Rendezvous
If Draco could be honest with himself he’d have to admit that he wanted things to be different this year. The fantasy he had built for himself this Summer would become reality. He’d been struggling for months with all of the shit life had thrown at him but there was a bright spot in the middle of it all.
Her.
Her hair is shorter than it had been during his trial. Stop staring.
Her skin is darker from the Summer sun. Lovely really.
Her eyes have regained some of their brightness, shining even across the Great Hall. Did I have anything to do with that?
She had been in Australia. That is what her letters had said. Her parents were there. He hadn’t asked why. He could guess at the answer.
Draco lets his hair fall over his eyes. His own hair had grown past his ears. A product of his own wallowing and self-pity. He is as pale as ever, having spent his Summer in the manor with Mother.
“Slytherin!” The Sorting Hat announces.
A short girl with pitch-black hair walks towards the table.
He keeps his eyes on Granger.
She returns his gaze for a moment, a shy smile hidden behind her hands.
It’s interesting. The moment is intimate even across the expanse of cheering students.
She looks away, her smile growing to unrealistic size at something Weasley has said.
Draco stops staring.
Reaching into his pocket, he feels for the soft parchment he had grabbed from his bedside table that morning.
Her most recent communication.
Under the terms of his probation, Draco was expected to see a mind healer once a week.
Against his own wishes, he had been assigned to Healer Lyle. A middle-aged half-blood witch.
Who else have you hurt?
It had been an exercise. Writing the letter to Granger. He’d written a dozen letters to the people who had suffered because he was a coward.
She is the only person who wrote back. Hermione Granger, ultimate swot.
Back and forth, all Summer, they’d written to each other about everything.
The war. Their mutual loathing. That is where things started. He’d realized the line between loathing and— not loathing… was thin.
From there they talked about their grief. Their hopes. Their fears. The future. Last week it had turned into Are you ready to be back at Hogwarts? and What NEWTs are you taking?
The letter he had gotten last night, which he had kept in his pocket all day, was a shock to say the least.
Hermione had written to tell him she was looking forward to seeing him. That hadn’t been the shocking part. Draco felt the same way. She was the bright spot in his otherwise gloomy reality.
Please meet me by the One-Eyed Witch passageway a half-hour after curfew.
The Gryffindor Princess, willing to break the rules, just to see him?
It was embarrassing how the letter had made him feel the first time he read it.
Special didn’t seem quite the right word for it. Draco hadn’t smiled in months, but the lopsided smirk he’d caught in the mirror was the closest he’d come.
Blaise elbows Draco and he pulls his hand out of his pocket.
“What?” He asks, irritated.
“You haven’t touched your plate,” Blaise points out.
The feast started a while ago. He’d gotten lost in his own mind again.
“Not hungry.”
Theo reaches across the table and takes the chicken leg off Draco’s plate.
Standing up, he ignores Blaise’s light pull on his sleeve.
Draco is the first to leave the feast, for which he is thankful for when he remembers that eighth-year students are not living in their own houses. Instead, the semi-adults were given a brand new tower in the castle, created in the reconstruction.
It isn’t as tall as the other towers, instead an extension above the entrance hall. Farther from the classrooms, but closer to the courtyard and the Great Hall.
He finds his room quickly, barely absorbing the four houses represented on every wall in a cacophony of color.
Malfoy. He wants to charm the name off the door.
He’d always been proud of his heritage. Proud of his name.
They get their own rooms this year. The door to his left says Zabini on it. To the right, Nott.
He chuckles. That’ll be gone before tomorrow. If anyone hated their father more than Draco, it was Theodore Nott.
Draco’s room leaves something to be desired. Hogwarts always had. At least he wouldn’t have to share it. There is a full-sized bed in the corner and a wardrobe.
His trunk is at the foot of the bed.
Green sheets. He can’t help but take his wand out and change them to black.
If he doesn’t have to live in Slytherin house, maybe he doesn’t have to remain a snake.
So far, he’s gotten his wish. Everything is different.
Walking through the silent hall, Draco is reminded of his last months in the castle. Sneaking around, trying to do something he dreaded.
“Draco,” a whisper pulls him from the memory.
He wishes it wasn’t so dark in the hallway.
A hand wraps around his wrist and he is pulled into the passage.
“ Lumos ,” Granger says.
The passage lights up and he leans back against the stone.
“Granger,” he breaths out.
She offers him a smile far brighter than any she’d given Potter or Weasel at dinner.
“You look awful.”
“You don’t.” Draco won’t hurt her again. Won’t throw words at her she doesn’t deserve. Won’t be the same person he was. If he has gotten anything out of seeing Healer Lyle, he needs to create new behaviors.
She blushes. “Thank you.”
“I thought we talked about this.”
“No thanking you for anything.”
He nods, offering her a licorice wand.
“Thank-,” she glares at him. “Well what else am I supposed to say?”
He smirks. “You are the brightest witch of the age, surely you can think of something.”
“Bugger off,” she says, smiling.
“Perfect.”
“You left dinner early,” she says, leaning on the opposite wall, the tips of her shoes pressing against his own.
“Watching me, Granger?”
She nods, shy.
Then, much to his own surprise, Draco pushes off the wall, placing his shoes on either side of hers.
“Why did you pick a hidden passage for us to meet?” He whispers.
She chews her cheek.
Draco had waited for her letters like a man obsessed. Had sat in his room staring at the windows.
Not only did she challenge him, but she also gave him something irreplaceable. A friend. He valued her in a way that he would have thought impossible six months ago.
He should protect that. Friends are in short supply.
“Granger,” he prods when she still doesn’t answer.
“I don’t know.”
She knows. He can see it in her doelike eyes. False innocence. It is too much for Draco.
“Can I kiss you?” The words are out of his mouth before he can think it through.
Her eyes widen further. Then, she nods.
Pressing his hands against the cool stone, he lowers his face to hers, lightly kissing her.
She sighs into his mouth, pressing back.
Draco Malfoy is kissing Hermione Granger in a Hogwarts passage.
Impossible. Unimaginable. Incredible.