Chapter 2
On Saturday morning, Hermione’s alarm didn’t go off. She was exhausted and, without the trusty beeping of her alarm, slept until noon.
When she finally woke, it took her a moment to register how bright the light streaming through the window was.
She sat up at once, curls flying, and swore.
“Shit, shit, shit—“ she muttered, pulling a shirt on and yanking her hair into a ponytail.
What time was it? Eleven?
She was supposed to have met Charlie Weasley almost an hour ago. Was he still there? Waiting at the cafe?
She washed her face as quickly as she could, then grabbed her purse, pulled on worn trainers and ran out the door.
She collided directly into someone standing in the hall.
Hermione’s face hit the man’s chest in a way that would have been comical to anyone watching but, for her, was just humiliating and painful.
“Ow,” she hissed, holding her nose. “Sorry, I didn’t see—“
It was Draco.
Hermione wished with every fiber of her being that she’d spent a little longer on her appearance. At least she wasn’t wearing pajama bottoms this time.
“Sorry,” she said. Her cheeks burned and she tried to avoid looking at him, hoping he wouldn’t notice her morning breath. “I’m—running late. Sorry.”
“Hey, no worries,” Draco said. His arms had lifted at their collision and hovered just over her elbows, as though deciding whether he needed to steady her. “Where are you going in such a rush?”
“I have to meet my friend,” she said, glancing down at her wristwatch. “I’m really late. Sorry, I’ll talk to you later, okay?”
Hermione ran towards the stairs, her loose trainers making ungainly flapping noises against the hard tile.
“Hey!” Draco called. “You should take the lift. And your shoes are untied—”
“The lift’s broken!”
“I think they fixed it,” Draco said. “It works fine now.”
Hermione tried it and found he was right.
~
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Hermione said, streaking across the busy cafe and landing in the red vinyl chair across from Charlie Weasley.
He grimaced at her.
“I’ve been waiting for an hour—“
“My alarm didn’t go off,” she said.
“It’s fine,” Charlie said, taking pity on her. His freckled face was tanned, his broad hands resting clasped on the table before him. “I brought some of your stuff. From, you know. Ron’s place.”
Although they had split up nearly three years ago, Ron still had some of Hermione’s possessions.
Her favorite, annotated copies of books. A necklace her mother had given her. A scarf she’d worn in her first year at Hogwarts.
Very meaningful things, in other words.
Hermione had asked for them a few times in the last three years, but each time she’d had a difficult time getting a response from Ron. Perhaps Lavender didn’t like him staying in touch with exes.
“Thanks Charlie,” she said. “I’m sorry to put you out like this.”
Charlie had always liked Hermione. She sometimes wondered if they mightn’t have had something between them, if she’d never met Ron…
He gave her a small smile. She wondered if he was thinking the same thing.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
“Oh, you know. Just—working.”
He gave her a pitying sort of look.
“What about you?” she asked, squeezing her paper cup of coffee tighter. Charlie had gotten her one—it was almost cold by now, but she was still grateful. “How are you doing?”
“I’m doing ok.”
An awkward silence.
Charlie rubbed his jaw, like he was trying to decide whether or not to say something. Hermione watched his thick fingers scrub over the light stubble.
“Hey,” he said finally, abruptly. “What do you think—about maybe grabbing a drink sometime?”
A little spark of disbelieving joy came to life in Hermione’s chest. He was asking her out?
“I thought you were seeing that girl?” Hermione asked.
“Nah. We just called it quits last weekend.”
“You don’t think it would be weird?” Hermione asked. “For us to…”
Charlie shrugged his broad shoulders, already smiling.
“Who cares?”
“Okay,” she said, smiling. “Yeah. Okay.”
Charlie’s warm brown eyes lit on something over Hermione’s shoulder. They lifted higher as whoever it was approached.
Hermione turned to find Draco. He stood behind her chair, a cup of coffee in his hands.
“Oh, hello!” she said. “I see you’ve found the local café.”
“Kitchen stuff isn’t unpacked yet,” he explained, smiling at her. “Decided to explore the neighborhood.”
His eyes moved to Charlie.
“Hi,” he said. “I’m Draco. Draco Malfoy.”
“Oh! Draco, this is my—“ Hermione hesitated. “Friend. This is my friend Charlie.”
Draco extended his hand, and Hermione saw the glint of cufflinks and a silver ring as he reached past her shoulder. A silver ring—was Draco married?
Charlie shook his hand. He looked surprised by Draco’s firm, abrupt handshake.
Hermione peeked at Draco’s hand again as he withdrew it. It was a pinky ring. She relaxed.
“How do you know Hermione?” Draco asked Charlie.
Charlie looked taken aback by the directness of the question.
“I—we were friends when she was in school,” he finally said, which was not exactly accurate. He graduated well before Hermione started Hogwarts.
Charlie Weasley was a stolid, tall man in his own right. He worked outdoors with dragons, had a steady and unflappable sort of attitude. But as he met Malfoy’s eyes, Hermione thought she saw uncertainty flicker in him.
Draco looked unflinchingly back, no such concern on his own face.
“I see,” he said.
“And how do you know Hermione?” Charlie asked.
“I’m her neighbor.”
Charlie shot Hermione an odd glance then. She wasn’t sure why.
“Cool,” he said. Then he repeated it: “Cool.”
“Nice to see you,” Draco said to Hermione. He rested his hand lightly on the back of her chair, though he didn’t touch her—Charlie’s eyes followed the movement. “I’ve got an appointment with my interior designer.”
“Okay,” Hermione said. “See you later.”
Draco left, and the bell over the door tinkled.
Hermione watched his retreating back for a moment, then turned her gaze back to Charlie.
“That guy is—odd,” he said, still watching the door. “Did he say Malfoy? Lucius’s son?”
“He’s nice,” she said. “Anyway—when do you want to grab those drinks?”
~
After coffee, Hermione was feeling rather good about herself. Instead of going home, she stopped by a shop that always had beautiful, colorful dresses in the window. She’d been inside once before and scurried out shortly after, intimidated by the prices. Nothing too exorbitant, not like some French designer or anything, but more than she usually spent.
Today though, she felt like splurging.
She walked through the wide, minimalist aisles of the shop. One dress of each kind hung on floating wooden rods. If you needed more sizes you’d have to speak to one of the excessively cool shop girls.
Hermione lingered by a green dress, cut high on the thigh and high on the neck. She never wore things like this. Little mother of pearl buttons glinted at the collar.
She touched the shimmering fabric wistfully, then remembered what Ron had said the one time she came home with a nice, albeit short, dress.
What are you getting all dressed up for? You want guys to think you’re gagging for it or something?
Ron had never spoken to her like that before.
But he’d had a few pints, and this was when their relationship was already hanging on by a thread.
Hermione had been so hurt that she physically flinched. Ron apologized instantly, but it hadn’t been the kind of thing that an apology could patch.
Hermione stared at the green dress for a moment longer, lost in memory. Then she let go of the fabric. She suddenly didn’t feel like shopping any longer.
She secured her bag a little tighter around her shoulder and walked out into the brisk autumn air.
Promptly and for the second time that day, she collided with Draco Malfoy.
Again?! What was going on—
“I am so sorry,” Hermione sputtered.
Draco seemed equally incredulous, though he appeared to find the situation funny. He laughed, and this time his hands actually steadied her elbows instead of just hovering over.
“Are you following me?” he teased, his smile wide and relaxed.
“I don’t know what’s with me today,” she said. “I must be distracted—knocking into you everywhere I go.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. He squeezed her elbows slightly and then let his hands drop to his sides. Hermione unconsciously let her hand drift to the spot on her arm where he’d touched her. “Were you doing some shopping?”
“Um—not really.” Hermione didn’t want to talk about it. “I thought you were going to meet with your decorator?”
Malfoy tipped his chin up at the building next to the shop.
On the frosted gray glass in the front read the words: Miriam Stone. Interior Design. London / New York.
“Oh,” Hermione said. “That looks—fancy.”
“They cancelled. Accidentally double booked.”
Hermione realized she’d never stepped away from Malfoy. She could feel the heat of his torso, through his shirt. If she reached forward just a tiny bit she would feel his lean, no doubt hard stomach.
She took a step back and—was it her imagination?—he seemed disappointed.
“Hey,” he said suddenly. “What’re you doing now? Want to grab some lunch?”
Hermione had only had a coffee. It hadn’t seemed like Charlie could stay long, so she didn’t want to linger for a scone.
“Sure,” she said, smiling up at Draco. “Yeah, I’m actually starving.”
They wandered down the street until they reached a little bistro. Hermione ordered a croque monsieur. Draco ordered steak-frites and a glass of red wine.
The conversation was so easy. Draco made her laugh. And he seemed pleased to be spending a meal with her, even lingering once the food was done to chat longer.
Was he—interested?
Hermione found it difficult to tell. But surely he was just being a friendly neighbor. He’d just moved from Bulgaria, after all. Maybe he didn’t know many people yet.
Once lunch was over they walked back to Flora Place together, so close to each other that her shoulder occasionally bumped his arm.
“That was fun,” Hermione said, outside the door to his flat. “Thanks for lunch. Let me get the next one?”
“We’ll see,” he said, smiling down at her. “Thanks for hanging out.”
She fought back a little burst of butterflies and quickly said goodbye.
-
Draco watched Hermione enter her flat. Then he unlocked the door to his own flat and stepped inside.
It was sparse. Contrary to what he’d told her, he hadn’t put too much of an effort yet into unpacking. The flat was entirely empty of furniture—there was a table in the kitchen, a bed in his room, and a single desk by the window, with drawers underneath.
Malfoy walked to his desk and took a notebook from his drawer.
She liked coffee.
Croque monsieurs.
Green dresses.
Charlie?
He took careful note of each one, adding them to the list under his last entry (daisies).
Draco was good at facts. He recognized patterns—he’d had to, in order to blend easily into a world full of people who had a natural intuition for empathy that he, somehow, had not been born with.
He’d sometimes wondered if this deficiency made it impossible for him to love in the traditional sense. But the question felt almost pedantic. Irrelevant. What he harbored for Hermione was—if not love—something purer and stronger.
After all, who else would put this level of effort in? Who would memorize the language of her needs and wants, would single-mindedly study what it meant to be perfect for her?
He kept fastidious track of the issues in her life. Broken furnaces, chips for dinner…
Shoddy men, calling her up only after their most recent fling had ended.
Draco exhaled shortly through his nostrils.
He organized the notes, making sure the edges of the papers were all perfectly aligned, then slid the notebook back in its drawer.
Draco went to his bedroom closet then and gazed at the large corkboard that made up most of one wall.
After a few moments, he removed something from his pocket and carefully pinned it to an empty square of the board.
It was a napkin from the bistro, with Hermione’s lip marks on it. The warm blush color of her lipstick.
Malfoy stared at it for a long moment. He touched the mark of her lips with his thumb.
Then he adjusted his trousers, clicked off the light and shut the door.