Dramione

Something heavy and warm—ungodly so—draped around her.

It wasn’t the type of heat that sat in her chest, squeezing her lungs until all thought extinguished. This was different. External. It had a shape to it—angular and firm, the solid geometry of limbs and torso along with the slow mechanical rise of a ribcage that wasn’t hers.

It felt male.

A tight cage of arms imprisoned her, one banded across her upper back and the other tucked beneath her waist, shoving her against a gently breathing chest. A neck that smelt of cedar and rosemary kissed her nose in damp skin—the scent thick and heady at this proximity, concentrated in the hollow beneath his jaw where sleep and body heat had turned it into something almost liquid. She knew this scent. Had catalogued it involuntarily for six years across conference tables and narrow corridors and within the airlessness of the Department lifts.

But she’d never smelt it from the source before. Not like this—with her cheek pressed against the origin point, her nose buried in the warm dip where his pulse tapped steadily against her temple.

This is the heart of it. The fire before the smoke.

And the skin beneath her cheek—gods, it was soft. Firm and warm and impossibly smooth, like the inside of a wrist. She couldn’t recall arriving in this position. Couldn’t sequence the events that had led from separate sides of the mattress to this entanglement, this mortifying pretzel of limbs.

Though she couldn’t entirely pretend it felt bad.

It felt good. The admission crept in like a draught under a door.

It also scared her. Knowing whose skin it belonged to.

Malfoy’s hot morning breath whistled past her ear, disturbing the few curls that had escaped her sleep-flattened bramble. Like wind through tall grass—rhythmic and intimate in the way only unconscious proximity could be.

Hermione remained frozen. Her body rigid as a board, every muscle locked in a paralysis of if I don’t move, this isn’t happening. It was already awkward enough to find yourself cradled in the arms of your frenemy colleague. Entirely another when that colleague was Draco fucking Malfoy.

The same Malfoy who owned a dog that gazed at him like he’d lassoed the moon. Who’d travelled the world and came home with foreign magic and a broader mind. Who wore Muggle denims and joggers on weekends. Who’d furnished a flat in creams and browns with hints of sage green like some approximation of a Hobbit hole and named his pets after Hobbits themselves.

Somehow, since the vessel had opened, it seemed more logical that she’d awoken in an alternate universe than accept the one she actually inhabited. Because in no world that Hermione Granger knew was Draco Malfoy nice.

At least not without an ulterior motive. Just like a Slytherin.

And most certainly not nice to her.

Though she’d been ignoring—or trying to ignore—his behaviour these past few days. The gentleness when she burned. The patience when she snarled.

Stop it.

Despite everything he’d shared of his past, she was still suspicious of him. Couldn’t help it, the way one couldn’t help flinching at a loud noise even after the threat had passed. Stripped of his prejudice, Malfoy was still Malfoy—cutting, snarky, and oh so superior. Nice on occasion in the way a cat was occasionally affectionate: briefly, on its own terms, and always leaving you wondering if it was genuine or a prelude to being scratched.

One of the only ex-Death Eaters to have escaped imprisonment altogether. Perhaps she’d have a different opinion if he’d served his time and—

She caught herself. Her jaw tightened.

Maybe you’re being too harsh. It was one thing to hold a grudge against a frenemy colleague. Entirely another to wish Azkaban on someone for deeds committed as a child. A boy of sixteen.

She exhaled a slow, careful breath through her nose, trying not to disturb the arm across her back.