Choose me
They started over a shared appreciation over a particular bottle of merlot Malfoy insisted was far too good to waste on “unappreciative plebs,” not that Hermione knew the difference. To her, all that mattered was that the wine went down without a bite and paired well with her charcuterie.
One glass became two, then a whole second bottle, and then Hermione realized she’d had far too much to drink in too short a span of time. The words spilled out of her before she could take them back.
“Gods, you are so pretty. And smart. Did I ever tell you how glad I am that you can actually argue with me?”
Not five minutes later, he pressed her into the booth with the full length of his body and she drank him in as ardently as she had the wine.
One hour and a couple of sober-up potions later, they yanked off their clothes in Malfoy’s ridiculous flat and didn’t leave for the rest of the weekend.
One month later, Theo dubbed her “Granger the Conquerer” for her relentless dominance of the games at their weekly get together. That was three times as fast as it had taken him to accept Blaise in the Snake Pit, and they were dating.
Three years later, a still alive and now wizened Crookshanks joined them in bed with a box in his mouth which he distastefully spit out onto Hermione’s lap while Draco struggled to hold back a laugh. He’d ply the familiar with his favorite treats later.
“…Draco.” She uttered his name in a disbelieving whisper and stared down at the sapphire velvet as if afraid it might transform into a serpent and bite her.
“Hermione.”
In the span of the five minutes it took for him to take up the ring and—smirk and dimples fully present—to ask her to “Choose me,” Hermione had turned into a blubbering mess of a witch with curls double their usual size and an alarmed cat at the end of the bed unsure whether to escape or maul the human who’d tricked him into taking part.