actually. There’s this brilliant, infuriating woman I once accidentally fell in love with while arguing about elf rights and moral philosophy. We never quite made it official, but she haunted me so thoroughly I still think I’m dreaming when someone says her name.'"

He paced, hands slicing the air like punctuation. "And I thought about you. Constantly. In the most idiotic, inconvenient ways. Mid-mission. Mid-meeting. Mid-teeth brushing. Every time I passed a bookstore or smelled cinnamon or heard someone say the word 'punctilious.'"

He turned to face her again, eyes wild with the sheer emotional chaos of it. "And you know what the worst part was? I’d convince myself I was finally over it—finally done. And then something stupid would happen. A quill with the same grip you liked. A bloody kneazle in the alley that looked like Crookshanks’ criminal cousin. A reference to Hogwarts. And I’d be back to square one, wondering if you still stirred your tea clockwise or if you’d hexed that habit out of yourself too."

He looked like a man mid-freefall—no parachute, no plan, just the sharp, spiraling knowledge that this, too, was her doing.

"I missed you, Granger. In the way people miss air. And sunlight. And reasons to sleep. And I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness, or your time, or even this conversation—but I had to try. I had to tell you. Because even if you walk away right now, at least I’ll know I said it."

He paused. But only briefly. His mouth kept moving like someone had cast a very emotionally fraught variation of the Imperius Curse.

"I didn’t leave to forget you. I left because I was still the kind of man who could hurt you without meaning to—and I hated that version of me more than I hated being without you. So yes, I took the bloody mission. Yes, I signed up for a thankless, miserable job that kept me in danger and surrounded by arrogant Aurors who thought 'emotional intelligence' was a Dark object. But it wasn’t to forget you. It was to be better for you."

He ran a hand through his hair and laughed, brittle. "I even brought you up during my mind healing sessions. Repeatedly. It got to the point where my therapist—brilliant bloke, very patient—asked me if 'the witch in question' might consider joining the session herself, since she was, in effect, a recurring protagonist in all my neuroses."

His eyes flicked toward her. Her fingers fidgeted with the edge of her sleeve, the same way they used to when she was trying not to say something she'd later regret—or perhaps desperately hoped she would.

"I read everything. Everything you published. Your paper on wandless healing theory—genius. Your proposal to revise trauma ward procedures with elemental magic? Should’ve been front-page. Your study on the long-term side effects of Time-Turner exposure? Granger, the Prophet should have paid you for the honor of printing it."

He took a breath, shallow and shaking. "I kept track of every advancement. Every article. Every award. I memorised your patient testimonials like they were gospel. Because watching you become more brilliant, more formidable, more... you—that was the only good part about being away."

He finally stopped. Barely breathing. Absolutely unravelled.

"I didn’t leave because I stopped loving you, Granger. I left because I did. And it terrified me. And I wanted—gods, I still want—to be the kind of man you don’t have to explain to your friends or footnote in your memoirs.”

He watched her then—closely, carefully, shamelessly, like a man cataloguing his own downfall in real time.

“And,” he added, with the sort of composure that should have come with a warning, “after exhausting most of New York’s supply of brunettes with control issues, things got a bit dull.”

Her expression shifted with all the warmth of a vault door closing.

Her cheeks turned a shade redder than he remembered them ever doing in school—somewhere between embarrassment and exasperation, but with enough heat to suggest she was rapidly drafting an internal monologue about the ethics of homicide. A flush crept down her neck in that traitorous way skin has when it wishes to betray every carefully guarded secret. Her jaw worked once, twice, like she was rehearsing a cutting remark and rejecting each version for being insufficiently lethal.

There was something darkly exhilarating about riling up Hermione Granger. Honestly, some pathetic part of him had wanted her to look like this—flushed, furious, eyes gleaming with loathing.

Jealousy, Draco noted, looked absolutely ravishing on her. Deathly attractive. The kind of look that made a man briefly reconsider the ethical implications of poking sleeping dragons—especially when said dragon was now giving him the expression he’d mentally filed under 'Murderous Granger' No. 3: Sultry Edition.

Was it a sign of maturity that he now knew precisely when he was behaving like a complete git? Or merely a continuation of his long-standing tradition of self-sabotage wearing well-tailored trousers?

Because the truth, the shameful, unvarnished truth, was that he had lied. There hadn’t been an endless parade of sharp-tongued brunettes, not really. Not at all. He’d spent the last two years in high-risk undercover missions abroad with nothing more than four polaroids of his precious witch, his left hand, and a dream (several, actually, usually involving curly hair and little to no clothing).

“That’s revolting,” she snapped, her voice trembling somewhere between outrage and heartbreak. “Truly revolting.”

Draco, like the idiot he undoubtedly was, smiled faintly. “You say that like it surprises you.”

“You processed your guilt by trying to replace me with women who vaguely reminded you of me?” she asked, incredulous.

There was a flicker of something self-mocking in his eyes. The truth was that nobody could ever replace her, and Draco would have never even given anybody the chance to—but that particular truth was not something he felt inclined to share, not at this precise moment.

So, he said: “Would it offend you less if I told you a few of them were blonde?”

Again, a lie. But he relished in the thrill and excitement over his little witch putting his hands on him again—whether to slap him, push him away, kiss him, or a variation of all three—Draco Malfoy had decided the lying was well worth it.

Granger stepped forward and shoved him with enough force to knock the wind out of his dignity. He barely stumbled, though the impact echoed louder in his chest than he let on.

“You brought me here,” she hissed, voice fracturing, “to a place that once meant something, just to tell me that I was a category you attempted to fill like a checkbox in your therapy journal?”

His mouth opened, but the smirk had abandoned him.

“You do not,” she went on, a tremor in her throat, “get to romanticize your damage and wrap it in nostalgia like some wounded poet. Not with me. Not after me.”

He shook his head, breath catching. “That wasn’t my intent.”

She cut him off, the accusation precise as a scalpel. “You just wanted to see if you could still get a reaction.”

He didn’t argue. He couldn’t. Because it was true. In the most pitiful, childish corner of his heart, he had wanted proof. Proof that he had not been the only one ruined. Proof that Draco Malfoy still mattered to Hermione Granger.

Suddenly, an ugly, familiar thought lodged right behind his ribs, the one that whispered: If you really mattered, why did she move on so easily? Why hadn’t she waited? Why had she smiled for someone else, laughed for someone else, let someone else touch her in all the ways he’d only ever dreamed of after he left?

It was petty. It was cruel. It was so painfully human it nearly knocked the wind out of him.

And then something snapped—softly, internally, like a button popping off an old shirt—and suddenly, he was spiraling.

“Oh, don’t worry, Granger. I got plenty of reactions, didn’t I? From you and your delightful string of temporary attachments. Let’s see—there was Matthew, the fitness-obsessed Curse Breaker with the personality of a tea towel. I knew the breakup was real when his Quidditch jersey stopped appearing in your laundry rotation. Then there was Ciaran—the environmental Transfiguration activist with three cats and no spine. And of course, the Healer—what was his name? Julian? The one who wore shoes without socks and wrote you poetry about the lunar cycles. I read it. Twice. For reasons that I assure you had nothing to do with masochism.”

She opened her mouth, but he didn’t let her have it.

“And before you defend your honour, yes, I know about all of them. I saw the photos in Witch Weekly. The charity events. The time you left St. Mungo’s with that wannabe artist, the one who painted landscapes and looked like he cried after sex. And the intern from the Arithmancy department—honestly, that one just felt personal.”

He was pacing again. Wildly. Gloriously unhinged.

Granger tried to push back—verbally this time, voice sharp with disbelief, arms crossed in front of her like a shield barely holding back a tempest. "Don’t you dare make me the villain here. You left me, Malfoy! And now you’re what—trying to make me feel guilty for not sitting in a tower like some lovesick ghost waiting for your dramatic reappearance?"

Her voice cracked at the edge, trembling not with weakness but with rage—the kind born of disappointment, and grief, and two years of unspoken questions. "Who were they, then? These brunettes with control issues? The ones you let fill the space I used to occupy? Give me names, Malfoy. Let’s even the playing field while we’re here airing out our trauma in the middle of the bloody ruins."

She was unraveling. Gloriously so. Her words spit like fire through clenched teeth, and her fists were clenched as though the weight of every unsent owl and sleepless night had been stored in her palms.

But Draco didn’t answer her. Not directly. Not cruelly. He only looked at her with something wounded and feral behind his eyes and said, very quietly, "There were no names. There was no one."

Granger’s eyes narrowed, disbelief etched across every inch of her face. Her arms folded tighter across her chest, knuckles white with effort. "Right," she bit out, voice low and slicing. "Because you, Draco Malfoy—proprietor of smug glances and perfectly tragic timing—expect me to believe you’ve spent two years in America, tragic and celibate, with no blonde witch or breathtaking Potioneer to warm your sheets? Try again. But this time, maybe skip the dramatic irony and just say what you mean."

Her eyes flared with the kind of fury that required a full moon and a license. "Because if I’m meant to believe I was that unforgettable, then you’ve got a funny way of showing it—leaving, ghosting, brooding in transatlantic silence like a coward in a bespoke coat."

Draco's jaw ticked, throat working silently, but he said nothing.

"Honestly," she finished, breath short, eyes glassy, "I expected better lies from you."

“I left. I know that,” he said, voice quieter now. “But I didn’t expect you to replace me with a goddamn queue.”

She shoved him—hard. Not the kind of theatrical push you gave a man for dramatic effect, but the kind that said she might’ve genuinely hoped he’d fall flat on his arse and stay there. Then she turned around.

And this time, she really did begin to walk away.

He watched her go, the sight of her retreat more painful than any injury he’d taken in the field.

“Granger,” he called. Her name cracked in his throat like glass underfoot.

She did not stop.

“Don’t walk away from me.”

Still, she moved.

“Hermione,” he tried, louder now, urgency rising to meet his fear.

He caught up to her in two strides, reaching out before he could lose his nerve, his fingers curling gently around her wrist—not to hold, not to possess, just to keep her still for one more moment.

“Don’t—” she hissed.

His grip tightened.

“Let go of me,” she said through gritted teeth.

“No.”

Her eyes flared as she spun to face him. “Draco—”

In the pale silver of the moonlight, her fury looked divine.

He stepped into it.

"You want to know who I slept with? Dated?" he said, sharp as splinters. "I’ve already told you. No one. Unless you count my therapist, who was a Mind Healer named Xavier Wipplethorp and married with six children.”

She tried to speak again, but he steamrolled through, stubborn as always.

"I didn’t shag my way across North America, Granger. I didn’t go on romantic walks through Central Park or wine and dine aspiring Potioneers or Danish Arithmancers or fall in love with someone who reminded me of you. Because there wasn’t anyone who reminded me of you. Not even close."

She narrowed her eyes. "So, what, you spent two years pining in silence while I moved on?"

"Yes," he said, without hesitation. "And if we’re keeping score, you had Adam, Ciaran, Julian the sockless poet, Matthew the Curse Breaker, the wannabe painter with a saviour complex, the intern who didn’t know what a non-verbal spell was, and at least one man I’m convinced you fabricated entirely to hurt me."

"Oh, please," she snapped.

But he only tilted his head, maddeningly calm. "What was his name again? Jasper? Joffrey? Something out of a Victorian children’s novel?"

She bristled. "You’re deflecting."

"No," he said, stepping closer, voice low, brittle. "I’m remembering. Painfully. Because I watched them all—the parade of half-witted, soft-handed, well-intentioned replacements. Every bloody one of them touching you like they had the right, like they earned it, like they knew what to do with a stubborn little witch like you."

He paused, then added, sharp and unforgiving, "And in case you were wondering—yes. I loathed them all. Every last simpering coward who thought he could fill the space I left behind. Thought he could touch what was mine and walk away unburned. I would’ve hexed the taste of you off their tongues if I could’ve."

He catalogued her glare before it even hit him—Look #13 in the Granger Expressions Compendium: "Utterly Disgusted, Mildly Considering Arson." It was deeply effective.

She blinked. Then opened her mouth. Then closed it again.

And for once, he didn’t interrupt. He simply looked at her like she’d stolen all the air from the ruins and expected him to keep breathing.

She surged forward and shoved him again—this time with more purpose, less restraint. "Don’t act like you’re the only one who bled. Who do you think I became while you were off—off nobly punishing yourself in a leather coat? You think I wasn’t haunted, too?"

He caught his balance, barely, and laughed. Bitter. "If you were haunted, you didn’t show it. Not at the gala with Adam. Or that bloody Witch Weekly spread where you were smiling like a woman who’d discovered inner peace and a reliable wand polish."

"At least I wasn’t gallivanting around with American Aurors like some tragic war hero with commitment issues," she snapped.

He raised a brow. "Gallivanting? Please. If you'd seen the state of the bunk beds and the company, you'd know gallivanting is far too generous."

She folded her arms. "So, no mysterious American witches? No steamy rendezvous in some enchanted hotel suite?"

"No," he snapped. "Unless you count the nights I dreamed of you and woke up so pathetic even my mirror started sighing at me."

There was silence. Dense, aching.

And then, as if it pained him to admit: "The only hands I’ve wanted on me in two years were yours, and you slapped me the night I returned to Britain. Now, you’ve shoved me. Multiple times. I’m clearly living the dream."

He was telling the truth, actually. Draco Malfoy had taken up masochism the moment he fell in love with Hermione Granger years ago.

"Oh, of course," she said, bitter and bright with hurt. "Two years in America and I’m supposed to believe you never laid a hand on any of those sunny witches with their perfect accents and uncomplicated lives, no war-torn baggage or biting sarcasm, just wide smiles and perfectly curled hair—and then here you are, thinking you can wander back like it’s all some inconvenient chapter you forgot to finish. Like I was the intermission."

"You—"

"Do you know what it felt like?" she barreled on. "Thinking maybe you left because you were bored of me? That I was too serious, too tired, too attached to rules and structure while you were off getting high on independence and foreign attention?"

"Granger—"

"Don’t 'Granger' me like I’m being dramatic. You joked, remember? About the brunettes with control issues. You made a joke of it, like none of it mattered. Like I was something you outgrew."

He took a breath. "I didn’t mean it—"

"It’s not a joke if nobody’s laughing, Malfoy.” And because Hermione Granger was nothing if not a witch with impeccable timing, her laugh at that exact moment was cruel and hollow, the kind that rattled through your bones. “You haven’t changed a bit.”

She turned away from him, shoulders squared like a duellist, back taut with finality. But Draco Malfoy—poster child for bad decisions and worse timing—had never been especially good at knowing when to shut up.

“Fine,” he said, voice low and splintering. “Let’s continue talking about your little boyfriends, then. Because I'm not quite done with that, actually. Let’s talk about how you moved on so easily. As if our years of history could be replaced by a decent jawline and a tragic poetry habit.”

She whirled back around, eyes blazing. “Are you seriously doing this right now?”

“Oh, I’m doing it,” he snapped. “I’ve seen them, Granger. Every smug photograph, every smiling interview, every time you stood next to some bloke with your hand on his arm like you didn’t want to hex him into a hedge. The wizarding world is quite small, you know! The American wizarding tabloids love foreign gossip!"

“I—”

He didn’t let her speak. “You sure seemed to have a good time parading around with them like I was already dead! Matthew with his bloody gym bag and Ciaran and his cats. Julian and his god awful poetry! And Adam—oh for fuck's sake, Adam with his socks and sandals!"

“Because I was trying to live!” she shouted. “You don’t get to leave me and then get upset because I didn’t turn into a nun with a Draco Malfoy shrine!"

“I didn’t get upset,” he lied. “I was simply informed. There’s a difference.”

“You’re obsessed with me!” she said, wagging her tiny finger at him. “You lying, good-for-nothing prick! Admit it!”

He threw his arms out. “Of course I was obsessed! You were supposed to be mine, and instead you were out there making sodding memories with Julian the Moon Whisperer!”

“Oh, don’t you dare make this about me!” she said, marching up to him now, all fire and fury and curls that should’ve been declared a public hazard. “You left, Malfoy. You. Left. You didn’t write. You didn’t floo. You didn’t even send one of your ridiculous owls that always looked vaguely traumatised. How many times must I repeat myself for you to get it through that thick skull of your’s how badly you hurt me?!”

“I wanted to write,” he ground out. “But Kingsley said no contact. National security. Risk of compromising the mission. You think I didn’t want to?”

She blinked, startled.

He took the opening, foolish man that he was. “And also, I didn't only read every article of Witch Weekly,” he went on, because apparently emotional implosion was tonight’s theme. “I also saw photos of you at the Ministry's Christmas Ball with the Arithmancy intern—that one stung, by the way—and I nearly broke my bloody hand punching a training dummy that looked suspiciously like his side part.”

“Are you listening to yourself?” she cried. “You sound completely—”

“Unhinged? Deranged? Homicidally romantic? Yes, I know. Welcome to my mental state since you kissed Julian in that bloody photograph and smiled like I’d never existed!”

“Because I had to!” she shouted. “Because if I didn’t pretend to smile, I would’ve spent every single day missing you so badly I couldn’t breathe!”

They were nose to nose now, shouting in the ruins like a pair of war-torn lunatics, and if it weren’t for the heartache rattling his bones, Draco might’ve laughed.

But she wasn’t laughing. And neither was he.

“You didn’t have to replace me,” he shot back. “You didn’t have to smile like they mattered.”

“And you didn’t have to vanish,” she bit out. “But you did. So I picked up the pieces and I tried to move on.”

“Yeah? Did it work?”

“You think I replaced you?” she said, voice lower now. “You think any of them even came close?”

His hand came up, slow and reverent, fingers brushing her jaw as if committing her to memory one last time. His storm grey eyes bore into warm brown, searching her face like she held all the answers he hated needing. 

His mouth was dry. His voice hoarse. “Did they, Hermione?”

She didn’t answer. Not right away. Instead, she turned, furious and trembling, facing the shattered archway like it had betrayed her. Her hands curled into fists at her sides. Her voice, when it came, was laced with fire.

“No,” she said, back still to him. “Because none of them were you. And that’s the problem, isn’t it? You ruined me for everyone else, Draco. You—”

He didn’t let her finish.

He moved before he could think, before his pride could stop him—crossed the space between them and grabbed her by the waist, spinning her to face him. And then, he kissed her.

It wasn’t polite. It wasn’t gentle. It was desperate and searing and full of every word he hadn’t said and every letter he hadn’t sent. One hand buried in her curls, the other anchored at her hip, he kissed her like he was starving and she was the only thing he’d ever hungered for.

She gasped against his mouth, half-shocked, half-furious—and then she kissed him back. With wild abandon, like she’d been waiting two years to do exactly that.

And truly, Draco had never been kissed like that—with such fury, such unbearable familiarity. It was like being recognised by a mirror you hadn’t looked in for years.

They stumbled backward in a tangle of limbs and coats and poorly made decisions, until her back hit the cold stone of the wall and all the air in his lungs escaped in something perilously close to reverence. His lips found the edge of her jaw, then her throat—an expedition of haste and hunger—while she pulled at his collar as if trying to make sense of him by force.

“I hate you,” she gasped, as his mouth found the corner of hers again.

“No, you don’t,” he murmured against her skin.

She grabbed a fistful of his coat and hauled him back in with the enthusiasm of a woman fed up with self-deception. The kiss that followed was far less graceful and significantly more honest. They broke apart only to crash together harder—two curses dressed as people, desperate to rewrite history with mouths and muscle memory.

It was absurd. It was improper. It was everything he had hoped for and nothing he could explain.

Time evaporated.

Perhaps it had been seconds. Perhaps it had been years. He wasn’t entirely certain he wasn’t hallucinating the whole thing. Her hands in his hair felt too vivid, too specific—the precise pressure of fingers that had once known every secret scar on his scalp.

None of it mattered.

Not the distance.
Not the damage.
Not the entirely probable chance that this was a catastrophic relapse in progress.

He would have let it consume him. He would have drowned in her mouth gladly, idiot that he was.

But then—

It fractured. Like the first note in a requiem.

“I can’t do this,” she breathed, and the words seemed to strip the marrow from his bones.

He froze. Her breath was on his cheek, furious and wet.

He stared at her, lips swollen, heart riotous, spine taut as a bowstring.

“I told myself I was over you,” she said. Her voice had dropped, worn thin by grief. “I built a life on that lie.”

He didn’t breathe. Didn’t blink. His mouth opened, then closed. The apology stuck somewhere in his throat, thick and useless.

“And then you show up,” she went on, bitter and breathless. “No letter. No apology. Just—present. Like a ghost I thought I’d finally buried.”

He stepped forward. She stepped back. And that was the rhythm of them, wasn’t it? Always one moving, the other retreating.

“I can’t go back,” she said. Her voice cracked in the middle, like glass. “Not to this. Not to you. You don’t get to tear me open just because you finally decided to feel something.”

He recoiled. It felt like a blow.

“Do you think it was easy for me?” he asked, and for once, there was no bravado. Just ruin.

She laughed. It was not kind.

“No,” she said, and her voice rose now, not in pitch but in depth—as if the ground beneath her fury had just given way and she had chosen to go down with it. “But you chose what was easy. Not just over me. Over us. Over everything we were. Everything I gave. And don’t you dare give me that wounded little speech about being better for me, or needing to be worthy. That’s such a bloody coward’s excuse and you know it.”

Her hands were shaking now. Not from fear. From rage. From the unbearable effort of having kept this inside for far too long.

“Who the hell cares what our friends thought? Or what your ghosts whispered? Or what half the world thinks about Draco Malfoy being seen with Hermione Granger? I loved you. I chose you. And you ripped that away from me because you were scared. Because you let their voices drown out mine. Because you let shame speak louder than I ever could.”

Draco opened his mouth, but she bulldozed right through him.

“You broke my heart,” she said. “And I know I sound redundant and dramatic and annoying, like every sob story you probably make jokes about over drinks with your bloody therapist, but I need you to hear this.”

Her eyes were glassy now—Granger Expression #34 in his mental catalogue, 'Emotional Avalanche, Imminent Doom'—and he hated himself more than he thought possible.

“I was in love with you. Not halfway, not hesitantly—entirely. Every part of me.” Her voice cracked, and he wanted to Avada himself. “I let you in. I chose you. And you left. You didn’t just leave Britain, you left me. Without warning. Without a letter. You just vanished. And I told myself I was over it. I told myself I was healing. But now you’re here, and all I can think is that you got to decide when to love me and when to disappear, and I had no say at all.”

He wanted to argue. He wanted to tell her that she was wrong, that he hadn’t chosen easy, that loving her had been the hardest, bravest, most all-consuming thing he had ever done. He wanted to say that he’d thought of her every damn day, that he’d carried her like a relic and a curse, stitched between ribs that never healed properly.

But all that came out was this, cracked and aching: "You were it for me, Granger. The beginning, the middle, the end. I don’t know if I can go on without you."

She looked at him, beautiful, brown eyes shining.

“Good,” she said, her voice sharp and soft all at once. “Now’s your chance to try.”

The silence that followed was not romantic. It was grave, the sort of silence usually reserved for libraries after hours or funerals no one attends.

She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, as if trying to erase him.

He almost asked her not to.

“I’m leaving,” she announced, in that same brisk tone she’d once used to call him an imbecile in third-year Transfiguration.

“I’ll take you home,” he offered. It sounded pitiful. He regretted it the moment it left his mouth.

“No,” she replied. “I’ll find my own way back.”

And then, without flourish or fanfare, she vanished with a sharp tug of magic.

The sound cracked through the empty air, and Draco was left standing alone, a man recently bludgeoned by all the decisions he’d ever made, surrounded by ruins more emotionally well-adjusted than he was.

The silence rushed in like floodwater.

And then, to his utter humiliation and inevitable future ridicule, a tear slipped down his cheek. Not dramatically. Not with ceremony. Just a slow, stupid testament to everything he hadn’t said.

He raised a hand to his face and wiped it away with the grace of a man thoroughly unimpressed with himself.

"Well done, Malfoy," he muttered to no one. "You’ve outdone yourself."

The ruins, naturally, declined to comment.

He lingered for a moment longer, spine soldier-straight, because if he slouched, he might dissolve entirely. Then, as though he hadn’t just been eviscerated in moonlight, he reached for his Muggle mobile phone.

He didn’t call her. Of course not. Even he wasn’t that stupid. (He is very stupid. But let's not comment on that right now.)

So instead, he pressed Theo's name.

It rang once.

Then twice.

“Malfoy?” Theo answered, voice fuzzy with noise in the background. “Why the hell are you calling me? You know how I feel about these infernal devices.”

Draco exhaled sharply. “Are you still with Weasley?”

A pause. “I am. Should I be concerned by your tone?”

Draco stared at the archway, now nothing more than theatrical stonework and failed sentiment.

“Is Granger home?”

Another pause. Then, cautiously: “Yeah. Granger's home. Why?”

He hesitated. Not because he didn’t know what to say. But because saying it felt like surrender.

“I just... I needed to know she got back safe.”

Around him, the ruins remained. Quiet. Unforgiving. 

And, as always, entirely unimpressed.