Things hadn’t gone exactly to Draco’s plan.
Correction: It was absolutely, empirically, nauseatingly worse.
Like, Olympics level of shit, top-tier gold level mess.
He didn’t mean to cheat. And, to be fair, it wasn’t even cheating. It wasn’t as if he and Pansy were on some mutual agreement to settle on monogamy with boring nightly calls and goodbye kisses and dinner dates with her comically unfortunate roommate Daphne. It was Pansy—it was supposed to be banters and sneerings and parties interspersed with fun, athletic sex. They weren’t exclusive, they weren’t permanent.
Except… maybe they were. Maybe when Pansy asked him if they were serious, he shouldn’t have kissed her instead of answering. But she looked so kissable, so absolutelyedible—his mouth went dry, he thought about their friendship, the length of it and how it tigented the noose around his neck. He thought about him and his messy, chaotic life and how she’s always, always been there. She was looking at him, legs stretched over him on the loveseat in his living room. Bleary eyed Pansy, smoking on that godawful weed Blaise had bought, trying to act as if she didn’t care, didn’t even count that. But she did. He knew that—and understood the necessity of the act—because she was his friend. His oldest friend. His only source of stability in a world of shifting loyalties.
Of course he couldn’t break her heart.
Of course he did so so much worse.
He hates himself.
Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, is what the law says. If you push an object, it will push back, if you say something hurtful, remnants of the words crack on the atmosphere and flick back at you, like splinters on your skin.
Bad decisions are like that, too.
People like Draco and Pansy double down on that. Conundrums one on top of the other and the other until it’s a seven story fuck-up. Until it’s entanglement and friction and everything they wanted to avoid in the first place. If you hate confrontations and take roads that avoid the electrifying, mortifying stretch of nerves, you will most definitely end up in a much much worse place.
Draco hates confrontations, the contrite words condensing at his stomach, the claw of them as he tries to push them out into the air and come clean. He is his father’s son, with his platinum blond hair and pointed chin and a drastically bad wordsmanship. He was a Malfoy with the charm and the ego and the propensity to fuck up and never look back.
Draco wanted to change that, he did. After lawsuits in his father’s name and the court cases and cover ups and hefty donations to charities he wouldn’t bother to know the names of, he was supposed to change. Grow up. Be better. Own up to his mistakes.
But.
But that wasn’t what he did. He called her religiously every night to say goodbye, made those awful kissy noises on the speaker to which she either replied with equally sticky noises or a gag. He met with her dad every other Sunday for golf and lost every time. He went on double dates with Daphne and whichever tattooed bohemian asshole she decided to date for the week. He did all of that so he wouldn’t have to talk to her. Tell her he’s been feeling stuck, which isn’t how it was with them. It was easy, to talk to her, to let her solve whatever new shit he fucked up.
She was his girl. Just not… his girlfriend.
How the fuck do you explain that?
So there he was, drunk enough to partially dull his senses, partially forget that he’s decided to confront Pansy tonight. But sober enough to realize he’s doing it again. Deflecting, running, pressing down the cold sense of responsibility with dull, dumb determination and he keeps kissing this girl. Unnamed. Unimportant.
He thinks she initiated the contact, he’s sure of that. Seventy percent sure of that. He’s sure of her dress that was maroon and tight and he was sure that she had sky blue eyes. In fact, he could swear that when she flicked her eyes at him the blue in them were the glaring neon signs of bad fucking decisions.
And before he even knew what was happening he was shoved into a room and he was kissing this girl—unidentified, unnamed blonde—and he had his fly undone. And she was pushing his jeans down and down and he kept thinking—
Wow this does not feel great.
And, I really should talk to Pansy.
And, does she taste like salmon?
And, he’s an asshole, he knows. He was thinking that as he helped her out of her lacy black bra, as she gave him a lopsided smile and he absentmindedly thought she was pretty. He dipped down to kiss and bite and suck on her shoulder and thought how much he hated himself. And he really should sit down and tell his girlfriend that just because she knew how many ways he was a douche didn’t help him—
But then. A shriek tore them apart, mostly out of their clothes. And it was a familiar shriek, she was just who he’d been thinking about and—
Oh god.
“Pansy?” he blurted, instinctively reaching for his shirt. Because there she was, wide-eyed, open mouthed and… choking on her words, holding the handle of the door as if her life depended on it.
The other girl scurried to put back her clothes. And Draco almost complimented her on how fast she was. How deft. Was she into sports? Did she find herself in these situations often? If yes, then could she advise him on how to handle this?
This. Pansy, slowly sliding past to let her go, not even sparing a glance on her, even as she spluttered an apology. She didn’t close the door, didn’t move a muscle as Draco put back his clothes. His fingers spasmed, he couldn’t button his shirt.
“Pans…” he started, stopped, then again. “I’m sorry.”
“Are you?”
“I didn’t think—”
“There are so many things you don’t think about, Draco,” she says calmly. Much too calmly. “Which one is it now?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Already said that.”
A terrible shiver rose up to this throat. He took a step, then another, then another by some great persistent pull towards her. Pansy backed a little, her entire face screwed shut like it does when she’s disappointed, and dissipated, and really fucking sad. Not for the first time, he feels regret, and a violent rush of shame. He didn’t want to hurt her. He wasn’t even that into the girl, he wanted to tell her it’s his old fucking vice. One bad decision led to another and he loved her like a friend. And there’s no other way he can love her. And he’s reaching to her, his hand, stretched out palm and he thinks he’s mumbling that he's sorry. That he made another bad decision. He’ll do anything to make it up to her, even continue the relationship and—
He doesn’t get to tell her any of that.
As soon as his fingertips touch her cheeks she coils back and, before he can blink or think, punches him straight in the nose.
He sees a blinding white light.
And then he sees stars.
He runs after her. After his head stopped spinning. It takes a while to fight through a clear vision. He can distinctively feel the rush of blood to his ears and his head as he runs through the flashing disco lights and hallways filled with people. The entire campus feels alive with the beat of the party, the walls vibrate with music. His nose hurts like a bitch. Pansy looks tiny, but she has been training Jiu-jitsu since she was eleven, after her mum died and her father became paranoid about—well, just about everything.
Draco knows that because he has known her all his life. Which only makes it worse. He’s never been on the receiving end of her spite.
Spite. What a mean little word. Full of venom. And hurt and anger and everything he used to feel for everyone. The emotion he only recently started associating with her. Is it easier that she reciprocates now? Is it—
He bumps into a guy while he runs, head still heavy, mind still clouded and he barely thinks before he calls out to the guy already speeding past people as loud as he could—
“Watch where you’re going!”
The guy stops, faded denim jacket and dark hair. His shoulders straighten and he turns back. His face is scrunched up in annoyance. He pushes his specs on the bridge of his nose, as he comes closer, Draco thinks he looks familiar.
“You pushed me,” he says gruffly.
“Yeah?” Draco snorts. “Then why didn’t you say something?”
“I was avoiding a fight.” He still has all of him scrunched up. Like his entire body is contorting into a dot. “Or was trying to.”
And he has the calm sneer. The patient chiding that reminds him too much of Pansy, and incidentally, too much of himself and he can’t help it. He decides that he hates this guy, dark hair swept up like he’s been through the wrong end of a tunnel. Which is also when memory pours onto his with such drastic force that he can’t help but blurt out—
“I know you!” he points his finger. “You’re Harry Potter.”
This changes something in him. A ripple. Like a violin string snapped with a finger. He suddenly takes a step back, then, reimbursing, takes a step forward and seethes, “You don’t know me.”
Draco laughs. “Blaise said some celebrity is coming here, man. I thought it was that YouTuber… that whatshisname or summat. The one who ate a dozen raw eggs.” He feels lightheaded. “But we only got you.”
“Are you high?” he asks incredulously.
“Do you have the scar? Of course you have the scar. Can I see it?”
“Fuck off, man.”
“Oww come on. Isn’t it what makes you so special, Chosen One? I heard some of the papers even call you the Boy Who Lived.”
Draco eyes the fist on the guy’s free hand and something about it—the veins popping on the skin, the anticipation of a fight, the electrifying ordeal of it, the need to know how much he can push this random guy until he breaks—makes him even more determined. Insufferable. Douchey.
“Is it easier with girls?” he asks. “I’m having a tough time with my girlfriend as of now. I bet you don’t have any of these issues. I bet it’s easy for you to pick up girls. Do you just show them your scar?”
Harry Potter stares at him as if he’s a bug, or a giant baboon. Draco stares with anticipation as anger and then disgust and finally, finally, dejection flashes over the guy’s face. “You’re not worth it,” he snaps, backing away.
And Draco won’t—can’t—take that. Of course he’s worth it. A tiny shot of electricity jumps at his forehead. He has the last word on anything. He is Draco fucking Malfoy and this—
“Hey, Scarface! Talk to me. Tell me how you—”
He can’t talk. Suddenly, before he can process, there’s a blunt force to his nose and it stings. His hand reaches up to his nose and Potter is already pushing past him. Draco blinks and the lights seem brighter, more out of focus and… floating. He thinks of Pansy and the girl he kissed a moment ago, about the fact that no one plays any good songs at college parties and what the fuck did Blaise put in the drink? He feels lightheaded, he bumps back to the wall.
Fuck me, is his last thought before he falls down for the second time in the night.
He notices her eyes, first. Big, wide eyes. Brown, earthly, concerned. Very fucking concerned and sweet. And they just of swim in and out of his consciousness, the only focal point in the blurry mess of his vision, and he lets it, holds on to it for a moment until he yanks himself up, palms pressed on the cool tiles of the floor and sits up, straighter, with more purpose, against a solid background. He feels slightly dizzy and slightly bummed out and massively fucked up as he squints at the owner of the eyes. Holds on to their color for another moment. The eyes blink.
Then the rest of her resurfaces. Hers is a familiar face. Familiar, someone he glances past each day, familiar, how her curls framer her face, like the shape of her eyes makes perfect sense with her eyebrows, the folded skin between the spaces of those, the arch of her nose, the freckles studded cheeks and the arch of her cheekbone and he squints at her, again, because doesn’t he recognize the heart-shaped lips and how they move when she talks about—
Books?
Simone de Bouvier?
French toasts?
“Are you alright?” she asks, and then cringes at herself. “I mean, as much as you could be in the current situation. Better?”
He groans, hitches his shoulders, tries to wiggle his fingers on his much too flaccid arms, moves his knees which are, by the way, spread flat on the surface as the girl crouches by his side. He does his entire self a good—moderately good, questionably good—once over and says, rasps, really, “I think so. Good. Better.”
She nods encouragingly. Now the rest of the senses come in. He can hear the loud, roaring noises of the party and the beating thump of the floor as they blast Cool for the Summer with the highest, campiest fucking base and the space is cramped and sweaty and he smells something sweet. Something like cinnamon and cloves and his head stings again. He blinks against the piercing light.
“How long was I out?” he manages to groan.
“No idea. I saw you like ten seconds ago? You were—do you want to get up?” she eyes at him like someone would eye at a cat caught in a net. “I’ll help you?”
He slumps back down from his effort. “Yes, no. Let’s just sit here for a while.”
She lets out a chuckle, a really breathy, really soft chuckle that makes him wonder if it’s an impromptu giggle. Or a snort or some rendition of—
“So… you were just kind of slumped and no one was even noticing and honestly it was sort of panic inducing to see this lifeless body—”
“Not lifeless.”
“Perceived lifeless body. Middle of the busty party with people dancing all around you. Sort of enigmatic, prophetic. Like maybe Gatsby if he fell flat on one of his parties.”
He smiles instinctively. “It happens. At these parties. Everyone’s just kind of used to it. They probably saw the entire thing.”
“What happened?”
“Someone punched me.” He scrunches his face. “I probably deserved it… though I don’t remember that much.”
“I’m Hermione—”
“Granger, I know.” And he does, suddenly, like lightning, like a blip. He pushes on his hands and sits up straighter. He definitely knows her. “You finished the reading list Flitcwick gave us over the summer.”
Her eyes light up for a moment before she lets out a soft chuckle and says, “Yeah. It was nothing. I had most of them down already.”
He had all of them down already. But he didn’t want to tell her that. He wanted to linger on that chuckle, the soft gasp of breath. And her smell. Cinnamon and clove and something that reminded him distinctly of books, the kind of first editions that had yellowing pages and really crumbling texture.
The music stops being less awful. There are people passing them without so much of a second glance and shit, his head hearts. And he wonders if it’s for the drink of the punch of just him being a douche. Is it just his life? The party. Pansy.
Pansy.
He groans.
“What?” Hermione suddenly looks worried. “Are you feeling worse?”
“Yeah… no.” He shakes his head. “I just did something shitty. Really shitty.”
“Is that why you’re—?”
His eyes widen. “No. Yes. I don’t—fuck.” He tries to get up, he falls back down. Hermione Granger has a very particular expression splattered all over her face, it’s something he knows very much of. It stings. The pity in her eyes as she helps him get up, lets him warp his arm around her shoulder for support. “It’s all the same.”
She makes a noncommittal shrug, and he turns his head to stare at her face, and something else—something very unlikely in the current scenario, but very him—comes to his mind like a trip of consciousness, like a trip of words.
“You’re pretty,” he mumbles, the scoffs, “of course you are.”
“I’m sorry?”
“It makes sense. Bad things come in threes.”
“Yeah. Yes.” She snorts. “That actually doesn’t explain anything, so.”
“Pansy says… bad things come in three,” he says, as if that explains everything. They were sitting in his tree house—a few thousand dollar monstrosity with wallpapers and a password protected lock system his mother gave him for his eighth birthday—sniffing, not letting tears pull in her eyes, her mother had died, she learned about the fact that her parents were opting for a divorce before that, and she was just so so scared about the third thing.
Draco gifted her a dog the next day to make her feel better.
It turned out that she had a very specific allergy to furs. She had to be hospitalized.
So.
In present time, Granger continues to stare at him with appraising eyes. He coughs awkwardly.
“So I did something really shitty to Pansy. She punched me. And then I came here and… another guy punched me. I deserved it both times, but, you see. Two disasters. The other one was bound to happen.”
“And that is…?”
“You’re pretty.”
Her eyes widen, he watches her watch him with some sort of incredulity, some exasperation, and sometimes really, intensely warm that his breath gets hitched, gut wrenches and there may be some mixing of his internal organs, could be the entanglement of some of his nerves as he sees her cheeks catch onto some of that fire that has the back of his throat burning and she blushes as she catches on to his words with all the shameless implications. And she stares and he stares and he thinks—
Yeah, bad things come in three.
So maybe it’s the myriad of complex emotions, maybe it’s the blood loss. But he leans in, catches her lips with his own and kisses. Softly, hesitantly.
She makes a sound that is somewhere between a gasp and a snort and pulls back. She looks flushed, breathless and… worried?
“Do you want to talk?” she asks. Not what he expected. And he should say no, he doesn’t harbor the habit of talking to people who haven’t known him before The Disaster, before the solidified persona he’s built, or something that was built around him, for him. He doesn’t talk to strangers. But.
Hermione Granger stares, and he focuses again on her eyes.
There’s something else in there, too, besides pity, besides worry. Curiosity, maybe. Intrigue. Draco wonders if he took a far worse blow than he suspected. As he leans in and the music stars being bearable, the lights mellower, he turns to her, her side profile in the disco lights, red and blue and purple all interchanging in seconds, time slows, he retracts to hours before and who he was then, who he is now.
“I do,” he says, gushes, really. Like it’s a confession in itself. Like it’s the beginning of something much worse than confessions.
“I think we should continue this somewhere else,” he hears her say.
“Yeah.” He runs his tongue over his lower lips and tastes sugar, really, something like maple syrup. Something so sweet it can leave a toothache. He wants to taste that again. “Yes, definitely.”
Pansy doesn’t talk to him for a week.
Draco tries to meet with her, he does, he taps his fingers into the screen of his iPhone and his thumb ghosts on her number for an excruciating amount of time before he closes the screen. The face reflecting on the dark screen is scrunched in disgust. He tosses it aside on his bed and mashes his head inside the pillow.
The pillow smells like cinnamon.
He hasn’t talked to Hermione Granger either.
Which is… okay? Acceptable? He doesn’t remember what they did. Everything comes in flashes and blips when he tries to push back into the night. He remembers her hair, a big nest of curls, dark and pretty and smooth. He remembers her laugh and the bristle it covered his skin with. He remembers talking, talking and how sore his throat was in the morning.
He doesn’t remember if they slept together, which is a problem.
He doesn’t know if he should try to solve it.
And as she’s spent the whole of the week ducking away and downright sprinting whenever their eyes meet—six times—he’s pretty sure she doesn’t know either.
He feels her eyes on him, though, when she thinks he isn’t careful. Big, curious eyes, appraising eyes. Not constantly. But it’s consistent. It’s there, on the back of his head, as he tries to navigate the hallway without facing professor Snape, as he navigates outside classes he won’t really attend, he feels her like a shadow and a shiver and… he can tell that she’s studying him. He knows that because he is looking, too.
He corners Blaise after his soccer practice one afternoon, finally mustering up the courage. Or not. His voice creaks and groans, he cowers a little. They stand beside the goalpost and Blaise is covered in sweat, heaving, and he really tries to associate the glower in his eyes with adrenaline, with the rush of the practice, not—not—with him, not at him.
There’s an undercurrent of shame as he asks Blaise how she’s doing. There’s a clear sharp relief when he learns that—
“She’s good. Better.”
Draco purses his lips, he pinches the top of his nose and instantly regrets it.
“She’s actually seeing someone,” Blaise murmurs, eyeing him skeptically.
“What?”
“Yeah. I know.” He shrugs. “Too soon?”
“That’s not what I meant.” That’s exactly what he meant. Not that he was hoping for her to pine after him. But… nothing. It’s just. Not like Pansy. Dating someone else on a whim. Something indecisive about it, like a freefall. She has had three boyfriends in her entire life. She doesn’t date just because she likes somebody. She a checklist, for fuck’s sake, with pros and cons and a specialised catalogue filled with traits and quirks that would match with hers.
“Just… not like her.”
“Yeah. She seems happy, though.”
A sudden thought strikes his mind. He cringes, “God, it’s not Pucey, is it?”
Blaise snorts. “Nah. It’s Harry Potter, actually, and—”
“What?” Draco snaps, his mind backtracks. “Potter? Harry Potter? The one who punched me?”
Blaise’s eyes widen for a moment before something else—something colder passes over. He shrugs. Everyone’s heard about it by now, it’s basically in ancient history, except for Draco, obviously. “Yeah, the one who punched you.”
“Fuck,” Draco hisses. “Fuck fuck shit—”
“Yeah.”
“Why is she with him? Is it because he punched me?”
Blaise scoffs. “What? No.”
“Some sort of revenge impulse or—”
“Not everything is about you, dude.”
“I’m not—” Draco stops, backtracking at his scowl. The scowl. It’s cold and dismissive and… aggressive? His eyes widen, he feels… another very familiar, very unfriendly rush of emotions.
“Hey, Blaise, are we okay?”
Draco sees the muscle in his jaw tighten, sees him gulp back whatever words were simmering in his head.
“Yeah, sure,” Blaise bites on the words. “Sure we’re good.”
Draco doesn’t tell him that he sincerely, sincerely doubts that.
Draco is almost sprawled on the shadowed grass beneath the massive, distinctive Hackberry tree on the east side of the campus. The air smells fresh, clear and sharp. He squints at the screen of his laptop, the sunlight glinting through the leaves making it harder to read the painfully mechanical words on the email he’s been crafting for the better part of three hours. He lets out a tired groan as he presses the backspace key again, then again, with more vengeance. He turns his head over for words of apology and really, it’s excruciating how many ways you can ask forgiveness and how many ways you can get them wrong.
He’s sorry for cheating on her, he’s sorry for starting the deadbeat relationship when all he wanted to do was… just get this done with, that’s where they were always heading, weren’t they? His mum said that Pansy was just like her and Draco was just like his father. And the timing helped, too, it was after his dad’s verdict. Just after. So. He’s sorry for mucking it all up and he’s sorry for the tangled mess, he’s sorry for making her bump into Harry fucking Potter, he’s sorry if he turns out to be an asshole.
“Hey,” a voice—tentative, soft—calls from behind.
Draco’s heart backflips a little, and he doesn’t know if it’s because he recognises it instantly or because he didn’t think she’d ever address him in the daylight.
He shuts down the laptop, takes a long, deep breath—the kind athletes probably take before running on a 500 miles racetrack—and turns to find Hermione Granger—tentative, soft—standing beside him with a half smile.
“Hi.”
“Can I sit?”
He nods stiffly. She has an armful of books in her hand, her arms are always full of books, or an assortment of academic materials. She is perpetually hunched, perpetually busy and nerdy and cute. Really endearing is the fact that she has a steady record of four point ohs and she is the acting head of an organization with only five members. Something about a dying breed of flying fish. He also knows she’s in five different clubs and she has an infuriatingly high score of performance on all of them.
She sets the books aside. She sits down closer, closer than he’s expected. Their shoulders brush.
She looks at him with single minded determination. And something about the look—anxious and appraising and apologetic—sort of reminds him of doctors. When they tell you that you have a rare and incurable brain cancer, or that you have five weeks to live.
And it’s weird. They aren’t in… anything. She hasn’t spoken to him after that night, although she’s been looking, staring and following his tracks.
Draco only knows that because he follows her too.
“What?” he asks blearily.
“Well,” she starts in a really concerningly tv doctor voice. “There’s actually no blunt way to say this, but—uhm. Do you know about the guy who punched you?”
“What?” he bleats. “Uhm—what? Harry Potter? What about—?”
“He’s sort of dating Pansy.”
“What?”
“Yeah. He… met her at the party and, well, you know. Sparks flew.”
“Uhm, yes.” He shakes his head, baffled and… disappointed. She’s here to talk about her friend? “I know he is. They are. And—” he glances at her. “I know he’s your friend.”
Her cheeks pinken. “Yeah. Yeah, I actually brought him to the party. So.” She shrugs. “It’s just—”
“Weird.”
“A bit like happenstance. You know, destiny.”
“Or doom,” he grumbles, pinching his nose.
“Harry is a good guy.”
“Of course you’d say that.” He scrunches his nose, still haunted by the memory. “He really likes Pansy?”
She smiles, sincerely, dotingly.
“He’s sort of a tortured soul, isn’t he? PTSD and shit?”
“Hey, I don’t like the tone,” she says, a little shrill, a little more like her. She straightens up, making no attempt to leave. “Or the gross simplification of his trauma. He’s—”
Draco snorts. “He is, isn’t he? Tortured?”
“Yes, but—”
“It’s just that Pansy has a type,” he explains, cutting her off.
“And?”
“And it isn’t him.”
“Yeah, it was you, and look how well that turned out,” she snaps, then immediately clamps her mouth. “Oh—”
Draco glances down, his throat constricted, eyes stingy. “Yeah. Yes, I deserved that. I wasn’t her type though. She made an exception.”
“You haven’t talked to her, right?”
“I’m writing an email,” he says, mumbles.
“That’s… what? An email?” she sounds incredulous, appalled, an amplified mess of whatever he’s feeling.
“Yeah I’m—” he coughs, not knowing whatever that’s coming out, but realizing that they aren’t going to be enough. Not nearly. “I don’t… I am not good with confrontations.”
There’s silence, and silent contemplation. Granger shuffles in her space, he can see her knees, there are scratches on the skin, brown and healing. He wants to ask her about those, he wants to ask her about anything else, really.
“She’ll understand,” she says finally. “She’s been your friend forever.”
“That’s part of the problem. She understands too much. I’ve… messed it up too much.”
“You’ll be surprised what friendship can take.”
“Are you speaking from experience?” He has half a mind to bring in her friendships, because he’s flitted past her Facebook profile, he’s seen the awkwardly endearing comments of Ron Weasley on her posts, he’s seen her deflate the admiration with almost mechanical precision. Sharp wit. Awkward humor. He chuckled at her replies.
He doesn’t feel like chuckling now.
“I speak from experience,” she says, and he’s almost sure he hears a sigh. He remembers that sound too, from the night. A sigh when he kissed her again in his room, a huff and—
“Did we have sex?” he asks abruptly. “Because I don’t really—”
“No, we haven’t,” she replies quickly. And he glances up, sees her face glowing with an imprudent blush as she chuckles. “Not from the lack of your trying. You kept pulling at your pants.”
“Oh fuck.”
“It was cute.”
“Oh fuck.”
“But then you… talked. We talked.” She flexes her hand over her books. “A lot.”
“Did I tell you, in detail, what I did?”
“Yes.”
“You still think I can fix it?”
“If you own up to it,” she says, and it’s a little pointed, the suggestion, a little distinct the way her lips curl. It feels like an accusation, and Draco doesn’t take accusations from anyone. He suddenly feels as if it’s gone too far, he’s been sitting here for far too long and—
“I am owning up to it,” he says coldly.
“You’re sending her an email.”
“She wouldn’t want to see me.”
“Won’t she?”
“She’s angry at me. She’s also dating the guy—”
“It’s not about you.”
“Why does everyone—I’m not saying it is, but—”
“But it’s always been like that, right? You hate someone and your friends hate them too? Now you suddenly can’t take the fact that—”
“What? No.”
Yes. And now that she’s said it, actually thursted it at his face, he suddenly can’t stand to think of it. And she keeps talking, keeps—
“You’ve had Pansy solve everything for you, Blaise as well. You’ve been the center of their universe since the beginning, and now you’ve mucked it all up.”
“How’d you—”
“You told me. Bits.” She shrugs. “And that’s what you always do, isn’t it? Talk in bits and pieces and the people around you always did the stitching? That’s why you have so few friends. Not just because your attitude is douchey—purposefully douchey—but also because you’re… exhausting, sometimes. You’re hard work.” Her eyes trail off to the library, the roof, the window panes framed in wood. “Harry’s a bit like that too.”
She purses her lips, narrows her eyes. And god, he can hear it. What she’s going to say next. About his walls and his ego and the futility of it all. The damage. He can hear her teeth mashing against each other with the effort of not saying them. He blinks, suddenly realizing how much he’s told her, how much she knows, this… nobody, practically a stranger. This one night stand who he didn’t even have sex with. He has a habit of not letting people in, to either see the ruin or the constant destruction. It makes the room for disappointment smaller, less people to worry about letting down. It also makes it lonelier. And the guard he has on crumbles on other people, too. Like Pansy, or Blaise, who had their whole lives being stretcher to his mess, his reputation. It must be awful, for them to be sidelined by him and his name and his dad and the string of tabloid news. All that and he still failed. That’s why it hurts so bad, he thinks, that’s why it stings like nothing ever did before.
Hermione Granger sees it, and she doesn’t have Pansy’s soothing, doting huff. She doesn’t have Blaise’s silent support. She’s demanding, she’s confronting. She’s… different. And there’s an exciting tilt to it, a rush of exhilaration. He leans back, sighs, lets her see his defeat, her win. His hand finds the laptop, opens it, and deletes the empty draft. He feels his fingers quiver from the weight of the truth he’s thinking and his throat is dry—remarkably dry—as he shuts down the laptop and stares at her.
“Do you have time for coffee?” he asks, hoarsely, not charming, not like he’s ever heard himself speak.
She rolls her eyes, and there’s the hint of a mischievous smile, just at the corner of her lips, that answers for her.
He finds Pansy sitting alone in the park of the campus, knees folded over the grass, eyes narrowed in concentration. She’s working on her sketchbook. Pansy has a dream of making her own line of clothing. Her brand, different from the one that has her mother’s last name. Better than that.
“Pans,” he says. Her head snaps up in an instant. She blinks, clutches on her pencil and takes a minute before she turns her head.
He hesitates a moment before moving closer, sitting down, in space for a private conversation. Her eyes are wide, cool, and calm. But he can see her lips tremble and—well, he gets it. How much he hurt her. The weight of the betrayal on their friendship. He does.
“I’m sorry. I’ve been lying to you for—for a long time and you didn’t deserve that. I should’ve told you how I felt. You’d understand. I know that. I was scared of losing you. You’ve always been a constant presence in my life and I didn’t want to mess it up for not feeling something I should feel and… I’m so sorry for hurting you.”
He had a speech, a whole page, in his head the words all made sense, picked one after another after another to make the perfect story. How much he depended on her—on them—and how much he resented that after the relationship didn’t seem to work.
But Pansy huffs and scoffs and turns away, he sees a smile, small and sour, mostly. But there.
He knows she understands.
“I know I’ve been the shittiest friend for the longest time and—”
“Not the shittiest,” she replies. “But yeah. Yes.”
He groans, combs his fingers through his hair. “Will you forgive me?”
“I already have.”
His heart picks up, and he reaches his hand instinctively, to touch her shoulder.
But she flinches back. Her voice is gruff as she says, “Maybe not entirely, but going there.”
His hand drops to his side. “Yeah, okay. I’ll be here. Whenever you decide to… I’ll be waiting.”
There are two decades worth of understanding between them, twenty years of unadulterated love. Pansy smiles, a little lighter, her face more relaxed as he takes her space with respect. Her hair is open, framing her face, smiling, pretty face. She chuckles a bit before starting talking. Blaise found his newest passion, she tells him. It’s ghost hunting. Apparently someone brought a medium named Luna Lovegood to the party and he is absolutely smitten. She tells him about her dad who is ready to murder him. The online course she’s been meaning to take. About her—her eyes light up—boyfriend. About Harry Potter and how he’s a lot like him. A lot different than him. Understands her. Admires her.
Pansy giggles, and it’s really something he hasn’t seen her do in a long time, and he chuckles at it, savors it.
The morning light is clear and sharp around them, everything is bright. Almost perfect.
“You are a problem,” Hermione Granger says in greeting.
Draco swallows a dry breath. He tries to smile. He hasn’t spoken to her since he sent her the text that he talked to Pansy. “Well, good morning to you too.”
Granger shakes her head, absentmindedly, as if he answered wrong—to a question she didn’t even ask. She leans against the doorframe of his room, and really takes a second—a few appraising seconds to scan his room, check if anyone else is here—to come inside.
Then she just stands still, looking absentminded, pretty.
Draco thinks now maybe he ought to feel offended. She called him a problem. But then he thinks maybe it’s a bit far fetched. She didn’t call him problematic. Just—problem. And she didn’t even say it in a mean way, or a particularly judgy way. It was an observation, at best, as if he were a math problem. The insipid constant number in an integration no one knows why it’s there or what to do with it. He was a problem, unsolvable, uncalled for conundrum, maybe, okay. But—
“A problem to who?” he asks.
She slides in further but stays on the far side of the room, closer to the door than anything and she stares for a second, as if taking everything in. The daylight reflecting on his beige wall, the sight of his clothes on the bed and on the table, strewn carelessly, messy. And he sees her fingers spasm, almost as she eyes the back cover of a book thrusted carelessly between his socks and the Chanel scarf Pansy had gifted him on his last birthday. She eyes at it inquisitively.
“It’s Kafka,” Draco says finally. “Metamorphosis.”
“Oh.” She purses her lips, trying to stifle a smile, trying to look as if she isn’t impressed.
She is impressed.
Draco starts the conversation to avoid giving into that pull in his face, the smug which—as Pansy stated—too self-induced to look good. “Is there any reason you are here?”
“Uh. You’re a problem.”
“You’ve said it already. Any other unscrupulous insight?”
“Well, you are careless and vain and proud.”
“Hmm.”
“Terribly sarcastic, kind of a douche.”
“Charming.”
“But you’re also insightful in a way that doesn’t make a deal of itself. You’re smart, but don’t have an aim in life as I see. You have a very specific brand of affection for the people you love and it’s… intriguing. It all makes me annoyed. You’re annoying.”
“I am not sure where this is going.”
“This is—well, I am extremely organized. I like planning, I like long-term. High-maintenance.”
“How is it working for you?”
“Great. Hectic and panic inducing and—” she lets out a chuckle that’s more neurotic than charming. “And sometimes I feel like I am going to die alone because I am so busy being everything I can be to have a normal… life. Fun, lightness. Stupid drinking game and bad decisions and whatever.”
Draco can’t help but grin. She’s absolutely, terrifyingly adorable. “Bad decisions are overrated.”
“A steady life is overrated.” She huffs. “Good grades and being valedictorian and—whatever.”
“I see now it won’t work between us. We’re too different.”
“Exactly. You’re… basically unfiltered chaos.”
“You’re not so steady as you think, you know. I know you botched McLaggen’s soccer training so your boy toy would have a chance at being captain.”
Her cheeks turn red, and it’s so satisfying, so fucking delightful that Draco can’t help letting that smug grin smooth over his face, plastered like cement.
“Ron’s my friend.”
“Did you tell him that?”
She huffs. Again. And takes the remaining few steps to sit on his chair. Hands folded neatly on her skirt, which was, not short. But up close, closer—between him and her—it seems extremely purposeful. Ruinously purposeful. The stretch of the seams. The soft, cotton fabric. Her bare knee and the glimpse of the creamy skin—
“My eyes are up here,” she snaps bitingly, but when he blinks up, she’s… smirking.
He feels a hot grip on his neck. It’s a new side of her—the teasing. A bit electrifying. “Yeah, well, your legs are not.”
“Stop being creepy.”
“Well, you just came into my room, uninvited, and declared I am pretty much insufferable. Cut me some slacks, Granger.”
She crosses her legs and Jesus she’s doing it on purpose. And what’s even worse is that he likes it. Her and her big clever mouth and messy hair and dark circles under her eyes and sunken cheeks because she probably hadn’t eaten anything since last week and didn’t have any sleep either because she’s an overachiever. And probably neurotic on some very important levels and Jesus Christ he probably has some very specific, very private kink that she resurfaces and Draco stares at her thighs—more, intentionally bare skin—and he is so turned on that it’s ridiculous. She’s ridiculous.
“You’re very vindictive,” he grumbles.
The pride on her face is too cute to be meanly smug. “And I have a massive complex of trying to fix any problem I see. Any mathematical equation or enigma or… person. I’ve basically mothered Harry and Ron since we were eleven. It’s grown in a thing, now. They come to me with every problem. I have a habit of fixing things for people.”
“I see.”
“So if we… you know, engage, I’ll probably try to fix you. Try to give you an aim. Break down some of those stone walls and—”
“You’re very confident about that.”
“—fix your room and your ridiculous sleeping schedule and whatnot.”
“You have bags under your eyes bigger than Eurasia. I’m not sure you’re qualified to fix up someone else’s sleeping schedule.”
“I have a test,” she says dismissively. “My point is: you’re the ultimate mess. It’s sort of catnip to someone like me.”
“Nice.” He snorts. “It’s a great visual.”
She tries not to smile.
Draco straightens up, he hadn’t made up his mind about them, he still isn’t sure if it’s anywhere near the vicinity of a good decision. She’s right—she’s bossy. And neurotic. And demanding. And excruciatingly smart. Smart enough to knock his excuses cold, fierce enough to cut him off of his bullshit.
But it’s okay to like those things, right?
“I like you,” he says simply. “And you like me too.”
She narrows her eyes, still trying not to smile. But she leans back on the chair, slightly more relaxed, slightly… less neurotic. She tilts her head as if to challenge him to talk further, talk her into his life.
And he smiles, inadvertently, smugly, because it’s easy with her. Surprisingly, terrifyingly easy with her.
He knows he wins the argument, even before he speaks.
Things hadn’t gone exactly to Draco’s plan.
They were much, much better.