Are you ignoring me?
She was a no show again.
Three memos he had sent her over the past two weeks regarding their team project, one they had started a few months back and had already made significant progress on, and they still needed to finalize details before submission next week. Draco’s latest revisions received no replies. He sat alone the past couple of Mondays for their scheduled check-in, staring blankly at the empty conference table.
He could not figure out where everything had gone wrong. Not only were they now civil to one another, before the silence he would’ve ventured to consider them friends. Old grudges from their childhood were long buried and apologies made. They worked well together when required, and had even hung out outside of work with mutual enemies-turned-friends.
There was nothing else for it. He needed to confront the witch if she was going to keep avoiding him.
He found her deep in the archives. Sometimes, things never change.
“Are you ignoring me?”
She startled at his question and gasped at his closeness. It really was too easy to sneak up on her when she had her nose buried in a book. Her large brown eyes narrowed and she took a deliberate step back.
“And what if I am?”
“Why?”
Carefully returning the book to its shelf, she turned back to him with her arms crossed and scoffed. “Are you seriously asking me why?”
“I obviously just did.”
“Do you remember the last time we spoke?”
Draco thought back to their last lunch together. They had opted for a restaurant in Muggle London.
“The Japanese restaurant, right?”
She arched a brow and nodded. When he didn’t follow up with anything else, she huffed again and gestured for him to continue. “And?”
“…and…we ate some pretty good sushi?”
“Merlin. C’mon Malfoy, do you seriously not remember what happened? What you said?”
He scowled at several months of hard work sliding backwards with her returned use of his surname. What in bloody hell was she talking about? What he said?
She shifted in place as Draco continued to think, the silence of her waiting threatening to suffocate him. They had talked about a lot of things. That was just the nature of their conversations. Talk tended to flow naturally no matter the tone—while they once yelled insults at one another, they now just as passionately discussed magical theory. They could talk for hours without a lull.
Japanese cuisine. Traveling history. Favorite destinations. People they traveled with. Why they chose a Muggle restaurant…
His eyes widened in remembrance. They left their usual cafeteria because he had insisted on going somewhere else.
“Ah.”
“I take it you remember.”
“Astoria was at the cafeteria.”
“Yes, your ex-fiancée, which you didn’t tell me until late into our meal. A meal, might I remind you, was our first time eating out together.”
He was a colossal idiot. When he admitted to his reason for asking Hermione out to lunch, she had flinched. He noticed, but brushed it aside as nothing to worry about when she brought the topic back to their project.
His emotions must have played out across his face, because hers softened.
“I sometimes forget you’re not always as put together as you look. I have a bad habit of overreacting and not communicating properly. I shouldn’t have made assumptions about your intentions for asking me out.”
She was doing it again, just like she had done in the past multiple times with others. Putting herself down, expecting the worst. And he was the one who made her do it this time. He needed to get his shit together and make his feelings clear.
Stepping forward into her space once more, he extended a hand. Looking at him quizzically, she took it, gasping when he brought her fingers to his lips for a soft kiss.
“Hermione Granger, I would like nothing more than to take you out with intentions to woo you. Muggle, magical, home, abroad, anywhere with you is where I’d like to be. And I’m sorry for the way I asked you out the first time.”
She stood in complete shock, mouth open and hand still clasped in his own. The longer she stared at him, the more nervous Draco became. He quirked his lips in a nervous smile.
“Hermione?”
“I…I…” She blinked rapidly and yanked her hand back. His heart sank.
He could feel himself sinking. The welcoming pull of occlumency called to him, promising to deaden his disappointment, save him from the embarrassment of rejection. Then he felt pressure on his arm. Surfacing back to reality, he looked down at the hand grasping his jumper before focusing back on her.
“I’d like that.”
She was smiling. She flicked a curl behind her ear with her other hand, continuing to tightly cling to him with a look of…hope?
“How about dinner tonight then, my treat?” Was he pushing his luck asking so soon?
“Only if you agree to a follow-up dinner Friday night, my treat.” Her dark eyes twinkled at the prospect, and Draco couldn’t help but grin back in response.
“Deal.”
She laughed as he held his hand out for a shake. The moment she released him, he spun on his heel with a last retort over his shoulder, “And if you don’t reply to my revisions by the end of the workday you don’t get dessert.”
The indignant squeak behind him added an extra pep to his jaunt to the lift. Dinner tonight, huh? Perhaps something ridiculously spicy would liven Hermione up even more…