You don't scare me
She found him in the seventh-floor corridor just outside of the Room of Requirement far past curfew time. The shadow of his sixth-year burden lay on his shoulders, weighing them down and making him look far older than his eighteen years.
“Draco? What are you doing here? Do you know what time it is?”
He didn’t even startle at her discovery, as if expecting she would find him. He simply turned to face her with a tired blink. His hands hung loosely at his sides, the usually immaculate nails bit down almost to the quick.
“I just wanted to see what it looked like with the Fiendfyre gone.” His voice was hoarse and low. She inspected his eyes expecting them to be rimmed with red, but they were dry.
She nodded in understanding and glanced at the blank wall behind him where she knew the Room stood. The battle seemed so long ago now, yet also as if it had just happened yesterday. If Hermione closed her eyes, she could almost smell the choking smoke, feel the overwhelming heat.
“There was nothing left of him there, not that I expected otherwise.”
Vincent Crabbe. Lumbering gait, forever lurking behind Draco. Her last memory of him was the curl to his lip as he cast the curse that almost burned them all, the same one that took his own life. When they were first years, she remembered him returning the scrunchie she had dropped at the train station. He had blushed as their fingers brushed in the trade.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly.
He tilted his head at her words, brow furrowing as he processed them. “Why are you sorry? He tried to kill you. We tried to kill you. We made the past seven years of your life here hell—”
His voice was cut off by the touch of her hands taking his into her own. She was impossibly warm. The heat flowed up his arms straight into his chest, nearly staggering him with the force of it.
“Do you remember what I said?” She squeezed his fingers as she waited for his response.
“…you said you forgave me.”
She could barely hear his murmur, and stepped closer into his frame.
“And?”
Draco’s sigh brushed warmth across the top of her hair as she leaned into his chest.
“And that we can’t change the past. That we can only look at the now and plan for the future the best way we know how.”
“Correct. And right now, I want you, Draco Malfoy, to remember that you don’t scare me. It’s quite the opposite, actually.” She looked up then, her dark eyes pulling him into her orbit. “You remind me every day of our ability to change for the better.”
The light in his eyes that had been briefly extinguished this evening flickered back to life as he gazed at her. The tension in his jaw released and the breath he took buoyed him back to the surface. It wouldn’t do to dwell on the dead, though he would never forget his friend and the times they shared.
“You’re right.”
“I know I’m right.”
This time, he couldn’t hold back the upward curl of his lips, and he leaned down to press his forehead to hers. “How does Head Girl want to deal with my infraction?”
“Follow me for the rest of my rounds tonight and then escort me to my quarters. You can make it up to me then.” She raised an eyebrow suggestively, before pulling back and spinning around to continue her patrol.
Giving a final parting nod over his shoulder at the wall, he turned to follow Hermione Granger. She strode confidently down the hallway, back straight and curly ponytail swinging from side to side like some kind of guiding beacon to his floundering heart. Toad girl. Mudblood. Insufferable know-it-all. Prettiest bird at the ball. Hero. Head Girl. Friend. Girlfriend. Lover.