Drabbles

Hermione perched her bum on the flat wooden arm of the adirondack Draco was reclined back in. His eyes were warmer than grey had any right to be and though his hands stayed where they were – one holding his pint on the opposite chair arm and one in his lap – the look he sent her made her feel wrapped in them. 

“Hi Draco,” she said and the edge of his mouth lifted. 

He’d been drinking more than usual, both because it was Harry’s birthday party so he’d been pulled into two rounds of shots already, and because the outdoor patio was still carrying the day’s heat, forming condensation on the outsides of all their glasses. 

He wasn’t typically one to overindulge and she could see the way it had already begun to dissolve his mask. 

“Hi honey,” he murmured and she swallowed even as she chastised him with a click of her tongue. 

Ron was standing in the group of their friends behind them, not twenty feet away, and although her husband had grown used to her friendship with Draco, she didn’t want to give him any reason to question it. 

“Having fun?” she asked, tilting her head down at his mostly empty pint. 

“Mm.” He hadn’t taken his eyes off her. 

She hadn’t been drinking as much as him — she was only on her first — but even so the comfort of being close to him wore down her self-control the way it always did. Her fingers were carded through his hair before she fully knew what she was doing, pushing it back off his forehead and sliding to the crown. 

His eyes were burning into her now and when she dared drop hers to meet his gaze, fingers still buried in that soft blonde, he mouthed, “I love you”. 

It wasn’t an uncommon occurrence, even when he wasn’t drowning his inhibitions, but the shine of it had dulled only slightly in all the years he’d been saying it, ever since they’d been teens. She thought he might mean it slightly differently nowadays — in a bit more of a grown up way now, as he also was. But even so, slightly-dulled or not, hearing it was a tiny thrill. 

“I know you do,” she whispered back. And then, because it was loud around her and calm inside her, she murmured. “You know I love you too.”

She regrouped enough to pull her hand off him and he settled further back on the chair, eyes half-lidded as he kept them on her. 

His hair was mussed from her fingers. 

Neither of them fixed it. 

“It makes it worse when you say it back.” His smile was teasing, amused, but she knew he meant the words. “I hate when you say it back.” 

“Stop saying it then,” she suggested in a stage-whisper and she caught a glimmer of white teeth as his grin spread. 

He laughed. “Wish that I could.” He sipped his pint, then had a second, larger swallow. He looked off to the side. “Fucking wish that I could.”

She needed to shift the topic, especially when he was being so honest. They were in public, for one, and literally in front of her none-the-wiser husband, for two. 

“How’s Paige?” she asked, taking a replenishing sip of her own ale. 

He sucked his canine, still looking away, then shrugged an unfussed shoulder. “Dunno."

“Ah. I assume that means you’ve broken up?”

He inclined his head. “Yep. She broke up with me.” 

“Bummer.” As far as Hermione knew, Paige had only made it two weeks, so she wasn’t expecting him to be devastated over it. Draco wasn’t a commitment-phobe but he was a bit…aimless. Self-searching. Privately, she wondered if he was…

He looked at her again, breaking her train of thought. His eyes were a little glassy from the booze but when they met hers, he seemed sober as a saint. 

“They’ll never be you.”

Fucking hell. She didn’t always enjoy being right. 

It was wrong to feel guilty — well, it was right to feel guilty but not about the part she did, namely that his apparent unrequited love for her was getting in the way of his happiness and not that she was worried about what another man’s infatuation with her was possibly doing to her marriage. Her primary concern should be Ron but…there was just something that tied her to Draco. Something she didn’t feel about anyone else. 

“They don’t need to be me,” she reminded him, as she had before. “It’s better if they aren’t.”

He sniffed noncommittally and she had another drink, turning to look at the rest of their group. Ron glanced over and caught her eye, giving her a lopsided smile before his gaze flicked to Draco. His smile didn’t waver and she allowed herself to hate, just for a tiny moment, how trusting he was. If she were married to Draco, there was no way he’d smile at seeing her practically sitting on the lap of another man. 

Aggressively possessive behavior is not a quality to aspire to, she scolded herself. Self-assured, trusting, committed adults don’t police their partner’s completely appropriate behavior.

She remembered her fingers in Draco’s hair and had to amend that last: somewhat inappropriate behavior. 

Draco’s knee bumped the bottom of her thigh as he shifted in the chair, pulling her attention back to him. “What’re you drinking?” 

She lifted her glass. “Oh. The red ale.”

He downed the dregs of his own, leaning to put it on the ground beside his chair before holding out his hand for hers. She handed it to him, watching as he rotated it to drink from the place she had, eyes on hers. 

He was always doing that – finding ways to touch her without actually doing it – and it messed with her heart and her head every time.

He hummed a sound of satisfaction and handed it back to her, tongue flicking out to skim his bottom lip and the drop of ale that had lingered there, caught between the glass and his mouth. 

And because she was a fool – a weak woman, who’d made a choice that she didn’t regret but also didn’t feel quite settled with – she made sure to drink from where his mouth had touched, too. 

She didn’t believe in soulmates – it was too depressing, too anxiety-inducing, to think that there was one – only ONE – truly perfect person for her in the entire world – but she wondered sometimes. When she looked at Draco, she just…felt it. 

Settled. 

Whole.

She didn’t like thinking about it. 

Not when she’d committed herself to Ron, who she loved quite deeply and who provided her everything she’d ever dreamed of in a partner, and not when the alternative could never, ever happen. Draco was too ensconced in their friend group, so even if she left Ron, she’d never be able to start a relationship with–

She made herself stop. 

“I’m going to the loo,” she said, holding her drink out to Draco. “Feel free to finish that.” 

He took it. 

He helped her stand. 

He let her leave.