Fauxmance

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/45896695.

Rating: Explicit
Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: F/M
Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy, Cho Chang/Blaise Zabini, Theodore
Nott/Ginny Weasley
Characters: Hermione Granger, Draco Malfoy, Cho Chang, Blaise Zabini, Theodore Nott,
Ginny Weasley, Gawain Robards, Cormac McLaggen, Kingsley Shacklebolt,
Pansy Parkinson
Additional Tags: Ministry of Magic Employee Hermione Granger, Quidditch Player Draco
Malfoy, Political Campaigns, Press and Tabloids, Fake/Pretend Relationship,
Eventual Romance, Texting, Phone Sex, Flirting, Social Media, Angst and
Fluff and Smut, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic
Language: English
Stats: Published: 2023-03-20 Completed: 2023-07-27 Words: 36,948 Chapters: 33/33
 Fauxmance
by aplacetostart

Summary

Ten years into their respective careers, Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy are each looking for a
change. Hermione is running for Deputy Minister alongside Kingsley Shacklebolt following her
impressive ascent through the Ministry. After a lengthy stint playing for the Falmouth Falcons,
Draco is retiring from the field with coaching on his mind.

So when public relations mastermind Pansy Parkinson pushes them together to help achieve their
goals… what could go wrong?

Notes

Fauxmance is a text fic AU originally told over Twitter. Click here to visit the main thread if you'd
prefer to read there.

This fic is stylized in a format fit for social media, including lack of capitalization and use of texts.

See the end of the work for more notes

 the introduction

hermione granger had spent her entire life climbing the ranks. first, school and the war. years of
studying, fighting, planning, proving herself. then, her newts and a quick jump into barrister
training — all top marks, of course.

after that, nearly a decade working her way through the ministry. she started off in policy, passing
landmark legislation to protect the rights of magical creatures. she sought out promotion after
promotion, ascending departments and earning increasingly lofty titles with ease.

all this until she landed where she is now, ten years into her career, in her early thirties: the
youngest ever appointed head of the department of international magical cooperation (DIMCO).
her life is fast-paced and well-calculated, spent flitting between magical summits, liaising with
allies, and masterfully handling hardball negotiations with ministries far and wide. occasionally,
she makes time for cocktails with friends. she doesn’t date — too distracting.

but it’s time for hermione to face her next big challenge. she’s running for public office. the launch
of the shacklebolt/granger ticket for minister and deputy minister was no surprise to political
insiders; kingsley had claimed hermione as his protégé for years.

neither was the announcement of their opponents. gawain robards, head of the DMLE, chose to run
alongside his deputy, cormac mclaggen. whose own history with hermione was… questionable, to
say the least.
with the news finally hitting the prophet, the campaign has begun in earnest and hermione feels a
bit like she's toppling head first into the unknown — a peculiar sensation. so she's surrounded
herself with friends, talented ones, whom she knows will help steer her to success.

she selected cho chang-zabini, her ministry aide, long-time confidante, and a political aficionado in
her own right, to run her campaign. it helps that her husband blaise has a knack for choosing her
outfits, too.

and p. parkinson public relations, the best in the business, agreed to handle her image. not that
hermione thought her image needed handling. but cho insisted, and having extra support under the
inevitable spotlight to come was reassuring, somehow, even from pansy.
the parkinson empire didn’t reign without reason — which meant that all things pertaining to
hermione’s public persona now ran on pansy’s terms. and, according to pansy, her schedule did as
well. hermione blocked off friday at noon on her calendar with a few weary swipes.
meanwhile…

the last ten years for draco malfoy have been roughly the same. he quietly served a brief house
arrest sentence at the end of the war, after which he was swiftly (and mercifully) recruited by the
falmouth falcons. he hasn’t looked back since.

his family’s riches were long gone, seized by the ministry in the aftermath of the war, but he hadn’t
done poorly for himself with the falcons. he went from seeker, to chaser when his lean frame grew
brawnier, to team captain, his contract renewed every year without question.

and the life of a famous athlete had come with its own perks: good pay, wild parties, his face in the
paper, and the witches— merlin, the 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘴. some called him a lady-killer. draco just thought he
needed to try all the peaches until he tasted the sweetest.

theo nott became his agent years ago via his ex-teammate ginny weasley, who just so happened to
marry him after a gnarly divorce with potter. and he thanked the gods for theo nearly as much as he
did the witches… even if it meant he’d have to cancel on his latest fling.

things were about to change for draco, however. after ten seasons, successful yet grueling, he was
ready to announce his forthcoming retirement and declare his intentions for his next step: a
coaching career.
his longtime pr consultant, none other than pansy parkinson, had steered it all, starting with what
she called a “soft launch” (a few strategic phrases dropped in his usual post-game interviews) to the
article in witch weekly. but apparently, there was still work to be done.

through all of the variations of relationships he’d ever had with pansy — from ill-fated teenaged
lovers to sibling-esque friends to their business partnership — she’d rarely been wrong. so, lunch
on friday at noon it would be.
 the secret

every week, hermione indulged in the same futile practice. she’d schedule a few free hours to keep
herself sane… and then she’d watch as each one dissolved into meetings. which meant that pansy’s
surprise lunch didn’t go unnoticed for long.

when cho texts her back twenty minutes later, she immediately knows something’s amiss: pansy
must’ve put a bug in cho’s ear that neither of them wanted her to hear. at least, not yet. and
hermione has never been very patient.
it’s not often that cho withholds information from her, and the idea of a secret between her and
pansy makes her stomach churn. but she’s running for office. she’s new at this. and she admits to
herself that maybe, just maybe, cho may have a point — it could be for her own good.
draco, on the other hand, is all good with secrets. keeping them, spilling them — he’s an open
book, these days. unless, of course, theo and ginny are involved.
he can’t help his curiosity now. this secret can’t be a good one if theo and pansy are both involved.
normally, draco is rather immune to anxiety, having embraced a healthy dose of carpe diem over his
years of quidditch stardom. but something about this gives him pause.
he did, in fact, ask pansy about it instead. but unfortunately for draco, she only wound up tightening
the growing knot in his stomach — and he found himself counting the hours, then the minutes until
noon on friday.
 the lunch

draco arrived at pansy’s office on time, for once – he was prone to appearing fashionably late, but
when his beloved pans disappeared in exchange for the more-than-mildly terrifying p. parkinson,
he knew just how harsh the consequences of a belated arrival could be.

parkinson public relations, in the heart of mayfair, buzzed with stylish agents negotiating on behalf
of celebrity images far and wide. in just the few minutes he spent in the waiting room, lazily
making eyes at pansy’s latest leggy receptionist, he heard mentions of katie bell’s trade to the
appleby arrows and the merits of susan bones’ romance column moving from the quibbler to–

“malfoy?”

that voice, of all voices, he certainly hadn’t expected.

hermione granger herself, clad in a lengthy trenchcoat and a well-ironed blouse buttoned all the
way up and a disgustingly appropriate knee-length skirt, was approaching pansy’s office, and him ,
as if she belonged there.

draco hadn’t seen her in years, aside from news clippings documenting her meteoric rise through
the ministry, and she was a far cry from the girl he once knew. she was a woman now, and an
intimidating one at that. she held herself with pride, shoulders back and spine straight, the
confidence in her commanding presence alone enough to make draco feel… smaller. high-powered
was an understatement.

it was interesting.

granger took one look at him, from the tip of his head to the points of his shoes, and dismissed him
as though he was merely part of the scenery.

“has there been a mistake?” she asked the receptionist, who immediately began to fumble through
her stacks of planners.

“no, there hasn’t.” pansy’s voice, sharp and cool as ever, called out from the threshold of her office.

the strange knot that had parked itself in draco’s stomach for days tightened enough to cut off his
blood supply.

“come in, both of you. and do sit down – you’ll need to, for what i’m about to tell you.”

he and granger shared another look, and this time her confusion matched his, but despite the
foreboding sense of impending doom that plagued him (them?), they both followed pansy dutifully
into her office. perhaps she was just as familiar with her wrath as he was.

there was no time for small talk. there never was, when pansy was involved.

“look,” the witch said once they’d seated themselves before her, her pointed nails ringing against
the tabletop with sharp taps. “there’s no easy way for me to say this.”
she looked at granger, then at him with the same blood-curdling sneer, and something told draco
that perhaps it would be easier for her to say it than for them to hear it.

“by my estimation, you’re both on track to lose your respective races.”

with a wave of her palm, a series of diagnostic charts appeared in the air behind her. granger leaned
forward in her chair to study them closely with narrowed eyes. draco saw all he needed to see from
his distance: lines and graphs pointing down, down, down.

“granger, we all know you’re shacklebolt’s best shot at a third term, but the people think you’re too
uptight,” pansy said, pinching her fingers to zoom in on one particularly damning chart. “they don’t
think you’re charming. they don’t want to have a beer with you. and quite frankly, if i polled them
today, the question wouldn’t be whether or not you have a stick up your arse – only how long it
really is.”

granger snorted, actually snorted, and draco’s eyes fell from the charts to her wholly unconvinced
expression. “i’m trying to be the deputy minister. i’m not supposed to go out drinking with
anyone.”

“au contraire,” pansy replied, though when draco smirked in response, she held up a palm.

“and you,” she said, curving a sharp finger in his direction. “you have the opposite problem.”

his own charts came to the forefront now, each one a colorful assortment of sinking trendlines and
surveys that skewed toward the negative. “all the major quidditch teams think you’re too much of a
playboy to do anything more than play. you’re a loose cannon for them, far too much of a risk to
consider seriously. we could do witch weekly photoshoots of you pretending to read books once a
week for the rest of the year, and you still wouldn’t get any coaching offers.”

“i don’t see what granger has to do with any of that,” he huffed under his breath.

pansy’s smile grew villainous. “are either of you familiar with the concept of a pr relationship?”

oh, no.

granger, of course, was first to retort. “you can’t possibly expect us to–”

pansy ignored her entirely. “i’m rather an expert in them. roger davies and zacharias smith, percy
weasley and alicia spinnet–”

“ percy ?”

“yes, love. though that one was more for alicia’s benefit than his, if i’m being honest.”

“i don’t have time for this,” granger muttered, and without another word she stood from her chair
and headed for the door.

pansy was unmoved, as if she’d been expecting it. “you both have something the other needs. i
don’t see you winning without him, granger.”

there was a heavy pause. granger’s fingers curled around the doorknob. draco could practically see
her calculating the options through the back of her head – her curls seemed to crackle with them,
glinting in the sunlight.
and soon enough, she turned on her heel and returned to her chair with a scowl.

“it’s rather simple in practice,” pansy explained when granger was fully seated, haughtier than ever.
“we’ll clue in our preferred journalists to strategically planned dates – a picnic here, a quidditch
game there. you’ll chit chat, hold hands, nothing scandalous. the press runs with it, and your
respective personas balance each other out enough for you to get what you want. and neither of you
should date anyone else, of course, at risk of being seen and losing control of the narrative – though
i expect that’d be far more difficult for draco.”

hermione was silent, deep in thought.

“how long?” he asked after another pregnant pause.

“six months. we can ramp down after the election and the end of the quidditch season.” the clock in
the corner of pansy’s office let out a chime. “well then, not much more to discuss, is this? you two
better be off.”

granger, again, was quick to stand, rushing toward the doorway – though he caught something of a
flush crawling up her cheeks. draco paused in the threshold, one hand planted on the doorframe as
he turned to look at her, then pansy at her desk.

“wait, weren’t we supposed to get lunch?”

pansy’s smug grin turned devilish. “not me , darling. the two of you .”

the ruse seemed simple enough to hermione.

staged dates. minor touching. smiles for the cameras. perhaps it was just par for the course, yet
another way in which she felt eerily ill-prepared for this next phase of her career.

and she wasn’t inexperienced . she hadn’t dated in years — no time, of course — but there were at
least ten distinct dates she’d been on in the past, and of those, four — no, three — wizards who
could claim to have bedded her… well, maybe two and a half.

she was going to be the bloody deputy minister, for merlin’s sake. what was a fake relationship
between friends?

was malfoy even her friend?

the walk to the restaurant where pansy had made reservations for their lunch was long enough for
hermione to consider the plan and observe him. his pace was leisurely, his shoulders had grown
broad. she’d seen bits and pieces of him over the years, and she was familiar enough with quidditch
to know he was the captain of the falmouth falcons, which made it easier to populate her
preconceived notions as to what kind of man he’d grown into. at the very least, he was far from the
sniveling teenager she once knew him as, and the more she studied him, the more she saw what
pansy did: he was laid-back, far more easygoing by his walk alone, and his hair was just long
enough for her to card a hand through—
“i think this is it,” he muttered, gesturing awkwardly toward a brick building wrapped in greenery
on the corner. “up ahead.”

gods, this was going to be tough.

the cafe was moderately upscale, chic without crossing the line into pretentious, and she had to
admire pansy’s commitment to their cause. she knew what she was doing, whether hermione liked
it or not.

“so,” she finally said after they’d exchanged a suitable amount of pained small talk and had their
plates presented to them. “what did you think of—”

“it’s crazy,” malfoy immediately replied, and they both exhaled nervous chuckles.

“yeah,” hermione peered up from her plate, suddenly feeling meek under his gaze. it was a bit too
piercing for her taste. “i had no idea coaching quidditch was such a serious affair.”

he arched a brow at her. “it’s not all parties and galleons, you know.”

“well, you certainly make it seem that way.”

“and what? running the ministry is all business, all the time?”

“yes, actually,” she scoffed. “you know, you used to be quite smart.”

“who says i’m not?”

“if you were smart, you’d want me to do this with you.”

“who says i don’t?” he crossed his arms over his chest. “sure, it’ll work out fine for me if you let
me leech off your image enough – screw coaching, i could get whatever job i want. but you’re
going to be the minister of magic.”

“deputy minister,” she corrected.

“sure, for now, but it’s only a matter of time.” her eyes found his, and she was surprised by the
sincerity glimmering within them. “you’re not going to want to find some way to fix this in another
ten years, when you run for minister and the public changes their mind and says you need to be
more serious again. probably five years, knowing you.”

true to form, malfoy’s concerns only made her want to argue.

“pansy’s not wrong. we could help each other,” she said. “and you must know by now that i’m
more of a pragmatist than a romantic. besides,” she paused, adopting her best impression of his
signature smirk. “i wouldn’t have thought you to turn down a witch.”

“i’m not turning you down!”

“sounds like it.”

“granger—”

“oh, drop it and call me hermione already.”

they were both pressing their elbows against the table now, leaning in towards each other over their
half-empty plates.

“you’re sure about this?” he asked.

she bit at the inside of her lip. she wasn’t sure, and probably never would be – but trust was a
finicky thing, these days. “as much as i can be. are you?”

“no, not at all,” he said with a soft laugh. “but that doesn’t mean i won’t give it my best shot.”

later, when their plates were cleared and they’d caught up a bit beyond the small talk they’d started
to manage, hermione saw the first of them: a photographer tucked behind a bush at the front of the
restaurant. she tilted her head in his direction until draco noticed, too, and his reached into his
pocket for a handful of galleons for their meal.

“shall we?” he asked.

she grinned. “let’s give them what they came for.”

 the prospect of "more"

draco wakes up on saturday morning, groggy and disheveled after a fairly raucous party at his
teammate’s townhouse, to two strings of unanswered texts — only one of which earns a response.

he reads through the quibbler article through dry, squinting eyes. he takes in the snarky tone, the
strangely secretive snap of their exit from a photographer who literally waited for them in a bush.
and he finds himself surprised by how little the prospect of “more” scares him.
draco groans. it was very much like pansy to leave out pieces of information she didn’t think were
important, even if they had the potential to send him flying through the stratosphere. texting
granger? planning dates with her? he almost puts his foot down. almost.
that same morning, hermione rose at 5am, went for a jog, deep cleaned her flat, meditated, drank a
green juice, and read through policy memos briefing her on the week to come. it wasn’t odd for cho
to text her on weekends (they were friends, after all) — but the subject was.
hermione replayed their “date” in her mind as she shared her thoughts with cho: her near-walkout at
pansy’s office. how strangely thoughtful he’d been. the way he’d reached his hand out to clasp hers,
as though it was natural for him. until another text buzzed its arrival.
she’d be catching her portkey to belgium the next day, which meant she was busy — very busy —
packing and prepping and running through the agenda for the fifteenth time. but duty called. and
the least she could do was add him to her contacts list.
she texts with draco for several minutes, and by the time he welcomes her gallery walking tour and
suggests she stop for a treat in belgium, she’s perched at the edge of her desk, agendas and memos
forgotten for now.

perhaps there are worse things than a belgian waffle.

 the handlers

with hermione occupied at her trade summit in belgium and draco busy prepping mid-season
revisions to the falcons’ playbook, pansy decides it’s high time to touch base with their respective
representatives.

keeping agents and managers and other forms of “people people” in the loop was par for the course
of her work — clients always came with their handlers, like them or not. so what if she happened to
be friends with these two?
pansy waits a requisite minute for silence before she explains exactly what the three of them are up
against. and at their response, she promptly smacks a fist to her desktop. she should’ve expected the
whinging.
as their impromptu planning session comes to a close and the rapid fire texts stop, pansy finds
herself staring at her phone. there’s very little that surprises her these days. but this… this is
surprising. all she can do for now is tuck it into her back pocket for later.
meanwhile, in belgium…

it’s a lovely morning. hermione is walking to the summit from her hotel when she passes an idyllic
little cafe with a view of the brussels grand-place. she’s tired. she’s hungry. and for those reasons
and only those, she decides to treat herself.
the truth is that summits often are fantastically dull — but there’s no world in which she’d let draco
know that. she adds a briefing of fabulous proportions to her mental to-do list, admires the view,
and digs into her breakfast.

it’s delicious.
 the challenge ahead

draco’s got a lot on his mind, for someone who's built his entire adult life around the goal of not
having much on his mind. it’s saturday morning when he finally caves and texts theo — and blaise,
for good measure.

usually, when his friends were busy with their lovely wives, draco would turn to the nearest witch
who remotely fancied him and charm the pants off her (literally). but there’d be no numbing by
way of mindless sex tonight. not with his new arrangement in the picture.
pansy’s point — that any faux pas would only set them back from their goals — had kept him in
check when his eyes wandered over the past week, but merlin, if it wasn’t getting lonely. he scrolls
through this contacts: hook-up after hook-up, nameless face after nameless face.
draco wants to throw his phone across the room. he texts pansy instead. it only makes him want to
throw it harder. and he wonders, ever so slightly, if perhaps a six-month break from his usual habits
could do him some good.
hermione had returned to her london flat exhausted, out of steam, and carrying a hefty to-do list
after her long and complex summit. but saturdays were for self-care… at least when she could
reserve herself from interruptions. from a warm bath, she sends some texts.
her relaxation quickly turns into less than such at the thought of her new “relationship” — and just
how fast word about it has gotten out among her friends.
the texts come flying in, and eventually, hermione sets her phone on the counter and slides chin-
deep into the tub. she begins to wonder whether the challenge ahead would be draco, or everyone
else.
 the gallery

hermione took the muggle route to the national gallery from her flat. she found comfort in familiar
tube trips, the myriad of faces and sounds, her anonymity in contrast with the magical world she’d
come to know, and lead, as her own. she’d always straddled the line between the two, drawn back
and forth by the pulls of her aging parents and her fast-paced career and friends and colleagues and
classmates.

a visit to the national gallery was simply a demonstration of those ties that bound, she mused as she
emerged into the bustle of trafalgar square from the underground. it was a serious place, a romantic
place, and one that could go so far as to represent her own muggle-born history.

pansy was quite good at her job.

she approached the gallery with a quiet confidence about her, a mask hermione had learned to adopt
in the face of the anxiety and imposter syndrome her mind conjured from time to time — though
why she felt this way now, she was uncertain. maybe it was the promise of hidden photographers
lurking about, or her general discomfort around the whole concept of this task. it was definitely not
anything to do with malfoy. (draco, she had to keep reminding herself.)

hermione, whether she liked it or not, had thought about his unexpected enthusiasm and rapid-fire
texts — not him, specific actions of his — for days. his interest in it all was sardonic, she was sure
of it… and yet rustling around in the depths of her satchel were enough notes and research to
accommodate the briefing and the tour he’d requested in tandem. old habits died hard.

she was surprised, when she ascended the marble steps, to see draco already there and waiting for
her, leaning against a pillar as if he belonged there. and he did, by the looks of him: he was dressed
smartly in a crisp white button-down and tailored trousers, a more masculine version of her own
outfit. it hadn’t been planned, but the press would think so, and they’d love it. something about that
thought made a heavy lump form in the back of her throat.

it moored itself there such that she struggled to form an appropriate greeting the closer she got to
him, and by the time he caught sight of her, she landed on the one word she could think of.

“hi.”

she nearly winced.

“hi,” draco replied none the wiser, looking her up and down. “what’s with the matching outfits?”

“guess we both had the same idea for a picturesque day at the museum,” she huffed, and the way
his neck craned back as he laughed, hearty and unrestrained, made her grin despite herself.

“did you prepare our tour?”

there wasn’t a hint of sarcasm in his tone.

she reached into her bag to pull out a well-worn dragonhide notebook, turning three-quarters of the
way in to the pages she’d scrawled nigh to the brim with notes on exhibits, artists, cultural eras. she
was no art historian, but between memories from visits with her parents and the research she
dabbled in for fun, she’d cobbled together what she thought was a fairly passable plan.

“i was thinking we’d start with the renaissance works,” she began.

“excellent. i’m known as a renaissance man.”

hermione rolled her eyes.

“after that, we can head upstairs, where the galleries are divided by century. we can visit the
modern art in the mezzanine, and then, if you’d like…” she trailed off, feigning interest in the
shape of the clouds as she considered her next suggestion. “we could end with a stroll through the
sculpture garden.”

when her eyes found his, he was staring at her with an indecipherable look that made her muscles
tense and her posture nearly falter.

“what?”

“nothing.”

“what is it, malfoy?”

“draco,” he corrected.

“draco,” she repeated.

satisfied, he smirked at her. “i don’t care what they say about you, granger — sometimes your
swottiness can come in handy.”

“hermione.”

“hermione.”

they paused, and her eyes wandered between the enormous doors, the pillars, the steps, and him.
when had he gotten so tall?

“shall we?” she asked abruptly, before the thought could linger.

she couldn’t hide her wary expression as he reached out his hand for hers, and when she hesitated,
he leaned in to whisper in her ear. “we won’t know who’s watching.”

hermione wasn’t built for media coverage and public opinion polling and relationships designed for
consumption. she was prone to planning every moment, to living her life by a rigid set of rules of
her own creation. but this affair, real or not, was something she simply couldn’t allow herself to
overthink.

so she slipped her palm into his, startled by the warmth of his fingers around hers, and dipped her
chin to hide her flush as they walked into the museum.
as they walked, draco noticed things.

her figure, at first. he’d taken some notice of it at their first meeting, but now, in the bright light of
the museum and the hours spent walking alongside each other… long gone was the scrawny
teenager who barely filled out her gryffindor jumper. she’d been replaced by a capital-w Woman,
with soft curves and supple skin and an arse far too pert for a witch of her stature.

and then, he saw more. the way her curls seemed to have a life of their own, rising and falling with
her breath and tossing over her shoulders with the rapid gestures of her hands when she spoke. how
her voice grew firm and confident when she explained the meaning of a painting or a fact about an
artist, but gave way to a quiet murmur when he made snarky remarks. the passion for everything
that seemed to burst from her, whether they were discussing exhibits or the museum’s layout or
whether they should stop for tea in the cafe.

it had been interesting before. it fascinated him now.

“i must admit,” she told him as they reclined on a bench in the sculpture garden at the end of their
day, the afternoon sun beginning to sink beneath the treetops. “i didn’t think you were actually
interested in any of this.”

“what, art?” he shrugged, casting an arm across the bench behind her shoulders. “not particularly.
but you made it rather captivating.”

another thing he noticed: the pretty shade of pink her skin turned when she blushed, which
happened more often than he imagined it would.

“will you stop trying to flirt your way out of this?”

“is it working? it usually works.”

“not with me.”

“i don’t know,” he tutted. “it’s gotten me this far.”

“draco,” she said, her tone more serious now. “you used to be the smartest in your class – after me,
of course. you’re not fooling me, you know.”

“fooling you how?”

“with this act.” her wild gesticulations were focused on him this time, her palm waving up and
down as if he too was an artwork to be analyzed. “we used to hate each other. you used to be cruel
to me. and it was awful, and you really do owe me an apology, but at least then you used to care
enough to–”

“to be a hateful sycophant,” he finished for her, gaze falling to his shoes. “that’s what happened,
when i cared. so by the time the war ended and i learned better and the falcons came knocking, all i
wanted to do was stop bloody caring so much.”

he paused. the words had escaped before he’d had the chance to think them through, but when he
dared to look at hermione again, all he could see was an undeserved ray of acceptance in the light
of her eyes.
“and i do owe you an apology. it’s long overdue. but i want to do it right.”

they sat in silence for a while, draco all too painfully aware of her shoulder resting millimeters
away from his fingertips, the occasional brush of a ringlet against his wrist. and for once, he felt
blessed to see the glint of a camera lens in the distance.

“look,” he muttered, tilting his chin toward the photographer meandering between the sculptures.

“ah,” hermione replied. he could feel her posture straighten beside him, prim and proper as ever,
and in the back of his mind he could hear pansy chastising them both for the failed attempt at
organic romance.

perhaps she was wrong about his flirting.

“i’m curious about something,” he said, lips curving into a playful smirk. “how mad would you be
if we went off-script?”

she gaped, though her mouth snapped shut just as quickly, as if predicting his retort. “how far off-
script?”

he waggled his eyebrows. “forget the museum. let’s see if they’ll follow us down to whitehall
gardens.”

“draco…”

“think about it. dashing quidditch star whisks away his high-strung girlfriend for a romantic walk
along the thames?”

“but pansy–”

“let me deal with pansy. this is going to work, i swear.” he cleared his throat. “besides, i meant it
when i said i wanted to hear about your summit. it’s almost sunset, and we’ll get more light there –
and i’m sure you have plenty of notes to read me.”

draco was watching her openly now, cataloging the way her nose wrinkled in thought as she
undoubtedly weighed her options. and soon enough, it gave way to a meek grin, a secretive dash of
the rebelliousness he’d known to expect from her during their school days.

“alright. but pansy is your problem.”

“done. let’s go, granger.”

“hermione!”

“hermione.”

like clockwork, the story of their date hit the prophet the next morning.
 the next logical step

pansy knew something was amiss by the way her assistants avoided her eyes. then her daily prophet
was meekly dropped off at her desk, her phone buzzing as she read the article in question. livid was
an understatement.

she barely thinks before she fires off a round of texts to draco, though she’s unsurprised to find he’s
been expecting her.
pansy’s not the only one miffed about the coverage, it seems — moments after draco blows her off,
her phone comes alight again with the other half of the equation.
meanwhile, from the falcons locker room before practice, draco’s usual routine is interrupted by a
terrifying thought…

he wants to text hermione.

rarely one to delay his gratification, he does — and he finds himself grinning a bit too wide when
she answers almost instantly.
he slips into his usual tactics all too quickly, only to get stopped with a harsh blow to his ego. gods,
she was unfair. but draco takes a deep breath and thinks back to her briefing and realizes he does, in
fact, have something worth saying that isn’t a blatant pick-up line.
he finds himself oddly captivated by their conversation. his trousers aren’t tented like he prefers
them to be when he texts a witch, but his mind is hard at work. and soon enough, she’s opening up
to him. and he’s interested, genuinely, far more than he ever thought he’d be.
draco’s nearly beaming at his phone now. practice is about to start. when hermione sends her last
text, he makes a few more swipes at his phone, plugging in an address he spotted on pansy’s desk
and crossing his fingers.
when he comes back in from the pitch a few hours later, he sees it and his entire chest swells. his
smile stays plastered on all afternoon.
 the witch who knows better

hermione arrives at beauxbatons with little fanfare, but all through her campus tour, she’s distracted
by thoughts of trade deals. and sushi, but that was… different. in the moments before her next
meeting, she texts cho.

she tries to focus, to remember who she is, but it’s pointless. she’s desperate for her phone to buzz.
when it finally does as the meeting adjourns, she races to retrieve it — but her heart sinks, because
the name on the screen isn’t the one she wants to see.
what was he doing, talking about chatting her up like she was one of his flings? and worse, what
was she doing still waiting for him to text her back? she remembers who she is: a witch who knows
better. so that night, she finally texts him, just to get to the bottom of it.
hermione practically huffs at her phone. after all these years, he was still just as infuriating as he’d
ever been. but for some reason, his reaction to her gripe makes her feel… guilty. like she wants to
console him, somehow.
she texts him quickly, her fingers moving faster than her thoughts as they bicker, and after a few
minutes she pauses. she can’t remember the last time she allowed herself to speak — or text —
without thinking.
there’s nothing hermione appreciates more than a good deal, so she leans back and snaps a single
photo, the bare minimum proof of what she is indeed wearing.

and then, she decides to have a little more fun.

she goes to bed grinning. victory rarely felt this sweet.

 the pattern

over the past few days, the sun has felt brighter when draco wakes up. his tea tastes stronger. his
practices run smoother. he’s smiling more.

coincidentally, hermione has been on his mind.

and people are starting to notice.

draco wants to heed theo’s advice and keep his distance. he really, really does. and yet, hermione’s
teasing was about all he could think about since it happened. since she’d done it. since he’d brought
it out of her.

he waits until his meeting ends, but he texts her anyway.

draco’s face is practically buried in his phone. he can’t remember the last time he went toe-to-toe
with a witch like this. or a time when he ever felt this… curious. intrigued. besotted, if he was
being honest with himself.

gods, he was in trouble.

but now the pressure was on. just as she’d surprised him, he wanted — needed — to return the
favor. to prove himself to her. he sets his sights on pansy and cho, as promised.

as the texts roll in from draco and pans(y), cho isn’t sure what to make of them. it’s odd enough that
he’s the one suggesting it, but hermione would never agree to it. right? she decides to text, just to
make sure.
it doesn’t take long for cho to get back to him — but when she does, draco can’t help but feel that
she’s onto something. something she doesn’t necessarily like.
and as soon as the details are worked out, pansy’s texting him, too.

draco’s good mood is tossed aside as quickly as it had come over him.
when his phone buzzes again a few minutes later, he almost ignores it.

he thanks merlin and morgana that he doesn’t.

he’s not sure whether it’s impulse or defiance that pushes him over the edge, but he thanks them for
that, too.

and suddenly, the sun feels even brighter.

 the warning

hermione gets back from france on friday evening and launches into preparations for the match.
usually, clothing was the least of her concerns, since blaise had long ago curated her wardrobe of
ministerial selections. this felt different.

a courier arrives with a parcel not long after. she unwraps its contents and finds the jersey on top,
“malfoy” etched in bold letters across the back. the rest of the outfit is tasteful — casual, but
elevated. refined and modern. and the matching boots are, dare she say… sexy.
as she texts cho, the conversation takes a turn she wasn’t expecting. she immediately scorns herself,
because of course she should have known. hermione drops the outfit and collapses on her couch,
rubbing a finger at her temple between texts.
hermione can’t help but feel like she’s in the midst of an ambush. both of her closest friends (and
apparently, their husbands) warning her about the man she’s “dating” for public consumption? the
man who makes her heart skip a beat whenever his name pops up on her—

oh, no.
she’s defensive, if only to make them stop the barrage of texts warning her about what she should
have feared all along. hermione is smart. she knows how to read a room. she would’ve figured it
out by now if draco was buttering her up just to use her and lose her… right?
before she can ponder it, he sends her a text. she thinks about hiding her new concerns until she’s
had a chance to process them, but he’s far too quick to clue in, even over texts. he’s disarming her,
and she’s comfortable, whether she likes it or not.
he more he texts, the more her smile grows. the more she looks forward to seeing him tomorrow.
the more her friends’ warning seems to fade into the distance. she might not fully understand his
motives, not yet. but damn, if she isn’t having fun.
 the game

quidditch has come naturally to draco his entire life. rarely has he been nervous before a game: his
first with the falcons, a few tough matches as captain.

today, he’s terrified.

he texts his mates in a last-ditch effort to prepare himself.

of course, it didn’t work. he takes a seat on his usual bench beside his locker and bounces his leg
tirelessly in anticipation, eyes fixed on his phone despite the pre-game chaos of the locker room. he
can’t help but text her.
it was impossible not to flirt with hermione. or was it “flirting”? it was getting harder for draco to
tell. but she sends a photo and wishes him good luck and he knows, right then and there, that this is
far more than “flirting” to him.

he just needs to show her.

hermione tucked her phone in the pocket of her jacket and peeked into the mirror one last time.
blaise dressed her in a black peacoat and a falcons jersey with “malfoy” emblazoned above the
soaring bird logo. she’d tucked it into the taupe knit skirt he selected, one end loose by her hip, and
topped it all off with knee-high leather boots that she was sure draco was ogling at in his locker
room now.

it was a far cry from the blazer-and-trousers power suit sets she gravitated toward most days.
frankly, she looked hot . it was a shame she was too nervous to enjoy it.

it wasn’t that draco deserved her anxiety, but regardless of her best efforts otherwise, his attempts
to woo her were working – painfully so. what started as a friendly competition to outdo him at his
own game had turned into a tit-for-tat that kept her eyes glued to her phone and left her heart
pounding at just the sound of a new text.

despite her friends’ warning and her own best judgment as to his history with witches, she was still
a bit too eager for their post-game coffee, far beyond intrigued at the prospect of him .

he was just so different from what she was used to, from what she once knew him to be. he was a
puzzle to solve, mysterious in the way he made her smile so effortlessly and shared glimmers of
brilliance between the cracks of his carefree facade. but merlin be damned if she was going to fall
for a trap – and that’s what made her nervous. not the flirting, or the charm, but the question of his
motivation behind it all.

her friends were right to warn her.

she stepped into theo and ginny’s living room minutes later to loud conversation and raucous music
cascading across the walls. cho and blaise were sitting on the couch while theo perched at the edge
of the coffee table, the three of them bickering about the merits of placing bets on draco’s final
score. ginny absentmindedly flicked her wand to dispense firewhiskey into shot glasses.

blaise spotted her materializing from the fireplace first, his smile curling into a proud smirk at this
handiwork. cho eyed her next, her jaw dropping in excitement. but it wasn’t until ginny turned her
head to the hearth that all hell broke loose.

“hot mama alert!"

“twirl for us, ‘mione!”

“i’ll bark for you!”

she rolled her eyes at the fanfare and dog whistles, dropping down beside cho on the couch with a
deep sigh as she accepted the shot glass that ginny eagerly sent towards her palm. “relax, all of you
– i’m on the clock, you know.”

“bollocks,” theo said, his eyes following the floating glasses until one arrived at his fingertips.
“blaise, what’s your rate these days? i’d love to see gin in those–”

ginny clapped a hand over her husband’s mouth. “you see me in plenty, thank you very much. now
hurry up and drink, we’ve got to get to the stadium soon if we want to see the falcons take the
field.”
“there’s only one falcon hermione wants to see,” theo grumbled when his mouth was released.

“to a smashing win!” blaise called out.

“for both of them,” cho added, grinning at her from across the room.

the group raised their glasses and hermione downed hers admirably, wincing at the burn of the
firewhiskey. she’d certainly need all the courage she could get… even in liquid form.

it didn’t take long for them to floo to the stadium, collect their tickets, and find their seats high up
in the stands. draco had reserved them a bench at the front of the falcons’ team box with a clear
view of the field in all directions. she couldn’t help but notice the way that theo and blaise flanked
her as they emerged from the stairs into the open air, only moving aside once cho and ginny had
taken their seats beside her, and her eyes scanned across the pitch to see what they’d been hiding
her from.

cameras. lots of them. nearly all of them trained on her .

there was a stand solely dedicated to press, by the looks of it – the entire box seemed to light up in
the flashes of their photographs. hermione straightened her posture and crossed her legs, tempted to
hide behind the collar of her jacket or perhaps leave the pitch altogether.

“maybe you should wave?” cho encouraged, and ginny squeezed her hand.

right. this was her job now. this would be her life , if she won.

hermione cleared her throat and looked towards the press box, waving slightly and smiling as
brightly as she could muster. the motion slipped her coat to the side to reveal malfoy’s name on her
shirt even more clearly, evoking another round of flashes from the cameras.

thankfully, the undue attention didn’t last long – the sound of trumpets turned all the cameras away
from her and down to the opening at the pitch below. the appleby arrows emerged first, soaring low
on their brooms and then high up into the air to the sound of cheers from half of the stadium,
though theo had broken out into a loud hiss.

another blow from the trumpets signaled the falcons’ entrance, and hermione leaned forward in her
seat to watch as their players took the field. they flew out one after another, rising into the air and
finding their places above the ground until draco, at the back of the pack, flew out onto the pitch to
roars from the falcons fans.

his eyes were trained right at her.

her breath hitched in her throat.

the referees released the balls and the game began. hermione half-listened as cho and ginny
remarked on their favorite players and blaise and theo jeered and whooped, but her eyes were fixed
on draco.

he was focused, tossing the quaffle and dodging bludgers and sending out messages to his team all
at once. it didn’t take long for her to realize exactly why he was named captain: he seemed to have
eyes on everything simultaneously, efficiently multi-tasking between every layer of the game. he
considered strategy and delivered instruction in equal measure.
he’d make a good coach.

it went on like this for over an hour, and the longer they played, the more hermione found herself
enrapt by the game. she hadn’t felt this involved since her hogwarts days, and it made her feel
lighter despite the pressure of the cameras and the day as a whole. soon enough she was cheering
right along with her friends, laughing and thoroughly enjoying herself as the game continued.

“look!” ginny called as the falcons reached two hundred points. the snitch was glimmering
overhead between two stands across the field. the seekers spotted it from opposite ends of the pitch
and flew towards it, meeting each other in the middle just as the snitch began racing down, down,
down towards the ground.

the seekers dove after it, twirling around each other in a downward spiral towards the snitch, and
hermione’s eyes darted between them and draco, who sunk a quaffle into the goal in the midst of
the chaos and continued delivering signals to his team.

the crowd clambered to their feet, falling near-silent as the seekers sunk lower and lower, and soon
the entire pitch had slowed to a halt to watch, immobilized by the suspense, the match so close in
hand to either one of them…

suddenly, the players split apart. hermione’s heart was pounding, theo had taken ginny into his
arms, and blaise was gripping tightly at cho’s hand. she bit her lip as she watched their reactions:
the arrows’ seeker flew down toward the ground, while the falcons’ seeker pumped his snitch-filled
fist in the air.

it was over. the falcons had won.

the crowd roared, the cameras flashed, and the entire team began to whoop and holler on the field,
circling on their broomsticks and cheering in celebration. hermione was just as thrilled, jumping
and cheering in glee, so distracted that she barely noticed as one player flew up while the rest flew
down.

he flew straight up to their stand until he was right in front of her.

draco hovered on his broom before hermione, hair disheveled and the nape of his neck glistening
with sweat, smirking at her until her smile faded and her eyes widened and–

he grabbed her by the collar of her jacket and pulled her into a kiss.

she was caught off-guard at first, lips pursing under the pressure of his as the sounds of her friends’
gasps and the cameras’ rapid shutters coursed through her. but draco’s warm palm slipped up to her
neck, his fingers brushing over her earlobe while his thumb hooked beneath her jaw, tilting her
head back to deepen the kiss…

and she let him.

her lips parted and her tongue slipped into his mouth, and she could practically feel him smirking,
and the sounds and the sights all melted away, and it was just her and draco up there alone, and she
knew it was too much, she knew it was unplanned, she knew it was wrong –

but gods, if it didn’t feel so right.

he broke the kiss a moment later. he leaned his forehead against hers as they caught their breath, his
exhale rolling across her skin and sending gooseflesh up her spine. her eyes fluttered open to find
his, heavy-lidded and staring right her, so fiery she thought his gaze alone might burn through her.
her hand raised to touch him just as he pulled away, his beaming smile revealing dimples she hadn’t
known were there.

without a word, he spun back on his broom and flew down to the pitch.

pansy is far away from the game — currently locked in a heated doubles tennis match at her
upscale witch’s club — when her phone begins to buzz uncontrollably. her eyes nearly pop out of
their sockets when she sees the reason for the disturbance.

she brushes off her doubles partner and heads to the sidelines to text cho and theo rapidly, calmly
entering crisis mode as if she could do it in her sleep.

who was she kidding — of course she could.

step one: collect the necessary information.

step two: contain, contain, contain. step three… well, that was where the rules varied. and pansy
doubted she’d be able to follow her usual plan with these two.
meanwhile, hermione darts into the nearest loo before she allows herself to panic. she can’t text
cho, or gin, or either of their husbands. she certainly can’t text draco. no, there’s only one witch in
the universe who may be able to calm her down.
she can barely relish in pansy’s surprisingly reassuring pep talk before her phone buzzes into
oblivion with new texts, this time from all her friends.
hermione cringes and scoffs and smirks in equal measure, and when her heartbeat finally stills, she
straightens her skirt and heads for the door.

she’s only got a pint or two between her and her date with draco now.

she turns back to double check her hair in the mirror, too.
 the pub

draco races through his post-game routine afraid he’s botched his chances with hermione. his
damned impulses, her irresistible temptation… but a few texts from blaise and theo make him
wonder if she might let him take her on a date after all.

even so, he needs to be certain she won’t behead him when he makes his appearance — and there’s
only one way to do that. draco takes three cleansing breaths before he caves in and texts his mates’
wives.
he takes a few steps towards the apparition point, but pauses on his way. hermione needs him to be
direct, and he won’t be prepared to face her unless he confronts her, and his own impulses, head-on.

so he wisens up and texts her — and he thanks all the gods above that he does.
by the time draco arrived at the pub near the stadium, it was filled with throngs of fans and
teammates. normally, this is what he looked forward to the most out after every match – the chance
to numb himself with a few too many drinks, maybe take home a leggy witch for a mindless shag.

the thought suddenly filled him with shame.

as he walked through the threshold his teammates cheered his arrival, raising their glasses and
clapping him on the back. he knew exactly what they were expecting from him: rowdy, charming
captain malfoy, ready to knock back pint after pint and play the field with them.

but there was only one person he came here to see.

draco scanned the pub until he spotted hermione at a table towards the back, leaning against a
window sill, laughing at something ginny was saying, her neck tilted back, the sunlight framing her
curls just so–

“gawk any harder and you’ll start drooling, mate.”

theo had appeared beside him, nudging his bicep to awaken him from his stupor before handing
him a pint of cold beer. draco took a languid, hearty sip before he turned to face him.

“i want her, theo,” he admitted. blaise wasn’t far behind, and he nodded in greeting as he joined
them. “that kiss was bloody amazing.”
“don’t do this to yourself, draco. you know what’s going to happen,” blaise said.

“do i?”

“you do this every time,” theo whined. “you obsess over a witch for a few weeks, convince her to
shag you, and then it’s onto the next one.”

“not this time.” draco’s gaze found hermione again, this time traveling from her face down to his
name written across her chest and her luscious thighs peeking out from her skirt. “it’s different with
her, i swear.”

“you said that about padma. and demelza.”

“and alicia – we all know how that panned out. and romilda, just last month.”

draco shook his head, downed half his pint, and looked between the two of them. “i don’t know
how it happened either, believe me. i used to hate her – you know how i was when we were in
school. but she’s… fuck, she’s something else.”

theo and blaise glanced at each other.

“she’s whip smart. and funny, surprisingly. and she keeps me on my toes. and she wants to talk to
me about things no one else does. and she–”

“alright, mate, we get it,” theo huffed. “look, just leave it be for the rest of the day at least, yeah?
we’ve got pans to deal with after your stint, and whether you like it or not, you’re both doing this
for another reason.”

“it’s your job,” blaise agreed. “something tells me granger wouldn’t be satisfied with just keeping
you on your toes if you screw this up for her.”

“gods willing. maybe she’ll have me on my knees instead.”

draco wagged his eyebrows at his friends’ mutual groans.

“now if you’ll excuse me…” he left blaise and theo behind, heading straight for hermione’s table.

“hello, ladies,” he greeted the three witches, ignoring cho and ginny’s disdainful stares in favor of
hermione’s sheepish grin. “do you think i could steal the witch of the hour for a moment?”

“whatever you’ve got to say to her, you can say in front of us,” cho muttered. ginny nodded in
agreement.

“come on, now. one kiss for the cameras and i’m suddenly your greatest enemy?”

“you could’ve at least talked it over first,” ginny retorted.

“sure, but then it wouldn’t have been a surprise.”

“hermione hates surprises.”

“not always,” hermione murmured, taking a sip of her drink to hide the flush blooming across her
cheeks.
ginny and cho shot each other the same glance that theo and blaise had moments prior.

he was beginning to dislike that look.

“i just wanted to talk about how we’ll handle pans come monday,” draco went on. “maybe we
should greet her with coffee in the morning. i hear she likes lattes.”

hermione hid her growing smile behind another gulp of her drink. that look was one he could get
used to.

cho shrugged. “that sounds more like a you problem, malfoy.”

“thought we were all on the same team, chang.”

“it’s chang-zabini.”

“alright,” ginny said, clearing her throat loudly. “i need to hit the loo. cho? ‘mione?”

“yeah, me too,” cho said.

“i’m good, actually,” hermione replied, and both witches looked at her as though she’d robbed
gringotts.

“well… we’ll be right back. hands to yourselves, yeah?” ginny said with a nervous chuckle as she
and cho walked off.

“i don’t know if i can promise her that,” draco said when they fell out of earshot, planting a hand at
the window sill inches away from hermione’s hip. “not when you’re wearing this .”

“you really are an insufferable little tramp,” she quipped, mischievous amber eyes looking up at
him beneath her lashes.

“i thought we agreed on seductress?” draco leaned in, angling his lips towards her ear as he added,
“and there’s nothing little about me, love.”

“i can’t believe this worked on all the other witches.”

“quite well, actually. it was just practice for you, though.”

“you know, i prepped notes from my beauxbatons visit,” hermione said with a giggle – an actual ,
helplessly girlish giggle that rang like music in his ears. “but something tells me you’re not going
to let me walk through them.”

“of course i will. i can be a good boy, when i want to be.”

the distance between them was closing again, and the pub felt far, far away as her fingers found his
belt loop and tugged gently. “what if i don’t want you to be good?”

he would’ve kissed her again right then and there if he hadn’t seen cho and ginny returning from
the corner of his eye.

he pulled away, leaving his hand where it rested on the sill beside her, and hermione’s fingers
brushed along his thigh as her hand returned to her side.
“cheeky,” he whispered just before the witches arrived at the table. theo and blaise weren’t far
behind, another round of drinks floating behind them and landing on the table.

“so, what’s the plan?” theo asked, rubbing his palms together. “are we getting sloshed and painting
the town red?”

“i think i should get going soon, actually. i imagine it wouldn’t be wise for a prospective deputy
minister to have more than a drink or two.”

“in public, at least.” ginny wrapped her arm around hermione’s shoulder and eyed draco’s palm
beside her for a beat too long. “what goes on in private is none of anyone’s concern.”

draco arched a brow towards her, but ginny’s expression offered nothing more.

“should we head back to ours, then?”

“not this time,” blaise answered, reaching for cho’s palm and giving it a chaste kiss. “we’ve got
dinner plans.”

“well, let’s finish this round at least, and then we’ll all go our separate ways.”

“perfect.” draco lifted his glass. “to good friends and easy matches.”

“here, here!”

while everyone else tipped their glasses and took enthusiastic sips, hermione brought her free hand
to the sill beside his. he brushed his pinky against hers, smirking when she looped her knuckle
around his.

it stayed there as they set down their drinks.

it stayed there as their friends began to chat about work schedules and the week ahead.

it stayed there until the last sips had been drained and everyone began to say their goodbyes.

and when their tiny touch finally broke apart as the group made to leave, draco quietly mourned its
loss.

he was a goner.

draco sends hermione a quick text as they head for the apparition point. he lingers behind the
group, watches as she texts him with a coy grin.

he immediately regrets asking her to meet in an hour. it’ll be the longest of his life.
 the cafe

hermione apparated back to her flat and immediately collapsed onto her couch, hiding her face in
her hands.

she had kissed draco. she had touched draco, just barely. she had held his hand – his pinky, rather –
for the better part of half an hour. and she wanted more .

whenever she was within six feet of his presence, it was as though every warning her friends had
bestowed upon her simply vacated her mind, leaving her entirely powerless to his near-hypnotic
charm. no man had ever left her feeling quite as interested as he always managed to.

and their flirting, competitive or not, was stoking a facet of her personality that she’d buried for
years. he evoked the parts of her that were intriguing, confident, mysterious – maybe even alluring.

at least draco seemed to think so… and that seemed to be enough.

what was so wrong about her interest in him, anyway? they’d be stuck together publicly for the
next six months – five, really, now that the first had nearly passed. the campaign was only going to
become more stressful, more exhausting, and a few good snogs could perhaps help alleviate a bit of
the pressure.

though good was an understatement, if today’s performance had been any indicator.

she spent her hour between the pub and the cafe failing to meditate, pacing back and forth across
her flat, and tugging listlessly at errant strands of curls. she decided to change, replacing his jersey
with a chic white blouse, but kept the rest of her outfit as it was.

no matter what she did, her nerves remained nearly unbearable. would he kiss her again? would she
like it as much if he did? were her friends right – that he’d win her over and lose interest and leave
her hungry for him? what was she even doing fretting over a man of all things?

she left her flat with a false sense of resolve, taking a deep breath, straightening her shoulders, and
heading for the door with a fabricated pep in her step.

the apparition point in mayfair was two blocks from the muggle cafe he’d selected, and as she
approached, she spotted him already sitting at a table outside. he’d changed, too, from a jumper and
jeans to a button-down and slacks. there were two lattes and a croissant sitting on the table before
him. his leg bounced beneath the table, and hermione grinned at the thought that perhaps she wasn’t
the only one facing a bout of nerves.

draco noticed her moments later and reached up a palm in silent greeting. she returned the gesture
before taking the final steps toward him.

“i’ll be honest,” he said, his hand slipping to the nape of his neck as she sat across from him. “i got
here ten minutes after i texted you.”

hermione laughed, tilting her head back, suddenly unrestrained. “i wish i’d known. i was just
pacing around my flat like a madwoman for an hour.”
“i don’t believe that for one second.”

“well, you’re going to have to take my word for it.” she peered down into the drink he’d gotten her:
an artfully-poured latte in a porcelain mug, still steaming, and he stealthily removed its stasis charm
with a flick of his wrist. “thanks for the coffee.”

hermione eyed him as she took a sip. draco was leaning back in his chair, legs spread, hands in his
lap, staring at her. drinking her in, really – his eyes raked down her frame like he wanted to eat her
alive.

she crossed her legs.

“what?” she finally asked.

he shook his head. “i’m just trying to figure out how i got so lucky. how i earned this.”

“by flirting with me nonstop for weeks, obviously,” she quipped.

“sure,” he replied, reaching to take his own mug in hand. “but that’s not serious , hermione. and
you’re a very serious witch.”

she pondered him for a moment, taking her own time to observe him as he drank from his cup. he
was painfully nonchalant, and she knew he was acting for her again, hiding what he really wanted
to say behind smooth lines and coquettish posturing.

two could play that game.

“i’m not serious all the time.” hermione leaned forward until her elbows rested on the table. “and
something about you makes me want to let loose.”

“funny, because something about you makes me want to be more serious.”

“why do you think that is?” she asked. “after all this time. after how much we hated each other. i
mean, i punched you in the face , malfoy.”

“and i’ve never forgotten it.” draco chuckled, a low, rumbling sound that nearly made her shudder.
“maybe that’s why. there’s not many people who can say they’ve seen through me like you have.”

“these days you’re about as transparent as a brick wall.”

“well, since you like our little deals so much,” he began, crossing his arms over his chest. “tell me
why you really think we’re here, and i’ll do the same.”

hermione inhaled deeply and looked down into her drink. moments of vulnerability were rare for
her. but a deal was a deal, and draco’s gaze hadn’t left her once since she’d sat down, and maybe
he’d slipped some veritaserum in her latte after all.

“it’s not just the flirting. i feel like i can… talk to you. tell you things i can’t tell anyone else. and i
don’t know if it’s because i’ve fallen into your trap and you have me wrapped around your finger or
because…”

she trailed off, peering up at him to find his eyes still fixed on her. he nodded.
“i spent my entire adolescence judging people, and look where that got me. i gave up on it a long
time ago,” he said, arching a brow at her. “and something tells me that very few people in your life
are actually listening to you right now.”

“that’s not true! i have cho, and ginny, and–”

draco broke into a smirk, the outline of his tongue sweeping against his lower lip.

“oh. so you know what they told me.”

“they haven’t been shy about it,” he replied. “and for the record, my friends aren’t keen on it either.
i’ve got a bit of a history, you see.”

“you think so?” she grinned. “it doesn’t scare me, you know. if anything, it intrigues me.”

“oh yeah?”

“yeah. what’s so wrong with you that all these witches have you on their shit list?”

hermione bit her lip as if it would take away the curse she’d let slip. it only made draco’s smirk
grow into a self-satisfied simper.

“i think the better question is why you haven’t investigated for yourself.”

“i don’t think you’ve quite earned that yet.”

“what do i need to do? beg you?”

“maybe.”

his eyes were pure fire again, just as they’d been when he kissed her on the quidditch pitch. the tip
of his shoe brushed against hers beneath the table. the air suddenly felt thick, too dense for her to
properly breathe.

hermione squeezed her thighs together.

“your turn,” she whispered, and she leaned back in her chair to watch him.

hermione was staring at him with wide amber eyes that made him fear his heart would burst from
his chest. it wasn’t just that she was pretty – she captivated him with every word that fell from her
lips. if she told him to jump, he was certain he’d only ask how high.

so when she said it was his turn, he obliged her.

“i feel like i can talk to you, too,” he began. “more than that. i think i’ve been trying to stifle myself
for so long that having you come along without many assumptions has made me…”

he trailed off with a wave of his palm, but hermione was relentless. “made you what, draco?”

“open up. want to try new things again, starting fixing the habits i know are wrong for me.” he
carded a palm through his hair. “like your work. it’s fascinating. and i love hearing you talk about
it, and it makes me want to do more, care more. contribute, somehow.”
she lifted her mug, wordlessly urging him to go on.

“even today, at the match. i had my eyes on you as much as i could manage, and just seeing the way
you relaxed, got excited even? it made me remember why i wanted to do this in the first place.”

the words were tumbling out of him now, and he was powerless to stop them.

“you’re just so passionate . it’s infectious. and gods, hermione, when you flirt with me? you set me
on fire. you make me want to–” he tugged at the strands of hair between his fingers as hermione’s
brows shot up. “i’m babbling, aren’t i?”

“just a bit.” she set her mug down and stared him straight on. her gaze had shifted into something
more composed, more postured. “can we talk seriously, for a moment?”

he nodded, even though all he wanted to do was kiss the worry out of her.

“i don’t date . i could feel as… interested in you as you are me, but that doesn’t necessarily mean
i’d want to act on it.”

now it was his turn to urge her to continue. he mimicked the sip she’d taken before, relishing in the
weak smile it earned him in response.

“it’s just that i’m so busy, draco. i’m running a department, i’m traveling all the time. i’m trying to
win a public office, and if i do, there’ll be talk of a ministerial run when kingsley retires – whether i
want it or not.”

she sighed, and he could practically feel the strain leaking out of her with it.

“i don’t want to burden you with all that.”

normally, when a witch so much as mentioned what their relationship would look like next week,
let alone in five years, draco would run for the hills as fast as he could.

but he couldn’t do that with hermione. and for the first time in a long time, he didn’t want to.
talking about the future, about her concerns for what they’d look like together – it didn’t scare him.

it did the opposite, actually.

“well, first things first. when you say you could feel interested in me,” he started. “do you mean to
say that you are?”

she said nothing, and for a moment draco feared he’d been imagining it all. but then her palm slid
across the table and found his beside their mugs, and she linked her pinky with his again, giving it a
tiny tug.

he beamed.

“i understand that you’re busy, and i know how important your work is to you. it’s becoming quite
important to me, too.”

the first hint of a smile began to curve at her lips.

“but let’s take a page from my book and not worry too far ahead for now, yeah? we don’t have to
get caught up in what our lives might look like then when we’re still trying to figure out what this
all means now .”

draco glanced down at their interlinked pinkies. slowly, he stretched the rest of fingers to rest over
her palm – he heard her breath catch in her throat, felt a slight twitch of her fingertips beneath his.
but he held steady, stroking his thumb against hers until she settled under his touch.

“because if we keep going down the path we’re on, hermione, i can promise you that i’ll do
whatever i need to make it work.”

hermione was quiet for a few minutes after that, and draco let her be. she was deep in thought – he
could tell by her furrowed brow and the slight wrinkle in her nose – and when she emerged from
her reverie, she was all business. determined. sincere.

taking him seriously.

“alright, draco, i agree to your terms. but i want you to try something different.” she made sure she
had his full attention – of course she did – before she continued. “the flirting is fun, and believe me,
i like it. but it’s a game to you. it’s a distraction. i know you’re interested in talking about more
meaningful things with me, so let’s.”

“i am,” he said with a nod. “but i’d be remiss if i didn’t tell you how much i like seeing what it does
to you – who you become. playful, flirty, relaxed. it’s nice. rather cute, if i can say so.”

hermione scoffed, but he only admired the way her teeth pulled against her bottom lip at the
compliment. “pansy was right. we both have something the other needs.”

“she usually is,” he chuckled. “alright, i’ve heard your concerns and i’d like to make a
proposition.”

“ooh, a business proposal? a man after my own heart.”

“i most certainly am.” she rolled her eyes, but he only grinned. “i want to keep seeing you,
hermione, like this . i want to talk with you about your work and hear all your thoughts and
brainstorm with you, when you’ll have me. but i also want to woo you, and win you over, and
charm you the way you deserve to be charmed.”

“so what’s the proposition?”

“a compromise, really. we keep texting, and we keep flirting because it’s fun and you’re allowed to
have it. but we meet in-person once a week to talk over the serious bits.”

hermione considered him for a moment. “i could get behind that.”

“good,” he said, leaning closer to her. “because i think i’m just about done talking right now.”

“what do you–”

his lips were on hers again before she could finish her sentence.
their date lasted hours. they talked about beauxbatons, they switched from coffee to wine, and
draco kissed her again and again — as many times as she’d let him.

it was brilliant. it was bliss. he went to bed enamored, fulfilled, happy.

and then the prophet arrived.

 the aftershocks

pansy parkinson isn’t a smoker, but when she lays eyes on the front page of the sunday morning
prophet, it’s the closest she’s ever gotten. it’s not even worth reaching out to the handlers alone.
they’re all on her shit list for this.

the barrage of side texts begins almost immediately. theo starts by texting draco, more shocked than
anything else — though perhaps he shouldn’t be.
cho, meanwhile, is thrilled with neither pansy’s reaction nor hermione’s shortsightedness. and rash
behavior. and pointed disregard of all of her and gin’s friendly warnings. but that’s hermione for
you — at the end of the day, she does what she wants.
and of course, draco texts hermione. he should know to expect that their texting never lasts long
without dissolving into flirtation by now… but it still gets him every time.
it’s not long before pansy brings the team back together. there’s too much at stake to dither. this is
the problem with working with so-called friends, she reminds herself — that they are so damn hard
to whip into shape.
she starts with her plan for the malfoy side of the equation: she needs quiet. he’s always been a
magnet for the spotlight, but his shine has dulled granger’s enough for one news cycle.
the plan for granger comes next, and of course, she’s not keen on what needs to happen next. it’s a
pivot, and a harsh one, but it comes with the territory.

and maybe a delay of game is just what she and draco need to slow down and smell the roses.
hermione’s frustrated. running for office is no joke, and she knows there’s an entire campaign
riding on her shoulders, yet she can’t help but feel like she’s being… punished.

leave it to draco to somehow ease her stress over it all in just a handful of texts.
 the it girl
Chapter Notes

TW: Very mild NSFW in this chapter.

hermione embarks on her whirlwind international tour as directed. pansy’s favorite journalists
follow her across the world, dropping articles in the prophet, the quibbler, and most recently, a
feature in witch weekly.

a month flies by.

the day the interview drops, she returns to her hotel room in são paulo in the evening, tired from a
long day of meetings and negotiations with the brazilian ministry’s trade department. of course,
there are a few celebratory texts from ginny and cho.
the ministry gala is no surprise — hermione usually attends, shakes hands, and scurries home after
a flute of champagne or two — but speaking? with draco on her arm? it’s far from pansy’s worst
idea… and she can’t help the pang of excitement that it strikes in her.
she finally turns to draco’s texts, which have been awaiting her response all day.

of course she read them earlier. of course she’d been giddy. but she was also busy being smart and
sexy, as he put it — so what if she left him alone with his thoughts for a few measly hours?
they’d gotten into some habits while hermione had been away.

it started with good morning texts, which grew into good nights. then came the phone and floo
calls, when time zones and schedules permitted. plus, draco’s latest innovation: the daily photo
exchange.
draco’s photo comes through and her heart skips a beat. she plays it off as much as she can
whenever he sends her one, but it’s getting harder to feign a lack of interest when said interest is
VERY much there. luckily for her, she has a way to change the subject just as quickly.
she’s learned a few other things about draco along the way. for starters, he’s just as infuriating as
he’s ever been, though somehow it only makes her laugh. his charm is so organic she’s starting to
think it’s not an act - just an innate part of him.
but she’s gotten better at the game they’re playing, too — more comfortable with the idea of
“dating” and dating draco. she’s learned how to leave him as flustered as she tends to be when he’s
around. her return to london can’t come soon enough.
 the great news

draco wakes up to a good morning text from hermione. how he got so lucky, he isn’t quite sure, but
it’s been two months and every text still sets his heart on fire. and her photos, well… they excite
other parts of him just as much.
he’s got practice and playbook prep today, but the ministry gala - he’d have to remind hermione to
tell him what “prom” is - remains fresh on his mind. from the safety of his bed, he decides to get
the difficult part out of the way.
with pansy placated (for now) and a game plan in the works, he decides to break the news to blaise
next - or so he thinks.
draco’s feeling fairly chuffed with himself by the time he gets out of bed, but when he emerges
from his morning shower, he spots a few texts from theo. and they’re… curious.
a coaching offer from an international team would be huge, and the more draco reads, the better it
all seems. he should be excited.

but all he can feel is his stomach twisting into a tight knot.

theo’s right. this is his dream. so why does it suddenly feel like his nightmare?
he makes it through the day, even a strained celebratory pint with theo, then he heads straight back
to his flat and into bed where the day had felt so promising hours before.

he tries to text hermione, but for the first time with her, he can’t find the right words.
while he agonizes over what to say to her, she texts him instead. it only makes it harder to tell her
what he needs to.

things are going so well between them. she makes him happier than he’s been since… he’s unsure.

so he bottles it up for now, paces restlessly in his kitchen.

draco feels wounded, even if the thought of a weekend stolen away in hermione’s flat sounds like
paradise on earth.

he sips his tea in the quiet for some time before he gets back into bed.

there’s always tomorrow.

 the curiosity
Chapter Notes

TW: The entire chapter is NSFW and contains smut.

a few days later finds hermione’s time in brazil coming to a close. her portkey is arranged, and
she’s got just another few days of negotiations to go.

it has her feeling unusually antsy.

she wakes up to an early text from draco.

most of the time, their flirting comes easy to her. it’s a game, it’s a tease.

but occasionally, draco surprises her. reminds her that there’s still so much yet to uncover with him.

she heads off to her first meeting with an unfamiliar ache between her thighs.
the next time her phone buzzes, her heart skips a beat, and she can’t help but glance at it mid-
conversation.

it’s ginny. she waits to respond, and she’s glad she does, because the prospect of having “juicy
details” to share is both terrifying and… something else.
the next text comes during a working session, and it’s the one she’s been waiting for.

her breath catches. the ache worsens.

fun. she’s allowed to have fun.

so she sneaks into the empty hallway, hikes up her skirt, and sends her response before she can
overthink it.
the rest of the day passes at a glacial pace.

all she can think about is her phone, and draco on the other side of the world, and by the time she’s
heading to her last meeting she’s squeezing her thighs together.

he texts her again. she can’t help herself.

she doesn’t do this. she doesn’t sext. she barely ever gets off, on her own or otherwise.

but she’s desperate in a way she’s never felt before, wound up by the anticipation alone. and she
begins to understand the new game they’re playing.
draco had been waiting for this. if he’d had his way, he would’ve taken her to bed the moment she
even hinted at her interest in doing so. but the distance placed between them forced him to slow
down, to get to know her – and fall for her, whether he liked it or not – before they took the first
step beyond the invisible barrier they’d been toeing for weeks.

and he knew, even if she hadn’t told him outright, that she wasn’t as comfortable with the next
natural stage of their flirting as he was. she’d been open about the fact that she didn’t date , and that
much of their relationship – if he could even call it that at this point – was new territory for her. it
only made him more determined to get this right… to make her feel–

his phone rang moments later, the photo of her from the witch weekly article bright on the screen.
draco stared at it for a few moments, took a deep breath, and answered the call.

“hi,” he murmured expectantly, knowingly. “i’m glad you called.”

“hi,” hermione replied, her voice little more than a squeak.

he imagined her on the other side of the world in a foreign hotel room, spending all day surrounded
by people she barely knew, attempting to bridge gaps between governments and solely responsible
for representing her entire country. the stress would be unbearable for most, and yet she threw
herself neck-deep into it day after day.

was he helping her relax, or just making it worse?

draco sank back into the pillows on his bed. “nervous?”

“no,” she shot back quickly, but he didn’t answer – the sound of his brow arching in suspicion
probably made it across the atlantic. “maybe,” she added, quieter.

“that’s alright. if anything, it makes me want to try this with you more.”

“what do you mean?” hermione asked, though he had a feeling she knew exactly what he meant.
and he wasn’t afraid to be blunt.

“i mean, when was the last time you got off, hermione?”

she nearly choked.

“i think that’s not—”

“that’s exactly your problem. you’re thinking too much.” draco listened to the sounds of her steady
inhales and exhales for some inclination of her reaction, but hearing none, he encouraged her
instead. “answer me, please.”

when she obliged him, her voice was meek – too meek for what he knew of her – and barely above
a whisper. “three months ago?”

“oh, love.” he carded a palm through his hair, brow furrowed in concern. “all this stress you deal
with, all this flirting between us, and not once have you...”

“i’ve been busy, malfoy,” she chided him, but he saw his opportunity and pounced on it.

“and now you’re not.” his fingers dropped down to toy with the waistband of his joggers. “in fact,
all you need to do right now is relax. do you trust me?”

there was barely a pause before she answered. “yes.”

“good. just listen to my voice.” draco looked down at his own body, envisioning her doing the same
on the other side of the world. “where are your hands right now?”

“by my sides.”

“move them to your chest, then run them down your stomach. slowly.”

there was a lengthy pause and weighty silence over the phone. draco’s breath hitched in his throat –
had he gone too far already? did he make the wrong move? he realized, then, that this wasn’t about
intimacy, it wasn’t about getting either of them off to him – it was about helping her decompress
after weeks of undue stress, and building up the burgeoning sense of trust between them, and–

after a moment, he heard her sheets rustling, the sound of her phone being shuffled around.

“can you hear me?” hermione asked, her voice clear as daylight in his ear. “i set the phone down by
my ear, and i’m– i’m–”

“merlin,” he breathed. “tell me what you’re doing. what feels good.”

“i’m running my fingers up and down my stomach. between my… my bra and my knickers.”

draco inhaled sharply and slid his teeth across the inside of his lip. she had no idea what she was
doing to him, how desperately he wished they could do this for the first time in person – but there
was no stopping either of them now.

“imagine i’m there with you. that i’m kneeling over you, kissing down your neck while i touch
every inch of your skin.” she sighed a breathy exhale over the phone, and it only urged him to say
more. “you have no idea how badly i want you. fuck, i wish i was there. or that you were here. or–”
“me too,” she replied. “i want to– will you–”

he paused. “do you want to touch yourself, hermione?”

when his question was met with something of a whimper, he bit back a groan, palming at his own
hardening length through his joggers.

he heard more rustling, then a quiet chuckle. “sorry, i nodded.”

“don’t be sorry, love.” his throat went dry and his voice took on a rasping tone as he continued,
nearly begging her, “will you slip your hand under your knickers and tell me how wet you are?”

draco pressed his phone to his ear as closely as he could. her sheets were rustling again, and he
heard the snap of her waistband against her navel, and then…

he could hear her. fuck, he could hear her – the sounds of her fingers tracing over her skin, running
through her slick folds, faint but unmistakable.

he threw his head back into his pillows in agony.

“gods, i’m so… your voice is…” hermione murmured. “you’re turning me on, draco.”

“you have no idea how hard you’re making me,” he whispered back, and her soft gasp let him
know she liked what she heard. “go slow for me. take your time, like i would.”

“would you?”

“it’d be tough to restrain myself around you – but of course i would. i’d want you to have me on
my knees, splayed out for me–”

she gasped again, and with his teeth pressed firmly into his lower lip, draco finally slipped his own
hand beneath his waistband.

hermione laid frozen in her hotel bed, one hand resting over her breast and the other slowly circling
her wet cunt beneath her knickers. her feigned confidence was dwindling fast at the prospect of
making this – whatever they were doing – real.

because the fact of the matter was that she was inexperienced. she’d never done this before. things
with draco had been moving fast, and there was no denying how much she wanted him, wanted
more – but she’d need to be brave.

it was a good thing hermione was very brave.

“tell me what you’re doing now,” draco whispered to her over the phone, his voice like a devil on
her shoulder, entirely irresistible to her now.

“i’m going slow,” she said. “i’m touching myself, but just… feeling, for now. like i’d want you to,
if you were here.”

she heard his breath catch, then another sound, something unfamiliar. she leaned closer to the
phone resting by her ear on the pillow beside her, discerning rustling, and something slick, and skin
touching skin – and when she realized what he was doing, her cunt clenched tight and a shudder
forced its way across her body.

“draco, are you–”

“yes. i couldn’t help– you were being so– is that alright?”

“ yes ,” she breathed, and as she listened to the sounds of his palm running slowly up and down his
shaft, her fingers finally made their way to her clit. “oh my god–”

“down to muggle curses now, are you?”

“draco!”

“good girl. i want you to say that again when you come for me.”

another clench. another shudder. she pressed harder against her clit, closed her eyes to imagine him
there with her, her fingers tangled in his flaxen hair and his broad shoulders hovering above her
waist as he touched her.

she heard his pace quicken, and encouraged by the sound, she decided to be bold. “i’m running my
fingers over my clit,” she said, following her own instructions as she narrated her actions to him. “i
like t-tight circles, light pressure, and– and–”

“gods, keep going,” draco urged her breathlessly.

she keened her hips up into her palm, bringing her other hand down from her breast and slipping it
beneath her knickers. he must’ve heard the movement – he groaned in her ear, his breath growing
more rapid as he touched himself to the sounds of her .

hermione took a deep breath. “can i– should i–”

“ yes , fuck, i want to hear you do it, granger.”

with a shaky inhale, she slipped two fingers into her dripping cunt, gasping out a low moan as she
curled them and slowly began to match the pace of the fingers circling her clit.

“oh, shit ,” draco hissed in her ear, and her jaw dropped.

hermione continued her ministrations, the sound of draco’s own like a heady drumbeat in her ear,
every motion, every exhale, every groan and whimper and moan sending her to new heights. she
imagined it was his cock fucking her, his fingers slipping between their bodies to nestle at her clit,
his breath rolling against her skin.

“it feels so good–”

“wish it was you–”

she was panting now, tension building in her abdomen, lewd sounds escaping her wet cunt as she
fucked herself harder, curled her fingers inward until she was pressing against a spongy spot in her
front wall that nearly made her wail. draco was just as responsive, his own breathing growing
heavy and his hand moving faster to stroke relentlessly at his cock.
“i’m going to-”

“me too. oh, gods, i’m–”

“ draco ,” she moaned, and her eyes slammed shut as her orgasm drove through her.

her walls clenched around her fingers, but she only fucked herself harder as he groaned helplessly
in her ear, imagining the way he’d come undone, his hair disheveled and his face flushed and
features contorted in ecstasy, hot ropes of his come spurting across his stomach as she drenched her
own hand.

it was only when she heard the sounds of his breathing, rhythmic and utterly spent, cascading by
her ear that she realized she’d come harder than she ever had before.

he hadn’t even touched her.

they sat in silence for a few moments, catching their breath and emerging from their respective
reveries. hermione reluctantly lifted her hands from her knickers and muttered a scourgify to vanish
away the mess she’d made, which only elicited another helpless groan from draco over the phone.

it made her grin, then chuckle, and soon enough they were both laughing lightly in each other’s
ears.

“i feel like i should thank you,” she finally said.

“don’t. the pleasure was all mine.”

“well, not really .”

they dissolved into another bout of laughter – giggles, giddy ones, if she was being honest with
herself.

“did that help you relax?” draco asked her, and there was an authenticity to his question that made
her melt a bit.

she took a deep breath, assessing herself before she answered. her limbs were like jelly, legs spread
out across the mattress and arms dangling on the pillows above her head. her spine was loose, her
skin deliciously sensitive, and her mind clearer than it had been in ages.

“it did,” hermione affirmed, unable to control the smile that overtook her features.

“we could do it again, you know,” he suggested.

“oh, i definitely think we will.”

they fell into a comfortable quiet again, and as hermione stared up at the ceiling of her hotel room
she felt a less pleasant feeling sink into her bones. an ache, a wish, an absence that she felt more
keenly than ever now that they’d crossed this boundary together.

“i miss you,” she whispered, swallowing away the tension that had emerged at the back of her
throat.
“i miss you, too,” he answered, and his tone – somewhere between wistful and forlorn – let her
know he was telling the truth.
 the preparations
Chapter Notes

Endless thanks to @sophiesstreet for the gorgeous art at the end of this chapter!

pansy, as always, had too much to do. working towards offers for draco and facing the three-month
mark of granger’s campaign meant a delicate dance of pr placements and media coverage. she
practically had their handlers on speed dial.
but pansy slips, and cho notices. theo asking about american press is odd, and while pansy might
have diverted her, she didn’t deny it.

cho decides to head to the source, if not for her own sanity, then for hermione’s.
draco, as polite as he’s trying to be with cho, is frustrated. sure, he doesn’t want to tell her the news
of the simmering offer, but he doesn’t necessarily want to tell anyone. it’s too early, nothing’s set in
stone… and who knows if he even wants to go to america, anyway?
he’s not surprised that both pans and theo text him separately as soon as he sets his phone aside.
draco long ago resigned himself to the faculties of his managers, but now he’s got something -
someone - else to consider. the lack of agency is starting to suffocate.
he texts hermione with every intent of telling her. really, he does. but she’s so far away, and
everything between them is so special and fragile and perfect. he’ll tell her. but not yet, he decides -
not until he’s ready.

it’s the only decision he’s allowed to make.

meanwhile, hermione is tying up the last of her loose ends overseas. she’s already bombarded with
gala prep and dimco work she’ll need to catch up on when she returns, as cho reminds her. but all
she can think about is time. time wasted, time she’d rather spend elsewhere.
hermione isn’t surprised when her check-in with cho turns to the matter of draco. he’s just another
agenda item, a thing to manage, and the thought alone pains her.

but cho is right. she wants this. she needs to be the candidate right now, and it’ll only get harder
from here.
she makes it through the rest of the day before she texts draco again, and when she does, he gives
her what no one else can: reassurance. acceptance. support.

it’s exactly what she needs.

she falls asleep that night with her phone by her ear, draco breathing softly beside her.
 the same bloody continent
Chapter Notes

TW: Mild NSFW in this chapter.

cho does indeed work her magic and earn hermione a “free” sunday morning — sort of, at least.
because rather than her usual formula for relaxation, the time is spent preening and pampering
under pansy’s strict guidance.
she’s frustrated enough by pansy’s response that the final wax strip barely evokes a wince. she says
her thank yous and goodbyes before she shoots a pained text to draco.
draco reaches out to pansy himself to try his luck. he knows it’s a futile effort, but enough whining
earns him something of a deal. besides, promising to tell hermione about his coaching prospects
after the gala only means he’ll need to woo her into oblivion to soften the blow.
he reaches out to blaise, expecting fanfare and a fight, and to his credit there is at least a bit of it.
but there’s also a glimmer of something like support. of hope, even. and it makes draco want to run
to her flat right then, damn the photographers.
the rest of hermione’s afternoon goes according to plan. she’s nearly done for the day when blaise
lets her know he’s en route for his swatch test — which means she has just enough time to send
draco a peek at what she’s got on beneath her bathrobe.
draco waits. he paces across his flat, he rocks back and forth on his heels. when he finally gets the
texts he’s been waiting for, he relishes in them for a moment. her reaction — unlike her, but
perhaps more like her than he or anyone else realizes — makes him beam.
his smile grows beyond what he thinks is possible for his face to contain, until he feels like he’s
floating, only brought back to earth by hermione’s demand to call him. he complies faster than he
ever has before.

fuck, the gala can’t come soon enough.

 the reunion
Chapter Notes

TW: Mild NSFW in this chapter.

hermione awoke on the morning of the gala with a fire in her heart.

this was her chance to turn the tides. certainly on the election and her portrayal in the press: pansy’s
talking points were solid, her speech was thoughtful and inspiring, and the latest polls showed her
and kingsley primed to soar above mclaggen and robards as the campaign kicked into a higher gear.

but aside from work, she knew pansy’s rules of engagement for her and draco were beginning to
fade. their “relationship” would be made well past official by the coverage of the gala tonight, and
cho had promised her domestic travel for the foreseeable future. she was ready to combat this
forced separation, finally find an opportunity for what was burning between them to blossom into
something tangible.

she was ready for change. she was ready to win, in every race she happened to be competing in. but
today, regardless of the gala and all the havoc that came with it… she was ready to finally reunite
with draco.

hermione arrived at her office in the ministry a few hours before the gala was set to begin. pansy,
cho and blaise had taken over half the dimco unit – from hermione’s office to the main lobby and
every room in between – and declared it team granger’s headquarters for the evening.

by the time she stepped through the fireplace in the lobby, the space was already buzzing.

pansy had claimed the receptionist’s desk, where she simultaneously directed her team of pr agents
and penned a last-minute statement with a quick notes quill. cho had covered half a wall with
seating charts and attendee intel, and members of her and kingsley’s teams had gathered around the
display for a final briefing. two of blaise’s clothing racks were stationed in the middle of the room
while he instructed the cadre of stylists flitting between them.

the lobby was nearly full but she knew more people would soon floo in and out to tend to hair and
makeup, messages to journalists, and gods knew what else.

and, at some point in the evening’s preparations, draco would arrive through that fireplace, too.

that was why, for the first several hours of primping and prepping, hermione’s gaze kept tracking
back towards that hearth, eyeing it for any hints of green flame or flashes of platinum hair.

she was sitting now in a chair before a mirror staged in the corner of the room, clad in a dressing
robe and sandals while a makeup artist tended to her skin.

“let’s do one more walk-through of your schmooze list,” cho urged, approaching her with a stack of
index cards in hand while a floating blush dappled across the apples of her cheeks.
“i’m on diplomats, ambassadors, and trade representatives,” hermione replied in well-practiced
monotone, careful to hold her face still as she spoke. “kingsley takes wizengamot members and
locals tonight. when we see the opponents, we’re polite but don’t linger long. the focus is on the
platform, rallying for the speeches, and getting out the vote.”

cho beamed in her direction. “you’ve got this.”

she was quickly replaced at hermione’s side by pansy, who’d been muttering heatedly into her
phone for the better part of an hour. “we’ve got at least twenty friendlies downstairs, and by my
count robards and mclaggen have less than half that. the prophet should look great tomorrow
morning, assuming you–”

“stick to the script,” hermione followed knowingly with a cheeky grin. “i promise we will.”

she paused, waiting for pansy’s eye roll to abate before she muttered, “pansy, is he–”

“soon,” pansy responded, and her eyes darted up from her phone just long enough to shoot her a
suspicious glance. “but you’ve got bigger things to worry about, granger.”

hermione nodded, though she couldn’t ignore the slight shift toward warmth in pansy’s icy exterior
as she walked away.

chaos quickly ensued around her. on one side of her chair, her hair stylist argued the differing
merits of two hairpieces, and on the other, her makeup artist compared the options against a dozen
tubes of lipstick. blaise crouched in front of her, holding up swatches of fabric from different
segments of her dress against her skin, and somewhere in the background cho and pansy were
bickering or laughing or maybe both–

and suddenly, the floo flashed green.

draco strode out of the hearth as though he owned the place, hair slicked back and shoulders held
high. he was already dressed in the expertly-tailored suit blaise had fitted for him, paired with
shining dragonhide dress shoes and a belt with a silver buckle. but he wasn’t wearing a tie, and the
top three buttons of his shirt were undone beneath his blazer, and hermione had to bite hard at the
inside of her lip to remember who and where she was.

his eyes found hers within an instant and fixed there despite the swarm of activity swirling around
her. everything around her seemed to slow to a halt, the stress and commotion melting away under
his burning gaze. slowly, he raised a palm to offer her a diminutive wave and a lopsided grin, and
she returned it with a tiny wave of her own from where her hands lay folded primly in her lap. as
his palm rose higher to card through his hair, hermione couldn’t help but notice the slight flush that
had drawn up his neck.

gods, she’d missed him.

their quiet, private greeting passed as quickly as it began. pansy was by draco’s side in a matter of
seconds, flagging over another hair stylist to adjust the tresses he’d mussed as she whipped through
the evening’s updates, and draco held her gaze for one pained moment further before he reluctantly
turned away from her.

“blaise,” hermione murmured from her chair. “do we have any time to…” her eyes scanned toward
draco and back to him.
he arched a brow at her, studied the glimmer of desperation she was certain had slipped across her
features, and sighed. “you’ll owe me,” he mumbled back, and she nodded furiously, welcoming
whatever price she’d need to pay.

blaise cleared his throat and stood to his full height. “silver hairpiece, plum lipstick,” he instructed
the stylists with an assertive stare. “but first, i need a moment alone with our client to adjust a
hem.”

the stylists stepped aside and blaise tipped his chin towards the hallway. hermione followed him
dutifully, grinning at cho as he delivered a kiss to her cheek en route and averting her eyes to avoid
pansy’s as she watched them disappear down the corridor.

blaise guided her into a near-empty office, leaving the door open just a crack. he turned on the
lights with a wave of his palm and toyed with the clothing rack in the middle of the room,
mindlessly rustling with the garments hanging there. hermione leaned back against the desk and
watched him in silence.

“thank you,” she finally said.

“for what?”

“you know what.” but blaise was quiet, eyeing her with a sort of devilish assurance she’d grown to
recognize as a shared slytherin trait. “for supporting us. for sticking your neck out.”

“i’m not afraid to admit when i’m wrong,” he replied, his expression growing earnest. “i’ve never
seen him like this with anyone before, granger. you’ve got something good going.”

she could hear her thundering heartbeat in her ears, feel the anticipation tingling at her nerves.

“yeah. yeah, we do.”

as pansy hummed about polling and talking points in his ear and the stylist set to straighten out his
hair, draco’s mind was elsewhere, focused solely on the witch he’d been waiting for. the witch he’d
been near begging to see in person after more than a month on different shores.

he watched her intently as he feigned interest in pansy’s spiel. some alternate plan he wasn’t privy
to began to take shape before him. hermione was whispering with blaise, but her eyes kept darting
back towards him. blaise dismissed the flock of stylists tending to hermione and began guiding her
swiftly through the vestibule and down the hall.

draco tracked their movements closely even as the hectic sounds of the war room carried on around
him, spotting the office they stole away into and the light spilling from a slight crack left in the
doorway.

he’d never find a way to thank blaise for this.

“oh,” he said abruptly, turning his attention back to pansy. “i just realized, blaise has still got my
tie. shall i…”

he trailed off when he realized she was already staring daggers at him. “honestly, one would think
you’d know better than to insult my intelligence by now.”
“please, pans. she’s right there,” he pressed, his own gaze growing fraught.

pansy’s head tilted slightly to the side. an agent flagged her down from the receptionist’s desk
across the room. “it’s not often that you surprise me, draco, and i’m finding that i don’t hate it,” she
said with a laugh as she heeded her colleague’s call, leaving him blissfully alone.

with a sly grin, he tucked his hands in his pockets and strolled purposefully down the hall.

he took a deep breath as he followed the light down the hallway, enveloped by the quiet the further
he got from the chaos of the lobby. his fingers hovered over the doorknob before he felt it turn
beneath his palm, and he stepped back to allow blaise to join him in the hallway.

“all i ask is that you don’t completely fuck up the hair and makeup,” he warned, closing the door
behind him to avoid drawing further attention. “and don’t rip anything. and don’t–”

draco interrupted him with a heavy clap to his shoulders, unable to withhold his smile any longer.
“thanks, mate. i owe you one – more than one.”

“i’ll cover for you, but i’d wager you’ve got ten minutes before they all notice you’re missing.”
blaise shook his head in disbelief as he started back down the hall. “gods love you both. really.”

this was it. there was nothing separating them now, save for a flimsy ministry door.

he threw it open and slammed it shut behind him, and when he looked up, there she was: hermione
granger herself, leaned back against the desk, waiting for him like it was the easiest thing in the
world.

draco dove for her like a man starved.

he was on her in two swift strides, his palms wrapping around her waist, one roaming up between
her shoulder blades and the other down to the small of her back, holding in a tight embrace against
his chest that filled him with inexplicable warmth. her own hands tucked between his blazer and his
oxford and ran across the fabric covering his back. the side of her face pressed against his chest,
and he felt the weight of her exhale as she relaxed into him.

he was certain she could feel his heart leaping out of his chest, because he could feel that flittering
drumbeat moored in his throat, thrumming through his veins, and as he pulled back just enough to
tip her chin towards him and meet her gaze, he realized it might never settle. it might always feel
this way.

and for the first time, the thought of always did not scare him.

“are you alright?” he asked, and as soon as he did he wasn’t sure why – she was perfectly safe, but
she was under enormous pressure, and maybe she was nervous, and–

“i’m fine,” she replied, leaning back and grasping at his biceps, his wrists, anything she could
reach, and he realized she was as touch-starved as he was. “so much better now.”

“i missed you.”

“i missed you .”

“can i–”
she didn’t let him finish. her lips were already pressed against his.

she kissed him with abandon, her lips like velvet against his own, and he met her with equal fervor.
his palms roved her body, one hand dipping down to clutch at her hip through the silken fabric
while the other planted at the edge of the desk beside her, caging her in.

her tongue brushed across his lower lip and he deepened their kiss, letting her explore the ridges of
his mouth. only when his lungs demanded breath did he allow his own mouth to wander – he kissed
the sharp line of her jaw, then traveled down the side of her neck until he found a spot that made
her sigh a breathy exhale into his ear.

her legs parted slightly and he stepped between them, drawing himself closer to the welcoming heat
of her body. draco followed her cues, nipping at the space below her earlobe until she whimpered,
sucking at the divot of her collarbone until her back arched forward. she was so responsive, and his
restraint was dwindling, and he could tell hermione was struggling, too – her fingers slipped into
his belt loops and pulled, and she ground her hips against his until the friction left him slack-jawed
against the crook of her neck.

“fuck,” he murmured into her skin, but it only encouraged her, and before he knew it she was
grabbing for the nape of his neck and tugging him in for a hungry kiss, and her thighs were splitting
wider, and his hands were sliding beneath the hem of her robe, and her supple skin was so soft, so
warm beneath his fingers, and—

hermione’s fingers found his wrist beneath her robe and squeezed. his palm pressed flat against her
inner thigh, kneading helplessly at her flesh. their hungry kisses slowed until they were both
panting, and draco dragged himself away from her, tortuous and slow, his forehead pressed against
hers.

“we should probably…”

“yeah,” he breathed, the tension between them still unraveling him at the seams. “yeah.”

“i want to,” she whispered, her breath rolling across his skin. “there’s nothing i want more.”

his hand drew back to find hers, if only to stop himself from roaming further up her thigh. “but we
should do it right. i want to…”

she nodded, her curls brushing against his cheek. “me, too.”

she craned her neck so she could peer up at him and traced the waves of his knuckles with her
thumb. he reached forward to tuck an errant curl behind her ear, his thumb grazing across her cheek
with the motion.

“this is your night, love,” he reassured her, the palm at her cheek falling to rest at her shoulder.
“you’re going to be brilliant.”

“only because i’ll have you here with me.” she shot him a shy smile, far too demure for the future
deputy minister on the night of the ministry gala.

“no, not only ,” he quipped, a smirk beginning to form. “i mean, sure, i add a certain layer of
charisma to the equation. a dash of malfoy charm. and good looks, obviously.”
“ obviously .” her smile grew more confident, more fiery, and he felt as though he’d grown three
inches taller.

draco took a step back from the desktop, just enough for hermione to stand and straighten out her
robe. he extended an open palm towards her. “come on, then. show me how it’s done.”

hermione glanced down at his palm, then back up to his eyes. “you’re sure about this?” she asked,
though her tone was incredulous, as though she already knew the answer and only sought to affirm
how mad he was.

but draco was done hiding. their friends’ whispers meant little to him now, not when hermione was
back in his arms.

and he wouldn’t be letting her go again.

“absolutely.”

she dropped her palm into his, and he twined their fingers as he reached for the door.

they emerged from the dim office side by side, hand in hand, returning to the chaos of the dimco
lobby together and proud.

blaise spotted them first – he’d been waiting for them, draco was sure – and shot them a minute
grin. cho and pansy were standing together, an array of paperwork between them, and he didn’t
miss the way pansy angled her shoulder to obscure cho’s view of them. he prepared himself for a
barrage that never came, an argument that fizzled amidst the hubbub of the evening, and he
squeezed hermione’s palm in reassurance.

“ready, ms. granger?” one of the stylists asked, gesturing towards the chair he’d found her in when
he first arrived.

hermione looked up at him, and he lifted their interlaced fingers to his lips, brushing a kiss against
her knuckles. her eyes were fixed on his as she answered.

“absolutely.”
 the gala

hermione had gone down the hall with blaise and two stylists five minutes ago. draco watched the
light dance under the doorway of the room they’d vanished into from his seat near pansy’s
appropriated desk.

she was walking him through her final reminders: the photo ops, the agenda, their seats, but he
could only think about hermione – and when the door opened and she emerged in the hallway, all
the other noise disappeared entirely.

her hair was pulled back into a low bun, and sheer gloves covered her forearms up to her elbows.
the dress she wore was sleeveless, a deep indigo blue, the neck and clavicle he’d spent far too little
time exploring on full display. it tapered at her waist and flared out into a flowing satin skirt with a
slit that cut a fine line up to her knee.

she was stunning. she was miraculous.

“you,” he whispered as she approached him. it was all he could think to say.

she smiled nevertheless, and it took his breath away.

cho, pansy and blaise offered their final well wishes, tucking notes into draco’s jacket pocket and
showing off texts from theo and ginny encouraging them to “break legs and take names.”

and then, once hermione had slipped her hand around draco’s elbow, the doors to the dimco unit
swung open, enveloping them in the clamor from the atrium ahead.

the cameras found them almost immediately, bright white flashes and shimmering lenses pointed
down the corridor in their direction before they made it even a few steps ahead. the reporters were
close behind, quick notes quills poised in the air. he felt hermione grow tense beside him, her grasp
tightening around his forearm.

“i’ve got you,” draco assured her, drawing her closer to his side. “they’re all here to see you. you
can do no wrong.”

“there’s a lot of wrong i’d like to do with you, though,” she quipped, granting them equally cheeky
grins as they stepped into the light.

the photographers were relentless in their first moments, just as pansy had warned them. the buzz
about their relationship had only grown during hermione’s world tour, and with the campaign
reaching its critical point, it seemed that the entire country was curious as to whether he’d be along
for the ride.

it was far past time to put those questions to bed, he thought.

draco’s grin grew into a winning smile and his arm lowered to wrap around hermione’s hips. his
thumb brushed against her waist, and he leaned down to press a kiss to her temple that the cameras
flashed double time to capture.
he allowed himself the indulgence for only a few moments before he stepped back and to the side,
away from the cameras as hermione posed alone, draco watching pridefully out of frame. a reporter
found him almost instantly.

“mr. malfoy, how does it feel to see your girlfriend in the spotlight on a night like tonight?”

“better than anything i could imagine,” he replied, watching the quick notes quill scribble his
answer from above before his gaze drifted back to hermione. “she’s perfect. and she’ll make the
perfect deputy minister.”

draco returned to hermione as the flashes began to slow, guiding her through the growing crowd
into the center of the atrium. the chamber had been transformed into something of a ballroom,
packed with well-dressed tables facing a podium by the central fountain. the sounds of a string
quartet and small talk filled the room, and floating trays carried hors d'oeuvres and champagne
flutes to the mingling functionaries.

cho, blaise and pansy would join them soon enough, and the speeches would begin in a few short
hours. until then, draco’s mission was simple: he was hermione’s anchor, the charismatic foil to her
political prowess.

not that she needed it. ever the professional, she was already combing through the crowd. “look,
there’s kingsley and sturgis,” she mused, tilting her head towards another flurry of camera flashes
ahead. “should we say hello?”

draco swallowed. he’d moved on from his criminal history with the majority of wizardkind,
hermione herself most importantly, but he hadn’t seen the minister since his (rather lenient)
sentencing years ago.

she ran her fingers across his forearm, a silent comfort. “he’ll be thrilled, draco. he’s been begging
me to find someone like you for years. besides, sturgis is a falcons fan,” she said with a shrug.

he arched a brow and followed her toward them, his trust in her judgment outweighing the growing
knot in his stomach.

“hermione!” kingsley boomed with a flourish of his robes when he saw her. he strolled through the
sea of cameras, and draco watched in awe as they swirled around him, capturing his every move as
he and hermione met in a jovial embrace.

they turned to pose, the pristine image of two ideal candidates waving for their electorate. he
admired the picture they painted, couldn’t stop himself from imagining that he, too, might be there
in the background some day.

when the cameras had their fill, sturgis returned to kingsley’s side and draco did the same. “ah, mr.
malfoy. a pleasure.”

“good evening, minister shacklebolt,” draco acknowledged with a polite nod.

“you’ve come a long way since i last saw you,” the minister pronounced, his eyes gleaming as
hermione slipped her arm back around draco’s. “though i must say, i wouldn’t have expected to find
you settled down.”
“well, you know hermione better than most,” he replied, beaming down at her. “so you know
there’s no one else worth settling for.”

the gala went on, he and hermione chatting and schmoozing in tandem. they worked through their
list of foreign dignitaries, hermione coloring each interaction with a tidbit of a story or an
expression that spoke volumes. occasionally, cho or pansy would text, pointing them toward an
important functionary or a friendly reporter seeking a quote – but for the most part, they were on
their own.

and for a man who spent his adult life in the spotlight, he found he quite liked supporting hermione
through hers.

“i think it’s going well,” he murmured to her in a spare moment. his palm reached up to brush
across the exposed space between her shoulder blades, and his lips dipped to the shell of her ear,
sweeping against the tender skin as he spoke. “ really well.”

“no way to tell until the prophet drops tomorrow, but i do know one thing.” she turned to face him,
her own hand dropping to rest against his chest as she looked up into his eyes. “i’m having more
fun than ever.”

as the event kicks into full swing, cho, blaise and pansy finish their own preparations and head out
to the atrium. pansy has plenty of her own clients and affairs to attend to at this gala, but it’s not
long before she gets bored with it all and texts team granger.
hermione left draco’s side for the first time that evening feeling light, mirthful. successful, even. as
she navigated the throngs of attendees out to the ministry corridors, her mind swirled with thoughts
of her speech, the diplomats left on her list, how she could ever thank draco for all he was doing to
keep her sane – and in the midst of it, a door opened, and she bumped into the person exiting.

“oh, excuse me–”

she found herself face to face with a black tuxedo, a tight-knotted bowtie, a smarmy, unctuous
smile. the same smile she’d been avoiding for months.

“cormac.”

“hermione.”

she cleared her throat, eyed the empty corridor beside him. “well, nice seeing you,” she murmured,
angling away from him, but his hand planted on her bare shoulder.

she could barely stifle her flinch.

“not so fast. i think we’re a bit overdue for a catch-up, don’t you?” cormac purred in her ear.
“candidate to candidate. friend to friend.”

hermione’s gaze darted back and forth. there was no one around, just the faraway sounds of gala
chatter. cormac was no threat to her – he was just a mosquito, a fruit fly hovering around a long-
rotted mistake. perhaps she’d been naive for thinking she could make it this far without confronting
him. perhaps this was all she needed to do to be rid of him, once and for all.

so she nodded, and she followed cormac back into the room he’d just emerged from.

it was a small ballroom with tall, arched windows, gilded with marble and gold, and she realized as
he closed the door behind her that for all her years at the ministry, she had never been here before.

“we typically reserve this space for dmle events,” cormac explained, gesturing toward a loveseat by
the window.

hermione stood by the door, posture unyielding.

“be that way, then,” he replied, standing before her. “you know, when we dated, i never understood
why you were so uptight. i’m starting to think that’s just who you are.”

“i’d barely call what we had ‘dating,’ cormac,” she corrected, crossing her arms over her chest.

“right, right. you don’t date ,” he chided in a singsong voice. “too bad that doesn’t explain how i–”

“please.” she cringed at the memories: a few too many glasses of wine, dozens of unanswered texts
from his number, cormac writhing above her in the dark. “get to your point.”

“i suppose i’m just curious why you chose to do all this.” he waved a palm toward her, vaguely
highlighting her dress, her makeup, her . “we’ve always shared the same ambitions. we could’ve
worked together. but instead, you launched this childish campaign against me.”

she scoffed, shaking her head. “pretending to believe in the police state drivel you’re peddling is far
from what i’d call a shared ambition. none of this is about you, anyway.”
he snapped back just as quickly. “and parading around with malfoy is what, then?”

hermione inhaled sharply. “it’s none of your business who i choose to spend my time with.”

“oh, please, as if you chose ,” he huffed, taking a step closer to her. “everyone knows you’re
working with parkinson. how soon after you lose does your contract end, hmm? how quickly will
he move on to his next floozy–”

“that’s enough, cormac.”

despite the slight tremor in her tightly-clasped palms, she was beginning to see this for what it was:
a trick. just a desperate chance for cormac to shake her before her speech, to try and fail to sabotage
her. and she knew he was conniving, that he’d do anything to win – but this was low, even for him.

“come on, ‘mione,” he cooed. he reached a hand toward her cheek and she recoiled, nearly tripping
on her gown as she stepped away from him.

“don’t you dare call me that.”

“it’s just so intriguing to me how the mighty have fallen. the golden girl forever tarnished by her
death eater–”

“i said, enough .”

her voice had dropped several octaves, and her arms had fallen to her sides, fists clenched by her
hips. her phone was buzzing where it was tucked into her bra. draco was waiting, and her speech
was coming up, and she didn’t need to busy herself with this misery.

“i’m leaving.”

she turned her back to him, heading for the door, but before she knew what was happening,
cormac’s hands had found her again.

“wait.”

in a single movement, cormac had spun her around into his arms, pressing her body into his with
undue force. his palm found her back and held her there firmly enough to prevent her from
wiggling in his grasp. she craned her neck back, desperate for distance, but it only revealed his face
slanted towards hers, eyes half-lidded and lips aiming for purchase.

“cormac, get the hell away from me!” she hissed, pressing a palm to his chest and pushing as hard
as she could.

but he’d stepped away just as quickly, as if he hadn’t made the move to begin with. he merely
smirked at her as he straightened his lapels, brushing off the spot where her hands had touched the
fabric with a condescending snap of his wrist.

“now, now. no need to get prissy,” he replied, a dark glint in his eye. “i’ve already gotten
everything i need.”

and with that, he opened the door and walked back down the hallway toward the gala as though
nothing had happened at all.
hermione leaves the ballroom, heart pounding, vision spinning. she leans against the wall and
inhales shallow breaths until she’s calm enough to look at her phone.

duty was calling.

with one sharp inhale, she steadies herself and charges back into the gala.

barely composed, hermione spotted draco at the bar from the edge of the corridor and weaved
through the crowd in his direction. he beamed when she arrived, his hand finding the small of her
back as he passed her the champagne that had been sitting beside his untouched glass.

“to a fantastic speech,” he said as he tipped his glass against hers.

she downed the whole thing in five strained swallows.

“sorry,” she murmured, wiping her lips with the back of her wrist. “i guess i’m just a bit nervous.”

draco eyed her cautiously. “that’s alright, love.” he chugged the rest of his glass in solidarity, but
her grin at his gesture was just as pained.

a bell rung out across the atrium, inviting the witches and wizards attending the gala to head for
their seats.
“fuck, dress robes. i should get going,” she whispered, and before he could say anything else she
was gone, darting back down the corridor towards her office.

blaise slipped on hermione’s dress robes with ease, fastening the buttons over her dress. “you look
like the deputy minister.” he stood back to admire his work. “forget that. you look like the
minister.”

she forced another weary grin and shook her head. a thick lump had formed at the back of her
throat. cormac was just toying with her, she reminded herself. she couldn’t fall into his trap. she had
to hold it together.

hermione met cho by the edge of the stage, where a functionary in dazzling robes was introducing
her. “your speech is on the podium,” she whispered. “just like we practiced, okay?”

she nodded, and then she was walking, and then she was onstage, staring at the crowd of esteemed
colleagues before her. the panic was finally settling in – she could feel her flitting heartbeat in her
marrow, the elastic of her diaphragm ready to snap.

her eyes raked over the crowd, pointedly avoiding the dmle table, passing over kingsley and sturgis,
blaise and pansy, until she found draco.

he was staring right at her, his eyes cooling the uncomfortable heat that had overtaken her skin. he
shot her a lopsided grin. he nodded, tipping his chin in silent confidence.

hermione held his gaze and exhaled a deep breath.

she could do this.

draco knew something was wrong the moment hermione took the stage.

sure, her speech was excellent. her opening jokes made the entire crowd chuckle in earnest, and her
call to action was inspiring enough to make three people at his table alone shed a tear. but he saw
how her fingers trembled as she flipped the pages of her notes, the way her panicked eyes had
searched for his.

not cho’s, not pansy’s, not blaise’s. his .

he kept his gaze fixed on hers, nodding in encouragement as she spoke. and she made it through, of
course – she was a consummate professional, their deputy minister to-be.

but still, something was wrong. and draco knew the gala was far from over.

she returned to his side after kingsley’s speech, when the dinner was served by manner of floating
plates around the room.

“you were perfect,” he whispered to her, squeezing her palm beneath the table, but she only
nodded, eschewing his eyes and nudging a carrot back and forth on her plate.

“hey.” he leaned into her side and bent down to whisper in her ear, as subtle a gesture as he could
manage in this crowd of officials. “we’re almost done. you can do this.”
he felt hermione’s chest expand with breath beside him, and when she nodded again, it was firmer
this time, as if she was starting to believe him.

his hand held firm over hers beneath the table throughout the entire meal.

the gala dragged on. hermione joined kingsley for photos by the podium, a quick interview with the
prophet’s top reporters. blaise’s team touched up her hair and makeup in silence. cho directed her
toward a few dignitaries that had yet to receive a greeting. pansy watched it all unfold from afar,
ready to pounce.

but her façade was swiftly crumbling, and she knew draco could tell. he held her hand for the rest
of the evening, foregoing the more appropriate elbow for interlaced fingers and a thumb rolling
steadily over her wrist, its tempo stilling her heartbeat.

he saw her like no one else did, she realized. calmed her like he’d been doing it his whole life.

how could she ever go without, now that he’d given her this gift?

they were separated again when the gala came to a close and team granger reconvened for a
nightcap in the dimco offices. pansy and draco chatted with her agents at the desk, while she, cho
and blaise gathered by the seating charts.

the plethora of people that had helped make this night a reality for her, for this campaign that was
bigger than all of them combined, were celebrating. by all intents and purposes, the night had been
a smashing success: her enlivening speech, the promise of praising press coverage to come.

but all hermione felt was sick.

she turned away from her conversation to search for draco across the room – only to find that his
eyes were still locked on hers, waiting for her, only her.

she reached for her phone, knowing exactly what she wanted for the first time that night.

they can’t stop staring at each other. she’s sure everyone’s noticed by now, but she just can’t find
the will to care.

she wants him. she needs him.

and, after just the few minutes that draco promised, hermione says her goodbyes and retreats
through the hearth.
 the night and the morning
Chapter Notes

TW: The entire chapter is NSFW and contains smut.

draco arrived at hermione’s flat moments after she texted him the signal.

he crossed through the wards at her hearth with ease and glanced around her flat. the fireplace was
in her living room, and it was just as he imagined: cozy and neatly organized, with plush antique
furniture and dim lighting and an abundant array of books overtaking nearly every wall and
surface. he wished for time to explore, to learn what secrets this inner sanctum of all things granger
held – but he was needed elsewhere right now.

“in here,” he heard her call weakly from another room.

draco walked down the hallway, the click of his dress shoes on the hardwood deafeningly loud in
the soundlessness of her flat. he passed by her kitchen, an office, and a bathroom, all dark and
empty, the curtains on the windows drawn shut.

he found her in her bedroom at the end of the hall, where she sat frozen at the edge of her oak-
framed bed.

draco leaned against the threshold of her bedroom. her gaze lifted just enough to meet his, the fire
he’d come to expect in her eyes replaced with glass, and she smiled a weary grin.

“hey.”

“hi.”

he moved to stand before her and extended his fingertips to graze softly against her chin. she let the
weight of her head rest in his palm, and slowly, he tilted her head back until her eyes found his
again.

“you must be exhausted,” he murmured. “let’s get all this rubbish off, yeah?”

he bent to his knee and lifted up the hem of her gown just enough to reveal her shoes. his palm
dipped down to her ankle, caressing her skin as he carefully unclasped the strap of one heel, then
the other, the tension in her bones releasing beneath his touch. he tucked both shoes beneath her
bed and stood, offering her his hand.

she rose and draco wrapped his arms around her without a word. she nearly collapsed into his chest,
suddenly fragile in his grasp as she detached from the hard-shelled exterior she wore for the rest of
the world.

how she did this alone for so long, how she coped with the stress of all she was and did and meant,
he could barely imagine. but nothing had ever felt so gods damn right as holding her now, as the
feeling of her coming back to life in his arms.

the flat of his palm roamed her back, grounding and steady, and he waited until she tugged at the
sleeves of his blazer before he withdrew from her. she began to undress him, sliding the jacket from
his shoulders and placing it on the ottoman at the foot of her bed. next was his tie, then the buttons
of his shirt, her willowy fingers deftly tending to them one by one.

when she reached the last button he took her hands in his, waiting for her to peer up at him before
he spoke. “what happened tonight, hermione?”

“something scared me,” she said after a pause, her voice barely above a whisper. “i…”

hermione trailed off, tears beginning to well up in her eyes, and draco pulled her into his embrace
again.

his first reaction was disbelief. what could have possibly scared this unshakable witch? she was so
strong, so fearless – but curled up like this and drained beyond belief, draco wondered if perhaps
that strength was borne from necessity, from a life spent fighting battle after battle and protecting
all others above herself.

next came the anger, the powerful fury at the mere thought that anything or anyone would dare to
put themselves at odds with the wonder that was hermione granger.

his hermione, he thought helplessly.

and with it came a realization of his own: all through his adulthood, he’d worked as hard as he
could to care as little as possible. yet somehow, with this witch who owed him nothing and gave
him everything, he could do nothing but care.

his.

hermione buried herself in draco’s grasp, her cheek pressed to his chest. never before had she
allowed a man to get this close to her, let alone take care of her. it was risky, and she knew it – her
life was easier lived alone. but whether she admitted it to herself or not, it was even easier to melt
away under his touch, to allow herself to be soothed by his presence, to let him in.

maybe she didn’t need to be so afraid of needing this, of needing him, anymore.

“it’s not worth either of our time,” she finally said. “i just want to forget about it.”

“are you sure, hermione?” draco asked, his fingers brushing against the nape of her neck.

she nodded, and his touch dragged across her skin to hover at the closure of her gown. “can i…”

hermione wanted nothing more.

she stood on the tips of her toes to kiss his cheek before she turned in his arms, her eyes fluttering
shut as he unfastened the clasp and the fabric dropped into a pool at her feet.

one by one, they shed each layer of their clothing until they were bare. his touches were nearly
reverent as he revealed more and more of her to him, and she drank in the sight of his body in the
moonlight trickling from between the curtains: his broad shoulders, the pale white scars running
across his chest. he released her hair from its bun, the curls tumbling across her neck, and removed
her makeup with a whispered incantation.

she pulled back the covers and settled with him in her bed, their bodies finding a natural fit beside
each other, his chin tucked into her shoulder and her back curled against his chest as if they’d done
it a thousand times before.

hermione cherished the closeness, the feeling of his skin pressing into hers, the comfortable silence
they’d fallen into. her home had never felt more like home.

she drifted into a sound, dreamless sleep quicker than she ever had before.

she awoke the next morning to a thin ray of sunlight dappling in through the curtains, draco’s arm
still wrapped tight around her waist. she basked in the feel of him, the newfound peace that filled
her soul. they had made it. yesterday was long gone, and for today, this was all she needed.

draco stirred slightly beside her, burying his face in the crook of her neck as his fingers clutched
protectively against her ribcage. he pressed a soft kiss below her ear, then another to her shoulder.
“how did you sleep?” he whispered.

“better than ever,” she replied, turning in his arms to face him. his hair was disheveled, eyes still
bleary with the last vestiges of sleep, and a lopsided grin overtook his features at the sight of her
face alone.

she could get used to this. she wondered if she already was.

“you warned me about how you get in the mornings,” he whispered. “but i don’t see anything but
perfection.”

“you must say that to all the girls,” she teased.

his voice went soft, undeniably serious. “no, hermione. no, i don’t.”

her chest swelled under the heavy weight of her heart. they laid there tangled in each other’s arms
for an insurmountable moment, yet nowhere near long enough.

it was draco who broke the silence, a furrow wrinkling his brow. “we should check the prophet.”

hermione bit her lip. it would’ve been the first thing she’d tend to on any other day. but here, in the
healing quiet of the morning, the campaign didn’t exist. the memories of the gala and its turmoil
faded away. she only wanted to prolong their solitude, to remain suspended in this blissful
animation.

she couldn’t tell him. she wasn’t ready.

“no, we shouldn’t,” she murmured, and she pressed her lips to his.

draco held hermione in his arms, kissing her with abandon, relishing in the sensation of her body
pressed against his, like she had been made to fit there. never before had he allowed himself the
luxuries she afforded him: the slow kisses, the wandering touches. he was in no rush. he had no
agenda. he just wanted to be with her.
he remembered his promise to pansy, but he couldn’t tell her. he wasn’t ready.

so he took his time, and hermione took hers. they kissed until they were breathless. his lips
traversed her skin, memorizing the arcs and divots while her fingers tangled in his hair, caressed his
spine. his palms meandered, roving across her hips and her belly and up to her breasts, kneading
the soft flesh and rolling against the peaks of her nipples to the sounds of her breathy moans – the
same moans that had brought him near insanity from across the world, now ringing in his ears.

from where his lips had settled in the crux of her collarbone, he peered up at her only to find that
she was already staring at him, wide-eyed and transfixed. she nodded her assent, and his lips dipped
lower.

as he covered her skin in kisses his hands followed in their own descent, over the curve of her waist
and down to those supple thighs he’d been dying to touch again, towards the heat of her core. his
eyes found hers as his fingertips brushed softly against her for the first time. her brows creased into
a taut line, her lips curled around a moan, and draco thought he’d discovered the sublime.

he trailed his fingers through her warm cunt, dragging her slick up to her clit – tight circles and
light pressure, she’d said, and as he fell into a steady rhythm her neck craned back in pleasure.

his cock was painfully hard now, and he couldn’t stop himself from bucking his hips into the
mattress as he touched her, her responsiveness driving him mad with desire. he wanted to taste her,
he wanted to worship her – but more than anything else, he wanted to feel her come apart around
him.

and when her eyes opened and looked down at him with an implacable hunger, he knew she wanted
exactly the same.

hermione dropped her hands to his shoulders and angled him onto his back. draco let her take the
lead, slack-jawed and awestruck as she straddled him, her knees bracketing his thighs and her cunt
aligned perfectly over his leaking cock. his palms found her hips as she leaned down to kiss him,
and she took him to the hilt in one gentle motion, one shared groan.

she began to rock against him, his hands on her hips aiding her motions, her clit rolling across his
pelvis with each pass. her met her lips for languid, hot kisses until she rose, arching her back as she
rode him, the morning light trickling over her perfect curves and her maelstrom of curls, her moans
echoing across the room.

it wasn’t long before draco sat up beneath her. he wrapped his arms around her to hold her back in
his wide palms and bent his knees to thrust up into her until she whined into his ear. “that’s it,” he
breathed, hips meeting hers with every motion, pulsing deep inside her. “i’ve got you.”

they panted in tandem, foreheads pressed together, gazes cast downward on where they were
joined. draco rutted into her, finding a steady pace as he felt her walls begin to clench around him.
“draco,” hermione whimpered, her hands finding his shoulders, nails pressing hard enough to
indent into his skin. “i’m–”

“give it to me, hermione,” he whispered back, meeting her needful gaze. he grasped for her cheek,
thumb pressed against her jaw. “fuck, please .”

she came with a cry and he followed her over the edge, their moans drowned out by desperate
kisses. he held her, rocked her gently in his arms, moored himself inside her as though she was his
anchor.

nothing else mattered except this, he decided. except her.

she was his, and he wouldn’t stop until he was hers, too.

draco and hermione spend the entire day tangled up in bed, ignoring the outside world.

the daily prophet delivered to her doorstep is left unread.

draco doesn’t dare look at his phone until he reluctantly returns to his flat that evening, barely ready
to return to the normalcy of his life tomorrow.

there’s a text from theo.

only a single text awaits hermione.

 the things we do

the day after the gala, pansy catalogs the flood of favorable articles and enjoys quality time with
her two favorite things: a dry martini and her vibrator.

if she only knew how much she’d need them.

theo’s text starts it off.

she makes it all the way to the evening without interruption before granger texts.

at first she thinks it’s likely a granger-ism — a hair out of place or a schedule concern — but she
begins to pay attention very quickly.

and then, she gets mad. seething, bloody, viciously mad.

she sees it coming from a mile away. she can be as upset as she wants about undisclosed history,
but at the end of the day, granger is her client and mclaggen is a scumbag -- and pansy takes as well
to scum as she does people who mess with her clients.
she’s in damage control mode now. she can’t do anything about mclaggen until he makes his next
move, and she knows he won’t leak the photo until he gets whatever it is he wants. but there’s
plenty she can, and might need to, do about their own narrative — starting with draco.
supposedly, granger doesn’t know draco’s secret… and draco doesn’t know hers. pivoting is
unavoidable, at this point. the plan is beginning to take shape in pansy’s mind, but first she needs to
learn what cho knows.
it’s settled. the secrets stay secret. they carry their clients to the finish line — at the sake of their
friendships, perhaps, but they’ve made their choice.

it’s ruthless, it’s cruel, but it’s right. it’s what separates winners from losers.

and pansy always wins.

 the next best thing

time after the gala flies by, and suddenly, it’s just a few weeks until election day.

hermione splits her time between campaign travel and dimco work. her team is preparing for her to
win. it excites her more than she should admit.

and as for draco… well, what can she say without blushing?

their relationship is going well.

really well.
he polls are holding strong in her and kingsley’s favor. her work is feeling balanced. she’s happy,
very happy, with draco.

and then there’s cormac, who appears in her orbit every fortnight like the demon he is. even
handling him has become something of a routine.
he texts her a vague threat every few weeks, she feeds it to pansy, and they offer a sliver of info in
exchange for his silence. it’s simple enough. it’s working, for now. and pansy’s plan to keep him at
bay just has to last long enough to get through the election, after all.
things are going well for draco, too — better than well.

the season has been stellar, the final few games poised to be his best ever, and he’s now floating
coaching offers from america, new zealand, south africa, and belize.

theo is thrilled.

and draco should be thrilled, too. but with every meeting, every nudge toward a deal, he can’t stop
the slight panic that courses through him… because he’s falling for hermione, more every day.

after the election, he promises himself. he’ll tell her. he needs to.
meanwhile…

pansy corrals the handlers and, as always, manages to hold it together. but there are cracks in the
foundation. the pressure is building.

it’s only a matter of time before something breaks, she realizes.

in fact, something may be breaking sooner than pansy could’ve predicted.

 the problem with honesty

after their self-inflicted wake-up call, theo and cho decide to test the waters and see if they can get
honesty back on the table. theo knows draco is likely looking for a distraction before his match
tomorrow, anyway.

for her part, cho reaches out to hermione before the town hall, hoping to mend some wounds and
coax her into talking to draco about cormac.
but it backfires, and when hermione gets onstage, she’s feeling rattled.

why was cho trying to manipulate her? did she know something about mclaggen? about draco?

she fumbles her words, and cormac is all too quick to pounce. in her frustration, she deigns to
respond.
the next day…

draco is distracted at his match. hermione is in the stands chumming it up with theo and ginny, and
it only makes his palms clammy (not good on a broom) and his knees shaky (even worse).

the falcons lose. he barely scores.

a text awaits him in the locker room.

pansy checks the scores that evening, and after two mishaps in as many days, she knows something
is afoot.

she knows exactly where to turn. she knows exactly how to handle it.
but what none of them expected, what none of them know how to handle?

the cover page of the daily prophet that graces their doorsteps the next morning.
 the worst part

they had fallen into something of a routine when draco stayed the night. hermione would often rise
first, rarely keen to linger in bed too far past sunrise, and he would wake to the sounds of her softly
padding across the flat. some mornings he’d catch her before she’d go, wrapping her up tight in his
arms, and on others she’d wake him with enthusiastic kisses.

but this morning, draco’s eyes shot open before hers did, the first rays of morning light beginning to
seep through the curtains. hermione remained curled up beside him, messy curls cascading over her
bare shoulders, and he relished in the sight of her – so peaceful, so at ease beside him – before he
headed off for the kitchen.

he brushed his teeth. he started the kettle. he opened the door to collect the daily prophet.

what he saw there made him freeze in the threshold.

as he read through the damning headline, watched the swaying motion of the photograph over and
over again, he vaguely heard the sounds of her emerging from bed, slipping into his t-shirt.

“draco?”

the door to her flat still half-open behind him, hermione approached, brow furrowed, and draco
suddenly sprang into action. he closed the door and gritted his teeth and tossed the prophet to the
kitchen table unceremoniously.

“what is this?” he asked, barely watching as she took the newspaper in hand and collapsed into her
seat at the table. her eyes, still half-glossy with sleep, darted open at the sight of the headline.

“what are they saying, affair ?”

in her stunned silence, he began to babble.

“for a year ? while you were colleagues? i– you didn’t even work with this bloke. and the gala, i
was there , you were… fuck, you were rattled after your speech and i didn’t even realize the actual
bloody reason and–”

hermione finally looked up from the prophet, her eyes welled up with tears. “you’re leaving?”

his heart sank.

hermione slid the newspaper back across the kitchen table. her gaze fell heavy on his brow as he
leaned down, planting his palms flat on the tabletop to read what she had, and he realized that she
knew now what he’d been withholding from her for months.

in his blinding shock, draco had neglected to read the second article on the page.

“i’m not having an affair,” she said when his eyes met hers again. “it’s– i’m– he’s my ex, sort of.”

“ sort of ?”

“we never really dated, but he came onto me at the gala–”

“what?”

hermione pointed to the photo, mclaggen’s hands clutching at her arms over and over again. “this
isn’t real . he… he cornered me at the gala, he grabbed me, and i pushed him away. he must’ve had
a camera there i didn’t see, and he’s been…”

draco’s eyes found hers. “has he been threatening you, hermione?”

“no! yes. i don’t know—”

“all this time? and you’ve just been… dealing with it? hiding it from me?”

“for months , alright? and anyway, it doesn’t matter at all now, does it? you’ve got four offers
halfway across the world. my month abroad was hard enough, and—”

“i never wanted to take any of them—”

“but you have to! this is what you set out to do. you’re leaving , draco.” her gaze cut through him,
thousands of tiny shards piercing. “i didn’t tell you about cormac because everything between was
so new and so perfect and the last thing we needed was this .” she gestured wildly toward the paper.
“but it doesn’t even matter because you’ve got plans and i’m not a part of them and maybe you
should just… go.”

her voice cracked on her final word. draco pressed his lids together, the morning sun suddenly
painful to his eyes.

“yeah, maybe i should.”

the scandalous article was getting out fast, too fast.

pansy’s phone buzzes all morning with reporters seeking comment and pundits sharing tanking poll
results — but there's little she can do without finding her bloody clients first.
while pansy is en route to hermione’s flat, cho finally gets a response from her. their conversation
goes even more disastrously than she thought it would.
and theo finally hears from draco, but before he can talk any sense into him or even properly
apologize, he’s gone again.
in hermione’s silence, cho begins to panic. she texts theo. she thinks.

and she remembers what her plan really ought to be: to be there for her friend.
hermione was still frozen at the kitchen table when she heard a knock at the door.

without thinking, she made a blistering wish that it would be him behind the door, stepping into her
flat as though nothing had happened. she wished they could go back to her bed, to the soft morning
light raining down over them as he held her. she wished for her time turner — but how far back
would she really want to go?

at the second knock, she finally stood to open the door to an ever-collected pansy. “he’s already
gone,” hermione announced. “you’ll have to look for him elsewhere.”

“good. i wasn’t looking for him.” pansy caught the door before hermione could close it, moving
beside her and into the flat. “i’ll take a splash of milk and one sugar,” she said simply, nodding
towards the steaming kettle draco had started what felt like ages ago.

hermione watched as pansy sat at her table and eyed the copy of the prophet, wrinkled from where
she’d white-knuckled it moments before. “it’s a shame, really,” pansy said ruefully as hermione
pulled teacups from the cupboard. “i thought we had him under control. i really did.”

“it’s not like you to miscalculate,” hermione said, joining pansy at the table with their tea. they
were silent for a moment, watching the steam curl up between them. “is this… is this it, pansy?”
she finally asked. “is this how it ends?”

“absolutely not,” she replied. something in her tone had shifted and made hermione feel hopeful,
against all odds. “we don’t finish until we win.”
hermione drummed her fingers against the table as she wiped an errant tear from her cheek. “and
you know what’s the worst part? i barely feel anything about this,” she said, waving a palm over
the picture in the prophet. “i know it’s awful. the magical world might hate me, but i know the truth
. what hurts, what i can’t stop thinking about… it’s the lies everyone told to get us here.”

“mostly because i told them to.” pansy sipped her tea with a shrug. “blame me, granger. they’re
your friends. they wouldn’t have done any of this if i hadn’t forced them to — especially not
draco.”

hermione couldn’t stop the swell of melancholy that simmered up at the mention of his name. “i
really care for him,” she whispered, voice trembling.

“i know.”

“i feel like… like winning doesn’t matter, unless he’s here with me.”

“i know, granger.” pansy reached a palm out across the table and rested it flat over hermione’s.
“he’ll come back. i know he will, it’s who he is. who you’ve made him want to be.”

they sat together all afternoon.

draco wasn’t sure exactly what brought him here.

he should’ve spoken to pansy. he should’ve let theo talk him off the cliff. he should’ve gone back to
mend things with hermione.

but instead, here he was, standing outside of mclaggen manor with a bone to pick.

he stood by the gate marking the side entrance for one hour, then another, trying not to think of his
so-called friends (every one of them, a liar) or where he’d ended up (the former malfoy manor was
bigger, obviously). he could only assume mclaggen still lived here, and he wasn’t sure what he’d
come here expecting, only that it was the first place he’d thought to go after leaving hermione.

fuck, he’d left hermione.

he was even less sure what he might do if this fragile equilibrium shifted.

and then, cormac walked down the path.

“are you planning to stand here much longer?” he asked, far too haughty for a dead man. “i’m sure
the auror office would respond rather quickly to an unwanted trespasser on these grounds."

draco took a step back as mclaggen emerged through the gate, hands tucked in his pockets. “you
know, it’s curious. i’d guess there’s press crawling through the windows of hermione’s flat right
now. they’re probably waiting for me at mine, too.” he looked around in an exaggerated sweep.
“but i haven’t seen a single reporter here, cormac.”

“and why would there be? they’ve already gotten everything they needed from me.”

draco’s blood ran cold through his veins. hermione had kept this from him, yes, but of course there
was no affair . just a callous, pompous politician hellbent on winning or making her miserable or
something in between.
and now it was just the two of them.

“she had her chance to make it right with me, but she chose not to. this was her consequence,” he
went on.

“so she didn’t throw herself at you on your demand and you’re entitled to… to what? blackmail
her? torture her?”

“get off my property, malfoy.”

“make me, mclaggen.”

cormac only sneered.

and before he could stop himself, draco reeled back, connecting his fist to mclaggen’s nose with a
sharp crack .
 the reckoning

with draco and hermione both mia, their colleagues — or, maybe, their friends — spring into action
to find them.

theo learns the address of mclaggen manor from cho and quickly texts blaise for support.

draco heard a loud pop of apparition just as his fist was about to connect with mclaggen’s face a
second time.

“draco!”

“mate, stop !”

he faltered, and in his hesitation one set of hands drew back on his shoulders while another pulled
down on his fist. he turned, catching a glimpse of blaise on one side and theo on the other. for a
moment, all he felt was relief washing over him — that he didn’t have to go through this alone. that
his friends were back and by his side.

and then the sheer rage pumped through his veins again, and he inhaled a sharp breath before he
lunged helplessly toward mclaggen once more, only to be held back and clapped hard on the
shoulder. it brought him back to reality, if only enough to quell the urge to pummel mclaggen into a
fine pulp.

for his part, mclaggen was crouched on the gravel before them, nursing his nose as blood trickled
out between his fingers. “shit,” he hissed, and he clambered to his feet. when he lowered his hand,
all three of them winced: his nose was crooked sideways at the bridge, and blood pooled below his
nostrils.

“you’ll bloody well pay for this, malfoy!” he shouted.

theo snorted, and they all turned to stare at him. “what? he sounds just like you.”

blaise released draco’s shoulders with a firm pat to his back. “alright, then?”

“better now,” he murmurs, but as he stared at the enraged, bloodied mclaggen before him, the
reality of the past hour returned to him in flashes.

he left hermione. the prophet article was so damning, so cruel, so impossible to come back from. he
left hermione. she learned about his coaching prospects in the absolute worst way. he left hermione.
she’d asked him to go, and he left.

shit.

“i need to get back,” draco mumbled, half-dazed. “i— i left her there. alone.”

“pans was on her way when we last spoke,” theo assured him.

“besides, we’ve got something more pressing to deal with here,” blaise added, gesturing half-
heartedly toward mclaggen, who was toying with his mobile and reaching for the gate.

draco blinked. “what do you mean, deal with ?”

“well, we can’t have him running off to the prophet about this, too,” blaise murmured as mclaggen
swung the gate open.

“are you suggesting—”

“path of least resistance.”

“you wouldn’t!”

“he’s got a point, actually.”

“we need to. for granger.”

“for you, mate.”

“fuck.”

“fuck.”

“ fuck !”
draco carded both palms through his hair and tugged, then hunched over at his waist and slammed
his hands to his knees. “fine. but i would’ve gotten another hit in if i knew we’d have to do it
anyway.”

“i know you would’ve,” theo soothed as blaise pointed his wand toward mclaggen’s back. “and it
would’ve been a stellar right hook, i’m sure. big old shiner and all.”

draco stood to his full height just as the clouds of obliviation surrounded mclaggen, and suddenly
blaise and theo were tugging him away, the three of them laughing as they ran.

it wasn’t long before they found themselves in the closest pub, knocking back a pint apiece in the
dimly lit back corner. it would only be a matter of time before someone spotted him and alerted the
press, and as he, blaise and theo sat in silence with their brews, it felt eerily like the calm before the
storm.

theo spoke first. “i just want to say… that i’m sorry. for everything.” he exhaled a deep breath. “you
needed a friend, not a manager, and i should’ve listened to you more, and not kept secrets from
you, and—”

draco’s lips curved into a lopsided grin. “yeah, mate, you should’ve. but it’s not the first time
you’ve been a git… and it certainly won’t be the last.”

blaise laughed across the table, even as a red flush bloomed across theo’s cheeks. “cheers to that.”

they tipped their glasses together, and draco’s smile only grew. “friends first from here on out,” he
said. “that’s all i ask.”

“friends first,” theo affirmed, downing the last of his pint. “so, what now? world domination? start
your own quidditch team?”

“now?” draco finished his own pint and eyed his friends with newfound determination. “i’m going
to get what i really want.”

elsewhere, cho reaches out to ginny for reinforcement in her plan to make amends with hermione.
when hermione heard a soft knock at her door, her heart thundered out of her chest. was it draco?
she’d told him to go, but she hadn’t really meant it — or had she? yes, he was leaving, and yes , he
had lied… but so had she, after all, and what did it even matter to them anymore?

she’d already accepted she wouldn’t win the election; pansy’s hours-long stewing over a single
mug of tea had convinced her as much. she knew nothing of the word of quidditch coaching, but
assumed from her years of international negotiations that draco’s prospects were just as limited.

but it didn’t change the fact that they lied to each other. that their closest friends, their professional
guideposts, had encouraged them to do it — and all for a race they both seemed doomed to lose.

all this, and yet, there was a knock at the door… and hermione couldn’t stop herself from wishing it
was draco, or cho, or ginny, or any one of her friends.

gods, she missed her friends.

“i’ll get it,” pansy finally said. “could be an overzealous reporter.”

“if it’s someone we know, let them in,” hermione instructed, hoping her true wishes weren’t too
thinly veiled.

“oh, gods,” pansy murmured as she peered through the peephole. “are you sure about that?”
the knock on the door came louder this time. “‘’mione, we know you’re in there! open up or we’ll
start taking shots in your hallway!”

hermione grinned. “open the door, pansy.”

ginny and cho strolled in with bundles of bottles and takeaway boxes in their arms. cho wore a
bright pink birthday hat, while ginny blew into the sparkly party horn between her lips. hermione
shook her head, the sight all too familiar — she’d been the one in the birthday hat more than once
for ginny and cho’s respective woes.

“we’ve got it all ,” cho said, as if on cue. “we weren’t sure what you were in the mood for, so we
got thai, indian, and sushi—”

“rosé to start, tequila for later—”

“bubble bath—”

“a few of those muggle dvds you like—”

“well, that’s my cue,” pansy announced, but before she could slip through the threshold, ginny
pulled her in by the back of her collar.

“not so fast. last i checked, this is a commiseration party for all involved.”

soon enough, the girls had piled up in hermione’s living room. cho poured and passed a round of
tequila shots with lazy flicks of her wand — so much for later — while ginny laid out the array of
food choices on the coffee table. pansy sat on the far end of the couch, eyeing her glass of rosé with
disdain.

“oh, lighten up, pans,” ginny scolded. “i’ve seen you drink far worse.”

“when and where? and you know i loathe when people call me that.”

“at my wedding — and if my husband gets a pass, so do i!”

“which one, the first or second?”

“as if you wouldn’t be on husband six by now…”

while pansy and ginny bickered — was that a giggle hermione heard? — cho settled the tequila
shots and scooted closer to her on the couch.

“so, i owe you an apology,” she said quietly. “a huge one.”

“big time,” hermione affirmed. “i know you want to win, i know this is so much bigger than me,
but…”

“you’re my friend. my best friend, before anything else. and somewhere along the way, i forgot that
and stopped listening to you. stopped advocating for what you wanted.”

cho’s eyes welled up with tears, and hermione dropped a palm to cover hers in her lap. “it’s going
to be alright, cho,” she whispered. “but we can’t keep going on like this. no more lies, between us
or anyone else. i can’t have a team— i can’t have a friend who isn’t honest with me.”
“you’re absolutely right. and i know i’ve got a lot to make up to you, if you’ll give me the chance.”

hermione shot her a sheepish grin. “well, if you’re already plying me with tequila…”

“that’s the spirit!” ginny shouted from across the room, and the four witches downed their shots and
winced in near-synchronous motions.

“i hate to sour the mood,” pansy started.

“no, you don’t,” cho and hermione replied.

“you’re right, i don’t.” the entire group laughed. “but granger… hermione. this is a major blow, one
that knocked me off my high horse no matter how much i’m pretending it hasn’t. but i think we can
save this, if you’re willing to do the work.”

hermione’s heart seized. she looked around the room, at the glimmering eyes of the three women, at
the shadow of mclaggen’s face on the discarded newspaper at the kitchen table. “i want to win,” she
said, determined. “but i want to do it my way.”

pansy nodded. cho beamed. ginny cracked her knuckles.

“to our future deputy minister,” cho finally said, raising her glass. “tell us where you want to start.”

the afternoon turns into evening, and pansy, half-drunk and surprisingly giggly, takes the
opportunity to gather her forces.
later that night, draco returns to his flat with bloody knuckles and a bruised ego.

he wants to call hermione. text her. show up at her flat and kiss her until he loses his breath.

but he falls asleep alone, grateful at least to know exactly what he’ll do next.
hermione shoos the witches away from her flat well after midnight, wine-drunk and heartbroken.

she reads the articles over and over again. she opens her text thread with draco, starts to type, and
deletes it.

and then she falls asleep — alone and hurt, but hopeful.
 the falcons

draco wakes the next morning determined, unafraid, ready to make things right. he skips the news,
ignores the growing swarm of reporters circling the blocks around his flat, and gets to work.

he starts by texting theo to cement their plan.

he kills time until half ten pacing through his flat, eyeing the cadre of reporters circling his block
through the windowshade. he wishes he could talk to hermione - but he can’t. not yet.

just before he steps into the hearth, he decides there’s one more person he needs to text.
when draco emerged from the fireplace into the familiar depths of the falcons’ stadium, he expected
to see the usual flurry of players crowding the halls. instead, he found the hallway empty and eerily
silent.

he took a deep breath as he brushed the ashes from his shoulders, realizing for the first time that
this could be one of his last moments in this place. for all the years he spent dulling his mind with
parties and booze and one-night stands, quidditch — the falcons, his team — had been the one
constant, the one thing he ever cared about.

there was so much more than that now. and draco knew exactly what he wanted: both.

“oi!” he finally heard as he began to walk down the hall, a bit slower than usual. he didn’t need to
turn his head to know it was theo.

“sorry, i’d hoped to catch you on your way out of the floo,” he said as he caught up with draco’s
pace, falling into lockstep beside him. “but you’re a bit early. you’re never early.”

draco couldn’t stifle his chuckle. “never say never.”

theo beamed. “it’s a good look for you, mate.”

draco paused near the end of the hallway, just before they rounded the corner that led to the offices
ahead. he clasped the button of his blazer over his tie, toying with it between his fingers.
“where is everyone?”

“i called in a favor, rescheduled some offensive drills. figured you wouldn’t want any more eyes on
you than necessary.”

“i was actually looking forward to the distraction, for once,” he said with a smirk.

“well, that’s what i’m here for,” theo replied, waggling his eyebrows. “should i whip out the clown
nose?”

draco shook his head, a wary half-grin overtaking his features. “no, i’m alright. i’m feeling good
about this. i’m feeling… ready.”

“carpe diem, my friend. i’m proud of you.”

theo dropped a hand to draco’s shoulder and squeezed. with a final glance, they turned the corner,
and the two men walked in tandem to conference room b.

as they approached the room, draco could hear the booming voices of the falcons shareholders
echoing beyond the walls. his heart began to pound in the cavern of his chest, but his footsteps
were steady, his mind clear. he was ready. this was what he wanted.

theo looked at draco, waiting for his nod before he opened the door to the conference room.

“pardon us, ladies and gents, we don’t mean to intrude,” theo started.

the conversation halted and all of the dozen sets of eyes looked down the long wooden table
towards the threshold. thick sheets of roster plans and trade options were strewn between them, and
draco caught a glimpse of several copies of the damning prophet issue within the piles.

“in light of recent news, my client requests a brief word with you all. we would have sought out an
appointment, but i’m sure you’re as eager to hear from him as he is to speak to you.”

a hushed murmur broke out among the shareholders, but the burly wizard with salt and pepper hair
at the head of the table was quiet. it was none other than the falcons franchise owner, whom draco
had only ever seen once before — at his first-ever signing in this very room.

after three heavy beats, the owner nodded, and theo nodded back before stepping aside.

and suddenly, it was just draco, front and center, with all eyes on him.

he rocked back on his heels for a moment, his gaze darting across the room. “i, um, thank you for
allowing me the chance to— to—”

draco paused. one of the shareholders coughed dryly. another bit back a snicker.

he cleared his throat. “you’ve seen the prophet. it was, uh… a rough night, as you probably
guessed.”

the snicker wasn’t held back that time.

draco swallowed thickly. beside him, theo bowed his head to shoot him a tight, reassuring
expression. he closed his eyes, thought of his purpose, his goal, his hermione — and when he
opened them again, he knew what he had to say.

“first off, i want to thank you all.” his gaze traveled from witch to wizard across the room. “it’s
been the honor of my lifetime, being a falcon. this team had faith in me when no one else did.
helped me grow when no one else would. and i’m sorry to ask you for one more chance to grow
with you… but i hope you’ll be willing hear me out.”

“respectfully, mr. malfoy,” a pointy-nosed wizard interjected. “the current public affairs crisis with
your… with ms. granger warrants caution on our—”

“let him finish.”

it was the owner who interrupted the man, peering at draco with an odd glint in his eye.

draco met his gaze, straightened his spine, and resumed with renewed confidence. “i’ve made it
clear for months now that my intent is to pursue a coaching role after my retirement at the end of
the season.” he gestured towards the copies of the prophet. “and as you all know now, i’ve gotten
interest from teams all over the world — countries i’ve never even set foot in. and it was flattering,
and it was a heroic effort on my agent’s part,” he said, grinning at theo beside him. “but it wasn’t
right. and it’s not what i want.”

he dropped his palms to the table. “what’s right for me is this team. i know this place and its people
like the back of my hand, and i’m not exaggerating when i say that the falcons have been my
family… going on ten years now,” he continued, looking through the window at the pitch beyond.
“so what i want is to stay. to coach here, if you’ll have me.”

“but there are no roles available for the coming season,” a brunette witch offered. “our head coach
is in contract for another two years, and both the offensive and defensive teams are fully staffed.”

“i know. believe me, i know,” draco replied. “but i’ll do whatever it takes to stay with this team in
some capacity, in any way you’ll have me. merlin, i’ll polish brooms if that’s what it takes —
because there’s nothing i want more than to be here, on this team, working with you all.”

next, he turned to the wizard who had interrupted him minutes before. “and as for your concerns?
they don’t worry me, not one bit. not a word of that article is true, and she’s going to prove it. i
know the kind of witch hermione granger is — she turned me from a foolhardy kid letting life drag
him along, to a man who knows what he wants and isn’t afraid to fight for it.”

he turned back to face the rest of the room, locking eyes with the owner as he finished his plea. “so
that’s what i’m asking you now. to give me a shot. to consider keeping me on, because i’ll give you
my all and i always will.”

the room was silent for a few moments after his voice faded. the shareholders cast sidelong glances
at one another, a few shuffling papers or scribbling notes. draco stood firm at the end of the table,
and theo took a step towards him, ready to guide him out of the room if the silence continued —
but finally, it was broken.

“thank you, mr. malfoy,” the owner said. “not a single member of this group can deny the success
your years as a player and captain of this team have brought us. but answer one question for me
before you leave us to deliberate.” he dropped his intertwined fingers to the table, and draco
straightened to attention. “as a coach, what’s one thing you’ll bring this team that no one else can?”
“i care.” his answer was immediate, escaping his lips faster than he could think the thought itself.

it was a reverie, a realization that went far beyond the question of quidditch. when he blinked, he
saw hermione behind his lids, laughing in the garden of the national gallery all those months ago,
reminding him what it felt like to care . under his breath, more to himself than to anyone else, he
murmured, “i care so bloody much.”

the owner nodded. “mr. nott, expect an answer in due time.”

with that, theo led draco from the room, leaving everything on the line. as they crossed the
threshold again, his ears rang and his shoulders dropped. he pushed all the air from his lungs on his
exhale, relief washing over him like a wave.

it was done. he had done it. and now, there was just one more thing left for him to do.

in london, pansy gets a text from theo. she takes in the new information, and her mind starts racing
through the possibilities, and then—

she can save this. she can get draco a win. it isn’t over yet — for either of them.

cho, pansy and theo head to the p. parkinson offices to deliberate.

and finally, draco arrives at his destination. he stands in the hallway, stares at the door, and wishes.
dreams. waits.
all she has to do is let him in.
 the confession

hermione stood behind the door to her flat, phone buzzing between her fingers, soft raps of
knuckles ringing across the oak from the other side.

draco’s knuckles. he was here , just there, just beyond the door.

and yet, her palm flinched from the doorknob each time she reached for it. she curled her fingers
around nothing, let her palm drop to her side in defeat.

the texts continued. he knocked again.

her eyes fluttered shut, tuning out her senses just enough for her to think. the last 24 hours had been
among the most painful of her life — encounters with a myriad of dark wizards included. yes, her
friends had been there for her, swooping in to reassure her and pull her from her misery. and yes,
pansy and cho had just spent the last several hours in her flat helping her formulate a plan, her
plan.

still, the shame swirled, and the guilt beckoned, and the call to despair pulled.

but draco, he knocked.

she thought back to that morning, only yesterday despite how much longer ago it felt. how she
found out that he’d been lying to her, keeping a secret that may have changed the entire course of
their relationship. how nearly everything that had grown between them, which felt so sacred to her
even now, had been colored by the painful pressure of secrets withheld.

two secrets, she reminded herself – both swallowed to protect the other, buried for the same reason.

and then she traveled further. her mind danced across the images she cherished most, memories of
furtive grins and pinkies wordlessly linked and texts that made her heart leap and her limbs soften.
she thought of his arm hooked steadfast around hers at the gala and standing in the crowd at his
matches, cheering as he soared. she glanced across her empty flat, the outline of her bed peeking
out from the threshold down the hall, and she remembered all the beds she’d slept in without him,
listening for the sound of his breathing over the phone by her ear.

hermione peered down at the screen in her palm, eyes racing over the texts that appeared there.

will you let me?

hermione?

her heart thundered, loud enough to hear its steady drumbeat in time with draco’s knocks.

it wasn’t even a question, she realized.

so she opened the door.

draco stood before her, blazer unbuttoned and tie pulled askew, hand raised to rap at her door once
more. she caught him off-guard, and for a moment he looked down at her in shock, as if he wasn’t
sure she was really there.
hermione inhaled sharply, rolling her tongue between her teeth, and she wondered if he was
expecting her to argue, to lash out. but all she could find to give him was a weary smile, tentative
and raw, and at the sight of it the tension in his shoulders dropped and his hand fell to her cheek.

“i’m sorry,” he said, eyes fixed on hers, fingers warm against her skin. “i mean it, hermione. you
don’t deserve to be lied to. you don’t deserve to be left behind when you need support.”

“but i asked you to leave,” she breathed. “even if i didn’t mean it.”

his lips trembled as disbelief colored his gaze. “you didn’t?”

hermione shook her head. “i was in shock. i’m so used to handling things alone… so used to just
being alone. and to find out you hid something so important to you—”

“only to protect you. only because i didn’t want to hurt you.”

“and that’s why i didn’t tell you about…” his name dissolved in the hollow of her throat, but it
weighed heavy between them in the silence that grew.

his finger swept across her cheekbone, and without thinking, she settled her jaw into the crux of his
palm and let the pressure there melt away beneath his touch. he stroked at her temple, soothing a
pain she hadn’t known was there, and her body simmered under the weight of his stare.

he chuckled softly. “you know, the first thing i did when i left your flat was punch him in the face.”

“you what ?”

“well, we obliviated him right after, just enough to forget i’d done it–”

she stepped back just out of his reach to look him up and down, her brows furrowing into a tight
line. “draco, you could’ve gotten hurt ! and with the election, if there had been cameras… there
was no reason to— why would you—”

“because i love you!” he blurted it out and it surprised them both, enough for his breath to catch in
his throat and her lips to part around a gasp. but just as quickly a newfound confidence swept
across his features, and he continued without faltering, without trying to take it back.

“because i love you, and he hurt you. i know it was a lie, what he said in the prophet. i know you’re
still going to win this election because you’re the most magnificent bloody witch this country’s
ever known, and i want to hold you every night and get to cheer on every single thing you achieve.
i know there’s nothing more in this world that i want than to be with you, so i went to the falcons
board and i begged them to let me stay.”

his hands traced their way up her neck until his palms rested at her collarbone, thumbs cupped at
her jaw and fingers resting in the tendrils by her ears.

“i love you, hermione. i do.”

her eyes were glistening, and for a moment draco feared she was on the verge of tears. he was
prepared for that — the possibility that she’d want him to go and mean it this time, that he’d caused
too much damage to repair.
but as he began to assume the worst, her lips curved into a glowing smile, and he relished in the
sight of it just before they crashed against his.

hermione kissed him with more fervor than she ever had and he kissed her back in equal measure,
the pads of his fingers pressing into her skin. her hands found the lapels of his blazer and pulled
him closer, closer, until their bodies were pressed together and his tongue was tracing along her
teeth.

in the background, her phone clamored to the floor.

“i love you,” she said breathlessly as his lips wandered down the column of her throat. “i love you,
draco. i love you, too.”

his heart roared at the sound of it.

he wasn’t sure how long they spent in that hallway, her door ajar and her phone buzzing
occasionally against the tiles. but when they finally parted just enough to breathe against each
other, forehead pressed to hers, he was sure that the rest of his life wouldn’t have been long enough.

“you’ve got to tell me everything,” she murmured against his lips, her lashes flitting softly against
his cheekbones.

“no more secrets,” he agreed.

“except birthday presents.”

“and surprise getaways.” hermione angled her neck back, only far enough to meet his eyes with a
questioning glare. “what? you think i’m not going to whisk the deputy minister away for a weekend
in france now and then?”

her lips found his again, swollen against his own. her phone began to buzz soon after, one vibration
leading into the next, and at the third sound she pulled away with a frown. duty called, no matter
how much he wanted to steal away inside her flat for the rest of the day – and then some.

“so, i told you what i decided to do,” he said quietly as he tucked a curl behind her ear. “what about
you?”

“i’m fighting it.” she nodded as if she was reassuring herself, and he felt her fingers tense within
the folds of fabric at his chest. “i’m working with cho and pansy on a statement — something from
me, straight from the heart. and we’re scheduling a press conference for tomorrow morning.”

“that’s my girl.”

as a pretty pink flush bloomed across her cheeks, he wondered just how soon he’d be able to
provoke it again.

“i actually — you know, they left just a few minutes before you came,” hermione said, and he
watched intently as she put the pieces together. “i should have known.”

“i think it was more romantic this way, don’t you?”

she tutted, but she smiled at him anyway. “they’re at her office now, working on some revisions.
blaise, too – he’s dressing up my robes for the cameras. they told me to take a break and join them
again when i was ready.” hermione chuckled under her breath. “they just can’t help but meddle.”

“theo must’ve told them, if they knew i was coming. i wouldn’t be surprised if they were all
together by now… ginny included, if i had to wager.” his voice dropped an octave as his gaze raked
over her, seeking any hints of fear or apprehension he could kiss away. “ are you ready?”

draco watched as she assumed a stance he’d come to recognize: spine straight, proud chest, chin
held high, just like the very first day he saw her after all those years – and still, it blew him away.

“yes,” she finally replied. she took his hand, and once her palm was settled, she brushed her pinky
against his and hooked them together. “i’m ready.”

he nodded as he squeezed her palm, unable to restrain his grin any longer. “i’m right behind you,
love.”

he held hermione’s hand as they arrived by floo directly into pansy’s office, leaving him shocked
— she’d never opened her wards to him like this before.

cho was huddled over pansy’s desk as she combed through a stack of redlined parchment. pansy
gesticulated wildly by the window, muttering something about an embargo into her phone. ginny
and theo sat across from one another at a nearby table, both of them poring over what looked like
quidditch rosters.

blaise, tucked in the corner and casting glittering spells at hermione’s dress robes, was the first to
notice them. “oh, thank merlin,” he groaned.

pansy saw them next, arching her brow and flashing them a knowing smirk. theo and ginny hid
their matching squeals of excitement behind their palms. and when cho looked up, the scowl he
expected to see was nowhere to be found — only a bright, prideful smile.

draco felt hermione’s palm tense up within his, and he didn’t think twice before he leaned down
and pressed a kiss to her forehead. when her eyes found his, all he saw was sheer determination. he
realized that she wasn’t afraid, just eager to get started… hesitant only to leave him behind.

“do your thing,” he assured her, releasing her hand with a final squeeze. “i’ll make myself useful
somehow.”

“i love you,” she whispered. she bit her lip in a sheepish grin, as though the words alone had made
her giddy.

“i love you, too,” he whispered back. there was nothing shy about the smile he offered in turn.

the team works through the afternoon. hermione occasionally glances over to catch draco smiling at
her – with pride, with a hint of disbelief, with what she now knew was love.

when they finish, pansy sends notice of the press conference through all her usual channels.
it’s not long before hermione receives a text from mclaggen. this time, she doesn't ignore it.

and when she falls asleep that night, draco’s arm around her and dress robes hanging in her
wardrobe, she doesn’t feel a hint of shame, nor guilt, nor despair.

because she’s ready.

 the press conference

hermione is greeted the next morning by texts from the entire team. draco reads over her shoulder
in bed until they mention his antics with mclaggen. with a scoff, he plucks the phone from her palm
amidst her fit of giggles.

draco swiped the phone from hermione’s hand a second time just as ginny’s emojis blinked up on
the screen. she chased it with a half-hearted reach, her palm dragging up his arm as he extended it
away from her. he placed the phone on the nightstand just in time to intertwine their fingers.

“it’s going to be a good day,” he whispered into her ear, his other hand snaking around her waist
and pulling her toward his chest. and it was: he had hermione in his arms, after all.

“is it?” she craned her neck back to rest her head on his shoulder, amber eyes peering up into his.
he lowered their linked hands them into her lap and caressed her knuckles as she spoke. “i’m not
nervous. this is the right thing to do – it’s what i want to do. but now i just have to…”

“do it?”

she nodded, burying her face in his neck. her words were muffled as she went on, “this wasn’t in
the plan. we don’t know what either of our futures look like anymore, draco.”
“hey.” his nose brushed against her chin, and when that wasn’t enough to encourage her to look at
him, he shifted her into his lap. her body fell limp as it released its tension, melting into him until
her legs were crossed around his hips and her fingers had tangled in the strands at the nape of his
neck.

“you’re right,” he said, pressing his forehead to hers. “we don’t know what the future looks like.
but what i do know…” draco laid a soft kiss to her lips, and because he was insatiable when it came
to her, kissed her once more before he continued. “is that we’re together. and we’re going after
what we want, what we really want. no strategies, no games – just us.”

“i don’t work well without plans,” she replied. “the plan until now was to win. and even if
everything goes perfectly today, i don’t know if that’s in the cards for me – for us – anymore.”

“and if it isn’t, we’ll figure it out.” he knew that wasn’t how she liked to operate, that he was asking
for a level of trust she rarely bestowed. but draco also knew that for all her plans, for all her
structure, her dogged pursuit of her dreams would carry her through – it was one of the things he
loved about her. “for now, though, you’ve got a record to set straight.”

“i most certainly do.” she was grinning now, the contours of her lips curving against his cheek, and
draco relished in it before he lifted her up and out of bed.

“come on then, ms. granger,” he said between kisses peppered across her neck. “let’s show them
who’s boss.”

while draco and hermione make their way to pansy’s office, their respective managers set the final
moves into position.
from the moment hermione stepped into the floo, time passed in a whirlwind.

blaise cinched the waist of her dress robes, sewn from cerulean velvet and adorned with gilded
swirls. “you wear the robes, not the other way around,” he praised as he assessed the glimmering
details in the mirror.

she spotted the growing crowd of reporters through a seam in the courtyard’s draping, the dozens
upon dozens of people gathering to document her words and translate them to an entire country’s
worth of witches and wizards. she heard cameras snapping sample shots, quick notes quills darting
up into the air.

ginny and theo offered hugs while her hair was swept up into a prim chignon. “send that son of a
bitch back to the hole he crawled out of!”

pansy shot her a mischievous smile while she reprimanded a reporter attempting to sneak in.

“i’ll be right backstage if you need me,” draco told her, squeezing her palm before he faded away.

until suddenly, it was just her and cho standing behind a softly-swaying curtain, the podium just a
few steps away.

pansy was onstage, making announcements and setting rules for the session before hermione took
the stand. she and cho had done this so many times before, delivering speeches on policy changes
and international relations, but this was different. this was about her .
hermione returned to her body with a gasp, as though she’d spent the last hour watching it all
happen from afar.

cho dropped a hand to hermione’s shoulder just as her eyes grew wide and her pulse began to race,
grounding her. “it’s almost showtime. you’ve got this.”

but did she? she peered down at the speech in her trembling hands, the parchment decorated with
sharp underlines and scribbled annotations: emphasize. link back to trade platform. eye contact. sell
it.

“cho, i don’t–”

“fuck the script, hermione.” cho’s eyes found hermione’s, a dogged determination blazing within
them.

“what?”

“i said, fuck the script.” cho’s focused expression dissolved into a knowing grin. “look at you.
you’re made for this, hermione, and we all believe in you no matter what. so fuck the campaign –
fuck all of it. you’re doing this for you , and if the voters don’t respect that, then they just don’t
deserve you. say what you need to say, and the rest will fall into place.”

hermione inhaled a deep breath, her eyes flitting between cho and pansy and the crowd. somewhere
in the back of her mind, she could hear pansy introducing her, feel time slipping through her
fingers.

“i’ve got you.” cho’s voice brought her back to reality once more. “i’m sorry it took me so long to
remember that, but i know now that’s the most important part of this – the rest of it is just noise.
i’ve got your back, and i always will. so do what you need to do, and trust that everything else will
be alright.”

the audience was applauding. cho was squeezing her tight. the parchment crumpled in her fist.

she took one last glance at the stage before she threw her arms around her friend. “thank you, cho.”

“always, hermione.”

and then, she was walking onstage.

the view from the podium was even more daunting than hermione might’ve imagined – she was
looking straight down into a sea of faces, blinded by camera lenses flashing over and over as she
stepped into the center of the stage.

after a few moments, the voices began to quiet and the flashes slowed, the audience eagerly
awaiting her statement. there were reporters from all over the world, she realized. faces she
recognizes from press junkets in brazil and norway and greece and–

she cleared her throat. every quill hovering in the air jotted it down as a note.

“thank you all for being here today,” hermione began, the first few sentences of her speech
ingrained in her brain. “i recognize that this is a difficult situation for any political candidate to find
themselves in, and i appreciate your ongoing respect for the integrity of this campaign and the
election as a whole.”
she took a deep breath and looked down at her parchment. the ink was smudged, the letters so far
away from her now. she knew she was supposed to talk about her regret, tell some vague version of
the real story, tie it all back to her platform… it had been her own plan, a speech she’d written
herself to save the campaign and get them back on the same track they’d been on before.

but it just didn’t feel right anymore.

hermione looked back up at the audience, then behind the curtain where cho, blaise, draco, and
pansy now stood. they watched as she turned the parchment over to its blank side, hiding its words,
but to her surprise all they did was break out into proud smiles.

as though they’d been expecting it. as though they were waiting for her to flip the script this time.

and it felt good .

“look, i’ll be honest,” she finally said, gazing forward at the crowd. “i came here today with a plan
to try and save my campaign. but i think you – and the electorate – deserve better than that. so
instead, i’d like to put the campaign aside for a bit and just… speak with you all from the heart.”

a slight murmur fell over the audience, but hermione continued without faltering. “whether i’ve
wanted to or not, i’ve been in the public eye since i was eleven years old. i’ve survived some of the
nastiest, most damaging rumors you can dream of. i’ve been branded the ‘golden girl’ just as much
as i’ve been called every insult in the book.”

this provoked a louder murmur, plus a few flashes from the cameras, and she waited for the
commotion to still again before she went on.

“but the one thing that is and has always been true about me is how much i love the wizarding
world. my entire life has been spent serving it, and contributing to its improvement, and trying to
give back just some of the goodness that it’s given me. and because of that, i want to tell you all the
truth about this so-called scandal – the whole truth. because without it, we can never get better. we
can never move on to the things that matter most.”

“the story behind these rumors is one i’m not proud of,” she explained, the quills beginning to
scramble as she dove into the scandal headfirst. “i dated cormac mclaggen briefly before the
campaign began – before either of us had announced our candidacies. i wasn’t interested, so i broke
up with him, but it wasn’t enough for him to just let me go… he wanted to make it hurt. so, on the
night of the annual ministry gala a few months ago, he lured me into a secluded room, grabbed me
while i was leaving, and– and– well, you’ve all seen the photo.”

several reporters in the crowd gasped in shock, and she quieted them with a wave of her palm.

“there is no sordid affair. i was tricked, and i was taken advantage of in a desperate political play.
that’s what happened. that’s the ugly truth of it.” hermione gripped at the edges of the podium,
leaning in as she continued, “and at the end of the day, that’s what i want you to expect from me:
full transparency, even around the bits i’m not fond of. because that’s the type of leader you all
deserve, and that’s the kind of person i am. of course, i want to win this election – but i’m not going
to lie, or cheat, or blackmail my way there. i’m going to be myself. my whole self.”

by now, the entire audience had broken out into a ruckus, shouting questions and taking picture
after picture. from the corner of her eye she saw pansy lean forward, ready to cut things off – but
draco held her in place, his eyes locked on hermione, urging her to keep going.
“so consider this a new day for the granger campaign,” she said, her gaze drifting from draco
backstage to the reporters before her. “i can promise you that i will always lead with my whole self.
with honesty, with integrity, and with compassion. i’ll never succumb those who want me to back
down. and if this story costs me the election, so be it, because i know who i am. you know who i’ll
be as your deputy minister. and that’s what matters most.”

pansy whisks hermione offstage after her speech, and her team brings her to a quiet room in the
back of the office while the press conference adjourns. it doesn’t take long for her phone to blow
up.

but it’s the front page of the prophet that arrives on her doorstep the next morning that renews her
with hope, with excitement.

she has draco. she has her friends. she has the campaign of her dreams.

now all there’s left to do is win.

 the champions

the final weeks of the campaign and the quidditch season fly by.

draco stands by hermione’s side at her final campaign stops, and hermione clears her schedule for
draco’s last matches to cheer from the stands.

in a strange way, their respective races feel less consequential now. what happens will happen, and
it’ll be alright so long as they have each other.

still, it doesn’t stop either of them — or their managers — from working hard towards their wins.
the days go by — event after event, practice after practice, and before they all know it, draco’s final
match is upon them.
as draco sat in the falcons’ locker room ahead of his final match, he was unsure what to think.

sure, there were whoops and whistles and cheers from his teammates, excited not only for the end
of the season but for his own last hurrah. there was the anticipation that swelled in his chest ahead
of every game, no matter how many seasons had passed.

but he hadn’t heard anything from the falcons’ management since he crashed the board meeting and
begged for a way to stay on. no other team, in britain or otherwise, had shown interest since news
broke in the prophet. and most importantly, the ministerial election was just days away — despite
all the coverage and the swings in polling numbers, the race remained tight.

in short, draco was anxious. uncertain. because no matter whether his team won or lost this game,
the path ahead became much less clear in just a few short hours.

so he vowed to enjoy it while it lasted.

he readied himself for the match and led his team in a strategy confab before they took to their
brooms and headed for the pitch. he stood in the threshold of the players’ entrance one last time,
staring up in awe at the massive crowd gathered in silver and green.

but nothing could have prepared him for what he’d see when he rode his broom up to the rafters.

draco looked immediately at the row of seats where his friends watched each game. some matches,
only hermione waited for him there, waving and cheering as though her life depended on it.
sometimes theo and ginny joined her, even cho from time to time.

but tonight, the row was filled with each of the people dearest to him: blaise, theo, cho, ginny, and
even pansy all filled the stands, hollering out his name as he came into view. and of course,
hermione, his hermione, stood at the end of the row, her curls bouncing on her shoulders as she
shouted with glee.

“you’ve got this,” he watched her say. “i love you.”

they all wore matching jerseys in falcons green, and just when he thought his heart couldn’t
possibly feel any fuller, they turned around to reveal that each shirt bore a letter of his name. theo
wore the “d,” pansy the “r,” cho the “a,” ginny the “c,” blaise the “o” — and hermione, to his
greatest amusement, wore an exclamation point.

gods, how he loved them all.

the game begins and the falcons take off. draco quickly scores a dozen points to the awe of the
stadium, and his success only grows from there.

halfway through the match, pansy signals for theo and cho to check their phones.

draco played his hardest at the match. he only had one shot left to prove himself, to show his
friends and everyone in the stadium how much their support mattered to him. and it paid off: when
his seeker caught the snitch and the final whistle rang out across the stadium, he looked up at the
scoreboard for the first time that game.

325 to 107.

his highest-ever scoring match. a falcons record.

before he knew what was happening, draco was surrounded by his team, players swirling in joyous
loops around him on their brooms until they all soared to the ground. he expected to waltz off to the
locker room and celebrate the final win with his teammates, but as he turned, he spotted theo
waiting for him at the entrance.

he gulped. somehow, he knew it was time.

“where are they?” draco asked as he approached his friend, and theo quickly whisked him down a
familiar hallway away from the cameras and victory cries.

“one of the conference rooms. and congrats, mate,” theo said, clapping him on the shoulder. “i had
a feeling you’d kick arse today.”

the conference room was already full when theo guided draco inside. pansy stood at the corner of
the conference table and offered him a waggle of her brows when their eyes met. hermione was by
the door, and she gave him a quick, chaste hug before stepping aside.

because behind her was the owner of the falcons, the same man who’d heard his impassioned plea
weeks before.

“captain malfoy,” he said, reaching out to shake his hand firmly. “excellent play out there today.”

“thank you, sir.” the room fell silent, draco’s shock at it all beginning to set in. “to what do i— uh
—“

the owner cleared his throat. “i wanted to be the first to inform you that we’ve had a last minute
shake-up to our coaching roster.”

draco blinked, then blinked again. “but the contracts were all in place. so how did…”

he trailed off, and as the realization spread across the room, all eyes fell to pansy.

she merely shrugged. “there were several openings on teams all around the world, as you may
recall. attractive ones. ones worth breaching contract for.”

“indeed, ms. parkinson. it appears our lead defensive coach has taken a new role on the south
african team,” the owner continued, his gaze meeting draco’s with a reassuring grin. “which leaves
the falcons with an opening, you see.”

hermione gasped quietly beside him. theo’s smile grew wider and wider.

“so, mr. malfoy. might you be interested in the position?”

“yes.” the word shot from draco’s throat without thinking as his eyes welled up with tears. “gods,
yes. please. i’d want nothing more.”
“good. then we’ll work with mr. nott on the particulars of your contract, and we’ll see you back
here as usual next week. lots to prep before pre-season, as you know.”

“yes. of course. yes. i— thank you, sir. thank you for this chance.”

as the owner moved to exit the room, he paused to shake draco’s hand once more — but this time,
he leaned in to speak to him alone. “you’re the best man for the job, draco. you care more than
anyone.”

the moment the door swung shut behind him, draco, hermione, theo and pansy burst into hysterics.

tears rolled freely down draco’s face. hermione wrapped her arms around him, laughing joyfully as
she pressed kisses to his cheeks. theo fist pumped the air over and over. even pansy allowed herself
a smile large enough to show dimples few had ever seen.

they did it. he did it. he got all he wanted and more than he could ever imagine — and merlin, did it
feel so damned perfect.

three days later, election day looms over the wizarding world. the race is still tight, far too close to
call.

hermione closes out her last campaign event and the group checks in before gathering to watch the
results roll in.
the dimco office was already buzzing with excitement by the time draco and hermione arrived from
her final campaign stop. aides and analysts flitted about the lobby debating results and sharing
polling updates. pansy and cho were directing them all, sending parchment slips flying across the
room and muttering instructions into their phones.

“oi!” theo called from a side table where he sat with ginny and blaise. they all held matching
teacups, an extravagant pink and yellow set she’d been gifted during a delegation to mumbai. “we
might’ve brought just a little bit of booze,” ginny admitted, and hermione laughed as she watched
them crash their sloshing teacups together.

draco tapped at her shoulder. “if you’d just follow me this way, ma’am,” he murmured in her ear,
guiding her like a natural-born bodyguard through the hectic lobby and down the hallway to a
familiar office.

“do you remember the last time we were in here together?” he asked, shutting the door and leaning
against the desk.

of course she did. it was the night of the gala, before it all turned to shit — the first time she’d seen
him in-person in months. a flush crawled up her cheeks as she remembered how heated they’d
gotten, how they couldn’t keep their hands off each other.

not much had changed, really.

“whatever happens tonight,” draco began, his grey eyes glimmering. “i just want you to know how
proud of you i am. how much i admire you. and the results, no matter what they say — they don’t
change a thing.”

hermione slipped into his embrace with practiced ease. his hands found their place at the small of
her back, hers between his shoulder blades, and she relished in his quiet, his comfort, his safety.

she breathed out the tension that had been coiling up her spine and buried herself into his chest.
“you’re right,” she whispered, “but i want to win.”

“oh, you will.” draco’s laugh rumbled through his lungs, the low vibration tingling in her ear. “trust
me, hermione. you will.”

in the background, the managers check in on the latest results — and maybe a few other things.
the night dragged on. hermione’s nerves waxed and waned as the results poured in, doing her best
to ignore the numbers as they ticked higher and higher. for every region that swung in her and
kingsley’s direction, another went for robards and mclaggen. the popularity of their police reform
platform proved to outweigh some of the strongest concerns about mclaggen’s blackmail attempt,
but hermione’s speech had earned back the trust of those who aligned with her and shacklebolt’s
policies.

it left them in a precarious position. more than halfway through the evening and the race was still
too close to call, even according to the most detailed projections of the pundits milling about the
dimco lobby.

draco sat beside her in a lounge chair on the sidelines, his pinky linked with hers and brushing
softly against her knuckle. and despite the occasional pangs of anxiety, hermione felt calm. settled.
ready. no matter what the results would be, she was proud of herself, content with where her life
had taken her. she had done things her way, won all there was to win.

but she’d be lying to herself if she said she didn’t want to earn this win, too.

deep in thought, hermione gazed across the room at all of the friends who’d worked so hard on her
behalf. who believed in her enough to help pursue this dream for her, for them.

there was cho, pointing toward a district map and asking her team of analysts which votes would be
tallied next. and there was pansy, seated by the window as she artfully handled requests for
comment from reporter after reporter.
blaise was at his clothing rack, where he combed between selections for her post-election speech.
ginny and theo sat together with their teacups offering whoops and cheers as each favorable result
rolled in.

and there was draco, beside her as always. supporting her, loving her, reminding her that she was so
much more than her job, than this election.

all of these people, all of her closest friends — her family, now. all there for her. she marveled in it,
quietly in awe of how far they’d come together.

she dropped her head to rest on draco’s shoulder.

it darted up just as quickly when cho’s phone rang across the room.

hermione’s breath hitched in her throat. vaguely, she heard cho’s greeting, watched as her lips
formed the words: “good evening, minister shacklebolt.”

the entire room fell silent and motionless. draco’s pinky squeezed hers. cho looked up at her from
the desk, her eyes watering, and after a moment she extended the phone toward her with an
outstretched arm. “it’s for you, hermione.”

she stood in a trance, her heart thumping loud enough she was sure everyone around her could hear
it. her feet carried her to the desk where cho stood. her fingers reached for the phone, trembling as
they lifted it.

and when she finally placed the mobile to her ear, mumbling a quiet “hi, kingsley” into the
microphone, time felt as though it had stopped entirely.

“we did it,” kingsley said. “the last votes just came through. we won. congratulations, hermione.”

she nearly dropped the phone then and there.

“we… we won?”

the entire room burst into an uproar. cho and pansy threw their arms around each other, jumping
and squealing in their embrace, while ginny and theo jumped out of their chairs and began to shout.
“t-thank you, kingsley,” hermione breathed into the phone. “i can’t wait to work with you.”

the call ended, and she was immediately thrust into the joy of the moment — hands reaching out to
clap her on the back, laughter and cheers and well wishes echoing past her ears. blaise waved his
wand across the room, sending cascades of glittering confetti flying through the air.

draco found her in the midst of it all. he stood before her, one hand tangling in her curls while the
other tilted her chin up to meet his gaze. “you did it, love. i knew you would.”

“we did it, both of us,” she replied. “all of us. together.”

as their lips connected in a passionate kiss, the sounds of the room growing distant once again,
hermione’s thoughts wandered to truth, and luck, and gratitude. how every decision up until that
moment had led her here, to this bliss. how it felt to love and be loved for exactly who you are.

and now that she had it, she would never let it go.
 the end and the beginning
Chapter Notes

Endless gratitude to my beloved Rachel (ohthedrarry on AO3 and @draqo_pctter on Twitter),

who helped build out this idea and has been Fauxmance's alpha from day one.

Thank you to Meg (@oceanxpoppy on AO3 and Twitter) and Olive (olivegreen on AO3 and
@olivegreenauth on Twitter), who devoured every syllable of this fic and cheered me on
constantly behind the scenes — not to mention the angst circles and t-shirts!

And for all the other readers who’ve flailed, yelled, cried, and laughed along the way, I am so,
so grateful for your love and support! The response has grown far beyond what I ever
imagined. I’ve had such a blast writing this little story and interacting with you all, and I can’t
thank you enough for reading.

two years later...

hermione and draco settle into their posts. their friends embrace a new normal between them. things
change for everyone, but their friendships live on — starting with cho, ginny, and hermione.
theo, blaise and draco have just as much to stay in touch about.

and as for hermione and draco, well…

before they head out on their first vacation since their big wins, they have some news of their own
to share.
hermione and draco spent the next two weeks alone on the beach, tangled up in each other in their
newlywed bliss.

while their elopement had been a shock to all of their friends, it had happened just as they intended
it to for months. draco had proposed to her on a quiet sunday morning, and hermione had accepted
without a second thought — courtship and tradition and press coverage be damned.

they had a quiet wedding in a back hall of the ministry, officiated by kingsley with sturgis as their
witness. they exchanged simple gold rings. draco kissed his bride with aplomb. in the end, it was
just the two of them celebrating their love, making their union official with the gilded swirls of a
magical vow to one another.

unsurprisingly to both of them, their lives didn’t feel much different in the wake of their elopement.
they relished in the sun, the sand, the uninterrupted happiness — and of course, made plans for a
garden party with their closest friends at their london townhouse upon their return. they didn’t want
to be struck from theo’s will, after all.

they spent every day of their honeymoon entirely together, choosing to do whatever their hearts
desired. they splashed in the waves, they rolled around in the sand. they spent a few days just
lounging in their bed, completely absorbed in each other, surrounded by nothing but the warm
breeze.

it was nearly the end of their vacation when hermione and draco dared to check their mobiles again.
they sat at the beachside veranda of their villa after dinner, the sun setting over the waves before
them, when they turned their devices back on together. hermione’s lips parted around a gasp as she
scrolled through her notifications. “do you also have at least a dozen missed calls from pansy?”

“two dozen,” draco corrected, and they offered each other matching curious looks before draco
dialed her number and placed his mobile on speaker between them.

“happy honeymoon, you crazy kids,” pansy greeted them after two rings. “i wish you’d told me this
was one of those vacations where you’d both fall off the face of the earth.”

“is it an emergency, pans?” draco asked, thinly veiling the annoyance in his tone.

“well, it’s news… big news.” pansy sighed over the phone, and draco’s eyes found hermione’s
across the table. “for both of you, actually. first, i got word that your head coach won’t be renewing
his contract at the end of the season, draco.”

“really?” hermione breathed, a grin beginning to stretch across her face. draco reached across the
table to lace their fingers together, his expression still stoic.

“and hermione, i’ve been speaking with kingsley for a few weeks now. he’s interested in
accelerating his retirement. he’s thinking the next election… should be yours.”

“ really ?” it was draco’s turn to exclaim, to grin from ear to ear, though hermione’s jaw had now
fallen to the floor.

for a moment, they all fell silent, save for the sound of the waves crashing to shore and the faint
buzz of background noise echoing from the mobile.

“and listen… i hate to interrupt what i now know is your bloody honeymoon , but this is the kind of
news that just can’t wait.”

hermione’s eyes locked on draco’s. she stood slowly, approaching his chair on bare feet. she sank
down into his lap, his hands coming to rest at her hips as her forehead pressed against his. they
stayed quiet, just breathing together, thinking through the news, lost in their own imaginations.
wondering how their lives could possibly get any better than this.

she pulled back just enough to look deeply into his eyes, and he returned her gaze with a wistful
grin. their answer laid in their shared expressions, not a word needing to be exchanged to know
what they wanted — to know what they were going to do, together.

“so what do you think? are you two ready for your next adventure?”

“yes,” they replied in unison, their smiles only growing as the warm sun danced across their skin.
“we’re ready.”
End Notes

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