Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

December 1996

Growing up in the Muggle world, Hermione Granger might not have understood magic in the way she knows it now—the way she feels it coursing through her bones, flowing within the world around her. But she’d always been drawn to the magic of a new book, the enchantment of a love story.

Hermione prides herself on her logical nature, but rationality has not prevented her from yearning for the impossibility of magic. And reason certainly does not make her immune to heartbreak.

So, in every chance encounter, every casual touch, every moment of prolonged eye contact, she searches for evidence of something more, something magical. A love story of her own. And when the magic fades, when she’s drowning in her emotions, Hermione pours them out. She writes a love letter. Not to send. Just for herself. They remind her that words, themselves, are magic. They can wound just as they can heal.

Her letters—which would soon travel with her through Horcrux hunts and dragon rides and battles, currently stashed away in the trunk at the foot of her Hogwarts bed—are among her most secret possessions. There are four in total: Draco Malfoy, up until he called her a Mudblood in Second Year—who’s always, unfortunately, been quite fit, in spite of his atrocious personality and his pureblood tosh. Viktor Krum from Fourth Year, of course. Dean Thomas, after that one Gryffindor common room party in Fifth Year. The all-too-brief appeal of Cormac McLaggen earlier this year, before she’d actually spoken to him. 

Well, five, now, she thinks as she seals this one, pausing to swipe the stray tears from her eyes. Now, finally added to her collection, is Ron Weasley, from… well, most of the years, but especially this year. Until Lavender, that is.

Now, the magic of these words, her words—I liked you first and By all rights, you were mine and I wish, just once, you’d choose me—will be carefully tucked away, along with those inconvenient, illogical feelings. Balance will be restored.

She takes a deep breath, opens her trunk, and lets go.

September 1998

The forbidden kiss. We knew that it was wrong, that he was betrothed to another. But if this wasn't what he wanted, then why did he come to the field of desire? It was fated that we should meet like this—

“Another bodice-ripper, you little pervert?” 

Hermione startles at the sudden presence of noise in the library, looking up to find Ginny smirking in the open seat across from her, legs propped on the table and crossed at the ankles.

She hides the book under her copy of Advanced Potion-Making. “I enjoy them for the plot, if you must know.”

“Sure you do. You’ll find no judgement from me. You should see the things Harry writes—”

“Oh, Merlin.” Hermione covers her face, peeking at Ginny through the gaps in her hands. “How many times must I ask you not to tell me these things?”

She recognises the tap of dragonhide Oxfords on stone before she registers Draco Malfoy swiftly approaching their table. 

“Can I talk to you?” he hisses quietly at Hermione, towering over her, and she raises her brows at him.

“Me?”

“Clearly.”

“Ferret, I was just about to tell Hermione—”

He refuses to break his searing gaze from Hermione. “Ginevra, I need to talk to Granger. Alone.”

“Always a pleasure, Malfoy. If you need me”—Ginny says breezily to Hermione as she drops her feet to the ground, stands, and grabs her bag from the table—“I’ll be in the Hospital Wing, with a ‘migraine,’ perusing that calendar of shirtless Aurors we all know Pomfrey keeps stashed in her office.” She sends Malfoy a lascivious wink before waltzing off.

Hermione turns back to Malfoy expectantly, gesturing to the vacated seat.

“Look, I wanted to say…” he pauses as he sits down, rubbing the back of his neck and now looking at anything but her face. “I appreciate it. But… this cannot happen.”

“What are you on about, Malfoy?”

His cheeks are turning crimson at this point. “Really, I think it’s… charming that you think I have ‘grey specks in my eyes,’ and…”

She freezes. What. In. The. Ever. Loving. Fuck. 

Hermione feels faint. There is only one place she’s ever read—nay, ever written—those words. She looks down at Malfoy’s hand, his family’s infamous signet ring tapping against a folded piece of worn parchment.

“Oh my god.”

“It’s not a blood status thing, I swear it. It’s just that Pansy…” He’s still rambling, but her mind is piecing together this most unfortunate chain of events and their implications. If Malfoy found his letter, then that means there’s a chance…

“Oh. My. God.” 

Because Ron has entered the library, looking around the room with a wild expression on his face. In his hands is a familiar folded letter with Ron Weasley written in none other than Hermione’s swooping script.

“Nonononononono,” she’s mumbling, with no mind to how absolutely unhinged she appears in this moment.

She abruptly stands and looks around wildly, with all the grace of a caged animal. Malfoy finally shuts up, watching her with what she imagines is a combination of apprehension and fear. 

Hermione has made plenty of decisions in her life that one might perceive as rash, including catching a professor on fire, trapping a middle-aged woman as a beetle in a jar, luring her headmistress on an impromptu journey toward an horde of angry centaurs in the Forbidden Forest, and taking Cormac McLaggen of all of the wizards in Hogwarts as her Slug Club date. But in this moment, her eyes tracking his lips as they part to speak, she makes perhaps the most impulsive decision of her life.

She leans her entire body over the table, yanks Draco Malfoy’s emerald Slytherin tie forward, and pulls his lips to meet hers.

They’re softer than she’d imagined, and if Hermione didn’t know better, she’d think he was kissing her back. In another world, with another man, she thinks, this might actually be quite a good kiss. 

The end of his tie is still loosely clasped in her hand when she pulls away. Malfoy, blinking rapidly at her, is frozen in place. 

“Granger, what the f—” 

She glances up and catches Ron’s stunned expression, his movements completely halted as he takes in the scene in front of him.

“Thank you!” she whispers to Malfoy as she drops his tie, wordlessly summoning her books and the letter in his hand into her arms and sprinting toward the nearest exit.

“Hermione!” Ron calls out from the other end of the library, followed swiftly by Madame Pince’s “MISTER WEASLEY!”, but she doesn’t look back.

Hermione hides away in a stall in the Prefects' bathroom, remembering a tad too late that a troll attacked her the last time she did this. Her own words blur on the parchment in front of her.

Dear Draco,

First of all I refuse to call you Malfoy. You think you’re so cool going by your surname. Just so you know, Malfoy sounds like the name of an old wizard with a long white beard. 

You think EVERYONE loves you, Draco. That’s what I hate about you. Because, except for Ron and Harry, everyone does love you. Including me. I did. Not anymore.

Here are all your worst qualities:

You say cruel things and never apologise. You just assume everyone else will find you charming. And if they don’t, who cares, right? Wrong! You do care. You care a lot about what people think of you.

You’re so good at everything. Too good. You could’ve given other boys at Hogwarts a chance to be good, but you never did.

You believe everything your father says, including that my blood is dirty, even though my blood is the same as yours and I’m a better witch than you are a wizard.

You still made me like you, even though you know Ron and Harry hate you, even though I know you’ll never like me back.

Even though you don’t deserve it, fine, here are all the things I like(d) about you:

One time in Potions, nobody wanted to be partners with Theodore Nott because he was quiet and awkward, and you volunteered like it was no big deal. Suddenly everyone thought Theodore was cool.

You are quite funny, even though I won’t ever admit it to you.

You make your friends feel very special. Because that’s your talent, right? You’re good at making people feel special when you want to.

Up close, your face isn’t so much handsome as beautiful. How many beautiful boys have you ever seen? For me it was just one. You. I think it’s a lot to do with your eyes. You have beautiful grey specks in your eyes. Unfairly beautiful.

Do you know what it’s like to like someone so much you can’t stand it and know that they’ll never feel the same way? Probably not. People like you don’t have to suffer through those kinds of things.

But now, I know for sure that I am over you. I’m proud to say I am the only witch in this school who has been immunised to the charms of Draco Malfoy. All because I had a really bad dose of you. Now I never have to worry about catching you again. Maybe YOU’RE the one with the bad blood.

Hermione Jean Granger

The door slowly creaks open. “Hermione, you in there?”

She rests her head in her hands, thinking she’d probably prefer another troll at this point. “Yes.”

“I didn’t mean to follow you,” Dean Thomas says softly. “I just saw you run in here and wanted to make sure you were okay. And uh, I…”—the soft rustle of paper sliding on marble, and a folded note marked Dean Thomas now rests directly in front of her—“thought you might want that back. It seemed quite personal.”

“Dean,” Hermione pleads as she opens the stall and holds up the incriminating letter—Dear Dean, I’ve never met a boy with manners as good as yours…—between them. “Know that I wrote this years ago.”

“Fifth Year, right? The common room party?” He gives her a soft smile, and she remembers why she was so inclined to write this letter in the first place. “I had a great time that night, too.” He pauses, choosing his next words carefully. “I feel like I ought to tell you, though… you know I’m gay, right?”

I did not, she thinks.

“Yes, of course, Dean!” She nods frantically. “Yes. I did. I did.”

“I’m just— it’s, Seamus and I, we’re still figuring things out, but there’s always been something there, you know? I’m not out out, but my parents know, so…” his voice trails off, a sheepish smile filling his face.

“Oh, Dean,” she sighs, reaching out to grab his hand. “I’m just chuffed for you two, really, and I’m terribly sorry about”—she waves the letter around frantically—“all of this. This was really for myself, you know, a diary of sorts, and it’s all quite mortifying.”

He squeezes her hand back. “Hermione. Please, don’t. We know better than most how precious love is. How quickly it can be taken from us. There is nothing wrong with sharing it.” Hermione laughs, because if she doesn’t, she might cry.

Sharing it. The words stick in her brain. Time stops, turns over, speeds up, almost as if she were using a Time Turner again, as she realises what exactly this means. That every single one of her letters might have been shared.

Oh, bugger.

The last time she sprinted up several flights of Hogwarts’ stairs at this speed, Hermione was fighting off Death Eaters while attempting to kill a cursed Maledictus with nothing but a Basilisk fang—so, perspective, she reminds herself.

The slaps of her black Mary Janes against stone echo around the corridor. She rounds a corner and skids to a stop outside the rooms she shares with Lavender in the Eighth Year dormitories—McGonagall’s gift (read: bribe) transformed within the Room of Requirement for the small group of students who returned after the Battle of Hogwarts, now perched across from the owlery on the seventh floor of the castle. It would be fairly idyllic on the whole, actually, if it weren’t for some owl species’ bloodcurdling midnight shrieks.

Hermione shoves open the door without a glance around her and collapses onto her knees at the foot of her bed. Her trunk sits open, Crookshanks settled comfortably atop the open lid and warily eyeing her frenetic movements.

She stares at the empty space on top of her favourite copy of Hogwarts: A History, where five letters once sat. 

“Ummmmm… Hermione?”

She slowly looks up at Lavender, perched lightly on Hermione’s bed, the silver webbing of scars down her neck from Fenrir Greyback’s attack—cursed wounds—covered with a pink silk scarf. While the two had been thrust into the same social group since Sixth Year due to Lavender’s and Ron’s long-term relationship, it was Hermione’s killing of Greyback in retaliation for his attack, and her constant presence at Lavender’s side during the gruelling recovery process this summer, that solidified their friendship. 

Hermione used to think that she simply wasn’t the type of girl whom other girls liked. Now, she realises, even the Brightest Witch of Her Age can be unbelievably stupid. Lavender and Ginny—they’d taught her the meaning of sorority. Of sisterhood.

As she stares at her roommate, still kneeling, words escape her. An incredulous “they’re… gone” slips out.

“What’s gone?”

“They’re gone,” Hermione repeats, slightly more hysterical, gesturing wildly at her trunk.

Lavender gasps, her hands dramatically lifting to cover her mouth. “They’re gone?”

“They’re gone.” She nods emphatically as she slowly stands, her voice rising an octave higher than usual. “I just don’t understand how…” She trails off, narrowing her eyes at Lavender. Her roommate. The only human alive who knew these letters existed, thanks to a smidge too much firewhiskey in the Eighth Year common room after the Start-of-Term Feast.

“Did you send them?” she asks, hands moving to her hips.

Lavender pouts, crossing her arms. “For Merlin’s sake, Hermione—you fight over a stupid boy one time, and you’re forever labelled a Brutus?! I’d never do that to you.” She pauses. “Well, not now, at least.”

Hermione continues to eye her warily. “How do you even know that reference?”

“O.W.L. in Muggle Studies, babes. Plus!” Lavender exclaims, holding up a finger. “Why would I want my ex-lover to receive a love letter from my best friend?”

“That’s actually quite a logical… wait, what? What do you mean, ex? And why do you insist on referring to him in that way?”

Lavender sighs, dropping backward onto Hermione’s bed. “I broke up with him this morning,” she mumbles, staring up at the dark wood panelling of the four-poster bed as she twirls a lock of hair in one finger.

“You WHAT?” Hermione crawls onto the edge of her bed, nudging Lavender with the back of her hand. “Why? And, how on earth could you not tell me?!”

“I didn’t want you to talk me out of it.” She rolls over onto her stomach, looking up at Hermione. “I just—I needed to do it. It’s our final year—really, we have so much freedom this year that it’s essentially a trial run at what life will look like after Hogwarts, except then Ron will be at the shop with George. And I needed to know.”

Hermione scrunches her eyebrows. “Know what?”

“If he was really choosing me all along, or if I’ve only ever been the consolation prize for you.”

“Oh, Lav,” she sighs. “You know he—”

Lavender’s small tawny owl flies through the room’s open window, dropping an envelope directly between the two girls before landing on her trunk with a small hoot beside Crookshanks. They both glance down to find one letter, returned to sender, addressed to Cormac McLaggen. 

Hermione sighs. “Oh, thank the fucking gods.”

The last time she’d looked out at this view, Hermione was preparing to leave everything she’d ever known behind—to Obliviate her parents’ memories of her and depart Hogwarts to hunt Horcruxes with Harry and Ron. Her feet dangle precariously off the ledge of the Astronomy Tower, the memory threatening to overwhelm her. 

Her separation from Harry, who declined McGonagall’s offer to begin Auror training, feels like living with a phantom limb. She still finds herself seeking him out in every room, wanting to ask his opinion amid every predicament. She’s lived for him for so long that she’s no longer certain what it even means to live for herself.

“Alright, Granger?”

“What are you doing here?”

Malfoy approaches her slowly, as if not wanting to startle a wild animal. “Actually, I stopped at your rooms earlier and Brown said you might be here. I just… Look, I just want to be super clear. I’m flattered, I am, but Pansy and I just broke up, so…”

“Are you trying to break up with me right now, Malfoy?”

“Yeah, well.” He rubs his neck, grimacing. “It didn’t really seem like it took the first time.”

“Draco Malfoy, I am not trying to date you.”

“See, your mouth is saying something, but then your mouth said…”—he gives her a meaningful look—“something completely different.”

“I don’t actually like you, you git. I just needed someone else not to think I like him.”

“Who?”

“Hm?”

“Go on, at least tell me who this mystery bloke is, or else I’m going to go on believing you’ve been concocting some scheme to slip Amortentia into my pumpkin juice.”

“Mmm…” She pretends to mull over his request. “No.”

“Excellent. Shall I just tell the rest of the school that you wrote me a love letter?” He turns dramatically, sweeping his robe out behind him.

“Fine, Malfoy. It’s Ronald.”

Malfoy scoffs, turning back to her. He lowers himself to the ground beside her, his thigh nearly touching hers as he leans back on his wrists and studies her. “The Weasel? For Merlin’s sake, it’s not even Potter? At least he’s reasonably worthy of you.”

“Oh, shush,” she says, uncertain whether to feel offended or flattered. “Anyway, Ron also got a letter, so you can imagine how complicated it’ll become if he thinks I’m in love with him.”

“Hold up.” He holds up one hand, having the audacity to look legitimately outraged. “I’m not the only one who got a love letter?”

“Well, I wrote five letters, so you’re not special.”

“Who else?” he growls, and something swoops low in Hermione’s stomach.

She rolls her eyes. “If I tell you, will you please leave me alone?”

“Perhaps.”

She sighs, feeling his gaze on her as she looks out at the Black Lake. “Viktor Krum, Dean Thomas, Cormac McLaggen,” she says, growing progressively closer to mumbling by the end.

Malfoy snorts. “I’ll give you Krum and Thomas, Granger, but McLaggen? I thought you were the sharp one of the Golden Trio.” He stands, offering her an outstretched hand to help her up. He’s surprisingly warm, and as his thumb grazes her wrist, she finds herself unwilling to let go.

“You’ll find no argument here.” Hermione drops his hand after a moment, clearing her throat. “And then you, back before I realised our epic romance would be thwarted by Voldemort’s quest for Muggle domination and some casually inherited bigotry.” 

She sees him wince out of the corner of her eye and feels just the slightest pang of remorse, nudging him lightly with her shoulder as they begin walking. “And, naturally, before I knew what an absolute prat you are.”

He doesn’t laugh, but rather looks at her quite seriously. “Granger, do you want me to get on my knees?”

“Your…” She stumbles for a moment as her eyes snap to his, her cheeks warming at the implication.

“I told you this summer, I’ll apologise every day—I’ll beg for your forgiveness—if that’s what you need.”

“Oh.” She shakes her head, more to clear it of that image than to respond to his question. “No. Malfoy. I meant what I said the last four times we’ve had this conversation: You’re forgiven.”

“Yes, but in Muggle Studies today—”

“In Muggle Studies?”

“I told you this, Granger. McGonagall’s allowed me to take an accelerated O.W.L. plus N.E.W.T. course of study this term. Anyway, today—”

“I thought you were taking the piss, Malfoy. That’s an incredible amount of work. I don’t know if that’s quite touching or just unbelievably stupid.”

“Well, your abundant faith in me aside, today we learned that Muggles propose marriage to one another on bended knee as a signifier of respect and devotion, representing mediaeval deference to Muggle royalty.”

“And you are… proposing marriage, Malfoy?”

“Merlin, no. This isn’t coming out right.” He runs his hand through his hair. “I just mean to say, I’d get on my knees if you wanted me to. As a sign of respect to you.”

She flushes. “Malfoy, you’re truly forgiven. I mean it.”

Desperate for a change in conversation topic, she looks around, surprised to find they’ve made their way to the Eighth Year common room. “I’ve so much Arithmancy work to do. Are we… okay?”

Malfoy clears his throat. “Uhh… yes. Fine, thanks.”

“Look,” she takes a deep breath, unsure which alternate universe she’s landed in where this is something she needs to state, out loud, to Draco Malfoy. “I’m sorry for kissing you.”

“It could have been worse, Granger.” He smirks at her. 

Her hand rests on the doorknob to her rooms, but neither of them move, the silence stretching between them. She’s reminded, quite unfortunately, of what awaits her once Malfoy opens his mouth again.

“So, what are you going to say to the Weasel?”

She sighs. “I guess I’m going to have to tell the truth.”

“Yeah, but, you know… What is the truth? How do you feel about him?”

“It’s not really your problem, Malfoy,” she snaps, finally pulling open the door and shutting it in his face.

The knock on her door that evening jolts Hermione from the rake’s attempt to ruin the fair maiden for all other men (with some rather intriguing uses of his tongue, she thinks). Crookshanks leaps off of her with a yowl as she gets out of bed and pads to the door, cracking it open.

She snakes her head through the small opening, darting her eyes around both corners to check for Ron’s presence before widening the gap for her unexpected visitor.

“Malfoy.”

“I thought you refuse to call me Malfoy,” he deadpans, perfectly mimicking Hermione’s swottiest intonation. 

“Hardy har har. I realised Draco”—she accentuates the ‘ay’—“was even more unbearably prattish.”

He does a double-take, eyes travelling down her body and back up. “Ace pyjamas, Granger.”

She looks down at Crookshanks’ disembodied head emblazoned across her jumper and trousers. “It’s Crooksie.” She points behind her, and Draco leans to look around her.

“No fucking way,” he laughs, approaching Crookshanks. “Isn’t this your little monster from Third Year? How is that thing possibly alive? It looked ready to pop its clogs, as they say, when you bought it.”

“He is half-Kneazle, actually. Quite a remarkable species. Capable of problem-solving without teaching or assistance! And he’s an excellent judge of character.”

Malfoy and Crookshanks eye each other warily. 

“I see,” Malfoy says cautiously after a moment. “Well, then.” 

He slowly approaches Crookshanks, nestled like a king atop Hermione’s trunk, and drops into a deep, aristocratic bow. “A pleasure, Mr. Crookshanks. I’m Malfoy. Draco Malfoy.” He inclines his head to Hermione and winks, the hint of a smirk tugging at his lips.

Crooks purrs contentedly, eyes on Hermione, and she mouths traitor.

“You should see him with Won-Won,” she says offhandedly to Draco. “They’ve grown quite fond of one another—it’s actually a tad unsettling. I’m not sure I trust them together.”

“Won. Won,” he repeats slowly.

The two of them stare at each other for a moment before bursting into laughter.

“Lavender’s— owl— she— got—” Hermione wheezes through a valiant first attempt at explaining. 

She pauses and dabs at her eyes before trying again. “When Lavender and Ron first started dating in Sixth Year, she called him”—she giggles—“Won-Won just to drive him mad. We all thought she was completely barking, and she knew it, but she stuck with it. Her owl died in the— well, it died, and when she found a new one in Hogsmeade a few weeks ago, she came straight into our rooms and told me his name, completely straight-faced.” 

Draco laughs again, and the sound is what Hermione imagines Amortentia tastes like. Addictive. Seductive.

After a moment, silence envelops the room as they grin at one another like complete twits. Hermione, not entirely sure why this conversation is occurring in the first place and yet, for whatever reason, not wanting this moment to end, waits patiently.

“What if—” Malfoy begins, twisting his signet ring with the forefinger and thumb of his other hand. “What if you didn’t tell him?”

“What?”

“What if we let people think we were actually together? Just for a little while. Not just the Weasel. Everybody.”

Hermione cannot prevent the high-pitched squeak that escapes her. “Have you lost the plot, Malfoy? Why would you possibly want that?”

“For starters—thanks to my own complete stupidity, I’m aware—the Malfoy name is in desperate need of public redemption, and what better to help rehabilitate it than a star-crossed romance with the Golden Girl herself? Plus, Pansy might hate it, which always makes a decision especially appealing.”

“Oh, I see. So you want to use me as your pawn?”

“Ah, well, see—technically, you used me as your pawn first. I’m merely seeking… mutual satisfaction, Granger.” The corner of his lip curves up.

Hermione hates, with every fibre of her being, how that phrase sounds so disgustingly attractive coming from Malfoy’s mouth right now. She bites her lip, wondering whether she’s imagining the way his eyes appear to dart to her mouth and back up. He slowly stands, swiping a tuft of Kneazle fur off his shoulder as he makes his way to the door.

“Just think about it, Granger.” Crookshanks lets out a high-pitched mewl that sounds curiously like endorsement if a Kneazle could express such sentiment.

“Don’t hold your breath.”

She closes the door behind him and leans against it, hitting the back of her head slightly harder than she anticipated against the cool wood.

Hermione hears Ron’s muffled voice behind her and turns to her side, pressing her ear up against the door and cursing the scheming ancient magic of this castle for allowing these two to cross paths now of all times.

“Were you just…? With Hermione?” 

“Looks like it,” Malfoy responds.

“How long have you two…?”

“Not long.” She doesn’t need to see Ron’s face to picture his expression as Malfoy has the audacity to whistle as he walks away from the wreckage of that conversation.

Hermione groans, taking several steps forward to drop onto her bed and scream into the nearest pillow.

The Slytherin Quidditch team is just finishing practice when she finally makes her decision days later. She adjusts her jumper and strides out to the pitch, watching his teammates chat to one another as they dismount. 

“Malfoy!”

He pauses midway through wiping the sweat from his brow with his elbow, the edges of his fitted black shirt slightly lifted to reveal a pale stretch of taut muscle. It angers her sometimes—how obscenely fit he is. How her body betrays her to respond to him. She clenches her thighs where she stands, ignoring the hot, shameful burst of desire coursing through her.

He drops the broom he holds in his other hand and walks toward her. “Granger?” 

She pauses, her gaze slowly lifting from his body to his eyes. “Let’s do this.”

He lifts his brows, glancing briefly around them before offering her a classic Malfoy smirk.

Without missing a beat, he closes the remaining steps between them and winds his arms around her, one snaking around her back and the other reaching up to grip the back of her neck. This kiss is nothing like their first in the library. His is searing. Devastating. Unrestrained. Her body is on fire everywhere he touches her. 

He slowly releases her, and her traitorous heart hammers wildly against her ribcage. She feels his hand shake as he runs it along her cheek, his eyes searching hers.

Hermione clears her throat, breaking the spell between them. “I’d best be on my way. To, umm, Transfiguration.” She takes two steps, realises she’s headed in the wrong direction, and course-corrects. “Yes. That’s right. Transfiguration. Have a nice day.”

Despite feeling like she’s been hit with a particularly effective Jelly-Legs Curse, her feet decidedly cannot take her away fast enough from… all of that.

“As you were,” Malfoy calls out to the small crowd of gaping Slytherins behind her.

“We must have a contract, so we’re on the same page about the rules.”

Draco stares incredulously at her from across what one could say is now ‘their’ table in the library.

“You have rules? You really know how to kill the fun in any given situation, Granger.”

“Well,” she scoffs, “it’s important to know where you stand on certain issues.”

“Granger,” he says, his expression immediately serious. “I do not hold those beliefs any longer, about you or any other Muggleborns—”

“Malfoy,” she interrupts, reaching across the table to lightly place a hand on his wrist. He pauses, looking up at her. “We’ve covered this. I wouldn’t have even considered this if I suspected otherwise. That’s not what I meant.”

His cheeks flush. “What issues, then?”

“For example…” She pauses, taking on her haughtiest tone. “When the time comes, I should be the one to break your heart, not the other way around. It will make you more sympathetic and it won’t leave me humiliated.”

“Fair enough.”

“And,” she continues. “I don’t want you to kiss me anymore.”

“Are you mad? Who is going to believe we are in a relationship if I’m not allowed to kiss you?”

“Listen, Malfoy. I refuse to deal with a repeat of the absolute rubbish Rita Skeeter put me through in Fourth Year. This would be— well, you can imagine how this would be if they thought we were…”

“Thought we were what, Granger?” If Rita Skeeter were here right now, she’d probably say Malfoy’s eyes were twinkling or glistening or some rubbish.

“Oh, you know. I’ve heard all the stories about the Prince of Slytherin, but I’m not like that.”

“Who says I’m like that?”

“Everybody. Everybody says that.”

“That doesn’t make it true. You should know that better than most.”

Hermione feels properly chastened, a feeling she utterly despises. “Well. It’s just— I’ve not had many relationships. I just don’t want all of my firsts to be fake.”

“But you kissed me first.”

“This is non-negotiable, Malfoy.”

Malfoy rolls his eyes. “Fine. We must figure out something, then. The snakes are going to be suspicious if I’m not allowed to touch you.”

“You have a point. How about this: You can kiss my cheek.”

“Fair, but not convincing enough.”

“You can… touch me, then.”

He snaps his attention to her, eyes wide. “Touch… you?”

“You know,” she says, fidgeting with her jumper. “Hold my hand. Put your arm around me. Rest your hand on my knee when we sit together. Things… couples do.”

“Yes. Uh. Of course. That’ll do it.”

She looks down, busying herself with adding more text to the parchment. “Okay, one more rule. We can never tell anyone that this relationship is fake, because it would be absolutely mortifying for the both of us.”

“Naturally, Granger. We would be a modern-day Grenouille and Crapaud.”

“Sorry?”

“You’ve never read Malecrit’s Hélas, Je Me Suis Transfiguré Les Pieds? Come off it. It’s bloody awful, mind you, but you can’t not read it. Add that to your little list.”

“Fine. I break your heart. No snitching. Malecrit book club. Anything else?”

His expression softens. “I could… I could write you notes”—he says, almost nervously—“every day.”

Hermione’s breath hitches. “You’d… do that?”

“Sure.” 

Her mind attempts to process what this means, what he might be saying to her, how she feels about it—

“Pansy was always on me to write her notes,” he interrupts, and she can almost hear the record-scratch sound effect her father used to attempt. “I never did, so if I start sending them to you, she’ll be completely narked, it’ll be good.”

Hermione coughs. “How… romantic.”

“Also, you’ll have to come with me to Slytherin’s Quidditch post-game parties.”

“Well, you have to be my Potions partner this term. And study with me in the library.”

“Okay.” Malfoy steals the parchment, pointing the quill at her before adding one last item and his signature to the paper. “But you’re going with me to the Yule Ball.”

She mulls over this proposal. “That’s… three months away from now. Do you earnestly believe we will still be doing this then?”

“Let’s call it a contingency.”

Hermione is certain that by the time the Yule Ball arrives, she and Malfoy will be ancient history, and that is the only reason that she leans down, adding her signature with a flourish to the magically binding contract. 

“Okay, Malfoy. Deal.”